pilgrim people

Two Sundays ago, I preached on Genesis 47 and "The Days of Our Sojourning." In making the point that God's people (like Israel in Goshen) are a peculiar people (in addition to a pilgrim people and preserved people), I said something that caused a couple of people to ask for clarification later. I said that one of the ways in which God's people are peculiar to the world is by being a people who, "on the holy day of each week, withdraw from the culture and come together as God's holy covenant community in order to hear God's peculiar speech...of Christ and him crucified."

Although we live, work, and go to school in the common realm of the kingdom of man and participate in common cultural activity, we withdraw from that common cultural activity on the one day that God has set aside and blessed for worship and rest. On that day, we gather together as the holy, peculiar, covenant assembly in order for God to renew his covenant with us and serve us through his preached Word and administered table.

Fine. That much we get (hopefully). The worship service is a withdraw from culture. It is holy, not common. It is completely different than anything we experience throughout the week. It is the Divine Service, God coming down and serving his people through the weakness of the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

But what about the rest of the day? What does it mean to keep the Lord's Day? And why should we?

There are seven brief points that I want to make. I will only make the first two in this post, which are as follows:

I. The Sabbath is a Creation Ordinance Patterned after God's Own Rest

If we want to understand the basis for keeping the Lord's Day, we must not merely go back to the Ten Commandments at Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5; rather, we must go back to the opening pages of the Bible. The Israelites did not invent the Sabbath; God did. And he did not invent it on Mount Sinai, but in the Garden. In Gen 2.2-3 we read: “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”

From the very beginning, God gave man a weekly, sabbatical pattern in which to live. This is very important for us to grasp because – whether we have realized it or not – Sabbath-keeping it is part of our responsibility as image-bearers of God. Just as God rules over creation, he has called his image-bearers to rule and exercise dominion over creation (Gen 1.26-28). Just as God worked in creation, he has called his image-bearers to work as part of his providential care for the world (Gen 2.15). And just as God rested after making all things in creation, he calls his image-bearers to rest and use the day that he sanctified and made holy from the beginning (Gen 2.2-3).

II. From the Beginning, the Sabbath had an Eschatological Focus

By “eschatological focus” I mean a focus that looks ahead to the glory of the age to come. The Sabbath was given by God to point Adam to the eternal, heavenly rest that would be his if he remained faithful in all his duty, faithful in that covenant into which God placed him. While we do not know how many weeks Adam lived in the Garden, we do know that every seventh day was a reminder of something greater that would be his if he obeyed the conditions of the Covenant of Works. Every seventh day pointed him to the glorious eternal Sabbath of heaven.

This is the interpretation that the writer to the Hebrews places on the Sabbath when he says, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” (Heb 4.9) Because Christ, the Second Adam, finished the work which the first Adam failed to do, the Sabbath now functions as a weekly sign that points us to the glorious consummation and eternal Sabbath rest that is yet to come in the new heavens and new earth. As Michael Horton has rightly pointed out: “The Sabbath is the weekly link to both past creation and future consummation.”

(Note: I highly recommend reading Mike's chapter, "Taking a Break From the Buzz" in his epic book on worship, A Better Way)

More to come on this...