Let us turn into our Bibles to Exodus chapter 20. Exodus chapter 20, verses 8 through 11. Let us listen attentively to the word of God, Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work.
You know your son, know your daughter, know your male servant, know your female servant, know your cattle, know your strangers within your gates. 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 day and hallowed it.
Let us pray. In these words, God, may we see the importance of having the Lord’s day, a day set aside and apart to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, the work of God the Father in calling us to redemption and the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, both individually and collectively as the church, the purified ones of God. And so, Lord, as we study the text and understand these things, especially in the day and age in which the Lord’s day is less and less honored by the people of God, Lord, may we pray by your Spirit, continue to be humbled but also strengthened to stand firm upon this, to believe in ten commandments and not nine commandments, God.
May we therefore be an example of gentleness as well and of your truth to other Christians that they may be drawn unto you to this glorious, blessed day, we pray. Amen. And so belief, as I think we all know, and practice of the Lord’s day, I fear, is quickly fading from our collective memory and practices.
It has become another day, unfortunately, for too many to work, take care of the yard, for example. Some Christians may or may not even bother going to public worship, forsaking the assembly of the saints for sports or something else, while others have worship Saturday night. Their reasons vary, to be sure.
I think it’s rooted sometimes in a simple lack of the knowledge of the importance of this day. I know it was that case for me. And how it was part of the moral law.
Some, like the dispensational circles, argue that the day of rest was a Jewish thing given to them at Mount Sinai. That’s where it started and that’s where it ends. So they think it’s part of the Mosaic ceremonial law.
But they and others, of course, miss the point and the purpose on how it is indeed rooted in nature. In fact, they had a Sabbath and a rest before Mount Sinai, as we will see, and God has given it to us. It is for our good.
It is a blessing he has bestowed upon us, not himself, as we will see. So we have three points here.
What Is the Sabbath?
What is the Sabbath? First of all, besides what you read here to remember the Sabbath day, it is a day of rest.
That’s what the word means. Both a physical and spiritual rest. And more broadly, it is under the category of a creation ordinance.
That is, that which God has given all of mankind before the fall. And so when the fall occurred through Adam and Eve, it did not lessen those obligations, but rather strengthened them all the more. They were in debt for not doing those things and doing sin instead.
Marriage, work, those are creation ordinances. All humans, young and old, are called to these things as becoming to them, of course. Children are not going to get married, but they’re going to have work.
They’re going to have some kind of job in their life. And so too with the Sabbath, or a day of rest, that God has given all of creation. The Confession describes it this way.
Chapter 21 on worship, verse 7, as it is the law of nature that in general, a due proportion of time be set aside for the worship of God. So they are arguing, of course, that it’s under the rubric of natural worship that all of creation, that is unbelievers, recognize that they honor their gods by holy days themselves. This has been the case for thousands of years in all kinds of civilizations until the Great Enlightenment skewered more and more of the West, unfortunately.
They had multiple days to honor their gods, to be sure. And we do this, in fact, ourselves. We have days of honor for one another.
They’re called birthdays. They’re called anniversaries. They’re called the Fourth of July for our nation, for that matter.
What are they there for? As a kid, of course, you think it’s there to have a fun time and shoot fireworks and eat cake. But we know as adults that it’s there to honor, to respect our nation, the marriage, our individuals and our birthdays. We do this instinctively because it is part of what it means to be human and part of what it means to respect people that we love and show honor to them.
How much more, all the more, do we honor and want to and should desire to respect our God and Creator? And thus, it says that as a law of nature, that in general, a due proportion of time be set aside for the worship of God. There ought to be something. It is, of course, the human condition in which we think of one thing at one time and do things sequentially.
And so we sleep and then we eat. I know as a kid you try to eat and sleep at the same time. It doesn’t really work out.
And you work. You set aside. And you set aside.
And you’re supposed to set aside time with God. And here, public assemblies and a public time with our Lord and Savior. And so, of course, the Bible moves beyond natural revelation and specifies that time.
It was Saturday in the Old Testament and is now Sunday in the New Testament era until the time of Christ. And that falls under the rubric of instituted worship. That specification given to us in the revealed will of God as opposed to natural.
It is exemplified by God Himself in the text of Genesis as we know. And in fact, it’s part of the argument laid down here in the Ten Commandments of chapter 20 of Exodus, verse 11. And rested the seventh day.
And this is the basis for that rest. What God Himself has done. He is the exemplar par excellence.
The example for us as His people. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 2 we read, On the seventh day God ended His work, which He had done. And He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His works which God had created and made. He blessed it. He sanctified it.
And He rested that day. There was no more creation and formation of things. This means God is showing us the importance of rest before the fall.
Which is to say, the emphasis there is creation ordinance. It means it is not given to us after the fall for our assistance or our need or something. Oh, you’ve fallen and so I’m going to give you some adjustments.
And God as we see in the Old Testament law in particular does give some adjustments and the like for their sinful condition. That’s nothing of the kind. It was given before the fall.
There is no adjustment at all. In our perfection we still needed rest. That’s the point.
First consider the reasoning offered in 1 Corinthians 9. Let’s back up here a little bit and jump forward to New Testament times. I know I want to focus especially on the Old Testament text and I will. But I want to give you some reasoning from the Bible here.
1 Corinthians 9 we read about the Corinthians and how Paul is encouraging them. You’re supposed to pay the minister. You’re supposed to help them and feed them and the like.
And he quotes from the Old Testament Deuteronomy of feeding the ox. You recall that? And Paul’s argument is, is it ox that God’s concerned about in Deuteronomy as such? Sure, the commandment is for ox and you’re supposed to take care of ox. But if it’s true for ox how much more for a human should you take care of them? And in this case the minister provided support for him.
All the more. And was it for the sake of the animal that God wrote these things? Indeed not at all. Is it rest that God was concerned about? Was he exhausted and he had to do these things for himself? Or is it for our sake that he did these things in Genesis 2? That he blessed and rested that day.
Certainly for our sake that he did these things. To teach us. To show us.
All the more. If God himself, the creator of heaven and earth, who is omnipotent and all powerful and needs not rest like a man, stooped down to our level and rested to stop creation and highlighted that in that text in Hebrews 2. What is he doing but showing us, follow my example. Because I’m not really tired.
Not at all. It’s the same kind of reasoning as 1 Corinthians 9. It’s not really the ox that God is concerned about. It’s not for the ox’s sake all together but for the minister.
It’s not for God’s sake all together but for us. The Lord’s day is a blessing for us. The church wounds herself when she throws it away.
In God’s course sanctifying and blessing it is not for his sake. The language there of the text. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.
Sanctified it, that is set it aside and made it holy for himself? No. He’s infinite. He doesn’t need these things.
For our sake. For us, brothers and sisters. For you.
And for me. And of course it being a blessed thing. God blessed the seventh day.
God blessed the day of rest. It is therefore a blessing for us as well. And it’s not ceremonial as such.
It was instituted before the fall. That is a time of rest is implied in natural creation. And God went ahead and gave you a specific time of due proportion that will change.
That’s that positive law part, right? Where parents tell their kids go to bed at 9 but now that you’re a teenager you can go to bed at midnight. But you must go to bed. The principle of sleep and rest, the specificity of it changes.
That’s the positive moral law part. And same with the day. The day changed, but the principle of rest is still the same.
The principle of a day of a set proportion that you set aside for God. And it is clearly one in seven days. The Sabbath day, the day of rest, was given to us before the fall, the time of innocency.
And it predates the giving of the Ten Commandments we read in Exodus 16. Before chapter 20 in Exodus 16.22, God talks about a day of rest already. It was a known event.
A known time that they had already practiced apparently. And so it is not like some of the dispensationalists try to argue, oh it’s only because of Exodus 20. No, Exodus 16 is there and of course Genesis 2 is there as well.
And it’s reaffirmed by Christ that it is the broad moral principle of a time and day of rest, although that day has changed. That rest has not. Nor the proportion has changed.
Matthew 12.8 we read, for the Son of Man is what? Lord even of the Sabbath. That is the day of rest. Which sometimes the Puritans would call the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, to differentiate from the Jewish Sabbath, that is Saturday from Sunday.
The Sabbath, again the word means rest. It’s a day of rest. A day of rest of the body, but especially of the soul and unto Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Matthew 24.20 is also interesting where he speaks of the future when Jesus warns them, but pray ye that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day. It is still binding during this time and of course ultimately there in Revelation 1.10 we see that there has been a change of day, although the change of rest has not changed and is known as the Lord’s Day. That he saw the vision John did on the Lord’s Day.
It must be a specific day. What day would that be? But the resurrection day. It can’t be every day.
Then every day is the Lord’s Day. What was the point of him saying that in Revelation 1? Well it could be Monday, it could have been Thursday. He specifies something called the Lord’s Day.
Something that is especially his. Owned by God over and above other things because the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. What is required then in this day of rest? In the Old Testament, Saturday.
In the New Testament, Sunday. We have a summary here in the Shorter Catechism question 57. The fourth commandment requires keeping holy to God such set times as he has appointed in his word.
Expressing one whole day in seven to be a holy Sabbath to himself. God did not rest for part of the day. It was the entire day.
And we should worship him. And of course being human we don’t have a worship service morning, evening, afternoon for hours on end. We go home, we relax, we talk of things of the Lord, we take care of some matters for our body and the like.
And that is certainly the case. But overall compared to the rest of the week, it is especially focused on him and worship and thinking about him and honoring him. It includes works of mercy and necessity.
I won’t go into the arguments for those things since I’m going over a number of things we’ve heard before here. But to encourage us in this matter when we are surrounded in the day and age unfortunately where many Christians don’t take the Lord’s Day as seriously as they ought. Works of mercy and necessity both for the body and for the soul.
There’s a summary here given to us by Puritan William Gouge. I went through his stuff on marriage earlier this year and last year. And he has a commentary on Hebrews.
If you want to spend a few years going through a commentary on Hebrews, it’s quite large. But it covers a lot of things to be sure. He gives a list.
I think it’s six things here. Instructing the ignorant on the Lord’s Day. Establishing the weak.
Comforting troubled souls. Informing such as are in error. Reproving sinners.
Edifying one another in the Lord as needed. And so they, that is the Puritans, were not as strict as some of us may have thought when it comes to the Lord’s Day. There are many topics that again I suggest it as a command.
It’s just something suggestive here. That we could talk about with respect to God in a meaningful way. There could be issues of conscience like can Christians even vote? I did a Sunday School series on ethics.
That’s a matter of Christian conscience and applying the law of God. That’s appropriate on the Lord’s Day to bring up when it has to be brought up for example. Instructing the ignorant.
How God applies the law to society. Resolving doubt for example. Perhaps with respect to not only applying God’s law but with respect to our salvation to God himself.
Comforting souls would include counseling and encouragement for one another as needed and the like. And one rule of thumb more or less is what we do throughout the rest of the week, we focus on work, focus on relaxation and things like that. We do less on the Lord’s Day as much as possible.
And by God’s grace we can simply not work many of us. We don’t have to go to the job. That’s a great blessing in this nation.
Whereas elsewhere they have to work in the Middle East and the like which is very hard upon them. And God has blessed us in so many ways although there’s lots of temptation otherwise. Now what is forbidden? I want to talk about the classic passage of Isaiah 58.
Isaiah 58. The fourth commandment the catechism explains to us forbids the omission or careless performance of the duties required of the profaning of the day by idleness or doing that which in itself is sinful. That’s obvious.
Or by unnecessary thoughts, words, works about a worldly employment or recreation. So avoid going in that direction as you are able. And the classic text here is Isaiah 58, 13-14.
Isaiah 58, 13-14. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath of the light, the holy of the Lord, honorable, it shall honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words. Then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
The God Almighty here in the mouth of the prophet is urging them, because clearly they weren’t taking the Lord’s day, that is the Sabbath, not the Christian, the Jewish Sabbath, but still a Christian insofar as it’s God and the same moral requirements, that it’s not your day. It’s not your time to sell things and go off to the mall and treat it like yet another day. But as we treat our birthday for our family members, the anniversary for our parents and the like, or the birthday of this nation more seriously, we ought to treat God’s day more seriously as well.
Now pay closer to the strong language here. We read in the middle of the text, nor speaking thine own words. Now, I think upon immediate reflection we realize there’s some hyperbole going on here.
If you can’t speak your own words, are you supposed to just quote the Bible all day on Sunday? I don’t think anybody believes that from this text. And so that gives us a clue here that he’s emphasizing, as Christ does, for example, when he talks about, what, cutting off your right hand and gouging out your eye. Pay attention, this is serious stuff is what he’s saying.
And so God is doing the same here in Isaiah 58. My common sense, again, as I highlighted, special days and birthdays and the like, we take a little seriously, although I think we’re especially blessed in our tradition and our churches here that it’s not especially a big problem by God’s grace, that God has been merciful to us in this regard, that we do take the Lord’s day seriously. That’s why we’re here.
We’re here morning and evening and want to learn more about God and to be with the saints. Old Testament spirituality, I want to talk a little bit about that, as I’ve done in the other commandments to remind us the Old Testament wasn’t just about externality. Oh, I just got to simply follow the Sabbath day and do the sacrifices, but my heart could be far from God.
In many ways, the Old Testament saints had many restrictions, of course, that we do not have. They couldn’t pick up sticks on the Sabbath day, for example. You recall that text there in Exodus.
Quite frightening. And they had multiple other holy days as well. The Passover and the tabernacle days of festivals and the like.
But underneath all of this was an underlying spirituality of faith and trust in God as I gave my first sermon on the first commandment. That’s always there. And especially highlighted in the Psalms and the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the like.
Numbers 28-26, for example, the first fruits offered during the feast week, during the holy convocation it describes there, that is a public gathering together, rest from work, you set aside your farm implements, you’re working on the trees and whatnot as a carpenter and the like, and you gather to honor God and worship before Him. Yes, the ceremonial parts are gone, we don’t have the first fruits to give before God, but clearly the teaching and the lesson here was give God your best in honoring Him throughout your life and especially on the Lord’s day. We do this in tithes, of course, and in offerings, which is above and beyond tithes.
That we say, yes, Lord, we care for your kingdom and you’ve blessed us especially and we wish to turn around and take this blessing and give it back to the kingdom work of our Lord and Savior. And so, yes, some things have changed, no more feasts, booths at tabernacles and festivals and the Passover’s and animals and sacrifices and the like, but the spiritual reality, the physical rest as well, no longer working is still binding upon us. False worship, of course, is rejected and if it’s rejected in one case, it’s rejected in all cases.
Proverbs 15.8 we read, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. Yes, they can come outwardly and say, here’s my animal. In fact, they can probably even give the best lamb, the best ox before God, which is what you’re supposed to do.
But their heart is far from Him. And it’s their way of buying off God, perhaps. The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.
He doesn’t want that. He wants their heart, first and foremost. But the prayer of the upright is His delight.
So you have this contrast here. The negative, the wicked, but the wicked’s what? Sacrifice. Their offering before God.
On the flip side, the prayer of the upright is His delight. So there’s not sacrifice of the wicked and sacrifice of the righteous, but sacrifice and prayer. Two different things, but they’re both related by what? Worship of God.
Is the point. And the Lord’s Day is what? Tied to the worship of God is the fourth commandment. And so this text is telling us, not just the sacrifices, but even the prayer of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, if it’s not from their heart.
And so is their honoring of God’s Lord’s Day. I want them to honor God’s Lord’s Day because I want that day off for the rest of you, like your boss, right? Your boss is like, okay, I guess I’ll do it. I don’t really care about God, but I want to look good to the Christians or something.
Maybe that’s what they did back in early America. And I wish they wouldn’t. That is, I wish their heart were given to God, but that they did it was still good for us.
And that’s a blessing. Here, the false worship is rejected in Proverbs 15, 8, that is Solomon’s proverb, recognizing the outward forms were never the whole point. And same with the Lord’s Day, the outward form of submitting and not working and avoiding undue entertainment and the like, going to sporting events or whatever else.
Primarily about offering your heart to God throughout the whole day and focusing upon Him. Psalm 92. Now I put this here.
I was thinking about maybe even preaching on it. Psalm 92 verses 1 and 2 at the beginning there. The title given to Psalm 92 is A Song for the Sabbath Day.
That’s why I have it here. A Song for the Sabbath Day. These are very old titles.
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, we read, and to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. Isn’t that interesting? Kindness in the morning and faithfulness every night. What does that sound like? Worship morning and evening.
That’s right there. Again, on the Sabbath day, the Old Testament, they doubled the sacrifices in morning and evening because it was a special holy convocation day on the Sabbath every Saturday. Proverbs 21, 3. Proverbs 21, 3 we read, to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
Then that outward form of showing honor to God or what we call worship. You ought to do that, that’s for sure. But if there is a conflict, righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord God Almighty because the outward forms are what? Positive, moral, they change.
There’s no more sacrifices. There’s no more Saturday worship. It’s now Sunday worship and it’s all been reduced to simply the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.
A lot less complication. A lot more simplicity. The simplicity of the Gospel.
Matthew 12, 7, but if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. Hosea 6, 6 and 1 Samuel 15, 22, to obey is better than sacrifice. I had just read that earlier.
Mark 2, 27, and he said to them, that is Jesus, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. And that’s important because the legalists want us to conform ourselves to their preconceived idea of perfection of the Lord’s Day. When there is for lack of a better term, I hope you take this carefully, wiggle room.
We have some little disagreements sometimes between churches and the like on specifically some things and some things you should or should not do in the Lord’s Day is what I’m getting at. And there’s a time for mercy as the point there is in Mark 2. We read elsewhere they were going through the fields and they were hungry, so they grabbed some food there on the Sabbath, plucked the corn off, and the Pharisees were right on top of them. How dare you? Christ is like, mercy over sacrifice.
Mercy for the food of the stomach in that case. The Sabbath was made for man. It’s for our good and for our benefit, for our blessing, not man to be what conformed to this thing of the Sabbath in that sense of legalism.
It’s a day of mercy and righteousness to be sure in the fellowship of the saints.
When Is the Sabbath?
Now I already talked about here point 2, when is the Sabbath, the 6-1 day pattern, and I think it’s helpful here, Fisher’s commentary, he’s a Puritan in the mid-1600s, he says, in the beginning of the commandment it is not said remember the seventh day, namely in order from creation, but remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Remember the rest day to keep it holy.
So in the end of this command the words are not, the Lord blessed the seventh day, but rather the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The Lord blessed this rest day and hallowed it, reminding us that the pattern is indeed 6-1 and it’s still 6-1, it’s just that 1 is a little different now, it’s Saturday to Sunday. Old Testament suggestions of this change of the pattern of course tied to creation and redemption.
The argument here in Exodus 20, verse 11 is the creation account for the 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and then it’s tied to redemption and Deuteronomy as well. So here the 8th day passage, circumcision on the 8th day, and the Feast of Tabernacles we read on the first day there shall be a Sabbath rest, on the 8th day there shall be a Sabbath rest. It’s quite interesting there in Leviticus 23 39, suggestive of a future change because we forget sometimes that the Holy Days of the Old Testament all fit under the rubric of the Fourth Commandment, all these Holy Days.
They were part of the ceremonial points to Christ and His work, including the New Testament era. That’s part of His work, isn’t it? And so I think Leviticus 23 39 is suggestive of the future change of day. New Testament reality of course, Christ’s redemption for us and ushering a new age, not the old creation of 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, but the new creation in Christ Jesus has now shifted the day to His day, the Lord’s day of Revelation.
Hebrews 4 9 is another argument of the New Testament here. There remains therefore a rest. The word is Sabbath there in the Greek.
It’s a Pauline word. Paul likes to apparently make up these words. You can’t find these words elsewhere.
Paul has his word, and so he uses the Greek letters to fit kind of the Hebrew letters. Sabbatissimos is the Greek there. You can hear Sabbath in the English right there.
It’s quite interesting. There remains, he argues in Hebrews 4, which is the text in which he says they were in the desert. They did not mix with faith their following of God and the miracles, and so God left them in the desert to die.
They did not trust in Him. They did not enter His rest, he argues. The rest of salvation.
But he goes a little further here in verse 9. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God, for he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. I think he’s arguing there that the reality offered in the Old Testament is the reality offered today of a day of rest to be sure found in Jesus Christ, but the sign is still there because in the Old Testament the sign pointed to Christ and His coming. But the coming of Christ in the New Testament is not done yet insofar as His work as a whole.
His coming is done. He’s in heaven. But His work is not done until what? The consummation when He returns.
And so we still have what? A forward-looking aspect to our faith. The rest of our faith, the faith of our rest in Jesus Christ. And that’s that Sabbath rest that is argued here.
There still remains a Sabbath. Still has a forward-looking part until Christ comes the second time. It’s still for us.
And so we are not beyond the Old Testament saints in that regard. Psalm 95.7 is the passage used here. For He is our God, that is quoted there in Hebrew, and we are the people of His pastor and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said, It is a people who have gone astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways. So I swore My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.
Quoted directly there in Hebrews 4. Which is to say, to come back another direction now, it was always the case that the Sabbath rest of the Old Testament was to point to Jesus, and the same with today. That’s what He’s arguing in the psalmist here in Psalm 95. I swore My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.
The Old Testament saints understood the outward forms were never to replace the heart and the call of repentance and of faith and trust in the Messiah to come. And ours is the Messiah who has come and also who is yet to come back again a second time.
Why the Sabbath?
Why the Sabbath? Well, you already heard a little bit about that and the whys here when I’ve gone over the what.
Clearly again, not because God was tired, but for our sake the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. And that’s in Mark 2.25 But He said to them, if you’ve not read what David did when he was in need of hungry and he and those with him, how he went to the house of God in the days of Abathar the high priest and ate the showbread. Went right in there and grabbed the showbread, which is not lawful to eat, except for the priests, and also gave some of those to who were with him.
And He said to them, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also the Lord of the Sabbath. He ties them both together in that case.
It’s the same, those verses are back to back. I am the Lord of the Sabbath, and I’m telling you, I gave it for you, and of course He understands after the fall, things have changed. So now we have works of necessity and mercy because of the effects of sin that weren’t there before.
But in both cases, rest is still there. Rest before the fall and rest after the fall. Now there are some specific reasons catechism gives out of the Word of God.
I just want to highlight it this way. A time to focus on God and honor Him especially. Because throughout the week, yes, you have family devotions and family time, but you know, if you’re like me, that you had a long day, you’re tired, you’re sick, whatever else.
But when you’re able to dedicate a whole day before God, you put aside all these distractions, and it’s a lot easier in many ways to realize it. You’re like, I don’t have to think about work today. No work, this is great.
I don’t have to think about going over here and doing this and doing that. I just simply go to church, be with the saints of God, read His Word, and come home, and then come back again. Very much more of a simplistic day, and that’s a good thing.
We have six days for everything else, after all. It’s a time for bodily rest, of course, as we are able. There are acts of necessity and mercy, again, that can come up at times.
And of course, especially for spiritual rest, to meditate upon Christ, learn more of His ways, and to grow thereby. It’s a school. It’s a school day for the Bible.
It’s a picture of eternal rest, again. This is one reason why it’s given. I went over that with Hebrews 4 and 9. There remains therefore rest for the people of God, because it’s not finished yet in full consummation until Christ returns.
As the world, brothers and sisters, stays busy 24-7 in so many ways, we are blessed to have a day of rest where there is no busyness, but especially a day of spiritual rest, pointing to the great eternal Sabbath in which we are with Jesus our Lord and Savior forever and ever. May this reality motivate us to honor His day and to draw blessing from it by God’s mercy, we pray. Amen.
Let us pray. Indeed, Lord, may we continue to grow thereby as Your people to use this opportunity, this time, which is set aside, different from the rest of the six days, Lord, in different ways, to different degrees, to be sure. And be thankful to honor You, Lord, to be grateful that we have this, so that we can learn more of You and Your ways, and to be thankful, and to praise You, and to think of ways in which we can continue, God, to be of use in Your kingdom and grow thereby.
Help us in this regard to be an example to our neighbors, to be an example, Lord, to our fellow Christians who struggle in this department, that we not look down upon them, but come alongside them and encourage them and point them to a better way. We ask these things by the blood of Christ our Savior. Amen.