Shalom.
Of the Ten Commandments, only one has been changed by man and accepted by the masses — not murder, not adultery, not idolatry, but the Sabbath. Most believers worship on Sunday, the first day of the week, while Scripture commands the seventh. So when did it change, who authorised it, and does it even matter?
The fourth commandment
Start at the beginning, with the commandment itself:
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work… 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 20:8–11
It’s the only one of the Ten that opens with “Remember” — because Yah knew it would be the one we’d forget. If the other nine commandments are still binding, why would this one alone be cancelled? “Because we’re under grace, not law” is the usual answer — but grace doesn’t cancel commandments, it empowers obedience to them, as we saw testing that same claim against dispensationalism. So the harder question stands: when did the Sabbath actually move from the seventh day to the first? Not in Scripture, it didn’t.
An unauthorised change
The change came later, and from a different source. In the centuries after the apostles, the Roman church distanced itself from anything read as “too Jewish,” and by the Council of Laodicea in AD 364 had formally condemned Sabbath-keeping as “Judaizing,” pronouncing anathema on anyone who kept it. The Catholic Church has never hidden the reasoning — its own Catechism states plainly that the transfer of the Sabbath to Sunday stands as proof the church holds authority above Scripture itself.
Yah never authorised that change. Yahusha’s own words settle whether anyone else could:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” — Matthew 5:17–18
And on the Sabbath specifically:
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.” — Mark 2:27–28
“Son of man” is the ordinary Hebrew idiom for a human being — the prophet Ezekiel is addressed by that same title nearly ninety times. Read that way, Yahusha isn’t claiming authority to set the Sabbath aside; He’s standing in the place Adam was always meant to hold — upright, entrusted with responsibility over Yah’s creation, affirming the Sabbath rather than replacing it. The change didn’t come from Yah. It came from Rome.
Sabbaths, plural
Scripture speaks of Shabbats — plural. Alongside the weekly Sabbath set apart at creation, Leviticus 23 lays out Yah’s appointed times, several of which carry their own Sabbath rest regardless of the day of the week they fall on: the first and seventh days of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement — called a Sabbath of Sabbaths — and the first and eighth days of Tabernacles.
“Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts… These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.” — Leviticus 23:2, 4
Feasts of the LORD — not feasts of the Jews. Notably absent from that list: Christmas, Easter, Lent, none of them commanded by Yah, all of them kept anyway while the actual appointed times go unobserved. Leviticus 23 repeats that these are to be kept “throughout your generations” — l’dor’tam in the Hebrew, meaning perpetually, continuously. Not until the cross. Not until some new age. Until Yah Himself says otherwise.
What the renewed covenant confirms
The apostles didn’t set any of this aside after the resurrection. Paul kept the feasts (Acts 18:21); Luke marks time by the feast calendar decades later (Acts 20:6); and writing to a Gentile congregation, Paul tells them outright to keep Unleavened Bread:
“Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast…” — 1 Corinthians 5:7–8
Colossians 2:16–17 is the passage most often used to argue the opposite:
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” — Colossians 2:16–17
Read carefully, Paul isn’t telling believers they no longer need to keep these things — he’s writing to believers who are keeping them, telling them not to let anyone judge them for it. The judgment in view is coming from outsiders, not from Paul; he’s defending the practice, not cancelling it.
Why it matters
The Sabbaths and feasts aren’t rituals for their own sake — they’re prophetic rehearsals, appointed meeting points between Yah and His people. Yahusha has already fulfilled Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Pentecost; the fall feasts — Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles — are still ahead. Missing the rehearsal leaves us unprepared for the fulfilment. And Isaiah gives a picture of where this ends:
“It shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.” — Isaiah 66:23
If the Sabbath is still being kept in the world to come, the question was never really whether it still matters now.
The lesson
The Sabbath was never changed by Yah — it was changed by man, and accepted by a church that valued tradition over obedience. Yah set it apart at creation, commanded it at Sinai, and Yahusha affirmed rather than replaced it; the apostles kept it, and it holds all the way to the Kingdom to come. The real question was never whether the Sabbath still matters. It’s whether we’ll trust Yah’s Word over man’s tradition.
May we be found among those who remember the Sabbath day — and all His appointed times — to keep them holy, throughout our generations.
HalleluYah.
Test everything, and let the Ruach lead you in truth.
Be blessed,
Dwayne • Echoed From Eden