There are some religious people today who believe that Christians must keep the Sabbath. The Seventh Day Adventist is the group that comes to mind first, but there are several other groups within different denominations that advocate the same thing. So then, should we as Christians keep the Sabbath? Should we be worshipping God on Saturday, the seventh day of the week, or on Sunday, the first day of the week? Obviously, we here at the Brown Street church of Christ believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day and that we should worship God on that day. But was it not God who originally instituted the Sabbath day? Can we be sure that we should not still be observing that day? The answer is yes, we can be sure. Here are the reasons why?

God gave the Sabbath for the first time at Sinai. Sabbatarians argue that in the beginning, God instituted the Sabbath on the seventh day. They usually use Genesis 2:2 as proof of this. The problem is Genesis 2:2 says nothing about the Sabbath. In fact, the word Sabbath doesn’t appear anywhere in the book of Genesis. Genesis 2:2 says that God rested on the seventh day, but it says nothing about Him instituting a command for man to do so. God gave the commandment to keep the Sabbath first at Sinai when God gave Israel the Law (Nehemiah 9:13-14; Ezra 20:10-12).

God only gave the Sabbath to the Israelites. God never commanded the Gentiles to keep the Sabbath or any other aspect of the law of Moses. Instead, He gave the law to the Jews only. Read again Ezra 20:10-12. In Deuteronomy 5:2-3, it is more than clear who God gave the law of Moses to. “The Lord our God made a covenant with US in Horeb. The Lord made NOT this covenant with our fathers, but with US, even US, who are all of US here alive this day” (emphasis mine, DW).

God took the covenant which contained the Sabbath away. Even if one overlooked the plain fact that God gave the covenant which contained the Sabbath to the Jews only, there is still the undeniable truth that He removed the covenant under consideration. Paul said, “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:14). Even a casual reading of Ephesians 2 will show that the middle wall of partition is referring to the old law. In Colossians 2:14 Paul made it clear that God took the law under consideration out of the way and nailed to the cross. And the Hebrews writer affirms in simple fashion that God made the first covenant (the law of Moses where one finds the commandment to keep the Sabbath) old (Hebrews 8:6-13). These scriptural facts tell us that we should not be keeping the Sabbath as a commandment of God today. Thus, regardless of what man says, this church will keep on doing what the Lord commanded and worshipped Him collectively on the Lord’s day, the first day of the week, for this is what we see the first century doing in scripture (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2).