I Went to Church on Sunday

I went to church on Sunday.

At church we come together partly to experience, proclaim and witness to the rest we have already been given in Christ. By worshipping on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week which commemorates and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the church affirms its participation in the rest of Christ. Here, as the whole person is caught up in the Spirit, we are removed from the preoccupations of mundane living, divorced from existential pressures, protected from the expedient urge to fix our problems, and focused on the Person and work of our redeeming Lord, Jesus Christ. Here, at the effectual summons of the Holy Spirit, we have (been) assembled together in the presence of our Triune God in order to show forth praises to his holy name, to declare his worth among ourselves and to the nations, to ascribe the glory that is due his Name, in other words, to worship him in Spirit and in truth.

Though we are plagued by persistent remaining sins, because of our union with our Lord Jesus Christ, we are holy; we are saints; we have already entered the rest of Christ. Our date or point of entry was the time that we heard the gospel message and believed it, Heb 4:3, not according to our own doing and according to the exercise of our will but only through and after the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. We entered that rest when we placed our faith alone, the gift of God, in Christ alone. The rest that we have entered is none other than the rest that God himself entered and celebrated when he ceased from his creation of the universe, vv. 4, 10. Each Lord's Day when we gather together we are reminded of the three-dimensional perspective of our rest in Christ: past – we first entered it when he delivered us from our sins; present – we are currently enjoying the benefits and fruits Christ secured for us by his finished work on the cross and which are now being applied to our hearts and lives by the Holy Spirit; future -we will fully and finally enter this rest at the Second Coming of Christ when he gathers up all his covenant people for whom he lived and died, unto himself to present us to his and our Father.

In the meantime, our rest is interspersed with sin and with struggle against it. We live in a fallen world characterized by sin and rebellion against God, by chaos and unrest. Each day we are called to consciously wrestle against our chief enemies, ".. the schemes of the devil.. The rulers, .. the authorities, .. the cosmic powers over this present darkness, .. the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places", Eph 6:11 -12. Each day we are mustered into a battle on three fronts, against the world, the flesh and the devil.

We cannot wage this battle in our own strength but only in a synergistic dependence on God the Holy Spirit who equips us in this struggle. In this regard we, whom the Lord has redeemed from the Egypt of sin to be the people of his own inheritance, are the new covenant fulfillment of the children of Israel who, although sent and led into the Promised Land by their Redeemer God, Yahweh, Josh 1:13, were still required to fight against and drive out their enemies with the Presence and power of Yahweh: "The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. But the LORD your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them." Dt 7:22-24. Like the faithful children of Israel who understood that their entrance into the Promised Land was only a type of the final rest to be enjoyed with God forever, "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on." Heb 4:8, we, "on whom the end of the ages has come.", 1 Cor 10:11, also know that we have not yet attained our final rest. God's promise of rest still stands, Heb 4:1. "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” vv. 9-10.

Now, this begs the question, what does our eternal rest look like? To what can we liken it? Indeed, to what must we liken it? We compare it to the rest into which God enters after his creation, vv. 3-4. For this reason, the writer to the Hebrews calls it a Sabbath rest, v. 9. We will rest from our labors in the same way that the Lord God rests from his original creation activity. In this Sabbath rest the Lord God pronounces a cosmic benediction on the work of his hands. "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Gen 1:31. "For everything created by God is good, .." 1 Tim 4:4. This Sabbath rest then has as its primary distinction the delight of God in himself and in his work. Theologians call this God's love of complacency. A. A. Hodge defines this love of complacency as ".. that approving affection with which God regards his own infinite perfections, and every image and reflection of them in his creatures, especially in the sanctified subjects of the new creation." and Louis Berkhof explains it as God’s "..delight in the contemplation of His own infinite perfections and of the creatures who reflect His moral image." It is true that our eternal rest necessarily includes rest from sin but far more than this, it is a rest in which we will be forever delighting in him and in his work of creation and re-creation, that is, redemption. It is a rest in which we, the unmerited recipients of God's love of complacency, will be basking in the unrestricted fullness of his glory.

The church at worship on earth eagerly anticipates this rest for which she is currently being framed and fitted. The church of Jesus Christ inwardly groans with inanimate creation to enter that rest. Each Lord's Day is both a reminder and a type of the Sabbath rest that is approaching as well as awaiting us. Each Lord's Day, those who have been justified by faith alone and who now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Rom 5:1, experience this rest and cry out with Saint Augustine, "Lord, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." Confessions, Book I. The church therefore understands that the term "rest in peace" is truly not meant for those who have died but for those who are living, for those who have eternal life by God's grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. Those who have faithfully responded to Jesus' command to come unto him and receive his rest, Mt 11:28, are the very ones who will experience this shalom and this rest consummately in heaven where they will always be with the Lord. No wonder then that the church's final recorded prayer in history is "Come, Lord Jesus!" Rev 22:20. No wonder then that we are restless until we enter our consummate rest.

I went to church on the Lord's Day. There I enjoyed, already but not yet fully, the rest of God in Christ. The rest is yet to come.

I Went to Church Yesterday

I went to church yesterday… the day before yesterday, really.

My current reflection on service has to do with rest, that holy and glorious gift of God symbolizing one aspect of his ultimate purposes for his creation. The biblical principle of rest stands in direct conflict with and in bold contrast to the thoughts and practices of contemporary society. We are a restless people. We belong to a culture that lives and moves and has its being in quickly moving pictures and scenes, in rapidly changing sounds, in fast and fanciful alterations in every aspect of life ranging from rituals to relationships. The outcome of this groundlessness is that we are the personification of the proverbial rolling stone that gathers no moss. We're shiftless in all our ways, very impressionistic in our thinking (?) and well-nigh incapable of having an ongoing, serious discussion. In this process, even our speech has been deconstructed into a series of Neanderthal-like disjointed sounds, grunts and utterances reflecting the pervasive shiftiness and stultification of our society. We are restless in all our ways. Our culture, regressing more and more into a state of abject childishness, has been overtaken by a regrettable malaise of intellectual ADHD.

In contrast to this pitiful state of fallen man, rest is a gleaming gift of God to his chosen people. Its biblical meaning is varied but its deeper significance goes beyond the simple notion of the absence of any spatial activity and the reality of being in a secured state. These are some of the meanings contained in the first primary Hebrew word for rest, nuach, found in such texts as Gen 8:4, "the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat." and from which we have such derived nouns as Noah and Manoah. However, the rest of God encompasses more than the non-existence of disturbances, whether external or internal.

Its full meaning is located in its soteriological significance stemming from the theology of the Sabbath. To this end the Scripture tells us that “..on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation." Gen 2:2-3.

In these verses we find the clear biblical teaching of the goal or destiny of creation: rest. That this is a unique day is emphasized by the threefold presence of the word itself: God rested from all the work that he had completed (in creation)- twice. This rest took place on the seventh day – the Hebrew word for seven is intimately related to the word for rest.

What does the Scripture mean when it says that God rested from his work? Clearly it does not and cannot signify that the perfect, omnipotent, independent Lord rested because he had need of physical recuperation. Exodus 31:17 is perhaps even more puzzling for here it states that the Lord God rested on the seventh day and literally took breath, that is, was refreshed. Rest, shabat, in the Genesis and Exodus texts, points to a cessation from labor, which when combined with the fact that the Lord blessed and sanctified this day (made it holy), denotes that God was therein signifying the divine intent and purpose for that day. Please refer to Dr. Joseph A. Pipa’s article "The Puritan Sabbath" in the June 2011 issue of Tabletalk. Accordingly, this rest in which the Lord God, who had just pronounced a cosmic benediction on all that he had created, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Gen 1:31; cf. 1 Tim 4:4, participated is a rest of enjoyment and delight in his work of creation. In other words, our Creator contemplated the work of his words and concluded that it was altogether good. Further, by blessing the day the Lord confers upon it further distinctives by which it is to be marked, i.e., fruitfulness and fulfillment. The implication here is that all those who obey God by observing his Sabbath, would experience fullness of joy, completeness of satisfaction and fruitfulness of life.

Moses expanded on the nature of this rest to the sons of Israel as he proclaimed to them the law a second time. In Dt 5:15 his parting words to his people were "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." Here we find that God commanded his people to rest on one day out of seven, not only because of his pattern in creation but also because of his gracious redemption of his covenant people from Egyptian slavery. The rest into which the Lord was leading them was symbolically located in the Transjordan territory and was accomplished, in the first place, by the taking of the city of Jericho. Upon entering the Promised Land therefore, Israel was said to have entered into its rest and its inheritance. This land was described by Yahweh himself as one that was flowing with milk and honey, signifying the stout riches of divine blessings, and as a place in which Israel would experience non-interference from and victory over all her enemies. All of these were a gracious gift of God. There she was to offer fit sacrifices to her Redeemer God. "But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in safety, then to the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the LORD." Dt 12:10-11. It was into this land and inheritance that Joshua, Moses' successor, led his people. "So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war." Josh 11:23.

But this was not the final rest that God intended for all of his people, for all time. For God's covenant people, there yet remains another day of rest. "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, .." Heb 4:8-9. This rest is to be found in the completed work of the Lord Jesus Christ who grants us a full-orbed rest, not simply a non-working on one day of the week and the absence of conflict but most importantly, a rest from the toil of sin. By his finished, substitutionary atoning sacrifice of himself for his covenant people on the cross of Calvary, Christ declares himself to be and presents himself as the fulfillment of all that redemption and rest in the old covenant typified. He is our rest. He, the Lord of the Sabbath, is our Sabbath rest. On the cross of Calvary, he cosmically disgraced and disarmed the rulers and authorities, by triumphing over them, Col 2:15. Then, by his resurrection from the grave, he ushered in a new order, a new age for the entire creation, a Sabbath rest for God's people, Heb 4:9. Herein lie the full meaning and significance of rest. Those of us, who by God's grace alone, have put their trust in Christ alone for their righteousness, have already entered this rest. However, its full benefits and blessings await the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ who will, at that time, grant us the fullness of our redemption, the completeness of our rest, as he ushers and leads us into the anti-typical Promised Land, the New Jerusalem, to present us as trophies of his awesome work of redemption, to the Father, as his spotless bride, fully rested from the toils, trials and troubles of sin. Christ is our rest. Christ is our peace.

Each time those of us to whom the Lord has been pleased to grant his rest, Mt 11:28(28-30), attend corporate worship, we demonstrate at least three great truths: we have already been the gracious recipients of this Sabbath rest; we are currently participating in this rest; and we are anticipating that day when our rest will be complete. In the meantime, we keep on drawing near to him by corporately partaking of his Word and sacrament. With each worship our longing for that day intensifies for we are increasingly tasting and seeing that the Lord is indeed good. With each worship our joy multiplies. With each worship we celebrate the victory, the rest of our conquering King, Christus Victor. With each worship we intensify our praise to our majestic Lord and King "… Till our ransomed souls shall find, rest beyond the river." (Emphasis added)

Would you believe that this was my experience in church yesterday?