Would it blow your mind? It blew my mind. I always thought that the week was arranged with Monday at the beginning, and Sunday at the end. And that made sense! It made sense that the weekend was the end of the week (simple, right?) I always assumed, naturally, that the Sabbath that God took off was Sunday. Why wouldn't it be? Why would it be any other day?
And then imagine my surprise when I found out that the Sabbath, in the Bible, was Saturday. God made light on Sunday, and then continued to create all the way through that week and then He rested on Saturday. So where do we get off going to church on a Sunday?
Well, this is a very interesting topic of conversation, and it's worth asking ourselves some serious questions about why we do what we do. Because again, it's not set in stone that we should worship on a Sunday, and indeed, if we were to rest on a day set by scripture, it wouldn't be Sunday.
So what was Saturday for? Well, if you take the story of creation seriously (and you should, because it's a matter of faith, don't you know), then you'll know that God created everything that there is, and nothing that there isn't, in a six day period. On day one, he spoke light into existence. On day two, God divided the waters from the waters, and created dry land. On day three, the earth brought forth vegetation, and then on thye fourth day, the stars all showed up and stuff. And then on the fifth day, living creatures from the sky and land showed up. And then on the sixth day, living creatures on the earth (including people) showed up. And that was a Friday. And then came Saturday, when all the work of creation was done, was wrapped up, and was finished. And then God looked at all the work he had done, and saw that it was good, and he rested.
The Sabbath, and the insistence on not working on the Sabbath, was bound to that concept: that God rested on the seventh day, and set aside his Sabbath as a time when people should rest. Moses passed that along to the people of Israel in the ten commandments, the decalogue, saying to them:
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For six
days you shall labour and do all your work. But the
seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall not
do any work - you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave,
your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days, the
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but rested on the
seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and consecrated it.
Exodus 20:8-11
Seems simple enough, doesn't it? But as with everything else, you need to ask yourself why. The Christian life should never be as simple as saying 'God says so, so I say okay.' As I've said before on the blog, something isn't wrong because God forbids it: God forbids it because it's wrong. And that's a vital distinction. A very very important distinction. And all the commands of God in the Bible, you need to find out why God was commanding this sort of stuff, or the Bible will end up being a rather closed book. Or if it's open, it'll be bad stuff.
And when you start poking around in the Old Testament, you'll find a bunch of stuff. You'll find a bunch of strange commandments from God, and you probably won't know what to do with it. You'll get a bit cross, because a great deal of things that you find in the Old Testament seem to be a little bit strange or offensive. The commands of God seem to be abrasive and difficult for us to keep. Have you ever read Leviticus? If not, you're not going to like it. Nor are you going to like Deuteronomy, or the back 9 of Exodus,The reason that you're not going to like any of this stuff is because it all settles disquietingly on our ears. And there are two reasons they settle disquietingly on our ears:
1 - what's the point?
2 - seems like a lot of work.
But all this stuff in the Old Testament, it was designed for a couple of things - first of all, to set Israel apart, and secondly, to bring about the messiah. The Christ.
If you read through the Old Testament, you might get the idea that God is in the real estate business, or that he likes Israel for arbitrary reasons. But he doesn't, and he isn't. He's into Israel because Israel is going to be the source of the messiah, the savior of the entire world. And stuff like Jonah, which is a story that stands perfectly well on its own, is also a story about Jesus. The sign of Jonah, where he was in the belly of the great fish for three days, it's a story about how Jesus was in the belly of the earth for three days. And the story of the Sabbath, where God rests, it's also a story about Jesus. When he rested.
No, Jesus didn't take Saturdays off all the time, as he did a lot of healing on the Sabbath, and made people upset, but what he was doing was restoring God's joy and blessing to people on the Sabbath. And the story of the Sabbath is intricately linked to the story of the death of Christ. Because Jesus did quite prominently take one Saturday off. Can you think of which one?
Give you a hint. It's the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
That was the day when God rested again. He rested in the week of creation, and he rested before the resurrection. Why was there that time between the death and the resurrection? To fulfill the Sabbath.
Observant Jews today still observe the Sabbath, still observe the Sabbath on Saturday, and still do no work (or as little as possible). They won't cook, won't take elevators, won't , well, won't do too much of anything. Nothing resembling work, and they do that because they recall the rest that God himself took on that day. And what do we as Christians celebrate on Sunday? We celebrate the Lord's day.
Again, this is still completely linked to the story of Easter. We Christians celebrate something pretty important on Sundays, something tied into the readings for this last Sunday. The Old Testament reading was of Elijah and the widow's son from 1 Kings 17. The Gospel readings was from Luke 7, about the widow's son at Nain. And what are these passages about? They're about resurrection. The widow's son in 1 Kings was dead. No breath left in him (or in Hebrew, no spirit left in him). And in Nain, the widow's son was also dead. These young men were both brown bread, and in the scriptures, with the Lord's activity, we see them restored to life. We see God's power over life and death, we see him not just performing CPR, but putting the living spirit back into these young gentlemen. And in this activity, what do we see? We see death itself being worked backwards, and life, real life, being restored. how is that done? It's done in Elijah's case by praying to God, and asking God to restore the young man's life, which God does. But in the case of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself speaks to the deceased young man of Nain, and calls him to life. Jesus does the same thing with Lazarus, not asking permission from God, but essentially ordering him, speaking him, back to life. Much in the same way that God spoke the universe into existence ten thousand years ago, Jesus, the word of God made flesh, speaks life into people.
And then comes the Sunday, the day we celebrate because that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead, when Jesus raised himself. This is why we celebrate on Sunday, and why we worship on Sunday, and why anything on Sunday - because we're celebrating the Lord's resurrection. We're celebrating the moment when God quite visibly declared in the world that death is not the end, and that there is hope for the future - there is always hope for the future. No matter how bedraggled or worn out we are, even if we're actually dead, there's hope for the future.
Every Sunday then, is a mini-Easter. You see that in lent, which is 40 days plus Sundays, because each Sunday is like Easter all over again. On Sundays, we celebrate not that God rested, but we celebrate that he did work. The big work. The work that restored life and peace to us all. The work that undid death, and granted us salvation
PJ.
1 - what's the point?
2 - seems like a lot of work.
But all this stuff in the Old Testament, it was designed for a couple of things - first of all, to set Israel apart, and secondly, to bring about the messiah. The Christ.
If you read through the Old Testament, you might get the idea that God is in the real estate business, or that he likes Israel for arbitrary reasons. But he doesn't, and he isn't. He's into Israel because Israel is going to be the source of the messiah, the savior of the entire world. And stuff like Jonah, which is a story that stands perfectly well on its own, is also a story about Jesus. The sign of Jonah, where he was in the belly of the great fish for three days, it's a story about how Jesus was in the belly of the earth for three days. And the story of the Sabbath, where God rests, it's also a story about Jesus. When he rested.
No, Jesus didn't take Saturdays off all the time, as he did a lot of healing on the Sabbath, and made people upset, but what he was doing was restoring God's joy and blessing to people on the Sabbath. And the story of the Sabbath is intricately linked to the story of the death of Christ. Because Jesus did quite prominently take one Saturday off. Can you think of which one?
Give you a hint. It's the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
That was the day when God rested again. He rested in the week of creation, and he rested before the resurrection. Why was there that time between the death and the resurrection? To fulfill the Sabbath.
Observant Jews today still observe the Sabbath, still observe the Sabbath on Saturday, and still do no work (or as little as possible). They won't cook, won't take elevators, won't , well, won't do too much of anything. Nothing resembling work, and they do that because they recall the rest that God himself took on that day. And what do we as Christians celebrate on Sunday? We celebrate the Lord's day.
Again, this is still completely linked to the story of Easter. We Christians celebrate something pretty important on Sundays, something tied into the readings for this last Sunday. The Old Testament reading was of Elijah and the widow's son from 1 Kings 17. The Gospel readings was from Luke 7, about the widow's son at Nain. And what are these passages about? They're about resurrection. The widow's son in 1 Kings was dead. No breath left in him (or in Hebrew, no spirit left in him). And in Nain, the widow's son was also dead. These young men were both brown bread, and in the scriptures, with the Lord's activity, we see them restored to life. We see God's power over life and death, we see him not just performing CPR, but putting the living spirit back into these young gentlemen. And in this activity, what do we see? We see death itself being worked backwards, and life, real life, being restored. how is that done? It's done in Elijah's case by praying to God, and asking God to restore the young man's life, which God does. But in the case of Jesus Christ, Jesus himself speaks to the deceased young man of Nain, and calls him to life. Jesus does the same thing with Lazarus, not asking permission from God, but essentially ordering him, speaking him, back to life. Much in the same way that God spoke the universe into existence ten thousand years ago, Jesus, the word of God made flesh, speaks life into people. And then comes the Sunday, the day we celebrate because that was the day that Jesus rose from the dead, when Jesus raised himself. This is why we celebrate on Sunday, and why we worship on Sunday, and why anything on Sunday - because we're celebrating the Lord's resurrection. We're celebrating the moment when God quite visibly declared in the world that death is not the end, and that there is hope for the future - there is always hope for the future. No matter how bedraggled or worn out we are, even if we're actually dead, there's hope for the future.
Every Sunday then, is a mini-Easter. You see that in lent, which is 40 days plus Sundays, because each Sunday is like Easter all over again. On Sundays, we celebrate not that God rested, but we celebrate that he did work. The big work. The work that restored life and peace to us all. The work that undid death, and granted us salvation
PJ.
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