Exodus 35:1-3
Sabbath Regulations:
1.Then Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said to them, “These are the words which the Lord has commanded you to do:
2.Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh day shall be a holy day for you, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.
3.You shall kindle no fire throughout your dwellings on the Sabbath day.”
I'd like for the Sabbath keepers to tell me if they follow the above regulations for the Sabbath to the letter? Because if you are guilty of breaking even a small part of the law and the Sabbath is part of the law then you are guilty of breaking the whole law.
The provocative conclusion to the above quote/OP surely draws a line in the sand which I suspect (unfortunately not knowing you, James is Back) is intended as a stimulant to claims that the Christian church is no longer under the Mosaic covenant, but the New such that something has changed. What is then perhaps not realized by some readers of this thread is that the role of the Sabbath remains at least an open question--open unless answered elsewhere ... such as on this Sabbath and the Law forum.
I am not much a student of this Sabbath and the Law forum, but have some sense of certain historical positions within the church addressing the role of the Sabbath in the New Covenant, some divisive (leaving aside for the time being who is being divisive against whom).
And I have my own opinion, tentative as it probably must remain, for in my understanding, the New Testament (along with any foreshadowing and antecedent theology of the OT) is positively ambivalent about the issue however stunningly serious the above quote with its Mosaic backing (e.g., Numbers 15) may be. Hence I think in part the divergence of position evident in the history of the church even if there is more to it.
Paul for example in discussing divergent celebration of days within the church (Rom. 14) bypasses an opportunity there to hammer home the point in the above quote/OP regarding the Sabbath (if anything, his conclusions seem contrary). And he bypasses similar opportunities in the pastorals where one might reasonably expect such a point to be made. The same is true for the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, one that discusses the topic of the Sabbath at some length, but never in a way as to encourage the conclusion of the above quote/OP with respect to the Sabbath. Nor do hints of Christian assembly on the first day of the week (rather than 7th) come with any allusion to Sabbath regulation. Nor, strangely, is the Sabbath regulation anywhere repeated in the NT the way the other members of the Decalogue are, that is save in Jesus' encounters with Jewish leadership before the cross, that is before the implications of Jesus' coming and cross work were fully mapped out and where the context is essentially and effectively the Mosaic covenant.
Again, not that the conclusions of the OP are a bad thing either (not to mention allusion to James 2:10 wrt covenant breaking); the Sabbath, Jesus insists, was made for man, for his benefit. And has the prophet's implicit exhortation to delight in the Sabbath as unto the Lord (Isa. 58) been annulled? Heaven forbid! And human beings still need physical rest. But then why the NT ambivalence and lack of specificity on the question?
One of the few places it seems one can turn is to broader conclusions and attendant hints about the relationship between the Mosaic and new covenants--another classically divisive issue, and a complex one. What is the role of the Mosaic law in the New covenant (and New Testament)? Having addressed slices of such questions on these forums elsewhere and having passed my present time and energy limitations, I shall bypass further elaboration here at least for the moment. No doubt others will express their own, often different views.
