The Sabbath, according to the Bible, is the last day of the week, established in Genesis 2:2 and 2:3 as a holy day. It is an appointed day of rest and keeping it is one of the Ten Commandments, “You are to labor and do all your work for six days, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. You must not do any work” (Exodus 20:9-10). Our week is to mimic the creation week (Exodus 20:11). During this time, God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh. It is clear, then, that the Sabbath is a day in which we do no work, and it takes place on the last day of the week, Saturday. It is important to note that according to God, the days start and end with the sun setting. Therefore, the Saturday Sabbath actually starts on Friday at sunset and ends on Saturday at sunset.
Human tradition changed the observance of the Sabbath slowly over the centuries fueled by the Catholic Church’s interest in cutting ties with the Jewish community. They wanted to observe the Sabbath as a spiritual day of rest rather than a physical day of rest, but God’s word stands forever. Man cannot simply change the day that God has appointed as holy, or the way in which He told us to observe it. There was never authority given to the Church to make such changes, and therefore the changes are not valid. Our Savior kept the Sabbath. If he didn’t, he would have been charged with it at his death, and he wouldn’t have lived a sinless life. The Pharisees claimed that his disciples and he broke the Sabbath on many occasions, but their allegations were based on the doctrines of men, the doctrines that they had made, not what Yahweh had commanded (Mark 7:7-9). The Sabbath is for us to relax, recover from the week, and serve Yahweh. It’s as the Bible says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). We know this includes the observance of the Sabbath on the day that was appointed by God, for Jesus said, “…until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest letter or mark will ever pass away from the law…” (Matthew 5:18). Finally, to erase any doubt as to whether we should be celebrating the Sabbath now, Isaiah 66:22-23 tells us that we will be celebrating the Sabbath during the millennial reign, so it couldn’t have been done away with.
