Would you take your Bibles, please? And I want you tonight if you would to open up the two places maybe you can keep your finger in one and Your thumb and the others we go back and forth to Exodus chapter 20 Which is the first time that the Lord gives us the Ten Commandments and then in Deuteronomy chapter 5 Deuteronomy means Deuteron Deuteronomus the second law where he gives these same Ten Commandments the second time Because and these two passages of Scripture we come tonight to the fourth commandment about the Sabbath day and These are the only two instances where one commandment is recorded differently in the two accounts and both the Exodus and the Deuteronomy Account of the law the other nine commandments are exactly the same the only one that is different is Is the fourth commandment concerning the Lord's Day and I want you to notice how God begins Giving us the Ten Commandments he begins with this little introductory comment I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt Out of the house of slavery Let me seem like a strange way to begin a list of Holy Commandments, but that's how God does it both in Exodus and a second time later in Deuteronomy He is he is saying something about himself. He begins with himself. I am the Lord your God who brought you Out of the land of Egypt. I brought you out of that house of bondage I'm about to tell you something about myself and Conversely and attendant to that. I'm going to tell you something about yourself Because you're my people made in my image and the Exodus account He begins by enforcing upon his people the idea of his holiness You remember that there was fire and thunder on the mountain and the people said to Moses. We are afraid Moses went to God and said Lord we we cannot come up here If any man approaches this mountain you have said that he will die and so God said well, okay You get the point that I am holy and I'm to be approached with great reverence and fear so only you and Aaron will come up And the people will stay down. He said tell them that if man or beast even touches the base of this mountain He will surely die So the first account of the Ten Commandments comes with us and a great cloud of Fear and power is God's presence Shakes the very earth, but the second account is different God doesn't really come to them in a glorious cloud, but Moses reminds them that They are People who made a covenant with God and because of his mercy Because he saved them and brought them out of the land of Egypt that they are to obey God as he reveals himself Both versions the holy version and the covenantal version Begin with the idea that I am the Lord your God or brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery and That is how God begins to reveal himself The point I'm making is that the Ten Commandments say more about God than they do about us They reveal the character of our God and they point to the future person of Jesus Christ Before they make any demand upon us In fact if you were to turn tonight to Leviticus chapter 19 You would find that there were laws there in that chapter Concerning honoring your parents making offerings to God providing for the poor Stealing honesty and business justice in the courts of law brotherly love farming sexual immorality Horticulture Dietary restrictions prostitution Sabbath keeping witchcraft caring for strangers and orphans and fairness in our economic dealings and in every one of those Expositions of the law extrapolations from the Ten Commandments each ends with the words I am the Lord 13 times in 36 verses God says either I am the Lord or I am the Lord your God in fact he begins the exposition of the law in Leviticus by saying Speak to all the congregations of the people of Israel and say to them you shall be holy for I the Lord your God and holy In other words, I am the Lord your God and these laws of mind reflect who I am and what I am like That is how you'll know me. I think this is the primary purpose of the law To reveal to us the nature of God and the goddess and our conduct and character and development as people Because we are made in the image of God In fact the Bible says that we are created in God's image and his likeness And therefore in our Perfect state our sinless innocence We did reflect these same character traits, but only after the fall Did we begin to be distorted people and so God came and gave us what was written in our hearts and explicit form So that we might remember who God is And how we're related to him in his holiness and in his mercy in the covenant James I packer in a marvelous little book called growing in Christ says when God gave Israel the ten commandments He introduced them by introducing himself first saying I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage What God is and has done determines what his people must be and do So the study of the ten commandments should start by seeing what these commandments tell us about God and that is how we have been approaching these ten commandments we've been looking at at what they say about God and How they present God is one who is delightful? easy and beneficial to live with Because one thing is True about the devil and about his work in us one thing he loves to do is to make God appear to be that great ogre in the sky So that we even as Christians sometimes feel you know God is hard to live with now Jesus I like His father and the ten commandments say this is not so God is good He's holy He's one to be reverent since the first three commandments say he should be He's also gracious God and his character is of Of sterling quality and great balance If we don't approach the ten commandments in the way that God intends them to be understood I am the Lord your God This holy one who brought you out of the land of Egypt who redeemed you brought you out of the house of bondage out of your sinful slavery then These ten commandments become impossible rules which we cannot possibly keep Which is usually the Christian perspective on them They lead us to think that behavior is more important than character and it is not They rob us of the Christ-centered essence of each commandment for the Bible says the Christ at the end of the law The fulfillment of the law the essence of the law For all who believe and they shield us from the grace that it gives in order to keep the law and They become odious in our sight It's natural for us to pit law against grace It's unbiblical to do so But when we pit law against grace what we really do is we pit the Father against the Son There are many people In our world and in our churches We do not see the commandments the same way the apostles do Paul said So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good For love is the fulfillment of the law and John would say we know his commandments and his commandments are not Burden some now. Let me ask you an honest question. Don't raise your hand How many of you honestly think when you read the ten commandments? Wow These are burdensome I've thought like that many times And that is the mark of spiritual immaturity Let me give you an illustration I have four children who are grown or growing and they're beginning to have children, so I have four grandchildren and one on the way And when I go to see the grandchildren, you know, we have they play and they get tired and pretty soon in the afternoon mom says Okay, it's time for you to take an app Now let me ask you something how many little children love to take an app So this is what they do they're cranky. They're fighting their whining. They smell I'm not tired I'm not cranky And that's how you know and every adult says put the kid the bed
They don't realize that a nap is a great blessing Now fast forward 62 years. How many of you like to take an app would you raise your hand? What is the difference? Well, guess what God is designed for the human race A nap Every day of the week It's called the Sabbath And an immature society runs itself to death all day long so that on Sunday when they're Going to go for their going fishing under going to the game They're behind the wheel and they've got road racing. They're christian. You know, they said it's not wrong with me
And I look at those people and say You're cranky You need a nap Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six days shall you labor and do all your work But the seventh day is for a nap Rest That's what Sabbath means in Hebrew it means To take a nap To recline To be at rest So each one of these commandments Reflect something about God's beautiful nature And his benefits for us the first one for example That we shall have no other gods before him Reflect the idea that God Is a marvelously unique being That ought to be loved and prized above all things and all other people The second one Tells that there's a certain way that we can approach God And if we do so we enter into sweet fellowship with him We approach him through Jesus Christ And in the proper form of worship That he has given us we all want to see God We want to see the things of the next realm The kingdom of heaven and God has shown us that in the person Of Jesus Christ in the Bible So we approach God in worship through the scripture and through the person and work of Jesus Christ. That's the second commandment The third commandment tells us that God is really important And he's very holy And therefore everything about him Should be handled with reverence even his name now the fourth commandment Tells us that there is a beauty and a balance and a blessedness in God himself That if we rest in God through Jesus Christ We will be restored and blessed I would say to you that takes faith To keep the ten commandments To believe these things because the world is telling you other things Instead of the first commandment you shall have no of the gods for me. They're saying oh no no no no no no no let's improve upon that There are many roads to God. Well there are many gods that can get us to heaven That's not an improvement That just confuses and confounds us. It's a race And causes all kinds of spiritual ruin eternally for people Who love and believe in the wrong God The second one says you know If you do worship the way God does it it's kind of boring. Let's improve upon it Let's make our worship like our entertainment things that we like And that only causes worship wars in the church And if there's a church in the world that should realize The horrible tragedy and the fallout of unbidlicable worship it should be the church in America And the third commandment of the world says you know Don't think things so seriously for crying out loud Well if you can't have fun with God who needs him and you come to the fourth commandment And the world says you know if you do what God says You're going to waste a whole day of the week And you'll be bored to death And in reality You'll be crying like a baby throwing a tantrum because you need a nap
It's interesting in these 10 commandments If you do a little arithmetic You find out just how important the fourth one is for example In the version and due to ronomy There are 383 words in the english version of the 10 commands in the english standard version the version that I'm using and that's in the pure act 383 words 21 of those words are the introduction. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery Commandment number two comprises 90 of those 383 words The other eight commandments make up 136 words and the Sabbath is 30% of them 135 words In fact if you if you discount the introduction 38% of the 10 commandments is on The Lord's Day in the book of Deuteronomy That's almost 40% There's as much on keeping the Sabbath as there is on commandments one and three and five through ten It's amazing And Exodus is about the same. It's a little shorter 324 words The fourth commandment is 97 of those 324 words in other words 32% or one third of all of the actual commandments But when you look at it this way, it's even more impressive if you take the first table of law our duty to God To have no other God to worship them the way he wants to be worshiped to hold his name holy and to honor his Sabbath It is 72% of all that's in the 10 commandments and our duty to man is only 28% So the obvious emphasis On the 10 commands and I don't believe I'm just playing with numbers The obvious emphasis of the 10 commandments is that we keep our relationship with God first And the relationship we have with one another will flow out of that Get the first four right and the second six are a lot easier That's what Moses and God are communicating to us now look at these two versions of commandment number four First with Exodus chapter 20 Verses 8 through 11 remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy Six days you shall labor and do all your work But 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God on it you shall not do any work You or your son or your daughter your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates for In six days the Lord made heaven and earth to see in all that is in them and rested on the 7th day therefore The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy Now look at the Deuteronomy version in Deuteronomy 5 Verses 12 through 15 observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you Six days you shall labor and do all your work But the 7th day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God on it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter Or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your lives Or the sojourner who is within your gates That your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt And the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand in an outstretched arm therefore The Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day
We are looking at the 10 commandments this way Three things three points on each one What does it say about the character of God What does it say about the person and work of Jesus Christ and how does it bless or apply to you and me Look at this first point What does the 4th commandments say about the character of God believe it or not it says that God is one who is to be enjoyed God is one to be enjoyed To be celebrated to be worshiped to be focused upon For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh They therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt And the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand in an outstretched arm therefore the Lord your God Commended you to keep the Sabbath day to keep it holy To combine these two commandments and the reasons given for them here the four things you learned about God first of all God is a God of balance God is a God who works And he rests If we were to turn to Genesis chapter 2 We'd find an amazing statement Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them and on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all of his work that he had done So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all of his work that he had done in creation God works for six days he rests on the seventh exactly as Exodus says We keep the Sabbath for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and he rested on the seventh day and therefore the Lord God made the Sabbath holy Does God rest because he gets tired? Of course not The Bible says in Isaiah chapter 40 have you not known and have you never heard that the Lord's and never lasting God the Creator of the ends of the earth he does not faint or grow weary his understanding is unsearchable He gives power to the faint and to him has no might. He increases strength Does the Lord need to take an app? No, according to Psalm 121 the Lord never slumbers and sleeps He doesn't get tired He doesn't need to take an app He doesn't want to go out and golf It doesn't get overburdened by his responsibilities of sovereignly guiding the earth It's not that God needs the Sabbath. It's that we do God makes the Sabbath for us and he keeps it as an example for us if I did it You should do it here's the Essence of God talking to the image of God saying you need rest you need recreation You need to draw apart a day and make it different from other people. There's a rhythm to life that God creates creation is not completed on day six. It is not complete until day seven God makes all that is in the world and on the seventh day he institutes and creates the Sabbath and he creates the rhythm of life of work and rest We don't think we need that We're like the powdering crying child who says I don't need rest Leave me alone my time is my own and God says not so not so time is part of my creation And I am sovereign over time as I've sovereign over everything else God knew that the entire creation And you'll notice in these commandments you your children your male and female slaves your life stock The sojourner that stays with you the visitor in your midst. They all need a Sabbath rest And so God in the Old Testament instituted a system of Sabbath A system of seven periods of rest the weekly Sabbath six days of work the seventh day rest And then the sabbatical year six years of farming the land a seventh year called the sabbatical year to leave the land follow And then seven times seven every forty nine years there was a fifth year of Jubilee to rest the economy Leviticus 25 covers this it's a marvelous chapter first God provides for the human being and his family And his livestock and says you'll wear yourself to oblivion if you don't stop one day a week and rest And you'll wear your land out till it produces nothing If you don't have a Sabbath year every seven years and your economy will go to pot If every forty nine years on the fifth year you don't return all of the land to the people originally on it Forgive all of the debt and start all over again now imagine What our economy would be like if every fifth year All debts were eliminated All land returned to the original family ownership Everyone had a break from debt From legal obligations All slaves in the fifth year all slaves were set free Why because as God says you know the way I made things was pretty good And even in its fallen state this is still a good creation If I leave it in your hands you'll run your bodies Your land and your societies into the ground and you'll be standing there weeping before me and saying I don't need a map When everything is fallen around you into collapse God is saying no I love you And I did not make you like a machine to be run until You fall apart You need a rest You need balance and rhythm to your life I modeled that for you and you will live like that as my creatures Here's a second thing these commandments about the lords they tell us they tell us not only about the balance of God But that God is a God of beauty Why does God stop on the seventh day From all of his creative work. We already said he wasn't tired It wasn't very he didn't grow bored Listen to the verse before Genesis chapter 2 And God saw everything that he had made And behold It was very good There was evening there was morning the sixth day And then God created the Sabbath You know what God did He stopped to enjoy the things that he had made He stopped for recreation To delight in the world he had made for himself For his own glory and for our good and pleasure He sat back and said to the angels to Adam and Eve Isn't this wonderful this world we live in together and it was And we call that Worse ship In our language worship Worship is describing Value to God And God enjoys his creation and describes great value to it In fact in our little catechism we say that that's the chief end of human beings to glorify God and to enjoy him forever Glorying and enjoying are the two Dimensions of worship therefore From the beginning of time men Following God's example have set aside one day and seven to worship God Not just to take a nap But to enjoy the benefits of common grace in God's world To go with your family and be together To be in a community of like-minded people To slow down and enjoy What the Bible has to say about this wonderful God and our life with him in the world To have a good meal to take a nap To enjoy the the beauties of creation And if we fail to do so It will lead to an idolatry On the glect of worship a profaning of God's name It's interesting how the first three commandments naturally lead up to the fourth If we just go all of the time Investing ourselves And the godless junk of the world and we never take a mental spiritual break and say no wait a minute I need to detox And remind myself that I was created with something better than the trinkets and trash of this world I was created for God who I said a day aside for to marvel and celebrate Well then we'll end up like everybody else practical atheists professing with our lips that we have God but godless And our routines and in the use of our time day in and day out Here's a third thing about these commandments That God is a god of redemption. That's what the Deuteronomy version says It says remember then That you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the lord your god brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm Therefore the lord your god commanded you to keep the Sabbath day The Sabbath day was not only a day to to institute some balance of work and worship in our life and celebrate the beauty of god in his creation It was the day to remember redemption salvation Deliverance God's ransoming of us from the house of slavery which is our sinful bondage And God says one of the things you will remember on this date you'll sit back and you will make the theme of your worship And the power of your rest the fact that I chose to save you for myself Save you from your sins and take you out of the world into my house into my kingdom It's a day of great gratitude. That's why the Bible talks both in the Old Testament and New Testament about the songs of the redeemed Redeemed how I love to proclaim it redeemed by the blood of the lamb the song of Sunday in fact So much was this a a major emphasis on the Lord day that Jesus Christ said to his apostle now You'll change from the seventh day to the first day of the week to commemorate my resurrection from the dead and the ceiling of your redemption in Jesus Christ fourthly This Sabbath they tells us that god is a god of the covenant would you turn please to Exodus chapter 31 an interesting chapter Where Moses says that the keeping of the Sabbath is a sign of the covenant we have as the church With God and with his son Jesus Christ it is a sign of the covenant of grace Exodus chapter 31 beginning in verse 12 And the Lord said to Moses you are to speak to the people of Israel to say to them above all You shall keep my Sabbath for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations That you may know that I the Lord sanctify you you shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death whoever does any work on it the soul shall be cut off from among his people Six days shall you work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest Holy to the Lord whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death Therefore the people of the Israel shall keep the Sabbath observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever 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 And he gave Moses when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai the two tablets of the testimony of the table of stone Written by the finger of God What an amazing statement this Sabbath day shall be a sign between me and you throughout your generations Observing throughout your generations as a covenant forever this day of holy rest You know when we get up on Sunday mornings folks And we go out the worship We make perhaps the most powerful statement of our living faith That we have made to anyone all during the week We tell the world that one of the marks of the people of God is that they keep the Sabbath day special They rest they go to church and worship they celebrate redemption They gather together to renew their covenant with God People say well, you know these Christians are different. Oh, we are different For we are a people in a community Of grace say by a covenant of grace And it should and does shape everything about us What we do during the other six days in our work and recreation and our family life and among our relationships with our neighbors People can say all they want to like and worship God Just as well in a fishing boat or on the golf course who with a cup of coffee on my back porch with the paper as I can in church And the fact is no yet can't God says you can't I'll tell you why You were not created alone You were created into a community called humanity And you were not redeemed alone You were deemed into a community called the church And you don't enter in a covenant with God alone with all the elective all time And you don't live your life Monday to Saturday alone you live in community with other people And your life like everybody else's life is shaped by two great communities The one reflecting the other the community of the Trinity God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and the community of the Church And Sunday tells us that we live in those two communities what theologians are beginning to call the country of the Trinity We have a life with God the Father in creation through our work And a life with God the Son in redemptive history through our witness And a life with God the Spirit in the community called the church And those three things have to fit in some harmonious synchronized pattern of grace and God is saying this covenant I made with you called the Sabbath We'll make all these things fit together ignore it
And everything will fall apart We don't believe that But the end of this message I hope to prove to you that it's true By looking at our own society So that's what the commandment number four says about God the Father He's a God of balance God of beauty A God who enjoys his creation He's a God who is a redeemer and a God who's made a covenant with us And set a society be a special people with the special use of time This commandment also points to Jesus Christ It says quite frankly That this commandment will not be fulfilled until Jesus has done his work If the redemption of Israel from Egypt and the bondage of Pharaoh Was a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ delivering us from the bondage of Lucifer Then the Sabbath date points to the great redemptive work of Jesus Christ We can see that in two ways if we had time the night and we don't we could turn to Hebrews chapter 4 Where the author of Hebrew says that Christ is your Sabbath rest And that you by faith enter into that rest and he warns us That those who by unbelief fail to enter into a relationship with Christ sacrifice their Sabbath rest for eternity He says when we put our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation We enter the rest of God from all of life's labors and burdens. We rest in Christ and his righteousness And not our own righteousness in order to be accepted by God. We rest from All of our efforts to save our souls by our religious duty and our dead works We rest with all the Old Testament and New Testament saints of history who found their redemptive rest in Jesus Christ We rest by means of the work of Jesus Christ What he did to save us We west through the high priest Jesus who Hebrews force us enters beyond the veil to intercede for us Having great sympathy for us because he shares in our human flesh And we rest in spite of our human weakness our spiritual fatigue and our spiritual and sinful blundings Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our own weaknesses But one who in every spectrum has been tempted as we are yet without sin Let us therefore with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need This is what the Sabbath day is primarily meant to do to point us every Sunday to Jesus Christ To recalibrate your hours and your days your weeks your months your years your decades your life Around the person and work of Jesus Christ every Sunday points to Jesus Christ. That's why we call it the Lord's day Because it reminds us Then in him in Christ we live and move and have our being It also tells us The Christ is Lord of the Sabbath. We read that tonight in Luke chapter 5 Jesus said to them the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath So then the son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath Now let me tell you what Jesus was not doing He was not eliminating the Sabbath I want you to turn to Luke chapter 5 for just a minute that scripture we just read That John included in our readings tonight Luke chapter 5 But I want you to go to the beginning of that chapter actually the beginning of that whole section which is Luke chapter 4 excuse me and where Jesus Christ Begins to do a series of things all based around the Sabbath day Luke chapter 4 Verse 16 begins the section that culminates at the end of chapter 6 Luke 4 5 and 6 are one unit In the study of this gospel and look at verse 16 as was his custom He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day As was his custom That little word in Greek is Ethel from where we get the word ethos It means a custom a practice a habit The being accustomed to doing something a regular pen or behavior something that shapes the flavor or character of everything around it What was the ethos of Jesus Christ's life it was the Sabbath as was his custom as was his habit Jesus went to the synagogue on Friday night We'll find him on Friday nights in the in the gospels in the senate we went there Saturday morning Because that was their Sabbath day from Friday night To Saturday evening ours is from Sunday morning to Sunday evening He kept this morning and evening pattern of being in the synagogue he preached in the synagogue he healed people in the synagogue He worked miracles in the synagogue sometimes he argued with people in the synagogue, but it was his custom To keep the Sabbath day Jesus and his apostles and the early church religiously consistently kept the Sabbath day Jesus Christ redeemed the Sabbath day from the burden of the laborious rules of the rabbis that made the Sabbath a joyless drudgery And Jesus Christ led his apostles to change the Christian Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday in order to commemorate and celebrate his finished work in the resurrection So forget this What I call the hippie myth the Jesus was some Anti-establishment guy who stayed away from the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath day just the flaunt grace and to make the point that he didn't need the church to be happy That's exactly the opposite of what he did Our dear Lord and Savior immersed his life in his local church And when he wasn't near the synagogue in Nazareth He always found another church to be in on the Jewish Sabbath day Jesus Christ's life kept its true North compass Because he went to church on the Lord's day You know what the best reason for going to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night is you know what the best reason for keeping the Sabbath holy is You know what the best reason the best argument for why the Christian Sabbath as the Catechism says should be celebrated because Jesus Christ did so I don't think we need any other argument but that If Jesus did it we do it Jesus is the son of God We are his children as well And if this is how Jesus Christ communed with and honored his father If this is how he lived in the community of the Trinity and this is how he enjoyed the covenant of grace Then so do we that leads us finally very quickly To look at what Christian people Have to benefit from the Sabbath to realize that we are people of the Sabbath Well look at that sheet we gave you that we handed out Of our readings what does the Sabbath prescribe It says the fourth commitment requires of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God Such set times as he is appointed in his word expressly one whole day in seven Which was the seventh day from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ and the first day of the week Ever since and so to continue to the end of the world Which is the Christian Sabbath and in the New Testament called the Lord's Day What is the fourth commitment requiring that we take Sunday and make it our Christian Sabbath And how do we do that look at the very next question The Sabbath the Lord's Day is to be sanctified or made holy By a holy resting all the day not only from such works as at all times sinful But even from such worldly employments and recreations and are on other days lawful And making it our delight to spend the whole time as so much of it as Maybe taken up in the works of necessity and mercy in the public and private exercise of God's worship and to that end You ought to prepare our hearts and with such foresight diligence and moderation to dispose and seasonally dispatch Our worldly business that we may be the more free and fit for the duties of that day very simply it says this We rest from regular work We leave the office physically and mentally We were framed from world recreations worldly recreations that may be lawful on Monday to Saturday But take us out of the spirit of wonderment and rest and worship That we avoid the unnecessary domestic work Sunday is not a day to catch up on house cleaning or do the lawn That we rejoice in the Sabbath day and not take it begrudgingly That we enter into corporate worship in the church morning and evening That we do ministries of mercy and service and caring for other people when necessarily we visit the sick and the shutdowns This is a great day to go see your grandmother in the nursing home and take her the joy of the Sabbath community Into her life and that we order our week From Monday to Saturday in such a way that we're not running up on Sunday saying oh, I just I'm sorry lord I got to do this to get ready for Monday Because we didn't plan our time well We may think that this is a drudgery But those who do so find it to be a blessing And we find that keeping the Sabbath day begins first of all with our attitude Is it a duty or is it a delight Well According to Isaiah We are to call the Sabbath a delight The day of the Lord honorable If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath from doing your own pleasure on my holy day If you call the Sabbath a delight The holy day of the Lord honorable If you honor it not going your own ways or seeking your own pleasure or talking idly Then you shall take delight in the Lord And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth I will feed you with a heritage of Jacob your father for the mouth of the Lord has spoken
But the Sabbath day for bids We've already read It forbids treating this day like all the other days And from robbing God of one thing that he has lordship over which is Time time your life Paul says is not your own You are not your own That is the American myth. It's my time. I'll do with it what I'm all know It's not and you'll find the Bible says that your days are numbered your times are in his hand Your life is not your own you've been bought with the price in fact when the Lord brings your time to an end There's nothing you can do about it Better than to have spent your time In this life Learning how to rest in Christ and to celebrate creation Into enjoy God and to have the right attitude about worship because that's all you're going to do for eternity And I think maybe for many people who get in by the skin of their teeth The first few thousand years are going to be horrible Is they learn how to grow up and spend their time well I'll leave you with this thought which I would ask you to think about and to mull over and to discuss God speaks through history Sometimes just as clearly as he does in his word In the 1950s and the 1960s state after state in our country began to repeal blue laws Laws that prohibited commerce and retail and civic work and entertainment on Sundays In rapid succession following that laws regulating marriage and divorce Prayer in public schools the sanctity of life adultery pornography displays of religion in public places Homosexuality and heterosexual marriage began to fall like dominoes Let me ask you a question was that a coincidence And I think not you take God out of the Sabbath day And you've taken God out of your week Take him out of your week and you'll remove him from the key institutions of life home and church and work and state Take him out of the institutions of life and you take him out of the culture Take him out of the culture and you take him out of society Take him out of society and everything collapses rather quickly For the flow of Godliness and blessings is clear in these first four commandments God is first in our hearts. We have no other God but God God is to be approached as he so prescribes in worship. We shall not worship him In any other way but Christ in the word God and everything about him is worthy of reverence Therefore even his name is holy And God is the God of time and life And therefore a day is set aside to rest in God to enjoy him To worship and serve him When we have a low view of God When we consider him and ogre When he's an inconvenience His duties are a drudgery Spending time with him was boring Hearing from him in his word is irrelevant Then you know what We don't have the God of the Bible
We have an idol in our hearts and lives
And the way we keep this all in balance Is through one little day in the week Called Sunday
Read this with me This last statement from our larger cynicism
The word remember remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy The word remember is set in the beginning of the fourth commandment Partly because of the great benefit of remembering it We being thereby helped in our preparation to keep it And in keeping it Better to keep all the rest of the commandments And to continue a thankful remembrance of the two great benefits of creation Exodus and redemption Deuteronomy Which contain a short abridgment of religion And partly because we are very ready to forget it For that there is less light of nature for it And yet it restrains our natural liberty in things at other times lawful That it comes with once in seven days And many worldly businesses come between and to often take off our minds from thinking of it Either to prepare for it or to sanctify it And that Satan with his instruments Much labor to blot out the glory and even the memory of it To bring all a religion and piety Into our lives All a religion and impiety For this is the summary of religion the catechism says creation and redemption This is the day of our religion the Lord's day And the best thing we could do for ourselves for our families for the church and for society for America Is to begin again to keep the Sabbath holy And see how God would bless us Don't be like a child Don't be cranky And unhappy and restless You need a nap You need to rest In Jesus Christ and the day he's given to do that Let me pray for his father This may be of all the things of the Ten Commandments the hardest for us to accept because it is the commandment that is most brazenly broken in our culture Because we have so much So much affluence and so many recreations and so many places to eat and so many things to do and such an easy ability to get from here and there and do them all That we are running our souls ragged and sacrificing Our children souls on the author of materialism And yet you have given us a day to draw back and rest and be refreshed in Jesus Christ and to know That all that we have in creation And all that you give us in redemption Is from the balance and beauty and blessedness of your life Spent with us We need this day and we need to see Our church here at Christ covenant grow in both their appreciation for and a change in attitude about The Lord's day And not to see this something they have to do because they're a staff member. They're an officer They want to keep out of trouble But to call this day a delight A joy to come and celebrate you and to rest in you and to renew our covenant with you and to find all the blessings that you promise To all the generations that keep this fourth commandment Help us to remember Help us to keep Help us to rest In this great day you've given us and do so That we might enjoy you and in so enjoying you We might find great fulfillment in this life we have in the world And we ask this Your grace and through Jesus Christ and whose name we pray amen