Soyeong
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- Mar 10, 2015
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There are a number of God's laws that appear to conflict with each other, such as when God commanded priests to rest on the Sabbath while also commanding priests to make offerings on the Sabbath (Numbers 28:9-10), however, it was not the case that priests were forced to sin by breaking one of the two commands no matter what they chose to do, but that the lesser command was never intended to be understood as preventing the greater command from being obeyed. This is why Jesus said in Matthew 12:5-7 that priests who did their duties on the Sabbath were held innocent, why David and his men were held innocent, and why he defended his disciples as being innocent. This is also why it is lawful to circumcise a baby on the 8th day if it happens to fall on the Sabbath, why it is lawful to get an ox or a child out of a pit on the Sabbath, and so forth.And when Christ was criticized for healing on the Sabbath, and when the Apostles were seen eating grains of wheat on the Sabbath
and criticized for violating the Sabbath, Jesus words were, "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
And Jesus gave the Apostles the authority to bind or loosen on earth, including the Sabbath. So, the early Church observed
the "Lord's Day," on Sunday, which is the day Jesus rose.
If you want to observe the Sabbath instead of the Lord's Day, go ahead. Just don't criticize Christians for
observing the Lord's Day.
It is contradictory to think that Jesus was correct about it being lawful to heal on the Sabbath and to think that the group of Pharisees were correct about Jesus breaking the Sabbath by healing on it. It has always been lawful to heal on the Sabbath, so those Pharisees were incorrect. The Sabbath was made as a precious gift from God to man for our own good, so it was never intended to bring about situations that are to our detriment, such as preventing someone from receiving healing. The group of Pharisees had reasoned that it is unlawful to do work on the Sabbath and that healing is work, therefore it is unlawful to heal on the Sabbath, however, we are also commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, and it would not be loving our neighbor to refuse to heal them, and no command was intended to be understood as preventing us from obeying the greatest two commandments.
Jesus was not saying that we are free to break the Sabbath or to decide for ourselves whether we want to keep it holy or on which day we want to keep it holy. Having the authority to bind and loose refers to having the authority to determine what is prohibited or permitted by God's law, such as determine whether a particular activity is prohibited or permitted on the Sabbath, but it does not have the authority to make changes to God's commands, such as changing the Sabbath to a different day. For example, they did not have the authority to say that we are now permitted to commit adultery, but they did have the authority to make rulings about whether a particular action should be permitted or considered to be adultery. If Jesus had wanted, then he could have quoted Rabbi Yehuda as saying that we are permitted to crush grains of wheat with our hands on the Sabbath for our own consumption as long as we don't use a tool.
There is nothing wrong with someone choosing to follow their own tradition of honoring the resurrection by worshiping God on Sunday or any other day of the week in addition to obeying God's command to keep the 7th day holy, but there is something wrong with someone hypocritical setting aside God's command to keep the 7th day holy or any of God's other commands in order to establish their tradition of honoring the resurrection. We have the freedom to follow of tradition of honoring the resurrection once a decade, once every two years, once a year, one every six months, once every month, once every two weeks, once every Thursday, twice a week, multiple times a day, or for whatever other time interval we want, but we should do that in addition to obeying God's command to keep the 7th day holy and to obeying God's other commands, not instead of them.
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