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THE LORD'S DAY (THE SABBATH AND THE DAY OF THE
LORD.) A very sacred
verse in the Bible is found in John chapter 14. In
verse 23 we read:
Jesus replied,”
If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My
Father will love him and
we
will come to him and
make our
home
with
him". God created and
continues to sustain the world so that He might be
with us in love and
fellowship, making His home
among us so that we might find
our home with
Him.
In the beginning
of the Bible we read that God
walks with
man
in the
garden that He has
made.
At the end of the Bible
we
read 'Now the dwelling of God is with men
and He
will live with them'.
Between the beginning and the end of the
Bible we
read how man falls
into sin and evil so
that
pride,
hatred,
and
violence,
come into the
world. Our home
(this
wonderful earth) becomes
separate from God's home in
heaven. Our world
becomes
subject to decay,
tragedy, and
death and heaven
becomes
subject to grief at a
lost world. The
central message of the Bible
is that through the
history of
the chosen people,
focused in the life,
death and resurrection of
Christ, God, at great cost
to
Himself, brings
heaven and earth back together by
suffering the judgement deserved by us
in Himself.
The resurrection
and ascension of Christ take us back to God.
The
result is that His home
and our home are
reunited.
At the beginning
of this same chapter 14 we read
the
familiar
words: Let not your
hearts be troubled neither let them be afraid, in My
Father's house are
many
abiding
places. But before the
day we see heaven, God wishes to make His home with
us here and now.
In John 14 we
read how Jesus will accomplish this great reunion of
heaven and earth. He
will
depart this world in
death
and return in
resurrection and give the
Holy
Spirit
to His people. In verse 20 we
read: In that day you will realise that I am in My Father,
and you are in me, and I am in
you. The phrases ‘IN
THAT DAY' or the 'DAY OF THE LORD' are used
in the Old Testament to
speak
of the time when the
LORD
would come IN PERSON to be
with His
people. For
the
disciples THAT DAY
would be the day of Jesus’
resurrection when they would recognise that Jesus
with them is God with
them.
From that time on, the
Day of
Resurrection
(Sunday)[1] was called 'THE LORD'S DAY. We gather
together in Church each Lord's Day so that the Lord
might dwell among us
and abide
with us not only as
individuals but as His people.
We cannot
truly
fellowship
with God if we do
not bother to fellowship with His
people. God's true home is
with His
people. At present the
Lord's Day is only one in seven. On the other
six days we take our
place in
the workaday world.
But one
day in the future our
ordinary
workaday
world will
come to an end. We
will die
and leave it behind. Not
only so, but the
world as it is now will not last
forever. It too
will
end.
Then the Lord's
Day
will become
everything. It
will have no end.
In Genesis 1 and
2 we read how God created
everything in
successive
stages (days). At
the
end of each day we read:
'and there was
morning and evening the first (or second, third..)
day.' But on the
seventh (Sabbath) day God rests to enjoy all His
wonderful work. It does
not
say 'there was morning
and
evening the seventh day.'
Why
not? Jewish
scholars tell
us that
the Sabbath is meant
to have
no end.
This is why we
must always honour and love the Lord's day and be
determined to enjoy it
for its
full length. Sadly
for
many
the Lord's day has
shrunk
only to the
Lord's hour
or
disappeared
altogether. If you and I
have opened the door of our lives to the Lord of
all, then we will not let
that
happen to us. In
Revelation
3.20 we
read: Behold I stand
at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and
opens the door, I will
come in
and eat with him and
he
with
me. [1] The Resurrection of Jesus was not just the resuscitation of a corpse; His new life transcended the space-time of this world. Thus arguments as to when exactly He rose are beside the point. Whenever he rose, He would not be merely waiting about or hiding. His new Resurrected life lay at the boundary of this world of space and time, and the eternal world with its own space and time. The fact is that He chose to reveal His conquest of death on the Sunday morning at dawn – or just before. When did He actually conquer death? Well one answer could be ‘before the foundation of the world’. (Revelation 13:8)
Howard Taylor. September 2009. If any
of the above has assisted you in your
thinking, study or preparation
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