Sabbath, Sunday and the mark of the beast

Common questions about the Sabbath

Nothing causes more confusion and controversy among Christians today than the interpretation of the Sabbath and its purpose.  Here are some questions you may have pondered…

►Do we have to keep the Sabbath as Christians?

►Will we have to keep the Sabbath in the millennial kingdom?

►Is Sunday the Christian Sabbath?

►When did the Sabbath start and when does it end or is it forever?

The reason I think we need to look at this is because I want to set our minds and hearts at rest and reassure you that if you worship God on a Sunday you are not in danger of going to hell because someone or some group has told you that you have taken the mark of the beast.

Rather, the Sabbath gives us the concept of rest.  Rest was the pinnacle of God’s creation week.  Would you agree that rest seems to be the greatest need in people’s hearts today? Instead the Sabbath has been twisted to be something that we need to serve rather than being a blessing to us.  Jesus rejected the traditions of men and even performed miracles on the Sabbath and said in Mark 2:27 that the “Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath”.

The word “Sabbath” isn’t found in the Genesis account but Moses, the writer, is talking about that exact concept, which is the seventh day of the week.  Instead the phrase, the seventh day, is mentioned three times in Gen. 2:2-3.  Our English word “Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew word “Shabbat” which means to cease working, to rest and is related to the Hebrew word for “seven”.

Three different Sabbaths in the Bible

The first Sabbath didn’t take place because God was tired from His creative works because God does not get weary.  God rather, set apart the seventh day because His work of creation was finished and He was pleased and satisfied with what He had created.  There are a couple of distinctive things about the seventh day of that creation week.

First Sabbath

Firstly notice that there is no evening and morning mentioned suggesting that if it wasn’t for man sinning and interrupting God’s rest that the Sabbath may have continued.  Instead God had to search out for Adam and Eve and deal with the situation when they sinned.  Secondly, there is no record of God blessing any other day except for Day 7.  In blessing this day, the day in itself should be a blessing to man.

Like most things in Genesis, man has twisted and degenerated the Sabbath as well.  I always remember on my trip to Israel when we were staying in a 12-story hotel in Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee.  We happened to be there on the Sabbath and the lift (elevator) stopped at each level ensuring that it didn’t travel too far beyond the Sabbath Day journey.  Every other day you could travel express from ground floor to level 12 etc.  The Jews have made hundreds if not thousands of laws surrounding the Sabbath  to ensure that the Sabbath is not broken.  Today some groups twist the Sabbath to be something that we also as Christians must keep religiously as an end in itself rather than taking the principle of rest.

Second Sabbath

The second Sabbath was the national one for Israel not mentioned until Exo. 16:23 when God gave the regulations to Israel about gathering the daily manna.  And we know that this wasn’t until at least the 15th day of the 2nd month after they had come out of Egypt. So we are talking about 2500 years after creation.  The way it is worded is that the Jews already knew the importance of the Sabbath and were observing it as a day of rest because of what God said in Gen. 2:1-3. About two weeks later in the third month, God gave the 10 Commandments to Moses and the people including the commandment to keep the Sabbath.¹

Notice how He connected it with creation in verse 8.  Moses even mentioned the weekly rest needed by servants and farm animals, so the Sabbath was a humanitarian act as well as a religious duty.  Furthermore the Lord commanded His people to observe every seventh year as a Sabbatical year and every 50th year as a Year of Jubilee.  These were rest years, the seventh Sabbatical year a rest for the land and the 50th year a year when slaves were to be freed, all ancestral property would be returned to its original family to guarantee justice and to stop the rich from accumulating too much wealth at the expense of the poor.  The land is the Lord’s and we are but mere tenants. What a fantastic principle!

An important point is that there is no evidence that God ever required any other nation to observe the Sabbath because the Jews alone were the chosen people of God.

The weekly Sabbath was a foretaste of the rest that Israel would have in the Promised Land and this concept of a promised rest is applied to us today as believers…

Third Sabbath

In the book of Hebrews, God’s first creation rest and Israel’s Canaan rest are brought together to teach us about the ultimate spiritual third Sabbath or rest that believers have in Christ.  When we trust in Jesus we are a new creation and so we enter into a new spiritual rest.  We are not in bondage to keep the Jewish law because Jesus fulfilled the law.²  The proof of this is that the first Christian believers gathered on every day including the Sabbath but the first day was particularly important—it was called the Lord’s Day in Rev. 1:10.  It was the day that John had his vision.

But we should not confuse the Lord’s Day and make it into a type of Christian Sabbath.  The Sabbath is and always will be the seventh day and it is set apart.

The seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, symbolises the old creation and the law: first you work and then you rest.  The first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, symbolises the new creation and grace: first you believe in Christ and find rest and then you work.  The entire week is worship, praise and service.

The Jewish Sabbath law was fulfilled by Christ on the cross and is no longer binding on God’s people but is only a shadow of the things that were to come.³  There are at least a dozen reasons why Sunday was important to the first early Christians including the fact that Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem was on Palm Sunday, He rose on a Sunday and the church began at Pentecost on a Sunday.  I also believe that Jesus may return for the church on the Sunday night on the Feast of Trumpets when believers will be resurrected and raptured.⁴

All six appearances of Jesus occurred on a Sunday not on the Sabbath and Thomas became a believer on a Sunday as well.  Perhaps most importantly as well, John the Apostle had his vision on a Sunday, the Lord’s Day.

Conclusion

The conclusion is that while the Sabbath was significant to the Jews, there is no New Testament significance of the Sabbath in connection with anything of Christ, Christianity, the church or heaven!  That doesn’t mean we can’t worship the Lord on the Sabbath if we so desire.

There is a certain fear among certain people that we must keep the Sabbath otherwise we are in danger of accepting the mark of the final end times beast.  That is just not true and those who preach this are preaching a falsehood.  The mark will be a physical mark on the right hand or forehead.  Finally, Jesus instructs His disciples and us, that we must pray that our escape from Jerusalem and Judea is not on the Sabbath or in winter.⁵  It is not because as Christians we should be keeping the Sabbath but I believe the reason is a very practical reason.  In Israel everything shuts down on the Sabbath and it is hard to move around and even borders might be closed to Jordan.  In the Jordanian winter there is a great danger of flash floods in the desert and it is cold even sometimes snowing in Jerusalem in the winter period.  So Jesus instructs us to pray that our escape might be on a day and season that is easier for us.  The implication is that we are already there of course waiting for the time to go to the safe place in Jordan.