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One man esteemeth one day above another;
another esteemeth every day alike.
Let every man be fully persuaded in
his own mind. (Romans 14:5)

All Scripture references are from the

New Scofield Reference Bible.
Printed in the United States of America
Revised 2006
The Sabbath Day or the
Lord’s Day – Which?
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt
thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the
sabbath of the LORD thy God; in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant,
nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that
is within thy gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the
seventh day; wherefore, the LORD blessed the sabbath day,
and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11)
The Sabbath day is Saturday. It is the seventh day of the week
according to our calendar. Furthermore, the Sabbath day has
never been changed to Sunday.
The present-day controversy over which day of the week Chris-
tians should observe hinges upon a false premise, which resulted
in a warped and distorted viewpoint of the real meaning of the
Sabbath day as found in the Word of God. Many Christians have
a woeful misconception of why the church has always observed
the first day of the week. Nothing but abysmal ignorance has per-
mitted the protagonists of the Sabbath day to traffic in their legal-
istic system.
The question, “When was the Sabbath changed to Sunday?” is
like the old chestnut asked of the man who was very much a Mr.
Milquetoast: “Do you still beat your wife?” You cannot answer
that question without getting into a peck of trouble. If you say, “Yes,”
you are wrong. If you say, “No,” you are wrong, and you are immedi-
ately in difficulty. For the same reason, “When was the Sabbath
day changed to Sunday?” is one of those questions that cannot be
answered in a word or two since it is based upon a false premise.

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 I am going to ask that you think with me as I deal with this
subject, for I believe this to be one of the most important of the
commandments, and it is essential that we understand what it means.
The Ten Commandments are given first in Exodus 20. They are
repeated in Deuteronomy 5, but it is interesting to note that in no
instance is this a repetition of the Law – it is rather an interpretation
of the Law in the lives of the people and nation after forty years
of experience with it in the wilderness. Therefore, all the command-
ments that we find given in Deuteronomy are identical to those
given in Exodus with one exception: The fourth commandment,
the one that has to do with the Sabbath day. Thereby hangs a tale,
and this is something our legalistic friends never call to our attention.

Basis in Exodus – Ceremonial

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh
day; wherefore, the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and
hallowed it. (Exodus 20:11)
The reason given in Exodus for the observance of the Sabbath
day is that God in creating did all the work in six days, and He
rested on the seventh and hallowed that day. Therefore, in Exodus
the basis is ceremonial or, as we could say today, theological or reli-
gious. It is founded upon the fact that God rested on the seventh day.
After Christ had healed the man at the Pool of Bethesda, the reli-
gious rulers accused Him of breaking the Mosaic Law because
He had done it on the Sabbath day. He said, “My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). In other words, “We are not
observing a Sabbath day any longer; we are working!”

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Basis in Deuteronomy – Humanitarian
When we turn to Deuteronomy we find an altogether different
reason given for the observance of the Sabbath day. Note this
passage:
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of
Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out from
there through a mighty hand and by an outstretched
arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to
keep the sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15)
Back in Exodus, the basis is that God rested on the Sabbath –
the seventh day – and that basis is theological, ceremonial. But
in Deuteronomy we learn that God brought them out of bondage
from the land of Egypt, and because of this they were to observe
the Sabbath day. They had worked as slaves in hard labor seven
days a week, from sunup till sunset, without respite from sorrow
or weariness. Now God tells them that, because He has delivered
them out of the land of Egypt and permitted them to keep one day
of rest, He wants them to be equally considerate of their servants
and all their animals. Man and beast must rest one day out of each
week. That is humanitarian.
You will recall that our Lord had this in mind when His disciples
were plucking the ears of grain on the Sabbath and the rulers chal-
lenged Him because of this. He said to the religious rulers:
The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
This is a flat statement of the humanitarian aspect of the question.
These two reasons are tremendous, and we would do well to keep
them in mind.

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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
The Sabbath Belongs to the Hebrews
Since the Sabbath day actually originated in creation – “And on
the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he
rested on the seventh day...” (Genesis 2:2) – one would think that
all the primitive nations of the world would have observed it in
some form and at some time. They all did have a garbled account
of the Flood and a garbled account of creation, which reveals that
there was one reliable source for these. But the interesting thing is
that this very important matter of the Sabbath day is not found to
be observed by the other nations.
A similar observance in Babylon led liberal scholars to try to trace
the Hebrews’ observance of the Sabbath back to Babylon. The Baby-
lonians observed the new moon, and there were four quarters in
their month. That would work out to seven and sometimes eight
days to a week, but it was never Sabbath to them. Dr. R. H. Charles
followed the findings of the liberals and their subsequent teachings
and made this statement: “The Sabbath belongs to the Hebrews.”
Isn’t that interesting! God had said when He first gave the Law to
His people that He wanted them to observe the Sabbath because
He had delivered them out of the land of Egypt. Well, who were
God’s chosen people? I dare say that there are very few reading this
message whose ancestors were slaves in Egypt. And even if they were,
I have a notion very few of you have ancestors delivered out of the
land of Egypt by a mighty act of redemption on God’s part. Obvi-
ously this applies to a certain group of people who are easily recog-
nized as the nation Israel.

Proofs Pertaining to Israel and the Sabbath

I turn now to several significant verses in the Word of God. First
notice Exodus 31:13:

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 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel [now we know
to whom He is speaking], saying, Verily my sabbaths ye
shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout
your generations….
Here God marked the Sabbath day as a peculiar sign between
Himself and the children of Israel. Then in the next verse God
cautioned them further:
Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you:
every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death….
(Exodus 31:14)
That was very serious, was it not? They were to forfeit their very
lives for defiling or profaning the Sabbath day. They were to be
dealt with as if they had murdered someone in cold blood.
Then following through with verses 16 and 17:
Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath,
to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for
a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the
children of Israel forever….
It is a sign between God and the people of Israel. That is clear, is
it not?
Like the rite of circumcision, the Sabbath belongs to the old
creation, for the Sabbath was built primarily on the old creation.
After God had created during the six days, He rested on the seventh
day. Israel, an earthly people, belonged to an old creation, and the
Sabbath was given to them as a peculiar sign.
Now if you are not convinced that God meant business about
this, turn to another portion in the Book of Numbers. If you are
one who feels that you can keep the Sabbath day and you do keep
it, the penalty for breaking it should make your hair stand on end.

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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
Numbers 15 includes an example of one who broke the Sabbath law:
And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness,
they found a man who gathered sticks upon the sabbath
day. (Numbers 15:32)
Now I may be wrong, but I have a notion that any one of you
readers does more work on the Sabbath or seventh day than this
man did. He only picked up a few sticks. Do you want to go under
Sabbath day restrictions? Let’s read further and learn what happened:
And they who found him gathering sticks brought him unto
Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they
put him in prison, because it was not declared what should
be done to him. (Numbers 15:33, 34)
We have come now to God’s verdict, and it is harsh:
And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely
put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with
stones outside the camp. And all the congregation brought
him outside the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he
died; as the LORD commanded Moses. (Numbers 15:35, 36)
Do you want to be under the law of the Sabbath day? I’m afraid
that a great many people who talk of keeping the Sabbath day are
breaking it. God meant business about this Sabbath day. Before we
conclude this study we shall see the reason God protected the day
as He did. We will see that it was symbolic of something tremen-
dous that He has done for you and me. He did not want it violated
in any fashion whatsoever. Neither can those who talk of keeping
the Sabbath violate what it symbolizes, as we shall see.

Sabbath Day Restrictions

Let us notice some of the things that they could not do on the
Sabbath day, which the Scripture enjoins. For example:
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 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon
the sabbath day. (Exodus 35:3)
The Jews were forbidden to kindle a fire. Now if you were one who
kept the Sabbath but you drove your car down to your church on
that day, the minute you inserted the key in the ignition and started
the motor of your car, you kindled a fire in every one of the cylin-
ders, although you did not see it. In doing this you broke the Sab-
bath. I called the attention of a friend to this, since he believes he
ought to keep the Sabbath. But I notice that he continues to start
his car every Saturday, and I see no indication that he is going to
start walking.
And that’s not all of it. I turn again to Exodus and read God’s
provision for the Sabbath rest during the time He provided manna
for His people in the wilderness. Notice this language:
And he said unto them, This is that which the LORD hath
said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto the
LORD: bake that [manna] which ye will bake today, and
boil that ye will boil; and that which remaineth over lay
up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it
up [the leftover manna] till the morning, as Moses bade;
and it did not become odious neither was there any worm
in it. And Moses said, Eat that today; for today is a sab-
bath unto the LORD: today ye shall not find it in the field.
(Exodus 16:23-25)
No cooking was permitted on the Sabbath day at all. And it
would not be permissible to go to a restaurant where someone
else had done the cooking, either.
Exodus 16:29 ties into the above verses:
See, the LORD hath given you the sabbath; therefore
he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days.
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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
 Abide every man in his place, let no man go out on
the seventh day.
The expression “a Sabbath day’s journey,” which is about 750
yards, comes from this verse of Scripture. Therefore the Jews
could go no farther than 750 yards on the Sabbath.
When Antiochus Epiphanes made his attack upon the nation
Israel, he was able to overcome some of the Maccabees, and the
reason was that he attacked on the Sabbath day. He knew the
Jews would not strike back because they would not even engage
in defensive warfare on the Sabbath.
When you turn to the Mishnah (or text) that was combined
with the commentary in the Talmud (containing the civil and
canonical laws of the nation Israel), you will find that they had
reduced the Sabbath day observance of Israel to minutiae, the most
trifling regulations. They had 39 ways of breaching the Sabbath,
and they divided each one of those 39 ways into another 39 ways,
and 39 multiplied by 39 equals 1521 ways in which one could
break the Sabbath in Old Testament times! Let me give you some
examples: If you tied a knot you broke the Sabbath. A scribe could
not carry a pen, because that would be carrying a burden on the
Sabbath. A person was not even permitted to kill a flea – it was
rather amusing to me that a man could not kill a flea even though
it was biting him! In other words, the flea had a free day on the
Sabbath. A person could not wear a coat or garment over his other
clothing. The thought was that the individual might become too
warm, take off his coat and put it over his arm, and that would be
carrying a burden on the Sabbath. A woman was not permitted to
look in a mirror on the Sabbath day for she might see a gray hair
and want to pull it out, and that would be reaping on the Sabbath.
Oh, my friend, they had reduced it to where it had become all but
ridiculous. Beloved, would you want to revert to the Sabbath?
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 But we find that God made it very clear to the people of Israel
that they were to observe the Sabbath. He said in Leviticus 19:30:
Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I
am the LORD.
The Sabbath day was bound together with the ceremonial worship
of this nation – the two never could be divorced. God said that they
must keep holy His Sabbath and His sanctuary.
It is little wonder that Simon Peter stood up in the first Council
of Jerusalem and said to those gathered there:
Now, therefore, why put God to the test, to put a yoke upon
the neck of the disciples [Gentiles], which neither our fathers
nor we were able to bear? (Acts 15:10)
He meant that they, the Jewish people, had not been able to
keep all these regulations, so why burden the converted Gentiles
with them?

A New Day
When we pass from the Old Testament and come into the New
Testament, nothing short of a revolution has taken place as far as
the Sabbath day is concerned. Every commandment is repeated in
the Epistles for the Christians as items for our conduct, with one
exception – the Sabbath day is not given to Christians. Nowhere
is it given to the church. In fact, just the contrary is true, for the
church is warned against keeping the Sabbath day, as we shall see.
Our Lord precipitated the wrath of the religious rulers at this very
point, and it is here that they broke with Him on the Sabbath
question. He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath, and He justified
His claim by raising up the man at the Pool of Bethesda.
My friend, there is one thing that you need to turn over in your
mind: Jesus was dead on the Sabbath day! Regardless of what day
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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
you think He was crucified (whether it be Wednesday, Thursday
or Friday), one thing is obvious, and upon this all agree – He was
dead on the Sabbath day. It was on the first day of the week that
He came forth from the dead. And when we turn to the resurrec-
tion account in the Gospel of Matthew (which was written
primarily to Israel), it opens with a remarkable statement:
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward
the first day of the week…. (Matthew 28:1)
What beautiful language. “At the end of the sabbath” – not just
the end of a day, but the end of keeping the Sabbath day – “it began
to dawn toward the first day of the week.” That is tremendous!

Pentecost – The Church Was Born

Then we turn to the Book of Acts, and there we read that the
church was born – and not on a Sabbath day, but on the Lord’s
Day, the first day of the week. Notice Acts 2:1:
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come….
What does the Bible mean by “fully come”? Does it mean when
the sun had come up or that it was twelve noon or that it was late
in the afternoon? No, it does not mean any of that at all. Let me
use a parenthesis to make it clear: “When the day of Pentecost [and
all of which it spoke] was come….” That which Pentecost had sym-
bolized in the Old Testament is now come. It was the first day of
the week, the only first day of the week Israel ever observed – for
they observed seven Sabbath days after Passover, and then the day
following the seventh Sabbath was Pentecost:
On that day the Holy Spirit came!
On that day the church was born!

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Proof that the Church Met on the First Day
It would be exceedingly strange if the church did not make some
recognition of the first day of the week. Actually you’ll find that the
church never met on any day other than the first day of the week.
As we turn to Acts 20:7 we find that Paul was preaching in Troas:
And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples
came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them,
ready to depart on the next day, and continued his speech
until midnight.
That was a long sermon! But will you note that the writer does not
insert anywhere such a statement as this: “Now I want to give you
a little word of explanation, for it was unusual for the church to
meet on the first day of the week.” He does not say that for the
simple reason that it was the regular time for the church to meet. It
can be proven that they never did meet on any other day. (There
was a group called Ebionites that met on the Sabbath day, but they
were called heretics by the early church.)
Paul said to the Corinthians when he wrote to them:
Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay
by him in store, as God hath prospered him….
(1 Corinthians 16:2)
Friends, why should he designate that day? Plainly, that is the day
upon which the church came together.
The church is a new creation of God. It does not belong to the
old creation; it is a new work:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, lest any
man should boast. For we are his workmanship [His
“poiema,” His poem, His new creation], created in Christ

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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
 Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
And the Christian is a new creation, by the way:
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Paul writes to the Galatians in the sixth chapter, verse 15:
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,
nor uncircumcision, but a new creature [creation].
John, when on the Isle of Patmos, wrote: “I was in the Spirit on
the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). I am aware that a great many
commentators hold the position that this has reference to this day
of grace in which we live. I will accept that, but I will not rule out
the other – it also carries the meaning of the Lord’s Day, the first
day of the week.
In the opening of this message I made mention of the fact that
the Sabbath day has never been changed to Sunday, the first day
of the week. A false propaganda has been circulated to the effect
that the Roman Catholic Church changed the day of worship from
Saturday to Sunday. That needs to be refuted. The church never
did observe the Sabbath day, so how could it be changed? The
church observed Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, from the beginning.
We have this record not only in Acts, but the body of church
history also bears testimony to that fact. For example, during the
first century we find a lovely thing to corroborate this, a quotation
from one of the church fathers, Ignatius (born in A.D. 69), who
was also a disciple of the apostle John:
No longer observing Sabbaths, but fashioning their lives
after the Lord’s Day, on which our life also rose through
Him.
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Also Athanasius (born around A.D. 296), a great man of the faith,
left us this statement:
We keep no Sabbaths: we keep the Lord’s Day as a
memorial of the beginning of the new creation.
The Epistle of Barnabas, which was never recognized or accepted
in the canon of Scripture, though no one has ever questioned the
accuracy of its historical statements, contains the following:
I shall make a beginning of the eighth day [that is,
Sunday], that is the beginning of another universe.
Wherefore we keep also the eighth day [Sunday] for
gladness, on which also Jesus rose from the dead.
The early church always met on the first day of the week to honor
a resurrected Christ and to recognize the fact that they were a new
creation. They did not belong to the old creation where the Sabbath
day is at the end of the week, but to a new day, the first day of
the week.
It may surprise you to learn that the Seventh Day Baptists started
the observance of the seventh day, or the Sabbath. So you Baptists
are going to have to take the blame here. (The Presbyterians and
the Methodists have already got enough to answer for, and I think
that you Baptists ought to shoulder this one!) The Ebionites rose in
the early church. They were called heretics then, and by the sixth
and seventh centuries they had called themselves Sabbatarians. It
was not until the seventeenth century when Puritan theology became
so dominant and legalistic that the Ebionites began to call them-
selves the Seventh Day Baptists. And all of the legalists today get
the seventh day from them.

The Firm Position of the Lord’s Day

Sunday – oh, how important this is to see – does not take the

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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
place of Saturday. The Lord’s Day is not a substitute for the Old
Testament Sabbath day. In fact, all is contrast. C. H. Mackintosh
put it this way:
1. The Sabbath was the seventh day; the Lord’s Day is the first.
2. The Sabbath was a test of Israel’s condition; the Lord’s Day is the
proof of the church’s acceptance on wholly unconditional grounds.
3. The Sabbath belonged to the old creation; the Lord’s Day
belongs to the new.
4. The Sabbath was a day of bodily rest for the Jew; the Lord’s Day
is a day of spiritual rest for the Christian.
5. If the Jew worked on the Sabbath, he was to be put to death.
If the Christian does not work on the Lord’s Day, he gives little
proof of life. That is, if he does not get involved on the Lord’s
Day in some type of spiritual ministry, he gives little evidence
that he has spiritual life. It is a day when you, as a Christian,
demonstrate that you belong to Christ. It is not a day when you
are to do nothing.
I disagree with those who hold that the Lord’s Day is the Sab-
bath. It is not a Sabbath; it is something new. Today, by meeting
on the Lord’s Day, we testify that Jesus came back from the dead.
For the early church, every Lord’s Day was an Easter! Oh, if we
could make every Sunday an Easter – come in our new garments
and fill our churches and talk about the resurrected Christ – that
would be wonderful! Sunday, or the Lord’s Day, does not take the
place of Saturday, which is still the Sabbath.
Now I have a suggestion to make. It would be ideal if we would
acknowledge each day as it was intended to be in its own origin –
Saturday, a day of rest, and the Lord’s Day, a day of worship. I
believe that the Bible would sanction that, for it says,

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 One man esteemeth one day above another; another
esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind. (Romans 14:5)
We observe the first day of the week because our Lord came back
from the dead on that day. We do not observe it as a substitute for
the Sabbath day or any other day.
It is vital that we understand that the Sabbath day, which was
part of the ceremonial law, has already been fulfilled in Christ.
And now the injunction given to Christians is clear in Colossians
2:16, 17:
Let no man, therefore, judge you in food, or in drink, or in
respect of a feast day, or of the new moon, or of a sabbath
day, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is
of Christ.
My friend, rituals in the Old Testament were shadows of things to
come – and shadows are photographs. When a photographer takes
our picture, a shadow is registered on a very sensitive negative. That
shadow is developed and becomes our picture. The Bible says that
as we look back to the Old Testament we find that even the Sabbath
day was a shadow of something.
In the Epistle to the Galatians we find a tremendously
important point:
But now, after ye have known God, or rather are known
by God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements,
unto which ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days,
and months, and times, and years. (Galatians 4:9, 10)
Beloved, Judaism has passed away, and it says here in Galatians that
today it is the same as any other pagan religion. Therefore, to ob-
serve the Sabbath in our day is to return to paganism. Such a legal
system is one and the same in God’s sight!
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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
 In coming to the final word in this study, I turn to the Epistle to
the Hebrews:
Let us, therefore, fear lest, a promise being left us of entering
into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For
unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them; but
the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed
with faith in them that heard it. (Hebrews 4:1, 2)
My friend, I keep the Sabbath day – I keep it in accordance with
the preceding passage of Scripture.
Now let me give you a personal illustration: When I came to
Pasadena to live in 1940, my neighbor – a very fine man, but a
member of a legalistic system that keeps the seventh day – nailed
me first off. I had not been in southern California twenty-four
hours when he buttonholed me and asked, “Do you keep the
Sabbath day?” I looked him right straight in the eye and said, “I
sure do.” He countered with a gleam in his eye and asked, “What
day do you keep?” I looked at him with a gleam in my eye and
said to him, “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday.” And then I started all over again on the next
week. He broke in on my recital and blurted out, “What in the
world do you mean?” I told him something like this: I simply mean
that when the Lord Jesus came to this world about two thousand
years ago, He said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”
(John 5:17).
I tried to make it clear to him that when God created everything,
including man, man sinned and ran into the ditch. And from that
day on, God did not rest because He wanted to redeem the poor,
lost sinner and bring him into a place of rest. On the cross Christ
died, but before He died He said to the Father, “It is finished”
(John 19:30). But when He said it, it was only one word – Tetelestai!

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Finished.
What was finished? The work of redemption was finished so that
now you and I can enter into rest. And, my friend, we don’t dare
try to add any of our good works to His work of redemption! Look
again at Ephesians 2:8 and 9:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God – not of works, lest any
man should boast.
Redemption is a completed package, and He presents it to you
wrapped up with everything in it. He doesn’t want you to bring
your do-it-yourself kit along. He does not need that. When He
died on the cross, He provided a righteousness that would satisfy
a holy God. All He asks of you is to receive this package, this gift
of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus.
He says, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest [I’ll rest you]” (Matthew 11:28). In other words,
“I’ll give you a Sabbath in which you can rest in Me, your Savior.”
He makes every day a Sabbath in which you can rest in Him.

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The Sabbath Day or the Lord’s Day – Which? by Dr. J. Vernon McGee