Featured Is Watching Sports on Sunday Violating Sabbath?

The sabbath was a creation ordinance made for man.
The ten commandments are also given to all men.

 

““The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Mount Sinai. The LORD did not make this covenant with our ancestors, but with all of us who are alive today.” (Deuteronomy 5:2–3)

 

The sabbath (non-Mosaic) was a creation ordinance. It existed before the Mosaic Law (Genesis 2:2-3). The command to honor the sabbath day (what Baptists call the Lord's day) has not been abrogated. The argument is how we are to honor it.

 

No Ten Commandments before Sinai
““The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Mount Sinai. The LORD did not make this covenant with our ancestors, but with all of us who are alive today.” (Deuteronomy 5:2–3)

The Ten Commandments were the Old Covenant. They called it the “Ark of the Covenant” because it carried the Ten Commandments.

But the Two Great Commandments are the eternal law written in every heart. We know how we would like to be treated. But only those who are born again have Spiritual power to do this. So the Two Great Commandments condemn all except believers, to Hell.

Jesus said the Ten Commandments Hung from the Two Great Commandments. This was at a level wicked people could keep under threat of death for disobedience and promises of rewards for obedience. Sinners could keep the Ten Commandments for the wrong reasons, greed, fear etc. But they could not keep the Two Great Commandments based on love without first having the Holy Spirit through the new birth.

 

It is the same reason why the moral law is still in force today. The moral law (the divine knowledge or right and wrong), while codified in the Decalogue (10 Commandments), existed before they were given to Moses at Sinai. This is why the LORD was able to say to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it" (Genesis 4:6-7). We are no longer under the Law when it comes to it's ceremonial and judicial aspects but, like the sabbath day, the moral pre-dates Law.

 

I never said the Decalogue existed before Sinai. I said that the divine knowledge of right and wrong (moral law) existed before Sinai. Categorical difference.

 

The Sabbath is its sign.

 

Of the sabbath (the Lord's day) the framers of the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith wrote:

7._____ As it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time, by God's appointment, be set apart for the worship of God, so by his Word, in a positive moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's day: and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished.
( Exodus 20:8; 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2; Acts 20:7; Revelation 1:10 )

8._____ The sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering their common affairs aforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all day, from their own works, words and thoughts, about their worldly employment and recreations, but are also taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.
( Isaiah 58:13; Nehemiah 13:15-22; Matthew 12:1-13 )

English Particular Baptists did not conflate setting apart one day in seven unto the LORD with the big "S" Sabbath that was part of the Mosaic Law. There is a categorical difference between sanctifying the first day of the week* (a creation ordinance) and observing the ceremonial Sabbath that was part of the Mosaic Law. You seem to be having a difficult time understanding the difference. I will not keep repeating this.

*1689 LBC 22.7

 

The 1689 London Baptist Assembly also recommended that sanctions be imposed for nonattendance at midweek church services:

from the Narrative of The Proceedings of the 1689 London Baptist Assembly

"The Questions Proposed from the Several Churches, Debated, and Resolved
....
Question. Whether when the Church have agreed upon the keeping of one day, weekly or monthly, besides the first day of the week, to worship God and perform the necessary services of the Church, they may not charge such persons with evil that neglect such meetings, and lay them under reproof, unless such members can shew good cause for such their absence?
Answer. Concluded in the affirmative (Heb. x. 25)."