Levi Hopkins' sermon on 'Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day' from the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 22, Paragraph 8, emphasizes the divine origin and significance of the Lord's Day. He asserts that the Sabbath was set apart by God and should be honored and kept holy, serving as a foreshadowing of eternal rest in Christ. Hopkins acknowledges the diversity in how Christians observe the Sabbath, urging grace and understanding among believers. He highlights that the Sabbath is a day for spiritual delight and communion with God, free from the usual demands of work and personal pursuits. The preacher also addresses the importance of rest and good deeds on the Sabbath, citing Jesus' teachings to emphasize that the day should not be a burden but a blessing. The ultimate goal of the Sabbath is to glorify God and enjoy His presence, reflecting on the completed work of Christ and looking forward to eternal rest. Hopkins concludes with a call for personal holiness and communal worship, urging believers to avoid distractions that detract from the day's sacred purpose.

Before we begin, please just join me in a word of prayer. Father in heaven, I pray that you just give me grace today, Lord. I need your grace. We all need your grace. Lord, I pray that you would admonish us today, that you would feed us today, that you would nourish us according to our needs, Lord.

I pray that we would be given a better understanding of you. They would behold you more in your fullness. They would be shaping more according to your likeness. That your name would be lifted up in our midst, Lord. That we would be in the Spirit on this Lord's Day.

That you'd help us to clear away any distractions, Lord. Any false, hypocritical desires, Lord, or emotions, but that we would just worship you in truth. That we would delight in you today. That we would honor your name and give you glory. Lord I pray that you would just guide my every word that you'd help me to speak truth without error for your name's sake.

In Jesus' name, Amen. So last week, Mr. Beckler did an excellent job covering the previous paragraph on the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath. If you didn't get a chance to hear that message, I'd strongly encourage that you go back and listen to it when you're able. So the confession having established that the Lord's Day is now and always will be, the Christian Sabbath moves on to how the Christian Sabbath is to be kept.

And this is where we pick up today in paragraph 8. Before I do, I like to make a few things clear. This is not our day. It's not a day that we set aside for the Lord. It's not some grand church or family tradition that we follow and are going to try to pass on to our future generation.

It's the Lord's day that he set apart, not us, not his disciples, not church history. The Lord set it apart. When his earthly work was finished and he entered into his eternal rest, just as was foreshadowed in creation. I'm going to repeat that. The Lord set it apart when his earthly work was finished and he entered into his eternal rest just as was foreshadowed in creation.

This day should be treated with honor and delight. It is to be remembered and to be kept holy. But how is it to be kept holy? This is an area of much debate as I've never met two Christians that fully align and would keep the Sabbath the exact same way. It's a matter of the conscience.

As humans, we tend to want things to be in absolute black and white. This is right and this is wrong. You can do this, you can't do that. This is holy, this is unholy. But the New Testament doesn't give us that kind of clarity when it comes to the Sabbath.

And there's areas like this in Christianity such as modesty. It is not clear enough lines where you can point at somebody else and say this is the mark, this is the clear line, this is modesty, this is immodesty. It's a matter of the conscience. That's not that it can't be clear and that we can't find God's will and can't do it. But I think we should have a lot of grace for our brothers and sisters in areas such as these and how it is kept.

What we do know is that the day is the Lord's that is set apart from all others, a day in which we look forward to the fullness of our rest when we will no longer be caught up in this conflict of the fulfillment of flesh or the Spirit. We will have one dominant delight and that is to be in the presence of our Lord and enjoy Him forever. One of our scripture proofs this morning was from Isaiah 58 which talks about our desires on this holy day and delighting in the Sabbath. It is not a day for seeking our own pleasures and chasing after our own desires and that we are to avoid idle conversation. That's not to say that we should avoid anything that gives us pleasure on the Sabbath or that the Sabbath is a day of some sort of extreme bondage and slavery where any enjoyable activity is somehow forbidden, prohibited.

I believe that it is simply setting in contrast that it is a day of seeking delight, gratification, and our fulfillment in Christ. And we should consider our words, our thoughts, and our activities in that light. We have an entire day that is set apart, a day where we are not burdened by the driving force of the busy marketplace, hard manual labor, and our desire to earn and achieve more toward our goals. The temptation with all this free time is to sink back into our busyness that dominates the rest of our week, and let it dominate our thoughts, our words, and many times our actions. These are the pleasures that that passage is talking about.

These are our own ways. In contrast, we should order our week in a way that brings a close to the pressing, driving, dominating force of the previous week. As our confession states, to prepare our hearts and order our common affairs a forehand, bringing the week to a close, that we can fully focus our undivided pleasure in communion with our Lord. You'll remember from the shorter catechism, it was put so well, man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is a day that is entirely freed up to that purpose, to seek not after our own ways, but after our chief end, the fellowship and enjoyment and glorification of our Lord on His holy day.

The confession states that the entire day should be taken up in private and public worship. That is a great goal, but I believe that it could be worded a little differently for clarification's sake. I believe that the public and private worship should be the dominating feature of the Lord's Day. The driving force, the ultimate pleasure. We aren't sinning if there's periods throughout the day where we are not found in worship.

Times like a nap. And I've literally spoke with Christians, professing believers, that would go so far to be pharisaical and say that any form of personal pleasure is a sin and that you shouldn't nap on the Sabbath day. There is still part of it the Sabbath that includes unnecessary physical rest where we can enjoy extra sleep, extra time with our family, our spouses, our children, and our church body, or in good necessary labor, such as helping others or tending to the needs of others, or that of our own home that have been neglected by the toil of the previous week. In the words of Jesus when asked if it was right that he worked a miracle on the Sabbath, he responded, is it not good to do good on the Sabbath? It is good.

You know, Most of the time when Jesus discussed or commented on the law, he was rebuking them, the people of that time for not taking it far enough, for having the standards set too low. You'd say, you've heard this said, but I tell you this. You've heard this, but I tell you this. But correct me if I'm wrong, when it comes to the Sabbath, this is an area where Jesus, anytime he commented on the Sabbath, he was commenting to tell him, You've taken it too far. I said this, and you're saying all this, and making all these laws and binding men's consciences.

You're straining at the gnat, but swallowing the camel, you've missed the point entirely. He's correcting them from making the Sabbath day a day of bondage, where men's hands were tied from doing any good or necessary work on the Sabbath. I pulled this quote from DesiringGod.org, An article by Scott Hubbard. The ultimate Sabbath rest is coming. When God's people will enjoy work without toil, hearts without sin, and an earth without thorns.

I thought that was so well put. When we enter into our eternal rest that is foreshadowed in the Lord's day, we will still be working. But it is a work without toil, a work without burdens, without sin, without fleshly desires, without a conflict in the soul. The Sabbath is a day of freedom and holy delight. We've been liberated from the bondage of sin and given an ability to worship.

This is our rest, but we also long for the time when we will enter into our rest in its fullness and enjoy Christ forever. I listened to a sermon by R.C. Sproul about the Sabbath day as a creation ordinance and I thought it was very interesting how he talked about the Sabbath as something that was indisputably displayed in creation. As stated in Romans 8, it's an area where man is left without excuse by the order of creation. The moral law of God is written upon our hearts and sealed in our created order.

From the beginning of creation, it was necessary for man to have a day of rest. There is no change in God. He is not a hard master, and he would not leave us without a day of rest. This rest is a picture of the rest we also enjoy in part and look forward to in the fullness of with Christ in eternity. We should use this day that he's provided faithfully.

We should avoid any temptations to consume it upon our own earthly desires, but rather find a delight in the day that is set apart for non-burdened fulfillment and a passionate seeking after God and enjoying the sweet communion we've been given with Him. And we should use it to pursue our chief end, the glory and enjoyment of our Lord forever. I'll end with this. When we consider how the Christian Sabbath is to be kept, let's avoid any desire that conflicts with the chief desire that should dominate the day. Avoiding such activities that would draw our hearts and minds toward personal pursuits and away from what should be our passionate delight that dominates the day, the worship, communion, praise, and adoration of our Lord.

And the remembrance that it is finished. Jesus earthly ministry and the work is accomplished, is complete, righteousness is obtained, and he has entered into the fullness of his rest. The sacrifice was accepted and we too will one day enter into the fullness of his rest forever to be together with the Lord. Let's just pray. Lord God I just thank you once again for the Sabbath.

I thank you that you have set it apart as holy. I thank you for a day, Lord, where we don't have to be burdened with the cares and concerns and desires of our flesh, Lord, that we can focus on you, Lord. I thank you for the gift of your grace in giving us the ability to commune with you, to speak with you, to hear from you, to lift up our voices and praise to you. Lord, we just thank you. That is not us in any way, Lord, that you've done it all.

You've provided everything we could possibly need to serve you faithfully. Lord, I pray that you would just give us grace to walk humbly before you, to obey your word, to give patience, Lord, for our brothers and sisters, to be bold with each other, to let iron sharpen iron, not to be afraid of necessary conflicts, Lord, but not to engage in unnecessary disputes, Lord, and not to judge our brothers and sisters by any standard that is not yours. To judge ourselves first, Lord, to begin inward. I pray that you just make us more holy each and every day today Lord that you would be worshiped in our midst in Jesus name amen. Thank you.