several Psalms that reveal to us the duty of giving thanks. There are what I call the Thanksgiving Psalms, Psalm 105, 106, and 107. All three of these begin with this concept of giving thanks unto the Lord. And then first Thessalonians 518. So let's hear these four commands from these four different passages and then begin our introduction to our sermon today. Psalm 105 verse 1. Hear now the inerrant, infallible, and inspired word of God. O give thanks unto the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him, talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name. Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Psalm 106, verse one. Praise ye the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. And then Psalm 107, verse one. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. And then 1 Thessalonians 5, 18. which reads, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his most holy word. So I have a quotation for you to read on thankfulness from the Reverend Thomas, well, I don't remember which one I put in the note sheet. Can someone help me out here? Is it Thomas, is it Brooks? Thank you so much. Thanksgiving is a self-denying grace. It is an uncrowning ourselves and the creatures to set the crown upon the head of our creator. It is the making ourselves a footstool that God may be lifted up upon his throne and ride in a holy triumph over all. It is a grace that gives God the supremacy in all our hearts, thoughts, desires, words, and works. self-love, flesh and blood, and many low and carnal considerations may carry men to pray and hear and talk, et cetera. The whip may work a slave to beg, but thankfulness is the free will offering of a child. There is nothing that so clearly and so fully speaks out your sincerity and spiritual ingenuity as thankfulness doth. Therefore, weak saints, if you would have a substantial evidence of your sincerity and spiritual ingenuity, be thankful for a little grace. The little birds do not sip but one drop of water, but they look up as if they meant to give thanks, to show us what we should do for every drop of grace, et cetera. Nice picture there of those little birds that stop by your birdbath at home and they bend down and fill their beaks with water. And then they lift up like that to make that water run down. And Thomas Brooks says, that's just the Lord reminding you that when you receive something, you should look up to heaven. That's perfect Puritan illustration there. Really good stuff. Making use of those what we call occasional meditations. So I'll remind you what the Thanksgiving holiday is about in these United States of America. You know, we have turkeys and pilgrims and all sorts of things. We remember some of those things, but we don't remember really the context of it. There was a proclamation by the governor of several different colonies and at different times in the fall, that year after their first year of remaining in the New World, having settled along the coast and in the coastal valleys there in what we call today New England. And we'll remember also, won't we, that in some cases over half of the settlement died through hunger, exposure, cold weather, Indian attack, and so on. But we will also remember that at the end of that first year that they took time to stop. They took a day following the biblical example of certain signal deliverances most of the Puritans and pilgrims would have pointed to the book of Esther and the celebration of what we call today Purim as an example of a competent fast or sorry feast day to be called remembering God's signal mercies. We'll remember our own confession of faith, won't we? That we abhor regular days that we call holidays. We don't like regular days, except for the Sabbath. That's the only day that God has called to be a holy day in the days of the New Testament, although there were many days in the Old Testament when the church was yet underage. In the full light of the New Testament, we have the Sabbath day, and so we have those 52 holy days per year and no others. And yet there is this Thanksgiving day that persists. And churches all over, no matter if they're Sabbatarian or not, they will acknowledge that day. We will acknowledge that it is a good day to set aside to give thanks to God. But there's a remnant of Puritanism even in the proclamation of that fourth Thursday of every year, in that it is a yearly proclamation. It is not a codified law proclamation, not written in our books, but it is a yearly proclamation, which I know it becomes a regular thing, but it is refreshed every year in keeping with those original proclamations that said, we don't want to develop a regular holiday here, but we do want to set aside a day seeing that God has been so very good to us. Let us take one day and set that aside as a feast day. And this was a big thing among the Puritans because it was six days of labor and one day of rest. To set aside another day where we were not going to be laboring but feasting instead, that was a very big deal to them. That was a deal that was supported by the church and the civil government as they came together in those days of greater overlap than what we have today. And they all said, yes, we will celebrate this day as a feast day unto God of thankfulness, reminiscent of those peace offerings of old. And we don't make offerings these days on altars in that sense. But let's remember what the peace offering was in the Old Testament. It was a day of recognizing a windfall or God's signal benefit and so there would be a day set aside to invite the Levite and the Levite would come and he would offer that peace offering, the son of Aaron, and you would feast with him. And you would invite perhaps even the poor that were next door to you, your poor neighbor, to come and feast with you in this peace offering because it was a celebration of the signal goodness of God, the extraordinary goodness of God. And so it wasn't an ordinary day, but a special day. And if you look at our confession of faith today, in the chapter on religious worship, you'll see that there are regular things, ordinary things, that we do as a part of worship. What are they? Singing of psalms with grace in the heart, the public preaching, constable hearing of the word, the reading of the scriptures with godly fear, praise with thanksgiving, and so on. And then there are, oh, the due administration of worthy receiving of the sacraments. All those are regular things. ordinary things as described by our confession of faith. And then there's a section on things that are not ordinary but special, and that is oaths, vows, feastings, and fastings. That there are times of perhaps great deprivation where our presbytery might want to call a fast, as we recently did. There are times of God's benefits that we would recognize also and in recognizing those benefits we would, even in the days when half of our colony has died in the last year, we would recognize the goodness of God that remains and call a day of feasting instead. Then there are other times of wait and moment where oaths and vows are particularly important. So we remember then that there are Feast days, and that is what the Thanksgiving holiday is supposed to be among Christians. That's why we abhor people calling it Turkey Day, because it's not Turkey Day. It's a day to remember the goodness of God and to give thanks. unto him, and so in help with that, I thought we would spend two weeks talking about, in this first week, giving thanks, which is a commanded element, as we've seen in Psalms 105, 6, and 7, and then 1 Thessalonians 5, 18. And then next week, being thankful, which we'll see from the book of Colossians, chapter 3. So God commands both. the outward and the inward. He commands the giving of thanks, the duty of offering thankfulness to him, and then that that should rise up out of hearts that are thankful. And we'll remember, won't we, this is a very humbling thing to remember, that God is able to command not only our actions, but our hearts. And this is what he does here in the command that we'll take up next week to be a thankful people. All right, so in the quotation that we just heard, we have that pure and true motive for any kind of obedience before the Lord and for the Christian, this great care to obey our Father. It cuts in two directions. The first, there is pleasure in hearing and obeying our Father. His commands are pleasant and sweet, and His voice of command is a voice wooing and drawing us to our renewed hearts and wills. He has changed our wills. And so, rather than to be at odds with the law of God, we are changed in our disposition toward it. So there is this desire and this pleasantness. Giving thanks is a pleasant duty to the people of God, or at least it ought to be. Further, the gospel reminds us that there is a grief regarding obedience because we are simply able of ourselves not to please our father. We're not able to do so. This is the cause for much heartache as we look over the wreckage of failed obedience and its sad effects. And the greatest part of that being the displeasure of our father having sinned against his holiness and offended him. This is a mark of true faith, a heart that is grieved for its want of obedience. That's a mark of true faith. It is a sign of a vain profession to wonder how many things we might desire and desire to commit and yet still be safe from the wrath to come. How close can I come to the edge and not fall over? That's not a faithful desire. A faithful desire is, I want to avoid not only evil itself, but occasions and temptations and even appearances of evil, as Paul will also write in 1 Thessalonians chapter five. And so at the outset of these two sermons on what it means to give thanks to God, what we're going to look at here is truly withering. It is not possible for us in these corrupt frames to thank the Lord in the way that he commands. We can do better than we have. We can. But we cannot obey perfectly in this life. There is no grace for that. The Lord has chosen rather because of original sin and our actual sins to keep us humble in that. And so even that in our best works there is a defilement, like we saw with David earlier. Oh, David did some really good works while he stayed there at Ziklag, didn't he? But it's also going to be costly for him, as we will read a couple chapters hence. It will be costly for him, this stay in Ziklag. And so he conquered the enemies of God. He fulfilled commands that had been left undone for hundreds of years or less. He shored up his relationship with the Judahites. All those things were good, right? But were they good in the sense that God might receive them as if they were good in themselves? Well, no, all of them were tainted with David's sin of deception and other things. We're gonna see this too, beloved. I hope that these four sermons on thankfulness will not only challenge us and stretch us and also humble us, but also as we prayed when we were praying with the men earlier today, that when God would set that lance upon the boil, of our sin and would open it so that that uncleanness might come out. That he would also, rather than simply it being a negative, that he would also spread that balm of gospel truth upon it. That we might know not only our sins, but God's great forgiveness. And don't we pray for this often? We pray that the Lord would tear open our understanding such that we would know more fully how far short we have fallen so that we may apply his mercy the more copiously and that he might apply it in that way. So don't forget that as we move on talking about thankfulness. And it seems to be example upon example, commandment upon commandment, and blow upon blow, such that by the end of the sermon we're bowed down. Because there is the balm of Gilead. There is a fountain opened, as Zechariah will say, for sin and for uncleanness. So let's begin then. Let's dive in. We have seen the commands, haven't we? I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14 commands in scripture to give God thanks. The command then is to give thanks. There are several things we want to see about it. The universality of the command, that it is not dependent upon circumstances. It rises above circumstances and reasons from the loving providence of God. Secondly, there are various methods of thanksgiving that I'd like to talk with you about, by sacrifice, by prayer, by public proclamation. So we can look at Psalm 50 and verse 14. We will see that the psalmist there expresses his thankfulness unto God by way of sacrifice. The sacrifices that we give today are different from the sacrifices that were given in the Old Testament, but they are still sacrifices, beloved. Let us remember that. As we look at Hebrews chapter 13, we will hear that we offer up the calves of our lips, confessing to his name. Notice that is a statement that makes our public profession of faith an offering or a sacrifice to God. We are giving up of ourselves to him. There are other sacrifices in verse 15 of Hebrews 13, doing mercy to others, to do good and to communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. These are sacrifices of thanksgiving unto God. Then by prayer, Ephesians 1.16 will tell us that we are commanded to give God thanks in prayer, that when we pray to God, we give him thanks, that part of what we do, rather than simply asking, we also acknowledge his mercy. In our larger catechism, I don't remember the number of the question, how are we to pray? We are to pray in the name of Christ, well we are to pray to God for all things, to God alone. We are to pray in the name of Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit, with confession of sin, and with confident acknowledgment, sorry, thankful acknowledgment of His mercies. Thankful acknowledgment of His mercies. It's a part of our prayer. I try to make it my own habit personally, it's not particularly required, but I try to make it my own habit to get myself in the proper frame of mind to begin every prayer, whether public or private, with thanksgiving. Choosing out some benefit that God has undeservedly given that I should be thankful for. And then also by public proclamation or expression. There is also a public proclamation of thankfulness that belongs to the Lord, which is what our Thanksgiving holiday is designed to do originally, although it may have fallen into that regularity that has taken the edges off of that, that has blunted it. Still, that is what this public proclamation is intended to do, and the president signs a new one every year, calling out this fourth Thursday of November, a public day of thankfulness to God for the benefits that he has given. And so that's a remnant of our country's founding, I'm not gonna say upon Puritanism, but alongside Puritanism. Okay, so we see that in Nehemiah chapter 12 and verse 27. Nehemiah 12, 27, where there is a day of thanksgiving that is declared for the people of God that they should gather and celebrate together for God's benefits that he's given. by private prayer, by sacrifice, by public prayer, by public proclamation, in all of those ways. These are ways that God gives us to vent this command of His, which is to give thanks unto His name. The various times of thanksgiving. are also important and I would like to spend the rest of our time here. So first of all, we note Psalm 34. Let's take a look at Psalm 34 together. Verse one. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. Well, this tells us how often we ought to be thankful. Although the word thanksgiving is not used, still, I will bless the Lord is very similar to it. I might even say in this context a functional synonym. It is at all times that we are to bless the Lord. So for the rest of today, both this morning and this afternoon, I'd like to speak to you about those various times of thanksgiving toward the Lord. In good times, in times of blessing, in times of plenty, and in times of liberty. In times of blessing, plenty, and liberty. In Ezra chapter three, verse 11, And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because he is good, for his mercy endureth forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. There was a signal event. What was the event? They had been carried away captive to Babylon. Now they have come back under men like Ezra and Nehemiah, Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. And what are they doing? They are endeavoring to rebuild the temple that was scraped from the ground. All of it dug up its foundations. And so they relayed that foundation. And in the day that they completed that foundation, Ezra gathered all of the people together and they sang and they rejoiced and they shouted unto the Lord. There was a signal benefit, spiritually, a spiritual benefit to the church that God had provided and so they gathered together to give thanks. This is really good, isn't it? This is a public acknowledging of the goodness of God which serves as a testimony to others. We referenced Nehemiah 12 earlier. We'll go back to it again. Nehemiah chapter 12. So the section that speaks about this dedication of the wall, this is what they're celebrating here, the dedication of the wall that was completed. So that goes from 22 through 43. Well, we'll not take the time to read all of those verses, but let's read 40 through 43. So stood the two companies of them that gave thanks in the house of God, and I, and the half of the rulers with me, and the priests, Eliakim, and Maaseah, and Minyamin, and Micaiah, Eli-o-ni, Zechariah, and Hananiah with trumpets, and Maasiah, and Shemaiah, and Eleazar, and Uzi, and Jehohanan, and Malkijah, and Elam, and Ezer, and the singers sang loud with Jezrahiah their overseer Also that day they offered great sacrifices and rejoiced for God had made them to rejoice with great joy. So the wives also and the children rejoiced so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off. They completed the wall. They'd come back from the captivity and the wall was broken down and the city was in so much disrepair that, remember, Nehemiah could not travel through it on a donkey. The rubble was still everywhere. Seventy years later, It was still there. No one had touched it. Not only had it fallen into disrepair from being destroyed, but 70 years of no maintenance. Those of you who are into maintenance of things, what happens after 70 years of not putting a wrench on something? It goes to nothing, doesn't it? It turns to dust again and dirt and uselessness. But they rebuilt that wall under the Lord's leadership through the Tirshat Nehemiah, and when they completed it, they stood and they praised the Lord. Psalm 18 is such a psalm as that. Notice what the psalm title reads, and we won't take the time to read all of Psalm 18 because it is a lengthy psalm and it's not our purview, but notice what it says. To the chief musician, a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake unto the Lord in the words, or the words of this song in the day, that the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul, of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul, and he said, I will love thee, O Lord, my strength, and so on. And we've already sung from Psalm 85. Sorry, from Psalm 18, where David is given thanks to the Lord in that psalm. So what was the signal event? He was delivered from all his enemies. This psalm has the dubious, it's not really dubious, it has the unique attribute of being recorded twice in scripture. It's also recorded in 2 Chronicles, and it's a slightly different version. This is the final edited version that David delivered for the Psalter. And then also Psalm 92. Let's turn to Psalm 92. A psalm or song for the Sabbath day. You hear that? And let's remind ourselves that the psalm titles, although they seem to be written in some Bibles in a different text type, maybe they're smaller, maybe they're separated out somehow, but that in the Hebrew text, they make up verse one of the psalms, such that if you work in the Hebrew Bible, as some would want to do, very often the verses in the psalms are off by one. because verse one is the actual title, and then verse two, which is verse one in the English, is actually the Hebrew verse two, and that offset remains throughout the rest of the psalm. Okay? So, it is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High, to show forth thy lovingkindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night, upon an instrument of 10 strings, and upon the psaltery, and upon the harp with a solemn sound, for thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works, I will triumph in the works of thy hand. And so, notice that the Sabbath day is also a good day to give thanks unto the Lord. And I wanna spend the rest of our time this morning talking about the Sabbath as a day of thankfulness. I have a quotation, another quotation to read for you, a man named Thomas Watson. Some of you will remember that name. When this blessed day approaches, we must lift up our heart in thankfulness to God that he has put another price into our hands for the gaining of heavenly wisdom. These are our spiritual harvest days. Now the wind of God's spirit blows upon the sails of our affections. And we may be much furthered on in that heavenly voyage. Christian, lift up thy heart to God in thankfulness that he have given thee another golden season. And be sure thou improve it. It may be thy last. Seasons of grace are not like the tide. If a man misseth one, he may have another. Well, that's a little stark, a little difficult, and yet true. We don't often think that way. We don't often think of the Sabbath as a day, perhaps our last on Earth, do we? I wonder if it would make a difference in the way we behaved if we did. I think probably it would. There's the testimony of many who have found out through some diagnosis or other that their days were numbered on earth. Of course, beloved, we remember, don't we, that all our days are numbered. All of us have numbered days. But that number was made more plain through some diagnosis or other. And the testimony of folks such as that, well, they often speak of how sweet their Sabbaths increased to them. How that their appreciation for what they have in the Sabbath, well, that they were more thankful for it. Well, let's take a few points and sort of draw that out for us for the rest of this morning. The Sabbath is a wonder, isn't it? It is a great benefit, especially when considered in light of the fallen world around us. We would expect that because labor and toil and sweat is a part of the curse, that it becomes, in a sense, as Solomon will describe, the chasing of vanity because of the disordered and corrupted nature of this groaning world, that we would have no respite from labor. that we would work and work and work and work and then die. Certainly that's what we deserve as a race. We turned away from our creator who gave us rest, and yet what God gave, he never took away. Because God knows that in this day, there is not only an overturning of the curse for his faithful people, but there is also a communion with him that gives life. Let's think about that for a moment. Many of you drove to church today. I know that when I drive, I'm focused on driving to the extent that I need to be, but I also see other things. I see things like birds flying around. I see things like squirrels and rabbits and things running across the road. I mean, why would a, there's the old joke, why did the chicken cross the road? Why would a squirrel run across the road? Why would he do that? Well, because if he doesn't run across the road, he doesn't either get to his den or get food. He's got something that he's doing every day. The Lord has not given rest from the toilsome labor of this world, this cursed world to animals. But he has given it to us. That we might set aside, one day out of seven, this copious and sweat-bringing labor that God brings us as a result of the curse. That the curse might become for us something that can actually point us toward life instead of death. Instead of this old world crushing and pressing against us until we're crushed into sweat and nothing else. On the Sabbath, the Lord gives us something where he says, put aside your labor and rest with me. Oh, beloved, can you be thankful for that? That our lives are not an incessant Day upon day, labor with sweat and toil and, if we were honest, a measure of futility. Chasing wind, as Solomon says it. But there's a day out of the week that you get a break from all of that, a commanded day, where God knows that we wouldn't even take up that benefit unless he pressed it to our hearts in that greater fashion with a command, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And yet that is a life-giving and loving command that the Father gives us that we might be thankful for it. May I say, and this is a convicting word to us all, me included, We work six days. We get up on Sunday morning. Our first natural inclination is to say, I'm tired. I don't feel like going to church today. It's true, isn't it? Well, this just speaks to our ingratitude, beloved. Speaks to our ingratitude. not appreciating the day, spending it in the suburbs of heaven, pointing our minds away from this old, toilsome world that will indeed demand our death, to a world of life, and light, and acceptance, and not a bit of futility. And none of the Sabbath labor, beloved, that you expend is lost. None of it is vain. Even a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple is not forgotten. Matthew chapter 10. And so the first point that I would like to make with you, beloved, is that the Lord has not given to everybody, everywhere, to all of his creation universally this Sabbath. The world continues today to toil. But especially we as God's people, there is a day this day that God has given us for which we ought to be wildly thankful that we get that rest from the stress, from the pressing, from the sweat, from the labor, from the toil, from the pain, from the sorrow that God has placed upon this old creation. Because here we get to leave it behind and to point ourselves heavenward. Can we give thanks? to God for the Sabbath day. It is a good thing to give thanks unto God and you see how the psalmist draws our attention to the public worship of God in the Sabbath. Listen to what he says. To show forth thy lovingkindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night. This is one of those places in scripture where many of our reforming fathers looked in the scripture to two services on the Lord's day. We're obviously in the context of public worship here. Notice, upon an instrument of 10 strings, upon the psaltery, upon the harp with a solemn sound, for thou hast made me glad through thy work, I will triumph in the works of thy hand. This is obviously a context of public worship. And the public worship in Sabbath day means morning and night, according to Psalm 92. that the Lord who made us knows that we need a Sabbath day, not a Sabbath hour, that he knows we need a day of rest and not an hour of rest, that it's the Lord's day, not the Lord's hour, as one old preacher put it, that we need this day to rest, not just physically, but spiritually, to find our rest in the Lord, to cease from our own labors, and to take our gander to fill our eyes and our minds with that gospel work of Christ. He who has entered into this Sabbath rest has ceased from his labors as God also did from his. Hebrews chapter nine. And there remains therefore a Sabbatism for the people of God. Sorry, Hebrews chapter four, verse nine. So the first thing The first time that we're looking at is the time of the Sabbath. So we remember his holiness because this day bears his name and therefore holy. He calls it in Isaiah chapter 58 verse 13, my holy day. The Lord claims this day as his own and because it's his, it's holy. The priests had to be holy when they approached the Lord. They had to be cleansed and washed and declared holy in that sacramental sense. The Lord takes that same concept and presses it down on this day. It is mine, it belongs to me, and as mine, just like the temple compound, just like the gifts that you bring, just like all of those things in Isaiah's day, they also must be holy because they are mine. John will continue that even in the days of the New Testament where he will say in Revelation 110, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And so the Lord has placed his own stamp of holiness on this day to remind us of his own holiness. It seems less and less possible to this old preacher for those who refuse to keep the Lord's day to live as those whose citizenship is in another place. Philippians 3.20 says our citizenship is in heaven and it is on that day then that this holy place touches earth as that weekly reminder where we have visited our true home. As we said a moment ago, the Puritans called this day the suburbs of heaven. Oh, you're not right downtown yet. You will be one day. But here you visit the outskirts of that holy place. So we are commanded to set our minds then on heavenly things and away from the earthly and mundane. We are to be holy in our thoughts, Colossians 3, 1 through 4. And the Sabbath then is a weekly motivation, a weekly reminder, and a weekly pointing of our minds in that direction. Can we be thankful for the facility that the Sabbath brings toward holy thoughts? Secondly, we remember the Lord's kindness and mercy. that although we live in a world that cries out for our death and witnesses to it every day, the Sabbath is a day of renewal, of reinforcement of the Lord's provision, for he grants us seven days of sustenance in six days of labor. And in the curse, remember that he had established the Sabbath already. And when the curse came in words to Adam, it did not come in words that reminded him of the Sabbath. Adam was supposed to remember that himself, not to labor. If we turn to Genesis chapter four, we'll not take the time to turn there. But if we take the time and turn there, we would see that at the end of days, Cain and Abel brought their offerings. That's the literal translation of the Hebrew. At the end of what days? Beloved, what is the only period of time that's been defined in the Bible by that point? The weekly Sabbath. And so at the end of the week, at the end of the days, what did they do? They brought their offering to the Lord. The Lord had established the Sabbath day to be a day of rest and worship with him, even in the first family. He had told Adam that he's going to labor, that he's going to toil, that he's going to sweat. And it was from the results of those labors that both Cain and Abel brought their offering. Yes, of course, Cain brought his without faith, but Abel brought his with faith. And of course, that's a necessary concomitant to all of our offerings and thankfulness. But like we said a moment ago, the birds, they're not relieved. The squirrels are not relieved. Beloved, you are relieved. You're relieved from the curse of your daily labor, now wait, so that you will recognize that you're relieved from that curse spiritually. This is why it's called the suburb of heaven. This is why the Sabbath has a gospel record attached to it in Hebrews chapter four. We cease our labors and instead fill our attention with God's, with Christ's on our behalf. The third point of thankfulness is we remember the Lord's mercy. He knows our frame that we are but dust. Truly Adam in the original means dust or dirt. God named his first man dirt, dust, because he took him out of the ground. The Lord remembers our frame that we are but dust. And so he gives us not only that physical rest, And remember that in an agrarian society, that must have been quite a day. But also he gives us spiritual rest. We are reminded, beloved, of the spiritual rest with which we rest in Christ. This is that gospel rest that we spoke of a moment ago. It is a time to refresh our souls. We remind ourselves that we are not beasts, that we are men, women, created in the image of God in need of rest, and so we thank him. We remember his forgiveness and grace in Christ next, for that day bears Christ's name upon it with regard to his resurrection, his triumph over death. his triumph over sin, his justification in the sight of the Father, such that being raised from the dead, death hath no power over him, and so now sin hath no power over us. What a day to be thankful, and Christ has put his name on this day for that reason. The people of God used to worship on the last day of the week. Now we worship on the first day of the week in thankful acknowledgement of the two great ordinances of creation and then redemption. In creation, God rested after he had labored. In redemption, Christ has already died and completed those labors, and so now we enter into the week with victory. We enter into the week with triumph. We enter into the week in Christ, having been fed upon his day, on his great name and his accomplishments. Can we be thankful? Can we make use? We are also thankful for the Sabbath day because we do these things in covenant with God and with one another for Christ Jesus' sake. In other words, If a Sabbath was simply laying in your jammies at your own house and not working, which some denominations actually do after a brief church service in the morning, they emphasize the rest rather than all of it. If that's all we did, we would have certainly much less to be thankful for in the first point. In the second point, we would lose out of the encouragement and the mutual edification that God has erected the church for. Christ is building this church, and how is he building it? Who are we? We are those, 1 Peter 2, living stones. One stone doesn't make a building. One stone doesn't make a wall. Even Christ has designed that although he is the chief cornerstone, he should not remain alone. He will say in Hebrews chapter two, I and the children whom thou has given me, Christ is in covenant with us as our elder brother and we are in covenant with God through Christ and with one another. And so the Sabbath day and the public worship and thankfulness for us reminds us that we are not alone in our Christian lives and we are not designed to be alone. We are designed to exist in a social kind of religion where we encourage one another, we gather prayer requests, we speak to one another about what we're struggling with or what we're triumphing in, and we're living as real human Christians before each other. And may I say it this way, that this covenant responsibility that we have is salutary to us because it also works for our perseverance. It's God's design that Sabbath by Sabbath. covenant keeping by covenant keeping, come and standing and sitting together, singing together, hearing together, acting together, moving together, praying together, that all of these things keep us as individuals on the right path. And therefore we are thankful. The Sabbath is also a blessing because it teaches that certain gospel truth that while in the creation week the Lord our God rested from his labors, the second Adam rose victorious in his own labors, reminding us that there is yet a Sabbath rest for the people of God. I alluded to this earlier. Let's bring it home from Hebrews chapter four. The argument that the apostle is making here goes all the way back into chapter three, verse seven, the Holy Ghost saith, today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the day of provocation, day of temptation in your wilderness and so on. And that section ends the quotation from Psalm 95 by saying, they shall not enter into my rest. Now the word, the Greek word used for rest there is katapaousis, and I don't use that just to show you that I know Greek, but because there's a change of the words here that we need to understand. So all the way in the rest of chapter three and into chapter four, we hear the apostle talking about this rest. And he seems to draw an analogous equivocation, two big words that mean simply that he doesn't use the word rest in the same way all the way through. He uses it symbolically, and then he uses it actually. In using it symbolically, the Old Testament land of Canaan is a symbol of the rest of God. And by rest, that would mean when they came into the land, and they did battle with all their enemies, and they put them all away as they were supposed to, and then they lived in peace in the land. And that was supposed to be a picture, in an earthly way, of what God does for us in a heavenly and spiritual way. The land of Canaan was a type of heaven. And that we know it was a type, we'll learn from chapter 11 of this book, where it says that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, and others, looked at that land of Canaan not as their final rest, but they looked to a heavenly country and a heavenly city whose builder and maker is God. And they entered into that rest by faith. Okay. So what happened to the Israelites when they came to the border of that land? They failed. They disbelieved. They would not believe the Lord and enter into that rest. And so the Lord says at Kadesh Barnea, you tempted me, you proved me at the waters of striving, the waters of Meribah. So your fathers tempted me. They proved me. They saw my work 40 years. I was grieved with that generation. I said, they shall not enter into my rest. But then it says here in chapter four that we who believe, verse three, we which have believed do enter into rest. As he said, I have sworn in my wrath if they shall enter into my rest. And so now the writer takes us all the way back to the creation that God rested from his works. And then he limits a certain day in David, again quoting from Psalm 95, today after so long a time, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, you can still enter into the rest. And then in verse 8, for if Joshua, that's what Jesus means there, because Jesus and Joshua are the same name, if Joshua had given them rest by leading them into the promised land, David wouldn't have spoken of another rest that was yet to come. And then he says that there remains yet a rest. But the word rest there is not katapaousis anymore. The word rest there is sabbatismos. There is a sabbatism that remains for the people of God. And then note what he says. For he that has entered into his rest has also ceased from his own works as God did from his. And this speaks of Christ and all who are in him. We have ceased from our own works, beloved. And we have entered into the gospel rest of Christ. And the Sabbath day is a weekly reminder of the gospel that we have nothing to offer the Lord. And he has done everything for us. And by faith and faith alone, we enter into his rest. Can we be thankful for the Sabbath? And this is why I said earlier that it's going to be difficult for those who are not keeping the Sabbath according to the scripture to maintain that gospel imperative in it and their gospel thankfulness because of it. So we rejoice finally, I have to close with this, that on the Sabbath day, the Lord does what he will describe for us in 58, 13 of Isaiah. 13 and 14, this wonderful teaching on the Sabbath in two verses, really the shortest compass and yet very, very deep. 13, if thou wilt turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words. Then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Let me close with this. The Lord here sets his Sabbath as it were a piece of property. A piece of property, and I'm going to maybe expand the illustration a little bit to say like a king and his castle. And so, Lord's day by Lord's day, the people of God are faced with a choice. This is what we're faced with. We can stay in our homes, in our hovels, and think of the king's palace that's surrounded by the serfs and their hovels, and their little hovels, their little huts, right? You got a rude little fire in there, and you got a little bit of rabbit that you've gleaned out of the field, and you know, it's not, it's not nothing, you know, it's something to be thankful for, yep. But that there's a trumpet that is blown one day out of the week. And what the king does is he throws open the doors of his palace and he says, come on in. I'm going to set out my daintiest of things for you to eat and drink. And what if we said, that's okay, happy with my rabbit. Beloved, isn't that what many do? And that's not thankful. There's no thanks in that at all. In fact, how do we say it? Would you like this? No thanks. There's no thankfulness in that. There's no thankfulness when God opens the doors of his palace and sets out his deities. Isn't that what it says? You'll delight in my delightful things. And notice what God also says in verses 13 and 14, that if you delight in my Sabbath, you delight in me. You recognize that it's my gifts that you're partaking of, that it's my stuff that I have given you out of my stock and store, out of the greatness of my own house and larder. And it is those spiritual things, the high places of the earth, which I have given as heritage to the sons of Jacob, is how he says it here. And we say, no thanks. Oh beloved, let it never be so among us. Let us not have ourselves excused from the banquet as those others who had some earthly concern that kept them away instead. Now I've married a wife, I've bought a yoke of oxen, I've bought a field, I need to walk it. Let us never be kept out in an unthankful way of the gates, the palace doors, by some earthly, and as Samuel Miller will say, groveling concern, that which lays low upon the ground of this earth, rather than being given wings to heaven on the Sabbath. Times of thankfulness. Why is the Sabbath a day of thankfulness? Why is it a good thing to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praise to thy name, O Most High, to declare thy lovingkindness in the morning and thy pleasure at night? Psalm 92. Because of these great reasons that God has attached to the Sabbath day. Beloved, can we be thankful at such times as God has required? Let's stand and call upon his name. Dear Heavenly Father, as we said at the outset, these are high and holy things, and our attitudes with much left by way of improvement to make, as we hear that scriptural standard and all that is attached to it. And so, Lord, we pray, help us then to give ourselves over to thankfulness for thy holy day, thankfulness for those set times, of worship that thou hast prescribed, that we may know that at those times we partake of true things of great privilege, and that it is indeed a fool's errand to say no thank you. So Father, we pray that thou wouldst press these things to our heart, help us to make good use of them, help us, Lord, not to let the cares of this world choke out thankfulness that we ought to have unto thee for thy holy day. We pray these things in Christ Jesus name. Amen.