The Fourth Commandment

Scripture Reading

You may be seated. Will you meet me in your Bibles at Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20. We continue on this hiatus, well not this excursion, sorry, as we were starting the book of Joshua and then we got to meditate upon the Lord's Word day and night. We had to stop and say, okay, so what is that and how does it apply to our lives? We don't want to be just quick to jump towards application. We want to see how does this actually apply to us.

And so today we come to the fourth commandment, Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11. If you're using your pew bibles, you can find that on page 68. Exodus chapter 20 beginning at verse 8. Hear now God's word. Let me say that again. This is God's word. Exodus chapter 20 beginning at verse 8.

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 to the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 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 hallowed it.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we do come before you this morning needing you to teach us, needing you to instruct us. Lord, we pray that you would give us ears to hear and minds to understand, eyes to see what you love, and to see the great love you have for us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

This is a controversial topic to talk about in Protestantism, especially in evangelical churches, is the fourth commandment, the Sabbath. The Sabbath. But as I was thinking about this, and I thought about all the men of renown, see the Sabbath is something in our culture, even in the Christian church, it's just kind of gone by the wayside. That's Old Testament stuff that's done away with. And then I started thinking historically about all the great men of old, all the great women of old.

And as I went through the various names, Charles Spurgeon, kept the Lord's Day. Jonathan Edwards kept the Lord's Day. Martin Luther kept the Lord's Day. John Calvin kept the Lord's Day. Jan Hus kept the Lord's Day. Irenaeus kept the Lord's Day. Basil kept the Lord's Day.

You can go back and back and back and back and back and it's only in recent modern history that it seems like the church has abandoned the fourth commandment. And I'm just gonna pose a question to you. This is somewhat cynical and I'm gonna take that and that's fine. Are we a better society today than we were 80 years ago when our forefathers and foremothers kept the Sabbath? When the businesses were closed, when the restaurants gave their employees a day off? Or have we seen a continual moral decline as people neglect the worship of God and the reading of his word?

My heart, this is me speaking to you from my heart, my heart for you this morning is that you might see the blessing of keeping God's day, the Lord's day. That you might see your faith grow and deepen, that you might be established and rooted in Christ as you worship with his people, as you honor his day, as you do as he's commanded you. That you might grow in love and find joy in him, not in the day itself. The day is a blessing, but the day is meant to show us how much joy we have in him. And so first we look at what are the reasons for the Sabbath. Look with me at verse eight and following. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. Verse 11, why?

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The Lord baked this into creation. God himself showed that this was what he did on the Lord's day. I was just talking to someone yesterday as we were eating lunch with them, and this guy Elliot I was talking to, he was saying, people have asked him before, what did God do on this first Sabbath day?

I mean, he wasn't working, so what did he do? He enjoyed himself and he enjoyed his creation. He got to sit back and he got to see the marvelous things, the good things that he had done, and he got to enjoy them. And what did all the rest of creation get to do on that first Sabbath day? They got to enjoy God. They got to enjoy the good things that he had made.

You see, it's rooted in God's own pattern. It is God who made the seventh day, but it's also God who set the pattern for the seventh day. We rest because he rested. We rest because it took him six days to create heaven and earth. Now let me just say, he could have made it in an instant. God could have just spoken one word, everything, boom, into existence. But instead, he took six days to make it.

Each day, making things perfectly in balance. Each day, making things work together. Each day, saying, okay, I'm gonna make a sea, and now I'm gonna fill the sea with creatures. I'm gonna make the sky, and I'm gonna fill the sky with flying creatures. I'm gonna make the land, and I'm gonna cause things to come up later in the land. I'm gonna make the heavens, and I'm gonna set stars, and the moon, and the sun in the heavens. And I'm gonna make the seventh day. I'm just gonna enjoy myself and my creation. I'm gonna walk in the garden in the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. I'm gonna see all the good things I have made.

It's God who enjoys the Sabbath day. It's God who rested on the seventh day. It's Jehovah who made it, who sanctified it. It's God who did this. And this is exactly what Jesus tells us. He says that we were not made for the Sabbath. But the Sabbath was made for us. See, there is a blessing when we come to the Sabbath. We get to think about who God is and what God has done. We get to bring him the worship that's due to his name. We get to do all the one and others of scripture. It is our blessing to keep this commandment to Halloween. But what's the scope of this commandment? What does it mean you're not supposed to do any work? Look with me at verse 10. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger who is within your gates.

Even the donkey got a day off on the Lord's day. Even the ox, who was used to having the heavy yoke upon his shoulders as he was going through the field plowing behind, got to just lay down in its stall and eat the fodder. Even the servants, right, this wasn't just like the rich people who got to take the day off, no, even the lowly of society, the servants and the poor, They had one whole day in seven that they could say, I don't have to work. Every other day I'm gonna work hard. Every other day I'm gonna, there's things that have to get done and I don't have a choice about it, but I know that my master is constrained by one thing. One in every seven, I get to rest. The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work.

Neither you nor your sons, I'm just going to say in our household, our children will sometimes ask me when we tell them, you know, maybe you should, hey guys, I want you to go into the living room and I want you to clean up the living room. We have guests coming for dinner. And they'll say, but dad, it's the Lord's day. It's kind of like, all right, well then I guess our, yeah, you're right, we should have done this yesterday. Yeah, all right. You get a day off. We might have to do a little bit. We don't want your dirty underwear on the floor, so put that away. Do that little bit of necessity, but you're right. We don't need to go and scour the whole house to stay. And this was something that the people found pretty quickly.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the book of Numbers, chapter 15, this promise was tested. When the people were in the wilderness, when they were there, what did God feed them with? What did God give them every day in the morning when they opened the tent doors and they walked out? What did they find laying on rocks all over the place? Manna. Yeah, they found manna all over the place that they got to eat.

But did you know that the Lord said, you're only gonna get a certain amount of portion, you're only gonna get a certain amount and every day you're allowed to pick up just that amount and you cannot put it away, you can't store it, it's not gonna be good tomorrow. But on the day before the Sabbath, that day you could gather two days worth of food. And only on the Sabbath would the manna last long enough. Now the people tested this, go read the book of Numbers and you'll see that people tested this in Exodus.

But see, they didn't even have to like start fires and cook this or anything, it was just there for them. But in Numbers chapter 15, we found somebody wanted to test this. Is everybody else in the camp is resting? Is everybody in the camp is just enjoying their family and enjoying having gone to the tabernacle and worshiping? Enjoying talking about all the great things that God had done?

There was one guy who said, you know what? I just wanna go do some work. I'm gonna go get a bunch of sticks, I'm gonna go cut down a tree, I'm gonna go gather the sticks, I'm gonna cut off the limbs, I'm gonna put it all together, and I'm gonna make a fire. You might think, man, okay, so he's just gathering some twigs and making a fire.

Well, no, what was everyone else doing? They didn't need a fire. There was a, at night, what was above the tabernacle at night? There was a pillar of fire above their heads. But this guy wants to go outside the camp, walk away from everyone else, gather the twigs, and do what the people are, they don't know what to do with the guy. Nobody else has done this before. What are we supposed to do?

So they get him and they take him to Moses. The Lord says the guy's supposed to be stoned. We think of the Sabbath as like a small thing. It's not a small thing when the God of the universe is the one who said, this is my day, sanctify it and make it holy.

The scope of it was that big. In the book of Nehemiah, we looked at this a couple years ago. As Nehemiah had built up the walls of Jerusalem, and they had people coming in and out of the city, and they were, I mean, it's like getting prosperous again. It was good stuff. There were people who had just moved from Babylon, and they had money with them. There was the satraps there. There was commerce to be done. But with the reinstitution of the temple worship was also the remembering of the Sabbath day.

And so when they kept trying to come in and out of the city to do business, Nehemiah said, no, mm-mm, not gonna happen on the Lord's day, outta here. So what'd they do? All right, we won't do it on the Lord's day, but instead what we'll do is we'll come on Friday night and, you know, It would be like somebody bringing taco trucks. And they parked taco trucks or whatever type of wonderful food you like and they brought those to-go trucks and they parked them in the church parking lot.

And they said, oh, we're not open for business, not yet. But we just want to entice you to be thinking about us. And Nehemiah says, get out of here. Don't even come near the city walls. Don't even camp near here. And he's so serious about this, he says, if you come back again, I'm gonna lay my hands on you. That's knuckle fighting words.

He was zealous for the Lord. This was not an unrighteous anger, but this was an anger saying, hold on, God's people have been told this day is holy, and you're trying to tempt God's people to make it something unholy. This is quite a big scope, if you think about it.

But I remember when I first became a Christian, I heard about this. I was a member in a reformed church and somebody talked to me about keeping the Sabbath. And they said, don't do any work. And I literally remember I was walking back home from church. It might have even been a sermon on the Sabbath. And I was walking home from work. It was in Virginia. The sun was shining, nice summer day. I remember thinking, work, sixth grade. Force times distance. Every time I take a step, I'm doing work. I'm using a certain amount of force and going a certain distance, which means I'm doing work. So is that how I'm supposed to think about work? And the Jewish people honestly thought about it this way, right? So they would come up with all sorts of laws and stuff to try to figure out how do we regulate work?

And so they would say, okay, if you're in town, you can take a rock, and if I can throw the rock and hit the back door, and it lands there, I can walk that far, and that's not work. And when I get there, I can rest for a little bit, and I can pick up the rock, and I can throw it more, and I can just keep doing it. They came up with all these silly, funky rules like that, but that wasn't the point. That wasn't the point. The point is that they would rest in the Lord.

But now, I've said all of this to you, but I'm guessing there are a number of objections or questions that you all have, and just letting you know, I'm gonna blame the computer. I was late starting, so I'm gonna redeem that time back, so we're gonna be a little bit late getting out of here, not too long, I promise. But I wanna propose to you at least seven objections. I'm sure there's probably more, but I wanna talk to you at least about seven that I commonly come into. The first one is a good sounding one, right?

Jesus is my Sabbath. People go to places like Hebrews chapter four and they'll say our eternal rest is in Jesus and we need to strive to enter into that rest where Jesus is in the temple. And I would say yes, you're absolutely right. Jesus is our eternal Sabbath. We will be one day eternally Sabbathing in heaven with Jesus and we get a taste of it now every week. Because, see, there's a problem. If we understand Hebrews chapter three and four to be speaking about Jesus being the Lord of the Sabbath, and that meaning there is no actual Sabbath rest, we run into a problem with what Jesus himself said. Turn in your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter seven. Matthew chapter seven. We're short on time, so I might say verses, and I know you might not be able to keep up, and that's okay. You can write them down later if you want.

But Matthew chapter five, verses 17 through 18, Jesus says this, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Most assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. If we take it that, okay, Jesus is our Sabbath, so thus we don't need a physical Sabbath anymore that's gone away with and done away with because it's, you know, it's, Jesus has broken the law. Well, there's a problem that Jesus himself says, I did not come to destroy the law.

This pattern still exists. This pattern is still there. Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, Matthew chapter 11. Verse 28, Jesus himself says, come to me, all you who labor and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly and hard and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus does promise us rest. Make no doubt about it. When I say this, I'm not saying that, okay, we legalistically keep the Sabbath and so we don't get any rest. No, I'm saying we get rest because Jesus tells us that the law is still in place. We still get to take rest in Christ every week. Every week.

You are invited every single week to come and to worship Him, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, to be reminded of what He has done and what He has said, and to hear the gospel proclaimed to you, expounded to you, and applied to your lives. You get to hear about Jesus every time you walk in these doors. And I'm going to make an honest thing out to you. If you ever hear me preach a Christless sermon, come and confront me in the back right away.

Right away, just make a beeline to the back door, don't even shake my hand, and say, I'll shake your hand next week when you preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Because it is the Sabbath that reminds us that we have rest in Christ. But some of you say, okay, well, maybe, okay, I get that, right? Jesus didn't come to destroy the law.

But what about places like Colossians chapter two or Romans chapter 15? Colossians chapter two talks about Sabbaths and not judging people who don't keep stuff like that. So, okay, let's look there. Colossians chapter two, 16 and 17. Colossians chapter two.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance is of Christ. And to this I would say yes and amen. We shouldn't let anyone judge us regarding food or drink or regarding festivals or new moons or Sabbaths. Because you see, in the Old Testament, there were tons and tons and tons of laws regarding food, drink, new moon festivals, and Sabbaths, plural. So there were many different times where it would be, okay, well, yes, there is a day of rest, but there's this special ceremony, there's this special festival, and that one's an even bigger Sabbath.

And that's what this is saying is that, no, no, no, no, all those ceremonial laws have been fulfilled in Christ. He's fulfilled that ceremonial law. And so those are abrogated. Those are fulfilled in Christ. This is what the book of Hebrews is getting at when it's saying that he has fulfilled all the ceremonial laws. Theologians call this a synecdoche. This is an idea of trying to get the whole of the laws by saying one thing. So the Sabbaths is talking about all the ceremonial Sabbaths. Okay, well maybe that doesn't convince you. So let's go to Romans chapter 14 verse 5. Romans chapter 14 verse 5, one person esteems one day above another, another esteems all days alike. Let each one be fully convinced of his own mind.

I was surprised. I went to just a broadly evangelical study Bible, the nearly inspired version, and so I went to the NIV and I just looked at my study notes. By the way, that's my primary devotional Bible, so I'm saying that tongue in cheek. I actually enjoy that translation often. But in the study Bible, I was surprised just to see in the notes that they even agree.

This is broadly evangelical, just saying this isn't talking about the Sabbath, but all these other ceremonial Sabbaths that would all go around. And how do we know that? Because the context of Romans chapter 14 and 15 is meat sacrifice to idols and all the ceremonial laws and things like that.

So if your objection is, well, Jesus, or the scriptures tell us that we're not supposed to regard Sabbaths, I would say, yeah, you're right. I don't want any of you making booths outside your house and going and celebrating the feast of booths outside. I don't think you have to go celebrate Yom Kippur. That's not going to make you more holy. I don't think you need to do all these other high holy days that were in the Old Testament because now we have that one holy day, the Sabbath. Some of you will say, okay, well, hold on, I know something about Jewish culture, and they worshiped on Saturday, not on Friday, or on Sunday. So is the Lord's Day really the Sabbath?

Is this really a one-for-one equation? Well, let's look at that. We had read this morning in Mark chapter 16. Mark chapter 16, this is the beauty. And I wanna step away from being somewhat defensive here and just point out to you these beautiful things. I know these are objections, but I'm not trying to be argumentative here. Luke chapter 16, Mark chapter 16, sorry. What do we see going on?

Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. And in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, what do we find the apostles doing and the Marys doing and all the people that were with them doing on the first day of the week? They were gathering together. What did Jesus do in Luke chapter 24 that we read? He opened up the words to them and he showed them how all the prophets and the Psalms pointed to him. He broke the bread and He gave thanks and He gave it to them. They celebrated the Lord's Supper on the first day.

It happens in every one of the Gospels. But it's not just in the Gospels. If we look at Acts chapter 20 verse 7, we find that that's the day that the apostles are meeting. It's the first day of the week. Why? Because our Savior was risen from that day.

Then we look and we hear Paul address the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, and there is an assumption here. He tells the people to gather together the gifts on the first day of the week. How would he know that they were going to even be together on the first day of the week to gather the gifts? Unless this was the practice of the early church.

And indeed, if we had time, I would step out of the scriptures and I would show you time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time again. All throughout the Church Fathers in the first 350 years, undisputedly believed that the Lord's Day was the Sabbath. That God had transferred the commandment from the last day of the week to the first day of the week. Why? Why though?

That's the day our King raised from the dead. That is the day your Savior rose from the dead. That is the day that God vindicated your justification. That God proved that Jesus' sacrifice was not in vain, but that death held no sway over Him. It was a day that changed the entire world. It was a day that the King of kings and the Lord of lords was left that grave. And it changed even the pattern of the week.

This is why John in Revelation 1.10 is able to say that he was up in the heavens on the Lord's day.

The Lord's day? Who's the Lord? Go time and time and time and time and time and time and time again in the scriptures, especially in the New Testament. And who do you think they're talking about when they call someone Kyrios, Lord? It's Jesus. It's Jesus's day. It's Jesus's resurrection day. It is the day that their Lord and Savior raised from the dead. It is his day. It's the first day of the week.

That's what John says in Revelation 1.10. And he's there praying on his day. Jesus himself said that he was Lord of the Sabbath. It's his day.

Okay, well, That's fine. You might not have a problem with saying, okay, well, the Sabbath was transferred from the last day of the week to the first day at the resurrection of Christ. It will be that until the resurrection of the dead, if you agree with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I hope you do. But you might say, but I'm not sure about the scope of all this, right? What did Jesus say? And the implications of it might bother you. What about police officers? What about paramedics? What about doctors? What about people who have to work on Sunday, like somebody to monitor the electrical grid? What about those people, right?

Doesn't this doctrine of the Sabbath just grind everything to a halt? What does Jesus say? If we remember what he did in Matthew chapter 12, verses 1 through 8, I'm not going to go there. You can go there in your Bibles if you want, but Jesus is walking through the fields on the Sabbath day. It's been a long, hard day for Jesus. He's walking in the fields. He's been ministering and ministering and ministering, and as He walks in the fields, you can imagine He and His disciples' hands running over the top of the wheat.

It's harvest time. I mean, it's ready. They reach down on one of the socks and they pull off a couple heads, rub it in their hands, get the chaff off of it, blow the chaff away, pop it in their mouths and eat. And oh, his adversaries are right there. Oh, hold on, what are you guys doing on the Sabbath day? That's not lawful.

And Jesus shows them, hold on, there's necessary work that needs done on the Sabbath day. When David was busy about his work on the Sabbath day and went into the tabernacle, he was able to eat the show bread, why? because it was of necessity and it was of mercy. He was able to eat. There are legitimate works that have to happen.

See, Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, this is true, but Jesus is also very adamant that there is acceptable work to do on his day. This is one of the things that got him in big trouble with the Pharisees. In Luke chapter 14, Verses one through six, Jesus goes into someone's home, and as he's there, there's a man sitting there with drops. His skin is swollen, he's bloated and in pain, and Jesus sees this man and sees compassion on him, but then he sees the Pharisees and he asks them the question, is it lawful to show kindness or to heal on the Sabbath?

And they won't answer him, because they know if they say it, all their ritual laws are going to crumble down like a house of cards. And he says, which one of you, if your donkey fell into a pit, which one of you wouldn't go and help that donkey out of its trouble spot? Which one of us, if we were driving on the gravel road and we saw that there was a car in the ditch, it had looked like it had swerved off and the smoke was going up in the air and there were people inside the car, which one of us would not stop and make sure that that person was okay and safe? And the Pharisees still wouldn't answer. The Pharisees still wouldn't answer. Jesus shows that it's merciful. It's lawful to do mercy on the Sabbath.

Yeah, we need to have doctors who are willing to sacrifice. We know of one of those doctors, one of our dear friends out in Hudson, Ohio. He's a physician. And he has to work. He works in the children's hospital and there are times where they have to call him in because of his specialty where a child is desperately in need and it's a time-sensitive issue. And so he has to go in. He goes and he shows mercy. And he misses God's people. We've missed him at times when we've gone and we worship there and he wasn't able to come to worship. He's one of the elders and we love him. But he was not able to be there all the time. So there is a reality to this. You might say, well, hold on. It's just hard. This just sounds really hard. It's just really difficult to keep the Sabbath. Yeah, it is.

It's difficult for me not to split my devotion between God and other things also. When I first became a Christian, it was really difficult for me to stop using Jesus's name as a curse word or an exclamation point. Some people find it really, really hard to honor their parents, especially as they get older in life, and children find it hard to obey their parents, even when they're young in life. People are given over to rage and malice and anger in their heart that burns within them, and it's hard for them to think that they could ever let that go. And God says, do not murder. Some people find it hard to be devoted to their spouse and to have self-control and to love the wife of their youth and be satisfied in her only.

And it's hard. But does that make it bad? Does that make it mean that we don't do it? No, it is our joy because there are blessings that flow from keeping his commandments. There are blessings that flow from keeping the Sabbath. There's more, but I'm going to just jump down to the last objection. Some people will say, this just sounds like legalism. It just sounds like legalism in a killjoy. I want to read you what Isaiah says about this.

Isaiah 53, 13 and 14. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, nor feeding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of Yahweh has spoken.

If we will call the Lord's day a delight, you wanna know why it's hard to keep the Sabbath? Because we love the world so much. You wanna know why it's hard for us to put away commerce on the Lord's day? Because the snares of this world are real. The deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life are constantly trying to choke out your love for God and your love for his Christ.

And the Lord is telling you, if you put it away, if you'll focus on me one day, I will renew your joy and I will put you on the heights of the hills. You will remember me, you'll have delight in me and I will have delight in you and you will have strength again. It's not a killjoy, it reminds us of our deepest joy. It's not legalism, it's joy-filled obedience, it's desiring, hungering, thirsting for God. Why is it so easy to break? Why is it so easy to break? Then if it's a joy to us, why do we as Christians who want to love God, want to love Jesus, and want to keep His commandments, why is it so easy for us to then break this commandment?

I have four F's for you. finances, family, fun, and friends. Jesus gives a parable in Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22. I know we're long. I'll pay penance for that later somehow. Matthew chapter 22. Verses one through 14. We're not gonna read every verse of this, but I wanna bring your eyes. So if you think Jesus is talking about inviting people into the kingdom of God, I want you to hear the people's excuses why they won't come.

And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son. Brothers and sisters, the bridegroom is waiting. The table is set. The wedding feast is about to happen. The king is sending out messengers. And he sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding. And they were not willing to come. Again, he sent out other servants saying, tell those who are invited, see, I have repaired my dinner. My ox and my fatted cattle are killed and all things are ready. Come to the wedding. There is prime steak. There is ribs. There is all the fixings. Everything is ready. It's ready. Come, come to my feast. It's there for you.

Verse five, but they made light of it and went their way. One to his own farm, another to his business. One to his farm, another to his business. The beans are crying out for you. There's only a limited time in the harvest. There's work that needs done on the house. You know, you really should work on that project. You know, you really do need to get that thing done at home. the barn, the farm, the money, the finances, the business, the schoolwork. It's crying out for you. Just don't pay attention to God. Pay attention to me.

Jesus warns us about this. He tells us that this is one of the soils that has the weeds in it that people will come and they'll sow the seed of the gospel, but the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life will choke out the seed. Brothers and sisters, my heart for you is I do not want to see that seed choked out. And the Sabbath is a corrective measure where we're able to say, no, no, for one day a week, I am going to plant my feet firmly in the promises of God.

I'm going to remember what Jesus has done. I'm going to listen to his word because my King lives, my Redeemer's feast is set for me, and there is a feast for me to have, and there are people for me to love. There's good works for me to do, and I am going to center my life On this one in seven practice, that one in every seven days, I'm gonna take a nap in the afternoon and I'm not gonna feel bad about it.

I'm gonna let my kids not load the dishwasher, we're going to use plastic plates instead. I'm not gonna go do unnecessary work. Now there is some necessary work, we get that. But I'm gonna try to keep that to a minimum. Because I wanna spend time with my Lord. Finances will try to pull you away. Your family will try to pull you away.

I mean, Jesus was clear about this, right? Jesus said, whoever's not willing to leave mother and father, brother and sister, and follow me is not worthy of my kingdom. Some of you know what it's like, and this is not a small thing. Some of you know what it's like to have your heart tugged, where you feel like your loyalty is being, like there's a rope and it's trying to come in two.

Because your family is pulling you one way, but you love the Lord with this way, and you don't know what to do. Brothers and sisters, grab the center strand, which is Christ. Hold firm to the promises. If you love me, keep my commandments. He who abides in me, I will abide in him, and manifest myself to him. Abide in Christ. Some of you, as your friends, what do we find the woman at the well doing, even though she's the outcast? come and tell me, come and see the man who's told me everything I've ever done.

But you know what it's like. Sometimes your friends and your family will try to, well, there's this event on the Lord's Day. Well, we just want to have a Father's Day brunch. We've already reserved the table. Come on. There's a class reunion. We're just having a party afterwards on Sunday. Everybody's going to come over for the barbecue. Just, it's not going to be too big of a deal. Brothers and sisters, there are small walks, small steps that lead to giving away our love for Christ. finances, family, friends, and fun.

We've looked at the fun with Isaiah. Sometimes it's just more fun. I like fun. I really do like fun. I like riding around on Nathan's little mini bike. I really like driving my redneck bus. I really enjoy going mudding down the road. I really enjoy doing fun things.

But all of them will come to nothing at that last great day. Do you want to fill your life with fun, or do you want to have everlasting joy? God says, put away your fun, turn towards me. Number six, we're gonna leave for chalk and toxins. Again, some ways to sanctify the Sabbath. I'd encourage you after the meal to come up, and we're just gonna have an honest conversation of things you've seen that have gone badly doing this, and practical ways that we can encourage each other to do well with this. But there is a blessing in the Lord's day, right? This is a day full of rest.

I can't tell you how many of you I have talked to and you've told me, I really wish I had more time to pray. Or some of you will say, I really wish I had more time to read my Bible. I really wish I had more time to cultivate my love for God. I really wish there was more time that I could read this book that I bought at this conference or I bought at international conference or something years ago and I've never had time to read it.

Brothers and sisters, there is a delight in the Lord on his day. He has given you a whole day to grow in your devotion to Him. You get a whole day that you can pray. You get a whole day that you can think upon Him. You get a whole day, if you want to go for a four-hour walk in the afternoon, go for a walk and just meditate on His Word and just pour out your heart to Him. He's given you a day where you can, without guilt, say, nope. Work can stay at work. The tractor can stay away. My schoolwork is gonna be there tomorrow. My chores are gonna be there later. I am going to go spend time with Jesus. And you don't have to feel guilty about it.

He's given you a whole day to do it where you can be blessed by spending time with the Lord, where you could be in your Bible more, where you can be investing in the community of the believers more. There are many, we feel this. Man, COVID isolation has ripped the church apart so often where people feel like they're just islands. And this is where I'm going to say what we're doing in the back right now with streaming this video is out of mercy and not because we want it to be habit. Let me say that again. I get this text message every once in a while, well, we did church online.

No, part of church is being together, one another. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 23 through 25 tells us that we're not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but we need to provoke each other unto love and good works. We need to exhort one another, and so much more as you see the day approaching.

We can't do all the one another's, giving one another a holy kiss. I promise there's only about one person in this congregation that I'm going to give a holy kiss to, but I might give you a hug or a handshake. It's kind of hard to do that if you're not with each other. It's kind of hard to exhort, you know, I've really got to talk to this person about something I see going on in their life, and it's not right.

There's children in the congregation that I need to warn them that I'm seeing this pattern in their life, and I'm telling you those conversations are best to have in person, and God has given you a date every single Sunday that you can go and have a heart-to-heart with someone. Hey, can we go sit outside? I've been praying about this and I need to talk with you. It seems like you're really depressed and downtrodden. What's going on?

He's given us the Lord's Day as a blessing to do that, as one of the things we heard this week, one of the men was saying, every Lord's Day is like a wedding vow renewal ceremony. And we get to say, who is our God? Who is our bridegroom? And to say, yeah, we're devoted to you, we're committed to you, we're gonna fix our eyes on Jesus.

So I'm just gonna list seven things real quick here on what God does through the Sabbath. God humbles us. God humbles us. One in every seven days, the Lord says, I don't need you to work. The world's still gonna run, and guess what? I don't need you to do it. The Lord humbles us through the Sabbath.

The Lord convicts us. God convicts us on the Sabbath. He convicts us of how quickly we can forget him and be tempted to not keep this commandment. He also convicts us of multitudes of sins as we spend time with one another in his word. Thirdly, he reminds us this world and our lives are not our own. You might have the deed to your house, but the land is the Lord's. You might think, I have a certain number of hours today to do my work. Brothers and sisters, you don't have any of your own time. You have borrowed time that the Lord has given you.

Fourthly, he provokes us to love and good deeds when we keep the Sabbath. Some of those good deeds look like bearing with one another. A pastor who's gone way too long on his sermon, and we're just gonna, I'm gonna try to sweet talk the elders later about what we should do with Sabbath school. Maybe we can just have coffee and food, I don't know. But that's not a promise, I'm just gonna throw that out there. But we can provoke one another to love and good deeds. To think about other people rather than ourselves. To be those who receive that love and good deeds. Fifthly, it gives us an opportunity to show love to our neighbor.

I worked a ton of different jobs before I was a pastor, and I always dreaded telling my employer I couldn't work on the Lord's Day. There were some jobs that I had to. I worked one job at a mental health institution where, I mean, literally, if somebody didn't go in there and care for these guys who were on feeding tubes and tracheotomies, tracheostomy, whatever that tube is that goes down their throat to keep them breathing. If somebody wasn't there to care for them and bathe them and change their adult pins and stuff, it would be a bad life. And so it was, but I'll tell you what, it was hard. So the second shift, go to worship, and then after worship, I'd get into my scrubs, stay for the meal, Olivia would go home, I'd go to work, and it threw off our whole rhythm.

But it gave me an opportunity on that day when people would see me, I wanted to enjoy the time with the saints. I have to put on my scrubs and say it's time for me to go love someone practically. There are times where that has to happen, and God gives us that opportunity. I love when I see guys out here plugging holes in people's tires who get them on the gravel, right? You have an opportunity to show love on the Lord's day. Two more things, he reminds us of his promises. This is an extremely important one.

We pray, Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. It is the Lord's day that is an anchor for our hearts, where we remember the promises. And lastly, he re-centers our hearts. He turns our hearts away from the world. And if we call his day a delight, he re-centers our hearts back on Christ. So brothers and sisters, I wrap up this very long sermon.

I pray that you call the Lord's Day a delight. I pray that you make the Lord's Day a gift to your children, a gift to your spouse, a gift to yourself that the Lord's given you. That you give yourself permission to say, work can wait. I love my family, but I want my joy in the Lord to remain. that you remember his day, that you keep it holy.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the lamb who was slain. We thank you for giving us your spirit and your son and the redemption purchased by you. God, we pray that you would let us have joy in who you are. Lord, I pray that you would let us be those who would keep your commandments, not because of legalism, but