I write a brief meditation for our church to us on Saturday evenings as we prepare for worship. This is the one for July 10, 2022.
Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Are we ready for it? Do we long for it to begin? Do we view it as a day of rest and gladness for our souls? Or is it simply another Sunday? It is easy to take for granted the coming of the Lord’s Day. Many Christians spend little if any time thinking about or preparing for it. Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, by necessity, structure their lives around keeping the Sabbath once every week. We may rightly say this is because of a deficient understanding of the Sabbath law and a legalistic observance of it. We may rightly affirm that Christ has delivered us from such ceremonial strictures. But have we been set free in Christ so that we may think little or nothing of the Lord’s Day as it approaches or when it arrives? Have we not been set free from the old law so that we might serve the Lord with greater joy, freedom, and devotion?
This is not to guilt us into engaging in Lord’s Day preparation. As we’ve said many times before, the Sabbath is a day of joy and feasting, not of sadness and fasting. It is a blessing appointed for man, not a burden which man must observe and endure. The point is not guilt but encouragement. You would not enjoy a holiday with your family if you did not prepare for it. If you simply show up for vacation with all of your worries, cares, work, and distractions, you will find neither rest nor rejoicing in the consecrated time. So too, when we approach the Lord’s Day as just another day, albeit a day when we do not have to go to work first thing in the morning, when our minds are filled with worldly things and our day is filled with the distraction of this present age, then it is no wonder we find little joy or substance in the Christian Sabbath.
God has called us to rest and rejoice on the Lord’s Day. It is the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection and, therefore, our own. It is a festival that commemorates what was done and contemplates what God is still doing and will yet do. It is not true that we get from the Lord’s Day what we put into it. The grace that is communicated there is not from within us but given to us from above. But it is true that we will not get from it what God intends to give unless we first give ourselves to it and him. The blessings of the Lord’s Day are received by faith, as are all the blessings of redemption. So shake yourself free from the worries, work, and worldliness of this present age. Lift up your heads and behold your God. Delight yourself in the Son and the gift of his grace. Be filled with his Spirit, and sing like one who is intoxicated with the joy of the Lord. Christ is risen! Sin and death have been conquered! God’s children will live forevermore! --JME
