YEA Lesson Library

The Lesson

On the seventh day of creation God made the Sabbath. He set it apart and made it holy. For four thousand years Israel of old, and those who followed the God of the Old Testament kept the seventh day Sabbath holy. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, He and His disciples kept the Sabbath. All of them were Jews. For all of them the Sabbath was more than a tradition or a commandment, it was a matter of religious identity. The Sabbath was clearly the identifying sign that answered the question “who is your God.” To change the Sabbath to another day would not merely have been a change in doctrine, it would have been tantamount to changing their God.

The Bible says: “Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you” (Exodus 31:13). Verse 16 says it is a perpetual covenant, “It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.”

Why would you, at some later time, abandon the observance of the Sabbath in favor of Sunday? And what would have been the consequences of that change? If the Sabbath had been changed to Sunday, would you have expected Jesus to say something about it, to explain the change? For there would have had to have been a moment when the change came into effect, right? It is very hard to imagine that one week the entire body of disciples of Jesus (who were all Jews at the time) kept the Sabbath, and the next week observed Sunday instead, with no explanation, no comment, not even a ripple. Yet this had been a commandment, a tradition, a religious identity for four-thousand years.

Christian churches today say the crucifixion and resurrection changed everything. Yet you would expect that a change of that magnitude would be explained somewhere in the New Testament. That there would be a passage that gives us, not merely the change, but the reason for the change. But you can search your Bible from cover to cover and find no such change or the reasons for it.

The Sabbath had a theology that went with it. It identified who your God was. You were a worshiper of Jehovah, not Baal, and it was the Sabbath that established that identity. So shouldn’t there be a statement just as strong as the original commandment to explain who our new God is? No such passage exists. And, of course, there was no change in their God.

The general presumption among Christians who keep Sunday is that the church began meeting on Sunday immediately after the resurrection of Jesus, and they did it because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday morning.

This is based entirely on eight New Testament texts that mention “the first day of the week.” The superficial impression is that the church was meet- ing regularly on Sunday, the first day of the week. But this is entirely misleading.

Six of these Scriptures refer to the same event or the same day – the day of Jesus’ first appearance to His disciples after His resurrection. Mark 16:9 is one of those Scriptures. It says, “Now Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.” Keep in mind that there is no Greek word for “week” found in the New Testament. In every case where the word “week” is found, the word is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew word Sabbath. The Hebrews would have called Sunday “the morrow after the Sabbath.” Mark 16:9 literally says, “Now when Jesus was risen early the first of the Sabbaths.” Another important thing to know is that the passage doesn’t really say that Jesus was risen early Sunday morning. There were no witnesses to the moment of Jesus’ resurrection. This Scripture is giving the time, not of His resurrection, but of His appearing to Mary.

There is nothing in any of the six Scriptures listed above that will be covered in class to show one reason for changing the day of worship to Sunday. This leaves us with only two Scriptures that might lead us to this conclusion.

“Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the church of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week, let everyone of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gathering when I come” (1Corinthians 16:2). This is not a Sabbath, but a work day of collecting the harvest grain for shipment to Palestine. It is the first day of harvest, not a regular first day of the week. Read it carefully. There is nothing here about a church meeting.

Now the only Scripture left in the New Testament that might possibly say the Sabbath was changed to Sunday is found in Acts 20:7, “Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.” This is the only passage in the New Testament that suggests the possibility that the church met on the first day of the week, and even here it is Saturday night, not Sunday, per se. Would you say this is thin evidence on which to base something as central to the faith as Sabbath observance?

From the beginning of the New Testament all the way through Acts 12, the church was composed entirely of Jews and circumcised proselytes. And there is not a word of any major change in the practice (including the day of worship) during this entire time. So if the change from Sabbath to Sunday didn’t take place in the time of the Apostles, when did it take place and why?

These changes took place over a long period of time. About 417, Pope Innocent I wrote a decree which became cannon law that the church should absolutely not observe the sacraments on Friday or Saturday. This reveals that a lot of people did. The Roman church was determined to stamp out the Sabbath. And it was the Roman church that changed the Sabbath to Sunday.