As is our custom at the evening hour, we use the larger catechism to guide us through the study of God's Word, so that the whole counsel of God is preached. In God's providence, we come now to the 117th question. How is the Sabbath, or the Lord's Day, to be sanctified? The Sabbath, or Lord's Day, is to be sanctified by an holy resting all the day, not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations as are on other days lawful, and making it our delight to spend the whole time, except so much of it as to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy, in the public and private exercises of God's worship. And to that end, we are to prepare our hearts, and with such foresight, diligence and moderation to dispose and seasonally dispatch our worldly business that we may be more free and fit for the duties of that day. I'd like us this evening to consider together words we have already read from the Gospel of Christ by Luke, the 23rd chapter and the 54th verse. It was preparation day and the Sabbath was about to begin. It was Preparation Day and the Sabbath was about to begin. Now clearly this is of some significance, else why would the author of the Gospel of Christ by Luke mention it? It is significant because the body of Jesus was to be laid in the tomb, and the following day, being the Sabbath, they themselves would rest and return to it on what we now know as Sunday, the first day of the week, which marked, as we know from the rest of the story, the resurrection of Christ. The day in which we are dealing with is a preparation day, and in God's providence, the authors of the Westminster Larger catechism drew our attention to the proper use of the Lord's Day. How are we to prepare for the Lord's Day? And I'd like us this evening to give our hearts and minds to that very question. Why have a Preparation Day? It clearly was significant in the lives of the disciples of Jesus, and I believe it should be significant for the disciples of Jesus in our day. day of preparation, which although the day of worship has been changed from a Saturday to a Sunday, although the day of preparation must follow with that, the same principles must apply. Well, I'd like to inquire of the text various things and seek to answer them with you so that we might prepare ourselves properly. for the use of the Lord's Day, as our forefathers in the faith, the Westminster Divines, encouraged us to do. The first question I want to ask you is this, when does the day begin? When does the day begin? I ask this for a reason, and I hope it will become apparent to us later on why that should be. Now, we can in fact answer that in a number of different ways. We might answer it in a sort of a legal way. So when does the day begin? Well, the day begins at midnight. And it goes through until the midnight 24 hours later. And that would be an obvious way in which we could say, well, the Lord's Day begins at midnight. Legally speaking, as it were, we enter into Sunday the moment the two hands are pointing to the top of the clock. And, of course, that would be A fair enough way of describing the Lord's Day, from midnight to midnight. We could also define it in terms of functionality. For most of us, perhaps, we think of the day beginning when we get out of bed, or if that is some time after when we wake up, when we wake up, or, well, I'll leave that one for you to debate over. But the beginning of the day begins when we wake up in the morning. Now boys and girls, I want to show you something that shows to us from scripture that in biblical times they reckoned the day starting at a different period. It wasn't midnight to midnight, and it wasn't when you got up in the morning. Now if you've got your Bibles, I want to show you what it is that I'm saying. Open it at the very first chapter of your Bibles, in which God gives us a record of creation. Now, when you're looking at these opening verses of our Bible, you'll see there, we'll read from verse 3, God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. Now, if you drop your eyes down to verse 8, God called the expanse sky and there was evening and there was morning the second day. And if you look through the various days of creation you'll see that this is a recurring theme. It's evening and morning is then followed by the numbering of the day, not morning and evening. So although we might be accustomed to thinking of the day as the day followed by the night, according to the way in which the world was created back in Genesis chapter 1, we have the evening and the morning forming the day. This is significant for us to help us understand this portion of Luke, because the evening was coming on, and so the Sabbath was beginning. The Sabbath for a Jew begins not at midnight on Saturday or Friday, Saturday evening, not when he gets up on Saturday morning, but at sunset on Friday. That's when the Jewish Sabbath begins, and it goes through until sunset on the Saturday. So when we ask the question, when does the Lord's Day begin, we can answer it in a number of different ways. And I'm not necessarily saying that we need to adopt the Jewish formula, I don't think that's required of us by scripture, but I do think there are some practical applications and there's a good reason why we should actually think more seriously about the Jewish pattern of having the Lord's Day beginning, not when you get up on a Sunday morning, but when you go to bed on a Saturday night. But we'll return to this in a practical application later on. Second question I'd like to ask is this. How much of the Lord's Day is the Lord's? How much of the Lord's Day is the Lord's? Well, if I asked a slightly different question and put something else in there, it may help point us in the right direction. If I were to ask you this question, how much of the Lord's tithe is the Lord's, how much would it be? Well, you could say, well, it's all of it, isn't it? If it wasn't all the Lord's, then it wouldn't be the Lord's tithe. What you give to the church, do you take back? What you give for the work of the kingdom of God, you say, well, it's still mine, but I'm not going to give to God all that I'm supposed to give. Well, God himself in his word addresses that. He tells you, if you don't give to the work of the kingdom what you should do, then that's the same as stealing from God. And when we don't give the Lord's day to the Lord, we are stealing time from God. Now, that's sad to say, that's something of an alien thought in our generation, isn't it? The whole concept of evening worship is being largely abandoned. And even churches which 20 or 30 years ago had a strong commitment to worshipping on the Lord's Day, now they'll have huge congregations in the morning and then there's not sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile having an evening worship on the Lord's Day in the evening. Well, how much of the Lord's Day belongs to the Lord? Do you find any reference in Scripture for the Lord's morning. You go to church in the morning, and then once you've done that, you've given all that you have to give to the Lord in terms of your time, the rest of the day is your own. Well, perhaps that is something of a modern mindset, but if it is a modern mindset, it wasn't the mindset of the Westminster divines. They said the Lord's day is to be given over wholly to the worship of the Lord, either in public exercises of worship or in private exercises of worship. How do we use the Lord's Day? Well, how much of the Lord's Day do we use for the Lord? And the simplest, straightforward reading is, you know, we use the whole of the Lord's Day for the Lord. We don't give Him an hour in the morning, we give Him the day. It's His day, He requires it of us. Which brings us to another question, what ought my attitude be to the Lord's Day? What ought my attitude be to the Lord's Day? And you know, sometimes the very questions that we ask about the use of a Sunday actually demonstrate what's going on in our hearts and minds. And anyone who's been a parent, if their children are old enough to talk, knows something of this truth. When a child Suddenly, out of nowhere, boys and girls, you're going to go, wise up now. You might think twice about asking a question to mum and dad after I've let the cat out of the bag, the secret's out. When a child asks a question, totally out of nowhere, like, dad, do you think it would be a good idea for me to draw all my money out of the bank account and spend it on this toy? Well, perhaps that won't be the question that gets the right answer. So, it's in vaguer terms, and it's more along the lines of, you know, Dad, if someone had some money and they wanted to get something, do you think it'd be alright to spend it? And right away, Dad's thinking, what's lying behind the question? because this question is, it sounds like a theoretical question, but dads or mums are wise enough to know that when that question comes, children seldom ask theoretical questions of that nature. There's something that lies behind it. And when we're asking questions about the use of, how do we use a Sunday, the Lord's Day? The very questions and the nature of the questions that we ask, it helps uncover what's actually going through our hearts and minds. I want to give you two different questions which will show something of the difference of the attitude of heart and mind between one person and another. So often the question that we might ask is, you know, pastor, elder, Can I do this? Is it alright for me to do this on the Lord's Day? And I just dare say that everyone present here this evening has at some point handled a question like that. Perhaps they haven't taken it to a minister or an elder and said, well, can I do this? But they have taken it to a friend or they've just pondered it in their own mind and come up with their own answer. Can I go to watch a White Sox game? I don't know if they're playing today. Can you give me a nod or a shake? Are they playing today? I thought they might be. Well, I can understand, not terribly well, but I can understand why perhaps for a White Sox fan there might be a strong temptation. Can I go to see the game even though it's a Sunday? And then we provide all sorts of rationale for why that would be okay. It's only once in a while. We're not going to make a habit of it. It's such an important game and so forth and so forth. And I could witness to the guy that shows me to my seat. Well, if he's worked for White Sox, perhaps he needs to be witnessed to. And I put that in just for the Cub fans that may be present. The point is that we're thinking about what can I do. Now let me just pose another question regarding the use of the Lord's Day, and perhaps cause you to think about the Lord's Day in a different way. The question is not what can I do on this day, but what does the Lord want me to do? And the moment we put those two questions side by side, surely we can see there is a big difference. In the first question, the focus is upon me. What can I do? And to be sure, the question is asked by those who want to be faithful to the Word of God and don't want to break the commandments of God. The question is turned in upon the self. It's what can I do? This is what I would like to do. Is it okay for me to do it? But the other question, the focus is upon what God wants. And the question is simply this. What does God want me to do with this day? How am I to spend it in a way which is pleasing to Him? And between those two questions there is a big difference. It really shows where our heart is. Now I don't say this to condemn anyone. Nobody has raised any particular questions about the use of the Sabbath with me of late. And I dare say that each of us in our own hearts, if we're being honest, we recognize that at some point we've asked the first question, what can I do? What's allowed, what's not allowed? Our own selfish disposition always has a default setting towards the self. What can I get out of it in the sense of this is what I want to do, is it permitted? And it takes a development of the work of the spirit in our hearts to get beyond the self and start asking the deeper, more spiritual questions, which says, Lord, what do you want me to do? How am I to use this for your glory? The scriptures tell us that we are to keep the Sabbath, we are to guard it. I've used this illustration in the past, but somebody mentioned it to me, I think it was just last week that they had heard A sermon from a number of years ago about the use of the Sabbath, in which apparently I made mention of this, so here we are again looking at questions of the Sabbath and I use it again. What are we to understand about the proper use of the Lord's Day? So often when we're asking these questions, can I do it or is it not allowed, what we're saying is, how far to the edge can I get before I've actually gone over the boundary? It's as though the use of the Sabbath is like a large field. And this fourth commandment about keeping the Lord's Day and keeping it holy is like a big sign at the edge before there's the cliff. And the question that we are asking is how close to the cliff can I get without actually falling over the edge? And our tendency is to want to live our life at the edge. I tell you what, if you were in that field and you were having a picnic with your family, I can tell you there's not a parent here that would put the blanket down on the edge of the cliff. They'd want to be as far away from the edge as possible. You just don't want your children running around near the edge of a cliff. And that surely is the point about the keeping of the Lord's Day. So often our questions relate to how close can I get to the edge? When the question we ought to be asking is, how far away can I get from the edge? And that is the difference between those two questions. The first question asked, can I do this? Is this close to the edge or is it over the edge? The second question is this, what does God want me to do with this day? How might He use it for His glory? And that's not asking how far away I can get from God without breaking his law, that's asking how close can I get to God? How close can I get? And that warning sign that God puts up, which we call the Ten Commandments, at the edge of the cliff saying, keep the Lord's day, is not meant there just to set us, you can go up to this very point, but beyond we'll fall over the cliff. but to warn us and to encourage us to stay away from the edge of the cliff as far as we can. So then, if we're asking the question, not about what can I do without breaking the Lord's Day, but how can I benefit most from it in a biblical way? How can I make use of, how can I be prepared for the Lord's Day? Well, let me give you three aspects in which we can be preparing for the Lord's Day. And in this we return to why the Jews used the Friday as a day of preparation. So that when the Lord's Day came round, the Sabbath day, they were ready for it. Though we may not keep that in a literal form in the sense that our Lord's Day begins at sunset or when we go to bed on a Saturday night, Yet there's a practical application for that in being prepared for the day that follows. Now I want to give you three subheadings. Our preparation in mind, our preparation practically speaking, and our preparation spiritually speaking. Preparation in mind. There are some practical things that we can do to prepare for the Lord's Day. Perhaps most of you, or at least a large portion of you, have businesses, or at least you have something that you're going to tomorrow morning. And it may be that for tomorrow morning you have some presentation to make, or you have some work that you're about to undertake. And it's not just something you turn up for, but you have to do something in preparation for it. Whether you have some kind of office work which involves reports that have to be written out beforehand, or you work with your hands and you know that in order to construct a house you need to have ordered up the lumber and the nails and whatever else that you need to have. You can't just turn up on Monday morning and then think about it. You have to make preparation. make that preparation before the Lord's Day comes round. Everybody's Lord's Day happens on the same day of the week. It doesn't, or it shouldn't, catch you unaware. It's not that somebody phones you up and says first thing in the morning, we're going to have Sabbath today. You know exactly when it's going to fall until the Lord is pleased to return again. You just look at your calendars, it's there. It does not take you by surprise. If it takes you by surprise, then it's because you've not been properly prepared. You have a responsibility to prepare in mind for the Lord's Day. That means that that report that needs to be ready for first thing on Monday morning needs to be ready by the time you finish up on a Saturday, so that you are not spending the Lord's Day doing it. Now students, we have, I'm glad to see a number of Trinity students here. And I know that the pressures will be on you in order to prepare for whatever Monday has in store by way of examinations or papers that have to be handed in. You know, I know that students often think that they're hard done by because they have to work so hard. Well, I'm sorry, but it don't get any easier when you start working for a living. Ask anybody here who's working for a living. So, now is a good time to learn the lessons of preparation for the rest of your life. Prepare for the Lord's Day. That test, that paper that you have to have submitted, make sure that you do your preparation in advance. So when the Lord's Day comes, you're not thinking about what's happening tomorrow. You've done the work, you're prepared for it, and now you can enjoy the Lord's Day. It was meant to be enjoyed without the thinking about these other things which interrupt and get in your way. We should be preparing for the Lord's Day in mind. And part of that, and perhaps this may be a subset, but I'll give it a different heading, the practical preparation for the Lord's Day. If you're driving to church, put gas in your tank on Saturday. Don't stop on the Lord's Day to fill up your tank. It's a small thing, but it's part of preparing. You're saying, I need to be thinking ahead. How can I use this day without being caught up in the things of the world. I know that some of you are very organized, and some of you are perhaps not so well organized. And those of you who are not well organized tend to say, well, hey, that's what I'm like. I'm kind of scatterbrained, a laugh it off, and so forth. Well, you know, if you're a little bit on the scatty side. I know that's probably not an American word, but I don't know what the American equivalent of scatty is, but you can get the sense of it. And it's improving your education because you learned a new word as well. Those people who are just sort of phased out, they're a bit, you know, space cadets. They come from a different planet. They're scatty. It's not good enough just to say that's what I'm like. if it leads you into sin. If your husband just says, you know, I know that I chat up the women at work and I flirt with them all the time, but hey, that's just what I'm like. It may be just what you're like, but that is not a proper response. And if you are scatty and it impinges upon your use of the Sabbath because you are not prepared, Then you can't just slough it off and say it doesn't matter. You need to change so that you are thinking about the Lord's Day, so that you are being prepared. So you're not stopping off at the grocery store on the way home from church because you forgot to buy anything in for the Sunday lunch or you haven't done this or you haven't done that. There's a practical application. You say this is a day of preparation. How are you using your Saturday? Be prepared for the Lord's Day so that nothing is allowed to impinge upon it. Be prepared in mind in terms of your preparation of reports or homework that you have to do, anything that you have to do for the next week so that you're not spending the Lord's Day doing it. Be prepared in terms of saying, how can I use and guard the Lord's Day that I'm not filling up my gas, my tank with gas, I'm not going to the grocery store to pick up some provisions to buy for the lunch. This is the Lord's Day. How much of the day is the Lord's? Well, it's the Lord's Day. Go figure. It all belongs to the Lord. Well, evidently, the people of God knew that the day of the Lord was important to prepare for. Verse 54, it was preparation day and the Sabbath was about to begin. We might make one last practical application. It's where we began in terms of when does the Lord's Day begin? Now, I'm not going to hold out for saying that it begins at sunset, but I do think there is a valuable application there. And perhaps there's a temptation that the young people are more likely to succumb to. And that is staying up late on a Saturday night with friends or watching movies or whatever else is done and you come to church and think, well I don't have any classes, I don't need to be up and I don't need to be at college for eight o'clock. Sunday morning is a bit more relaxed. And you come to church with only having four or five hours sleep. Is that truly the way you want to treat the divine worship? You see, I think there was a reason why It was the evening in the morning rather than the morning in the evening. Why the Lord's Day began on Friday night at sunset rather than at Saturday morning at sunrise? Because we have to be prepared physically by giving our bodies good night's rest on the Saturday night. And if you're up into the wee small hours of Sunday morning with friends, or with watching movies, or whatever else you might be doing, talking the night away, and you know that there is delight and there's a pleasure in that. I'm not saying that it's wrong in and of itself, but it is wrong if it impinges upon your use of the Lord's day. Because you're not coming to the Lord well refreshed to be able to sit under the ministry of the Word. You're coming tired. Yawning through services, not able to focus. You see, the Jews had it right. They prepared for the Lord's Day because the Lord's Day began at sunset, not at sunrise. And so, how they spent the night before was important. And I believe there's a practical lesson for us that how we spend the night before is important for us also. That we should be well rested when we come to attend upon the means of grace. Well, there is one final thing that I would like to say regarding the time of preparation, and it is this. There is, I believe, an eternal dimension to the time of preparation. In one way, we can talk about eternity as being the eternal Sabbath, and our Sundays are the nearest thing that we have to heaven on earth. Now for some of you that may seem like a strange thing to say because a Sunday is such a terrible day. That's because it is sometimes a savor of life unto life and also the savor of death unto death. And there are many of those who being unconverted have no joy in the Lord's day. But we sang not so long ago, Psalm 42, at least a few verses from Psalm 42, in which the psalmist says, it was such a joy and a light to enter into the presence of God. He panted after God as a hark pants after the water brooks. This is a very pastoral picture. There's the deer running through the woods and with all his physical exertion he comes upon the stream and he's eager to drink it in. And there's a picture of how the people of God should be about the Lord's Day. Monday to Saturday we make our way in this world. We are rushing through this world and it builds up a thirst, but that thirst is not to be satisfied in the world, it's to be satisfied in the presence of God. How will I make my way in the presence of God? I say again with the psalmist, I joyed when to the house of God go up, they said to me. How beautiful is the place of God. I long to worship there. Do we see the Lord's Day as being a time of refreshment for the soul? Because it will help us understand our own position in this world, here and now. Not just for Saturday, but this whole time, this living in this world. Living in this world is the day of preparation. Boys and girls, we've been talking about preparing for the Lord's Day. We've had a lot of practical applications how we can prepare for the Sunday. Make sure that you are well rested, make sure that you have set aside the time properly, done everything that needs to be done so that you're not bothered with other things that enter in on Monday. Make sure that that's done in advance. All sorts of preparation. But boys and girls, I want you to understand that this entire life is preparation for eternity. And everything that we can say about preparing for the Lord's Day, we can say about this life. And that means being prepared in mind to deal with what's important. What is important? The things of God are important. I had a conversation with someone not so long ago regarding this very thing. And Trinity students, don't take it personally, it's another student story but it's not meant to make you feel uncomfortable. This is coincidental rather than an opportunity for me to bash students. Although I am quite happy to bash students when the need arises. Being a student he had lots of things to do. Each day was filled with many classes to attend and papers to write and Well, all the things that you student types do. And because he was seeking to work his way through college, he was holding down two jobs on top of that. So instead, in addition to all the hours of classes that he was doing, the preparation, the reading and time in the library, he was also working two jobs in order to pay for his fees. And with all these pressures upon him to do all these things, he got to the point and said, well, I don't have time. I don't have time to go to church anymore." Well, boys and girls, I want you to understand that that's the wrong choice. He's lost sight of what is really important. It's Jesus himself who says, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you. What's important in life is the preparation of the mind. Ask yourself the question, what really is important in this world? Because this life, and you know, if you're young, perhaps you think that your life is, oh, it's going to be so far. You've got maybe 70 years in front of you. Well, that's an enormous length of time. Well, we have a few 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds with us. Ask them if it's such a long period of time. They've experienced it. Seems long to you now. But to those who have had three score years and ten or four score years, it doesn't seem such a long time after all. We need to be preparing now for eternity. And boys and girls, I want you to be asking yourselves the most important questions. What is really important in this world? What is really important? Then there is the the practical aspect, that we should be good stewards. I want you to understand something that I believe is taught in Scripture, that the reward that we have in heaven will not be the same for everyone. I think this may come as a new idea to some folk, that there are variations in reward in heaven. I don't know if we have this sort of mental picture of the New Jerusalem that would be something like a housing scheme in Bucharest. Great concrete blocks and everybody gets exactly the same. But Jesus tells the parable of those servants who were given the minas, which would be equivalent to about six months wages. A lump sum of money, I go and do something with it. And there was one steward who was given ten minas. And he went and invested it, and he got ten more. And what does the master say when he came back? Because you have been faithful and little, I will make you now the ruler over ten cities. The one who had five, he had five minutes. He'd been faithful, he got five more, and he was made ruler over five. They weren't all given the same. You know, when we get to eternity, As it were, we enter then into our reward, what God is pleased to give us. It's here and now that we can be the good stewards of what God has given to us. It's preparation for eternity. I want you to be thinking about the use of what God has given you for this life. Because how you use what God gives you in this life will have a determination of what happens in the life that is to come. This whole life that we have is a time preparation for eternity. And once we get into eternity, there will be no more changes. It's here, it's now that we can make those changes. We can use what God has given us and we'll have eternal benefits for our souls. And then there's that third element. which is the absolutely most important element, the spiritual element. And I leave this to last because this is the most important, and if there's any one thought that I want to send you out with, it'll be this one. For this is a day of preparation. Our lives are a preparation for eternity. And being prepared spiritually is what's most important of all. How do you stand before God? Are you one of His? Are you trusting in Christ? If you find the Lord's Day as something of a tiresome event, you take no delight in it. You go along because, well, Mum and Dad drag you along, but really you don't get any pleasure out of it. The only pleasure you get is the time that you spend with your friends. and you endure the rest of the day. What do you think heaven is going to be like? Our catechism begins by telling us that our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We get a foretaste of heaven by coming together on the Lord's Day to sit under the ministry of God's word to hear what kind of a God it is with whom we have to do. to hear about Jesus, to know something more of His grace and of His mercy. Grace revealed to us that we are enabled to take the talents which He gives us, and He will reward us for the right use of them. I want you to understand that this life is a time of preparation. And the most important question you can be asked is, am I ready for heaven? Is that really where I want to be? Do I love Jesus and have him set before me each and every day? Because that ultimately is the most important preparation that you or I can do. Putting gas in the tank on a Saturday to make sure we don't have to stop off at the gas station on the way to church is an important and practical lesson, but it pales into insignificance in comparison with this important preparation. But here, now, I am prepared for the eternal Sabbath, because my heart is right with God.