Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11, these are the words of God. 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 Yahweh 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 Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is within, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. As far as the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word, we look to him to add his blessing now to the preaching of it. Remember is one of the most common commands in many of our households. Some of us have little ones who say, remember to wash your hands. Remember to brush your teeth. Remember that you represent our family. Remember that you represent Jesus. Why, children, do you think we have to be told to remember? Well, the answer is we are prone to forget. And so one of God's 10 commandments, he reduces all of his good and perfect law in which the believer delights in his inner being to 10 commandments. And he even calls in the scripture 10 words. And one of them is remember. And it's a command to remember because we are prone to forget. So we are going to first, in the first place, hear about what we are to remember. And that we are to remember that we are created for the Lord. And that we are to remember that we have been redeemed for the Lord. And then that especially Jesus is the Lord for whom we are created and redeemed. And then we're going to take up this word, the Sabbath day, remember the Sabbath day. And one of the reasons is that not only are we to remember these things for which the Sabbath was consecrated, but we are to remember the day itself. And it's an important command because God here isn't establishing the Sabbath day. There are many who are trying to, in our flesh as we resist the commands of God, which our flesh resists all of the commands of God. There are many who try to make a good theological case and kids are good at making good theological cases and adults sometimes are even better in our hearts. I have a daughter who is two. And she did something, I can't even remember what it was, but it was disobedience. And I said, what did you just do? And she said what she did. And I said, and daddy has a rule that, and whatever the rule was. So what's it called when you break daddy's rule? She said, disobedience. And I said, what happens when we disobey? And she said, Jesus. Now that is a wonderful one-word statement of substitutionary atonement and vicarious righteousness and all of the blessedness of God coming to sinners in union with Christ through faith. Praise God! But it was a very, as far as she could get, complex theological answer to an immediate undesirable situation. And there are those who come up with complex theological answers. They'll say Sabbath is part of the ceremonial law, which, of course, the word remember blows away because that authority existed. And he quotes from Genesis 2. And it's not just common to all people, it's even before the fall. And, of course, we're going to find out that Jesus identifies himself as the Lord of the Sabbath. And we'll see how the scripture actually anticipates not a reduction in emphasis on God's holy day, but an increase in emphasis and experience and enrichment and pleasure and glory of God's holy day when the Lord of the Sabbath came as Redeemer who had initially been our creator. And so we'll think about the Sabbath day and then think about keeping it holy. So remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Remember then, remember first that you were created for the Lord. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And he gives the rest of the command, the things that you are not to do on God's holy day, which are not the emphasis that the Lord has, although he gives it more words. That's something that he says in support of the primary command, and we'll get to that. But we connect that to the remembering to verse 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy for, In six days, Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." And so he says, remember, and he says, remember for. He gives us the reason that we are to remember. And so he takes us back to Genesis, and he takes us especially back to the beginning of Genesis 2, but it's worth, for our purposes, noting the end of Genesis chapter 1, that actually the sixth day has been going for some time, and man is made last on the sixth day. Then God said, let us make man in our image. according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created men in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, of birds of the air, and of every living thing that moves on the earth. But we know that when it says male and female, he created them in verse 27, that there's a process there, isn't there? Because in the next chapter, God would form the man's body from the dust of the earth. And those of you who are here for the afternoon sermon this past Lord's Day, you remember what he did then. God himself breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Now, can you see God? No, I cannot see God, but he always sees me. God does not have a body. God is a spirit. And has, what is God? God is a spirit and has not a body like men. So even our littlest ones at the very beginning of their child's cataclysm knows that God does not have a form by which he breathes into nostrils. But God would one day become a man. The Lord Jesus Christ. And when the Lord Jesus would be challenged by the Pharisees about Sabbath King, he would say, basically, I am the Lord about whom the Sabbath has always been. Those who are with me, those who are, and the gleaning wasn't actually breaking according to God's law. You are allowed to glean in your neighbor's field, but you weren't allowed to reap in your neighbor's field. The disciples who rolled the grains between their fingers because they were with Jesus. It was because he was going through grain fields and they were with him and they were hungry. And he says, The priests are allowed to work in the temple. Why? Because the Sabbath is about God's people gathered to Him, delighting in Him. It is set apart for that. And I am Lord of the Sabbath. And Jesus identifies Himself as the One who has breathed into the nostrils of man. Now, when the sixth day is finally over, man is made late, and woman is made later, Right? In some ways, Eve gets the Sabbath quicker than Adam, because Adam was created. And then he took him over to where he was planting the Garden of Eden. And he brought him all the animals. And there's a big, long procedure. And then he puts him to sleep. And it's right after he sings the first love song, love poem ever, this at last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Okay, that gets us to the end of verse 27, and God blesses them, commands now verse 29. See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you, which will be for food. Also every beast of the earth, every bird of the air, to everything that creeps on the earth. in which there is life. I have given every green herb for food. It was so. God saw everything he had made. Indeed, it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them were finished. And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the 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, why did God take a rest? Was God tired? Was that hard for him to create the world? Does he rest on the seventh day because he thought, whew, I need a break? Why, for that matter, did God take six days to make all the other stuff? Was it because, oh, it's a lot of work. I'm going to have to plan it out real carefully because I can only get so much done in a day. God isn't weak. God doesn't have to plan because of his limitations, because he can only do so much at a time. Who's like that? We are. It took six days to create because he was creating in a way that would establish how we would work. And he took a seventh day to rest from creating, not because he would need a rest, but because we would need a rest. Now, what is it for? What is that day for? Well, he tells us that he blessed it and made it holy. Now, what is something that is holy? You'll get people who say, well, I believe every day is holy unto God. Well, that's true. Do you think that when God blessed the seventh day, that he was saying the other six days weren't for him? That when he labored and did all of our work, that somehow that was for us, but the seventh day we should do stuff for him? That's utter nonsense to anybody who knows the God of the Bible. So what he's doing is he's saying, this day is mine in a way that the other ones are not. This day is especially for me. We just heard in the other building, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And so when God gave the people of Israel meals that were set apart and holy and that were different from other meals, was he saying, I'm just kidding about that eating and drinking to my glory, all those other meals. No, he's saying, I'm making a difference. This one is set apart to me and there are certain aspects of it that are different in a way that all the others aren't. Sorry for anybody who's trying to fall on the live feed on the Facebook. So the day is holy, it is set apart from the creation to the creator. You see, all of these things that he had given them to do, to govern the fish of the sea, to govern the birds of the air, to govern the living things that move on the earth, to be fruitful and to multiply. And yet God had created us for himself. God had created us in his image. There are no other creatures that have fellowship with God on the earth. You alone were made to know your creator and to enjoy him, to participate in the pleasures of God himself. Sometimes we hear people say that God created us because he needed somebody to love. No, he didn't. He has himself. He exists in perfect love, perfect delight, perfect enjoyment and adoration from all eternity to all eternity. And he created all these glorious creatures that show his creativity, but there's only one creature that he created to enjoy the pleasures that he himself has in himself, and that is us. And so there are these six creature days in which he gives us to labor and do all our work and have pleasure. Right? Those who say, oh, well, we should do what we find pleasant on the Sabbath day. Well, think about Adam and his wife in the unfallen state. Did they not find it pleasant? To do all that God had commanded him, commanded them? To image him in his creation? To be fruitful and multiply? Well, the Lord's created a day that is holy for the creator. It's holy time for the worship of God. That is how the first four commandments are organized. They're all about the worship of God. Love to say, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength is the first great commandment. Love your neighbor as yourself is the second great commandment. We'll say, OK, love your neighbor as yourself is really described by honor your father and mother. You shall not commit murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall not covet, right? That's how love your neighbor as yourself is defined and explained by God himself in the word of God. Well. How does God detail out for us, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Because you and I want to say, or at least from our flesh we want to say, that means to feel really strongly about God and always use our minds as much as we can for Him and to everything we do as strongly as we can and to do it for His glory and not ours, to do it according to His rules and not ours, and all those things are true, that is loving your God with your mind, and that is loving your God with your strength, and that is loving your God with your soul. But how does God himself detail out loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? Who to worship? Whom to worship? You shall have no other gods before me. How to worship? You saw no image, you only heard a voice. You shall not make unto yourself any graven image. God himself determines how to worship, with what manner or with what heart or spirit. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Manner and heart of worship and time. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. God says, this is how you love me. I don't know if you've ever had a conversation like I have in which You have enjoyed the goodness of this particular one of God's commands and how he has used it to train your heart to call him his own best gift and better than all of his other gifts put together and you're trying to explain it to them and they say, oh, I love God with all my heart. He knows I love him. We don't have to have a special day for that. God himself says you have to have a special day for that. He is the one who defines loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. And part of it is remembering that you were created for him and having a day set apart for that. But it's not just that you were created for him. It's also that you're redeemed for him. It's very interesting that if you turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 5, where we have the parallel, The commandment is worded differently, isn't it? Observe the Sabbath day. Now, in the previous commandment, he said, remember, and he's taking us backwards to creation. Now he's saying, observe or keep. the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as Yahweh your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not, or you shall do no work, and this is similar, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, your female servant, your ox, your donkey, or any of your cattle, nor your strangers within your gates, that your male servant, your female servant may rest as well as you. That's interesting, that your male servant and female servant may rest as well as you. And remember, so now we're remembering what? That you were a slave in the land of Egypt and Yahweh your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Yahweh, your God. Yahweh, your God. You are a slave in Egypt. What's Moses here commanding them? He's commanding them to remember not only that they were created for the Lord, they were redeemed for the Lord, and particularly that they were redeemed for his worship. You remember when God sent Moses. He's saying, you were slaves, you were crying out, you had no Sabbaths. Pharaoh didn't give them a Sabbath. You had no Sabbath at all. You were not able to spend this day focused on the Creator instead of his creation. You were not able to spend this day laboring in worship instead of laboring in this other work, because you were a slave in Egypt. But God sent Moses, and Moses stood before Pharaoh, and he said, Yahweh says, let my people go that they may, some of you know it, I heard it whispered, worship me. that they may serve me." He even had the second commandment discussion, right? Pharaoh says at one point, what will you bring? And Moses says, we'll bring everything because the Lord is the one who defines what to work with. So we better have it all there just in case he wants it all. But here in Deuteronomy chapter 5, he ties the Sabbath day to redemption. Remember that you were created for the Lord. Remember that you were redeemed for the Lord. And Jesus identifies himself as especially the Lord for whom we were created and redeemed. In Mark chapter 227, he rightly says what we were noticing in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, that man was not created for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was created for man. God didn't say, I'd really enjoy some time off, so I think I'll create a man who can keep this day with me. No, he said, I'm creating a man who will delight in me, and so I'll create this day to train him to delight in me, to give him a day where he doesn't delight in all of my other gifts and all of the works that I've given him to do, but where he delights in me more directly, more immediately. So Mark 2.27, he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man. not man for the Sabbath, therefore the son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath. And in our reading from Matthew chapter 12, same thing in verse eight, the word even is not there in the majority text. The son of man is Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus is the one for whom we were created. Isn't that one of the main things that the New Testament teaches you, that Jesus is Yahweh in the flesh? John chapter one, all things were created through him. Nothing that was made without him. Colossians chapter one, all things were created through him. Hebrews chapter one, all things were created through him. It's one of the main things that Jesus himself is the one for whom we were created. And it's even more emphasized, isn't it, that Jesus himself is the one for whom we are redeemed. So why would it be surprising if Exodus chapter 20 gives the fourth commandment as remember the Sabbath to keep it holy for you were created for the Lord. And Deuteronomy chapter five gives the fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy for you are redeemed for the Lord. This is what gives us purpose in all of our work. This is what gives us comfort in all of our trouble. This is what makes any genuine pleasure a lasting and eternal pleasure, that we were made for the Lord, that we were redeemed for the Lord. Apart from this, you live in darkness. Those who do not know that they are created and redeemed for Jesus Christ live in darkness without hope and without God in the world. And so we are not surprised that a Sabbath keeping remains for the people of God when the Lord Jesus comes and he says, I am the one who created you for myself. And I am here to redeem you for myself. And I am going to die on the cross to do it. And I'm going to rise again from the dead to prove that this is who I am and that is what I have done. And he died and he rose again. That's the gospel. And it is intimately connected to the logic of the fourth commandment in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. So what is the Sabbath day? Well, initially it was which day of the week? Depends on who you are. If you're God, it was the seventh day. Which day was it for Adam and especially for Eve? Their first full day. All right, it was the second day that they experienced, but they're late on the sixth day. They're the last things on the sixth day. Isn't it interesting? that God gave them all these commands of what they would have to do for the six days. He who created them in His image, and then He said to them at the end of Genesis chapter one, so we know that Eve is created at that point from verse 28 on, and He gives them all of these commands. He says, but first, Just spend a day knowing me, worshiping me, enjoying me, having fellowship with me. I made you for myself. Have you ever noticed that in Genesis chapter 1 and 2? that before they ever came to a day in which they would obey these other commandments that are good commandments, the first thing they were to do was keep an entire day holy unto the Lord. Sometimes you hear people Talk about the Bible as if the gospel is something that comes late and God's generosity and enjoying him and having fellowship with him is something that comes late. It is not. It is something that is up front and center even from before the fall. that we are made for fellowship with him, to delight in his goodness, to belong to him, to enjoy his own pleasure of mutual fellowship and love and joy. And that is what the Sabbath day is about. So he says, remember it to keep it holy and observe it to keep it holy. Initially it was man's first day. Now it's restored to the Jews under Moses as the last day of the week. But what do they care which day it was? They hadn't had one for 200 years. They get brought out of Egypt where they hadn't had a Sabbath. And he says, six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh is the Sabbath of Yahweh your God. It's anticipated as coming into a special season of glory with the coming of the Messiah. Do you think the Jews kept the Sabbath well? Well, no, because one of the things that the Lord says over and over again when he's sending them to exile is that they have profaned his Sabbaths. In fact, one of the things he says is that while they're off in Babylon, speaking to Judah specifically, while they're off in Babylon, the land will finally get all the Sabbaths that it missed. when they were breaking his day. But there is a looking forward to a new era of Sabbath joy in the last part of Isaiah. You know, the part of Isaiah that is so full of gospel and so full of Jesus that all the liberal God-hating scholars want to say that it's not really part of the book of Isaiah. They say 1 to 39, that's God condemning them for their sin. That's the Old Testament God. But 40 to 66 with this servant who suffers in the people's place and God restoring his people and gathering in all of the nations, that's too much gospel stuff. Can't be the same God or the same author. Well, part of the gospel section, the servant section, servant songs, the Jesus section of Isaiah is chapter 56 and chapter 58. Chapter 56, this is verse 3. Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh speak, saying, Yahweh has utterly separated me from his people. Nor let the eunuchs say, here I am, a dry tree. For thus says Yahweh to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths. and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant. Even to them I will give in my house, within my walls, a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. And I'll give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. All of the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to Yahweh to serve him, to love the name of Yahweh, to be his servants. Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar." You say, oh, we don't have burnt offerings and sacrifices, don't we? Isn't that not what the whole book of Hebrews is about? that the one who offered himself as a sacrifice atoned for and consecrated the true tabernacle of heaven and that he always lives to make intercession for us. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations. Is that not what Jesus said that he would be doing at the cross? tearing down the temple and rebuilding it in three days, being the true temple. The Lord Yahweh who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, yet I will gather to him others besides those who are gathered to him. These sons of the foreigner joining themselves to the people of God and the gathering in of still more and more. Is that not the age of the spread of the gospel? Is that not what the book of Acts is exulting in, rejoicing in? And the joy of belonging to the people of God by faith is tied directly to the Sabbath keeping that will come in the age of the church as led from heaven by Messiah. Isaiah 58. the opening 12 verses or so, well, the opening, you know, the opening 12 verses, the Lord reasoning with his people who treated his law as a burden, treated belonging to him as a burden, wanting God to do them good because they made themselves miserable enough that God should have appreciated it. Oh, read it. Cry aloud. Spare not. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances of justice. They take delight in approaching God. These are theological, surface-y, religious, But listen to the questions beginning in verse 3. Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and you take no notice? In fact, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exploit all your laborers. Indeed, you fast for strife and debate and to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high. Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast and an acceptable day for yolly? You hear what he's saying? He's saying, my law is good and delightful. It is given to you, not so that you can indebt me by how well you bore my miserable burdens. It does not honor God to treat His law, any part of it, at any time. let alone the fourth commandment, in which the whole point is pleasure in Him. And what happens? People totally ignore the primary part of the command. Remember the day to keep holy. And they focus on the, you shall not do any work or any labor, neither you nor, nor, nor, nor, nor. And they make it into a list of everything that we cannot do. And say, here is the burden that I will carry to show how lucky God is to have such an obedient person as I am. Isn't that the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12? As they're watching the Lord of Sabbath in whom they should be delighting and watching those who are actually delighting in Him and having fellowship with Him and eating the grain because they were with Him and being healed by Him so that they can rejoice in Him all the more? And God's answer to that is Sabbath-keeping is done. Let's not do it anymore. No. Let's do it the right way. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the day of Yahweh honorable, heavy, weighty. This is something big that God has given us a day to turn away from everything else and just devote it to Him and delight in Him and shall honor Him. Not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, not speaking your own words, then what? You shall delight yourself in Yahweh. I'm so glad that that's the logic of verses 13 and 14. Because I am still very much like the Apostle Paul at the end of Romans 7. The good that I want to do, I seem never to do. The evil that I hate, I keep finding myself doing. Here I am. if maybe 15, 20 years into the Lord's rehabilitating my understanding of the fourth commandment, 15 to 20 years in growing and delighting in Him, and I still can't really say that I delight in the Lord in a way that makes His day a constant and continual and uninhibited delight. I say, oh Lord, I do not delight in You. How can I delight in You? How could someone who has been given so much and has been brought to faith in Christ and who knows so much and who's ministered to others, like Paul says, lest ministering to others, after ministering to others, I myself shall be disqualified. And dear congregation, I hope that I am not the only one for whom that is the great question of my life. In fact, if it is not the great question, or at least one of the great questions of your life, you are not a believer in Jesus Christ. because the desire to find more pleasure in him, finding him as your greatest pleasure, but recognizing that you do not have that joy yet for the full and wanting more of it. That is the heart that is being conformed to Jesus, who delights in his father so much that even if he has been tortured by the devil for 40 days and he hadn't eaten a thing, he's told, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to come bread because he is not being so very generous with you either. He really said that you cannot eat from any tree of the garden? How does our Savior answer? He says, man shall not live. It's written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by it. What do you mean? My stomach is hungry, but my soul is full because I have my Father. And I have the words of my Father. And my delight cannot be increased by the crumbs of earth. because I have the fellowship of my Father in heaven. And that's what a Christian is being conformed to. That's what we are being made like. Now your experience, if you long after God and to desire him like that, and to delight in him, may be much like mine, where you find that your delight is ever so small. You say, how will I ever come to keep the Lord stable? I hear these things, it's different than the kind of legalistic stuff that I've heard before. It sure looks like that's the logic of the commandment and how it fits in the Bible, but I don't think I could do it. Well, he actually uses the day to grow you in being able to do it. Notice the logic is not, if you delight yourself in Yahweh, then you will 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 Yahweh honorable, and shall honor him, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words. No, it's true. As he increases your delight, the more you're able to do those things. But he actually says, I have given you this to do, because if you do these things, then you will delight in me. The Lord's Day is a means of God's grace that produces in us its own keeping by his mercy and power. So that as you see that it's Jesus day, because it's the day where you spend time with the one who created you for himself. And he came as a Jewish man who sits now resurrected at the right hand of majesty. And it's the day of the one who has redeemed you for himself. And he came and he died on a cross. And his body was in the tomb. And the third day he rose again from the dead. and he has redeemed you for himself. And so it was initially man's first day was restored to the Jews under Moses as the last day of the week, but it was anticipated as coming into a special season of glory with the Messiah. When Jesus says, I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill, he didn't mean I'm going to do it in your place so you don't have to do it anymore. He fulfilled all those things that were shadows. Those are done away with. The true one has come. And the Sabbath was not a shadow. It is still maintained to us. It is elevated to the church under Christ as the first day of the week. Now, I gave you a list of verses there where the Greek actually probably should say first day Sabbath. It can say first day of the week, but there's another way to say first day of the week. Matthew 28, 1, Mark 16, 1-2, Luke 24, verse 1, John 20, verse 1, Acts 20, verse 7, 1 Corinthians 16, verse 2, all those places where our English translations say first day of the week. It's actually first day Sabbath. But even if the language isn't there, the reality is there, isn't it? You say, well, why isn't there a verse in the Bible saying that he changed it? Well, because they didn't need a verse when they were experiencing the reality of the fact that he had changed it. If you are dependent on Jesus to appear out of thin air or walk through walls and locked doors between his resurrection and his ascension in order to be gathered to him, then you're not saying, is this a Sabbath or is it still the last day of the week? If Jesus shows up, that's the Sabbath. And that's when the scripture tells us that he met with his people between his resurrection and his ascension. It only ever mentions his meeting with them on the first day of the week. Poor Thomas missed the first one. He had to wait six more days. You should never miss evening worship. You should never miss Lord's Day worship whenever you have the chance for it. Then after the ascension, and Jesus is in glory and he pours out his spirit, and until the promise that the spirit would finish leading the disciples into all the things that remained for Jesus to say. He makes that promise, John 16, say, you're a cessationist. Say, well, I'm a, Jesus kept his promises and the Holy Spirit fulfilled his missionist. It takes a lot more syllables, but that's what it is. Jesus told them, John 16, I have many things to say to you. There are many things that remain. You cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into those things that remain. Jesus promised that he would complete the apostles by his spirit, the finishing of everything they needed. In the interim period, they needed 1 Corinthians 14 reality, which they had turned into a circus. But the Holy Spirit was immediately inspiring, which song to sing, what prayer to pray, what text to preach. Now, if you're dependent upon the Holy Spirit to inspire in real time your worship service, you're not saying, well, I don't know, which day is the Sabbath? Well, the day that the Sabbath, the day that the Holy Spirit directly inspires the public worship of the church is the Sabbath. And that was the first day of the week. 1 Corinthians 16, Acts chapter 20, other places. And so the Sabbath was initially man's first day, then it was restored to the Jews under Moses as the last day of their week, in imitation of the creation order, the Sabbath for God, the seventh day of his first week, as it were, from his creating. It was anticipated as coming into a special season of glory with the Messiah, and part of its coming into that special season of glory is it being restored to the first day of the week. And there will be consummated when our work is done and we enter into his rest. Hebrews chapter four. You have it in the, or should have it in the worship booklet if you, if you have a booklet. He's talking throughout this, this chapter about entering God's rest and the entering of his rest that comes when we're done with our work. And you take chapters three and four, and you take chapter 12, and you get this composite picture that the apostle, in talking about Christ leading Christian worship from heaven, that he's doing something special in the preaching. that in the preaching that occurs on earth, what's happening right now, a saved and called and gifted and graced and ordained man who is yet a sinner, speaking himself imperfect from God's perfect word, which is an old book written over thousands of years by dozens of men, that when we do this in public worship, Jesus addresses his people from heaven. And that he's doing it because he is shaking heaven and earth and getting them prepared for the new heaven and the new earth. But that when the hearing is joined with faith, when the Holy Spirit enables you to recognize, remember Jesus said, my sheep, hear my voice, my sheep know me and they hear my voice, they recognize me. I can't remember word for word right now. My sheep know my voice. When we recognize that it is Christ's voice by faith, that it be mixed with faith is able to profit those who hear. And they were not able to be profited by it, verse 2. Indeed, the gospels preached to us as well as to them. The word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed to enter that rest. And he's talking about this process of entering his rest. But then in verse 9, when it's disappointing in the New King James, there are translations that tell you the word is different. There remains therefore. Throughout the chapter, he's used the word katapausis. But you don't have to know Greek, you just have to know that that's very different than sabbatismon. Because that's the word in verse 9, for the thing that remains on which Jesus addresses his people, so that when you die, what you enter into will be the blessedness of knowing and delighting in the Lord Jesus perfectly forever. That's his rest that it's talking about in the rest of the chapter. And the way that he has appointed to get you there is sabbatismon by sabbatismon, sabbath-keeping by sabbath-keeping, gathering you in the assembly that joins the assembly in glory, according to chapter 12, and working in you by his word as he builds you up in himself and prepares you for that blessedness for which he created you, that blessedness for which he redeemed you. This is not something to be given up easily and tossed away with some clever theological reasoning. This is your Redeemer's program for training your heart in delighting in Him and preserving you and bringing you at last to enter His rest when your work on earth is done. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Remembering in order to consecrate is the main point of the commandment. We have not spent time on what you shouldn't do on the Lord's day. We're not going to spend time on what you shouldn't do on the Lord's day. Because the day is about resting in Him and rejoicing in Him. That's why mercy and necessity are aimed at enabling people to worship Jesus. If we just make it soup kitchen day, we will miss that the point of the mercy that Jesus showed when He said, yes, it's good to do good on the Sabbath. Well, what is the good? enabling those who are suffering the consequences of the fall to gather to their Creator and Redeemer and worship Him as uninhibitedly as possible. So yes, of course, do mercy, but the main mercy is to bring them into the public worship of God, to hear Jesus speak from heaven, praying that the Holy Spirit would give them the faith that they would not refuse Him who speaks. This is why making it a day for me or a day for my family or arguing for other activities just because you find them restful is just as bad as working and maybe worse. Because the work is not set aside in order for you to feel rested. It's set aside for you to find your rest in Jesus. It's set aside for you to find him your delight. When I talk to somebody, he says, well, there's nothing I enjoy so much as washing my car. You just want to cry, don't you? Say that is probably true of me with some things. But God gave me this day so that I could end up saying, there's nothing I enjoy so much as worshiping Jesus. And it's whatever else that goes in that sentence instead of Jesus, that is probably the most necessary thing to reserve for the other six days. You were created to delight in Jesus, and you were redeemed to delight in Jesus. In fact, as you grammar and composition moms probably would want to remind me, the passive voice is hurting us there. Jesus created you. to delight in himself. And Jesus redeemed you to delight in himself. And that's why he has maintained for you a Sabbath keeping that remains because it is the day on which he trains us in delight. Amen. Oh Lord, how we thank you for your patience and mercy and wisdom. Toward us you're often foolish people, stubborn and hard and cold of heart towards you. We want to come to the place where we say there's nothing that I find more restful and refreshing and rejoicing than you, Lord Jesus. And so we pray that you'd bless to us the opening of your word and the public worship. that your spirit would make our hearts into fertile soil, that neither the cares nor the pleasures of this world would grow up as strongly as the truth that we have heard proclaimed, so that they will be unable to choke it out, that your word would bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. Grant it, we ask, in your own matchless name.