Sabbatarianism

There were a group of people that rose, even in the early church, the Ebionites.

They were called heretics then.

By the 6th and 7th century, they had called themselves Sabbatarians.

And it was not until you come to the 17th century, when at that time the Puritan theology became so dominant, and legalistic that they began to call themselves then Seventh-day Baptists.

And all of the legalists today get the seventh day from them.

Weak is hardly the word I should have used.

His rebuke of the Sabbatarians, his personal violence to the hucksters, his outbursts against the Pharisees, his rather unreasoning petulance against the fig tree because it bore no fruit at the wrong season of the year, his very human feeling towards the housewife who bustled about when he was talking, his gratification that the ointment should have been used for him instead of being devoted to the poor, his self-distrust before the crisis.

These make me realize and love the man.

You are a Unitarian then, or rather perhaps a mere deist, said the curate with a combative flush.

"I'm not a Sabbath guy."

Yeah, "I'm not a Sabbatarian.

You know? So I'm going to work on the Sabbath." And they say, "Uh, you can, but we're gonna stone you."

"You've got about an hour of working."

But this is a handy device to say, "Here's the sum total of natural moral law," right? Now, the reason that people have hesitated with that is because obviously of the Sabbath debate, right? And, uh, that's the elephant in the room.

Uh, so can you demonstrate canonically that the Sabbath works as natural law, as universal moral law for all people, all places, all times? And then of course, we get into our Sabbatarian debates.

I myself don't think you can do that.

I don't think it has canonical weight.

And I'm happy to say, and, uh, this, this...

You know, we'll, we'll get to the Sabbath.

I obey the Sabbath, but I don't obey the Sabbath like the Sabbatarians.

I obey the Sabbath in its intent in the old covenant as it functions to ultimately point me forward to the Sabbath rest that comes in Christ that I now must enter, uh, Hebrews three and four and, and, and so on.

But basic, the basic command is given in one of the Ten Commandments, and not later on in the case law or the ceremonial law that follows in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, Deuteronomy.

And so that's got to give you pause, even if you're one of the most ardent anti-Sabbatarians.

You're going to say, "Well, why is it there? Why not later?" I, I need to confess, I was actually an anti- an ardent anti-Sabbatarian when I first started out in ministry, the church that I was in.

This is now like twenty-five years ago.

Because let's be honest, we are never gonna debate the ongoing applicability, the ongoing moral applicability of the other nine commandments, right? There's no debate about murder or theft or, um, lying.

There are no serious Christians going around sleeping with other people's spouses and going, "Well, you know, I'm not under Moses, I'm under grace now." And if you are doing that, then stop doing that, repent, and read your Bible properly.

But if the other nine commandments have such abiding moral force, why not the fourth? Now, I know that some anti-Sabbatarians, because I used to say this myself, protest, and they say, "Well, if you look at the, if you look at the nine command- the other nine commandments, Jesus expliter- explicitly reiterates those other nine commandments in the New Testament, but not the fourth." I want to say, friends, I think that's a very poor argument from silence, and a very bad way to interpret the Bible, and I'm also not exactly sure that it's true either.

Just because Jesus doesn't explicitly reiterate an Old Testament command doesn't mean you're just sort of free to ignore that Old Testament command.

There is a Torah teacher who teaches everybody to sacrifice the Passover in his own backyard and you probably better run from that person.

He's also a lunar Sabbatarian and he teaches all sorts of weird things.

I would just say, be careful.

Pray for his soul, but step back.

It's very moralistic, very much emphasis on sin.

So the sort of Christianity as it manifested itself culturally, manifested itself in things such as Sabbatarianism.

So most people these days have never experienced Sabbatarianism 'cause it basically died out in the '60s and '70s.

It means you can't do things on Sunday.

Shops were all closed on Sunday.

There's a whole range of things.

So you could only buy alcohol on a Sunday if you were a bona fide traveler.

There's a fascinating, um, exchange in the constitutional convention debates leading to Australia's constitution about Sabbatarianism.