Jesus Washed

What Did Jesus Do?

They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Revelation 7.14

For the longest time the worship of God was appointed for the seventh day of the week—the Sabbath. Like everything else in the beginning that is recorded in Genesis, God willed it and it was so. Amen.

Now the Sabbath’s initial purpose was rest, a cessation from the labors of the rest of the week. For God had made Man to share in His labor, not the work of creation itself, but of sustaining and multiplying what the LORD created until all the world should be filled with its goodness, or everything God made He had declared “good.”

As we might imagine, after six days of work there was need to get cleaned up by the time the Sabbath came around each week. Fortunately, there was ample water all around, and washing wasn’t that hard a chore. And so, all cleaned up, Man could join his Maker in enjoying the Sabbath rest together.

But with the Fall it became impossible for Man to ever clean himself enough to be with God and truly share in the Sabbath. The Sabbath continued, but there was now work to be done on the Sabbath as well, for the stain of sin had to be removed. The only problem was, nothing Man could do could ever make him clean again. And so the perfect rest of the Sabbath was lost to Man forever, or so it seemed.

For the Father love the world so much that he would send the Son to wash away the stain of sin forever. The work Jesus did on the cross, the washing by the blood of the Lamb, has freed us to again come into the presence of God to rest and to worship now, and for eternity.

It was on the first day of the week that the Son arose. And ever since it has been the first day of the week when Christians celebrate their having been washed by the blood of the Lamb, and worship God who sits upon the throne of heaven, and the Lamb who stands before the throne. What take place on the first day of the week in Christian worship, or at least what is supposed to take place, is the very thing the apostle John was shown in heaven, the worship of the washed who forever celebrate the salvation wrought by God and by the Lamb. If we are not rejoicing in our being made clean, and praising the Father and the Son for washing us, there just isn’t much point in worship.

For God shelters with his presence the washed who come before the throne, satisfying their hunger, slaking their thirst, turning away the sun and any scorching heat, as the Lamb, who is their shepherd, guides them to springs of living water. (Revelation 7.15-17) No more Sabbaths of working to be clean, but celebrating on the Lord’s Day being washed by the blood of the Lamb. That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4