Let's turn together again in God's word to the fourth commandment. As is our habit, we will read the entirety of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, as we consider each of these commandments in turn. So we'll look together tonight for the third and final time at the fourth commandment as we consider what it means to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. So let's look together at Exodus 20. We'll read from verse 1 to verse 17. We'll be paying special attention to verses 8 through 11 today. Exodus 20, verse 1. And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. So for the reading from God's word this evening, may he add its blessing to our hearts. When we come to the fourth commandment, Exodus 20, in verse eight, it begins with that word remember. Remember. That's the charge for the Christian, that we would remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, to remember the day of the Lord is to be mindful of the great work of God, specifically in two areas. When you see the reason for remembering the Sabbath day in the Exodus version of the Ten Commandments, it's because God created the heavens and the earth. When you look at the reason that God gives in Deuteronomy, it's that God is your deliverer, that he brought Israel out of the land of slavery. So on the one hand, you remember God as creator on his day. On the other hand, you remember God as deliverer. To remember the great works of God in creation and redemption, that is the joy of the Christian on the Lord's day. It means we have the privilege of meditating on him. of meditating on His works to, in a sense, bask in His glory as His people. And I want us as a congregation, before we leave this commandment, to make sure that that's what we're left with. That we're left with the great impression that our responsibility on the seventh day in the fourth commandment is not to suffer under the burden of do's and don'ts, but that we leave with an understanding that this day, that this day is a great privilege, is a great joy for the believer, that we would be able to draw near to God, that we would have one day in seven to remember Him and the work that He has done as Christians, It should be our joy to declare God's work of creation, to declare His work of redemption. And I don't want to leave this day without making that impression on us as a congregation. You see, we have a commandment that is positive. That is wonderful. And we know that because there is so much blessing for the people of God in remembering the Christian Sabbath. Or another way of saying that is the Lord's Day. And so as we consider that together tonight, I want to look, as we conclude our time in the Fourth Commandment, at three things. First, I want us to see that there is a Christian Sabbath. Second of all, I want us to see the blessing of this Christian Sabbath. And in the third place, I want to draw some conclusions about the Sabbath for us as the people of God. So we want to see that there is much blessing for the people of God in remembering the Lord's Day, in remembering this Christian Sabbath. We want to learn that by looking at the reality of a Christian Sabbath, the blessing of a Christian Sabbath, and we'll make some conclusions about this Sabbath. So first, let's look at the fact that there is a Christian Sabbath. Before we get to the blessing that the Lord's Day provides for us, it is important that we consider, at least in passing, why we celebrate the Lord's Day, the Sabbath, on the first day of the week and not on the seventh day of the week. Now, to do so, to make this case for the change of day from the seventh day to the first day, we can't point to one text in Scripture. We can't look at one place and say, here God explicitly says the day is moved from the seventh day to the first day. Instead, what we have to do is draw inferences from multiple texts. And we do that in different doctrines as well. So, for example, if you're trying to establish the doctrine of the Trinity, what you do is you look at different texts that talk about the divinity of the Son and the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the divinity of the Father. And from those three and the way in which the scriptures relate to or bring together oftentimes the three persons of the Trinity in doxology and those kinds of things, you extrapolate the doctrine of the Trinity. from that. And so the same thing is true on issues related to baptism. The same thing is true on issues related to the Lord's Day. How did it happen that the first day of the week became the celebration of the resurrection of Christ rather than the seventh-day Sabbath as it was celebrated by the Jews? Now, when we come to the seventh commandment, in verse 9 it talks about that there are six days for us to labor, and that the seventh day is a day of rest. Now, what we have to think about when it comes to six days labor, one day rest, we have to think of that as a cycle, not as a linear progression. So we don't think one, two, three, four, five, six. Those are for work, seven, that's the day for rest. Instead, it's a cycle that God implements at the beginning in creation. There are six days in his week that he makes, six days for laboring, and one day for resting. And so the seventh day in itself is not mandatory, but one day in seven is mandatory for resting for the people of God. So, as we think about the fourth commandment and the issue of when we should worship, we remember that cycle, okay? Now, as we've seen previously, the fourth commandment is not simply about when we should worship, right? We've seen that in the fourth commandment there's a great protection from God over His own worship that He sets aside one day in seven so that His people would not forget Him. But the when question of worship certainly is included in the fourth commandment as well. Now, throughout the Old Testament, the Sabbath was celebrated on the seventh day of the week, and that was done at God's command. But since Christ, and since His resurrection has taken place, that has moved, as we see in Scripture, to the first day of the week. Now, there are different explanations for why the Sabbath moves from the seventh day to the first day. Some people would say, and you will be able to guess who these people are from the description, that the authority of the Church, through the Pope, moved the seventh day Sabbath to the first day of the week. And so the Roman Catholic Church would say that the day was moved explicitly by the command of papal authority. They're not looking to scripture to establish the movement of the day from the 7th to the 1st, but they're saying the pope and the church authority itself established a movement from the 7th day to the 1st day of the week. So that's one way to explain the change. There is another set of people who said that the church chose a different day, it could have been any day, but it ended up being Sunday, as they thought about the resurrection of Christ. And because the day seven is ceremonial, the church could choose any day of the week, and so the church did choose any day of the week, and now we're just going to go along with the choice that the church made. And it may surprise you some of the names that subscribe to this way of thinking. One of them was John Calvin. John Calvin believed this to be the way the Sabbath day was chosen. It was a random choice by the church that now, for pragmatic reasons, we subscribe to. And many of the 16th century reformers, to some degree or another, would espouse that kind of view of how the day was changed from the seventh day to the first day of the week. But when it comes to Westminster's view... When it comes to the Presbyterian Reformed view, the view is this, that God, in His wisdom, through apostolic example, moved the day from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week. So the church wasn't free to choose whichever day it wanted. God explicitly, through the example of His apostles in the Scriptures, established a new day of worship for His people. The Christian Sabbath, as Westminster would be very free to call it, the Christian Sabbath is identical in requirement to the Jewish Sabbath in the sense of it requires rest and it requires worship. So it's identical in requirement, but it is moved to the first day of the week. And it is given a unique name in scripture. It is called the Lord's Day. So as the Lord's Supper is a special meal belonging to the Lord where his people remember his sacrifice, so the Lord's Day is a special day belonging to the Lord to remember his works of creation and redemption. And the day in Westminster's view, I think it's the right view, the day in Westminster's view is moved because of the significance of the first day of the week and at the Apostles example. So, to establish the significance of the first day of the week in Scripture, we have to look at several texts, and we have to look at the significance of the first day in the New Testament. If you look at Matthew 28 in verse 1, you see that Jesus is raised on the first day of the week. If you look at John 20 in verse 19, you see that Jesus first appeared to the disciples on the first day of the week. If you look at Acts 2 in verse 1, you see that the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost which takes place on the first day of the week. If you look at Acts 20 and verse 7, you see the disciples gathering for fellowship and for preaching on the first day of the week. If you look at 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 2, you see that offerings for the poor are to be collected on the first day of the week. And if you look at Revelation 1 and verse 10, you see that the revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John comes on the Lord's Day, which is the first day of the week. The first day of the week in the New Testament, extremely significant in the life and the worship of God's people. In fact, the only time that you have an explicit mentioning of the day of the gathering of the New Testament saints, it's always on the first day of the week. And the recognition of the Lord's Day, as it was called, the first day of the week for Christian worship, was immediately established in church history. Now, church history is not our authority, right? We're not a church that lives according to tradition, but we do allow tradition to inform what we do as a church. And so we can look at the writings of church history and see the establishment of first day of the week worship immediately in the life of the church. There is a man in church history, his name is Ignatius of Antioch. He was a disciple of the disciple John. Died anywhere between 110 AD and 140 AD. And in his letter, his epistle to the Magnesians, he writes this, those who have come to the possession of new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath seventh day, but living in observance of the Lord's day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death. And so the apostolic example that we've rehearsed very quickly through New Testament scripture is immediately carried forward, is immediately accepted, even by first-generation Christians in the early New Testament church. And on this first day of the week, We are not to work, we're not to make anybody else work, and we're to delight ourself in the Lord as he works in us and through us on this holy day. So there is a Christian Sabbath. That's what we want to establish first. Now what we want to see is the blessing of this Sabbath day to the believer. There is a tendency, It happens as soon as you start talking about the fourth commandment, as soon as you begin talking about the Sabbath day and the demands that the Sabbath day makes on the believer, there is a tendency in discussing the fourth commandment to immediately go to what we should and should not do. Can I do this? Can I not do that? Can I engage in this behavior? Can I not behave in that behavior? It is very important that, as Christians, we avoid this knee-jerk reaction to the Fourth Commandment. Now, I am not saying that it is not important for us to think through how we sanctify this Christian Sabbath day. I want us to be careful to think about how we honor the Sabbath, but we should not only think in terms of what we should and should not do, because if we only think in terms of what we can and cannot do on the Christian Sabbath, we will miss the great blessing that the Sabbath holds. Remember who gave you this commandment. The one who gave you this commandment is your Heavenly Father. Your Heavenly Father wants what is good for you. Your Heavenly Father wants what will bless you in the way that He knows you will be blessed, and He will love you only in that way. Let's think about it in terms of the human father. It's a very poor father who is only concerned with the behavior of his children. He's only teaching his children for outward conformity. The desire of a good father in addressing the behavior of his children usually is twofold. A Christian father will address behavior in his child in the first place because he desires his child to give honor and glory to God. That's his first desire. In the second place, he desires to train his children in right behavior that the child would be able to navigate life. in a way that is healthy, in a way that is good for him. So a father, a godly father, doesn't view his task in raising up his children as the same as training parrots. He doesn't simply want to train a reaction, something where the child's not thinking. He wants to train his child for a greater good. There's a greater good that the father desires for his children beyond simply external behavior. And that is how God the Father is with his children. even much more perfected than we are as human fathers. God wants not just external behavior, He wants what is good for His children through this behavior. So God the Father is not calling His children to remember the Sabbath day because that seems like a neat trick for them to learn. No, God the Father gives them the Sabbath, demands that they keep it because it is for their good. It is their blessing. Now, as we know, children sometimes complain about the rules of the house. But when children come to understand why the rules of the house are given, when they come to understand the benefit to these rules, the reason that exists behind them for their obedience, then oftentimes conformity becomes easier. It becomes at least clearer. So we want to think together today about the blessing of the Sabbath. And I've chosen four examples of how the Sabbath day blesses us. When scripture calls us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, we want to remember four blessings from the Sabbath for the people of God. In the first place, We see that the Sabbath helps the Christian remember God's unique place. In verse 8 of our text, it says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That's the charge for the Christian. And then verses 9 through 10 talk about how this charge is carried out, right? How it's to be remembered. And then verse 11 gives the reason. We are to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy in this way, ceasing from working, ceasing anybody else working for us, because God instituted it as creator. In Deuteronomy 5.15, a different reasons giving, we are to remember the Sabbath, we are to observe the Sabbath, because God delivered Israel out of Egypt. And so Sabbath is to commemorate God's work as creator, the source of your life, and it's to commemorate God's work as Redeemer, the one who rescues your soul. So in a sense, the stopping of our daily labors and the turning of our attention to God helps us to remember God's unique works of creation and salvation, redemption and creation. It's not unlike tithing. Tithing is to remind the giver. Tithing is not for the benefit of God. God is not in need of your money. God is not in need of your 10%. God gives you the ability to tithe and the privilege of tithing that you remember one thing, that all that you have comes from Him. And so it is with your time. God places a tithe on your time. It's one day in seven where He sets apart that time. God can accomplish all that He needs to accomplish without your time, without you stopping from your daily labors and contributing anything. He doesn't need you for anything. but he gives you this day as a blessing that you would be able to cease, that you would be able to enjoy a weekly reminder that God and God alone owns your time as creator and that you should use that time for his glory because he is your redeemer. So God and God alone is worthy of thanksgiving and it is expressed, you are reminded of that expression one day in seven. No Sabbath means no reminder. No reminder means eventually no memory. And it is a great blessing that God gives to us that we would remember Him as He is, that we would keep our eyes fixed on the works that He has done for the benefit of His people. And so, the Christian Sabbath helps us to remember God's unique place. The second blessing that the Sabbath brings to us is that it prepares the Christian to keep all the other commandments. Now this is linked to the first one, but in a sense it's different. Because God is remembered as unique this one day in seven, and the keeping of the fourth commandment sets aside our time and focuses on Him, it prepares the Christian to obey all of God's other laws. Keeping the Sabbath is a weekly reminder that God is to be worshipped. And when you live that out, you remember weekly, every week again, that God owns all your time. That he owns all your time on the first day of the week, but also that he owns all your time on the other days of the week as well. The worship of the Christian, of course, is not to be reserved just for Sunday. From Romans 12 and verse 1, we are told that we're to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, which is our spiritual worship. So that means that the worship that we engage in on the Lord's Day is really preparatory for the worship that we give to the Lord on the last six days of the week. To forget the Sabbath day, we have seen from the larger catechism, is the gateway to all impiety. And that means, then, that to remember the Sabbath day is the opening of the gateway to the very piety that flows from the worship of God. If forgetting the Sabbath day leads to impiety, remembering the Sabbath day, in a true and godly sense, okay, that's what we're talking about, we're not talking about a checklist, but in a true and godly sense, to remember the Sabbath day leads to piety. The second blessing of the Sabbath is that it prepares the Christian to keep all the other commandments. In the third place, as we look at the blessings of the Sabbath, we see that the Sabbath gives the Christian a foretaste of heaven. Now, I don't think we realize the full impact of this blessing because it's difficult for us to imagine heaven. But the things that we are engaged in on this first day of the week are the things that we will be engaged in perfection in heaven. In heaven, the activity of the saints and the angels is what? The activity of the saints and the angels in heaven is worship. We don't know a lot about heaven. But when we get a glimpse into heaven through God's word, we see that the angels and the saints are engaged in worship. In Isaiah 6 and verse 2, there's that description of the seraphim before the throne of God, and they're flying. They have six wings. With two, they cover their feet. With two, they cover their eyes. And with two, they're flying. And as they're doing that in the very presence of God, what are they doing? They're praising God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory. So the seraphim in heaven worship. You can go to Revelation 5, verses 6 through 11. You have there a description of heaven. It's a scene of the throne room, the four living creatures, the 24 elders, they're singing a new song. They're bringing the prayers of the saints before the Lord. And in verse 13, it says that the voice of every living creature in heaven and on earth gives worship to God. In Revelation 7, verse 9 through 11, there is a great multitude described in heaven, a multitude so great that no one can number it, and they're standing before the Lord, worshiping Him, and the elders fall on their faces before the Lord. Heaven is filled with the worship of God and the worship that we offer imperfectly today. is a foretaste of the glory and splendor of heaven. We have the blessing of participating today in what will be perfected in us in eternity in the heavenly places. And so the Sabbath third blessing is that God gives us a foretaste of heaven by corporate worship on the Sabbath day. And the fourth blessing of the Sabbath day, there are many more, I'm sure you can come up with your own, but the fourth one that I want to highlight for us today is that Sabbath keeping protects the Christian against Satan's devices. The prophecy of Jeremiah, as we've gone through it not too long ago, one of the things that I hope you remember from our study of Jeremiah is that Jeremiah is constantly confronting the people of God with their sin. And the people of God, the sin that he confronts them with in his book, is vast, is very broad. God doesn't send the people of Israel into exile for one little sin, but he shows that they've broken all of the moral law. They've really broken all of God's big commandments. And there's one chapter in specific that deals with Israel's Sabbath breaking. It's Jeremiah 17. And in Jeremiah 17, he's calling the people of God to repent of their Sabbath breaking. And specifically in verses 21 through 23, there the prophet is reminding Israel to keep the Sabbath day, but he points out how Israel refuses to listen. And they refuse to listen that they might not hear and receive instruction. The hardening of the heart of Israel in Sabbath breaking is for the end that they would not hear or receive instruction, in a sense that they would be handed over to their own desires, that the hardness of their own heart would take them as far from the Lord as they want to be. And, of course, we remember from the larger catechism that Satan has a specific desire in removing the Lord's Day. Satan desires the destruction of the Sabbath that he would bring in all impiety and irreligion. The natural man, of course, prefers to walk in his own ways, but the Sabbath day is that weekly opportunity to hear the voice of your loving Heavenly Father, to receive instruction from His Word. Now, we know from Scripture that if you are in Christ, that you delight to walk in his ways." Now, how do you know how to walk in his ways? Well, you know it from your own study of God's Word, of course. But when Scripture speaks of the instruction of the saints, it speaks, first of all, of corporate worship, the preaching of God's Word. The Sabbath gives you two opportunities for a time of training. To neglect the worship services of the Lord would be more significant even than neglecting family worship in your home. Imagine growing up in a home where God's word was never set in front of you. How would you learn? How would you hear God's voice? Well, that's what God is saying in Jeremiah 17 about the Sabbath. that this is the opportunity to hear and receive instruction from your loving Heavenly Father. So those are the blessings of the Sabbath day. God gives it to the people of God to build us up as sons and daughters. So don't view it as a curse. Don't view it as an inconvenience in your life, but train yourself to think of this first day of the week, this glorious day where we celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, train yourself to think of it as the great blessing it is intended to be for the believer. That is how God has intended it for us, and that is how we should view it. Now, how might we distract ourselves from keeping this commandment? That's the last thing we want to think about together, very briefly, as we have some concluding thoughts on the Sabbath. God, in his holiness, gives to man the blessing of Sabbath, but man, in his sinfulness, does much to work against the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day that lifts our eyes and our hearts to heaven, but our nature is such that we want to look at the things below. That's why we have a passage like Colossians 3, verse 2, where the Apostle Paul has to charge the Colossian believers, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. That's what we're prone to do. We're prone to have our eyes down on the things of the earth. We're to lift up our eyes to the things of heaven. So as we finish our study on the fourth commandment, let us consider together one more time what it means to sanctify the Sabbath day. In the first place, I want us to see that most significantly, keeping the Sabbath is spiritual first. Now, I'm not saying it's spiritual only, but it is first and foremost spiritual. No one can keep the Sabbath day when his heart is not completely devoted, given over to the worship of God. That's why I say that building a list about things you can and cannot do on the Sabbath day is a hopeless exercise. It's hopelessly inadequate when it comes to sanctifying the Lord's day. The reality that when we come to the thorny questions about the Lord's day, we think we have the gotcha moment where the pastor's not going to be able to explain clearly what we should or shouldn't do on the Lord's day. When it comes to those thorny questions, there usually isn't even one answer about whether or not it should be done on the Sabbath or not. Something may be a good practice on one day, but you talk to me the next Sabbath day when my heart and my motivations are different, and it won't be a good idea at all. Now what I'm not saying is that the Sabbath is now completely subjective and so just do whatever you want so long as it feels good in your heart. But what I am saying is that we should watch that we do not make what is designed for worship of God into something that worships self. that we so focus on what we have done, that we praise ourself instead of praising the Lord for the resurrection of Christ. That is what the Sabbath is for, to worship God. We shouldn't turn it into the worship of our own accomplishments. So the Sabbath is spiritual first. It's only physical and it's outworking by consequence. You understand what I mean by that? We work out what we do and don't do on the Sabbath out of love for God, because we desire to praise Him, because we desire to protect the day and walk according to His ways. So we keep the Sabbath spiritually first. The second thing, as we think about what it means to sanctify the Sabbath on top of what we've considered last Lord's Day, is that we should recognize that all of life is worship, that all of life is resting from sin. As Christians, we cannot compartmentalize our days into six days I do whatever I want, one day I'm devoted to the things of God. The first day of the week, prepares you to serve the Lord the other days as well. So God graciously gives us six days to do all our labors. He only demands one day for our rest. But on that one day, He does more in us so that He prepares us to worship and serve Him the other six days of the week. And so the Sabbath isn't your Christian minimum so that you can live like the world on the other days. No, God calls his people to holiness all seven days. You know what's amazing about the Sabbath? Is that an unbeliever can rest physically. The unbeliever can not work and not make anybody else work on Sunday. And he can hate God while he's doing it. So just resting isn't what is demanded of us. For the unbeliever who rests, where there are blue laws, for example, the motivation is not that God would be worshipped on this day, but rather that they could have a day off, that man can be idle. But the Sabbath prepares the putting off of sin. And the putting off of sin requires the work of the Spirit. And the work of the Spirit causes the Christian to delight himself in the Lord, according to Isaiah 58, in verse 13 and 14. And that's what we're being prepared for on this day, this day of worship. We're being prepared to delight ourselves in the worship of God, which will be perfected in heaven and can be practiced every single day that God has given to us. And so in the third place then, as we think about what it means to sanctify the Sabbath, we want to ask the Lord to impress on us the reality of the Sabbath as a blessing. I have found it to be true in the church that too often the Christian views the call to Sabbath rest largely as an inconvenience. And when he allows himself to think that way, he has taken the first step in fulfilling the devil's plans. The plan of the devil, the desire of the evil one, is that the people of God forget the glory and even forget the memory of the Sabbath. And step one to forgetting the glory and the memory of the Sabbath is to begin to view the Sabbath not as a blessing, but as an inconvenience. That's what happened to Israel. Israel in the Old Testament did not delight themselves in the Sabbath, but they viewed it as an inconvenience. You see that in the prophecy of Amos. The prophecy of Amos, chapter 8, verse 5. Israel's response to the Sabbath is this. When the Sabbath is celebrating, this is what the heart of Israel was saying. When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale? They're on the Sabbath resting, while all the while wishing that they didn't have to. They had a day reserved for the worship of God, and while they're living on that day, they were wishing that they could leave God behind, that they could begin their selling, their buying again. Brothers and sisters, that is to desecrate the Sabbath. That is to make evil what God made Good. Remember what God has called the Sabbath. What does God call the Sabbath? Let God define what the Sabbath day is for you. And God says the Sabbath day is a delight. That's how God defines the Sabbath. And if that delight is lacking in you, and if you find yourself grumbling over the worship of God, ask Him to change your heart. Ask Him to change you so that you would benefit from the special gift that God has given to you. And when you ask God in sincerity and humility, repenting of your grumbling against Him, He will change your heart. He promises so in His Word. In Isaiah 56, verse 6 and 7, He talks about what happens to the person that turns from delighting in self and begins to delight in Him. It says there, the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant, these 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. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. You want the joy that God gives? At least in part, it comes by rejoicing, delighting yourself in the worship, the day that he sets apart for his people. So turn to him. and rejoice on this day and see it as the blessing for you, for training you in worshiping Him. The fourth commandment is a call to rest. You are to rest. Everyone under your care is to rest. It's a day that's set apart by God that's significant to Him. He gives this day for worship and for worship only to do the works of piety, the works of mercy, the works of necessity that come our way. But do not just look at the outside of this day. Don't just look at what you must do or what you may do or what you mustn't do or what you may not do. Look at your heart. This day is a blessed day. It is a gift from God. to prepare his people for the Christian life in every other aspect as well. So serve the Lord on this day, give thanks to him on this day, and rejoice in the work that he does among his people, even as they rest in him. Let's pray together.