“Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath.”
The Old Testament Feast of Tabernacles was a week-long celebration, remembering God’s preservation of Israel through the wilderness and the gift of the Promised Land, culminating on the eighth day. The Year of Jubilee, a freedom from all debt and slavery and a return to the land promised to their ancestors, happened on the 50th year, after a cycle of seven Sabbath years, seven sevens. A child in Israel was circumcised on the eighth day in Israel.
In Luke 4:18 Jesus told the Jews of Nazareth that the Year of Jubilee, the Year of the Lord’s Favor, had come.
Jesus came into Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover week. He did His final week of work, finishing it on the sixth day. He rested in the grave on the seventh day, the most perfect Sabbath ever kept, and He rose again on the eighth day. This is why the ancient church typically spoke not of worship on the first day of the week, but the eighth- not a mere moving of the Sabbath Day, but a completion and transcending of the whole system, something many elements of the Old Testament Law anticipate, and something we celebrate every Lord’s Day.
