Sabbath or Sunday Worship Part 10 Series
Sabbath or Sunday Service Part 10- Jesus and the Apostles
Why did God make the Sabbath a commandment, and what is the significance of this day to Him? What did Jesus say about keeping the Sabbath? What did Jesus say when his apostles worked Sabbath Day?
Hebrews 8:10
There is no way that the Israelites will have an acceptable or legitimate excuse not to refrain from working and worshiping God. The Sabbath commemorated God’s day of rest and made this holy for the people he chose to worship Him. Based on their pattern of breaking God’s commandments, they either forget that it’s Saturday, which is a very lame excuse, or they are busy attending to the needs of their family. The all-knowing God cannot be lied upon. He had complete or maximum knowledge of us even when we were still in our mother’s belly. He also knows that the good news was preached to His people from the ancient period before reaching the non-Israelites, yet they came short of acceptance. The apostles continued preaching the word of God and the message of Jesus Christ; therefore, it is hard to believe that they lacked knowledge and understanding. To claim that they were innocent or ignorant about the commandment is to whack the dust on the shoulder. They are fully aware that Sabbath is to be remembered as a rest day and holy for the LORD, and their disobedience speaks for itself. It is a holy day ordained by the LORD for us to rest instead of working seven days a week; He gave us a break. God did not only put His word in our minds but also wrote it in our hearts; that’s how important the day of rest is to Him. God said in Hebrews 4: Exasperated, I vowed, “They’ll never get where they’re going, never be able to sit down and rest.” What does this mean? Struggle!
Though Sabbath is the covenant God made for the house of Israel, it also applies to non-Christians who believe in the God of Abraham but have fewer restrictions due to the absence of the covenant to celebrate the seventh day of rest and worship. Sunday meetings with the believers have become a tradition, and some believers worship the LORD any day of the week. The Christian’s seventh day of rest is a commitment to the LORD as a worship day, and observation of labor rest is not focused on Saturday but Sunday; this becomes the covenant made by Christians.
Since the Sabbath is for the Israelites, without throwing a stone to harm anyone, we can make to believe that we can worship the one true God anytime on any day. Jesus worshiped on Sabbath, and so did his apostles because they were Jews, and the covenant made by God cannot be broken. Obedience to the word of God will bring protection and blessings to the faithful people of Israel. Still, a special responsibility, as well as an obligation to carry out the will and purpose of God, is necessary to follow God’s demanding standard. “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people of his possession, out of all the nations that are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 14:2).
Jesus said God sent him only to the lost sheep of Israel, and his chosen apostles will carry the same obligation to reach the Jewish people, being chosen by God is a great privilege and opportunity, but they have to receive the spiritual message of God with purity in their heart and not because of the benefits of being chosen: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you” (Jeremiah 7:23). Being God’s chosen people the responsibility to transmit His revelation to all the people of the world, and has to begin among their people first, which has an ancient past of in and out of the faith.
Whoever sins also commits lawlessness, and submission to the evil work of the man of lawlessness will perish because they refused to love the truth and instead chose to be deceived by the father of lies with his incredible display of power to do signs and wonders and what they do not know is the more powerful Jesus to overthrow and destroy this man of lawlessness by just the breath of his mouth. Like the Almighty Father when He created the light with His breath; He just “let there be light,” and the light was created so as other living things lights; the animals and the likes, the vegetables and their likeness by just the breath of His mouth, all have been created. The Son Jesus can use the power of the breath of God to take away the great deceiver for good and will be destroyed permanently in the lake of fire with all his followers. Their existence will not even be remembered, and those who received complete sanctification will receive a glorified body and will live happily forever and ever with the Father and the Son in eternity.
Don’t let anyone deceive you, promising power and glory which is temporal, and submit to the eternal promise by the Almighty, and receive an everlasting life that lasts forever. Recommended read: 2 Thessalonians 2:3–10.
God is all in all.