Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon: Sanctifying the Lord’s Day

Today’s sermon text is found in Isaiah 58:6-14. We’ll focus mostly on verses 13 and 14. We’ll begin reading at verse 6 and read to the end of Isaiah 58. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Isaiah 58, beginning at verse 6:

“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 the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, the Lord 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, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. The Lord 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 the Lord 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 the Lord. 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 the Lord has spoken.”

Let’s pray. Father, we look forward to the blessings that you pour forth from your rich storehouse upon us, your people. We desire more blessing, Lord God, in the context of our lives individually and as families and in the context of our church. And we thank you, Lord God, that you instruct us today from your word in the means by which you have appointed that we might receive blessings from your hand.

Help us, Lord God, to believe and rejoice in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the new creation that he has affected. Help us this day to understand your word. By understanding it, to rejoice in it. And by rejoicing in it, you experience and do those things that are pleasing to you. Not just today, but the rest of our lives. And may we, Lord God, receive rich blessings from your storehouse today and forever.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I don’t normally start with a joke or put jokes in my sermon, but I saw this one this week and thought it was so appropriate. It might be a good way at the beginning of our sermon today to get across the basic point. We are in the middle of a series of sermons on the Sabbath. We’ll return to John chapter 5 next Lord’s day.

The story goes that there was this man who became a monk and he went to the monastery to do his work as a monk and reported to the old monk and he was told he had to copy a bunch of manuscripts. He noticed as he was copying this manuscript that he was copying from a copy which had been made from another copy which had been made from another copy.

So he went up to the monk who was in charge of this project and said, “Well, why don’t we copy from the original because if they made an error back then, the error would just be perpetuated all over these many, many years?” So the head monk said, “Well, that’s kind of a good idea. I’ll look into it.” So he went down to the storeroom where the original manuscripts were kept to see what the original said as opposed to the copies.

And he didn’t come back up for a long time and they got worried about him and sent somebody down to find out what had happened. And they heard this sobbing in the back of the manuscript room and he’s bent over a manuscript and he’s crying uncontrollably. “Well, what’s wrong, father? What’s wrong?” The word he said was “celebrate,” yeah, not “celibate.”

Well, you know, when we think of the Christian Sabbath or the Lord’s day, we usually think of it in terms of celibacy—not terms of not marrying, but as some kind of rigid duty imposed upon us. It’s not a joyful thing. And that’s kind of the reputation that Sabbath-keeping or keeping the Lord’s day has gotten over the years. But the original manuscript here in the scriptures tells us quite a different thing about this day. This is a day of delight. The Lord’s day is a day of great celebration.

We want to talk about that. And it’s a wonderful season to be talking about it because the Lord’s day is the day of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in a more profound way. We go to heaven. He comes to earth. And this season is the season of rejoicing in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it’s just wonderful that at least in our part of the globe it happens at this dark time of year. You know, it happens on the longest night of the year, the darkest day of the year. Right around then, three days later is when we celebrate Christmas.

And there was a definitive movement of the world. I’ve been saying this now for a month in these various sermons. The old world is gone and the new world has arrived. We have gone from darkness of the Adamic world to the shining bright appearing of the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. A definitive click happened in the calendar of the world 2,000 years ago. We move definitively forward into this new creation.

The gospel of John is all about that. Well, it’s a nice time of year to be celebrating that. And we have these festival things up here in the context of the sanctuary as sort of the accoutrements to worship during this season.

In Revelation 2:7 we read:

“He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

In terms of the architectural symbolism of our church, the sanctuary represents the throne room, the paradise of God. And so during this season it’s good to have a symbolic tree—actually an actual tree—represented here in the context of the sanctuary. We always have a tree represented here. Of course we have this cross, and the cross is a stylized tree. In all likelihood, our Savior was crucified on a tree. The Romans probably wouldn’t go to all the trouble of putting up a bunch of poles if they didn’t have to. Probably the crossmember was put up on an olive tree. We don’t know that, but it’s a stylized tree. And Jesus goes to the tree and the tree becomes the tree of life to us.

And not only that, but we have this tree, but we have these ornaments on the tree. This stylized fruit—that’s what it is. You know, my wife and I were fortunate enough, walking around in the providence of God a couple weeks ago in the Hawthorne district, to find some neat old metal apples as ornaments. You know, that’s really what these balls are. Balls represent stylized fruit.

Revelation 22:1 and following reads:

“He showed me a pure river of water of life clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street and on either side of the river was the tree of life which bore 12 fruits.”

The tree of life bears fruit, and fruit is born in the lives of the Christians. The fruit of the Spirit is represented on most Christmas trees by these round balls—the great, you know, Spirit-filled work that he does in our lives. Fruit of the Spirit are pictured for us here.

When we come to the Lord’s day worship the next few weeks and see the tree, we’re to think of the tree of life. We’re sort of to connect it to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is where life flows out to all the world. We’re to see those balls and think, “Well, what was the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in my life?”

We even had presents under the tree here. And I guess the way I think of that is it’s a reminder again of what we said worship is. Worship is certainly us serving God, but it’s God coming and serving us. He gives us these great gifts of glory and of knowledge and of life in the context of our worship service.

This is pictured in the Old Testament sacrifices, pictured in the Old Testament Holy of Holies with the rod of Aaron and restored personhood, glory and weight, with the manna—life come down—representing the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true manna from heaven, and the law there in the context of the Holy of Holies. The three items of furniture in there, locked up for a thousand years after the temple was built.

And then along comes the Lord Jesus Christ and opens all of that up. Veil ripped in two. No more keeping it away. The gifts flow in the context of worship to us. And these presents or gifts of God are represented to us here, at least for a few weeks. But these presents under this tree of life with the symbolic fruit of the Holy Spirit that are born in our lives—what do the balls on this tree represent, children?

Fruit. Fruit. Fruit of the Spirit.

What do the gifts under the Christmas tree remind us of?

Glory, knowledge, and life. Glory, knowledge, and life.

On the children’s outline, these are the gifts of God to his people in the context of worship. Well, so we’re doing great thanksgiving at this year for the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. And really, the last couple of weeks have built toward this sermon.

This sermon is about how do we sanctify the Lord’s day? What do we do about it? What sets it apart? What can we not do and what should we do? And what we saw was necessarily so last week that the Old Testament system prefigured this eighth day worship. Why don’t we do this on Saturday, the seventh day?

Well, you know, there’s pretty good evidence that even in the Old Testament the Sabbath was a rotating day, like your birthday on a different day each year. There’s pretty good evidence—can’t be sure—that the Sabbath itself, because of several double Sabbaths that occurred in the calendar, moved on the day of the week. But in any event, we know that in the New Testament it’s the first day of the week, the eighth day of the week, so to speak, in which we’re supposed to celebrate these truths that were pictured in the various ways that the calendar represented the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.

We’re to give thanks for the day of the Lord. Why do we sanctify this particular day? Because it was prefigured in the Old Testament. Our Savior blessed this day by his appearance in his resurrection. And the apostles practiced this day. And specifically, the scriptures tell us that there’s something special about this day. This is the Lord’s day now. It’s not as if the Lord doesn’t own every day, right? But there’s still a day called the Lord’s day in which John, in the revelation, is pictured as being in the context of worship in the Spirit.

So this is all prefigured. And remember, we looked at John last week and how the Savior appears on the first day of the week and then he waits a week and appears again on the first day of the week, eight days later, including the day that he appeared.

I came across this quote from B.B. Warfield on the citation from the gospel of John about Jesus appearing on the first day of the week then waiting and appearing again on the first day of the week. Warfield said this:

“The appearance is strong that our Lord, having crowned the day of his rising with manifestations, disappeared for a whole week to appear again only on the week—on the next Christian Sabbath. The full effect of our Lord’s sanctification of the first day of the week as his appointed day of his meeting with his disciples can be fitly appreciated only by considering with his manifestations also his disappearances.”

So Warfield said not only did he bless this day by appearing, but he blessed this day particularly by not appearing for the next six days. So Warfield says, correctly, we’re to think of this day as the day that our Savior put his stamp of approval on in terms of our worship and our consecration of the whole day.

What does the fourth commandment? What day does it apply to? It applies to this day. Specifically, the final scripture text today will be from Matthew 28. And it’s an interesting phrase. It says, “At the end of the Sabbath, as the first day of the week came,” something to that effect. “At the end of the Sabbath, on the first day of the week,” and I guess we could read that just in the normal way that the first day of the week followed the Sabbath day.

Or we could read into that—and this is quite common in gospel language to find a couple of meanings going on—that when our Savior, it was after the last Sabbath. It was the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of the Christian Sabbath. The “Lord’s day” is the terminology used in the New Testament.

So at the end of the Sabbath, first day of the week, remember we said that our Savior, it was on the eighth day of the feast of Tabernacles, at the last great day of the great feast. That’s the terminology in John’s gospel. And it was the last day of the prefigurement of the work of the Savior by the feast of Tabernacles. It was the last feast of Tabernacles.

Now, there was a celebration of this stuff continuing on, you know, as the old was going away and the new was coming on, but definitively the feast of Tabernacles was now over as a specific calendar feast. And anybody that kept worshiping that Old Testament system was now said, “No, no, no, no, no, no. That is not the deal.” Now, the deal is the Lord’s day. The first day of the week.

Now, my job today is to talk about how we sanctify this day, and that’s what we want to get to. Ten points. They’re going to go pretty quick, so don’t worry about this long introduction.

This is a somewhat long quote, but I just love this quote. I like it quite a bit. You know, it’s an odd thing that in our generation, the meaning and significance of this day has been nearly totally lost. I mean, it’s almost completely absent. And in many churches that we think quite highly of, they don’t really set apart this day either. The whole world seems to have forgotten what this day was all about.

It was not so a hundred years ago in this country. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians—everybody kept the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath rather, the Lord’s day. I mean, it was common. You can find all kinds of books on the Lord’s day and the Christian Sabbath because it was a big topic throughout the history of this country.

Tocqueville in his comments on America at her opening stages of her history and what a great nation she was becoming commented that on the Lord’s day they would close the streets so that the cars wouldn’t drive around to disturb the worship services that every city was doing. That was a description of what Christian America was. It was a country that kept the day and rejoiced in it and understood it.

So we don’t understand that, but this is from an essay or a lecture rather delivered on the Sabbath. It’s called “The Foundations of the Sabbath and the Word of God.” And I want to talk about celebrating the Lord’s day today instead of celibate, instead of a non-joyous remembrance of it. But before I get to that side of it, I want to read this as a reminder of what we’ve seen up to now. He said:

“I am to speak to you today not on the usefulness of or the blessedness of the Sabbath, but of its obligation. It’s a word we don’t like to hear much anymore. Of its obligation, he said, and I am to speak to you of its obligations not as that obligation naturally arises out of its usefulness or blessedness, but as it is immediately imposed by God in his word.”

I want to talk about the obligation that arises out of its usefulness and blessedness. It’s a good thing. But he makes an excellent point that he’s going to talk in this lecture about the obligation that’s based upon the word of God itself.

“This is the day of gladness and triumph on which the Lord broke the bonds of the grave, abolishing death, bringing life and immortality to life—to light rather. As naturally you dwell on the value of the Sabbath, it’s not true anymore, but if we were back then, a hundred years ago in this country, we would naturally dwell on the value of the Christian Sabbath. This is the day on which the tired body rests from its appointed labor, on which the worn spirit finds opportunity for recuperation. An oasis in the desert of earthly cares when we can escape for a moment from the treadmill toil of daily life and at leisure from ourselves refresh our souls in God.”

You know, looking at my notes, I preached on the sanctification of the Sabbath in about 1987 and there’s a note there about my oldest daughter Lana, and how I mentioned in the cessation from work part of the sermon that I had asked Lana, who then was probably nine or ten years old, what she liked about the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath.

She says, “Well, I get to worship God. I get to go to church and be with my friends, and I don’t have to do the dishes.”

See, that’s the perspective on the cessation from labor. That’s correct. And he’s saying that, you know, we should be really glad that God gives us one day out of seven to rest from all labors.

So he says, “I am to recall to your minds—it may seem somewhat brusquely—to the contemplation of the duty of the Sabbath and ask you to let them rest for a moment on the bald notion of authority. I do not admit that in so doing I am asking you to lower your eyes. Rather, I conceive myself to be inviting you to raise them to raise them to the very pinnacle, the pinnacle.

“After all is said, there is no greater word than ‘ought.’ And there is no higher reason for keeping the Sabbath than that I ought to keep it, that I owe it to God the Lord to keep it in accordance with his command.”

We want to talk about the delight of the Sabbath today as an inducement for its keeping. But we must not forget in so doing that this word “ought” is not some lower motivation. It is the highest motivation for what we’re called to do as Christians. The ought of looking up at the very pinnacle of pinnacles—God has revealed in his word telling us what we should do. That’s our motivation first and foremost.

Now there’s delight in doing that. There’s joy, there’s celebration, there’s all that stuff. But first and foremost, the foundation for keeping the Lord’s day the way he says to is to be found in obedience, in our obligation to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and his word.

Now, I’ve got listed in the outlines three verses that are normally objected to, and because I shortened this series, we can’t spend much time on them. In Romans 14 it talks about one man esteeming one day higher than another, and that everybody be convinced in his own mind. And some people have said, “Well, this means that you can’t esteem the Lord’s day above the rest of the days.”

Well, if that’s true, then John was wrong in his gospel in the book of Revelation to record it. So Jesus was wrong to wait for the week to appear on that day. And Paul was wrong to wait around for the first day of the week to give his sermon. That’s not what’s going on. What’s going on in Romans 14 are different days. He’s talking about some people eating meat, some people not.

We talked in this text about six months ago on Christian Liberty. He’s talking here probably about fast days, specifically in terms of the context is food that he’s saying that some people would want to keep this day and other people want to keep this fast day. Whatever they want to do is fine. So he’s not talking about the Lord’s day. It’s not mentioned. The Sabbath isn’t even mentioned.

In Galatians 4:9-11 we read about the Galatians. He says:

“You observe days and months and seasons and years. I’m afraid for you lest I have labored in vain.”

Some people say that Paul is writing to the Galatians not to keep the weekly Lord’s day or Christian Sabbath because it’s part of what’s wrong. But Paul identifies what he’s talking about here in verse 9. He says:

“You’re turning again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you desire again to be in bondage.”

The whole point of Galatians is the Judaizing influence to failure to move fully into the change of the world at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so they want to keep back to specifically days, months, seasons, and years. It’s the Judaizing influence. It’s the Old Testament calendrical system that had operated for 2,000 years that was now put out of joint and funneled down to the Lord’s day itself. It was that whole system of new moons and festivals and seasons on a yearly basis that they were keeping.

And Paul is saying the world has moved forward. The Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t come to just kind of cap that off. He comes to funnel all that down to the Lord’s day. So he’s saying don’t keep Old Testament sacrificial calendar because it’s all been brought to completion. The world is now new. There’s a sense in which the world is no longer governed by any kind of seasonal thing. It’s the light of the Lord Jesus Christ which is particularly reflected on the Lord’s day that the world moves in the context of now.

So he’s talking in Galatians 4 about the Mosaic law, the whole calendrical system, not Paul’s appointed day of gathering. He told them to gather. Remember in Corinthians, we read that last week.

Colossians 2, same thing:

“Let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.”

Festival, new moon, or Sabbath—plural. This particular designation of festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths is found three times with these same Greek words in the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament. And in each of those occurrences, it’s referring again to that whole calendar system of the Old Testament that God had imposed upon them for a particular period of time, saying what it was that Jesus was going to fulfill.

So again, here in Colossians, it’s not the Christian Sabbath or the Lord’s day that’s being spoken of. It’s the whole Mosaic system. So those are some common objections that are dealt with rather easily as to why we still want to keep the Lord’s day as this new day of worship as the Church has always done and as we saw last week the Savior and the apostles did.

Okay, one other point before we actually get into these ten means of keeping the Lord’s day. I have listed for you Genesis 9:12-13 and 17, Genesis 17, Exodus 31, and Ezekiel 20. Why do I have these here?

Well, in Genesis 9, the rainbow is a specific covenant sign that God had given to the people. The rainbow was put in the cloud and God said, “It shall be for the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” A perpetual sign of the covenant. The same language is used in Genesis 17 of circumcision. Perpetual sign of the covenant. And the same language is used in the other texts I’ve listed here about the Sabbath.

As I said last week, it was a summation of all the obligations or rights and responsibilities of having God as our God, as was circumcision, and as was the rainbow. Far as I can tell, these are the only signs that are referred to in this same way—that they’re a perpetual sign of the covenant.

And just as the rainbow still shines in the sky, and just as we have baptism now fulfilling all the Old Testament cleansing rituals of which circumcision was one, we now have a particular Lord’s day that gathers and funnels down all the meanings of the sabbatical system that God had said was the particular mark of his people.

Who are you as Christians? There are two rituals here that are specifically spoken of as this perpetual sign of the covenant. And it’s a sign that demonstrates to yourself, to the other people in the church, and to the world who you are. Those two aspects that set you aside as a peculiar people are baptism and the Lord’s day.

You know, it’s like in Toy Story. I’ve used this illustration before, but it’s a great one. You know, the astronaut toy comes to a realization in Toy Story one of who he is, and he’s not some actual guy, you know, he’s insane. This toy is insane. And he comes to sanity when he recognizes the mark of the boy on himself and then realizes what his real calling in life is.

You walk around with not a visible mark, but the mark of baptism on you. And that is a mark of who you are definitively—that you’re a beloved of the Lord Jesus Christ. You’re owned by God, though. And you have a particular role to submit to him and what you do. And that is where you’ll find true joy in life, not in the fantasy make-believe world that you can fly around and you’re the arch astronaut of all time. You find your meaning and purpose and joy in remembering your baptism, the name of the triune God placed upon you.

And the other thing these texts tell us is that you identify who you are distinctly in the way you honor God and sanctify this particular day. The Sabbath is that same kind of covenant mark as circumcision is.

Look at Ezekiel 20. Please turn your scriptures open to Ezekiel 20.

Now, Ezekiel 20, you know, God is going to show the people through the mouth of Ezekiel what their sins are and what they’ve really done wrong. Look at verse 10:

“Therefore, I made them go out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness. And I gave them my statutes and showed them my judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. Moreover, I also gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.”

Okay, so God says that when they came out of Egypt, he gave them laws and judgments. He gave them the covenant. And that is kind of summed up in his giving them his Sabbaths. But they didn’t want to keep those Sabbaths. So look down at verse 15:

“So I also raised my hand in an oath to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land which I gave them, flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands, because they despised my judgments and did not walk in my statutes, but profaned my Sabbaths.”

Why didn’t he bring them into the promised land? Because they rebelled. And that rebellion is specified as a failure to observe his Sabbaths. Then in verse 19:

“I am the Lord your God. Walk in my statutes. Keep my judgments. Do them. Hallow my Sabbaths. There will be a sign between me and you that you may know that I am the Lord your God. But they rebelled against me.”

He said why? In the context of the land they rebelled against me. So in verse 23:

“Also I raised my hand in an oath to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries because they had not executed my judgments, that had despised my statutes. And what’s the summation statement? They had profaned my Sabbaths.”

Their eyes were fixed on their fathers. What is the judgment of God that refuses to allow a people to move into the promised land? Sabbath violation. What’s the judgment of God in terms of their being dispersed? Whenever they get judgments against them and get dispersed among the nations, it’s because of violation of the Sabbath God had given them. It’s a summation of who they are as a people.

And God says, when you don’t do that right, nothing else is going to work out very good for you. And you’re not going to be able to move into the sort of blessings that my people are given to them by me.

Now, we’ve got an obligation in this church. Pastor Wilson and myself and children—your parents have an obligation to shepherd you. And you know, the word “shepherd” means to rule as well as to feed and nurture. Shepherd in the Old Testament always talks about kings. Pastor is as a shepherd by ruling. And Pastor Wilson and myself have an obligation to look out for your well-being and to make sure that you don’t suffer wandering around in the wilderness for the next forty years of your lives, children, instead of moving into the promises God has given to you.

And we’re telling you that we think that this Lord’s day is a special day to set apart and sanctify the whole day. And I don’t know if you—if either you understand it, you don’t understand it—doesn’t make any difference. You should trust your parents and you should trust your pastor. Unless there’s some big reason for you to do something else today, you really ought to sanctify it the way your parents and your pastors tell you.

The Sabbath’s quite simple. Ten points are going to go quick. But ultimately, you know, the real issue with people usually isn’t, “Well, do I understand what I should do on this day or not?” It’s “Am I going to submit? Am I going to believe the authorities that God has placed in my life in this church? Am I going to obey the fifth commandment?” Not so much the fourth.

You know, the commandments move through the first three—sins against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And if you get the first three right, you get to four, Sabbath rest. Well, we always think we’re doing fine with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So God then gives us the next three about fathers in the context of our homes and our church and our business, and then the Son in terms of our fellow man. We’re not going to kill our fellow man. And then the Spirit in terms of how we marry or go about doing those kinds of affairs in our lives.

That’s what the next three commandments do—they flesh out the first three by pointing us toward, you know, on the horizontal level, to reflect our obedience or disobedience to God on the vertical level.

Now the idea is that if you move, if you respect God the Father by respecting and honoring and submitting to your parents and pastors, trust them, and if you try not to kill each other but to help each other, and if you try to keep yourself pure and marry well, then you’re going to have a blessed next forty years of your lives, kids.

But if you don’t see, if you violate the fifth commandment today and go against the will of your parents in this church or the pastors in this church, you see, then you’re going to kind of wander in the wilderness. So I would ask you today to consider that what we’re telling you is the advice of this church and your parents who have signed this covenant to this church. And as such, you need to believe that God will work through us unless we’re doing something clearly wrong.

If we are, tell us. I want to hear it. If we’re breaking the word of God somehow or misapplying it, we want to hear those kinds of things. The parents would too. But we begin by saying that.

So what’s the Christian Sabbath? What is the Christian Sabbath? It’s the Lord’s day.

Children, for your outlines: Who should you trust and obey even if you don’t understand something they tell you to do? Your parents and your pastors, children. For your children’s outline, question number four: Who should you trust and obey even if you don’t necessarily agree with it or you don’t understand why they want you to do something? You should trust and obey your parents and your pastors. And which commandment tells us that? The fifth commandment, children. You right away then.

Now you know the first part of the outline. How do you sanctify the Lord’s day? How do you correctly observe the Lord’s day? You do it, first of all, by honoring the fifth commandment, by honoring your parents and obeying the fifth commandment.

This is the day. You know, dads in this church, one of the biggest things on our agenda, at the top of our to-do list, is to train our boys and girls to respect their mother, right? Because we know if they’re respecting and being submissive and kind to their mother in their speech, they’re going to treat their wives well and they’re going to be good to their husbands too. This is the day to focus on that. Don’t wait till tomorrow. Sanctify the Lord’s day by honoring and reverencing and being properly reverent, reverential, toward the authorities in the family that God has given to you.

That’s how you begin to honor God—is by honoring the authorities that he’s given to you to represent him to you. The Proverbs—I’m just loving teaching this Proverbs class Mondays and Wednesdays. A little tough. It’s not a book that’s easily structured. But I mean, if there’s one thing you get out of the first nine chapters, it’s, you know, if you’re going to be wise, you better honor mom and dad. And it goes through one end of the book to the other.

All of your actions, children, happen in a context. You’re not by yourself. You’re around people that, according to the beginning of the actual Proverbs themselves in chapter 10, verse one, you’re either going to make happy or you’re going to make grieve. You live in community. Your actions of honoring and reverencing God, reflected by honoring and reverencing your parents, will either produce joy or it’ll produce grief. Won’t be anything in between. You have an effect. Make your parents happy today. Make them celebrate on this day of celebration.

Two, we sanctify the Lord’s day by ceasing from most vocational and arduous labors. And I’ve got a bunch of verses there, but this is a rather obvious one, is it not? From Exodus 20 and the other places in the scriptures. You don’t work today. You don’t work hard today. You don’t sweat. You know, if it gets a little hot, we sweat, but you’re not supposed to do arduous work. Your normal vocational labors are to be set aside.

God says, “You get to not do the dishes today, right? You get to rest today. You get to rejoice and rest up and you need rest. Your body needs rest. You stop from normal work. That’s not a hard thing to understand, is it? I don’t think so. So the way we sanctify the Sabbath according to the ten commandments is to rest this day physically—to rest. To not do arduous labor and to not do our normal vocations.

Three, what do we do? We sanctify the Lord’s day by ceasing from commerce. This is a little more bonier point of contention here amongst people. This church, we believe that you shouldn’t, unless necessary—for some reason that’s odd—engage in commerce. You know, I over the last twenty years have forgotten to buy gas once or twice, maybe, and we’ve had to buy gas on Sunday to get home. You know, you can do that. If you’re breaking down, car breaks down, you got to do something. You’re on vacation, it’s a whole different deal. Time is kind of separate. It’s different when you’re on vacation and you don’t have your church, you don’t have people around, you don’t have preparations that are easily made to enter into rest that day. Maybe you got to buy food out when you’re on vacation or something.

But I mean, normally for most of us, we come here, we spend the day here, and there’s no reason to stop and buy anything when we leave here. This isn’t just kind of a good idea. It’s in the scriptures.

Nehemiah 10. Remember that this church has always looked at the retaking of the covenant in Nehemiah’s day and age as kind of a model for our church covenant. That’s why it reads the way it does. And as part of that renewal of the covenant in the times of Nehemiah, in verse 31 of chapter 10, we read that they agreed to this term of their covenant renewal:

“The whole people, all the people agree to this. If the peoples of the land bring wares or any grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we would not buy them from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we would forego the seventh year’s produce and the exacting of every debt.”

No commerce is what they all agreed to. And this wasn’t just words to them. This was action. Because in Nehemiah 13, we read this. Nehemiah says:

“In those days, I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath, bringing in sheaves, loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them about that day in which they were selling provisions. Men of Tyre dwelt there also—men outside of the covenant community, not Jews—who brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem.

“You know, we had people who aren’t Christians having their shops open, bringing their shops into Jerusalem to sell to the covenant-keeping community in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, ‘What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do thus? And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.’

So he tells the church community, “This is why God always brought judgments.” He says, “Because we wouldn’t honor and sanctify the day. That’s why we keep going backwards instead of going forwards. That’s why we were thrown into exile. Now we’re coming back and we want to rebuild the city walls and the worship facility. We want to move forward in our culture and we’re going to go back again into the wilderness if you keep this up.” That’s what he tells the men, the leaders of Judah.

“So it was at the gates of Jerusalem as it began to be dark before the Sabbath that I commanded the gates to be shut, closed off the streets. I charged that they must not be open till after the Sabbath. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day. Now the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. And I warned them and said to them, ‘Why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, I’ll lay hands on you. I will grab you, put you in prison, beat you—whatever it is,’ he says to the men of Tyre who would come and try to induce the people of Israel to break Sabbath by buying and selling.

“From that time on, they came no more on the Sabbaths.”

So God says in Nehemiah that part of what we’re supposed to not do on the Lord’s day is engage in normal commerce. And he says that the civil ruler, which is what Nehemiah was, should enact laws to enforce that provision. What we want long-term in Oregon City are the streets of this city closed during worship services. Nobody’s driving around while the church is meeting. Makes too much noise. We want all the shops closed every Lord’s day so that the people of God are not tempted to somehow go off and start shopping, which God says is not a proper exercise of things to do on the Lord’s day.

Now, how are we going to get there? Some people say, “Well, you just wait.” By the way, this is not some weird RCC doctrine. R.C. Sproul in the book that George is teaching now in one of the adult classes—the one hundred and two essentials of the faith or whatever it is—page on each essential, he has chapter eighty-four on the Sabbath. And R.C. Sproul says the Sabbath is, you know, the one day in seven principle. He says the truth is still binding upon us. It’s the fourth commandment. It’s what we got to do. And he says very explicitly here that I’ll read it here. He says:

“Most agree that the Sabbath includes a mandate to refrain or to rest from all but necessary commerce or labor. Sabbath is also a time for corporate worship, special attention to the study of God’s word.”

Sproul says in this book that thousands, tens of thousands of people are reading, identifying what the reformed faith is all about, that everybody agrees, pretty much, that the Sabbath is still in effect. The Christian Lord’s day is the fulfillment of that one day in seven—a whole day set apart. And what that means is no working, no buying and selling. And so we have this requirement by God upon us. And that’s what we want long-term for Oregon City. That’s what the new world looks like: that every seventh day everything stops and people focus, instead of buying and selling, into worship, and instead of work, they focus on rest.

So that’s what we think is the third proper way to sanctify the Lord’s day.

Four, we sanctify the Lord’s day by making preparations for it. You got to buy the gas on Saturday. And I’ve got some verses here that in the Gospels the account is that the day before the Jewish Sabbath is called the day of preparation because you were supposed to be forward thinking about the day. How am I going to get by without eating tomorrow? How am I going to get by without buying gas? How am I going to get by without going to my job? I got to go talk to him. I got to get a job that lets me off on the seventh day, on the Lord’s day. You have to make some preparations for it. You got to cook the food ahead of time. So we have various things that go on in this church to help people set this day apart so that the women don’t have to cook and the men don’t have to work and nobody’s got to engage in commerce.

We encourage each other to think about these things the day before on Saturday, the day of preparation.

Now, what does that do for you? You know, if you’re like many of the men in our culture today, you think about the day after you get up. Yeah, you’ve got a job. They have to, but you don’t know what you’re going to do on Saturday typically till you get up. Then you decide. We are not a very forward-thinking culture anymore. We don’t consider the future.

We’ve had an ongoing concern: Do our young people think about what they’re going to be doing ten, fifteen years from now? Are they making plans for tomorrow so that today’s activities are different? They just want to get married real quick. They just get a job quick, or maybe God’s given them a desire or an ability, at least, to go into extended vocation, extended education to get better vocation. Forward thinking, planning about the future—here’s where it starts.

If we raise a generation of children that do not honor the Sabbath and aren’t forward thinking about the future, beginning with the day of preparation for it, then we sort of train them to just be, you know, on-the-moment kind of kids the way most of our culture is. This country’s moved away from Sabbath. And as a result of that, it’s moved away in the ordinary lives of the people from planning for the future.

We rest, but we rest having planned for that rest the day before, and we rest looking forward to what God will bless us about in terms of the future. So there’s a day of preparation ahead of time that we’re supposed to engage in, and that’s how we sanctify the Lord’s day.

Five, we sanctify the Lord’s day by convocating with the Lord and his people. This isn’t New Testament. Leviticus 23 says that every Sabbath day was a day of convocation. The Old Testament that was in the synagogue. Three times a year you got to go up to the temple to be with God. Most of the time you were just convocating with the people. And the picture there is that when Jesus comes, the synagogue comes now with its weekly convocation. The temple comes. The greater temple is the church. And just like circumcision and cleansing and leprosy cleansing and all these cleansings come down to baptism, just like all these Old Testament food meals come down to the Lord’s supper, just like all this calendrical system of new moons and feasts and festivals come down to the Lord’s day, so here as well, all this convocating that went on at the synagogue weekly and at the temple three times a year—all of this finds its completion in Lord’s Day worship.

That’s the beauty of all of this. Now everything’s been brought together. Synagogue and temple are merged. Word and music and liturgy are merged together. And now we get the whole thing every Lord’s day. They didn’t get the whole thing. They had to wait. They only got to convocate with the people, not in the special presence of God at the temple every week. See, couldn’t do that with a centralized sanctuary. It was waiting for the coming of Jesus. And when Jesus comes, now our synagoguing, our gathering together, is also going to the temple. Lord, it’s now decentralized. Wherever we meet, this is the temple of God. That’s what Hebrews 10 is all about.

Now turn to Hebrews 10. Look at verse 19:

“Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

“So he says, ‘You’re going to temple on the Lord’s day. You’re going to the Holy of Holies. You’re going through the veil which was Jesus’s flesh to come together in the Lord’s day in the temple.’

“Verse 24: ‘Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is.’

That word is like epic synagogue, super synagoguing the gathering of us together. So here in Hebrews, when he is exhorting people to keep the Lord’s day by convocating, he appeals to temple worship where we run into the presence of God and a synagogue worship where we assemble together with each other. And he says they’ve come together in the Lord’s day and don’t forsake it. Go to synagogue, go to temple, go to the church which is both brought together now, because this is the great joy of the last two thousand years.

For four thousand years, men waited to come together with God and fellow man in the heightened way that the New Testament church would provide. We get to do it. They didn’t. They had to wait and wait and wait for the advent of Christ, and we look back and say that’s what we get to do. This Hebrews 10 stuff, the temple and the synagogue brought together—praise God, what a neat deal. We’re not just with each other. We’re with the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, we draw near with confidence and boldness to the throne of grace.

At a congregational church last night, First Congregational Church, Celtic Christmas—highly recommend it. Wonderful night. And it’s interesting: the Sunday before we were at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Advent lessons and carols. And Trinity Cathedral is kind of much more formal and big, you know, temple-like. And the First Congregational Church is in the round—beautiful old church down by the park district, you know, by the on Park Street in downtown Portland. Both beautiful buildings—one was highly formal, temple-like, and the congregational church is synagogue-like. There’s really not a whole lot. There’s three big huge stained glass windows, arches, no cross, and the pews are all curved. You seat eight hundred, nine hundred people in there, but you sort of looking at each other because it’s curved. You know, these pews draw you to the front.

The curved pews kind of draw you to the front on each other. Congregational church, you see, they emphasize synagogue, the gathering together of the people. Episcopal church, formal and liturgical—they emphasize temple. See, they’re both proper emphases. They’re both beautiful churches. And Hebrews says, “The neat thing about Lord’s Day worship is we get to sanctify the Lord’s day by getting together with each other and with God—temple and synagogue brought together.

Now notice here that this scary text, Hebrews 10 is where the scary text is, right? The text that’s supposed to scare us.

Verse 26:

“If we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much so worse punishment do you suppose will be thought worthy of who has trampled the Son of God underfoot?”

What’s the great sin that’s going to result in these people being cut off? I don’t—we don’t—we wouldn’t say they lose their salvation. Say they manifesting that they ever were saved. But they’re cut off. They apostatize. They’re excommunicated. They’re declared outside of the body of Christ. And they’re supposed to be afraid.

What’s the great sin? Is it adultery? The big sin with what the only thing we modern-day churches are allowed to excommunicate for is sexual sins. No, the immediate context is what I just read to you. The context is not coming to church. That’s the sin that the Hebrews were in danger of doing. That’s the sin that he warned them would end up in them trampling the blood of Christ underfoot.

What are we not to do in Isaiah 58? If we don’t sanctify the Lord’s day, what are we doing with it? We’re trampling it underfoot. That’s what it said in verse 13. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, I’ll bless you. What he’s saying is, if you stop trampling the Sabbath underfoot, then you can ride on the high places, then you’ll be victorious. Then Oregon City will be converted. Then Oregon will manifest the glory of Christ.

If you don’t trample the Sabbath underfoot here, he says, if you don’t observe the Lord’s day by convocation, you are trampling Christ underfoot. What did Moses say? If you’re trampling the Sabbath underfoot, you’re cut off. Now we’re trampling Christ underfoot if we fail to come to his synagogue and his temple and meet with his people and meet with him.

Now, that’s what the scriptures tell us. That’s how important convocating in the Lord’s day is. And if you know Christians who for long periods of time do not convocate in the Lord’s day, maybe there’s ignorance involved, but they need to hear this text and they need to be told by the churches of which they may be on the membership rolls that they are in danger of losing their salvation. Now I said it that way intentionally.

Now we don’t believe they’re losing their salvation, but they should not have this “once saved, always saved” mentality that lets them skate through life trampling the Son of God underfoot by not hearing his command to come and worship. That’s how important Hebrews 10 says convocating is on the Lord’s day.

Well, we also sanctify the Lord’s day by focusing on his word. We read in Isaiah 58:

“You don’t do your own ways nor your own pleasure, nor speak your own words.”

What does it mean? It means the day is to be separate. It means that the Sabbath day is a day to focus not on our words, our own words, but Christ’s word. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the six days our words can be irrelevant to Christ. This is the pattern this day for the rest of our lives. And if we focus particularly all day long today on the Lord’s word, then our words reflect his words as we go into our world. If we put that out of sync, if instead Sunday becomes, you know, we listen to the word for an hour and then we go home and just don’t think about the word anymore and don’t talk about it and just do our normal sort of chat, see, we don’t move forward.

Our speech doesn’t move forward. Our speech has gone backwards. You listen to Shakespeare. Those people had high literary achievements. They focused on words. We focus on the visual image, the icon. Now, I like movies, but that’s what we do. We’re a culture that’s sliding away from the word. We’re speaking our own words instead of spending a day to reflect on God’s word, and we’re being impoverished by it. We have a famine as they did in the Old Testament—a famine of the word of God. And as a result, our own language is becoming deconstructed. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. We become unintelligible to each other. It’s difficult to communicate. And some people are now saying you can’t communicate. Why? It’s so confusing. You got to deconstruct it. And we don’t know. There’s so many factors going on in your speech that we can’t understand each other without spending hours and days and weeks and months deconstructing out all the elements of what you’re saying.

We’re losing language because we don’t focus on the word of God by sanctifying this day—by not speaking our own words apart from God’s word, but having our words reflect his word. And we know I got some scriptures there that this was what they did on the Sabbath. They would hear preaching from the synagogue, and they would hear the word of God exposed.

Seven, we sanctify the Lord’s day by engaging in works of mercy. Well, you know, I don’t have to repeat this. I almost did. There’s various scriptures here that tell us this, but clearly Isaiah 58 tells us that we have to connect this sanctification of the Lord’s day with these various things the rest of Isaiah 58 talks about—of helping people, feeding the poor, helping the lonely and isolated, ministering works of grace. Westminster Confession of Faith says this is what you got to do on the Sabbath. You got to attend worship. You got to rest all day. And you got to do works if you’re allowed to do works of mercy or necessity—works of mercy.

Two weeks from today, you want application from this sermon? Here it is. Two weeks from today, whatever the time is in the evening—seven, I don’t know what it is; Dave or Zach can tell us later on—two weeks from today, sanctify the Lord’s day by going to the McCloughlin place with the rest of us. By reaching out to the widowed and the widowers, those who are mostly probably without families during this time of year, to minister grace and benevolence to them today on the Lord’s day. This is what the day is about. It’s about works of mercy being done. So that’s immediate application of this. Sanctify the Lord’s day two weeks from today, December twenty-third. Go with us to the McCloughlin place. We would love it if there was not enough room for everybody that wanted to go to the McCloughlin place and minister to those old people. Wouldn’t they be shocked by that? The people cared enough to show them kindness and grace during the Christmas season to spend an evening with them instead of with their family. You see, we sanctify the Lord’s day with acts of mercy.

Eight, we sanctify the Lord’s day by making it a day of celebration. We disagree with the Westminster Confession here. They leave out one aspect: celebration, joy, leisure activities, recreation. And why do we do that? Because in the Old Testament, it wasn’t just the Sabbath day that comes down to the Lord’s day. It was the Sabbath day, the new moon festivals, the three weeks in Jerusalem. These were times when people were festive and gay in the presence of God. We celebrate on the Lord’s day. This is a way to sanctify the Sabbath.

Nehemiah 8:10:

“Go your way, the Sabbath day observance. Eat the fat, drink the sweet, send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. Go to McCloughlin with candy, with sweet things for him in two weeks. He says, ‘This day is holy to the Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’”

If the church of Jesus Christ is impotent in our culture and has no impact virtually, if it has become strengthless, maybe it’s because it’s become joyless—by rushing out of church and going home and doing cooking and running to the malls and doing shopping and being caught up in the busyness of life. Instead of setting the day apart, calmly reflect on the greatness of what Christ has accomplished. The world has moved forward. The new creation has come, and we have to celebrate that. This Sabbath day is a day of celebration, joy, and recreation. And the scriptures are clear. The Old Testament was about that.

Isaiah 58 says:

“If you sanctify the Lord’s day, I’m going to cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth.”

What does it mean? What it means, Jay Alexander in his commentary says, is that the high places are the conquered cities. We are going forth conquering by riding on the high places. He’ll feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. You’re going to prosper. You’re not going to be the tail. You’re going to be the head in the culture. You’re going to have an effect on Oregon City. I will send you into the high places of Oregon City to rule this city for the Lord Jesus Christ if you honor this day by cessation from work, by cessation from commerce, by attending to God’s word, by gathering with God’s people, and by engaging in acts of benevolence and kindness.

You do these things, and you will be the repairer of the breach, the builder of streets to live in, the bringer of joy to Oregon City and to the world. The Lord’s Day is about celebration.

Children’s outline, six, seven, eight, and nine. Let’s do them.

What things should we not do on the Lord’s day? Work and buy. Shouldn’t work, except apart from necessary work. Shouldn’t buy, apart from necessary commerce.

What things should we do? Rest. Worship.

You see the correlation? We don’t work. We rest. We don’t buy and involve ourselves in commerce. We worship.

You know, if I go to a store tomorrow and I buy something, it’s easier seen in a village with a guy I was in Poland a year ago. Brought back a glass engraved to my wife. The guy was there etching these glasses, beautiful etching, and he does it for free. Hard and I were there. Couldn’t believe the glass where we could buy. You buy it from this craftsman and he’s right there. See, that’s village culture. A little more harder to see in big-city culture, but commerce is about the exchange of people. That glass is him. He’s done something there. He’s giving you part of him, and you’re giving him part of you. The money that you’ve earned becomes part of your blessings, and you’re giving yourself a little bit of yourself to him. Commerce is about the exchange of people. It’s fellowship. It’s, you know, it’s people getting together with people. That’s what it is.

And on the Lord’s day, we don’t do that. Instead, we get together and we enact this commerce with Christ. We bring nothing, and he gives us everything. And we enact this commerce with each other. We speak God’s words to one another, encourage each other in the faith, and we build each other up. And we recognize that if we do that right, that tomorrow when you go and buy a loaf of bread, it’s a different deal.

Tomorrow when you go and buy a loaf of bread and there’s a store clerk there, you think of the clerk as—a little more complicated in an urban culture with a lot of specialization of labor. You see, there’s a transaction of people going on in commerce. So we’ve forgotten every bit of that. We think it’s just about goods and services unconnected to people. People make everything. There’s nothing that people don’t make that’s exchanged in commerce, at least that I can think of.

So we don’t buy and sell, but we do worship by convocating with the great giver of gifts, and we give each other gifts of our persons themselves.

Eight. What things might we do on the Lord’s day? Permissible: help and play. Don’t have to do benevolence works every Lord’s day, but it’s a focus of it. Don’t have to play or engage in leisurely activities, recreational activities, but it’s permissible because the scriptures say that the new moons and the festival days were times of recreation and festivity.

So we are allowed to do play and help on the Lord’s day.

Nine. What things should we think about? Others and the Bible. We’re to not talk our own talk. We’re to talk scripture. We’re supposed to talk about the Bible. Focus on the word of God, and we’re to focus on other people.

Nine, we sanctify the Lord’s day by pressing ahead, taking hands off of our lives and trusting God for the future. There’s a new book I heard about—I haven’t read it—the book out, it’s called Flatland. And apparently in this book, Flatland, there’s a guy at the beginning of the book, a guy named Mr. Point, and he thinks, you know, he has life all figured out. And along comes Mr. Line. And Mr. Line shows Mr. Point that there’s another dimension to life. Okay, so that’s neat. Well, now he thinks he’s got it figured out. But then along comes Mr. Square, Mr. 3-D, Mr. 4-D, etc. See, people live in a flatland. They think it’s defined in a particular way.

And the Lord God every Lord’s day comes here and reminds us that it’s not the way it looks. We think we still live in this Adamic creation. We think that sun is still the sort of light. God says that on the Lord’s day, he comes and he reminds us that we are living now in the new Jerusalem. There’s a final consummation to come. But Jesus has definitively moved the calendar ahead—from Adam to Jesus, from darkness to light. That’s what that eighth-day thing was all about last week. It was a reminder that we really live in the new creation, in the new world. That’s what the Sabbath reminds us of. And it tells us, think of things differently tomorrow.

Don’t think of commerce as a vain exchange of money that somehow is bad. Think of it as the exchange of people and the communion that exists in the context of people. Don’t think that things are going to go on as they have. Understand that the gospel is the good news that Christ reigns now in a way that he didn’t for four thousand years. Now he’s decided no longer to wink at sin. Things are different. Judgments are intensified—we’ll talk about that next week—to the end that the new world might be made more manifest.

Now, if you take this whole day and sanctify it the way we’ve talked about, and remember that this is the future, you get a little bit of understanding of what this is all about. There’s a new creation that God has brought into effect. Now some of you are probably thinking, “Boy, I don’t feel much like the new creation. I, you know, there are melancholic personalities. I read about this on the BH list this last week. One of the men, one of the pastors, said that he knows a lot of melancholy people. And you may think, “What’s wrong with me? Pastor’s all excited and I’m just kind of okay.”

Well, see, melancholy expresses a dissatisfaction with the present, right? And see, if you sin in melancholy, you’ll get depressed and you don’t press to the future. But if you understand that your melancholy is a holy dissatisfaction with the present, desiring more and more the manifestation of the crown rights of King Jesus and of his kingdom, well then you understand why God gave you that particular thrust of your personality. I’m kind of an impatient guy. And you know, I think if I understand that correctly on the Lord’s day and meditate on that, I recognize that impatience isn’t necessarily bad either.

If we had a whole group of Christians who were very satisfied, not melancholy, rejoicing and very patient, things probably wouldn’t move ahead. But if we take the impatience, the godly impatience that says we want things to be different—we want our lives to be more effective. We want the lives of our children to be more effective. We want the lives of our church to be more effective—if we take that impatience with the present to move toward a future blessedness, well then you know we’ve done a good thing.

So sin today, be impatient, be melancholic, be dissatisfied with the present. I half joke. But you should have a dissatisfaction. There are people here that are more dissatisfied than others. The danger is if you continue to look at what went wrong or what you’re depressed over in the past and don’t see that God is pressing you toward the future. This day is the day we press toward the future—that we take impatience, that we take depression, sadness, melancholy, and we understand the need that God is showing us—that we need a further manifestation of what this day tells us has arrived: definitively, the new kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. We move ahead. We’re to be a peculiar people. And that’s how we sanctify the Lord’s day.

The tenth point. How will the world know that you’re Christians? By your love. But what else? Well, Ezekiel 20 said that in the sight of the nations, they see you keeping the Sabbath. That’s how they know you’re a Christian. The church stops the world for a day. They stop the streets in early America. They stop commerce. And they say, “We’re ratcheting forward. We’re going to change the world more based upon the once-for-all coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The new creation has arrived. We’re moving into it in a fuller way. We’re going to talk about the word of God, its application. Our commerce will be changed. Our work will be changed. Our education, our recreations will be changed because of the way we thought about him on the Lord’s day. We move the world forward by stopping it, remembering the once-for-all past action of our Savior and appropriating that action in conquering in terms of moving toward the future.

The Lord Jesus Christ says that he has accomplished definitively the salvation of the world. And our great joy this day is that very thing. This isn’t about celibacy. This Lord’s day. This is about joy and celebration.

Children, not many questions on your outline because I don’t want you to work so much today. I want you to rejoice by memorizing this poem by Isaac Watts that many of our younger people did years ago. You’ll remember it.

“This is the day when Christ arose so early from the dead. Why should I keep my eyelids closed, waste my hours in bed? This is the day when Jesus broke the powers of death and hell. Shall I still wear Satan’s yoke and love my sin so well? Today with pleasure Christians meet to pray and hear thy word. And I would go with cheerful feet to learn thy will, O Lord. I’ll leave my sport to read and pray and so prepare for heaven. Oh, may I love this blessed day, the best of all the seven.”

Sabbath used to be called the queen of days. Theology used to be called the queen of the sciences. And now theology is where the losers end up all too often. People that can’t cut it in the business world end up in schools of theology. Queen of the sciences now—dropped down. Queen of the days now—just like any other day. Will it be different in your life?

I know that it is already, and it will be increasingly as the world spins forward.

Let’s pray.

We thank you, Lord God, for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the definitive movement of the world forward. Help us to rejoice in that every Lord’s day. Help us not to see your requirements upon us as burdensome. Help us to take the yoke on our Savior and understand that yoke