The Fourth Commandment - Part II

Grace Reformation Bible Church iconGrace Reformation Bible Church

6 views

Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 20:8-11

0 comments

00:01
Well, this morning we complete the fourth commandment, and as was mentioned last week, we will take some opportunity tonight to sort of have an open forum, since this is more of a practical message, want to have sort of a informal round circle where we can ask questions and talk practically, talk personally, talk about perhaps areas of challenge, but also encourage one another as we seek to apply this commandment to our lives.
00:32
Last week, as we considered the fourth commandment, we considered really the question of why. Why does the
00:39
Lord give us this Sabbath day? Why does He command us to rest? And this morning, we want to consider how.
00:46
How are we to rest? How are we to sanctify the Sabbath, the Lord's day? We want to consider that in four parts this morning.
00:54
We want to consider what we rest for, secondly, what we rest from, thirdly, what we rest by, and then lastly, what we rest in, or perhaps whom we rest in.
01:11
So rest for, rest from, rest by, and rest in. Rest for, question 66, which we didn't cover last week from our catechism, which again bears no authority, but I do believe it is a very helpful and biblical summary of what the
01:32
Bible has to say about the Lord's day. And so, insofar as it does that, I think it's thoroughly biblical.
01:39
How is the Sabbath to be sanctified? And this is the answer. The Sabbath is to be sanctified or set apart by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days.
01:55
And spending the time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
02:05
That's a very helpful summary. A holy resting all the day.
02:12
That's what our answer sets forward. A holy resting all the day. And what does that holy rest look like?
02:18
Spending time in both public and private exercises of God's worship.
02:25
So a holy rest that actually looks like public and private worship all that day.
02:33
As we saw last week, everything about the Sabbath command orbits around the worship of God.
02:40
What is the Sabbath command about? The worship, the enjoyment, communion with the holy
02:46
God. So the Sabbath is a rest from our earthly labors and a gift from God for the sake of this delightful communion, this enjoyment of worshiping the
02:58
Lord our Creator, the Lord our Redeemer. When we view the Sabbath as a gift in this way, we can begin to understand why
03:06
God was so offended that His people began to treat it as a weary burden, a yoke, a heavy yoke around their neck.
03:16
And they began to grumble and complain and roll their eyes and huff and puff about this gift of the
03:23
Sabbath day. We read that in Numbers 15, Ezekiel 20, Jeremiah 17. It's clear throughout the prophets, the frequent rebukes that God gives to His people, it's clear that He is jealous for our keeping of the holiness of this day.
03:40
Failure of God's people to honor the Sabbath is situated right next to idolatry and spiritual adultery, a constant charge.
03:51
So the question for us that we began to consider last week is, how do you keep this day holy?
03:58
Do you treat this day as a day of sacred rest, a day of communion, a day of worship?
04:03
Or do you treat this day as a burden, as a boredom? We considered last week from Mark 2,
04:09
Jesus' wonderfully clarifying teaching against the excess of the Pharisees.
04:15
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So we considered that the
04:23
Sabbath was made for our sake, for our good, for our benefit. It was a gift given to man.
04:28
But as Mark 2 goes on to declare, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. So ultimately, the
04:34
Sabbath is about Him. This day you shall keep holy. It is the Sabbath of the Lord. And rather than view it as a burden, we are to view it as a blessing.
04:44
As the prophets rebuke God's people for treating the Sabbath as a burden, for profaning it in idleness and worldliness,
04:52
God calls them to then reconsider, rethink, repent, turn, and consider it, in fact, a blessing, and therefore to keep it holy.
05:01
Blessed is the man who does this, Isaiah 56 says. Blessed is the
05:07
Son of Man who lays hold on it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, who keeps
05:12
His hand from doing evil. In other words, the Lord will bless those who bless His day.
05:18
The Lord will honor those who honor His day. It's a day of rest. But that rest is worship.
05:26
It's a worshipful rest. It's a day of rest unto worship. A day of rest for worship.
05:33
It's great prayer if we consider some of the great prayers throughout Scripture. Perhaps one of the top three would be
05:41
Nehemiah 9. The whole chapter is essentially a long -form prayer, Nehemiah recounting the history of Israel in some ways like Stephen recounts the history of Israel.
05:52
And he's considering God's graciousness in high contrast to the people's rebellion.
05:57
So if we just pick a few examples of this, Nehemiah 9, 13, and 14.
06:03
You came down on Mount Sinai. You spoke with us from heaven. You gave us ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments.
06:12
You made known your holy Sabbath. You commanded precepts and statutes and laws, right?
06:18
This is part of what Nehemiah recounts as the gracious and merciful activity of God.
06:25
You didn't stay, as it were, distant, aloof, apart from your people.
06:31
You came down on Sinai. And you gave us good, true, righteous laws, statutes and commandments that would bless us and bind us to your will.
06:43
You made known your holy Sabbath. Nehemiah is saying, thank you. Thank you that you gave us the
06:51
Sabbath. Thank you that you came and spoke the law. Thank you that you gave us this badge and this guide, this pathway of how we can walk before you and enjoy you and love you and love our neighbor as ourself.
07:07
But of course, the tragic counter, verses 34 and 35, neither our kings, nor our princes, nor our priests, nor our fathers have kept your law.
07:20
They have not keted your commandments. They have not kept your testimonies. They have not served you in their kingdom.
07:29
They have not served you in the many good things you gave them. Do you see what Nehemiah is understanding?
07:35
You gave us this law. You gave us this testimony. You gave us a way that we could serve you in the land that you gave us, good things that you gave us.
07:48
But we would not. So the law was given that God's people might serve
07:54
God. Remember, we spent some time some weeks ago considering that in detail. We are servants of God.
08:01
We are given grace to serve God. And in this way, we're given the Sabbath that we might serve
08:07
Him by, a holy rest all that day to worship Him. Now Nehemiah, this isn't just a prayer.
08:14
This isn't just an afterthought for him. This is coming from his heart. This is a reality for his life.
08:21
He understands the Sabbath is a gift. He's also in a position of authority as governor.
08:28
He has authority. He has opportunity to enforce the command that God has given.
08:36
And so in Nehemiah 13, we read of this very thing. Nehemiah records, in those days I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the
08:42
Sabbath, bringing in sheaves, loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, all kinds of burdens, and then bringing it into Jerusalem on the
08:51
Sabbath day. And so I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. So you have this scene that opens up in Nehemiah 13.
09:00
He notices that merchants are selling, workmen are loading donkeys, I guess the vineyards are running at full steam, right?
09:10
The treading of the wine presses throughout the day, so treading, bringing, loading, and the most significant thing, failing to keep the
09:18
Sabbath holy. In fact, they were so lax that, as we read a little bit further, now even the
09:26
Gentile nations are being brought to the holy city, and they're partaking in all this activity. They're buying, selling, trading, carrying forth.
09:34
So now the Israelites are not being salt and light. They're not having the testimony of God's law going before them.
09:42
Men of Tyre, we read, dwelt also, brought in fish, all kinds of goods, and sold them on the
09:47
Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem. So what does Nehemiah do? He doesn't say, well, it's not that big of a deal,
09:59
I guess. We all stumble in many ways. Not a big deal. He doesn't say, well, at least
10:05
I'm trying really hard to keep the Sabbath. I can't speak for them, nor will I speak to them. What Nehemiah does, he goes right up and he says, if you do this again,
10:14
I'm laying hands on you. If you do this again, I'm laying hands on you. Now, I don't know how imposing of a figure
10:23
Nehemiah was. He must have been a pretty mighty man, because we read in response to that, from that time forward, no one came again on the
10:30
Sabbath. Now what did it mean to lay hands? Most likely, with his position of governorship, most likely that was an idiom for I'll arrest you,
10:40
I'll have you seized, potentially imprisoned. But if we just read it on service level, he might be saying, you're going to catch these hands if you break the
10:48
Sabbath. I'm going to take you to the ground. You don't want to mess with me. We see a man that has this
10:55
Phineas -like zeal for God. Nehemiah is the same man in prayer in chapter 9 as he is in practice in chapter 13.
11:06
Now that's key. His heart has an understanding of who
11:12
God is. His practice has an understanding of what God requires, a right understanding of who
11:20
God is, a right worship according to what God requires.
11:26
Now sadly, our contemporary view of the fourth commandment is so marginalized that Nehemiah 13 seems bizarre, out of place.
11:37
I'm glad we don't have people like Nehemiah anymore. I'm glad we don't have to be like this anymore. Rather than seeing it as God's commendation of what a righteous man, zealous in all of his house will look like, we find
11:49
Nehemiah to be an oddity, someone that should be turned into a wax statue in Ripley's Museum, believe it or not.
11:57
Nehemiah was so concerned to protect the worship of God that he didn't just threaten those that were transgressing and defiling the day, he actually posted
12:07
Levites to guard the gates. So we read in Nehemiah 13, 22, I commanded the
12:14
Levites that they should cleanse themselves, that they should go and guard the gates in order to sanctify the
12:21
Sabbath. What are Levites charged with? What are they responsible for?
12:28
Levites are tasked by God, consecrated by God, to administer to all things pertaining to his worship.
12:37
Is Nehemiah taking a step out of order when he says,
12:43
I'm actually not going to have you go to the foundation of the temple, I'm actually going to have you go and be watchmen by the gates.
12:52
Wouldn't the Levite protest? No, no, no. Nehemiah, I appreciate your zeal, but you need to understand,
12:59
I'm here to help God and help his people in his worship.
13:06
And so I'm here to serve the temple in the needs of worship. I can't go be a doorkeeper at the city gates, don't you have other workers that can do that?
13:15
But what would Nehemiah say? How would he argue? The sanctification of the
13:22
Sabbath is about God's worship. And that's why Levites must guard the gates. The sanctification of the
13:29
Sabbath day is about the holiness of God. We can't have men of Tyre coming in, nor Israelites going to trade, lift, and work.
13:37
And some commoner, some average doorkeeper is not going to have a heart for the holiness of God, nor an eye to the right worship of God.
13:45
I need Levites at the gates. This is why they have to not only guard the gates, but cleanse themselves.
13:53
In other words, they cleanse themselves that they might go and watch at the very doors where the
13:59
Sabbath day might be profaned. That is a beautiful image for us. You see what
14:04
Nehemiah 13 is getting at. The Sabbath is about the holy worship of the holy God. And therefore, anything that pertains to guarding the gates or keeping that day is holy work.
14:14
It's Levitical work. It's priestly work. What you do to prepare for this day.
14:20
How you arrange your life in order to keep it. What you do to set it apart. That is a holy, priestly work.
14:27
It's guarding the gates of God's worship. We need to grow from guarding the
14:32
Lord's day as common porters, half responsible, half interested, to guarding it with the zeal of Nehemiah, guarding it with the holy discernment of a
14:42
Levite. It is a day of rest for worship. Now we have to add, as we kind of conclude this first point, it's a day of rest for worship, but as the catechism rightly says, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
15:02
The crown jewel of the day is worship, the worship of God. The posts and frame that keep that jewel in its prominent place are works of necessity and works of mercy.
15:16
I would not put the worship of God in the keeping of the
15:21
Sabbath on equal footing with works of necessity and works of mercy. This is what the
15:27
Sabbath is for. It's for work of necessity, it is for work of mercy. That's not to say these three things are equal or interchangeable, no, no, no.
15:37
The queen over every aspect of the day is the worship of God. It is a day for worship.
15:44
Now when you set that as the crown jewel, when you set that as the priority, underneath that comes opportunity for works of mercy and works of necessity.
15:53
It's very important that the focus of the day is the worship of God, and then along with that, in the practice of that, we come to works of necessity and works of mercy.
16:03
So that's the first point. We'll elaborate on what that looks like in the third part.
16:09
Now secondly, so we have a rest for, secondly, a rest from. We have a rest from.
16:17
Question 67, what is forbidden in the fourth commandment?
16:23
The fourth commandment forbids the omission or careless performance of the duties required and the profaning the day by idleness or doing that which is in itself sinful or by unnecessary thoughts, words, works about worldly employments, worldly recreations.
16:44
So notice what's being said here. We are to rest from something. We are to rest from worldly employments and recreations.
16:54
Worldly employments and recreations. Now at this point, as we head into this,
16:59
I want to remind us of a point made in the conclusion last week. It was from Ryan McGraw. To apply the fourth commandment to our lives, we must first see its scope and our inability to keep it.
17:13
That's true of every commandment. When you understand the full breadth, the full scope of what
17:19
God is requiring and forbidding, you'll realize, woe is me. I need a savior.
17:26
I have no standing against this law. And if that's true of the other commandments, it's no less true of the fourth commandment.
17:33
You must understand what it requires, what it forbids, and therein, your inability to keep it as God requires.
17:40
That's why even Nehemiah in chapter 13, he breaks out into prayer when he recounts all that he's done, threatening those who are breaking the
17:49
Sabbath in his role as governor, installing Levites to guard the gates. And what does he say?
17:54
Verse 22, remember me, my God, concerning this, spare me according to the greatness of your mercy.
18:01
You say, Lord, I've tried as hard as I can to keep this day holy to you. Please show me mercy.
18:08
It's a man who understands his heart and his flesh. Show me mercy, Lord. As zealous as I am,
18:13
I'm not nearly as zealous as I ought to be. As careful as I am, I'm not nearly as careful as I should be.
18:20
Lord, show me great mercy. So on the one hand, he says, I command you, cleanse yourselves, sanctify the
18:26
Sabbath. And then he says, Lord, give me your grace. It's the only way
18:31
I can have a standing before you. Nehemiah, like we all, judged himself when he had done all to be an unprofitable servant.
18:40
He knew that he needed God's mercy to pardon his sin. So as McGraw said, and we talked about this last week, we return to the commandment, cleansed by the blood of Christ and therefore compelled out of love to serve him by keeping the commandment.
18:58
You must come to the law, understand its weight and its demand against you, flee from the law to Christ, receive that righteous cloak, that covering that comes from his shed blood, and then go back to the law amazed and grateful because of this righteousness that is now yours by faith and say, therefore,
19:18
I will walk in this way. I'll show you my gratitude, my thankfulness by walking in this way that is right and pleasing to you.
19:25
The law is holy, just, and good. The more that we delight in the Sabbath, the more we will sanctify it in this very way.
19:36
And therein, we'll move away from the list of do's and don'ts, the papal statements, to actually receiving this day as a day of rest for worship.
19:50
Again, the more we understand it to be a gift, the more we call it a delight, the more we understand that we are cleansed from all of our sins and this is our pathway, our walking stick of gratitude unto
20:03
God, the more that naturally we will set apart this day. A lot of the questions of what about this, what about that, get answered in this very way.
20:11
I have no desire as an elder to put on the big papal white hat with the gold trim and pronounce on what you can and cannot do.
20:20
Some of you might want that, I don't want that. Paul is as concerned to be a prophet unto holiness for God's people as he is to be a champion for their liberty in Christ.
20:33
One of the harder things, I think, in church ministry, you have people that are maybe lax and you want to sort of pull them up by the bootstraps and you have people that are overzealous and they might trample on those that are lax in a way that they trample on the liberty they have in Christ.
20:49
And shepherds especially are called by God to not only prosecute what God requires but protect the liberty that is afforded in Christ.
20:58
Very challenging. Well, I don't want to be the Sabbath police, I don't want to have the steady brim and, you know, be kind of scanning, you know, newspaper folds down and I'm scanning the lunch lines, you know, the table, woo!
21:12
What was that, conversation? Sounds pretty worldly to me. No, there's no place for Sabbath police here.
21:19
When you understand what this law requires and you're serving and seeking to follow this commandment out of gratitude, part of that is you recognize how woefully far behind what
21:32
God requires you are and yet God has given you grace. You can't help but then be gracious to your brothers and sisters. We need to have this outlook of charity and encouragement to encourage and spur one another on to good works in this way.
21:46
We can't do it through intimidation or trampling on one another's toes. If that's true of any commandment, it's certainly true of the fourth.
21:56
So it's a day of rest from worldly employment and recreations.
22:03
And as I say, when our sole focus begins with what this day is for, this day is for communing with God and enjoying
22:14
God and the people of God, communing with God and with one another, both public and private expressions of worship.
22:22
And then following downstream from that as the day unravels, works of necessity, things that have to get done just to live another day or to carry forward in the week, as well as opportunities to show mercy.
22:34
And the early church especially treated the Lord's Day as a day to do works of charity and mercy.
22:41
It was a day of distribution to those in need, a day that alms were taken up for the relief of the poor.
22:47
We have that right off of 1 Corinthians 16. Certainly it's something we should consider as Christians today.
22:53
What are the works and opportunities that we can do to show mercy? So when we consider what the day is for, so many of these practical questions about our thoughts, our speech, our recreations begin to answer themselves.
23:06
In other words, if I combine the first point with this, what you are resting for will help you determine what to rest from.
23:18
What you are resting for will help you determine what you need to rest from.
23:26
There's a lot of debate over Calvin's view on the fourth commandment. Richard Gaffin wrote a whole book on that, some historical vignettes that might shed light on him having a perhaps much broader and liberal view on keeping the
23:42
Lord's Day compared to the English Puritans, but if you actually read some of his sermons from Deuteronomy, you wouldn't get that sense at all.
23:51
So here's an excerpt from one such message from Deuteronomy. Calvin says, we must refrain from our own business, which might hinder us from the minding of God's works.
24:01
We must call upon His name and exercise ourselves in His words. If we spend the
24:06
Lord's Day in making good cheer and playing and gaming, is that a good honoring of God?
24:12
No. Is it not a mockery, an unhallowing of His name?
24:18
Yes. But when the shop windows are closed shut on the Lord's Day and men don't travel like they do on other days, it is to the end that we should have more leisure, more liberty to attend the things of God.
24:33
But most people have no regard at all to using the day in this way, which was ordained for them to withdraw from all earthly cares and affairs so that they could give themselves wholly unto
24:46
God. And do you notice what he's saying? It's the same thing I'm saying in this way.
24:53
What you are resting for will determine what you rest from. We must refrain from our own business.
25:02
Why should we rest from that? Because it will hinder us from minding
25:07
God's works and calling on His name and being exercised in His word. You're resting for that, therefore you rest from minding your own business.
25:16
If we spend the Lord's Day in making good cheer and in playing games, why should we rest from that? Why should we rest from games and gaming and playfulness and good cheer?
25:28
Because of what we're resting for, to hallow God's name, to have leisure and liberty so that we can attend
25:34
God's commands. And so again, we rest from, and we determine what that resting from looks like in light of what we're resting for.
25:45
What is the day about? As I said last week, there's some views on the
25:51
Lord's Day that amount to a little more than which view of this controversial position, which view allows me to play sports and go to movies?
25:59
That's my view. What conviction allows me to follow through with my own desires?
26:05
That's the conviction I have. You basically say, is there any theological position that allows me to do this?
26:11
That's my position. We don't care to let God begin his thoughts directed down toward us.
26:17
We rather seek to impose our thoughts, our desires upon God's will. Sort of like a petulant child.
26:25
And all they want to do is stretch the very limits of what is still technically obedience.
26:33
How far can I stretch? How far can I go where technically I have not disobeyed?
26:38
But they're straying as far as they can. And even though perhaps technically they haven't disobeyed, the parent knows you have no heart for obedience.
26:49
There's no thoughtfulness, no gratitude about why I'm asking you to do this or to not do this. You're only taking it as a command, chafing against it, and trying to get as far away from it as you possibly can.
27:00
Do you think God honors that kind of obedience? But when you have a willing heart, when you have this heart that is soft and tender and saying,
27:11
Lord, I don't want to do anything that jeopardizes what this day is for. It's a day of worship, a day of communion, a day of delight.
27:20
Therefore, I will withdraw from all of these other things that will impose upon that.
27:27
Another thing that people commonly do, they'll go and break the fourth commandment, profane the
27:36
Sabbath by some worldly recreation or idleness on their part. And they'll say very confidently,
27:42
I don't feel bad about it. I don't feel any conviction about it. Most lawbreakers don't feel conviction.
27:49
That's why they break the law. Most lawbreakers don't feel bad about the things they do. Have you ever seen an episode of cops where someone, you know, runs over a fire hydrant and crashes into someone's house?
28:00
And the officer runs up and, you know, get out of the car, you know. They're on the getaway and the person says, I don't see how
28:06
I've done anything wrong. Well, then you're free to go. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter that you don't see what you've done wrong.
28:13
It matters that according to God's will, you have done something wrong. Again, what you're resting for determines what you're resting from.
28:22
Amos chapter 8, we get this insight into the rebellious heart. When will the new moon be passed so I can sell grain?
28:29
When will the Sabbath be over that I can trade wheat? If you read a little bit further in Amos 8, famously, do you know what comes downstream from this kind of mindset?
28:40
God's bringing judgment and the judgment is because of this and also produces this. When is the
28:46
Sabbath going to be over? You know, why do I have to keep it so boring? When can I do the things I want to do? And downstream from that,
28:53
God says there's a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, but a famine of the
28:58
Word of God. If we could have a view of God, of His glory, of His beauty.
29:07
If we could be enraptured like the angels that hide their faces in shame against His peerless light.
29:14
If we could be taken to Isaiah's throne room vision, where Sarah's endlessly fall before Him, screaming out, holy, holy, holy, as we open the service with this morning.
29:25
We would never get to the place on the Lord's Day where we have this mindset of, well, I can still honor
29:32
God on this day and enjoy the playoff game. Isaiah could not say, this is incredible, woe is me.
29:41
I'm just going to go rollerblading. It really makes me feel relaxed on the Lord's Day. You couldn't juxtapose that kind of base worldliness into a scene like that.
29:52
So if the day is about the enjoyment, the worship, the communion, the sort of enrapture of God, what is that going to draw us away from?
30:04
What would detract from that? Malachi 3, your words have been harsh against me, says the
30:11
Lord, yet you say, what have we spoken against you? They haven't said anything, but God says, no, you have spoken against me.
30:20
You have said it's useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?
30:27
This is just a waste of time. There's no benefit to it. It's useless. I'm waiting for it to pass.
30:33
It's all about what I can't do. When is the three stars going to appear in the night sky? I can go do what
30:38
I want to do, kind of catch up on lost time, you know, catch up and review all the things that I've missed. None of the people really said it's useless.
30:46
It's a burden. It's boring. We don't like it. But God says it's as if you came to my face and spoke it to me.
30:55
Your actions speak directly to me. He's viewing their whole attitude and outlook, their whole heart of rebellion as if it was a mouth.
31:05
What profit is it to walk in this? Why keep this? Others are doing things that are against this, but they seem fine.
31:12
Why can't I be like them? So the question is, what are our hearts saying to God? Nothing that we're vocalizing, but what's our action communicating to God?
31:21
Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And we will never be able to keep the
31:27
Sabbath. We'll never desire to keep the Sabbath. We'll never guard the worship of God if our hearts and our thoughts are carnal, if our desires are worldly, if our walk is fleshly.
31:39
The Sabbath will be the farthest thing from your purview. It's the thing that scrapes against worldliness in a
31:45
Christian's life. It shows you how composed of flesh you are. When this day is set apart, you understand to sanctify the
31:54
Sabbath means I have to be incredibly sanctified. Nehemiah says, cleanse yourself,
32:00
Levites, so that you can sanctify the Sabbath. James Dennison, who wrote a tremendous book,
32:10
The Market Day of the Soul, his treatment of the Puritans on the fourth commandment. Market Day of the
32:15
Soul. In a different article based on that book, he wrote, the Puritan sanctification of the
32:21
Sabbath day has been caricatured as a bore. The Puritan response would have been, what?
32:31
What is so boring about a Christian setting aside a day to delight in the
32:39
Lord and to delight in His people? What is boring about taking a whole day to enjoy the sweet presence of the
32:47
Lord in public and in family and in private reflection? What is boring about spending a day teaching children the way of salvation?
32:58
Opening up the words of Scripture to them at home, dealing with them in a tender, loving, and joyful way?
33:04
What's boring about taking a day to visit and pray for those who are sick or in need? What is boring about a day of warm fellowship with others who love the
33:13
Lord Jesus that you love? See, what you are resting for determines what you rest from.
33:21
So you need a renewed mind. You need a renewed heart.
33:26
You need the kind of heart that's willing to turn the foot away from your own pleasure, your own thoughts, your own desires, and turn instead to the
33:35
Lord. That's, of course, the classic passage, Isaiah 58, 13 and 14.
33:41
If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and then you call the
33:50
Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord and honorable and honor
33:56
Him, not doing your own ways, not trying to find your own pleasure, not speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the
34:07
Lord. Now notice what's encapsulated in those verses. We have the repetition of delight that frames the passage.
34:15
Call the Sabbath a delight, then you have the imperatives, then you shall delight yourself in the
34:22
Lord. So we have the initial call, call the Sabbath a delight, and then the promise, if you do it in this way, if calling the
34:32
Sabbath a delight looks like this, then you will delight yourself in the Lord. You won't just be calling it a delight, but finding it to be something other than delightful.
34:42
You'll actually experience why this is a delight. God is saying, call it what it truly is.
34:48
Practice it in this way and you'll find it to be so. What does it look like to honor the
34:54
Lord on the Sabbath day? Not doing your own ways, not trying to find your own pleasure, not speaking your own words.
35:04
Now our flesh immediately resists that. That's tyrannical, not speaking, is this thought police?
35:12
Every sentence has to be like a psalm or a proverb. I can't just say, you know, hey,
35:17
I just wanted to say thank you for that, or hey, how's your work going? This is so tyrannical. But understand what's being framed here.
35:25
Call the Sabbath a delight, practice it in this way, you shall delight.
35:32
And then of course, God attaches even more weight by giving more promises to this. Not only will you be able to call the
35:38
Lord's day, this holy day, a delight to your soul, but you also will receive the heritage of Jacob.
35:46
In other words, you'll be brought to ride on the high hills of the earth. And the Lord gives these promises throughout the prophet, you would just come to me and have your heart to me and not grumble and begrudge things that I've given you as gifts and blessings.
36:02
I would feed you the very heritage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'd bring you to the very heights of the earth.
36:08
I would give you blessings untold. If you would just constrain your flesh and your worldliness to sanctify and set apart this day.
36:20
So here's a sort of renovated way of saying what you're resting for helps you determine what you rest from.
36:32
What you turn your foot to shows you what to turn your foot from.
36:40
What you turn your foot to shows you what to turn your foot from. If you turn your foot from treating this day like any other day, or maybe setting it half apart, now it's all the things
36:54
I don't do because it's Sunday. Turning your foot instead to the
37:02
Lord's day. The day of delight. The market day for my soul. Not a day for my own ways.
37:09
Not a day to produce my own sense of enjoyment and recreation. No, no, no. A day of worship.
37:16
A day of rest for worship. A day that comes with needs and necessities and mercies, but even then, it's all to worship and enjoy the
37:27
Lord my God. I turn my foot to that and it shows me all the ways I need to turn my foot from all the other things that impose upon my thoughts.
37:36
My cares, my needs, my concerns. The things that frame Monday through Saturday. The stress and the busyness of work.
37:43
How am I gonna make ends meet in this way? All the things that fill us with anxiety and concern that cause us instead to say
37:50
I can't afford to call this a day of delight. I need to work. I need to produce. I need to prepare. We spend more time getting ready for Monday in the week ahead than we do getting ready for the
38:00
Lord's day as a day of rest. No wonder we're not brought to the high hills of the earth.
38:07
No wonder the church in North America is not fed with the heritage of Jacob. What you turn your foot from follows what you turn your foot to.
38:21
Turning your foot from your own pleasure. We're gonna get there in this third point. When I read that from Isaiah 58,
38:28
I couldn't help but think of Eric Liddell. Some of you have seen Chariots of Fire.
38:35
It's a great, great film. And of course, Eric Liddell, who was a Scotsman, properly so, was endowed with this incredible gift.
38:45
He could run a burst of speed in a short distance. He wasn't very good at long distance running.
38:52
But the hundred meter was his for the taking. There was no one in the world that could beat
38:59
Eric Liddell in a hundred meters. No one. And all of the United Kingdom knew it.
39:05
And when the 1924 Olympics came around, Eric Liddell was by far the favored to win the hundred meter event.
39:15
But Eric Liddell was a Christian. And Eric Liddell sought to honor and live for the glory of God.
39:24
And it so happened that the hundred meter event fell on the Lord's Day, on a Sunday. Now the
39:30
Olympics come and go every four years, right? This was, I think Eric Liddell was a little bit older at the time, if I recall.
39:37
This was potentially the only opportunity he would have. Others would come up in four years.
39:43
It's hard for runners to maintain any sense of legacy. All this ridicule was poured upon him.
39:52
Not from fellow believers, but from the secular press. A traitor to the country.
39:59
Someone who would trade the glory of the empire. The gold medal that would give
40:06
Britain this great claim. And this is 1924, you know, Germany is sort of in the throes as well.
40:14
You have very significant pressure being put by politicians and public leaders.
40:20
Visits from prime ministers. You must run this event, young man. You're insane not to run this.
40:26
Anglican clergy being prodded. Go and tell them it's okay. Oh, we give you absolution, it's okay. I don't respect you, no.
40:33
He wouldn't do it. And so he went, as he did every Lord's Day, to worship the Lord and spend the day with the
40:39
Lord's people and he sat out on the event. But he still had qualified for the 400 meter, which he was almost rock bottom.
40:49
He couldn't run distance. And the Lord honored him by allowing him to win the gold medal in the 400 meter.
40:56
But the thing that I love about Eric Liddell is that his actual heart was not for this gift of sprinting and it wasn't for the gold medal.
41:06
In fact, for the last years of his life, he almost never recounted the gold medal. Hollywood has made more about Eric Liddell's Olympic career than Eric Liddell ever did.
41:15
What Eric Liddell was about was missions to China. Ever since he was a boy, he wanted to join the
41:21
China Inland Mission. He had read of the stories of Hudson Taylor. He felt that he had, as it were, been born out of place.
41:27
He was actually born Chinese. Such was his heart for the people of China. So as soon as the
41:33
Olympic event was over, he brought his wife to China. And this was at the outbreak of the war.
41:41
And after some years of ministry, he had to send his wife away as the Japanese invaded the Chinese mainland.
41:47
And thankfully, they got to Canada just in time as he was taken to a concentration camp where he died a few years later. That's what his life was all about.
41:58
And if you watch the movie, Chariots of Fire, I don't believe this was actually something from his mouth, but they put it on his mouth in the script.
42:05
And it's the very end and he says, when he says, I feel his pleasure. Speaking of God, I feel his pleasure when
42:12
I run. I feel his pleasure when I run. But I think if you actually asked
42:20
Eric Liddell what his pleasure was, it wouldn't be running.
42:25
It wasn't the Olympic goal. You see, he had turned his foot from his pleasure. He had honored the
42:31
Lord. Why? Because his pleasure was in communing with God and making God known and making
42:37
God great. That was his pleasure. So I don't say that it was because Eric Liddell kept the
42:44
Sabbath that he had this great enjoyment and bliss and thirst to glorify
42:50
God. No, it was the other way around.
42:55
It was because he had this great enjoyment of God, this great thirst to glorify
43:01
God, this great delight in God that he kept the Sabbath. And nothing, not even
43:06
Olympic gold could impinge upon that. That's less than this day for me. That would be a loss on this day for me.
43:14
Some gold trophy, that would be a loss compared to what I receive on this day.
43:19
That is what it looks like to keep the fourth commandment. So thirdly, we rest by.
43:27
We rest by. Now according to our catechism, we rest by spending the time in public and private exercises of God's worship, except what's taken up in works of necessity and mercy.
43:40
So we're to rest from worldly employment, rest from recreation. I think a very important point.
43:47
Again, if this day is for worship, for communion with God and his people, then it's not a day for rollerblading in Parcheesi.
43:55
It's a day for worship and communion, not for recreation. We don't define what is restful and impose that upon what the
44:02
Sabbath is about. God defines what the day is for. We seek to conform our practice to his will.
44:09
Call it a delight in this way, turning your foot from these other ways, these fleshly ways, and you will call it.
44:17
But of course, this rest from worldly employment, this rest from recreation, it's not that God isn't concerned for our bodies.
44:24
He's only concerned for our soul. We go too far if we make the day all about the inner spiritual dimensions of our being.
44:32
It's also a day for physical refreshment and restoration. Rest never means inactivity.
44:39
It didn't mean that for God. It doesn't mean it for us. But remember, we've been calling the Sabbath a gift, a gift.
44:46
And like some gifts, they require assembly. And I would say the Sabbath is the kind of gift that requires careful assembly.
44:54
Hey, I'm a parent now. I don't like when the kids get Christmas gifts that have to be built.
45:01
It's like some model kit or something. You're like, great, thanks. And they instantly want it to be opened and built.
45:07
You know, this is gonna take an hour, and you get frustrated halfway through. It's not really a great gift, but it's worth building.
45:14
And the Sabbath is a gift like that. It's not easy to put it all together, but it's worth the effort.
45:20
When you actually have taken the time, prepared, and worked it out, assembled and established the day, given a certain order and rhythm and consistency in your practice, you'll find that it is a day of joy.
45:34
It is a day of rest and delight. So wise preparation, the sort of, you know,
45:40
Martha, Martha, Martha protest. We need to know how to choose the better parts so that it's not taken away from us.
45:47
These are the things that I wanna sketch out very briefly, and I hope that we'll sort of dive into it in discussion later tonight.
45:55
But perhaps this will be food for thought. You can ruminate on this over the day. Maybe you'll have some questions that flow out of this later tonight.
46:03
So let's just talk about self, family, society, okay? When it comes to how we rest on this
46:11
Sabbath day. What do we rest by? What do we do? So the self. Well, the big question for each one of these is, how do we focus?
46:19
What is our desire? How will we pursue this delight? How will we pursue
46:25
God's blessing on this day? So what's our focus? What's our desire? What will our pursuit look like?
46:33
Well, for yourself, the Sabbath can't just begin on the Sabbath. Even the Jews had what was called the preparation day.
46:41
All right, there's works of necessity, even on the Lord's day, there's works of necessity leading up to it. Sometimes the busiest time is right before the day of rest.
46:49
Maybe you're sweating and trying to get everything in order. Well, you need to make sure that the activity of preparation doesn't lead you to be so exhausted that you're essentially idle and just trying to catch up and you're not able to devote the day to communion with God, to public and private worship, or to enjoy it in a meaningful way with others.
47:09
So why is preparation? Choosing the better part really does matter. Some of you, that means you need to start, you know,
47:15
Saturday morning. Some of you, maybe Thursday night. It's like preparation two and a half days.
47:23
Whatever it takes so that this day of rest is actually a day of worship, and that it doesn't take away from your opportunities to commune with others, to do works of mercy.
47:34
This is a challenge, I think, for all of us. If you're a young family, you have young children, this is perhaps the most taxing, the most difficult aspect of using the
47:44
Sabbath in a God -honoring way. You have to know your limits, know your constraints. Don't put so much on yourself that the day truly has become a burden to you and to your whole family.
47:54
But also, don't use that as an excuse to not strive and pursue the blessedness of the day. It's okay to feel tired after the day of rest.
48:05
God probably is pleased. You've sought to squeeze out every drop you could to enjoy the day in a
48:11
God -honoring way. That's not a bad way to feel. But it's also not wrong to find refreshment.
48:18
One of the big dilemmas is, can I actually rest? Is it, am I profaning the Sabbath? Am I being needlessly, recklessly idle if I nap?
48:29
Well, I don't think the answer is yes or no. I think you have to discern your heart. Again, why are you napping?
48:35
What's your focus? What's your desire? Is this part of your pursuit for the blessedness of the day?
48:41
Or is it just a way to pass time? Or you've burnt yourself out in preparation that you just need it now?
48:48
I don't think there's any problem with someone saying, I'm gonna go take a little nap, I'm gonna power nap, so that I'll be refreshed to continue on in this day.
48:56
You know, we have this plan later tonight, we're having these people over, we're going to this study, so I'm gonna take a little nap so that I can be fully alert, fully present, fully refreshed for that.
49:06
Notice how what you're resting for determines what you're resting from. You don't need to rest from that nap if it's for that sake.
49:15
But if it's because of unwise preparation, then perhaps you need to look at your week, at your practice in other ways.
49:21
Another thing, worldly conversation. All right, we need to train, again, outflow of the heart comes out of our mouth.
49:29
Carnal thoughts come from a carnal heart. Worldly conversation comes from a sort of worldly mind frame.
49:34
So if the whole Lunch Fellowship, if all we're talking about is guns and ammo, you know, and the
49:40
Bruins, you know, the fate of the Bruins, then probably we're not understanding what this day has required rightly.
49:46
It has no purchase in our hearts, in our aspirations, and that's coming out in our conversation.
49:52
But, I'd also say that in order just to have meaningful fellowship, to actually live life together as the people of God, we need to know how's your work going?
50:04
I know you've been working on this. I've been praying for you. Has anything changed with that? Or I know you have plans, you know, to have kind of a normal conversation in these ways.
50:14
It's not a profaning of the Sabbath, it's part of actually sharing fellowship in an informed way.
50:20
So when we get together, we ought to have concern. How was your week? How is your work going?
50:25
How can I pray for you? But again, it's framed with this larger desire of spiritual encouragement, of care, concern, prayerfulness, watchfulness.
50:35
And so our conversation can be about secular things if it's framed in the right way, if it's for the right reasons.
50:42
Again, we have to discern our hearts. It's never a black and white yes or no. Let's talk about family.
50:50
Again, what's the focus for our family on the Lord's Day? What's our desire as a family on the
50:55
Lord's Day? How will we as a family pursue the blessing of God on His day? Well, the younger your kids are, the harder it is,
51:04
I think. Anything you give to them becomes a toy and an opportunity to play. If you take that away, they find something, eventually they'll just play with their fingers.
51:13
Kids just play with everything. That's how they are at a certain age. Now that's inescapable, and I don't think that's something we have to be judge dreads about in the confines of our living room.
51:23
But the big question is, as your children get older, what's their trajectory? Are they 13 and they need to be coloring with crayons on the
51:32
Lord's Day? Well, then perhaps it's time that they grow up and have a bigger vision that there's better things in life, bigger issues and blessings in life than what they can occupy their time with in self -amusement.
51:46
You couldn't maybe do that with a three -year -old or a four -year -old. You could certainly do that with a 13 or 14 -year -old.
51:51
Again, what's their trajectory? Largely, the church in America has failed for this very reason. We allow children all the way up to age 12 to basically have activity hour, and then we say, now it's time to be an adult instantaneously the next
52:03
Sunday. You're now part of the church worship. It's like, what? I'm very grateful that for all the distractions and other things that come with it, it is a great blessing that children that are growing up here, all they know is like a two -hour worship service followed by lunch fellowship.
52:21
They don't know 20 -minute segments of activity time and play and veggie tales. That makes it hard for the families, but that is a blessing.
52:29
It's training them to view the day in an upright way, to see that there's something beyond them that they have to conform to and grow into.
52:39
As parents, we fail our children if we're not aiding them in growing into the
52:44
Lord's day. What about chores and preparation, right?
52:51
There's some things that have to happen on the day. In the blue law days, some of you grew up in these days, it used to be that the big feast, the
52:58
Sunday dinner, that was the biggest meal of the week. You'd be eating leftovers till Wednesday morning. I don't think that's wise.
53:06
I think that puts so much upon the members of the household to get everything ready if you're inviting people over.
53:13
I don't think having a huge feast on the Lord's day is going to help you for what the day is for.
53:18
If it's essentially about the worship of God, then taking up half of the day just to organize this massive feast is actually gonna detract from that focus on God.
53:27
And so we have to be careful that even ways we're seeking to bless others can slowly over time erode the purpose of the day and the greatest blessing of the day, which is reflecting and enjoying
53:38
God. So what do you do prior? Having certain things ready to go, being as minimal as you can, maximizing the amount of time you have to speak with and be around brothers and sisters, family and friends.
53:54
The younger your children are, take this as a special day to follow up with them, to really speak to their soul.
53:59
It should be in the experience of our children that they know we have a concern for their soul. You know, what are the things that are on their mind, on their heart?
54:07
Are they troubled by anything? Depending how young they are, they're beginning to understand and put together pieces of the gospel.
54:13
Do they understand how these things kind of fit together? Again, using this as an opportunity to set apart the day as a family, not just as an individual within your family.
54:23
That means for you children, you have a requirement from the Lord to honor your mother and father.
54:28
And part of honoring your mother and father is aiding them in what God has called them to do. So don't make it hard for your parents to sanctify the
54:36
Sabbath day. Don't be rebellious and rude and grumbling and complaining.
54:42
And when, when, when, when, when is it over? Can we do this? Can we do that? Bless your parents.
54:48
Do you know how much your parents would be blessed to see you come to them and say, could you tell me this story?
54:54
Or this was mentioned today. Could you explain that to me? Or could you help me write a letter to someone?
55:00
Or I want to, you know, write down a prayer. Could you help me write out the words that I don't know how to spell?
55:07
Something like that. What a blessing that would be. You'd be helping your parents to honor the Lord on his day. And you would find that day to be a day of joy to your soul as well.
55:16
Husbands and wives need to recognize the limits and capacities that they each have. A husband may feel very convicted.
55:23
Oh yes, that's right. Now we're gonna invite half the church over constantly and we're gonna, the whole day is gonna be taking up in fellowship at our place.
55:31
You need to make sure your wife is in union with that. You may have this great day and you might be a social butterfly and that's just the greatest bliss and I'm calling it a delight,
55:40
Lord. Meanwhile, your wife is wilting and she's like feeling half convicted because it's the most dreadful day and she's overextended so she can't honor the
55:49
Lord and she's very stressed out about all the things that have to do with company. But at the same time, she feels convicted. She doesn't want to bring that up because it seems like it's profaning the day or going against what
55:57
God has required. Husbands and wives have to be very delicate about these things. You need to work in unison so that together as one flesh, you can find this to be a day of rest and worship, a day of communion with God.
56:10
That's the crown jewel that involves opportunities, mercies, necessities. What about society?
56:20
Society, again, what's the focus of our society is work, work, work. The desire of our society is gain, gain, gain.
56:28
The pursuit of our society is not the Lord's blessing. It's their own sort of temporal and earthly benefit.
56:35
So our society is not interested at all in the fourth commandment. In fact, you'll get head cocks and sideways glances.
56:42
Why is it such a big deal to you? But we need to understand from the fourth commandment that there's a social responsibility that Christians have.
56:50
This has been essentially washed away with the tide of secularism in the past 80, 90 years.
56:56
But even long before Eric Liddell, Christians understood there's a social responsibility we have.
57:03
It's loving God, loving neighbor. There is a way to love your neighbor with the fourth commandment.
57:10
So that means you're to structure the day not only for yourself, not only for the church body, not only for your family, but also for your neighbor, for others in the society in which you live.
57:21
That means we have to be thoughtful and mindful about servants, merchants. We saw that not only from the fourth commandment, but right from Nehemiah.
57:29
He's as concerned about the men of Tyre as he is about the men of Judah and Jerusalem. Now, deeds of mercy, deeds of preservation are appropriate, necessary even.
57:41
There's certain professions that protect life and allow the well -being of our neighbors that properly fall under necessity.
57:49
Soldiers, firefighters, police officers, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, emergency repairs.
57:56
These are all ways that we bless and benefit our neighbor out of love to them and service to God. These are all fall under the sort of umbrella of necessity.
58:05
But again, thoughtful Christians will be able to discern how necessary is necessary. I have no guilt, no conviction at all about doing something that's necessary, but I never wanna allow the label necessary to be an opportunity for my flesh.
58:20
Now, every Sunday there's some job that's really necessary, but it's just nice to get the overtime.
58:27
This is what we're talking about. The operation of factories and certain services that cannot stop down without affecting the prolonged need of that output.
58:38
Electrical plant, hospital, furnace rooms, college cafeterias, what have you.
58:43
These too fall under necessity. But the big thing we have to remember is in Israel, the
58:49
Gentile who came to dwell in the land, they had to cease from their labor too.
58:56
They could not dwell in the land and do as they please. If they were in the land among the Israelites, they had to keep the
59:01
Sabbath as well. That didn't mean somehow that they had this communion and enjoyment and delight in God.
59:07
Sadly, not even the Israelites, many of them had that. But recognize the Gentiles had no participation in the feasts, they could not go to the temple, and yet if they were in the land among God's people, they were to keep the
59:20
Sabbath. Remember, we established this last week. The Sabbath is a creation ordinance. Now, we cannot legislate that people go to church.
59:29
We cannot legislate people's hearts toward God. No senator, no
59:34
Congress can muster up any atom of devotion from an unregenerate person toward God.
59:42
There's only one king, and he's not an earthly king, who can actually compel worship from a sinner.
59:49
We cannot legislate people to go to church, but in days past, it was the law of the land, the legislation of our leaders, that businesses and shops be closed on the day of the
59:58
Lord. Now, we find that even the businesses that traditionally had been closed on Sundays are now open.
01:00:08
We find that work is consuming holidays. And now, most businesses are open seven days a week,
01:00:16
Thanksgiving, Christmas is almost like the last holdout, but even that is beginning to ebb away.
01:00:22
So we're becoming this society that is endlessly devoted to work, work, work, gain, gain, gain, an abject defiance to the law of God.
01:00:32
The tragedy here is that many evangelicals rally around keeping the 10 Commandments as a monument in the courthouses of our land, while they, in effect, disregard the
01:00:41
Fourth Commandment. Such laws, laws that were once prevalent throughout the
01:00:47
United States, they were once renowned throughout the world, created an environment that was not just spiritually beneficial for the people of God, but it was physically beneficial for the workers, even for the unregenerate.
01:00:58
They found a benefit in having time set apart from work, to be with family. It gave them the opportunity to worship
01:01:05
God, which is what's required of the civil magistrate. They can't compel worship, but they can enforce the conditions that allow for worship and cannot impose any hindrance therein.
01:01:14
We had a case recently in the Supreme Court, went up to the Supreme Court, about a mailman in Pennsylvania, whose whole career as a mailman never had to work
01:01:23
Sundays. It was really only the past five or six years with the advent of increased
01:01:29
Amazon delivery that the Postal Service now had to work seven days a week. And for as long as he could, he kept trying to work overtime or double shifts or whatever to get some of his other coworkers to take the
01:01:41
Sunday shifts. Because he's like, I can't, it's the Lord's Day. I'm not going to do it. And then finally, his management fired him.
01:01:48
If you're not gonna work Sundays, you're gone. And he took that to court, rightfully so. And the Supreme Court vindicated him.
01:01:54
The fact that that even had to go to the Supreme Court is a travesty. It was once the law of the land that no one could work on the
01:02:01
Lord's Day. Now it's an anomaly that has to go to the highest court in the land that someone dared not to work on the day of the
01:02:09
Lord. Do you see how far we have fallen? Philip Schaff, this eminent historian of the church, he said, the churches of England, of Scotland, of America, to their incalculable advantage, excel all the churches in Europe because their observance of the
01:02:27
Sabbath is a school of discipline, a means of grace for all of the people, a safeguard of public morality, a bulwark against infidelity, a source of immeasurable blessing to the church, to the state, and to the family.
01:02:43
This is what he said. Listen to this. Next to the church and next to the Bible, the
01:02:49
Lord's Day is the chief pillar of Christian society. You cannot imagine that the
01:02:59
Christian disregard for the Sabbath has nothing to do with where our culture is in 2024.
01:03:06
Just like the Israelites dare not imagine from the testimony of the prophets that their disregard for the
01:03:13
Sabbath had nothing to do with being dragged away to judgment. God wasn't just concerned about his people.
01:03:19
He wasn't just concerned about the servants or the Gentiles. He was concerned about the cattle, about the land.
01:03:26
When God tore his people away for 70 years in the Babylonian exile, he says in 2 Chronicles 36, you didn't give the land rest, so now
01:03:33
I'm giving it rest. You didn't allow the fields to keep a Sabbath. I'm giving the fields Sabbath. 70 years of Sabbath for every year you've stolen from me.
01:03:44
God has his concern. The Sabbath, the Lord's Day in this way, it's a microcosm of God's kingship over all of creation.
01:03:51
He designates the time for worship. He designates the days of rest. Where Christians fail to honor him as king, we allow
01:03:58
Caesar to dictate the festivals, the feasts, and the days of rest. And Caesar is no friend to the rest and needs for human flourishing.
01:04:07
Caesar is like Pharaoh. Brick without straw, groan and grumble work as we take more and more taxes, give you less and less in return, less time off, break apart your family, take away your children.
01:04:22
Now you understand why Shaw says the Sabbath next to the Bible and the church is the chief pillar of Christian society.
01:04:33
Here's the big picture. The old covenant moves toward rest. This is from Peter Lightheart, I love this.
01:04:40
The old covenant moves toward rest while the new begins from rest.
01:04:48
Israel's Sabbath was the seventh day but the Lord's Day is the first. In the new covenant, the Lord's Day sets the pattern for the week of our labor.
01:04:56
That is, it ought to. Does it? Do you work from a foundation of confidence in God's gifts or do you head into Monday and begin the daily grind as if it all depends on you and you'll never catch up?
01:05:12
Do you go from resting on the Lord's Day to resume this frantic pace throughout the other days to come?
01:05:19
Do your labor -saving devices, does your technology make you busier? Isn't that amazing?
01:05:25
We have more technological convenience than any society in the history of humanity and we're more busy than any society in the history of humanity.
01:05:35
We can communicate instantaneously, we can heat things instantaneously, we don't have to walk three quarters of a mile to get water, we don't have to churn butter, yet we're busier than ever.
01:05:46
Our fingers are worked down to the bone. The world around us is chaos and cacophony.
01:05:53
We're called to better things. The Christian's week is a melody. When your work begins to sing the songs of the
01:06:00
Sabbath, you become a witness to the gift of rest that is only found in Jesus. That is so well said.
01:06:07
Our world is demand, chaos, cacophony, everything out of harmony, out of order, out of time.
01:06:14
The Christian, by beginning here, saying, I rest in God, I rest for God, therefore
01:06:21
I rest from all of these things, and your life begins to acclimate into this melody. It's a rhythm that you're resting in God's provision, in His goodness, in His control.
01:06:30
Now you don't run the rat race like everyone else, you go forward in meekness, in humbleness, you walk forward seeing how
01:06:38
He's provided, thanking Him for what He gives, opportunities, the ability to work. You trust
01:06:44
Him, you follow Him, and then you come to that rest again. Your days begin with this rest in the goodness of God and the mercy of Jesus, and they draw you closer toward another rest and another rest and another rest, resting all along the way until you enter the consummation.
01:07:05
Well, I have some things I'm gonna skip over and I'll save it in part for discussion tonight, but let me close here with these thoughts.
01:07:12
As we've said, we are to imitate God. God must dictate
01:07:18
His will to us and we conform to that will, rather than us asserting our will and asking
01:07:25
God to conform His word to us. We must have our thoughts proceeding toward God, from God, rather than God forcing
01:07:36
His thoughts underneath ours, so we imitate Him. In creation, when God gave
01:07:41
Adam and Eve this presentation of the Sabbath rest, what was He doing?
01:07:47
He had finished His labor of creation and He was reflecting on it, observing it, and saying, it is very good, it is very good.
01:07:59
So Adam and Eve were meant to imitate God. God rested on the seventh day, we will now rest on the seventh day.
01:08:06
God observed all that His hands had made and pronounced good. We will observe all that His hands have made and say, good.
01:08:16
One of the effects of our technocratical society is we're no longer able to appreciate and pronounce things as very good.
01:08:25
We become very cynical and our worldview and experience of the world has become very flat. There's no enchantment to nature, one of the effects of secularism.
01:08:34
Lord's Day, in part, is a day we behold all that God has made and we say, like Him, it is good.
01:08:43
God is very good, God is a wise and powerful creator. So maybe you notice bird songs that you wouldn't otherwise notice in the busyness of the week, but now you have a day set apart.
01:08:56
You notice the intricacy of the foliage, you know, the beauty of the landscape. You're up on the Bemis Heights and you're just like,
01:09:01
God is so good. But then we go a little bit further because it's not just God as creator, but it's
01:09:08
God as redeemer. And on this first day of the week, as new creations in Christ, we behold what
01:09:15
He has done, not just what He has made, but what He has done, this great work of redemption. We worship
01:09:20
Him, we behold it, and we say, it is very good. Remember, we said that Christ as the last
01:09:28
Adam is the true image of what we're meant to be. Well, if man was meant to be a Sabbath keeper unto that great day, then
01:09:36
Christ truly understood what it meant to keep the Sabbath. And He could reflect on the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, but even
01:09:44
Solomon was not arrayed like these. He knew how to behold creation and say, this is very good.
01:09:49
My Father is very good. But He also knew how to look at the work of redemption and say, this is very good.
01:10:01
Which is amazing. We as Christians imitate Him in this very way.
01:10:07
Isaiah 53, It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, He's put Him to grief. When you make
01:10:13
His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the
01:10:19
Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul and be satisfied.
01:10:27
So Christ, here in Isaiah 53, the servant that is struck, smitten, afflicted, crucified, torn asunder,
01:10:36
He looks at the labor of all of that. And He looks at how God has now prospered Him, given Him an assembly of His brethren, those who are
01:10:43
His inheritance. He looks and He sees the labor and travail of His soul and He's satisfied.
01:10:49
He says it's good. Christians then on this day, this day for worship, this day of communion, we gather and we look at our
01:11:00
Creator and we look at our Redeemer, we look at the works of His hand, we look at His nail -pierced hands and we say, it is good, it is a delight.
01:11:08
We are satisfied with You, Lord. It's not just rest for our bodies.
01:11:14
It's not just a cessation of labor. It's a picture. It's a testimony. As long as we sojourn to that great day, this
01:11:23
Sabbath marks our journey. A weekly rhythm, a melody that creates this
01:11:28
Sabbath song singing hallelujahs to the slain Lamb. Would that God made us pilgrims in this very way.
01:11:36
This is what the Puritans understood. This is how they regarded the day. Amen? May the
01:11:41
Lord of the Sabbath help us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Let's pray.
01:11:53
Lord, help us, we do pray. Lord, help us to be satisfied in this day. Satisfied because of who
01:11:59
You are, because of what You've done, because of how You've brought us out of darkness into Your life, because of how
01:12:06
You've laid Your loving cords around us, Lord. Claimed us as Your own. Adopted us to be beloved sons and daughters.
01:12:14
Gifted us with this day of rest so that we could be set apart from the cares and burdens and toils of the week.
01:12:20
To have a day of delighting with You, enjoying family and friends and fellowship, worshiping
01:12:27
You, Lord. We pray that as this exposes all of our weakness and all of our worldliness, all of our flesh,
01:12:33
Lord, that that exposure, that light, would bring real conviction, Lord. That we would run to the cross and with the freedom that comes only from the cross,
01:12:43
Lord, that we would return to this law and seek it and pursue its blessing out of gratitude and thankfulness, Lord.
01:12:48
Let us recognize it and treat it as the gift that it is. Help us then, Lord, to call the Sabbath a delight, turning from our own ways, our own thoughts, our own works, so that we can find it to be that delight that You've promised it,
01:13:03
Lord. May this church ride upon the high hills of the earth. May this church be fed with the heritage of Jacob.