by Pat Lunsford

Created on: December 14, 2010   Last Updated: January 17, 2011

According to Jewish law the Sabbath is Saturday which is the seventh day of the week, but what do Christians do with the Sabbath? Exodus chapter 20 clearly states that the seventh day is to be kept holy. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.”

What makes the fourth commandment any less binding than the other nine?

Sabbatarians believe that every command in the Decalogue is binding and that the fourth command is no less binding than the others. There are also a number of Christians who have switched the Saturday Sabbath to Sunday, observing the first day of the week as the new Sabbath which was the most popular view of the churches centuries ago.

A number of Christian scholars have long since realized that there is no precedence for either of these views. The seventh day commemorated the completion of the first creation and the first day commemorates the completion of the new creation when Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

There are strong indications in the New Testament that the early Christians worshiped on the first day of the week such as Acts 20:7. "On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight."

Then again in 1 Corinthians 16:2 where Paul is organizing a collection for Jerusalem where it says, "On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come."

When God sanctified the seventh day it was for the benefit of all creation to pause one out of every seven days and reflect on the Creator. It was applied to animals as well as man to stop and realize that God was the source of all they saw around them.

Sabbath means rest. Notice what it says in Exodus 20:9: "Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God." It mentions nothing about a particular day, it just says work six days and rest one. And this day of rest is to be holy or God-focused.

We are to do all things to the glory of God but if we don’t pause periodically to worship and reflect, we can lose the focus of why we do what we do and get caught up in the ways of the world. This is not our permanent home and if we lose that focus we can begin to drift away from the reality of God and make this world,

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