Sabbath

Further to my recent sermon on the Sabbath (see church website), which I also spoke on to the leaders at camp, I agree with Mr Newman, here:

Sabbath-keeping

By way of postscript, it has often been used as an argument against Christian sabbath-keeping (and indeed the Christian calendar as a whole) that Paul points to the observation of days and months and seasons and years as evidence of turning back to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world (3.9-10). I do not think that charge sticks. Paul is talking about observation of the Jewish calender, which is precisely what Christians are not doing. Christians keep the first day of the week as the Sabbath, and they order their year around the events of Christ’s life. Moreover, they are not doing so in order to be marked out as God’s people. The sabbath principle, of one day in seven consecrated for rest and blessing is, like marriage, embedded in the creation before the giving of the law (Genesis 2.3). Just as the coming of Christ has not abolished marriage, even though the relationship between Christ and the church is the ultimate reality of which marriage was created as a picture, so too the sabbath day is not abolished though Christ brings the rest of which the sabbath is a picture. As for the Christian calendar as a whole, Paul expressly gives permission for us to observe days in honour of the Lord (Romans 14.6).