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The Lord Jesus finished His
work when upon the earth--blessedly, gloriously finished it--but where did
He spend the Sabbath day? In the tomb! And what was man
doing while the Son of God was in the grave? He was observing the
Sabbath day! What a thought! The Lord Jesus in His grave to
repair a broken Sabbath, and yet man attempting to keep the Sabbath as
though it were not broken at all! It was man’s Sabbath, and
not God’s. It was a Sabbath without the Saviour--an empty,
powerless, worthless, because Christless and Godless, form.
But some will say, The day
has been changed, while all the principles belonging to it remain the
same. Where is the divine warrant for such a statement?
Surely, if the Word of God stated it, there could be nothing easier than
to produce it. But the fact is, there is none; on the contrary, the
distinction is most fully maintained in the New Testament. Take one
example, in proof: "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn
towards the first day of the week" (Matt. 28:1). There is no
mention here of the seventh day being changed to the first day; nor of any
transfer of the Sabbath from the one to the other.
The first day of the week is
not the Sabbath changed, but altogether a new day. It is the first
day of a new period, and not the last day of an old. The seventh day
stands connected with the earth and earthly rest; the first day of the
week, on the contrary, introduces us to heaven and heavenly rest,
now. This makes a vast difference in the principle. If I
celebrate the seventh day, it marks me as an earthly man, inasmuch as that
day is clearly the rest of earth--creation rest; but if I am taught by the
Word and Spirit of God to understand the meaning of the first day of the
week, I shall at once apprehend its immediate connection with that new and
heavenly order of things, of which the death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus form the foundation.
The seventh day appertained
to Israel and to earth: the first day of the week appertains to the Church
and to heaven. Further, Israel was commanded to observe the
Sabbath day: the Body is privileged to enjoy the first day of the
week. The former was the test of Israel’s moral condition:
the latter is the significant proof of the Church’s eternal
acceptance. That made manifest what Israel could do for God:
this perfectly declares what the Father has done for us.
It is quite impossible to
over-estimate the value and importance of the Lord’s day, as the first
day of the week is termed (Rev. 1:10). Being the day the Lord Jesus
rose from the dead, it sets forth, not the completion of creation, but the
full and glorious triumph of redemption. Nor should we regard the
celebration of the first day of the week as a matter of bondage, or as a
yoke put on the neck of a believer. There is not so much as a single
passage of Scripture in which the first day of the week is called the
Sabbath day, whereas there is abundant proof of their entire distinctness.
But let it not be supposed
that we lose sight of the important fact that the Sabbath will again be
celebrated in the land of Israel, and over the entire creation. It
assuredly will. "There remaineth a rest for the people of
God" (Heb. 4:9). The Son of Man shall resume His position of
government over the whole earth, and there will be a glorious Sabbath--a
rest which sin shall never interrupt. But in the meantime, do not
bind down the Christian, as with an iron rule, to observe the seventh day,
when it is his high and holy privilege to observe the first. Do not
bring him down from heaven, where he can rest, to a cursed and
blood-stained earth, where he cannot. Do not ask him to keep a day
which his Saviour spent in the tomb, instead of that blessed day on which
He arose from it! |
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