The Rhythm of Redemption: God's Appointed Times Text: Leviticus 23:1-3
Introduction: Whose Calendar Are You On?
Every man lives by a calendar. The only question is which one. Our secular age would have you believe that time is a neutral, empty container that we fill with our ambitions, our deadlines, and our entertainments. The modern man's calendar is a chaotic jumble of tax deadlines, Super Bowl Sundays, quarterly reports, and Black Friday sales. It is a calendar that tells a story, and the story is this: man is the center, and his anxieties and appetites are the driving force of history. It is a story that begins with nothing and ends nowhere. It is the rhythm of the hamster wheel.
Into this frantic and meaningless existence, the Word of God speaks with sovereign authority. God, the Creator of time, is also the Lord of time. He does not leave His people to drift in the meaningless currents of a secular calendar. He gives them His own. He establishes a rhythm, a liturgy, that tells the true story of the world: the story of creation, fall, redemption, and glory. A calendar is not just a way to mark time; it is a way to interpret reality. And God's people must learn to live on God's time.
Leviticus 23 is not a dusty chapter of obsolete regulations for an ancient tribe. It is the divine framework for a godly culture. It is God handing Israel the sheet music for the symphony of redemption. He is teaching them how to order their lives, their work, their worship, and their rest around His great acts of salvation. And at the very foundation of this liturgical year, as the downbeat that sets the tempo for everything else, He places the Sabbath. Before we can understand the great annual feasts, we must first understand the weekly pulse of God's grace. To neglect this is to attempt to build a culture on a foundation of sand, and to live a life that is perpetually out of sync with the God who made you.
The Text
And Yahweh spoke again to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘The appointed times of Yahweh which you shall proclaim as holy convocations, My appointed times are these: For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a sabbath to Yahweh in all your places of habitation.'"
(Leviticus 23:1-3 LSB)
God's Appointments, Not Man's Suggestions (v. 1-2)
The passage begins with the ultimate authority claim:
"And Yahweh spoke again to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, "The appointed times of Yahweh which you shall proclaim as holy convocations, My appointed times are these...'" (Leviticus 23:1-2)
Notice first that this calendar originates with God. "Yahweh spoke." This is not the result of a congregational survey or a decision by a committee on worship. God sets the schedule. Modern evangelicals, in their desperate quest to be relevant, have largely abandoned God's calendar in favor of the world's. Our big days are Mother's Day, the Super Bowl, and the Fourth of July. We have traded God's story for man's story. But here, God asserts His sovereign right to define the rhythm of His people's lives. These are "the appointed times of Yahweh."
He calls them His "appointed times," the Hebrew word is moedim. This word means a set time, a fixed appointment. This is not a casual suggestion. When God sets an appointment, you keep it. He then defines these appointments as "holy convocations." The Hebrew is miqra qodesh. A convocation is a public assembly. Holy means it is set apart from all common and profane activities. God is commanding His people to gather, together, in public, for sacred purposes at set times. This demolishes the flimsy, modern idea that faith is a "private matter." Biblical faith is profoundly corporate and public. God saves individuals to make them into a people, and that people is defined by their regular, holy gatherings before Him.
God says, "My appointed times." The possessive is crucial. We do not own our time; God does. We are stewards of the days He gives us, and He has a claim on them. To disregard the Lord's appointed times, chief of which is the Lord's Day, is not just a failure of time management. It is an act of rebellion. It is telling God that our schedule, our rest, our entertainment, and our work are more important than His summons.
The Foundational Rhythm (v. 3)
Before God lists the great annual festivals like Passover and Tabernacles, He lays the foundation with the weekly rhythm.
"For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation. You shall not do any work; it is a sabbath to Yahweh in all your places of habitation." (Leviticus 23:3 LSB)
The Sabbath is the anchor of the entire liturgical year. Get the week wrong, and the rest of the year will be a discordant mess. Notice the pattern: six days of work, one day of rest. The fourth commandment is not just a command to rest; it is a command to work. "Six days work may be done." God is for labor, for diligence, for dominion. He created man to work. But our work is to be framed by rest.
The seventh day is a "sabbath of complete rest," a shabbat shabbaton. This is an emphatic phrase, a "sabbath of sabbaths." It means a total cessation from the ordinary labors of the previous six days. This is not a suggestion to slow down a bit. It is a command to stop. Why? Because it is an act of faith. By stopping our work, we declare that God, not our own frantic effort, is the one who sustains the universe. We trust that He can keep the world spinning for one day without our help. To refuse to rest is a form of practical atheism. It is to live as though everything depends on us.
And what is the purpose of this rest? It is a "holy convocation." Again, the public, corporate gathering is central. We rest from our labors in order to gather for worship. The rest is not an end in itself; it is the means to the greater end of assembling before our God. And this rhythm is to be practiced "in all your places of habitation." It is both a public, corporate reality and a private, domestic one. The worship in the assembly is to shape the joyful rest in the home. The whole day is set apart as "a sabbath to Yahweh." It belongs to Him.
From Old Rhythm to New
Now, a critic might say, "This is all well and good for ancient Israel, but we are not under the Old Covenant." This is true, but it is a half-truth, and half-truths are often the most dangerous lies. We are not under the old administration of the covenant, but the principles of creation and redemption, the very grammar of God's relationship with man, are eternal. The Sabbath was not abolished; it was fulfilled and transformed.
The Old Covenant pattern was work, then rest. For six days, Israel labored, and on the seventh, they rested. This was a picture of the law: do this, and you will live. But Christ came, and He accomplished a new creation. His resurrection from the dead on the first day of the week was the ultimate act of re-creation. And nothing short of a new creation could alter the day of rest established at the first creation.
Because of Christ's resurrection, the rhythm of redemption has been graciously inverted. We no longer work for our rest. We now work from our rest. The Christian week begins on the first day, the Lord's Day. We gather for our holy convocation. We feast on Christ in the Word and sacrament. We are filled up with grace. And from that foundation of gospel rest, we go out to labor for the next six days. Our work is not a desperate attempt to earn God's favor, but a joyful and grateful response to the favor we have already received freely in Jesus Christ. We do not work to be accepted; we work because we are accepted.
This is why honoring the Lord's Day is not some grim form of legalism. It is a joyful celebration of the gospel. It is a weekly declaration that Jesus is Lord, that the tomb is empty, and that our salvation is based on His finished work, not our frantic striving. It is the central, load-bearing pillar of a Christian culture. To neglect it is to cut ourselves off from the very rhythm of grace that God has ordained for our good, our joy, and our strength.
The world's calendar will run you into the ground. It offers no real rest, only temporary distraction. But God's calendar, founded on the weekly celebration of the resurrection, is a fountain of life. It is the rhythm of redemption, and it is the only way to live a life that is truly in time with the triumphant music of the gospel.