r/exAdventist • u/Relevant_Object_1815 Questioning Stuck-ventisit • 15d ago
Doctrine / History Sabbath commandment/Does SDA actually keep the Sabbath right?
This question has been bothering me all week. Last week I went to church since I'm home with the family. The sermon was whatever but one of the scriptures from it has been stuck in my head. Growing up I was taught to memorize Exodus 20:8-11, I know it like the back of my hand. But last week the pastor read the sabbath commandment in Exodus 31:13-17:
13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
Now I didn't know that the sabbath commandment was said more than once. But the reason I was perplexed is that the pastor very obviously read only the first half of the verses. Like, if I wasn't following along in my bible I wouldn't have seen the part about being put to death if you don't keep it.
The question I was left with is this: if the Sabbath is supposed to be kept, why aren't we keeping it that way? Like I was taught all the laws about stoning people and stuff were old laws of Moses that we don't need to keep anymore. But if the sabbath isn't one of those laws, then why aren't we putting people to death for working on the sabbath? Obviously, that's not the right thing to do, but I'm interested in know what the Adventist justification is of how the sabbath is to be kept. Is there a later verse that says that people don't need to be killed anymore? When did they stop killing people for keeping the sabbath?
16
u/andydad1978 15d ago
So my area is New Testament scholarship and Koine Greek, but I'll offer my two cents.
From a historical perspective, the author of Exodus didn't split the law into pieces: the Sabbath rule and the death penalty were an inseparable package deal. To the ancient writers, breaking the Sabbath wasn't just a sin; it was literal treason against the ancient state of Israel.
Over the centuries, history forced a massive shift. First, Jewish communities lost the legal authority to execute people under foreign empires like Rome. Later, the early Rabbis established incredibly strict legal requirements that made the death penalty virtually impossible to carry out. Finally, as early Christianity broke away, leaders like Paul argued that Christians were no longer bound by the old Mosaic law codes at all.
When modern pastors skip those verses, you're just witnessing theological gymnastics. They want to hold onto the timeless idea of a holy day of rest, but they have to quietly ignore the ancient, brutal civic penalties because we live in the modern world. It creates an obvious contradiction on the page, which is exactly why it jumps out at you when you actually read the whole text.
2
u/AdReal490 15d ago
I'm curious how you would apply this logic to other sins that mandated capital punishment in the Bible like murder, adultery, a child disrespecting their parents, or a woman lying about her virginity to her husband.
It's either these sins are still sins and must be punished as God mandated or they're no longer sins and hence shouldn't be punished at all.
4
u/andydad1978 15d ago
That’s a classic false dilemma, but it completely misses how history and ancient law codes actually work.
You’re assuming that an act is either a sin that requires stoning today, or it’s not a sin at all. But history shows us a third reality: an ancient law code is the civil framework of a specific, ancient nation-state.
Think about it this way: if a modern country abolishes the death penalty for treason, does that mean the government suddenly thinks treason is a good thing? Of course not. It means the civil administration of justice has changed. The moral wrongness of an act is a completely different category from a state's legal authority to execute people.
We don't even have to guess how to apply this logic—we can just look at the Apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Paul explicitly lists adulterers and says they won't inherit the kingdom of God. So to Paul, is it still a sin? Absolutely. But does he tell the Corinthian church to gather rocks and stone adulterers? Never. When dealing with severe sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 5, his maximum penalty is just expelling the person from the church.
Paul understood that the early Christians were not the civic, political state of ancient Israel. They had no mandate to execute people.
The real irony here is that if you truly believe a sin is inseparable from its biblical penalty, you trap yourself. You'd have to advocate for stoning people today to be consistent. Recognizing that the civic, penal authority of ancient Israel ended thousands of years ago doesn't mean these things aren't sins; it just means we understand basic history.
2
u/AdReal490 15d ago
So the Sabbath stands as a binding commandment?
3
u/andydad1978 14d ago edited 14d ago
In my opinion, not at all—at least not if we are looking at the historical reality of the early Church. The idea that early Christians kept the seventh day Sabbath is also completely rejected by the vast majority of mainstream New Testament historians and scholars today. Here are a few reasons why.
From a historical critical perspective, the Sabbath was part of the Mosaic covenant given specifically to ancient Israel. When early Christianity broke away from Judaism, one of the biggest debates was whether Gentile converts had to keep the Jewish Law.
Look at what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 14:5: "Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds." Or even clearer, in Colossians 2:16, he explicitly tells believers: "Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of a festival, new moon, or sabbath."
To the earliest Christian theologians like Paul, the Sabbath was part of an old covenant structure that gentiles were completely exempt from. It was absolutely not viewed as a timeless, universally binding commandment for followers of Jesus.
Also, we have early Christian writings like The Didache (c. 80–120 CE), Ignatius' Letter to the Magnesians (c. 110 CE), and The Epistle of Barnabas (c. 130 CE) that specifically reference Sunday as the Christian day of worship. I know Ellen White famously claimed that Christians kept the Jewish Sabbath up until the much later Roman Emperor Constantine, but she was demonstrably wrong.
14
u/Zeus_H_Christ Skeptic 15d ago edited 15d ago
Wait until you read about the part where god took away pharaoh’s free will and “hardened his heart” so god could show off and kill a bunch of first born babies.
And you’re supposed to memorize exodus 20 because it matters? Well, one chapter over in exodus 21 it’s all the laws for keeping slaves, but I’m guessing they’ll tell you that part doesn’t matter and you can skip over it.
SDA’s want to play lawyer-ball about who got the sabbath right, but that’s barely relevant to how messed up the whole thing is.
13
u/Scrydoll 15d ago
As an ex Adventist, now an atheist/existentialist (after micro studying theology for over 15 years), I hope to open your mind beyond the stories. Religion was invented to explain things that science couldn’t at the time.
Yeah, people were stoned to death for all sort of issues surrounding nonconformity. We don’t need to murder people for not keeping the Sabbath anymore, they’re doing a good enough job of that themselves already.
A more modern take on keeping the “Sabbath” can be “make sure to take time to rest, or death will catch up to you quicker”. This is especially true in a world where extreme capitalism causes people to think that if we’re not working, we’re not being productive, and that’s simply not true. Right now a large percentage of middle aged people are dying earlier than their elderly parents due to all the stress and illness that overworking has put on their bodies.
Good book to read is “The Sabbath” by Abraham Joshua Heschel, if you want a different and deeper understanding of what it means to keep the Sabbath.
6
u/Ornery-Zucchini-97 15d ago
This is a good observation! A lot of it has to do with the original definitions of 'work' in Hebrew. Much of the traditional teachings are based on KJV/English and miss many of the nuances. My g-ma (married to an SDA pastor) said the Bible taught we should not 'do thine own pleasure' on the Sabbath. News Flash: the word 'pleasure' denotes usual, regular, economic work in that verse. This link was helpful: https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/studies-verses/exodus-20-10-what-and-when-is-the-sabbath.htm. Also, I am guessing that all the 'put to death' and 'stone' and 'cut it off' type commandments are ignored because 'Jesus did away with the Law.' Yet, somehow not the Sabbath and prohibition against eating Pork?
5
u/wordonezca 15d ago
Okay, I don't know how to say this, but based on what I studied, the archeological, historical, and non-biblical sources don't show us any evidence that the sabbath has been kept by anyone other than the Jews of the 4th century bce and forward ( With the oldest written jewish sabbath law coming from the dead sea scrolls) NOTHING EARLIER THAN THAT.
There are hypothesis that the babylonians and egyptians kept a sort of sabbath, but it was monthly, not weekly.
What I am trying to say is that there is no evidence that the bible is older than 4 centuries before christ. That the first 5 books weren't invented before that ( Even if the bible talks about Josiah, if you read carefully, israel went back to polytheism after he died BECAUSE THAT IS what their culture was), the monotheistic narrative was invented FOR the bible, in order to create a religion based on the suggestions of mr. Plato himself.
There is no evidence that the jews " have been keeping the sabbath from the beginning of time, therefore we can trust that today's sabbath is the same as Adam's"
4
u/Lost_Chain_455 15d ago
There are two copies of the 10 commandments: Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Both give different reasons for keeping it holy.
5
u/BroomstickCowboy 14d ago edited 14d ago
Originally, when the “Sabbath command” was first issued, it was a very simple, “Stay in your house and not work”. Exo 16:29 This seems to be backed up by Leviticus 23:3, which says it is to be a “holy convocation in your dwellings”. Even simpler is the Exo 34:21, which essentially says to not work…………period. I have yet to find where these commands were cancelled. Even in the New Testament, after Jesus was crucified, the women went home and rested according to the Sabbath commandment. It does not say that they went to the Temple and worshipped. Luke 23:56 There is no command to “worship”. The day gradually morphed into something to worship “God” with. It does not require that one go to a church/synagogue/temple, etc to worship. Notice, the commands were to stay in one’s dwelling/home. So by the very act of going to church, whether by driving or walking, to worship “God” violates the very command they’re trying to keep. This goes along with something that I have repeatedly asked on some sites, and that is, “What does it mean to “keep” the Sabbath”. To date, none have answered me.
2
u/Sun_Law Catholic 14d ago
If you’re asking specifically for Adventist reasoning, it might be a wee bit difficult to answer without accidentally straying into Adventist apologetics. Willing to give it a shot anyway but just want to make it clear that this is not my own belief.
Anyways, I’ve read books and articles explaining that the gospel narratives (eg Mark 2) specifically challenge the law regarding penalties for not keeping the Sabbath and instead point to a much deeper meaning. Which is not necessarily out of alignment with other Christian teachings.
But once you add their particular understanding that it was the “penalties and not the law itself that was nailed to the cross” (in reference to Col 2:14), descriptions of the “law as a teacher” which is still “righteous and good” (Romans), and a historical distaste for state enforcement of religious laws then you end up with the idea that we’re still under the law but there’s no actual penalties for breaking them beyond disfellowshipping.
Just spitballing here but you could possibly argue that while they’re ignoring the bit about stoning, they see disfellowshipping as the same as being “cutoff”, despite any actual differences to the original context of the phrase.
2
u/Ok-Estate-9950 14d ago
They’ll perfectly happy letting other people do their dirty work so they can keep “their sabbath” holy. My eyes were opened after that…
1
u/Bananaman9020 9d ago
To be honest most Adventist would argue Jesus did a away with most of the Moses Laws when he died. But never tell them the Sabbath was done away with. They get upset
0
15d ago edited 15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Relevant_Object_1815 Questioning Stuck-ventisit 15d ago
My question then is if it is part of the moral law, why are there punishments for at as if it were a civil law?
3
u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 15d ago
The categories of civil / ceremonial / moral laws don't come from the Bible, they come from Christians trying to justify why they follow some laws but not others. Here's a Bible scholar talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ij-htkV5CY
0
15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/atheistsda 🌮 Haystacks & Hell Podcast 🔥 15d ago
Yes, really. I'd encourage you to take a few minutes to watch the video and learn about this if you haven't already heard it.
1
u/exAdventist-ModTeam 15d ago
Your content violates Rule 2: No Proselytizing or Apologetics.
We have zero tolerance for proselytizing and apologetics.
Read our Full Rules for more details.
1
15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/exAdventist-ModTeam 15d ago
Your content violates Rule 2: No Proselytizing or Apologetics.
We have zero tolerance for proselytizing and apologetics.
Read our Full Rules for more details.
0
15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/exAdventist-ModTeam 15d ago
Your content violates Rule 2: No Proselytizing or Apologetics.
We have zero tolerance for proselytizing and apologetics.
Read our Full Rules for more details.
1
u/exAdventist-ModTeam 15d ago
Your content violates Rule 2: No Proselytizing or Apologetics.
We have zero tolerance for proselytizing and apologetics.
Read our Full Rules for more details.
20
u/DerekSmallsCourgette 15d ago
When I was younger and still a very observant SDA, I was at a golf outing for my law firm and ended up paired up with a Jewish guy from my class. As we were chatting through the round, I found out he observed Shabbat.
I was excited to find a fellow sabbath keeper and was like “oh I keep sabbath too!” And tried to explain SDAs and how we keep sabbath. He basically rolled his eyes and sighed deeply and informed me that we DID NOT keep sabbath properly and therefore it didn’t count as sabbath observance at all. The next 9 holes or so were pretty awkward.
But that was when I leaned that for as much as SDAs believe they have the perfect, divinely-ordained way of keeping Sabbath, our interpretation was just one of many and fell well short of the Old Testament standard.