In his sermon, Peter Allison discusses the right use of the Sabbath, drawing from Luke 13 where Jesus heals a woman bound by infirmity for 18 years. He emphasizes that the Sabbath is a day of rest and worship, not just a time for refraining from work but also for acts of mercy and necessity. The sermon illustrates how Jesus' healing on the Sabbath was a fulfillment of the fourth commandment, showing love and compassion. This action challenged the synagogue ruler's rigid interpretation of the law. The Sabbath is described as a divine institution, emphasizing God's sovereignty over time, work, and rest. It is a reminder of God's creation, a day to cease from usual labor and to delight in worship and mercy. The sermon warns against both neglecting the Sabbath and adding extra burdens not prescribed by God. Ultimately, the Sabbath points to the rest promised in Christ and reflects our heart's desire towards God.

Please turn to Luke 13. I'd like to read the beginning of verse 10. Hear God's holy and infallible word. Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up.

But when Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath. And he said to the crowd, there are six days on which men ought to work. Therefore come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath.

The Lord then answered him and said, Hypocrite, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound, think of it, for eighteen years Be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath. And when He had said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame, and all the multitude rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by Him." The entrance of His Word gives light and understanding to the simple. Heavenly Father, do thank you for the light that you give to us who are simple, to make us wise, even wiser than our instructors. We ask that you would illumine our hearts today, this morning.

We ask that you would open them to receive your word. We ask that it would come to us in the power of your Holy Spirit and with much assurance. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips for this, to declare this message. In Jesus' name we ask, amen. Well, I'm sure most of us have had the experience of sitting in one position for a long time for something that maybe required some care and precision and then trying to stand up or move to another position and finding it very difficult.

Maybe that's becoming more true as you get older, less true maybe when you're little and your bones and joints are very supple. But these things, our body can take time to adjust to a change. Well, if you hold a joint immobile, and for a long time, maybe weeks, your joints can actually freeze up and lock up so that they can't be moved. Something like this has apparently happened to this woman as Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, he sees this woman bent over, completely unable to stand up. There was, she could, he says, could in no way raise herself up.

But Jesus sees her and immediately calls her to him. This woman from this account is a faithful saint. We know that because one, she is at the synagogue on the Sabbath. That's where faithful Saints went to worship God To the synagogue she's there despite her crippling infirmity, something she's had for 18 years, bent over, completely unable to stand up, but nevertheless she is in the house of God in this synagogue on the Sabbath as Jesus is preaching. Jesus calls her a daughter of Abraham.

He's saying she is in the covenant. She is a member of the covenant of grace. That The sign of the covenant is upon her. Women weren't able to receive the sign of the covenant in the Old Testament of membership, but they were considered as if they were circumcised. And this is one of those places where we see that.

They were part of the covenant. And as soon as Jesus heals her, she glorifies him. She praises him. Immediately she glorifies God. So these are all the signs, the marks, the characteristics of a saint.

Now, we don't know what exactly produced this infirmity, but Jesus does say that it was the result of demonic oppression. So here's a believer, a saint, who has been oppressed by Satan 18 years. She's been bound by him. We don't know if there were was some physical circumstance. You know There have been times when wicked people have put prisoners of war in positions, in instruments of torture where they can't move and leave them there for many days, weeks, and to the point where their body then is unable to move.

So we don't know whether there was some physical cause like that that was done through the motivation or the instigation of Satan driving, moving people to do something to her or whether this was something that happened like Job's sickness came spiritually to him. But in any event we know that this was the result of satanic oppression. Jesus says Satan has bound her. And many times, the people that Jesus heals, they are healed, or they were oppressed. They had these maladies that were brought on by satanic oppression.

Jesus sees her, he calls her to him, And he lays his hands on her. Because touch is important. He didn't just say, be healed. He could have. And sometimes he did do that.

Remember the centurion who recognized that Jesus was a man of authority and that all Jesus had to do was to say the word Jesus didn't have to come physically into his house. He said I'm not worthy for you to come into my house and Jesus then healed that That one without having to come But in this case Jesus puts his hands upon her he laid his hands on her. Hands are instruments that communicate love, The touch. Physical affection is communicated through hands. He didn't ask her if she wanted to be healed.

Many times Jesus healed people because they asked him, because they sought healing from him. And he might ask them if he saw them, if they wanted to be healed. But he doesn't do any of these things. He simply sees her, calls him to himself, puts his hands upon her and says, woman, you are loosed from your infirmity." And immediately she was made straight and she could stand up and she glorified God. Now that should have been an occasion of great rejoicing.

Here's somebody for 18 years who's been bent over, completely unable to stand up, and now she's healed. She glorified God, And everybody else ought to have been glorifying God, but there was the ruler of the synagogue who was indignant that this had happened. Jesus in doing this was keeping the Sabbath. The Sabbath commandment, the fourth commandment, deals with our use of time. We are commanded to work for six days and to rest for one day in seven.

And Since the resurrection, that day is the first day of the week. But at this point in history, it was the seventh day. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and then on the seventh day He rested. So the fourth commandment calls us to remember that Sabbath day and to keep it holy and to follow God's example in working six days and resting on the seventh day. Six days you shall labor, God spoke from Mount Sinai, and do all your work.

But the seventh day is the Sabbath and Sabbath is a Hebrew word, it's a transliteration of a Hebrew word that means rest. It means to cease from exertion and to rest. Sabbath is just a transliteration of this word for rest. The seventh day is a Sabbath. The seventh day is the Sabbath.

It's saying that on this seventh day, we are to, it is a Sabbath, which means it is a rest. It's a Sabbath of the Lord God. He rested on that day. That's why it's a Sabbath of the Lord God. In it, you shall not do any work.

You, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger, that is within your gates. For in six days, here's God's example, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. And he rested on the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. He set it apart as a special day. And so we are to remember the Sabbath day.

Now today that Sabbath is the first day. The first day of the week is the day that light, God created the light. On the first day God created light So that is the that is the first day of the week this day that we celebrate now as the Sabbath was the day that God Created light it was the day that God arose God Christ arose being the light of the world and it was the day that the Holy Spirit fell upon. And so as some hymn writers and poets have noted this was a triple light that was given on this first day of the week. And so ever since the resurrection we set apart the first day of the week as the Sabbath.

And that is a command in scripture, this change of the day. In some ways it's been translated away, but there are several places in the Gospels and in the Epistles that refer to this day as the first day Sabbath. Now most translations will say first day of the week, but the word they're translating in those places is Sabbath. The first day is not there in the text, they add that. It's really the first of the Sabbath.

Or on the first day Sabbath, if you want to put the word day in there to distinguish it from the seventh day Sabbath and so this is not just an inference This is not something that is just the tradition of the church to do it. The church has done it on this day because it is commanded in Scripture that the day of rest has changed from the seventh day to the first day. The day of the triple light was given. And so this, but this rest day, whether it's the seventh day before the resurrection or the first day after the resurrection, this Sabbath day is kept in the same way. It is to be remembered or set apart by a holy resting.

That's what a Sabbath is, a resting. So we're to rest this day, not only from things that would be wrong at any time, But even the things that are right the work that is good that work that is even commanded Of us the other six days on this day. We are to rest from that work and we're to make it our Delight we're to make it our practice to spend this whole day in resting in works of worship and works of necessity and works of mercy. That can be public worship, private worship, works of necessity, and works of mercy. We're to prepare our hearts for this day with foresight.

We're given examples in the scripture of how, that there is to be a certain preparation for this day, so that we are able to rest this day, that our work can be set aside safely and we can rest on this day. And so Jesus is doing this. The Bible tells us that as was His custom, as was His custom, Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. And here in this day he was teaching in the synagogue. Jesus kept the Sabbath law, the fourth commandment, perfectly.

So everything that Jesus does on the Sabbath is in keeping with the fourth commandment. Jesus is not giving us a new understanding of the fourth commandment that is different from what Moses gave. This was the custom of faithful Jews to gather every week in the synagogue to worship God and to hear God's word taught. In Acts 15 at that assembly of the very first ecumenical council of the church where they answered one of the first doctrinal questions that divided the church. We read that the apostles say that Moses is preached every week.

For Moses has had throughout many generations, it wasn't something new, didn't just start recently, from many generations going back into the time that they came into the land of Canaan. Those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues, every Sabbath. So Jesus is keeping the Sabbath the fourth commandment. And our worship today is based on that pattern that was established in the synagogues, that of preaching, teaching the Word of God, of praying and of singing. This is what Jesus did on the Sabbath.

But this proper keeping of the Sabbath that Jesus was engaged in is challenged by this ruler of the synagogue. So the ruler of the synagogue is incensed that Jesus healed somebody on the Sabbath. And he says, He doesn't answer Jesus directly. He goes right to the crowd, which is really quite disrespectful in some ways of Jesus. But he goes to the crowd and he says, there are six days in which men ought to work.

That is true. That is a true statement. Therefore, come and be healed on them and not on the Sabbath. That is a misapplication and Jesus corrects it. Here's the ruler of the synagogue.

He's ordained and examined to this office. It would have been his responsibility to superintend the work of the worship in the synagogue each week. The prayers, the scripture readings, the songs. He would in each case determine what songs were to be sung or what scriptures were to be read or who was to be called upon to give the teaching, to read from the law and the prophets, who was to conduct the prayers. And Alfred Edersheim says who would act as the Sheleak Sabir, or the messenger of the congregation, who would deliver an address.

So there were people that were ordained to these offices. And so he may have been the one that arranged for Jesus to do this. We don't know. Jesus may have in some way assumed that authority, but Jesus usually worked under the customs of their day when they were appropriate. And so basically you could say in short that the care of the synagogue, its building, its grounds, as well as the worship that was done in it each week was the responsibility of this man.

So he's a ruler in this community. And Jesus was doing something that was contrary to what he thought was right and probably what he had been teaching or the other elders in that synagogue. And so he wants to re-instruct the crowd in what he believed was the right teaching, the right understanding of the fourth commandment. Now his teaching was correct, but his application is way off. Very wrong.

And Jesus immediately answers him, Hypocrite, you hypocrite. You have the form of godliness, but you lack the inward reality. Your righteousness is worthless. It's not righteousness in the sight of God. And Jesus points out their gross inconsistency.

Our obedience to the law is done out of love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. And there must be a love for God. That's why we do keep these commandments. And when we love God, then we will keep these commandments.

But if we don't love God's people, then we're not loving God. Jesus says, John said in his epistle, if someone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this ruler in being indignant that this woman who is bound by Satan for so many years was healed, him being indignant shows that he lacked any love for her. He lacked compassion for her.

He should have been rejoicing that she was healed on this day. But he didn't love his sister in Christ and Jesus is saying to him, you don't love God either. And so Jesus calls him out as a hypocrite. Because it was not out of love that he led his donkey and his ox into water. It was his own on the Sabbath day.

It was his own self-interest in preserving his property. And Jesus points this out. He says, doesn't each of you on the Sabbath loose his oxen or donkey from the stall and lead it to water? So you ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whose Satan has bound, think of it, 18 years, should she be loosed on the Sabbath. Now, the people saw that comparison immediately.

They recognized the hypocrisy that here's somebody who loves his animal more than he loves this woman made in the image of God. And the multitude rejoice at what happens. So Jesus establishes here the fourth commandment. Jesus is our righteousness. He perfectly keeps the law of God.

This is before His sacrifice. This is before His crucifixion. This is the Old Covenant. So even if the Sabbath changed, what's happening here is prior to that change. The Sabbath is still on the seventh day.

It hasn't shifted to the first day. So this is still the Old Covenant. So whatever is required under the Old Testament to keep the Sabbath, it's required of Jesus. Jesus does not annul in any way any of the commandments. He observed the Old Testament ceremonies and sacrifices because he perfectly kept the law of God in every way.

And so what Jesus does here has to be seen as keeping, affirming, upholding the fourth commandment as it was to be obeyed in the Old testament. And so what the fourth commandment teaches us is that first God is the creator of time and that he is sovereign over it. God is the creator of time and he is sovereign over it. Historians like to theorize about how days and months and years came into existence. We can point to the earth turning on its axis, the moon circling the earth, the earth turning on its axis for a day, the moon circling the earth for a month, the earth and the sun constitute a year, their relative motion constitute a year.

But where does the week come from? There's nothing out there that would create a week. Where does that come from? God created it. It came from God, the sovereign creator of time, establishing a week.

And people that have rebelled against God have tried to change the week. Well, why don't we make it 10 days? But you know, since the history of the world, nobody has been able to change the week. That's a testament to God's sovereignty over time. That here's something that has no connection to anything that God made.

And actually the idea that we get a day because that's the time the earth turns on its axis is backwards. God says that the earth turns on it, God says that he made the planetary bodies to be markers of time, not the creators of it. The earth turns on its axis, God made that to happen in the space of a day. The day already existed. God made the earth's turning to be a keep marker of it.

God made the moon's course around the earth to be a marker of a month, not the definition or not the origination of time. These heavenly bodies keep time. That God has created and over which he is sovereign. And so when it comes to the weak, God created that. God who is the creator of time has created a weak and nobody has been able to change it.

Though people have tried. It utterly fails because we are not the creators of time. We cannot create our own time. God created the Sabbath to be that weekly marker, and He set it apart. He made it holy.

In Genesis we read that on the seventh day, God ended His work, and he rested from the seventh day from all his work that he had done and he blessed that day and he Sanctified it that means he set it apart as a different and a special day. He set it apart because he rested So God is the creator of time. He's the one who makes it progress He's the one who makes time move forward He can make it stop if he wants and he did in the days of Joshua And Joshua was fighting the Ammonites or he can make it go backwards as he did in the days of Hezekiah. But he is also the one who makes it go forward at the appointed times in the ordinary way. It's God that does that.

God is also sovereign over work. God established work at the creation. And so being created in God's image, we are to work and rest after the pattern that He established at creation. Today we sometimes have the idea, we sometimes hear the idea in our culture that the less work you do the better, the better off you are. Or we might hear the more work you do the better off you are.

You know, do more work and get ahead. You build more wealth over your lifetime if you work longer and work harder. And so there are people today who are chasing very big incomes and very big ideas who will work all the time. They get up at 5 a.m. And they work every day like that.

Both those ideas are wrong. God is sovereign over work, and what we ought to be doing is working when God says we're to be working, and resting when He says we're to be resting. See, work is a person's faithful response to the Word of God, and to God's sovereignty over work. That we work in the day, six days a week, and that we rest at night. God has called us to rest and we rest on the Sabbath day all day.

God is also sovereign over rest. The Sabbath was made as a day of rest, and it was made for us specifically. The Sabbath was made for man. It wasn't made for any other reason. It was a blessing.

It was something that was given to us as a blessing. Now maybe little children don't like to take naps and rest, but quickly, most people quickly grow out of that. And we enjoy our rest. We need to remember the Sabbath is a blessing. It was given to us as a rest, not as a day to make us chafe, not as a day to bind us and keep us from doing those things that we want to do but can't.

You can tell who someone's God is. Really tell who their God is by who they acknowledge as sovereign over their time. Do they think their time belongs to them? If so, then the rest in the Sabbath will be a day of chafing. Well, I can't do what I want to do.

When we have that thinking, We're saying that our time is ours. You know, if our state, if the civil magistrate, the state, or our employer gives us A holiday, a day of rest, do we receive it? Or do we reject it because we have too much work to do? If God gives us a day of rest, a holy day, a day that's set apart, do we receive it as a blessing that's to be enjoyed, or is it something that we avoid? To the Sabbath rest is a testimony every week that God is sovereign over our time, over our work, and over our rest.

So we need to, if we're going to rightly keep the Sabbath as Jesus did, we need to avoid really two errors. We need to avoid freeing our conscience of the law of God and the need to keep it. And we need to avoid binding our conscience from requirements that are added to God's law. We need to avoid freeing our conscience of God's law. Jesus is here affirming the duty, our duty, to keep the Sabbath.

It ought to be a day that we delight in. And Nehemiah gives us an example of people who were trying to free their conscience from God's law. And in Nehemiah 13, Nehemiah tells us that In those days, he said, I saw people in Judah, this is the church, treading wine presses on the Sabbath. They were harvesting and they were preparing their food on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaves from the field and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day." Nehemiah says, I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions. And there were other people outside the church, these men of Tyre, who were also there.

And they brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Israel and in Jerusalem. So Nehemiah says, I contended with the nobles and I said to them What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do thus and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? That you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath." So it was. At the gates of Jerusalem, Nehemiah says, as it began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded the gates to be shut and charged that they must not be opened till after the Sabbath." And then he says he posted some of his servants at the gate so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath.

Now the merchants and the sellers of wares all lodged outside of Jerusalem once or twice. So he warns them, why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, he says, I will lay hands on you. As a civil magistrate he was saying, I am serious about enforcing this Sabbath commandment. I will lay hands on you if you do this again.

And from that time on they came no more on the Sabbath. And He commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves and they should go and guard the gates to sanctify the Sabbath day This this was a this is a day of rest. It's not it's not a day of work Jeremiah 17 speaks of the same thing. In verse 21. And he says, the Lord said to Jeremiah, go and stand in the gate of the children of the people by which the kings of Judah come in and go out in all the gates of Jerusalem and say to them, hear the word of the Lord, you kings of Judah and Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who enter by the gates.

Thus says the Lord, Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem, nor carry a burden out of your house on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day as I commanded your fathers. But they did not obey or incline their ear, but they made their neck stiff that they might not receive instruction. And it shall be if you Heed me carefully, says the Lord, to bring no burden into the gates of the city on the Sabbath, but hallow the Sabbath day and do no work on it. Then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, and riding in chariots and horses and their princes accompanied by the men of Judah, and this city shall remain forever. But if you will not heed me to hallow the Sabbath day, such as not carrying a burden when entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." In other words, this is not like a little commandment that has no consequence.

This is an important commandment. In our land, even into my lifetime, there were civil laws against working on the Sabbath day. They are sometimes called blue laws. And of all the laws that were on the books, some of these laws continued, even after other laws, good laws were dropped. It was often against the law to open stores for commerce on the Lord's Day.

I remember my pastor talking about in his lifetime when I was growing up, talking about in his lifetime in the city that we lived in, said there would only be one pharmacy open on the Lord's Day. And if you needed medication on the Lord's Day, you would need to call a number to find out which pharmacy in the county was open on the Lord's Day. And they apparently took turns to be open. We have to avoid freeing our conscience of God's law. This is a commandment.

Just as much as you shall not murder, you shall not steal, and you shall not commit adultery. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy and this is how the scriptures tell us to keep it holy, to do no work on it, to stop our regular employment. And God has said to Jeremiah that his judgment was coming upon the city if they did not keep his Sabbath holy. We also need to ensure that our servants are able to cease from their regular labor. And that's one of the reasons why going to restaurants is something we should avoid ordinarily.

But there may be times where it's necessary because it is necessary to eat. But ordinarily if we're able to we should allow these people as our servants to have a day of rest on that day. But we also need to avoid binding our conscience from requirements that are added to God's law. And so there are certain works of necessity that are right to do on the Sabbath. In Matthew 12, Jesus is walking through a grain field.

You might say corn field, but that's what we would call grain. And they were hungry and they began to pluck the heads of grain in verse 1. And the Pharisees saw and they are upset again because they're saying His disciples are not doing or doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. And Jesus, again, rebukes them. He says, you're ignorant of the word of God.

Have you not read what David did when he was hungry. When David was fleeing Saul, he came to the tabernacle, he came to Abimelech, the tabernacle, and he hadn't had anything to eat and the people that were with him, and there was nothing there to give him. And so, Bimalek gave him the showbread. That it wasn't lawful for anyone but the priest to eat. And he said, haven't you read about that?

Now why was that good? Here is something that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to eat the showbread. But in this case it was necessary because David was hungry and his men and they needed something to eat and so the bread was rightfully given to them because the purpose of the law is to remember mercy. Or also works of worship. Jesus said the priests profane the Sabbath and are innocent.

Numbers explains the duties of priests on the Sabbath day. On the Sabbath day, Numbers 28 says, Two lambs in their first year without blemish, and two tenths of an ephah of fine flour as a grain offering mixed with oil and with its drink offering. This is the burnt offering for every Sabbath besides the regular burnt offering. So on the Sabbath day the priest had to do more work Sacrificing animals like lambs is hard work. It's butchering, it's lifting and lugging, it's dirty work.

And yet the priests were commanded to do it. Because works of worship are proper on the Sabbath day, and the priests are not guilty of breaking it. Works of mercy are also necessary or appropriate on the Sabbath day. So leading animals to water, as Jesus cites the example. Even the Pharisees acknowledged that.

But Jesus pointed out they weren't doing it out of mercy to the animals, they were doing it out of a selfish interest in preserving their animals. But healing someone bound by Satan is a work of mercy. And yes, ordinarily you might do these kinds of things on the regular day. A doctor would normally work on regular days. But in this case, this was a woman who had been bound by 18 years and it was an act of mercy for her to be healed.

You see the Sabbath addresses our heart. If we're asking for someone to give us a set of rules to do this and don't do this, I think we're completely missing the point of the Sabbath. The Sabbath and our response to it reveal the desire of our heart, which God sees. And the desire of our heart, God says in Isaiah 58, if you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my day, and instead, call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable. And honor Him, not doing your own way, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you will 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. And speaking about what the desire of our heart is. Is it to have this day of rest? If it is, if the desire of our heart is out of love to the Lord, to enjoy this day of rest, then our conscience won't be bound by extra rules. And where we see the need for mercy, we'll gladly render that mercy.

Where we see there's a work of necessity, we'll do it. Sometimes there's a work of necessity that is due to our own lack of preparation. And Then I have to say, when that happens to me, Lord please forgive my lack of preparation that I had to do this work on the Lord's day when I could have done it earlier. But it becomes a necessity at that point. Sabbath reveals our heart, much like the tenth commandment concerns our heart toward our neighbor.

The fourth commandment concerns our heart toward the Lord God. This commandment shows us that we can never keep the law in our own strength. Probably more than any other commandment. We may think we have kept the sixth commandment because we didn't kill anyone this week. Or that we've kept the Eighth Commandment because we didn't steal any cars lately.

Now that's obviously not true, but we can easily deceive ourselves that way. But when it comes to this commandment, it speaks directly to the desires of our heart. What is our heart desiring to do? And it's plain to see that we just can't keep it. Because so often our heart wants to do what it wants to do.

It wants to do its own pleasure and it finds and chases at sometimes the Sabbath rest. And so the Sabbath reveals our need of Christ. We need Christ. We need His righteousness because He is the only one who can perfectly do the will and pleasure of His Father and perfectly keep this day, showing mercy where it is needed, engaging in works of necessity where that is needed, but spending the whole day doing the pleasure of His Father. Only Christ was perfectly able to do that.

We need His righteousness. We need His sacrifice because we've broken this commandment. And we need the rest that is promised in this day. Hebrews chapter 4 speaks about a coming rest that we are looking forward to. It says, there remains a promise of entering his rest.

If Joshua had given them rest when they came into the land of Canaan, then God would not have afterwards spoken of another rest. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. And this Sabbath, this day of rest on earth, is pointing forward to that rest that we look forward to when we will rest with God in heaven and with Christ. That is what this day points to. It's a foretaste of that rest that He is preparing for us.

And we need it. We need it. May God enable us more and more to enjoy the rest of this day and to turn aside our foot from our own pleasure and honor the Lord in this day that He's given to us as a day of blessing. Let's pray. Oh Father in heaven, we thank you for your example, for the example of the scriptures that are a guide to us, for all these things you have said that were written before were written for our learning and our instruction.

Father, we do lift up our many needs, needs for healing, for her rardo, for reconciliation and unity. We lift up Dawn and her mother as a travel lord. We ask for your protection, for your healing. We pray for Calvin's mother too and ask for your healing for her and her relief from pain and her rehabilitation from this surgery. That is, we ask as well for Foundation Church, we lift them up to you.

We thank you for your blessing of them and on this recent trip to Honduras. We thank you for the help that they were able to give and for the gospel that was able to be preached. We pray Lord for the refugees to whom they minister down there that you would provide for them homes again and jobs and work. We lift up Andrea as well in this discovery of this defect in her heart. We pray for your healing to her.

We pray that You would enable the surgeons to repair this, and that you would give her relief from the symptoms and that she has endured for so long. Lord, we ask that you might deliver her, that you would set her free, and that you would heal her. Lord, we ask your blessing on the remainder of this day of rest, enable us to delight in it, to rejoice before you, even feasting before you, Enjoying the rest of the day, the fellowship and worship. We ask these things.