Jesus the Greater Sabbath

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If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn to Colossians chapter 2 and go to verse 16.
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You may wonder why this is our third week of dealing with this particular passage, but if you're brand new, you wouldn't wonder that, because you haven't been here, but if you have been here, you'll know that this is our third week looking at the same text.
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And the reason why, and I mention this the first time, is that there is so much in this text that it would not be, I would not be able to get through it all in one message, but also there are within this text debates that have been drawn and there are arguments that have come that I think deserve to be dealt with among God's people.
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In fact, several years ago, I engaged in a debate on this very platform with a good friend who was not a contentious debate, Rob Hamm is the pastor of Keystone Heights Presbyterian Church and he and I were friends, but we engaged in a public moderated debate on the subject of the Sabbath.
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Rob is a Presbyterian and Presbyterians hold to something called covenant theology and in covenant theology, the view of the Sabbath tends to be that Sunday is the Sabbath day, whereas in the old covenant it was Saturday, now it is Sunday and the restrictions and the laws of the Sabbath have been applied to Sunday for Christians.
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I took a different perspective and I do take a different perspective and it's the perspective we're going to talk about today, but I want to begin by saying this, there are a few things which cause as much contention between believers as the subject that we're going to discuss.
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The Sabbath is a hugely contentious subject and my hope today is to show you one, some of the similar or some of the different views on the subject, but also to try to provide a convincing explanation as to why the position that we hold at this church is in fact the position of scripture.
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I wouldn't believe it if I didn't, or rather I wouldn't teach it if I didn't believe it, but at the end of the day, I will concede if you leave with a different view, I will only say this, that I hope that you will extend to me the same grace that I would extend to you in our differences, but I do hope to show the textual basis for this particular view.
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Now again, if you're new, let me give you a quick warning.
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We are very committed in this church to teaching the Bible and theology.
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We have an unwritten motto, our motto is theology matters.
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We have an academy where we teach scripture and theology over a two year program for anyone who wants to come.
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It's absolutely free.
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So this is what we do here.
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If you're not used to sermons that are teaching sermons, then this is what we're about.
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The gospel is in this message, but this message will be very much a lesson because we should be taught from the word of God when we come to the house of God.
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So let's stand together and let's read the text.
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And we're going to read 16 to 23 as we have been, because that finishes out this chapter.
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And this is what it says.
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Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
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These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
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Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God.
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If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used according to human precepts and teachings.
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These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting the self-made religion and asceticism in severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
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Father in heaven, I pray first and foremost that you would keep me from error, for Lord, I am a fallible man capable of preaching error and I don't want to preach error for the sake of my conscience, for the sake of your name, for the sake of your people.
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And Father, as your word is preached today, I pray that you open the hearts of your people, open their ears to where the word would go in through the mind and into the heart, and Lord, if there be unbelievers here today, that they would in fact hear the gospel, that Jesus is our rest, that Jesus is our Sabbath, and if we are in him, we are in fact resting and no longer working for our salvation.
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We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
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As we continue on, by way of reminder, again I know some of you are new, we have been going through the book of Colossians now for several months, we started at the very beginning and have worked our way now to chapter 2, and Paul is addressing a problem in Colossae, the problem of those who would add to the sufficiency of Christ's work, that they would say that Christ's work is not enough, but that something must be added for us to experience salvation or to live a right Christian life, we must add something to Christ.
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Some added vain philosophy, we see this back in chapter 2, verse 8, where he says let no one take you captive by vain philosophy, some add paganism, and we see that when he talks about the worship of angels and asceticism, and he says let no one disqualify you for those things, but we also see that there are those in the Colossian church, or at least there is a danger that there are those coming within the Colossian church who are trying to add the keeping of the old covenant law.
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This final group is typically referred to by theologians as the Judaizers.
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The Judaizers were a group in the first century who had come from Jerusalem, who had gone to the churches where Paul had preached the gospel, and they took into those churches a message of Jewish law keeping.
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Paul's first letter that he wrote, I believe, is the letter to the churches of Galatia.
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Galatia was a region that included Lystra, and Iconium, and Derbe, we read about them in Acts, and in that region those churches had been infiltrated by the Judaizers who were trying to enforce upon them the demand to keep things like circumcision.
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And Paul comes and says Gentiles are not required to be circumcised, and that was a great debate in the early church, and so in Acts 15 we see where the apostles came together in Jerusalem, they discussed the matter, and they made the decision, and it was proclaimed and written and sent out to all the churches that we are going to lay no burden upon the Gentiles in regard to circumcision.
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But they also said we're not going to lay any burden at all except for that, we talked about this last week, except for that they abstained from sexual immorality, and they abstained from idolatry, and that included eating foods offered to idols and blood and things like that, and we see that in Acts 15.
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But yet there were still these groups who tried to enforce Jewish law-keeping on the Gentile church.
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And Paul clearly repudiates them in Galatians, he calls it another gospel.
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He said if anyone comes to you preaching a gospel other than the gospel I preach, let him be what, church? Let him be accursed, anathema, put him out.
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Paul was not mincing words.
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Well in Colossians chapter 2 we see Paul dealing with a similar thing.
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In verse 16 he says therefore let no one pass judgment on you, and by that he means let no one tell you you must do this by threat of judgment, let no one tell you you must do these things by the judgment of God, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink.
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We talked last week about the dietary laws of the Old Testament, what they represented, what they meant, and the fact that the New Testament in fact does abrogate those dietary restrictions and we are no longer under the Old Testament dietary restrictions.
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Praise God, eat the pork.
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That's the shortened version of last week's sermon.
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But he doesn't stop with the dietary restrictions, he says let no one pass judgment on you in food or drink or with regard to a festival.
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Now there were seven annual festivals or feasts that were held among the Jewish people and all of them in one way or another point to Jesus.
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He mentions the new moon.
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Now the new moon was the monthly sacrifices that were offered, they are commanded in the book of Numbers that every month they would offer up a sacrifice and that is how time was dictated.
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The moon, the lunar cycle was how they understood their months and so they would see every time a new moon would come that was a new month, time for a new sacrifice.
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And he says don't let anyone judge you according to these things.
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Basically this, don't let anyone tell you that your spirituality, that your Christianity, that your faith is based on what you eat, that your faith is based on the feasts that you keep or on the sacrifices that you make.
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Now up until now all of God's people would give a hearty amen, all of the reformed and the non-reformed and all the, whether they be Mennonite or Methodist, everybody would say amen.
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But then we get to the last of the four and people become very argumentative because there's four things in this list.
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The food, the feasts, I'm going to say the dietary restrictions, the feasts, the sacrifices on the new moon and the Sabbath.
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And beloved if you want to start a debate online, just put something, I don't care what you put about the Sabbath, anything, the Sabbath is Saturday, whoop, there it goes.
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Somebody's going to want to argue.
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Because this particular subject continues to be a debate even until today, even among those who would identify as we do as part of the reformed faith.
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Now one of the objections that I want to immediately address, and I said I was going to do this two weeks ago so I didn't want to forget to do it, is the objection that Paul here is not referring to the weekly Sabbath but he's only referring to the other Sabbaths.
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Now for a moment let's talk about what that means.
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There are other Sabbaths.
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The weekly Sabbath was the Saturday observation of the day that God rested after having created the world.
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That's the weekly Sabbath and it's Saturday.
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But there were other Sabbaths.
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There were annual Sabbaths that went along with the feasts.
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There were Sabbaths that happened every seven years.
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There were seven year Sabbaths.
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And then there was the grandest of all the Sabbaths, the 490th year Sabbath which was known as what? The year of Jubilee.
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I love that song, Days of Elijah.
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We may even sing that soon.
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I like that song and it talks about the year of Jubilee where all debts were wiped and all people received back that which they owned, their family property and it was all returned.
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If you're ever going to take out a loan, take it out on the 498th year.
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Wait 489th year, oh again.
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But this idea of the year of Jubilee.
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So you have this concept of Sabbaths.
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It wasn't only one day.
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And what the argument goes is this, Paul is only referring to the other Sabbaths.
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He's not referring to the weekly Sabbath.
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And here's my response, baloney, that's it, that's my response.
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There's nothing in the text that would cause us to come to that conclusion.
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The only thing that causes us to come to that conclusion is an a priori dependence upon a position on the Sabbath that we bring to the text.
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There's nothing in the text that would make us think that this isn't referring to the Sabbath.
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And one argument is, well it says Sabbath in the plural.
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And even that's not provable.
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The Greek is actually obscure here.
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It's not certain whether it's plural or singular and that's not a big deal.
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Because even if it were in the plural, even if it does say, don't let them judge you in regard to a festival, new moons, meet or drink or the Sabbaths.
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It still would include all the Sabbaths because plural means it would be more than one indicating them all.
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There's nothing here that would limit this or take away that it's referring to a weekly Sabbath.
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The only reason why we would come to that conclusion is if we had a prior commitment to a system that demanded it, not the text itself.
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So with that being said, I'm going to provide you with four different ways, and by the way if you're on my Wednesday night, if you come Wednesday night, I talked about this some a few weeks ago because I was in Mark and Jesus talks about the Sabbath.
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So I did do this for outline, so you may have seen this before if you listen online or whatever.
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These are the four views Christians have held on the Sabbath.
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The four views that people have held down through the last 2,000 years.
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The first one is called the Saturday Sabbatarian.
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The Saturday Sabbatarian are those who would argue that keeping the Sabbath means that you have to worship and rest on Saturday because that is the seventh day.
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Most of us think of Sunday, no, Sunday is the first day, not the last day.
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Saturday is the last day of the week.
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That's why our calendars start over on Sunday, it's the first day of the week.
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Saturday Sabbatarians hold that you must observe Saturday because that is a perpetual moral commandment of God.
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Ten commandments say what? Honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
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What day is that? It's Saturday.
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Jewish people still do that by the way.
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If you go to Israel, there are places where you can't even live unless you observe the Sabbath because they won't let people live in those communities if they are going to do things on the Sabbath that would violate their understanding of the Sabbath.
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So you've got to live according to Sabbath law if you live in those neighborhoods.
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So Saturday Sabbatarians, who would that be? Well the Seventh Day Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists, yeah they exist.
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And there are others, the Hebrew Roots Movement, Messianic Jews all would hold to a Saturday Sabbatarian view.
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Of all the views I think that that is the least tenable, in fact I would say it's wrong.
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I would say the first one is wrong, we'll get to that in a little while, but of all the positions I think that one is the most dangerous, it tends to be the most legalistic actually.
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But it is one view.
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The second view is called Sunday Sabbatarians.
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This is also known as the Puritan Sabbath.
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It's known as the Puritan Sabbath because it was held by the Puritans and this is why many Reformed people hold this view.
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And this is the view that the Sabbath is now to be observed as a day of rest, but not on Saturday, on Sunday.
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And the argument goes like this, it's not the seventh day that matters, it's the one in seven cycle that matters.
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And the one in seven cycle changed when Jesus rose from the dead on the first day, that made that day the Sabbath.
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Now again, this is the Puritan view, and if you hold that view and I'm misrepresenting you, I'm not trying to, I really am trying to make it, am I saying it right? That it's one in seven, and that it was Sunday after the Lord rose.
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That's the Puritan Sabbath, or known as the Saturday, I'm sorry, the Sunday Sabbatarians.
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That's the view my friend Rob held when we debated.
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If you want to hear that side more expressly explained, you can go to our website, type in Sabbath debate, and you'll see it's there, still there to this day, we did it back in 2018.
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So that's the second view.
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That is not heresy.
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If you hold that view, I'm not calling you a heretic, I disagree, but there's no heresy involved here.
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This is a difference, this is a intramural, inter-church debate, okay? So just understand, that's, it's fine, but that's the Puritan Sabbath.
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The third position is known as Lord's Day observance.
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Now this is also referred to as the Continental Sabbath.
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The Continental Sabbath.
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The Continental Sabbath, or the Lord's Day observance, is the belief that the Sabbath restrictions and laws were given to Israel, and the new covenant is given a new day.
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The Sabbath was for the old covenant, the Lord's Day is for the new covenant.
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And the new covenant day is Sunday, but it does not bear the same legal restrictions as the old covenant Sabbath.
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That's the, that's the Continental Sabbath versus the Puritan Sabbath.
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Does that make sense? So we still see the Lord's Day as being important, and it's still set apart, but it does not carry the legal restrictions of the Sabbath.
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Make sense? Alright.
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Alright.
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Now the final view is known as the Fulfillment View.
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The Fulfillment View is that Christ Himself is the true and perpetual Sabbath rest for His people, and therefore the Sabbath commandments of the Old Testament have been fulfilled and are no longer binding on believers, and therefore there is no more Sabbath at all, it's fulfilled in Christ.
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Alright, so the question is, where are we? By we I mean this church.
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We sit very comfortably between three and four.
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No, I do, let me be clear.
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We believe that Sunday is the Lord's Day, in fact next Sunday is Resurrection Sunday, and my sermon is going to be why we worship on Sunday.
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Why do we worship on Sunday? Because every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday.
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Easter ain't once a year, Easter's once a week, and that's what we're going to see next week.
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We celebrate the Resurrection every time we come here and worship.
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That's what Sunday is.
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So in that sense we do observe the Lord's Day, but we also believe that the Old Covenant Sabbath found its perfect fulfillment in the finished work of Christ.
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That is the distinction.
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That is the distinction.
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So with that being said, I want to kind of just move along into some ideas of why we come to that conclusion, and I want to do so by looking at a different passage.
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If you have your Bible, I want you to turn to Hebrews chapter 4.
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If you preach on the Sabbath and don't go to Hebrews 4, what are you even doing? While you're doing that, let me mention something else about Colossians 2 though.
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Colossians 2 tells us that there's shadows and substance, and it tells us, and you can just find your place at chapter 4 of Hebrews and hold it there for a minute.
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It says there's shadows and substance, and I gave this illustration to my Sunday school this morning, my kids in the class.
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I said, imagine you're standing in front of a big bright light.
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Let's say you're standing in front of one of those police search lights, and you are standing and the light is cast upon you, and you turn around and look behind you.
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That light that's cast upon you is going to cast a long shadow, possibly dozens of feet long, and that shadow that's cast by you is only there because you're there.
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If you step out of the light, what's going to happen? No more shadow, right? But you step into the light and the shadow becomes visible because you're there.
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Remember, when Paul says, let no one judge you in regard to a meet and drink or festivals or new moons or sabbaths, he says these things are a shadow and Christ is the substance.
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Skiah and soma, skiah, shadow, soma is the word for body or substance, the reality.
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And what does he say is shadow? All those food laws, that was all shadow.
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All those new moons, that was all shadow.
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All of those feasts were all shadow.
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And the sabbath itself was a shadow.
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And the substance is Christ.
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See without Christ, the sabbath would have no meaning.
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Keep that in mind.
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And without Christ, the sabbath has no meaning because it points to him.
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So let's now read Hebrews chapter 4.
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Now this again is a highly debated passage, so I would just pray for your patience as we walk through it.
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The apostle Paul says, therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
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So right away, what's he talking about? He's talking about rest.
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And he's talking about the rest that we enter into by virtue of faith in Christ.
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Let me ask you a question.
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What has Jesus promised us? He promises us life eternal.
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He promises us sanctification and joy and all of those things.
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But what's one of the greatest promises? He says, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you sabbath.
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Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give thee rest.
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So in that sense, rest is not a day, it's a state of being.
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We are either at work or at rest.
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And in Christ, we're in rest.
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So again, hearing the text, he says, therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
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What is one of the things we see in Hebrews? The warning of those who think they're in Christ and are not, or doing all the Christian things but are not truly Christian, right? Let us be weary of those of you who would fail to enter that rest.
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Fail to enter into Christ.
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For good news came to us.
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That word is the gospel.
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For the gospel came to us, just as to them.
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But the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
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For we who have believed enter that rest.
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What rest? The rest of Christ.
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For we who believe have entered that rest.
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Have entered.
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Oh, come on now, that'll preach.
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We have entered that rest.
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It's a state of being.
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For we who have believed enter that rest, as he said, as I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
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For he has somewhere spoken, and by the way, I just love that.
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Not to take a moment, but don't you love it when the Bible's citing the Bible? He just said, it's there somewhere.
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He didn't say where, he just said, he somewhere said this.
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You ever done that? You know there's something in the Bible, but you don't look quite, I know it's there.
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And the writer of Hebrews even does that.
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He says, for it is somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way.
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And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.
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He's talking about Genesis chapter two.
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Remember when this was written, there was no chapters and verses, so he couldn't say, hey, back in Genesis chapter two.
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But he says it's there.
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And again in this passage he says, they shall not enter my rest.
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You see, there's two types of people in this world.
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Always two types of people.
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I don't care what you, how you try to separate people, whether you try to separate people by color or size, or whether you try to separate people by country or language.
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There's only two types of people in the world.
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There are those who are in Christ and those who aren't.
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There are those who have entered into his rest and those who haven't.
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That's what I said, the gospel's here.
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The gospel's in the Sabbath message.
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Because we have either entered into this rest or we haven't.
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Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, today, today, today.
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Sorry, I'm getting a little Pentecostal here, but this is it.
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It's today, today, saying through David so long afterward in the words already quoted, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
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For if Joshua, amen, if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.
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So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, and a lot of Sabbatarians will grab that and they'll say, see, the Sabbath rest remains today.
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No, this passage is not talking about a day.
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He just said it's about the day of rest that we are in in Christ, not a day of the week.
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Amen.
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So then there remains a Sabbath rest, not a Sabbath day, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
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For whoever has entered God's rest has rested from his works as God did from his.
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The text tells us, verse 11, let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
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Our rest is in Christ, beloved.
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Our rest is in him.
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So if somebody says, are you anti-Sabbatarian? I say, no.
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I'm not anti-Sabbatarian any more than I'm anti-sacrifice.
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Because somebody says, well, you're not doing sacrifices anymore.
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Does that mean you're anti-sacrifice? No, I don't do sacrifices anymore because they were fulfilled in Christ.
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I'm not anti-Sabbath because the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ.
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You see, it's the same thing.
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But we have those who would say, I understand the first one, but I deny the second one.
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Paul says they're all shadows, whether it's feasts or food or sacrifices or Sabbaths.
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It's all shadows.
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And it all has one substance, and that's Christ.
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And then the looming voice in the back of my head screams out, but what about the Decalogue? Ten Commandments.
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What about the Ten Commandments? Because as you know, number four says, thou shall remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
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And so we have to deal with that.
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But the first thing I want to say is, that's what the first one always runs to.
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And I think they have a better argument.
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Because if your demand is that we should keep the Sabbath, the Sabbath is Saturday.
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The Sabbath was given, not one day in seven, it was given on the seventh day.
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God rested on the seventh day.
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So if you're going to run to the Ten Commandments and say, here's our demand that we have to keep the Sabbath, I would ask you to prove to me then when it was changed.
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Now I'm going to argue we're supposed to worship on Sunday.
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I'm going to argue that next week.
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But you won't hear this come out of my mouth.
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You won't hear that the Sabbath changed.
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You'll hear that we got a new covenant with a new day.
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The same way we got a new feast and a new law.
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See in the old covenant, we had an old feast.
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It was called Passover.
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How many of you had Passover this year? And there are one.
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But we have this feast every week.
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And you know what's interesting about this feast? It's called something in Scripture.
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It's called the Lord's Supper.
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It's called the Lord's Supper.
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There's only one other place in the New Testament where we see the possessive lords.
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Lord's Supper and the Lord's Day.
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The Lord's Supper is communion.
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The Lord's Day is Sunday.
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And both of them are new covenant realities.
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The Lord's Supper takes the place of all the feasts.
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And the Lord's Day takes the place of the Sabbath.
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So going back to the Ten Commandments.
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Well are you telling us brother we no longer have to keep the Ten Commandments? Keep your shorts on because this might get you.
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Sorry if that was, I'm saying be prepared for what I'm about to say.
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The Ten Commandments.
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By the way the word Decalogue means ten words.
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And typically that's what it's referred to as the ten words.
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The ten statements of God.
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And I want to ask you for a second what are the Ten Commandments? If you are a reformed minded covenant theology person you're going to say the Ten Commandments are the moral law of God.
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And I want to challenge you for a moment on that thought.
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And here's where some of you may lose your mind.
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At our church we do not teach a tripartite division of the law.
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And if you don't know what that is that means this.
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The law of God is to be broken into three parts.
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Moral, ceremonial, and civil.
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And the ceremonial and civil laws are fulfilled in Christ.
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But the moral law continues to be a moral law forever and is not fulfilled in Christ.
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Ultimately we have to keep the moral law forever.
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That tripartite division is not in the Bible.
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That tripartite division wasn't even in the early church.
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In fact we don't even see it arise in Christian literature for hundreds of years after the time of the apostles.
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The tripartite division is not the way that we understand the law.
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But let me give you the way we do understand it because I do think this is important.
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The Bible breaks down into covenants.
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Most specifically it breaks down into the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
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We understand that right? I mean that's New Testament, Old Testament right? The word testament means covenant.
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We take everything, Old Covenant, New Covenant.
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Now the Old Covenant had laws and the New Covenant comes and what does Hebrews 8.13 tell us? I'm sorry 8.13, Hebrews 8.13 tells us what? It's been made obsolete because a new and better covenant has come.
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New sacrifices, I'm sorry a better sacrifice, better promises, better priest.
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The New Covenant has made the Old Covenant obsolete.
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People lose their mind when they hear me say the Old Covenant is obsolete.
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You sound like Andy Stanley, don't you dare say that because I'm not saying it doesn't have value and I'm not saying it isn't true and I'm not saying we don't learn things from the Old Covenant but what I am saying is you are not in this covenant, you are in this covenant.
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And you ought to be glad because everything in this covenant is far better than this covenant.
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Hebrews 8.13 tells us if the Old Covenant had been faultless there would be no need for another covenant.
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And the New Covenant has come and with it we actually do have as Brother Mike just said we actually have new laws.
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He said well wait a minute those laws were in the Old Covenant, not as explicitly.
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Jesus said a new command I give to you that you love one another how? As I have loved you.
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He said it was a new commandment, he literally used the word new.
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And he says it's a new commandment I give to you, me, I'm the commandment, love one another how? As I have loved you.
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You see the standard of the New Covenant is not Moses, it's Jesus.
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The standard of the New Covenant is not the Ten Commandments, it's Christ.
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Now are there, amen, are there laws? Are there laws that transcend both covenants, yes.
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Because guess what, before this covenant was made a lot of people lived back here.
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Because you can go from Adam to Abraham and there was no covenant, well I'm sorry there was the Noahic Covenant, what I mean though is there was no law before Moses.
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But yet these people still had laws that they lived by such as murder, right, and adultery.
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Remember when Abimelech took Sarah into his house and then he found out she was the wife of Abraham and he went to Abraham and he said how dare you let this woman come into my house? Why do you think he even cared? He was a pagan king.
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Because he understood that there was a law, what we call a transcendent law and the transcendent law transcends the covenants.
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Murder transcends the covenants, because it's always wrong.
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Adultery transcends the covenants because it's always wrong.
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Stealing transcends the covenants, it's always wrong whether you're in the Mosaic covenant or not.
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So the question becomes is the Sabbath transcendent law? Is the Sabbath transcendent law? And it is my contention that it's not.
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Here are five facts, I'm going to give you five facts.
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These are not, honestly, somebody may want to argue with me, but facts be facts.
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And these are five things that are facts.
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You may disagree on how to interpret what they mean, but here's five facts.
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Number one, there's no explicit command to keep the Sabbath before Moses.
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You won't find it.
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Now you will see God says he makes the Sabbath holy in Genesis chapter 2, but there is no command to keep the Sabbath, and there is no explicit command for anyone to keep the Sabbath until Exodus 16.
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And in case you're wondering, Exodus 16 is during the wilderness wanderings prior to the giving of the Ten Commandments.
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It was right before they made it to Sinai, God gives them a law, and he says don't work on the Sabbath, and this is when the guy goes out and cuts wood, and he ends up being executed for it, right? So there's no explicit command to keep the Sabbath before Moses.
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Number two, there is no evidence that any Gentile nation has ever rebuked for not keeping the Sabbath.
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If you look at all the rebukes that God gives to the Gentile nations, he rebukes them over adultery, he rebukes them over sexual immorality, he rebukes them over murder and theft, he rebukes them for all kinds of reasons, but he never says, oh, and by the way, the thing that you're failing to do is keep the Sabbath.
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God doesn't rebuke it for them because it was not a command given to them.
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Number three, the New Testament Scriptures never command the keeping of the Sabbath following the ascension of Christ.
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You will not find a Sabbath command in the New Testament that is required after the coming of Christ, the ascension of Christ.
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So that puts the Sabbath, I mean, just with those three things, that puts it right in here, the Old Covenant.
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Number four, of all the warnings against sin in the New Testament, none of them include keeping the Sabbath.
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I mean, you go to 1 Corinthians 6, it talks about sexual immorality and homosexuality and idolatry and all of those different sins, but one thing you will never find in the list of sins, whether it's in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6 or in any of the other lists of the New Testament that include the sins that New Testament Christians ought to abandon and that they ought not practice, it says nothing about the Sabbath at all.
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Number four, the New Testament never refers to Sunday as Sabbath or imposes any of the regulations or exemptions of the Sabbath, I should say on Sunday, but that's okay.
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I want to thank Dave for typing these up for me this morning, thank you Dave, but that should say on Sunday.
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All right, so it says, the New Testament never refers to Sunday as Sabbath or imposes any of the regulations or expectations of the Sabbath on Sunday, it doesn't.
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Last one, number five.
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Was that five? Oh, okay, look at me.
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No, no, that was it, I just went through them faster than I thought I would.
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So, with that being said, we have to ask the question, why is it? Why is it that this is such a debate? If those five things are true, and I believe they are, why is this such a debate? Well I do believe that the debate comes down to how we see the commandments, the ten commandments.
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That really is the issue.
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And so I want to, in my remaining time, which is very fleeting, I want to just for a moment show you something about the ten commandments that we ought to always remember.
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Go with me, if you will, to Exodus chapter 34, and find your place at verse 27.
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And the Lord said to Moses, write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
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So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights.
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He neither ate bread nor drank water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
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Now based upon that text, what does it say the ten commandments are? The words of the covenant.
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Literally he says, he says he wrote the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
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See we argue whether or not the ten commandments are God's moral law.
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I will say what the Bible says is that the ten commandments are the covenant God made with Israel in Sinai.
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This is the words of the covenant.
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It's literally what it says.
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These are the words of the covenant.
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Now with that, you can also find that if you just want to see it again, Deuteronomy 4.13 and Deuteronomy 9.9-11, both of them say that the ten commandments are the covenant God made with Israel.
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That is what it is.
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The ten commandments are the covenant God made with Israel.
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Now go to Exodus 31, go to verse 12, we're going to read 12-17.
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And the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say above all you shall keep my Sabbaths for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I the Lord sanctify you.
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You shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you.
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Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death.
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Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
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Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord.
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Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.
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Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath through their generations as a covenant forever.
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It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.
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And he gave to Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God.
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That text tells us that the Sabbath was given as a sign.
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Now very quickly I just want to ask, covenants always are accompanied by what? Signs.
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You go back to the Noahic covenant, after God brought Noah out of the ark what did he give him? Rainbow.
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And he said what? This is a sign as a reminder that I will no longer destroy the world by water.
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So the rainbow is the sign of the Noahic covenant.
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Later Abraham receives a covenant from God.
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What did he get? Circumcision.
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Circumcision.
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Genesis 17 says this will be the sign of the covenant that I have made with Abraham.
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Later God gives a covenant to Moses.
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This covenant, the ten commandments and what is the sign of the covenant God gives to Moses? The Sabbath.
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The sign of the Mosaic covenant is the Sabbath.
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Therefore, it makes sense that it would be included in the covenant document.
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The covenant document is the ten commandments.
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This is the covenant I've given to you.
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These ten words.
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And it makes sense that the covenant document would contain the covenant sign.
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The ten commandments do in fact represent God's moral law.
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But, the moral law of God transcends covenants.
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And the Sabbath is part of the covenant God made with Israel in Sinai.
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And all of that pointed to something greater.
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It pointed to Christ.
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So here are my concluding thoughts.
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If we say that Sunday is Sabbath, I think we're actually doing some negative things.
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And here's my thoughts.
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Number one, I think we're using confusing terms.
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Because people automatically associate the old covenant with the Sabbath.
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And they should.
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It's the sign of the old covenant.
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So when we demand that people hold to the Sabbath, we are doing what the very Judaizers themselves were being accused of.
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We're demanding people go backward rather than forward.
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So we're using confusing terms.
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Number two, we are setting confusing expectations.
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And this is the big one.
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I have a lot of friends who hold differing views on this than I do.
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Like I said, I've debated some of them.
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I've had conversations with some of them.
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But here's the one consistent thing among my Sabbatarian friends.
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Is none of them can agree what you can do on the Sabbath.
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None of them can agree whether or not you're supposed to go to a restaurant or not go to a restaurant.
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Whether or not you're allowed to play games or not play games.
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You know Calvin actually played ball on the Sabbath.
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And people lost their mind.
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He played a ball game on the Sabbath.
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It wasn't like us.
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You know you have baseball.
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But it was like a kickball kind of thing.
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You know how the Europeans are.
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It was like soccer.
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But the idea of what can we do.
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It sets up confusing expectations.
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So one, it's confusing terms.
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Two, it's confusing expectations.
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And thirdly and most dangerously, it confuses the covenants.
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It confuses the covenants.
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So I'll end with this quote.
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This is from Fred Zaspel.
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Fred Zaspel is a personal friend.
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But he's also one who wrote a book on this very subject.
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And this is from page 236 of his book.
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And he says.
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The sign and seal of the old covenant has given way to the reality of Christ in the new covenant.
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The Sabbath no longer has significance as a day.
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Its significance is that which it pointed to.
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In him who gives rest.
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And in whom we have ceased from our works.
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For those who rest in Christ every day is Sabbath.
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Let's pray.
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Father I thank you for your word.
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Lord I know that such a word as this is going to bring up a thousand questions.
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And possibly even some confusion.
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And Lord I pray that you would deal with that confusion.
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Minister to us by your spirit.
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Teach us your word.
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And Lord that through all of this you would be glorified.
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And Lord if I have said something that has offended.
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I pray Lord that that offense would be removed.
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And Lord that our relationships within this body would be firm in our love for one another.
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And be able to look past all offenses.
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And I pray Lord for understanding.
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That all of us would grow in our understanding of your word and its truth.
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And I pray that we would find our rest.
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Our ultimate rest.
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Our true Sabbath.
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In the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And if there are those here who haven't.
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If they have failed to enter that rest.
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Lord that today be the day of salvation for them.
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You draw them to yourselves by your gospel.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.