Anonymous Asks (399)

“What principles can we put into practice when it comes to Sabbath rest?”

I am finding this question and variations on it increasingly common in online forums with large numbers of younger commenters from theological systems in which Replacement Theology is a major tenet. In a way this makes sense for them. If indeed, as their system teaches, the people of God are a continuum from Abraham (or earlier) to present day — if the Church is Israel and Israel the Church — then why not practice Israel’s Sabbath rest in some form?

Outside with Christ

John 9 begins with the healing of a man born blind. The story, like so many others in John, is unique to that gospel. The chapter is not even primarily about the healing itself, which takes up a mere seven verses. Strange as it may seem to a first-time reader to find Jesus making mud with his own saliva and anointing a man’s eyes, it’s no stranger than some of his other healings. John’s account is concerned primarily with the repercussions of the event, which take him almost five times as long to tell as the actual healing.

John gives us 41 verses devoted to a man’s story, but no record of his name. That’s actually fairly common in all the gospels, since their subject is Christ, not us. In a way, the man himself is incidental. In another way, he’s anything but.

The Substance Belongs to Christ

It is remarkable that the only mention of Sabbath-keeping in all the epistles comes in Colossians 2, where Paul identifies it as one of the requirements of Jewish law eclipsed in Christ. The apostle writes:

“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”

The Sabbath, Paul says, was a shadow. That’s important.

Anonymous Asks (240)

“What does it mean that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath?”

The Sabbath was a weekly day of rest for the people of Israel instituted by God through Moses at Mount Sinai. Keeping it is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. Its basis is the creation week of Genesis 1-2: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and 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.”

Seven Sabbaths

Quick question: How many Sabbaths was the Lord Jesus accused of breaking?

Well, we can’t say for certain, as there is no guarantee the writers of the Gospels were attempting to document every occasion on which the Jewish leadership became offended with him for allegedly doing it.

What we do know is that the first four books of the New Testament make reference to seven occasions when the Lord explained the reasons for his behavior.

Where Did the Sabbath Go?

Doug Batchelor’s sermons on YouTube begin with the words “Happy Sabbath”.

Batchelor is a Seventh-Day Adventist, so this should not surprise anyone. Wikipedia calls Seventh-Day Adventism “a Protestant Christian denomination distinguished by its observance of Saturday ... as the Sabbath”.

Batchelor says:

“Very few people, after accepting Christ, dispute nine of the Ten Commandments, but the fourth they often see as a ‘personal preference’ or optional commandment. But it’s not just a recommendation from Moses; it’s the law of the Almighty.

The devil doesn’t care whether your sin is adultery or murder or Sabbath breaking, just as long as he can get you to sin and separate you from God.”

That sounds serious. So how come so many evangelicals don’t keep the Sabbath? Are we all casual about obeying God’s commands, as Batchelor suggests? Are we perhaps misinterpreting scripture?

I don’t think so.

Should Christians Observe the Sabbath?

An electrical shabbat lamp. Should
every Christian have one of these?

From time to time this question still comes up among believers, particularly converted Jews or those accustomed to highly liturgical traditions.

Lauren F. Winner, for example, advocates a modified Sabbath observation for believers, despite evidently having read what the apostle Paul has to say about it.

Today’s post provides a useful counterbalance to that sort of thinking. RJA considers two significant aspects of Sabbath observance: its Biblical origins, and the question of whether or not the Sabbath should be observed by Christians today — Tom