This week we will be concluding our short series on the history of holy days. My short 3 or 4 part series that is now extended to a 6th and a 7th part and I could have done an 8th or a 9th part as well but I decided to contract some of these matters. Let us get before us the history so that we might be prepared for today's lessons. It seems seasonable to take up this history at this point in time because of course all around us we've had spread the Christ Mass and we found that almost the entire Protestant world has gone running after Rome and the observance of Rome's holy days. and so it seemed good to take up this history to see what the word of God has to say about it for even all of our human traditions are to be evaluated in the light of God's word we started our investigation with the regulative principle of worship that God has commanded us how we are to worship him and has given us the forms of worship And as Moses says, we are not to add to those forms of worship nor to take away from them, but do all that God has said. No subtractions and no additions. We apply this principally to what we might call the forms of worship or the substance of worship. God is commanded during this new administration, the reading, preaching and conscionable hearing of the word. He has commanded prayer, the singing of the Psalms, and the administration of the sacraments. These are the ordinary forms of worship, the substance of worship. We are not to add to these nor take away from them. Generally speaking, the circumstances of worship have been left to the purview of the Church. In other words, we must have a time of meeting and a place of meeting and God has left those things up to us during this new administration or we should say for the most part because God has also been pleased to regulate some of the circumstances of worship and when he has done so we are not free to alter his regulation So for example, generally speaking, God has left it up to us to figure out how we are to dress as long as it is modest, generally speaking. But then he regulated head coverings for women, a regulated circumstance of the worship. He has not regulated time with respect to say 10.30 or 11 o'clock, but he has regulated time generally. You will meet for your worship, your public assembly on the Sabbath day. Leviticus chapter 23 so there is some regulation of the circumstances and it has been my argument throughout this that God has regulated the appointment of holy days he has reserved that for himself and he has not given it to man and as we see in the scripture he shows his displeasure whenever men have attempted to hallow days for the worshipping of God As we get into the history, we see this time and time again. From the creation of the world, God appointed a holy day. He set one day apart for his worship. That was the weekly Sabbath. But we should note that he did not leave it up to Adam to do this, but that he himself did it. And that weekly Sabbath day is moral in its import. Now some have looked at the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath, and they thought it to be ceremonial, but nothing could be further from the truth. You think about morally we must worship God. It's a first commandment issue. We must worship God. The fourth commandment deals with the proper proportion of time for that. You imagine Adam in the Garden of Eden. He says, I have God's commanded me to exercise dominion. I have a great many responsibilities. But he's also commanded me to worship. What is the proper proportion of time for me to work this garden over against the worship of God? Now, Adam, with the wisdom that he had, might be able to see that every day is too much because he does have dominion responsibilities. But they'd say once a month is too little and too infrequent. But it was only the divine wisdom that could tell him that the perfect proportion of time to be set aside for the worship of God was the one day in seven. So it is moral. God must be worshipped and there is a fitting proportion of time for that to be done. The divine will has been made clear to us that is one part in seven. And that's the way that it was. One holy day in the church for 2,500 years. Two millennia and a half. No other holy day was kept, nor was necessary to be kept in order to be pleasing to God. Things changed with the Mosaic administration of the Covenant of Grace. Moses, now that we're approaching the time for the arrival of Christ, it's just 1500 years now until the arrival of Christ. God added ceremonial Sabbaths to preach Christ to come. But again, who instituted these holy days? God himself instituted these holy days. And for his own purpose. Of course, in the nature of the case, this would be most necessary. If the original Sabbath principle is moral, in other words, if the proper proportion of time is six days of labor and one day of worship, then only God himself could alter that or give any exceptions to it with ceremonial Sabbaths or ceremonial holy days. And this he himself does. So he commanded their three great yearly feasts, and the new moons and even the sabbatical years all for the purpose of preaching Christ so that his people would be ready when Christ arrived. This raises the question for us, would God be pleased if men tried to appoint any holy days for themselves? And as we saw in the history the answer was a resounding no. First we saw Aaron, with the construction of the golden calf, appointing a holy day for its service and worship. Now, he believed this to be a Sabbath day for Jehovah, a holy day for Jehovah, even though they had the golden calf, the God that had brought them up out of Egypt. We ask the question, was God pleased with the holy day of Aaron's appointing? And the answer is no. God was so angry with what was going on in Israel that he wanted to wipe them all out and declared as much to Moses. Through Moses' intercession, a powerful image of Jesus Christ, God relents. Moses goes down there and reveals God's disposition to the people. His anger was greatly inflamed, not only by the calf itself, but by their dancing and revelry associated with their feast day, their holy day. And so what does Moses do? He decimates the calf. He melts it, he grinds it to powder, he throws it in the water and he makes them drink it. Now we might say, perhaps this isn't enough to prove that God won't be pleased with any holy days of human institution, but it is enough to teach us this. that the monuments of idolatry, including holy days, ought to be taken away and not had in remembrance. Can any of us in sobriety imagine Moses walking away from that and saying, the calf was bad, but the holy day that was instituted, that's just fine? Of course not. The text that is most decisive against the holy days of human institution is actually 1 Kings 12 and we looked at this, the history of Jeroboam. You remember Jeroboam, after the division of the northern and southern kingdom, wanted to keep his northern kingdom people from going down to Jerusalem to worship, afraid that their hearts would be carried away to the southern king, the house of David, if they did so. And so what does he do? He gives them a substitute form of worship, the golden calves in Dan and Bethel, very convenient, a place that any northern kingdom Israelite could go to with some convenience. He gave them a substitute service, a substitute priesthood, and also substitute holy days, so that they would not feel the need to go down to Jerusalem for theirs. It's said in that text, and those that have read Deuteronomy are going to get the point, that these were holy days that came out of Jeroboam's own mind and heart this being an allusion to Deuteronomy 12.8 where God told them that with respect to worship we are no longer going to do what is right in every man's own eyes and here were holy days that were right in Jeroboam's own eyes but different than that that the Lord himself had established the Lord makes his disposition quite clear in 1st Kings chapter 13 he judges Jeroboam not only by sending a prophet, sending a word to declare against this idolatry but also by the working of a miracle where that altar that he had erected is overthrown and his hand withers up when he stretches it out against the prophet you see God's great anger against this idolatrous mindset that we will approach God according to the path of our choosing but nothing could be more opposite to the gospel and its worship we approach God on God's terms not on our own so we see God's displeasure against these things but there was another great turning in the history of redemption with the arrival of Jesus Christ and the accomplishment of our redemption those ceremonial holy days have been given for the purpose of preaching Jesus Christ to come but now Christ has come and they were fulfilled and in their fulfillment they were taken away we saw that God in his great mercy in Romans 14 gave the Jews who had been instructed in this all of their lives, and now for 15 centuries, a gracious time to let go of the old ordinances. You have to remember that until the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, things hadn't changed very radically for this people. The temple is still sitting there, and people are still going up. It might quite literally be on Monday I was going up and on Wednesday I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and I've been converted. But what do I do with the practice of the fathers, especially after God had judged us so strictly and severely when we left these things off? God graciously gave them a space to gradually let those things go. But we see that even as God was giving His space for those Roman Jews to let go of their ceremonial Sabbaths, as He was granting those Sabbaths an honorable burial, He would not suffer those ceremonial Sabbaths to be imposed upon the Gentile Christian. We saw this in Galatians chapter 4 and Colossians chapter 2. These things are on their way to the grave. We're not going to rake them out of the ashes as we saw Dr. Evans say last week. But with the fall of Jerusalem, it was the decisive end of the ceremonial Sabbaths. You might say, well, how can that be? Because the Jews have continued to practice their ceremonial Sabbaths for these 20 centuries since. How can it be that you say that the ceremonial Sabbaths were buried? The Jews can pretend whatever they want, but they have not been able to keep the ceremonial Sabbaths without the temple and without its worship. Because at the heart of every one of those ceremonies was sacrifice. So God by his own power and providence cut the heart out of these ceremonial Sabbaths where they cannot be kept according to his institution which is very important this is where we pick up Numbers chapter 9 beginning in verse 1 I bring this up because we see Jehovah's zeal that the ceremonial Sabbaths be kept in the way that he commanded, and that included all of the rites and sacrifices that he had appointed, things that cannot be done since the fall of Jerusalem, in spite of what the Jews might pretend. Numbers chapter 9 verse 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, But the children of Israel also keep the Passover at his appointed season. And the fourteenth day of this month at even, ye shall keep it in his appointed season, according to all the rites of it, and according to all the ceremonies thereof shall ye keep it. And Moses spake unto the children of Israel that they should keep the Passover. You see that the Lord insists that when you keep this Passover, you're going to keep it with all of its rites and ceremonies. which requires a temple something that they no longer have access to the Lord Jesus Christ himself returned in judgment against the temple took it away and the ceremonial Sabbath cannot be continued not by Jewish Christians and not by Gentile Christians they cannot be kept but this raises a question for us which is really the burden of this morning's sermon well is there any holy day left? If the ceremonial Sabbaths have been taken away, is there any holy day left in the Christian Church? Well, we have already anticipated the answer to that. First, a little background. I would encourage you to look at this in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 19. The Puritan divines always made a three-fold division of God's law. The first division was the moral law. These were principles of morality that were grounded in the very nature of God himself and could not be changed or altered. These are represented to us in the Ten Commandments. It was no part of the ceremonial law, for example, that men would not murder or kill or steal, commit adultery. These are moral principles that have been in the world from the very beginning and will continue. These are principles of conduct that always guide man. And Jesus did not disannul or take these things away. He said, I came not to abrogate these things, to annul the law and the prophets, but I came to fulfill these things, to do them perfectly and to teach you concerning them in their full extent, not to take them away. so the moral law grounded in the nature of God is perpetual and abiding the ceremonial law was given to preach Jesus Christ to come and was primarily connected with the Mosaic administration so you think about the shedding of all those the blood of all of those bulls and goats all intended to preach Jesus Christ you think about their ceremonial Sabbaths intended to preach Christ their priesthood preaching Christ Jesus to come what a wonderful image of Jesus Christ to see the high priest in his garb with his breastplate and the names of the tribes of the children of Israel blazoned upon his chest and his shoulders a clear evidence that he was not ministering for himself but for the good of his people representative a picture of spiritual truth so that Paul could say you are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus your high priest his name written your name written upon his chest and upon his shoulders where he lives to make intercession for you all of these things were intended to preach Christ but as we saw last week in Colossians chapter 2 they were foreshadows they were shadows that were pointing forward to a body but when the body has come there's no more need of the ceremonies it's like preferring the shadow of your beloved spouse over the very body going after the shadow, loving the shadow, adoring the shadow when the body is standing right there Paul says this is a ridiculous thing and a ridiculous situation We're not to go after those things when you have the fullness of Jesus Christ set before you in the preaching of the gospel. The Jews also had a judicial law that as our Divine said the judicial law of Israel was given specifically for that state except for the general equity thereof. So some of the laws are peculiar to them as a people like their cities of refuge But the principles of equity that are taught in those things go on. In other words, a man ought not to be executed without some form of a trial. We learn principles of justice from those judicial laws even though we don't keep them necessarily in all of their particulars. So what we have in sum, the moral law continues, the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and taken away, and the judicial law passed with the state of Israel except for the general equity, the principles of justice that we learned there. You might say, Pastor, why do you bring all of this up? Well it has everything to do with what we're doing. Remember I said that the weekly Sabbath day was a moral institution and not a ceremonial institution. Given 2500 years before the ceremonial law under Moses. and given based on moral principles. What is the fitting proportion of time for the worship of God? It is moral in its import. So when the ceremonial law is taken away, we would not expect the moral weekly Sabbath to be taken away. And you think about its presentation in Moses' Law, where do we find it? Do we find it there, only presented, say, in Leviticus? No, we find it first, packed up, with the moral law of God written in the Ten Commandments, engraven by his own finger in stone, as if it would never pass away, and laid up in the safest place in all of the world, God's own holy ark, to show that this is perpetual and abiding upon his people. As Moses makes plain to us, God in his creating gave us this pattern for our imitation in the fourth commandment. Turn there to Exodus chapter 20. Remember the Lord could have created the earth in any way that he wanted to create it. He could have created it instantaneously if that had been his good pleasure. Or he could have created it over a very long period of time. None of these time frames is necessitated by some sort of limitation on his power. According to his power he can do it any way that he wants. But he chooses to do it in the space of six days and to rest on the seventh. Not because God needed that for himself. but to teach man his own pattern of life as Moses applies it here in Exodus chapter 20 verse 9 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 the 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. Notice that little word for it at the beginning of verse 11. He says you're going to work the six days and rest on the seventh day to worship the Lord your God. On what basis Moses? For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth. and on the seventh day he rested and he hallowed that day and blessed it this is a creation ordinance like marriage things that pass not away but have continued among men from the very beginning as we saw in a previous sermon we see that even the pagans, the ancient pagans knew that the seventh day was a holy day indicating that this was something even older than the law of Moses something older than the division of nations in Genesis chapter 10 where they began to separate themselves out this goes all the way back to the creation and something that Noah would have taught his boys and something that his boys would have taught their posterity even as a great many went into paganism they remembered this that the seventh day was a holy day and kept by holy people so this is our anticipated answer when we come and we say do we expect there to be any holy day remaining during this present administration after the ceremonial sabbaths are taken away and the answer is yes we would expect the moral sabbath to continue but let us look at a problem text one that we have to deal with and it's always good to deal with the most difficult things because if we can deal with the most difficult text all of the other text will be easy by comparison turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2 Colossians chapter 2, beginning in verse 16. Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of any holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Now some have looked at this text and said, look, the Sabbath days are talked about here. The Sabbath day is being treated as if it's taken away. And of course, if that is what's intended here, it would be. I mean, this text would be decisive against the Sabbath day. We wouldn't have expected it, but if Paul is talking about our weekly Sabbath here, that would pretty much be the end of it. But the question is, what is meant by Sabbaths here? What is intended? Because there are actually two possibilities and not one. You should know that under the old administration that during those weekly festivals the first day and the last day of those festivals were holy convocations that were called Sabbaths. They were called Sabbaths. And so the question here is what does Paul intend? Does he intend the ceremonial Sabbaths connected with the feast days? Or does he intend the weekly Sabbath? How do we get an answer to a question like that? Here we have recourse to something that is called the analogy of faith. And you should have this in your bulletin, Westminster Confession of Faith 1-9. How do we resolve this kind of difficult exegetical problem? Westminster Confession of Faith 1-9 says this, The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself. And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold but one, it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. So what are the divines telling us here? What is the infallible rule of the interpretation of the scripture? Well, it is the Holy Spirit of God Himself speaking in other places of scripture. And as the divine say here, the sense of the scripture is not manifold. In other words, it is not going to contradict itself or say opposite things. The sense of the scripture is ultimately one. One unified coherent body of truth. So when we're having an exegetical difficulty, when we come to this and we say, well, we're not sure what he means here necessarily by Sabbaths, we've got to look to the other scriptures to tell us. And the first thing that we ought to do is look to the immediate context. And really, we need nothing beyond the immediate context to tell us what Sabbaths are intended here. We spent a lot of time with this last week, so I'll just briefly touch it in review. In verse 14, Paul talks about the handwriting of ordinances that were against us, that these things were nailed to the cross and taken away. Now the handwriting of ordinances here referred to cannot be the moral law. It cannot be, or Paul will be contradicting himself as early as chapter 3. So within the scope of about 15 verses, he will be contradicting himself. You say, well, how do you know that, Pastor? Look at chapter 3, verse 1. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on the things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affections, evil concupiscence, 7th commandment violations, and covetousness, 10th commandment violation, which is idolatry, 2nd commandment violation. In other words, Paul is not meaning that the moral law has been taken away. in the cross of Christ, it continues, and it continues to assert its precepts. The handwriting of ordinances that was nailed to the cross, those ordinances that were against us, were the ceremonial laws. You say, well how do you know that? The Puritans were brilliant on this point. They said, as we look at Paul's epistle to the Hebrews, year after year the ceremonial ordinances were a reminder that your sins were not yet fully dealt with. You would go year after year and put your hand upon the head of that goat, and you would proclaim your sins over it, and that goat would be slaughtered as a picture of Jesus Christ. But as Paul says in Hebrews, but nobody ever really believed that they really took away the guilt of sins. And the fact that the high priest had to go into the Holy of Holies year after year was a sign that sin was not being decisively dealt with. It was only when Jesus Christ offered his blood once for all and then sat down that sin was decisively dealt with. So these were those ordinances that were against us, a constant reminder of the guilt of our sins and our longing after their final resolution. And in context, we find that ceremonies that's what Paul is dealing with here in verse 11 he talks about circumcision being taken away verse 16 the dietary regulations that taught the separation of Jews and Gentiles taken away and then he comes to the holy days in verse 16 those were the three ceremonial feasts those three great times when they would go up to Jerusalem The New Moon, which was that monthly Sabbath day, the beginning of the New Moon, they would gather to hear preaching, and they would leave off their working, and there would be sacrifices, the preaching of Christ to them. So in context, when we come to the mention of Sabbaths here, what do you expect? It would be something of an intrusion to say that this was the moral, weekly Sabbath day, but rather in context, he's been talking about the ceremonies. the Holy Days, the New Moons, and their Sabbaths. But if we're still not convinced, we can begin to broaden out to the broader context of redemptive revelation, which is decisive against interpreting this as the weekly Sabbath day. Now remember all the work that we just did, that the weekly Sabbath does indeed appear to be moral throughout the Word of God, which would Make one assume its continuance. Only God could abrogate this law, and Colossians 2 does not seem to be an abrogation against it. But there is a text that is absolutely decisive against the idea that the Moral Weekly Sabbath has been taken away. Turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 1, verse 10. This is the beginning where Jesus Christ begins to reveal to John the unfolding of history from that time to the end of the world. But John says that he was in the midst of his worship when all of this came, when the Lord Jesus visited him and revealed these things to him. He says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet. Jonathan Edwards in his sermons on the Sabbath, they had this to say about it. As only Jonathan Edwards could do. I could have never done this. But once he's done it, then I can see that it's indeed true what he does. He said the bad mention of the Lord's Day here proves two things beyond any doubt. That God is still setting apart a day for himself and for his worship. And that the Sabbath day was moved from the seventh day of the week to the first. So the bare mention of it proves it. And I thought to myself, well that's an incredible thing to say. Let's look at these things as Edwards develops them. He's not wrong about this. He's right about it. First of all he points out that here God is still claiming a day for himself in a peculiar sense. Now, there's a sense in which we can say that every day belongs to the Lord, but when this adjective is attached to a word, it shows that this day is appropriating it in a peculiar sense for himself. Another way of saying this is, when John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, he expects his readers to recognize the time frame. It's not just any old day. That would be to speak without any meaning. I was in the Spirit on a day that belongs to the Lord. Well that doesn't tell you anything. He's referring to a day that he expects them to recognize. A particular set amount of time. And it's a day that God is still setting apart for himself. Now when we go back to Exodus chapter 20 and we see the Sabbath principle, we see that there's still a Sabbath day in the world. That God is still reserving one day in seven for his own worship. Still setting apart one part in seven for himself. And we find John doing exactly the thing that we would expect on that Sabbath day. John is in the Spirit on the Lord's day. He is worshipping God on the Lord's day. Well, if we see that, then we might ask a further question. How do you know that it was changed from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week? And Jonathan Edwards points this out, he said, how do we define what a word or a term means except by the way that it is used in the body of literature from the time? In other words, how do we define what it means or what it senses except by comparing it against other uses? And when Edwards went to the ecclesiastical history of the first three centuries, he said, every single mention of the Lord's Day always meant Sunday. every single one and I thought well I want to check this out I want to be sure that this is right so I went to the famous Greek lexicon among scholars they call it BDB it's a lexicon that was frankly written by people that hardly seem to even be believers, but even in their note on this phrase or this term, the Lord's Day, they say certainly the seventh day in its usage, I mean certainly the first day of the week in its usage, certainly Sunday. Very interesting, because as they compared it over against all of its uses in ecclesiastical literature, they said that's the only thing that it ever means, and it never means the seventh day, ever, anywhere. That's why even those unbelieving scholars could say, certainly it means the first day of the week. Well, Edwards had figured that out 200 years before they did. But this is what it means. So this mention of the Lord's day, God is still reserving one part in seven for himself, still hallowing a day for himself. And that is changed from the last day of the week to the first day of the week. Now, if we are right about this, we ought to find it borne out. in Redemptive Revelation. Do we find the early church in Scripture meeting on the first day of the week for their worship and for their ordinances? Do we find this to be the case? We certainly do. Before we get into that though, let's do just a little background. Turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 5. As we saw in Exodus chapter 20, the Sabbath was initially associated with the creation and the creation pattern. But in the midst of it, a rest was proclaimed for all, even for man servants and maid servants. It's a holy resting for everyone, even the cattle. But what we find in Deuteronomy chapter 5 is that Moses draws an additional association to their redemption out of Egypt. So here we are finding that Moses is making another association or attachment of the day. Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 12. Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six days thou shalt 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, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt. and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." I want you to notice the association and how this association is made. Initially it's set up on the creation pattern, but it was a resting for everyone, including laborers, slaves, servants. And here Jehovah is saying, I'm bringing you into your rest. so you can keep your Sabbath days you were servants and slaves and it's part of my great and glorious redemption to take you out of your Egyptian bondage and your forced labor and to let you enter into your Sabbaths into your rest that was commanded you and now granted to you it's not surprising after this to find the Sabbath day not only associated with the creation but with redemption and this is what we find in Hebrews chapter 4 Paul says there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God a day to which we are still moving a day when we will rest from our struggling and striving against sin Now with this connection, and I do this as a bit of background, with this connection with redemption, Jonathan Edwards said this, he said, the Lord Jesus Christ completed our redemption on the first day of the week with his resurrection from the dead. God has accepted his sacrifice. And Edwards said it would not be fitting to be gathering for the worship of God in the celebration of our redemption on that seventh day when Jesus Christ is still in the grave. He said, but rather it is most fitting that we celebrate our redemption in the worship of God on that day in which our redemption was completed, the first day of the week, the day of Christ's resurrection. And Jonathan Edwards also said, and then God was pleased to set honor upon this day by other redemptive events you remember Pentecost was 50 days from the Passover which was the first day of the week the first day of the week the Holy Spirit of God comes upon his people and they are granted that first fruits of this new administration so many thousands converted at that first preaching of the gospel as if Christ would set great honor upon the first day of the week and then what do we find? it's subtle but the early church gets it and they begin to meet for their worship on the first day of the week well we might even start with revelation God is in the spirit on the Lord's day and that's the day that the Lord Jesus is pleased to meet with John to teach him the first day of the week Jesus shows up to John and preaches to him and unfolds the history to him certainly a remarkable thing but we find the early Christians doing this in Troas let me just read these texts Acts chapter 20 verse 7 it says and upon the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread which very well could be a reference to the Lord's Supper we find exactly what we expect to find Paul preached unto them ready to depart on the morrow and continued his speech until midnight so here we find Paul meeting with the Christians at Troas on the first day of the week for preaching and likely for the Lord's Supper here the breaking of bread and it was also the practice to meet on the first day of the week in Corinth and Galatia and we get these in one statement from Paul in 1st Corinthians chapter 16 verse 1 now concerning the collection for the saints and you remember this collection was something Paul was very zealous of the gospel had come from the Jews the Gentiles had received a great spiritual blessing from the Jews and so Paul was expecting them to minister to them physical necessities he wanted to take a great offering from the Gentiles back to the Jewish believers as a sign of the unity and oneness of the church and so he tells these Gentiles Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." So here his expectation is that they will be meeting on the first day of the week, and during that time, very much as it is in our day, they're going to be gathering their resources, And here part of that is gathering their resources for the ministration to the Christians in Jerusalem. So this is what we find in the early church, yet during the apostolic era. And then we ask, this certainly would not determine the point, but did the early church get this? In other words, after the apostolic era, did the early church understand this? Is this what they believed they had received from the apostles? And Edwards summarizes this, he says, the tradition of the church from age to age, though it be no rule, yet may be a great confirmation of the truth in such a case as is this. We find by all accounts, that it had been the universal custom of the Christian Church in all ages, even from the age of the apostles, to keep the first day of the week. We read in the writings which remain of the first, second, and third centuries of the Christians keeping the Lord's day. And so in all succeeding ages, and there are no accounts that contradict them. That's very significant. There was no other practice in the Church of Jesus Christ. This day hath all along been kept by Christians in all countries throughout the world, and by almost all that have borne the name of Christians of all denominations, however different in their opinions as to other things. Edwards will go on to say that it is hard to conceive how all of these different kinds of churches in different areas with differing beliefs in a great many things would all end up with one belief concerning the Lord's Day if they had not received it from the apostles themselves received it as apostolic practice as Edwards said this wouldn't be a proof But it is a great confirmation that we have done the biblical exegesis properly and appropriately to find that that's what the early Christians were doing. This always raises a question though, and we already have the answer to it. This is one of the reasons I built the sermons the way that I have. The question always comes up time and time again. If God wanted us to still keep a Sabbath day and to keep it on the first day, rather than the seventh day, why wasn't he more direct? He's pretty direct with Moses, why wasn't he more direct with us? Well, as we saw, there seems to be a great reason for it already. You remember Paul's disposition to the taking away of the Jewish ceremonial Sabbaths. How tender God was with them and gave them a time and an opportunity to let go, especially after he had so severely judged them for disobeying. the same was true with the weekly Sabbath day and God had judged them most strictly and strongly when they hadn't kept the weekly Sabbath day here we find again God's method of instruction of those early Christians very gentle in the move of the day from the seventh to the first and so it's not surprising in light of Romans chapter 14 that God would be thus gentle in instructing them but Edwards goes on and he says this Which about half makes me ashamed. You know, because I can remember a time when I thought the very same thing. Why wasn't God more direct with us if this is what he wanted us to do? And Edward said this, God can reveal his will to rational creatures by more means than just a direct command. And as rational creatures we ought to be able to take more kinds of instructions than just thou shalt and thou shalt not. We are rational and reasonable creatures. And so he is right and altogether just in expecting us to be able to look at all of redemptive revelation as we've been doing concerning the holy days and arrive at the right principles and the right practice. There's more than enough material for doing that. So we are blameworthy as reasonable irrational creatures for not getting this. And God in his wisdom can reveal himself to us in any way that he is pleased. And it's not up to us to demand you ought to reveal to us in this or that way. It is enough what he has given to us. all of this has really been to deal with that difficult text of Colossians chapter 2 and should we understand this of the ceremonial Sabbaths being taken away or the moral Sabbath and with all of redemptive revelation in front of us we say this is certainly the taking away of ceremonial Sabbaths and not the weekly Sabbath day so a brief review of God's appointed holy days in the history of the world and you'll start to get the sense here A weekly Sabbath day for 2,500 years from the creation of the time of Moses. That was the only holy day. For 1,500 years, ceremonial Sabbaths were added, but the weekly Sabbath day is still kept. It is ongoing. And then after the ceremonial Sabbaths have been removed for these 2,000 years, the moral Sabbath has continued. now when we read the Bible it can seem as if there is a very heavy weight upon the ceremonial Sabbaths because so much of our Bible comes out of the Mosaic administration but when you look at the scope of history for 75% of the Earth's current history it has been the weekly moral Sabbath alone and the Mosaic administration was the exception for the purpose of preaching Christ to come rather than the rule So there in your bulletins, we see the biblical background of Westminster Confession of Faith 21-7, which is a good place to conclude. As it is of the law of nature that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God, so in his word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept wholly unto him, which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week. And from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which in scripture is called the Lord's Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath. Amen. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, that's E-D-M-O-N-T-O-N Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Kelvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since He condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.