Our Sabbath Rest

INTRODUCTION

     I first became interested in studying about the Sabbath about 1974, when two of the elders of my church, in their proper concern for my soul, came to visit me on a Saturday evening about my plans for the next day.  My plans included getting a good night’s sleep, and then getting the wheat harvest into full swing, for the wheat was ripe and ready, and that is how I make my living.  I certainly have never made a regular practice of working on the Lord’s Day, but harvest time was always an exception, not only for me, but also for all the farmers in this area.  As it turned out, I got no sleep that night, nor did I harvest wheat the next day.  I became convinced during that restless night that if I did not rest from my labors the next day, I would be deliberately disobedient, both to God and my own conscience.

     “You shall work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during plowing time and harvest you shall rest.”  Exodus 34:21.

     The elders used this Scripture in their visit with me, but they really had not been all that convincing.  I knew Scripture in the New Testament that seemed to set me at liberty from such OT laws (e.g. Col.2:16).  And yet, I was convicted.  Could the Sabbath commandment be the only one of the ten that was not a lasting moral imperative?

     Let me begin by confessing that I have never kept the fourth commandment in the past.  I don’t keep it now, and I have no hope of keeping it in this lifetime.  Question 82 in the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?”  Answer, “No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed.”  The Sabbath commandment, like the other nine, will always leave us as guilty sinners.  That is the purpose of the Law in a fallen world.  Our guilt is real.  If we are to be saved, the Law is not the place to stop.  It must drive us to the cross.

     The headings of the following study of the Sabbath are:

I.  The Old Covenant and the Sabbath
II.  Jesus and the Sabbath
III.  The New Covenant and the Sabbath
IV.  The Christian and the Sabbath

     Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

I.  THE OLD COVENANT AND THE SABBATH

     The word “Sabbath” means rest.  The first Sabbath is recorded in Genesis 2:2-3.

    And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had
done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He
had done.  Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because
in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

     The Sabbath, then, has been with man from the very beginning.  The first full day that the first man, Adam, knew was the Sabbath of the Lord, as God rested from His work of creation.  Adam and Eve, having been made in God’s image on the sixth day, had not yet fallen into sin.  It was the desire of Adam’s heart, having been created very good, to do what pleased God.  He therefore must have spent his first full day of life glorifying the God of creation, and sharing in God’s rest.

       After Adam’s fall into sin, a radical change took place in the relationship which existed between God, and the man and his wife.  Fear and the dread of God replaced the peace and joy which once existed.  Adam and all his seed came to live under the sentence of death.  The only hope the man or any of his descendants had of regaining what had been lost was the promise God graciously held out to them of redemption, which one day would come by the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15).  Henceforth, if their lives were to have any meaning, they had to live by faith in this promise of God.  Otherwise, all that was sure in their future was toil, pain, anguish, and death.  The Sabbath, which Jesus later would say was made for man (Mark 2:27), had at first been a time for man to cease from the pleasure of the work which God had given him, so that man could lead all creation in glorifying the Creator.  Now that man, and the rest of creation with him, had fallen under the effects of the curse, the Sabbath took on new meaning.  Now, by the grace of God, it was a time of rest from the grinding toil which man’s work had become.  It was a time to offer sacrifice to God for sin, and to rest in the hope of redemption which those sacrifices pictured, and which God had promised would come through the seed of the woman.  For those who refused to live by faith in the promise of God, however, the blessings of the Sabbath were soon lost, and the day forgotten and desecrated.  Consider Cain, who slew his brother Abel.  As part of his punishment, he was to live a restless life, not knowing the peace that belongs to the man of faith, for the Lord said to him, “You shall be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.”  Genesis 4:12.  After that, the Sabbath was lost to the generality of mankind, for they became like those described by the prophet Isaiah.

But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
For it cannot be quiet,
And its waters toss up refuse and mud.
“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
Isaiah 57:20-21.

     Out of the generality of mankind, however, God continued to claim people for Himself, and to cause them to rest in Him by faith.  He gave even clearer promises to such men as Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In the course of time, God caused the descendants of Jacob (or Israel) to dwell in the land of Egypt.  At first the children of Israel lived well in Egypt, no doubt resting and worshiping God on the Sabbath.  But as time wore on, they began to forget the God of their fathers, and the Sabbath was taken away from them.  They were forced to work at hard labor every day by the Egyptians.  It was in this context that the greatest display in the OT of God’s redeeming power and love for His covenant people was manifested.  Moses, the mediator of the old covenant (who was a type of Christ, the mediator of the new covenant) was sent by God to obtain the release of the children of Israel from their cruel bondage to Pharaoh, king of Egypt.  In the Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites saw pictured the irresistible power of God to save sinners from their bondage to Satan, sin, and death.  They experienced the first Passover, when the angel of death passed over their houses, but killed all the Egyptian firstborn.  They were spared not because they were better than the Egyptians, but because their doorways were protected by the blood of a sacrificed lamb, whose life God accepted as a substitute for theirs.  The children of Israel entered into a day of rest and refreshment when they were delivered from their cruel taskmasters at the Red Sea.  From then on, even before they heard the voice of God speaking the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, they were taught strictly to observe the seventh day Sabbath.  They were required to gather the manna each day, but were to gather enough for two days on the sixth day, for none was given on the seventh (Exodus 16:22-30).

     At Mt. Sinai, God made a covenant with the children of Israel.  At the heart of this sacred agreement were the Ten Commandments, which were moral requirements that had to be obeyed.  The morality of the ten commandments was not new, being always what a righteous God required of men, but it was now put into the form of express commandments around which a covenant agreement was made (now called the old covenant).  These commandments were spoken by God in the hearing of all the people who followed Moses.  Moses then received them written by the finger of God on two stone tablets.

     The Ten Commandments are a covenant document between God the King, and His subject people.  The Great King has promised to take this people for His own, to protect, keep, and bless them.  The people for their part promise to keep the laws of the King, the heart of which is the Ten Commandments.

     The fourth commandment is, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”  Exodus 20:8.  It is possible that this was all that was written on the stone, for there are minor differences in the God inspired commentary of Moses about this commandment as given here in Exodus, and his commentary on it as he reviewed the Law a second time forty years later as the people prepared to enter the promised land (Deuteronomy 5).

     Exodus 20:8-11 reads as follows:

    Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you
shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath
of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your
son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle
or your sojourner who stays with you.  For in six days the LORD made
the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested
on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and
made it holy.

     It is clear from the reason given for the commandment here in Exodus that it is no new thing.  The need for a Sabbath rest and its holy nature dates back to creation.

     The reason given for the commandment in Deuteronomy 5 is equally instructive.  The commandment reads essentially the same, except instead of looking back to creation, these words are added:

…so that your male and your female servants may rest as well as you.
And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,
and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand
and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD, your God commanded
you to observe the Sabbath day.               Deuteronomy 5:14-15.

     Here the merciful nature of the Sabbath day is seen.  The covenant man is called to consider the way the Lord has redeemed him from the uninterrupted toil of slavery.  Should he then not be merciful also to those who serve him?  Even the animals are to share in the blessings of the covenant, for a man must not work even his ox, or his donkey, or any other of his animals on a Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:14).  The Sabbath was given for mercy’s sake.

     The fourth commandment, like all the rest of the Ten Commandments, is not ceremonial, but moral in its main purpose.  However, there are some things about it that make it unique.  Apart from God’s revelation, a man’s conscience would not accuse him about the Sabbath, as it might about the other commandments.  All days look alike.  Apart from God’s commandment, the Sabbath is exactly as any other day.  While the commandment is moral, the letter of it is not a moral absolute.  Works of necessity and mercy could be done without guilt.  In fact, as we shall see later, such work must be done, or the spirit of the law would be broken.  “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” is unique in that this commandment can only be broken one day in seven.  However, “Six days shall you labor and do all your work,” is added for the benefit of the man who might have his heart set on breaking all ten of the commandments on, say, a Wednesday.

     Another unique thing about the fourth commandment is that it contains duties both to God (that men should glorify Him by keeping the seventh day holy to Him) and to man (a man’s servants and animals were to be given rest for mercy’s sake).  The three commandments which precede the fourth contain a summary of a man’s duties to God.  The six which follow it contain a man’s duties to other men.  In the middle of the covenant, then, linking together the two tablets of the Law containing a man’s duties both to God and to other men, stands the fourth commandment.  It is a covenant sign between God and His people, as seen below.

     Moses received a great deal of instruction from God on Mt. Sinai.  He received not only the Ten Commandments, but also the whole ceremonial system (directions for building the tabernacle, the many sacrifices, etc.).  Those things were given by God’s grace to protect the man who broke the covenant law, and needed a means of forgiveness.  These things were all in one way or another to picture and point forward to the coming Christ, who would be the one sufficient sacrifice for sin.  After completing all these instructions, God returned to the subject of the Sabbath.  The last thing recorded for us that God told Moses before he came down from the mountain, once more involved instruction about the Sabbath; thereby showing its great importance.  Nothing was to be more strictly enforced, for the Sabbath was a covenant sign between the Lord and His people.

    And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “But as for you, speak
to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely observe My Sabbath;
for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations,
that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.  Therefore
you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you.  Everyone who
profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on
it, that person shall be cut off from among his people.  For six days
work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete
rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall
surely be put to death.  So the sons of Israel shall observe the Sabbath, to
celebrate the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual
covenant.’  It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for 
in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day
He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.”       Exodus 31:12-17.

     The penalty for the covenant breaker under the old covenant was severe.  However, the covenant also had great promises for obedience.

“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 word,
Then you will take delight in the LORD,
And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”    Isaiah 58:13-14.

II.  JESUS AND THE SABBATH

     By the time of Jesus, the religious leaders of Israel had turned the rest and refreshment of the Sabbath into a terrible yoke of hypocritical rules which enslaved the people.  The day had become a burden rather than a blessing.  The four gospel accounts are filled with serious controversies over the Sabbath question between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees.  Jesus was born and lived His life as an old covenant man.  The laws of Moses were as binding on him as they were on the scribes and Pharisees, but they understood those laws very differently.  The Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the law, and of violating the Sabbath in particular.  Jesus, for His part, told His disciples, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill… For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Matthew 5:17, 20.  Jesus here means His hearers to understand at least three things:  1.  That righteousness is defined by the Law of God as given to Moses and understood by the Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets;  2.  That He has come to fulfill that righteousness defined by the Law; and 3.  That the scribes and Pharisees, who pretend to be righteous, actually are condemned by the Law.

     Let us look at just one section of the gospel according to Matthew, and see there the teachings of Jesus about the true meaning of the Sabbath.  The context for Jesus’ teaching is described in Matthew 9:36, which reads, “And seeing the multitudes, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and down cast like sheep without a shepherd.”  Those who were supposed to shepherd Israel, the religious and civil leaders, were in fact wolves in sheep’s clothing.  If false shepherds were not bad enough, the multitudes also toiled under all the other distressing conditions of this fallen world, where sin, hostile spiritual powers, every kind of disease and sickness, and finally death, enslaves every man.  To such as these, Jesus issued an invitation, which I believe to be the most important teaching in Scripture about the true meaning of the Sabbath.

    “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, 
for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest
for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30.

     Jesus is our Sabbath.  Rest in Him!

     The verses above introduce the section of teachings about the Sabbath that we wish to consider, Matthew 12:1-12.  In this section Jesus points out to the critical Pharisees that the Sabbath, the covenant sign, cannot be made to cancel out the very heart of the covenant itself, which is kindness and mercy.  The Sabbath was given for mercy’s sake.  It was made for man, not to enslave him.

     Against mercy and against the word of God (which gives the example of David, who fed his hungry men bread which the Law reserved for the priests alone), the Pharisees said that gathering and eating standing grain by the hungry was forbidden on the Sabbath.  Against mercy and against the power of God which was being manifested, the Pharisees objected to the deliverance and healing by Jesus on the Sabbath of those who were in bondage to demons and diseases.  But, as Jesus pointed out, how could the Sabbath law be made to cancel out the very thing for which it had been given?  “But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Verse7).  Here in a parallel passage, Mark 2:27, are added the words, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”  And Matthew continues, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Verse 8).  Then Jesus demonstrated that He was indeed the Lord of the Sabbath (that is, that He was God) by entering into a synagogue on that Sabbath day and, by the power of God, healing a man with a withered hand.  Before He healed the man, He said to the Pharisees, “What man shall there be among you, who shall have one sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it, and lift it out?  Of how much more value then is man than a sheep!  So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”  (Verses 11-12).  The passage goes on to reveal that the Pharisees were so offended by this, that these defenders of the fourth commandment went out and plotted together that very Sabbath to break the sixth commandment–the one against murder.

     Jesus was indeed the Lord of the Sabbath.  It was His law.  Only He knew the depths of its meaning.  In His life and in His death, He kept it perfectly for us.  In the sixth day of creation, the Father had finished His creation, and entered into His rest the seventh day.  On the sixth day of Jesus’ last week, when He had completed all things necessary for our purification, He said from the cross, “It is finished.”  John 19:30.  Then He said, “Father, into thy hands I commit My Spirit.”  Luke 23:46.  He breathed His last, resting fully in the sure promises of God the Father that He would be raised again to life and glory.  Jesus rested in the grave on the seventh day.  He fulfilled the old covenant sign, the Sabbath, and not only the sign.  He fulfilled every detail of the old covenant.  All of the righteous demands of the Law had been met for all those for whom He died.  It was finished.

III.  THE NEW COVENANT AND THE SABBATH

    …You are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with
ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone,
but on tablets of human hearts…  Our adequacy is from God, who
also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the 
letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
From II Corinthians 3:3-6

    For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former
commandment because of its weakness and uselessness (for the 
Law made nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing
in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.
Hebrews 7:18-19.

     In considering the new covenant and the Sabbath, we are about to look at some verses of NT scripture that may seem at first to teach that the Sabbath is now a dead issue, a relic of the old covenant that no longer applies in any way to the Christian, or new covenant believer.  However, the same might be said for any of the ten commandments of the old covenant, but few would argue that murder, theft, or lying are dead issues for the Christian.  Some try to resolve the problem of the Christian’s relationship to the Law by pointing out that the Law has both ceremonial and moral parts.  The Christian, they say, is only released from the ceremonial parts, such as circumcision, and the sacrifice system, etc.  However, when Paul says in Romans 7:6-7 that “we have been released from the Law,” he is not talking about ceremonial aspects of the Law, for he uses, “You shall not covet,” as an example.  Therefore, even if one could prove, as some have tried to do, that the fourth commandment is not a moral commandment as the other nine are, but ceremonial in nature, the problem would still remain.  The ceremonial aspects of the Law are never separated from the rest of the Law by Scripture.  If you are under the Law, you are bound by all of it (see Galatians 5:2-3).  Christ frees us from the whole Law, and it is especially the moral aspects of the Law from which we most desperately need to be released.  It is moral guilt under the Law which has brought us under sentence of death.  The whole Law was only a shadow.  Christ is the substance that cast that shadow.  Even the righteousness of the Law must be cast off as rubbish (see Philippians 3:8), for the full righteousness of God has come in Christ, thus doing away with the Law forever.  Christ is our righteousness.  It must be remembered, that if the shadow had to be obeyed, how much more must we obey the One who cast the shadow.  Anyone can see through the hypocrisy of those who would try to mock God by using their “liberty in Christ” as a license to sin.  The Law still defines what sin is.  “Sin is the transgression of the law.” I John 3:4, King James Version.  Let no one say, “We are not under law, but under grace,” unless he bears in mind the rest of this passage, which reads, “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  What then?  Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?  May it never be!”  Romans 6:14-15.  Christ, the substance of the shadowy law, demands obedience, and the content of that obedience is the Law.  But, He has freed us from its penalty by His death, and has sent the Holy Spirit to apply it to our hearts, that we can obey.  It is a new and better covenant, inaugurated and sealed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

     It was just such considerations that led Paul to say to the Galatians, “You observe days and months and seasons and years.  I fear for you, that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.”  Galatians 4:10-11.  And in Colossians 2:16-17, he said, “Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day–things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

     Is it not clear that we no longer need old covenant Jewish regulations, festivals, new moon celebrations, or ever Sabbath days?  We now have Christ Himself, the thing that these things of the old covenant all pointed toward.  We are not to be judged by such things any longer.  These things, like circumcision, are all done away.  Christ is now all things to us for salvation.  He is our Sabbath.  We must rest in Him.  We cannot have a righteousness of our own based on keeping the fourth commandment.  Just as John Calvin says in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “During our whole lives we may aim at a constant rest from our own work, in order that the Lord may work in us by his Spirit.”  We must not be guilty of what Calvin calls “the gross and carnal superstition of sabbatism,” thinking to have a righteousness of our own apart from Christ by our observance of a day.  If we change the day from the seventh to the first, but retain the same legalistic attitude about it, Calvin says, “This is nothing else than to insult the Jews, by changing the day, and yet mentally attributing to it the same sanctity; thus retaining the same typical distinction of days as had place among the Jews.”  (See Institutes, Book II, chapter VIII.)

     But, Calvin also says, “But if the reason for which the Lord appointed a Sabbath to the Jews is equally applicable to us, no one can assert that it is a matter with which we have nothing to do.”  (Ibid.)

     Such a reason is set forth in Hebrews 3 and 4, a passage too long to quote much of here, but it should be read.  This passage sets forth the necessity of not trusting in our own works, but to heed the gracious call of God to come and join Him in His rest.  “His works were finished from the foundation of the world.  For He has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’ ”   Hebrews 4:3-4.

     By God’s grace the way is still open for the one who hears God’s voice to enter into God’s rest, the finished work of redemption which the Father and the Son together determined from the foundation of the world.  (Compare Ephesians 1:3-6.)

     “There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.  For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.  Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest…”  Hebrews 4:9-11.

     This is the Christian’s Sabbath–the finished work of God in Christ.  Resting in it is a thing we should make progress in daily, not just one day in seven.

     Of the keeping of one day in seven holy to the Lord, there are also other reasons which apply to us as well as to the old covenant people.  While the Christian is not of the world, he is for the time being still in the world, and it is a world where he must still labor under the conditions of the curse.  We therefore have as much need and right to a weekly day of rest from our toil as did the Jews.  It is necessary for order that this be a particular day, that we may spend it in acts of corporate as well as private worship, being mindful not to neglect those works of necessity and mercy which bring honor to God.  Since mercy is the heart of the new covenant even more obviously than it was of the old, one particular day in seven also needs to be kept as a day of rest for the benefit of those who are subject to us.  While it is needful that some one certain day be kept, the Christian should always be on guard against superstition.

     Let us look briefly at the practice of the NT church.  There is no new law given to the church in the NT that says believers are henceforth to keep the first day of the week as a new day of rest rather than continuing to keep the seventh day of the week.  Nevertheless, the Spirit left no doubt in the hearts and minds of the disciples that they should gather to worship God on the first day of the week.  The reason for this was very simple but powerful–the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Jesus rose sometime between midnight and dawn on the first day of the week.  Nothing was ever the same after that.  Jesus met that evening with His gathered disciples in an upper room.  Exactly one week later, He met with them again.  It is likely that most of His resurrection appearances, which took place over a period of forty days, happened on the first day of the week.

     Again on the first day of the week, the Holy Spirit descended on the gathered disciples at Pentecost, and the gathering of souls into the church began, as the disciples went out that day and preached the gospel with power.  The first day resurrection and the events of Pentecost were prefigured in the Old Testament by the day of First Fruits and the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), as well as other “eighth day” celebrations having to do with harvest.  Jesus is the “first fruits” from the dead (see I Corinthians 15:20-23).  Pentecost was the start of the great threshing season of God’s harvest.  Circumcision, which was performed on the eighth day of a baby boy’s life, also symbolizes a new beginning, as did the many other eight day purification ceremonies.  These things pointed to, and were fulfilled by, the resurrection.  The “eighth day” is, of course, also the first day in a new cycle of seven.

     As the gospel was taken out into the world, the apostles met in the synagogues of the Jews on the seventh day for evangelistic purposes.  However, when a description is given of believers gathering for worship, it is generally on the first day of the week.  The first day is never called a Sabbath in the NT.  “The Sabbath” is a name which always refers to the seventh day.  In Revelation 1:10, the first day of the week is called the Lord’s day.  While this is the only time in Scripture that this name is used, it is obvious from this verse that this name for the day was in wide use by then.  Scripture never uses the name Sunday, and some Christians have objected to using that name for the day on the grounds that it was named for a heathen sun god.  But, at the close of the OT, Malachi the prophet looked forward to the coming of Christ and to His resurrection from the dead.  He said concerning Jesus, “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2; see also Ps.84:11; Luke 1:78-79).  What more appropriate name could be found for the Lord’s day than Sunday, when Jesus, like the sun, came forth conquering and to conquer, making all lesser lights fade and disappear.

     From the incidental references about the church’s Lord’s Day gatherings in the Scripture, it would appear that two meetings were usually held, the first in the early morning, and the second after dark.  This practice commemorated the events of Resurrection Day, by which they remembered the morning when the tomb was found empty and the evening meeting with the risen Lord that same day in the upper room.  It was the common practice to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at the evening meeting.  These early and late meetings were probably also necessary because many of the early Gentile converts were slaves who had no choice but to spend the day working for unconverted masters.  Even under such conditions, they could spend the day rejoicing, because they were resting in the hope of the resurrection.

     The old covenant saint spent his week of labor looking forward to the rest of the Sabbath, which was fulfilled as Christ rested in the grave on the seventh day after having made purification for sins.  The new covenant saint, having the commandment written on his heart by the Spirit, begins his week resting from his own works and rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ.  In Christ’s resurrection the believer sees the sure hope of his own resurrection on the great Day of the Lord, the consummation of the new covenant.  It will be the Lord’s eighth day, the first day of a new work of creation.  This work has already been accomplished in principle in the resurrection of Christ.  The new Day of the Lord has already dawned in the hearts of the believers.  Those who were dead in their trespasses and sins were raised to a life of faith by the power of the Spirit when they heard the good news preached to them (see Ephesians 2).  For all these reasons, the NT saints came by the leading of the Holy Spirit to celebrate the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, and to keep it holy, resting in it in the hope of the resurrection.  They gathered themselves together to pray, to hear the preaching of the word, to celebrate the Lord’s supper, and to gather collections for the needs of the poor.  It was a new day for a new age, when the gospel of the power of God to save sinners was preached, no longer just to Jews, but to the whole world.

IV.  THE CHRISTIAN AND THE SABBATH

     We could conclude by spending a great deal of time looking at the present condition of Lord’s Day practice, but if you are a believer, you have the Spirit, and have no need to be instructed.  You know that the greed and restlessness of the world and its evil ruler will always be trying to take away the rights of the child of God.  Even our own flesh is at war against us.  The wicked always see the commandment as a restraint on their liberty (and so it is a restraint on their liberty to sin).  But, the Christian has true liberty in Christ.  It is the liberty to enjoy doing the fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law.  The keeping of the Lord’s Day from the heart, by the Christian, is no less a covenant sign than was the keeping of the seventh day by the OT believer.

     Our King has decreed a day of rest for our sakes, so that we may worship Him.  We need to encourage each other on the Lord’s Day, so that we do not lose heart, for, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”  Romans 13:12, King James Version.  Remember the great promises of the covenant for those who persevere in the faith.  They shall enter the eternal rest of God where, “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more;  neither shall the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them to springs of the water of life; and God shall wipe every tear from their eyes.”  Revelation 7:16-17.

     But the covenant also warns those who are slaves to the restless spirit who rules this present world, and who cannot rest in God.  They, like the master they serve, will have no rest in judgment, but, “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”  Revelation 20:10.

     In considering what our practice should be on the Lord’s Day, remember these words of the apostle John.

    And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears,
we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at
His coming.  If you know that He is righteous, you know that every 
one also who practices righteousness is born in Him.
I John 2:28-29.

     These words of the Psalmist beautifully summarize the meaning of the Lord’s Day for the believer.

I shall not die, but live,
And tell of the works of the Lord…
The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief corner stone.
This is the LORD’S doing.
It is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day which the LORD has made;
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:17, 22-24.