Your Lord's Day Sabbath

The point: Hold fast to your convictions and practice relative to the Lord's Day Sabbath.

Martin quotes John Owen, who calls the Lord's Day 'God's hedge around all of his other ordinances,' illustrating that neglecting the Sabbath leads to the erosion and disappearance of other divine institutions like corporate worship and preaching.

let me take up first of all two questions with you. Question number one, why is the matter of the Lord's day Sabbath so crucial an issue? Here I am, my last two Lord's days among you after forty-six years of labor, if ever your ears would be open to me, I would hope it would be now, well why among all the important things that I could take up with you, why am I focusing this morning in what is the last of three sermons that I propose to preach to you, why am I addressing this issue? Well I answer to you in the words of John Owen.

9:41 - 10:26 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion.

Martin quotes an unnamed author who states, 'Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion,' to emphasize the direct link between Sabbath observance and the maintenance of religious practice and belief.

And on this passage, Mark 2, 27, where Christ says the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, not Lord to abolish it, but Lord to strip away from it all of the encumbrances of Pharisaic legalism, to take away from it all that was distinctly Jewish in the Mosaic economy, Lord of the Sabbath, to merge it into the glory of the first day of the week, Lord's Day Sabbath. He then went on to say, had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion. Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion.

14:43 - 15:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Had we no Sabbath, we should soon have no religion.

Martin describes people he observes on Sundays engaged in sports, recreation, and television watching, concluding that their lack of Sabbath observance directly correlates with their lack of religion.

Driving to church Sunday by Sunday, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, what do I behold? People with no religion. They have their expensive bike and all their expensive gear, and they're out working their cardiovascular system, or they're there in the ball fields playing touch football, or they're playing baseball, and they'll go back to their homes and sit in front of their television sets and watch the glut of professional sports on the Lord's Day or the special movie of the week. They have no religion because they have no Sabbath.

15:27 - 16:09 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why setting apart a whole day for the Lord is so vigorously opposed. He argues that the Fourth Commandment is the most concrete and difficult to rationalize away…

Martin uses the example of the First Commandment, explaining that someone can outwardly appear to keep it while harboring 'a hundred idols' in their heart, which no one else would know, contrasting this with the concreteness of the Fourth Commandment.

The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. Someone may outwardly appear to keep that. They do not carve a god of wood or stone. They are not so patently worshippers of their senses as a sensualist or of stuff as a materialist that you can say, that's an idolatrous attachment to this or that.

18:51 - 19:17 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why setting apart a whole day for the Lord is so vigorously opposed. He argues that the Fourth Commandment is the most concrete and difficult to rationalize away…

Martin uses the example of the Seventh Commandment, explaining that someone can avoid physical adultery but fantasize about many women, breaking the commandment perpetually without others knowing, again contrasting this with the Fourth Commandment's overt nature.

But in their hearts, they can have an idol's shelf full of a hundred idols, and you and I would never know it. Do you agree with me? We'd never know it. The seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery, a commandment to sexual purity.

19:17 - 19:35 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And it is because the native disposition of the human heart is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, where will that show itself most clearly? Where the law of God most clearly impinges upon minutes an…

Martin gives concrete examples of Sabbath-breaking activities like fishing or playing sports on Sunday mornings, highlighting how these actions make it difficult to rationalize one's non-observance due to the day's tangible nature.

The Sabbath was made for man. And when you come to the concreteness of the fourth commandment, it's very difficult to rationalize when the minutes of the morning are spent getting the fishing gear together, making a trip down to the shore, spending the day out fishing for blues or for striped bass or whatever else. And if you get up in the morning and gather your athletic gear and you go off to the athletic fields of the Montville High School to play softball or hardball

20:37 - 21:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And it is because the native disposition of the human heart is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, where will that show itself most clearly? Where the law of God most clearly impinges upon minutes an…

Martin shares a personal anecdote about his struggle with the desire to know if 'Big Brown' won the derby on Sunday morning, illustrating how indwelling sin acts in opposition to God's holy law, even for a preacher preparing a sermon on the Sabbath.

and out of it comes the Lord's Day Sabbath, stripped of all those things, redolent and bursting with the life of the age to come, but nonetheless a day to be kept holy unto the Lord. I get up Sunday morning. How do I regard the day? Is this the day to check and see whether Big Brown won the derby?

26:04 - 26:33 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why setting apart a whole day for the Lord is so vigorously opposed. He argues that the Fourth Commandment is the most concrete and difficult to rationalize away…

Martin describes modern societal trends like increased sports activities, professional sports, and beach trips on Sundays, illustrating how society is increasingly set against God and the Lord's Day Sabbath.

You have an enemy in your breast and in a society that is increasingly set against God, no wonder. The Lord's day Sabbath is now glutted with all kinds of high school and junior high school sports activities, something unheard of 30 years ago. Professional sports galore on the Lord's day. Sand and sun and surf beckon down to the shore and people are willing to get into a 30, 40 mile parking lot arrangement of cars on the Garden State Parkway.

28:17 - 28:58 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why setting apart a whole day for the Lord is so vigorously opposed. He argues that the Fourth Commandment is the most concrete and difficult to rationalize away…

Martin points to the rise of Saturday evening worship services as an example of churches capitulating to a society that prioritizes sports and self-indulgence over Lord's Day observance.

To get a little sun and sand and surf on the Lord's day. Churches have so capitulated that they now have Saturday evening worship services for people that want to spend the Lord's day with sand and surf and sun and sports. That's what has given birth to the Saturday night worship services is a capitulation to a society that increasingly because it has no Sabbath, it has no religion and worships the God of sports and self-indulgence.

28:58 - 29:41 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why setting apart a whole day for the Lord is so vigorously opposed. He argues that the Fourth Commandment is the most concrete and difficult to rationalize away…

Martin mentions John Bunyan's conversion, noting that God used Bunyan's Sabbath breaking and cursing as two great issues to bring him to a sense of need for Christ, illustrating the power of the Fourth Commandment to convict the unconverted.

And I know there are good and godly men who are detaching the first day of the week from any relationship to Genesis 3, 1 to 3, Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5 and trying to establish the Lord's day with no theological underpinnings with which one can bind the conscience of the unconverted that he's violating the fourth commandment. The very commandment God used in the conversion of John Bunyan it was his Sabbath breaking and his cursing that were the two great issues

29:41 - 30:25 Read in full sermon

The point: Men, have the holy guts to set the standards for your household regarding Saturday evening activities and Lord's Day preparation.

Martin recounts two pastoral instances where 'mature Christians' went to R-rated movies on Saturday night, illustrating how such activities hinder spiritual preparation for a fruitful Lord's Day and make it impossible to receive maximum profit from worship.

And may I really stick my neck out and say the activities of the Saturday evening should peculiarly lend themselves to a mind and a heart prepared to enter in without distraction to the praise and worship of God on His day. In the last few months, I've had two instances in pastoral dealings with people where I discovered that so-called mature Christians went out on a Saturday night to a movie theater, one of them to watch a blood and guts

32:41 - 33:26 Read in full sermon

The point: Passionately and incessantly resist any tendency to an oppressive and barren legalism that would make the day one of oppressive drudgery.

Martin describes a set of 16 Christian classics from the American Tract Society, illustrating how spiritual forefathers used family reading as a Lord's Day Sabbath activity to foster spiritual growth.

Family reading habits. This used to be a Lord's Day Sabbath activity of our spiritual forefathers. I have a set of 16 books. And those books were Christian classics put together by the American Tract Society, beautifully bound with half leather.

37:11 - 37:30 Read in full sermon

The point: Passionately and incessantly resist any tendency to an oppressive and barren legalism that would make the day one of oppressive drudgery.

Martin shares a personal family practice of memorizing hymns during car trips on the Lord's Day, illustrating a creative way to prepare children's minds for the day and buy up the opportunity for spiritual enrichment.

And they were the family reading materials where on the inside there's a beautiful picture of a family sitting together on a couch and children leaning over the shoulder of dad and mom. And they are reading good, solid Christian classics together as a family. One of the things that we did as a family for years was we memorized hymns on that trip from Cedar Grove to Caldwell and then out to here. And those hymns that we memorized, I can still, for the most part, sing them all word-perfectly.

37:30 - 38:09 Read in full sermon

The point: For unconverted children, expect and enforce respect for the Lord's Day and its activities, lovingly reminding them that conversion will turn drudgery into delight.

Martin quotes John Owen's humorous observation that some writers' rules for the Lord's Day were so extensive one would spend the whole week reading them and have no time to enjoy the day, illustrating the danger of oppressive legalism.

I've seen some parents in their anxiety that we're going to keep the Lord's Day. It was terrible. The things that they did treated children as though they were not children and tried to overload the day. Rarely in the hundreds of pages, thousands probably by now, of John Owen that I've read, rarely will you find Owen using humor.

38:45 - 39:08 Read in full sermon

Driving home: If that hedge, begins to shrivel, if pieces of that hedge begin to be removed, it's only a matter of time before all the other ordinances will be affected.

Martin observes that many evangelical churches have given up Sunday night and Wednesday night services, linking this decline to their earlier abandonment of clear teaching on the Sabbath, reinforcing the 'hedge' analogy.

Up until a few years ago you could count on it, any church that claimed to be an evangelical church had Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night. No more. By and large, the average evangelical church has given up its Sunday night service. It's given up its Wednesday night service.

52:28 - 52:51 Read in full sermon