The Foundations Of The Sabbath In The Word Of God

**Reposted from my original on 7/14/07.**

~Here's an excellent address on the Christian Sabbath by B.B. Warfield delivered at the Fourteenth International Lord's Day Congress held in Oakland, California, July 27-August 1, 1915, published in Sunday the World's Rest Day. 1916. A side benefit is that this helps answer the question, "What part of the Old Testament ought I obey as a Gentile?"  This will Biblically answer questions one may have over the Lord's Day or what many still call the Christian Sabbath...why the change from Saturday to Sunday, its application to us New Testament believers, etc.  This is not only Reformed theology but from my understanding of our Methodist Theology it is also what John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Thomas Ralston, and others of their Methodist contemporaries believed the Bible taught.  Non-observance of the Lord's Day as well as Saturday observance is something that has always been rejected by the Church worldwide until only recently.  Happy Reading to you truth seekers, Phillip Dickinson~

I am to speak to you today, not of the usefulness or of the blessedness of the Sabbath, but of its obligation. And I am to speak to you of its obligation, not as that obligation naturally arises out of its usefulness or blessedness, but as it is immediately imposed by God in his Word. You naturally dwell on the joy of the Sabbath. This is the day of gladness and triumph, on which the Lord broke the bonds of the grave, abolishing death and bringing life and immortality to light. As naturally you dwell on the value of the Sabbath. This is the day on which the tired body rests from its appointed labor; on which the worn spirit finds opportunity for recuperation; an oasis in the desert of earthly cares, when we can escape for a moment from the treadmill toil of daily life and, at leisure from ourselves, refresh our souls in God. I am to recall your minds—it may seem somewhat brusquely —to the contemplation of the duty of the Sabbath; and to ask you to let them rest for a moment on the bald notion of authority. I do not admit that, in so doing, I am asking you to lower your eyes. Rather, I conceive myself to be inviting you to raise them; to raise them to the very pinnacle of the pinnacle. After all is said, there is no greater word than "ought." And there is no higher reason for keeping the Sabbath than that I ought to keep it; that I owe it to God the Lord to keep it in accordance with his command.

It may nevertheless require some little effort to withdraw our thoughts even for a moment from the utility of the Sabbath and fix them on its bare obligation. Since Proudhon taught the world the natural value of the Sabbath, its supernatural origin and sanction have, in wide circles, passed perhaps somewhat out of sight. In its abounding usefulness to man, it may seem so obviously man's day that we may easily forget that it was for two thousand years before it was discovered to be man's day already the Lord's day; and, stretching back from that, from the creation of the world God's day. The Sabbath is undoubtedly rooted in nature; in our human nature and in the nature of the created universe. Unbroken toil is not good for us; the recurrence of a day of rest is of advantage to us, physically, mentally, spiritually. But had we been left to find this out for ourselves, we should probably have waited very long for it. Certainly Proudhon tardily learned it from observation, not of pure nature, but of the Sabbath rest ordained by God. We are told on the highest authority that "the Sabbath was made for man." Man needs it. It blesses his life. But man apparently would never have had it, had it not been "made" for him; made for him by him who from the beginning of the world has known all his works, and, knowing man, has made for him from the beginning of the world the day of rest which he needs. He who needed no rest, in the greatness of his condescension, rested from the work which he had creatively made, that by his example he might woo man to his needed rest.

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