Gospel From The War Front by shingirayi gwete - HTML preview

Chapter 14 - A Day to Remember

On the Christmas Eve of 1914 during the First World War, something unusual happened on the battlefield. During the night of that historic day, the German soldiers started singing Christmas carols and the British soldiers joined in the singing, these were enemies at war mind you. These opposing armies climbed out of their trenches and met in the space in-between which was known as “No Man’s Land”. This meet up was strange in that the soldiers did not exchange gunfire with each other like other times but they met to celebrate Christmas. They took a break from the war which later became popularly known as ‘the Christmas Truce’. To these soldiers, Christmas was a day to remember for them, though being away from the comfort of their homes and at war, they remembered Christmas.

We as the children of God also have a day which we must remember to observe. Unlike the Christmas truce where enemies stopped fighting with each other, we must always be vigilant because our enemy (Satan) does not take a break. However, there is a special day we need to rest from our daily routines as is commanded by God Our Creator. In this chapter, we will study from the word of God about this particular day of rest which we must remember to observe (it's not Christmas by the way).

The ignored commandment

Most Christian denominations seem to keep eight and some nine of the Ten Commandments. No matter how different the church doctrines might be, the majority agree to most of the Ten Commandments. They agree that we should not have other gods, no to idol worshipping, no to taking the name of the Lord in vain, honouring your parents, no to murder, no to adultery, no to stealing, no to bearing false witness and no to covetousness. Despite those similarities, there is one particular commandment which seems to go unnoticed yet of all the commandments its one which God explained the most. I’m referring to the 4th commandment which has to do with Sabbath day observance.

In most of the commandments, there aren't many explanations as to why we must observe them, it’s just ‘You shall not steal’, and there is no explanation as to why you must not steal, ‘You shall not murder’, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, and no clarification is given as to why you must not do these things. But when it comes to the fourth commandment, there is much explanation provided by God yet we seem to ignore that law in its entirety. It even starts with the word "REMEMBER" yet we have seemed to have forgotten what God requires us to remember.

This commandment is found on Exodus 20:8-11 and reads "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it, you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

We are in a war and our enemy Satan is happy when we break just one of the Ten Commandments because he is aware of James 2:10 which says if you break one law you have broken all the laws. The devil is in the business of causing people to break just one law, and he knows he would have won in causing them to disobey God. By breaking particularly, the fourth commandment, people get to miss out on the Blessings which come with observing that commandment.

The Origin

For us to have a better appreciation of this commandment let us consider its origin, how it all started. When we read this commandment from the book of Exodus chapter 20, it points us back to the creation account of this planet, part of the commandment reads “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day”.

This commandment is referring us to the Genesis creation account. So let’s go to Genesis 2:2-3 which reads “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

God created everything in six literal days, then on the seventh day, He RESTED. Not only did He rest but He BLESSED the seventh day (meaning there are blessings in that day) and He SANCTIFIED it (to sanctify means to set apart for holy use). Take note this is happening in Genesis where only two humans are inhabiting the earth (Adam and Eve), there was nothing called a Jew yet. The Sabbath Day was instituted when there were no Jews in existence at that time, as Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). It wasn’t made for Jews but mankind, so as long as you qualify into the bracket of mankind then you qualify also to benefit from the Sabbath. The seventh day in which God rested is the one being pointed to by the fourth commandment in Exodus 20 as the Sabbath.

The Sabbath commandment did not originate at Mount Sinai when God declared the Ten Commandments, it was already there ever since creation just like any other commandment. Before Mt Sinai it was a sin to kill, it was a sin to commit adultery, it was a sin to worship other gods, the Ten Commandments existed before Mt Sinai.

Let’s consider Exodus 16:23 (this is before the Ten Commandments were given at Mt Sinai) it reads: Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD has said: "Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. Bake what you will bake today, and boil what you will boil; and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to  be  kept  until  morning." The Lord here was calling on His people to observe the Sabbath Day rest yet it’s before Mt Sinai which comes on Exodus 20. This is not a law which was an afterthought which “popped up” at Sinai, it was already there since creation and was observed before Mt Sinai (Check Exodus 16:28-30).

The New Testament

Some folks will argue that the Sabbath Day commandment ended in the Old Testament and we are now the New Testament church which is no longer required to observe that commandment. For the benefit of those who believe as such, let’s consider what the New Testament has to say about the Sabbath day. By the way, the Bible is not a menu where we cherry-pick what we want and ignore some parts which we don't like, we have to take an all-inclusive approach, you can’t form a doctrine based on one or two isolated scriptures. You have to consider what the whole Bible says (both old and new testaments) with regards to what you are studying and come up with a common understanding of all the scriptures which relate to that topic under study.

Did Jesus Break the Sabbath Commandment?

We are in a war, Satan causes people to take extreme positions. He is happy with those who take the extreme position of disregarding the commandments of God totally, he is also equally happy with those who claim to keep the commandments of God yet violating them in their attempts to keep them. Pharisees were in the latter extreme, they claimed to keep the law of God yet breaking it in their attempts. Over and above what God had said with regards to Sabbath observance, they made their own regulations on how to keep the Sabbath holy. They ended up with very strict rules which were never from God. For instance, you were not allowed to spit on the Sabbath for if you do so you would have been considered to have done secular work of watering a plant. You were not allowed to carry a handkerchief on Sabbath since this might be interpreted as carrying a burden. These two examples were considered to be secular work which must not be done on the Sabbath Day. Take note, this is not scriptural, these are man-made laws which some of the Jews made during those times. The scribes and Pharisees were good at coming up their own traditions which made the commandments of God of no effect (Matthew 15:6).

So whenever Christ violated any of these man-made doctrines, they would charge Him as having broken the Sabbath yet he had just broken their traditions and not the commandment of God. Today, those who say Jesus broke the Sabbath commandment are accusing Jesus of sinning because 1 John 3:4 says “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness”. Sin is breaking the law. So if Jesus broke the Sabbath it means that He sinned yet Hebrews 14:15 says he was in all points tempted as we are, yet WITHOUT SIN. Jesus lived a sinless life and He died without sin, meaning He never broke a single commandment, not even the Sabbath commandment. If He broke anything, it was the traditions of men not the law of God. Whoever accuses Jesus of breaking the Sabbath is accusing Him of sinning and is also implying that He is not worthy to be Our Saviour, for how can a sinner save another sinner? that’s a serious accusation which borders on blasphemy.

On Luke 6:7-11, the scribes and Pharisees were angry at Jesus because He had healed on the Sabbath Day (by the way the Sabbath commandment does not forbid healing on that day) yet the same folk who accused Him were willing & ready to rescue their animal when it falls into a pit on the Sabbath (Matthew 12:10-11), what pure hypocrisy. This was just one of the many ACCUSATIONS which the Pharisees made against Jesus, it was not God who said Jesus broke the Sabbath but people.

Accordingly, if we want to learn the true import of the Sabbath in the New Testament, we must look at what Jesus did on the Sabbath and not what He was accused of doing or not doing by His adversaries. Luke 4:16 says as His custom was, Jesus would go to the synagogue every Sabbath. If we claim to be followers of Jesus we ought to follow His footsteps. It is on the Sabbath that He healed those who were sick more than any other day. Jesus did not lessen the sanctity of the Sabbath, nor did He shift its sacredness to any other day.

After Jesus’s death

As we learnt in the previous chapter, the Ten Commandments did not end at the cross with Jesus' death but the ceremonial laws were the ones which came to an end there. The Ten Commandments remained and are still binding. Since this is the case, we need to find scriptural evidence of the Seventh-day Sabbath observance after the death of Jesus.

Jesus Himself when He gave a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Armies which was fulfilled around AD 70, He said: “And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath” (Matthew 24:20). This destruction was going to come after His death yet He tells His followers that they must pray that it does not happen on the Sabbath day because on such a day they might not be in a position to flee as they will be occupied with service to God. If Jesus had come to remove the weekly Sabbath, surely there was no need for Him to expect His followers to keep on observing this day after his death. But Him knowing fully that the Seventh-day Sabbath will and must continue to be observed after His death, resurrection and accession, He gave that prophecy.

There were some women who closely followed Jesus, they could not anoint His body after He had died because they were resting on the Sabbath day in line with the commandment number four (Luke 23:56). They had to wait until the Sabbath had come to an end before they could to go to the tomb where his body was intending to anoint it (Mark 16:1-2). If the Sabbath commandment had ended at Jesus’s death, these women should have gone to the tomb to anoint the body on the Sabbath, than to wait for the first day of the week, which came after Sabbath.

Paul preached at Antioch on a Sabbath (Acts 13:14-16), by the way, the title Christian was first given to the disciples at Antioch (Acts 11:26), the same city which Paul preached at on a Sabbath. So there we have Christians coming together on Sabbath to hear Paul preach after Jesus’ death, resurrection and accession to heaven. After he (Paul) preached there, the Gentiles (non-Jews) asked if he could preach to them the same words the next Sabbath (Acts 13:42). Gentiles of all the people, requesting to hear the word of God the coming Sabbath, despite being Gentiles, they understood very well the issue of Sabbath observance. When the next Sabbath arrived, almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God (Acts 13:44). This is amazing, a whole city congregating to hear the word of God on the Sabbath day.

Paul and his travel companions went to Philippi and when the Sabbath day came they went to the riverside where there was a place of prayer. It is there where they met Lydia (Acts 16:13-15). At Thessalonica, Paul spent three Sabbaths with the Jews there (Acts 17:2). This is all happening after Jesus had died, showing that the Sabbath day did not end at the death of Christ.

Which day is it?

After having established that the fourth commandment of the Decalogue is still binding today, perhaps one might also want to know which day is the biblical Seventh Day Sabbath. First of all, in the Genesis creation account where we established that's when the Sabbath day was introduced, God did His creation work in six literal days and rested on the seventh day which He made the Sabbath. Therefore, since the earth began, the week always had seven days as we have today seven days from Sunday to Saturday. So from the seven days we have on our calendar today, the next step is to establish which day of the seven is the Lord's Sabbath.

Let us consider the Bible narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now when evening had come, because it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council member, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, coming and taking courage, went into Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Mark 15:42-43

This is just after the death of Jesus at the cross, Joseph of Arimathea a secret disciple of Jesus took it upon Himself to give Christ a proper burial. So he approached Pilate to ask for the body and this happened on a day which the Bible calls ‘Preparation Day’ which the same scripture says that day was before the Sabbath.

In Summary: The Sabbath day (7th day of the week) comes after the Preparation day (6th day of the week) OR the Preparation Day comes

before the Sabbath day. This day on which Joseph asked for the body of Christ was called the Preparation day because it was the day in which people made preparations for the Sabbath day which was to follow.

When Jesus died He was buried on the same day which is the preparation day. The day that followed afterwards was the Sabbath day, the women who followed Jesus could not go and anoint his body for they were resting in observance of the Sabbath commandment. (Luke 23:56 says Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.) Then after the Sabbath had come to an end, it was now the first day of the week, the women made their way to Jesus’ tomb (Luke 24:1 reads Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.)

So there we have established a sequence, Jesus died and was buried on the preparation day (Day 6), the women rested on the Sabbath (Day 7), and they went to his grave on the 1st day of the week and didn’t find Him as He had risen from the dead.