Q59. Which day of the seven hath God appointed to be the weekly Sabbath?
A. From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly Sabbath; and the first day of the week, ever since, to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath.
We might as well start right away with the obvious objection.
Objection 1. If the Sabbath is moral law, and moral law cannot change, then the seventh day part cannot change!
Reply Obj. 1. The number of the day belongs to positive law and the essence of the day to natural law. So it is not only the distinction between ceremonial and moral that needs to be regarded here, but the sense in which God himself commands things that are mutable (positive law) and things that are not (natural law).
Augustine set forth a famous principle of biblical interpretation that the Reformed tradition has really taken more seriously, I believe, than any other. That principle is that the New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed. Those will make up the first two points of our outline and then finally we will summarize how this commandment is one of those mixed precepts. In other words, it has both a positive (circumstantial) and natural (constant) element.
The New is in the Old Concealed
The place to start may be in the word itself, first the number “seven,” and how it functioned in a week and beyond, and then the word for “rest.” The word sabbaton (σάββατον) in Greek can mean either the seventh day or a week, while in Hebrew it is sheba (שֶׁבַע). Now the very similar-sounding Hebrew verb שַׁבָּת refers us more specifically to that last day of rest, since that is the reason Moses gave in Genesis 2:4 for the blessing of the seventh day. However, in the Hebrew calendar, there is also the Sabbath year, and then finally the Year of Jubilee, being the fiftieth year, following seven sevens of years. Now let’s think about the distinction between natural law and positive law when it comes to the concept of a “seventh” of something. The seventh in any series of things is entirely relative to when the first is. There is nothing sacred about the days of the week beyond what God has said about them. None can claim that the definite day is a necessity in God, even while all grant that God’s own choice of the day is necessarily His own. It certainly cannot be changed by man.
To put it in “realist” terms, if there is a “universal” and “particulars” to this institution, rest is the universal, while the days are the particulars. The day is not the universal. The rest is. The day is the temporal occasion for the rest. Some, like Turretin, built on this point to speak of a “threefold Sabbath … temporal, spiritual, and eternal or heavenly.”1 The first regards the Day of worship in our age, the second its gospel fulfillment of rest, and the third where the two come together as one reality in the eternal state. Why is this an important distinction? It is simply that if these are legitimate, then one cannot be cited to negate the other. They pertain to distinct divine ordainces.
Owen argued that while the Sabbath belongs to the natural law, which day it falls on belongs to positive law, or as Turretin put it, “moral as to substance …but ceremonial as to circumstance.”2 And that is the reason why the Apostles could move it without it being any violation. Now whether or not they did move it is another question, which we come to shortly.
Additionally, not all days of solemn rest that were called Sabbath were in fact on the seventh day, as Turretin points out,
“Accordingly for the same reason all the solemn feasts of the Jews were designated by the name ‘Sabbath,’ although they did not fall upon the seventh day (Lev. 23:32 and elsewhere), because they were kept almost in the same manner as the weekly Sabbath … [and] the first and last day of each festival (which lasted many days) is called a Sabbath because both were equally solemn.”3
There were already Old Testament clues of the new creational rest. The first clue is the second reading of the law, at the plains of Moab:
“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut. 5:12-15).
That’s a new “therefore” from Exodus 20. The Sabbath is the rest of redemption. It’s not a second Sabbath, just like Deuteronomy isn’t a “second law.” But on that last day of the week, he gives a sneak peak at the New Day to come.
Yet another major clue comes in Isaiah. Being a design of the original creation, it is no surprise that it is meant to be there in the end: “From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the LORD” (Is. 66:23). It does not matter a bit if the sense of the Sabbath here is to be taken in some figurative way, for it is still a special worship service in which Jews and Gentiles all assemble in the age to come. Indeed “new moon to new moon” and “Sabbath to Sabbath” does appear to be a merism, so that there is a totality of days that replaces the once-a-week meeting. But surely this does not mean that the act itself is relegated to Israel of old.
The Old is in the New Revealed
First, the Sabbath is a Gospel Sign. The author of Hebrews retraced the steps of Israel in the wilderness and then as they entered the land. And after Joshua had led them to inherit the land—yes, that land that was their rest—yet we are told that even that Jeshua had not given them rest: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb. 4:9-10). Many argue that the contrast there has to do with his righteous work versus our unrighteous works. That is really why the contrast is between “his rest” and “our works.”4 But there is another contrast between our “dead works” and his living work. It is not just the cross that is the gospel on the seventh day, but the resurrection as well. The more we look into it, the more appropriate it appears that the Lord’s Day would be the day of his resurrection. On this day of rest there is newness of life! And so Jesus says to us today and every Lord’s Day:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mat. 11:28-30).
Second, the Sabbath Rose Out of the Old World. It is argued by Seventh Day Adventists and others that “Sabbath” means “seventh” and that we have no right to alter this as it is an immutable part of God’s law. But as we have seen, this fails a basic test of logic. There is nothing sacred about the days of the week beyond what God has said about them—and the God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old. Daniel Hyde observes that,
“When Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, things changed. Christ, the second Adam, ‘finished’ (John 19:30) the work that the first Adam failed to do (Rom. 5:12-19). Because of that pivotal event, the church determined that for Christians under the new covenant, the day of worship and celebration of the Lord’s grace in Jesus Christ was to be the first day of the week, Sunday.”5
Jesus’ statement that, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5), includes our concept of rest and weekly rhythms. It was “on the first day of the week” (Jn. 20:1; cf. Mat. 28:1) that Jesus rose from the dead.
Third, the Apostles’ Example has the Authority of Christ. Some [like Junius]6 have suggested that Jesus likely revealed this immediately to the Apostles; others only mediately, so that moved by the Spirit to authorize through their Scriptures. In either case, it would be Christ’s ordination, since He says of the Spirit, “he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn. 16:14, 15). Four texts give more desriptive evidence of the move to Sunday as the “Christian Sabbath” — cf. Acts 2; Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; and Revelation 1:10. Let us take each in turn. Pentecost was celebrated on the first day of the week. The word means “fiftieth,” and was to be celebrated following the seventh seven. The other meaning of σάββατον is “week.” So it was not merely that our Lord rose on the first day of the Jewish week but also that he poured out his power upon the church. Later on in Acts,
“On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight” (20:7).
To the Corinthians, the Apostle gives instruction for part of their public worship service: “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come” (1 Cor. 16:2). As to this first day of the week being treated with special significance, we might also think of the words of John.
“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, ‘Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches’” (Rev. 1:10-11).
Dr. Godfrey, in his series on Revelation, sees in Revelation 1:10, not only in the term “Lord’s Day,” but the phrase, “in the Spirit,” that John is recalling that “fellowship of the Spirit” he has with the saints, and is using “Lord’s Day” as a note of solidarity with the saints assembled back where he ministered, while he was separated from them, alone on that island of Patmos.
Fourth, the Old Day is referred to either as a Shadow or at least Secondary. There is another clue in passages like Romans 14:5, Galatians 4:10-11, and Colossians 2:16-17. Each of which treat the “shadows” of commandments like the Sabbath to be just that, the “ABC’s” of the law, as opposed to its deeper spiritual meaning — the spirit versus the letter. The Colossians passage especially is instructive:
“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”
Christ is “the substance” of the Sabbath. Wherever else shadows give way to substance in the New Testament, either the whole ordinance being discussed is abrogated (e.g. temple sacrifices), or else the institution is transformed or given deeper meaning (e.g. marriage). But it never simply “points to Christ” in some nebulous way that doesn’t change anything. And what is a type or a sign in the Old always belongs to ceremonial law and not the law of nature in itself. So singular things can possess both that which is natural and moral, and that which is positive and ceremonial. Turretin makes this same argument about the Sabbath being referred to as a sign of the Old Covenant in Exodus 31:13.7
A Mixed Precept — Positive (Circumstantial) and Natural (Constant)
Can we really say what is positive and circumstantial and therefore can be changed, as opposed to what is natural and moral and therefore must be retained? Turretin gives a list of three for each:
“Ceremonial can be viewed in three ways: (1) in the designation of the seventh day, which, as it was changed under the New Testament, ought to have been ceremonial. (2) In the sanctification of that day, its strict and rigid observance from evening to evening, both privative … and positive … (3) In the typical signification of that day, to shadow forth the grace of sanctification and from it the spiritual and heavenly rest in Christ (of which Paul speaks in Col. 2:16, 17).
The moral also consists in three things: (1) in the appointment of public meetings for the worship of God on a certain fixed time and day. (2) In the sanctification of the day itself, both privative by a cessation from the works of our ordinary calling so that we may have leisure for sacred meditation and divine worship … and positive, by the solemn and public worship of God in the congregation of the church. (3) In the relief of servants and beasts, for whom God had regard … and that servants themselves might attend to sacred things.”8
Brakel argues against those who deny that the Sabbath is moral law by himself denying that it was ceremonial—that is had any typological function.9 This is wholly unnecessary because of what we can see about this mixed precept. He brings out many important points, but could have done just as well by amending his case to the fact that the Sabbath is not merely ceremonial law.
A statement by Junius summarizes the necessity of being better theologians on the conceptual level about things like this. He was speaking of how even though human laws must conform to immutable eternal law, they must also change given the diverse circumstances. But the same folly that he speaks of can be applied to those who falsely extend immutability over even those laws which God is free to change:
“The other cause of change, which we previously established, is entirely necessary, namely, the mode of those things that the laws govern. For anyone who thinks that mutable matters must be administered and cared for by an immutable reasoning and method is someone who would condemn the prudence of parents in ruling their children in the home, the practical knowledge of the plowman in cultivating his crops in the field, and the expertise of sailors in heeding the wind on the sea. But while such a person thinks he preserves a constant and perpetual reasoning, but not reasoning, he will ruin the very matter about which reason reasons.”10
APPLICATION
Use 1. EVANGELICAL USE. Paul says,
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).
Jesus rose from the dead on that Sunday morning. We often can’t get out of bed on a Sunday, much less do it with great joy. Do we look forward to it—do we rise on His Day with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength?
Use 2. CIVIL USE. It’s hard to get people together for anything, to organize them to action, under one set of beliefs. That’s why the State hates the freedom to assemble. How much more does the State hate that unbreakable succession of weekly assemblies that stretches across time and space, called the church.
Have you ever thought of the Lord’s Day as a constantly recurring Independence Day that launches real reformation of the church? It would be a surprise if many did. But this was not always so. Organization based upon a real community, a real fellowship, is the first step to a genuinely lasting new society—or resistance to present social evil. The enemy knows that the Great Commission is a subversive call out people’s total life out of Babylon. It calls people from out of the nations by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mat. 28:20).
This is real discipleship and this centers on the Lord’s Day. This is our basic problem. We don’t see the Sabbath as the weekly, real and lasting, Independence Day. But the enemy knows what would happen if the church caught a vision for this regular feast.
Use 3. DIRECTIVE USE. The great irony here about the Sabbath and the legalism often associated with it is that it is the stage of Christ’s war against legalism. Again, we have only need to ask the lame man whose hand was healed by Jesus. Isaiah 58:13-14 was a clue about that, but it is in the New Testament revelation of the resurrection that this comes more into focus. Everything about the Day should say: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Let’s put it this way: The Lord’s Day, as a foretaste of the New Creation, is what establishes you for all that other work on the other six days. Remember what Israel was told,
“You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you” (Ex. 31:13).
This is a perfect transition into next week. The ultimate rest is not negative, but positive. Like all of the other commandments, the “doing” is heads and the “don’t do” is only the tails. So the church has to ask ourselves: How do we do better? How do we ensure that the Lord’s Day is a more festive holiday than the secularized holidays (an oxymoron!) of our culture?
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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.13.3.
2. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.13.19.
3. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.13.2.
4. Owen took issue with this in his Exposition of Hebrews, as one could not say this and compare it with the words “as God did from his” (v. 10). God’s works were all perfect, ours sinful. Instead the relevant way God rested from his works is Christ’s resurrection beginning the entering of his rest. There “the foundation of the new creation [was] laid and perfected” — Works, 21:355.
5. Daniel Hyde, “Why Do Christians Worship on Sunday?”
6. Turretin says that this is in Junius’ Opera Theologica 4:26-27 on Gen. 2:1, 2; in Inst., II.11.14.3
7. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.13.20.
8. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.13.22, 23.
9. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:150-59.
10. Junius, The Mosaic Polity, 95.
