The Day of The Lord
Before We Gather by Zach Hicks
| Scripture
Read John 20:1-18
| Devotion
Worshiping on Sunday is a time-bending, mystical enterprise. Before Jesus’ time on earth, believers in the one, true, living God worshiped on Saturday, the holy Sabbath. It was day seven of the week the day of rest, joy, and delight, mirroring God’s rest on the seventh day of creation (Gen. 2:1-3).
When Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week- Sunday early Christians-viewed this as such a cosmically significant event that they reoriented their worship practice. You think it’s hard to change just one simple worship tradition in your church? Imagine changing a thousands-year-old tradition such as what day to gather for worship! Yes, Jesus’ resurrection was that significant.
The gospel of John is full of parallels between the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and the story of Jesus. In fact, you could say that John is the Genesis of the New Testament. It begins just like Genesis does: “In the beginning.” As John recounts the stories of Jesus in his gospel, he maps Jesus’ life and ministry onto dozens and dozens of instances in the book of Genesis. He intends for the reader to think about God’s creation of the world as he tells the story of the recreation of the world through Jesus.
It’s purposeful, then, when John loads his resurrection account with a lot of Genesis-y allusions. Just like the earth was “without form and void” (Gen. 1:2), so the resurrection story begins “while it was still dark” (John 20:1). Adam and Eve’s sin required shameful covering of their bodies (Gen. 3:7), but the New Adam, Jesus Christ, emerges from the grave uncovered, with “the linen cloths lying there,” useless in the tomb (John 20:5). Adam and Eve walked in a garden (Gen. 3:8); a woman met Jesus alone, mistaking him for a gardener (John 20:15).
John’s point is clear: through cross and resurrection, the old creation has died and the new creation has come. And this has some radical implications for worship.
Acts and Corinthians both report that Christians quickly began to gather for worship on Jesus’ resurrection day, “the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2). In the book of Revelation, John the gospel writer reveals what Christians began to call this first day: they called it “the Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10). This title isn’t just some reference to how Sunday is Jesus’ special day. No, “the Lord’s Day” is another way of referring to a special Old Testament prophecy known as “the day of the Lord.”
The prophet Joel speaks of the day of the Lord as the end of time and the final judgment when the sun would turn to dark- ness and the moon to blood (Joel 2:31). Amos describes the day of the Lord as a day of full and perfect justice for all who have been wronged (Amos 5:18-24). Just a few pages before the New Testament, the prophet Malachi describes the day of the Lord as an overwhelming refiner’s fire, purifying everything (Mal. 3:3).
And crazy enough, Christians use this phrase the day of the Lord-as the title of our worship day, Jesus’ resurrection day.
Here’s just one mind blowing implication of all this: when we gather for worship, God is bringing the future new heavens and new earth, promised in Revelation’s final “day” (Revelation 21), into the present moment of worship. Imagine you’re standing in a broad, low valley and ahead of you a mile or two is an enormous hundred-foot-high concrete wall, which is damming up a large body of water. On that wall is written “the day of the Lord.” When Jesus rose from the dead some two thousand years ago, it is as though he punched some holes into that wall, and now those future precious healing waters ahead of us are dribbling back to us at our feet whenever we gather for worship.
What was once wholly promised in the future has been unlocked and poured out in foretastes when we worship. You can almost taste those waters in the bread and wine of the table. You can nearly feel their cleansing as you witness a baptism. You hear them lapping up on the shores near your toes in preaching. You feel the bellows of their rhythmic waves in the music.
Worship is a time-bending, present experience of the future day of the Lord. It is the backward leak of the dammed up heavenly waters, meant to give us just enough hope and promise to help us make it through another week this side of eternity. When God calls us into worship, it is an invitation to experience all the peace, joy, and fullness of where we’re headed.
| Prayer
Aim your prayers in this direction:
- Pray that the Holy Spirit would fill your congregation with inspiring hope this Sunday.
- Pray for a powerful experience of the joy and peace of the future new heavens and new earth right in your midst as you worship.
- Ask, seek, and knock for God to graciously offer tangible foretastes of future healing of body and soul in your worship gathering.
- Ask God to tear down the cultural forces that would seek to make your church now-focused to the neglect of the future orientation and hope of the coming day of the Lord.