Isaiah 58, these are the words of God. Cry aloud. Spare not. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. Tell my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of me the ordinances of justice. They take delight in approaching God. Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls and you take no notice? In fact, in the day of your fast, you find pleasure and exploit all your labors. Indeed, you fast for strife and debate and to strike with the fist of wickedness. He will not fast as you do this day to make your voice heard on high. Is it a fast that I have chosen, a day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast? and an acceptable day to Yahweh, is this not the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke, is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out, When you see the naked that you cover him and not hide yourself from your own flesh, then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of Yahweh shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call and Yahweh will answer. You shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness. Your darkness shall be as the noonday, Yahweh will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. And you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of Yahweh honorable, and shall honor him not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in Yahweh, and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, the mouth of Yahweh has spoken. Thus ends this reading of God's inspired and inerrant word. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God endures forever. By way of reminder, some of us have not been here for some weeks. And so not reminder for you, but a catch up how we got here. We're in Hebrews chapter four. We're hearing about Jesus, the apostle of our faith, who in his infinite glory as the living God, yet humbled himself to become our redeemer. and having returned and sat down at the right hand of majesty, is now preparing us not only for that last and great day on which he is unashamed to call us his brethren and will present us shining like the sun in the kingdom of our father, glorified to reflect him and his perfect glory forever and ever, but even now, In these Lord's Day services, week by week, as He brings us to the heavenly Zion, with the angels gathered in festal dress for feast, and the souls of the just made perfect, He presents us in heaven. He says, behold I and the children whom you have given me. He sings his father's praise in the midst of the congregation and in particular as the apostle of our confession. As our high priest, the high priest of our confession, he represents us and he ministers his sacrifice on our behalf and he prays for us and we'll be hearing those things from 414 on to the end of chapter 10. But right now, in particular, is the apostle of our confession. He is sent by God and he declares God's name to us, his brethren. He's not ashamed to call us his brothers. And he is, as we heard in the the first 10 verses of Hebrews chapter 4, saving us, preparing us to enter his rest, announcing to us week by week where we hear his voice in the words of scripture and we come, not with hard hearts, but with soft hearts, having set before us his rest, His rest, which did not mean the promised land, because when Joshua brought them into the promised land and gave them success over their enemies, still later, he was saying in Psalm 95, enter my rest. Do not harden your hearts when you hear my voice in the gathering on the Lord's days, or on that time, on the Sabbaths for worship. And we say, come, let us worship and bow down. And that corporate worship assembly, he was still saying, My rest is before you. In fact, as you remember Hebrews chapter 4, he said the Sabbath was not for man. that God's works were finished from the foundations of the world. And you remember, children, that God doesn't need to rest, that when he rested on the Sabbath day, when he blessed the Sabbath day and he made it holy, it was not for his sake because he needed it, but he was setting before Adam that even his life in Eden was not as good as what God had ultimately prepared for him. That even as Adam six days a week would glorify God with all his heart in his labor, and as he would enjoy God with all his heart in everything he did, there would still be for Adam and for Eve that one day a week And so we've been hearing about the rest of God and entering the rest of God and looking to God as the one who loves to give us joy. Not the tiny little things with which we love to amuse ourselves and tend to devote ourselves in our flesh, but Himself. Jesus came that we might have joy, but not just partially. not just those smaller things that are from him and in which we ought to be enjoying him, that the smaller goodness of the thing is something that opens, as it were, a window for our hearts to enjoy him himself, every gift being a means by which we delight ourselves in the giver. Jesus came that we might have joy and have it full, completely. not a particle left out. And so we came to Isaiah 58 because in Hebrews 4 it said, therefore, there remains a Sabbath keeping for the people of God. Not just a creation ordinance Sabbath, but a people of God Sabbath, a covenantal Sabbath, a Sabbath that says, you are mine. And I am yours. And I have not now only made you for Myself, but I have redeemed you for Myself. What I purchased with My covenant blood, we've been hearing as we've gone through Hebrews, that benediction at the end of the book. the blood of the everlasting covenant. He says, what I have purchased for you, I set before you week by week in the covenant Sabbath. What in the New Testament is called the Lord's Day. I set that before you. so that until you come at last to enter that rest that I had set before Adam as better than Eden, that rest that the wilderness generation failed to enter because of the hardness of their hearts, that rest that was still to come even after Joshua had brought them in and they had subdued that land, that rest that Psalm 95 was inviting the people in David's day to look forward to week by week as they gather for that worship. As long as I am still bringing you to my eternal and perfect infinite delight in me, the Lord says. there remains a Sabbath keeping for the people of God. Now we're going to be coming next week to consider the Lord Jesus declaring himself the Lord of the Sabbath. And when we do, we're going to be looking back at this passage, not literally in the sermon. Well, maybe, I haven't finished writing it yet. But at that time when the Lord declares Himself the Lord of the Sabbath, He's saying, what I said in Isaiah 58 verses 13 to 14, Jesus says to the Pharisees who have been picking on the disciples, He says Isaiah 58, 13 to 14 is about me. I am the one in whom Sabbath keeping most of all means delighting. It is a day of delighting in the Lord Jesus Christ, Yahweh the creator who took on flesh to become our savior and who redeemed us for himself. So we got here by considering Hebrews 4 and the rest of God, and then last week we found out how very much we need these Sabbaths. because our tendency is to make our religion, our Christianity, all about what we have done and what we think God owes us. How we, sure, we come to God by grace through faith and all of that, but then we learn from his word how to live and somewhere along the line, we come to a place where we think that God owes us. And sometimes that's not revealed to us until we aren't getting the results that we wanted and we turn to God the way we saw last week in the first 12 verses and we say, Lord, why am I not getting the results that I wanted? Have you not seen how faithfully I am doing what you commanded, bearing this burden that you have? given me to carry and we realize, we realize how far we need to go because as the thought escapes our minds, we realize that we have been treating God as a hard master who holds his blessing tightly and that we have been using our Christian walk to strike with a wicked fist and trying to pry the fingers of God off of the blessing that we think we deserve. We are a very needy people because our hearts are so hard. And it even shows up in how we treat others. We view God as stingy, tight-fisted with our blessing, and we are tight-fisted to bless others as well. That's what we've seen in Isaiah 58, 1-12. If you consider with me Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11, I just want to show you that this isn't something new in Isaiah. As I've been studying these last couple of weeks, trying to consider what the objections are to keeping the Lord's Day in the way that is taught in Isaiah 58 and captured perhaps most famously in the Westminster Standards, keeping the Lord's Day in a way that really until the last hundred years had, since the Reformation, been the way that we kept it. I came across a very clever sort of argument that said, well, the prophets didn't establish new law, therefore, Unless they knew beforehand that they should be keeping it in the Isaiah 58 way, then Isaiah 58 can't mean what you say it means. It can't really mean not doing your own pleasure. It can't really mean not doing your own ways, not seeking your own pleasure, not speaking your own word. It can't really mean that. Well, whenever you can take the word of God and turn it over on its head and say, it doesn't actually mean that, you know you're in trouble. But just in case we have those, or you perhaps will be encountering someone who makes this kind of argument, look at the commandment. Perhaps we should start with verses 13 and 14, and then we'll come back. You shall not murder. What does that mean? What did the Lord Jesus say it means, children? He said if you hate in your heart or are angry without cause, you break that commandment. You shall not commit adultery. What did the Lord Jesus say that means? He says it means you shouldn't even look with lust or you've committed adultery already. You see Scripture interpreting Scripture. The commands command not just the outward performance, but the inward reality, the inward principle, the heart, the spirit of the command. And so already you can see, can't you? Isaiah 58 isn't adding anything. It's just opening up and exposing. the heart that is required. It's making application of a command that was already there. Look at now verses 8 through 11. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It's a positive command. It's not the day of don't. This is something that by God's help, we knew a father and mother once who, when their children wanted to do things that weren't biblically permitted on the day, they didn't say, No, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. They would say, this is a day for better things. This is a day for better things. It's a positive command. There's a lot of negative coming, but note the positive command. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter." There's the Lord taking away. pleasure is he tying up neatly a great big burden to set on our shoulders there look at what it's sandwiched between Remember that Sabbath day, that gift that points you to my rest, which it has been since the garden, since before the fall, to keep it holy. That's a positive, joyful blessing. So that's the one side of the sandwich. Look at the other side of the sandwich. Isn't it exactly what we saw last week in Isaiah 58, one through 12? Nor your male servant, nor your female servant, What's he saying? He's saying on the Sabbath, there's no yoke. There's no bondage. You don't get to boss them around, employ them for your purposes. One day a week, there are no servants in Israel. He goes even further, doesn't he? You remember the proverb, I wish I remembered it well enough to quote it word perfect, about the perversity of a man who is cruel to animals. You all know it instinctively, don't you? Someone who delights to inflict pain on an animal. Here's another way that if we understand and obey the commandment from the heart, we delight, we delight to see our workhorse not working one day a week. In most contexts, that doesn't work anymore. Some of you might actually have workhorses. Nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. In fact, if you look at chapter 56 and chapter 66 in Isaiah, we don't have time in these sermons to do an entire biblical theology. We'll end up like the Puritan who spent 40 years in the book of Job, which wasn't a terrible thing. Brought other texts in and he preached Christ every week. Don't give the Puritans such a hard time. But if you look at Isaiah 56 and 66, those passages teach there aren't foreigners for those Sabbaths, for those strangers who gather on Sabbath for worship. There aren't eunuchs. In other words, on the Sabbath, everyone has a family. Everyone is family. Because the Sabbath is a day of being gathered before God. Not now, just creationally, Exodus 20, but covenantally. And if you are among the covenant people on the Sabbath, you delight in God together. No one employing anyone else or excluding others. It is the gathering day, not the isolation day. Four, now we'll pop over to Deuteronomy 5 in a moment. Four, in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Did you catch that? He says, I didn't just now invent this day and invent this rest and invent the holiness of it, but I am giving it to you now anew as part of our covenant. Now, Deuteronomy 5, actually, in the second copy of the law that the Lord gives, As quoted now in Moses' final sermon, he gives different reasoning. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. It's Deuteronomy 5 verse 12 and following. As Yahweh your God commanded you, six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant. nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle. nor your stranger within your gates." Did you notice the point? In Isaiah 58, last week, we saw that if we see God as generous, we will be generous. If we learn to delight in Him as the one who does us good and enables us to do any imperfect and non-worthy good that we do do, all of it He enables us to do. If we see Him as open-handed and generous and giving to us, whatever he commands, then we will be open-handed and generous and extending our soul, not just our food, but our soul to the hungry and to the afflicted. That a view of God as generous shapes us as becoming a generous people. Did you notice that already in the difference between Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, he describes at greater length, not just now cattle, but ox and cattle and donkey. He expands the imitative generosity, the change that it makes in us to see him as generous. Listen now, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you and the logic has changed. In Exodus 20, he said, for this is a creation ordinance. Deuteronomy 5, he says, and it's also a redemption ordinance. The fact that it's a creation ordinance means as long as we're in this creation, it can never cease. Work, marriage, Sabbath. The fact that it is a redemption ordinance means that until we have come into his rest, Well, there's a new covenant redemption ordinance as well. But listen, and remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and Yahweh your God brought you out from there. by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Yahweh your God redeemed you for himself in relationship to himself. You didn't get any Sabbaths in Egypt because you were in bondage in Egypt. but He has brought you out of bondage, and you look forward now on the Sabbath to enjoying your Redeemer forever. One day a week, you look forward in a way that you don't have time to, that you are not able to on the other days, and God has declared the entire day holy for that. Well, that is how we get to Isaiah 58 verses 13 and 14. It's not an isolated text whose words have been twisted by a bunch of stuffy English and Scottish guys who were stuck in a room for too many years and forgot that there's a real world out there. God help us when we resist good and right doctrine. We invent contempt in our hearts for those who have taught it. But don't you see that this is one slice with an entire Bible full of the same theology that God who made us for Himself. and to enjoy Him. And God who redeemed us for Himself and to enjoy Him has from Genesis, yes, to Revelation, but we've only gone to Hebrews so far. From Genesis to Hebrews. From Genesis 2, 1 and 2 to Hebrews 4, 9. There's a unified view of this commandment as a day that is set apart entirely for the worship of God. It's holy to him. And it's a generous gift that turns us into a generous people. That's why the only exceptions that we get are necessity and mercy. Why? Because without an exception for necessity, then it does become a hard day. There's a day in which you can't feed well and can't seek treatment and can't help others. That's not made for that. You can't have the day of God's goodness become the day of man's hardness. That's exactly the opposite. of the view of the command that we have in Genesis 2 and Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 and Isaiah 58 and Hebrews 4. And then mercy. Mercy. One of the main reasons we don't do more for others is because we are finite and we are limited. The other main reason is because we are hard-hearted and selfish. and the Sabbath command comes and cuts through both of them. It says you don't get to plan what to do this day. I call it holy, God says, and you do what I say on this day. And all of a sudden, your schedule's cleared. You're not too busy with yourself to do mercy. And the other half, the heart problem, it's a day of delighting in him. A day of delighting in him. And we come and we gather for worship. corporately as an assembly and in our homes, maybe it's a great day for hospitality too, something else that we're often too busy for. And you don't gather in this worship and say, oh, the Lord is so delightful, I would like for nobody else to find out. Oh, God has been so good to me. And I do know there's a lot of other people out there who need people to be good to them, Yeah, that's tough for them. I'm too busy having God be good to me. Do you see how that combination of enjoying His goodness in the day and being good to others is the answer? to the me religion, what I do so I can get what I want, of verses 1-12, as opposed to the Lord's religion, what He has done so He can give Himself to us? Well, you'll see then that the first point is that we have a surprising if-then. Verse 13, if you keep all of these specific commands, that God the Holy Spirit helping us. I hope we are warmed up to considering them. If you keep all these specific commands, verse 13, then, verse 14, you shall delight yourself in the Lord. And then we'll notice that the specific commands of necessity, because we are sinners, are going to rub us the wrong way. They just are. And we need to be able to respond when the Lord's Word rubs us the wrong way. Not with, there must be a way of understanding this that feels better to my flesh. But rather, perhaps the Lord is addressing me and my remaining sin by making this feel uncomfortable to me. And then in the last place, this is giving us a surprising if-then. with commands that rub us the wrong way in order to give us what cannot be had in any other way. We'll see that in v. 14 by God's help. First then, this surprising if-then. If you turn your foot away from the Sabbath, then you will delight yourself in the Lord. This is a surprising if-then, but oh, it's a merciful if-then. Because I trust that by the Lord's working and softening our hearts and helping us last week as we heard about how we need to be a people who find the Lord's delightful. We need to be a people who say that His commands are not a burden that crush us or a burden that we don't want, and so we're just going to reject, but that His commands are a joy because He is our joy. Something that we cannot know until we have been redeemed. Paul the Pharisee doesn't say, I delight in his law from my inner being. It's Paul the Christian who says that, right in the middle of a passage in which he's saying, the good that I want to do, I don't do, and the evil that I hate, I do. I trust that many of us came out of last week being taught that we ought to delight in the Lord and confessing to him, Lord, I don't delight in you the way I should. I delight in food more than I delight in you. I delight in my favorite participation sport. more than I delight in you. I delight in my favorite spectator sport more than I delight in you. I delight in my work. I delight in my chores. I delight in getting things done, especially if I hadn't found time the other six days to do it for months, and boy, a few hours on a Sunday, knock it out, ooh, Lord, that makes me feel a lot more good than you. What can be done for a people who hear that not just the Sabbath command, but all of his commands should be a joy. And we say, we read it and we say, yup, I agree with that, it should be. But there's a disconnect, isn't there? Because it's not true about us. God help your wayward children. We say something like that week after week as we can confess our sins together in prayer. Lord, have mercy on your sinful children. Do we mean it? Well, if we do, then we're grateful for this surprise. Because the way we normally think about this is, if I delight in the Lord, then I'll turn my foot away on the Sabbath from doing my own ways, from seeking my own pleasure, from speaking my own words. say if I delight in him enough then I'll be able to do this that's not the relationship between verse 13 and verse 14 the relationship between verse 13 and verse 14 is if you do this then you will delight in him God knows the weakness of our hearts, that our appetites are so easily satisfied, our soul appetites are so easily satisfied by earthly things and so sluggishly and like pulling teeth to be satisfied with Him. Many of us have gone through that season where at one point in time in our walk with the Lord, we loved to rise early, we loved to open his word and consider what is said on the pages of the word of God because there my Redeemer speaks in black and white. We loved to offer ourselves to him in prayer and just make known to him everything we were concerned with, everything we're delighted with, everything we needed. And then we've come into the season where we hate to get up. If I skip it this morning, I can sleep seven more minutes. Or 20 or 50 or whatever it is. We open the Word and it's not even confusing because we're not thinking about it. Just get your eyes over all of the text and check the box in my head. Come to pray. We know a form of prayer. know a bunch of things that we're supposed to say, but the prayers don't even reach the ceiling. They're not even coming from our hearts. Starts somewhere near the epiglottis. That's about as far as our prayers go from here to here. What can be done for a cold, hard, dry, cracked Christian soul? If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. There's a prescription for that, dear Christian. Perhaps you are here this morning in the dry season. There's a prescription for you. I have multiple ministers here this morning, almost like a presbytery, but smaller. Dear brothers, it's his prescription for us too. You can take another day and do other things and organize your life however. But this is the day of delighting in Him. You can't make another day holy. I can't make another day holy. Only one can make anything holy, dear children. Only the Holy One. The Holy, Holy, Holy One can make something holy. And yes, not as much as the priests, thank God, slaughtering oxen all day long. That's work. There may be more labor. but it doesn't take away from the generosity and the holiness and the delight of the day and the rest for our souls that it is designed to be and no wonder there are so many ministers burning out because they give everyone else the medicine in the midst of the plague and they never turn the needle on themselves and inject God's remedy. Now that's a good illustration for us, an injection. I doubt there are too many among you, among us, who like to get shots. In fact, thank God there are some among us who've never had one. If you do like to get a shot, you're weird. You are. I mean, pleasure in the puncture in the needle. This does, we'll come back into Point one, as I've preached around it, we've gotten out of the original plan for organization. There is an analogy here because it rubs us the wrong way. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure, not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasure, not speaking your own words, Now, I don't know if we have anyone here who's still in that stage of learning to talk. Jacob isn't quite there yet. Maybe Josie. Ezekiel talks way too much. Dear children, I bet I can guess what one of your first words were. Oh, there's da-da. It's good to be the dad. The tongue does it so much more naturally. You get da-da. Mom has the child captive more of the times. You go ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma, just doing her best. And a large percentage of kids just say da-da first anyway. Two of my first words were no and la-a, which is no in Arabic. But one of all of our first words is mine. Isn't that true, kids? Mine. Toy. Mine. The last thing in the plate that was closest to you that you were going to grab and the older brother or sister reaches out for. Mine. Maybe mama has a new baby. Mine. My mama. Well, unfortunately for us in our flesh, verse 13, is exactly the opposite of mine. Mine. Mine. It's not your own. Not your own. Not your own. Is it any wonder that we resist this command so much? Not your own. You can have my, when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Works just as well with Sabbath, doesn't it? Works just as well with Sunday. You see, we have to trust Him. While we're in the space between I don't delight Him like I ought, and we tried it out, we tried the if, and we got to the then and now we do and are starting to delight in him as we ought. While we're in the gap in the middle, we need to trust him. That's why he says, call the Sabbath a delight. He's saying, until your heart gets there, you're just gonna have to trump feeling with doctrine. We have to do this quite often as Christians, don't we? Because we have so much of that remaining sin in us that there are so many of God's commands. You know, I'm going to nurse bitterness or I'm going to gossip about that woman because it's a prayer request. Or people just need to know so they can be protected from him. Well, that's not something to play with. Sometimes that is actually true in certain situations. But if you're upset because he said something, no, people don't need to know. He needs to know. If your brother sins, go tell him his fault between you and him. I hope you parents are teaching your children about yell and tell situations. I do not need to be the one who is navigating that in the pulpit. If they don't know, they need to know from you and from me. I'll tell them too, but they need to know. We justify our sin. So he says, call the Sabbath a delight. You're not delighting in it yet, but you're going to call it a delight. You're going to say, theology is going to trump feeling for now. I don't feel like doing good to my enemy. I don't feel like repaying good for evil. I don't feel like blessing those who curse me. But theology is going to trump feeling for now. and as the Lord works in my heart and conforms me to Christ, I am actually going to enjoy imitating Him and loving my enemies and so being a child of my Father in Heaven who causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall, even on the wicked, so that when the holy angels look at me, not responding to that kid who is always mean to me with some form of meanness, but serving them, doing something good to them and for them, when the holy angels see that, they'll say, that's a child of his father in heaven. Don't you see the family resemblance? And it's not because, oh, he has his eyes. And it's not because, oh, he has his nose or his chin, it's because he has his heart. But you don't start out blessing the person who curses you because you feel like it. For a while, theology, doctrine, has to trump feeling. So also with Sabbath keeping. Call the Sabbath a delight. Not as big as a delight as it ought to be. For every Christian it is, to some extent, a delight. If the idea of spending a day with your heavenly Father does nothing for you, then the phrase Heavenly Father might just be just words for you. If the idea of spending a day with the Redeemer does nothing for you, then Redeemer might just be a word with no substance to you. There are warning signs that ought to send us flying to Christ and pleading for His mercy and saying, Lord, thank you for exposing that there's no reality in here. Before I came to stand before you, before whom all is laid bare and naked and exposed and heard to depart from me, I never knew you. But if you do know Him, then there is some delight there. and you can call Him a delighted, it's not what it ought to be. It doesn't compare perhaps to other things yet. The flesh is still far too strong. But there is some there, and you're going to say, I'm going to lay hold of that. And I'm going to keep this day like He says. I'm going to make my decisions not by what I want to do, but by what He says it's for. That's coming now to, if you're following, we're back in point one. That's what the word holy means. It's His. When God declares something holy, it's not like the Pharisaical idea of Korban. You remember that? The Pharisees came up with a wonderful synagogue finance plan. They said you can take everything that you have and you can say it is devoted to the church. It is devoted to God. It is devoted to synagogue. But as long as I live, I can withdraw on it. And then once I pass, it goes to them. And then mom and dad are in trouble, and they need help. They say, oh, I'm sorry, mom and dad. All my wealth is Korban. It's devoted to God. I'm enjoying it on his behalf for now. That's sick, isn't it? That's not what holiness is. Holiness means something belongs entirely to God. When God declares the sacrifice holy, it means it's His. When God calls you a saint, which means holy, it means you belong entirely to Him. You are bought with a price. You're set apart from the world to Him. Your life is His. When God calls the day holy, it's all His. It's not the holy hour, or the holy hour and a half, or the holy four hours. If you get here at 10, you might stay five and a half hours all the way to the end of the family devotions after we eat unofficially. Well, today it's official. It's not the holy five and a half hours. It's a holy day. It belongs to Him. It's His and not ours. Why? Because He wants you to be miserable? No. Because you and I are terrible judges of what's good for us. We are terrible judges of what gives joy and delight. I had a brother unwittingly say to me recently after spending some time with me and in my home, well, that was better than I thought it would be. Spending time with the Lord is always better than we thought it would be. From the heart in His Word and worship and fellowship and prayer with Him. Whatever we had given up for it didn't compare beforehand. But beforehand, we hated the idea of giving it up for it. That's alright. I was debating whether to humiliate myself before you. It took years of leading the prayer meeting in Mississippi. before I finally got out of the same rut every single week. Wednesday afternoon comes around. I've got a thousand better ideas for what I wanted to do that evening. Did not want to just study and pray with people. I was a pastor. I was pastoring them as a student. Not ordained yet. every single week at the end of the evening. Oh, Lord, that was so good. So good to spend that time reading and praying. We studied more than we do here. We don't have enough time to pray because we all are busy. So prayer meeting here is just solid hour of prayer. That's it. Go home. Or fellowship for those who can after. But every week, Wednesday afternoon, oh, Lord, why isn't the prayer meeting? Wednesday bedtime, Lord, that was so good. I'm so sorry that I didn't want to do it. And that wasn't even the Sabbath. That wasn't even the Lord's Day. We're terrible judges of what's good for us. That's why I'm so grateful. that in opening this up, not doing your own ways. I had a professor in seminary, we were going over the law of God and one snarky student, it wasn't I or I would take the blame that I deserve. One snarky student raises his hand and he comes up with some plausible situation. Well, if this and this and this happens, then can I do that and not break the Sabbath? And Dr. Curd folds his arms and he goes, you just broke the Sabbath. So the whole point of the day is not, can I do whatever? It's the Lord says to do whatever. If it's something the Lord says to do on the Sabbath, do it. Sabbath-keeping is about doing as well as possible worship and mercy, not trying to sneak in what I wanted to do if I could possibly qualify it as worship or mercy. or necessity, oh wow. Everything becomes necessary for a mentally, emotionally feeble snowflake culture such as we are. Everything makes us feel unsafe. Everything is necessary for me, me, me, me, and yet we do it with God. Oh Lord, this is what really rests me. This is what really delights me. It's a deed of necessity. Ooh, theologically justified, let me go do it now, can't wait. We don't realize we've just said, Lord, you don't really rest me. You don't really delight me. If I have you and this other thing, then I'll be rested, then I'll be delighted. But if I just had you, well, it's necessary. Gimme, gimme, gimme mine. I'm sorry that ought not to be spoken with such lightness. That's hard. Not pulling out your phone and reading the latest articles on whatever it is that you love. There is nothing that this is more about for us than entertainment. Because this is a command that says, holy unto God, separated from what everything else is consumed with. And there has never been a people in a place at a time that is so consumed with entertainment as we are in this place, our nation, at this time. I'm not going to get into the list. You can't do a list. Pharisees tried a list. It's because they were messed up and we'll see how much next week. Pharisees tried a list. But we will manufacture. If we had a list of 40,000 things that we shouldn't do on the Sabbath, not only would we already be keeping it in the wrong spirit, but we would come up with the 40,000 and first thing that is what we really want to do instead of delighting in Him anyway. The list doesn't work. It's not what the day is not for. It's what the day is for. And I can't do for you what you need to do for yourself. Because it's not your own ways. Your own pleasure. Your own words. I wish we could do an entire sermon on that. Brothers and sisters, we need to help each other. These things are really hard. And you don't need me coming and just shooting the breeze with you, distracting you from what the day is for. And you know what? I don't need you doing that with me either. We need to plan and be intentional about our Lord's Day conversations. You know, many of your kids are already doing it. I haven't been giving out stickers and pencils and stuff for a little while. I still have a smile basket, kids. You can still come get it. But somewhere along the line, a bunch of them figured out that the thing that helps pastor the most on the Lord's Day is to tell them what I've been learning from the Bible lately, what mom or dad taught me in family worship lately, or to repeat the verse mom made me learn in homeschool this week. Y'all have no idea. how that helps me keep the Lord's day. Speaking words is a very relational thing. And if I know that I'm weak, and I know that you're weak, and you know that you're weak, and you know that I'm weak, then this is really one of the places where the rubber really meets the road for us. You're going to have to help the tweeners, or teeners, or whatever the age is where they stop really, really idolizing mom and dad. If you hadn't got honor and respect inculcated, trained by eight or nine, you're going to find out. Because either they honor you for Christ's sake, or they honor you because they idolize you. And you're going to disappoint them. And the idol will be gone. and either they will continue honoring You for His sake, but somewhere along the line, they go into this mode where they are just consumed with themselves. Apart from grace, apart from the Lord blessing your efforts with them. I'm not saying it's inevitable. The Scripture is not train up your child shabbily and after they depart from the way that they should go, Claim a verse out of context to comfort yourself about the terrible job that you did and the fruit that you don't see. Train up a child in the way that they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it. We gotta help. We gotta help one another keep the day in our conversations. Y'all, figure out what encouraging thing you've been learning about the Lord what mercy He's shown you. It doesn't always have to be a conviction party where we're all just, I mean, we could, we all sin so much, we could just. and gather together and have communal confession. Be a bunch of Roman Catholics. Just everybody have 40 priests. Come and talk about the Lord's goodness. What He's shown you in His Word. The mercy that He has demonstrated. Share your requests for others. Don't let our Sabbath keeping together stop when we've got Oh, I don't have a bulletin, I'll use this. When we got the script. Look, a script of Sabbath words. Praise God, they're wonderful words. When we go outside, it's still the Sabbath. We need to speak Sabbath words then. Finally, as I said, we're not good judges of what will give us joy or what will give us pleasure. You look at Look at verse 14. "...then you shall delight yourself in Yahweh." Is He delightful? Yes. Do we delight in Him as we ought? No. He will remedy that by Sabbath-keeping. He gives a prescription here. I want to be able to delight myself in Him. Sometimes you get a foodie or someone who's You've got money to burn. It's fine. The Lord assigns to each his portion. And they get into all this intricate food stuff and this weird taste. And you're like, I just wish I could enjoy that because that guy seems to really get something out of it. Our ability to delight needs help. But don't you want to be able to delight in the Lord who is infinitely more delightful than anything in His creation? And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth Girls, listen, you know how Disney has the girls who live in the palace and it's up on the hill and it's spines and sparkles and ooh, I wanna be in that palace. Well, I got bad news for you and good news. Disney are God-hating liars and the palace is fake. That's bad news. It just exists in the figment of the imagination of someone who wants to manipulate your heart and soul to make money and pervert the earth. And now for the good news. The picture of being high on the hill and enjoying pleasure and glory like you can hardly imagine in your life the way it is now and so We're tempted to spend 21 hours a day watching it in film and repeating, let it go ad nauseum. That picture of that goodness is just a hint of a whisper of a reality that God has planned for you in Jesus Christ. And He makes you to ride on the high hills by training your heart one day a week in Sabbath keeping. You see how the whole, well, can I do this? Can I do that? It just crumbles. If you see what God is giving us through it, say, Lord, how do I do it? Give me a step, one, two, three. I want to know how to delight in you and to ride on the hills and be fed with the heritage of Jacob, my father. Because the heritage of Jacob is the Lord himself. If you will, if you have a copy of the Word of God, we'll conclude Psalm 73. Won't read you the whole Psalm, mostly because it's hard to read text without wanting to open it up. And there's a lot in that first part to open up, but I'll just summarize it to you. Asaph was full of ideas of what he wanted, and he had kept his hands clean. He was serving the Lord, but other people seemed to have health and family and wealth and enjoy all the kind of food that they wanted and good reputation. So he was dealing with that very similar to why have I afflicted myself and you see it not kind of attitude, right? Verse 16, Psalm 73. When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me until I went into the sanctuary, into the holiness of God. Then I understood their end. Surely you set them in slippery places. You cast them down to destruction. Oh, how they are brought to desolation as in a moment. They are utterly consumed with terrors as a dream when one awakes. So Lord, when you awake, you shall despise their image. What is he saying? All the pleasures that I thought I wanted. They evaporate here for a moment and gone. That's not what we're made for. But when I went to your holiness, when I went to the sanctuary, when I went to worship, I realized I was made for you, Lord. And they, when they face you, they're going to be destroyed. Thus, my heart was grieved and I was vexed in my mind. I was so foolish and ignorant. I was like a beast. before you. I didn't realize that I was made for you. I was acting as if I was one of those animals who has no capacity to delight in you. They have a capacity to enjoy their food. They have a capacity to enjoy their health. They have a capacity to enjoy their strength. They don't have a capacity to enjoy you. I was acting like one of them, Lord. Thank you for bringing me to worship. Thank You for bringing me into Your holiness so that I could see how poorly everything else compares and realize that I had no reason for a complaint against You. And now comes, if you hadn't memorized this, do you all know the hymn? It's a song. It's a paraphrase of this portion. In sweet communion, Lord, with Thee. Alright. You would do well to memorize from verse 23 to the end. Nevertheless, I am continually with You. You hold me by my right hand. What's he saying? He's saying, I don't have health, I don't have money, I don't have popularity, I don't have anything, but I've got you. Going to worship, retrained my heart, Lord, to instead of acting like a beast, to realize I have you. You will guide me. You hold me by my right hand. You will guide me with your counsel. And afterward, you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. Some of you have lost loved ones who are in Christ. And right now, one of the most comforting things to us about glory, one of the most pleasant things about glory, is that when we get there, that fellowship that is now broken will be restored. but that just shows that we haven't learned to appreciate the Lord as we ought to. It's true. That will be a comfort to us. We will be glad that that fellowship is restored, but that is not the glory of glory. If someone writes a book about 90 minutes in heaven or has visions of their loved one that they saw or whatever, it's not heaven. In heaven, we're consumed with Christ. You see that in Revelation. You see what He says here? He says, my heart was so trained to delight in you by going to worship that the heavenliness of heaven is the fact that you who held me by the hand and guided me by your counsel and were continually with me here, that you will be the one who receives me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? Well, I have all the holy angels. And I have the souls of the right just made perfect. And I have all of my deceased loved ones who are in Christ. And those things are all good and well and right and delightful and praise God. But the delight of the Lord himself is so infinitely more. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Y'all, I know this is a hard sermon because it rubs us the wrong way. It is an unpopular doctrine even among modern-day Presbyterians, but you were not made for all of these other things. They were made for you. You are made for more. You are made for the Lord Himself to delight in Him. And that's what this command is about. And the fact that you and I don't delight in Him as we should yet is just greater reason to keep it, to keep a whole day completely holy to Him. O Lord, grant to us to delight in you. Grant to us to ride on the high hills. Grant to us to be fed with the heritage of Jacob our father. Grant to us to have heart and mind shaped to where we rejoice that we are continually with you, that you guide us by your counsel, that you hold us by your hand, that you yourself are the heavenliness of heaven, and that you will receive us into glory. Oh, we do not see in this text the way our hearts are, but we pray by your Spirit that you would stir up our hunger We thank you that you've given us a prescription. Lord, give us the conviction to follow it and make us to enjoy the fruit of it. For we ask it in your name, Lord Jesus. And your people say, amen.