Exodus chapter 20. We'll be reading verses 8 through 11. Exodus 20 verses 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. 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. Amen. If you were encountering a new believer that was seeking advice from you on how to grow in godliness and holiness, what would you tell them? No doubt, I think the first thing that comes to your mind and to my mind would be, well, read the Bible. Pray. sing psalms, go to church. Yes, absolutely, those are all good things. But one of the chief ways to grow in godliness actually includes all of those things, and it's the Sabbath, the keeping of the Sabbath day. On the Sabbath day, you, just by nature of showing up to worship God at the meeting place you're at, you will encounter all of those things that we just said. You'll have the preached word, you'll have the means of grace, but it's not just at church. It's not just at church, it's the whole of the day. The whole of the day. So imagine you're speaking with this new believer, Would you have apprehension talking to them about the Sabbath day? Is your goal just to get them to come to church? It's a good thing to get someone to come to church. But the Lord says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, not just come to church. but remember the Sabbath day. The Puritans would call the Sabbath day the market day of the soul. Maybe you've heard that before. Children, the market day, when you go out and you're exchanging goods, you're getting things and you're giving things. Well, the market day of your soul is when you go to the Lord's house, or really, That's kind of the highlight of the market day of the soul. But you are receiving blessings from the Lord the whole day. You're communing with God the whole of the day. Your soul is being fed with fat things. You're feasting. You're enjoying. You're being blessed by the Lord on this, the Sabbath day. And as we alluded to already, the Church has always had the Sabbath day. The very first day, full day, that Adam and Eve had, was the Sabbath day. Adam and Eve, created on the sixth day, with all the animals and so on. First day, full day, is the Sabbath. If you were to turn to Genesis 4, and you encounter Cain and Abel, they go to the Lord with their offerings at the, it says in the Hebrew, at the end of the days. Or we could say, on the Sabbath day. And we also looked at Exodus 16, where in the wilderness, as they're traveling still, they've got the Sabbath day before the Ten Commandments. And then you get to Exodus 20, and we see at the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath day is given with all of the other Ten Commandments. So that the Church has always had the Sabbath day. You press on into the New Testament. We've got Jesus, who keeps the Sabbath day. It's the Sabbath day and where is He? He's in the synagogue, worshipping the Lord. You go to Acts and when are they meeting? They're meeting on the first day of the week. The Sabbath day is changed from Saturday or the seventh day to the first day of the week. And this sermon is not going to address all of the theological things surrounding New Testament Sabbath. We're going to deal with that in the introduction, and then apply what it looked like to sanctify the Sabbath day. But in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ, He's keeping the Sabbath day. Every rebuke He gives to the Pharisees concerning the Sabbath day is not, don't keep the Sabbath day, it's, you're being legalistic about the Sabbath day. I'm keeping the Sabbath day perfectly, is what the Lord's doing. He kept it perfectly. And He was blessed on His Sabbath days. and in Acts you see it, in Revelation 1, John is in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, you go to the early church, and what do you see? 2nd century, Justin Martyr, keeping the Lord's Day. Ignatius, keeping the Lord's Day. The Didache, one of the earliest documents we have, speaks of the Lord's Day. Go on into the 3rd century, you see it still. And like many other things, often it gets corrupted over time. But praise the Lord for the Protestant Reformation. And in the Protestant Reformation, all of the reformed believers held to the Sabbath day. So you go to the Savoy Declaration, that's the Congregationalists, they hold to the Sabbath day. You go to the Presbyterians, the Westminster Standards, they hold to the Sabbath day. Go to the Baptists, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, Sabbath day. Go to the Three Forms of Unity, the Dutch Reform, they hold to Sabbath day. You have further reformation where England is trying to call for, England with the Westminster Assembly, they're trying to fall into more conformity with Scotland's reformations. They don't officially ever adopt the Westminster standards, and the Anglicans don't have anything on paper saying they keep the Sabbath day. It's not part of a confession or a creed or anything like that. But if I were to ask you, who is maybe your favorite Anglican? Many of you would probably say someone like J.C. Ryle. J.C. Ryle is pro-Sabbath Day. Most of the well-respected Anglicans that you know hold to the Sabbath Day, and I'm not putting them in the reformed camp. They're distinct. A wonderful book that many young men have read is called Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle. In it, he says, Sabbath-breaking leads to apostasy. Sabbath-breaking leads to apostasy. Why do I bring that up? Maybe to shock you a little bit, but we have become numb and desensitized to Sabbath-breaking in America, in the Church, in the Reformed Church, definitely the Evangelical Church, but even in the Reformed Church, Sabbath-breaking is no big deal. But it's a big deal to God. And I bring all that heritage up from Genesis, up through the end of the New Testament, early church, Reformation, to show you that the Christian heritage from the Old Testament saints to the New Testament saints to the early church and the Protestant reform, they kept the Sabbath day. But most believers today don't. And what I want you to get in your mind is that Sabbath-keeping is a gift from God to you, and it is vital for your Christian life, your sanctification, your holiness. It's vital for this. After all, did not the Lord Jesus say, If ye love me, keep my commandments? Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. and it gets trampled underfoot as though it wasn't. Who is the Sabbath day for? Is it for the Jews only? Is it only for the Christians, you might be thinking? It's for all men. It's for all men. Mark 2, 27. The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Remember that it's a creation ordinance. It'd be like asking, Who should work? Who should be married? Well, you only have to work if you want to work, or you only have to get married if you want to recognize that. Or how about comparing it to the other Ten Commandments? Does idolatry and the prohibition to, you shall have no other gods before me, does that only apply to Christians and Jews? No. How about, you shall not commit adultery? Does that only apply to the Christians and the Jews? No. The moral law is a universal law for all people, everywhere. And it's a blessing. The next question comes, well, were the Old Testament Sabbath regulations more strict? Were they more strict? And at first glance, you might think so. Turn to Exodus 1532. Sorry, Numbers 1532. Numbers 1532. A man is collecting sticks on the Sabbath day. While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, under guard, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall be surely put to death. all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died as the Lord commanded Moses. Or we could turn to Exodus 31, and we could read, if you break the Sabbath day, that the punishment for breaking the Sabbath day, Exodus 31, 14 and 15, is death. One that defileth it shall surely be put to death. For whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. And the commandments repeated. So were the Sabbath regulations in the Old Testament more strict? Well, the Fifth Commandment also, if you violate the Fifth Commandment under the Old Testament law, children, you get put to death. If you commit adultery under the Old Testament law, you get put to death. So the question is, is the duty lowered in the New Testament? Because in the New Testament, you don't get put to death for adultery, you don't get put to death for violating the Fifth Commandment, and you don't get put to death for breaking the Sabbath day. So is the duty lowered? The answer is no. No. The New Testament actually more clearly reveals the duty. So the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Sermon on the Mount, says, So the point is, just because the punishment is not there, doesn't mean you have any less obligation to keep the day. So it would be like saying, if you live under the Old Testament, you would have more of an obligation to be faithful to your wife if you're a husband. And now that you're in the New Testament, you somehow have less of an obligation. It's not so. The same thing with the Sabbath day. It's not so. The Lord gives us the heart duty required, which was always there. They were not more strict with their laws. The Lord still takes very seriously adultery, just as He does the fifth commandment, and just as He does the Sabbath day. Well then, our theme this morning is sanctifying the Sabbath day. And we're gonna look at this under two heads, or two headings. Negatively, prohibition, positively, requirements, or duties, negatively and positively. First, we're going to look at this negatively. What is prohibited? Exodus 20, verses 8 to 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." And we'll stop there. It's very clear what the Lord says. All the other commandments, we speak of the Ten Commandments often. Thou shalt not. There's a thou shalt not in the Fourth Commandment. And it says, Thou shalt not work. The very little explanation needs to be given to this, besides the two exceptions that the Lord shows us. God has given six days for work, lawful work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. And there are those two exceptions, works of necessity and works of mercy. Works of necessity and works of mercy. So we have works of necessity, those works which cannot be avoided. They cannot be postponed. So, if you own animals, you have to feed them and care for them. If your house caught fire, you'd have to put it out. You can't postpone that. It's a necessity. the Lord gives us this precept in Matthew 12. Or works of mercy. If you're a doctor, if you're a nurse, if you're a minister or just even a friend, you're visiting the sick, caring for the sick. Or the most merciful thing you can do for someone is actually share with them the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is room here to go and evangelize people on the Sabbath day as a work of mercy to them and their soul. And the Lord shows us this with the healing of the man born blind and the healing of the man at the withered hand on the Sabbath day. They try and condemn him. He's not breaking the Sabbath. He's doing a work of mercy. So the question is, if it's so clear that I shouldn't work, What do I do if I currently work on the Sabbath day? What am I supposed to do? Maybe none of you work here on the Sabbath day. Praise the Lord for that. But if you're counseling someone else, what would you say? Clearly the Bible is very clear, no work. As we've been doing with other commandments and comparing, I want you to think about this. You've got a friend, He's committing adultery. You know about it. And he seeks you out for advice. And you think, Brother, you really don't want to upset the girl you're committing adultery with. So it's probably best if you just break it off slow. You know, slowly start to distance yourself. Just ease away slower and slower. No, that's ridiculous. If he's committing adultery, you tell him, stop immediately. What are you thinking? Are you out of your mind? But with the Sabbath, We make exceptions, don't we? Well, you know, keep doing it for a few months and try to get your employer. No. The Lord says no. Full stop. No. You stop immediately. You stop immediately. This is the Lord's day. This is the Sabbath day. He prescribes what we do. He prohibits what we do. And he has said, no. So if you're confronted with working on the Sabbath day, you stop immediately. Boss, I cannot do this. This is a violation of the law of God. I don't know what that means for my employment, but I cannot do this. Don't wait. put it off today in repentance. But then we also see another prohibition or something negative in this command. And it's more clearly seen, I think, in Isaiah 58. Turn to Isaiah 58, 13 to 14. And this is a prohibition against recreation. We have the commandment in Exodus 20 and some other things before that. We have, maybe we could call it exegesis here from Isaiah, or a helpful word from him. Scripture interprets scripture. Isaiah 58, 13 and 14. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable, and shalt honor him. Listen to this prohibition. not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then thou shalt call thyself, then thou shalt, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and so on. So we see here a prohibition from recreation, your own pleasures, your own ways, your own words even, Before I even go any further, do you think the Lord cares how you speak on a day-to-day basis? He certainly does. The Lord cares about all that we do. And I want to be clear here, we started with a negative, and it's going to be very negative, right? The Lord is saying, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. We're going to get to the positive. As in, then do this, and then do this, and then do this. But He's clear here. not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking even thine own words." We could press it, even your own thoughts, right? The Lord cares about what we think about, what we meditate upon, and so on. And He's given us His day as a rich blessing. Now, I want to go here to an example in the Scriptures. Turn to Nehemiah 13. Nehemiah 13. It's after Chronicles. Nehemiah 13. Nehemiah is the governor after the return from Babylonian exile. And he is the magistrate. And he's going to see some things happening. And let's look at what he does. Nehemiah 13 15 to 19 in those days I saw in Judah some treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaves and Lading asses as also wine grapes and figs and all manner of burdens which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals and There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish, and all manner of wear, and sold on the Sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus? And did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel. by profaning the Sabbath. And it came to pass that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut and charged that they should not be opened till after the Sabbath. And some of my servants set eye at the gates that there should no burden be brought in on the Sabbath." We'll stop there. So he sees it, he confronts it, he implements immediate stops to it. And if you notice, when we read the Fourth Commandment, the commandment is specified to those who are in authority. So, remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy, you, and it says, your son, daughter, manservant, maidservant, your animals, stranger within thy gates, someone who has a form of authority, has a more duty on the Sabbath, to ensure that those under their charge also keep the Sabbath. And he says a few things here. He says, a few times, they're profaning the day, but notice this. He says, verse 18, What's he referring to? He is actually tying Sabbath-breaking to the reason why they went into exile. The reason why they came under such severe judgments of the Lord. To Sabbath-breaking. Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath. And so He does something about it. And so we apply this. Fathers and mothers, or if you're an employer. I'm a father, many fathers in here. It is your duty for those who are under your charge to ensure that they're keeping the Sabbath day. I have a portion in this message about legalism. Imagine if I said, it is your duty that your children do not murder each other. You wouldn't look at me any different, would you? You'd be like, that makes sense, right? But you say keep the Sabbath day, and it sounds like legalism because we're so foreign to it. But it's the duty of those who are in authority to ensure Sabbath-keeping, not just for law-keeping's sake. It's for their good, spiritual good, material good. It's for your good. Children might not see it that way at times, but you can disciple them, you can train them up in the ways of the Lord so that they can delight themselves in the Lord and see the rich blessings of the Sabbath. You know, you can imagine a child is going wayward, maybe an older teenage child, and they've fallen in love with some unbeliever and you're like, no, cut it off, not happening. They might get mad at you, they might get upset with you, but what you're doing is you're snatching them from the flames. You're protecting them, both physically and spiritually. It's good for them. And it's your duty to do this. It's also, as we looked at Nehemiah, and earlier in Isaiah 49, the magistrate's duty. In America, in the early 1600s to about 1950, there was something called blue laws. Maybe you've never heard of them, maybe you have, but essentially these were laws on the books that prohibited shopping. This is in pretty much everywhere across America until the 1950s. Prohibited shopping, prohibited working, nothing was open on the Sabbath day. It was all closed. And I'm speaking of Sunday specifically, the Sabbath day under the New Testament. Could you imagine ever living under such a society? I've never grown up in something like that. Maybe some of you have, but it's so far away, and it's the duty of the magistrate to do this, to bring this about, because he must uphold the law of God. There may be a few times a year that you would experience something like this. I'm thinking of on Christmas day or Thanksgiving or something. I can remember a few years ago it was Thanksgiving and my pipe under my kitchen sink broke. And on Thanksgiving day, you're cooking all day. And I couldn't use my sink because there's no way to. So I went to the local hardware store. Closed. Went over here. Closed. Tried to go to Home Depot over here. Everything was closed. It was impossible to get something on that day. It was as though I was living in a materialistic, artificial Sabbath day. And there are days like that in our culture, where everything is shut down and closed. But that's the picture of the biblical Sabbath day is everything stops. It's not just that. Everything does stop. and people worship God. People were eating turkeys in their house. That's not the Sabbath day. We also have an example from a preacher. Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah 17. And what does he preach on? Jeremiah 17, 19. I want you to note who's telling him to go preach. Thus said the Lord unto me, Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem, and say unto them, Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates. Thus saith the Lord. Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden. On the Sabbath day. You mean the Lord told Jeremiah to go preach on Sabbath day to the kings? To the nobles of Judah? He certainly did. Bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem, neither carry forth a burden out of your house. So there's a duty here, we've got a duty for magistrates and fathers and mothers and employers. We've got a duty for preachers to preach against Sabbath breaking. for sessions to discipline this. Once again, we compare another sin. A person in your congregation started worshipping a false god. Could you imagine the elders not disciplining him for that? That's absolutely insane. But we see a magistrate changing laws. We see Jeremiah preaching against it from a message from the Lord. Go do this, Jeremiah. And then we see the individuals. Exodus 16, which we already read. They weren't supposed to gather on the seventh day. They went out and gathered and they're chastised for not keeping the commandments of the Lord. I've already brought this up, but there is such fear of legalism in this subject here. You know, I've heard a couple of, call them, I've heard some messages on the Sabbath and they're always prefaced with a million qualifications about we don't want to be legalists, we don't want to be legalists, we don't want to be legalists, this and this and all these rules and all this stuff. All that the Lord has set before you so far is don't work, no work, no recreation. And in our Christian culture, to be absolutely frank with you, We are so far from being legalistic about the Sabbath day, especially considering history and what the Christian church looked like in the history of the world. We're so far from it. You don't, I'm not saying never worry about it, of course you can fall into it, but the concerns of men, you don't need to be concerned about this. If you even say, I wanna keep the Sabbath day, someone's gonna think you're a legalist already. You haven't even defined what that meant. I want to keep the Sabbath day holy. Well, that's legalism. To whatever degree you say it, someone's going to immediately look at you as a legalist. Obedience is not legalism. Obedience is not legalism. We are called to obey the Lord from a heart of joy and love because of what He's done for us. Remember, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. God has given it to us as a gift. He's given it to us as a gift. We touched a bit about speaking earlier, and I want to maybe help bring some clarity here. You know, we spoke during the fellowship lunch, and I asked a brother about his job. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with asking people about their lives on the Sabbath day. The issue is when it dominates, and that's the focus of everything. But how could I even pray for a brother if I didn't ask him how his week was going? How could I care for him and love him? That's not the point. That's not the point is to make these stringent fences around the law. But we want to honor the law, or honor the Lord, and not let these things dominate Finally, under this first heading of negatively, I want you to remember that today, literally today, today is the market day of the soul. It is. But do you treat it as such? Do you approach unto this day as the market day of the soul? Or is it a hindrance to you because you can't go to work? Is it a hindrance to you because you can't do something that your father and mother has said? Let's not do that. Let's do this instead. See, the Lord cares about both your body and your soul. And He's given this day for your soul and your spiritual good, for your growth in holiness. I want you to think of Abraham. When Abraham was called by the Lord to go to Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son, and they went the three days journey, He left the servants, and he left the donkey, and he went up onto the mountain. He left behind his work and his recreation, and he worshipped the Lord. Think of that. Go up on the mountain and worship God the whole of the day. That's not a picture of you going to church. That's a picture of you approaching the Sabbath day. So we've considered the Sabbath day, sanctifying it in the negative, and now we'll look positively, positively. So what do we do on the Sabbath day? We've already said many times, it's the market day of the soul. And the first thing we note is verse eight of Exodus 20, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. In the New Testament, the day before the Sabbath is called the day of preparation, or the preparation day. There's a remembering of it by preparing for it. Remembering of it by preparing for it. And we'll parse this out in two ways. You're gonna prepare for it practically, materially, logistically, and you're gonna prepare for it spiritually. So practically, materially, logistically. We saw Exodus 16, they gathered double manna on day six so that they're freed up to worship God on the Sabbath day. This preparation allows you to avoid work on that day. So some of us just came back from a road trip, a long one. You prepare before you go on a road trip. You've got things packed and ready to go. Children, if you've ever been on a road trip, maybe you haven't done the packing. Maybe your parents have done it for you. Or maybe you got old enough to where they told you to pack. And you went to pack, and you forgot things. And you realized, I'm not going to do that next time. So you learn in your preparations. You grow in them. And you can grow in this area, too. But for the Sabbath day, the preparations in our modern context might be ensuring you have enough gas in your car for the Sabbath, having groceries, you have a fellowship meal. You have that already at your house when you go to church. You've thought about it in the week ahead, not just the day before, but you're intentional. You've got your clothes clean and your dishes ready and all these things, and children. What you can do is have your clothes picked out. I've got a son in my home that loses much time regularly because he can't find his shoe or he can't find his belt. You need a belt to wear pants with a shirt tucked in. And so I'm not saying you have to wear a belt or whatever the case, but point is, have your things ready, know where they are. Those are the things at particular ages that you run into. And you can implement particular Sabbath family traditions. Tradition is not a bad word. Traditionalism is bad, but tradition can be good, especially for children. You know, you do the same thing every week, you eat the same thing for breakfast on the Sabbath, and it's a treat maybe, something sweet, or you have ice cream every Sabbath, or something enjoyable, something that the children can look forward to, and adults certainly look forward to it as well. This is all the prep work, the things that you do beforehand, so that when you get to the Sabbath day, you can fully enjoy it, logistically and practically. But then there's a spiritual preparation. It's not just material. It's not just outward. It's not less than that. This is the day that the Lord has made for you to come unto Mount Zion, to worship God, to rejoice in it, to be glad, and so you're to approach it with spiritual preparations. This is the day that you're going to meet Jesus Christ preached to you. You're going to hear His voice. He's going to set up a banquet for you. He's going to feed you with fat things. It's a beautiful day, a glorious day. He's going to carry you into the banqueting house, or quite literally, the wine house. It's going to be a glorious and beautiful time. And He's going to place His banner of love over your soul. And He's going to issue out to you a double blessing on this day. And so you need to be spiritually prepared for it, expecting this. You know, we want to approach this day knowing that God has blessed it. Knowing that He's promised to bless you in it. And to kind of tie in to the very first opening. If the Lord has given you this whole day, once a week, it's as though He's saying to you, use this for your own good, for my glory. I've given it to you. Take the whole of the day. Worship me. Grow in grace. Feed upon me. Every week. There's no famine on the Sabbath day. You could even imagine maybe someone in prison. You can even keep the Sabbath day in prison as you look forward to it and prepare for it and have sweet communion with the Lord Jesus Christ from a prison cell. Children, it's easy to think of maybe your birthday, and your birthday's coming up, and you focus on that, you get so excited for it, or a vacation is coming up, and all you can do is think of that for weeks and weeks to come. That's the attitude and heart that the Lord would have you to have about His day, His glorious day. And even when you do take a vacation, guess what's carved out in the middle of your vacation? you're still going to keep the Sabbath day. Because the Sabbath day doesn't stop on vacations. So we've seen the preparation for it. How about the observation of the day? The observation of the day. So we've made proper preparations for it. You're leaving behind all of your lawful work and your recreation. so that you can be more fully set to sanctify the day. And I want you to know that this day is not mere rest. It's not a day of inaction. It's actually a day of holy exercises. So it's actually expressly forbidden that you would be idle on this day. So you can imagine, well, okay, church starts really late, so I'm gonna sleep in really late, wake up with just enough time to get to church, then I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go sleep for the rest of the day, and that's my Sabbath day. That is not what the Lord has intended for the Sabbath day at all. Not at all. He is not telling you, I want you to be idle or slothful. It's actually forbidden. It's not a lazy Sunday. He has given you this day to remember as a market day for your soul. And as we're on the subject of sleeping, it's not as though you can't nap on a Sabbath day or something like that. That's not what the Lord is saying to you. It's idleness. Spiritual idleness is forbidden. slothfulness is forbidden and you're to be given to spiritual exercises the whole of the day. Maybe you're a bit apprehensive and you're thinking, how can I fill my whole day with stuff to do? How can I fill my whole day? Maybe you've never even considered this before. Or maybe you're looking for new things because you struggle at times. Well, I would first say that the schedule of the worship services here are an aid to you. They're an aid to you. You know, you show up here, you have a fellowship lunch after the first service, and you have a second service, and then you go home, and the Lord has given you this to aid you in the keeping of the whole of the day. It's a real blessing. So the schedule is set up to help you. But also, you need to examine your Sabbath day and make necessary changes if you see fit. Not every Sabbath day looks the same. It's not wake up, open my Bible, read the Bible until I go to church, go to church, get home, read my Bible the whole time. That is not what the Lord is saying that you have to do or something like that. There are other spiritual things to do besides reading your Bible. But you need to examine these things. And I would also say that regardless of who you are, and I speak this to myself, and I do this, speak to someone who is more mature than you in the faith, ask them about their Sabbath day. Ask them what they do. If they have older children, or if they have the same age children as you, you can learn from each other. Talk about these things. Help one another in your keeping of the Sabbath day. You know, there's many, many things that you can learn just from a conversation. I want to make one keynote because I've talked about it, talked around it. Worship of the Lord is the pinnacle of the Sabbath day. Not to say that if you're sick and you're sick home, that you can't keep the Sabbath day somehow because you're sick. But from the beginning, there has been holy convocations on this day to worship the Lord and to meet with Him and to be blessed. You've got the synagogue gatherings in the New Testament, Christ Himself goes, New Testament worship services and so on. And so as you prepare for the Sabbath day, You're also preparing to meet with the Lord in worship. In worship. So what does that require of you? It requires of you heart preparation. So before we started this service, there was a time of prayer, preparing to meet with the Lord. Not, children, not staring at the wall. but preparing to meet with the Lord. Heart preparation, but just like the Sabbath, physical preparation. Going to the bathroom, so you don't need to leave. Having everything you need. Notebook, pen if you take notes, things like this. And in the context of worship, I want to speak about small children for a moment. You know, small children, wiggling in worship, that's fine. We train them. But I want to press to your soul that if your small child can watch a two-hour movie without moving, they can sit in worship just fine. It's not a problem. The problem is, we need to take seriously what we're doing here. And you can raise that argument to them. Flip it on them. Well, that movie was really short. Really, it was really short. We're going to do family worship for an hour and a half. It'll be really short. No, it wasn't really short. It went by fast because you were entertained. You wanted to be there. Flip it on them. Talk to them about these things. Encourage them to sit still and not just sit still, you know, obediently, but to listen. That this market day of the soul is for them too. That the Lord is speaking to them as well. Now, I've said this already as well, but we've emphasized that it's the whole day. And the Sabbath isn't over when you've gotten into your car and you go home. You still have much of the day for the Lord to bless you. for you to have serious, beautiful communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to make a couple notes here that, you know, you already have the fellowship meal. It's a great help, but fellowship and hospitality on this Sabbath day is something that you can do. I'm not saying you have to do it, but you can do it, and it's rich and beautiful. you know, getting together in the home and singing the Psalms, or reviewing the sermon, or talking about the Lord, things like that. It may be done especially on this day. Just praying for one another. Finally, I want to distinguish between what's called legal obedience and evangelical obedience. Legal obedience and evangelical obedience. So I've given you a lot about this Sabbath day. And you can take all of these things and you can just legally just go do them. Technically, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Right? Wouldn't necessarily be bad. But the Lord doesn't just want legal obedience. He doesn't want you to just go, okay, alright, wake up in the morning, I'll do this, and then I'll do this, and then I'll do this, and then I'll do this. Or you can imagine a son being told, son, go do this. And he does it, and he just walks over there, just obviously doesn't want to do it, but he does it. That's legal obedience. Just obeying for obedience sake. as opposed to evangelical obedience, where you see the beauty, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fact that all of His commandments to you are blessings. You think of one of the first ones in the garden before the fall, be fruitful and multiply. That was a command. It's also a really great blessing. Same thing with the Sabbath day. It's a command, but it's a blessing. And the Lord desires evangelical heart obedience for you to love the things that the Lord loves. To be blessed in the things that the Lord has said He will bless you in. So that you can truly call the Sabbath a delight, and delight yourself in the Lord. Delight yourself in the Lord. As we've said, Sabbath breaking is acceptable today. But I want you to think about this. I want you to think about this. People, on Judgment Day, one of the sins God will send people to hell for is for breaking His Sabbath day. This is something that Christ has died for. This is something that Christ calls us to repent of and gives us as a blessing. He calls you to enjoy it. And if you don't like the Sabbath day, you won't like heaven. It's the eternal Sabbath day. Robert Murray McShane said, there are no Sabbaths in hell. No Sabbaths in hell. Speaking of Robert Murray McShane, Robert Murray McShane single his whole life, minister in the free church, died at 29, missionary and pastor. He didn't say this, but someone writing of him said, Robert Murray McShane would wake up every morning on the Sabbath day at six in the morning and he would stay up until midnight because he wanted to spend the absolute most time with the Lord on his Sabbath day. That's not a prescription for you. That's to show you that He cared about the Lord and spending time with the Lord, especially on His Sabbath day. It's glorious and it's beautiful. And God has never, ever left His people without the Sabbath. From the very creation of the world, He's given it to us. But as people continue to desert it, time and time again, And sadly, we're in a culture that has almost totally deserted the Sabbath day. And one thing that will mark you out as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is your observance of the Sabbath day. It's gonna make you weird. There's a lot of things that makes a Christian weird, and I don't mean weird like stay away from that person, I mean a peculiar person. You know, the way they talk, the way they dress, the way they do things. But the Sabbath day is one of those things that really marks you out as distinct and separate. And that's the Lord's wisdom there. I can't go into a certain career field. Why not? Fourth Commandment. I can't do this certain thing that you want me to do. Why not? Fourth Commandment. I love the Lord and His day and I won't compromise on this at all, not one inch. It's His day, not your day. So the question for all of us is, what will you do with this glorious day which the Lord has made? What will you do with it? Will you follow the Lord Jesus Christ? He kept the Sabbath day. You're never gonna keep it perfectly. He kept it perfectly, but he showed us the example of obedience to the Lord in it. And by God's grace, you will be blessed in it. You know, if you did the math as well, you know, if you're a covenant child raised in the church, and from the time you were little, every Sabbath day, was taken seriously and given to the Lord. By the time you're 49 years old, you will have spent seven years of your life keeping this Sabbath day, enjoying the Lord on His day. Every seven years of your life, one whole year of your life is given distinctly to the Lord. A whole year of your life. It's a long time. But the Lord's given it to you for your good because the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Will you call it a delight? The Lord has said it is a delight. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable, and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasures, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Amen. Let us stand and close with prayer. O Lord, our God, we give you thanks and we praise you for thy law is perfect. All 10 of thy commandments, every word from your mouth is good. Oh, we pray that you would give us delight in our souls to keep thy day, to prepare for it, to remember it, to be blessed in it, to enter into the banqueting house of the Lord Jesus Christ, to feed on fat things, to be nourished and cared for, to hear the voice of the shepherd, to be taken up into the courts of our God, O Lord, we delight in thy Sabbath, and yet we fail many times, and our minds wander, and our hearts and our affections cling to the things of this world. Forgive us, and give us new desires, love for thy holy day, that we might with a clear conscience and faith say, by Sabbath is a delight. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.