Sunday
Sunday is the Lord’s Day.
He gives us seven days, but claims one of them as His own.
It is not a bad deal. Life as an endless stream of days would be unbearable. We need the organizational point of the Lord’s Day each week. It is a chance to end things and start them up again.
Perhaps the slaves-turned-landowners who crossed the River Jordan into Canaan’s Land needed a day to knock off work and take up worship and rest. Without this grace, they would have worked themselves to death.
Just like we sometimes do.
In Isaiah the Lord calls it, “My Holy Day.”
It is not rightfully ours to spend as we please. Early Christians, in honor of the Lord’s resurrection, expanded the Sabbath, the seventh day, to Sunday, the first day of the week. The Sabbath Day of the Old Covenant converged with the Resurrection Celebration of the First Day to become the New Covenant Lord’s Day. On Sunday we gaze at the cross through the door of an empty tomb.
The seeds of sanity, rest and worship, are sown in this weekly break from our routines:
- Rest for weariness or to avoid it, and
- Worship to renew us and reconnect us to the Lord and His family.
The Lord’s Day is a day to rise above our musical preferences to sing the music of others.
It is a day to thank God for His faithfulness and to honor His work in our brothers and sisters as we hear the testimonies of both
- the young and the old,
- the victor and the vanquished, and
- the sick and the healed.
The Lord’s Day is a time to praise and worship the Lord, to seek His face in intercession and to hear His Word.
On the Lord’s Day we focus our hearts on Jesus.
In response to our attention, He lavishes us with love and truth and peace. His Holy Spirit expands our hearts so we can know Jesus better and experience more of His strength. When we close out the clamor of the week in Lord’s Day worship, our hearts can hear the worship going on in heaven as we encounter His holy presence on His Holy Day.
Offering ourselves to Him gives the Lord opportunity to retune our internal instruments to face another week proving His good, pleasing, and perfect will.
There is no day like the Lord’s Day. Let us gather together in His presence. Let us give Him the glory due His name, for as He promised, in giving we receive.
On Sunday we gaze at the cross through the door of an empty tomb.
Scriptures:
Exodus 20:8
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Matthew 12:11-12
“Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Mark 2:27-28
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
John 20:1
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.
Acts 20:7
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread
Revelation 1:9-11 NKJV
I, John… was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,”
Isaiah 58:13-14
“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the LORD’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.” The mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Prayer:
Dearest Lord Jesus, today we will give You thanks. We will give You the glory due unto Your name. This day is Your Day not ours. It is Your holy day and we will not profane it. We focus on You. We seek Your face. Like the woman in the crowd we press through to touch You. We need Your healing virtue. We need a Word from You, Lord. We need to sense Your nearness and rest in Your mercy. You have called us out of darkness into Your marvelous light so that we might give You praise. And this we do, today, Your Day! Amen.
Song:
This Is the Day
Traditional Scripture Chorus
This is the day (This is the Day)
That the Lord has made (That the Lord has made)
I will rejoice (I will rejoice)
And be glad in it (And be glad in it)
This is the day that the Lord has made.
I will rejoice and be glad in it.
This is the day (This is the Day)
That the Lord has made!
Semper Reformanda!
Stephen Phifer
© 2017 Stephen R. Phifer All Rights Reserved
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