It is the fourth commandment from verse 8 through to 11 that we're going to consider for the last time in terms of this commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. That is what will be our focus this morning. Well, last time we were looking at this commandment we saw, didn't we, that it's absolutely essential we understand the context of the commandment. We are not to think about God's law or God's commandments in the same way you think about civil law and the laws that your Prime Minister sets or your government set. Because you see, the government or the authorities may set us laws that A. we think are bad laws, B. aren't good laws and we may question them and also we may think these laws come from an eyed heart that wants to actually pickpocket the people. Whether it's a taxation law or whatever, you've seen the riots, haven't you, in Paris because Macron has been setting heavy taxation rates and it's suppressed the people and so the people are saying we don't like this law, this law is a burden. But what we see is that the law of God, the commandments of God, come from a God who seeks relationship. A God who wants to know his people and be known by his people. A God who engages himself and covenants himself to the believer and says, if you want to know me, if you want to love me, if you want to experience me, if you want to enjoy me, here's how it's going to work. keep my commandments and here they are. And you know that that's true for any relationship to flourish, whether it's a marriage. If you keep committing adultery, the marriage isn't going to work, is it? If you keep lying to your spouse, the marriage isn't going to work. If you have a light view or a light thought of your spouse, That's not going to encourage an intimate relationship. And so actually when you look at these commandments in the context of a relationship, it makes sense when God says, have no other gods before me. Don't love anyone else. I'm your God. I'm your maker. I'm your redeemer and I'm your saviour and I am good. Why would you go to anyone else? And it makes sense why he would say, Do not make a graven image. Don't have an image in your mind of what I'm like that is inconsistent with who I am. Would your thought life and would your conceptions of me in your mind be thoroughly informed by the word of God? Think rightly about me. Think highly of me. And then do not take my name in vain. Don't have a trivial, casual attitude about me. Be serious to me. Whenever you hear the word of the Lord or bring the word of the Lord on your lips, be serious. Take it seriously. Be committed to me. And then fourthly, I'm just recapping because it's important we recap. Some people weren't here. I can't just land the helicopter. And anyway, I'm sure you've forgotten some things. And then, look, if this relationship's going to work, be devoted to me with your time. I am God. I made time. You are a creature of time. Show me your devotion in the way you use your time. Give me one whole day and order the other six days around the one day. That demonstrates that I am your God. When the people say, why is it that you're being so organised and you're making every effort to ensure that you are prepared to be free on this day to worship God, you say, because God is worthy of all my time and all my devotion. Can you imagine? You think about it, if you didn't have these commandments you wouldn't have a relationship with God. Would you have a relationship with God if you never spent time with him? If 52 weeks of the year, say you live 85 years, 85 years of your life, there was never once in that whole time, a whole day, you spent with God. Your relationship's not going to be very good, is it? It's going to really, really suffer. And so therefore, I'm just going to bring this back to our minds because I'm going to be assuming this now as I go on, we have to keep in mind that relationship is the context through which these commandments are given. And therefore to say it's a burden, it's not fair, you fail to grasp the nature of God, the nature of his commandments and the purpose of them for us as human beings. And so we saw, therefore, just to look at the— because last time I went from the context, the relationship, I then spent a bit of time exploring the commandment's practice. Just briefly, we didn't get into every nook and cranny of every single application, but just the bare bones. So God gives you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and he says, do all your work on six. All of it. And that Hebrew word for work includes all your earthly pursuits. your recreations, your pleasures, your business, all those things, do all of it on 6th, rest on the 7th, in it, in that day, you shall do no work. But, why? Remember the Sabbath. In other words, look back to the God who made this day for all humanity and blessed it and set it apart and said, I give my creation, men and women, a day on which their souls can be utterly blessed. And so let that remembrance of that day arouse in you great anticipation, great excitement, great longing and therefore clear practice to keep that day. Deuteronomy, which also summarises the commandments, doesn't say remember the Sabbath day, it says observe the Sabbath day. And we saw that didn't we, that that implies make every single effort. You've got a holiday, you're making every effort to make sure you're ready for the holiday, the bags are packed. The underwear's packed, the suitcase is full, the car's packed, you've cleared all your earthly things, you've dealt with your emails, you've turned them off, you're ready for your holiday. Well in the same way, make every effort to hedge this day about and ensure that this day can happen in your lives. Now that was the bare bones of the practice. That was the nitty-gritty. I just want to read you the Confession of Faith. just to summarize that what I said last time is perfectly in keeping with what brothers and sisters and believers have believed since the beginning of time but was recaptured in the Reformation. So chapter 22 of the 1689 Confession says, it is a law of nature, it's essential to man's being that in general a proportion of time by God's appointment should be set apart for the worship of God. So he is given in his word a positive moral and perpetual commandment binding on all men in all ages to this effect. He is appointed one day in seven for Sabbath to be kept holy to him. So that's the principle. And then we get to the application. The Sabbath is to be kept holy to the Lord by those who are after necessary preparation of their hearts. We prepare our hearts for this day. It impacts what we do Sunday morning and Saturday night. We prepare our hearts, and we make prior arrangement of our common affairs, and we observe all the day the holy rest from our works, words, thoughts about our worldly employments and recreations, and we give ourselves over to the public and private acts of worship for the whole time. and carrying out the duties of necessity and mercy. And we will come back to those principles as we go through this series but you can see this is thoroughly mainstream Christianity until recently. And I'm not surprised in a time when people do not love God that there goes the desire to spend time with God. But we're going to look at the commandments from a different angle today. I'm not going to spend ages going over the nitty-gritty but we will do some overlap of course because repetition is good. You know the Bible repeats things a lot. Because human beings forget. But I want to take this opportunity to draw out why this commandment is such a mouth-watering prospect for the true believer. And I want to ask some questions now. And these are the questions I want you to have in your mind as I proceed. Because I'm going to be seeming to answer them and show you why these questions are stupid. Where is the hardship? Where is the restrictiveness of this command? Where is the harshness of this command? How can it be said a difficult thing to do? How can this day be considered to be bondage? Where is the difficulty in this day? In other words, where is the hardship? Where is the burden? Because that's the accusation to this teaching, legalistic. And I want to ask, as I go through what the purpose of this day is for, I'm asking you to tell me where is the burden? Where is it? That's the question. Because I want to propose to you, if there is no burden in keeping this day, why don't we keep it? Why won't we honour it and do what our Maker commands us to do? And if you're not a Christian here, and some of this may be like, well, I'm not even a Christian, I'm not even saved. Well, as you're listening to this, I'm hoping that it will reveal why you need to be saved. Because I don't think any of us, even believers, can claim that we've been keeping this commandment, even as believers. So, certainly, as unbelievers. So, firstly then, I've got three points. I'm going to give you them now. The freedom of the day, the focus of the day, and the far reach of the day. Three Fs. The freedom of the day, the focus of the day, and the far reach of the day. Now firstly, let's look at the freedom of the day. It's a day of freedom, friends. Work six, don't work one. Leave your work on the six. Be free on the one. Now, the question is, why is it a Day of Freedom? Where do we get the essence of this in it? Well, we need to consider again afresh, in relation to these questions we're asking, what the purpose of the day originally was. We need to do some overlap and go back. And this takes us back to Genesis, doesn't it? God rested on the Sabbath. Why do we rest on the Sabbath? Because God set us an example by resting on the Sabbath. God created all things in the space of six days and all very good. God determined reality. God out of his power and wisdom made all things. All the things which you're so desperate to not give up on the Sabbath, to keep on the Sabbath, God made those things and said they're good because he is supremely good. He is the awful good. God is good. And what God was doing then in working on six and then resting on one, he was setting us an example. God didn't need to rest. God doesn't get tired or weary. God was showing us what it means to be a man or a woman made in his image. It is doing what God does. And it is delighting in his glory. God spoke and he made the light. He made the day. He made the stars. He made the moon. And he was saying, this is all good. This is all good. It declares my glory. I'm seeing something of my greatness in all of these things. And then he made man and he made woman. All very good. But you see, he then made the Sabbath. And in Genesis it's very clear that the Sabbath, although man is the pinnacle of God's creation, the Sabbath is the pinnacle of the created week. It climaxes the day's climax at the Sabbath. God finished all he had made. It was all very good. Then God rested and he blessed the seventh day. Now, I want to ask you, what kind of rest was he doing? Because he was resting. It's what the text says. But we've just established that God doesn't get weary or tired. This is an important question. Well, have you ever been on holiday and you're doing a little walk. You're not tired. You're perfectly fine. You could go on for another two or three hours. But you suddenly see an amazing view and you want to stop. Why? To catch your breath. Not catch your breath because you're tired. To take it in. You couldn't dare proceed a moment further. I have got to put everything down and just go... And there God is. He's created everything and it's all very good. And what he's doing on the seventh day he's seizing from his work and creation and he's enjoying his work of creation because his work of creation declares his greatness and his glory and that's all God has been doing for all eternity delighting in his glorious being because he's the highest of all beings and he can't delight in anything lesser than his being and he therefore says The goal of creation is not creation, the goal of creation is me. And he delights in creation, therefore setting us an example. And he invites us to go do all that we have to do in six days and then on the seventh day to go, wow, God's glory, God's greatness, God's majesty, God's power, God's splendour. To delight in God. to enjoy him, as the catechism says. Because here's the thing, you're made in the image of God. I'm made in the image of God. And we are like God when we do what God does. And God delights in his glory, friends. And so we are only like God to the extent that we delight in his glory. How we delight in his glory is spending all of our time delighting in the things we're doing. And we'll never say, actually, he deserves some contemplation in my life. He deserves some focus of my time. And so to despise this day is to despise the reason you were made and to despise the God who made you. Where's the burden in a day delighting in God? I'm listening. Is there a burden in that? It's a question, isn't it? And the freedom of the day is seen even more in the fact that God made this day of rest not after the fall, but before the fall. There was no sin in the world. Now, when we think of rest, we think of it in the sense of, I'm very tired now, work has been hard, my boss has been annoying, and the demands have been great. I need rest. But you see, before the fall, there was no burden to work. Work would have been refreshing. And yet, even Adam, prior to fall, needed a day of rest. And so, strictly speaking then, the freedom of the day is found not in necessarily stopping work. Stopping work is only necessary so that you can do something else. But the purpose of the day is actually to positively do something else, which is to marvel at God. and delight in Him and enjoy Him and love Him, to behold Him. It is to be delivered from labour to be taken up with a holy activity of beholding and contemplating the God for whom you were made. It is seizing from physical work to be taken up with soul work because we're body and soul and therefore our time and our week should reflect that reality. If you just work all the time, just so you can put food on the table and feed your bellies, and you just rest and you watch telly and you just recreate all the time, all you're doing is saying, really, all that matters is that I'm like my dog who gets tickled on the ear and gets excited, that I'm physically being happy. But we're soul, my friends, as well as body. And this is a day for the soul. And the body will obviously be benefited when the soul is being stirred and refreshed, because those two things belong together. Where's the burden? I'm going to keep asking this question. Where's the burden? I'm waiting. I want to know where the burden is in this. Where's the hardship? How is that slavery? Isn't slavery having to work all the time? But I've been given a day to satisfy my soul with God. I've been given a whole day to just behold all that He is in His majesty. We love bank holidays, don't we? And when you have a bank holiday on Monday, where's the burden in saying, I'm free to play golf? That would be a burden for me. But for you, I know some of you are keen golfers. I'm free to go to the art museum and look at Picasso. That sounds a bit like a burden of some. It's great prospect. I'm free from that which prevents me from doing this, but I now don't have to do that, and I'm free to engage in the things that really I want to be doing. Where's the burden for the believer with whom Jesus is the lover of their soul, the all-consuming passion of our hearts, who's loved us with an everlasting love, who's grabbed you from the plight of hell, the grip of Satan, the wrath of God, and has brought you into his everlasting life, who's brought you into light, he's given you everlasting life, he's given you a new heart, a new mind, a new nature, a new... Oh, behold, the old has gone, the new has come, Paul says, to live is Christ, he says, to die is gain. I count all things lost compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Him. And God says, you've got a day where you can do that. For the true believer, where's the burden? Where's the burden? Where's the hardship? If we love God, we should love the Sabbath. And added to that, sinners come into the world. We needed Sabbath before sin, as I said, because it was made for man, as man, sinless. But man has fallen. What was the consequence of the fall? I haven't got time to do biblical references so I'm assuming lots of things here. But what was the consequence of the fall? One of it was that labour would be difficult. Work would be hard. Men and women, is work not hard? It bears thorns and thistles. It's suffocating. It's a noble thing to do. When you are working, you are being like the God who made you. Work is a high vocation. And your job means the world to God. He wants you to do it. But because of sin, it is hard. It is the hardest thing we'll be doing all of our lives. It's tiring. It doesn't produce the outcomes we hope. It causes conflict in our lives, stress, anxiety, depression, worry. Now if Adam needed a day of rest before sin when work was a delight, but he still needed it as part of being man in the image of God, my friends, how much more do we need a day where we can just say, just shut that off, to be taken up with the God who is life and light and good. Where's the burden? You know, we have, as believers, an enemy. We have Satan. We have the world. And is it not true, every single day of our lives, Satan and the world and our pressures and our work make Bible reading hard? make it hard to spend time with brothers and sisters, make prayer hard. Our mental energy is sapped. We then have all the mind-numbing entertainment that we feel that we need and so there's little time left for spiritual disciplines. Is it not true that Satan spends all his week trying to make the believer forget God? Forget your salvation. That's why it's okay for the preacher to preach similar things you've heard before because all week we're forgetting it. Not intellectually but we are forgetting it. We are forgetting it. He is squeezing us. Forget God. Forget God. Ignore God. Shut off God. Run away from God like Jonah did. Hide from God. You can't afford to read your Bible today. You've got too much to do. Now, God knows this. God knows the forces with which we have to fight with every day. Enemies without and enemies within. My sinful nature and the enemy of God's people. And he says, one day, where you can recover, recuperate, refix your gaze, be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, and then you can go into the next week fuelled up. And no, it doesn't happen in ways like that. Sometimes a preacher's sermon's drowsy or we're just not well or whatever. There's all sorts of human reasons. But that's the point of the day. The day is that you come, you have your gaze refixed on the author of your salvation, you reflect on the power of God and the redemption of God, and you go into the week saying, I will serve my King this week. Where's the burden? Where's the burden? Let me quote a contemporary preacher. Some of you may ask, why did the Lord keep one day in the week for himself? He can't be benefited by man's keeping the Sunday holy. Our goodness can't reach to him. He has no need of our services. He who commands the adoring praises of heaven, I'm sure he gets a better worship service in heaven than he does here, whose ear is filled with the glad songs of angels, he can't need ours. No, my brethren, we need Him. We cannot be happy without Him. We must get to heaven. Our God knows that. And He wants us to come to Him and be happy in His great love. And He has shown us the right way and He has given us the Lord's day on purpose that all, especially His hard-working and weary children, might have time to learn it. And so back to the question that people always ask today. I've heard it in so many different places. What activities can I do on a Sunday? Is it okay to watch films? Is it okay to watch television? Is it okay to play PS3? You know, you go on all these lists. What that's basically saying is, at what point can I stop doing the things I should be doing on the day to do the things I really want to be doing? You're trying to find out what's the minimum I can get away with. Because the idea of not doing those things is a horrible prospect. It will leave such a vacuum in my soul. It will leave such a vacuum in my life. So can you give me a list? Because once I've ticked off that list, then I can get back to the things I really want to be doing. Do you not see that? But you see, when we say the freedom of this day to positively do all of these things, you don't even have to be asking, what shouldn't I be doing? Because you want to be taken up with, what should I be doing? And what I shouldn't be doing is implied in what I should be doing. Where's the burden? It's a burden for someone who's not a Christian because they don't delight in God. They don't love Christ. And so when you say to them, delight in Christ and delight in God, they say, no, I love the world. I love pleasure. I love sin. Where's the burden? Where's the hardship? That was the freedom of the day. Secondly, the focus of the day. So this is where we're moving on now. So we've got this opportunity for liberation and freedom. We now come to why it's such freeing. The focus, verse 10. Six days you shall labour, do all your work, verse 9. But the seventh day is a Sabbath, the Hebrew says, to the Lord your God. We touched on this but it was very rushed last time. To the Lord your God. The purpose defines the activity. This is where we're going to now start. We're going to be starting to get to activity, but not because I'm giving you a list, but more because to understand the purpose it's going to mean certain things, obviously. You have to apply it. Two gods. When you have a wedding, is it not true that the nature of a day defines the activity of the day? If you have a wedding day, men, there are certain things you don't do on that day. Why? Because you understand that this day is not for doing those things. I'm getting married. I am not playing golf. I've got to be there on time. I've got to make sure I've had my hair cut. There are certain prerequisites to enjoying a wedding day and so the purpose of the day defines the activities of the day. When someone says, look, you really shouldn't be watching television at one o'clock when the bride's coming in, you're not going to go, that's legalistic. You're going to go, no, of course I shouldn't because I should be doing this. Or a wedding anniversary. Think of a wedding anniversary. Like remembering the Sabbath, you remember, okay, we got married. We got married, in my case, seven years ago. And August the 6th means it's our anniversary. And that means that if I have the time and we can make it happen, there's certain activities we should be doing to remember and observe our anniversary. I can't say I've remembered and observed the anniversary by just saying, I saw it in my calendar. I remembered it, yeah, but you didn't do anything. I observed it, well, yeah, I observed it in my day one diary, but no, to remember and observe means to do something about it and to pursue, so you might go for a meal, you might have some flowers, you might have a present, you might have a poem, if you're that way inclined. The anniversary, the purpose of the day defines the activity of the day. Now, I will be fair here, and I will caveat, because you see, when people want you to write a list, I think to myself, if I was to tell you that this day could be lived to God… then I think the kinds of activities are going to be obvious. But, to be fair, maybe some believers the question comes from a place of just simply, I've never heard this teaching, I've never been taught, I want to in my heart obey this, but I've had no model or example of this, and so what does it look like? And if that's where you're coming from, that's fair enough. That's fair enough. Won't it leave a vacuum? What could I do? If you've lived your life as a non-Christian, you think, well, if I don't do the things I've always been doing seven days a week, what do I do? I don't know. Well, okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Does it just mean sitting at home in silence, reading my Bible all day? Well, that's what we're coming on to, the focus of the day. God delighted in his glory revealed in creation. That's what verse 11 tells us. It's the reason God made six days rest on the seventh. In Deuteronomy chapter 5 we're also told, aren't we, that the other reason Israel was to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy and observe it was because they were redeemed by God. So the Sabbath then is a day where God's people fill their minds with the glorious works of God in creation and in redemption. They cast their minds back to the God who made them and think about his power and his wisdom and his creativity and his love and his mercy. And then they think about their redemption and think about his grace and his pity. and his love which is an electing love which set its heart on the ill-deserving sinner. And so as God delighted in his glory, we are delighting in his created glory and in his revealed glory on this day. Which is why, if you were to read — and I haven't got time to read the verses — but if you were to read in Leviticus 23, it talks about the holy assemblies. And it has all these — for example, it says in Leviticus 23, in the first three verses, that part of the Sabbath involved Israel coming together in holy assemblies. Why? Praise. Hearing God's words. In fact, in Nehemiah 8, verse 9, we read that, on the day they gathered, and the Scriptures were read, and meaning was explained. We know, don't we, from 2 Corinthians 4, where does God's glory supremely shine now? God's glory shines through his word. And so, therefore, the day is to be to God, to be enjoying God and his glory, and therefore, we want to be pursuing whatever activities enable us to do that, to delight in the revealed glory of God in creation and in redemption. This is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. You know, isn't there so much, Church, if you're like me and you forget in the week and you start to feel self-pity and worry and anxiety and you question your assurance, don't you need to contemplate your redemption? Don't you need to remember your bondage to sin? Don't you need to remember your total inability to respond? And don't you need to remember the power that woke you up? The love which changed you? The love which reached out to you? And so, this is a day to be filled with the mighty works of God. Now, of course, it doesn't mean 24 hours at church. It just means we do activities which allow that to happen. seized from physical activities that we normally do to pursue other activities that help us to live to God. Now, of course, there are clearly works of necessity, right? Eating, sleeping, sitting, cooking. Though you might do as much as you can to do as less of that as you can the day before or the week before, nevertheless, in order to do the activities you should be doing on the day, they have to be done. You need to sleep because you need to listen at church, maybe. You need to cook because if you don't eat your tummy will be rumbling all the way through church and fellowship. But it's not just therefore activities which fill our minds with God and what he's done for us that we to do. Because you see there was one kind of activity God didn't stop doing on the Sabbath and has never stopped doing. God finished his works of creation but he never ceased his works of mercy. and providence and upholding all things by the word of his power, of providing food, of sending rain, of doing good. That's why when you fast forward to Jesus and the Pharisees were having a go at him for healing people, he says, my father's been working until now. My father's been doing good and I'm doing good. Should I kill life or save life? Anyway, we will come to that. But the point I'm making is therefore not just are we to do any activity which helps us grow in our knowledge and understanding of the glory of God in our salvation and in our redemption, but we are also to do those activities which further the welfare of those around us. So the question is, what can I not do? The question is, how can I do all that's possible to do? Visiting the sick, visiting the elderly, having fellowship, catching up with one another, encouraging one another. Think of all the one another's in scripture. Show hospitality to one another, encourage one another, stir up one another, love one another, bear one another's burdens. Well, this is a day for the one another's, friends. This is a day for evangelism. Jesus did so much of his ministry, his evangelism, on the Sabbath. He did. He preached and he reached out. So there's so much that you could do. The question is, how do you have time to do the other things? To be honest, there's so much that one could do that you couldn't do it all in one Sabbath and so you might have to have a different kind of Sabbath each Sabbath. One week you have hospitality and fellowship, another week you may have out on some tracks or whatever, another week you may visit an elderly in the church. There's so much that can be done on the Sabbath, so much possibility. In other words, the commandments are God's moral law. God's moral law is a reflection of his being and God, even on the Sabbath, is still expressing his being. And that being, that commandment is divided into two. Love your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. And so God's being is fulfilling his law at all times. Loving his neighbour. Loving creation. And so we on the Sabbath love God. We come to church. We come to Sunday school. We hear the works of God. We talk about the works of God. Commandments 1 to 4. Commandments 6 to 10. We seek the good of men and women around us. And that, my friends, causes us to enjoy God. Because Jesus knew great delight in doing the will of his Father. And there is great blessing and experience of God's presence in doing these things. That's how we keep it holy. That's how we keep it separate. It's a day for setting the captives free. binding wounds, encouraging the faint-hearted, comforting the downcast, renewing bonds in the fellowship, strengthening families and friendships, building the church, overcoming darkness and indeed going on the front foot and fighting spiritual battles. The people of Israel marched around Jericho. How many days? Seven. They were marching on the Sabbath. They were doing spiritual battle on the Sabbath. And we fight God's battles on this day. So, how do you live a day to God? Well, you're going to have devotions, prayer, worship, instruction, care for members, fellowship, reading of scripture. Oh my friends, there is so much to fill the day with. Once we grasp the aim of the day, the freedom of the day, what time is there to be doing anything else? Now, my last point then, that we're going to be coming onto now, is the far reach of the day. We need to remember the far reach and you see that in the second part of verse 10. Now this is where it will be difficult and I need much grace to teach this because I have found this particularly challenging for me. We read that it's not just a day for you to rest but your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your cattle. nor your stranger who is within your gates. Now, love your Lord your God as yourself, love your neighbour as yourself. Love your Lord your God, love your neighbour as yourself. Can we claim to love God by seeking this day for ourselves whilst not helping others to also enter into this day that God has made? Can we claim to be loving our neighbour as myself when we make our neighbour do that which we wouldn't want to be doing on this day? the far reach is all-encompassing. That's why it wasn't made for God. The Sabbath was made for man as man. It is morally binding on all men and women. In other words, if we want to be free on this day to worship God and enjoy Him, we should want others to also be free to worship God and enjoy Him. If we say we're serious about people coming in and worshipping among us, how can we then in the afternoon or before church go and use the services of others which prevents them from coming in? The text is very clear that God is expressing this isn't a selfish thing just for you. This is for you to also promote among all other people. Because if you love your neighbour as yourself, you would want everyone that comes into contact in your family and in your friendships to experience the blessing of the day. Because friends, men and women are in bondage to sin, the world and Satan. And we have come to know the liberation of being set free by God and forgiveness of sins. And we want others to experience that joy. This Sabbath wasn't just made for believers but for all mankind. Man will be held accountable before God for breaking this commandment. Because God made time and man owes God his time. And so therefore it's not just a duty we owe to God. It's a duty we owe to our fellow men and women, our friends and family. I should not want someone to work to serve me so I can be free to do the Sabbath whilst they're in bondage working to serve me. I should want all men and women to enter in to this day of rest. In fact, Deuteronomy 5 verse 14 makes this clear why he says this. He says, so they may rest as well as you. Be a witness to them in what they're missing out on. Point them to the call to be blessed by observing the one day in seven. How can we proclaim the blessings of the Lord's Day of public worship and encourage others to come and receive the same blessing, as I said, if we use their services to serve us, to promote the very things which keep them from coming in? Now you might say to me this, and this is the objection that I've heard many a time, Well, if I don't go and eat in their restaurant, if I don't go and shop in their shops, they still will work anyway. That's what people say. Very common objection. Okay, let's look at it like this. You're a Christian doctor. You believe abortion is wrong. Someone comes to you and wants you to help them through the process of getting an abortion. Now, you're not going to say, well, if I don't do it, another doctor will. You're not going to say, well they do it anyway, so I might as well do it. No, you're going to say, I will not have their blood on my hands. My conscience, I will not take part or participate in their sin. And so, if we want other people to know their sin, and to know that they've fallen short from not giving God their time and we also want to witness what we want them to see in our lives, the blessing it gives. How can we want them to work to serve us and in so doing they're breaking the commandment and we're breaking the commandment by not seeking their blessing and their freedom and their liberation. If you believe, as I do, that all men and women are responsible to worship God, to rest in Him, you can't at the same time do that which requires them to work to serve you. It must have been a temptation, mustn't it, for Israel? I'll tell you what, we want our businesses to stop. We have to, because God said. But I'll tell you what, so that we can keep making profit, we'll get the sojourners and the visitors among us, we'll ply off the work on them so we can have a rest and they can work for us. God says, no. Now, Obviously, some work has to go on on Sunday, doesn't it? Doctors. We talked about that God does good to men and women on this day, so any job which serves the physical, emotional, mental well-being of men and women has to go on this day. Clearly, some form of transport is going to have to go on this day, isn't it? Not everyone has a car to get about. Clearly, the power stations are going to have to work if we want electricity. So evidently there's some kind of work that must be done. Now of course, one has to be sensitive here because there may be some believers who are in a situation where They cannot find another job. They have done all they can to find another job. They have done all they can to seek a better job. But for the present moment in time, they can only do the job they are presently in, and their taskmasters and employers insist they work on Sundays. In that situation, they have to put food on the table, and their situation should arouse sympathy in brothers and sisters. clearly they have to work. To be honest, they're in a similar situation to the early church. Many of the early church were slaves and they would meet at five or six in the morning and then go off to do their duties. Those people in those situations should feel our compassion. But many people use it as an excuse. They say, well, you know, I have to work on this day. Well, have you really sought a different job? Have you really looked for another one? So this day is a day for loving God and loving our neighbour. I should be seeking in my actions to promote their well-being. You wouldn't say what's the point promoting trying to fight against abortion because the majority are against it. You still believe you have a moral responsibility to seek to rid the world of that evil. And we should seek to say to people, men and women, hey, you don't have to work. There's something far more better for you to be doing on this day. Now can you imagine the witness this would be to men and women? Can you imagine the what this would communicate to people around us. Isn't this preachy? He says, people might say, the Gentiles, the unbelievers might say, who are these Christians who abstain from work and entertainment on Sunday so that they may worship? We see churches open, full of people commemorating, remembering their creation and their salvation, worshipping together. You see, when God's people really take this day seriously, it proves our faith, It proves that Jesus is the desire of our hearts. It proves commandment number one. You shall have no other gods before me. Before our families. We would rather offend brother, sister, mum, dad than almighty God who has saved us and redeemed us. it vindicates the greatness of the Gospel among unbelievers around us. And I just wonder, I just wonder, in this day and age where people say Christians aren't to be taken seriously, imagine if Free Grace Belvedere started being a Sabbath-keeping church, and people are finding, these people, they just spend a whole day together with God and doing good things, and they arrange their whole weeks to be free on that day. It could beg the question, what would motivate them to do that? I want to go and find out. But if we don't keep the Sabbath and we live our lives like everyone else does, what's that say about our God? That he's worthy? That he's amazing? That he's captivated us? That he loves us? To run away from the Sabbath, friends, is to run away from God. It is to do what Jonah did. It is to get up and run. And the only reason someone would be listening to me now and saying, this sounds terrible, is if you delight in the external form of worship but do not have the spirit of worship. You're like Israel. God says, I want no more of your offerings and your sacrifices and your songs and your prayers. I want your hearts. And this day then has a profound call on our lives. Where's the burden? I welcome you to tell me where the burden is in this. I can't see one for the true Christian who loves God, loves Christ, and loves his fellow man. And I want to encourage other men and women from now on, because I've sinned in this area. I preached to you as a sinner to sinners, and I'm saying I want my life to honour God in the fourth commandment, because to break the fourth commandment is to break the whole law. I want to serve Him. I want to be able to say with the psalmist, blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with their whole heart. And may we know the great blessing of keeping the Sabbath holy and enter into the joy of beholding the glory of God and finding our rest in Him. Amen.