Sabbath Debate Debrief

Sabbath Debate Debrief and the Strategy Behind the Analysis

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the Faith, Wednesday, May 14, 2014. Okay, today we will definitely be doing some Sabbath debate analysis. And it's going to be complicated, that's all I can say.

And then definitely a sermon review in an hour or two. So kind of a slightly modified episode of Fighting for the Faith. Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough.

I am your servant in Jesus Christ. And this is the program that dishes up a daily dose of biblical discernment. The goal of which, help you to think biblically, help you to think critically, and help you compare what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God, because there's no shortage of crazy things being said out there.

We take the time to slow down, stop, open up our Bibles, and compare what people are saying. Well, to God's Word in context. And when we do that, well, oftentimes we find that people are not rightly handling God's Word, not properly distinguishing between law and gospel.

And as a result of it, they're not teaching us the truth about God or sound doctrine or things like that. Now, on Monday's episode of Fighting for the Faith, you had the opportunity to hear my debate with Jim Staley.

And so what I wanted to do today in the first hour is basically dedicate our numero uno to doing some analysis, doing a little bit of a debrief, and taking you through some things, and kind of debunking some of what it is that Jim Staley said, and also reveal to you what my strategy was so you kind of understand why I talked about what I talked about and why I didn't go after particular things.

In fact, going into the debate, I had an extremely tight strategy that I needed to stick to. In fact, we talk about what the three major tenets of my strategy were, and so you can kind of understand what's going on there.

Strategy number one was to attack the unstated major premise that people like Jim Staley or Sabbatarians or people in the Seventh-day Adventists attack their unstated major premise that Christians are required to keep the Mosaic covenant slash law.

Now, you'll notice if you go back and you listen to my opening argument, my opening argument is entirely biblical, and that's on purpose, because you have to build a biblical foundation and understand that there was kind of a challenge in the debate, and that is that—well, more than one challenge.

I had the negative position regarding whether or not Christians are required to keep the Sabbath, and understand this, it's difficult to prove a negative. It's very difficult to prove a negative, and so I had to find a way to argue it in such a way that it was more of a positive rather than a negative, while still—does that make any sense?

So the idea was I was trying to actually build a positive case, a positive case that states that the Mosaic covenant has been fulfilled in Christ and that Christians are not required to keep Torah. That's the idea behind it, and so by doing that, it made it so that I can attack the unstated major premise that Jim Staley has, and that would force him to actually come on to my argument rather than me going on to his argument.

The idea was is that I knew that if I got bogged down in his bad hermeneutic, that it would just—it would have been a furball, and it wouldn't have—I wouldn't have done very well. And so the idea is that his whole—his bad hermeneutic is because of— that he doesn't rightly understand that Christ has fulfilled the Torah for us and that Christians are not under the Torah, okay?

In fact, we're under the law of Christ or the law of liberty or the law of the Spirit. That's something completely different. Under the new covenant, Torah is not what reigns, and so I wanted to put forward the biblical argument for that in my opening argument.

And then because we had two rebuttals going into the debate, my strategy was to chop up what I was doing. So the idea is that my opening argument, only being 20 minutes, I had to build a positive biblical case.

Rebuttal number one, the idea was to continue to build off of my opening argument rather than, you know, spend time directly attacking his ideas. Does that make sense? And so by building off of the biblical foundation that I had built, I could demonstrate that the early Church Fathers pre-Constantine—this is kind of important— that they rightly understood the biblical teaching, that the Torah and the Old Covenant had been fulfilled in Christ, and so the idea then was to build off of my biblical arguments and then undercut Jim Staley's conspiracy theory.

Because with a theology like Jim Staley's, he has to come up with some kind of a plausible explanation as to why Christians, you know, all the way back in earliest recorded history— this includes the New Testament and the earliest Church Fathers— are worshiping on Sunday and have continued to worship on Sunday.

What's the answer to—why is it that Christians are doing that rather than keeping the Sabbath? Well, the answer to that is simple in Jim Staley's mind. It's a conspiracy. This is a conspiracy on the part of Rome, the Pope, Constantine, and anti-Semitism.

This is what's going on here. And so by first doing what I did, build the biblical argument that the Mosaic Covenant is completed, has been fulfilled, and that the Old Covenant has given way to the New and that we're under the New, not the Old, I can demonstrate the Church Fathers in the earliest ones understood this biblical reality, and that's why they worshiped on Sunday.

And what that does is it takes away Jim Staley's argument that all of this was changed as a result of a conspiracy and anti-Semitism. And so going into it, I had basically—the strategy was build the biblical argument, build off the biblical argument, and then rebuttal number two being only seven minutes long, that one I had left open kind of as, okay, this will be one that I try to craft while up on the dais and address some of his things.

And then during my cross-examination, my goal with the cross-examination with him was basically to ask questions to show the inconsistency in his theology and also I asked him questions about whether or not he receives direct revelation.

In fact, we'll be listening to a portion of something that he recently, not too long ago, did so that you can hear what Jim Staley is about, who he is. And I think that's actually something that plays into all of this, is that what it is that makes Jim Staley Jim Staley is apparently he's hearing directly from God.

And so you can kind of put him into the broader category of visionary leaders. In fact, I would even say, based upon kind of the warp and woof of his arguments, that he receives direct revelation from God, has an inspired interpretation of the Book of Romans, and based upon the details of the vision that he had, he had a vision apparently where he and Jesus were walking through the ruined foundations of the temple, and he's been tasked with rebuilding that.

You could make a parallel between Jim Staley and maybe even Joseph Smith of Mormonism. It's something very similar going on there, but we'll be playing that as part of the program today, so you understand that's going to be in our analysis.

So cross-examination was to help bring some of that out, and then my closing, again, the strategy was finished long before I ever went up on the dais, was to demonstrate how the Sabbath is type and shadow of our Sabbath rest in Christ, which is salvation by grace through faith and not by works, and demonstrated that from Hebrews.

So that was my strategy going in. I crafted it long before I got to St. Louis, and when I had asked for prayers from you guys before leaving, specifically my prayer was that the strategy would work. And I'm very, very satisfied with what happened.

And understand this, there were certain things going into it that I knew I couldn't allow myself to go down the bunny trail because it would burn precious minutes, and I had to make every minute really count.

And I also knew that I would have the ability, once the debate was finished and up, that I could do some analysis on it, go back and do a postmortem on it, and kind of tease out some of the things that I didn't want to allow myself to get bogged down in.

For instance, one of the things I specifically said that I was going to avoid during the debate was a debate on whether or not the Sabbath is a creation commandment. And it's not that I believe that it is, it's that in order to demonstrate that it's not, it takes a little bit more work than I wanted to give it in the debate.

So I didn't contest the fact that God created, that God rested on the sixth day, and that He hallowed it by resting. That's absolutely in the Genesis account. I don't have a problem with that. But we'll take a little bit of time today to kind of unpack some of that thing as whether or not it's a creation ordinance and things like that.

So anyway, that's the overall strategy that I employed. And so what we're going to be doing for the rest of this first hour here is I'm going to go back and I'm going to kind of pick apart a few things that Jim Staley said and do a little bit of fact-checking so that you kind of get what's going on and we can see if we can't tie up some loose ends from the debate, if you would.

And so what I'm going to do right now is we're just going to get right into the analysis, and we're going to take a look, first and foremost, at whether or not the Sabbath was given as a commandment at creation.

Let's listen to Jim Staley from the debate. Again, I should warn you here, this isn't in chronological order, this is kind of by topic, and even the topics that we're going to cover, there's no rhyme or reason to them, it's just that as I analyze these things, this is what I wanted to talk about.

So here's soundbite number one from Jim Staley talking about the Sabbath being given at creation. Here we go.

First of all, I want to show and give an overview of history from creation to today to show that God's original intent, it's very important that we understand God's original intent and whether or not his original intent was for us to keep the Sabbath, or in Hebrew, the Shabbat, for all eternity.

So we're going to turn to Genesis 2, verse 2, and it says,. On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and he sanctified it.

That Hebrew word there is kadosh. It's to be set apart, it's to be made holy. As a matter of fact, it's the very thing that we're commanded to do, is to be set apart and to be made holy. And so he says,.

Because of that he had rested from all the work which God had made.

Okay, now, so that's kind of soundbite number one, arguing from creation. And in his closing statement, he kind of ratcheted it up a notch. Listen to what he said in his closing regarding this.

Now listen, for those that believe that God meant what he said, when he told us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy in the garden before man sinned.

Okay, so you kind of catch the problem there. Let's take a look at the Genesis account, and you'll kind of understand where the problems are when we go from here. When we look at the Genesis account, number one, when was Genesis written?

Okay, think about it for a second. Pause for a second. Okay, Genesis, or Bereshit, which is its Hebrew name, was written by Moses. Huh? That's right. So we've got a little bit of a problem here. The book of Genesis did not exist at the time of Abraham or Adam or Isaac or Jacob.

It didn't exist back then. The book of Genesis comes on the scene at Mount Sinai. Yeah, while the children of Israel are doing their wilderness thing. So we've got a problem here in that quoting Genesis to somehow say that this is a creation ordinance kind of misses an important fact, and that is that this was written by Moses, and we're talking at least 2 ,500 years after the earth has been created.

You're saying 2 ,500 years? Are you saying that the earth is young? Yeah, I am. Read your Bible. Jesus believed in a literal six-day creation. So I'm not going to deviate from him because he rose from the grave, and he's an eyewitness to the account.

You get what I'm saying, but that's a different topic. So let's take a look at Genesis 2. Here's what it says, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day, made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Straight up. So yes, it's absolutely true that God blessed the seventh day, and on it he rested from all of the work that he'd done.

No doubt about that. Absolutely true. What is missing in all of this is a commandment. There's not a therefore here. Now, this is important also because this was written at the time of Moses, that this then becomes the basis later as God gives his commands as to why they're keeping the Sabbath.

But keep this in mind. There's no commandment here. God rested on the seventh day, made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work. It doesn't say, therefore, go and do likewise. And so when we get to Adam and Eve, there's no mention that they're Sabbath keepers.

None whatsoever. Enoch, no mention that he's a Sabbath keeper. Same also with circumcision. Was Adam circumcised? Scripture doesn't say he was circumcised. Enoch wasn't circumcised. Noah wasn't a Sabbath keeper, nor was he circumcised.

You kind of get the idea. Abraham's the first guy circumcised, but he's not a Sabbath keeper. So to basically claim that this is the equivalent of a commandment, talking about how God blessed the seventh day, and that the original intent of God was that everybody would, quote, keep the Sabbath, well, that's not actually what the text says.

In order for that to be the case, you would have to demonstrate that along with this note of what took place in creation, that there was a command associated with it that everybody was supposed to know.

But Adam didn't keep the Sabbath, nor was it ever mentioned that he was commanded to. And so all the way through the patriarchs in the book of Genesis, there's not a mention of Sabbath keeping. Not at all.

And so we've got a big problem. And so when Jim Staley makes the claim that it's a commandment in the Garden, listen again to what he said.

Now listen, for those that believe that God meant what He said, when He told us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy in the Garden before man sinned.

Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy before man sinned. You see, that's not what the text says. The text in Genesis 2 does not say remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, it just says what God did on the seventh day, keeping in mind the book of Genesis shows up during the time of Moses.

Moses is the author of Genesis. So this idea that God's original intent was this, well, that goes beyond the text. It goes beyond the text and it's not what the text says. If this was God's original intent, that man keep the Sabbath, why is there no text that says that was God's original intent?

And so you kind of get the idea as to why I intentionally decided ahead of time this was not going to be a bunny trail that I was going to go down, because it takes a little bit of time to kind of flesh this out.

But the idea is that just because the text in Genesis says that God set aside or made the seventh day holy by resting on it, does not mean that that was his original intent, that humanity would keep it from the beginning of creation.

In fact, a good way to summarize what Jim Staley did is he took a descriptive text in Genesis 2 and turned it into a prescriptive text. But in order for me to say, in fact, in order for me to concede that God's original intent was that man would keep the Sabbath day, I would have to see in the book of Genesis a statement saying, and God intends for you to rest the way he rested.

But I see no text that says that, nor do I see any of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis concerned with or even making mention of anything to do with the Sabbath at all. Therefore, what Jim has done is overstated what the implications are of Genesis 2, verse 2, because there is no implied commandment there.

In fact, there is no stated commandment there, and he's basically making it an implied one, but that's not what's going on. Again, when did this book show up? When did the book of Genesis show up? Moses is the one who wrote it.

So it makes perfect sense that God would explain to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai why, regarding this Sabbath-keeping that he's put on them, and I'll explain how this is all on them and not on us in just a minute, and that this is tied back to the six days of creation.

But again, in all of Genesis, ain't no Sabbath-keepers, and there's no commandment in Genesis to keep the Sabbath, and no data as to whether or not any of the patriarchs were sinning against Yahweh by not keeping it, or, like I just said, taking a descriptive text and turning it into a prescription.

You can't do that. And kind of on the same note then, the question that needs to be answered is, who exactly is the Sabbath for? Well, God's Word explicitly states who the Sabbath is for. Let's take a look here at Exodus 31.

I'll start at verse 12 and pay close attention. I'll give you a cross-reference on this too. Here's what it says, Notice I'm using the plural there. That's right. Who was the Lord speaking to? Let me read again.

Uh-huh. As a perpetual covenant. That's right. It is a sign. Verse 17, It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel. That's right. So, who was the Sabbath given to? There was no prescription in the Garden, and Exodus 31 makes it absolutely clear that the Sabbath is a sign between the Lord and the people of Israel.

Straight up. Ezekiel 20, verse 12 reiterates this, the people of Israel, my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Yahweh who sanctifies them. So, it's kind of strike one and strike two here, and that is that the children of Israel are the ones who God made the Sabbath with.

It doesn't show up on the scene until Moses. Genesis 2 is a descriptive text, not a prescriptive text, and you get what's going on there. Now, one of the things I wanted to also clear up in my analysis was a statement made by Jim Staley regarding what's said in the Augsburg Confession.

Now, if you remember during the cross-examination, Jim Staley brought up the Augsburg Confession, and I want to point out something that he did. Number one, he made a statement by misquoting the Augsburg Confession, and then he didn't ask me a question, okay?

So, I want to play for you what he said regarding the Augsburg Confession, because we're doing a little bit of fact-checking and kind of cleaning some stuff up here in our analysis. So, here's Jim Staley asking me a question regarding the Augsburg Confession.

Here we go.

Interestingly enough, in 1530, the Augsburg Confession of Faith is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church, one of the most important documents in the Lutheran Reformation. And they say this, in Article 28, it says, they, the Catholics, allege that the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue as it appears.

Neither is there any example more boastful of then than changing the Sabbath day. Great, they say, is the power and authority of the Church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments. And I find it interesting that the very denomination that you belong to also believes that it is arrogant and actually virtually impossible to dispense with one of the Ten Commandments.

Now, he made a statement. He didn't ask me a question. Let me play just a little bit so you see how he just goes right to the next point. He didn't allow me to actually interact with what he said. My next question is, do you believe?

Yeah, so he just went right to the next question. So let's take a look at Augsburg Confession 28. I don't expect you all to have a copy of this. But Augsburg Confession 28 is a section concerning the power of bishops.

So what happens in Augsburg Confession Article 28 is rather fascinating because what he's doing is he's quoting Melanchthon as Melanchthon is quoting an argument put out by the Roman Catholic Church regarding their power and ability to change ceremonies and things like that.

So he's basically quoting a Roman Catholic argument and he will then rebut it. But what he's doing is he's not agreeing with them. All he's doing is restating what their position is regarding the power that they supposedly have to do particular things.

So let me read to you the relevant portion from the Augsburg Confession. Here's what it says. Furthermore, it is also debated whether bishops have the power to establish ceremonies in the Church as well as regulations concerning food, festivals, and the different orders of the clergy.

For those who grant bishops this power cite this saying of Christ in John 16. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.

They also cite the example in Acts 15 where the eating of blood and what is strangled was prohibited. They appeal as well to the transference of the Sabbath to Sunday, contrary to the Ten Commandments, as they view it.

No other example is so strongly emphasized and quoted as the transference of the Sabbath. Thereby they want to maintain that the power of the Church is great because it has dispensed with and altered part of the Ten Commandments.

Concerning this question, our people teach that bishops do not have the power to institute or establish something that is contrary to the gospel as is indicated above and is taught by canon law throughout the Ninth Distinction.

Now it is patently contrary to God's command and word to make laws out of opinions or to require that by observing them a person makes satisfaction for sin and obtains grace. So what's happening there in Article 28 in the Augsburg Confession is that Melanchthon is quoting basically the argument of Rome.

They're saying, oh, our bishops have all kinds of power. We're so powerful. Why are we powerful? Well, we even have the power to dispense with one of the Ten Commandments, the one regarding the Sabbath.

We're so powerful. You've got to obey us. This is the power that Christ has given us. And the response of the Lutherans is, yeah, listen, you don't have the power to institute or establish something that's contrary to the gospel, straight up.

So for him to quote the Augsburg Confession the way that he did, somehow in support of his position that the Lutherans are acknowledging that Rome changed the Sabbath, the Lutherans are not saying that Rome changed the Sabbath.

The Augsburg Confession isn't saying that at all. Instead, what all Melanchthon is doing is pointing out that they claim that they have this authority, and he's saying, no, you don't. And it doesn't matter if you think that you have the authority to change the Sabbath or not.

You don't have the power to change anything contrary to the gospel. So Augsburg Confession 28 is talking about the abuse of power of Roman Catholic bishops, and he quotes their definitive argument claiming that Roman bishops have all kinds of power, and the Lutheran position is, no, you don't.

You don't have that kind of power, and so you get what I'm saying. So that's, again, another really bad argument on the part of Jim Staley. But note the fact that that occurred during the portion where he was supposed to be asking me questions.

But Jim Staley, I noted the fact that he used a lot of his time during his cross-examination of me to not ask me questions, but instead to make statements, and that was one of the statements that he made, and he didn't actually ask a question.

So you get what I'm saying. So I hope that clears that up. He misquoted the Augsburg Confession and then quickly moved along without giving me the ability to actually answer a question because he didn't ask one regarding the statement that he made out of context from the Augsburg Confession.

All right, we are up on our first break. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the Faith, you can do so. My email address is talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com, or you can subscribe on Facebook, facebook .com forward slash piratechristian.

Follow me on Twitter, my name there, at piratechristian. Quick break. When we come back, we'll be doing some more fact-checking of Jim Staley's statements that he made during the Sabbath debate to see if they hold any water.

Stay tuned, don't want to miss it. We'll be right back.

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The Ten Commandments, the Old Covenant, and the New Covenant

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Let me thank you for your support. We cannot do what we are doing here without it. Okay, moving along. I'm going to spend a little bit more time, like I said, debunking some of the things that Jim Staley said during the Sabbath debate that I had with him.

And one of the more interesting comments that he made was that the Ten Commandments are not connected to the law of God. Listen very carefully to Jim Staley's statement here. Here we go.

That's absolutely fine, but the mistake that he is making is that the Ten Commandments are connected to the law of God. Matter of fact, so much so that if my opponent is correct and the law of God is completely obliterated and done away with, ladies and gentlemen, we can commit adultery.

Yeah, that's right. Apparently the mistake I'm making is believing that the Ten Commandments are connected to the law of God. Let me play that opening statement again.

Listen again. That's absolutely fine, but the mistake that he is making is that the Ten Commandments are connected to the law of God.

That the Ten Commandments are connected to the law of God. Now, this is one of those ones that I expected to show up, but Jim Staley actually did a pretty good job of, how shall I put it, of not overemphasizing this point and alerting more people to it.

Because this is a very interesting argument that all Sabbatarians seem to have in common. And that is that they will basically say, listen, the Ten Commandments are not part of the law of God or the New Covenant.

That's their way of basically brushing aside the argument that I gave in my opening statement. My opening statement was that we are not under the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant has gone away, and we are under the New Covenant.

So what they try to do is somehow take the Ten Commandments, which, by the way, if I were to ask you, what were the Ten Commandments written on? You go, stone tablets. Right, stone tablets. The Ten Commandments were written on stone tablets.

The Ten Commandments are not part of the law of God that we're required to keep. So the Ten Commandments are different than the Torah in this sense. So they're trying to make some kind of a distinction so that they can save the Ten Commandments.

You can't do that. Listen, the whole thing gets obliterated, and the reason why is because of what God's Word says. Let me read to you just a couple of passages, one short and the other long. Deuteronomy 4, verse 13, Moses talking, and he says, Yeah.

Deuteronomy 4 .13 makes it clear that the Ten Commandments are part and parcel. In fact, they are the covenant, and that's the Old Covenant. So Jim Staley, like many Sabbatarians, tries to say that, oh, no, no, no, no, no, the Ten Commandments, yeah.

What Chris is talking about is, oh, yeah, that's right. That Old Covenant stuff, sure, yeah, that's gone and done away with, but the Ten Commandments are not part of that. Well, Deuteronomy 4 .13 says that they are.

So does Deuteronomy 5. Here's what Deuteronomy 5. I'll start at verse 1. Here's what it says. Now, stop. There's another passage that points out the fact that Sabbath-keeping and all that other stuff, that, you know, why didn't it appear with the patriarchs?

Abraham, Yitzhak, you know, Yaakov, you know, all those guys. Why? Because it says right here in this verse, verse 2 and 3,. But with us, who are all of us here alive today? Yahweh spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of Yahweh.

For you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. The question, when were any of you in slavery, in the house of slavery?

Did you live in Egypt? No. Okay. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or that is in the water or under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Verse 12, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days shall you labor and do all of your work, but on the seventh is the Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.

Yeah, you get the gist of what's going on there. Verse 16, honor your father and your mother. Verse 17, you shall not murder. Verse 18, you shall not commit adultery. Verse 19, you shall not steal. Verse 20, and you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Verse 21, you shall not covet. Verse 22, these words the Lord spoke, Yahweh spoke to all your assembly at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice.