We are living in a society which is characterized by burnout. Maybe you've been there. I've been there. Breakdown. Maybe you've been there. I've been there. Marital breakdown. Marital failure. Family neglect. Children who said, I never saw my parents. Children who are dropped off at a nursery and don't see their parents until the weekend. We are a society that is 24-7, always plugged in. Emails, texts, social media. You're laying in your bed at 11 o'clock, just drifting off to sleep and the phone buzzes next to you and all of a sudden you now can't sleep for the rest of the night because you've seen an email from your boss. Maybe even from someone in the church. We're never switching off. Parents' lives are hectic. Clubs every single night. Football this night. Swimming this night. Rugby the next night. Party that day. Seven days a week, even on Sunday. Hockey. Dance. You name it. And parents spend their lives taking kids from one place to the next place, from one place to the next place. The idea of time. You're not working. You're not in control of time. Time is in control of you. This is the lives today in this society. Is it a coincidence that in a 24-7 society, in a 7-day-a-week society, shops open 7 days a week, emails looked at 7 days a week, texts received 7 days a week, that there is more breakdown, more family breakdown, more marital strife, more depression than has ever been seen before? Now, you know I'm not saying that every form of those kind of things is to do with what I'm saying. But it may be in some cases. And this is not just a problem for culture, friends. This is a problem in the church. This is a problem in Reformed, Grace Baptist churches. Because Christians today... You know, we celebrate Eric Liddell, don't we? Oh, what a man, Eric Liddell. He refused to run on the Sabbath. He took a bold stand. I was reading a book on holiday a year ago about Everett Idle, written by a non-Christian, who was in absolute awe of this guy. He was like, what kind of man, what kind of faith must he have had in God? He was fascinated by it, that would cause him to turn down to run in an event he'd been training for for years. Everett Idle's witness was profound, and it affected people around him. And so we celebrate Errol Idle, but the minute someone in our kind of church or in our culture starts to take the same kind of stand as Errol Idle, he's accused of being a legalist. He's accused of being restrictive. And we can't have it both ways. There either is a Sabbath or there isn't. And if there is a Sabbath, it should be observed. But obviously in the right spirit. As we've considered in previous weeks when we've looked at the Pharisees, that's when we get to Luke, we'll see then. The problem is though, it's really hard work for a preacher and a pastor today to preach on the Sabbath because there are so many good men preaching that the Sabbath doesn't exist anymore. Preaching in our kind of churches, I've been there, that there is no Sabbath for the believer. That all seven days are alike and all seven days are the same and we have to contend with this. And they find great biblical verses to support their arguments. They say that Sabbath is simply a matter of conscience. Listen to this, Romans 14, this is the verse they go to, 14 verse 4. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. One person assumes one day above another. Another esteems another day alike. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observe it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. In other words, you see, people infer from that, they infer that there is no Sabbath, there is no, it's about personal choice. It's ignoring the context, and we'll get to these verses in later weeks. Because it goes on to say, he who eats, eats the Lord. In other words, we are dealing with a Jewish problem here. A particular Jewish problem, foods. Jews wouldn't eat certain foods. Or Galatians 4, verse 10, these are all texts which you can have read at you by people who do not observe Sabbath. 4, verse 10. You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. In other words, they're saying, Paul's saying there is no Sabbath, why are you doing it? If you're keeping a Sabbath, that's the logic they're flowing. Is that correct? Or maybe this one. This one is really one that shakes people. It shook me. It was an argument I once held to in my earlier life as a Christian. You think it's decided. Let no one judge you in food or in drink or in regarding festival or new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Or Romans 6 verse 14, we no longer are under law, but under grace. And so, without dealing with all these texts right now, the question is, what can we say to this? Well, a lot of it can be said to this, and if one was to consider those verses in their context, you'd actually realize it has no meaning, no reference to one day out of seven, to a Lord's Day, to a Christian Sabbath, but actually it has reference to the Jewish Sabbath weeks and festivals that the Jews were trying to bind on the Gentiles, just like they were trying to bind circumcision upon them, and they were trying to get them to not eat pork and not eat certain meats. So, but anyway, that's not my aim this morning. But these texts are texts that are read at us and we read them and we think, well, is there a Sabbath? So, right. What can be said to this? Well, lots can be said. But in order to build a case, in order to build an argument, in order to establish what the scriptures teach, you have to lay a foundation, don't you? And so, we have to go back to the beginning. If we start with Jesus, if we start here, not realizing that Jesus came to fulfill scripture, he came to exemplify true law-keeping, we will miss out on what God would have us understand. So we need to go back to the beginning, to Genesis chapter 2, particularly the first mention of the Sabbath, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. And the first thing I want us to consider here is this. Sabbath is a creation ordinance. It is a creation ordinance. Well, what do I mean by that? A creation ordinance is what the theologians, the term they use to tell us that God has created something that as long as earth, heaven and earth stands, it is binding on all human beings. There's two other creation ordinances here in this text. Marriage and work. And how do we know it's a creation ordinance? Well, it's the language of God's blessing. God setting something up and blessing, giving it his approval. And we see that in verse 28. We see the creation ordinances of marriage and of work. God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, which we know from reading Genesis chapter two later on requires marriage. Fill the earth, but here's the work part, subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves. In other words, God will bless man as man fulfills this mandate. God has said fill the earth, that means marriage. So marriage is something blessed and ordained by God for the good of human flourishing. Work is something good, friends. We were made to work. Now, obviously, because of the fall, work is hard. Work bears thorns and thistles. It is, we are in a cursed world. Originally is very working, are fulfilling their God's given roles. Those are two creation ordinances. What that means is, take marriage. When God's creation ordinance is twisted and rejected and opposed, it leads to human suffering. Is marriage not something good for children? for society. But we are seeing in a society where there's sex before marriage, you end up with orphans, you end up with children unwanted, you end up with abortion, you end up with divorce. When marriage is not held in high esteem, it wreaks havoc. And that makes sense. Because Satan's job is to attack what God has said is very good, what God has blessed and ordained for good. So he attacks marriage. It's no different to work. when people don't work, when they sit around and bum around and are lazy, they're not gonna be happy. They're gonna not feel satisfied because they're not fulfilling what God has made them to do. In the same way, we see that exact same language in verse three, that it is a creation ordinance. God blessed the seventh day. and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his works which God had created and made. Now, there's a few things to bear in mind about this. Was there sin in the world at this point? No. God created Sabbath when there was no sin in a perfect world. So Sabbath is clearly not something that has just come with the law. In fact, had the Mosaic law, had the law of Moses come at this point, No, this was before the law of Moses. This was when man was upright. And man as upright, man as sinless, man as good, was given a day to observe, a Sabbath day. And was God restrictive? Every tree, every fruit I give you, and He blessed this day, this seventh day, He made it holy, He sanctified it. God is depicted here as being a giver, as giving to man these things. I give you all the fruit, I give you all the trees, I give you all the sea creatures, and I give you this day, this Sabbath day, this one day out of seven. So the idea that keeping a Sabbath, the idea that having one day out of seven, which is different to the other six, is somehow restrictive, legalistic, is completely out of flow with the text, with the word of God. If that is your attitude, it has to change. That is my attitude. It has to change. And as a matter of fact, when you get to the Ten Commandments, the fourth commandment, what is the reason for the Sabbath? How does God justify it? Because if the Sabbath was something only tied to the Jewish law, that we say passed away when Christ came, listen to his reasons. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, so on, was the reason. Because for, for what? In six days, The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. In other words, this was given at the beginning. Now, the Jews had been in slavery for 400 years. Had they been able to keep the Sabbath? No. And so God had to reissue it. But you see, the Ten Commandments were given to Adam at the very beginning. And we see that here in the Sabbath being given. And so therefore, if Sabbath-keeping is a creation ordinance, it is something God made at the very beginning for man's welfare and blessing, it is therefore fundamental to our created existence. As long as we are human beings, on this world God made, we have to observe Sabbath. If we say it passed away with the coming of Christ, or as Colossians 2 said, because the substance of it was in Christ, Well hang on a second, isn't the substance and the point of marriage that it's fulfilled in Christ? Christ loved his church. But we still get married. Well if work is fulfilled in Christ, Christ came to obey the work of the Lord, to work so that we could rest, why do we still work? Because We don't enter into those realities fully until we go to be of the Lord. As long as this earth stands, we have to observe the created order and pattern of things God has ordained. And he's ordained it that there is Sabbath. And you know, it is scientifically proven. I've read articles, blogs by doctors, people that aren't even believers who say it is programmed into our humanity that we are not capable of sustaining work seven days a week. We can only work six. Well, that in itself is evidence this is something that God put into motion. Because you see, here's the thing. God made all things for his glory. He is the Lord, and therefore he is the Lord of time. And since he is the Lord of time, it makes sense that time should serve his glory. And so God has set things in motion so that your week climaxes in what? Sabbath. As we will see what that means in a moment but it climaxes in worship. It climaxes in God because God is the Lord over time and therefore time should reflect those priorities. That everything in our lives, everything created, everything we do is subservient to a greater end. God. Because he is the end of all things. All things were made through him and for him. Now, there are a number of appraisals we can draw from this. Firstly, as we've seen, Sabbath is a creation ordinance. What we see, therefore, is that Sabbath-keeping is fundamental to creative rhythm and order. As I've said, if we neglect it, it is detrimental to our health, both spiritually and physically. There is a link between our spirits and our bodies. And when our spirits are suffering and neglected, our bodies will also suffer. That's an unbreakable link. We are body and soul. We are also made in the image of God. And God worked six days and rested on the seventh. And therefore, we image our God when we keep Sabbath, when we observe the seventh. And isn't it interesting? What is Satan's aim? To destroy the image of God in man. Because Satan hates God. And Satan hates when he sees God in man. And isn't it very interesting, therefore, that today, at a time of ungodliness and compromise in the church, that Sabbath-keeping should be attacked? Because he knows that when men and women follow God's pattern of working and resting, they are imaging their God. And so therefore, if he can get men and women to work seven days and live for themselves on seven days and not give God a whole day out of seven, then he is succeeding in defacing that image which God has established in us. And so that's why it's something that he goes. It also means that it is a moral requirement. And this is something that struck me this week. You see this argument played out in Romans chapter two, don't you? where he's talking to the Jews who have the law, saying they will be judged by that law. But then the question arises for the Roman believers, what about Gentiles who didn't get the Ten Commandments? What about them? How can they be judged if they weren't given the Ten Commandments? What's very interesting is Paul says, they do have the Ten Commandments. It wasn't given to them on tablets of stone, but it was given to them at creation. The work of the law was written on the heart. Now what law? Well, he's just been talking about the law, the Ten Commandments with the Jews. And he's saying the work of that law was written on the law of men and women at creation. Well, the fourth commandment is included in that law. So what it means is that the fourth commandment is a moral obligation. That all creation made in the image of God are to subject their time to God who is the Lord of time and the creator of time. And therefore, just as you would go to an unbeliever and your witness, and I've done this before, and you try to convict of sin, use the law to convict of sin. Have you worshipped anything other than God? Have you lived for anything? Have you loved anything more than God? We often do that kind of thing. Have you looked at a woman or a man with lust in your heart? You can also say, have you given to God a day of the week that He is due in your life? Every week, of every month, of every year. Because God made you and has called you to live for him. Have you given him that? And obviously, all of us say no. And so the law, including the fourth commandment, was given at creation. In other words, just as it would be right to point out sin for murder, for lust, for covetousness, and all of these things, and you might say to a brother or sister, hey, I'm just challenging you here, what about the law? Sabba keeping is a moral requirement. It is a law. It is written on the work of our hearts and we are held accountable to it. And what's very interesting about this, if you read accounts of revival, times when God has moved powerfully, do you know one of the chief sins people are convicted of, either believers who have been warm for a long time or unconverted people, it is this. And I've read it in journals. How many Sabbaths have I neglected? Let's put it this way. There are 52 Sabbaths in a year. If you've been alive for 30 years, that's 1,560 Sabbaths. That's 37,440 hours of time God has called you to be taken up with him as the chief end of all things. And we are guilty of not giving him that time. So actually, and as I said, it's very interesting, in revival, that is this sin that particularly strikes people. Look, here's the thing. You can tell the spiritual temperature of God's people in their Sabbath observant. If people love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind and all their strength, the idea of giving them one day out of seven completely to him and his purposes is gonna be the most exciting prospect. But the idea of it being some sort of begrudging, oh dear, Sunday's coming, That is an indicator of the heart. And so you show me the English church's attitude to Sabbath and you reveal their attitude to God. That is a fact. And that's actually when you, as we're gonna see other texts from Isaiah and Ezekiel and Nehemiah, that the prophets would often condemn them for breaking the Sabbath as to be the sin which typifies all the other sins. It typifies the fact that they do not love their Lord, their God, with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their minds. Sabbath is a creation ordinance then. Secondly, and this is where we get, so we've established a fact of what it is. This is where we begin to understand what the spirit of it should be. Sabbath is God's gift. It is God's gift. Then God blessed it. Blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work. Now it's unhelpful because we have chapter divisions here but there was no chapter divisions. Man is the pinnacle of God's creation, yes, but man is not the pinnacle of narrative here. If we look at the builder, I give you the fish, I give you the birds, I give you every living thing, I give you the herb. that yield seed, I give you every bee, I give, I give, I give, I give, I give, and then what we've got is, and, here's the climax of the giving. And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made, then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Because you see, why did God give creative things? Why did God make all these things good? because these things were to declare His glory. We read Psalm 19, didn't we? The heavens declare the glory of the Lord. That's why we say whatever you eat or drink, whatever you do, eat or drink to the glory of God. These things are to take us to God. Those things aren't in the end of themselves. That's why they're building up to a climax. Because if we were to delight in the creative things as an end in themselves, we've missed the point. And that's what men and women are doing today, they delight in the creative things rather than the God who made those creative things. But the whole of creation declares the glory of God. It reveals who he is, that he is a powerful God, a wise God, a good God, a loving God. And so God stepped back, he saw it was all very good, and he rested, he blessed it, and he sanctified it. He blessed it. Ian Murray said, the splendour of creation from flowers and birds to oceans and furthest galaxies declares to man that God is great and wise and good. All things come from God and he is to be adored by all. The question is, if you read the narrative before you get to the Sabbath, how is it that mankind can adore God? Because we're so busy subduing the earth and filling it. How can we give ourselves entirely to that? Of course, we seek to do that as we work and as we subdue the earth and as we feed our families and as we attend to all our affairs of life. But how can we truly be taken up with God in the fullest extent? Well, God made Sabbath. He made Sabbath. He made one day out of seven where we could be taken up with God. Him. Taken up with His glory. Taken up with Him. Because you see, the Sabbath was given to enable man not to delight in the very good, but to delight in the fountain of all the very good. And this is absolutely clear from the text. God blessed those other things, but then God did something extra on this day. He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Now, what is to bless? Well, what is the opposite to bless? It is to curse. Now, what is curse in the Bible? To be under God's curse is to be separated from Him, to be outside of all His goodness, outside of all His blessing, without a sight of His glory and His greatness, completely in darkness, separated from the life of God, dead in your sins and trespasses. Blessed is then the opposite of all of that. To bless something is for God to say, on this day, I give myself, I give my presence, I give my life, I give all that I am to be experienced by all who observe this day. I have blessed this day. It has unusual goodness. This day, not that the other days are bad days, but this day, because of the activity of this day, is a day where there will be unusual blessing, surpassing blessing. Because this day is not being taken up with work and marriage. This day is taken up with something else. This day is taken up with, as I said, the fountain of all good. God himself. In other words, this day is a day which God says stands in a positive relationship to me. I am going to do good on this day. Not that he doesn't do good on all the other days. We saw that from the narrative. Don't mishear me. But I'm going to do exceptionally wonderful things on this day. And therefore, that means he sanctified it. What is to sanctify it? Well, if you read in NIV or ESV, he made it holy. Well you see, what is holiness? God is holy. He is other than us. He is special. He is good. He is wise. He is sinless. He is holy, holy, holy. And it's to be separate, it's to be special. And he's saying this day is holy. It is separate from the other days. It is holy because I am holy and this day is to be taken up with me. And so all that God is, is if you like, on display on this day. That's what it's there for. He is bestowing his presence on this day in a way that he isn't on all the other days. Not that he's not there on the other days, but this is a special day. I guess it's a bit like saying, for example, we often say as believers, don't we, that the church are a royal priesthood. We are a holy priesthood. We are a holy nation. We are those who all minister the Lord. And when we come together, there's a very special presence. Now is that saying that God isn't with you when you're on your own? No, of course not. Of course he's with you. But what we are saying, there's a sense in which the church, the holy people of God, come together, the Lord has promised to be there in a way he hasn't promised to be there in the other days. He set the church apart from the world. It is a special dwelling place for God. And to set this day aside, he is saying, this is a day I have set aside, I've stamped it with my own, I've stamped it with my approval, and I mean to do good. Just like he set apart marriage as a creation ordinance. Marriage is special. Whatever people tell you on the news and whatever the fools tell you out there, you can't reinvent marriage. Only a man or a woman in a covenantal relationship can produce a stable environment for human flourishing. Because God has ordained it so. There are things that can only be done in marriage that can't be done anywhere else in any other kind of relationship. And there are blessings to be had on this day that are not to be had on any other day. God's saying He blessed it and He sanctified it. But you might be thinking, I don't get it though. Because God is said to rest. What's my Sabbath keeping to look like? You might say, what does it mean to have Sabbath? God's blessing it, but with what? Well, we can infer what our Sabbath keeping is in principle by understanding what it meant for God to Sabbath. That's what we have to now understand. What does it mean for God to Sabbath? Because God is said to rest, to rest. Hang on a second. Isaiah 40, 28. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. God doesn't need to rest. How can God need to rest? He neither faints nor grows weary. And didn't Jesus say, my father has been working until now, and I have been working? That's a contradiction. God rested from his work. God is always working. And this is where we get to the crux of what Sabbath-keeping is. You see, a lot of believers today, if they do believe in Sabbath, they may think it's just a day to put their feet up after church, and watch telly, go and play football, or whatever. But if we understand what it meant for God to Sabbath, we immediately know what it meant for us to Sabbath. God Sabbathing, God resting, wasn't inactivity. It was a resting from one kind of activity, and engaging in another kind of activity. He rested from his work, from his creative work. But what does it mean for God to rest then? Because he's always at work, he's always sustaining the world. It's an important question. Well, let me ask you a question. Is God always at rest? Yes. For God to Sabbath, For God to rest is to do what God is fundamentally always doing. He is stepping back from creation here. And he is what? Admiring his glory. He is admiring his glory. And this is radical for our society. Because we think that's a bit narcissistic, don't we? A bit egomaniac. But God is the highest good. God is taken up with himself. God wouldn't be God if he wasn't. God loves his glory. And so the heavens declare the glory of the God. God rests on one day to admire his glory, to admire his goodness, to admire his greatness. And my friends, that is what God has always been doing. Father, Son and Holy Spirit in all eternity, which isn't time, is just taken up with himself, admiring all his holy and perfect and infinite attributes. Augustine, head of Augustine, he said, Thou art good, O God, and needest no rest, and art always at rest, because thou thyself art thy own rest. So for God to Sabbath is for God to be God. Now it wasn't that he wasn't doing this when he was creating, because he was both in time and outside of time. He was resting whilst he was creating in himself. But why is he therefore resting on the seventh day? Why? He's not for his own benefit because he's always at rest. He's resting, as I said, to set us a pattern. He is taken up with his glory and he is inviting us also to be taken up with his glory. He is inviting us to give ourselves entirely to the pursuit of knowing him. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever. And God is saying, I have given you a gift. Because I know that reading your Bibles is hard and the workly routine. Well I have given you one day out of seven where you can give yourselves entirely to pursuing intimacy, fellowship and relationship with me. Beholding me in all my fullness and in all my glory. All things were made through him and for him. Don't look at the creative things on Monday to Saturday, well it would have been Monday, it would have been Sunday to Friday in this particular instance. Don't look at those things and then in themselves. Look beyond those things to the Glory that they point to. Now obviously, because of our sin, the idea of seeing His glory in a day and spending a whole day delighting in God will not excite us if we do not love God. What I am suggesting will be to you the greatest burden possible. And for someone to say, are you keeping the Sabbath? You will say, don't be legalistic. Because you do not know God, nor the love of God. But if you love God and have been filled by Him, it will be the most positive and exciting thing to give Him a whole day. Because here's the thing, what was the greatest gift God gave to man? It wasn't the beasts, it wasn't marriage, it wasn't work, it is Himself. And that's why this narrative climaxes in God blessing and sanctifying the Sabbath day. Because as Jesus said, the Sabbath wasn't made for God, But for man, it is a day where he is obliged himself to give himself to the people who keep the Sabbath holy. I give this and this and this and this and now I give you a day of rest where you can see he's being taken up with that and do a higher activity of being taken up with me. These are all very good things but I am greater than all those things. I am God who made all those things. You know Thomas Watson? I really recommend Thomas Watson. He is a readable Puritan and he has lovely pithy sayings. And he said this, God made this day to raise the heart to heaven to converse with him. And so rest, biblical rest, Sabbath rest is not inactivity. It is a cessation from one kind of activity to take up another kind of activity, namely worship, adoration, pursuing God, pursuing Him and knowledge of Him. It is seizing not just your work, but all the recreations which you spend on the other six days, living for yourself, your own entertainment and your own joy, but actually pursuing your ultimate joy in the only one who can truly satisfy. For the soul is restless until it finds its rest, its rest in Him. It is God's gift. Now my friends, That means, but then you think, well, yeah, but I'm still, what is the goal of this? What is the goal of this? Well, fourthly, Sabbath rest, and I've only got two points now, but I quit. Sabbath rest is anticipation. What do you think you're gonna be doing in eternity if you're going to heaven? You're gonna be Sabbath keeping all eternity. You're gonna be before the throne of God, adoring the glory of God, beholding the glory of God shining in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you see him, you'll see him as he is, and we will be like him. And you see, some Christians today, and one of the first preachers I used to listen to on this, in my old circles, would say, but Jesus said, come to me, all you who are, I'll give you rest. In other words, you say, well, if we've already got rest in Christ, then the Sabbath has been fulfilled in Christ. He's right. But we don't fully enter the realisation of that rest until we go to be in heaven. And therefore the one day out of seven is a day where every week we come together and we anticipate the rest that will be fully ours in heaven. The scriptures support this understanding. Hebrews chapter 4. Listen to what God's word says here. He's talking about the Israelite generation. He says that they were disobedient to God, weren't they? And they didn't enter God's rest. But he says something wonderfully encouraging to the saints, the Hebrew saints, who are being persecuted, who are suffering great troubles. And he says this. There, therefore, remains a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered his rest has also himself seized from his works as God did from his. In other words, he's saying, for all the people of God, I know it's hard, but there remains for you a Sabbath rest. And then the book of Revelation picks this up wonderfully in chapter 14, verses 12 and 13. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God. Remember again, the context is saints are tempted to give up following God, give up obeying his law, because it gets them in trouble. Then I heard a voice from the heaven saying to me, Right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors and their works. Follow them. So every Lord's Day we remember, don't we, that Jesus died for our sins. He bore our punishment. He took it all upon himself and he rose and he visited the disciples on that Easter Sunday and then he delayed it a week and he visited Thomas the following Sunday. first day of the week, and then he poured out his spirit on the first day of the week. And God's people then started meeting on the first day of the week. We'll consider this in later weeks. And what are they doing? They're anticipating what he has done and the rest in Jesus that awaits them in heaven. So Sabbath rest is anticipation. Because ultimately the reason for our existence is to delight in God. That's why you were made. God has given himself to you. He's made you in his image so that you can know him. And so when you sabbath keep, you are doing what is fundamentally human. Adoring your maker and your God. Now if that prospect doesn't delight you, what makes you think you're going to heaven? Because if heaven is doing eternally what we do to infinite degree, what we get a glimpse of on sabbath, well if you don't delight in what sabbath holds out for you, you're not going to heaven. Because heaven is doing that eternally, what we seek to anticipate, weekly, with the people of God. But lastly, therefore, and this is where we're going to do just a little bit of application, but I'll have to save some for future weeks, and this may bring loads of questions to what I've raised this morning. Loads, that's fine. If you have questions, email them to me in a week. Just so that as I'm preparing future messages, I can begin to think about incorporating them into the messages. But fifthly and lastly, you've listened very well. because I know this is a bit more of a Bible study in some ways today than what I normally do. Sabbath rest should be welcome to a child of God. If man before he sinned needed Sabbath, how much more does man in sin need Sabbath? If God made man so that he can't be taken up with creative things for six days, but he needs a day where he can seize from those things to pursue higher ends, God himself, how much more do we need it, friends? When our minds are constantly being poisoned by the world and our thinking is corrupted and we forget to read the scriptures and we have a really busy week, well, how much more do we need a day where we can delight in God? and being instructed in His Word, and talk about Him with our friends and with our family, and do the kind of works where we encounter God in those works. Oh my friends, we need it so much. How much more do our worn down bodies need refreshment and restoration of the Spirit? We need it. Friends, we all complain, don't we? I just don't have time to read my Bible. I don't have time to read any Christian books. I don't have time to have spiritual conversation. Well, if I could say this lovingly and gently, and I'm saying this to myself, okay? I am saying this to myself. We're not all doing our time right then. That's why God has given us this day. God has given us 24 hours. He's given us a day where we can be taken up with what we find hard to be taken up with the other six days. Not that we don't try and have devotions on those other days, but God in His grace has given us a day where we can receive that food for our souls that we so need in order to face another week. And therefore what it means is keeping the day is just as important how you keep the other days, isn't it? You see, here's the thing. Adam broke the Sabbath commandment. You say, how do we know that? Well, you see, it's not just keeping the seventh day. In order to have a seventh day free from other things, you have to do the other things God has called you to do on the other six days. And so whatever day it was that Adam sinned, we don't know if it was a Tuesday or Wednesday or a Friday afternoon after a long day of work. I don't know. I mean, when he was toiling, he wasn't getting tired, was he, before Sinai? So he hasn't really got an excuse. What we do know is, whatever day it was, he was getting distracted in doing what he shouldn't have been doing. Whether he should have been working and he got distracted from his work and he was listening to the voice of his wife and the serpent. Or whether it was Sabbath day and he should have been delighting in God and he was actually delighting in the wisdom of the evil one and embracing that. Whatever we know is we know that Adam, when he sinned, he broke the whole law. All the ten commandments. And friends, so actually to keep a Sabbath means we have to think about how we order our week. Jesus is Lord. What is our profession? Jesus is Lord. Well does he look like he's our Lord in how we govern our affairs in the week? Or is God something to serve our ends? So to keep a Sabbath we have to order our weeks. It's not surprising today that in a time of godlessness and lawlessness, that God is not loved and therefore, as I said today, the idea of testing him and worshipping him is despised. And the last thing I wanted to say is this, on this point. It tests our faith. And I realise how hard what I'm saying is. Please, I do. We are growing up in Babylon. But it comes down to this. God has said that this is the way human beings are to live. Work six, rest one. And the wisdom of the evil one is, is that really so? Is that really possible? Is that really for your good? And the reason we work on Lord's Day, the reason we work on Sunday, the reason we open the laptop, the reason we check the emails, the reason we do these kind of things is because we don't believe if we do what God has said, we'll be okay. So it's actually the essence of who do we submit to? God's word or our own wisdom. If God has blessed this day and therefore blessed those who keep it, we have to believe like Eric Liddell did. that he who submits to God and his ways will be blessed by God one way or another. But to do the opposite is to actually say I don't actually believe there is blessing in doing this. I think that's the inference and that's what's really struck me this week and I'm really saying that with a degree of I understand what I'm asking there and what I'm saying there. But it is to say, I don't trust God will honour those who honour Him. We claim the Lord as holy, but we do not honour the Lord of the day, who is holy. And so... There's way more that could be said. I won't go into any more specifics. But in other words, what have we learned this morning is this. And whilst it will have loads of questions, we've learned God made the Sabbath for man. He made it his glory because to promote his glory is actually to love man. Because to see God's glory is the greatest good we can experience. So God made the Sabbath, not for himself, but for man, that we might be taken up with him. And so therefore, when it comes to writing a list, the list, that's the wrong question. Can I have a list passed of what I can and can't do? The minute we understand the Sabbath is, what should this day be about? Sunday, for the believer, should be about me pursuing my knowledge and relationship and my joy and intimacy with Him. Therefore, any activity which does not foster that is forbidden on the Sabbath, isn't it? That's the obvious implication. The only kind of activity that is warranted on the Sabbath is that which furthers the joy in Him. That is the implication. And so you don't need a list. And from family to family, you will work that out. Anyway. Let's pray. Oh Lord, these are hard truths to get our heads around. especially when you call weak ambassadors to preach for you. But we do believe your words. We want to submit ourselves under it, and not out of a sense of burden, but we want to enter in to that blessing which you promised. And so, Lord, as we proceed to give more thought to these matters, would you enlighten us, challenge us, convict us? Would there be repentance among us? And would we be a people who call the Sabbath not a burden, but a delight. We ask this for Jesus' sake. Amen.