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February 1929
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FRED S. SHEPARD ’S BLACKBOARD OUTLINE S ABBATH—Ezek. 20:12. ANCTUARY—Lev. 19:30. TATE—Isa. 48:13, 14. Remember the Sabbath day.—Ex. 20:8. creation was under doom. On that day Christ’s friends felt "keener sorrow and greater sense of loss than on the cruci fixion day itself. It was the last day of an old period. The resurrection day was a protest against Judaism and the first day of a new period. It is the duty of Christians to observe the first day in commemoration of the risen Saviour and in gratitude for what His salvation means. It should be a day spent not only with God but for God. Manual labor should be laid aside as far as consistent with the law of Christian love. It is not a day for revelry, neither for gloom, but for religious delight and joyous service. Its observance is not com pulsory: it is a privilege for the church to enjoy. It is necessary not only to the spiritual growth of believers but the phys ical good of man. The charge so often heard, that the Christian’s Sabbath was changed by Con stantine or the Pope of Rome from Satur day to Sunday, is without basis of sup port. How can one miss the fact that the first day of the week was regularly ob served by the early .church following the resurrection, hundreds of years before Constantine or before there was .a Roman Pope? (See Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2.) There is no record that Christians, follow ing the resurrection, ever had their assem blies on Saturday, the day when Jewish rejecters continued to gather in unbelief, although it is a fact that the apostles did visit the synagogues on the Jewish Sab bath to preach Christ and the resurrec tion (Acts 13:14; 17:2). Post-apostolic writings uniformly refer to the first day as the day always observed by believers in the early church. We are sometimes warned that Sunday was the day set apart to the heathen wor ship of the sun god and so named 5« m - nan-daeg (day of the sun). It need only be said that all the days of the week are of ancient heathen origin. Saturday, our present seventh day, is from Saeturn- daeg (Saturn day). So, following the logic of those who classify first-day ob servers with sun worshipers, the seventh dayists should be classified with those who worshiped Saturn, the Latin god of agriculture. The pagan festival of sun worship was not weekly, but once a year. The Roman week had eight days and a rest/day was observed on what was called Nundinae, once in eight days. Christians, from the days of the early church down to the days of Constantine, had continued to celebrate every seventh day, following the Jewish Sabbath, as the Lord’s Day. ' Constantine legalized the Christians’ rest day, making it the legal rest day of the Roman Em pire. Later, this resulted in the abolish ing of the pagan Nundinae. The Lord’s Day is easily traced back to the beginnings of the church, showing that no change in the day was ordered in the fourth century, as some claim. Bar nabas (A. D. 120) says: “We keep the eighth day with joyfulness.” Justin Mar-
Those who would fix the Christian’s rest day by the fourth commandment of the law of Moses should carefully ob serve that the time element of it allows of some flexibility, for it simply declares that there shall be six days of labor followed by a seventh of rest. Had the particular •day of the week been the essential thing, it would have been necessary for God to give specific directions as to where this one- seventh qf consecrated time should begin and end. If Saturday does not happen to fall the same time for all in the world, then it must be. admitted that it was. not a certain portion of time which God made more holy than others, but His moral re quirement Was the dedication of a certain proportion of man’s time, even as He re quired a certain proportion of man’s in come. So far as duty to God is concerned, the demand of the fourth commandment can be as fully met on one day as another, and that with no reflection upon God’s purpose. It is interesting to notice that it is only within the last hundred years that the day line has been fixed where it now is. For centuries men have juggled with the days and fixed their boundaries to suit them selves. The beginning of the seventh day has been altered each time calendar ad justments were made. Who knows any thing about God’s original calendar? Furthermore, the days vary with the lati tude and season. A New Zealand man writes a letter and dates it March 17, 9 a. m. At the same moment a man in Honolulu writes one and dates it March 16, 11 a. m. In one place it is Saturday. In the other it is Sunday. Two men start from Chi cago going around the world in opposite ways. Each will observe the seventh day as the sun sets. When the two meet, one of them will be keeping his Sabbath on Sunday and the other will be observing his on Friday. They will be unable to set tle the argument as to. which is keeping the right day until they both adjust their watches according to man-made laws. Thus we see that the Mosaic law, given specifically to Israel in the land of Pales tine, could not be universally and strictly applied. The consecration of one-seventh of our time to the worship of God and rest from manual labor, is a moral obligation of God’s command which must ever stand. Is it not significant, however, that when our Lord came with the Gospel for all nations, he reaffirmed the moral principles of nine of the commandments, but made no reference to the Sabbath command, other than to announce that He Himself was Lord of the Sabbath with full author ity concerning it? This can only be be cause its ceremonies were about to be ful filled and its memorial of deliverance from the Egyptians would not be signifi cant to a church largely Gentile. The shadows, as Paul showed, belonged to the past dispensation (Col. 2:16-17). A dead Christ could not save the world. Redemption was not complète until the resurrection. Saturday was the day when Christ’s body lay dead in the tomb. To the dis ciples it was a day of restless doubt and gloom, a day they would wish to forget. For the rejecters of the Saviour it was a day of terrible unbelief. They were car rying on their sacrifices as though re demption had not been completed. It was a day when Satan and his hosts rejoiced, believing Christ was held under the power of death. It was a day when
March 17, 1929 The Christian Sabbath
Texts: Gen. 2:2-3; Exo. 20:8-11; Mt. 12:1-14; 28:1-10; Jn. 20:19; Acts 20:7; Rom. 14:4-6. L esson in O utline I. The Sabbath Rest of God, Typical of the Christian Rest and Eternal Glory. Gen. 2 :2, 3. II. The Jewish Sabbath, Typical of the Christian Rest and Eternal Glory. Ex. 20:8-11. III. Spiritual Significance of the Jewish Sabbath. Matt. 12:1-14. IV. The First Day of the Week, the Day of Resurrection, Life, and Peace. Matt. 28:1-14; Jno. 20:19. V. The First Day of the Week, the Day of Showing forth the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Acts 20:7. VI. Christians are to Regard the Differ ent Days to the Lord. Rom. 14:4-6. VII. The First Day of the Week, the Lord’s Day. Rev. 1 :10. — o — COME speak of the Christian’s rest day as “Sunday” ; others call it “the Lord’s Day,” and still others refer to it as “the Sabbath.” They all mean the same thing. As the Lord’s Supper is the New Tes tament equivalent of the Passover, as bap tism takes the place of circumcision, so the resurrection day, or Lord’s Day, takes the place of the Mosaic Sabbath. We find no definite command of our Lord to change circumcision to baptism, or the Paschal feast to the Lord’s Supper, or the Sabbath to the Lord’s Day. The practice of the apostles and the inspired record of their conduct, together with writings of the early church period, reveal the fact that the old fittingly gave way to the new without any commands being given. From the resurrection forward, the first day of the week was recognized by believers as the day sealed of God in honor of the risen Lord. Controversy about circum cision, attendance at Passover and other points continued for some time, some con verted Jews holding that the old practices were to be observed in addition to the new, but it does not appear that any ques tion was raised as to the fitness of the first day of the week as the day of wor ship (see Gal. 4:10; Rom. 14:5; Col. 2: 16). The church stands not at the foot of Mt. Sinai except as it recognizes the un changeable moral principles of the com mandments. We stand at the mouth of the open tomb. The resurrection is the fundamental truth on which Christianity rests. This was an event far greater than the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, which was the occasion of the Mosaic Sabbath (Deut. 5 :13-15; Exo. 20:1-2; 31:16-17; Ezek. 20:12). It is only when we come to the claims of one religious sect that there is differ ence of meaning. T h e s e m e a n by “Sabbath,” the Sab bath of the Old Testament. In New Testament usage the Mosaic Sabbath and the Lord’s Day are clearly distinguished and run along side by side following the resurrection.
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