Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is found in Exodus 23:10-13. Exodus 23:10-13. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed.

And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this portion of scripture. We thank you for your spirit. We do pray that the Holy Spirit would now do his work of writing this law upon our hearts. Cause us, Father, to rejoice in the truths we see uncovered here, truths that are important for our life and for our refreshment. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. The fact that it’s not always seen as a delightful topic is an indication of the sort of strangeness that exists that we find rather in the church of Jesus Christ in America and around the world. The Sabbath, the Lord’s day, is not one of particular delight for most Christians. Our Savior tells us that the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath, correcting the abuses of the Sabbath two thousand years ago.

And we have no less need today for the Savior to come to us through his word and to tell us that the Sabbath was made for us and not us for the Sabbath, to restore to an understanding of the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, a sense of joy, a sense of real relaxation and refreshment, the sense of great delight in the day that God has given us. That is indeed the best of all the seven. So these are strange times because that’s not the average view of the Christian toward the idea of a Sabbath and what the scripture teaches about it.

Now, I want to give us a little bit of setting. What I’ve given you mostly on the outline is an overview of the Sabbath, which we’ll get to in a couple of minutes. First, we want to talk specifically about the text before us as a springboard to a consideration in general of the Sabbath. And I want us to remember the setting for this particular portion of scripture. The setting is that the people of God had just come out of Egypt.

When they received the Sabbath law, they probably had a lot easier way to understand it and delight in it than we did. You remember that when Moses first goes to Pharaoh to say to him, to demand that his people should come out, or rather as the process continues, Moses says that God’s people should be let go for a week of worshiping him away from Egypt. So, and then Pharaoh of course doesn’t want that to happen because he would acknowledge the sovereignty of Yahweh in letting the children of Israel go for a week into the wilderness.

For the children of Israel in Egypt, the choice was real clear to them. They had perpetual bondage and slavery by this point in time, and they could either labor six days and rest with the Lord on the seventh day or they could labor perpetually in the context of Egypt. That was the choice really put before them as they came out of Egypt. And that’s the context for the giving of these laws and the emphasis that these laws on the Sabbath here and in other places of the Pentateuch have on rest on the Sabbath day.

Now, the Sabbath day is a day of delight to Reformed Christians more than non-Reformed Christians. The great confessional standards of the Reformed church coming from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have always talked in terms of the Sabbath. For instance, in the Westminster Larger Catechism, we read, “What is required in the fourth commandment?” The fourth commandment requires of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such set times as he has appointed in his word, expressly one whole day, not two hours Sunday morning, one whole day in seven which was the seventh from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ and the first day of the week ever since and so to continue to the end of the world which is the Christian Sabbath and in the New Testament called the Lord’s day.

Now we’ll talk about those terms Christian Sabbath and Lord’s day a little more toward the end of the sermon but there is a transition recognized. The standard recognized the obligation of the fourth commandment that’s perpetual upon the Christian but a change in administration of the day and I think we could also see a change in how, what that day looks like from this period of time coming out of Egypt to now the fullness of redemption in Christ our Savior as we go along.

So the Westminster Larger Catechism in question 118 recognizes that the Sabbath command and the fourth commandment is particularly given to those in control. You know you’re given a commandment to let your servant, your maidservant, your manservant rest on that day. So the Westminster Larger Catechism says, “Why is the charge of keeping the Sabbath more specially directed to governors of families and other superiors?”

And the answer is: “The charge of keeping the Sabbath is more specially directed to governors of families and other superiors because they are bound not only to keep it themselves but to see that it be observed by all those that are under their charge and because they are prone of times to hinder them by employments of their own.”

So in the fourth commandment we have a particular obligation on covenantal heads to let those under their covenantal authority rest on the Sabbath day from all their labors.

Now, this particular verse we have today begins its discussion of the Sabbath. And by the way, let me just say that we’re now at a point in the law of the covenant where virtually the rest of the law of the covenant, many verses, most of chapter 23, will be concerned with the Sabbath and sabbatical sorts of observances. So we’ve now moved away from all the civil statutes and all those things to now talking about the festival period of God’s people.

And specifically, this section begins with the discussion of the sabbatical year in which the land is to rest. We read in verse 10: “Six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow.” The word there to let it rest means to let it drop, throw it down. Don’t work it that seventh year. And I think the way to look at this is the land is a living organism.

It may move quite slow in comparison to us or cattle or birds. And it may not be quite so obvious, but it is a living organism and it can be depleted by its labors over time. And additionally, the land is seen as a living organism that refuses to give its labor easily to man. So the land as a living organism owned by God is to be given rest by men in the sabbatical year, the seventh year, and not working the land. And what it says specifically is that the poor may freely eat of the produce in that seventh year.

And in other places of scripture, it says that you can eat of that produce too. If you had a field in the seventh year, you could go ahead and pick whatever had grown up on its own and the poor could go in there and eat it. You’ve always got this grace aspect running throughout the law of the covenant because we were given grace by God. And so you’re supposed to let that land rest. And additionally, God had promised the children of Israel that in the sixth year he would give them a triple harvest to get them through that seventh year.

He told them, you know, how are we going to live if we don’t, if we aren’t productive in that sabbatical year? And the answer is: I’ll give you a blessing in the sixth year.

Now these laws are all tied to the people on the land, the typological nature of the priestly nation to come. And I don’t believe these are tied to us specifically in terms of the sabbatical year. Nonetheless, if we understand that the basis for this is that in God’s created order, he’s given us land that needs rest on a regular basis, the application of it to farmers at least is fairly direct.

Land must be allowed to lie fallow, rotate crops, whatever it is, to let the land rejuvenate itself, so to speak, to let it be refreshed and vivified. There also seems to be in the context of this particular law an upward progression as it were from the land and up to giving people rest and beasts rest as well. The discipline of the ethic goes from the lesser case to the greater. If man is to give even the land rest, then he is surely to give rest to the animals of the land.

And if he’s to give rest to the animals of the land, then he must surely be required to give strangers rest. And if he is to give strangers rest, then surely he must give his servants rest. And if he is to give his servants rest, then he must surely give himself rest. And so the rationale builds from the smallest indication of the land being in need of rest up to the image of God in man itself.

As I said, this word for rest, as you’ll understand it here, means literally to drop or to throw down. Specifically, this term is used in a sabbatical sense both in terms of debts as well as in terms of the production of the land in the sabbatical year. The lesson is one of obedience and trust in the provision of God. God promised to bless far beyond any loss that would come about by letting the land rest or by releasing the debtor in the seventh year. And so it’s tied to that kind of idea of relying upon the providence of God.

Now specifically we’re told that the end result of this is refreshment. Okay? You’re supposed to let your land rest. And then in terms of the sabbatical week: six days you do your work, seventh day you shall rest, throw down your labors, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed.

This word refreshed is only used in this particular form of the word three times in the scriptures. And I’ll talk about one of those three times at the communion talk today. But here’s one of the three times. The root is the same basic word as the word nephesh, which means soul or living being. And the base of this word seems to be the idea of to breathe. So the animals became living beings, they started to breathe. Man is given breath from God and he starts to breathe. The animals have this nephesh in the sense not of an immortal soul but in the sense of being a breathing creature and having life.

And man has this breathing thing in relationship to the animals. But man’s breath is given to him by God. God breathes into man the breath of life and so man is separated from the beast although of a piece with them as well. So the idea here is breathing and from the root of breathing it means to take a breath and in addition to this it’s related very closely to the idea of life.

So the idea of the Sabbath system here in this particular text, particularly the weekly Sabbath which is applicable to us in a very direct way, is that the end result of it may be that you might take a breath and be revivified, to take a breath and get your life back. So the basic idea of the Sabbath is you work six days a week and then on the Lord’s day or in the Old Testament the Sabbath day you put down your work, you lay down your activity, you take a breath and you get revivified by God. You get life again and refreshment from God to go on into the rest of the week and the labors he has called you to do.

So you see the Sabbath is a delight. It’s a time of refreshment. It’s a time of joy. It’s a time to take a deep breath, to get revivified, and to get ready for the rest of your life. It’s a joyous thing.

Now, I want to go through the outline here quickly, and it’s just an overview of the various Sabbath teachings throughout the scriptures. And we’ll see by the end of this why when we look at the refreshment of the Sabbath put in the context of the whole Bible, it’s a tremendous day of delight to us and a day of joy to enter into the work that God says we must do on this particular day and to leave behind the sorts of work he would have us leave behind.

And the first thing I want to talk about is this relationship of Sabbath to blessing. Very obviously the Sabbath-keeping led to blessing in the Old Testament. We read for instance in Isaiah 56:2: “Blessed is the man that doeth this, the son of man that layeth hold of it, that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it.” So that you keep the Sabbath, you’re blessed as a result of that.

Verse 5 of Isaiah 56 says: “Even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” And then in verse 7: “Even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joy in my house of prayer.”

The Sabbath was a delight. There was a blessing attached to the correct keeping of the Sabbath. And as part of that blessing, God says he’s going to bring you into his house with great joy in the context of his house of prayer. So Sabbath-keeping is promised to us to be associated with blessing.

And probably the most well-known text on Sabbath-keeping, Isaiah 58:13 and 14, where we began our worship this morning as the call to worship. We’re told that if you do indeed take a hold of the day correctly, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. Verse 14: “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 has spoken it.”

Those blessings were put earlier in the book of Deuteronomy in terms of covenant blessings. And in Isaiah 58, the summation of covenant keeping and covenant blessings is tied to this observance of the one day in seven of throwing things down, taking a good deep breath and being refreshed and revivified. This is directly related in Isaiah 58 to the prosperity that he’s going to give his people. He’s going to then cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth and he will feed us with the heritage of Jacob, our father.

One way to further an eschatological vision is to promote the keeping of God’s law by God’s people of the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath in its proper sense, and to see the keeping of it not as some sort of drudgery or restriction on who we are, but rather as being called to a great festival of joy, delight, refreshment, taking a breath, and revivification.

Now, in the context of this, it’s interesting how some of this plays itself out in 2 Kings 4:23. The context here is Elisha and the Shunamite widow. The Shunamite widow’s son has died and needs help. And so she’s going to go find Elisha. And in verse 23, her husband’s talking to her and she’s going to go find the man of God, Elisha. And her husband says, “Wherefore will you go to him today? Is it neither new moon nor Sabbath?” And she said, “It shall be well.”

What we read from that is the practice with the people of God, such as Elisha, the prophet of God, or other men of God, was the Sabbath was a day when you would get together with those men to be instructed, encouraged, vivified to take a breath, to get new life as it were from an understanding of God’s word, not so very different from what we do today.

So the day is to be given over to this understanding of the word of God and its application to our lives that produces tremendous blessings and joy from God.

Secondly, Sabbath-keeping itself was a blessing. There’s a human need of one day in seven. Men have tried to get rid of the seven-day week. The French Revolution and the Russian Communist Party both tried to get rid of this principle, this flow of life through seven days and one day of rest out of the seven, unsuccessfully.

God has built into the human condition at least since the fall the need to rest on one day out of seven. And so the Sabbath meets a particular need for mankind and in the very resting we take that breath we get revivified because the Sabbath-keeping itself is directly a blessing let alone the blessings that God promises to attend us with. In addition to that, the Sabbath, as Jesus said, was made for man.

Man and the creation ordinance required a Sabbath rest. It was good for him. It was a blessing to him. And again, in our text today in Exodus 23:12: take up and fulfill the sabbatical requirements to the end that your subordinates and as implied you as well will be refreshed. So the Sabbath itself is a blessing of rest and refreshment and it meets well the needs of the particular physical makeup and psychical makeup that God has given to us.

We need to put our minds down and our bodies down, so to speak in terms of activity, one day out of seven.

The Sabbath taught deliverance, victory, and rest. And of course, we’ve talked about rest quite a bit, but of course we know that in various places, including in the Ten Commandments, we’re told specifically that the Sabbath is tied to a remembrance. In Deuteronomy 5:15: “You’ll remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, that the Lord thy God brought thee out of there with a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm. Therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”

He commands you to enter into the joy, the victory, the deliverance, the rest that he has accomplished by his works in history. So the Sabbath is tied to these tremendous truths of victory, deliverance, and rest.

And the Sabbath yielded community blessings in its Old Testament context. In Isaiah 56, which we referred to earlier, the ones that grab a hold of the Sabbath are those that are blessed and that are brought with joy to the house of prayer. They’re brought there not in isolation, but just as our Lord’s Day meetings are, they’re brought together in community. So it’s a day of community rejoicing in the presence of God.

Leviticus 23:3 is a very important verse for a proper understanding of the Old Testament Sabbath. Without this verse, well, there’s others as well we can look to by implication, but this verse very explicitly tells us that the Old Testament Sabbath that we read about in Exodus 23 that was a refreshment to men was one of convocation.

We tend to think of the Old Testament and much of the church does not understand what I’m going to tell you. People tend to think of the Old Testament Sabbath as a day of rest off by themselves individually and that even the passages such as Isaiah 56 seem normally to refer to the convocation in Jerusalem. But Leviticus 23:3 tells us explicitly that the Sabbath was a day of convocation.

“Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest and holy convocation. You shall do no work therein.” This tells us that the Mosaical sabbatical process was not one of isolation but rather of convocation on the Lord’s day. This tells us that the synagogue system did not initiate, did not begin rather or originate with the captivity, that the synagogue system on the Sabbath predates that.

Acts 15, in the council of Jerusalem they said, “Well, you know, here’s what laws the Gentiles should keep and Moses from ancient times has been read in the synagogue pattern.” So here we see that from the beginning of Mosaic legislation when they go into the land, their Sabbath day was a day not of just isolation and rest but of convocation and joy and worship and instruction in God’s word which was the synagogue system.

Very important text to understand what this Old Testament Sabbath was. It was a day of convocation of community blessings and community joy.

And with significant differences to the Lord’s day, the Sabbath therefore, the Old Testament Sabbath was to be marked by tremendous joy. It led to blessings. It was a blessing. It was a picture and a reminder of the victory, deliverance, and rest that God had accomplished for his people.

These were a people who were in horrific bondage in Egypt prior to their deliverance. They were slaves. They had no days of rest. They were always in servitude, the last years of their stay in Egypt. So to them, the tremendous shift away from that to having one day out of seven to convocate together to have joy to celebrate the deliverance, the rest and the victory of God over Egypt—this was not some kind of downtrodden bad day with a bunch of restrictions upon it.

This was a festival. This was a holiday. This was a holy day and called for celebration. That was the Old Testament Sabbath.

Now, it’s in that context then that we should read the Sabbath in connection with the law. The Sabbath summarized the law of God. In Isaiah 56:1 and 2, this text we’ve spoken of earlier, we read: “Thus says the Lord, keep ye judgment, do justice, my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold of it, that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.”

The point is that the summation of law-keeping for the recipients of Isaiah’s message here in Isaiah 56:1 and 2, the summation of keeping all the law of God was rolled up in whether or not you kept the Sabbath. So the law of God essentially was summarized in a typological or a symbolic form in Sabbath-keeping, proper Sabbath-keeping.

But we must understand that the Sabbath predates these Mosaic laws that we’re talking about here. This is a very important truth for us. If something arises new in the Mosaic stipulations, for instance, the tithe, the way the tithe is administered, and we see that it’s predated by a general administration of ten percent of the tithe, then we see that what Moses does is for a particular period of redemption history, things are administered in a particular way.

But the general obligation tithing predates Mosaic legislation and so it applies throughout creation history. Well, the same thing’s true of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a creation ordinance. It didn’t start with Moses. It started with the six days of creation and God resting on the seventh day. It predates Mosaic law.

The Old Testament witness affirms that God instituted Sabbath observance at creation. He rests on the seventh day of the week. Secondly, the Old Testament witness affirms the church’s obligation of Sabbath observance prior to Sinai. In Exodus 16, before they receive the law through Moses, in Exodus 16, God feeds them with manna. And the manna is to be collected on six days. And on the seventh day, you weren’t supposed to pick manna up. But on the sixth day, there’d be twice as much available than it was the day before and you were to keep it over to the seventh day.

Now, if you tried to turn it into perpetual use on the eighth day, that manna would rot. But the provision of a sabbatical rest on the seventh day as a creation ordinance, it’s tied to God’s rest. It’s commanded by that in terms of that, but it also predates Mosaic legislation in the practice of the church in the wilderness being required not to gather manna on the seventh day. So the Sabbath predates Mosaic law.

And then third, the Old Testament witness cites the creation Sabbath as the basis of the fourth word in Exodus 20, the fourth commandment. The reason why we’re supposed to keep Sabbath is because God worked six days and rested on the seventh. There’s nothing in terms of redemptive history that would change that fact. So the Sabbath is a creation ordinance. This is affirmed in the New Testament witness as well.

The New Testament witness of our Lord affirms the creation mandate for its observance. He says: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” What’s he talking about? He’s talking about the creation week. So our Savior puts Sabbath observance and ties it back to its original ordinance, its original establishment in the context of creation. And then again in the epistles, the epistles cite the creation Sabbath as the basis for Sabbath-keeping in Hebrews 3 and 4.

Hebrews 3 and 4 says that we, you know, we’ve been that the creation mandate is why we keep Sabbath. And because we’re not totally into the eschaton yet, even though we’ve been moved ahead through the work of our Savior, there remains a Sabbath-keeping for us in this particular created order, and we’ll get to that as we proceed on the outline.

The point is the Sabbath is a tremendous blessing. It’s a blessing tied to the law, but understand that the Sabbath predates Mosaic law. It’s a creation ordinance. And so we should expect it like the tithe to have an abiding application to us this side of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then indeed we find that the ceremonial law of Moses that given through Moses rather actually foreshadowed an eighth day Sabbath, the change of the Sabbath day from the seventh day to the eighth day, from the seventh day of the week to the first day of the week with the coming of our Savior.

And I list here lots of evidences for this that I think are fascinating. We’ll just run through them in a very summary fashion. But I want you to understand that the Sabbath precedes the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law builds on the Sabbath, gives certain things, the way it’s administered in terms of the land, etc., because they’re now a priestly nation to the world. And then the Mosaic law pictures that the way the Sabbath will be observed is going to change when Messiah comes and redemption is fully accomplished.

How does it picture that? Well, for instance, the feast of unleavened bread. In Leviticus 23:11, in the context of the Passover and unleavened bread, a sheaf is waved before God. This is like the beginning of the harvest time. A single sheaf is waved and fifty days later, the full harvest is baked into loaves and they’re waved before God. Well, the sheaf offering is talked about in Leviticus 23:11: “He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you. On the morrow after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it.”

So the day after the Sabbath, eighth day as it were, first day of the week, the sheaf is waved. Now, children, what does that mean? You’ve got a wheat harvest. You got a first grain that comes up, is what it’s being typified here. That sheaf, not on Saturday, but on Sunday, using our terminology, is to be waved before God. Who is the sheaf? Jesus said, “Unless the wheat goes into the ground, dies and is buried, it won’t yield up fruit or crops.”

Jesus goes into the grave and on the day after the Sabbath, Jesus raises up from the grave. Right? So the sheaf offering of the Old Testament sabbatical Mosaic regulations pictures that the day will change when the Sheaf comes, who is the wheat, who is the Lord Jesus Christ and he’s harvested up as the first fruits of all those who are going to be resurrected in him and he’s taken up. The day will change.

That’s what this feast of unleavened bread is telling us in Leviticus 23:11. Pentecost, so we have like we have a proteological resurrection, the beginning, and now an eschatological resurrection fifty days later is Pentecost when the whole harvest is baked up into a loaf and it’s waved before God and accepted into his throne room, so to speak. It’s a picture of Jesus’s resurrection and then the church coming as the full harvest of God, the beginning and end, so to speak, of the resurrection of Christ’s body.

And it’s represented by those loaves, the body of Christ, the church being raised up. But Pentecost again showed an eighth day fulfillment because you get seven weeks, seven times seven is forty-nine. And then the eighth day of the seventh week, first day of the week, now the fiftieth day, Pentecost—Penta means five or fifty—Pentecost the fiftieth day, the eighth day of that last of the seven weeks. The full loaves are then waved and presented to God. A picture that when Christ comes to begin the harvest of souls through the preaching of the gospel, the Sabbath day will change from the last day of the week to the first day of the week.

“Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days, and you shall offer a new food offering unto the Lord.” And then third, tabernacles or ingathering. The feast of tabernacles or ingathering is another picture of the consummation of all things. It’s the conclusion of the whole sabbatical system of God’s people. They come together. They’re uplifted. They’re walking with branches.

They’ve got those palm branches on the ground. They’re living in huts. They’ve got huts made out of branches. They’re raised up. They’re a heavenly people gathered around God in Jerusalem that represents the eschatology of the completion of all things through the proclamation of the gospel. And here as well in the feast of tabernacles, we’re told in verse 39: “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month when you’ve gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath.”

I mean, how can you miss that? The first day is a Sabbath. The eighth day is a Sabbath. You see, the day is going to change from the seventh day, the first creation day to the first day of the week, the new creation day in Christ our Savior.

Jubilee taught the same thing on a yearly basis. It’s the fiftieth year. That’s the year of Jubilee. And our Savior came and said that he has ushered in the year of release, the perpetual Jubilee year now through his work. That’s what he preached on in his first sermon. “Seven Sabbaths of years unto you seven times seven years in the space of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. And the next year the eighth year at the end of the seven cycles, seven cycles of seven years, the eighth year as it were is this change to the new Sabbath year.”

And then in Exodus 12:14-16 we read that when they were to keep the feast of unleavened bread they to keep it from the first day until the seventh day. So again, the first day is singled out for us in the Passover itself and the feast of unleavened bread.

So the Sabbath is blessing. It’s tied to the law of God in terms of the Mosaic laws. It predates that in creation. And the Mosaic law tells us the day will change from the seventh day to the eighth day when the true Sheaf has come, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are other sacrificial prefigurements, however, of the eighth day Sabbath as well. And I list these on your outline. First, sacrificial maturity occurred on the eighth day. We read this earlier in the case laws in Exodus. The animal was not ready to be sacrificed until he was eight days old. Secondly, the priestly work was preceded by seven days of consecration. We’re told that in Leviticus 9:1. So on the eighth day, the priest is ready to do his thing.

Third, the purification of the temple culminated in an eighth day of the completion of the process, making it fit for the habitation of Jehovah. That’s found in 2 Chronicles 29:17. And then in Ezekiel 43:27, we read: “When these days are expired, these are the days for the purification of the new covenant altar. That upon the eighth day and so forward, the priest shall make your burnt offerings upon the altar.”

The altar went through a preparation for seven days. And Ezekiel says on the eighth day, it’s ready. So do you get the picture? The sacrificial animal who is Christ isn’t ready until the eighth day. The priest can’t do his thing until the eighth day is when the sacrifices start. The altar is cleansed for seven days, and on the eighth day, it’s ready to go. And the temple itself must be cleansed so that on the eighth day, God will inhabit it.

All of these things are sacrificial prefigurements of the change of the day and of the coming of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ that ushers in the true Sabbath, the true refreshment, the true revivification that the Old Testament creation Sabbath and the Mosaic Sabbath pointed to.

You see, if you understand the beauty of all these things, then when we get around to keeping the Christian Sabbath or the Lord’s Day today, man, if you come with an understanding of all that this stuff teaches, you just want to say, “Yahoo.” When you get together, you want to say, “Praise God for what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished.” And the richness of the portrayal of that message of what Christ has accomplished through this Old Testament sacrificial system. It’s not dull. It’s not dreary. It’s not, you know, a burden. The Sabbath-keeping and the laws relating to it—they point us to the greatness of the victory of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for us.

The new creation ordinance of circumcision was performed on the eighth day, picturing this transition from old creation to new creation. And the purification of deadness of leprosy culminated in eighth day of re-entrance into fellowship with Jehovah and his people. And I give you the scriptural citations that’s the basis for that.

You see, tremendous prefigurement of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the change of the day in the Sabbath laws of the Old Testament.

Now, the Sabbath is tied to the law because the Sabbath is tied to the covenant. And as we’ve been preaching on for the last twenty-three sermons in this series, this is the law of the covenant. The law can’t be separated from the covenant. Sabbath-keeping is equated with the keeping of the covenant.

Again, Isaiah 56:4 and 6: “Thus says the Lord unto the eunuchs to keep my Sabbaths and choose the things that please me and take hold of my covenant.” Again, verse six: “The sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it and takes hold of my covenant to perform it”—to enter into the joy of the Old Testament Sabbath or the Christian Sabbath and the Lord’s day observance, to enter into that, is to take a hold of the covenant of God. Nothing less.

God equates the proper observance of this one day in seven with whether or not you’re a covenant keeper or a covenant breaker. It is that important. It’s that significant of what the covenant effected through Christ’s blood has accomplished: rest, deliverance, victory, a new creation. Praise God. And God says if you walk away from the Sabbath observance, you walk away from the essence or heart of the covenant itself.

The same thing is stated again in Exodus. In Exodus chapter 20, we read that in verse 16, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. And he gave to Moses when he had made an end of commanding with him upon mount Sinai two tablets of testimony.

So the tablets of testimony, the giving of the law completes with this requirement to see the Sabbath and its observance in relationship to the covenant of God. It’s a sign between God and us.

Secondly, the blessings of the Sabbath are equated with the blessings of the covenant. I mentioned earlier Isaiah 58 and I said that in Deuteronomy 32:13, we’re given the covenant blessings that you’ll ride upon the high places of the earth. And Isaiah 58 correlates those covenant blessings to observance of the Sabbath correctly, entering into that day of rest and deliverance and grace correctly. So the blessings of the Sabbath are equivalent with the blessings of the covenant.

Now God then, this is the basis for why God threatens those who violate the Sabbath with having a fire kindled against them because they have made in essence a broken covenant with him if they break the Sabbath. In other words, there are covenant curses as well as covenant blessings in relationship to the Sabbath.

In 2 Chronicles 36, we read of the captivity of God’s people into Babylon. Verse 20 and 21, we read this: “Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths.”

Why are God’s people under judgment? Why do they go into captivity? Why do they lose their position of prominence riding on the high places of the earth? Why did the people in the Old Testament lose that privilege and end up in captivity? Because they failed to give the land, which is owned by God, for sabbatical release. They failed the Sabbath. They failed the covenant. And as a result, they entered into not covenant blessings, but covenant cursings.

You see, that’s how important it is. God says that if this day is observed correctly, tremendous blessings, covenant blessings flow to us. But if this day is spurned by his people, he’ll make the nations the head and us the tail. We see a situation where the church is the tail. And we see a situation where the church has no use for one day out of seven where it’s called the Lord’s day or the Christian Sabbath, whatever it’s called.

The church today routinely comes to hear the morning sermon and then goes into the rest of the day going about their business, buying and selling, working, not convocating together like we do at this church so often, but instead thinking that the obligations of the Lord’s day are filled up on this one hour spent hearing a short sermon. They don’t take the one day out of seven. And as a result, the church is under the judgment of God because it’s found wanting of him in terms of covenant observance.

And it does not understand the basis for what the victory of Christ, what it all is and what it’s ushered us into. There’s a relationship between the law of God and the sabbatical restrictions of it and an optimistic view of the future. The Sabbath moves us toward the future and says that Christ has bought the future with his final victory over sin and death. And there’s a relationship to that, to the covenant blessings and cursings.

And if we’re going to turn this situation around in America where the church rides on the high places once more, central to that transformation, to that reconstruction, will be a proper observance of the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath.

Let’s talk then about the Sabbath and the New Testament briefly. The New Testament teaches the eighth day or Lord’s day observance, the Christian Sabbath. And I’m not going to go to these references, but over and over again, what we see happening in the New Testament is that they meet on the first day of the week, which is the eighth day, as we saw from the ceremonial regulations of the Sabbath and the Old Testament system. The seventh and first are correlated.

Christians meet on the first day of the week for the worship of God. The new creation has a new Sabbath. New creation, new ordinance. Remember, the Sabbath was a creation ordinance, but now all things are new in Christ. Circumcision doesn’t avail anything, it says, but a new creation in Christ. Christ has brought in the new creation through his work on the cross. And so we have a new creation ordinance, a new Sabbath: the Lord’s day.

Now, what some call the Christian Sabbath. This new Sabbath memorializes the definitive new creation through the coming work of the Lord Jesus Christ that was pictured in all those prefigurements of the Old Testament sacramental sabbatical laws. This new creation is a new Sabbath anticipating the consummated new creation. There’s a now and not now aspect to the new creation in Christ which we read about in Hebrews.

So the new creation has a new Sabbath associated with it. And in this new Sabbath, there seems to be a shift from rest to worship with the coming of Jesus. When Israel was in Egypt, they were in the cruel bondage of pagan slavery. They never got to rest. And so the emphasis in the Old Testament on sabbatical laws are laws of rest. Now we know they were days of convocation as Leviticus 23:3 tells us.

But the primary emphasis in the Old Testament Mosaic Sabbath seems to be rest. But now you see rest is not the big emphasis. When we see the church meeting on the Lord’s day, it’s not primarily for the purpose of rest. It’s for the purpose of worshiping God. It’s for the purpose of convocating together in that holy convocation to worship God in the context of the gospel.

So there seems to be a shift from the old creation where Adam fell, sin and bondage was a result. We needed rest from the bondage in Egypt to now the new creation. We’re not simply given rest now. We’re given life through the worship of God. It takes center stage in terms of the Lord’s day activities in the New Testament.

So there’s this shift of emphasis that seems to be the case this side of glory. Sabbath-keeping remains. In Hebrews 4:9, we read: “There remains therefore a rest to the people of God.” Now this word rest here is not the normal word for rest. This particular word rest is sabbatismos and is literally a Sabbath-keeping. There remains therefore a Sabbath-keeping to the people of God. And the idea of the passage is that all things have been made new in Christ and yet we still have Adamic bodies. We still have an earth that’s not been fully renewed. There’s a not yet stage to all of this that will change when our Lord returns.

So until the new creation is totally consummated and made new with the return of the Savior, we still maintain this one day out of seven. We still have the Adamic bodies that require rest. We still have a land that requires it to be lying fallow every seventh year to take a breath and to be revivified. And so Hebrews 4 says that as long as we’re in this yet accomplished and yet not consummated new creation, there remains Sabbath-keeping for the people of God.

The Lord’s day then is the culmination of all the Old Testament Sabbaths. You know, when we get around to talking about signs and seals of the covenant, the baptism and communion, we know by now hopefully that it’s really the boiling down of all the Old Testament food and drink stipulations and all the cleansing stipulations—baptism and the Lord’s supper. Well, the Lord’s day is the same thing. Sometimes it’s not good to call it the Sabbath because we want to understand the transfer to the Lord’s day and that all of the Old Testament sabbatical cycle finds its culmination in this single Lord’s Day activity which we now enter into.

We’re going to talk about that more next week. We’ll talk about why we think it’s okay to have fun, to recreate, play sports, etc. on the Lord’s day. And I’ll talk about that next week. But this is the key to it: the New Testament Lord’s Day is the culmination of all the Old Testament Sabbaths that were there.

And then finally, the Sabbath is a redemption ordinance. So see what we’ve done here. This scripture that we looked at in Exodus 23 says: “Let it drop. Throw down your work one day out of seven and enter into refreshment. Take a breath. Be revivified for one whole day set apart primarily for the worship of God and also for rest and recreation.” And you see, all of that is the culmination of the teaching of the whole Old Testament that what happens on the Sabbath is people convocate together to remember the deliverance, the victory, and the rest that God has accomplished, first through the work of God in delivering them out of Egypt, then through the work of Christ, the greater Deliverer, and all of this means that we move—we see the Sabbath not in doom-and-gloom sort of terms but we see the Sabbath in delightful sort of terms. We see the Lord’s day as a delightful day of convocation and joy and refreshment.

It’s a creation ordinance. The law of God prefigured and showed this change of day with the new creation in Christ. And the basis for this change of course is the redemption effected through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the last point in your outline is: the Sabbath is a redemption ordinance. The Old Testament Sabbath…