The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, June 8, 2008, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Speaking to the church of Thyatira, the Lord Jesus says, Nevertheless, that which you have, hold fast until I come. Let us pray. Our Father, we draw near to you again, conscious that as we come to the preaching, teaching of your Holy Word, we need, desperately need, present and powerful activities of your Spirit. Your servant needs Him to give him utterance in the opening up and applying of your truth Those gathered in this building need Him as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, giving understanding and giving an inclination of affection to You and to Your truth, a disposition of faith and obedience. O Lord, we have great needs, but come by Your Spirit, we pray, and meet those needs. To the praise of the glory of Your grace, we plead. In Jesus' name, Amen. I have entitled my final series of sermons preached to you as one of your pastors parting counsels to the members and friends of Trinity Baptist Church. The foundational and all-embracing word of counsel had two major headings. The first being, in faith and love, cling tenaciously to the person of Christ. And then secondly, out of faith and love, obey resolutely the word of Christ. And then the first specific application of these words of Jesus to hold fast until I come, the words of Revelation 2.25 was this, hold fast your biblical churchmanship. And I then focused upon seven aspects of biblical truth which constitutes the specifics of a vigorous biblical churchmanship. And now this morning, and God willing again this evening, I purpose to address two more specific areas of biblical truth and practice. I take up the first in this hour, and it is this. Hold fast your convictions and practice concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. Hold fast your convictions and practice concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. That is, God's appointed day for social worship, physical rest, works of necessity and mercy, and celebration of our gospel rest in the finished work of Christ. Now, by way of introduction to this word of counsel and exhortation, I want to say two things. First of all, why do I use the terminology Lord's Day Sabbath? Well, I use it because according to the New Testament, the special day marked out by apostolic approval and guidance of the churches is called the Lord's Day, the first day of the week. Acts 20 verse 7, 1 Corinthians 16, 2 and Revelation 1 and verse 10. However, As our confession of faith so clearly states it, this day, called the Lord's Day, did not drop down out of heaven with the apostles. We believe it has an organic relationship with the creation ordinance of the day of rest as sanctified by God Himself, Genesis 2, 1-3, and the day of rest mandated and marked out by the fourth commandment, in which keeping Sabbath is clearly stated as an integral part of bearing the image of God. the God who created for six days and rested on the seventh. And Jesus said, with respect to that institution in Mark 2 27, man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for, and their definite article is there in the original, for the man. The man, Adam, in his sinless pristine state coming from the creative hand of God, yet God knew that Adam, as image of God, was to structure his life in seven-day cycles, six of labor, and one for specific focus, rest, reflection, and worship of his God. All that was distinctively Jewish and a part of the old covenant Jewish Sabbath went into Christ's tomb, and there it is forever buried. But what came out of Christ's tomb with him in his resurrection life in glory is the Lord's Day Sabbath. That is a Sabbath, a day of appointed rest and social worship and works of mercy and necessity and remembrance of a completed salvation in Jesus Christ. What comes out of Christ's tomb is the Lord's Day Sabbath, stripped of everything that was distinctively Jewish, including the seventh day, and is clothed with all the realities of new covenant salvation in Jesus Christ, and the breaking in of the age to come in the resurrection of Christ. so that we understand our Bibles to set before us an organic relationship between Sabbath as creation ordinance, Sabbath as part of the Jewish mosaic economy, and now Sabbath as the Lord's Day Sabbath in Jesus Christ. Now, having addressed why this terminology, the Lord's Day Sabbath, I want to say a word about what I propose to do in this hour. I am not planning to set before you a condensed version of the biblical, exegetical, theological, and historical data which warrants the recognition of a Lord's Day Sabbath. addressing several passages in the New Testament that appear to teach otherwise, that has been done frequently in the life and ministry of this assembly. If you were to look at an exhaustive catalog of the sermons preached in this place, there have been series preached on the subject of the Lord's Day Sabbath, Sunday school classes in which the confession of faith and its statement on the Lord's Day Sabbath has been expounded. There have been individual sermons and lessons taking up practical issues. Good books have been recommended, such as Pastor Walter Chantry's book called The Sabbath of Delight, Dr. Joseph Piper's books, And even a few months ago, I held up before you a chart trying to demonstrate a biblical theological demonstration of the organic relationship of that original creation Sabbath and the Lord's Day Sabbath as it is our possession in Jesus Christ. So I do not propose in this hour to set forth the evidence for that that has been preached. I believe, I trust responsibly and thoroughly. Rather, I want to give some practical counsel on the issue of this matter of the Lord's Day Sabbath. Now in urging you to hold fast to your convictions and your practice relative to the Lord's Day Sabbath, let me take up first of all two questions with you. Question number one, why is the matter of the Lord's Day Sabbath so crucial an issue? Here I am, my last two Lord's Days among you after 46 years of labor. If ever your ears would be open to me, I would hope it would be now. Well, why, among all the important things that I could take up with you, why am I focusing this morning in what is the last of three sermons that I propose to preach to you? Why am I addressing this issue? Well, I answer to you in the words of John Owen. John Owen has a masterful treatise on the Lord's Day Sabbath in an introductory essay to his massive four volumes of exposition on the book of Hebrews. All the objections to the Sabbath I have ever heard Owen takes up, and to my judgment, thoroughly answers them and addresses them in a sound biblical and theological way. And in that treatise, Owen makes this observation. He calls the Lord's Day God's hedge around all of his other ordinances. God's hedge around all of his other ordinances. And Owen perceptively states that when that hedge is either uprooted cut down, discarded, neglected, it is only a matter of time when the ordinances instituted by God for the benefit of the church and the good of mankind will erode, and in some cases, utterly disappear. For example, the social or corporate worship of the people of God, the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, the ordinances of the Lord's Supper and Baptism, the ordinance of the mandated one-anothering passages of the New Testament that we looked at several weeks ago, all of those ordinances will eventually erode and come to nothing unless we maintain the sanctity The responsibility, the mandate of keeping a Lord's Day Sabbath unto our God. Remember the words of Jesus, the Sabbath was made for man. As man, and when man is what man ought to be woven into the fabric of his life, is Sabbath, a cycle of one day in seven, in which he sets apart his normal, ordinary labors and gives himself, as our confession so beautifully states, to the special privileges and responsibilities and activities of the public worship of God. The Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering of their common affairs aforehand, do not only observe a holy rest all day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employment and recreations, but are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship and in the duties of necessity and of mercy. And so I am asserting that this matter is crucial because I believe Owen's observation is an accurate observation. And if we would maintain in vigor and health all of the other ordinances ordained for our salvation and for our maturation in grace, then we must preserve our convictions and our practice concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. One man has written, and it hit me when I saw his words, all my books are packed away and the only books I could consult are the ones I'm leaving for Pastor Chansky, and the only ones I'm leaving are a few sets that I seldom used, so I went to one of those sets yesterday. Don't tell him that. I've already told him that. That's why I don't want to haul them all the way out to Michigan. And on this passage, Mark 2, 27, where Christ says the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, not Lord to abolish it, but Lord to strip away from it all of the encumbrances of Pharisaic legalism, to take away from it all that was distinctly Jewish in the Mosaic economy, Lord of the Sabbath, to merge it into the glory of the first day of the week, Lord's Day Sabbath. He then went on to say, had we no Sabbath, We should soon have no religion. Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion. Driving to church, Sunday by Sunday, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, what do I behold? People with no religion! They have their expensive bike and all their expensive gear, and they're out working their cardiovascular system. Or they're there in the ball fields playing touch football or they're playing baseball and they'll go back to their homes and sit in front of their television sets and watch the glut of professional sports on the Lord's Day or the special movie of the week. They have no religion because they have no Sabbath. No sense that the God who made them has said to them, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion. The Sabbath was made for man for his well-being, to have a rest from his ordinary labors. It was made for his physical, emotional, and psychological good. So that's question number one. Why? Is the matter of the Lord's Day Sabbath so crucial? I answer, it is God's hedge around all of His other ordinances. Question number two, why is the setting apart of a whole day as the Lord's Day Sabbath opposed so vigorously? Why is it opposed so vigorously? When we say in the words of our confession, as it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart to the worship of God, so by His word in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto Him. We stand in the historic stream of evangelical Reformed Protestantism, when we say that the Ten Commandments are a summary of God's moral requirement of men, and there are ten, not nine commandments. And upon everyone who is man, the Sabbath was made for man, comes the commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Now, why? Why is the setting apart of a whole day as the Lord's Day Sabbath opposed so vigorously? Well, let me give an answer. I believe that there are many reasons, but among the ten words spoken by God, written by the finger of God in stone, the fourth commandment is the most concrete and the most difficult to evade or to rationalize whether or not you're keeping it. Think with me for a minute. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. Someone may outwardly appear to keep that. They do not carve a god of wood or stone. They are not so patently worshippers of their senses as a sensualist or of stuff as a materialist that you can say that's an idolatrous attachment to this or that. But in their hearts they can have an idol shelf full of a hundred idols and you and I would never know it. You agree with me? We'd never know it. Seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery, a commandment to sexual purity. And someone may never touch anyone other than his wife, may never look leeringly at another woman, but he could fantasize about 20 different women in an hour and be breaking that commandment perpetually and no one would know it. However, When the commandment says, remember the Sabbath day, Sabbath day, Sabbath day, what is a day? It's a unit of time made up of minutes, of hours that accumulate into a day. All right, you with me? Remember the Sabbath day. That portion of time that God has marked out and said in a peculiar way, this is mine. Remember that reality. It's mine for you. The Sabbath was made for man. And when you come to the concreteness of the fourth commandment, it's very difficult to rationalize when the minutes of the morning are spent getting the fishing gear together, making a trip down to the shore, spending the day out fishing for blues or for striped bass or whatever else. And if you get up in the morning and gather your athletic gear and you go off to the athletic fields of the Montville High School to play softball or hardball or touch football with your buddies, you see, it's very difficult to rationalize when there are units of time, minutes and hours, that accumulate into a day. And it's because of the concreteness of the demand of God that the human heart in its native disposition, Romans 8, 7, the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. And because that law was originally written on Adam's inner consciousness, Romans chapter 2, and though with the passing of time and the influence of sin much of that work of the law written on the heart has been skewed and twisted and in some cases perhaps almost obliterated, yet Paul says they show the work of the law written in their hearts the meanwhile their conscience excusing or accusing them. And there is bread into the consciousness of man that he owes something to his God. This is what our confession is talking about when it says, as it is the law of nature that in general a proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart to the worship of God. They didn't pull that out of the air, they pulled it out of their Bibles. And it is because the native disposition of the human heart is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, where will that show itself most clearly? Where the law of God most clearly impinges upon minutes and hours. You following me? This is why there is such hatred to that fourth commandment. And because remaining sin in believers acts in principle the way reigning sin acts in unbelievers, there is in every one of us the reality of what Paul describes in Romans 7, verses 21 and following. Listen to his words. Verse 20, when I would, but if what I would not that I do, it's no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me, I find then the law that to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. If I have been regenerate, God has taken out the heart of stone, given me a heart of flesh, written His law upon my heart, that is, given me an inward disposition of affinity and love for His objective law. But, he says, I see a different law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members, so that in the heart of a true believer, his remaining sin acts in opposition to God's law. And if with the unconverted, that antipathy to God's law, that non-subjection to the law has a focused expression in terms of the fourth commandment, should it surprise us that in the heart and consciousness of true believers who love the law of God with the inward man and delight in it, they should have peculiar struggles with the fourth commandment. because of the concreteness of its demand. It's Sunday morning. How do I regard this day? Do I regard it as the Lord's day Sabbath, the Lord's day, day of rest, marked out by God from creation, coming through the peculiarities of the Mosaic covenant, but now stripped of all that was peculiarly Mosaic and Jewish, buried in Christ's tomb. And out of it comes the Lord's day, Sabbath, stripped of all those things, redolent and bursting with the life of the age to come, but nonetheless a day to be kept holy unto the Lord. I get up Sunday morning. How do I regard the day? Is this the day to check and see whether Big Brown won the derby? I wrestled with that this morning. I totally forgot to turn on the radio any time after 6.35 last night to check and see if Big Brown won. And when I got up this morning, you know what the first thought in my mind was? Did Big Brown win? And don't anyone whisper and tell me. I don't want to know. I wrestled with the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it separate unto God that the whole day would be given over. By the grace of God, Christ's power enabled me to win the victory. I don't know and I don't care till the Sabbath day is over. What was it in me Here I went to bed with my notes for this sermon, lying next to my bed. The last thing I did when I lied down last night, I'm going over my notes. My first thought this morning should have been the sermon, but it was Big Brown! Triple Crown! I find then a law in my memory. seeking to bring me down and back into an opposition to God's holy law. That's why this matter of the Lord's Day is opposed so vigorously. You have an enemy in your breast. And in a society that is increasingly set against God, no wonder. The Lord's Day Sabbath is now glutted with all kinds of high school and junior high school sports activities, something unheard of thirty years ago. Professional sports galore on the Lord's Day. Sand and sun and surf beckon down to the shore and people are willing to get into a 30-40 mile parking lot arrangement of cars on the Garden State Parkway to get a little sun and sand and surf on the Lord's Day. Churches have so capitulated that they now have Saturday evening worship services for people that want to spend the Lord's Day with sand and surf and sun and sports. That's what has given birth to the Saturday night worship services? It's a capitulation to a society that increasingly, because it has no Sabbath, it has no religion, and worships the God of sports and self-indulgence. And I know there are good and godly men who are detaching The first day of the week, from any relationship to Genesis 3, 1 to 3, Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5, and trying to establish the Lord's Day with no theological underpinnings with which one can bind the conscience of the unconverted that he's violating the fourth commandment, The very commandment God used in the conversion of John Bunyan, it was his Sabbath breaking and his cursing that were the two great issues that God used to bring that man to his sense of need of Christ and his salvation. Well, having explained my terminology and what I'm not attempting to do, answered two questions. Why is it so important? Why is it so opposed? I want to bring some practical counsels as you seek to hold fast your convictions and practice concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. And I have four practical counsels. Number one, thoughtfully and jealously guard your Saturday evening preparations for a fruitful Lord's Day. Thoughtfully and jealously guard your Saturday evening preparations for a fruitful Lord's Day. Our confession is most helpful where it sets before us these words. The Sabbath, I'd rather use the words the Lord's Day Sabbath, is then kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering their common affairs beforehand, what they're saying is your Saturday evening is critical to a profitable Lord's Day. Clothes should be laid out, ironed, pressed, washed, whatever necessary, that nobody's scurrying around in the morning, oh, we're going to wear this, going to wear that. Well, this needs to be pressed. And poor mom, she's harassed and stressed out. The meals should be planned. Bedtime should be planned in terms of the Lord's Day. When my children were old enough to court, curfew on Saturday night entered into, I trust, thoughtful and jealously guarded Saturdays in preparation for a fruitful Lord's Day. And may I really stick my neck out and say the activities of the Saturday evening should peculiarly lend themselves to a mind and a heart prepared to enter in without distraction to the praise and worship of God on His day. In the last few months, I've had two instances in pastoral dealings with people where I discovered that so-called mature Christians went out on a Saturday night to a movie theater. One of them to watch a blood and guts, R-rated, horrible collation of brutality. And another, I'm not sure what they watched, but in both cases, the so-called motive of those who took other people was they wanted to be able to witness to them and relate to them. How in the world can your mind be filled with the kind of music that is part and parcel of the modern music and the sights and scenes on a Saturday night and after staggering out of bed and rushing for a shower and shaving or if you're in case of a woman fixing your hair and all the rest and come as it were breathless into the house of God and expect to receive maximum profit from the ministry of the word. It's impossible. And I'm urging you, dear people, thoughtfully and then jealously guard your Saturday evening preparations for a fruitful Lord's Day. And you men have the holy guts to set the standards and say, as for me and my house, this is what we do. You don't like it? There's the door, if they're old enough. If they're not old enough, then never retire the rod. A retired rod is an ineffective rod. By God's grace, establish those standards so that your family awakens refreshed and clothes laid out and all the other things and meals planned, if not actually prepared for the Lord's Day. And your Lord's Day can be spent wholly in the worship of God, in works of necessity and mercy, in celebrating anew. the great salvation brought to us by our risen Lord. Secondly, creatively and realistically plan the activities of the Lord's Day according to the capacities of your family members. Creatively and realistically plan the activities of the Lord's Day according to the capacities of your family members. Remember what we are told about God himself in Psalm 103, 13 and 14. He remembers our frame. He knows that we are dust. God deals with us in terms of who we are realistically as creatures of the dust. Be like God with And in terms of the development of the children in their ages, where they are spiritually, all of those things will enter in. It will take time for you and your wife to creatively, realistically plan the activities of the Lord's Day according to the capacities of the family members. I could give a bunch of suggestions. I mentioned just a few. For many families, taking a walk together would be a wonderful means of interaction and communication as well as some physical recreation. Review the messages when you sit at the table. If naps are in order, don't believe your kids when they say they can't nap. It's amazing how they can nap when they come to church and they start to fall asleep. You tell them, no, the sleeping goes on in the afternoon, not in church. family reading habits. This used to be a Lord's Day Sabbath activity of our spiritual forefathers. I have a set of 16 books, and those books were Christian classics put together by the American Tract Society, beautifully bound with half leather and they were the family reading materials where on the inside there's a beautiful picture of a family sitting together on a couch and children leaning over the shoulder of dad and mom and they are reading good solid Christian classics together as a family. One of the things that we did as a family for years was we memorized hymns on that trip from Cedar Grove to Caldwell, and then out to here, and those hymns that we memorized, I can still, for the most part, sing them all word perfect, all the stanzas. It was a wonderful way to buy up the opportunity to prepare the minds of the children for the Lord's Day. Creatively and realistically plan the activities of the Lord's Day according to the capacity of your family members. Then thirdly, passionately and incessantly resist any tendency to an oppressive and barren legalism that would make the day one of oppressive drudgery. I've seen some parents in their anxiety that we're going to keep the Lord's Day. It was terrible. The things that they did treated children as though they were not children and tried to overload the day. Rarely in the hundreds of pages, thousands probably by now of John Owen that I've read, rarely will you find Owen using humor. But one of the touches of humor, I'll never forget it, John Owen said, With regard to this matter of what we do and don't do on the Lord's Day, he said, I have read some writers where one would spend the whole week reading all their rules for the Lord's Day and would have no time to actually enjoy the Lord's Day. In other words, Owen was dealing with the fact that there is this Pharisaic tendency. Remember, when people say the New Testament is silent on the Sabbath, what New Testament are they talking about? There is no commandment that Jesus spent more time stripping the pharisaic legalism than the fourth commandment. He strips away the pharisaic legalism and shallow perspective of several commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, but again and again he enters Sabbath controversies with the Pharisees. What's he doing? He's stripping away all of the legalism. Why? Just to bury the Sabbath? No, to bring it out of his tomb as the new covenant, Lord's Day, Sabbath, freed not only of Mosaic strictures and legislation, but free of all Pharisaic drudgery and oppression. So passionately and incessantly resist any tendency to an oppressive and barren legalism that would make the day a drudgery. Go to passages like Isaiah 58, 13 and following, where the Lord says, if you call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, God then promises wonderful blessing in the keeping of that day, in the spirit of liberty in Christ. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, but my children are unconverted. They've got no heart for God, no heart for the Bible. What do we do? You can expect and enforce respect for the day and the activities that you choose should mark that day. And then just lovingly constantly remind them, son, daughter, if and when you get converted, what is now a drudgery will be a delight. I am not saying you can take away the sense of drudgery to your unconverted kids. No, you can't. Because their hearts are at enmity to God, not subject to the law of God, including the fourth commandment. But don't Strap the day with unnecessary, unbiblical legalism and oppressive rulemaking that has no relationship to a wise application of biblical principles. Then, fourthly, here's my fourth counsel. Consciously reflect on the finished work of Christ. That rest to which the Lord's Day Sabbath primarily points and celebrates. Consciously reflect on the finished work of Christ, that rest to which the Lord's Day Sabbath primarily points and celebrates. This is one of the beauties, it seems to me, of a holistic biblical, theological grasp on the Lord's Day Sabbath, according to Exodus 20, in keeping the Sabbath, what is celebrated? God's rest after His initial creation. Let's look at it for a moment. How am I doing time-wise? Yeah, I'm doing alright. Alright. Exodus 20. Look at this. Exodus 20. And verse 8, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your manservant, maidservant, cattle, stranger within your gates. Why? For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Here the emphasis is the rest of creation. God creates on six days. He rests on the seventh. Now he says to man made in his image, you are to labor six days. You are to rest on the seventh. So that the instructed Israelite would in a special way celebrate God's rest after his work of creation on the Sabbath. Then in Deuteronomy 5, we have what I believe are the comments of Moses. Deuteronomy chapter 5. Deuteronomy chapter 5. In this other account of the Ten Commandments, verse 12, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Now look at verse 15. And you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out by a mighty hand in an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. You see, in the development of God's truth, what we call biblical theology, there's an organic unity, but there is development. And here we are told that the rest of deliverance from Egypt is to be celebrated on that day. You were once a bunch of slaves, oppressed and and driven by your slave masters. But your God brought you out of the land of Egypt by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Celebrate the rest of deliverance from the oppression of Egypt. Well, now we come into the New Testament. And what do we find? Hebrews chapter 4. Hebrews chapter 4. I don't have time to open it up in detail, but verse 8, if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken. Afterward, of another day, there remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest has himself rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore give diligence to enter that rest that no man fall after the same example of disobedience. There is now a gospel rest. Christ accomplishes his work and finishes it on the Friday and on the Sabbath day, the day of rest. Where is Christ? resting in his tomb, resting in his tomb, awaiting the day of resurrection. And on the first day of the week, he rises from the dead. The devil and sin have been defeated. And he now constitutes by appearing his disciples two times in John chapter 20. He appears in the midst and the writers careful to say on the eighth day, on the eighth day. So that by the time John writes the book of Revelation, I was in the spirit on the Lord day the believing community throughout all Asia Minor knows what day of which he speaks when the church would celebrate the rest of a complete salvation in Jesus Christ. Dear people, consciously reflect on the finished work of Christ, that rest to which the Lord's Day Sabbath primarily points. So those are my counsels to you. And I plead with you, dear people of God, hold fast to your convictions and your practice concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. My unconverted friend, as I've already indicated, your attitude to God's appointed day of rest and worship reflects your relationship to Jesus Christ. You've not entered into the rest of a completed salvation. If you did, you'd love his day. You'd love his worship. You'd love the gathering of his people, the interaction with his people. What is sheer boredom to you now? Listen to Jesus. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. You labor and you're heavy laden under what is now an oppressive burden. He says, come unto me. I will give you what? I'll give you rest. And when you come into the rest of his salvation, then you love the rest of his day and the gathering of his people and the singing of his praise. So I urge you to flee to Christ and find the rest that is in Him. And dear people of God, hold fast to these convictions. Lest day for social worship rest, works of necessity and mercy, and above all, concentrated remembrance of Christ and His completed salvation and the pledge of the age to come As I was reflecting earlier this morning on how I might conclude the sermon, this is the only thought that came to my mind. I plan to be in constant touch with my fellow elders, the three of them, in days to come. It would be unnatural, as it were, to push you out of my heart. And I thought, what would I do if in a telephone conversation six months from now, one of the elders said to me, Pastor Martin, we've got time for you to ask only two questions about the state of the church. Two questions, that's all. When you've asked two, that's it. We're hanging up on you. You know what my two questions would be? I believe these two questions and the answer to them would be a more telling index of the state of this church than anything else. You got any idea what the two questions would be? Question number one would be this. How is the attendance and the spirit of prayer in the Wednesday night prayer meeting? How is the attendance and the spirit of prayer in the Wednesday night prayer meeting? When you, the people of God, discipline your time and your schedules to gather to seek God, and God pours out the Spirit of grace and supplication, then you know God has not abandoned you. You are not conducting yourself in such a way as to grieve the Holy Spirit so that He withdraws His presence. That would be my first question. And you know what my second question would be? What are the patterns of the Lord's Day Sabbath observance among the people? Are they beginning to buy into some of the stuff that feeds back from sister churches after the evening service? Oh, the Lord's Day is over. We can go out and play cards, watch a movie, as though the Lord's Day was a burden and you were looking for the time when it got over. That greatly disturbs greatly disturbs me. Instead of saying, I want a husband every minute of the day to feed my soul, to enlarge my knowledge of God and of his truth, to interact with his people, to sing his praise. What is the pattern of their Lord's Day Sabbath observance? If that hedge begins to shrivel, If pieces of that hedge begin to be removed, it's only a matter of time before all the other ordinances will be affected. Up until a few years ago, you could count on it. Any church that claimed to be an evangelical church had Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night. No more. By and large, the average evangelical church has given up its Sunday night service. It's given up its Wednesday prayer meeting. What's happened? Long ago they gave up any clear teaching on the Sabbath. It's the hedge! I'm no prophet nor the son of a prophet, but God has so constituted us that it's the jealous guarding of His day that with His blessing will be used to help preserve all of his other ordinances. And I pray God that this place, until Christ returns, will be marked as a people who, by God's power and the enabling work of Christ through the Spirit, are committed to hold fast to your convictions and your concerning the Lord's Day Sabbath. Let's pray. Our Father, how we thank you for your word that is a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway. And we pray that as we have considered this vital aspect of our privilege and our duty as your children, that you would write upon our hearts your word. Give us grace to resist all of the pressures from a godless, law-hating world and from a careless church, that we may be committed to keeping your day wholly unto yourself. Seal then your word to our hearts, And to your name be the praise and honor, in Jesus' name, amen.