The Sabbath

Everything below is the text as prepared for the table. Both guests spoke to the audience, not to each other; direct address was reserved for the five-minute answers. Every claim carries a chapter and a verse, or is labelled opinion. Read it with your Bible open.

The moderator’s opening

Good Sabbath, and welcome to Truth vs Error, from Royal Priesthood Ministry.

Two guests. One question. One Book. Fifteen minutes each, uninterrupted. Five minutes each to answer what the other one said. Then six rapid-fire questions that neither of them has seen.

Three rules govern this table. Every claim comes with a chapter and a verse, or it is labelled opinion. Neither guest describes the other’s position — he states it in the other man’s own words first, and then answers it. And “I don’t know” is an honourable answer here, and costs a man nothing.

AGREEMENT CARD

Before we begin, here is what tonight is not about. Both guests affirm:

• We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and by nothing else
• No day of the week saves anyone
• Both men here love the Lord and love this Book
• God has His people in every Christian communion
• No verse in Scripture commands the observance of Sunday. Our second guest does not claim there is one, and he will tell you so himself.

That last line surprises some people. It should not. Sunday-keeping scholars have said it plainly in print for centuries.

So the real question is narrower, and harder.

QUESTION CARD

Are Christians bound to keep the seventh-day Sabbath — or did that obligation end at the

cross?

One more thing, so nobody is confused about terms. According to the text, a day runs from sunset to sunset. Genesis one, verse five: the evening and the morning were the first day. Leviticus twenty-three, verse thirty-two: from even unto even shall ye celebrate your sabbath. Nehemiah thirteen, verse nineteen: the gates shut when it began to be dark before the sabbath. Luke twenty-three, verse fifty-four: the sabbath drew on as the sun was setting. And Mark one, verse thirty-two: at even, when the sun did set — because the sabbath had ended. That is the Book’s own clock, and it is not a denominational claim.

THE TWO BURDENS

Both of our guests carry a burden this hour, and I want them named out loud.

Genesis two says God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Our first guest must show from Scripture that the blessing was never removed. Our second guest must show from Scripture that it was. Neither man may settle it by tradition, by habit, or by the practice of the church. The Book decides.

Our second guest keeps the first day. He is here presenting his own convictions in his own words, and he has agreed to this format.

There’s a thin line between truth and error. So today, let the Bible truth be found.

Definitions — 45 seconds each

“In one sentence each, before you argue anything: what do you believe a Christian is obligated to do with the fourth commandment, and why?”

Speech A — The Seventh Day

Guest One · 15 minutes

The Seventh Day

Moderator. Friends.

Let me begin with what this study will not do.

It will not show that a day saves anybody. Nobody is saved by a calendar. We are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, and by nothing else. And nothing I say this hour should be heard as a judgement on the man sitting across from me, or on the millions of Christians who worship on Sunday and love the Lord better than I do.

Here is what the study in Scripture will reveal. God set apart the seventh day, and He never unset it. If that blessing was lifted, the study will show us the verse where He lifted it. Let us look for it together.

I. What the study shows before there was a Jew

Genesis chapter two, verses one to three. God ended His work, He rested the seventh day, He blessed it, and He sanctified it.

Look at the calendar of that chapter. There is no Israel. There is no Moses. There is no Sinai. There is no sin, and therefore no ceremonial law, because there is nothing yet to atone for. There are two people in a garden and a God who blessed a day.

So whatever the seventh day is, the record puts it twenty-five centuries before the Jewish nation existed. The study will not reveal a Jewish institution in Genesis two. It reveals a day God blessed and set apart for holy use, in a world with no Jews in it.

And the word sanctified is not decorative. It means set apart for holy use. Show us the passage where He takes that back.

II. What the study shows before Sinai

Exodus sixteen. The manna.

One month before a word is written on stone, God tells them to gather double on the sixth day, because the seventh is the rest of the holy sabbath. Some go out anyway. And in verse twenty-eight God says: how long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

You cannot break a law that does not yet exist. The study reveals a commandment already in force before Sinai, already being broken, already being defended by God Himself.

III. Where the study places it in the law

Exodus twenty. Ten commandments, written by the finger of God, on stone, placed inside the ark of the covenant.

Nine of them open by telling you what to do or not do. One of them opens by telling you to remember.

Why would God command a man to remember a thing, unless He foresaw that men would forget it?

And notice what that commandment contains that no other one does. It names the Lawgiver, His territory and His title to rule: the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is. Take the fourth commandment out of the law, and you have a law with no signature on it.

The study will also show that this commandment sits between the third and the fifth. If it is ceremonial, the study must show us why the ones on either side of it are not.

IV. What the study shows about the Lord Himself

Luke four, verse sixteen. He went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, as his custom was.

Mark two, verse twenty-seven. The sabbath was made for man — not for the Jew; for man, the race. And verse twenty-eight: the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. He is Lord of it. A man does not become lord of a thing he means to abolish.

Matthew twenty-four, verse twenty. Speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem, forty years after Calvary, He tells His disciples to pray that their flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day. If the seventh day ended at the cross, the study must explain why the Lord has His people praying about it four decades later.

And then Luke twenty-three, verses fifty-four to fifty-six.

They took His body down. They prepared the spices. And rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.

The women who had followed Him three years, who had heard every word He preached, who had stood at the cross — on the one weekend in the history of the world when you might expect the old order to fall away — kept the Sabbath according to the commandment. The Lord of the Sabbath lay in the grave, and His own followers rested.

Nobody had told them anything had changed. The study will show us why: because in that week, nothing had.

V. What the study shows about the apostles

Acts thirteen, verse fourteen — Paul in the synagogue on the sabbath. Verse forty-two — the Gentiles beg him to preach these words to them the next sabbath. Verse forty-four — the next sabbath almost the whole city comes together.

There is the opening. There is the moment to say: brethren, you need not wait until Saturday, we meet tomorrow, on the first day. The record contains no such sentence.

Acts sixteen, verse thirteen — Philippi, on the sabbath, by a riverside, where there was no synagogue at all. Acts seventeen, verse two — Thessalonica, as his manner was, three sabbath days. Acts eighteen, verse four — Corinth, every sabbath; and verse eleven says he stayed a year and six months. Seventy-eight consecutive Sabbaths in one city.

VI. What the study shows about the first day

The first day of the week appears eight times in the New Testament. Let us take all eight.

Five are resurrection reports — Matthew twenty-eight, Mark sixteen twice, Luke twenty-four, John twenty. They record a fact. Not one gives a command, a blessing, or an instruction.

John twenty, verse nineteen — the disciples together that evening, and the text tells us why: for fear of the Jews. The doors were shut. That is not a worship service.

Acts twenty, verse seven — breaking bread at Troas on the first day. Read the whole passage. Paul preached until midnight, and by the Book’s own clock the first day begins at sunset — so this is Saturday night, and Paul departed on foot at daybreak. And Acts two, verse forty-six, says they broke bread daily.

First Corinthians sixteen, verse two — let every one of you lay by him in store. By him. At home. Paul is telling them to set money aside privately so no collections are needed when he arrives. It is the opposite of a church service.

Eight texts. The study reveals no command, no blessing, and no word of transfer in any of them.

VII. What the study shows about the record after the apostles

I will state the history plainly, including the part that does not flatter me.

Justin Martyr, writing about the year one hundred and fifty-five, describes Christians assembling on the day called Sunday. That is real, it is early, and I concede it.

But hear the Council of Laodicea, about the year three hundred and sixty-three, canon twenty-nine: Christians must not judaize by resting on the sabbath, but must work on that day, honouring rather the Lord’s day.

Why forbid a thing nobody is doing? That canon is evidence that three centuries after Calvary, Christians were still resting on the seventh day — and had to be legislated out of it.

And I will say one more thing about the record, once, and then leave it alone. One religious body claims the change as solely its own doing, and says so in its own catechism. The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, page fifty, asks: which is the Sabbath day? Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day. Then: why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? Because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday. That is not my accusation against anyone. It is their published answer to their own question, and it is their claim to make, not mine to prove.

VIII. Where the study ends

Isaiah sixty-six, verses twenty-two and twenty-three. In the new heavens and the new earth, from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.

It begins in a sinless world. It runs through the new earth. The only part in dispute is the middle.

IX. Three things the study puts to us

First. Genesis two, verse three is a blessing. If that blessing was removed, the study must show us the verse where God removed it.

Second. Luke twenty-three, verse fifty-six. The women rested according to the commandment, on the weekend when everything changed.

Third. If the seventh day is Jewish, the study must account for its presence in Genesis two, before there was a Jew to give it to.

Read it for yourself.

Speech B — The First Day

Guest Two · 15 minutes

The First Day

Moderator. Friends.

Let me open by conceding something that will save us all a great deal of time.

There is no text in the Bible that commands Christians to keep Sunday. None. I will not pretend otherwise, I will not produce a verse I do not have, and any Sunday-keeper who tells you differently is doing our cause harm rather than good.

So let me say what this study will actually reveal, because it is not what has just been answered at such length.

I am not saying Sunday replaced the Sabbath. I am saying the seventh-day obligation was Israel’s covenant sign, that it was fulfilled and brought to an end in Jesus Christ, and that Christians are bound to no day at all. We gather on the first day gladly, freely, and by choice — never by commandment. That is not a lesser position. It is the position of the apostle Paul.

I. To whom the study shows the sign was given

Let us stay in Genesis two a moment longer. God rested, blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Agreed, and gladly.

But notice what the text does not contain. There is no command. Nobody is told to keep it. It records what God did, not what Adam was instructed to do. And from Genesis three to Exodus fifteen — twenty-five centuries, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph — the study reveals not one Sabbath command, not one Sabbath rebuke, not one Sabbath kept. Abraham is called the friend of God and the father of the faithful, and we are never told he kept a Sabbath.

Then at Sinai it appears, and Scripture tells us plainly what it is for.

Exodus thirty-one, verse thirteen: Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. And verse seventeen: It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.

A sign between God and Israel. The study does not reveal a sign between God and mankind.

And Deuteronomy five, verse fifteen gives a reason that has not been mentioned this hour. When Moses repeats the commandment, he grounds it not in creation but in the Exodus: remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt… therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

Then Nehemiah nine, verses thirteen and fourteen, looking back at Sinai: thou camest down also upon mount Sinai… and madest known unto them thy holy sabbath. Made known. At Sinai. To Israel.

II. What the study shows about shadow and substance

Colossians two, verses sixteen and seventeen: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

It will be said that this means only the ceremonial sabbaths. Then notice the structure Paul chose: yearly feast, monthly new moon, weekly sabbath. Year, month, week. He has covered the whole calendar, and the weekly Sabbath is the final term in it.

And hear the instruction itself: let no man judge you. Paul is not telling the Colossians which day to keep. He is telling them to let nobody put them on trial over a day.

III. What the study shows Paul said twice more

Romans fourteen, verses five and six. One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. And: He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.

If the fourth commandment binds a Christian the way the sixth does, that sentence is unthinkable. Paul could not write let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind about murder, or theft, or adultery. He writes it about days — because days are no longer in that category.

Galatians four, verses nine to eleven. Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Paul is not neutral there.

He is alarmed. And what alarms him is Gentile believers taking up calendar obligations as a condition of standing with God.

IV. The question this study most needs answered

Acts fifteen.

The precise question before the apostles is: what must Gentile converts keep? The whole church assembles. There is much disputing. James renders the decision, and the letter goes out naming four things — abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication.

Four items. The Sabbath is not among them.

This is the one place in the New Testament where the apostles sit down and list what Gentile Christians are obligated to do. If the seventh-day Sabbath bound every Christian in every nation until the end of the world, its absence from that list wants explaining.

It will be said that it was assumed. Then the study must tell us why the apostles assumed the fourth commandment and spelled out things strangled.

V. What the study shows the rest actually is

Hebrews four. My brother’s position rests on verse nine — sabbatismos, a sabbath-keeping remains. Let us read the chapter it sits in.

Verse one: let us fear, lest we come short of entering His rest. Verse three: we which have believed do enter into rest. Present tense, by believing. Verse seven: God limits a certain day, saying Today. And verse ten: he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

The rest of Hebrews four is not a square on a calendar. It is ceasing from your own works and resting in the finished work of Christ — and the day it is entered on is today. Every day.

Matthew eleven, verse twenty-eight: Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He does not say I will give you a day. He says I will give you rest. He is the Sabbath. The shadow has met the body.

VI. What the study shows about the covenants

Hebrews eight, verse thirteen: In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.

Romans ten, verse four: Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. And Galatians three, verses twenty-four and twenty-five: the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ — but after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

And the answer to the strongest illustration on the other side of this table. It is said that Jesus kept the Sabbath, therefore we must. Galatians four, verses four and five: He was made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. Matthew five, verse seventeen: He came to fulfil it. He kept the law on our behalf, under a covenant He came to bring to its completion. His obedience under that covenant is our salvation — it is not our schedule.

Second Corinthians three names the ministration written and engraven in stones — and there is no mistaking which document that is — glorious, but a ministration of death, and Paul says that glory was done away.

VII. What the study shows about the early record

The church gathered on the first day from the beginning, and long before there was any emperor or any pope.

The Didache tells Christians to gather on the Lord’s day and break bread. Ignatius, about the year one hundred and ten, writes of those who no longer sabbatize but live according to the Lord’s day. The Epistle of Barnabas keeps the eighth day with gladness. Pliny, a pagan governor writing to Trajan about one hundred and twelve, reports Christians meeting on a fixed day before dawn. Justin Martyr, about one hundred and fifty-five, tells the emperor that on the day called Sunday all Christians in city and country assemble.

Constantine’s decree is three hundred and twenty-one. Laodicea is about three hundred and sixty-three. Every source I have just named is earlier — some of them by two centuries.

And I will add one thing about the record, once, and then leave it alone. One Christian community advocates the seventh day more strongly than any other. Their most cited scholar on this very question — the man who wrote the standard study of it — dated the origin of Sunday worship to about the year one hundred and thirty-five, and said plainly that on this point he differed from their prophet. I mention it not to wound anyone, but because it is the honest state of the record, and it is their own scholar who put it there.

VIII. What I concede

No verse commands Sunday. I said it first and I say it again.

The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. Genesis two and Exodus twenty say so, and I will not play games with the text.

Jesus and the apostles were in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Of course they were. That is where the Jews were, and Paul went where he could preach. His manner was to reason with Jews on the Sabbath. That is evangelistic strategy, and the study should not confuse it with a doctrine of obligation.

And many who keep Sunday keep no day at all, and have reduced the Lord’s day to an hour on a calendar. That is a rebuke to us, not to him.

IX. Three things the study puts to us

First. Acts fifteen. The apostles listed what Gentiles must keep. The study must account for the absence.

Second. Romans fourteen, verse five. The study must tell us whether Paul could have written that sentence about any other of the ten commandments.

Third. Exodus thirty-one, verse seventeen calls the Sabbath a sign between God and the children of Israel. The study must show by what authority a sign God restricted is extended.

Read it for yourself.

The answers

Guest Two answers Guest One · 5 minutes

Delivered by Guest Two

Four things, brother, and I will take them in your order.

First, you have answered a position I do not hold. You spent fifteen minutes showing there is no command for Sunday. I conceded that in my opening sentence. The question is not whether Sunday was commanded. It is whether the seventh day still binds. That is the burden the moderator gave you, and it is the one I would like to hear answered.

Second, Genesis two contains no command. You ask where God unblessed what He blessed. I ask where He first commanded it. The text says God rested, blessed and sanctified. It does not tell Adam to do anything. And from Genesis three to Exodus fifteen there is not one Sabbath command, one Sabbath rebuke, or one Sabbath kept — through Noah, through Abraham, through Joseph. Nehemiah nine, verse fourteen says God made it known at Sinai.

Third, Luke twenty-three, verse fifty-six proves less than it feels like it proves. Of course the women rested according to the commandment. Christ had not yet risen. The new covenant is ratified by the resurrection and by Pentecost, not by Friday afternoon. And those same women were walking to a tomb to anoint a body they had been told would rise. Their practice that Saturday tells us what they had not yet understood. It does not tell us what was now binding.

Fourth, Acts fifteen, because it was not touched. The apostles convened for one purpose — to determine what Gentile believers must keep. They named four things. The Sabbath is not among them. If the answer is that it was assumed, then tell this house why the apostles assumed the fourth commandment and spelled out things strangled.

And on Laodicea — you are right, and I concede it freely. That canon does show some Christians were resting on the seventh day in the fourth century. But notice what else it shows: those same Christians were also honouring the Lord’s day. And Sunday assembly is attested by Ignatius, by Barnabas, by Pliny and by Justin, long before any council or any emperor.

My question, and I would like a plain answer.

Romans fourteen, verse five. Paul says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind about a day, and that the one who regards it and the one who does not both do so unto the Lord.

Could the apostle have written that sentence about the third commandment? About the seventh? About the eighth?

If not — and we both know he could not — then Paul has already told us which category the question of days belongs in. And it is not the category it has been put in this hour.

Guest One answers Guest Two · 5 minutes

Delivered by Guest One

Five things, brother, and then a question.

First, Acts fifteen — and the answer is in the chapter. Read verse twenty-one, the closing sentence of James’ ruling: Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every sabbath day. The Council’s four items concerned table fellowship and fornication. They were never a summary of Christian duty — or you must tell this house that the apostles also felt no need to mention idolatry, theft or murder. You would not argue that Gentiles were free to steal because theft is not on that list. The list is not a catalogue of the moral law.

Second, on the covenants. You read Hebrews eight, verse thirteen. Read three verses up. Hebrews eight, verse ten quotes Jeremiah thirty-one: I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts. The new covenant promise is not the removal of the law. It is the relocation of it. And Romans ten, verse four must sit beside Romans three, verse thirty-one: Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

Third, on Matthew five, verse seventeen. You say He fulfilled the law on our behalf. Read the next verse. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Both of us quote that passage. Only one of us has quoted the whole paragraph.

Fourth, on Exodus thirty-one and the sign. Ezekiel twenty, verses twelve and twenty tell us what the sign signifies: I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them. A sign of sanctification. Do you believe Christ no longer sanctifies His people? Then the sign stands.

Fifth, on the silence before Sinai. You argue from the absence of Sabbath commands in Genesis. But Scripture is equally silent about commands against murder and adultery before Sinai — and Cain is guilty, and Joseph says how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God. Silence in a brief narrative is not repeal. And Exodus sixteen is before Sinai, and God says there: how long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?

My question.

You said the rest of Hebrews four is a Person and not a day, and I agree with you that Christ is our rest.

Then explain verse nine. The Spirit of God chose a word He uses nowhere else in the New Testament — sabbatismos, a sabbath-keeping — and said it remains for the people of God, writing to Christians thirty years after the cross.

Why that word? Why there? And why remains, if it does not?

Rapid fire — six questions

Clock per question (2:30): 0:00–0:30 the moderator states the question and repeats it once · 0:30–1:30 first guest · 1:30–2:30 second guest. Guest One leads the odd numbers, Guest Two leads the even numbers.

“Six questions. Neither guest has seen them. I ask each one twice, then sixty seconds each — and when the time is up I will stop you mid-sentence, and it is nothing personal.”

Reserve questions

• If you were shown to be wrong today, what specifically would you change on Monday?
• Is this a matter worth dividing a congregation over? If not, how should a pastor teach it?
• Name the single strongest argument for the other side, and say why it does not persuade you.

The finding

But don’t take that from us. Take it from the Book. Open Genesis two, Exodus twenty and Luke twenty-three, and read it for yourself — because there’s a thin line between truth and error.