Are Christians Required to Honor the Sabbath?

Some of my videos start out like this. It's the Lord's Day, I got my Bible, I'm ready to hear the Word. Let's talk about the Lord's Day. When should Christians worship corporately? Is there a specific day and time?

And does it matter to God? If it does matter to God, should it matter to us? The other day, I shared this post, which refers to Crosspoint City Church Pastor James Griffin telling his congregation that they have started a Thursday evening service.

Now, having a service in the middle of the week is not an issue. I believe the controversy is over the reasons given and what Pastor James Griffin hopes to achieve with this midweek service. Here's the clip.

The Problem With Replacing Sunday Worship

According to the latest church statistics, the average church member, I'm not talking about the lame, lousy church member, I'm talking the average church member, listen to this, only attends the gatherings twice a month.

Twice a month. So if you're taking a test, that's a 50.

You just failed, right? Twice a month. I'm not positive, but I think he's talking about Crosspoint City Church specifically so that he's saying out of all the people who attend Crosspoint City Church, the average person or family only attends two Sundays out of the month.

Now, Crosspoint City is a multi-site church, meaning that they have more than one location, but consider each of their locations part of the same church. There are issues with that, yes, but that is for another video.

Across their three locations, they report an average of 2 ,739 people each Sunday. So the issue they are wanting to address, it seems, is that of those 2 ,700 people, they are, on average, only attending two Sundays a month.

There are many factors that contribute to this. Some people have crazy work schedules, and we've got first responders, and we've got people that work at different factories around town, and I get that.

Some of us, we travel on the weekends for various things. We've got travel sports on the weekends. I think some people, it's just laziness, but that's a different message for a different time. But I know there are many contributing factors, which, let me show you my cards if I can, which is why back in August, we launched a Thursday night gathering.

A couple of issues to note here before we dive in, notice the groups of people he mentions. He first mentions first responders and blue-collar workers, so people who have work schedules that conflict with the Lord's Day.

But note that, in the same breath, he mentions another group of people, weekend travelers and travel sports. These are people who are actively volunteering to miss Sunday worship.

You see, our elders and our leaders got together. We said, okay, culture has obviously changed. Sunday is no longer the sacred day. It's just another day. And we can whine about it and complain about it and try to fight against it, or we can just beat culture at its own game.

And so, let's do that. Let's start a gathering on a weird day at a really weird time so that we can give people their weekends back and they can still be in church.

So, the culture has changed. People no longer honor the appointed day of worship. So, the leaders at Crosspoint City Church decided to, quote, beat culture at its own game. Why would you want to play culture's game?

I'm afraid that while beating culture at its own game sounds cool, what's really happening is that they are bowing to the culture. That's because of the reasons presented. Giving people their weekends back is such an unfortunate way to say whatever he's trying to say.

I want to give Pastor Griffin the biggest benefit of the doubt at this point because I'm sure that he would not want to communicate that going to church on Sunday is somehow robbing people of their weekends.

Scrappy, you got to work on Sunday? Hey, thanks for taking care of us, cops and firefighters and nurses and doctors. We appreciate you. Thank you for what you do. People that are working at the factories, weird shifts, thank you for what you do.

Oh, you got travel ball this weekend? Great, go have fun. Praying for you. Hope you win. You want to go to the campsite? Okay, that's a Thursday night.

You see again that he lumps first responders in with people who want their children to play soccer on the weekend or go camping. This leads me to believe that they are, in fact, bowing to the culture rather than beating the culture at its own game.

I think the culture is winning. Because if your observation is that people don't care about the Lord's Day anymore and your solution is to say, that's okay, we don't either, or God doesn't require you to, you are being influenced by the culture, not the other way around.

The issue comes down to this. You are making space for people to despise the day God has appointed for corporate worship while teaching them that they are still acting in a way that's pleasing to God because they come to the Thursday service instead.

It is antinomian to suggest to your people that God's law may be disregarded at this point. As we head towards a conclusion of what to think about this, I want to submit a brief argument for Sunday being the Lord's Day or the Christian Sabbath.

God Determines the Time and Manner of Worship

Let's start with the fundamentals. Number one. Who decides how the church should worship? God or the church? God alone has the right to determine how he will be worshipped and when he will be worshipped.

Worship is not appointed by the church. It is appointed by God for the church. This is the clear testimony of scripture. When God tells Israel how he is to be worshipped in Deuteronomy 12, he caps it off with these words.

Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to or take away from it. Likewise, the Bible explicitly condemns all worship that is not commanded by God. Number two. The light of nature demonstrates that God must be worshipped not on an individual level merely, but corporately at a time appointed by God.

In other words, apart from special revelation contained in the Bible, by general revelation or creation, mankind knows that God is to be worshipped. And therefore, they also know that if he is to be worshipped, he alone has the right to decide when and how he is to be worshipped.

The two fundamentals we want to take into this discussion. God decides how the church must worship him, including when to worship him. And mankind already recognizes this. The only reason mankind and especially Christians would deny this is because they are either deceived, they've been taught wrongly, or haven't searched out this matter yet.

The Fourth Commandment and the Creation Ordinance

Moving on from the fundamental truths, let's now examine the Ten Commandments. It is the law of nature that in general a portion of time specified by God should be set apart for the worship of God. So by his word in a positive moral and perpetual commandment that obliges everyone in every age, he has specifically appointed one day in seven for his Sabbath to be kept holy to him.

Exodus 20 verse 8, the fourth commandment. This is going to affirm that the moral law teaches image bearers that one day in seven should be set apart for men to corporately worship God. But what is included is a creation ordinance, a positive moral command attached to the naturally moral law.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.

For in six days God made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So where is the positive moral law added to the naturally moral law?

It is in God's appointment of the seventh day. This positive moral attachment of the specific day on which to worship God, that attachment to the naturally moral universal and perpetual law is not known to men apart from special revelation that God has specified in his word a specific time, the seventh day.

So naturally moral law, God must be worshiped at the time of his appointment. Positive moral law attached to it, that specific time is the seventh day. Now let's prove that keeping a Sabbath apart from the specified time is natural, moral, universal, and perpetual.

First we must note that keeping the Sabbath is included in the Ten Commandments. It is moral law. It does not pass away. The Ten Commandments are alone spoken by God, alone written on stone by the finger of God, alone placed in the Ark of the Covenant, written on the hearts of believers, cited as moral in the New Testament.

Now we must note from Exodus 28 -11 that the Sabbath is instituted as a creation ordinance. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Creation ordinances are perpetual, meaning that they don't cease to be ordinances, they endure as long as the creation endures. For example, Paul appeals to creation ordinance in 1 Timothy 2 .13 to explain why women are not to exercise authority over men.

All right, so far we have established this, that God is to be worshipped at a time that he alone has the right to appoint is natural moral law known inherently and binding on image bearers in every age and place.

Jim Rinehan writes that this is simply to say that the moral law written on the heart commands that the creature made after God's image must devote a certain span of time to revere the Creator. Also that in the Ten Commandments God has attached the positive moral command that the appointed time is the seventh day.

The Sabbath day, the seventh day, must be kept holy to the Lord. The positive addition to the command is subject to change. The question at this point is, then why do Christians meet on Sunday? And what impact does it have on Crosspoint City's understanding of their midweek service?

The Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath

Allow me to call your attention to the fact that the Sabbath of the Old Covenant and the Lord's Day parallel one another. Or as Sam Waldron put it, the Lord's Day embodies the Sabbath principle. Note the following observations.

First, the Lord's Day isn't an idea invented by people. Second, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day is one day of each week set apart to the Lord. Third, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day assumes the week of creation.

Fourth, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day memorializes both creation and redemption. Fifth, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day is a day belonging especially to God. Sixth, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day is a holy day.

Seventh, like the Sabbath, the Lord's Day is a day of corporate public worship. Now that we have established the fundamentals and noted the parallels, it is time to present the argument that the positive moral attachment of the Fourth Commandment has changed from the last day of the week to the first day of the week.

From the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, the appointed day was the last day of the week. After the resurrection of Christ, it was changed to the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day.

This day is to be kept to the end of the age as the Christian Sabbath, since the observance of the last day of the week has been abolished. I'd like to present the case in contrast with common objections.

The naturally moral law has not changed. The specification of when that law is to be observed has. A period of time to be set apart for God's worship is part of the moral law. The precise proportion of that time is established by positive law.

If you are a Seventh-day Adventist or someone else who believes that the Sabbath for Christians is still Saturday and that altering the day to Sunday would be to cause God to change, recognize that God's moral law is not changing.

It is still perpetual. But only the positive moral precept in which a specified day is given is changing. This must be positive rather than natural, because while men naturally can and do know that they are to worship God, they cannot know specifically when and how without special revelation, which includes the moral positive command.

Maybe you're someone who believes that Jesus is our Sabbath, and so no specific day is appointed for Christians. But what you end up doing is actually what the Seventh-day Adventists accuse Lord's Day observers of doing, abolishing the natural moral law of God.

This position is, I believe, indefensible since it completely disregards the fourth commandment, which, as we said at the beginning, is moral law, universally binding on all mankind in every age. It doesn't just go away because God doesn't change.

It is a creation ordinance. What Jesus did change is the day of its appointment. And you ask, how can a creation ordinance be altered? The answer, only by way of a new creation. The new creation was inaugurated by Christ.

The seventh day memorializing the original creation was the shadow of the first day memorializing new creation. This changed day, the Lord's Day, maintains the moral principle of time devoted to God, even while shifting the typological focus away from the original creation to the new creation instituted at Christ's resurrection.

Maybe you are someone who objects by citing Romans 14, 5 -6. Well, if you agree that the fourth commandment is moral, you agree that it is universally binding on all men in every age. And so you must concede that Paul is not talking about the fourth commandment.

Well, Halmus Brackel, in volume 3 of his work, The Christian's Reasonable Service, answers this objection. As far as Romans 14, 5 -6 is concerned, the question is whether the observance of all days should be tolerated.

The believers among the Gentiles who constituted the church understood correctly that one was not bound to the Jewish days and that the distinction of foods had also ceased. The weak believers among the Jews who had joined themselves to the congregation understood indeed that the ceremonies were to be eliminated, for they confessed that Christ had already come.

However, they deemed that the Jewish days still had to be religiously observed and that one as yet was not permitted to eat all foods. The believers among the Gentiles could not tolerate this. Paul exhorts that for the time being one must bear with those who are weak and that the ceremonial days were not observed in a ceremonial sense but engaged in as religious exercises.

They would thus observe them unto the Lord which could be tolerated for some time. The Jews, in turn, had to tolerate that the Gentiles did not observe these days. Thus, this text does not apply in the least to the Lord's day, that is, the Sabbath.

Romans 14 is about Gentile and Jew relationships within the church at Rome and how they were navigating those various issues. In conclusion, just as God set apart the seventh day by resting, so Christ sets apart the first day by entering his rest through his resurrection and ascension.

This is called the Lord's day. Yes, every day belongs to God, but it is, in my estimation and that of many others, undeniable that the Lord expects his church to honor him by gathering on the first day of the week to worship him.

The issue with this announcement by the leaders of Crosspoint City Church is that they are teaching their people that they can obey the fourth commandment on Thursday rather than the day appointed by God.

James Griffin, however well-intentioned he may be, does not have the right to determine which day is to be kept holy to the Lord because he's not the Lord and he knows that, of course. That's why I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Not that he needs it from me. He most likely doesn't care who I am. That's fine, but again, the mistake is not having a midweek service. The mistake is teaching people that they can replace the Lord's day with a midweek service for the sake of travel, sports, and camping.

Rather than bowing to the culture, pastors ought to teach their people to honor the Lord's day. If you forsake the Lord's day for sports and camping, you're in sin. If you have work scheduling conflict, you should recognize that working on the Lord's day is not ideal.

And while there is provision and grace for deeds of necessity and mercy, you know, sometimes you just have to work. Though sometimes you have to work, you should be missing it when you miss it. And if you don't long to gather with the saints when you are providentially prevented, you should ask yourself why.

And if you are in a work situation that prevents you from gathering with the saints on the day that God has appointed, you should be doing what you can to get your shift changed or to otherwise get out of that situation.

Despising the Sabbath so you can have your weekends back is a holy no. I'm please Lord, give me a sign.