On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace
be with you.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” 24
Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29
Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
One of the things we have learned together as a church family is this: Hard teaching makes soft hearts and soft teaching makes hard hearts.
Many think that by preaching easy things and making what the Bible says not binding and making God all love and grace and no justice and judgment will make the church
grow and bring peace and comfort to folks…but this is not true. The hard teaching of the Scripture breaks up the hard hearts of men and women whose knees won’t bend to Christ. At the same time, soft teaching…teaching that recoils from Biblical truth and wants
everything to be cute and cuddly…this makes the heart hard.
For the next couple of mornings we are going to focus on the pattern of life that Jesus sets for his church as it centers around the Sabbath day. Hopefully the straight
forward truth of God’s Word will continue to break up the fallow ground of our hearts!
We have done a lot of teaching about what the Bible says about worship…and we will not cover all of that, but a few principles:
The Lord has established worship according to the pattern of heaven that was the purpose of Moses being taken up to heaven, shown the realities there, and then told
to make the tabernacle according to that pattern. So, the worship of God’s people is to be an entering into the realities of heaven itself, we understand that.
However, we are not simply to understand the risen Christ with his people on the Lord’s Day, we are to participate in the sweetness of that blessed fellowship. By
the Spirit, by faith, we are called to enter into the very presence of Christ before the throne of God, as worship is an entrance into heaven itself.
Did you know that Jerusalem was built on a hill? Why do you suppose? Why did the people have to go UP to worship? Was God just interested in making sure they got a
little exercise? And then in the Psalter we have a bunch of psalms called Psalms of Ascent. The worshippers sang them as they went up to worship! Their going up was a picture for them of the reality of what worship is, an entrance, by faith, into the presence
of God Himself.
John is calling us to the vital vision that exists between the risen Christ and His church and that in the assembly, in the Sabbath gathering of the church, the Living
Xp is present to give to His people, as at no other time. This vital union is so focused on the new pattern, that if you are not at the appointed place on the appointed day, then you miss meeting with the Risen Christ in this heavenly ordained way.
The Lord has given us a day of celebration, a day where we experience the realities of the new heavens and the new earth in the presence of Jesus, what could be a
greater gift? It is in the ordained worship of the church, on the Christian Sabbath day that the means of Grace, that God’s ways of giving us what we need are made manifest and received by faith by those who love Him.
I want to emphasize something quite different and yet, quite necessary in the work of the resurrected Savior, necessary for the glory of God and necessary for your
life, if indeed you are to have it, abundantly.
John is as much a preacher as he is a historian. John declares to us in his account of the life of Christ not just what happened but what it all means and what it
means for the church that STAYS in the world even as Jesus Himself leaves the world. John places in front of us a remarkable sermon about Christ and His significance, and in this 20th chapter a remarkable sermon about the Christian Sabbath, even
the first Christian Sabbath, the church’s life…the church’s worship…and the church’s mission as we are confronted again by the resurrected Jesus.
We have recently spoken about the peace that the risen Christ extends to the disciples. It is noted three times, verses 19, 21, 26. But what I want us to grasp is
that Jesus pronounces this peace upon a gathered company, a company representative of his church particularly gathered in the Christian Sabbath context, the first Christian Sabbath. The Christian Sabbath brings to bear the realities of the new creation, it
brings the realities of what the church is to experience in relation to the work of God in Christ Jesus.
Think of this: In the OT, the Sabbath was kept from sun down until sun down. This is in reflection of what we read in Genesis, chapter one, about creation and how
the days were counted. We do not read it was morning and evening, but rather, we read that it was evening and morning, the first day…evening and morning the second day. In the OT Sabbath, following that creation pattern, as the Sabbath is said to do in Exodus
20, we move from darkness, evening, to light, morning, almost as if there is in the old economy, there is the expectation of light coming.
But the new Sabbath, the new creation, coming in Christ’s victory begins with the breaking of light and is marked by the pattern of Jesus meeting with his own, morning
and evening. The pattern is set and set by the risen Jesus. The focus is there, at the beginning, in meeting with the risen Christ, on the Sabbath day. The church’s love is inflamed, our obedience filled with rejoicing, our penitence with the assurance of
sins forgiven and our hope renewed. And in and through meeting with the risen Savior the church is empowered for her mission in the world.
To miss worship, to miss the appointed fellowship with Christ, is to miss Christ Himself, is to miss…heaven. To put aside the Sabbath day, to say good-by to the Sabbath,
to stay home, or go out, or whatever it is that has more importance at the moment…which sadly so many are doing is to miss:
*Jesus’ ordained gathering wherein He meets with His other worldly people.
*It is to miss gathering before the face of the Savior, in the heavenly places.
*It is to miss the appointed way of God to hear the voice of Jesus speak to you.
*It is to miss the nourishment that God says is to our faith, in and through the sacraments.
*It is to miss the supernatural empowering of heaven to live faithfully in our calling in this present evil age.
And no, you may not choose any day to be YOUR Sabbath day, as if the Lord had left it up to our convenience to choose a day when we can summon Him. God has ordained
the day wherein He has summoned US, His gathered people to meet with the resurrected Christ. And No, we may not keep the Sabbath from Saturday evening to Sunday evening. Jesus set the pattern for the church and the Christian Sabbath is the celebration of light,
even as Jesus said He is the light of the world.
The Lord has said that on the Sabbath day, the first day of the week, the Resurrected Christ meets with his people…heaven and earth intersect on this divinely ordained,
weekly given gift. Let me pause before getting back to the text so that there is no misunderstanding. You might be thinking: “Ok, Pastor, so the application of this is that we should go to church.”
No, that is not it…that is to miss the point entirely. That is to read the Bible on a horizontal level only. Our application is not to be doing but believing…believing
the promises of God so the application is not to go to church, but to meet with the resurrected Christ by faith, before the throne of God. It is to realize the unspeakable gift that God has given to His people gathered, that we might imitate heaven and get
a taste of what is ours forever.
Tomorrow we will see this point driven home in the disciple Thomas.
Prayer: Father, thank you for your gift of the Sabbath Day and the blessing of meeting with the resurrected Savior. Help me to be more mindful of all that You have
for me and for Your people when we are gathered together on that holy day! Help me to better prepare my heart for it, to attend to it with joy and thanksgiving and to live out of that day to the glory of my King. In Jesus name, Amen.
Song: Don’t Forget the Sabbath
