Does it really make any difference whether we keep the day God blessed and made holy? Can we substitute another day? Do we have to keep any day at all? Must the Christian respect what God makes holy?
God records a plain but effective explanation in an experience in Moses' life. Moses had been raised from a baby as a prince by Pharaoh's daughter, but he had killed an Egyptian guard who had been beating a Hebrew slave. He was forced to flee for his life to the land of Midian. There, after some time, he had married a daughter of Jethro the priest of Midian.
One day, leading a flock of sheep, Moses came to Mount Sinai, where he saw a large bush burning, yet the flames did not consume it. While pondering this strange sight, the Lord called to Moses out of the burning bush: "Moses, Moses! . . . Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is
holy ground" (Exodus 3:1-5).
Why did it make any difference
whether Moses took off his shoesor
where? Because the ground where he stood at that moment was holy! God required him to treat holy ground with a respect he did not treat other common plots of ground. Why was this ground holy? Because God's presence was in it! God is holy, and His presence in the bush made the ground around it holy.
In the same way, God's presence is in His Sabbath. He rested on the seventh day of Creation to put His presence in that day, making it holy time. Four thousand years later, when this same Being, the Word, lived in human flesh, He was still putting His presence in that same weekly recurring Sabbath: He went into the synagogues "as His custom was . . . on the Sabbath day" (Luke 4:16)!
Jesus Christ is the same today as He was yesterday, and shall be forever (Hebrews 13:8). He has not changed in the least. He is still putting His presence in His Sabbath, making it holy!
God commanded Moses to take his shoes off that holy ground. Likewise, the same God commands mankind to take his foot off from trampling and profaning His holy time. God requires His children to treat that day with a respect not required of other time. Notice Isaiah 58:13-14:
If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.
We honor God by keeping holy those things that He has made holyand only God can make things holy! We dishonor Him when we speak our own words, saying, "Well, I think the ideas and ways of
men must be right. I'd rather do as they do, and have them think well of me."
God commands: "Take your foot off My holy time. Quit trampling all over that which is holy and sacred to Me! Quit profaning My holy things." The sin is in profaning what God made holy.
God has never made any other weekday holy. Mankind has no authority to sanctify a day. One cannot keep a day holy, unless God has first made it holy, any more than one can keep cold water hot unless it is hot in the first place! God made this period of time holy, and He commands us to keep it that way.
At first blush, Romans 14:5-6 seems to say that it makes no difference to God which days we keep holy. Actually, these verses do not concern
any days that must be kept holy. This is proved by the context of the entire chapter.
Paul admonishes the saints at Rome to receive the "weak in the faith" and not to sit in judgment of them (verse 1). Some of those recently converted, not yet having grown strong in the faith, refused to eat meat and subsisted mainly on vegetables.
The apostle explains why in another of his letters. Most of the available meat in the city had been offered to idols. Some Gentiles who had been converted and come out of idolatry still held some superstitious beliefs. They thought that idols actually had power over their lives. Therefore, "some, with consciousness of the idols," ate meat "as a thing offered to an idol" (I Corinthians 8:7). Paul assures them that "we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one" (verse 4).
But why does Paul break into his discussion about eating or refraining from eating meat to mention "esteem[ing] a day"? Notice the answer from within these very verses:
One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. (Romans 14:5-6)
Not only were some weak converts afraid of eating meat offered to idols, but others customarily abstained from a particular foodthey practiced a kind of faston certain days, much as devout Catholics abstain from meat on Friday. Others regarded all days alike as far as eating was concerned.
The whole matter involves
abstention from foods on particular days. "To eat or not to eat" is the question at hand. Paul is not referring to God's Sabbath or Holy Days at all!
Jesus says that we should fast before God and not be seen or let it be known by others unnecessarily (Matthew 6:16). But Jews and Gentiles both practiced semi-fasts on particular days of each week or month. Though divided on the matter, the Jews customarily fasted "twice in the week" (Luke 18:12) and on specific days of certain months (Zechariah 7:4-7). The Gentiles also were of various opinions over when to abstain from certain foods. These things are mentioned in
Hasting's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.
In God's sight, it does not matter when one abstains or fasts, but He does care whether we do it in a proper attitude and for the right reasons (see Isaiah 58). Paul wants the brethren to live at peace with one another and not argue or judge each other over their human opinions, which he calls "doubtful things" (Romans 14:1).
The Bible elsewhere teaches very plainly which days God made holy and commands us to keep holy. They are found in Exodus 20:8-11 and Leviticus 23.