Bible Difficulties (27 page)

In the light of these early Christian testimonies, we can see the unsoundness of the contention made by some sabbatarian advocates that Sunday was not chosen to supercede Saturday as the day of Christian worship until the time of Constantine the Great (308-37).

From apostolic times Sunday has been recognized by Christians as a day of worship and a day of rest. But what Constantine did was to issue a special edict prescribing Sunday as the official day of rest each week throughout the Roman Empire.

Sanctifying the Lord's Day

Now that we have covered the New Testament basis for the adoption of the first day of the week as the distinctive day of worship for Christians, we turn our attention to the question of how the Lord's Day was--and is--to be sanctified by God's people. If our initial premise is correct and the Lord's Day is basically intended to perpetuate the special sanctity of the Sabbath, then it would follow that our reverence for Sunday should be equal to that of the ancient Hebrew believer for the seventh-day Sabbath.

How is the Lord's Day to be sanctified? Well, if we consult the Decalogue, we find that it is to be marked by a cessation from self-serving, gainful employment that would be quite proper for the other six days of the week (Exod. 20:9-10). It is also, according to Leviticus 23:3, to be a day of public worship, a "holy convocation," and a day of special significance for the officiating priests. They were to replace the old showbread with fresh new loaves on the "table before the LORD" in the sanctuary (Lev. 24:8), and they were to double the normal offering on the altar of sacrifice (the "continual burnt offering") according to Numbers 28:9-10. But the most illuminating passage in the Old Testament concerning the true celebration of the Sabbath is found in Isaiah 58:13-14: "If because of the Sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure, and speaking your own words, then you will take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth" (NASB).

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Much of the concept conveyed by that passage found classic expression in the Westminster Shorter Catechism (60): "How is the [Christian] Sabbath to be sanctified?

The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy (Matt. 12:11-12)." This was the ideal standard of the Puritan movement, which represented the finest flower of the Protestant Reformation in the English-speaking world. While that standard is now more often honored by the breach than by observance, it would be difficult to prove that the modern permissive attitude towards hallowing the Lord's Day has any foundation in Scripture.

It is often urged by those who advocate pure voluntarism in the use of Sunday that Colossians 2:16 abolishes almost all the sanctions of the Old Testament fourth commandment. This verse says, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day"

(NIV). A more accurate rendering of
sabbaton
would be "Sabbaths"--plural rather than singular. This is important here, for the Hebrew religious calendar possessed not only seventh-day Sabbaths but also feast-day Sabbaths, which were to be celebrated in exactly the same way as the Saturday Sabbath, regardless of what day in the week the first and last days of the feast might fall (especially in regard to the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles, both of which ran for eight days).

The general purport of Colossians 2:16 is that the distinctive holy days of the Old Testament are no longer binding on New Testament believers because "these are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ" (v.17).

Hence v.16 would seem to be referring primarily to obsolete Old Testament ordinances, of which the seventh-day Sabbath was one, and probably the feast-day Sabbath was another.

There is no good reason to believe that Paul intended to include the Christian form of the fourth commandment, that is, Sunday observance, as among the "shadows" that had already been fulfilled by Christ; the observance of the Lord's Day could hardly be classified as an Old Testament "shadow." In point of fact, it was a contemporary Christian ordinance zealously observed by those who trusted in Christ, the "Reality"

(
soma
literally means "body"), rather than in obsolete or obsolescent Old Testament types (or "shadows"). Therefore, it is altogether unwarranted to draw from this verse an unrestrained license to use the Lord's Day any way one pleases. Church attendance and group Bible study are admittedly the most important elements in Sunday observance, but the principle of rest from self-seeking labor (except for those involved in works of real necessity or mercy) is surely at the heart of hallowing the Lord's Day--even in these days when the secularized culture around us holds that day in very low esteem.

For additional study of this topic see D.A. Carson,
From Sabbath to Lord's Day
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).

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Why is there so much killing of human beings mentioned in the Bible, along with the
frequent references to animal sacrifice on the altar? How does this square with the
divine command "Thou shalt not kill" (Exod. 20:13)?

Since the Bible is a book about man in his state of sin, and since there is so much violence and bloodshed in human society, it was inevitable that frequent mention of manslaughter should occur in Scripture. But much confusion has arisen from the misleading translation of Exodus 20:13 that occurs in most English versions. The Hebrew original uses a specific word for murder (
rasah
) in the sixth commandment and should be rendered "You shall not murder" (NASB). This is no prohibition against capital punishment for capital crimes, since it is not a general term for the taking of life, such as our English word "kill" implies. Exodus 21:12, right in the very next chapter, reads: "He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death." This amounts to a specific divine command to punish murder with capital punishment, in keeping with Genesis 9:6:

"Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man" (NASB).

Violence and bloodshed are occasionally mentioned in the record of man's history throughout Scripture, but never with approval. Yet there were specific situations when entire communities (such as Jericho) or entire tribes (such as Amalekites) were to be exterminated by the Israelites in obedience to God's command. In each case these offenders had gone so far in degeneracy and moral depravity that their continued presence would result in spreading the dreadful cancer of sin among God's covenant people. Just as the wise surgeon removes dangerous cancer from his patient's body by use of the scalpel, so God employed the Israelites to remove such dangerous malignancies from human society. So far as sacrificial animals were concerned, this mode of worship, symbolizing the coming sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross, was taught to our forebears from the time of Adam and systematized for the believing community in the laws of Moses. "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins" (Heb.

9:22).

Why were there multiple marriages in Israel after the giving of the Ten
Commandments?

The seventh commandment says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exod. 20:14). How did this affect the patriarchs like Abraham, who was given Hagar by his own wife, Sarah, to serve as her proxy in the marriage bed? Or Jacob, who not only married Leah and Rachel but also had children by their maids Bilhah and Zilpah? Perhaps the fact that the Decalogue was not given to Israel until five centuries later may have lessened the guilt of their multiple marriages. But how about King David, who lived four centuries later? 2

Samuel 12:7-8 actually states that God "gave Saul's wives into David's arms" (cf. NIV), as if God Himself condoned this polygamy. How do we reconcile this with the monogamy that Jesus so clearly taught in Matthew 19:9 and which He asserted to have been God's intention from the very beginning of the human race?

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Genesis 2:23-24, as Christ pointed out, teaches monogamy as God's will for man. After Adam was presented with his wife, Eve, the Bible records: "The man said, `This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.'...For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh" (NASB). Now there is no possibility of a husband's constituting a unity with one wife if he also has another wife--or several others. This is made very clear by the analogy in Ephesians 5:23:

"For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church, He Himself being the Savior of the body" (NASB). The implication here is that there is but one true church and that it stands in a relationship to the heavenly Bridegroom like that of the wife toward her husband. Christ is not the Head of many different churches; He has but a single mystical body--not several different bodies--and therefore His one and only church is viewed as the antitype of monogamous marriage. Polygamy is absolutely excluded.

As we examine the scriptural record, we come to the realization that every case of polygamy or concubinage amounted to a failure to follow God's original model and plan.

The very first reference to polygamy in Genesis is found in the life of Lamech son of Methushael, who, in addition to his bloodthirsty vindictiveness toward those with whom he had quarreled, is recorded in Genesis 4:23-24 as boasting of his prowess to his two wives. After that there is no mention of plural marriage until the time of Abraham.

In Abraham's case, Sarah is always represented as being Abraham's only legal wife as long as she lived. But when she became convinced that she could bear him no children of her own, she presented him with her maid Hagar, to be her proxy in the marriage bed.

This meant that Hagar became a concubine to Abraham, not his lawfully wedded wife.

But even this attempt to "help God" carry out His earlier promise, that Abraham would become the ancestor of a great nation, turned out to be a cause of great bitterness and strife within their home; and ultimately Hagar had to be sent away, along with Abraham's son by her, the lad Ishmael (Gen. 21:12-14).

Abraham's son Isaac was married to but one wife, Rebecca, and was faithful to her all his life. But their self-willed son Esau broke their heart by becoming involved in polygamy and by marrying out of the faith--both of Esau's wives were pagans (Gen.

26:34). Later on Esau even took a third wife, Mahalath the daughter of his uncle Ishmael (Gen. 28:9) and Oholibamah as well (cf. Gen. 26). In so doing, Esau is not presented as a model for believers to follow.

In the case of Jacob, his only desire was for one woman, Rachel, the daughter of Laban.

It was only through Laban's crafty maneuvering that Jacob was tricked into marrying Rachel's older sister, Leah, as well. Later on, as unhappy rivalry broke out between the two sisters in the matter of childbearing, they resorted to Sarah's misguided expedient of presenting their husband with their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah, to serve as proxies in the marriage bed. But so far as Jacob was concerned, there never was any desire on his part to become a polygamist. All he had done was fall in love with Rachel; and after that one thing led to another, until he had four sets of children. These of course became ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel, and God was gracious enough to accept them all 118

within His plan for multiplying the race of Abraham. But even the home of Jacob was a rather unhappy one at first, rent with jealousy and strife, and marked by cruelty and falsehood.

This whole problem of polygamy in Old Testament times is not easy to handle. Yet it really should not be equated with adultery so as to make it a technical violation of the seventh commandment; for in Old Testament times when a man took a second wife, he bound himself to her as much as to his first wife. Thus all of David's wives were equally

"Mrs. David," so to speak. The concubines were likewise an exclusive obligation for the man to cherish, support, and provide for in every way. This was a far different matter than entering into illicit relations with another man's wife. So far as Saul's wives were concerned--or the wives of any other deceased king, for that matter--they were normally entrusted to the protection and care of his successor. Otherwise a later marriage to a king's widow might give the second husband a legal claim to the throne. (This was the reason Solomon was so alarmed by Adonijah's proposal to marry King David's youngest wife, Abishag; Solomon took this maneuver as part of a plot to overthrow him [1 Kings 2:22].) Therefore the rule was that once a woman became a king's consort (whether as queen, secondary wife, or concubine), she had a right to retain that status even though her royal husband had died. His successor would take her over. Presumably, however, a son would treat all his father's wives as respected pensioners in the palace, rather than entering into incestuous relations with them.

The fact of the matter was that while polygamy was contrary to God's intention and ideal, nevertheless, because of what Christ called "the hardness of men's hearts" (Matt.

19:8), it was tolerated--especially in the case of a political leader whose dynasty would fail if he produced no son by his first wife. A state of civil war might well ensue from such a situation, with resulting bloodshed and disruption to the state. But then, of course, there were occasional references to plural marriages even in the case of private citizens, like Samuel's father, Elkanah. In the course of time, however, a better understanding of God's will in regard to marriage prevailed among God's people. From the time of the return from Babylonian exile (ca. 537 B.C.) onward, there is no reference to polygamy among God's people to be found in any of the post-Exilic books of the Old Testament. By Christ's time monogamy was the rule among the Greeks and the Romans as well as among the Jews, and Christ's affirmation of the "one flesh" principle of marriage (which makes sense only in a context of monogamy) found ready acceptance among His countrymen (Matt. 19:5-6).