Opus 2025-540: Lord’s Day or Sabbath

I don’t think it really matters which term you want to use.  Christians have a habit of calling Sunday the Sabbath.  It isn’t.  The biblical Sabbath starts at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday. 

(Lev 23:32 KJV)  It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath.

It is the seventh day of the week.  At least that’s what they like to tell us when they want to show their intellectual superiority by telling us that Sunday is not the Sabbath.

I haven’t done a lot of research on the Sabbath, but when you think about it, who is to say what the first day of the week is.  That is arbitrary.  It’s just like the New Year.  The biblical new year is a lunar calendar and has to do with the interaction of the sun and the moon.  It changes every year.  Who is to say the Sabbath isn’t the same thing.  This is especially true when you look at modern pocket calendars.  They now start the week on Monday and you’ll notice Sunday becomes the tail end.

The issue though is a day of rest.  The issue is taking one of seven and setting that aside to stop work.  The original Genesis account doesn’t say go to church or synagogue.  It simply says stop working.  So the Sabbath is a day of rest.  It still makes a difference, but you don’t notice this as much if you live in the city as you do out in the country.

I could go out in the morning at 5 o’clock and tell you which day is Sunday.  I might get it a little confused with Saturday but generally speaking there is still a difference.  How can I tell?  Are the animals lined up facing the rising sun?  Is there a glow in the Earth?  No.  On Sunday, as a general rule, the larger part of the population is not going to work.  Although this is changing a lot in modern culture, there are still large numbers of people that don’t work on Sundays.  They may do sports.  They may go shopping.  They may work in the garden.  But they don’t go to work.

What that means is that the road about a half mile from my house is generally empty and quiet on Sunday morning.  You might have an occasional car driving by on their way to grandma’s house or to the local coffee shop but in general, nobody is going to work.  It is obvious that the day is different.

I would encourage you to take seriously the command to work six days and then take a day of rest.  If you go to church on Sunday, that often involves a lot of work.  You might want to take Saturday the way it was originally established as your day of rest.  Either way, although we’re not under the law, God has reasons for His standards.  I would suggest that we take them seriously.

homo unius libri