If you were to go to any place where Christians post messages it would only be a matter of time before the debate of whether the sabbath is on Saturday or Sunday would appear. I have lived long enough to know that people have a tendency to believe what they are familiar with unless provided with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I have no delusions that the article I am now writing will settle this debate but it is with a prayerful heart that I hope it will be used of my Father to reach past our human desire to be correct and help us to know our Fathers heart on the issue.
The question that lies at the core of most disagreements on this subject is which day did God ordain for believers to worship. The question itself is skewed because sabbath is about rest in Gods work, honor of Gods sovereignty, and remembrance of our dependence on God as the only maker of the cosmos and ourselves making it as God has said a day of rest from our own labours.
So though we do worship God on the sabbath; everyday is a day in which we are to worship God. The word worship means a submission of our will to any power. So for this reason our worship is found in our every day actions, speech, and motives. God would never give His family instructions to only do these things once a week.
Still why did the church replace the seventh day from Saturday to Sunday? The answer is they did not. In the early church we see the brethren coming together on the Lord's day for fellowship, the Lord's supper (or love feast), and sharing of their faith; it is clearly still seen as the first day of the week. The sabbath remains the sabbath; a day of rest.
Why then did the church meet on the first day? The answer most would give for a reason of Sunday meetings is the resurrection of the Lord but a clearer answer becomes apparent when we read the writings of the very early "church fathers". Those who wrote only decades after the last of the apostles had passed away referred to the Lords day as the eighth day.
The consummation of the covenant given to Abraham was the token of circumcision; the removing of the flesh. This token was reaffirmed by Moses so that on the eighth day every male of God's covenant was to be circumcised. The token of the outward removal of the flesh as given to Abraham is a teaching to us of the true circumcision of the heart.
The flesh that every man has inherited from Adam has no ability to walk in the life of God since it is filled with the death of separation from God by its nature which only produces sin. It is by faith in Messiah that we become one with Him and the living death of Adam in us is laid upon Him and carried to His cross. In the death of the cross we die; receiving the wages of our sin. The life generated by our Adamic flesh dies there and we find that our new life is the life of God which lived in Jesus. This is the true removal of the flesh.
The flesh generated life is a self life and as such all that live by it are separated and alone. Those who are joined to the Lord have through death come to share one life; the life of our Lord which is the life of our Father. This life in which we move and breath and have our being makes us not only one with our Father and His Son but also one with each other. It is by this new life that we can come together not as individuals but with one accord and one heart in Messiah.
So Sunday was never intended to replace the old but to be a remembrance and a fellowship of the new.
