Calling the Sabbath a Delight

שׁבת - shâbath / BDB Definition: to cease, desist, rest

A Challenge (largely to myself) to remember the Sabbath:

What our priority on the Lord's Day? Its not whether you have a long list of fun stuff you are sure not to do that day, but what takes priority? Does worship become sacrificed to leisure on the Sabbath? Does private worship become sacrificed to entertainment? Do we fill a whole day with recreation, watch 3 hours of television, go for a 2 hour walk, go shopping for 3 hours and get home and say: “well, I don't have time tonight for prayer, Scripture, or learning more about God through a teacher.” Why don't you have time? Is it because Sunday is the same as Saturday in all but a couple hours in the morning? If we find ourselves with no time to read Scripture for more than a few minutes during the week, or a book on the gospel or on Christ, or memorizing the Catechism, or praying for more than a few minutes, then you have a whole day dedicated to doing so. Is there even an hour set aside for private worship? Or is it the same as every other day? The problem with our observance of the Sabbath is that the Sabbath looks like every other day, busy with the unimportant things, and lax with the ultimate concerns. We are the busiest generation of American, and the most in need of resting in Christ.

"If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

- Isaiah 58:13-14


You, O Lord, stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” (Chapter 1)…I enjoyed much in [secular] books…But in the books of philosophers no one hears Him who calls “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Chapter 7)

-Augustine of Hippo. The Confessions.

Meditation: Rev 21:5

My friend Jay has posted his sermons before, so I will take his lead that doing so is not bad form. I was asked on somewhat short notice to give this meditation, and I wan't able to work on it as long as I'd like. So here is the somewhat hurried text from my first ecclessial sermon/meditation. It is not what I think may be a typical sermon for me. It is not DTS-approved, for it does not have 3 points and a conclusion. It is not puritan-like, for I did not hone down a propositional truth to expound. It was just a mediation on the text and answering two simple questions:

1) Why is Revelation 21:5 worth memorizing?
2) How does it invite us to the table?


SERMON TEXT

Today, we are continuing our series: “Texts you should memorize,” with one from a book you may not have many verses memorized from, and so perhaps, you are not as familiar with. Revelation 21:5.

Rev 21:5 And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all
things new."

So often, by the text of Scripture itself, by other Christians and by our own encounter with nature, we are prompted to look on nature and praise the workmanship of God. We see the complexity of ecosystems working together in nature, and we marvel at the harmony of Creation. We see the vastness of Space and galaxies thousands of light-years away through Hubble telescope, and are baffled at the vastness of Creation. We see micro-organisms and are blown away by the micro-world that thrives around us unseen.

Yet, almost as if to jolt us down from our cloud, nature shocks us with its horror. A friend of mine just last week sat next to the bed of his godly sister in her 30s, as she constantly felt the pain in her body of an aggressive form of cancer. 10 years ago, to the day she was diagnosed, my friend's father had died from the same form of cancer. Last week, he also lost his sister, as genetics and nature destroyed her body, and she passed away. In moments like that, we do not look at the harmony, or wonder of Creation and marvel. No, we look at how the world functions and instead of praise, we cry out at the pain and disappointment of creation, of a world that is not as it ought to be.

We have sympathy in those secret times, that we believe we are not supposed to have, with another man who died young, in his 20s. Stephen Crane penned a short poem we had to study in high school. It reads:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"That fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation”

A wonder at the universe can quickly turn to the recognition of a harsh coldness present in it.

We don't think we should have such feeling. But such feelings are not unChristian. It is a recognition of the reality of this world. Though creation can instill a sense of wonder, it can also produce unease, anger, and pain, and fear as we understand that something is deeply wrong with this world. This is a fact not lost to the same Scriptures that laud the workmanship of nature. Paul writes “the whole creation has been groaning together in pain.” And we know, too, from Scripture that our own sin did this to creation, but we long to be out from under it. We long to be free of this decay.

So why this verse from Revelation 21? We need this verse close to our hearts because of the world we now live in. Here, we are told in verse 4 of another time, when,

Rev 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the
former things have passed away."

These words do not come cheaply, but from Christ, Who Himself knows tears, for he wept, Who knows mourning for he mourned for those who died and for their souls, and Who knows pain from the small pains of hunger, to the greater pains of injury and death.

In verse 5 we are told, The one who has the power to create this world, has the power to do an even greater work. He has the power to re-create this world. John saw “a new heaven and a new earth.” And it was not the same as the current creation. It was not a world plagued with the realities of this world, of mourning, or pain or death. It is a new world in which the crooked things are straightened. Where deformities are healed. A new world where we no longer inflict sin and pain on others, and where sin and pain is not inflicted on us. Where cancer and no evil design can enter to disturb the enjoyment of God by His people.

This is the world where Christ Himself declares in four simple words in the original Greek:
1) Behold or Look, gaze upon this, keep this in front of you.
2) I am making, in the present. This is my current project.
3) All things – the whole of creation, you and all things.
4) New – begun again, not as they were before.

Though we may have reservations with some particulars of it, many of us saw a few years ago, the movie “The Passion.” The director made an interesting choice in including these words from Revelation 21:5 in the story of the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ tells his mother as He goes to the cross: “Behold, I am making all things new.”

It was an appropriate choice to include these words here, for the work of new creation was begun with the resurrection of Christ, with His resurrection, new creation body. The Heidelberg Catechism states His resurrection is a pledge and surety that we will receive resurrected bodies. [Q45 & Q49] The payment for sin is complete, yet the work of new creation is just begun. Paul, after telling us creation groans under the weight of sin, tells us in Romans 8:23:

Rom 8:23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits
of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the
redemption of our bodies.

To we who are in this world, and find ourselves groaning inwardly, Christ invites us to the table. Scripture calls the Supper a “communion” or “partaking” with Christ's flesh and blood. This is Christ inviting believers, His people, to the table to receive again the pledge of new creation. In coming, we commune with Him, and he assures our souls that indeed, what He has started in us, He is faithful to complete. That the tears and pain, that man has inflicted on himself, will not be healed by man, but by Christ, by the God-man, the sure pledge of the redemption of our redeemed bodies by the Renewer of all things.

Christ in the end declares “Behold, I am making all things new.” Today, we trust in the truth of our Redeemer's word, that He indeed will make all things new. Come, and feast on Christ's sure word, made visible in the Supper: that He is making all things new. Amen.

Revelation 21:5a

REVELATION 21:5a - And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new."

I'm giving the mediation at Vespers tonight on this verse. Say a prayer for my first ecclesial sermon.

Bavinck on Christ as Word of God

"He [Christ] is the Logos in an utterly unique sense, revealer and revelation alike. In him, all revelations of God, all words of God, in nature and history, in creation and re-creation, under the Old and New Testaments, have their ground, their unity and center. He is the sun; the particular words of God are its rays. The word of God in nature, in Israel, in the New Testament, in Scripture may not for a moment be detached or thought about apart from Him. God’s revelation exists only because He is the Logos. He is the principium cognoscendi [the principle of knowing], in the general sense of all knowledge, in the special sense, as logos ensarkos [the word infleshed], of all knowledge of God, of religion and theology."

-Herman Bavinck. Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1. pg 402.

Calvin: The Divine Exchange

"Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament [of the Lord's Supper], as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it follows, that we can confidently assure ourselves, that eternal life, of which he himself is the heir, is ours, and that the kingdom of heaven, into which he has entered, can no more be taken from us than from him; on the other hand, that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from the guilt of which he absolves us, seeing he has been pleased that these should be imputed to himself as if they were his own.

This is the wondrous exchange made by his boundless goodness. Having become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of God. By his own descent to the earth he has prepared our ascent to heaven. Having received our mortality, he has bestowed on us his immortality. Having undertaken our weakness, he has made us strong in his strength. Having submitted to our poverty, he has transferred to us his riches. Having taken upon himself the burden of unrighteousness with which we were oppressed, he has clothed us with his righteousness."

-John Calvin. Institutes. Bk 4, ch 17.2

Apostolic Fathers: The Sweet Exchange

"And when our iniquity had been fully accomplished, and it had been made perfectly clear that punishment and death were expected as its reward, and the season came which God had ordained, when He should show His goodness and power (O the exceeding great kindness and love of God!), He did not hate us, nor did He reject us, nor did He hold a grudge against us, but was patient and forebearing, and in pity for us took upon Himself our sins, and Himself parted with His own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy One for the lawless, the guiltless for the guilty, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. For what else but His righteousness would have covered our sins? In whom was it possible for us lawless and ungodly men to have been justified, save only in the Son of God?

O the sweet exchange, O the incomprehensible work of God, O the unexpected benefits; that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in One Righteous Man, and the righteousness of One should justify many that are sinners!

Having then in the former time demonstrated the inability of our nature to obtain life, and having now revealed a Saviour able to save even creatures which have no ability, He willed that for both reasons we should believe in His goodness and should regard Him as nurse, father, teacher, counsellor, physician, mind, light, honor, glory, strength and life."

(Epistle to Diognetus. 9:2-6. circa 130 AD)

Hymn: Thy Mercy, My God

Thy Mercy, My God
by John Stocker

Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart. and the boast of my tongue;
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affections, and bound my soul fast.

Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here;
Sin would reduce me to utter despair;
But, through Thy free goodness, my spirits revive,
And He that first made me still keeps me alive.

Whene'er I mistake, Thy kind mercy begins
To melt me, and then I can mourn for my sins;
And, led by Thy Spirit to Jesus's blood,
My sorrows are dired and my strength is renew'd

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground,
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.

Thy mercy is endless, most tender and free;
No sinner need doubt, since 'tis given to me;
No merit will buy it, nor sin stop its course;
Good works are the fruits of its freeness and force.

The doors of Thy mercy are open all day
To the poor and the needy who knock by the way;
But those that bring cash in the mouth of their sack;
The rich and the proud, shall be empty sent back.

Dear Father, Thy merciful word I my all;
Thy promise supports me when ready to fall;
When enemies crowd, to cause doubt and despair,
I conquer them all by the spirit of prayer.

Thy mercy, in Jesus, exempts me from hell;
Of Thy mercy I'll sing, of Thy mercy I'll tell;
'Twas Jesus, my Friend, when He hung on the tree,
That open'd the channel of mercy for me.

Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own,
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son;
All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine.