I belong to a Messianic fellowship and we observe a Seventh day or Saturday sabbath, following the custom of Jewish believers in Yeshua. But that is not why I have chosen to keep a Saturday Sabbath.
My primary reason is because God Himself instituted the Sabbath on the seventh day. Six days He worked, and on the seventh day He rested from all that He had created and made. If God established the seventh day to be a sabbath of rest, who am I to determine and establish a different day?
By long experience of trying to do just that very thing, I have come to experience, as a truth, there is a genuine blessing to be experienced on that day, unlike any other day. It isn't something you can put into words, but it is like God is more accessible, reachable, present, during this day. You can 'feel' Him. He is there.
Christians will stand on the ground that they keep a Sunday Sabbath as remembrance that Christ rose from the dead on that day. I don't accept that. My argument has nothing to do with their reason, or what day His resurrection took place on, but because of the way God handled the Sabbath, before and after the giving of the Law.
In Exodus, where we are given the Sabbath, and where it is also made part of the Ten Commandments that formed the covenant of God with the people of Israel, He commands the Sabbath to be observed on the basis of His work in creation.
However, in Deuteronomy where the law is given again prior to the people entering into their promised land, to take it and make it theirs, the reason given for the keeping of the Sabbath is based on their exodus from Egypt. Now if that is not based on Christ's work on the cross, I do not know what is. God has made provision for Christ's work on the cross within the seventh day Sabbath, so why does man need to find another day to commemmorate it?
Furthermore, the resurrection of Christ is more about work than rest, for by it, He enabled God to work His strange work among us, bringing us to Him, and working out His salvation in us. The Sabbath is all about rest, about accepting Christ as our Sabbath, our rest, our peace.
As to the justification that keeping a Sunday sabbath commemorates His resurrection from the dead... well, to my mind that fails to embrace the reality that we live and abide in that resurrection life every day of our lives, if in fact you are part of His New Covenant. Every day should be a revelling in the joy of what He has done for us, a walking in and working out of the salvation He has worked in. It shouldn't be something that is observed just one day a week. The Sabbath should be a patient waiting and confirmation of our faith in the rest that will be ours at His return.
Moving into the New Testament, all the disciples, Jew and Gentile convert alike kept and maintained a Saturday or seventh day sabbath together. If you read the book of Acts carefully, you will realise that every Gentile who heard the Good News of Christ was found in a synagogue for the most part. Even James, one of the pillars in the newly formed Body of Christ, gave only four observances to new Gentile converts to the faith of Christ, and his reason for doing so was because they had Moses preached in every synagogue.
The first Christians received all their instruction into the faith of God through the synagogue system, which primarily took place on a Saturday, or seventh day. These believers met again on the following day to speak of what they had heard, what the Lord had shown them, sharing the new and fresh light they had received through that week, and no doubt through what they had heard from the Word of God taught in the synagogue the previous day.
The primary reason they split off from the Jewish church was because, although the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was taken away in Christ, it still remained (and remains) very much in existence in the world and in the flesh, until converts to Christ were anathema to Jews, and Jews became anathema to Christians. When Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of His dominion, he also established a new day on which to observe the Sabbath.
That act speaks volumes of comparison between Constantine and Jeroboam. While Jeroboam was appointed to his place by God when He split the kingdom due to Solomon's idolatry, one of the first things he did was establish new feast days, for the express purpose of preventing the people from returning to Jerusalem, when those feasts were to be observed under the laws and commandment of God.
Now if you ask me which one I would choose, a day mandated and established by God to commemmorate, not the resurrection but the final day when we can all rest in the peace of Christ at His return, or a day appointed by man, visionary and appointed of God or not, I will choose what God has declared.
For these reasons, I choose to keep a Saturday or Seventh Day Sabbath ~ not because it is Jewish, but because it was appointed of God. If He did not change the day, but only the reason for keeping it, then why should I, or rather, who am I to determine His Sabbath to be otherwise and make it a day of my own choosing?
On a more personal note, I like to keep the Sabbath on this day. It is a most wonderful experience to come to Friday evening knowing that you have taken care of all your business, and knowing you can draw the curtain over the week, shutting out the past and the future of what awaits next week, and spend a day, fully able to give yourself and all your attention completely to God, without distraction. That is truly rest indeed.
Some get bogged down with all the Jewish "do's" and "do not's" of keeping a Sabbath according to rabbinical (man's) judgments, but none of these are mandated by God. All He asks is that you take this day as a day of ease and refreshment, not in our own ideas and entertainments, but through restoring communion and fellowship with Him, the source of all our peace and rest, to be refreshed by Him in the only way that brings lasting peace and strength that will see you through another week.
And that is most blessed indeed. Blessed be God who has given us His holy Sabbath, to find our rest and refreshment and renewal in Him, our God, and the source of all our peace and rest. To Him be praise, honour and glory forevermore. Amen.