There is no place in the book of Acts or in the epistles where believers are commanded to observe the Sabbath. This should be a fatal blow to any who assert that the ten commandments are a rule of faith and life for believers today! Sunday is never called the Sabbath; it is called the first day of the week. If the “moral law” was not part of what Christ fulfilled when HE spoke of the law, then why are we not commanded to observe it? Indeed, Paul tells his Gentile hearers that they are not under any obligation to observe any Sabbaths (Colossians 2:16). Now the true Sabbath is found in Hebrews where it is a REST from our works. “There remains therefore a rest unto the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God DID FROM HIS” (Hebrews 4:9-10). This understanding of a SPIRITUAL Sabbath was certainly not the understanding written by Moses in Exodus 20:8. No Jew would have understood it this way. Of course, the term “Sabbath” simply means seven. So, the Sabbath is the seventh day. Some have tried to explain the Sabbath command in Exodus as something beneficial for men and the land. Yet as far as we know there are no statements to that effect in the Old Testament. Does God get tired? Does he need to rest? No. That rest in Exodus was a shadow of the rest that the people of God entered by faith from their works. This idea falls right in line with what Jesus (the Lord of the Sabbath) said about the Sabbath — it was made for man and not man being made for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).

G. Santamaria