Wednesday, May 9
As we saw yesterday, the texts commonly used to promote the idea that Sunday replaced the Sabbath say no such thing. In fact, every reference to the seventh-day Sabbath in the New Testament reveals that it was still being kept as one of God’s Ten Commandments.
Read Luke 4:14-16; 23:55, 56. What do these passages tell us about the seventh-day Sabbath both before and after Christ’s death?
Notice how the women, who had been with Christ, “rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56, NKJV).Obviously, the commandment was the fourth commandment, written in stone at Sinai. So whatever they had learned from their time with Jesus, there is no indication that they had learned from Him anything other than keeping the commandments of God, which included the Sabbath commandment. In fact, Christ told His disciples, “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15, NKJV) . His commandments, which He Himself had kept, included the seventh-day Sabbath. If Sunday were to be a replacement for the Sabbath, these women knew nothing about it.
Read Acts 13:14, 42-44; Acts 16:12, 13. What evidence do these verses give for the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath? What evidence do they give for the keeping of the first day of the week?
We find in these texts no evidence of a change of the Sabbath day to Sunday. Instead they point clearly to the practice among early believers in Jesus of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath.
Acts 16:13 is especially interesting, because it occurs outside the context of the synagogue. The believers were meeting by the side of a river, where some “customarily” went to pray. And they did so on the seventh-day Sabbath, many years after the death of Jesus, too. If a change to Sunday occurred, nothing in these texts indicates it.
What are some gentle and non-condemnatory ways you can witness to Sunday keepers about the seventh-day Sabbath?
