Does the Bible allow Christian to worship on Sunday?

BibleAsk Team

Automatic Transcript Generated:

Speaker 4

First question from Thomas is, does the Bible allow Christians to worship on Sunday? Who would like to take that?

Speaker 1

At first, I think maybe I’ll take a quick answer. Just say one thing that it’s very important to understand. There’s God’s perfect will and then there’s God’s permissive will. And God puts up with a lot of things we do wrong, like God might say do something, but he will, in his patience, looked the other way a little bit during our time of ignorance. So when you say allow it’s interesting, I’m not sure exactly what you’re going to say. God might not strike people lightning for doing the wrong thing. But let’s talk about what does God want us to do? And does God say anything about what day he wants to be worshiped? And I love to go back to the very beginning, which is to Genesis. And we look at Genesis two, and it says two, verse two. And on the 7th day, God ended his work, which he had made, and he rested on the 7th day from all his work, which he had made. And God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it because in it he had rested from all his work. When is this what period of time are we talking about?

Investment.

Speaker 1

This act of establishing you Sabbath happened.

Creation.

Speaker 1

Yeah, the very beginning. So this is not after Moses or before Moses or after Abraham. This is with Adam. And this predates any other Covenant. This is before sin. God made the day Holy. He set it apart. The day itself is Holy whether we keep it or not. And Sharon, one of you then are going to talk about now, does God say anything about us needing to actually recognize the Sabbath?

Speaker 3

I think so.

Speaker 1

Maybe when you guys want to chime in on that.

Speaker 3

Way, do you want to say anything? I don’t want to.

Speaker 2

Sure. Sure. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jay. That was a wonderful, very simple introduction to the kind of the first introduction of the first day of the week, kind of a link in with the first day of the week by mentioning the 7th. Because if you have the 7th, then that means the 7th is in a sequence from one through seven. And so the reason they mention in Genesis that God sanctified it is because when God sanctifies something, he sets it apart. And once he sets it apart, then he makes it Holy. And once it’s Holy, it is to be recognized as something that comes from God. And so if you look at if you look at Genesis, chapter one and versus actually Genesis, chapter two versus four. Genesis chapter two versus four, it reads, these are the generations of the heavens and of the Earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the Earth and the heavens. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because in the King James Version, it uses the generations or in a modern term to use history. So God says that the history of the Earth and the heaven is actually in the time Chronicle of seven days or one week.

Speaker 2

So the entire way that God sees time on Earth is by weeks. And that was from the very beginning. And therefore it makes us think if God sees the entire Earth’s history in a week cycle. And then in the previous verses he mentioned the 7th, the day that cannot be any interesting significance. And therefore he reiterated it in Exodus chapter 20 versus eight through eleven by saying, this is how I actually want you to worship the 7th day by not working. And the reason he wants us not to work is to actually spend time with him and to think about him. And that attitude of not working also extends not only to the humans but also to the animal world. Why to the animal world? Because if you look at Genesis again, one, in chapter two, we see that the entire creation, both animate and inanimate, rested on that day. So that’s a short little add on to what Jay was adding. Hopefully it wasn’t too complicated to understand if it was too complicated or there’s some jargon. Just please add in the comments for clarification.

Speaker 4

Can we clarify? Also this question was, let’s put the question back up here because is it wrong to worship on Sunday also? Or is it just that is there a problem with worshipping on Sunday or is it just that God wants us to especially worship on the 7th day?

Speaker 3

And I would say to that obviously we’re supposed to worship God every day, seven days a week. But Jesus says you need to die daily, or Paul says, I die daily every day. We’re supposed to die to self and live for Christ. And so obviously Sunday worship Sunday. That’s fine, but not in the sense that it is a Holy day in any sense of the word. If you look at the week of creation, the first day of the week was a work day. It’s only the 7th day that set aside is Holy. And a lot of people have said, well, the Sabbath, the 7th day, Sabbath, that’s just for the Jews. And I’m a Christian like I worship the first day because that’s when Jesus rose from the grave. But as far as sanctify Holiness, what God has called for us, that’s based on God’s word, which he stated clearly as my brother Jesus said in Genesis two, two and three, that God did rest on the 7th day. And then he goes on Jesus when he’s on Earth calls himself the Lord of the Sabbath. Now, Jesus isn’t saying that it’s only for the Jews.

Speaker 3

He’s saying, no, I made the Sabbath, Jesus is the Creator. You see that in John chapter one, verses one to 314, that Jesus is the Creator, he created the world and then he says, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. So obviously if you follow Jesus who also kept the Sabbath, we just want to follow in his example. And so as a Christian, of course we worship Jesus Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But that 7th day is a special day of worship where we put aside all of our earthly work and we just focus on our relationship with God.

Speaker 4

Amen. Thank you for clarifying that, Tina.

Speaker 1

I think people often use Colossians. 216 maybe we could put it up as a claim that Sabbath has been done away with or somehow moved. Or maybe it relates to this question. It says, so let no one judge you in food or drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath. So if you stop right there, it’s going to say, okay, we shouldn’t judge. There’s no standard anymore by which we’re required to do these things. And we see Sabbath. There is a Sabbath done away with. Let’s look at the next verse. 217 it says, these are shadows of things to come but the substance is of Christ. So these are shadows of things to come. Where do we find the shadows of things to come? That’s not the 7th day Sabbath. This is referring to all these laws that were given to Moses. The ten Commandments aside that were supposed to be illustrations teaching the Israelites about Jesus, about the plan of Salvation. These sort of things. Not the seven day Sabbath that was given in Eden before the plan of Salvation even came into effect.

Speaker 4

Thank you guys.

Speaker 3

No problem. And when it talks about the shadow of things that come, the shadow was whenever you read in scripture it usually is referring to the sanctuary. And so the Sabbath plural is always talking about the Sabbaths of the sanctuary. Those festivals like the feast of booths, the Yom Kippur, all these Sabbaths that were pointing toward the coming Jesus Christ. But again, he never said it’s. Do away with the original Sabbath like you’re saying given that creation Amen.

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