We are about to consider at this time, as most of you know, the testimony of scripture to “the Lord's-day,” a term which is no invention of man. Indeed, that very phrase of itself, given as it is by the Holy Ghost, to one who has an adequate sense of the force of scripture, would be conclusive for the object now in view; which is to assert its authority, to explain its special place in God's word, and to enforce its claims on every Christian heart. It is scarcely needful to say that I am not about to present it as having anything to do with the sabbath. Such a reference must always weaken and obscure the Lord's-day. In fact, it tends to destroy the character of an institution which those who love the Lord desire to hold firmly and enjoy with all their hearts.
Of course I am aware that there are many pious men who think that there must be a sensible loss, if we exclude from the Lord's-day the place which the sabbath possessed of old; and this indeed justly in the minds of those saints of God who had peculiar associations with Israel before our Lord came, and all through His earthly ministry. It is not, again, as in the least degree denying the importance of the sabbath that this distinctness of character is asserted; for it will fall within the scope of what I am now about to open if I a little draw out the contrast between the two days. But I say “contrast” advisedly. It will be my place to show that it is not simply a question of what is expedient, or what the church has inaugurated, or what the world acknowledges in the codes of law. I claim for it divine authority, although that authority be exercised in a characteristic manner. This may strike the minds of some Christians as singular, for the simple reason, that they have been habitually accustomed to regard the law as the only expression of divine will.
One understands that such should be the thought of an infidel. I remember sometime ago reading —an unhappy task, but still it did come within the scope of my duty to read—the essay of a well-known freethinker of our day, who takes this very ground—that the only thing which is authoritative, definite, and even positive, is the law. This we can understand of course in an unbeliever, for the sad and sufficient reason that Christ is no more than a blank to him. He may admire this or that in Christ, but he sees neither His personal glory nor the perfection of His ways as displaying God and man here below. Still it does seem an egregious thing that any person looking at the Ten Commandments should say that there alone, not in Christ, we find what is positive, and that what the New Testament furnishes is only negative. For any one to read, “Thou shalt not do this,” and “Thou shalt not do that,” and then declare that this is positive, on the one hand, and on the other to behold the revelation of God in Christ in the New Testament, and then tell me that this is negative, is certainly strong. Yet one can understand an infidel saying so; but it is no less singular than painful that children of God in our day should be found on the same platform as far as this is concerned. They at least ought to know that Christ alone, not the law, is the perfect expression of God in man. It does not become the saint of God to be thus blind to His moral glory.
I hope to show at this time, then, that there is not the smallest need of endeavoring to supplement what the New Testament lays down as to the Lord's-day. There is a clear and ample intimation of God's mind and will as to it; for though it may come in a way which to minds accustomed to the law, and owning no other rule, must certainly seem strange, it will be their great gain if disabused of so serious an error. The truth is that the manner in which the Spirit of God has brought out the Lord's-day in the later revelation is in exact keeping with the fullest unfoldings of divine grace and truth. It is bound up with Christ Himself, and yet more manifestly with His work. Hence, it is lack of faith and of spiritual intelligence, as well as a slight of revelation, to rest it on abstract grounds, especially on one so low and foreign to Christianity as the law of nature. It is in striking contrast with a perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages. It is not true that one day in seven is the sabbath, but the seventh day, any more than the dream of a change in the sabbath to the first day to constitute the Lord's-day.
I shall proceed to show that the Lord's-day is an essential part of Christianity for the believer while here below. It is not a human or ecclesiastical arrangement that comes in, desirable in its way, and to be accepted with thankfulness but destitute of a divine claim. I believe, on the contrary, that, while given of the Lord no less than the sabbath, its nature, association, and object are far higher. No Christian man can intelligently put a slight on the Lord's-day. I know there are those who, affecting a kind of ultra-spirituality, will tell you that, for their part, all days are alike the Lord's-day to them. My answer is, that it would be more true to say that to such no day is the Lord's-day. Such is the effect of not owning the Lord's-day as pre-eminently His. The theory of making every day to be His ends in the practice that no day is really so. It is want of faith as a starting-point; and where faith is lacking, all else fails. By little degrees, perhaps with rapid steps if they are bold, such men will begin to treat every day as being theoretically the Lord's; but they will soon allow themselves such a latitude on the Lord's-day as is, in my judgment, disgraceful to the Christian, and a dishonor to the Lord Jesus.
It will be apparent, on the contrary, that, though the day was brought out as a fact, just as with other characteristics of the New Testament, there was light enough for faith to act on and understand from the very birthday of Christianity. From that moment when Christianity had its proper being and impress, the Lord's-day was marked out by the Lord Himself, and all through from beginning to end the Lord's-day has assigned to it, by the distinct sanction of the Spirit of God, a clear and distinctive and momentous place for the heart and conscience of every Christian. Further, it is well to press the grave observation, that those who confound the Lord's-day with the sabbath invariably and necessarily lose the true idea of the latter, if not of the former also. Certainly the height of the truth that is connected with the Lord's-day is never appreciated under that confession, whereby you descend from its heavenly character to an earthly one. Again, to put it on sabbatical ground is to forfeit the light which shines so richly in it when duly understood. For what people call “the Christian sabbath," as it is a term entirely unknown to the scripture, so also it is a plain confusion of the law of God with His grace.
But let none suppose that I mean by this that the sabbath was not a most important institution. A large part of scripture refutes such a notion. confessedly sets forth the gathering of a heavenly Further, I wish to guard all from the mistaken thought, that what God instituted with such solemnity as the sabbath, from the beginning of man's earth, is really done with. Not so. Scripture is distinct that the sabbath will have a place in, the earth; that it is associated with the blessing that is coming upon all the creation; that, in short, it will not be the Lord's-day but the sabbath, when Jehovah shall fill the world with the goodness that is natural to Himself. When evil has been put down, when Satan has been dealt with, when the Lord will have His way manifestly from sea to sea —at that glorious period the sabbath will have its own proper and honored place. Hence we find, in the book of Ezekiel, for instance (which gives us most interesting glimpses into the future that is reserved for the people of God, and for their land here below), that the sabbath comes forward once more into prominence. So also one may see in the prophet Isaiah. There is no need of accumulating such scriptures now; but those referred to plainly prove that, not in some figurative sense, but in all strictness, the day is at hand when God will vindicate His people for Himself—when Israel will be no longer a remnant of deceitful tongue, abandoned to the groveling acquisition of gold and silver, but when, contrariwise, they will be Jehovah's witnesses. Poor alas! has been their testimony hitherto—false witnesses against the only True and Faithful! But they are yet to be bright witnesses of divine mercy in the reign of Messiah's glory. And when that age comes, the sabbath, I repeat, will resume its place for the earth.
Israel shall then observe their new moons also, and, as we are told, they will celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, as well as Passover, but, remarkably enough, not Pentecost. Look at the book of Ezekiel, and you will find a striking absence of the latter feast in the picture of the future. If his visions had been a figure of what God is doing at this present time, Pentecost must have been, I do not say, the exclusive but assuredly the most prominent feast. Instead of this, the prophecy of Ezekiel shows us conspicuously the absence of Pentecost, the reason of which seems to me as manifest as it is beautiful. The types that were given under the law had a bearing on the heavenly people as well as on the earthly. Pentecost in particular and people; and that heavenly people, now in process of gathering, has, if I may say it, so absorbed the feast to itself, that Israel will have no Pentecost in the day that is coming. They will have the Passover; none can do without that sign of Christ sacrificed. It does not matter whether it be earthly people or heavenly, the Lamb and the Lamb's blood are essential for any to be in living relationship with God. “Christ our passover is sacrificed” not merely “for us,” but for them also. They accordingly will have the great foundation feast of Passover. But the distinctive feast for them in that day will be the feast of Tabernacles, as we have seen, because it is the day when glory shall dwell in the land, not merely be seen in heaven, but descend and dwell in the land—when God therefore is accomplishing His glorious thoughts and plans for this long groaning but then delivered earth. In that day then, along with all this, there are naturally the new moons. She that, ruling the night, had given her light, and had long faded away, will shine out once more with renewed brightness. Israel will again become the great vessel of reflected glory here below.
But we, Christians, in that day shall enter into the glory itself. We have to do with Him whom we are permitted to see with unveiled face even now; for meanwhile the power of the Spirit of God has brought us into this nearness, and has made true the feast of Pentecost so completely in the heavenly people, that there is no place by-and-by for earthly people to keep it suitably. Such is the way in which God has arranged with the utmost skill these remarkable shadows of good things to come.
In that day the sabbath too will resume its place on the seventh day as of old. Meanwhile a new creation in Christ has come in, and I will presently show how this has linked itself with the Lord's-day, and in what its character essentially differs from the sabbath.
The sabbath was instituted, as we know, at the beginning. It formed the close of the week devoted by God to making the heavens and the earth which now are. It set forth the precious truth, that He who had deigned to work in forming the earth for man always looked onward to a rest which the renewed creature should share; not merely a rest for us, but for Him and us together, when there will be no more working. The sign of this was the sabbath or seventh day.
Nevertheless it is not exactly true that the sabbath was made a command at first. God sanctified it, but no man can prove that the sabbath was taken up and acted on in any formal manner. Scripture is silent about it, and it is wise for us not to go beyond scripture. But this we do know, that the Lord sanctified the sabbath, and there are tokens here and there that it was known by men. Even the very heathen were not without some traces of it. But the word of God bears the remembrance of the six days of creation and of the sabbath in the institution of weeks. This we find appearing every now and then (as at and after the flood, for instance); so that it is plain that, more or less, the sabbath was known from the beginning. But here it was connected with creation. And what was the state of creation? Man had fallen, and all placed under him was ruined before God. I am aware that man tries to cover that ruin, not daring to face the solemnity of such a fact. Even godly men sometimes try to patch it up. But the way of truth is always to own the havoc that sin has brought in, confessing it to God, and looking for His deliverance, not men's effort to conceal, deny, or remedy it.
But now we must open another book; we come down to Exodus. There is a change. A people in flesh are called out by and to God; everything accordingly is regulated by His law. Their whole life—private, public, social, religious—everything comes under His legislation and authority.
This then gives occasion to another step on God's part as to the sabbath. It is not only the sanctifying of it as the pledge of His rest for creation, but, further, God imposed the keeping of the sabbath on His people, binding it up as an essential part even of His ten words. Even before this He had marked its importance when the manna was given distinctly and solemnly. There was a direct infraction of that which God made so apparent, that His people were without excuse if they did not heed it, not that there was a command even then, we may notice.
But if there be a true way of learning God's mind, it is in weighing what He does as well as what He says. And the God who had given Israel the manna gave them a double portion on the sixth day, but none on the seventh. Was this in vain? Was it not for the express purpose of guarding against any activity on His people's part, even in gathering manna on the seventh day? The sabbath, and the people's rest on it, were thus made sufficiently apparent to any who wished to learn what God's will was about the matter. All the rulers came and told Moses that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread; but they are told that this is that which Jehovah had said, “To-morrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto Jehovah,” when the manna, though kept, did not stink or breed worms. Yet were some bold enough to despise His ways and words; but the Lord as yet contented Himself with a solemn reproof, without as yet making His people to be the executioners of His judgment because of those that regarded not the works of Jehovah nor the operation of His hand.
Soon after, however, it was not left to a sound judgment formed on what God did, nor to such words as we have heard, but He blended it with the law, and indeed made it to be the one special exception to its general character, for all the rest of the law is moral. The sabbath has another nature quite distinct. The very heathen would acknowledge that no man should steal, do murder, or commit adultery. Every human conscience, unconverted or not, recognizes these and the like. Indeed it may be mentioned here, that a great enemy of Christianity, the Emperor Julian, in speaking about the law, acquiesced in all the rest but the denunciation of idols and the keeping of the sabbath. He owned that the moral commandments were perfectly right, but tried to make out that they had all known them before. And if he classed along with the sabbatical law the command against idols, he need not; for there were not a few Gentiles who knew the wrongness of such objects of worship. Heathen conscience could easily feel the absurdity of an idol; but the sabbath is purely prescriptive, owes its existence to the revealed facts of creation, and hence derives all its authority from God's word. This is what gives its particular importance.
If there is any commandment of the ten, therefore, that rests on God's claim simply, it is the sabbath. Thus because the child does the will of his father, and shows far more the spirit of obedience, if he obeys him, not merely abstaining from or hating what his own conscience knows to be wrong, so the Jew proved it much more by simply bowing to God's command about it. If one were merely to cleave to the moral commandments, it might be no more than honoring one's own conscience. If I bow to God's command, where my own conscience says nothing apart from His word, it is evident that His authority is dear to me. Therefore this was what gave the sabbatical law such immense force, and justly so, to an Israelite. For this reason the sabbath acted as a test, rather than the other nine commandments; so it was the special sign between Jehovah and Israel. None of the other commandments could have been, or was, such a sign as the sabbath-day. It was the peculiar and easily recognized badge that distinguished the Jewish people from all others, and hence in the law and prophets it is thus referred to. But you see it, in fact, constantly brought forward by God, and attached to all other things—what it did not matter. We have already noticed how with the giving of the manna the sabbath was marked for the observation of Israel; so, if God set up a tabernacle, the sabbath came in afresh. Indeed, as has been remarked by another, it followed, no matter what the dealing or institution might be. If He appointed feasts, the sabbath stands in the very front of them, the first and foremost of them all, as it points to the crowning result for God and man. It differed essentially from all the others, in that all the other feasts came but once a year, whilst the sabbath was recurring every week. Nevertheless, if God was giving His people an account of the feasts, not only did the sabbath come within the list of the feasts, but it came as the foremost of them.
There was nothing therefore in the legal system that had a more pointed and constant importance in the mind of God for His people Israel than the sabbath, and accordingly by this day they were tried peculiarly. (Comp. Lev. 26:34, 3534Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. 35As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. (Leviticus 26:34‑35)). They were surrounded by jealous neighbors; but who ever dared to take advantage of the sabbath as long as Israel walked in any measure with God? When they fell away from Him, when they had broken down in every particular in which His honor was concerned, when they had been swept away into captivity because of their idolatry, God did not sustain them in the sabbath. It is remarkable that, when they returned from captivity, and when they had enemies to contend with, the Gentiles took advantage of the sabbath, and pressed it craftily against the Jews by attacking them on that day because they knew that there would be scruples on their part to fight on such a day. While under the direct government of God it never was attempted.
[W.K.]
(To be continued)