Though the Jews were indeed entrusted with God's memorial of Creation, the Sabbath was not made for the Jews alone but for all of mankind. Nearly all theologians, even those who keep Sunday, agree that the Bible is clear on this ...
"The Sabbath was established originally in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam" (
Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, August 15, 1937).
If the first Sabbath to be kept by a human being were not until just before Sinai (Exodus 16), and the Sabbath were merely a Jewish institution, as some claim, then why did Jesus say that the Sabbath was "made for man" (Mark 2:27)? And if no one was keeping the Sabbath, how then did generation after generation of human beings keep track of the weekly cycle for all those years? The book of Genesis is clear that the patriarchs used the seven-day week to count time (Genesis 2:1-3; 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12; 29:27, 28; 31:23; 50:10).
One would also wonder how the story of the Creation would have been maintained from generation to generation, a story that places special significance on the seventh day, if no one had ever observed the Sabbath during the 2,500 years between Creation and Sinai. The Creation story itself testifies that the Sabbath belongs to all people.
Furthermore, the seventh day held special significance in many ancient cultures outside of Judaism. Take the ancient Babylonians and Greeks, for example:
"The Sabbath-rest was a Babylonian, as well as a Hebrew, institution. ... The Sabbath was also known, at all events in Accadian times, as a 'dies nefastus,' a day on which certain work was forbidden to be done, and an old list of Babylonian festivals and fast-days tells us that on the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days each month the Sabbath-rest had to be observed" (A. H. Sayce,
The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, 1894, 74).
"But the seventh day is recognized as sacred, not by the Hebrews only, but also by the Greeks" (Clement of Alexandria).
Although the Scriptures do clearly portray the Sabbath as the memorial of God's Creation rest (Genesis 2:1-3; Exodus 20:11; Hebrews 4:4), and the early hours of the first day as the time when Christ arose from the dead (Matthew 28:1-6), nowhere do they identify Sunday worship as a commemoration of the resurrection (or as a replacement for Sabbath observance). Instead, they identify the Eucharist (communion service) as the commemoration of "the Lord's death" and the participation of the believer in baptism as the symbol of the Lord's death and resurrection.
"As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26).
"We were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4, 5).
Adapted from Kevin Morgan,
Sabbath Rest, 80-82.