Many of us are familiar with the seemingly endless sheaves of paper called computer printouts. They give us, in a matter of moments, detailed information about events and things that have been programmed into the computer at an earlier time. Page after page of facts and figures is tediously typed out by the machine giving us a word picture of what it "remembers" about a particular item.
But there is one computer that doesn't need programming. It automatically records all events that occur around it in the most minute detail. And it doesn't employ printouts to recall its information but instantly reproduces the items to be remembered in a full color, stereophonic sound, motion picture. Its program is unlimited. It handles all types of information, stores it indefinitely and never becomes overloaded.
Quite a machine? Indeed! All this and it only weighs about three pounds. And you carry one around with you all the time. It is the human brain, a marvelous computer that works wonders. And the procedure by which past information and events are reproduced in color and sound movies is called memory.
Scientists tell us we never really forget anything and that events we cannot recall from the earliest of childhood are still recorded on our brains and affect our behavior today, with one notable exception. There is a memorial to the most significant events in human history that we all should remember. In fact, the God who created us specifically commanded us to remember this memorial, but almost the whole world has forgotten. I am speaking of the Sabbath, God's great memorial of creation, that the world at large has forgotten. Yet it is the only one of God's commandments that specifically says "Remember." Most people can remember the ones that start "Thou shalt not." But the world has forgotten the one that says "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy!"
There are two main divisions among Christian people on the matter of which day is to be kept as the Sabbath, or the Lord's day. Our desire as we turn to the Bible is to put man's opinions and suppositions aside and see what God has to say about this important matter. I say important, because any subject on which God has expressed His will is important.
In the book of Revelation the apostle John speaks of the Lord's day. "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." Revelation 1:10. He doesn't say which day of the week it was. The only way we can find out which day of the week he was speaking of is to compare that verse with other Scriptures.
God inspired the prophet Isaiah to write these words: "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable...." God says the Sabbath is His holy day. The Sabbath, then, according to the Bible is the Lord's day. In a special sense it belongs to the Lord.
In Mark 2:27,28 Jesus is speaking, and He says: "The Sabbath was made for man." God made man first and then He made the Sabbath to be a blessing to man, a day of rest and spiritual communion. The Jews had made the Sabbath a burden. They had surrounded the Sabbath with scores of man-made regulations, even specifying just exactly how far a person could travel on the Sabbath day and making it a legalistic bondage and a burden instead of a blessing and a delight as God intended that it should be.
If Christ is Lord of the Sabbath then it follows naturally that the Sabbath is the Lord's day. We find that there is a harmony all through the scriptures. You notice it says, "The Sabbath was made." Mark 2:27. It didn't just happen into being, but it came as a result of thoughtful and careful planning. Now, if it was made, this question naturally follows: "Who made it?" As we find the answer to this question in the Bible, it will become even more clear that the Sabbath is the Lord's day.
Ephesians 3:9. "And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ." All right, let's be sure we got that. It is plain Scripture, so clear that no one could misunderstand it.
God created all things by Jesus Christ. The Sabbath was made. Christ made everything that was made, therefore, God through Christ Jesus made the Sabbath. That is why the Bible speaks of the Sabbath as the Lord's day. The Lord Jesus Christ made that day.
In John 1:10 it speaks of Jesus again. It says that "He was in the world, and the world was made by him and the world knew him not." You remember it says in the 14th verse, "And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." You know, I talk to folks who tell me that they've gone to church for years and yet they come to me and say, "We didn't know that Christ existed before he was born nineteen centuries ago!"
You remember Jesus prayed to His Father as He finished His task here on earth, "And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." John 17:5. You remember also that when God was planning the creation of man He said, "Let us make man in our image." Genesis 1:26. God wasn't alone. God the Father and God the Son together planned and carried out the creation of man, according to the Bible. And the Bible, of course, must be our guide. Again, in Hebrews 1:1,2, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds." God, through Jesus Christ, made the worlds. He made this world; this earth and everything in it. "And without him was not anything made that was made." John 1:3.
Interesting isn't it, that in the light of all these Bible texts we so seldom hear a sermon on Christ as the Creator. Let me tell you one reason for that. When it becomes clear that Christ made the Sabbath in the beginning before the entrance of sin, it forever settles the issue as to which day is the Lord's day and the Bible Sabbath. The day that the Lord Jesus Christ made, the day over which he claims the Lordship, is naturally and biblically, His day. The devil does not want this issue made clear. He wants to keep men in confusion. He wants to dishonor God's law against which he has for centuries been in rebellion.
Going back to the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis, we read, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed..." which day? "The seventh day and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Genesis 2:1-3. Now tell me, if God's plan was that we should choose any day that happened to be convenient and make that our Sabbath, why did God take a specific day and place His blessing upon it, making it a holy day? Is there any other day in all the Bible of which we are told that God blessed that day and made it holy for man to keep? I know of no other day that God has blessed with the three-fold blessing of resting upon it, blessing it, and sanctifying it, or setting it apart for a holy purpose. Remember, this all took place before Adam sinned, while all things were yet perfect. The Sabbath was a part of God's perfect plan.
Then notice as we come to the book of Exodus where the Ten Commandments are written out. It doesn't say to keep one day in seven, but it says, "Remember," harking back to something they already knew about. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Exodus 20:8. God's command wasn't just to take a day and make it holy. As a matter of fact, we can't do that because, "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23. Only God can make something holy. God made the day holy. His command to us is to remember that and to keep it holy. If I were to give you my blue coat and say, "Now you take this coat and bring it back tomorrow night, but just this one thing, you keep it white." I dare say that not one of you would take me up on that. You couldn't keep this coat white, because it isn't white to start with. No more can we keep holy something which isn't holy to start with.
God has given us six days to do all our work but the seventh day is the Sabbath, whose Sabbath does it say it is? Notice Exodus 20:10, "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God." Really that should settle it. There is the answer. Our question today isn't to know which day is the Sabbath of the Jews or the Baptists or the Adventists or the Roman Catholics or the Methodists, but the question that should arise in our hearts today is, "Which day is the Lord's Sabbath? Which day is the Lord's day?" And here is the Bible answer. "But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God."
You know, the Bible says that one man esteems one day above another. Another man esteems every day alike, but here you find out which day God esteems above all others. The day that God has made holy. And here we have God's command to keep it.
Sometimes I hear ministers talking about the Jewish Sabbath. And, of course, they are referring to the day that we now call Saturday, the seventh day. Now, it is true that the Jews kept it, and they still keep it, but friends, that doesn't make it Jewish. God made the Sabbath two thousand years before the first Jew was born. So, surely, we can't refer to the Lord's Sabbath as Jewish.
Notice the reason God gave for keeping the Sabbath. "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. God had a definite purpose in mind when He made the seventh day the Sabbath. It was ever to remind us that God created the world and all things therein. It was a sign of allegiance to the true God. It was test of obedience, a proof of love.