Can we keep any day as the Sabbath?
By this argument Satan prepared the world to accept a substitute in place of the Sabbath which God had specifically commanded. Upon the tables of stone God wrote the great unchanging law of the ages with His own finger. Every word was serious and meaningful. Not one line was ambiguous or mysterious. Sinners and Christians, educated and uneducated, have no problem understanding the simple, clear words of the Ten Commandments. So does God mean what he says or not? God does mean what He says and He says what He means. He said unmistakably to keep the seventh day, not any day in seven. No one has tried to void that law as too complicated to comprehend. Some say they keep the Sabbath every day of the week. Is this what God said to do? My Bible says “Six days you shall work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” Can we just respond to God by saying, “You got it wrong God, the Seventh day is not your Sabbath we can just keep any or every day.”
Isn’t that dangerous to mock God and His Commandment like that? God desires us to worship Him every day, doing everything at all times to His glory, however, as to a Holy day of worship, God has commanded only one and has set apart no other day. We worship God seven days a week but if we kept the Sabbath seven days a week, we would not be Holy, we would be lazy.
Most of the big Ten begin with the same words: “Thou shalt not,” but right in the heart of the law we find the fourth Commandment which is introduced with the word, “Remember.” Why is this one different? Because God was commanding them to call something to memory which already existed but had been forgotten. Genesis describes the origin of the Sabbath in these words, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made...And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Genesis 2:1-3. Which day did God bless and sanctify? The seventh day. How was it to be kept holy? By resting. Could any of the other six be kept holy? No. Why? Because God commanded not to rest those days but to work. In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron were supposed to bring Holy fire from the alter but instead brought, as the Bible phrases it, strange fire. Did the Holy fire and the secular fire look the same? Yes. Were they chemically the same? Yes. Was God happy with the secular fire instead of Holy fire? Leviticus 10:2 says, “And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.” God was definitely not happy with their strange fire. So how does God feel when we offer Him a secular day instead of His Holy day? How does God feel when we offer a day used for sun worship (Sunday) that God detested? Does God’s blessing have any value or is it worthless? Why do parents pray for God to bless their children? The seventh day is different from the other six because it has God’s blessing and is Holy. Why did God make this day Holy? He made this day Holy because He is Holy and it is for intimate Holy time with Him. Ever heard the expression you can’t change it because it’s written in stone? It is very relevant that the Commandments were written in stone by God’s finger. When God puts it on stone like this it’s solid, it’s eternal and it’s immovable and you can’t change it. God gave many other Laws to Moses at Mt Sinai but they were not written in stone and most of those were nailed to the cross. The Ten Commandments were the only thing God wrote in stone.
Why did God bless the day? Because He had created the world in six days. It was the birthday of the world, a memorial of the mighty act of creation. It is the test Commandment of our love and obedience to God while also celebrating creation and reminding us He can and will do it again. Can the Sabbath memorial be changed? Never. It points backward to an accomplished fact. July 4 is Independence Day. Can it be changed? It can’t change anymore than your birthday. It is a memorial of your birth, which happened on a set day. History would have to run through again to change your birthday, or Independence Day, or to change the Sabbath day. We can call another day Independence Day, and we can call another day the Sabbath, but that will never make it so. It is the day that it is.
Did God ever give man the privilege of choosing his own day of rest? He did not. In fact, God confirmed in the Bible that the Sabbath was settled and sealed by His own divine selection and should not be tampered with. Read Exodus 16 concerning the giving of manna. For 40 years God worked three miracles every week to show Israel which day was holy.
(1.) No manna fell on the seventh day.
(2.) They could not keep it overnight without spoilage
(3.) But when they kept it over the Sabbath, it remained sweet and fresh.
But some Israelites had the same idea as many modern Christians. They felt that any day in seven would be all right to keep holy: “And it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my Commandments and my laws?” Exodus 16:27-28. Sadly, these people thought another day could be kept just as well as the seventh day. Perhaps they were planning to observe the first day of the week, or some other day which was more convenient for them. This seems to be the plan for many Christians today. So how did God respond to these non-Jews? God accused them of breaking all His Commandments and laws.
Would God say the same thing to those who break the Sabbath today? Of course! He is the same yesterday, today and forever, He changes not. God made it clear that, regardless of our feelings, those who work on the Sabbath are breaking His Commandments. James explains that breaking even one Commandment is sin and is to break all of them just as God demonstrated in Exodus 16: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” James 2:10-11.
