The Day of the LORD pre-echoed

You find “the day of the LORD” often in the Old Testament books and then of course again in the New Testament. A good question to ask about “the day of the LORD” or “that day” or “on that day” is whether or not it is indeed a singular or plural.

If you read the book of Amos you hear about “that day” when things happen like the northern kingdom of Israel finally gets what it should for their treatment of the poor. Things like the wealthy being reduced to slaves and the grand citizens of the city taken from their lavish homes into bondage. ‘That day” is terrible, and it was. It came on a different day for the southern kingdom when the temple was destroyed and the people who the Babylonians found any value in were hauled off into exile.

If you zip forward to the book of Revelation you’ll learn that God also promises visitations upon the churches John writes to and often the visit won’t be pleasant. Often in the Bible “the day of the LORD” is a sort of “Judgment Day” when “the books are opened” and everyone is called to account.

Once you begin to understand “that day” you in fact begin to see it all over the Bible. “The day of the LORD” came to Egypt when Moses demanded of Pharaoh that he let the LORD’s people go to worship him in the wilderness and Pharaoh refused. “That day” was a day of darkness, and hail, and locusts, and eventually death to the firstborn of man and animal.

Luke 12:35-40 draws in another imagine into this “day of the LORD” theme. The people are told to “gird up their loins” echoing the commands of Exodus 12:11. Here we get an interesting picture of a master returning and faithful servants waiting. In fact, if you follow Luke it seems like Jesus is really hungry and just can’t get enough of banquets and stories of banquets. Banquets in Luke are events of illumination, people, Jesus, and their standing with God and each other are all revealed at once in the context of these parties. What’s interesting in this passage is that we see the coming together of this “day of the LORD” with the parties in Luke.

In Luke 7 Jesus is insulted at a banquet and a sinful woman washes his feet with her hair. The hosts are revealed to be who they are, and Jesus and the woman are revealed to be who they are. The light has come into the room and everyone gets to see what’s really going on. It’s “the day of the LORD” come into that town, into that time.

In Luke 11 Jesus attends another banquet and this time he’s doing the insulting. He lets go a rant that confused no one. Jesus declares that the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are part of “this generation”. Again, the time thing is strange because “this generation” is very old indeed when you discover that they were already around in Deuteronomy 32:4-6. The rebelled against God in the desert, murdered the Old Testament prophets over hundreds of years and then showed up in Jesus time. Again, the light comes on.

We will see this “day of the LORD” come in John 13 when the Son of Man serves his servants by washing their feet and serving a banquet of himself to them. We’ll see the day of the LORD come the next day when there is darkness and earthquake and tombs are opened (Matt 27:50-54). It happens again on the following Sunday, and then again at Pentecost. It just keeps coming.

So, is the day of the LORD singular or plural? I think we have to say “both”. I think of it as a pre-echo. You all know what an echo is, there is one loud, defining noise and then that noise reverberates because of a structured reality. There is one day of the LORD, but it has been preceded by its echo. It has been reverberating throughout creation for a very long time and will continue until the original arrives. It will be a day of darkness and terror, and a day of feasting and joy. It all depends on whether or not you are happy to see him, and whether or not you can stand his presence.

What then is the church? The church is the community preparing for the presence. We are weak, flimsy, and thin, so by his providence he toughens his church up, nourishes it in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6), tests it, purifies it, makes it ready to tolerate, withstand, and eventually enjoy his presence. God it seems, is an acquired taste for a naturally rebellious people.