The Scripture Quotations in this publication are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946 and 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

Which Day ?
Six days' work and one day's rest: this has been the human pattern for a very long time. To some people the day of rest is just a welcome breathing space after six days of hard work. To others it is a day of sport and pleasure. To others again it is a religious day, a day of worship called the sabbath. (The word 'sabbath' is a Hebrew word, and it means, simply, 'rest.')

Questions
In this booklet we shall look at the Bible answers to the following questions:
Is the sabbath Saturday or Sunday?
Should Christians keep the sabbath?
Why do Jews still keep the sabbath?
Why was the Lord Jesus so often accused of breaking the sabbath?
Is the religious sect known as the Seventh Day Adventists right or wrong in its teaching about the sabbath? The main purpose, however, is to survey the whole range of Bible teaching about the sabbath, and discover what we should believe and what we should do.

Saturday or Sunday?
One question can be answered quickly: Is the sabbath Saturday or Sunday?
The following scriptures show clearly that the sabbath of the Bible is Saturday:
"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it." (Exodus 20: 8 - 11.)
"Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall be put to death." (Exodus 31: 15.)
The sabbath is the seventh day. And because Saturday is the name we give to the seventh day, the sabbath must be Saturday.

The Night comes First
This is straightforward enough, but one thing still needs explaining. According to the Old Testament, each 24-hour day began at sunset - not midnight - and ended at sunset. This means that in each complete day the full period of darkness, the whole night, came before the period of daylight. It was like this right from the beginning when "there was evening and there was morning, one day." (Genesis 1: 5.)

Thus, strictly speaking, the sabbath, the seventh day, begins at sunset on the day we call Friday, and continues until sunset on the day we call Saturday. This is how orthodox Jews observe it.

Which Day is to be kept Holy?
One question has been answered. The sabbath is Saturday,or to be more exact, Friday night and Saturday. But this brings us to another question. Since the sabbath is Saturday, ought Saturday to be observed as a holy day?
The Jews do not work on the sabbath. To this day religious Jews regard that period of 24 hours as a time to be set aside for God.
But what about Christians? Ought Christians to keep Saturday as a holy day? Or is this no longer necessary? Or should Sunday be kept instead? The Bible provides clear answers to these questions.
' These, and all subsequent Bible quotations arc from the Revised Standard Version.


 The Old Testament Background 
The Creation Week
Although the word 'sabbath' is not used in Genesis 2: 3, this is the first reference to the day afterwards called the sabbath in Scripture: "So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation."

Here we are told that after six days of work there followed a day when God did not work. God pronounced a blessing on the seventh day and declared it holy.

The first statement in Scripture about man's duties with regard to the seventh day was made 2,500 years or more after the creation of Adam. Instructions were given to the children of Israel in the wilderness, and it is here that the word 'sabbath' first occurs.

Manna
The people of Israel had been led out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to the wilderness where there was no food. Miraculously, God provided them with food from heaven. This food, called 'manna', appeared on the ground in the morning, and the people were instructed to gather sufficient each morning for that day only. They were to do this for the first five days of the week. Then on the sixth day they were to gather twice as much - enough to last them through the seventh day as well. There was no manna on the seventh day. "Six days you shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is a sabbath, there will be none." (Exodus 16: 26.)
This is the first occurrence of the word 'sabbath' hi the Bible.

The Ten Commandments
Not long after this, God gave to the children of Israel a set of laws, which is usually called the Law of Moses. One very important part of this Law was the Ten Commandments, which were written "by the
finger of God" on stone tablets. The fourth commandment was: "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy."

Death Penalty
God made it plain that the law of the sabbath was to be strictly enforced, and the penalty for breaking this law was death. (Exodus 31: 14.)

Indeed, a man who was found gathering sticks on the sabbath day was stoned to death in accordance with God's instructions. (See Numbers 15: 32-.36.)

Although the penalty for sabbath breaking was severe, the sabbath law was a merciful provision. The keeping of this day was intended to help the people, and not to make life more difficult for them.

The Blessing of the Sabbath
How would the keeping of the sabbath benefit the people of Israel? Deuteronomy 5: 14, 15 provides the answer:
"The seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day."

The law ensured that everybody, even the lowest servants, would enjoy a day's rest every week. The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. They, of all people, would know well enough how much hard-working people need regular rest. God had helped them by delivering them from the oppression of the Egyptian taskmasters. Now they were instructed to be merciful to their servants, as God had been merciful to them. They were to provide their servants with one day's rest each week. It was necessary for the sabbath law to be strictly enforced because, otherwise, masters who were greedy of gain would take advantage, and would squeeze as much work as they could out of their bondservants.
* The full text of this commandment is quoted on pages 1 and 2. .

A Sign
The sabbath law was certainly beneficial to servants. But what about the masters? There was no obvious gain to masters, who, because of this law, would lose the advantage of a whole day's work from each servant every week. Some Hebrew masters would feel reluctant to grant this weekly break to their servants in those stern days when servants were made to work and to keep on working. But, strange though it appears, the keeping of the sabbath did bring benefits to masters as well.

Both in Exodus 31: 13 - 17 and in Ezekiel 20: 12 the sabbath is described as a sign between Israel and God, "that they might know that I the Lord sanctify them." This means that if the people kept the sabbath faithfully they would be given convincing evidence that God was indeed their God. God would shower rich blessings upon the Israelites if they honoured Him and put aside their own affairs for one day in every week.

Thus a healthy attitude towards the sabbath sprang from a deep trust in God. The way in which the Israelites regarded the sabbath law was an indication of their attitude to all God's commandments, and to the God who gave them these commandments. The sabbath law was therefore a good way of measuring Israel's faithfulness to God.

The Sabbath- a Delight
Right-minded keepers of the sabbath were not self-centred people. They put God in the very centre of their lives. Isaiah explains that the sabbath was to be more than a day of rest. Rest from work is a good thing in itself, but the sabbath was also to be a day specially set aside for blessing and honouring the Lord. Those who, during the sabbath, turned away from their own personal interests and put God first, were promised great pleasure from fulfilling this high purpose:

"If you turn back your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 58: 13, 14.)

One of the greatest rewards for keeping the sabbath so as to please God was a growing pleasure in this godly activity.
What was forbidden on the sabbath was work for personal advantage - "not going your own ways." A man was not permitted to work for himself on this day, nor to make his servant work for him. For 24 hours his servant was a free man.
The Israelites were told, to keep the sabbath holy. 'Holy' means 'separate for God.' The sabbath was to be God's day.