Is There a “Lord’s Day”?

DesiringGod.org ^ | October 2, 2005 | Dr. John Piper

[topcat54]

Topcat, we both know that this entire issue is just an attempted distraction from the fact that you have no Scriptural argument.

Actually, it is not. Your interpretation of the passages is very much in doubt. The evidence of the doubt is that it is virtually unknown within the Christian community, both those from Jewish as well as a gentile backgrounds, until it was "rediscovered" by the messianics. Even the Jewish believers within the first several generation of the apostles did not subscribe to these messianic theories. The Nazarenes were not a "large" sect neither did they ever exist in large numbers by anyone's interpretation of history. That's a fabrication on your part. The reason they did not exist in large numbers is obvious; they held to aberrational, if not outright heretical, views. It was their odd views that made them unacceptable to the larger Christian community, not any outright "anti-Jewishess" on the part of the church.

It wouldn't matter if they weren't. Popularity is not a test of truth.

True, however, when no one is on your side then there is reason to reconsider. And, factually, there is no strain of this odd theology down through history. The messianics are a blip on the larger radar screen. If history is any judge they will fade from the scene within a generation because of the biblical desire on the part of all real Christians to be one in Messiah, not split up into sects based in racial/nationalist distinctions.

[Buggman]

Actually, it is not. Your interpretation of the passages is very much in doubt.

Then why have you not even attempted to show where my interpretation is wrong? C'mon, topcat, why can't you show us all where that passage spoken by our Lord and/or recorded by a true Apostle--and not a quasi-gnostic pseudographia--is that says, "And henceforth, the Sabbath will be held on Sunday, to mark the day of the Resurrection of the Son of Man"?

Perhaps because it doesn't exist? Perhaps because no one personally taught by the Messiah regarded the Sabbath as anything other than the seventh day?

Even the Jewish believers within the first several generation of the apostles did not subscribe to these messianic theories. The Nazarenes were not a "large" sect neither did they ever exist in large numbers by anyone's interpretation of history.

Yeah, but given that the number of the Jewish believers was dwarfed by the numbers of the Gentiles, that's not precisely a surprise.

The fact remains that a significant number of Jewish believers continued to keep Torah for no less than three centuries after the fall of Jerusalem, and that there were Gentile believers who wanted to join them in celebrating the Feastdays of the Lord.

That these facts are personally inconvenient for you does not make them a fabrication. Note that I have supported my position with both primary and secondary sources; you've offered nothing but sheer opinion.

It was their odd views that made them unacceptable to the larger Christian community, not any outright "anti-Jewishess" on the part of the church.

Balony:

The Jews are the most worthless of all men. They are lecherous, rapacious, greety. They are perfidious murderers of Christ. They worship the Devil. Their religion is a sickness. The Jews are the odious assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christians may never cease vengeance, and the Jew must live in servitude forever. God always hated the Jews. It is essential that all Christians hate them.
--John Chrysostom, "Orations Against The Jews," c. 379 AD

And this is the man whom the Church dubbed the "golden-mouthed."

Or let's go a couple of centuries earlier and consider Justin Martyr. While not so venomous as Chrysostom, a hint of anti-Jewishness enters his discourse when he takes a day that the Lord Himself said was given for man (i.e., as a blessing) and who said, "that God enjoined you to keep the Sabbath, and impose on you other precepts for a sign, as I have already said, on account of your unrighteousness, and that of your fathers"--that is, as a curse and a burden (Dialogue, chap. 21). He didn't get such an idea from Scripture; from whence did it come, then?

True, however, when no one is on your side then there is reason to reconsider.

Fortunate for me, then, that it is a complete lie that "no one" is on my side, either currently or historically, as has been amply demonstrated here.

Moreover, such a foolish claim ignores the fact that I stand on the Scriptures, and you have yet to provide an answer to them--other than from a semi-gnostic forgery, that is. Since the Bible is the Word of God, I can rightly claim Him on my side of this debate. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31).

So then, back to the core question which you have yet to even attempt to answer: Can you show where in the Bible anyone with the authority to do so overtly and directly changed the Sabbath?

If not, be man enough to admit it.

[topcat54]

Hold on there, cowboy. Before you go trudging down the centuries and reinterpreting Chrysostom, we need to get back to the facts at issue. Back a little closer to the apostles.

Facts #1) No one in the church, from the apostles to the 20th century, accepts the messianic theology of partial applicability of old covenant cultic laws to the church or the overtly "anti-semitic" interpretation of church history. At least no one without an axe to grind.

Fact #2) There is no historical support for the notion that significant portions of the early church continued to follow the cultic practices of Israel during the time immediately after the destruction of the temple in AD70. Speaking of the situation prior to AD70, Philip Schaff says this:

The Jewish Christians, at least in Palestine, conformed as closely as possible to the venerable forms of the cultus of their fathers, which in truth were divinely ordained, and were an expressive type of the Christian worship. So far as we know, they scrupulously observed the Sabbath, the annual Jewish feasts, the hours of daily prayer, and the whole Mosaic ritual, and celebrated, in addition to these, the Christian Sunday, the death and the resurrection of the Lord, and the holy Supper. But this union was gradually weakened by the stubborn opposition of the Jews, and was last entirely broken by the destruction of the temple, except among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.

In the Gentile-Christian congregations founded by Paul, the worship took from the beginning a more independent form. The essential elements of the Old Testament service were transferred, indeed, but divested of their national legal character, and transformed by the spirit of the gospel. Thus the Jewish Sabbath passed into the Christian Sunday; the typical Passover and Pentecost became feasts of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the bloody sacrifices gave place to the thankful remembrance and appropriation of the one, all-sufficient, and eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and to the personal offering of prayer, intercession, and entire self-consecration to the service of the Redeemer; on the ruins of the temple made without hands arose the never ceasing worship of the omnipresent God in spirit and in truth. So early as the close of the apostolic period this more free and spiritual cultus of Christianity had no doubt become well nigh universal; yet many Jewish elements, especially in the Eastern church, remain to this day.

Fact #3) The church has offered a reasonable interpretation for the change in the sabbath to a 1st day Lord's Day since day one of the Christian church. The only folks who have ignored that interpretation and offered their owned strained version of the Scriptural evidence are the heretical Ebionites and, 19 centuries later, the messianics.

Fact #4) Regarding the sabbath, Schaff contends that the early Jewish believers kept both sabbath and Lord's Day until the destruction of the temple. He writes, "Besides the Christian Sunday, the Jewish Christians observed their ancient Sabbath also, till Jerusalem was destroyed. After that event, the Jewish habit continued only among the Ebionites and Nazarenes." Schaff indicates here that Ebionties and Nazarenes were minority sects at that point even among the Jewish believers probaby due to their heretical and aberrational views.

Fact #5) Contrary to your assertion, Jews and their offspring made up a significant population of the early church, esp. in and around Jerusalem. Of course there was one unique event that helped finalize the unification of Jews and gentiles into one church with non-cultic rituals, that was the destruction of the temple in AD70. The Jewish believer saw with their own eyes the fulfillment of all that Jesus predicted regarding the "end of the age", i.e., the end of the old covenant economy. They could no longer keep the festivals and other cultic practices as given in the Mosaic code, at least not without resorting to the "Jewish fables" of the rabbis. They witnessed the "days of vengeance" and saw first hand the decaying and passing away of the nationalist qualities of the old covenant.

The church has rightly taught against the judaizing tendancies of those who wish to follow the cultic practices of the Mosaic code for religious reasons. They were mere "shadows" and destined to pass away. Their sole purpose was to separate the people of God physically from the other nations. In an age when God's people come from every nation, tribe, and tongue that reason for being no longer applies.

[Diego1618]

Don't forget Lev 23:10 - Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. No mention of the Passover. This waving of the sheaf would happen at harvest time.

Leviticus 23:11, [The priest is to wave the sheaf on the day after the Sabbath]. Which Sabbath? The primary Sabbath spoken of in the previous paragraph....the first Sabbath of Unleavened Bread....verse 6...or the 16th of the month. Then begins the fifty day count to Pentecost...verse 15.

For further edification of this important holiday "Google" The Works of Flavius Josephus" a first century Jewish historian. Look in Book III, Chapter X, verses 5-6 for a complete description of the first century celebration of the Passover and the attendant First Fruits and then 50 days later the Feast of Weeks(Pentecost).

Sorry to take so long on this but I was just reviewing some notes taken last month and had forgotten to put in my 2 cents worth.