In Exodus 20:8-11, God instructed the Hebrews to take a day off. It is in this passage that one learns that the Lord commanded the Sabbath because in six days He made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day He rested (Genesis 2:3). For centuries, as seen in the Old Testament and till the time of Christ, Jews rested and observed the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath unto the Lord.
Yet, today biblical Christians meet on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week or Sunday, as they have since the beginning of the church in Acts 2. The shift in the calendar was monumental. Something catastrophic happened to effect this change in the day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to the first day according to the Jewish calendar!
This monumental event that changed history was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as we read in the Gospel records (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19), which are eyewitness accounts that Jesus Christ arose from the tomb on the first day of the week.
After His resurrection, we never find Christ meeting with His disciples on the seventh day or Sabbath. However, He especially honored the first day by manifesting Himself to the apostles and others on four separate occasions (Matthew 28:9; Luke 24:34, 18-33; John 20:19-23). Again, on the next first day of the week, Jesus appeared to His disciples (John 20:26). Nothing but the resurrection of Jesus Christ could change the day of honoring the Lord from the Sabbath to the first day of the week.
Many centuries before Christ, some tradesmen who resented keeping the Sabbath day came to the prophet of the Lord, Amos, and demanded to know, “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances of deceit?” (Amos 8:5). Amos responded in Amos 8:9, “‘And on that day,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.’” Scripture confirms just as Amos prophesied that the Sabbath was abolished when God darkened the earth in a clear day and the sun went down at noon. This, of course, happened when Jesus was crucified; as a result, the Sabbath Day was nailed to His cross, as we see in Matthew 27:51ff.
Then Colossians 2:14-16 clearly states:
[Editor’s Note: The change from the Sabbath Day to the first day of the week as a day of worship was divinely prophesied as well as accomplished through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the commencement of New Testament Christianity. The Jewish system regulated the number of the days in a week, whereupon, God chose the seventh day for rest and for worship. Beyond the Jewish system, irrespective of any way in which mankind could manipulate his calendar, God now has selected the first day of the week for Christian worship. Every week on anyone’s calendar has a first day of the week. On that day of the week under Christianity, Christians are called upon through New Testament Scripture to worship Almighty God. ~ Louis Rushmore, Editor]Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
