A Conscientious and Joyful Sabbath Observance

In this part of the sermon: Martin opens with the series' framing text (Jeremiah 6:16), recaps the two prior old paths (conversion and gospel holiness from the men's conference sessions), and introduces the…

Martin pictures Israel's situation in Jeremiah 6:16 as a traveler arriving at a point where he must stop, reflect, ask for the right path, and then walk. This analogy frames the entire conference series on walking in the old paths.

Now from several remarks that have been made by the brethren who have been leading us in worship, you are now aware that this past weekend was the annual men's conference in this church. And I was privileged to preach Friday night and twice yesterday on the theme that was mutually decided upon in my interaction with your pastors, walking in the old paths. And that language was taken directly from the passage that I read in your hearing where the Lord speaks to apostate Judah and calls upon them as though they were a traveler who had arrived in the land of Judah. They arrived at a certain point...

2:54 - 4:17 Read in full sermon

The point: When the church faces spiritual dullness, the answer is not novelty or innovation but a return to the old paths God has prescribed — including the Lord's Day Sabbath.

Paul's description of the Thessalonians turning to God from idols to serve the living and true God illustrates what genuine conversion involves: a decisive turning both from idols and to God as willing bond-servants — not just grabbing goodies from God.

The beginning and the end. add unto you how that you turn to God from your idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for His Son from the heaven, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. And we notice that involved in this true conversion to God, there is first of all a decisive turning, both positive and negative, a turning to God, but a turning from idols, and then a decisive submission. You turn to serve as willing bond slaves would be a legitimate translation of the verb Paul uses. They did not turn just to grab some goodies from God, but to be engaged with God in th...

6:02 - 7:23 Read in full sermon

The point: When the church faces spiritual dullness, the answer is not novelty or innovation but a return to the old paths God has prescribed — including the Lord's Day Sabbath.

Martin distinguishes waiting for the Second Coming as an event from waiting for Christ as a person. He illustrates: when you love someone and are separated from them, you long to be with them — so genuine love for Christ produces longing for his return in glory.

You turn to God from your idols to serve the living and the true God, and this refocusing, this reorientation, this reorientation of the whole of life, to wait for His Son from the heavens. Not to wait for the Second Coming, that's an event, but to wait for a person, for having turned to God from idols, through Jesus Christ and in the context of the gospel. All true faith in Christ inevitably results in genuine love for the person of Christ and the person we love, when separated from them we long to be with them so it's inevitable if we truly believe on Christ we love Christ and loving Christ ...

7:23 - 8:49 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why he uses the precise compound term 'Lord's Day Sabbath': 'Lord's Day' (Revelation 1:10) is the New Testament's final designation; 'Sabbath' anchors it to the…

Martin notes that when John's Revelation letters arrived at the seven churches — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, and others — no one needed to ask 'what is the Lord's Day?' The term was universally assumed to be understood, demonstrating it was the established gathering day of the first-century church.

The last reference to this special day of rest is found in Revelation chapter 1 and verse 10. And it is there called the Lord's Day. You remember, John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. Now, what John wrote is going to be sent to seven churches throughout Asia Minor, toward the close of the first century. And the Lord Jesus, who reveals what's in that book to John, has confidence, as does John, that when the letters come to those seven churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, etc., when one of the readers would stand up on a Lord's Day to read, and they would hear this word in...

13:37 - 14:56 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why he uses the precise compound term 'Lord's Day Sabbath': 'Lord's Day' (Revelation 1:10) is the New Testament's final designation; 'Sabbath' anchors it to the…

Martin recalls his days in construction: when workers didn't know where to put something, the boss would say 'hang it on a sky hook' — a hook fastened to nothing. He uses this to argue that the Lord's Day is not a New Testament sky hook with no foundation; it is fastened to the Sabbath principle rooted deep in creation.

Lord's Day does not come to us in the New Testament hanging on the sky hook. You know what a sky hook is? When I used to do construction work, when we didn't know where to put something, and I asked the boss, Mr. Hughes, where do I put that? He said, oh, I'll go hanging on a sky hook. There's no such thing as a sky hook. A sky hook holds nothing. A hook's got to be fastened to something. And the Sabbath, you see, is the foundational principle of the Lord's Day.

17:29 - 17:59 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains why he uses the precise compound term 'Lord's Day Sabbath': 'Lord's Day' (Revelation 1:10) is the New Testament's final designation; 'Sabbath' anchors it to the…

Martin pictures the Sabbath as overlaid with layers of Pharisaic encrustments — hundreds of man-made rules added on top of Mosaic legislation. Christ's Sabbath controversies in the Gospels are him pulling away all this crust to expose the original creation Sabbath beneath, preparing it to become the Lord's Day.

With their hundreds of things you should and should not do on the Sabbath. The Lord's pulling away all of that, seeking to bring that Sabbath back to its creation beauty and even to its proper balanced Mosaic expression. And then as the mediator of the new covenant, he fulfills perfectly every legitimate God-given requirement of the Sabbath. For he perfectly kept the law as our representative and covenant head. And then he goes into Joseph's tomb, having died for all of our breaches of the fourth commandment along with all the other commandments. And what does he bring out of the tomb with him...

19:29 - 20:29 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And the whole teaching of the special day has an organic relationship that is nothing short of beautiful. Have you followed me or am I talking to myself?

Martin says Christ went into Joseph's tomb having died for all our fourth commandment breaches. He came out on the first day of the week bringing the original creation Sabbath — stripped of Mosaic demands — filled with resurrection glory. John Owen's memorable line: 'Leave it in Joseph's tomb.'

And by his perfect life and death, stripped of all the Mosaic demands of the fourth commandment, and he brings out of his tomb the Lord's day, filled with the light and glory of resurrection power. Fifty days later, with the coming of the Holy Spirit to the new covenant community, he gives us the Lord's day. And he began to make it evident what his purposes were in that period before he went back to heaven. When does he come and appear in the midst of the gathered disciples in John chapter 20? It's on that resurrection day. They are gathered, doors are shut, they're scared, witless, and all of...

20:29 - 21:28 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin defines 'conscientious' as acting on the strict dictates of conscience — a binary moral monitor — argues we have no right to less than a conscientious commitment to the…

Martin personifies conscience as a little moral monitor with a very limited vocabulary — it only knows two words: right and wrong, yes and no. We keep trying to teach it 'neither' and 'maybe,' but conscience refuses to learn those words and spits them back out.

Now, what do I mean by the word conscientious? Well, I mean simply this. Something that's conscientious is something that is done by the strict regard and the dictates of your conscience. You see, conscience is that little moral monitor who only knows two words.

25:47 - 26:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Use the term 'Lord's Day' rather than 'Sunday' even with unbelievers, as a deliberate act of witness that introduces Christ into conversation and reminds the world that God has a day.

Martin says he never calls it 'Sunday' — even in conversation with unbelievers he always says 'the Lord's Day,' believing this plants a seed: 'Sunday' just refers to the sun and the day, but 'the Lord's Day' introduces Christ into the entire picture.

I never use the term. I try to call it all the time the Lord's Day, even with pagans, thinking maybe it will at least be a little salt on their consciences that God has a day. Sunday just talks about the sun and the day. You say the Lord's Day and you're introducing Christ into the whole world.

28:32 - 28:52 Read in full sermon

The point: We have no right to be less conscientious about the fourth commandment than we are about any other — idolatry, false worship, taking God's name in vain, murder, adultery, or theft. Inconsistency here is not Christian lib…

Martin reads directly from the confession of faith that by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, God appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath — from creation to Christ's resurrection it was the seventh day; from the resurrection it was changed to the first day, the Christian Sabbath, to be continued to the end of the world.

Yes, to keep it set apart unto God, not as if you were an Israelite under the Mosaic economy, but in the light of the fact that that day has now become the Lord's day, that the risen Christ, who is Lord of the Sabbath, having changed the day from the seventh to the first, nonetheless, regards it as His special day, set apart unto Him for other than common purposes. Our confession of faith is very, very clear on this matter of a conscientious concern about the Lord's day. I read paragraph 7 in the section that deals with this. As it is the law of nature that a general proportion of time by God'...

31:01 - 32:27 Read in full sermon

The point: We have no right to be less conscientious about the fourth commandment than we are about any other — idolatry, false worship, taking God's name in vain, murder, adultery, or theft. Inconsistency here is not Christian lib…

Martin quotes Owen: 'Take away from among men a conscience of observing a fixed, stated day of sacred rest to God, and for the celebration of His worship in assemblies, and all religion will quickly decay if not come to nothing in this world.' He then applies this prophecy to the visible secularization of the Lord's Day in modern America.

which is called the Lord's day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week having been abolished. John Owen has a very helpful comment on this matter of having a conscientious concern relative to this matter of the Lord's day. Listen to this very simple but profoundly important statement. Take away from among men a conscience of observing a fixed, stated day of sacred rest to God, and for the celebration of His worship in assemblies, and all religion will quickly decay if not come to nothing in this world. What a profoun...

32:27 - 33:45 Read in full sermon

The point: We have no right to be less conscientious about the fourth commandment than we are about any other — idolatry, false worship, taking God's name in vain, murder, adultery, or theft. Inconsistency here is not Christian lib…

Martin recalls a time when no high school would dare hold sporting events on the Lord's Day. Now schools everywhere schedule games on Sunday, and men spend the entire Lord's Day from noon to 10 o'clock watching football with beer and potato chips. This cultural observation illustrates Owen's prophecy of religious decay fulfilled in a single generation.

Some of us have lived long enough to see how the Lord's day has just been overrun with every kind of imaginable activity that makes it like any other day. I can remember when no high school would have dared to have any football games or volleyball games or field hockey games on the Lord's day. All of the schools wherever I've been in this country, the Lord's day means nothing anymore. The Lord's day is football day when men will sit with their beer and their potato chips, from 12 noon to 10 o'clock every Lord's day, watching grown up boys bump heads and break necks on one another. Lord's day m...

33:45 - 34:55 Read in full sermon

The point: We have no right to be less conscientious about the fourth commandment than we are about any other — idolatry, false worship, taking God's name in vain, murder, adultery, or theft. Inconsistency here is not Christian lib…

Martin quotes Owen's second observation: God gave the Lord's Day to be a hedge and protector around all his other ordinances. While the hedge stands, public worship, preaching, and the interaction of the people of God are protected; let the hedge fall into disuse, and all God's ordinances erode and become ineffectual.

Did any wonder that by and large we see the decay of any solid, vital religion all around us? Owen says in another place, God has given us the Lord's day to be the hedge and protector around all his other ordinances, so that when that hedge is there and healthy and unbroken, his other ordinances of public worship and preaching and the interaction of the people of God are wonderfully protected, but let that hedge be broken into, let it be neglected, let it fall into disuse, and all the ordinances of God by degrees erode and become ineffectual. So I'm calling you to stand and look and ask for th...

34:55 - 36:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate joyful anticipation of the Lord's Day beginning on Saturday, looking forward to it the way you anticipate your favorite meal. Call the Sabbath a delight in the spirit of Isaiah 58.

Martin mentions he is currently reading Owen's masterful treatise on spiritual mindedness for the seventh time — he has read thousands of pages of Owen, some pages many times over. This personal detail establishes his deep familiarity with Owen before quoting him at length on joyful Sabbath observance.

I'm reading for the seventh time right now, his masterful treatise on spiritual mindedness. But here I found a little humor in John Owen. Listen to what Owen says as we take up this matter of what I mean by a joyful observance of the Lord's day Sabbath. For whereas some have made no distinction between the Sabbath as a moral requirement and as a mosaic requirement, unless it be merely the change of the day, they've endeavored to introduce the whole practice required on the latter, that is the mosaic Sabbath, into the Lord's day.

36:22 - 37:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate joyful anticipation of the Lord's Day beginning on Saturday, looking forward to it the way you anticipate your favorite meal. Call the Sabbath a delight in the spirit of Isaiah 58.

Martin quotes Owen's wry observation that some have collected everything good, pious, and useful and prescribed it all as necessary for the Lord's Day, 'so a man can hardly in six days read over all the duties that are proposed to be observed on the seventh.' Martin identifies this as Owen's humor: such a list becomes an insufferable burden, not a delight.

But we've already showed that there were many additions made unto the original Sabbath command as to the manner of its observance in its accommodation to the mosaic pedagogy, that is the mosaic tutelage and training framework preparing the covenant community for the coming of Jesus when we would then become full-grown sons when we came into covenant relationship with God. Besides that, the whole required a frame of spirit suited to the mosaic economy. Now here's his humor. Again, others, they've collected whatever they could think of that is good, pious, and useful in the practice of religion,...

37:07 - 38:25 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate joyful anticipation of the Lord's Day beginning on Saturday, looking forward to it the way you anticipate your favorite meal. Call the Sabbath a delight in the spirit of Isaiah 58.

Martin asks the congregation to imagine their favorite cut of meat — a perfectly cooked inch-and-a-half filet mignon (emphatically not well done, which he says requires a return to cooking school). The smell rising to the olfactory nerves, the sight on the plate, the first cut — that experience of delight is what God calls his people to feel toward the Sabbath. 'Spiritually you ought to salivate like you do when you think of your favorite meat.'

And what I'm saying is it's God's intention that we should have a conscientious but joyful observance of the Lord's day Sabbath. Surely this comes through so clearly in Isaiah 58, does it not? Isaiah 58, I've quoted a number of passages, but here I'd like you to get this through the eye gate as well as the ear gate. Isaiah 58, 13 says, If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then s...

38:25 - 39:49 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It no longer reigns, but it remains. And remaining sin in its attitudes and dispositions is no different from reigning sin. Remaining sin has the remnants of the clenched fist.

Martin uses Pharaoh's response to Moses as the archetypal image of the unregenerate heart. When God commands, the natural man answers: 'I don't recognize his claims. I'm Pharaoh.' This is the clenched fist in the face of God — the disposition behind every unconverted person's contempt for the Lord's Day.

The disposition of every unregenerate heart is like Pharaoh. When Moses goes in and says, Yahweh demands let my people go, and Pharaoh answers and says, who is Yahweh that I should obey him? I don't recognize his claims. I'm Pharaoh.

46:13 - 46:32 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It no longer reigns, but it remains. And remaining sin in its attitudes and dispositions is no different from reigning sin. Remaining sin has the remnants of the clenched fist.

Martin pictures God coming to the worldling and saying: I have marked out one day in seven to remind you that you are more than atoms and electrical impulses — you have a never-dying soul. The Lord's Day is God's merciful intrusion into secular time, calling people to remember their eternal identity and how they can come to know God through Christ.

God can come to him and say, I have marked out one day in seven that you might be reminded you are more than just the compilation of atoms and electrical impulses and the things that make you up as a man. You have a never-dying soul. And in mercy, I've marked out a day that you might be forced to remember that you're my creature, made in my image, yes, fallen in Adam, but a creature who through Jesus Christ can be brought back into fellowship with God, associate with those things that remind you of who you are and how you can come to know God. And they say, I want no part of it. Carnal mind is...

46:59 - 47:53 Read in full sermon

The point: When you wake on the Lord's Day feeling an indisposition to honor God on his day, recognize that feeling as the actings of remaining sin and resist it in Christ's strength, the same way you would resist any other sinful …

Martin draws a direct comparison: if you woke on the Lord's Day and a lustful thought about a neighbor's wife flashed through your mind, you would cry out to Christ and resist it. If an impulse to go shoplifting arose, you would resist it with all your might. Treat Sabbath indisposition the same way — recognize where it comes from and deal with it in Christ's strength.

It's the actings of your remaining sin that would lead you in the direction of ignoring to some degree, despising, disregarding, or even profaning and carelessly observing the Sabbath. And you need to recognize that indisposition and deal with it the same way you would if you woke up next Lord's day morning, saw your neighbor's wife, and a horrible thought of lusting after her flashed across your mind. What would you do with it? Would you entertain it?

50:25 - 51:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Receive the Lord's Day as God's weekly gift reminding us we are image-bearers with eternal souls — a truth easily buried beneath the week's ordinary labor and earthly responsibilities.

Martin pictures unfallen Adam: no sin, perfect wife, no tempter, all his gardening worshipful, all conversation with Eve worshipful. Yet God still gave him a special day set apart. This proves the Sabbath is not a consequence of the Fall but a creation ordinance for humanity at its best — even perfect Adam needed the Sabbath's focused rest and reflection.

Adam would have gone about his dressing the garden with delight and communion with God, no doubt, when he wasn't sure where to put this plant or that plant and what to cut back and what to arrange, he would have done so constantly lifting up his heart to God pleading for wisdom that he might be a good steward in the care of God's creation for God put him in the garden to dress it and to keep it, to use his creativity, his aesthetic sensitivities and he would have done so so that in a sense all of his work would have been worship, all of his conversation with Eve would have been worshipful, no ...

53:36 - 55:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Receive the Lord's Day as God's gracious forced reminder of the eternal rest to come in Christ — a counterweight to the earthbound pressures of family, work, and financial obligation.

Martin draws a structural parallel: just as the Lord's Supper reminds us that all our blessings are rooted in the death of the Savior, so the Lord's Day reminds us that the benefits bought by that death are leading us to eternal rest. Both ordinances are God's gracious forced reminders for believers who tend toward earthboundness.

I'm a creature who has eternal destiny before me and it becomes a testimony to the world that we are more than mere animals and then it becomes a wonderfully blessed forced reminder just like the Lord's Supper reminds us that all of our blessings are rooted in the death of our Savior. The Lord's Day reminds us that the benefits bought by the death of the Savior are leading us to eternal rest and where we have a tendency to get so earthbound in the responsibilities of this life caring for the kids putting bread on the table keeping up the house et cetera, et cetera the Lord's Day comes around a...

56:47 - 58:13 Read in full sermon

The point: Treasure the Lord's Day as the primary means of preserving the presence and blessing of God among the congregation. Carelessness about the Lord's Day is the path to becoming just another ecclesiastical outfit.

Martin surveys seasons of genuine Holy Spirit revival throughout church history and notes that one of the almost universal fruits is a return to conscientious, joyful Lord's Day observance. Nominal Christians converted into real Christians, and dull backslidden believers revived, suddenly cannot get enough of preaching, praying, and praising on the Lord's Day.

Ask yourself the question when the Holy Spirit has come in might and power in those seasons that we have come to call revival what has been one of the almost universal fruits of such a visitation of the Holy Spirit? It has been a return to a conscientious joyful observance of the Lord's Day. When people who merely have religious profession but are unconverted or when converted people have entered a season of spiritual dullness and God comes by the Holy Spirit and converts many nominal Christians into real Christians and he pours fresh life into real Christians who were backslidden and moribund...

60:41 - 61:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Treasure the Lord's Day as the primary means of preserving the presence and blessing of God among the congregation. Carelessness about the Lord's Day is the path to becoming just another ecclesiastical outfit.

Martin applies the revival argument personally: when you have let the edge go off your spiritual life, that is when you start glancing at your watch during preaching, counting down when it will be over. When you are revived and a Spirit-filled man is feeding your soul, time disappears entirely.

For by their fruits you shall know them. Think of your own life when you have allowed the edge to go all the way off your spiritual experience. Isn't that when you begin to start looking at your watch oh the preaching's gone. You get revived in your spirit and a man is preaching in the power of the Spirit and feeding your soul.

62:33 - 62:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Treasure the Lord's Day as the primary means of preserving the presence and blessing of God among the congregation. Carelessness about the Lord's Day is the path to becoming just another ecclesiastical outfit.

Martin describes what happens after a powerful Lord's Day service: 'I can't believe that — that seemed like 20 minutes.' He identifies this as 'the powers of the age to come, the eternal Sabbath' breaking into present experience — the foretaste of the eternal rest in which the hearts of God's people leap to meet and embrace it.

It's like you get a little taste of the age to come and time is irrelevant. And when everything's over you say what I can't believe that that seemed like 20 minutes. What is that? That's the powers of the age to come the eternal Sabbath.

62:59 - 63:14 Read in full sermon