Paul Carrington's sermon, 'The Sabbath: Honor & Delight,' explores the doctrine of the Sabbath, emphasizing its purpose as both a command and a blessing. The sermon discusses the pitfalls of Phariseism, characterized by rigid law-keeping, and Antinomianism, which disregards God's law, arguing for a balanced understanding rooted in scripture. Carrington highlights the Sabbath's foundation in creation, its moral significance, and its role as a day of rest and worship, distinct from other days. He addresses common misconceptions, including the Sabbath's change from the seventh to the first day, symbolizing Christ's resurrection and redemption. The sermon underscores the Sabbath as a day to honor God, delight in His presence, and reflect on both His creative and redemptive work, urging believers to see it as a gift and commandment designed for their good.

Well this afternoon we have the opportunity to take a look at the doctrine of the Sabbath as we continue our series of joined and knit together and really considering this day that every single Sunday we meet together to honor him and just to give our or to recalibrate and bring our thoughts together on what does this day represent, that's really the aim and the intent as we look through this wonderful doctrine. And I want to take it away from just looking at it from the perspective of a lawyer, but looking at it more so from the perspective of sons and daughters of worshipers of the true God. And so after I'm finished our brother Mike is going to come up and we're going to have a time of question and answer so if you have questions you can be thinking about them throughout and we'd be happy to do our best to try to answer them. One of the main objectives for this afternoon as we look at this doctrine, look at the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, is I'd love for you to have in your mind two words, honor and delight. Thinking about these two words, just as we go through this teaching.

You know there's when you deal with a doctrine like the doctrine of the Sabbath or teaching on it there's there's pits on either side right on one side you have really the pit of Phariseism where it's grinding obedience and self-righteousness that's really what carries things it's just you know this necessity of law-keeping but you're really missing the mark because the heart is often not there. And I remember I grew up in a city where there was a big Jewish population. And if you go to the kind of the Hasidic area, Hasidic Jews, which are really the strict, strict law keepers, and you go to their apartment building, say on a Sabbath day, they don't, when they get into an elevator to go up to the 10th floor, they, according to their law on the Sabbath day, think of it as a as a breach of the Sabbath to push a button to go and take that elevator up to the 10th floor. They would actually consider that kind of in the idea of they're forbidden to create sparks and make fire on the Sabbath day. And you've got this rigid, hard structure of what, you know, how can we just limit as much as we can?

And there's a danger there. That's a pit to fall into. But on the other side, just as dangerous, is this pit of antinomianism, which means kind of against law, where you take a look at the law of God and you say we're free in Christ, I can live and I can do and be whatever I want to, and you disregard what God has actually said in his word. And if you look around even today in Christianity there's a big big discussions and debates going on on how the law of God is treated. And so we want to we want to look at this because both of the people both sides the antinomian side as well as the strict phariseic side they totally miss the mark.

They totally do not fulfill the thing that God had originally intended in their attempts to either disqualify it or in their attempts to hold it so rigidly and build other laws around it that they miss the blessing, the delight, as well as the honor. And so we want to today just discuss the idea of what does the scripture say? What is the true teaching of the Sabbath? We don't want the antinomian to just become more pharisaical and we don't want the Pharisee to become more antinomian. That's not the remedy, but the remedy is what do the scriptures teach in regards to this beautiful, beautiful doctrine?

And so that's my hope today is that the Lord preserve us from the errors of the antinomian on the one side, as well as the errors of the Pharisee on the other side. And really look at the more excellent way, the more excellent way that holds up this beautiful day for honor and delight of our true and living God. And so one of the things we heard last week was what honor actually is. You remember we were looking at John chapter 5. And this word honor, when we think of honor, really means an inward disposition of heart.

How do you really think about things? As a child, You can obey your parents, but you may not honor your parents and we can obey God But really not have such a high high regard for him that we like we just sang all hail the power We can sing that but the heart is what we're really aiming after and so My goal for today is kind of in line with what Spurgeon says. I want to read a quote here. And he says it like this. Regarding the Sabbath, I am no preacher of the old legal Sabbath.

I am a preacher of the gospel. The Sabbath of The Jew is to him a task. The Lord's Day of the Christian, the first day of the week, is to him a joy, a day of rest, of peace, and of thanksgiving. And if you Christian men can earnestly drive away all distractions so that you can really rest today. It will be good for your bodies, good for your souls, good mentally, good spiritually, good temporally, and good eternally.

So that's really my aim today is to put forth the beauty of this day, but also showing that it is a command of God. So we've broken it kind of into four different sections. The first, just because we have such a broad spectrum of people here, is to really look at the idea of what is the Sabbath? What is it? And then what is its relation in the New Testament times when we come to Matthew looking on forward.

And then hopefully once we've cleared away some of the misconceptions, my hope is that we can ask, you know, how can we think about it and what are some practical considerations in terms of even preparing for it? And then as I mentioned, we'll hopefully have a time of question and answer towards the end. So I want to start off by what is the Sabbath and the very first place in the Bible where the word appears is in Genesis chapter 2. You can read about it in chapter 2 verses 2 and 3 and I'm just gonna read it out to us in terms of where the word appears. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done and he rested.

That verb is Shabbat or it means ceased. On the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, meaning he consecrated or he hallowed it, because in it he rested from all the work in which he had created and made. And so what does this signify? You know, did God all of a sudden reach to the point where he was just so exhausted because he had worked so hard in those six days?

We all, I think all of us would agree that it wasn't because God needed rest that he actually rested. But I think what it means is he ceased his labor on that day. It's like an artist who who puts together this masterpiece and there's nothing more that he could have done. It was so beautiful and everything. You remember after each day, do you remember what he said?

It is good. And then at the end, it was very good. It's this idea of completeness and everything being done to the point where if God were to ask, what more could I have done? All of creation would have shutted back, nothing at all. So, So beautiful and so good was his creation.

And so this is not an idea. I just want to, again, get us thinking. This is not an idea that God needed rest, but it's more a reflection of the beauty of God in his creation for all of us. And so really, really important that we have that in our mind. But then we get to the next section where the Sabbath is mentioned.

So we have Genesis 2 right at the beginning of the word of God. And then in Exodus chapter 20, we hear this is where Moses is receiving the Ten Commandments written by the finger of God inscribed in tablets. This is the moral standard of God for all ages and for all people. And so you have to ask yourself, well what does a good God command? A good God is going to command good things, things that are profitable, things that are most glorious, things that will be most beneficial for his people.

And so I'm going to read the fourth commandment. It's found in Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 to 10 and it says this, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day it is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gate. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath and he hallowed it." And so what is this fourth commandment saying? It's looking at the commandment of us, our necessity of resting on the Sabbath day. Not a suggestion, he's now commanding something. But what does he do? He hearkens back right to Genesis chapter 2 and he says basically he says four in six days and then he says therefore the commandment the Lord blessed the Sabbath and he hallowed it.

He set it apart. It wasn't that God needed to set apart a day for anything. He didn't need to set it apart for himself, but he consecrated or he sanctified the day for all of his creation to rest. A lot of times people make the argument, well, the Sabbath wasn't really, wasn't in place from Genesis to Exodus. It was only in Exodus that people started actually observing the Sabbath, which is not true.

You can't really make an argument from silence and say that was the case. Just like you hear in the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder, murder was still wrong, lying was still wrong even though the ten commandments weren't actually given. And so what we're seeing is that the law of God is codified or codified right here on these ten tablets and he roots the fourth commandment right in creation. He goes right back and says this is why God has commanded this because right from the very beginning He consecrated, he hallowed that day and everyone that would be obedient and follow God from Genesis up to the time would have observed and would have kept that Sabbath. And so what's the Lord saying?

He's saying follow me in this pattern of life and work and worship. He builds everything, the fabric, right into the creation order. That's really what he's doing here. And so what he's saying though, it's such a blessing, right? He's saying lay down your burdens and cares.

As one man, Thomas Watson, he says, it's kind of like a spiritual jubilee, a day of just having enjoyment and pleasure before God and delighting in him and worshiping him, singing songs and families coming and honoring him. That is for our best good. It's not a burden. It is a burden for those who may not know the Lord. It can be a drudgery, but the intent of it for people who have been regenerated and who know God, it becomes a great joy for us.

And so it's very important that we recognize that the Ten Commandments, though they're inscribed in Exodus chapter 20, this is the moral standard of God from the very beginning of time and it's rooted actually in eternity in the very character of God. So you could say it like this that the reason why murder is wrong is not only because it takes another man's life but because God is the giver of life. The reason why adultery is wrong is not because you injure your wife or the wife injures her husband alone but because God is faithful, right? The reason why it's wrong to lie is not because you're just deceiving a person But because God is truth and so all of this is being rooted and grounded right at the very beginning Harkening back not just to creation But even you could argue into eternity and into the very character, the moral character of the living God. And so how should we look at this day?

It should be the most anticipated day of the week where we get to gather together, but more importantly we get to gather underneath the banner of God who has bought us and saved us. It's a day of communion where we can untether ourselves, unravel ourselves from the cares of this life and focus the day on God. And I want to ask a question, you know, can you think of a pagan god who actually offers his people rest? If you look down through the annals of history there's there's no such thing. A pagan God is a capricious God who you know he can change his mind on a dime he's forever enslaving more and more his people and it's works based There's no rest at all for those who put themselves under the enslavement of the pagan God and how altogether God is different right.

He's basically saying I'm the I'm the true I'm the living God. He says come Come aside and spend some time with me under my care reflecting on my glory. In case it enters your mind about, but what about all these other things? He's saying, don't worry. I promise to meet your needs with just six days of work.

That's a God unlike any other God. It's so wonderful to think of that in juxtaposition or in contrary to the gods of this world. God is totally unlike them and so the focus of the day is really the worship of God and the care that we take for our souls. There are, of course, exceptions for work. You know, God is a good God, and so he does make exceptions for works of necessity, works of charity, you know, that you, for example, you know, if a mechanic is here in the church and somebody goes out and their cars won't start, it wouldn't be sinful for the mechanic to go and fix that car on that day and do whatever he can.

Or you see someone on the side of the road or someone's a nurse or a doctor along those lines. God is good enough. He's great that he says, you know what, I recognize that the Sabbath isn't to be a burden, it's to be a blessing primarily for the people. But always keep in mind it's also a command. And we shouldn't hold a command and a blessing as though somehow a blessing, if it's a blessing, well, it can't be a command.

The things that God commands are blessings, just like you look at all the other 10 commandments. If we were to live by them as a people or as a nation, could you imagine the blessing? It's all for our good, but it's also commanded by a holy and good God. And so before we get into the New Testament, I just thought it'd be helpful to look, before I kind of get into the idea of what is its relation, to look at Mark chapter 2, verse 27. And this is where Jesus, he's already been confronted by the Pharisees just right in the beginning of his ministry.

And we read these words, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath. And notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say the Sabbath was made for the Jews. When Jesus wants to talk about the Sabbath, remember how when he was questioned about marriage, what did he do?

He went back to the same chapter, Genesis chapter 2, and he says, for this cause a man shall leave his mother and father and the two shall be one flesh. He goes right back to the creation order. Well, when he's talking about the Sabbath, what does he do? He goes right back not to say that the Sabbath was made for the Jews but he says that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath. It's very important that we recognize if you want to look even at marriage, if you want to look at the Sabbath, both of them are established pre-fall, right?

It's before man even falls and falls into sin that the Lord is pointing to the beauty, to the importance, to the command of the Sabbath itself. And so now that we've looked at the foundational scriptures in the Old Testament, I want to just take a look at what is its relationship in New Testament times, right? Because again, some people will insist, well, that was fine for the Jews in the New Testament. This is the argument that's most pervasive today. But we're set free from the law in the New Testament.

And that's a partial argument because yes, though we're set free from the ceremonial aspects of the law in Christ, the moral law that's rooted right in the character of God is not done away with. It's perpetual. It will never go away because God is a perpetual, eternal God. And so the question is, well, was this somehow, perhaps, the Sabbath abrogated with, you know, the Jews had about 613 laws. The first 10 were the 10 Commandments, and then you have 603 laws that were there.

Well, was the Sabbath somehow abrogated or done away with in Christ when he came? Well, I think the next question would be, well, was the first commandment done away with? With Christ, that you shall have no other gods before me? What about the seventh commandment, thou shall not commit adultery, or the fifth, honor your mother and your father? None of those were done away with.

So why would we make the argument that the Fourth Commandment is done away with? On what basis would we make that argument? You know, the Apostle Paul, for example, quotes the Fifth Commandment in Ephesians, chapter 6, in full. And he's not saying, but that's done away with. Of course not.

It's still in full effect and it will be in full effect until the end of the age. And so what we want to be warned against is that the majority of believers today have this view of somehow there's nine commandments. Nine commandments are in effect. The Sabbath somehow, somehow we've been able to just pull it out and it's no longer in effect. Or some people would say it's, you know, Christ is our Sabbath and therefore we don't need to honor him on his Sabbath day, it's just another day, you know.

That's kind of the argument. But it's not the truth of the Word of God. You will not find that argument anywhere in the scriptures. And just to kind of nail down this idea of the separateness of the Ten Commandments, you know, when I was looking through the Old Testament, there's a part of the New Testament, Old Testament in Deuteronomy chapter 31, and it's talking about the Ten Commandments, which includes the Sabbath, and where were the Ten Commandments put? They were put inside the Ark, the Ark of the Covenant.

But the 603 laws, the Book of the Law, That book of the law was kept outside of the Ark of the Covenant and laid beside it. And that's what Christ came to do away with, to fulfill and abrogate. But the Ten Commandments, again I just want to make sure we're understanding that, are perpetual and always kept into effect. And so Christ, he argued regarding the Sabbath, but he never argued against this concept of the Sabbath. What he did is he had to labor to dig it out underneath this mountain of legalistic garbage that the Pharisees had layered on top of it.

So sometimes people look at his arguments against the Pharisees and think that he argued against the Pharisees on the Sabbath, therefore the Sabbath isn't good. But what he was saying is that you men have made the Sabbath something unrecognizable. You've distorted it, you've twisted it, you've totally defaced it so that the beauty of it has been stripped away. You know, They make arguments like, oh well it's well and good, yeah, this man was a cripple for 38 years, but how dare he carry his mat? It's true that this man was blind from his birth and that no one in the history of the world has ever been healed from blindness from his birth, but who did the healing?

Let's go get him. He's broken our man-made laws that have been layered on top of the beauty of the Sabbath. And so what we find Christ doing is not abolishing the Sabbath, but abolishing the distortions and attacking the distortions that the Sabbath had become. It's really important that we see that because it's it's still binding but he didn't want that wooden dead strict oppressive way of looking at the Sabbath. He wanted people to see the beauty of it, which is what we're going to look at in a moment.

And it's important that we notice Jesus didn't say, I was the Lord of the Sabbath, but I am the Lord of the Sabbath. Something really important to consider. And in case that's not persuasive enough if you look at the the the Sermon on the Mount which is arguably the most beautiful sermon ever preached he's when he starts getting into the law right before that he says do not think in case you're tempted in case there's any inkling in your mind, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. And then what does he do? He goes on and he talks about murder, and he explains what murder is.

Then he goes on, he talks about adultery. He talks about keeping your word. He talks about, he basically explains what the law's original intent was and so that's what he does when he attacks the Sabbath he's explaining the beauty and what it was originally intended to be. And So another question that's often asked is, why don't we observe the seventh day? But we've changed it, or it's changed somehow to Sunday.

Well, it's true that though we experience a change of day, it's no less binding upon the New Testament Church. I remember there was a guy that I was debating with and going back and forth with, and we'll talk about this in a minute when you get to Colossians, but we were going, but this is about 12 years ago, and we were in a debate, and he was a saboteur, and I wasn't, So I was someone who would argue against what I'm actually saying now. And I thought I had the trump card, you know, I came out and I had this argument with him. It's from Colossians chapter 2 and it basically says here, I want to make sure I can read it here. It says, so let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come.

But the substance is of Christ, or is of Christ. And so I thought I had this trump card that I put down on the table, so to speak, and I defeated his argument. Let no one judge you. And Sabbaths is mentioned right there. But here's the challenge here, is that what Paul was doing in Colossians chapter 2 is he's looking at the problems of the pagans that they bring to the table.

There's angel worship and all this other stuff that's going on. And on the other side of it, there's the legalism of the Judaizers that he's also attacking. And specifically here, when Paul writes the scripture, he's dealing with the ceremonial ordinances. Notice what he starts with, food and drink is where he starts. And then if you look in Leviticus chapter 23, it talks about this idea of Sabbaths with a plural, right?

There are day, the Lord's Day or the Sabbath Day, but then you also have ceremonial Sabbaths all the way through in the Old Testament that the Jews were mandated to observe and to keep. And so anytime you see these three words together, you see festival or feast day and new moon and Sabbath. In the Old Testament, there's actually seven times where they're looked at like a package, right? You don't separate them. For example, you know, there's a scripture, I think, in Hosea.

It says, I will also cause all her mirth to cease and then you see her feast days her new moons her Sabbaths all her appointed feast and you see it in Isaiah if you remember Isaiah chapter 1 you can look in Nehemiah there's about seven times where anytime you look at you know festivals and new moons and Sabbaths are mentioned together and that part of it, this plurality of it, right, these three things coming together and then the idea of it being Sabbaths is not pointing at all to the Lord day. What was the problem a lot of times in the in the New Testament? Everywhere Paul would go who came right behind him? The Judaizers and they try to distort the gospel. He spent so much of his ministry warring against those who had who had really kind of put people back into the bondage of becoming Jews in order to be acceptable unto God.

And so he's not speaking about the Sabbath. I just want to make that very very clear, but he's talking about these other Sabbaths and you see those, you see the feast days like unleavened bread that's been fulfilled in Christ or the Passover or the firstfruits or Pentecost or the atonement all of those has been kept or all of those have been fulfilled in the Lord himself and so when Paul says let no one judge you he means that the false teachers in Colossi have no right to judge the salvation of the Colossians for refusing to enter into pagan practices on the one side or refusing to observe Old Testament ceremonial laws because why Christ is the substance And so the trump card that I thought I had when you actually take a closer look, it evaporates. It's not really an argument against the Sabbath, it's an argument against the ceremonial Sabbaths and other feast days and food and drink restrictions that the Jews would have imposed. And so just in terms of why we've changed it again from the first from the seventh day to the first day, well think about it like this. What is the most spectacular day in the history of mankind?

It's the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so what we do is we look not to see, well, let's switch it up then, but we look to the Lord of the Sabbath who established the Lord's Day when he rose, that first day of the week. If you look 50 days later, what do you get? You get the day of Pentecost, which is also the first day of the week where the Holy Spirit comes and baptizes the apostles and the disciples in the upper room. And for further clarity in Acts 20 verse 7, this is now just the actual practice of the early church.

It says this, now on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread just like we did today. Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. It's a foregone conclusion by the time you get to Acts 20 that it was just a standard practice. When the disciples came together to break bread, it was just the Lord's Day, he rose on that day, Then you see the day of Pentecost, and then it becomes just a general practice of the Church underneath the authority of the Apostles that Jesus Christ had anointed. And So what the apostles did, we have to recognize they did by divine authority.

That's really, really important for us to recognize. And here's another quote from a man by the name of Ignatius. Some of you, even some of the children, might have heard of a man named Ignatius. He was a man who died in 107 AD. So he was a good friend of the Apostle John.

He was also a friend of Polycarp. And this is what he says. He's actually older than Polycarp. And so he says this, let everyone that loves the Christ keep holy the first day of the week the Lord's Day. So this is basically a contemporary of the Apostle John not coming up with something on his own but he was taught by John he was taught by the other Apostles it was understood that the first day of the week was now the day consecrated because it was the day that our Savior rose from the dead.

And so what is the symbolism? We have the resurrection and we see something beautiful, a work even more glorious than creation. Redemption in Jesus Christ was now being brought to light. There was great power on display in making us, right, in creation, but even greater power on display in redeeming us and bringing us back to God. And so it's interesting to make something out of nothing is one thing, but to make something out of something worse than nothing, that's another thing altogether.

But that's what Jesus Christ has done. And so in creation, creation was with the speaking of a word, let there be light, but in redemption it was in the shedding of blood, the blood of the only begotten Son of God. And so this beautiful, this change of day wasn't just arbitrary, but it was very intentional, where from creation to Christ, it was looking back and giving God thanks and praise for his creation from Christ until the beginning of eternity when Christ returns, it's going to be about reflecting the Lord's Day until he comes. And so that's really what we want to focus on. And so hopefully so far we've established a couple of things that like marriage, the Sabbath is rooted in creation before the fall.

That's really important. It was then codified in the moral law in the Ten Commandments which are separate than the 603 ceremonial observances of the Jews which have been done away with and fulfilled in the Lord of the Sabbath. And then we see the worship of the Lord's Day actually in the New Testament where they gather together very often and worship the Lord. And then we again we see what was it intended to be? Well it was intended to be a blessing but it's just like all of the other commandments.

It's again not arbitrary, not well I don't need the blessing so I won't keep the Sabbath. That is not how we ought to look at it, but it's mandated, it's commanded by God and in order to honor Him on His day We should really hold it up high. Now we don't become self-righteous. We don't want to fall into a trap of looking down on others and anything like that, but simply obey the Lord in the thing that he's commanded for us to do. And it's an interesting question, you know, why would we argue against a blessing being provided by God?

It's a real, see if you find even right now as we're going through this and your heart is angry or just you know maybe even feeling like you're being infringed upon, it's an interesting question. Why would you argue against what God is actually gifting to you? We shouldn't do that but receive it with wholehearted thanksgiving and then honor him on this his day. And so, just getting to the end here, how should we think about the day? Well, I think it's this marriage of honor and delight, kind of these two things coming together.

And I want to read just Isaiah 58 to us here, just a couple of verses. And we all, I think, are familiar with this. We've sung songs about this, quoting it verbatim, word for word. But he says this, Isaiah, 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." And so there's two words that appear twice in these two verses.

You see the word honor coming up twice and you see the word delight coming up twice. And when a person has been regenerated, when they've come to know the Lord, the things that please God become our delight over time, right? We become more conformed to the image of God and so the things that that make God happy make us happy as well, that we're no longer warring against them. We still have sin, indwelling sin, and so on. But even when you notice that, right, for those of you who are born again, what happens when you sin?

There's a grief. There's a, Lord, please forgive me for what I say. You can fill in the blank, but there's not a, you know, wiping your mouth and going on as though nothing has happened, at least for the sins that we know. There's sins we know, or sins we don't even know that we commit. But, but what we want to do is just kind of look at all that God has given to us, And what is he saying with the Sabbath?

Again, unlike the other gods, he's saying I'm not a hard master. I know that you have to look after your calling. I know that you have to do all these different things, but remember this, that all true blessings, They come from me, not from your labor. When Jesus says that a man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, it's as though he's acknowledging that man's chief purpose and chief source of all goodness is from God. And this is what the Sabbath does every time we get a chance to meet together, is to refresh our minds and to come together and worship Him corporately and honor Him on this day.

So it's not just a day off. It's not just a day off to just relax and do nothing. That's what the Pharisees would almost cut off any activity. They saw the Sabbath equated with inactivity. But Jesus, he didn't see the Sabbath equated.

He did good on the Sabbath day. Just like when we gather, we serve one another, we love one another, so on, you know, there's so many things that we could do, but it's a day of special attention to God. So not a day off, but a day of special attention to God where we revel and we relax in his presence and we truly see that, you know what, God will provide. He's provided a savior and he will provide all of my needs. And so we wanna look at the blessing, but also the oughtness of it, the fact that it is a commandment.

And I just wanna caution all of us, don't believe the lie of the garden of Eden, somehow that God is holding out on you, that God doesn't want the best for you. He's restricting me, somehow putting me in a box. That's not it at all. It's not that at all. You know somewhere else in the scriptures that says that his commandments are not grievous, but they're beautiful They're good their commandments to be delighted in and to honor him in and so what are some practical considerations here?

Just very very briefly just some things that we can think about. Now, neither myself nor Mike are gonna say, here's what you do, here's what you don't do, all that, we're staying away entirely from that. Scott would do the same, but think about preparation, just as you consider preparing for this day. This is something that Thomas Watson said. He says, when Saturday evening approaches, sound a retreat.

Call your minds off from the world and summon your thoughts together to think of the great work of the approaching day. So he doesn't give a bunch of things to do, not to do, but come aside and prepare yourself for the approaching day. And so there's some things that parents can do, obviously, you know, make sure that we're reflecting this as a day of delight to our children. That's, I think, super important. We can read, we can sing, we can talk, we can think about the things of God and what's going to be spoken of in the coming day or maybe the songs that we're going to be singing.

We can encourage and we can comfort and we can exhort one another as well and remember that the Pharisees again they totally miss the spirit of the Sabbath. We don't want to do that by making just a series of rules necessarily. Now families might have certain rules and that's fine. The family can do that, but We don't want to miss the spirit of the Sabbath. And at the same time, the great danger, in fact, probably the greater danger today that we have is the idea of, again, antinomianism.

And we have no regard for the day, or very little regard for the day. I'm free, I can do whatever I want. Right, you again have that one pit on one side and a pit on the other side. And so again, honor and delight should be our chief impulse. And so my thought is for all of us just to consider this, that if you're wondering what to do or how did all these I think the good question to ask yourself is what honors God most on his day and then take what God is teaching you the Word of God and then do those things honor him on his day and give him all the glory it's a day that's not like any of the other days he set it aside he sanctified it and it is commanded it's an obligation and so the last scripture I just want to read to us as well it we've talked about how it's a Sabbath day that reflects what God has done in creation, but in the second giving of the law in Deuteronomy, right when they were on the verge of entering into the promised land, this is what the Lord says in the second giving of the Ten Commandments.

He says, remember that you were a slave in Egypt. Remember you were a slave in this world. Remember that hard bondage of making bricks without straw? That's what it is like when you're walking in the world. He says, remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." And so what does the Sabbath day do? It reflects on the beauty of our Creator, but it also reminds us of our great need for a Savior. It reminds us that we're sinners, that we need God. Not only that He created us, but oh, how I need Him to save me, and I want to be washed, I want to please Him, I want to honor him in everything. It's this open declaration of reminding ourselves and reminding one another that he is both creator and he is Redeemer.

And so he's bringing us to this eternal rest. But until then, let's honor him on this day and give him all the praise and the glory that's due to him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that your word is so beautiful.

We thank you for your intentions in giving us a day of rest, Lord, how you've made this day for man. Help us, O Lord, to honor you on this day and to be corrected and to be challenged by what your word actually teaches about it. We ask you, Lord, give us soft hearts and help us, Father, to not just take these things into our heads, but to acknowledge you as a great creator and an amazing Redeemer. Lord, you've bought us and you've purchased us for yourself. And we just pray that we would live all of our days in honor and praise to your name.

But on these days that you've given to us the Sabbath rest oh lord we pray that it would be acceptable in your sight and that you would receive all the glory and all the praise in christ's name we pray amen