The Sabbath Was Saturday, Not Sunday
by Terry Wane Benton
The 7th day of the week is the old Sabbath commanded of the Israelites (Exodus 20:8-11). Are we to keep it? No! We are not under the law of Moses (Romans 7:6). The inspired apostle Paul said that the ordinances of the law were “abolished” in His flesh (Ephesians 2:15).
Jeremiah 31:31f predicted a new covenant that would be unlike the Sinai covenant. Hebrews 8-9 show that Jesus died and gave us a new covenant. So, Jesus became surety of a better covenant (Hebrews 7:22).
The old covenant from Mt. Sinai not only imposed the Sabbath (7th-day law) but also imposed the Levitical priesthood of the sons of Aaron. It also detailed the animal sacrifices that were required under that law. Hebrews 7:11-12 shows that Jesus became our High Priest even though He was not a Levite because “there is a change of the law” that was predicted and now realized in Jesus.
No one is to judge us regarding sabbaths (Colossians 2:13-16). Why? Because those ordinances were “taken out of the way and nailed to the cross.” Misguided people try to judge us for not keeping the Sabbath. Paul said not to let them judge us by a law we are not under. The Sabbath was a rest that foreshadowed the real spiritual rest we have in Jesus. The shadow gave us a dark form of the real thing. Jesus is our Sabbath rest, our substance of what the Sabbath day was only a dark form. Do not let misguided people judge you regarding Sabbaths and other shadows of the law.
We meet on Sunday, not because it is a Sabbath, but because it is the day on which the Light of the world was raised from the dead and gave us our new life start in His new covenant. This is the day the disciples of Jesus came together to break bread in the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7). This is the day the Spirit came on Pentecost to reveal the Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus (Acts 2). This is the day the disciples pooled their resources to help the needy saints (I Corinthians 16:1-2).
Our Sabbath rest is in Jesus. We celebrate together our substance in Christ every first day of the week as an expression of our relationship with Him in His new and better covenant.
This was done immediately from Acts 2 onward, long before a Roman Catholic Church existed. So, any claim that the Catholics “changed” the Sabbath to Sunday is false. The Lord “changed the law” long before there was a Roman Catholic Church.
