The Sabbath Command

Well, good morning. It is good to be here with you all. Last week, Nathan and Benjamin Meyer and I had the opportunity, we were up in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to speak at a youth retreat for a church up there, and it was a joy to be up there. We got to meet other Christians and believers, and that Sunday morning we worshiped with them. And it's always a sweet thing to... learn of other Christians in other places that love the Lord and to be part of their worship. But I miss being here, and it's always wonderful to be back home and to worship with the body of believers that I'm part of day to day and week to week. So it's a joy to be here. Well, today and next week, we are going to begin taking a look.

at the fourth commandment. So we're continuing our series through the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment is that we honor the Sabbath and keep it holy. And today, what I'm going to argue is that keeping the Sabbath is a command of God and that it's still in force. I'm going to argue that it is required of all of us to keep the Sabbath. Now, what we're not going to get into much this week is what... the details and what all it means to keep the Sabbath. I'm setting the groundwork, and next week we're going to talk more about what resting and keeping and honoring and all that is going to look like. Today, I'm going to walk us through five arguments as to the command and why we are required to keep the Sabbath. Now, I think of all the commandments. It's easy, every time you prepare to preach, you probably, you know, I sort of felt like this with...

most of the commandments. But I do think that in some unique ways, this is the most neglected of all the commandments. In a lot of ways, I think we have the most disdain for the fourth commandment and that the opposition towards it is unique. And why do I say that? Well, because if you talk to Christians, you'll find that they're very open about their disagreement with the fourth commandment and that as you talk with them about what they do or you observe, often there's not really any sort of sanctifying of the fourth commandment or like setting it apart that much other than maybe a couple hours rather than the day. And there's not like a guilty admittance to this. It's just part of what we say and do. We're very open about it. And that's not generally.

how we would treat any of the other commandments. There's not like, if we're going to talk about a violation of the seventh commandment, you should not commit adultery. You know, there's a little hanging of the head in shame. With the other commands, often we may have distorted views of how we keep them, but there's no one who is really trying to get rid of that command. There's no one who's trying to say that, you know, the sixth commandment is no longer necessary to keep. Many argue that we don't have to keep the fourth commandment, that the fourth commandment is a Jewish thing that was an Old Testament thing and does not apply to New Testament Christians, which would make sense if we were consistent in that.

We often, what you see with Reformed people is that we will say that about the fourth commandment, but not about the other nine commandments. We sort of want to put the fourth commandment into this special category. And so we're happy to maintain nine commandments and relegate the fourth commandment to the Old Testament. This neglect of the Sabbath is harmful to us as Christians. It can cause a shallowness and a dryness to our faith. and it will cause us to miss out on some of God's greatest blessings that he has for us. It will cause us to miss out on some of the delight that we find in the Lord. So my hope for today is that if you do not currently work to keep the Sabbath or think that it's commanded by God, my prayer is that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to this command and convict you. If you do seek to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, then I pray that this sermon will strengthen you.

and will help you to do so, and give you the tools to understand it better. And if you fall into a category of someone who's not thought about it, or you've just never been taught about the Sabbath, then I pray that this sermon will help you grow in your understanding and in your obedience to the law of God. Because I think often, you know, when we were in Florida, I had a friend there, and he was telling me about how he was going out of town for a couple weeks. to go visit his family. And he would do this at the same time of the year every year. It was a regular thing. And so I asked him, I said, what church do you go to when you're there? I was just curious. And he's like, oh, well, we sort of don't sometimes, you know, sort of hemmed and hawed. And I was kind of like, really? You know, this isn't a priority when you go out. Like, what does this say about the value of church and the priority that you place? And he was kind of like, oh, I never really thought about that.

And then it was interesting, as we knew we were moving up here, you know, about a year, almost a year and a half later, we knew we were coming up here and we were leaving. And I was sitting there talking to him and we were talking about our relationship and just some of the things that we'd grown together. And he brought up that conversation, which had happened like probably within the first month of us getting to know each other. And he was like, you know, I can't believe that there was... that only a year ago that I would have gone somewhere and not looked up a church to go to. And he was saying, you know, I just hadn't ever thought about it until it was brought out to me that this is something that's important to a Christian and I should do. And so, and it was just shocking to him. Like, he couldn't even believe, like, at that point when we had that conversation, not going to church when he was out of town would just be, like, completely foreign to him. He just couldn't imagine that.

It's hard for him to remember a time in his life where that would have just been something that give or take. And so I think sometimes that's us a lot, where if we haven't been taught or we haven't been shown what's important, we'll neglect it, not through necessarily willful disobedience, but through a lack of being taught. So now we're being taught. Well, let's read God's Word. And after we read through this, I'm going to make five arguments as to why the Sabbath command is still in effect for us today. And then at the end, we'll wrap up with a little bit of the taste of the joy of Sabbath. And then next week, we'll really dive into that more so. But we're going to begin by reading all of the first table of the law. The Ten Commandments are divided into two tables, right? The first four commandments are our relationship towards God.

And then the sixth through ten are our relationships with each other. So in the past we talked about the command of God is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You say, how do I do that? The first four commandments explicitly teach you how to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second command is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. And that's the next six commandments. But all of them fit under... The command, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So we'll read all 11 verses of chapter 20, the first 11, because that's going to give us the context. And hopefully we'll kind of begin to see the movement within the first four commands. The first command is, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. It's telling us who to worship. And then these commands where God opens up how we are to worship.

And the words we use and the attitude that we have in worship is the third commandment. And then the fourth commandment is the special time of worship. All right, please stand with me. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle. or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Let's pray again. Father God, we praise you for giving us your word and your commands. We ask that you give us soft hearts to receive it and to understand it.

Give us the Holy Spirit in your son's name. All right. First argument is that the Sabbath command is rooted in creation. You know, there's the song in The Sound of Music. Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start. When we read, we begin with A, B, C. It's so helpful for us to go back to Genesis and to be students of God and what he does in the book of Genesis. Many of the problems that we have today result from us ignoring and forgetting or simply not knowing the truths and the lessons that are taught in the beginning in the book of Genesis. So in the beginning, in Genesis, right, we have God creating the world from nothing. And then what God begins to do is to populate. So he creates heavens.

Then he populates them with stars and planets. He creates seas, and he populates it with fish. He creates land, he populates it with plants, with animals. But then, on day six, it's very unique. There's evening and morning, and God's calling it good. And everything's just sort of spoken into existence. But then, on day six, it begins to change. Because on day six, God stops. and contemplates what he's about to make. And he gives instruction about it. He says that he's going to make a man, and that that man is going to be made in his image. And then he doesn't just speak man into existence. Rather, he actually forms him out of the ground. And so there's this very intimate molding and shaping that God does. And then...

In 127, we're told that God created man in his image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. And so we get this sense that there's this very unique creation that happens on day six that is different than the other creative acts of God. God made man in his image. And then what we see in Genesis 1 and 2 is that God gives Adam Three creation mandates. The first two we have commanded very directly to Adam. And it is to be fruitful, to multiply, and to take dominion over the earth. And we can learn a couple things by these things being commanded in Genesis chapter 1. One is that these commands are for all time. They were not given to a particular nation.

or a particular tribe. They were given to Adam, the father of all mankind, and to his descendants. At no point are they ever revoked. The command to be fruitful and multiply and to take dominion is a command for all time for man. They are also imitative commands. Because what you see in all the beginning part is that God existed, and then he creates a world. And what is that but being fruitful? He makes a world and then he populates it with creatures. And not just creatures, but he populates it with men who are made in his image. And then he tells those men to go and be fruitful. And so what we see is God does things that display who he is, and then he commands man to be like him, to image him.

And so the first thing he says is to be fruitful, which is what God was just doing, is being fruitful. Then he says, take dominion. And what you read in Genesis 1 is that God is hovering over the face of the deep, and it's this tumultuous thing. And then he creates these wild, empty places. But then God brings order to it all because he creates a sun to rule the day and a moon to rule the night. And so as God creates a world, he begins to create order within that world. And then he creates man to follow in his footsteps in bringing order to all creation. And so again, the dominion that man is to exercise is imitative of the dominion that God is displaying, the authority that God is displaying in creation. Well, then we come to Genesis 2, 1 through 3, which says, Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts.

By the seventh day, God completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all of his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. Now, this is really unique, what happens in these verses. God sets up the structure of a week. 24 hours are in a day, right? And that makes sense. You can study and you could figure out 24 hours in a day. There's 30 days, 31 days in a month. There's the cycle of the moon. There's a reason for it. You can figure it out. 365 days in a year. There is no reason that you will find in creation for a seven-day week. The reason there's a seven-day week is because God ingrained it in us at the beginning. That he worked six days and then he set one day.

And if you study history, you'll find there are points where men have rebelled against this and tried to create a different system, and they've all failed miserably. You just can't get this ingrained behavior out of man. One of the interesting things, too, with that is that the wealth that the Western world experienced and that changed, part of that was actually tied directly to this. Because in Roman Catholicism, when you had all these random saints days and all these different not the six day structure, it was hard to plan and regulate society. And as soon as it becomes more regulated by a seven day week, prosperity that we have in this world is very tied to that. That's free of charge. All right. So what we see is in this verses is that God, what?

He rests. Now, we have to ask the question, was God tired? No. So the idea here is not simply a cessation, a stopping of activity and being inactive. It is a cessation of activity. God is not creating things anymore, but it is not just time to take a nap because we know For instance, in Isaiah, it tells us explicitly that God does not get tired and weary. But rest doesn't just mean inactivity as we tend to think of it. Rather, what does God do? He stops the work of creating, and he takes pleasure in it. He takes glory in all that his hand had accomplished. He surveys his handiwork, and he is satisfied. He is happy in what he's done.

Notice what else that God does. It says that he blesses the day and sanctifies it. Remember what sanctification, it's being set apart, right? So he takes this day, he blesses it, and he sets it apart as unique from the other six days. Not that it's better, but it's unique. He sets it apart for a special purpose. Now, we have to ask, Did God do this for his own good? Did God need a particular day set apart for him? Well, no. God doesn't need a specific time and day for him to rest because God is not bound by time. He's not bound by the structure of a week. He doesn't experience things.

episodically in the way that we do. We are creatures within time. God's not shackled by it. He's infinite. And so we say, well, why does God set apart and sanctify a day? Well, he does it for man. He does it for the good of man. And what he does is set an example for man. And this ties back to why was I spending all that time talking about the first two creation mandates? That's not what our sermon is on. No, but it's illustrative. of what he does. There's this pattern where God sets an example, he does something, and then the command is for us to imitate God. And so in creation, what we see is God takes a day set apart to rest and to glory in the work that he's done. And man, who's in his image, is to do the same thing. The first giving of the Sabbath is at creation.

Which means, as we said earlier, the command given to creation means it's for all men for all time. It wasn't given to one people group. It wasn't given for one small part of history. Marriage is not just for Christians. Marriage was given to mankind. The command to be fruitful, the command to multiply, was given to men for all time. The command to set apart the Sabbath. to sanctify it and to make it holy was given to mankind. And in the fourth commandment, that's how Moses grounds the commandment. You notice in verse 11, for in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. And he rested on the seventh day. So in verse 11, what we see is the grounding of the fourth commandment goes back.

pre-Israel, all the way back to Adam. So the first argument as to why we must keep the Sabbath holy is that it is a creation command given to all men for all time. The second argument comes from Exodus 16. Now, you know me, you've probably heard me joke about math before and that I'm not like, by any stretch of the imagination, a mathematician. But what I can tell you is I do know this. 16 comes before the number 20. And that is significant when we look at Exodus. Because in Exodus chapter 16, we read this. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, this is what the Lord meant. Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil.

and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning. Moses said, eat today, for today is the Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will find nothing in the field. No explanation. Just there's a Sabbath thing that's mentioned. The law is given in Exodus 20, but there's an assumption in Exodus 16 that people have some understanding of a Sabbath and of a rest. and that this is something that God expects of them. In chapter 16, we see that the people of Israel have some sort of understanding of the Sabbath. They're not like, huh? What are you talking about? What's this Sabbath thing? So the Sabbath predates the explicit giving of the command and the decalogue. And what do we see? It's a day of rest, and it's a day that's devoted to the Lord. And so in Exodus 16, we see evidence.

that the Sabbath command is not tied to the people of Israel, but it's given before. It's an assumption that there's some sort of understanding that there should be a day which is given over to rest and to the worship of the Lord. That's argument number two. Argument number three is from our understanding of what the law of God is. If you read through the Westminster Confession, which is one of the standards that we subscribe to, it helps us and teaches us about the organization of the laws in the Old Testament. If you will read through the Old Testament, there's a lot of laws, aren't there? I think the Jews have counted them up and they say there's 613 laws given in the Old Testament. Well, how do we think about them? Well, there are generally three types of law.

In the Old Testament, there are civil laws. And the civil laws pertain to Israel. They were a theocracy, and they were given specific laws by God that were to govern them and rule them for that time. For example, there are laws that have to do with the regulation of slaves and how you can sell them and when you can sell them and how long you can keep them. and marriages, all of those things. There are rules about how an ox goring someone should be treated, who's guilty, what should happen to the ox, all of those things. Those are civil laws given by God for the nation of Israel for that time. There are also ceremonial laws. The ceremonial laws are laws that have to do with the sacrificial system.

All the offerings that they were required to bring, how they were required to bring them. All the laws dealing with ceremonial uncleanliness or cleanliness. What made you impure? What allowed you to enter the temple or not enter the temple? All the laws relating to the Levites, right? Like all of these laws are not binding to us today. Hebrews 10, one says, for the law. Since it was only a shadow and a good thing, or a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very form of things, can never by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year make perfect those who draw near. And the whole book, the whole argument of Hebrews, right, is talking about how Christ is better. What Christ did when he came is fulfill all the civil and ceremonial law. All these things that were...

teachers to point to the better sacrifice, the Christ who is to come, the sacrificial lamb, the once for all. And all of those laws were fulfilled, are done away with, are not binding. You don't have to follow them. Praise the Lord. The third type of law, the one that the Ten Commandments is under, is what we would call the moral law. Now, the moral law is but the Ten Commandments is the summary and the explanation of the moral law. It's found in the Ten Commandments. And the moral law was always binding, and it is binding to believers and unbelievers. It's the standard by which God judges. In other words, it was always wrong to murder someone, and it's never going to be okay to murder someone.

And so thou shalt not murder is binding. You shall worship and serve the Lord your God. There's only one God who we're ever supposed to worship. And it was always a sin to worship a different God. And it will always be a sin to not worship. So like, and even in the Old Testament, you see this distinction where we see again and again, it says, obedience is better than sacrifice. following the Ten Commandments than having to put yourself under the ceremonial laws, the sacrificial laws. Just obey, right? And intuitively we can understand that murdering is always wrong and there's never a time that it was okay to murder. And that becoming unclean by helping someone move a dead body is not the same.

as committing adultery on your wife, that one is significantly worse than the other. And so as you look through the Old Testament, it's very clear that the moral law is distinct from the ceremonial law and the civil law and is a higher law, and that it has more weight than the other parts of the law. Now, if we move and we remember in the New Testament, Jesus preaches a sermon, It's called the Sermon on the Mount, right? Pastor Dave preached on this recently. And he goes through all these Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes, what Jesus does is he doesn't negate the moral law on the Beatitudes. Rather, what's he do? He opens it up. He brings it to weight more. He expands on it and says, you know, you think you're keeping it? It's far weightier than what we think. He says, Do not think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you that until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until it is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now, I want to add,

The confession says, we are not now under the law as a covenant of works, thereby to be justified or condemned. So as I'm saying that the moral law is binding, what I'm not saying, underscore, I am not saying that in keeping it, you're somehow justified. Or in keeping it, you're somehow saved. Jesus fulfilled the terms of the covenant. He fulfilled the terms of the moral law as well. So we still obey it and keep it. Because it's always wrong to disobey any parts of the moral law. And yet, in keeping the law, it does not save us. And we're not justified. We're justified by Jesus and Jesus' perfect keeping of the law. And praise the Lord, right? Because who among us can honestly say that we've kept that law? And so, we do not have to keep the law to save ourselves. Rather, we do it because we love the Lord.

And because the moral law demonstrates to us the character of God. It demonstrates us what holiness is and how to live holy lives. It shows true holiness. So to draw it back to the Sabbath, the fourth commandment is part of the moral law. It's part of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing in Exodus 20 to make us think that somehow the fourth commandment is lesser than the other nine commandments. There's nothing in it that hints that the fourth commandment will somehow be done away with or that it will somehow go away in a way that the other commandments don't. And so if you believe that the other nine commandments require obedience, it's inconsistent to say that the fourth commandment no longer has any bearing on our lives or doesn't need to be obeyed or is somehow fulfilled in a unique way that the other ones are not. It's just inconsistent in our thinking.

Now, it's rooted in creation. Exodus 16 shows us that there's an understanding of the Sabbath that predates the giving of the law. The set keeping of the Sabbath is part of the moral law. Argument number four. Let's look at Jesus' relationship to the Sabbath. Now we're going to sort of start moving into the New Testament. Often, when people want to argue about the Sabbath, they want to argue that it is never explicitly restated in the New Testament. And there's also a misunderstanding of what Jesus has to say about it. And I want to make this point really clear. It's dangerous to say that since the New Testament doesn't explicitly state the Sabbath as continuing, that it's no longer of any effect. Because the first three commandments are nowhere explicitly brought forward either. Just because a commandment isn't explicitly restated in the New Testament does not mean that it no longer bears weight in our lives. Second, That thinking betrays how much we've been infected by ideas like dispensationalism and how easy it is for us to undervalue the Old Testament and to think that the Old Testament is somehow not applicable to us or not as inspired as the New Testament, which is just untrue. The Old Testament is as inspired as the New Testament. In the New Testament, we get to see the promises and the foreshadowing come to fruition.

And it's a wonderful and great joy, but should never cause us to think that the Old Testament is somehow lesser. And the Old Testament enriches our understanding of the New Testament. And you really lose something when you denigrate the Old Testament or don't read it or love it. And so all I'm saying is that when we try and say, well, that's just Old Testament stuff, it doesn't really matter, division that we want to have between the New Testament and the Old Testament, which is one that we don't find in Scripture or the way the apostles treat the Old Testament or the way Jesus treats it. It is the Word of God, and it's inspired, and it has much to say to us. In Jesus's ministry, he speaks about the Sabbath 11 times, but he never dismisses it. In fact, in every instance, what he does is he upholds the Sabbath and refines faulty understandings of the Sabbath. He removes the misunderstandings. He removes the superstitions.

that the Pharisees have allowed to grow up around it. But he never dismisses it. And so in his breaking of the Sabbath, it's not actually breaking. Actually, he's keeping the Sabbath rightly, and the Pharisees were keeping it wrongly. And he broke their superstitions, not the command of the fourth commandment. In Mark 2.28, he says, So the Son of Man is Lord even. of the Sabbath. So not only does Jesus not reject keeping the Sabbath, he actually claims that he's the Lord of the Sabbath. This is an incredible claim, right? Because in it, he is claiming deity. Because in Genesis, what we saw is the Lord sanctified the Sabbath to himself as a day set apart to focus on him. And so in Jesus saying that the Sabbath is my day, he is making a claim that he's God.

And why would we think that his lordship only spans two years or three, because he says that at the beginning of his ministry, and then somehow in three years when he dies and rises from the dead, the day that he was lord over disappeared. Which is implied, I guess, if we say that the Sabbath is no longer enforced today. That there's no longer a command to honor and keep it holy and rest in it. Now, up until now, we've been looking at the Sabbath as being on the seventh day of the week, as it was up until Jesus' resurrection. And so the fifth argument is Sabbath to Lord's Day. And so we've seen that Jesus says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath. He's claiming ownership of that day. Now, let's look at how it changed. There are a few instances.

in Scripture, where we learn that it's begun to change. First, I would want to point out that in all of the Gospels, it is very particularly pointed out again and again in the resurrection story that Jesus rose on the first day of the week. Like, it is emphasized strongly. You might ask, why? What is the importance of the first day of the week? Well, in Acts 20, verse 7, we read, So those are two verses in the New Testament which show us the shift that is happening. that the Old Testament Sabbath day has changed, and that it's moving from Saturday to the first day of the week. These passages make it evident that the church did begin meeting on the first day, and that began to change. Now, the change is gradual, but it's inevitable. And that's starting in...

Acts, right? And going up even beyond out of Scripture and into church history as we see, this change doesn't happen like that. Well, does that make it a lesser change or an unimportant change? No. In fact, what we see is God's mercy to the Jews in this. And this isn't the only thing that we see in Scripture where the Old Testament ceremonial and civil laws and other things are... gradually changed and dropped off. But it doesn't always happen like this, that they're still meeting in synagogues, that they're still, you know, you look at the Council of Jerusalem and the commands that they make and the demands. And so you have these Judaizers who always want to bring in the Sabbath and they always want to bring in all these extra Jewish laws. And you have Paul, again, you know, he's pushing hard against that stuff.

But there's grace as we transition out of the Old Testament and into the New Testament and as these changes are made. And if you read church history, if you're a student in church history, you'll see that many of the theological truths and scriptural truths that we hold dear today were misunderstood and were talked about poorly. And people that we hold up as men of faith and saints, you read what they write and you're like, but what you have to realize is God works through time. And so many of the changes that are important that we can't go back to the ways it was before took time to operate, and God gave us grace as he changed hearts and understandings of the commands that he's given. Then you have Revelation 1, verse 10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a voice like the sound of a trumpet. And here's a unique thing. We know that the Lord's day is in reference to the first day of the week. That is...

everything in church history at this time period that we have that mentions the Lord's Day, ties it to the first day of the week. And what we see is that John is worshiping, and the Lord comes to him the first day of the week. That's significant. Then he's calling it the Lord's Day, and the church is calling Sunday the Lord's Day. That's really significant. We have two things that we ascribe as particularly to the Lord. His table. The Lord's Supper and the Lord's Day. Claiming that there's some relationship to God in that day. Drawing this link, right? So our five arguments. God set the example and commanded the Sabbath rest in the garden. It's a creation ordinance. We see in Exodus 16 that Israel had a notion of the Sabbath, what it was, and how to keep it before the command was given.

It's part of the Ten Commandments. It's part of the moral law of God, which is binding, which teaches us how to live, which aren't just suggestions for a better life. They will lead to a better life, but they're commands. They're not suggestions. Jesus kept the Sabbath. He refined the Sabbath, and he claimed lordship over the Sabbath, but he did not do away with the Sabbath. And we see the example of the church in moving it. from Saturday to Sunday, and yet still keeping it and still calling the day significant and claiming that Christ has lordship in particular over that day. Every day is the Lord's day, right? And yet we ascribe this day in particular as being the Lord's, and that's instructive for us. Well, we need to end, but ask yourselves, why do we have such opposition in our hearts towards the Lord's day?

Why is this so abhorrent to us? I'd say that it's one of the creation ordinances. And if you look in the world around us, we hate all the creation ordinances. We work against all of them, right? We don't want to take dominion. We want animals to take dominion over us. We don't want to be fruitful with children. We want to be fruitful with animals or whatever. We don't want to turn the world into a garden. We want to let it go to chaos. We don't want to celebrate the Sabbath, the Lord's Day. We want to create a Saturday as a day of rest. We take all God's priorities and we shift them to something else. It just shows our hearts as sinners. The other thing is, I think we find the Sabbath restrictive. We think of it as more restrictive. And it's a beautiful thing and a joyful thing. And that's really one of the things that I want to work on next week.

is to try and rewire how we think about the Sabbath. It's not just a restrictive thing, but it's actually meant to give us rest and joy and delight. In the end, we're not that dissimilar to the three-year-old who, as soon as he's given a command not to do something, is like his whole life reorients to wanting to do the thing he was told not to do. And when we hear God say, honor the Sabbath, set it apart, keep it holy, we're like, But I don't want to. And it just shows the rebellion of our hearts, doesn't it? Isaiah, I'm going to end with a promise to you from the book of Isaiah. This is an amazing promise. Listen to these words. If because of the Sabbath you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on my holy day, and if you call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and honor it.

desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word, then, then this promise, then you will take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Your delight is guaranteed by the mouth of the Lord if you will desist. from seeking your own pleasure and seek the Lord's pleasure. And so we have seen that the Sabbath is commanded by God, but it's not a dreary and burdensome thing. It's good for us. It's to help us and sustain us, to help us focus on God. And so I exhort you to set apart the day of the Lord and to see what happens. Turn your feet from doing your own pleasure in your own way.

in your own conversations, and instead call the Sabbath a delight. Seek to honor the Lord and see how God will change your heart. See how he will change it so that you will actually find delight and further blessing in seeking after him. He promises to do it. Maybe our depression and our sadness and our lack of love for the Lord is rooted in the fact that we're so caught up with our own desires, we don't actually pay attention to what the Lord desires. And maybe if we would just start calling what the Lord desires a delight, and even if we have a hard time believing it at first, it will actually become a delight because the Lord promises that it will. And so keeping the Sabbath takes faith. It is not a work that earns us favor with God. It takes faith, but he will bless it.

Let's pray.