Episode 130: The Joy of the Christian Sabbath

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August 20, 2025

Allen sits down with Pastor Jonathan Murdock and Pastor Landon Schrock to talk about the doctrine of the Christian Sabbath and why this is wonderful gift of God for His people.

00:00: Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom
00:05: I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?
00:13: You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.
00:21: The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be
00:26: Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the
00:37: Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving
00:44: Jesus in a local, visible congregation. One of our guests is laughing at my technological abilities.
00:53: Actually, I should say technological disabilities. So I'm only 39, Landon, but my technology has outpaced me.
01:02: So welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm your host,
01:08: Alan Nelson. I'm one of the elders at Providence Baptist Church. We're a Reformed Baptist Church in Central Arkansas, Perryville, just outside of Toadstuck, if you don't know where Perryville is.
01:19: So maybe that helps you a little bit. And joining with me is a good brother, a friend, a dear friend, actually, and a no stranger to the
01:30: Rural Church Podcast. That is Pastor Jonathan Murdock. Hello, brother. Hey, brother.
01:36: It's great to be with you guys again. I'm just glad that we're talking about something not controversial this time.
01:42: Right, like there should be no controversy. Yeah, because every time you're on here, we talk about something controversial. I know, every time.
01:49: Today, we get to talk about something no one will have any problems with. None. So, Pastor Jonathan is one of the elders at Trinity Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas.
02:00: He's also a co -laborer with me in FIRM, Fellowship of International Reform Missions, with our dear brother and friend,
02:09: Pastor Randall Easter of By the Word Baptist Church in Hazel, Texas. But a first -time guest this morning, or I say this morning,
02:19: I don't know when you're listening to this, we're recording it in the morning, is brother Landon Schrock.
02:25: Landon, before, hold on, let me say this. Before you introduce yourself, tell us about who you are, your church, here's a question
02:32: I always ask first -time guests. Did you ever foresee a time in your life, like younger days, that you're like, you know, one day
02:41: I will have such ministerial acumen that I will be invited on the
02:49: Rural Church Podcast? Did you ever foresee that? I didn't. This is a total shock.
02:55: Yeah. Well, shock to the Schrock. You have arrived, brother.
03:02: This is a particular honor, brother. You've taken hold of it, so. Amen. Why don't you tell us just a little bit about yourself and your church and your family, if you want to?
03:13: Yeah. So I'm one of the elders at Legacy Baptist Church in Northwest Arkansas.
03:19: We're in Bella Vista, so it's like all the way at the tippy -top corner of Northwest Arkansas.
03:27: And we've been there 11 years. I guess we joined at the end of 14 or beginning of 15.
03:34: And I've been an elder there for the last five. My wife and I, Heather, have been married 19 years.
03:40: And we just had our seventh, goodness, I guess, back in August.
03:48: Congratulations, brother. Yeah, that's me. I'm a student still, goodness, still after five years.
03:54: I'm still a student at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. How much longer? I'm on the slow track.
04:01: Okay. I probably got, I want to say I've probably got about two years left. Okay. Yeah. Sam Waldron has been on the
04:09: Rural Church Podcast. Man, that is, I'm a little bit more humbled to be here now. He's a good brother.
04:16: We're appreciative of Dr. Waldron and especially his new book, latest book, The Doctrine of Last Things.
04:23: Free Grace Press, grateful for that. But there's been many ways that Dr. Waldron has been impactful to me in theology and so helpful.
04:32: And I'll just go ahead and let's just segue right into it. One of the ways, Dr. Waldron. I don't know that I've read anything by him on this, but I know
04:40: I've listened to some podcasts that he's done before on this, and that's what we're talking about today,
04:45: The Doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. And I'm trying to control this podcast where,
04:52: I mean, we could spend hours talking about this. But let's just kind of weigh into it here.
05:01: Well, Jonathan, you go first, and Landon, you can shore up any areas you want to of what he says.
05:07: But could you just lay for us like just a, I'm not going to give you a time frame, but just a brief defense or explanation.
05:17: Maybe somebody's listening, Christian Sabbath, how can you have a Christian Sabbath? What do you mean by that?
05:23: And what is your defense of that? So you go, and then Jonathan or Landon, can you be listening and you fill in some things you'd like to shore up with whatever he says?
05:33: So I'll steal this from Owen, John Owen. John Owen does a tremendous job laying a foundation for the reason for a
05:44: Christian Sabbath. And what he says is that everyone who claims Christianity knows that it's right to gather together to worship the
05:54: Lord weekly. So we all have that in us. We all know that.
06:01: That is our practice. And so he asked the question, then where does it come from? And if we ask the question, where does it come from?
06:09: We have to trace it back to Genesis 2, 3. The Lord blessed the day and made it holy.
06:17: And so you have an institution of the blessing of this day in Genesis 2, 3.
06:25: But something that Owen does that's very interesting, and it's one of my favorite arguments of him is, and Albert Martin talks about this as well.
06:34: He says that people want to reduce the Christian Sabbath to an hour on Sunday mornings.
06:41: And he says, it's kind of like they bring their chicken, pop the head off, dump the blood out for an hour and leave.
06:48: And they're done. And I've done my hour. Now I can go and do whatever I want to do.
06:54: But Owen brings up the issue and he says, we argue from Genesis 1, the word day, six literal 24 -hour day periods.
07:07: And then we get to Genesis 2, 3 and the word day there. So if we're talking about what a
07:13: Christian Sabbath, what should be the bounds of our Christian Sabbath, he says, should not that word day also determine the length of what we do?
07:22: And so when we talk about the Christian Sabbath, we do mean our gathering on Sunday.
07:29: But we also mean the preparation for that day. And we also mean the observance of the whole day.
07:39: And so I would say that our observance of the Lord's day, our
07:45: Christian Sabbath is one that is set apart for God, for worship and for holy meditations, as the
07:57: Puritans would say. I really appreciate even our confession. Our confession lays that out very well when it defends the
08:07: Sabbath. We were here in our church, we read through either the confession or the catechism.
08:14: And we just read this. I was going to read that here this morning. In question 66, sorry, 65, how is the
08:25: Sabbath to be sanctified? Right? So if we take that back to that Genesis 2, 3 account, the
08:33: Lord blessed it and made it holy. Well, then how are we to bless it and make it holy?
08:39: How are we to sanctify it? And our catechism says the Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day.
08:48: And they don't mean a nap time, though you can take a nap, right?
08:53: I mean, you can rest physically, but it's a resting from our toil in this world, a resting from the preoccupations of this world, and a resting in Christ, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
09:24: So I love that. I love how they define that. And so I think that would be the bounds by which I would say this is the
09:30: Christian Sabbath. Yeah, that's good. I want to make one comment. I'm going to turn it over to Landon. He's been thinking and ready to lay it on us.
09:38: But, you know, in Owen's argument, and I think it's a fascinating argument.
09:44: Actually, I think it's an inescapable argument. Yeah, absolutely. God, who determines the time of when we were in?
09:55: Yeah, yeah, right. It's either God determines that time or you determine that time.
10:02: And if you say, if God determines that time, then what is it? Or you have to just go with it like, okay, well,
10:09: I just determined that time. Yeah, right. Okay, so there's a few things, just going to be clarity, because I know there'll probably be some people listening to this that not even 100 % sure still what we're talking about.
10:22: So, you know, you've mentioned Genesis. And, of course, the Sabbath day there is the seventh day.
10:29: So we're not talking about that. But, Landon, why don't you just kind of, I mean, we are talking about that, but it's not the seventh day anymore.
10:38: So, Landon, why don't you just kind of weigh in and add some of your own thoughts here as we're just kind of weighing in on like, okay, what is the
10:44: Christian Sabbath? Yeah. So I think foundationally, kind of like what Jonas was saying,
10:50: I think when you first see the institution of the Sabbath in Genesis 2, and Jesus alludes to this in Mark 2 27, the
11:00: Sabbath was made for man and not man Sabbath. I mean, I would ask both you brothers, like when you hear the word
11:07: Sabbath, not when you heard the word Sabbath 15 years ago or 20 years ago, but today, when you hear the word
11:15: Sabbath, what is your initial couple words? Like what comes to your mind? I mean, rest comes to,
11:24: I mean, I think about rest, worship, Christ.
11:30: A few words that come to my mind immediately. Gift. I just read a book by Lewis Bailey, The Practice of Piety, and it was a manual on piety.
11:44: He was an Anglican, but he was a Puritan Anglican. And he says when, he said in that book, he said, when a
11:52: Christian dies, it's not something new because he's died to himself his whole life, but he says when he dies, all he's doing is resting from his work in this world.
12:07: So the Christian lives with his mind in heaven, right?
12:13: Set your mind on things that are above. So I think in the same sense, when
12:18: I think of the Sabbath, I think about raptured. So we can live in heaven now through hope.
12:28: And so I think when I think about, when I hear the word Sabbath, it is the leaving this world and exiting the world for a day, in a sense.
12:40: And typologically, it's me in hope being with the Lord Jesus Christ.
12:47: And we live in two kingdoms and we're pilgrims here. And on that day, we don't have to live in this kingdom.
12:56: In hope, because of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the means of grace, we're exited from this world.
13:04: And that, I mean, that kind of alludes to or continues to answer that question.
13:09: Like I think all three of us, when we think about the Sabbath, are thinking of it as a blessing from God and a gift, a delight, and a way that we as creatures are given a time to worship our
13:23: God. But I think, Alan, to answer your question, for the idea of a
13:31: Christian Sabbath, where does that come from? Well, it comes from the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue gives us, in short form, a picture of God's moral law that has its basis in who
13:44: God is and His consistency in what He demands of man. Again, our
13:52: Confession, Chapter 19, Paragraph 2, says, The same law that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai.
14:05: And Ten Commandments are written in two tables, the first four containing our duty towards God, and the other six, our duty to man.
14:12: So if we recognize that man has a duty toward God in the first four, the fourth is giving us a time to worship, and that's the moral foundation of why the
14:25: Sabbath is obligatory. But I think because we all,
14:31: I'm sure you guys are like me, grew up in very dispensational waters to where when you hear the word
14:38: Sabbath, you're like, it tells me what I can't do on my day. But that's really the substance of the
14:47: Decalogue, particularly the first four, the first table, is it's giving us our obligation to God.
14:53: Like what ought we to do? I want to, okay, so let me just give my brief defense, and then kind of you guys can weigh in.
15:02: But in Genesis 2, you have several institutions. For example, you have marriage, and Christ is the fulfillment of marriage,
15:13: Ephesians 5. Marriage is simply a picture of Christ in the church.
15:22: But you don't look at Genesis 2 and say, okay, well, there's marriage. Okay, it's ultimately pointing to Christ in the church. Christ has fulfilled that, so let's do away with marriage.
15:31: I mean, nobody makes an argument unless you're a cult leader or something. Typically, those guys say, let's do away with marriage, except all your wives can be mine.
15:39: That's David Koresh or whatever. Okay, there's also work, and Christ is the fulfillment of work.
15:47: Christ is the end of work, yet we don't do away with vocation. And similarly in Genesis 2, you have the establishment of the doctrine of the
15:59: Sabbath, which I would argue that it's moral and that it's positive and moral.
16:10: Okay? Positive, by that, I mean it's on the seventh day.
16:15: That's a positive. So that's why we're going to talk about the shift in just a minute.
16:21: So anyway, you have all that. I don't have my Bible in front of me right now, but you get into Genesis 4, and you have in Genesis 4, it says that Cain and Abel came and brought their offerings.
16:33: But if you look at the Hebrew, it says, like, at the end of days, they brought their offering.
16:39: And so that's interesting, isn't it? Like, I'm not going to stay a long time there, but it's possible that it means at the end of the week, right?
16:46: They came on the Sabbath day and brought their offering because that was what
16:52: Adam, their father, had taught them. But more conclusive evidence than that is when you get to Genesis 26, about Abraham, God says that Abraham has obeyed my laws and my commandments.
17:09: Okay, what commandments, right? This is prior, let's just remind ourselves, that Genesis is prior to the giving of the law in Sinai.
17:18: So what commandments does Abraham obey? Well, I would argue,
17:24: I mean, and obviously, we're not talking about he obeys like Christ obeys. We're talking about he follows the moral law, that the moral law is a reality prior to Sinai.
17:39: That's what I'm arguing. Anyway, so then, you know, lots more arguments we could make.
17:45: But then in the New Testament, there is a lie that is kind of going on in the world today.
17:55: They probably don't mean it. I'm talking about our Christian brothers. They don't mean it. When they say this, it just gets repeated a lot, that the fourth commandment is never mentioned in the
18:03: New Testament. Okay, they probably don't understand, one, in Mark 2, what
18:11: Landon, you've already brought up, the Sabbath was made for man, right?
18:17: Not Israel, by the way, but for man. It's a gift not just to Israel.
18:23: It's a gift to mankind. It's a gift made. In creation. Yeah, in creation.
18:29: And then, of course, an important passage, which, Jonathan, I know you're preaching through Hebrew, so you may want to speak more to this, but in Hebrews 4, there remains a
18:40: Sabbath rest for the people of God. So the fourth commandment is mentioned in the
18:45: New Testament. Clearly in the New Testament, they switch from their seventh -day meeting to a first -day gathering.
18:56: In Revelation 1, John calls it the Lord's Day. So it had become, in the early
19:02: Christian church, this day, this Christian Sabbath, had become known as the
19:09: Lord's Day. And you know this, Jonathan, and Landon, I'm sure you know it as well, but the word
19:14: Lord is used as an adjective two times, and all the New Testaments use an adjective two times.
19:20: One, it's in 1 Corinthians 11. It's speaking of his supper, the Lord's Supper.
19:25: Secondly, it's speaking of the Lord's Day. So all meals are God's, but he has a special supper.
19:31: All days are God's, but he has a special day, the Christian Sabbath, which is the first day of the week.
19:37: Why? Because it is on that day that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.
19:43: I don't know. So anyway, there's just like my little hints there, and it's what we're talking about. There's really a beauty here in what you mentioned,
19:51: Alan, because Meredith Klein, I was reading a book by him the other day, and he pointed out, he made the argument, he believes that Adam and Eve sinned on the
20:03: Sabbath, on the first Sabbath day. John Flavel makes the same argument.
20:11: And then they're clothed, right, on that same day. But if we look throughout the nation of Israel, you have one of their most important festivals is the
20:25: Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles. And, you know, Pastor Randall points this out.
20:31: Pastor Randall Easter points this out. 400 years, they're in Egypt, and they don't get a day off. And then they come to the wilderness, and he says,
20:39: I'm going to give you one in seven. Like, it's not a bad thing, right? I mean, like, one in seven, you get a day off, right?
20:47: But if we look at the idea of the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles, they're in the desert, and they would take these palm branches or green branches, and they would make these little booths.
21:00: And so they're out in the hot sun all day, and they would have seven weeks of celebration before this.
21:06: The Feast of Tabernacles or Booths was the seventh week, and they would just gorge themselves as they sat in these little booths, right?
21:14: So these little hut things, and everything would be green. So they would be looking up and seeing green, and it was just a joyful time.
21:22: But at the end of that, they would have a Sabbath of Sabbaths on the eighth day.
21:29: And it would be the end of their celebration, and they would just celebrate. I mean, it was huge.
21:35: The most food and everything, and it was a looking forward to the eighth day. And it was typified, right?
21:45: That's what we see. It was the type of why we call it the
21:50: Lord's Day now, right? So it was a type. But then we get to the
21:56: New Testament, and you're right. It's changed to the eighth day. The eighth day.
22:02: That's a good word. The eighth day. The eighth day. Yeah. And it's typical of what we're looking forward to.
22:10: So if we look at the Lord's Supper, it's a type. We come to the table, and we say, until he returns, we remember him here.
22:19: Because one day, we are going to feast on him forever in heaven.
22:25: One day, we're going to sit down with him and enjoy the communion face -to -face, seeing him as he is, right?
22:33: In the same way, we meet on the eighth day as a type. Because when we get there, the sun flees.
22:42: The moon flees. Earth is no more. The sea is no more. And it's one day.
22:49: There is no sun. And it's the eighth day. And it's one long celebration.
22:57: There is no temple. Christ is a temple. The door is always open, it says. It's never shut.
23:02: We're brought in, and we're eternally with Christ in the consummation of his kingdom on the eighth day for all eternity.
23:12: So every time we come on Sunday morning, that should be our attitude. That's what's being typified.
23:19: That's what we're to sell it. So it's not – there is negative things.
23:25: There is things, you know, our confession, you don't do this, right? Our catechism, don't do this.
23:31: What is it the fourth commandment prohibit, right? We have negative commands, but we also must look at the positive commands.
23:40: This is why we don't. So I don't have to go to Walmart on the Lord's Day because I don't have to deal with those people.
23:48: I get to get raptured into eternity for a day in hope, looking forward to Christ.
23:57: And I don't have to deal with the things of this world. Only acts of necessity and mercy, right? Amen. Landon, do you have – oh, let me ask you this first.
24:05: Do you like Lord of the Rings? Absolutely. So I – Let me ask you this.
24:11: Let me inject. Lord of the Rings or Narnia? Oh, no. To me, it's not even close. What did you say,
24:19: Landon? I said – well, for me, I prefer Lord of the Rings to Narnia. I'm the other way around.
24:27: I enjoyed The Hobbit. I enjoyed The Cimmerillion, and I couldn't stand the Lord of the
24:32: Rings trilogy. Well, the point I'm going to make is if you read the Bible without a healthy understanding of typology, then you're saying somebody like J .R
24:45: .R. Tolkien is a better author than – Right, right, right, right.
24:51: But if you read the Bible in understanding typology – and again, we put guardrails.
24:57: You can't go crazy, you know. Right, right, right. If you read the Bible and you understand typology, then the
25:02: Bible, in my opinion, is even all the more beautiful. It's like a hermeneutical. Yeah, right.
25:08: But anyway, Landon, we've kind of been chatting a lot. So all that we've been talking about, how do you – what do you want to – anything you want to add or say?
25:16: I've got some things, but go ahead. Yeah, well, I think just to pick back up on the importance of the
25:22: Sabbath as a creation ordinance, you mentioned that in marriage and labor and those institutions we see. And I think the hermeneutical principle as far as whole
25:29: Bible is like – you see, these things are instituted prior to the fall.
25:36: Yeah. And I think that's where Genesis 227 becomes so important – or I'm sorry,
25:44: Mark 227 becomes so important. The Sabbath is made for man. It's not something that comes into place, you know, after the fall or even at Sinai.
25:55: It's something that God bakes into His creation pattern as something good, like marriage.
26:02: And in the New Testament, this is constantly alluded to. You know, when Jesus is asked about divorce in Mark 10 6,
26:14: I guess Jesus responds. He says, from the beginning it was not so, and God created them male and female.
26:20: So you see the creation ordinance as the foundation for what marriage is.
26:26: But also when you get to the New Testament and you see that marriage typifies
26:32: Christ and His bride, even after the ascension and the advent of the new covenant, marriage does not cease.
26:40: Like, people still marry. We don't not get married because we're married to Christ.
26:48: And labor doesn't cease, and the Sabbath doesn't cease.
26:54: It still holds in place because it's a creation ordinance, and it binds all of created time.
27:01: And if you really define, I think, from Genesis 2 what the Sabbath is, like Jonathan just mentioned, the
27:07: Sabbath is God entering His eternal rest. There's no evening.
27:14: So the Sabbath formally begins when God enters His rest, and His eternal rest is the
27:20: Sabbath. So to say in the new covenant the Sabbath has somehow been realized, and every day is the same because Christ is our
27:29: Sabbath rest, in the sense that every day is the same.
27:36: It would be the same thing as saying, well, we don't need to be married anymore because Christ is our husband.
27:42: Like, we don't obliterate God's creation ordinances because salvation has been realized.
27:49: But that's where it becomes so important to see the distinction between the law and the gospel. Like, the law gives us
27:56: God's demand for righteousness, and Christ has fulfilled that. So if you take
28:02: God's law and remove its moral component and say that's been realized, we really take away from the work that Christ has completed.
28:12: Like, Christ fulfilled the Sabbath to its perfection. So that means every
28:18: Saturday, as was His pattern right in the gospels, He would go to the synagogue on the seventh day, or we see that in like Psalm 92, a day for the
28:28: Sabbath worship, right? That's right there in the subscript. The content of Psalm 92, and listen to this, and this is in the
28:36: Old Covenant. It's beautiful, yeah. Sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness by night.
28:44: You think of the Hebrews singing the joy of the Sabbath in the Old Covenant. Well, Christ fulfilled perfectly out of love for God.
28:52: He fulfilled the Sabbath perfectly, just like the rest of the law on our behalf. So I think to all the, any critique that the
29:00: Sabbath is somehow some kind of a legalistic, they're misunderstanding the function of the
29:09: Sabbath. It's a, to break the Sabbath is an act of, is an act of, or to break the
29:17: Sabbath is an act of omission. It's not honoring it. It's not remembering it.
29:23: Yeah, I would even argue that even in the garden, the
29:29: Sabbath is our recompense. So you have, like you said, creation, like Landon just said.
29:38: Creation, God creates man and gives him a task.
29:44: Be fruitful and multiply. The moral law we know is written on Adam's heart, right?
29:51: So he has the law of God written on his heart. Then he has positive commands. Be fruitful and multiply.
29:57: Don't eat from the tree. Dominate the earth. Right? So even if he doesn't eat from the tree, his recompense isn't fulfilled or isn't given until he dominates the whole world and fills the earth.
30:12: Right? So it's not just not eating from the tree. He has to fill the whole earth and dominate it before he gets his recompense.
30:21: Where is his recompense? It's eternal with God, and that is what is typified by the day.
30:31: And so, you know, we have two things. We have a moral obligation, you know, clearly in the law, and we have a joy and a delight.
30:43: And we should see both of those in Christ. You know, Alan brought up Hebrews 4 .9.
30:50: There remains for us a Sabbath rest. That is what we're looking forward to.
30:55: That's what we celebrate every time we come together, that this isn't our home. The reason that we don't go to the store, right?
31:06: That we make provisions so we don't have to. Look, sometimes we do. Sometimes we have to.
31:12: Sometimes there's an act of necessity and we have to. But the reason we try not to isn't just so we can say, well,
31:19: I didn't go to the store today. I'm better than you. But so we can say—so that we look forward to the day we're not part of this world, right?
31:28: And so we're looking forward for that. And so I agree, brother. I don't know.
31:34: I want to say, too, there is a theological purpose in the
31:39: Sabbath, in the moving, too, from the seventh day to the first day. In the seventh day, it ties in with the covenant of works in Genesis 2.
31:52: And essentially it's, okay, Adam, if you work, you're going to enter the rest.
31:59: But now it's the first day of the week. Why? Because Jesus has completed the work. And so now the first thing that we do is we enter into the rest.
32:08: We enter into Christ. And then as a result, we're going to, as Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says, 8 through 10, that we know the first part.
32:21: By grace, you've been saved through faith. And this is gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
32:28: And then verse 10, you know, you're created in Christ Jesus for good works. So our pattern is not work and then enter the rest.
32:36: Our pattern is we've entered the rest. Now we work. So there's a theological significance. I also want to just go back and make this explicit.
32:42: This is going to be a terrible, terrible analogy, but I bring it to the table in order to make a point.
32:51: And that is, if you look at your wife and you say, hey, I'm going to have an affair this weekend because Jesus has completed the seventh commandment, right?
33:01: So the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, that is fulfilled.
33:07: Christ has kept it for us. Therefore, by the logic of some of our
33:13: New Covenant theology brethren or dispensational brethren as well, the logic is, well, that's been fulfilled.
33:21: So now I can just go live this way. Well, it's like, no, nobody, again, unless you're a cult leader or a heretic, nobody's going to make that argument.
33:31: And the same applies for the first four commandments. And particularly in this podcast episode, it applies for the fourth commandment.
33:39: There is a moral obligation. Christ has fulfilled the fourth commandment. Yet there remains a moral obligation for us to follow this because the law of God, Jeremiah 31 promises, the law of God is written on our hearts.
33:58: Amen. Any response there? Yeah. And you talked about our rest and resting in Christ and His finished work.
34:11: The joy of that. You know, yes, He fulfilled the law for me.
34:17: That doesn't mean that I don't obey. But it's interesting in Ezekiel, no,
34:24: Jeremiah, Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8, the New Covenant is laid out.
34:30: You have, it says there, I'll write their laws upon my heart. I'll write my laws upon their heart.
34:38: But they're already written on our heart. So it's strange. Why are they now rewritten?
34:44: It's because we now have a new relationship. We're not in a covenant of works where we're trying to fulfill them for our justification.
34:53: But we're resting on the finished work of Christ. There's one thing I love about our confession.
34:59: If you read the chapter 11 on justification, beautiful definition of justification.
35:05: And it ends there saying that the passive and active obedience of Christ is given to us.
35:11: And then the next paragraph starts like this paragraph 2. It says, faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness.
35:20: If you ask me what we're doing on the Sabbath, on the Christian Sabbath, we're coming in and we're receiving and resting on Christ.
35:29: We are coming in and saying He has done everything. I just get to enjoy it.
35:37: I get to take delight in it. So we've argued positively.
35:43: Let me bring up a question. I think it needs to be asked. Why not?
35:49: Give me a good reason not to enjoy the Sabbath. I'll start with Landon.
35:55: So from my perspective, you're saying every day I have to go and I have to deal with things in this world.
36:02: I have to live in a kingdom that's not my home. I have to deal with vanity fair every day.
36:09: But you're going to tell me one day I don't have to? One day I can get up and enjoy the fellowship of the saints.
36:15: I can go where Hebrews 12 says you've come to Mount Zion. And I can see that typified in the body of Christ, the assembly of the brethren, the judge of all the earth.
36:28: I can come here and enjoy that for one day. So give me one reason why I should. What do you think,
36:35: Landon? Oh, I mean, absolutely. I think there's a promise concerning the
36:42: Sabbath in Isaiah, right? It's foreseeing the new covenant.
36:48: And it says if you call the Sabbath a delight, my holy day, and you turn your foot from your own ways, from doing your own pleasure, then you will find delight in the
37:01: Lord, right? That's the promise there. God will cause you to write on the heights of the earth and the inheritance of Jacob.
37:09: And you will delight in the Lord. It's a means of sanctification. And I found that the pattern of honoring the day, remembering the day, does that uniquely.
37:24: But it also realigns my mind during the rest of the week when I'm working, when I'm doing labor. It's a means of sanctification in that it changes the entire paradigm because I'm patterning myself on the first day of the week.
37:40: And the rest of the week, it helps me prioritize my time. This is not my time.
37:45: This is God's time. Yeah, I was going to say,
37:52: I know, and we all have friends. I'm sure some of these friends kind of overlap. But I know that we have friends that they're afraid, like they've led their churches to confessions like the
38:05: New Hampshire Confession, or maybe even the First London Baptist Confession. Healthier confessions than,
38:12: I would argue, much healthier confessions than like the Baptist Faith and Message. Good confessions, like they're good.
38:19: I don't want to disparage that. But I think the reason that people move to those kind of confessions is because of this very thing.
38:29: It's one thing that we're talking about that people are afraid of. It's like you're afraid of the gift that God has given you.
38:38: And you say, why do some people not do it? Well, I would argue that there is a fear of legalism.
38:45: And we can see that in some places, like legalism is a real thing. Look, guys, legalism is a reality in the reform, not just the reform world, but even the reform
38:57: Baptist world. We could see like people think they're holier because they don't let their kid eat Skittles or something.
39:02: You know what I'm saying? Like we're all kind of probably dealing with that. Not bad things, but things that people will do and say, well, now
39:11: I've reached another level of holiness because of these things. So that's a reality.
39:16: I think people are maybe afraid of that. And that's a good red flag to have.
39:24: Like, hey, I don't want to bring legalism into my walk with Christ. Amen. But again, we're going back to this is not legalism.
39:32: This is moral. This is how we desire to please the Lord because Christ has already kept this for us, completed this for us.
39:42: And now we desire by His grace and for His glory. We desire to follow
39:47: Him in His ways, not for salvation, but because we're not for justification, certainly, but because we've been justified.
39:56: But then also the reality I want to go back to the thing that Landon brought up. We've talked about several times is it is a gift.
40:04: It is a gift. And I told you guys I wanted to call this episode the joy of the
40:10: Christian Sabbath. So maybe we should kind of start transitioning now to talk about,
40:17: OK, what does this look like? Let me start because we want for us in our church.
40:24: I'm speaking for Providence Baptist Church. Like we want to allow we certainly we're not we're not what you call the
40:33: Sabbath police and going around and saying, OK, or take it. Like, how many steps did you take today?
40:38: What are you doing today? I think there's freedom. Actually, I think there's there's there's freedom in even in even in recreation to an extent.
40:48: But. I'll give you an example of my own life. Years ago, years ago, we've always been against travel baseball and missing church to play baseball.
41:00: But years ago, this was like twenty nineteen through twenty twenty one.
41:06: We had a situation where my middle son was on a travel team.
41:13: And so we said, OK, well, he can play and we'll let him play on Sunday just as long as he's not playing during service time.
41:23: That's because I had a that's because I had a poor view of the doctrine, the
41:29: Christian Sabbath. I still think it was a better view than a lot of people have. But it was like,
41:34: OK, well, as just insofar as we're not disrupting service, we'll go do these things.
41:42: But I realized as I grew and mature and as I grew in my theology and hopefully in my sanctification and growth in the
41:51: Lord, like, OK, it's not just about, you know, the Al Martin analogy used earlier about the breaking the chicken's head and dumping the blood.
41:59: Like the doctrine of the Christian Sabbath is not about, OK, I've checked God off the box today.
42:04: Amen. So let's let's let's work through that a little bit. So if we look at the means of grace by which the
42:13: Lord Jesus has commanded us or given us gifts to grow and be sanctified, so that we're matured and being brought up, built up into the perfect man,
42:27: Jesus Christ, right? That's what Ephesians 4 says. If we believe that, then the height of joy in the
42:36: Christian life is to grow in faith, our faith to be tested. It turns into hope and our hope to be fully set on the
42:44: Lord Jesus Christ. Then the greatest joy for the Christian ought to be to grow.
42:51: Yeah. And the greatest way in which we do that is through the means of grace given for us for the
42:56: Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath. So what is that? What does that look like, Landon?
43:02: Both of you guys have talked about and I love it. Like your churches have a long day on Sundays.
43:11: And that's only just that's part of it. I know that's not the whole thing. But what is the doctrine of the
43:17: Christian Sabbath look like for you guys, Landon? For you personally, family, church? Yeah.
43:24: So, you know, obviously, you know, I'm raising my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. So, you know, many of my children aren't converted.
43:33: I've got a lot of young kids. I have one son who we baptized a few years ago. I'm praising the
43:38: Lord for that. But I've set, you know, I've set down a single rule on our house. You know, I'm guarding my house like we're going to sanctify the day we're going to make it holy.
43:47: So I've set down a hard rule for we don't do any screen time on the Lord's Day. That's self -entertainment.
43:54: However, this is a day where, you know, go jump on the trampoline or go play tag.
44:01: I'm glad to hear you say that. Anything that promotes fellowship and cohesiveness in the family, you know, we sing.
44:07: We do catechism songs, Jim Oryx catechism songs. We sing those together. We, you know, sometimes we'll review the sermon for the day.
44:15: So do things to promote fellowship, Christian fellowship, godliness in our home.
44:22: But, you know, even on the idea of labor, you know, I think the Sabbath being,
44:28: I believe, a sin of omission, not honoring, not sanctifying the day, that it is a day of labor.
44:37: Like we are certainly working as pastors. Like Sunday is for sure the busiest day of my week.
44:44: I'm laboring all day in the Lord's work, right? But, you know, the other day
44:50: I got home from church, and we've been renovating our house. I've been doing a lot of the work myself. And I had all these stained boards that were like finished for the stairs.
45:00: And I got home from church, and I'm thinking, man, it would just take me like 10 minutes to just go ahead and install these boards. But I thought,
45:06: I don't have to do that today. Today is the Lord. It's not my day. Today's the Lord's Day.
45:11: So I come to my office, and I'm starting to type up a letter. And I hear this noise, and we're having this windstorm.
45:18: And my gutter has been literally torn off the roof, like 20 feet of it.
45:24: And it's bent all the way under the roof, and it's flapping and hitting the roof. And I'm like, what is that noise? So I go out and look at it, and I'm like, my goodness, this gutter is going to come off the house, and I'm going to have to replace it.
45:34: So did I have any guilt to go out there and get the drill and put the gutter? No, none at all. I had to do that.
45:40: I mean, it's necessary to do that. So I'm not thinking, oh, my goodness, the
45:46: Lord's going to be displeased with me if I repair my gutter. Not at all. But the things that I normally do in my six days of labor,
45:56: I don't have to do those on Sunday. I get a day that I can rest in the Lord and seek the Lord, and not just in the worship service, primarily in the worship service.
46:07: But then I go home, and I don't have to go back to my own day. It's his day by his perspective, like you mentioned.
46:15: So that's, I think, kind of has been a paradigm for me that's been really helpful. What's funny, not funny,
46:23: I mean, just interesting about that and beautiful about that, brother, is what you've just described is like, that's legalism?
46:32: Like, what? That's like a burden? No, that's a freedom.
46:39: Okay, well, Theo, let me give you guys a question, because this is important. So there's at least a couple different places, is
46:47: Romans 14 .1, and then Colossians. What is this? What's the passage in Colossians?
46:54: So what would your response be to like, okay, but Paul is saying, or let me phrase it this way.
47:01: Paul appears to be talking against what you guys are saying. You're telling Christians to observe a day, and Paul seems to be speaking against these things.
47:10: So what would your pastoral response be then? The Colossian passage, I think, gives clarity to the
47:16: Romans passage. The Colossian passage says Sabbaths. It's plural. The word there is plural.
47:24: It may not be plural in your translation, just for those listening. In the Greek, it is plural.
47:29: It is plural, yeah. And I think that's referring to the Jewish festivals, and the festivals of the day, and I think
47:41: Romans 14 as well. It's the position I would take that, you know, for them, he's saying you don't have to obey these, right?
47:52: This is done. And he's doing away with the covenant. And you don't obligate people to do those, and so I don't think it has anything to do with what we would refer to as the
48:04: Christian Sabbath day, neither one of those passages. Yeah, it uses the words.
48:11: It's 216, but it uses the words, you know, new moons, Sabbaths, festivals.
48:17: Yeah, right. In the Old Covenant, you know, the Sabbath day in the Decalogue is the seventh day.
48:23: But in the Old Covenant, if you go through, like, Deuteronomy, you see multiple days. It will be a Sabbath day for you.
48:31: But those three words used together, I think they're used together particularly six times in the
48:39: Old Testament, always in a group. And it's denoting, like, feasts and ceremonies. It's not talking about the
48:46: Sabbath. Right. And one example, 2 Chronicles 2 .4,
48:52: it says, So Paul writing in Colossians is clearly,
49:11: I mean, Paul trained under the school of Gamaliel. Paul is not unfamiliar with the
49:17: Old Testament. So for him to use those three words, Sabbaths, plural, new moons, festivals, he's clearly indicating not one day in seven.
49:29: He's clearly indicating the Jewish observance of these ceremonial feasts. And in the same way as circumcision, if you're going to bring it back and say, you have to observe these things, you're going back to Moses.
49:42: And the whole book of Hebrews takes that idea and says, you don't have to go back here.
49:50: Yeah. I mean, that's the point, right? Romans 14 is the same. I'm going to pull this up because this is a really important point because I'm sorry,
49:58: Romans. Yeah. In Romans 13, I mean, Paul's already cited the Decalogue, 13 .9.
50:06: He's already set up the Decalogue paradigmatically. It's already being used.
50:12: So when he gets to 14 and let no one look upon you as far as observance, he's not undermining the moral law.
50:25: And so I think it's important to say he's already cited the moral law. And then he continues to go on into Christian freedom.
50:33: And he's saying one who eats. He puts observing of one day next to one who eats.
50:39: Right. And so we see the Jewish tradition there of the festivals.
50:45: Yeah. I'll give you an application. And just funny because we was talking about it before. Landon wasn't on when we were talking about it.
50:52: But there's 176 days till Christmas, Landon. By the time this comes out, it'll be much shorter.
50:59: But, for example, as a pastor, as a pastor, I cannot look at my people and tell them that they must observe
51:08: Christmas Day. I cannot tell them that. I cannot tell them that they have to observe Independence Day.
51:14: I cannot tell them that they have to observe Thanksgiving Day. I'm just giving a modern. Obviously, Paul's not thinking about these things, but I'm just giving a modern application.
51:24: I cannot tell my people that they have to observe those days. You might be surprised.
51:29: Some of our listeners say that. I don't think that you have to celebrate. You don't have to celebrate Christmas Day.
51:36: It's just not it's not a thing. OK, now we do and we enjoy it. We have a lot of fun and grateful for it.
51:44: But I can look at my people and say God has given you 52 holidays a year and you are under obligation.
51:55: You're under moral obligation. Observe those 52 days in the freedom and joy of Christ.
52:04: So I like one thing, even just application. I don't know what kind of listeners listen to this, but like let's say you're going out of town and well, we're on vacation.
52:16: OK, but you don't take vacation from the Lord. So wherever you're at, like one of the things is it's great.
52:22: Pastor Jacob right now, he's gone to Montana. This is funny. I'll try to make this real quick. But he spent probably hours looking for a church where they were going to be.
52:33: Well, it turns out they were way ahead and they were like a whole day ahead. And so like all the churches he had looked up, they when they got around a
52:41: Sunday, they were like seven hours away. And so now at the last minute, you know, I guess
52:46: Saturday night or whatever, he's looking for somewhere to go. He can't really find where he finally in the province of God finds a little church nine minutes from their campsite.
52:55: They were an independent fundamental Baptist church who is undergoing reformation. Reform reforming in a reformed church now.
53:03: And it was just amazing, you know. But anyway, just use that analogy. Like that's the kind of things that we do is because we don't like we just don't believe that we we take a break like this is the
53:16: Sabbath day is our break. And it's two things. It's because we should.
53:22: Right. We're commanded to do it. And we get to. You know, it's both.
53:28: I remember we were on last year. We were on, you know, vacation in New Mexico. We found a small, you know, it's not very small reformed
53:37: Baptist church. And it was such a great encouragement. It was such a delight to enjoy fellowship with the people and and partake with them.
53:47: You know, really, really a delight. Yeah. So, again, freedom, joy.
53:56: Yeah. You asked about earlier. Like, what do we do? Oh, yeah. That's right. Sorry. Go ahead. Owen's argument really hit me about the 24 hours, you know, like the observance of a day.
54:09: So our family, we don't plan anything for Saturday evenings. And when the sun goes down, we calm ourselves down.
54:19: We get our stuff ready for the next day. Go to bed early. I get to the church early.
54:25: But then here at our church, we have several people that come from a long ways away. And after Sunday school, someone brings doughnuts or something breakfast, some kind of breakfast.
54:36: And then we have service. And then we have a meal. And then the majority of our people stay.
54:41: And we sit around, drink coffee, talk, and our kids play. And it's our kids' favorite day of the week because they get to spend all day with one another.
54:51: They enjoy. But like Brother Landon said, you know, no screen time.
54:56: We don't put a movie on or anything like that. But, you know, they'll go outside and play in the yard.
55:02: They'll put the hammocks up. They'll, you know, have a great time. And the parents here, we just sit around this past Sunday.
55:08: We had a lengthy discussion about the Imago Dei. And it was just so encouraging.
55:15: You know, we really try to steer our conversations to what we're reading, what, you know, different things like that.
55:22: And then we have evening service. And at the end of the day, we're all physically tired because it's a long day.
55:28: Some of the people take a nap. You know, some people, you know, duck off and take a nap. But by the end of the day, we're physically tired, but so encouraged.
55:38: And when the sun goes down, it's kind of the closing of the day, you know. And so that's what my family does.
55:45: And there's freedom, you know. Some families observe things differently here at our church. But, you know, there's freedom.
55:52: But it's fun. It's joyful. It's a delight. And that's what we portray to our families and to the church.
56:00: I would say, you know, one thing about us, like screen time. So I don't know if you guys are familiar with torch lighters.
56:07: So there are times that we just try to get a great one to settle down, like rest. And we'll let them watch the torch lighters, which is, you know, because we specifically it's teaching about some usually a
56:20: Christian missionary or, you know, biography or something like that. We also do a meal time.
56:28: One of the things we try to do, sometimes it's at the church, but we try to get in other people's homes as well.
56:35: And then the thing is, I know I'm not trying to speak pejoratively of like,
56:40: I call it like the crock pot brigade or whatever, where it's like, well, if there's any kind of cooking at all, you've broken the
56:48: Sabbath. Like, I'm just going to disagree with that. I think so. The thing that Landon matured,
56:55: I do want to talk about acts of necessity. So, and this still comes up periodically, but we as a family, like we do all our shopping on a different day.
57:07: Now, it took a while for us to kind of transition to that. And it was just a natural time, like, hey, we're going to run to the store after church and because it's just a wrong mindset.
57:17: But now it's like, no, no, no. We get all our groceries we get. So, so don't, what
57:23: I'm saying is don't create necessity, like plan. It requires sometimes planning, but also sometimes, so this is us and I'm just going to tell you how we handled it.
57:35: But like the other day, we were supposed to take chocolate milk to the fellowship meal. And one of my sons, the night before, unbeknownst to my wife, had drank the chocolate milk.
57:45: It was gone. I was like, okay, what do we do? I think there's probably some liberty here.
57:50: And maybe you can disagree with me, but it's like, you can be like, hey, sorry, we just didn't bring chocolate milk.
57:55: Our son drank it. Or we went and considered it an act of mercy because we had promised chocolate milk.
58:04: And so we got it, you know, and I know there's things like that that are going to come up. And I would just say, kind of like with Landon, you need to be resolved in your conscience.
58:16: And you say, look, this is, this is acts of necessity and mercy. I'm just saying, don't, don't create those things.
58:22: I would even argue the Lord's Day, the Christian Sabbath could be a day where it's like all week you're working, but you don't have time, you know, to visit a shut -in or something.
58:34: I'm talking about really more for the church right now, because pastors, hopefully you've got that time built in.
58:40: The church say, look, there's a shut -in and we're going to go give them Christian encouragement this day because the other six days of the week, we are obligated.
58:52: Like, you're obligated to work too, right? You're obligated to rest, but you're also obligated to work.
58:58: You're obligated to provide for your family. And so these other days you may be busy. So anyway, I'm just trying to say that this isn't like shut yourself in a dark room and just sit there.
59:09: That's not what we're talking about. Like, this is a joy. This is a delight. Again, I want to go back to the language.
59:16: This is a gift to God's people. And I would argue that there's a theological implication to order our week around the first day.
59:28: This is kind of weird, maybe, but like I disdain calendars that put
59:34: Sunday at the back, you know, because sometimes they do that, you know, and even I'm guilty too.
59:40: We sometimes slip up and call Sunday the weekend. It's just common vernacular, but it's not the weekend.
59:48: Sunday is not part of the weekend etymologically. It's the first day of the week.
59:54: And so we're going to—our lives are, you know, there's so much application here, but our lives are going to be ordered well when we order them according to God's economy of time and not man's and not the world's.
01:00:11: Anyway, I've been there for a while. Our confession says the Sabbath is kept holy unto the
01:00:17: Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs aforehand, do not only observe a holy rest all day from their own works, words, and thoughts about worldly employments and recreations, but also—but after due preparation, ordering of our affairs, right?
01:00:35: So that's what we try to do. Do we always do that perfectly? No. Do we forget things?
01:00:41: Yes. And when you forget those things, like you said about the chocolate milk, you have this—is it necessity or no?
01:00:48: Some people would say the chocolate milk's not necessity, and some would say yes, that's necessity. Chocolate milk's always necessity.
01:00:54: I think there's some freedom in necessity, right?
01:01:00: What constitutes a necessity, right? And there's some freedom there. Everybody's going to have to work that out in their own minds and hearts.
01:01:10: But the idea is not legalism, but my heart's intent.
01:01:17: This is what I'm seeking to do, right? I want to honor the Lord. I want to please
01:01:22: Him in my heart. I want, like Brother Landon quoted from Isaiah, that when the
01:01:28: Sabbath is the delight, then we will have joy, right? Yeah.
01:01:35: And I would say this, like, I'm not trying to disparage—I want to be careful because I know faithful churches and faithful brothers that they only kind of have like a morning service, you know?
01:01:47: Yeah, right. Praise God do that. But for us, one of the things that we establish in having, you know, morning and then evening, and Landon, I know you guys have morning and then meal and then prayer.
01:02:00: It's very similar. But for us, like, we just reminded, like, this is the
01:02:05: Lord's day, you know? And years ago, I met this pastor, and they just floored me, but he didn't go.
01:02:14: Like, their church had Sunday night, and he didn't go. This was obviously a huge church. And I was like, thinking to myself, how do you not go?
01:02:20: And he's like, one of the other pastors handles it, you know? And he didn't even go. And his argument was, it's a day for me and my family.
01:02:29: Well, Landon kind of got on that earlier. Like, I do think that there's some application of the
01:02:35: Christian Sabbath of fellowship with your family. But it's like, I love bringing my family to church, right?
01:02:43: So, it's just getting out of this mentality. So, I'll give you a real good application for someone listening to this who's completely foreign.
01:02:52: This coming Sunday, this coming Lord's day, you say, well,
01:02:58: I've never really, I don't know, what should I do? Well, prioritize gathering with the people. Prioritize the church.
01:03:06: And then after church, like, you always say, well, I would read more, but I just don't have time to read.
01:03:13: Guess what? The Lord has given you liberty to not care about all these other things you have to do tomorrow.
01:03:23: Why don't you read? Why don't you, well, I wish I had more time to pray with my wife.
01:03:29: Okay, pray with your wife. Or, you know what? I wish I could get to know that Christian couple.
01:03:34: We're just all so busy during the week. Guess what? Make plans. You're going to eat.
01:03:40: You're going to fellowship. You know what I'm saying? There's so many practical, wonderful things that we can do when we realize the
01:03:49: Lord has given us freedom to not have to do all these other worldly things on the first day of the week.
01:03:57: I'll add this. Your families enjoy it. I'll tell a quick story and then
01:04:03: I'll ask you the same. We, as a family, are Green Bay Packers fans, and I like the
01:04:12: Green Bay Packers. My boys love the Green Bay Packers. We're driving home one Sunday evening from church, and my middle son says,
01:04:19: Hey, Dad, if the Packers make it to the Super Bowl, can we go? I'm like, but it's $2 ,500 a ticket, right?
01:04:27: So, three tickets, and then plane tickets, and then hotels. We're talking over $10 ,000 for us to go to a football game.
01:04:35: And I said, and it's on Sunday. He's like, oh, there's no way we could do it on the Sabbath.
01:04:41: We can't do it, right? And so, his problem wasn't the money. There's no way our family could pay $10 ,000 to go to a football game.
01:04:49: And if I told my sons, we're not going to go to church tomorrow, they'd be devastated.
01:05:00: Because they've learned to center our lives around that. So, I want to ask you guys, how do your families react to the
01:05:09: Christian Sabbath? Similarly, we moved here 11 years ago.
01:05:18: We built our entire life around the church. That's the central, that's the one thing that cannot be compromised.
01:05:26: And so, I think that element of it has always been, like, so for our, like,
01:05:31: Alan, like you said, for our brothers who might be in a different camp on moral law, I really appreciate that they're
01:05:37: Lord's Day maximalists. Like, they see the gathering as more than just a one -hour service.
01:05:45: They see the benefit. But I think there has to be a place to root in God's moral law why it is so critical.
01:05:55: Like Hebrews 10, right? Not forsaking our own assembly together. Where does that have its basis?
01:06:00: That's right. Very good. Because God's commanded us to sanctify and keep holy a day.
01:06:06: So, all of the benefits that we get from the Lord's Day, and fellowship, and worship, and communion, and giving, and all those things we find have their root in God's moral law.
01:06:19: And, of course, we can say without hesitation, just like we would say on the
01:06:25: Fifth Commandment, children, honor your parents. Honor your father and mother. We can say, remember the
01:06:31: Sabbath day and keep it holy. And what we mean by that is all of the positive commands in the
01:06:37: New Covenant and how the Lord of the Sabbath has ordained His church to live.
01:06:43: And that's continuous in all of Scripture. You might say,
01:06:49: I think Richard Barcello said this, he said, the Lord's Day is the
01:06:55: Sabbath in its fullest expression. I love that. Yeah, that's good.
01:07:02: Yeah. Amen. Our kids, I think there's a fleshly thing. Like, there's a fleshly enjoyment in the fact that they don't have to do chores.
01:07:11: Right. Yeah. Now, we do minimal, just like minimal necessity.
01:07:18: But as far as like, hey, we're going to have to wash the dishes, do laundry, vacuum, all the kind of the big stuff.
01:07:27: It's like, yeah, we don't have to do it. Every now and then, maybe
01:07:34: I'll catch them doing something. I'm like, oh, let's not do that. Or like, one of my sons plays guitar.
01:07:41: I've been really encouraged. And I may catch him playing
01:07:47: Weezer or something. And I'm like, hey, you know what? I appreciate you playing guitar. Let's not play that today.
01:07:54: Let's think about maybe how you could work today on like how some of the songs that we sing at church.
01:08:00: And he's like, oh, okay. Because they're children. He's converted.
01:08:05: But they're still trying to understand and work through and teach. And so I'm not walking around with someone got me this great walking stick.
01:08:16: It's really beautiful. I'm not walking around with that thing ready to just smite people. It's like I'm trying to teach and encourage.
01:08:24: And like, hey, why don't you guys use this day to read? Or like Lana says, go outside.
01:08:31: Hey, play this game. We understand they're still children. And so it's not just sit in the corner, sit on your hands.
01:08:40: I don't think that's teaching them that the Sabbath is a delight. I think you mentioned something.
01:08:46: We're almost done. But I do want to mention this. As far as pastoral teaching, I think we have an obligation to teach.
01:08:54: And we have a confession. That confession ought to guide us or ought to be the guide for that teaching.
01:09:03: If we believe that our confession is the right expression or the closest expression of the scriptures.
01:09:09: And so we have a confession. We should teach that. But one of the ways that I find that we have somebody new that comes to church.
01:09:18: They're going to join the church. They might have a different opinion of the Sabbath. And it doesn't take long for them to live in our celebration of the
01:09:29: Sabbath. And they're like, why didn't I have this before? When they first come here, they're like, oh, you guys are weird.
01:09:37: You have to do the Sabbath, right? This is one of those places. Well, I'll just let that go. And it's like, we don't even have to say anything.
01:09:46: And there's a young guy that just joined our church. And not long after he came here, there was a wedding that he was involved in on the
01:09:54: Lord's Day. And he went and coming home from that wedding, he's like, I'm never doing that again. Bro, that was just a waste of my day.
01:10:03: And so I think that's interesting that when people come and observe a joyful observation of the
01:10:13: Sabbath and get away from, oh, that's legalism and just see what a delight it is.
01:10:21: It's mind boggling to them and it changes even their opinion of it. And we're rural.
01:10:27: I just want to say this. We're a rural context. This is the rural church podcast after all. And so we have an agrarian society in some senses.
01:10:37: People have to do cattle or chicken or crops. And it's just like, don't complicate this.
01:10:45: If your crops need water, give them. In fact, you'd be cruel to deny feeding and watering and taking care of your animals.
01:10:56: But there is a line there. It's like there's certain things like, OK, the main things I'm going to be able to take care. And then
01:11:01: I want to just make it where on this day, I'm going to take care of these things.
01:11:06: But I don't have to do it in such a way that my whole day revolves around it. And anyway, we could flesh out.
01:11:14: But what kind of concluding thoughts might you have, Landon? And then we're going to kind of try to land the plane.
01:11:20: This is like when I preach, I promise a conclusion, but it doesn't come sometimes. Anyway, what do you think?
01:11:26: I think that's important. I think the danger of this doctrine is in how it's been historically abused.
01:11:37: It was abused by the Pharisees. It's to look for fault, or to create some kind of a list of here's what you can't do.
01:11:49: And it may even be a conviction that you have. But to create a list and say, this is the thing you can't do.
01:11:56: We're promoting what you should do. I mean, if you look at Matthew 12, works of necessity, works of mercy, works of piety.
01:12:04: Jesus is giving us a paradigm on how we ought to observe the day. If you turn that into a list of hard and fast, like you can't do these things, it does become binding.
01:12:15: So I think in church discipline, for instance, like you guys probably like me, would you all discipline somebody for habitually neglecting the
01:12:24: Lord's Day on purpose without any reason? We went traveling sports.
01:12:31: We had a football game that day, so we're not going to come to church because we've prioritized this. I'm not talking about the one exception.
01:12:38: I'm talking about habitual, like Hebrews 10. Yeah, yeah. Respecting the Lord's Day. So it works like that with all laws.
01:12:47: I would never go into my congregation and ask a member for a cell phone so I could look through his browser history to make sure he's not lusting.
01:12:54: Yeah, you're right. If you find an intentional violation of God's law, and it's perpetual, and you're trying to call them to repentance.
01:13:02: So I think it's important just to say we're promoting what ought to be done on the
01:13:08: Lord's Day and not treat it differently than the other commandments. It's the decalogue.
01:13:15: It's God's moral law. Yeah, right. So I think that's just a caution because I think it can, if viewed wrongly, become pharisaical if you construct like you can't do this and you can't do this.
01:13:30: So just a precaution there. Yeah, and I think there's conscience issues, and some people are going to be okay with certain things, and some people aren't.
01:13:42: I still think there's clear violations, like just the neglect of gathering with God's people.
01:13:50: Or if there's a family just like, look, we have to get our groceries on Sunday. I'd want to sit down with them.
01:13:55: It's like, hey, I wouldn't want to be pastoral. I wouldn't want to be like, you hypocrites, whatever.
01:14:02: Like, hey, let's just think through this, and let's help. Like pastors, we shouldn't be ready to just beat people up, but let's help.
01:14:10: I want to lift these burdens from you, and I want you to find the joy. And along with that, we should structure our churches, and this is what we've tried to do here with our whole day.
01:14:22: We want to give you the opportunity that you can enjoy the Sabbath. Yeah.
01:14:28: We want to make provisions for you and your family, so you can come rest in Christ all day.
01:14:35: Right? So we're going to structure the whole day to where you can take full advantage of that. Yeah.
01:14:41: And if you don't, you know. It's on you. Yeah. You know.
01:14:47: And pastorally, it needs to be shown from the Word. Right, right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's so dangerous to say, our confession says this, or historically this is what
01:14:57: Reformed Baptists believe. They need to see it from the Word. Right, right. So where does the argument come from? It comes from here, right?
01:15:04: That's good. We say a lot at our church, if we can talk you into something, there are much better people out there that can talk you out of it.
01:15:13: We want you to be convinced from the Scriptures. We want God to convince you. Absolutely.
01:15:19: And so that's the tool. That's the reason the confession is such a good tool. It's like, look, here's the argument.
01:15:24: Now let's look. Let's look at what it's rooted in. So, well, brothers, this has been a delight.
01:15:32: This has been incredible. Yeah, amen. I appreciate you, brothers. I appreciate your friendship.
01:15:38: And so you guys, you got any final sentence that you need to say, and I'll take us out.
01:15:46: Enjoy the day. Yeah. When you wake up, think, I get to leave the earth today in hope.
01:15:53: I get to ascend to the mountain Zion with the saints in hope today. Amen. Yeah.
01:16:00: Call the Sabbath a delight. Amen. Amen. Well, I'm going to conclude this, but as soon as I conclude, you're going to hear that message you hear at the end of the podcast every week.
01:16:11: That's Pastor Jonathan Murdock preaching. So I'm going to close this, but actually
01:16:16: Jonathan's taking us out, but it's prerecorded recorded. So thank you guys for joining us this week on the
01:16:22: Rural Church Podcast. If you have any questions about this episode, you can email me. If you want to ask it to the other brothers, you can just email me.
01:16:30: I'll get it to them. But my email, quatronelson at gmail. So that's c -u -a -t -r -o -n -e -l -s -o -n at gmail .com.
01:16:38: Thanks for joining us this week. And we'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what
01:16:50: God's doing. This is His work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.