The Promise Behind the Sabbath

This is Haven Today.

I'm David Wolin.

You know, there's no joy quite like the joy of the holiday season.

Every year, a similar experience repeats.

We have a joy then that I'd describe as three-dimensional.

And here's what I mean.

Isn't much of the joy you feel around the holidays, especially as you get older, isn't it connected often to the memory of years gone by? That's one dimension in the past.

And there's also a joy of the present as we enjoy a current year's celebration.

That's another dimension.

And then as the next year wears on, summer turns to fall and we start to anticipate the season yet to come.

And so there are three dimensions of that joy, past, present, and future.

Well, today we're going to pick back up the biblical theme of rest and we'll consider it in the same threefold light.

We'll look back in Scripture at what God has done in history, in the Old Testament.

It provides for us something like a pencil sketch of what will eventually become a full-color painting.

That's when we get to the new, which is also our present experience.

The present experience of God's people, which began with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, today God's people experience a taste of the promised rest of God in a way that Old Testament saints did not.

And then we will finally close briefly by looking to the future, to the consummation of all history, when together as one people, the saints of every age, together we will enter into the rest for which God created humanity as we glorify God and enjoy him forever, resting from all our labors just like our creator.