Sabbath Controversy #2: Observations / Applications

Introduction and Review of Mark 2:23-28 Exposition

0:02 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, June 17th, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us again turn together to the second chapter of Mark's Gospel. And since I have already read the entire chapter, I'll not read the last paragraph again, but simply indicate that it is that paragraph, beginning with verse 23 and concluding with verse 28, that will form the focus of our study again this morning. There is perhaps no passage in all of the New Testament more significant with respect to the subject of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day than is this passage in Mark's Gospel. Now there are other very significant and vital passages, but I say there is perhaps no passage more significant in all of the New Testament than the passage that is before us. In our initial study of this portion last Lord's Day morning, I attempted to do but one thing,

1:28 namely simply to open up and underscore and isolate, the basic facts established by the passage and to explain the meaning of the words of the passage. And this morning I will briefly review the highlights of that exposition, and then we will move on to consider together some vital observations and applications of the truth contained in the passage. In our study last Lord's Day, we noted in verse 23, this simple account of the activity of Jesus and his disciples. He, with them, was going through a field of standing grain on a Jewish Sabbath day. And as they went through that field of standing grain, the disciples broke off some of the heads of grain, and according to Luke chapter 1, they rubbed the grain between their hands, and the disciples probably, though the text does not say it, blew upon it. To blow the chaff away, and then they ate those heads of grain. In speaking of this passage with one of the members of the congregation, they said they could remember doing precisely that as a child in another country.

2:48 They would pass by a field of ripened grain, and they'd pull off the heads of the grain, rub it between their fingers, and blow upon it, and then they would have their little snack. Now, the disciples, in doing this, were not stealing, according to Deuteronomy 23 and verse 25. Such practice was permitted by the Mosaic legislation. Then we noted in verse 24, the vigorous objection of the Pharisees.

3:19 They reproach our Lord for permitting his disciples to do what they regarded as unlawful on the Sabbath day. Behold, why do they, that is, your disciples, and apparently with your approval, on the Sabbath day, that which is not lawful. Now they were not breaking the Nein Law. One can search every element of the Mosaic legislation touching forbidden activity on the Sabbath, and there is not a shred of evidence that they were breaking either the letter or the spirit of Mosaic legislation for the Sabbath.

4:01 They were breaking... one of the silly or several of the silly, minute regulations of the scribes and of the Pharisees.

4:11 And so they come to our Lord objecting, why are they doing that which is unlawful? According to their nitpicking rules and regulations, the disciples were guilty of harvesting on the Sabbath, threshing on the Sabbath, and probably winnowing on the Sabbath when they blew away the chaff from their few little grains of wheat or of barley. Well, then we have the answer of our Lord recorded in verses 25 to 28. He has, first of all, an immediate answer to their immediate question, or I should say an answer to their immediate question.

4:52 And that answer is given in verses 25 and 26. He directs the Pharisees to an incident in the life of David, an incident recorded in 1 Samuel 21, in which David and his men in a time of physical need, notice the emphasis, when he had need and was hungry, he and they that were with him. David in such a situation was permitted to violate a stipulation of the divinely given ceremonial, that law said that only the priests should eat of the special bread, the bread of presentation that was placed in the tabernacle, that bread that was changed every Sabbath. And apparently it was on a Sabbath day, when David was fleeing for his life from the court of Saul, that he meets the priests coming out of the tabernacle with the old loaves, and it was those very loaves that David and his men were permitted to eat, and they incurred no guilt. Now what's the point of our Lord citing this incident? Simply this.

6:03 If David, in the face of real human need, was permitted to break a God-given ceremonial law without guilt, how much more can the disciples of Christ, in the face of real need, break one of the silly regulations of the scribes and Pharisees, and be utterly guiltless? That's the reasoning. That's the reasoning of our Lord. So he answers the immediate question, but then in verses 27 and 28 he addresses the deeper issues.

6:36 He knows that again and again these Pharisees are going to be offended with his Sabbath practice, because there are deeper issues that they have not yet come to grips with. And those two issues are these. Number one, they do not understand the nature, and purpose, of the appointed day of rest. So the Lord is going to say something about that.

7:03 And secondly, they do not know who the appointed legislator of the day of rest really is. So our Lord addresses those two deeper issues. He said, You Pharisees are thinking the way you are thinking, because you are ignorant of the nature and purpose of the appointed day of rest. And this is given to you.

7:26 And this is given in verse 27. The Sabbath was made, or literally came into being for the sake of, or on the behalf of, man. The diah with the accusative means nothing less than for the sake of, or on account of. The Sabbath came into being for the sake of man, and not man, brought into being for the sake of the Sabbath.

7:59 You Pharisees don't understand the original intention and purpose of the appointed day of rest. You view the appointed day of rest with God's stipulations to which you've added 1500 plus of your own, and that's literally, they had 39 times 39, all of these stipulations, and you view it as a system of rules and regulations into which every man must be squeezed, as though man were created for nothing more than to keep the rules and regulations of your Sabbath. He said, You're thinking backwards. Man was not made for the Sabbath. Rather, the appointed day of rest was brought into being for man, that is, for his good, for his blessing, for the advancement and securing of his life and well-being. If you understood that, what problem would you have with my disciples in order to relieve their hunger pangs, probably coming back from synagogue worship? Why would you get all upset if they take one of the gifts of God, rub a little between their fingers, and have a little snack?

9:17 What can there be in that innocent snack on this day that is a violation of man's well-being? And if you understand the nature and purpose of the day of rest, you would not be accusing my disciples of doing that which is not lawful. And then he says in verse 28, You need to understand who the appointed legislator of the day of rest really is, so that, and that connective is a strong one, hoste, so that, in this manner, as the result from this first truth, if the Sabbath was made for man, even so, then the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. And we saw in our study that this points us back to Daniel 7, 13 and 14, in which the Son of Man is given a universal kingdom over all nations and all men. And here is the line of our Gospel, the argument. If the Sabbath was made for man, the Son of Man is Lord over all men, then He is also Lord over that which is given to man, and comes within the circle of the gifts of God to man.

10:37 He is Lord of the Sabbath. You Pharisees think that you and your doctors of the law and your rabbis have the right to legislate what is right or wrong on the appointed day of rest, but you don't have that right. The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, not you and your crowd. I, Jesus said, am the Lord of the Sabbath.

11:06 That appointed day of rest, marked out, blessed and sanctified at creation as a gracious gift to mankind, that day of rest reinstituted in the wilderness the well-being of the people of God, that appointed day of rest etched in tables of stone to underscore its place as unalterable moral law, that appointed day of rest surrounded, and listen carefully, with stipulations suited to the circumstances of Israel as a nation in a state of tutelage and immaturity, that day of rest attended with elements which were to foreshadow the work of redemption, that day of rest over which Christ as Son of Man is now Lord, is that day which as Lord He now begins to purify and strip away from it all the encrustments and the layers of all of this legalistic, rabbinical tradition which had made the Sabbath a noose around the neck and a burden upon the backs of the people in Israel. And then as Lord of the Sabbath He will nail to His cross all that is attached to that period of immaturity,

12:34 the stipulations and sanctions and penalties that are strictly Mosaic. According to Colossians 2.16 the Jewish Sabbath was nailed to Christ's cross and went into Christ's tomb. And He came out of that tomb not with the Mosaic Sabbath, but with that original day of rest given to man in his innocency, now stripped of all that is strictly Mosaic and typical and shadowy, and now dressed in all the glorious robes of the new covenant realities of His redemptive activity with its new day, with its new name, the Lord's day, Kuriakos Heimera, no longer the Jewish Sabbath, but the day of the Lord. And in a very wonderful way G. Campbell Morgan has summarized so beautifully everything that I tried to establish in some 55 minutes of exposition last week and now I've given you in about 10 minutes of review and I'll conclude the review with just reading this paragraph from G. Campbell Morgan.

The Sabbath Principle: Older Than Judaism, Restored in Christ

13:48 The Sabbath principle is far older than Judaism. It is as old as humanity. It is rooted in the inherent necessity of human nature. The Sabbath was made for man.

14:02 Go back to Genesis and there you will find it. There the Sabbath of man was the seventh day in the creative process, but it was the first in human existence because the seventh day of creation was man's first day of life. Thus originally man's first day was his Sabbath day. It was not the seventh day.

14:26 It was God's seventh day of work and his seventh day of work was man's first day of life and was his Sabbath. Out of the first day of rest man was to go forth to his work. Under the Hebrew economy it was the seventh day. Man worked his way into rest.

14:46 The resurrection changed everything and men of the new race went back to the original ideal of the first day. We are no longer working into rest. We are resting and working as the result of our perpetual rest. But the principle of the appointed day of rest abides as our Lord has revealed here the fact that the principle of the Sabbath day is certainly a provision for rest but principally for worship.

15:16 That's the profound underlying meaning of the Sabbath. It is not indolence. It is not doing nothing. It is ceasing all the work necessary for the here and the now for the temporal and material in order that we may enter into his courts that we may hold fellowship with him.

15:35 Christ has not violated that. He says he is Lord of that. But he broke through the super-added traditions that made the Sabbath a burden that could not before. Well, so much for that all to be it brief review for those who are not with us for the exposition I can only commend the tape of last week's ministry to you.

Contextual Significance: Sabbath Controversy Between Old and New Covenants

16:03 But now in the light of that I want to draw out some what I believe to be vital observations and applications of the truth contained in this passage. And the first is this I want you to note the vital significance of the context of this passage in the Gospel of Mark. What follows and what comes before is very significant as Mark under the guidance of the Spirit organized this material. This incident is followed by the one that we shall expound God willing next week.

16:40 It's another Sabbath controversy incident. On this next Sabbath day Jesus heals. And in healing He again stirs up the ire of the Pharisees. And as He responds to their objections to His healing on the Sabbath He articulates the principle that works of mercy are perfectly proper on the appointed day of rest.

17:11 And He does this even though it leads to the Pharisees committing themselves to His destruction. In other words after He articulates the principle that He is Lord of the Sabbath He then goes on to demonstrate how He exercises that Lordship with respect to regulating and determining what is proper on His own day of which He is Lord. It is preceded by the passage in which we considered the parables of the patch and of the wineskins. A passage in which Jesus was making it plain that you cannot take the forms and the rituals of the old covenant as an old garment and attach onto them the dynamics of the new covenant. Fasting was prescribed in the old covenant. One specific day of regular fasting in conjunction with the day of atonement. But all that had grown up out of that in terms of Pharisaic Judaism and even the transitional ministry of John the Pharisees and John's disciples come and say why don't your disciples fast?

18:33 Jesus defuses the immediate question by saying I'm the bridegroom my friends are with me I'm with them how can they fast? This is a time to be joyous. A time of temporary fasting will come when I'm taken away but there's a deeper issue. And the deeper issue is this you must not attempt to impose new covenant worship and privileges and forms upon the old covenant and of old Judaism.

19:05 Right from his assertion about the patches and the wineskins he proclaims himself Lord of the Sabbath. And to me that significance in the context. There's not a shred of evidence that he is Lord of the Sabbath to abolish it but Lord of the Sabbath to purify it of all the encrustments of Pharisaic Judaism to swallow up in himself all of the peculiarities of the Mosaic Sabbath which were type and shadow and as Lord of the Sabbath to bequeath to his church the Lord's Day Sabbath the first day of the week in which the beauty and glory of the original Sabbath are now restored in which the moral element of the Sabbath embodied in the fourth commandment finds pure and unaltered expression. And I say it's significant that this statement comes couched as it does on the one hand between the clear statement that there's no patching up of the old with the new. New covenant life in worship will need a new garment and new wine skins. And therefore to say that any concept of a day of rest that has any connection

20:33 with the biblical notion of Sabbath is to mix up the covenants I cannot embrace that polemic because I see in this very setting our Lord speaking of fasting and other things pertaining to the old covenant as passing. But with reference to the matter of the sacred day of rest he as the Lord of the Sabbath will not take from man that which was made for man. It was made for man and redemption has as its commitment the ennobling and the purifying and the elevating of man and therefore the Lord of the Sabbath will not take from man that which is made for him but will enhance it and beautify it and give it to him in all the glory and wonder and power of new covenant privilege and reality. Well then in the second place I would ask you to note how this passage exposes the three major errors into which people fall with respect to the appointed day of rest. There are three major errors into which people fall with respect to the appointed day of rest or the appointed day of rest and of worship.

Error 1: Undermining the Sabbath Through Legalism

22:01 And the first one is this. It addresses itself to the problem of undermining the appointed day of rest by legalism. Undermining the appointed day of rest by legalism. Now when I use the term legalism I do not mean a careful and meticulous regard to the details of God's law kept out of love to Christ and in the fear of God.

22:29 Now for some people anyone who renders to God's law at any point a careful and meticulous obedience out of love to Christ and in the fear of God is called a legalist. But that's not legalism. That's evangelical obedience. This is what the Bible says in Ephesians 7.1.

22:50 Having these promises dearly beloved let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of God. What do I mean by legalism? I mean this. The practice epitomized in the Pharisees in which an elaborate system of man-made rules and regulations are imposed on the consciences of men as having divine authority.

23:17 You see they came and said your disciples are doing what is unlawful. They equated their man-made rules with the law of God. That was legalism. Pharisaic legalism.

23:31 And I also mean a Mosaic legalism in which people would regard the Lord's Day Sabbath as though it were the Mosaic Sabbath. And that the only basic difference is a change of day. And that's legalism. To impose upon the glorious liberty of the sons of God the details of the Mosaic Sabbath is a form of legalism.

24:00 And you see what happens when people attempt to preserve the sanctity of God's appointed day by legalism they end up undermining that appointed day of rest and turning it into a day of insufferable and oppressive and constricting heaviness. Now the most classic statement I've ever read on that fact comes, it'll surprise you for its source, from John Owen, the great giant of Puritan theologians. And I've read hundreds, probably thousands of pages of John Owen in my life over the past 20 years is when I first became acquainted with Owen. And John Owen seldom, I don't know if ever I found, until I found this page, indulges humor in his expositions. But here Owen at least had a smile in the corner of his mouth. And he's talking about problems people have with the Lord's day and he says this is what happens.

25:14 For whereas some have made no distinction between the Sabbath as moral and mosaical unless it be merely in the change of the day, they've endeavored to introduce the whole practice required on the mosaic Sabbath into the Lord's day. But we've already showed that there were sundry additions made unto the command as to the manner of its observance, its accommodation unto the mosaic pedagogy, beside the whole required a frame of spirit suited thereunto. Others again have collected whatever they could think of that is good, pious, and useful in the practice of religion, and prescribed it all in a multitude of instances as necessary to the sanctification of this day, so that a man could scarcely in six days read over all the duties that are proposed to be observed on the seventh. You see what he's saying? And you see the touch of humor? He said some people in their efforts to preserve the sanctity of the appointed day of rest have weighed it down with a multitude of man-made rules and regulations.

26:28 And whenever we do that, you know what happens? We cancel the very commandment we're trying to preserve. Look in Mark chapter 7, where Jesus makes this so plain. He says it again and again.

26:43 Verse 8 of Mark 7, You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men. He said unto them, Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. Verse 13, Making void the word of God by your tradition. You see, God is wise enough to tell us what He requires of His subjects.

27:14 And when we out of a false sense of having to help God go beyond what God has declared, we undermine the very precept we are seeking to preserve. And surely this passage should speak so clearly to us. How could people come to the place where they're ready to accuse the Son of God of indulging lawlessness in His own disciples as though He were a minister of sin? It's because they have been held in this grip of this vicious legalism.

27:51 And we need to be warned from this passage, lest we fall into the same snare. As one of my brethren said, People, once they begin to take seriously that the Sabbath was made for man, the appointed day of rest is for man, in all covenants and in all dispensations, man is man, needs a divinely appointed day of rest. When he begins to understand that the fourth commandment is a moral precept, we're to remember God's appointed day. He has blessed it and sanctified it and has sanctified it and has said to us, Now you keep it and preserve it in terms of what I have made it.

28:34 No sooner do they begin to take that seriously when they start asking questions. Well, can I take a walk on the Lord's day? And if you answer yes, well, how far can I go? And if you give them a distance, they say, Well, suppose I cover part of it just jogging.

28:52 Well, how fast may I jog? You see what the mentality is? It wants a neat little package set of regulations thinking if only I can have that, then I'll really keep the law of God. No, you'll end up negating the law of God and doing exactly what the Pharisees did.

29:11 When Jesus said, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, it's interesting, in the organization of Matthew's Gospel, you know what follows right after this incident in Matthew 12. Matthew's organizing principle presents Jesus as the great burden bearer who says to his own fellow Israelites, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you what? Rest.

29:38 I'll give you rest. I'll give you rest. And one of the things from which he gives us rest is all legalistic conceptions. One of the things of the appointed day of rest that turns it from a day of rest into a day of heaviness.

Error 2: Dreading the Sabbath Through Ignorance or Prejudice

29:56 A day that becomes a vicious burden to be borne. May we take warning from this passage. But there's a second error that this passage exposes and it's this. It not only exposes the error of undermining the appointed day of rest through legalism, but secondly it exposes the problem of dreading the appointed day of rest through ignorance or prejudice.

30:24 Dreading the appointed day of rest through ignorance or prejudice. I'm amazed at how many people if you just say the word Sabbath, they become unstrung. Do you know what the word Sabbath means in the Hebrew? It simply means rest.

30:42 You'll notice what the terminology I've been using this morning, the appointed day of rest, that's not a knee-jerk phrase, is it? But in many places you say Sabbath and people they just come all strong. They think you're all ready to tell them they have to go to the local rabbi, be circumcised, eat nothing but kosher meat. Unbelievable.

31:07 There is a prejudice against the use of the very word Sabbath. People become unstrung in the presence of that word. Well this passage should show us the error of dreading the appointed day of rest through ignorance or through prejudice. Some are ignorant that the Sabbath, the appointed day of rest, was made on account of or for the sake of man.

31:36 The dia with the accusative. It was made for man's sake. Now no matter how you cut it, there are some who say, well it has no reference to creation. Well then it has to refer to the Mosaic Sabbath so that even the Mosaic Sabbath with all of its stipulations was still a blessing to man, not a curse.

32:02 It was made for man. Oh if any of you has been ignorant of this, you've been ignorant of one of God's gracious gifts to you. If man in Edenic bliss needed one day in seven in the cycle of sinless existence, in a situation where work was not with the sweat of the brow, but was sheer delight and another form of worship, if in the midst of that Adam yet needed one day in seven, every returning cycle of seven, to contemplate God's mighty works, to drink in, as it were, the wonder of God's handiwork and refresh himself in his God, how much more in a situation of a fallen world where now man labors by the sweat of his brow and the earth is unyielding and he feels on every hand the pressure of the curse, how much more does he need to know that God has provided a day in which he can rest from his normal labors to contemplate what God has done to bring him into spiritual rest, to gather with the people of God to have the mind and the spirit elevated above the mundane and the temporal and the earthly and that which is fleeting.

33:29 Who can regard that as a burden but one who is a muckraker, whose eyes are ever downward, who lives and thinks as though there were no realities but his own lust and his own toys. But for a Christian to regard as a burden such a gracious gift, O child of God, don't dread the appointed day of rest through ignorance. It was made for you. And the Lord of the Sabbath has brought to you His gracious gift of His own day on which you can gather with His people in the livingness of His own presence and rejoice in Him and give the whole day to His worship and to your own refreshment spiritually, emotionally, and physically. But it also, you see, attacks this dread through prejudice. And it's interesting, as I was meditating upon this passage, I think it's accurate to say in a very real sense, sin entered the world when the devil prejudiced the mind of our first parent toward the goodness of God in giving them a stipulation about a certain tree. Remember what God had said?

34:50 You may freely eat of all the trees, but of that tree you may not eat. Why? In the day that you eat, you will die. It is not in your best interest to eat of that tree.

35:03 I'm forbidding you to eat of that tree, and I'm going to be up front with you, Adam. Don't eat of it, for in the day you do, you will die. That tree does not gender unto life. It leads to death.

35:20 It is in your own best interest not to speak of my glory that you stay away from that tree. Now, the devil came, and what did he do? He sought to prejudice the mind of Eve towards the goodness of God in giving that stipulation. Yea, hath God said?

35:39 Yes, this is what God said. You know what he did? He said this. Now look.

35:43 God knows in the day you eat, you'll be as God, knowing good and evil. You see, God really did not give that command for your best interest. God did it to keep you under his thumb, to cramp your style, to keep you from your full potential. And when Eve allowed her mind to be prejudiced to the goodness of God with reference to that stipulation, she left herself vulnerable.

36:16 And you know the subsequent history. And this is exactly what the devil's done with regard to God's appointed day of rest. He's prejudiced the minds of people to think when God says, remember the appointed day of rest to keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your own necessary work, but the seventh, every recurring seventh day, in terms of my own appointment, which now by virtue of the activity of the Lord of the Sabbath is the first day of the week, is to be kept a day of holy rest unto me, not inactivity and passivity, but a rest from your own labors, a cessation of your own natural and normal and wholesome diversions and pleasures. It is my day, and it is in your own best interest so to guard it and keep it. What does the devil do? He prejudices our minds to think, no, if we're really going to find our true potential, we've got to have the right to do as we just well please on the Lord's day.

Error 3: Refusing the Sabbath Through Rebellion Against God

37:36 Well, how can we in the face of the words of the Lord Jesus dread the appointed day of rest through this kind of prejudice? It was made for man. It was made for man. And then finally, the third error that this passage clearly exposes is what I'm calling refusing to acknowledge the appointed day of rest through rebellion against God.

38:11 Refusing to acknowledge the appointed day of rest through rebellion against God. The passage says, the Sabbath, the appointed day of rest was made for man. It was made for the sake of man and given to man. And it is that very reality that forms the substructure of the fourth commandment.

38:37 Remember the Sabbath day. Regard the appointed day of rest that I have set apart and sanctified and keep it holy. And because it was made for man, it does not mean that man is the Lord of the Sabbath. Because it was made for man, it comes under the Lordship of the Son of Man.

39:04 And it loses nothing of its moral necessity in the hands of the Lord Jesus. And I would not be at all surprised if I'm speaking to some this morning whose problem with regard to the appointed day of rest is not that it's being undermined through legalism or that you dread it through ignorance or prejudice. But you refuse to acknowledge that appointed day of rest through your rebellion against Almighty God. Because the Scripture says the carnal mind is enmity against God.

39:47 It is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can it be. And God's moral law is epitomized in those ten words that He set apart from every other element of the Mosaic legislation, etched in stone with His own finger. And as much as the carnal mind is enmity against the first commandment, thou shall have no other gods before Me.

40:14 And the carnal mind shows its true nature by setting itself upon a thousand things and worshiping them rather than the true and living God. So when God says, remember My appointed day of rest to keep it holy, the carnal mind says, I will not! My life is Mine! My time!

40:36 My days are Mine! You think they are? You'll stand before the Lord of the Sabbath in the last day. And when He judges you, men will be sent to hell for being Sabbath breakers as much as for being adulterers and whoremongers and thieves and liars and covetous men as well.

40:58 My friend, don't you trifle with God's rights to tell you what to do with the life He has given and the time He apportions to you. And the reason some of you disregard the day is because of the rebellion of your own heart. And the tragedy is that as we see the erosion on every hand of even what we would call a general sensitivity to the law of God, we see it also in this area. And the tragedy is that instead of the church raising up a prophetic voice and standing against such lawlessness, it seeks to accommodate its theology to tell people it's all right to go ahead and act as though God had never made an appointed day of rest. And again, John Owen saw this tendency in his day and he not only spoke perceptively to undermining the day with legalism, but listen to what he had to say. You'd think he was speaking to this present hour. Let men in whose hearts are the ways of God seriously consider the use that has been made under the blessing of God of the conscientious observation of the Lord's day in past and in present ages, unto the promotion of holiness, righteousness,

42:26 and religion universally in the power of it, and he goes on to underscore, that whenever the church has known days of blessing and power in the nearness of God, there has been a serious regard for the sanctity of the Lord's day. But in days of general erosion, men turn away from sanctifying God's day. Now how are we to stop this? He says the way to put a stop to this declension is not by accommodating the commands of God to the corrupt courses and ways of men.

42:59 The truths of God and the holiness of his precepts must be pleaded and defended, though the world dislike them here and perish hereafter. His law must not be made lackey to the wills of men, nor be dissolved by vain interpretations because they complain they cannot indeed, because they will not comply with it. Our Lord Jesus did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them, and to supply men with the spiritual strength to fulfill them also. It is evil to break the least commandment, but there is great aggravation of that evil in them that shall teach men so.

43:39 And this cannot be done but by giving such expositions of them as by virtue whereof men may think themselves freed from an obligation unto that obedience which indeed those commandments do require. And he is simply expounding the words of Jesus, whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and teach men so, the same shall be least in the kingdom of heaven. Dear people, we live in a lawless age, and that lawlessness is seen not only with respect to the other elements of God's moral law, but with reference to the day appointed for special spiritual exercise and special rest, and for the turning of the mind to God and His ways and His word, in a concentrated manner. Those in our own day who would tell us that it's a reversion, it's a reversion to a spirit of bondage, to think that there needs to be one day in heaven set apart as the Lord's day, peculiarly His. They are so spiritual, they tell us, that every day is the Lord's day. You know what Jesus said about religious teachers?

45:02 Put them to test by this simple, simple test. By their fruits you'll know them. And if we look at the fruits of that spirit worked out in the lives of those who imbibe it, do we see careful walking with God with a tender conscience, serious regard for His worship and the ministry of His word? No.

45:29 What we see is a conformity to the world and to the spirit of this age, that under the guise of being more spiritual than God ever intended we should be. Man in his innocency had a day set apart, and surely man in this fallen state as he awaits the eternal Sabbath, that eternal rest. Do you know what God's punishment is for those who defy His law? It struck me in preparation.

Consequences of Rebellion and the Spirit's Work in Revival

46:00 Those who say, I will not take an appointed day of rest and keep it unto God. You know what God says to them? Depart from Me into everlasting fire. And what's one of the descriptions of that state?

46:12 Revelation 14, 11. And they have no rest. They have no rest, day nor night. They say, I'll take no rest.

46:29 God says, alright, I'll give you no rest. You will not take My day of rest to think that you have an immortal soul, to go where My word is preached, to reflect that this world is but a passing scene. You will not rest so as to come into My rest and the salvation of My Son. You'll despise all of that and My gracious provision to nudge you to heaven and God and the world of the Spirit.

46:58 Is that your course? Then God says, you'll have that course and you'll have it for eternity. No rest, day nor night. But when God in grace says, God has subdued the proud hearts of rebel sinners and brought them to embrace His Son, it can be demonstrated from church history without, I don't know of any exception, every history of every revival of which I've read, one of the marks of the visitation of the Holy Ghost upon a community of people is not only renewed love for the word and renewed life in worship and renewed zeal in witness and renewed fervor and reality in worship and prayer, but always a renewed regard for the sanctity of the Lord's day. The Holy Spirit who writes the law of God upon the hearts of men also writes the spirit of the fourth commandment upon the heart so that a true believer can say whatever his understanding of the specific biblical and theological grounds of the sanctity of the Lord's day, he is able to say as a believer, I delight in the law of God after the inward parts. I delight to do thy will,

48:26 O my God, yea, thy laws within my heart. Part of that law is the sanctity of every returning seventh day set apart unto the Lord by His own appointment. O may God take this very passage and keep us as a people, keep us from undermining the appointed day of rest through legalism of any kind, Pharisaic or Mosaic. May He keep us from dreading it through ignorance or prejudice.

49:02 And if we are those who this morning are utterly rejecting it through impenitence and rebellion, may God bring us to see that one of the reasons Christ had to undergo the agonies of the cross was because of that very disposition in your heart and in mine by nature. And when it says He bore the curses of a broken law, Galatians 3.13, He bore the curse of all of our breaches of the fourth commandment, all of our indifference to the claims of God's appointed day. Christ died and His blood is able to cleanse from the sin of the profanation of that appointed day. And by the Holy Spirit He is able to give us a delight in that precept until we can say without any reservation we delight in that day. In the very language of Isaiah 58 we call that day a day of delight, the day of the Lord. And in it we find our delight in Him.

50:12 God willing, next week we'll look at the passage in which we'll see what a work of mercy is. And then hopefully two weeks from today I want to bring a topical message on some broad Biblical guidelines for our observance of the Lord's day. I've not dealt with any details because it's only been my purpose to try to extract the principles from this passage and to lay them upon your consciences in the presence of God. Let us pray.

50:43 Our Father, we thank You that in Your great goodness and mercy You have marked out one day in seven from the beginning of the world. We thank You that the appointed day of rest was brought into being for us. And we confess with shame the horrible outcroppings of our own perverse sinful natures and our tragic succumbing to the insinuations of the devil and all of the prejudice that we have had against the gift of Your day. We pray that the Spirit and the Word will so work that we may find delight in our Lord Jesus Christ not only as our great Prophet, Priest and King, our great Shepherd and our elder brother, but may we love Him as Lord of the Sabbath. Oh, that we may love Him as the One who has given to us in the power of His own risen life His day, this very day on which we meet in His name

52:09 to be kept as a day of holy rest unto You. Oh, our Father, help us by Your Spirit that we, by Your grace, may to this lawless generation manifest that we love You and love the gift of Your day and are determined to keep it as a day sanctified and set apart from common usage. Oh, Lord, hear our cry and answer us, we plead, for the sake of Your dear Son we ask in His name. Amen.