The Sabbath Created #1

The point: Commit to a biblical framework for understanding the Sabbath, willing to let the Bible shape your thinking.

Martin recounts his personal experience of spending Sunday afternoons watching professional football during his early Christian life, illustrating how his heart was initially focused on entertainment rather than giving the whole day to the Lord, despite intellectual conviction.

When I first understood what the Bible teaches on the Sabbath many, many years ago, I had not only an intellectual, but a moral choice to make. During the first few years of my Christian life, I spent Sunday afternoons in the fall watching professional football. I went to church twice on Sunday. I acknowledged that that time belonged to God.

5:35 - 6:05 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The third principle is that the Sabbath is a blessed day, endowed with God's special favor. Martin contrasts the world's view of the Sabbath as a burden with God's intention for…

Martin quotes missionary John Payton's account of President Grover Cleveland's refusal to open the Chicago World's Fair on the Sabbath, demonstrating a historical example of honoring the Lord's Day and contrasting it with modern societal disregard for the Sabbath.

It is clear from this text that the Sabbath day is a blessed day day blessed of the Lord. And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. Now the world regards the Sabbath as a burden. I know of no plainer way to characterize the common view of the Sabbath that is to be found amongst those who know of such a thing. The world regards the Sabbath as a burden. And wherever they have been able to do so, wicked men have sought to destroy the Sabbath institution. Our own society, for example, once known for carefulness in...

42:25 - 43:41 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Far from us, then, be the feeling which would count the Sabbath other than a delight, which would esteem its services grievous and its hours a weariness. The Sabbath was made for man.

Martin reads several paragraphs from Bush's commentary on 'God blessed the seventh day,' which elaborates on the Sabbath as a channel of special blessings, a day of happiness, and a means of communion with God, enriching the understanding of the Sabbath's blessed nature.

I want to read a few paragraphs out of Bush's commentary on Genesis, and then I'm done for this morning. We come back tonight, and there will be three lines of application from this text. But I want to read in closing just a few paragraphs from Bush's comments on the words, God blessed the seventh day. Bush says, As a peculiar eminence and distinction are here clearly attributed to the seventh day above the other six.

49:19 - 49:49 Read in full sermon