The Meaning of the Sabbath Day
The Sabbath is the enthronement of God. In Genesis 1, God builds a Palace for Himself and sits down to judge the world on the Sabbath Day. If one reads that together with the chronology of Genesis 2-3, then the Sabbath Day is the day when Adam and Eve fell. God inspects His people on the Sabbath Day, and judges them either “good, or bad.” Ultimately, that goes back to Genesis 1 where God creates light and “sees” (a term referring to judgment) that it is “good.” Amos thus says that for unrighteous Israel, the “Day of the Lord” is “darkness, not light.” Genesis 3:8 says (according to Kline’s translation) that God “came in the Spirit for THE DAY” which is why Adam and Eve fled. When God comes, the noise is overwhelming as the Glory of God descends. When the Israelites were at Sinai, they witnessed the Glory descend on the mountain as sounds like the voice of many waters and trumpets blasted.
The key is in understanding that eschatology is not contingent on the Fall. God created the heavens and the earth. He made the invisible heavens in an instant, complete and mature. The Earth gradually grows up into the model of its heavenly prototype. God enlightens, forms, and fills it. Adam is the “generation of heaven and earth” and God puts the Holy Spirit in his nostrils. He was supposed to gradually expand the boundaries of God’s Garden-Sanctuary outwards and grow in communion with the Holy Spirit. As he grew in communion with the Spirit, he would lift the whole creation up with him. Every Sabbath, God would come and inspect him.
Jesus Christ, the Last Adam, has brought the world not only back to Eden, but beyond in inaugurating the eschaton. Adam became a “living soul”, so Paul describes the body of the flesh as a “soulish body.” The body of the Last Adam has been glorified by the Holy Spirit in the resurrection so that it is a “spiritual body.” The Church is the people of the Last Adam, fulfilling Adam’s mission in expanding the kingdom of God from sea to sea. Thus, Balaam, speaking of the Messianic Age, describes Israel as “like gardens beside a river.” The Church follows the rivers flowing from God’s fountain of life (compare Daniel 7, Revelation 22:1) out and cultivates the whole creation into God’s temple.
Because Jesus has inaugurated the eschaton, we are living in the inaugurated eschatological Sabbath. Since Sabbath is about enthronement in God’s Temple-Palace, the eschatological Sabbath began when Jesus stitched Heaven and Earth together in Himself and sat down on David’s heavenly throne. In that sense, every day is the Sabbath for the Christian. In another sense, there has been a movement from the seventh to the eighth day. Circumcision happens on the eighth day because it is a sign of the coming eschatological Sabbath. In one sense, Sunday is the first day of a new creation. In another, Sunday is the eighth day of the matured old creation.
It is therefore foolish for anyone to argue that Christians should celebrate Church on Saturday instead of Sunday. When the Church gathers to celebrate the Eucharist, God comes and inspects His people for their faithfulness to Him, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 11. This goes back to the inspection of jealousy in Numbers 5 when the woman suspected of adultery brings bread to God, drinks the divine presence (water mixed with Tabernacle dust) and is blessed or cursed depending on whether she had slept with another man. If we are a faithful Bride, then God inspects us and blesses us when we receive God’s Body and Blood. If we are unfaithful, God curses us when we receive His Body and Blood.
