Saturday Sabbath

[happilycatholic]

I like the way you explain it (not that others didn’t explain it well) Saturday is the Sabbath but it is the Jewish Sabbath for the children of Israel and since we are not Jewish but Gentiles/Christians this does not apply to us? Am I understanding it correctly?

In fact, yes. Gentiles were not expected to follow the terms of this Covenant. (Sabbath keeping, dietary laws, circumcision, etc.) With that said, while in the home of a Jew, Gentiles were expected to follow the ‘rules’ so to speak. In matters of the Sabbath, imagine if you were hosting a Gentile in your home and you are Jew. In order to keep the Lord’s Command, all those in the household must follow the Sabbath Laws set forth to keep it Holy. You couldn’t have the day interrupted by secular activity. Also, you would want to ‘witness’ to the Gentile as to the authority, power, and the mercy of the Creator, of God. So you would do that by expecting the Gentile to follow the laws set forth to keep the Sabbath Holy. Besides your household is either Holy or it’s not, there’s no inbetween, right? Still, Gentiles were never expected to be circumcised or to keep dietary laws. God obviously set the Jews apart from Gentiles and all others. It is not strange that He would do so with the Sabbath as well. Even the Jews attest to this.

But, if you will read Scripture and discern for yourself and not take the word of anyone save a minister or priest, you will find the Truth and the answers you seek. Treat these opinions here as purely that, opinions.

Faith is often a fact-finding mission (at first). It was for me. But it is a blessed mission because no matter what, if you have God as your destiny and you trust in Him, He will lead you on the path you need to be on. Sometimes faith is believing in that which we cannot find reason nor proof.

Blessings,

HC

 

[happilycatholic]

One other thing Malia, Judaism is the root of all that led us to Christ. Christ was a Jew. We must remember that the Jewish faith has much to offer and much to teach us as Christ Himself used it to teach His Disciples. We must not seek to abolish it nor set it aside, but to embrace it and learn from it.

I say this because there are those that will say the Sabbath has been abolished or that the Commandments were abolished. If you try to reconcile that with Scripture, it may prove confusing. First embrace Judaism and the Old Covenant and then you will know why it is that God sent His only Son to bring us a New Covenant.

It is not necessary to say that Christ transgressed the Sabbath Commandment in order to fully embrace the Lord’s Day. Christ was an obedient Jew. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died and was buried according to the Jewish faith.

Christ came to teach the Jews the ways in which they were flawed in keeping the Sabbath so that they would again come to know the importance of God’s Covenants with us. He came to let them know that God’s Covenants are good and that we are the ones that are sometimes flawed. Christ wanted to reiterate the goodness in the Old Covenant so we would trust in Him and trust Him to bring us a New and better Covenant for all mankind and for all time. He couldn’t very well preach the goodness of a New Covenant if the old one was bad. No one would have trusted Him.

This is where we get all the references from Jesus about keeping the Sabbath. Seemingly in contrast, we get the verses that seem to say that Christ transgressed the Sabbath to prove it inadequate. Not so. Christ never committed a sin and therefor could not have transgressed the Sabbath. He was merely stating that what we believed to be keeping the Sabbath was actually imposing and burdensome and therefore no longer in keeping with God’s Commandment. This is evidenced in Mark 2. This is where the story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath and allowing His Disciples to pick grain comes from. In these stories Jesus tells them “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”. In other words, I am Lord, I define the Sabbath, not your burdensome laws.

Instead of transgressing the Commandment, Jesus is breaking Rabbinic laws. These are laws made locally by the Rabbis of the area and are not necessarily binding on all Jews.

See? Jesus is telling them the Sabbath is good, it’s always been good but what they’ve morphed it into is burdensome. But it’s no matter because He’s Lord of the Sabbath and has come to give them a New sabbath, an eternal one.

Without fully understanding the Sabbath, we could not fully understand the benefit of Eternal Rest with the Father and the sacrifice made by Christ.

So, the Sabbath is always and forever to be honored. It is just no longer needed for salvation. God has a particular relationship with all mankind now and that was done through Jesus. Yay!!

Blessings,

HC

 

[losh14]

happilycatholic, I really do appreciate your robust answers. I hadn’t thought of approaching the matter through Covenant theology, but certainly it is a fruitful endeavor.

I would approach it by seeing the truth that underlies both the Old and the New Covenant, and state that even if we are free of the Commandments, we are not free to disobey the truth that underlies them. While the Lord has written His Law on our hearts, that does not give us license to murder, to engage in idolatry, to lie, etc. We have instead exchanged one iteration of God’s Laws (a consequentialist one) for another (a deontological one).

Thanks kindly for your apologia here.

 

[Malia_Belen]

“The Sabbath was made for man not for God”…What does this mean? Where is it in the Bible?

 

[Charlie_Zeaiter]

I believe Jesus fulfilled the Saturday Sabbath when He was laid to rest in the tomb on that Holy Saturday. God finished creating the world on a Friday, and rested on the Saturday. Jesus finished His work of redemption on the Cross on a Friday, and was laid to rest in the tomb on a Saturday. For me, this says when God created the world He also had a plan to save it.

Sunday He rose from the dead, and hence is our new holy day.

 

[windlessuser]

“The Sabbath was made for man not for God”…What does this mean? Where is it in the Bible?

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27)

"His point was that the Sabbath was made to serve people, instead of people being created to serve the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a servant, not a master. He was addressing the relative importance of the Sabbath, not which specific people were given the Sabbath.

We could just as easily say, “Circumcision was made for humans, not for angels.” This statement is true, but we should not focus on the first half as if it meant that circumcision was made for all humans. It was given to Israel only, not the rest of the world.

Similarly, Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for humans, but he did not say, nor did he mean, that it was made for all humans"

From:
wcg.org/lit/law/sabbath/mark227.htm.

 

[happilycatholic]

happilycatholic, I really do appreciate your robust answers. I hadn’t thought of approaching the matter through Covenant theology, but certainly it is a fruitful endeavor.

I would approach it by seeing the truth that underlies both the Old and the New Covenant, and state that even if we are free of the Commandments, we are not free to disobey the truth that underlies them. While the Lord has written His Law on our hearts, that does not give us license to murder, to engage in idolatry, to lie, etc. We have instead exchanged one iteration of God’s Laws (a consequentialist one) for another (a deontological one).

Thanks kindly for your apologia here.

Thank you losh14 for the kind words.

Blessings,

HC