Question:
Is there any evidence that the Lord does not sanctify and bless the first day of the week, now kept by Christians, to their enlightenment, rest, and utmost satisfaction?
Answer:
The Lord does not expressly tell us that He does not sanctify and bless the first day; He neither tells us that He does so bless and sanctify it. He does not ask men to do what He has not commanded nor to surmise that He has done what He has given us no record that He has done. He says: “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” “Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” “Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” (See John 14:15; 14:15; Ecclesiastes 12:13). To disregard these plain injunctions of God’s Word—the explicit commands which He has given us concerning His holy day—and to set up in our minds an institution which God has never given, is to do as did Saul. He thought that rendering sacrifice, doing something which pleased him, was more pleasing to God than it was to explicitly obey just what God had told him, but the words of the prophet to him were, “Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22). To substitute something of our own for something which God has given, is to put no difference between the clean and the unclean, the holy and the profane. And it is just that thing God charges to Israel’s false teachers. “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they shewed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.” (Ezekiel 22:26). (See also Leviticus 10).
God’s blessing rests upon His people every day; that is, upon those who walk in the light that shines upon their pathway and yield themselves to do His will so far as they understand it. One can obtain the blessing of the Lord in seeking Him on Thursday and seeking Him on Sunday. Education also has very much to do with these things. The devout Jew living in Babylon or Rome who had not heard of Christ’s death upon the cross no doubt found real pleasure, blessing, and enlightenment in offering up his sacrifice by faith, and yet the One great Sacrifice had superseded it. The Lord only holds us responsible for what He gives us. Jesus said of the Jews who crucified Him: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” (John 15:22-24).
We are not condemned because we may be walking in error for which we are not responsible. We are condemned when we cling to error after God has revealed it to us as such. “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19). The man who observes Sunday with all his heart, believing it to be true, will gladly accept the light of God when it comes, and thereby demonstrate that he was before that walking in all the light he saw. “But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:21). But he who is actuated by selfish motives turns from the light, condemns its searching rays, and still clings to his sins. (See John 3: 17-21).
The matter of feeling in the condemnation or approval of a doctrine is primarily a matter of education and practice fostered by the wrong theology of the day. All God requires is faith, simple faith in His Holy Word. He who has such faith as will lead him to turn from everything that the Holy Word condemns and who gives himself wholly to God will find a joy that the follower of no human tradition can ever have. It is the experience of thousands who have embraced the Sabbath of the Lord, with all that it means, even among those who have long enjoyed God’s blessing in first-day churches, that they have a sweetness of peace and satisfaction of life which they never knew before. “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them [they shall have no stumblingblock].” (Psalms 119:165, margin). Our correspondent says in a postscript, “I am assured that no faithful Christian will have any choice of his own as to which day he keeps, but will accept none but God’s choice, when he knows it.” But how can we know it except by God’s Word?
