All right, Hebrews chapter four. Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them. But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest. As he said, as I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, God did rest the seventh day from all his works, and in this place again, if they shall enter into my rest, seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief. Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, Today, after so long a time, as it is said, Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, Then would he not afterward have spoken of another day? There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. And then you can turn in your Bible or you can just look at the bulletin where it says, which is the fourth commandments. That's a printing of. Fourth Commandment, which is our sermon text proper this evening. I'll just read it from there. 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, nor 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. Maybe you remember our illustration from last week. Last Sunday evening, I talked about a king who was building a new castle and leaving his old castle to his son. And out of his love for his son, his only son, he built this great room within the castle. But you remember, the son would not go in the room. After the father had built the castle and left it for him, But now, we're moving further into our illustration. We're a few years, maybe months, into the future, and the son has finally gone into the room. So you got this castle, this special room that this father has left for him with great glory and delights in there. He goes into the room, and guess what he finds? Another door. A door within the room. So a door on the other side of a door. leading to another room. And within that second door is the real joy and glory. At this point, the son is trying to figure out, is my father tricking me? Is this a joke? Are you serious, dad? Maybe some of you would say that. At this point, The dad has configured this door within the door to open only if his son will follow certain steps. It's like he's left directions for him how to get this second door open. It's not a trick, but it is a process. Once the process or the preparation or the proper approach is taken, then he can have all that his father intended for him in that room. Why continue with this illustration? Well, because Christians who deny that the fourth commandment applies to them in any sense are like those who won't even open the first door. They've got this great gift promised to them, and they won't even open the first door to see if it's true. What about those who will open the first door, but won't open the second door? They think instead that this is a trick or even a burden. Right? Dad, this is a trick. I can't do this. I don't care anymore. Well, those are the Christians who affirm the fourth commandment applies to them, but refuse to call the Sabbath a delight. and make it different than the other days. Again, this is just an illustration, but I hope it helps prove the point. Those who open the first door, but not the second, are those who pay lip service to the fourth commandment. By doing so, cut themselves off from fully experiencing heaven on earth in the way their father intends. So I want us tonight to move from lip service to true practice of the fourth commandment. from lip service to true practice of the fourth commandment. If God gave the Sabbath to us, and he did, right, Christ says that, how do we get the most out of that gift? Now, I hope you would admit with me that every good and perfect gift comes from our heavenly Father, right? James tells us this. Wouldn't you further want to get as much out of that gift as possible? Right? God doesn't give you a gift to behold it merely, but to take it, use it. Sabbath keeping is a tremendous blessing, and God, in my experience, and I trust for those of you who already seek to keep the Sabbath as well, God really proves himself when you honor his day, when you set it aside. So I wanna show us a number of things that we could summarize this way. There's a way to keep the Sabbath, It's laid out in the scriptures, and it has God's blessing attached to it. Now, before you have 3,400 objections to my applications that I'll get to, I cannot address every point, every situation, every circumstance that will befall you, but I hope that you can deduce enough of the principle of Sabbath-keeping that you can have it applied to your life. All right, and if you have any questions, I'll be glad to talk about those. So first, keeping the Sabbath according to scripture and then receiving God's blessing. We'll kind of bounce around a little, but that's a general outline of where we're going. First, how is the Sabbath to be sanctified? And you see it there in your bulletin, the bottom of page two. This is question 57, eight, nine, 60 of our shorter catechism. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified? I'll just read it to you. The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all the day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days. And, so that's what you don't do, what you do do, you spend the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. So first, I'm just gonna walk through some of this and bring in some scripture passages and try to apply it as we go. First, you notice that it is a holy resting. It's not a resting in general, it's a purposeful rest, a holy resting, a sanctified rest, or a hallowed rest, right? We have in the Fourth Commandment itself, God, what did we say? The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it, so everything that is done on that day has a holy attachment to us. And you remember last week we talked about how it's not so much what we don't do on the Sabbath, though there is that, right? There are negative things about the Sabbath that we turn from, but it's about turning from one type of work to another, right? Turning from one type of labor to another type of labor. from normal, common, worldly, not in a sinful sense necessarily, though we want to turn from those things as well, but turning from worldly, earthly, temporal works to spiritual and eternal ones, turning to works that are specially appointed. Have you ever wondered why we don't have church every day? We could, maybe, in some cases, and there have been Christian places in the past that have done that, and that's good and great, but what's absolutely mandatory is to have worship on the Lord's Day, because the Lord's Day has a special purpose, it has a special meaning. And the way they describe this, in a broad sense, it's a holy rest. There are things not to do, as they go through in this question. You don't do your job on a Sunday. Now, I'm going to get to the qualifications on that. Don't throw things at me. The Sabbath is sanctified by holy resting all the day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days. So, there are things that you do not do on Sunday that are not necessarily sinful for you to do the other six days. But if you do them on Sunday, the Lord's Day, they become sinful, is the point, because Sunday has a special purpose. It's hallowed by God. Now, if you need a defense of the fact that Sunday is hallowed in the way that Saturday was, I'll refer you to the sermon last week or a conversation with me afterwards. I'm assuming that because we've already proven it, but you don't do your job on a Sunday because it's not in keeping with holy resting. God determines what is holy, right? He sets it apart. He calls it what He wishes. He stopped His work after the sixth day and entered into His rest. We do the same thing out of imitation of Him. We have six days of work and one day of rest. If He has given you the other six days to do a work, it's so that you will not have to do it on the seventh. If you feel that pressure and compelling to do it on the 7th, it's because you're not managing your time well. If you can't take a day off, that's a problem, isn't it? You somehow find a way to take 7 to 14 days of vacation, but you can't take one day off in 7, right? I started practicing this in seminary when I became convinced of the fourth commandment teaching found in the shorter catechism. And one of the things I did was I blocked off Sunday, 12 to 12, 24 hours, no homework, nothing, no studying, no reviewing, nothing. God bless that. I never failed a class. I never had trouble with any of my professors. I never had to do anything extra because I set that day aside to God. But I experienced such a freedom, such a joy and delight. I could turn myself to the Lord and know that I was seeking his pleasure. and also trusting in him, because that's what really Sabbath keeping is about. If you're grabbing that time from those six days and bringing it into the seventh, frankly, it's because there's a trouble that you have in your heart with trusting the Lord. It could be, right, that you're struggling with managing your time, but it also comes from that, that God won't allot you the time to come that you need to do that work. You could look at a passage like Nehemiah chapter 13, where they have come to the gates of the city and they're selling things. Well, in the city is where the Sabbath was kept because God's kingdom was focused in one city at that time more or less and It's it's so funny I mean it really is it's comical when you read it because Nehemiah rebukes these people and says that he's gonna lay hands on them if they continue to desecrate the Sabbath How about that kind of conversation today? I'm not gonna threaten to punch you, but we're so, I mean, we're just scared to even have a conversation that somebody might be violating the fourth commandment. Oh, you might offend them. You might step on their toes. They honor the Sabbath how they wanna do it. No, friends, it's the Lord's day. Not yours, not mine, right? Works of... Necessity and mercy are things that are mentioned here as well. So there are things that are lawful to do other than worship, and they lay them out as works of necessity and mercy. Now, we have a tendency to think, oh, this is an exception to the Sabbath. No, works of necessity and mercy are keeping Sabbath, right? Now, what's an example of a work of necessity? Eating, right? I personally don't think it's good to fast on the Lord's Day because it's basically a feast day, right? It's a day of joy and rejoicing in heaven. There won't be any fasting in heaven, right? It's fine to fast the other days. I won't lay down a law about that, but that's just a general understanding that I have. But works of necessity like medicinal things, doctors, certain ones, of course, police officers. Other things like that you could fill in the blank. Maybe pharmacies, give or take, right? Depending on how they do their job. You could make an argument that somebody that needs medicine on Sunday truly needs it, right? If it's a certain type of drug. But things that aren't necessities. Chick-fil-A. Ooh, they show that to you. you're not gonna die without a fast food restaurant on a Sunday. In fact, you've got six other days to get ready for Sunday, so you don't have that hankering. Maybe you can go get Chick-fil-A on Saturday if you like it that much. Lay up your treasure for Sunday. There are jobs that fit in the category of necessity, but just because your job asks you to work on Sunday does not mean it's a necessity, right? Whatever happened to things like Christians being known for seeking first the kingdom of God? and all of these things being added to you. You let people encroach upon the Lord's worship and tell you that they have rule over your life. It won't be long before you start believing them and following them. There are things that you cannot foresee, right? So these would be what we might call works of mercy. Or, you can, I mean, really back and forth, necessity and mercy, the thing that, where Christ, quote unquote, breaks the Sabbath when he heals. He's not breaking the Sabbath. He's breaking the Pharisee's application and understanding of the Sabbath. When he grabs, he and the disciples grab the wheat to eat. That's not work, right? Any more than you walking by and picking up your Bible off your shelf is work, to come to church. They were accusing him of breaking the Sabbath, but he was not doing those things. You see, that's a merciful thing. You're hungry, eat. But you don't do a work of mercy by causing someone else to violate the fourth commandment. You see what I'm saying? Something like, I'm gonna be specific, going out to eat on the Sabbath, right? You can't justify your taking advantage of someone else's Sabbath breaking, right? It's not fair to them, and it's not loving for us to do that. Again, we get six days to prepare for those things. I mean, hmm, go ask a, I've done it before in the past, where you ask a waiter who the most frequent customers are on Sunday, Christians, who the worst tippers are, Christians, and who treat them the worst, Christians. I mean, we're practically feeding the industry of restaurants and justifying their being open on Sunday. But that's a specific application. I don't need to dive further in. holy resting, turning away from works that are lawful on other days that aren't lawful on that day, spending time in public and private exercises of worship. We'll get into that more in a moment. So what is forbidden in the fourth commandment? You have the next question here. The fourth commandment forbids the omission or careless performance of the duties required and the profaning of the day by idleness. or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works about our worldly employments or recreations. Notice how this penetrates, and they show you, just as they do in the other commandments, there's a duty required and a thing forbidden, right? It penetrates to the affections, right? Sabbath-keeping is not exterior only. It's interior as well. It penetrates to the affections like all laws, as Christ teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. There are things that are duties on the Sabbath, and they get it here by implication, but they tell us more or less what the things are not to do. And those things that we are not to do We should not wish that we were able to do them. Do you remember the text I quoted from Amos last week? That they were desirous of the new moon and Sabbath feast to end so that they could resume their selling? Right? Don't desire for the Sabbath to be over. Maybe you do desire for the Sabbath to be over because the Sabbath is not hallowed in your life, because you're not setting it aside. and in our doing what we ought to do on the Sabbath, we are to give ourselves fully to it. Have you ever considered what you legitimately have more time for on the Sabbath that you don't on other days? Good things, right? The things that you have time for. Do you do those things? Do you do those things? Do you teach your children to do those things? Do you teach your grandchildren to do those things? Do you do like God and set aside the day for special observations of His work and glory? Many writers have argued that that's what God did on the seventh day, that He looked out over all that He made, that He was showing in His rest how we are to approach it. Stop our labors and behold the glory. Stop our labors and devote ourselves to observing. rather than being consuming all the time. And what are the reasons annexed to the fourth commandment? You have that there. The reasons annexed to the fourth commandment are God's allowing us six days of the week for our own employments and his challenging a special propriety in the seventh His own example and his blessing the Sabbath day. I'm gonna kind of close by moving to Isaiah 58 and a contemplation on the Sabbath there. Before I do that, as you turn there, you might be saying in your mind or you've had a conversation with somebody about the Sabbath and they'll say, but what about Colossians 2, 16, right, where Paul says, 2, 16. He says this, let no man therefore judge you and meet or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ, or the substance of things is of Christ. Well, what does that mean? He just said the word Sabbath, days. It's actually plural there. Most modern translations say something like Sabbaths rather than Sabbath days. They're showing you it's plural by providing that S on the end. But what's the point there? Well, what was the shadow of things to come? Well, if you consider these other things, it's the ceremonial laws, right? How they were prohibited from eating certain foods, how they were prohibited from having certain drinks, how they were commanded to observe this calendar. I don't know about you, but if the moral law is eternal, it predates a calendar, right? The calendar is established with the establishing of Israel. the building of the temple, then you have the calendar in place. But what's before that, indeed what gives rise to that, is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. So, in light of our sermon last week, there's a principle that continues one day in seven. We're not commanding you to keep the seventh day Sabbath. But Scripture does teach a Sabbath principle, one day in seven. Why not observe the day that all of Christian history has observed? The first day Sabbath, the Lord's day, right? And that was part of our sermon last week, but that's an answer to Colossians 2, verse 16, that I didn't bring up last week. So Isaiah 58, verses 13 and 14 says this. Listen to these promises that God attaches to the Sabbath. Again, draw back from the Jewishness of this and think about the principle behind it, right? 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 shall honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then, Then, if you do this, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord's, 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. Did you hear that? If you will delight yourself, or devote yourself, we should say, to keeping the Lord's ordinances, one of which is the Sabbath, the one day in seven principle, God promises to cause you to delight in Him. Wow. What a tremendous blessing that God promises if you will keep that commandment in particular, obviously by implication all are attached to it, but God will increase your delight in Him. Quite frankly, I've never met anybody who kept the Sabbath, truly, that did not delight in it. Most people who despise the Sabbath stand outside of it and point a finger at it, just like all the other commandments. Think of it like this. If Christ brings us the Sabbath rest of God, and that rest is heaven on earth, the experience of salvation, if the Lord's day is heaven on earth for a whole day, Ought not heavenly works to be done as much as time allows? Some preachers will say this is the Lord's day, not the Lord's hour. And that's why they recognize that it should be devoted to public and private worship as much as possible, except so much as be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. What is the work of heaven? Worship. Worship. So what's the Lord's Day about, chiefly? Might say rest, but rest for what? Unto worship, right? If that's the purpose of the day in principle, as the Catechism and Scripture lays out, then what excuses are there to not set aside the day for that? None. I mean, you really look God in the face and say you'd rather have earth than heaven. How can we consider evening worship, personal prayer, family prayer, catechesis, and all that could be with that? How can we consider those things a burden? Is heaven a burden, my friends? Because God attaches this glorious promise to it. If you will keep his Sabbath, we call it the Lord's Day, the first day Sabbath, whatever you want to say, not the Jewish Sabbath. If you will keep the fourth commandments, Devote yourself to it. God will bless you in it and cause your delight in him to increase and increase your love for it and for him. You might say, well, Christ is my Sabbath. Amen, just like Christ is your adultery. I mean, your keeping of the commandment against adultery. Just like Christ is your keeping of the first commandment. You don't get to dismiss it. Right, Christ saves you from the law to the law, that you might keep it truly, not perfectly, but truly in Him by the Spirit, devoting yourself to the works of God. So let's pray and seek the Lord that we would be a Sabbath-keeping people, a Sabbath-keeping people, because I don't know about you, friends, But I want more of heaven in my life, not less. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.