The Foundations of the Sabbath ~ Part 1 of 3

Alan Dunn

If we seek to bring to Christ biblically regulated, Spirit-invigorated worship, inevitably we ask the question, “When should we gather to worship?” “Sunday” is the generally accepted answer. But “Why do we gather on Sunday?” Scripture’s answer to these questions brings us into its teachings on the Sabbath. Scripture begins to teach us about the Sabbath in Genesis 2, at the point when God completed His work of creation. If we would understand when we are to worship and why we worship when we do, we must be anchored to the foundational revelation of God concerning the Sabbath which He gave at Creation.

Not all concur that Creation is foundational to a right view of New Covenant worship. Some view the Sabbath as originating apart from God’s revelation.((Barclay, William, The Ten Commandments For Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 31-32. Barclay tells us that the division of time into a seven-day week was a Babylonian invention useful for social and humanitarian reasons which Israel discovered upon arrival in Cannan. Shields, Norman. Pattern For Life (Welwyn: Evangelical Press, 1983). Shields roots Sabbath in pagan culture, suggesting that Abraham brought the idea to Palestine from Mesopotamia. He disallows any connection of Sabbath to creation. “It is thus difficult to accept the contention that Sabbath was known and obligatory from the creation onwards. That the creation narrative (Gen 2:1-3) tells of God resting on the seventh day is not in itself proof that the earliest men knew that fact or that they knew themselves to have a duty to follow it” (83-84).)) We first read of God’s shabath in Gen 2:2, yet some refuse to build their views of Sabbath on the foundations of Creation and argue that Sabbath emerged only at the time of Moses. These voices dismiss the legitimacy of the “creation ordinances”((John Murray defines a “creation ordinance” as “the commandments or mandates given to man in the state of integrity. These creation ordinances, as we may call them, are the procreation of offspring, the replenishing of the earth, subduing of the same, dominion over the creatures, labor, the weekly Sabbath, and marriage.” Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 27.)) one of which is the Sabbath. While denying that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance,((Carson, D.A. “Jesus and the Sabbath in the Four Gospels” From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation (New York: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 65. Carson opens up Mk 2:27 The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. He unconvincingly argues that (the) man is not Adam (yet Adam is repeatedly identified as ‘the man’ in Gen 2), but neither is he merely the Jew nor yet is he mankind. Then who is he? He denies that ἐγένετο refers to God’s work of creation but is “simply a circumlocution for God’s action” inferring the giving of the Law to Israel. Jesus’ use of γίνομαι(made) is, admittedly, unusual. I am not opposed to referring to Jn 1:1ff where the Spirit employs that verb to refer to God’s work of creation. Often the verb used regarding the origin of the Mosaic Law is δiδωmi (to give) (cf. Ex 24:12; Jn 1:17; 7:19; Rom 9:4; cf. Heb 8:6 enacted; and Act 7:35 you received the law). Also, the usual verb describing God’s act of creation is ποιεω(to do, make) (cf. Act 7:50; 14:25; 17:24; Heb 1:2). After demurring the legitimacy of categorizing the Law as ‘moral,’ ‘civil,’ and ‘ceremonial,’ Carson then collapses all Old Covenant Sabbath Law into “the ceremonial category” (69).)) there are still attempts to argue that Sunday is the day of New Covenant worship. There are three such arguments: a “New Covenant Theology” antinomian argument;((Wells, Tom, and Fred G. Zaspel. New Covenant Theology: Description, Definition, Defense. (Frederick, Md.: New Covenant Media, 2002). Zaspel permits Gen 2:1-3 to “sound the first note of eschatology in Scripture” with an “anticipatory function.” However, “the view that Gen 2:1-3 establishes and enjoins Sabbath observance as a creation ordinance, whether right or wrong in itself, seems to miss the main point… No command regarding Sabbath day observance can be found here. Nor is there any religious significance attached to the day, so far as man’s obligations or behavior are concerned. No mention at all is made to what bearing this day has on man” ( 214). That “no command regarding the Sabbath day observance can be found” appears sufficient to dismiss the legitimacy of creation ordinances as informing a Christian ethic. Zaspel also interprets the “rest” of Heb 4 as descriptive of justification: a turning from our works to rest in the finished work of Jesus. See Leupold, H. C. Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1960) who likewise finds no commandment in Gen 2:1-3. “However it should be well observed that no commandment is laid upon mankind at this point. Procksch remarks rightly and pointedly:’ for the present the Sabbath stays in heaven’” (103).)) an argument that evaporates Sabbath into soteriology((Lincoln, Andrew T. “From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical and Theological Perspective” Carson, D. A. ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation. (New York: Wipf & Stock, 2000). “It could be argued that even if the Sabbath were a creation ordinance, its function was not so much to enable the first man and woman to reflect a facet of the moral character of God as to be symbolic of the Creator’s intention for the history of His creation. In this case, despite the mandate to the first pair, this function of the Sabbath was fulfilled in the salvation that Christ brought; the creation ordinance, then passes with the inauguration of the new creation” (347-348). “In short, the physical rest of the Old Testament Sabbath has become the salvation rest of the true Sabbath” (396).)) which characteristically interprets the idea of ‘resting from one’s works’ and ‘entering God’s rest’ in Hebrews 4 as a metaphor for justification; and the argument of an over-realized eschatology((An ‘over-realized eschatology’ gives undue emphasis to the “already” aspects of the biblical “already – not yet” eschatological tension. It so emphasizes the Christian’s participation in Christ’s resurrection that it negates the integrity of life yet lived in this age, and preemptively presumes the possession of what is yet to be given in the resurrection. Lincoln, Andrew T. “Sabbath, Rest, and Eschatology in the New Testament” Carson, D. A. ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation. (New York: Wipf & Stock, 2000). “The coming of Jesus Christ fulfills the concept of rest… there is an “already” and a “not yet” to that fulfillment. But it is not as if the “already” and the “not yet” balanced the scale exactly. The fact that the decisive turn of events has already occurred in Christ shows that the “already” outweighs the “not yet….” “Thus the true Sabbath, which has come with Christ, is not a literal, physical rest but is seen as consisting in the salvation that God has provided… In short the physical rest of the Old Testament Sabbath has become the salvation rest of the true Sabbath… In fact the Sabbath keeping now demanded is the cessation from reliance on one’s own works (Heb 4:9,10)” (214-215). I am compelled to ask, in light of Paul’s teaching that the gift of the Holy Spirit is but the down-payment of our eternal inheritance, how it is that the down-payment can “outweigh” the full installment to be given to us in the resurrection? On p.205 Lincoln writes: “In that Christ’s resurrection fulfills the rest signified by the Old Testament Sabbath… The Resurrection is the accomplishment of the work of salvation that outranks and replaces the literal Sabbath. Its celebration on the first day is therefore in terms of salvation rather than of the literal rest that was a sign of the finished work of God in Christ. In other words, in the fulfillment, though the consummation of that fulfillment is still outstanding, the concept of literal rest has been transformed.” I take “literal Sabbath” to mean a specific day in this created realm of time and space which is “made holy” and devoted to worshipping the Lord. In view of my as yet ‘time and space’ existence, I am unconvinced that such a “literal Sabbath” no longer concerns me. Jesus is resurrected, but I have only the down-payment of my resurrection inheritance. While I am yet in this body, still living in created time and space, the “literal Sabbath” still pertains to me.)).

When we ask why it is that we in the New Covenant meet on Sunday, these brethren do not abandon the commitment to gather on Sunday and are happy to call the first day “The Lord’s Day,” but their rationale for why we assemble on that day is inadequate.((By not recognizing how and why the Lord established the Sabbath in Genesis, non-Sabbatarians fail to perceive that same divine action and purpose in Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath (Lk 6:5). Sabbath, as we will see, is established by divine action. It was Jesus Himself, who having fulfilled the Creation and Exodus Sabbath by His resurrection, then advanced Sabbath morality and blessing into the New Covenant Lord’s Day by His post-resurrection action.)) Essentially they offer pragmatics and practiced ecclesiastical precedent as the reasons why we ‘should’ (need to?) gather on the Lord’s Day.((“It is true that the reasons why weekly worship became the norm in Christian circles can be given in largely practical terms and that once daily corporate worship became impracticable, the weekly interval would suggest itself to Jewish Christians as the next most appropriate division of time. Gentiles, however, would not necessarily have found the Sabbatical division of time either natural or convenient and need not have adopted it, and yet they did.” (Lincoln. Ibid. 398). “The question is, did Jesus or did someone else change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and make of the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath? The New Testament gives no clear statement as to what happened or how it happened. All we know is that already in the New Testament times Christians celebrated worship on the first day of the week and that they called it ‘the Lord’s Day’.” Old, Hughes Oliphant. Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 26.)) Even popular Evangelical and Reformed books on worship curiously neglect the question of the Sabbath and the question of when we are to worship corporately.((Specific treatment of the Lord’s Day Sabbath is absent, for example, from The Worship of God: Reformed Concepts of Biblical Worship (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2005.); Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship Celebrating the Legacy of James Montgomery Boice. (Grand Rapids: P & R, 2003.); Carson, D. A. ed. Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002.); Martin, Ralph P. The Worship of God: Some Theological, Pastoral and Practical Reflections Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Company, 1982.)) Pragmatism, traditionalism and pervasive neglect of the Sabbath characterize present-day anemic Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism’s prevalent loss of doctrinal clarity, manifest moral laxity and superficial “selfolatry”((“Selfolatry” is my own coinage. On the present state of Evangelicalism see the five volume series by David Wells. Wells, David F. No Place for Truth, Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1993). Wells, David F. God in the Wasteland: the Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1994). Wells, David F. Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998). Wells, David F. Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005). Wells, David F. The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2008). These are helpful and informative theological sociologies in which Dr. Wells calls for biblical churchmanship, but there is no call to compel Evangelicals to understand and embrace the blessings promised in the Sabbath.)) will not be rectified if Christians are not convinced as to when and why the church should gather. The question of how to observe the Lord’s Day Sabbath must be deferred until we establish a biblical foundation for our practice. That foundation is the Creation Sabbath.

God’s revelation is comprised of two fundamental components: His acts and His words which explain His acts. Indeed God’s speech is a divine act. By God’s speech, we are given the revealed interpretation of God’s acts so that we might know Him. Keil and Delitzsch comment on the redemptive revelations of God which “consist of the historical events by which the personal and living God manifested Himself to men… Hence all the acts of God in history… are to be regarded as essential elements of the religion of the Old Testament, quite as much as the verbal revelations… Revealed religion… is essentially a history of what God has done to establish His kingdom upon the earth.”((Keil, C. F., and Franz Delitzsch. Commentary on the Old Testament (New York: Hendrickson, 1989), 11.))

When we open our Bibles, we read of God’s acts whereby He created the heavens and the earth over the course of six days. God’s acts through “The Creation Week” (Gen 1:1-2:4) constitute the primeval matrix of divine revelation. As God acts, He speaks, but the week is said to be that time during which God accomplished the work of creation (Gen 2:2-3). Moses’ ordinal numbering of the days of the first week is patent on the surface of the text. God works sequentially over a period of linear and teleological time, moving to His purposed goal of His own Sabbath rest. It is true that God blessed the seventh day (Gen 2:3), an act which consists of divine speech, but the preliminary revelation leading up to the seventh day in which God “sabbathed,” is a revelation consisting of divine action. The Sabbath itself is explained in terms of divine action: because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This divine behavior is not to be considered merely as a paradigm competing with Evolution for title rights to one’s cosmogony. It is revelatory behavior. Indeed, as we will see, it is normative behavior designed to communicate to man how it is that he, as God’s image, is likewise to behave and order his work through the course of passing time. Upon completion of his work, he, like God, would enter Sabbath rest. As God acted, so should man.

Those brethren who presume that unless they find an explicit command to validate the Sabbath they have no reason to observe the Sabbath, are ignoring the essential deed-revelation method by which God established the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not established primarily in word revelation but in deed revelation, and we are accountable to God for His deed revelation as much as we are for His word revelation. A cursory survey of the epitome events by which redemption is advanced through redemptive history shows continuity both in the manner in which God perpetuates Sabbath and in its essential blessing to man. We have reason to think that Adam and his posterity (especially the seed of the woman) observed the Sabbath. However, it is evident that the original morality of the creation ordinances was lost beneath the avalanche of abounding sin leading up to the Flood. Not only Sabbath, but marriage was also is disrepair during this time.((Murray, op. cit. 34-35.)) After the Flood, there is evidence that Noah (whose name expresses the hope of Sabbath rest) and the patriarchs viewed time as proceeding in a heptadic cadence in which the seventh day was significant of divine action and eschatological hope.((Roger T. Beckwith and Wilfrid Stott, The Christian Sunday: A Biblical and Historical Study (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), 3-6.)) When we approach the revelation of God’s Law at Sinai, we read of the divine provision of manna which was given in double portion on the sixth day so as not to require its gathering on the seventh day (Exo 16:22-30). It is evident that Israel was aware of Sabbath prior to the giving of the fourth commandment. God’s acts of giving increased proportions and preserving the manna on through the seventh day, when it otherwise spoiled during the preceding six days, was to be interpreted as establishing a holy Sabbath to the Lord.((Exo 16:23 This is what the Lord meant (NASB). The Hebrew is dabar – to speak. Moses does not record the Lord speaking to establish this Sabbath, but acting peculiarly in the provision of the manna. The NASB implies that God’s actions here have meaning, that God’s deeds constitute a form of communication equivalent to speech.))

The rationale for what is commanded in the fourth commandment is, again, the behavior of God. What must Israel do? Remember((Hebrew zakar: think about, meditate upon, pay attention to; remember, recollect; mention, declare, recite, proclaim, invoke, commemorate, accuse, confess (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody, 1980). The term implies a recollection of something previously known.)) the Sabbath day to keep it holy. (Exo 20:8). Why? On what basis? For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exo 20:11). What is the reason for the legal obligation? The reason is the more profound ontological creational obligation found in Gen 2:2-3, appended as the rationale for the fourth commandment.((Douma, Jochem. The Ten Commandments: Manual for the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R Pub, 1996), 110. Douma recognizes the reference to Gen 2:3 appended as the rationale to the fourth commandment, but is unwilling to think that men knew of the Sabbath before Sinai. He suggests that this was the first occasion in which God made His creation action the rationale for Sabbath. I argue that Adam and ensuing generations knew and understood God’s actions in creation as establishing and informing the Sabbath.)) At the second giving of the Law, Israel was to Observe((Hebrew shamar: to keep, watch over; preserve (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody, 1980). The implication is that having “remembered” to align with the creation Sabbath (Exo 20:8), now Israel is to “keep and preserve” what has been recollected.)) the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord commanded you (Deu 5:12). Why? Again God’s action, now His redemptive action, forms the basis for observance of the Sabbath. And you shall remember((When the Lord tells them to remember their slavery, He is telling them to recall what they knew and experienced in the past. So too, when remember is used in Exo 20:8, it means to recall what was known and experienced in the past, viz. the Sabbath. The fourth commandment was NOT the first revelation of the Sabbath, but a reminder of the previously given revelation in creation and redemption.)) that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day (Deu 5:15). In other words, the legal obligation of the fourth commandment is not raw commandment: do this because I command you to do this. Its rationale is more profound and relational: do this because of what I have done and am doing and will do, because you are made and redeemed to be like Me and be with Me. Our observance of the fourth commandment is not so much compliance with law as it is imitation of divine action. As we will see, because the Sabbath is inherently eschatological, the Lord’s reference to His Creation Sabbath in the fourth commandment simultaneously pointed to the eschatological hope that ever stands before God’s people. Not only did the Mosaic Sabbath commemorate creation, because it was the Sabbath, it also pointed to the eschatological rest of God which we have entered in Christ, into which we will enter in resurrection glory at His return. The observance of the Sabbath was integrally bound up with the temple cultus and priestly sacrifices. Here is yet another current of revelation that reminded Israel of man’s creation Sabbath enjoyed in God’s Garden and pointed to God’s eschatological Sabbath rest.

The regulations for the Old Covenant cultus and especially the arrangement, furniture, and décor of the tabernacle and later the temple, were reminiscent of God’s Garden-Temple and typical of God’s global purpose((Wright, Christopher. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006.)) and the eschatological goal of history.((Beale, G. K. The Temple and the Church’s Mission A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (New York: InterVarsity, 2004). Longman, Tremper. Immanuel in Our Place Seeing Christ in Israel’s Worship Grand Rapids: P & R, 2001.)) With the temple, God advanced His plan to give man sanctified time in which to enjoy communion with Him. His presence with His people was their peculiar possession so the Lord made His Sabbath time with them the sign of the Old Covenant (Exo 31:13). At the heart of the Old Covenant lay the promised blessings of Sabbath life lived with God: My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest (Exo 33:14).

When we come to the New Covenant, we again see God in action. The incarnate Son of God broke into history and performed the works and said the words of divine blessing. Jesus preached His first sermon recorded in Luke 4 in His home-town synagogue from Isa 61:1-2 in which He announced that with His coming, the year of the Lord’s favor, (the Jubilee year – Lev 25:8-17) had commenced. The Jubilee was imbued with Sabbath eschatology as the culmination of a sequence of seven cycles of the seven-year sabbaticals.((Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics For The People of God (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2004), 198. “In this year there was to be a proclamation of liberty to Israelites who had become enslaved for debt, and a restoration of land to families who had been compelled to sell it out of economic need sometime during the previous fifty years.”)) Jesus’ entire ministry was designed to usher men into God’s eschatological Sabbath blessing. He was endowed with the Holy Spirit, who is Himself the manifestation of eschatological fulfillment. The Gospel writers often inform us that Jesus performed His miracles on the Sabbath and that it was His practice to gather for corporate worship on the Sabbath. We, disciples of Jesus, must ask ourselves whether we are following Him whose lifestyle was Sabbatarian. He rescued and restored the Sabbath from the distorted degradations of the Pharisees.((Bruce Ray, Celebrating the Sabbath: Finding Rest in a Restless World (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub., 2000), 62-67 suggests that the Pharisees acquired their perverted perspectives on the Sabbath from the Babylonians while in captivity. They then imported these perversions and infected Israel’s Sabbath with a pagan virus of austerity and a merit-earning mentality, emptying Sabbath of its God-given blessing and distorting it into an impossible burden.)) He declared His deity when He claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath (Lk 6:5). It is also significant that Jesus confirmed the abiding ethical relevance of the creation ordinance of marriage by citing Gen 1:27 and 2:24 in Mat 19:4-5. Jesus by-passed the seventh commandment in His refutation of the Pharisee’s penchant for divorce and underscored the abiding morality of marriage as instituted in creation. The seventh commandment does not command marriage, but assumes its existence and protects it. Marriage came into existence, not by God’s command, but by His action as a creation ordinance.((Pipa, Joseph A. The Lord’s Day (Geanies House, Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1997), 37. “Others object at this point saying that God did not command Adam and Eve to keep the seventh day holy. Again we may refer to the parallel with the marriage ordinance in Gen 2:22-25. When God gave Eve to Adam, He instituted marriage. Although God does not give a specific command about marriage, we understand that by this act He established marriage.”)) We have every reason to believe that Jesus viewed the creation ordinance of the Sabbath as having the same abiding integrity as marriage. We see Jesus as the eschatological man, whose being, deeds and words convey Sabbath blessing to men. He is the embodiment of Sabbath life inaugurated in history.

It is His resurrection however, that constitutes the change from the seventh to the first day. ((Fesko, J. V. Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1-3 with the Christ of Eschatology (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2007), 203. “Christ inaugurated the eschatological age, the new creation, which started with His resurrection from the dead on Sunday, the first day of the week. This is why the Church observes its day of rest on Sunday.” Bruce Ray, op. cit. 43. “The Old Covenant Sabbath is transformed into the New Covenant Sabbath (or Lord’s Day) by the resurrection of the Lord of the Sabbath from the dead.” “There is no one text that explicitly says this. The reader should consider the evidence that follows and judge wither or not it agrees with Scripture” (p.121). Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 142. “It has been strikingly observed, that our Lord died on the eve of that Jewish Sabbath, at the end of one of these typical weeks of labor by which His work and its consummation were prefigured. And Christ entered upon His rest, the rest of His new, eternal life on the first day of the week, so that the Jewish Sabbath comes to lie between, and was, as it were, disposed of, buried in His grave (Delitzsch). If there is in the New Testament no formal enactment regarding this change, the cause lies in the superfluousness of it.”)) That the resurrection is the rationale for why Christians gather on the first day is commonly recognized. Yet it is common to encounter a bewildered agnosticism when asking the question of why the Sabbath was elevated from the seventh to the first day. ((Old, Hughes Oliphant. Op. cit. 26. “The question is, did Jesus or did someone else change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and make of the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath? The New Testament gives no clear statement as to what happened or how it happened. All we know is that already in the New Testament times Christians celebrated worship on the first day of the week and that they called it ‘the Lord’s Day’.”))Being uncertain of the divinely established warrant for the change of the day, ecclesiastical warrant is presented instead. We are told that the reason why we gather on Sunday is not because Jesus “commanded” us to, but because the church determined to do so and thus set a normative precedent which we inherited.((Douma, op. cit. 138. Douma deduces that the early church severed the connection between the Lord’s Day and the fourth commandment and then he answers how Christians are to justify gathering on Sundays. My interjections are in brackets [ ]. He asks, “Is it not better to say that we observe Sunday an as ecclesiastical ordinance rather than a divine ordinance [italics his]? In our opinion, we should not overestimate the difficulties connected with this historical development. It is true that the observance of Sunday was not instituted by Christ personally [I disagree] or by His apostles. In that respect it is not a divine ordinance, since Sunday observance obtained public validity by means of regulations promulgated by church and state [does this mean that first day worship is a Western phenomenon and not incumbent upon Christians who live in, say, Muslim lands?]. Sunday observance is thus an ecclesiastical ordinance. But then, it was surely an ordinance that was inevitable on account of the Spirit of Christ, who has led the church into all truth. The claim exerted upon Christian life and thought by Christ’s resurrection simply implied that believers would most naturally [italics mine – this points to the image-bearing dynamic which will be discussed below] use Sunday [note the utilitarian use] to commemorate Christ’s resurrection. The transition from the Sabbath to Sunday was not arbitrary, but flowed from the authority of the One who called Himself Lord of the Sabbath and who was the fulfillment of the Sabbath. [But Douma just stated, “the observance of Sunday was not instituted by Christ personally,” yet here Christ authorizes it? How was His authority communicated? If this transition from Sabbath to Sunday is authorized by the Lord, then how is it not a divine ordinance but merely an ecclesiastical ordinance?] For this reason, the treasure of the fourth commandment could not possibly remain tied to the Jewish Sabbath, but required the celebration of another day, namely the Lord’s Day. Therefore, the institution of Sunday observance cannot be rejected as merely an ecclesiastical ordinance that just happened to arise from historical considerations. There is no specific verse in the New Testament clarifying for us the transition from Sabbath to Sunday. But only Biblicism, with its desire to have a verse for everything, makes an issue out of that. There are more issues that lack a particular and specific verse, like infant baptism, but they nevertheless enjoy biblical warrant.” [I suppose being called a “Biblicist” is worth the price of attempting to identify the biblical warrant for the transition from the seventh to the first day Sabbath in the Bible. As for the Biblicism of infant baptism… I fear we Biblicists will be disappointed, but I digress…] Also notice the Andrew Lincoln’s longing for that missing command of the Lord for the change of the day, his uneasiness with the residual rationale of convenience and practicality to explain first day worship, and his attempt to find a Scriptural warrant for the change of the day. “The New Testament foundations for the church’s practice of Sunday worship are not as numerous or as detailed as might be desired… with the impact of the Gentile mission the observance of the first day spread and had become a regular practice of the church by the end of the first century [but is] this sufficient to establish the normativeness of this custom for the church? There are certainly other apostolic and early church practices that are not considered binding on the church…When the Protestant reformers, however, wanted to make Scripture uniquely authoritative for faith and practice, they tended to reduce the significance of the first day to a merely convenient institution… they may well have overlooked the significance of Revelation 1:10 in this regard. That the first day of the week was given the title Lord’s Day suggests a matter of far greater import than convenience or practicality. But how does Scripture provide a norm in this area? Which of its descriptive statements can have normative force, and why? If to set a normative pattern an imperative in the New Testament is required, then observance of the first day of the week does not come into the category of normative patterns of practice, and by itself apostolic practice is not sufficient to constitute a command carrying apostolic authority… yet… the designation “Lord’s Day”… show(s) that a precedent had already been set in the practice of at least John’s churches and evidently met with his approval. So in the case of worship on the first day of the week we have a pattern that is repeated in the New Testament, and as is shown by Revelation 1:10, the pattern had become established. Furthermore, as the designation “Lord’s Day” indicates, this pattern was undergirded by the theological rationale of Christ’s Lordship demonstrated in His Resurrection on the first day of the week… its rationale… remains applicable throughout the church’s life. Hence the practice of Sunday worship can be said to be not merely one that recommends itself because it bears the mark of antiquity but one that, though not directly commanded, lays high claim to bearing the mark of canonical authority.” “From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical and Theological Perspective” Carson, D. A. ed. From Sabbath to Lord’s Day A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation. (New York: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 386-388.)) The problem with this approach is that it fails to perceive that Jesus’ “command” regarding the Sabbath was not given by verbal communication, but, as Sabbath was previously established, it was given by His action. Jesus’ resurrection and His post-resurrection visits communicated the moral warrant for the change of the day.((Pipa, op. cit. 126. “The church has always recognized that the change of the day was first initiated by the resurrection appearances of Christ on the first day of the week when all of the New Testament recorded appearances took place.”)) Jesus constituted His Sabbath for His new creation people by the same means that God established the original old creation Sabbath: by divine action which then became normative to be imitated by His regenerated image-bearers. The Lord of the Sabbath established His Lord’s Day Sabbath by rising from the dead into eschatological, Sabbath-quality life. Then, on that first day (Jn 20:19), He went to the gathered disciples to bless them (Peace be with you) and gave them time sanctified by His personal presence. When the Lord of the Sabbath comes to be with you, THAT is the Sabbath. When Jesus rose on the first day and met His disciples on that day, He transitioned the seventh day old Creation-Exodus Sabbath into the first day, new Creation-Exodus((“Exodus” can be synonymous with Jesus’ resurrection. Cf. Luke 9:31.)) Sabbath. His coming, His presence, His action, transitions Sabbath blessing and sanctity to the first day. When He is present, Sabbath blessing and sanctity are given. But Thomas was not present on that first first day, so eight days((A study of the significance of the eighth day in Old Covenant ceremonial Sabbaths is instructive as a type of first day blessing.)) later (Jn 2:26ff), that is on the next first day, Thomas assembled with the disciples and Jesus again came to them and transformed the time of that first day into holy time, sanctified time, Sabbath time. Thomas confessed that this resurrected One is his Lord and his God. Indeed, He is the Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus came to His disciples and prophetically depicted the Pentecostal bestowal of the Holy Spirit by breathing on them (Jn 20:22). The Holy Spirit is Himself the down payment of our eschatological Sabbath-life inheritance. It is significant that the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost (Acts 2), the first day of the week. On the first day of the week, Christ, by His Spirit, comes to the gathered people of God.

It was not by verbal command that Jesus changed the day of holy convocation (Lev 23:3) from the seventh to the first day. It was by something far more wonderful, more ontological and eschatological, more personal and loving: it was by Himself. By coming to the disciples and being with them, by giving them His own Spirit to be with them, and by doing this on the first day of the week, Jesus changed the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day. The warrant to gather in the presence of Jesus and enjoy Sabbath blessing is not ecclesiastical precedent responding to pragmatic need. The warrant is Jesus Himself. Jesus comes to us to give us Sabbath blessing on the first day of the week. He told us He would. Lo, (see this, pay attention to this) I am with you (plural: the gathered church), until the end of the age (Mat 28:20). When the Lord is in the midst of His gathered worshiping church that is when it is the Sabbath. We see that the church gathered on the first day of the week((Cf. Acts 20:27 And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread; 1 Cor 16:1 On the first day of every week let each one of you put aside and save, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come. By the end of the first century, this first day of worship was known as “The Lord’s Day.” Rev 1:10 I was in the Spirit of the Lord’s Day.)) and she will continue to do so until the end of this age.

Beyond this age we anticipate the arrival of the promised eternal Sabbath Rest of God. And how will God establish that eternal Sabbath? As He has always established and given Sabbath blessing and sanctified life: by coming to be with us, to live with us and to take us into His consummated eschatological Garden-Temple-City. The words of Revelation 21 and 22 are saturated with Sabbath blessing and sanctity. Finally, God Himself shall be among them (Rev 21:3). We then resurrected, glorified will commence unending Sabbath blessing, forever living in the presence of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Alan Dunn, © 2013

The Foundations of the Sabbath Part 2
The Foundations of the Sabbath Part 3

Notes for the Foundations of the Sabbath Part 1: