The Easter Sabbath

I am writing on the Easter Sabbath, Saturday 7th April. This is the quiet day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday and I am wondering about that Sabbath day when Jesus body lay still and uncorrupted. Is that not the model Sabbath?

The Reformed tradition normally speaks of the Sabbath as a “creation ordinance” and downplays Jesus’ own radical re-evaluation of the Sabbath. But if Jesus is the centre of all God’s purposes who was marked for slaughter “before the foundation of the World” then did God not have THAT SABBATH in mind when he inspired the writer of Genesis.

Consider the word of Jesus spoken at dusk at the end of the sixth day of the week (remember Jewish days end at Sunset) – “It is finished”. Is it not related to the statement of Genesis 2:1-3.

It depends whether you see the death of Jesus as merely mending creation or whether this you see this universe as God’s purposed setting for the revelation and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

I think scripture teaches us that the central story of the creation is NOT the story of its beginning but, instead, is the story of Jesus Christ and what He has achieved. So the “rest” of God on the Seventh Day is a reference to that day the holy body of His Christ would lay on stone in a tomb outside Jerusalem.

Jesus rested from His works before He was raised to see their fruits on Easter Sunday, the first day of the New Creation.

Hebrews 4 tells us that we who believe enter his rest now – note the tenses in Hebrews 4:3 -as we rest from the works of death and live to Christ. The promised “rest” is not our Resurrection which seems to be full of activity and life, just like the resurrected Jesus. Still less, is it the rest of inactivity in the intermediate state in what is popularly called “heaven”.

No, it is the peace of resting from rebellion and wilful sinning. The body of Jesus rested on Easter Sabbath, His battle with evil successfully finished. We must be done with rebelling and enter that rest.

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”.

Let us share in the death to sin won on Good Friday, let us share the holy Sabbath of our Lord and refrain from all sin and backsliding, and anticipate our share in the glories of Easter Sunday.