Objection:
The Sabbath was not a day of special religious worship. In God’s plan, the keeping of the seventh day on the part of His people was to be an external form, or rite; the performance of a definitely prescribed ceremony, stipulating the cessation of all work on a given day or a day of complete physical rest. Only when connected with the annual feasts was it observed as a day of religious significance. All this proves that the seventh-day Sabbath was simply one of the ceremonial sabbaths. All those sabbaths, in common with every other ceremonial statute, were abolished at the cross.
Answer:
By two unwarranted claims, this objection seeks to drop the seventh-day Sabbath down to the level of the ceremonial sabbaths, which were blotted out at the cross. Let us consider them in order:
First False Claim
The seventh-day Sabbath was merely an “external form,” which simply called “complete physical rest.” Hence, it could not be that essentially spiritual, morally binding, holy day we declare it is.
It is difficult to understand how any one acquainted with the Bible would make this statement. Let the Bible provide the refutation. The creation of the Sabbath reveals that it is distinguished in two ways: (1) by God’s resting on it and (2) by His blessing and sanctifying it—setting it apart for holy use.
When the Lord sought first to impress on the new nation of Israel the significance of the Sabbath, which had doubtless been forgotten by many during their Egyptian bondage, He caused manna to fall for the six working days and then withheld it on the seventh. The Israelites were to gather extra on the sixth day and to rest on the seventh. When they came to the first Friday and found that they were able to collect twice as much as on preceding days, Moses said to them, “This is that which the LORD hath said, To morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath.” Exodus 16:23. The Sabbath presented was not only as a day of “complete physical rest” but also as “the holy sabbath.”
When Nehemiah long afterward referred to the formal giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, he declared that God there made known unto them His “holy sabbath.” (Nehemiah 9:14)
Nehemiah found certain Jews working on the Sabbath and buying wares on that day. With indignation at this threat to the life of the nation, now rising from its long captivity, he cried out:
“What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath.” Nehemiah 13:17-18.
It is only holy things that are capable of being profaned. How strange to Nehemiah’s ears would have sounded the words of those who today try to dismiss the Sabbath as merely an “external form” that dealt only with “physical rest.” Would God, who bore so long with the most grievous iniquities of Israel, have uprooted the Jewish nation and sent it into captivity because of a failure to keep a merely “external form, or rite”?
The Lord, through Isaiah, offers a special blessing to those who truly keep the Sabbath:
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” Isaiah 58:13-14.
Second False Claim
The seventh-day Sabbath acquired a “religious significance” “only when connected with the annual feasts.” Hence it owed its religious or spiritual quality to its connection with obviously ceremonial, annual sabbaths. And can that which is blessed—in this case, given “religious significance”—be on a higher level than that which blesses it? All this proves that the seventh-day Sabbath was simply one of the ceremonial sabbaths.
But we have discovered that the seventh-day Sabbath has inherent holiness given to it by God in Eden. There were no annual feast days with which it might possibly be connected until twenty-five hundred years later. When the manna was first given, Moses described the seventh day as “the holy sabbath,” though no annual feasts with which it might be “connected” had yet been given. When God announced the Sabbath as a part of the Decalogue, it could be described as His “holy sabbath,” wrote Nehemiah. But the giving of the Ten Commandments preceded the setting forth of the laws that created the annual feast days. We found nothing in the context of the passages in Genesis, Exodus, or Isaiah which speak of God’s holy Sabbath that gives any suggestion that it needed to be “connected” with any annual feast to possess holiness.
Strictly speaking, we need not, therefore, spend time discussing annual feasts. However, examining them adds further proof that they are essentially different front the seventh-day Sabbath. From Leviticus 23, we learn that there were seven annual sabbaths:
- The fifteenth day of the first month of the Jewish year, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, also known as the Passover sabbath.
- The twenty-first day of the first month, the last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
- The fiftieth day from “the morrow after the” fifteenth of the first month, known later as Pentecost.
- The first day of the seventh month, called “a memorial of blowing of trumpets.”
- The tenth day of the seventh month, known as the Day of Atonement.
- The fifteenth day of the seventh month, the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
- The twenty-second day of the seventh month, the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
These annual gatherings were properly called “sabbaths,” for the Hebrew word shâbath, from which our English “sabbath” is translated in the Old Testament, simply means “rest.” And on those annual sabbaths, the people rested from their labors. But the mere fact that these annual holy days are called “sabbaths” does not in itself warrant placing them in the same class with the seventh-day Sabbath. To be sure, both are rest days, but that does not mean that they are of the same character or standing. In terms of the Hebrew language, we could adequately describe a modern holiday as a “sabbath,” a rest day; we could also represent a Christian Era holy day as a “sabbath.” But how foolish would be the person who decided, therefore, that holidays and holy days are of the same nature, and thus stand or fall together, simply because both are rest days, or “sabbaths,” according to the Hebrew. Though they have one point in common, namely, rest, their dissimilarities are many. Thus with the annual sabbaths and the seventh-day Sabbath. Their dissimilarities are many and great. Let us note them:
| Seventh-Day (Ten Commandments) Sabbath | Annual (Ceremonial) Sabbaths |
|---|---|
| 1. Made at the creation of the world. Genesis 2:2-3. | 1. Made at Sinai, about twenty-five hundred years after creation. Leviticus 23. |
| 2. Memorialized an event at the beginning of time, the creation, before there was a Jewish people. | 2. Memorialized events in current Jewish history. For example, Feast of Tabernacles. Leviticus 23:43. |
| 3. Intended ever to turn men’s minds back to creation. Exodus 20:8-11. | 3. Intended to turn men’s minds ever forward to cross, etc. “A shadow of things to come.” Colossians 2:17. For example, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” 1 Corinthians 5:7. |
| 4. God rested on the seventh-day Sabbath and specifically blessed and sanctified it. Genesis 2:2-3. | 4. God did not rest on these days nor set them apart with distinctive blessing or sanctification. |
| 5. Commemorates a world that had come forth perfect from Creator’s hand. | 5. Commemorates and foreshadows events in a world plagued with sin. |
| 6. Tied to weekly cycle and the same day of the week always. | 6. Tied to the Jewish calendar, and thus a different day of the week each time celebrated. |
| 7. Could be kept anywhere in the world because the weekly cycle operates free of all calendars. | 7. It could be known and kept only where the Jewish calendar is in existence. |
| 8. Kept every week. | 8. Kept only once a year. |
| 9. “Made for man.” Mark 2:27. | 9. A part of the ceremonial ritual “which was against us.” Colossians 2:14. |
| 10. Will continue beyond this world. Isaiah 66:23. | 10. Abolished, taken “out of the way,” at Christ’s crucifixion. Colossians 2:14. |
Though, indeed, all things that pertain to the service of God at any time have a specific holy quality, and though, in the present instance, these annual sabbaths had some features in common with the seventh-day Sabbath, the dissimilarities are so fundamental and so great as to leave no doubt that the former should not be confused with the latter.
When the Lord instructed Moses concerning the annual feasts, known as “holy convocations,” which revolved around the seven annual sabbaths, He declared in conclusion, “These are the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations. . . Beside the sabbaths of the LORD . . .” Leviticus 23:37-38.
Thus are we instructed by God Himself that the annual sabbaths are apart from and in addition to “the sabbaths of the Lord.”
As the Bible commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown well observes:
Leviticus 23:38 expressly distinguished “the sabbath of the Lord” from the other sabbaths. A positive precept is right because it is commanded, and ceases to be obligatory when abrogated; a moral precept is commanded eternally, because it is eternally right.
Comment on Colossians 2:16
