Last time I said I was going to look at four small pictures from this text. Vignette #1 and #2 I am going to combine: Thomas and the Purpose of the Lord’s Day
As I have mentioned in the past, I think Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas’ unique problem was not his doubt, sinful as it was, the other disciples were no different,
they doubted and they feared as well, after all they were locked away in a room shaking in their sandals. They were not beaming with confidence and great faith, any more or less, than Thomas, and yet Thomas is forever known as…doubting Thomas.
Thomas’ unique problem was that he was not with the gathered saints of God to meet the risen Christ. He was not where he should have been and he missed it…and his
life, his lack of faith, evidenced the fact that he had not been where the others had been, in the presence of the living Christ at Christ’s appointed gathering.
His doubt was not squelched, and was not put to death. His faith was not encouraged. His fear was not put to rest. And why? Because he was not in the presence of the
risen Savior that he might be assured and given courage and faith, to bask in the victory and glory of God. He had to wait one week, didn’t he? He had to wait until the next Sabbath, the next time the Risen Jesus meets with his church.
Do you see, brothers and sisters, why the Lord Jesus has ordained the day of light, the Christian Sabbath and why there is nothing you do more important or more necessary
to your living than this?
I am convinced that in Thomas we get a condensed picture of what happens when someone, who professes faith, ignores the Lord’s Day, or stays away. This picture is
compressed for us over a one week period of time in Thomas’ life, but our experience will be the same, perhaps a bit more spread out, if we neglect meeting with the risen Savior.
What I want us to grasp, is that Jesus pronounces His peace, which we looked at last week, upon a gathered company, a company representative of his church particularly
gathered in the Christian Sabbath context, the first Christian Sabbath.
The 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, have you ever thought about that? How it is that in Genesis 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, the expectation of light coming. But the new Sabbath, the new creation, coming in Christ’s victory begins with the breaking of light, 21:4, 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. To miss worship, to miss
the appointed fellowship with Christ, is to miss Christ Himself.
To put aside the Sabbath day, to say good-by to the Sabbath, to stay home, or go out to do other things, 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.
This experience 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 Jesus in this
heavenly ordained way.
It is in worship, it is on the 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.
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. That is to read the Bible on a horizontal level only. Our application is not to go to church…but to believe God that by faith, we go to heaven…we go to Him, we add our voices to the multitude in
the praises of the resurrected Savior of sinners.
Do you see how important our worship is? Now, I am not saying that a person cannot have a relationship with the Lord outside of this, that is absurd. But John is seeking
to communicate to us the same thing that the Bible has sought to communicate throughout redemptive history. That there is something about the called meeting of the church on the Sabbath where the presence of God is made known in a way that it never is anywhere
else.
David was in the wilderness running from Absalom, he knew God was with him in the wilderness, he knew he could pray and worship God there, and yet he yearned and longed
for the courts of the Lord. He yearned to go up with the people of God to the place of corporate worship because he knew there was something there that could not be had anywhere else. And because he could not go there, he was deeply grieved.
The Psalmist says it very bluntly, the Lord loves the gates of Zion, the corporate gathering of God’s people) more than all the dwellings of Jacob, the individual
gathering of God’s people. He loves when we worship Him in our quite time, but he loves the church’s gathering and this…more.
If the Christian view of worship and the called Sabbath Day of God is shallow, trite, flippant, irrelevant, easy to blow off for other things, listen carefully, if
that is the case then you will see in that Christian’s life the same attitude toward Jesus himself. If meeting with the risen Savior, as appointed by the Risen Savior is not important, is not of ultimate importance, then who are we kidding…for neither is
living for the Lord.
This is the testimony of God, there is such a connection made between Christ and the Sabbath day, that our neglect of it, our carelessness about it, is a neglect and
a carelessness about Jesus himself.
Remember how we saw that peace and Jesus are the same, to have Jesus means we have peace, the two are bound together? Well, so uniquely bound is Christ to the assembly
of those he loves on the Sabbath that our failure or refusal to love it, to anticipate it, to make it our chief joy, is to a large degree, a failure and refusal to so love, anticipate and make Christ our chief joy. This is the divinely appointed interaction
between heaven and earth! Thomas learned that and we too will find peace as we learn it.
Prayer: Father, help me to make much of your gifts and provisions chiefly among them the means of grace that are for your people, given on the Holy Day you have
set apart for us. Help me to make much of it and to expect much from it that I would consider the Sabbath a delight, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn : Lord of the Sabbath, Here Us Pray