Dennis Tuuri

Deuteronomy 5 beginning at verse 12. Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. 6 days thou shalt labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man’s servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy ox, nor thine ass, nor any of the cattle, nor thy stranger, that is within thy gates, that thy man’s servant and thy maid servant may rest as well as thou.

And remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out then through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm. Wherefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the wonderful truths of this statement in your scriptures. We thank you that it is a command to us, but it is also a word to us. Help us to begin to grasp a hold of the Sabbath and the Lord’s day in a way that we have not yet. Help us, Lord God, to be transformed by your word. Open up to us the overview of what this commandment is all about that our hearts may delight in it. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. I had a couple of days of crisis in my heart as I prepared for today. I had a tough week. You know, we all do from time to time, many of us frequently. Mine was particularly busy and in the context of that, it just got kind of hard toward the end. Very difficult. I’m sure that on any given week all of us go through difficult trials and tribulations.

Well, as I was going through this really not happy time on Friday and into Saturday morning, I didn’t know how I’d preach the sermon today because the sermon is all about the joy of the Lord’s day. And I didn’t really feel like I was experiencing a lot of that. But as I continued to review my notes last night for the sermon yesterday afternoon and began to see things that I’d gone through in the perspective of what the text tells us about today, I became very prepared to do this sermon.

We just recited from Psalm 119 and we ended by saying well, let’s see, that’s the song we sang. Sorry about that. Well, I can’t see what I was thinking of now, but as we prepared for worship a few minutes ago, we talked about how in an understanding of the precepts of God, there is great delight. And that’s really the message today.

The Lord’s day, the Sabbath is about joy. It’s about the sort of joy that we see exemplified in the coming of Jesus in the context of the gospels when he would feast when merrymaking was so abundant in the context of his life that he was called to account for it by the Pharisees. It’s the kind of joy that was anticipated by David as he brought the ark into Jerusalem. Surely a picture of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to his people that we read about in the gospels and then finally at the conclusion of time in every Lord’s day.

As David does that, he is so overcome by the joy of the moment that he dances and singing of course breaks out in the context of men’s hearts. That’s the kind of picture that I think we properly have in the context of what the Lord’s Day or fourth word is all about.

We can talk a lot about the details the next few weeks, but this morning I want to open it up in terms of an overview of what the fourth word is all about, the fourth commandment. And I want us to sort of see how we’re supposed to do this thing today. What is this day all about in its overall sense? And I want to look at Exodus 20 as well as Deuteronomy 5.

Deuteronomy 5, if you’re looking at your scriptures, we read that we’re to keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. So this is a reminder really I think of Exodus 20 and the fourth word in the decalogue.

So while Deuteronomy 5 the fourth word rather in Deuteronomy 5 is the most major change that we read as we list the ten commandments from Exodus 20 and the 10 words from Deuteronomy 5. The biggest change is in this fourth word. The fourth word begins with saying there is an essential continuity between its wording and that which was given at Sinai because it says “as the Lord your God commanded thee.”

So all of what Exodus 20 teaches us about the fourth word is brought into this word at the beginning. So look at Exodus 20. Let’s remind ourselves of what it said. Turn to Exodus 20, verse 8, if you have your scriptures today open before you.

Verse 8 says, “Remember, this is the beginning of the fourth word in the decalogue of Exodus 20. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” And I would say, by the way, that word “keep” here is maybe in some of your translations italicized or even maybe not there. Young’s literal translation says, “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it.” So the keeping aspect really isn’t stressed, but the idea is to remember. And to remember something is more than just kind of thinking about it. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but it means to memorialize something, to have something done that brings to mind things that changes our lives.

So memorialize the Sabbath day to sanctify it.

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that’s within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Very familiar language to us. What’s the emphasis? Well, the emphasis in the Exodus reading is that God has created the world in six days, and we’re supposed to be like God, and we’re to rest on the seventh day, or now on the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day. So the idea is a stress upon creation.

What’s the stress in the text in Deuteronomy 5? Well, it’s a little different, isn’t it? It says here at the center of Exodus 20, it does repeat the commandment not to do any work. But then it says that the purpose of this is that thy servants may rest as well. That thy man’s servant and thy maidservant may rest as well as you.

So now we have an emphasis on the giving of rest, not just the taking of rest. And we’re to remember here that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt. And that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and a stretched out arm. This is what is known, you know, the word we would use to say what is the basis for the fourth word in Deuteronomy 5 is redemption. God has brought us out of Egypt and therefore we’re supposed to take rest and send rest to others.

So in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, we have a different emphasis but there is a continuity because Deuteronomy 5 says “as the Lord commanded you.” It brings in everything from Exodus 20. So creation is not left out of the Deuteronomy account. In fact it talks about the whole 6 days, 7-day cycle but it’s not given as the reason for the fourth word in Deuteronomy 5 in the retelling of the law. Redemption is the stress.

Now, Exodus 20 is the same way. It stresses creation, but it doesn’t leave out redemption. Remember that the prologue, the introduction to the 10 words in Exodus 20 is the realization, a calling back to mind that God brought them out of Egypt. The prologue for the entire law is redemption. Okay? So in Exodus 20, that’s already been stressed that’s the basic introduction to all of the words is the same thing that Deuteronomy 5 stresses in terms of the fourth word.

So the point is the scriptures are a unity. These two fourth words change, but the change doesn’t mean that the old way is bad and the new way is good. There’s an essential continuity, but God has desired to place something different in the particular retelling of the law by Moses in Deuteronomy 5. There’s a little different thing going on.

If you look at this text, by the way, look at Deuteronomy 5 now and let’s just notice something that I think is interesting to help us kind of focus in on what God wants us to focus in on in Deuteronomy 5. So, if you’ve got your scriptures, look at Deuteronomy 5:12. Okay? What does it begin by saying, “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it.” And at the end of this, just before the fifth commandment, to honor your parents, it says, to keep the Sabbath day.

Okay, so before and after there are these bookends of keeping the Sabbath day. Now going back to verse 12, “keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the Lord thy God commanded thee.” So the second element here is the command of God. And just before it says to keep the Sabbath day, now we have it frontloaded there that the Lord thy God has commanded thee. Therefore the Lord commanded thee to keep the Sabbath.

Now why? Well, again, it’s a deliberate structure in the text. We have “keep” and “keep” at either end and then we have “command” in the interior of that, right? And so, if we take that as a basic model, then what’s at the center is the rest of the content in terms of what this is supposed to be like. And what he says is that six days you’re supposed to labor and do all your work and then rest on the seventh. And then you’re supposed to also remember that you were a servant in Egypt before the Lord brought thee out.

I believe that the text kind of draws us to a focus at the center that says that “your man’s servant and your maidservant may rest as well as thou.” Now, this is an addition in Deuteronomy 5, right? This wasn’t probably indicated in Exodus 20, but it wasn’t spelled out. Now, God wants to make us very certain that we focus on this change, this renewed emphasis. And not only does he add it, but he adds it at what I think is the heart of the fourth word in Deuteronomy 5.

And you know, I wouldn’t have come up with that except that he seems obviously to have done this “keep” thing “command” thing drawing us to this center. And the very center of that, I think, if we were to look at it carefully, is this commandment or this implication that you’re to give others rest.

So these two commandments work together in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, these two tellings of it. And at its heart we are celebrating we are doing this day in a way that commemorates a couple of big things that memorializes meditates upon extends two things: creation and redemption.

Now right away you went outside into the created order to come here today and it is beautiful. Surely you may remember the first time you saw one of those global satellite photos of planet Earth and the incredible beauty that had. I remember in me the evocation of great praise to God for the beauty of that zoomed out mega perspective on planet Earth. And throughout my life when I take the time to get into the created order—you know, we’re in the created order now, of course, but when we look around what the Lord God has done and when we stop and reflect upon it, it is a miraculous thing to give praise to God for.

Right? So the Lord’s day is a time to praise God more than that to delight in what God has done in terms of his created work and specifically a sequence of days which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes.

Secondly, God wants us to of course focus on redemption. Now remember folks that we have really stressed in this church and we’re trying to, you know, hit ourselves over the head over and over again with his truth. Salvation is not just about the forgiveness of sins. Redemption is not just about God forgiving the sins of the Israelites. They had a change in external situation, right? They came out of Egypt. They were given their own country to exercise dominion in. The context of redemption is comprehensive. Salvation is comprehensive. People get in trouble. They think we’re denying salvation from sin. No. No. Of course not. Obviously not.

But remember, all we got to do is remember the sequence of offerings that we emulate here in the context of Reformation Covenant Church. And the church historically is referred to as the divine service to us where God ministers gifts to us. And we remember those sequence of offerings in Leviticus. And they begin with purification, but that’s not where it ends. If that’s where it ended, we would just announce the forgiveness of sins after the confession of sins, sing a couple of songs, and go home.

But that’s the beginning. The rest of it, redemption is being redeemed from all the sins and evil in the context of the world. And salvation is the salvation of the entire world in the context of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and its reclamation in him. So redemption—this so it’s like creation—that’s why new creation and redemption are so closely linked. We come together we set apart this day in a way because we want to focus upon these two incredible works of God: creation and redemption.

So you know what, how do we do this? How do we—what is the—okay, so that’s the big ticket right, that’s the big message. But how do we actually do it? And the fourth commandment tells us more of what it is we’re supposed to do.

Now, we know instinctively about—we kind of understand that God—well, we don’t understand. We’ve been taught it and it’s quite clear in Exodus 20. God works for six days and rests on the seventh. And so, we’re to work for six days and to rest on the seventh. Okay? So, that’s what it is. And we know—we may not have you may not have thought of it this way—but what that really lines us up with is who we are.

Who are we? We’re imagebearers of God. One way to think about God’s law, God’s ethical requirements is God’s ethical requirements means that we’re supposed to image God. The “what would Jesus do” line while misapplied and can be greatly confusing, there is this essential truth to it. Now, we make—we could broaden it out into the triune God of course—but we’re made to image God and what the law tells us how to do is it tells us what God’s character is like and tells us what we’re to be like in the context of that right.

So if you ever want to know what the basis of our ethical behavior is—who you are—you’re an imagebearer and everything you say and do you’re supposed to be in a sense imitating God his communicable attributes his character. This is what you’re to be. And so God does things over a sequence. Why did it take him six days? Was his arm shortened? No. He could have done it in one, three. He decided to do it in six days as a model and example to us surely. And he wants man—then he then gives man this sequence of six days and then rest whatever that may mean. And he gives that to man as a blessing to him as his imagebearer.

And so if we’re going to delight in our work through the six days of the week, we also delight to rest as God rested.

Now, may I suggest you that’s the same thing that’s true in Deuteronomy 5 about redemption, right? This is also not a, you know, a thing seen to be seen in isolation from the character of God. It is the character of God to redeem his people, to put the world to rights, and to bring about justice, beauty and truth in the world. That’s what God does. And a major act of doing that was the deliverance of God’s people from Egypt, getting them back to the promised land where they were supposed to do some things for the whole world and minister the truth of God from the temple to the whole world.

That’s exactly what Deuteronomy 5 says is also our obligation. It says that the center of what we do today is to meditate upon and to work toward the redemption of the world because we want to be like God. I mean, God says he creates the world in six days, rests on the seventh. He does this clearly not because he had to, but because it’s an example to us about how we’re supposed to—how we’ll be happiest. It’s the owner’s manual, right?

How we’re going to be happiest is imaging God. And God says we’re to image him through this cycle of six and one. And God says that we’re to image him. We’ll be delighted in our lives. Not if we just rejoice in forgiveness of sins in isolation, but rather that we see our imagebearing capacity of God to take what he did for us in redeeming us holistically, saving us holistically, and extend it out to others—that your servants, your man’s servants, and your maidservants may find rest as well.

The center obligation of Deuteronomy 5 is the extension of God’s creation and redemption, we could say, or new creation and redemption in Christ to the whole world. So how we do this is first of all to see ourselves in both of the castings of the fourth commandment as imagebearers of God. And this day is about setting aside a day to remind ourselves of that and to remind ourselves of the great things that we’re supposed to do as his imagebearers.

We’re supposed to work six days. We’re supposed to extend redemption. Those are the two big deals that are going on in the Deuteronomy Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. And so overall, that’s what this day is a delight in. It’s a delight in God’s creative work and it’s a delight in his redemption. And because of that, we’re also to image God in being joyful today.

Isaiah 58 says, “Call the Sabbath a delight.” You may not feel like it, but call it that, and you’ll begin to feel like it. God is not morose. God isn’t, you know, sad all the time. God is a God of life. God is a God of joy. God is a God who brings things to fruition and rejoices in his work. And so at the heart of what this day is about for us as Christians, this side of the cross is a tremendous joy.

It’s a joy in looking at the created order and what God has done. It’s a joy in looking at the kind of comprehensive redemption and new creation that Christ brought into the world. And it’s a joy that looks at us also as imagebearers and say “hey, what do you think about that? This last six days I did work like God did. I extended his work of creation. I took things that he gave us and restructured them and molded them into this kind of thing. You know, I took created elements the way he did and formed, filled, lighted them and I brought knowledge and discernment to the work of the creator of the world and I brought about a microphone that can let people hear me at a distance. See, that’s imagebearer capacity.”

And whether it’s the created order of the outdoors and the earth in its raw sense or whether it’s the manifestation of that through the work of men’s hands, what a thing to meditate upon and be thankful to God for. Praise God.

You know, I’m going to say something about Haiti. The reality is that time and God’s giving his imagebearers the capacity to work the created order to reduce the effects of earthquakes. Right? And yeah, a lot of people, you know, don’t like the government telling you how to build things. But the fact is that technology over the last hundred years has improved so that things like Haiti are now the exception when earthquakes happen.

And what we can say is that as the created order continues to manifest the glory of God through his imagebearers, man, the day will come when that kind of testing of physical structures and governments—and in a way that’s what it was—will be met with a better grade on the part of the people that occupy that particular place in time. You know, so it is a tremendous tragedy and churches today are filled with people who in America and around the world whose hearts are going out to the people in Haiti.

But one of the things that we should take away from it is the importance of good government. The importance of doing things like microphones to buildings, buildings and structures that will be able to survive the kind of test that God and his sovereignty brings to pass. And so there’s that perspective on it. We come together and we give thanks for the created order and the recreative work of man in his dominion task.

And we come together to rejoice in the fact that the progression of the Christian gospel is again that places like Haiti are then become the objects of compassion and the redemptive work of the church. Surely if the heart of Deuteronomy 5 is the extension of rest in the context of the world, those that we have covenant relationships to, then surely this is a very appropriate day to consider how we can extend redemption, how we can extend mercy and compassion to those elements around the world, including particularly today Haiti.

So, at this church, today, we’re not quite certain yet. We were trying to get out an email yesterday. We’re still not quite certain. We think we have an orphanage 2 miles outside of Port-au-Prince that has a relationship to Dave H.’s church in Washington that we’re going to encourage people to fund money to. And we’ll be doing that here at Reformation Covenant. But the alms offering today, these baskets for the next couple of weeks will go to work in Haiti.

And this is such an appropriate thing to do in the context of a commemoration of what God does. He brought us out of Egypt. He brings redemption to the world. So, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a part of the imagebearer capacity of man to image God in creation and redemption, to take this day to give joy and thanks to God for those actions of his, and to do it in a joyful way. We should be like David.

The more we appreciate the wonder of the creation and the wonder of man being able to use that created order to affect the lives of other people, the more we see the outflowing of love and compassion even in the times of difficult trials and tribulations like Haiti, then the more we’ll want to dance into church on the Lord’s day and dance up the aisles and rejoice in the presence of God. That’s what Lord’s day, that’s what the fourth commandment, I think, is all about.

Now, there is a couple of things—details along this way here—that it’s important to see. So, we can see that the general picture is this: creation, redemption. The general picture is imagebearer. And the general picture is that we’re to image God including joy.

We know in Nehemiah 8, the people are going back into the land. They see what’s been done so far in the work in Jerusalem and they’re gathered together for the reading of the law by Ezra. They’re gathered together in holy convocation and they weep and the word goes out from Nehemiah and the governors, “Do not weep. This is a day of rejoicing before God.” He says to eat the fat, eat the good, tasty things today and drink the sweet wine. Drink the rejoicing stuff. And so the Sabbath observation, the Lord’s day observation is, always has an element of faith to it. But it’s a faith that this is the reality that the Lord God is working these things out in the context of our world.

And we are commanded then to enter into the life of God, which is joy and celebration. So the Sabbath must be celebration. But the text also tells us then how this can happen. Well, that’s great, Dennis. Should be celebrating. How am I supposed to do it? Doesn’t seem like I have a whole lot to celebrate about. And what are some practical ways that we can learn from the text itself to help us to do this?

Well, the first thing is the word “keep” in verse 12. So the word keep—what does it mean? Well, the word keep means to watch. It can mean to guard, to preserve something. But more than that its basic meaning is in looking at, meditating upon the thing and trying to discern how to go about maintaining that thing and improving it. Okay.

So to keep the Lord’s day means that it’s a day that’s been given to us as a great treasure. Right? And if we do not appreciate that treasure, one of the specific commands that we’re to do based on Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 is to involve ourselves in a meditation of the day, what it is at its core, which we’ve just talked about, and then to keep it in the sense of guarding it, preparing for it, meditating upon it, getting ready for it.

I had a young woman in my office four or five months ago, and she said that the Lord’s day is the worst day of the week for her, member of this church. My, that’s a sad statement because clearly it’s supposed to be the happiest, most joyous day of the week because what thing, what better thing do we have to do than to think about God’s creative and redemptive works in the world and to rejoice in that.

We go through six days of hard work and difficult work with its successes but also its many failures. We go through six days of strained relationships within our families even with our friends or the absence of them. We go through six days of difficult trials and tribulations and the Lord says on the seventh day we’re to rejoice in the fact that history is a progression toward joy in each of those elements.

But see, it’s not just going to happen. God doesn’t say just “here it is enjoy it.” He says “here it is keep it. Here it is. Think about what it is supposed to be like. Here it is. Make preparations for that day.” Not because it’s some kind of great obligation on you. It’s the happiest time. When seen properly, it’s the happiest time of life, the Lord’s day celebrations all day long.

And so, well, it doesn’t feel that way. Well, then maybe what we need to do is to work hard on the keeping aspect of it, right? We have to think about it. We have to guard its use. We have to keep distractions that are maybe good and proper to attend to in the context of the week. We want to keep those to a minimum. We want to make preparations that we’re well rested, that we’ve got things we need that’ll make us joyful that day.

I don’t know what it is for you. You know, for some people it’s food. For some people it’s just making sure you got getting together with the right people in the afternoon. For some people it’s other things, but make preparations. We have an obligation and it is a joyful obligation. It’s something that we should be happy to do because after all the end result is joy for us. We have an obligation. The commandment begins and ends by saying “keep it.”

And it doesn’t just mean “do it.” It doesn’t mean that really at all. It means “guard it. Think about how it can be guarded. Think about how to use it properly” and then “take some actions relative to preparation for that day that will bring joy in your life in the context of it.”

So it is that we’re to keep the Lord’s day, keep the Sabbath day that it may be sanctified. God blessed the Lord’s day and he gave it to man as a blessing, as a sanctified day. And we’re to meditate upon, take actions relative to it the other six days of the week so that when we enter into Lord’s Day celebration, it really is a celebration for us.

So, the first thing we’re supposed to do is to keep it. Yes, it’s a command, but it’s a command given us by God for our well-being, for our delight and for our joy.

Secondly, we’re told that part of this preparation is to not do any work today. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means the normal sort of six days stuff that you’re supposed to do. And why? Because God rested on the seventh day. Now, think about this a little bit.

We said that our entering into the Lord’s day is as imagebearers of God. We’re to rest the way he rested. We’re to extend redemption and rest to others the way he did it. And so this is part of what we do on the Lord’s day. And so we’re to rest as he rested. How did he rest? He wasn’t tired and then took a nap. Now we are. There’s—I’m not trying to get rid of that aspect. There is a concept of physical rest involved. But that is one small slice, I think, of what this day of rest is supposed to be like for us.

God rested and took joy in his completed work. Rest, as God represents it to us first in the Bible, the first thing we know about rest is that it is the joyful celebration of a divine work that’s been brought to completion. It’s a joyful celebration of a divine work that’s been brought to completion. It’s not the absence of something. You know, we get hung up on all the negative. It’s not the absence of something. Rest is an entering into the joyful celebration of God for his completion of divine work both for redemption and creation. Okay? That’s what rest is.

And so, we’re supposed to preserve this day. We’re supposed to make preparations, be thoughtful about it so that we can rest, not doing our normal work today, but rather to take pleasure in a divinely completed task. And as imagebearers, so God does this work, rejoices in it on the seventh day. We do our work six days a week and we’re to rejoice in that on the Lord’s day.

Part of rest is a contemplation of the imagebearer capacity that we have and that Jesus Christ redeemed us to accomplish specific tasks in the world. We’re to look back on the week as God did and say, “Well, the Lord God is doing something through us. As frustrating as it might have been, I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to do, but I’m going to delight today in the work that God has accomplished through me.”

So rest is that. So we’re to be imagebearers of God. The focus is creation and redemption. The how of doing this is to image God in joy. It’s to image God by maintaining this day by keeping it, preserving it, meditating upon what he wants us to do. What are the basic characteristics of it? And the basic characteristics of it are joy as we’ve mentioned. But it is rest. It is a joy that results from the celebration of God’s work.

The word Sabbath itself means rest, finish, cease, bring to completion—is one way to think of it. It’s the joy this side of having brought a work to completion. And so, as God’s imagebearers, that’s what we’re to do as well. We’re to rejoice in this day in the completed work of God, even in the midst of long projects that can’t get done overnight.

God says that he has created the world in six days. He’s brought it to completion and then he expects us to continue to work in the context of our workweeks and to bring tasks to completion and we enter into the joy of God’s completion of creation and redemption and of ours as well. And we go—that’s why this is a proper day to think about the extension of redemption and our work of creation.

Interesting. By the way, I heard this morning that President Obama was at a Martin Luther King Day celebration this morning and he was talking about the work of Martin Luther King and he mentioned that we meet today on a Sabbath. And you know, that’s a good term to use. It’s not what the New Testament uses. The New Testament uses “Lord’s Day,” but it brings all these concepts of the fourth word into the New Covenant as the Lord’s Day.

Why? Because the work of creation was brought into disrepair through the sin of man and Jesus Christ came to affect a new creation and the sin that resulted in the context of the garden created a need for redemption that was prefigured in the coming out of Egypt but ultimately was fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ on Calvary.

So the Christian Lord’s day is certainly this celebration of God’s finished work and God’s completed work in the Lord Jesus Christ and the extension of that to others. This is a perfectly good day to think about the extension of redemption whether it’s in Haiti, whether it’s in doing away with the kind of racial discrimination that existed in this country for really up into our lifetime itself. This is a day to celebrate that in spite of man’s sins and in spite of people doing things often for very strange motivations, the reality is that we have accomplished as a country many good things. As a nation today, as a Christian nation, our hearts turn to Haiti. As a nation we think of the work of ending racial discrimination in our country and that’s really—it’s at the heart of what we’re supposed to do on the Lord’s day if we see this center in Deuteronomy 5 as talking about the extension of redemption, not just bringing ourselves to a joyful entering into God’s rest but bringing others into that as well.

So, and then third, it says we’re to remember the Lord’s day. So, we’re to keep it, think about it, meditate upon it. We are as well to rest as we’ve been talking about. And third, we’re to remember it. Now, the word “remember” doesn’t mean just to think about it and bring it back to mind. It does that—it does mean that—but it means more than that.

God told Noah in Genesis 9 that the sign of the covenant would be this bow, the rainbow put in the sky. And God said he would look upon the bow when the skies got cloudy. He would see the bow and he would remember his covenant. God didn’t forget his covenant. But what it means is God would treat man in accordance with the covenant that he had made with him. And so to remember here in the context of the fourth day is not just a bringing back to mental ascent or mental thinking about something. It’s to memorialize something. It’s to take the day and set it up as a memorial that brings into activity the covenant saving works of God.

We’re to memorialize it. We’re to memorialize in Exodus 20 creation and we’re to memorialize now in Deuteronomy 5 the emphasis becomes the memorialization of redemption. And so what do we have? We have got a memorialization here. Jesus says, “This is the new covenant of my blood. Do this as my memorial.” The fourth commandment is why we’re here. We’ve come together primarily to memorialize the greatest work of creation and redemption throughout human history, throughout created history, and that’s the work of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.

We’ve come here to memorialize this thing. So, you know, rest is important to rejoice in the completed work of God in creation and redemption is important, but we’re to do it primarily or at least with a great focus on memorializing things together. So that’s why we come together for a part of the Lord’s day. We pay attention to the memorialization of God’s creative acts and redemptive acts through the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s how God says we’re supposed to do it this day. It’s to be called a great delight because it is a great delight. It’s the picture to us of God’s creative work and we’re to give thanks to him. We’re to praise his holy name for the created order and for the works of men that take this order and develop it and mature it. God says this is a day of delight because he brings redemption to the world. He rolls back the effects of sin. But more than that, he extends into the whole world the sort of work, the sort of blessed state of wonderful work that he has accomplished through men throughout the entire world and we’re to enter into that today.

Leviticus 19—we’ll come back to this next week actually, a particular element of it in Deuteronomy Moses’ sermon as well—but when it begins to tell us about the ethical standards of God’s law, of God’s covenant to us in Leviticus 19:1 and 2 he says, “Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them, ‘Ye shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.’”

So, he’s going to give a bunch of commandments. But what are they? They’re reflections of the character of God. And they tell us how we can image God. And of course, that’s what we’ve been made to do. And that’s what we’ll be happiest doing. And how do we image God? “You shall fear every man, his mother, and his father, and keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.” There’s the essence of the covenant.

What we’ve been talking about, the memorialization of creation and redemption, the preparation for that in keeping it and then the entering into the rest of God. All of these things really are bound up in the context of covenant blessings from God. We come together to add our memorialization to receive the renewal of the covenant blessings from God that he ministers to us. All of the things we’ve talked about can be comprehended in one thing and that’s the covenant.

God’s single plan through Christ to bring salvation to the world. That’s what’s been brought to completion on the cross and in the resurrection 2,000 years ago. That’s what is the focus of what we’re to protect and guard and keep. That’s the joy of the created work and the redemptive work that God has given to us and that’s what we’re to enter into today through memorializing the covenant acts of God.

In the Old Testament, it says, “This is my covenant that you keep my Sabbath.” Right? Says that over and over again. In Isaiah 56, we see another reminder of this.

Isaiah 56 says, “Neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, ‘The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people.’ Neither let the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord unto the eunuch that keeps my Sabbaths and chooses the things that please me and take of my covenants. And to that man, it 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.’”

To what man? The man that keeps his covenant, that grabs a hold of his covenant by keeping the Sabbath of God, by guarding that day, by thinking about it, by trying to preserve it as a day of delight and joy and commemoration of creation and redemption. And these are the things it says that please God. So the essence of the covenant, the essence of pleasing God in response to that covenant is seen as a joyful entering into the day of God’s rest, his joyful meditation of his works.

The same thing about the sons of the strangers. Verse 6, “to the sons of the strangers that join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to have the name of the Lord to be his servants. Everyone that keeps the Sabbath from polluting it and takes hold of my covenant.” Again, there the designation is that taking hold of the covenant of God is tied in you know absolutely in a way that can’t be broken to this day. That is the memorialization of this relationship that we have with God our creator and with his work of redemption.

The covenant is what the Sabbath is all about. That covenant is something to be preserved, guarded, and maintained. That covenant is to be something that’s entered into with joy. That covenant is the completion of God’s work of creation and redemption. And that covenant is what we rejoice in today.

There’s a wonderful song that we’ll be singing over the next few weeks written by a man named Christopher Wordsworth. He was actually the nephew of William Wordsworth. And he wrote this song in the 1860s. He thought that good songwriting—he wrote many books. He was a theologian, he was a bishop, et cetera. But he said that it was really important that songs taught good theology, good theology. And so he tried to take songs that would teach good theology and bring people to delight in that theology as well.

And the song that he wrote about the Lord’s Day is “O Day of Rest and Gladness.” And I want to read some of the lyrics here to you. And we’ve sung it in this church. We’ll sing it again.

“O day of rest and gladness. O day of joy and light, O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful most bright. On thee the high and holy through ages joined in tune sing holy, holy, holy to the great God triune.”

So in the first verse he opens it up. This is a wonderful day of blessing and it’s a blessing that we enter into in a trinitarian way. The second verse explains that “On thee at the creation the light first had its birth. On thee for our salvation Christ rose from depths of earth. On thee our Lord victorious his spirit sent from heaven and thus on thee most glorious a triple light was given.”

He talks about the trinitarian aspect and what creation—light of creation, redemption—Jesus Christ resurrection—and the giving of the spirit to his disciples as well—is on the Lord’s day celebrated as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We said that the fourth commandment follows the first three for a reason. God is our great King of all kings, Lord of lords, power of all powers, the Father. Yes, the whole Trinity is involved in it.

We can think of the Father’s power and authority over us. Jesus Christ comes to do the will of the Father. God provides mediation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to affect redemption. We’ve got creation and redemption. And then finally, God sends his Holy Spirit to us. And this day is a reminder of that. That that Spirit may take the work of creation and redemption through the body of Christ through his people and extend it over the whole world.

And Wordsworth knew that and he sang songs and he wrote songs that we could enter into about the joy of the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we enter into on the Lord’s day. This is a great blessing. And then the third verse, what a wonderful statement of what he’s writing here.

“Thou art a port protected from storms that round us rise. A garden intersected with streams of Paradise. Thou art a cooling fountain in life’s dry dreary land. From thee like Pisgah’s mountain, we view our promised land.”

“A port protected, intersected with streams of Paradise.” That’s what the Lord’s day is intended to be. Now, we don’t always experience it that way. We almost never do. But that’s what we’re to look toward. That’s the truth. He was right theologically on what he saw the Lord’s day being. He’s right because that’s what these verses teach us in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. He’s right.

And so that’s the goal of our observance of the fourth word, our response to God in gratitude and praise for what he has brought to pass. Isaiah 58 says, “This is what we’re supposed to do. If you’ll turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable, and shalt honor him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, 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.”

We want to do that. We want to ride on the high places. We want to be successful in ministering to the suffering people in Haiti. We want to be successful in bringing a release and redemptive work to the whole world. We want to be successful in curing relationships in the context of our church and family and friends. We want to be successful in the work that God has given us to do. We want to have a good workweek this week making stuff with as little frustration as possible that can bring men’s lives to more joy and happiness and productivity as our imagebearer capacity of God is fulfilled in the work that we do.

That’s what we want. And God says to accomplish that, “Call the Sabbath a delight.” The stuff you do Monday through Saturday is great stuff, spirit-empowered work. But on the Lord’s day, the focus is God himself who comes to be with us, who comes to make his blessings flow by bringing up in our heart gratitude and praise to him for the completion of creation and redemption and to find the kind of renewing strength that will allow us go back to our work week, to our failed relationships, and to the other things, and go at it again knowing that history moves in terms of what the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished at his resurrection.

I hope I’ve set the fourth word in a proper context for you. It is a day of joy. And if it’s not a day of joy, let’s get about making it a day of joy in our lives individually, corporately. We’re going off to Scammania a couple of weeks. And one of the things we’re going to talk about is what do we do here in the memorializing portion of the day to bring increased joy and delight in what we’ve talked about today to this congregation so that joy may flow over into whatever it is you do the rest of the day and into your lives and into whatever things you’ve set up for yourself to do.

Pray for us. Thank God for the officers of this church. This is a tremendous thing that God has set before us, the beauty of what the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day is. And may the Lord God continue to give us wisdom to keep it, to meditate upon it, to memorialize it, and to enter into that joyful completion of divine work that rest is.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for this day. We thank you, Lord God, for