This morning we continue our consideration of the commandments, the Ten Commandments, specifically the Fourth Commandment as we have it summarized for us in the Heidelberg Catechism. We read Isaiah 58, Isaiah chapter 58. Isaiah 58, beginning at verse 1 as we hear now the Word of God. Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to My people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sin. For day after day after they seek Me out, they seem eager to know My ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask Me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you have not noticed? Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen? Only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast? A day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed to pray and break in every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shunderer? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and He will say, Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always. You will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations who will be called repairer of broken walls and restorer of streets with dwellings. If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speak these idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord. And I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. And turn with me, if you would, in the back of this altar hymnal to page 52. Page 52. Lord's Day 38. Question and Answer 103. Page 52, as we confess together what we believe, as we read the words of this answer. Question 1 asks me, is God's will for us in the fourth commandment? First, that the gospel ministry and education for it be maintained, and that especially on the festive day of rest, I regularly attend the assembly of God's people to learn what God's Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to God publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. Second, that every day of my life I rest from my evil ways, let the Lord work in me through His Spirit, and so begin already in this life the eternal Sabbath. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we consider to consider this fourth commandment of the law of God, we are dealing with something surprising to any of us, I trust, that has caused much controversy with regard to the reapplication of this commandment for those of us who live on this side of the cross, on this side of the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many Christian circles today that say that there is no longer a day, a specific day that Christians are required to set apart in the week. They say that we live every day in the rest of our Lord. And to that last part, we say, Amen! As the catechism teaches, that every day of my life, I rest from my evil ways. But for us, you see, it's not a question of if the Lord calls from us one day out of seven. We believe Scripture supports this as we hope to see. It's more of a question, how is that day to be spent? What is to characterize that day? Now, I'm afraid that for many, that which we call the Lord's Day has been changed into a day of what does God forbid? May I or may I not? Rather than what does God require? Instead of being busy with the things of the Father, so often we try to strictly fulfill the fourth commandment by a prompt omission of all sorts of everyday activities. In many respects, imitating the well-known Pharisees. This is not to say that we should worry about how we spend this day. We must, because God is very concerned, very interested in how we spend this day. Many have given in to a sinful conscience and justify many things that violate the Lord's day. And of course, when it comes to this, no preacher can possibly give a complete list of leaps and don'ts because the idea is we'll be as numerous as there are people. And that's not the point anyway. The true question for Sunday is, Lord, what would You have me to do? That's the true question. Lord, what would You have me to do? And if this is our discernment, and we won't have time for what not to do. We won't be tempted to compromise our selfish desires with God's demands. And when we strive to keep the Lord's day as He intended for us, then Sunday becomes the glory of all of the days and not a concentration camp surrounded by a barbed wire fence of touch not and taste not. Our gratitude, our fullness for God's redemptive grace is to be demonstrated by faithful observance to this commandment and as well as all of the others. This one, it seems, more than any of the others is the one that has been cut out and thrown away. Therefore, we need to consider the preacher of this Word of God, grateful, living, by remembering to keep the Lord's day. What is to be remembered? How is it to be remembered? And when is it to be remembered? Now, it's important for us to consider this commandment as it is given in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. And that's because two different reasons are given. As we read in Exodus 20, verses 8-11, Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. But He rested on the seventh day, and therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Now, Deuteronomy 5, except for a few words, repeats that commandment and the instruction about work. But then verse 15 of Deuteronomy 5 gives a different reason. It says, that you were a slave in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. Now, first of all, God calls His people to remember. And the idea of to remember is to focus one's attention completely upon. To give complete attention to something. And then as well, then as remembering is to move one to take action. As one of the catechism classes dealt with this morning, I understand. To prepare. To take action. And the action of this commandment, you see, is to keep or to guard the Sabbath day. Remembering and doing are to go together. We find the same idea in Psalm 103, verse 18. The context there talks about God's mercy and righteousness. And verse 18 says that that God's mercy and righteousness are upon such as keep as covenant and to those who remember His commandments to do them. Well, what is to be remembered? Very simply, the Sabbath day. Sabbath, we know, means to cease or to rest from an activity. And in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath day is contrasted to six days of labor and work. So clearly, for you and for those who work for you, the command is given to lay and get your work done in six days, but then on the seventh, put down your tools. Cease from that activity. And why are we called to stop all ordinary daily activity? Again, two reasons are given according to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. God's work of creation, first of all, and His work of redemption. Boys and girls, after God finished His work of creation, in six days, He didn't rest because He was tired and He needed to lay down and take a nap. But He rested from His work of creation in order to enter into the enjoyment of what He made. It was good. It was very good. And God's people are also to enter into the enjoyment of God, not the enjoyment of self, but the enjoyment of God and of His might and of His power and of His work of creation. And then after Egypt, the Israelites were reminded that they were to remember the freedom, the liberation which they enjoyed by the mighty hand and the outstretched arm of God. And then in Exodus 31, we find that the Sabbath also was to remind Israel of God's covenant with them and therefore celebrating the Sabbath the way God commanded, demonstrating commitment to the covenant of God. But all of this, the point of all of this creation, redemption, and covenant was that the entire focus of God's people was to be on Him. And in our Lord Jesus Christ, this creation, redemption, and covenant theme takes on an even richer meaning. In Him we are recreated because we have been redeemed from sin and now we enjoy a new covenant relationship with God through the blood of Jesus. And the Sabbath rest that we enjoy today is the eternal rest that we look forward to in heaven. We enjoy the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins already in this life. And therefore, as the catechism says, we are to rest from our evil ways, or as the older version says, from our evil works, looking forward to that day when we will be completely delivered from this body of death to dwell in the Father's heaven. We are to rest. This will be the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah 58, verse 14, which says, Then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the highest of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob, the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Well then, how is the Sabbath day to be remembered? The commandment says, to keep it holy. And then our God goes on in His instruction to tell us how to keep it holy. We cannot, we must not forget that God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Notice, beloved, it is God who set apart this day from the rest of the days for a particular use, for a whole use. This is not a church ordinance. It's not a man-made deal. God Himself set this day apart. And as God's people, we are to keep or guard like a soldier, the idea is. Keep or guard that day so that it stays separated unto the Lord. And what is it to be separated from? The six days of labor and work and time that God gives us to provide for and to use for ourselves. The other six days God has given to us to till the earth and to exercise dominion over His creation and to fulfill our own desires, of course, desires within His will. But one day, one day He keeps for Himself. And this was very clearly illustrated with the Israelites in the wilderness as every day they were to gather manna for one day at a time, except for the sixth day. They were to gather for two days because there would be no manna to gather on the seventh day. But to see, beloved, keeping the Sabbath day holy does not mean wasting it away either. As God's people were to rest from the work and the activities of the other six days, meaning don't do that work, but that in no way meant that this day was to simply become a lazy, hazy day of doing nothing with sleeping in and napping all afternoon. As on the other side, it was not to be a day of fulfilling one's own recreational enjoyment. The day was and is to be holy unto the Lord. It was His day. It still is to be used in His service. and this is because remembering involves actions remember do and don't do according to the love of god and this is where the pharisees got into trouble they considered only that which was forbidden and they developed a list of do's and don'ts consisting of literal literally hundreds of regulations they actually had a sort of a manual of what kind of work couldn't be done on the sabbath as i mentioned in the earlier service if i remember right i read something to the effect that they were allowed to tie their shoes, only not use two hands on the Sabbath. Ridiculous, huh? But their legalism turned the Sabbath into a concentration camp. And as they would challenge Jesus, He would correct them, telling them, in essence, that it was never God's intent for the Sabbath to become a day of straight jackets. In Mark 2, verse 27, Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man and not for the Sabbath. and our Lord demonstrated how man was to use the Sabbath in service to God. In the Reformed tradition, we consider works of piety or religion, works of necessity, and works of mercy to be permitted. Isaiah 58, 6 and 7 point to this somewhat. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? In Matthew 12, Jesus demonstrates these three things as well as other places, but specifically here. And in verse 5, we read of chapter 12, Or haven't you read in the law that on the Sabbath day the priests in the temple didn't desecrate the day and yet are innocent? And we know that Jesus Himself taught in the temple on the Sabbath day. The first four verses of chapter 12 talk about necessity, words of necessity. At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, Look, your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath. He answered, Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. And then verses 11 and 12 point to works of mercy. Verse 11, He said to them, if any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep? Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And of course, if you recall, that was in response to a healing. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Our Lord Jesus Christ used the Sabbath day to show that He was the Redeemer and to draw the attention of man to God. His healing pointed to the spiritual healing of all of God's people. The Sabbath was made for man. Why? So that he might be better able to serve his God. And the Catechism rightly guides believers in that direction. First, that the gospel ministry and education for it be maintained, and that especially on the festive day of rest, they regularly attend the assembly of God's people to learn what God's Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to God publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. I don't know how that answer puts to rest any idea of a lazy day. The action verbs there, maintain, regularly attend, learn, participate, Pray publicly. Bring. And when we consider the fact that from the very beginning, God set apart a day for Himself, for you and me, to focus our attention on Him and on His attributes and on His redemption, there should be no doubt that He is calling us to worship Him on that day. Believers are called to rest from normal everyday activity and labor, but to be active in spiritual labor in doing spiritual good. And the first thing that must be maintained is the church worship service. We need this, beloved. We need this to help us in our spiritual life. We are to come together to celebrate the spiritual rest that Christ gives to the weary and the heavy laden. And that means to remember our redemption through Him. And the Catechism rightly says, to regularly, or as the older version says, to diligently attend. Hebrews 10, verse 25 says that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of the dumb, but exhorting one another and so much more, the more as you see the day approaching. You see, nowhere, nowhere does Scripture teach that the worship of God's people is a come as you please and when you want approach. It is a privilege for God's people. But also an obligation. It's not optional. There are many things in the life of the church that are optional. Attending a Bible study. Teaching. Leading different things. These things are optional, but not the official gathering together, the called worship of God's people. It's not optional. And to treat worship as an option, but not skipping once in a while, or altogether is to be guilty of digressing the fourth commandment. Those who truly hunger and thirst after righteousness do not get enough. Many of you are familiar, I trust, with Dr. D. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And in a sermon that he preached on this very commandment, he has some helpful examples. I'd like to indulge you and read a couple of these. There was a man who just took over the presidency of a very large corporation. In his first week as president, he was told by his aide that there was a very important meeting called of all of the heads of the organization for the next day at 10 o'clock. He said, I'm sorry, I won't be able to be there. He, that is the aide, said, but sir, this is a very important matter. It is an emergency. It is a crisis. It must be dealt with. And he said, I'm sorry, but I have a previous appointment and I can't make it. The aide said, sir, I would be interested in knowing with whom you have such an important appointment that you can't break it for something as important as this. And he said, engagement is with the Lord to meet Him at His house, at His table, at 10.30 tomorrow, and I will be the will. His name was James Garfield, who was once the President of the United States. He had his priorities straight. Kennedy goes on. Some people say they just can't come to church because they are too busy. Well, let me tell you about a very busy man, a man who was an expert in business. He was enormously successful, and I would venture to say more successful than a businessman any of us knows. His name was J.C. Penney. He built one of the largest organizations in the world and he said this, If a man's business requires so much of his time that he cannot attend the Sunday morning and evening services and the Wednesday night prayer meeting of his church, that man has more business than God intended him to have. Wow. That's powerful. power, and that is from an effort on the subject. And then a little later in his sermon, Kennedy includes an example of himself dealing with questions that many of us have struggled with. He says, it is a thing that every Christian struggles with, questions like, do you go out to eat on the Lord's Day, on the Sabbath day? If you do, you are obviously making people work to feed you. And then he says, when I first came to this area about 40 years ago, that's Florida, we We didn't have any service. I had never thought about that problem. And my wife and I went out on Sunday evening to get something to eat. And I recall that one evening we were sitting at a counter in a little restaurant. The cook was behind the counter fixing the food we ordered. We were the only customers there, so I got into a conversation with this man who was about 40. I found out that he was a Christian. At least he professed to be. And I said to him, where do you go to church? He said, well, I don't go to church. So I started to go a little bit and said to him, well, you know, sir, you really ought to go to church. It's actually very important. And why did you stop going? Suddenly, he whirled on me with the instrument in his hand he had been cooking with and said, because of people like you who come in here and make me work all day long to feed you. That's why. Dear beloved, part of the maintenance of the church is to be a participant in that of which you are a part. If you are a part of the body of Christ, then be a part of the body of Christ. That body is to be nourished together as we hear and learn God's Word. And there's also an intimate connection here as well with the Lord's Supper. That sacrament, we are to remember Christ by spiritually eating and drinking His body and blood as we physically eat and drink the bread and the juice. Without this, we have no part in Him. In the same way, as we learn God's Word, He feeds us with the bread of life. But notice, we come here to hear God's Word. Not the word of the preacher. It doesn't mean that the preacher's not a sinner. He is. But we come to hear God's Word. It is the Word of God. It is the fountain of life and the light on our path and the guide to heaven. And that Word must thrill our soul and governing our life. And we don't just receive that Word for information, but we are to bow before God's Word. The catechism also says that the education for the ministry of the Gospel is to be maintained. The older version says that the schools for the ministry of the Gospel is to be maintained. Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Our seminaries must be continued. We must see to that. The ministry of the Word, beloved, must be maintained because the proclamation of the Word is the means given by God to proclaim the Gospel of rest in this restless world. How do we remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy? By focusing completely on God. We call it the Lord's day. It belongs to Him. And therefore, to take our focus off of Him and to place it on ourselves and our selfish interests is to steal from God. And that's why Isaiah teaches that the Sabbath is a delight only when, as verse 13 says, when you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day. How do you treat God's day as holy? I once heard a story in connection with this commandment that was told by a Dutch minister a long time ago. In a small town, there was a man who was a beggar, and one day he went to another man and asked for a dime to buy a cup of coffee for that day. The other man puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out seven dimes and says, I tell you what, I'll give you six of these dimes. You can have a cup of coffee every day for the next six days, but I'll keep one dime for myself. And as the man turned and walked away, the beggar hit him over the head and took the seventh dime. Beloved, is that what we do with God? He says there are seven days a week. I give you a gift. A gift of six days for you. But I will keep one for me. Finally, let's consider when the Lord's day is to be remembered. Well, we've been talking especially about worship service. And we do that on Sunday. We do that on the first day of the week. But again, as we mentioned at the very beginning, there are some, even in the Reformed camp, that would say that Scripture nowhere commands a day be set aside since Christ finished His work and ascended. Of course, they would say that it's a good idea to do this. It's not a bad thing at all to set aside a day or at least a part of a day. But it's not required. And I cannot agree with that thinking. And I hope and pray that you cannot agree with that thinking either. God gave us His pattern already with creation. Genesis 2, 2 and 3 tells us, And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. You see, He ties a knot around His work of creation and the fourth commandment in Exodus 20. And again, even our Lord kept the Sabbath day and even taught the proper observance of it. The creation ordinance cannot be changed. Has not been changed. Will not be changed. There is still to be a day. A what day? Well, the seventh day before Christ, Saturday, has moved to the first day of the week. Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. And this with very, very good reason. First of all, our Lord roared from the dead on the first day of the week. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples twice on the first day of the week. The Holy Spirit came on the first day of the week. Christians in the early New Testament do to tell their worship services on the first day of the week. And the first day of the week, notice this, the first day of the week came to be called after our Lord ascended, then it became known as the Lord's Day. After our Lord did His work. And we have testimony from many early church fathers regarding the Lord's Day. For example, Justin Martyr says, on the Lord's Day, all Christians in the city or country meet together because this is the day of our Lord's resurrection. In Asia, the Lord transferred the Sabbath to the Lord's Day being the first day of the week. Augustine says, the Lord's Day was the Lord by the resurrection of Christ declared to Christians. And from that time, it began to be celebrated as the Christian festival. And beloved, if you think about it, Adam's first day of life was the Sabbath, wasn't it? He was created the sixth day, and therefore his life began enjoying Sabbath rest with the Lord. He enjoyed the rest of the Lord before he went out to work. Sin, of course, changed all that and removed that rest. And therefore, man was working, looking forward, longing for that rest. Jesus Christ has brought that rest. And therefore, once again, we rest with the Lord on the first day of the week. She strengthens us. And from there, from that first day, then we go out to work the other six days in the strength of the Lord, knowing without a doubt that we have been with the Lord on that first day. When we remember the Sabbath day, our Lord's day, to keep it holy, that is to be a light leading us through life. And it is on that day in a special way, in a specific way, that we reflect on and rejoice in the redemption of Jesus Christ. We are to give thanks for His cross and we are called to remember the blessings of His substitutionary atonement from regeneration all the way to glorification. And beloved, when you remember that, when you focus your attention on Christ's redemptive work toward your eternal rest, then there really is only one question left. What is that worth to you? What is it worth to you? You see, how we spend the Lord's Day is our response to the Gospel. And if we neglect His day, then we really have to ask, will He be a part of our week? But then again, we cannot separate Sunday from the other six days of the week. And that's because we do live that new life in the joy of the Lord every day. All of life is to be a service of worship. God has lifted one day from the week out of that flow of days in order to qualify and equip His people for that life of worship every day. And therefore, in a sense, in church as we come together to be nourished by the Word of God, we learn the Word of God by our work during the week. And that means that the Lord's Day is the throbbing heart of daily life. And the world which doesn't have a heart for the Lord will demand Sunday for her recreation and her selfish festivities and her personal gainful employment. Sunday becomes, and it has become, just a part of the world's weekend But Monday isn't the first day of the week. Sunday is. The children of God, in contrast to this, will do everything which would cause the heart of the heart to beat powerfully and to keep the spiritual blood flowing. And therefore, God's people in the strength of the Spirit work to avoid, in as much as they are able to, everything that could draw them away from the Lord and prevent them from lifting their hearts up on high. The fact is, the Christians did not intentionally do anything that would endanger His heart. But again, contact with the risen Christ on the first day of the week is also to have a sanctifying effect on days 2 and 7. The Catechism is correct when it says, Second, that every day of my life I rest for my evil ways. Let the Lord work the Lord in me through His Spirit and so begin already in this life the eternal Sabbath. In Isaiah 58, Isaiah is teaching us that not only should the Lord's day be a delight, but full of life is to be a Sabbath delight in the Lord. Congregation, do you enjoy the rest in the Lord Jesus Christ today? If you do, that's but a small, it's a foretaste, but a very small foretaste of the eternal rest, yet nonetheless, a foretaste of the eternal rest God has prepared for His people. And what will characterize that eternal rest? Well, of course, we don't know exactly what our life in heaven will be like. But we do know that it will be worship, forever worship of our God. But for those who reject the Savior's rest in this life, their eternity will be characterized by the unrest of weeping and gnashing of teeth. And if that describes you this morning, you are being called urgently to confess your sins, to repent of them. and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and your restlessness which you are in right now will be removed forever and you will enjoy the rest of the Lord. Beloved, the fourth commandment is the close of the first four obviously but the first table of the law dealing with our relationship to God. And the truth is if you are not remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy then you must go all the way back to the beginning. Back to number one. because one who is not enjoying rest in God does not worship only Him. Therefore, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy today and every day with works of grateful living. Bow before the Word of God. And may our prayer be, Lord, what would You have me do? Amen. Shall we pray? Father, as Your people, we are humbled again as we come in for Your throne, for grace. Having considered this Your Word, Your teaching, Your instruction, with regard to Your day, and being reminded again that each one of us violates the first day of the week every time it comes around. Father, we pray that you would increase our knowledge of who you are and what you require of us. Give us joy in your work and help us to examine our hearts and our lives and to constantly be challenged that more and more we might be conformed to your image and to your way and to your desires. Father, we confess that sometimes your word is indeed hard to swallow. especially as we have become so set in our ways. We pray that for each one of us, You would soften our hearts and hearts. You would make us more faithful servants, servants of the Most High God. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these things. Amen.