What is Sunday For?
Have you ever wondered what Sunday is for? The old laws about what businesses could be open or what could be sold has been changed many years ago. So what are we supposed to do on Sunday?
In Luke 6, one Sabbath, Jesus was walking though some grainfields with his disciples who plucked some grain as they were walking and ate it. Then the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath. Jesus reminded them that even David broke the Law and then He added: “The Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath.”
On another Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in the Temple. There was a man present who had a deformed hand, so the Pharisees were watching to see if Jesus would break the Law by healing on the Sabbath. Now Jesus knew what they were thinking and that they were looking for some pretext so they could accuse Him of breaking the Law.
So Jesus asked them a question: “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” Jesus then healed the man’s hand and they were furious.
Now the problem was that over the years they had made many restrictive regulations about how to keep the Sabbath. In one sense, that was good, because they did not want to break the Law. But the problem was that their regulations had become a maze of rules and statutes that even the Pharisees did not keep all of them perfectly. But what’s more important was that their regulations had become as important as the very words of the Law itself.
Now let’s examine this. First, the Sabbath rest was part of the Law of Moses. The Jews were to make it a sacred day. Sabbath is Saturday. The Greek word “sabbaton” means “seventh” and comes from the Greek root for seven. Now the Hebrew word “shabbath” sounds much like the Greek word, but it’s root meaning is to “rest.” So it was a day of worship and honor for God.
The church began on the Day of Pentecost which was a Sunday, so the practice of the early church was to meet on Sunday. Our examples of the early church was to meet on Sunday.
So let’s get back to our question. So the “day of rest” was not for sleeping late or for ...
