Featured The Crux of Keeping the Sabbath Day Contention

I was asked which tribe I belong to. I said, I belong to the tribe of Jesus Christ.

Here --thank you very much-- you gave me most excellent Scripture consolidating my claim in Christ.
"You will find your joy in the LORD," it says, because He, The Repairer of the (sin-) breach, the Satisfaction of my soul, my continual Guide and Restorer of God's paths to dwell in to me ---HE, The Holy of the LORD Jesus Christ, turned not away his feet from the Sabbath of the LORD, but did the pleasure of the LORD on his Holy Day and called the Sabbath of the LORD his delight.

Christ calling the Sabbath of the LORD honourable, DELIGHTED HIMSELF IN THE LORD. Why not the tribe of Jesus Christ?!

What more shall I ask for to believe my Lord Jesus Christ and eat and drink with the Heritage of his People, the heritage of the King of kings the mouth of the LORD hath spoken of?

 

I am really not sure what your going on about. But if your wondering if I believe the views I hold are from the Scriptures, well, of course I do.

 

The apostles put no emphasis on the First Day of the week. Each of Matthew and John wrote of the First Day of the week, once. No other apostle ever mentioned the First Day or have done something mentioned on it (except once, Paul according to Luke who was no apostle).


Christ rose again, not on the First Day of the week, but, quote, “before / against / towards the First Day of the week ON THE SABBATH IN THE SABBATH’S MID-AFTERNOON DAYLIGHT INCLINING towards / before / unto the First Day of the week”End quote.


The apostles never began to worship the Lord on The First Day. Their worship, according to Acts 2 “when Pentecost was fully come” 50 days after Resurrection Sabbath, was on the Sabbath again. And then for some time later “Moses being read in the churches EVERY SABBATH DAY . . . BEING ASSEMBLED WITH ONE ACCORD … when they gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle, which, when they had read (it), they rejoiced for the consolation . . . in every city where they have preached THE WORD OF THE LORD (“Moses being read”) . . . And so were the churches established in the faith (of Jesus).”

 

Isa 58:13 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:
Isa 58:14 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.

I simply take scripture for what it says. What does it say?
It says, that 700 years before Christ, the Lord was speaking to Israel through the prophet Isaiah, and said:
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, ...
700 years B.C., there was no "Lord's Day." There was only the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, the day which we know as Saturday. And that is the day that Isaiah was referring to. He didn't know of any other day.

He is simply teaching here that Sabbath observance observance was an indicator of a Jew's faithfulness to the Covenant.

 

If Jesus Christ must be believed, Isaiah did not "~simply teach... Sabbath observance. What a dull and dry subject, especially when the subject of man's Sabbath observance~". If Jesus must be believed, Isaiah prophesied and taught NOTHING THAN CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED AND RAISED FROM THE DEAD. And chapters 57,58 are no different than chapter 53 and 56, for example. What is inspirational about Isaiah as the whole Old Testament, is its speaking of the Christ, Luke 24:26,27,32,44-46.

Or have the Prophets for simply what they have to say to Israel about the Sabbath for yourself, DHK. That is not what I get or would like to get out of them.

 

I am not sure what your argument is.
The Sabbath is the Sabbath is the Sabbath, i.e., the seventh day of creation, the day that God rested, the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments, a commandment given to the nation of Israel as a sign of a covenant made between them and the nation of Israel for them and their generations forever (Ex.31:15-17). That day is Saturday.

The apostles started out by worshiping on every day, daily. (Acts 2). They were also in the Temple.
There is no evidence that they continued to worship on the Sabbath.
As time went on they began to worship on the first day of the week, but that is not the Sabbath. See Acts 20:7, "Upon the first day of the week." There is no Sabbath here. This is the day they gathered together.

The practice continued.
1 Corinthians 16:2 Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.
--Paul would meet with on the first day of the week, the same day that they met when they would bring their offerings to their various assemblies. This was not the sabbath. This was the first day of the week. It has nothing to do with the Sabbath.

But the Sabbath in Isaiah is the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, not the first day of the week.

 

“~The apostles started out by worshiping on every day, daily. (Acts 2).~”

Incorrect. The apostles started out by worshiping “when the day of Pentecost-fully-come”, had come, which was the Seventh Day Sabbath because Jesus had raised “on the day after the (passover-)sabbath”—, the passover sabbath “on the fifteenth day of the First Month”, “the sabbath”, “after”, which, “ye shall begin to count fifty days” to Pentecost, “seven Sabbaths-of-weeks” which meant every first day of every seven days, was the Sabbath-of-the-LORD, the Seventh Day of the week, so that “the day after the seventh seven days” or “fiftieth day”, was the Sabbath of the LORD again. Plain literal Old Testament reading and counting!


Then plain literal New Testament reading, reads, “In the end of the Sabbath, before, the First Day of the week … the angel of the Lord cast the stone from the grave”, and Jesus rose from the grave, naturally, in perfect fulfilment of the Old Covenant Word of God, “on the third day”, of the “three days thick darkness” that “the plague was upon Him”, “they (Christ in reality) on the sixteenth day of the First Month cleansed the sanctuary” of his grave by his resurrection from the dead. So fifty days later, was the Sabbath-of-the-Lord again when the apostles “~started out by worshiping~”, “when the day of Pentecost was fully come”.


Then Peter and the apostles went on that whole Sabbath, preaching Jesus’ fulfilment of the Scriptures concerning his “three days thick darkness” of death, “that his soul was not left in hell”; of burial, “that neither his flesh did see corruption”; and resurrection, “that this Jesus had God raised up from the dead whereof we all”—on that very Sabbath Day—“are witnesses”. Then Peter goes on to explain to them how the Holy Spirit fulfilled the promise of the day of Pentecost in verse 33, “the promise which you now (“today when you hear his Voice” Hebrews 4:7) see and hear.”


Then, dear DHK, verse 39, "for the promise is unto you (Jewish believers) and to your children, AND TO ALL THAT ARE AFAR OFF, even as many (heathen, non-Jewish believers), as the Lord our God shall call.”


---All having happened on the Sabbath on which the apostles started out by worshiping “when the day of Pentecost was fully come”, which was the Seventh Day Sabbath of the Lord JESUS now, because Jesus had raised “on the Sabbath” and thereby “had given them rest and as well therefore, a Sabbath-rest to keep”. Hebrews 4:8,9.


At this point Luther declared the Book of Hebrews, does not belong in the canon of Holy Writ. The Sabbath in it was the offense to Luther as it became an offense to every Protestant after him until today. Even the Sabbatharians take offense at the truth, God in the beginning at the creation “in the evening cool of day” after the Sixth Day of creation week, immediately after our first parents had transgressed God’s VOICE, “CALLED” after them and PROMISED them salvation through the sacrifice and covering of the temple of their body with the skin of sacrifice, exactly in the way which God would “after so long time”, instruct Moses to build the sanctuary in the wilderness IN VIEW OF THE COMING GOD AND HIS SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF for the sins of many.

 

The Perfect Participle implies inescapably and undeniably that "before we on the First Day of the week were still gathering together (and) Paul had spoken to them, we had been gathering together BEFORE on the First Day of the week". And that, undeniably and inescapably implies "we before on the First Day of the week", had gathered together on the Sabbath Day "BEFORE on the First Day of the week we were gathering together STILL when Paul spoke to them".

Yes, that is Greek which Christians because of their Sunday misconception find Greek but nevertheless is Greek in absolute sense correct and true.

 

The apostles worshiped before the Day of Pentecost was fully come.

Act 1:13 And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James.
Act 1:14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.
Act 1:15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)

There was ten days between the ascension and the Day of Pentecost. Most of that time they spent in an upper room praying and worshiping. It wasn't the Sabbath; it was every day.

 

Very good point, very good made, DHK. Correct, they worshipped for ten days in anticipation of "Pentecost FULLY, come". They worshipped having received both 40 days' communication from Jesus and having witnessed his ascension for basis and content of their preaching and teaching. They had solid ground on which to stand during their worshipping for those ten days. And when having received the blessings from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit ---the once for all LAST Shavuot for all future times---, they, as Christ's CHOSEN APOSTLES, had even more reason and firmer foundation to go on and preach and teach every day of their lives afterwards.

For that very reason, the apostles appointed deacons to attend to certain matters SO THAT THEY, AS CHRIST'S APOSTLES, could carry on to preach and teach "daily" in the sense of every day of the week and whenever without break.

As therefore the history of the church itself afterwards showed, the 'daily worship' of the believers and converts, STOPPED. And the apostles' 'daily' worship also STOPPED as can clearly be seen from their history recorded in Acts and as proven by the fact they all had died by the end of the first century.

Now apply your argument against the Seventh Day Sabbath that it (according to you) is not commanded in the New Testament; apply it to your, 'daily worship' supposition and ask, Where is the command that the Church must worship daily AS THE CHURCH? There isn't such command or the vaguest innuendo to the effect.

 

"Now about the First Day of the week", said Paul as an announcement after his sermon recorded in chapter 15. "Therefore my beloved brethren ---because death was swallowed up and the victory of the grave was overturned by Christ's Resurrection from the dead, He having destroyed the last enemy, death--- Therefore, brethren, be ye steadfast", said Paul (as well as wrote Paul) in closing. "Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” “Your labour in the Lord is not in vain”, said Paul in closing, ANNOUNCING, “Now about the collection . . . every First Day of the week . . .”


Paul refers to the First Day in his Letter, as he had preached in his resurrection-sermon. He may just as well be understood for having written as if he had said, “ABOUT the First Day … concerning the collection”— ‘Kata (de) Mian sabbatou … peri … tehs logeias’. In context of chapter, 15, Paul would have said, "Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. About the First Day therefore, concerning the collection…” It is just the same as actually written by Paul, "Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. Therefore about the collection … every First Day of the week . . .”.


Because Paul refers to the First Day, it means he refers to it deferring from the day before on which he preached his resurrection-sermon. In sequence the Sabbath was the day before the First Day.


And just like Paul referred to the First Day, having said (written) “Concerning the collection every First Day…”, did he right after his sermon refer to everything else mentioned in chapter 16. Paul wrote his Letter just like he preached it and closed it and directly afterwards made all the announcement for the future as recorded in chapter 16 . . . “AS I HAVE given order (as I have preached and as I have taught) to the churches in Galatia, SO do ye (in Corinth as well)”..

 

The trouble with your interpretation is that you are the only one that holds to it.
Someone once told me: "You can make the Greek say whatever you want it to say." That is partly true. So I don't trust your interpretive skills when it comes to the Greek.

Therefore, I will give you what some others say about this verse (1Cor.16:2)

John MacArthur

William MacDonald

Jamieson, Faucett and Brown

And finally the verbose John Gill

--Note "their sabbath" was not the Jewish sabbath, but rather the Christian sabbath which was always on the first day of the week, as attested by the many ECF that Gill references.

 

You don't keep the Sabbath do you Gerhard?
If you did, here are some guidelines to help you along in how to do it in a biblical way.
Otherwise, just to say you "keep it" and do things your own way, is simply being a hypocrite.
The Bible is very specific about "keeping the sabbath.}

http://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm

 

Only as long as we are talking with those who care not a wit for sola scriptura support for week-day-1.

In ALL the examples above we DO have the statement that is being identified - in support of the 7th day - God's own Holy Day - "My Holy Day" as HE said - 'The Holy Day of the LORD" Is 58:13 - but we have NOTHING of that sort for "week-day-1".

As long as "the Bible" is simply "so much detail to be ignored" for those who reject sola scriptura testing of their doctrine - then "yeah" it is all pointless.

And of course "All eternity AFTER the cross" in Is 66:23 New EARTH - for ALL MANKIND - is pretty hard to "ignore".

"The NT believer" is told this -

"what matters is KEEPING the Commandments of God" - 1Cor 7:19

Those who whine that the 3rd commandment 'not taking God's name in vain' is never once quoted in the NT -- no not even in part-- are simply "making rules up" -- are relying on a doctrine based on "fluff" -- as even DHK would know.

in Christ,

Bob

 

There is no command of God to keep the Sabbath, not for Gentile believers. You have never shown that. That command is restricted and has always been restricted to the Jews. You have never shown anything different.

If you had any serious though about keeping the Sabbath you wouldn't use electricity, natural gas, gasoline, drive your car, etc.
You would keep the Sabbath according to the OT as closely as possible in the same manner as others do today who actually do keep it. But hypocritically you don't. You just "do it your own way," and say you do.

Try it this way.

http://www.jewfaq.org/shabbat.htm

 

You may see it as ~trouble~ for my ~interpretation~ the fact--may be--I am "~the only one that holds to it~". I acknowledge your acknowledgment as a compliment.

But you are nevertheless wrong.

An example of one person who does hold my view in this place, or rather whose view or interpretation I have made use of, is the inimitable Reverend Doctor Alfred Marshall of whom Canon J. B. Phillips M.A. says, "I consider that Dr. Marshall has done his work supremely well. ... I for one [continues Phillips] am grateful for an alert and intelligent literal translation wedded to the latest and most reliable Greek Text. I am glad, for example, to see that Dr Marshal has not missed the PECULIAR Greek construction in Matthew . . .” and may I, add, in 1Corinthians 16:2, ‘kata Mian sabbatohn’!

 

What in whole is true, here, is, that that ~someone~ who once told you: "You can make the Greek say whatever you want it to say", not ~partly~, but wholly, has no “~interpretive skills when it comes to the Greek~”. You may trust me because I am skilled enough myself in Greek to know what I have learned from and is attested to, by all avouched Greek scholars, that Greek is most likely of all languages the most precise and unmistakably unambiguous.

 

And therein is the problem. I don't trust you Gerhard, precisely because your "Greek interpretation goes directly contrary to what the rest of the Bible teaches. When that happens then one knows that the "Greek interpretation" is wrong.

 

I have never even tried!

I have never even tried!


But you have never even tried to notice “the day The Seventh Day is Sabbath OF THE LORD GOD”, “GOD (not me) thus concerning spake, And GOD (through Christ in rising from the dead, not I,) the day The Seventh Day from all his works rested.”


Please pay attention to the SCRIPTURES for a change, DHK, and forget about your countless one another parroting scholars!

 

Your posts are very confusing it is often hard to follow them. The Sabbath is not for today. It seems that no matter what you try to define it as you want to make it binding. It isn't. Even if you define it as the first day of the week it is not commanded to keep it. What does this word mean?

Luk 18:12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Did he fast twice in one Sabbath day?

Luke 18:12 νηστευω δις του σαββατου αποδεκατω παντα οσα κτωμαι
Note: "The Sabbath."
What does it mean? It is correctly translated as "the week."

1Co 16:2 Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.

1 Corinthians 16:2 κατα μιαν σαββατων εκαστος υμων παρ εαυτω τιθετω θησαυριζων ο τι αν ευοδωται ινα μη οταν ελθω τοτε λογιαι γινωνται

The same applies here: the first (day) of the week.
The Sabbath day was not in view here. The word (as in Luke 18:12) simply means "week".

Thayer Definition:
1) the seventh day of each week which was a sacred festival on which the Israelites were required to abstain from all work
1a) the institution of the sabbath, the law for keeping holy every seventh day of the week
1b) a single sabbath, sabbath day
2) seven days, a week

It is a well-accepted definition, and "sabbath" does not need to be forced upon it. The KJV has it right.