218
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
April 1927
The Sabbath and th e Lord’s Day B y D avid B aron
On the eighth day the priests (their consecration hav ing been perfected) entered on their ministrations in. the Tabernacle. So also the Pentecostal day, on which the Holy Ghost was sent down as the witness of the resurrec tion-glory of Jesus, was an eighth day. It followed the last of the Seventh-day Sabbaths that completed the seven weeks numbered from the day of the offering of the first- fruits. The eighth day was “the great day” of the Feast of Tabernacles. In these, and other instances, the eighth day is singled out for special honor. It was thus honored in type, because it was-to be honored by the great fact of the resurrection of our Substitute. That marked it especially as the day of result- a day that, following on and springing out of the series of days that had preceded, embodied in itself and made manifest the consequences of the agencies that had in those days operated. Living in the Suburbs o f Heaven R ev . A. W. O rw ig W HEN Peter,'James and John were granted that sublime interview with Jesus on the sacred mount, no doubt they felt that-they were basking in the very suburbs of heaven. And when the ever-outspoken Peter exclaimed, “Lord, it is good to be here,” he unquestion ably expressed the sentiment of the two other apostles. Ah, yes, where Jesus is, there is heaven in holy fellowship and “joy. unspeakable and full of glory.” And notice the words.'of the apostle Paul, in speaking of being “in heavenly places in Christ.” That would, indeed, seem to bring us to the suburbs of the celestial city on high, even though the primary meaning may be the great enjoyment of divine or heavenly things. But let us not forget that they are all “in Christ.” Dear reader, where do we live? Is it “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” so far as our personal relation to. Him is concerned ? Do we “stand by ■ faith on heaven’s table land?” Or do we flounder “where doubts arise and fears dismay?” If the latter, then we are a long way from the delectable suburbs of heaven. And it certainly becomes us fervently to p ray ,'“Lord, plant my feet on higher ground,” The Bible speaks of “the gates of heaven,” and of “that great city, the new Jerusalem, having twelve gates,” and of each gate as being a “pearl.” Oh that we may constantly live very near to those pearly gates! Then surely we shall live in the very closest confines of heaven. And we shall not be concerned whether we dwell near the “east three gates,” or “the north three gates,” or “the south three gates,” or “the west three gates,” because all of them are of inimitable grandeur, and the glorious pas sage ways from heaven’s suburbs to heaven itself. S teven son ’s Prayer The evening before his sudden death in Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson read aloud to his family a prayer that he had composed, which closes with this petition: “Go with each of us to rest; if any wake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns to us, our Sun and Comforter, call us with morning faces and with morning hearts, eager to labor, eager to be happy, if hap piness shall be our portion ; and if the day be marked to sorrow, strong to endure it.”
pT is important to remember that the weekly sev enth-day Sabbath is essentially connected with the old marred creation, with the imperfect Mosaic dispensation, and with the mere typical redemption from Egypt. But from the beginning there was the promise of a new creation, of a more perfect dispensation than that of the law, and of the greater deliverance than that from Egypt; and it was but meet, when the promises were at last fulfilled in the advent of the Redeemer, the true Joshua, through whom alone we enter into rest, that the weekly Sabbath should henceforth be associated not with the imperfect, or even with the merely typical, but with the perfect and the eternal. The greatest honor bestowed on the Sabbath of the old creation was that our Lord Jesus, after pouring out His soul as a ransom for us, made it the one complete day of His rest in death in proof that His work was accomplished, and the sore travail of His soul for our redemption ended; “but when He rose, the sanctity and hallowment of that primeval Sabbath passed on with Him into the new day—even that day of resurrec tion-rest into which He entered as ‘the first-begotten from the dead,’ ‘the beginning of the (new) creation of God.’ ” v ’ S abbath of t h e O ld C reation With His resurrection the seventh-day Sabbath of the old creation expired, transmitting its sanctity and its priv- ileges to the new Sabbath—the first day, which became our day of rest in the power of a new creation. “If any man be in Christ (to him there is) a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.” Such is our condition, as viewed in Christ our Representative and Forerunner. Surely, a new Sabbath day befits those of whom such things can be spoken. How necessarily, therefore, must the seventh-day Sab bath, seeing that it was bound up with the old creation, re sign its claims to that new day on which the Head and Rep resentative and Forerunner of the redeemed rose to take the Headship of the new creation of God. In the types of Israel, the special honor attaching to the eighth-day had long been indicated. It was the day appointed for cir cumcision, that great vtype of separation from the' flesh unto God, according to the power of the resurrection of Christ. On the eighth day the firstborn were to be given unto God. John Bunyan on M u tua l Helpfulness rJ'HE doctrine of the Gospel is like the dew and the small rain that distilleth upon the tender grass wherewith it doth flourish and is kept green (Deut. 32: 2). Christians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which being shaken with the wind they let fall their dew at each other’s roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one another. For Christians to commune savourly of God’s matters one with another, it is as if they opened to each other’s nostrils boxes of perfume. ; Saith Paul to the Church of Rome, “I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me” (Rom.l :11, 12). Christians should be often affirming the doctrine of grace, and jus tification by it one to another.
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