A Conscientious and Joyful Sabbath Observance

Introduction: The Third Old Path

0:03 Now, it's always a delight to minister in churches where people bring their Bibles with them. And so I would urge you to take your copy of the Word of God and turn with me this morning to the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah, and I shall simply read one text, Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 16. The youthful prophet from Anathoth, set apart by God to minister primarily to the southern tribes in Israel to Judah, speaks these words, verse 16 of Jeremiah 6. Thus says the Lord, stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths where is the good way. And walk therein. And walk therein, and you shall find rest for your souls.

1:09 Let's again pray and ask God that by the help of the Holy Spirit, we may know the voice of God speaking to us as surely as he spoke through the prophet Jeremiah. Let's pray. Holy Father, what a privilege has been ours to lift up our voices in hymns of praise of. Amen.

1:36 Recognizing afresh who you are as the great and glorious and wonderful God, we thank you for the reminder that all creation lifts up its hands in praise to you. And now we come again, mindful that you have said in your word that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. O Lord. O Lord.

2:06 O Lord. Give us from heaven all that we need to profit from the study of your word this morning. Help your servant, help this gathered congregation that together we may be very conscious that there is another among us. Even the person of your Holy Spirit, illuminating our minds, giving utterance to your servants, enabling us to taste the powers of the age to come.

2:35 Lord, we have not come to simply examine words out of a book. We've come to have heart dealings with the God of the book. Hear us and meet with us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

2:54 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 in which they needed to stop and to reflect and then to ask and having asked, to walk. And it was my privilege in the three sessions of the men's conference to seek to open up the larger context of this passage as we considered the prophet, the people, the burden of his message. And then we, as it were, tightened the field in our worship. lens and zoomed in upon verse 16, and we noted the majestic speaker. It is Yahweh himself,

4:17 the great I Am, the self-sustaining, self-sufficient, triune God who calls out to his people with three imperatives, and he tells them that they are, first of all, to stand and to look. They are to be reflective on where they are, how they got there, where they are going, and in that posture of serious reflection, they are then to ask for something, and what they are to ask for is the old or ancient paths, the paths of biblical revelation, the paths marked out by the word of God through Moses and the prophets. They are to ask for the old. The old paths wherein is the good way, and having asked and received direction, they are now to plant their feet in the very path marked out by the word of this eternal, changeless, self-sufficient, living and true God, Jehovah himself. And then having sought to come to some basic understanding of the text, I began to draw out some lines of context.

5:34 In this text, the writing of the current Gospel is the same, but in a different way. So I will now read to you a little bit of the text that we have already read to you and we will examine its basic picture because we have not yet reached the end of the Gospel. But when we look at the text and its text, it has a lot of understanding of the new changing path that is being constructed in the world, so I will now read it in a different form. The beginning and the end.

6:02 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 the very purpose for which they were made. Even as we read in our consecutive reading this morning, Adam, Adam was placed in the garden to do the will of God, and you and I are called back into fellowship with Him through the gospel to the end that we should become His willing, cheerful bond servants. And then we saw the decisive refocusing of the entirety of life.

7:23 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 we want to be with Christ and we can't be with Him until we enter through the door of death or in this passage when He comes in glory and power and gathers all His saints living and dead unto Himself and we are wrenched loose from being groveling worldlings and we become pilgrims and sojourners whose hearts are set on the blessings yet to come so we consider then this old path of this heart and life transforming conversion to God and then secondly

8:49 we consider the old path of gospel holiness and I spent the first session yesterday morning opening up the absolute necessity necessity for gospel holiness having defined what I meant by gospel holiness we looked at four lines of evidence as to why it is absolutely essential to pursue godly holiness then we looked at the nature of godly of gospel holiness what is it that makes up godly a gospel holiness and we looked at six things that form the essential elements of gospel holiness and then in the final hour yesterday we considered the gracious provisions God has made for gospel holiness what has He given us that we may indeed be a holy people and so I urge any of you that were not there that you get the cds download them from sermon audio not because I think the preaching was that great but because this stuff is so vital it is one of the most important things in the gospel and it is one of the old paths that in great measure has been forsaken in our day and the answer to the dilemmas and to the ballets and to the dullness in many of our churches is not looking for something new

10:15 something novel something that is scintillating it is to do what God says in our text stand and look ask for the old paths wherein is the good way and walk therein. Now this morning we take up the third of those old paths that I want us to consider together, and it is this. It is the old path and the good way of a conscientious and joyful observance of the Lord's Day Sabbath. Now I know that's a mouthful, but try as I have tried, I can't reduce it and still have a framework to deliver the burden of my heart. God is calling us by the scriptures to stand and to look about and to ask for the old paths and the good way that is the way of finding rest to our souls, and I submit to you that one of those old paths that constitutes part of the new world, that constitutes part of the new world, that constitutes part of the good way, is nothing other and nothing less than a conscientious

Defining the Term: Lord's Day Sabbath

11:36 and joyful observance of the Lord's Day Sabbath. Now I begin, first of all, by explaining my terminology. You see, words capture ideas, and if you want to capture the idea accurately, it's important to choose the right words. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

12:07 No man knows the things of God save the Spirit of God. If God did not disclose himself in words apart from general revelation in the world without and our own world within, we would not know what's in his mind. But Paul says, which things we speak. In words, which the Holy Spirit teaches. The things of God revealed by the Spirit of God are couched in the very words of God, and the right words convey the right ideas. And the words I've used in this title of this third old path, I've used them deliberately, seeking to make them a vehicle to capture the essence of the teaching of the Word of God. So we begin with the term Lord's Day Sabbath. Why didn't I simply say, let's consider the old path of a conscientious and joyful observance of the Sabbath, or of the Lord's

13:17 Day. Why do I put together the Lord's Day Sabbath? Well, I do that very deliberately because I think better than any other way. It captures the unified teaching of the Word of God concerning a sacred day of rest.

13:37 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 the assembly, I, John, was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. People didn't sit there and nudge one another and say, what's this Lord's Day? What's that? No, the assumption is that the congregations in those seven churches would fully understand the

14:56 identity of the church. The term conveyed by the Lord's Day. God's last designation of the sacred day of rest is that it is the Lord's Day. The crucified, risen, exalted, enthroned Lord Jesus has made this His peculiar and special day. And that's why I don't simply use the bare term Sabbath, which fundamentally, only means day of rest, but I use the Lord's Day Sabbath to underscore that all of our thinking about the sacred day must be through the glasses and through the prison of the blessings brought to the new covenant community of the people of God. We do not keep the Mosaic Sabbath. The Mosaic Sabbath. The Sabbath, which was the original creation Sabbath, was given many aspects peculiar to the Mosaic

16:08 covenant, and that day, the day of the Mosaic Sabbath, went into Christ's tomb with Him, and no lesser Puritan theologian than John Owen said, leave it in Joseph's tomb. Don't rest. Don't rest. Don't rest.

16:29 Don't resurrect the Mosaic Sabbath and bring the people of God back under old covenant strictures, which Paul describes as that of a people who have not yet come of age, and they needed all of the strictures and the restraints, the pressures of that covenant and its detailed instructions. We celebrate the Lord's Day, a day. A day that oozes and is full of the glory of new covenant realities, a risen Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, our freedom in Jesus Christ. So that's why I am using the terminology the Lord's Day Sabbath, but I am using the term Sabbath. Why not just stop with the Lord's Day, because the

17:29 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.

17:59 It is the Lord's Day Sabbath that immediately then takes us all the way back to the very passage read this morning. We're woven into the fabric of creation itself before the fall of man. God himself sanctifies the seventh day and gives it peculiar significance. And then as that Lord's Day Sabbath is revealed to us in Genesis 2, in the unfolding of redemptive history, it gets encased with much Mosaic legislation and directions under the Mosaic covenant. And when we come into the New Testament, we find it gets encrusted with a lot of Pharisaic nonsense and man-made rules. And Jesus pulls away those encrustments in all of the

18:59 Gospels. There's no commandment with which our Lord has more concern to set people right about that commandment than the fourth commandment. And what is he doing? For the most part, he's pulling off all this man-made encrustment around the original Sabbath of creation, encased in Mosaic legislation, to which the Pharisees add all of their man-made rules and regulations and traditions.

19:29 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? On the first day of the week, he brings out with him that original creation Sabbath, now stripped in his life ministry of the Lord.

20:29 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 a sudden, their Lord is in the midst.

21:28 Jesus. Jesus comes and meets with us on the first day of the week, eight days later. And John is careful to underscore that. What happens? Not six days, or four days, or nine days, but eight days later.

21:46 The next first day of the week, lo and behold, they're gathered, huddled together, and who appears in the midst? Jesus himself appears in the midst. On what is now the Lord's day, Sabbath, so that in a matter-of-fact way, when Paul is thinking of the Corinthian church and their involvement in the collection for the poor saints, he says, Oh, on the first day of the week, let each one of you lay by him in store, that no collections be taken when I come. Or when Luke is writing an account of Paul's activity.

22:28 In Acts chapter 20, he comes to Troas and says very matter-of-factly, on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread. You see, the very matter-of-fact way it is set before us, it is evident that God, by the Spirit, through the apostolic pattern of life and ministry and instruction, the new covenant community comes to embrace that there is now a special day filled with such glory of new covenant privilege and accomplished redemption that God even changes the day from the seventh to the first. So that his little finger that pointed to the fact that the day of rest would celebrate not only creation, Genesis, I'm sorry, Exodus chapter 20, where in the commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, the focus falls upon that's the pattern of creation. But in Deuteronomy 5, God says you're to keep this day holy because you were redeemed out of Egypt. So that that special day is also to be a remembrance not only of God's pattern of work and rest, but of God's mighty activity in redemption. Redemptive deliverance.

23:54 And all of that comes to fulfillment when Jesus rises from the dead on the first day of the week and then constitutes that day the Lord's day, Sabbath. It doesn't come to us hanging on a sky hook. It has these deep subterranean roots that go all the way back to Genesis chapter 2. Roots that...

24:23 That find themselves embedded in the fourth commandment in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy 5. But now it is encased within the entire Mosaic framework with peculiar requirements and perspectives that are fitting to that framework of the Mosaic covenant. But when it goes into Joseph's borrowed tomb when Christ dies and is buried, as Owen says, leave it buried, and it comes out of that tomb, the Lord's day, on the first day of the week. 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?

25:15 Wiggle your ears, nod, twitch your nose, something. Do you see why I have chosen the terminology, the Lord's day, Sabbath, that we might express that wonderful reality? Now, I've used this language. The old path is the path of a joyful, I'm sorry, a conscientious and a joyful observance of the Lord's day, Sabbath.

Defining Conscientious Observance

25:47 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.

26:08 He's got a very limited vocabulary. Try as we may to give him a wider vocabulary, he learns nothing. You contemplate a given action and conscience says, right, wrong. Yes?

26:24 No. And we're constantly trying to teach him the word neither and maybe. No, conscience won't learn it. He spits them out, he won't learn it.

26:34 So, to do something conscientiously is to do it with the conviction it is my duty to do it and therefore I do it in a painstaking and careful way. And the old path to which I'm calling you this morning is a path of a joyful, I'm sorry, a joyful observance of the Lord's day, Sabbath. Of conscientious observance of the Lord's day, Sabbath. In other words, we must be persuaded that the God who made us requires of us that we remember the Sabbath day to keep it what God has already made it.

27:18 He didn't say remember the Sabbath day to make it holy, but to keep it holy. Genesis 2 that we read this morning says, God sanctified, set apart as special this day. That was God's activity. We are now called upon to remember what God has done in marking out that day and saying in a special way, this is mine.

27:47 Remember my day to keep it what I've made it. Remember my day to keep it what I've made it. Remember my day to keep it what I've made it. To make something holy is to set it apart from a common use unto God.

27:57 And God says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, to preserve it for what God has made it. A day set apart from ordinary days for special services to be rendered unto God. And my appeal, my brothers and sisters, is that if we are to honor God, if we are to honor God, if we are to honor God, it must become a matter of conscience when Sunday begins to roll around. This day we call Sunday.

28:32 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.

28:52 The whole picture. And as that day approaches, if we have a conscientious conviction about it, we are anticipating this day has been marked out by God. I don't need to wonder what shall I, shall I not do? Where shall I be?

29:12 It's a settled conviction that this day has been made holy, set apart from common usage unto God. And it is my privilege, and my duty to remember it, to regard it in a way that is honoring to my God. Now I hope every one of you sitting here has a conscientious regard for the first commandment. Do you seek to keep your heart free from my?

29:43 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. A God is any person or thing that takes a place in your affections belonging only to God. Do you have a conscientious, conscientious commitment to the first commandment? Constantly praying, going through periods of self-examination to make sure that no one or nothing is taking a place in your heart that belongs only to God.

30:08 I hope you have a conscientious commitment to the first commandment. To the second commandment, you're not going to worship God any way you feel or any way that's popular. You're going to worship in the way God prescribes in the Word. You don't treat His name, in a light and frivolous manner.

30:27 His name is sacred because His character is both revealed and captured in His name. I hope you have a conscientious commitment to the third commandment and to the fifth, honoring father and mother, and to the sixth, no murder, no adultery, no stealing. We have no right to have anything less than a conscientious commitment to the fourth commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

31:01 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's appointment be set apart for the worship of God, so by His word, in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, a day of rest, to be kept holy unto Him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed to the first day of the week,

32:27 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 profound insight. Take away a conscientious observance of the Lord's day Sabbath, and all religion will quickly decay if not come to nothing in this world. Look at our own country.

33:45 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 means nothing. The beaches, the places of fun and amusement, they do their big business, the weekend tally of money that pours into Hollywood's garbage, much of it on the Lord's day. Owen was right.

34:55 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 the old way, the old paths wherein is the good way, and walk therein, that is the good way of a conscientious observance of the Lord's day Sabbath. But then it needs to be a joyful observance of the Lord's day Sabbath. Again, John Owen is so helpful, and I've read thousands of pages of Owen, some pages many, many times.

Defining Joyful Observance

36:22 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.

37:07 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, and prescribed it all in a multitude of instances as necessary to the sanctification of 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. He said it would take a man six days to read all the things he should and shouldn't do on the seventh. How can that be joyful? That becomes an insufferable burden.

38:25 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 shall you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Two times the word delight is there. What do you experience when someone puts down before you your favorite cut of meat? Maybe it's a nice inch and a half thick filet mignon done just right, which means not well done.

39:49 Anyone who does a filet mignon well done, they need to go back to school and retrain their taste buds. But anyway, maybe it's a filet mignon, maybe it's a brisket, or whatever it is. What do you experience when that favorite piece of meat, the smell of it, goes up into your olfactory nerves and you salivate and you see it sitting on the table and it's on your plate and you cut it? You experience delight.

40:16 God says, when you think of the Sabbath, spiritually you ought to salivate like you do when you think of your favorite meat. Call the Sabbath a delight. Saturday, you say, tomorrow's my delightful day. Tomorrow is the day when God says, I'll ride upon the high places.

40:37 That's what I mean when I speak of delight, or I'm speaking of what we find in Psalm 122. On this day, there is gathering the convocation of His people. What was the disposition of the psalmist? I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.

40:59 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who are built as a city, that is compact together. I was glad. Somebody said, Hey, let's go up to the house of God. Here's the appointed day of worship.

41:16 He says, My heart leaped within me. Here is God's day in which we can go and gather as God's people. Or Psalm 92, which has the title, A Psalm for the Sabbath Day. It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to Your name most high, to show forth Your lovingkindness in the morning and Your faithfulness every night.

41:45 Here we've gathered this morning. We've celebrated the lovingkindness of God, the chesed, the covenant love and faithfulness of God. And after something to eat and to rest and some fellowship, we're going to come back and do it again tonight. We don't need to have a movie Sunday night because we've had all the delight we can have in singing the praises of our covenant God in the morning.

42:12 And we've got to have something a little more scintillating. No, no. We're going to gather tonight to do the same thing we did this morning. And if we had the strength, we'd like to have another service from 11 to 12.

42:26 I hope that's the way you feel. That's what we find throbbing through these passages, Isaiah 58, Psalm 122, Psalm 92. So my brothers and my sisters, I say the old path, wherein is the good way, is that of a conscientious, joyful observance of the Lord's Day Sabbath. Now then, having established what I mean by the language of that statement, there's a question that no doubt some of you are already raising in your own mind and it's this.

Why the Lord's Day Is Neglected

43:10 Why then is the Lord's Day Sabbath so ignored, despised, disregarded, profaned, and carelessly observed? That's a good question. Why is the Lord's Day Sabbath so ignored, despised, disregarded, profaned, and carelessly observed? You know what the fundamental answer is?

43:39 Turn to Romans chapter 8 for the answer. Here's the fundamental answer. Romans chapter 8 and verse 7. Romans 8 and verse 7.

43:58 Because the carnal mind, or the mind of the flesh, that is, the mindset of everyone who has not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who has never experienced what God promises under the New Covenant, that He will take out the heart of flesh, the heart of stone, give us a heart of flesh, write His law upon our hearts, give us His Holy Spirit, incline us to keep His law, and walk in His fear. All of that is a bringing together of some of the statements of Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31. That's what God does when He saves us. But those who have not known that, they are under the power of their carnal or fleshly mind, the disposition of heart and of spirit. And what is the essence of that disposition? The mind of the flesh is enmity against God. You are born with a clenched fist toward God.

45:11 I was born with a clenched fist toward God. Now, how does that clenched fist manifest itself? Well, in Psalm, and we see it in our day, we see aggressive atheists writing their books, seeking to convert people to atheism. But that's not necessarily the way many manifest their clenched fist.

45:37 Look at the text. See what it says. The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. This enmity is manifested in its non-subjection to the law of God, so that whatever the law of God says, the enmity to the God who gave the law is manifested by their non-subjection to that law.

46:13 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.

46:32 I recognize Pharaoh's designs and desires and determinations, but Yahweh, I have no recognition of his claims. That's the disposition of every unregenerate man, woman, boy or girl. It is the clenched fist in the face of the living God. That's why the average worldling cares nothing for the Lord's Day Sabbath.

46:59 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 enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God. But what about the believer?

47:53 Why is it so many professing Christians ignore, despise, disregard, openly profane, or carelessly observe the Sabbath? Here's the reason. Follow closely now. While we were under the dominion of sin, the clenched fist reigned.

48:14 If we're Christians, the dominion of sin has been broken. We are no longer fundamentally rebels against God, but subjects of God. You turn to God from your idols to serve the living and true God. But, but, the Bible makes plain, we have remaining sin.

48:35 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. Remaining sin has an indisposition to keep the law of God.

49:02 That's why Paul said, I find then a law that to me who would do good, for I delight after the law of God in my inner man, I find this other principle of operation that makes me indisposed to do what fundamentally with all my heart I want to do. Paul is conscious of this tension. He mentions it in Galatians 5. The flesh lusts against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh.

49:32 These two are contrary, the one to the other, so that you may not do the things that you would. So when I get up on the Lord's day morning, I not only get up as a new creature in Christ, with a new heart, indwelt by the Spirit, the law of God written internally, so I have an internal motivation to obey the law in its external revelation, that law that says remember the Sabbath, and there's a part of me that says I delight in the law of God with my inward part. But I have this other principle in me and I begin to have a mind that goes off in the directions of worldly concerns and feels an irritation as to, well I've got to be present at Sunday school and Sunday morning and then... What is that?

50:25 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?

51:00 I hope not. You would cry out, Lord Jesus, pour my heart of that horrible, adulterous thought toward my neighbor's wife. Or if you suddenly felt an impulse to hop in your car and go to a shopping mall and engage in a half hour of shoplifting and violate the command, you shall not steal. What would you do with those thoughts that rise up out of that horrible muck of your remaining sin?

51:32 I hope you'd resist it with all your might. So when you get up next Lord's day and you feel an indisposition to honor the Lord on His day, recognize where it comes from and deal with it accordingly in the strength and in the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why is the Lord's day ignored, despised, disregarded, profaned, and carelessly observed in the unconverted? It's because their enmity to God and their reigning sin makes them hate the fourth commandment.

52:14 In the hearts of God's people, remaining sin causes us to think less of the Lord's day Sabbath than we ought, to be less scrupulous about honoring God on His special day. Now, I want to raise another question. Why is it so crucial to have this conscientious and joyful observance of the Lord's day? Well, here again I'm greatly indebted to John Owen.

Why the Lord's Day Is Crucial

52:53 John Owen says, and I believe he's right because he's biblical, God's given us this day, among many other things, to be number one, a constant reminder that we are creatures created in the image of God, as our brother reminded us in the scripture reading this morning. Every returning Lord's day is a reminder. Adam, my first father, put down in a perfect environment with a perfect wife, with no sin within, no tempter yet without, he still needed a special day. A special day.

53:36 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 sharp words, no deceptive words, no sarcastic words, all of life was worship. Yet, God said, unfallen Adam in a perfect environment with a perfect white needed a special day of worship, a special day of restful reflection on God's creation when he wasn't so busy with his hands that he couldn't back up with fresh admiration for the very things he was dressing and keeping and the wonder of being in God's worship. Being in God's world as God's servant and son, doing God's will, Adam in an unfallen state needed the blessings of the Sabbath, a constant reminder that he was not like the beast of the field around him.

55:06 He was created as image of God. Secondly, a physical and emotional well-being demands the Sabbath. What did Jesus say? He says, man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man.

55:26 And God rested on that day and man as image of God, he is to rest from his normal labors physically. Unfallen Adam, before work was to be toiled with sweat and thorns in the ground to oppose its productivity, Adam needed the Sabbath for his physical and emotional well-being and then the Sabbath is now become a weekly reminder of the age to come. For in Christ, the age to come is broken in upon us and we are marked out for God's eternal Sabbath, eternal rest that awaits us in the age to come and each returning Sabbath is a reminder this world is not our home. This is not our permanent home. This is our permanent abiding place and then in the fourth place it's a testimony to the world that we're more than animals. When your neighbors see you get in that car week after week and they know you're going off to church you're bearing witness to the fact I am more than flesh and blood and all the stuff that's around me in my house and on my back and my car and my whatever else I possess.

56:47 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 and reminds us Hebrews 3 and 4 a rest yet remains for the people of God. And as we are resting in the accomplished work of Christ it will bring us at last to the eternal rest in the presence of our Lord Jesus. Now in bringing this to a close I want to just touch on two other things and you've been very attentive I've made you think but I don't know any other way to call you to consider this wonderful old path

Answering Objections and the Historical Argument

58:13 of a conscientious joyful observance of the Lord's Day Sabbath there's an oft repeated objection well how come the New Testament is silent about the Sabbath? I want to hand my Bible to people and say what Bible are you reading? This Bible in the New Testament is full of stuff about the Sabbath. What commandment did Jesus labor more to set people's thinking right about?

58:50 But the fourth commandment. Most of his controversies many of his controversies with the Pharisees were over the fourth commandment. Throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John issues of the Sabbath are continually before us. It's Mark that says quoting our Lord Jesus the Sabbath man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man even so the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath and as Lord of the Sabbath in the days of his flesh what was he doing?

59:23 Telling people that by his death and resurrection he's going to abolish the Sabbath? No! He's stripping the Sabbath of all the encrustment of Pharisaic legalism. Preparing the Sabbath to become the Lord's Day Sabbath.

59:42 That's what he's doing. He doesn't give one word to indicate that he's pulling off all that encrustment in order to bury the Sabbath as a moral obligation. And people say the New Testament is silent about the Sabbath. I say what New Testament do you read?

60:03 Mine is not silent. And Jesus graciously does what he does that we might begin to think in terms of the blessings of the Lord's Day Sabbath which was not merely the Mosaic Sabbath with a change of day. And then I would urge you to consider what I call a final necessary historical observation. Jesus said by their fruits you will know them.

60:41 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 and dull. What happens? They have an appetite for all of the stuff that is spread out on the Lord's Day. On the Lord's Day Sabbath they can't get enough of preaching they can't get enough of praying they can't get enough of praising by their fruits you shall know them.

61:57 You see if God intended for us to regard indifference to the Sabbath as a part of Christian liberty why every time almost without exception when he pours out his Spirit is the fruit of that a resurrection. A resurrection of joyful conscientious Sabbath people. I would ask that question to anyone who thinks it's his duty to tell Christians you have no obligation to the Lord's Day. I think you have a controversy with not only God's word but his works.

62:33 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.

62:59 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.

63:14 The eternal Sabbath breaking into now. And the hearts of the true people of God leap to meet it and embrace it and enjoy it. So I plead with you dear people of God in this assembly whom God has blessed so richly and by way of an aside I can't tell you how much joy it's brought me to stand among you and be given the grand tour of this five star facility in which the Lord has brought you. We tracked with you when our deacon Jerry Dreesy was coming down laboring much to help in this and to see your growth.

63:51 Many of your faces are new to me. But unless you want to become just another ecclesiastical outfit then just get careless about the Lord's day. If you would treasure the presence and blessing of Almighty God treasure the privileges of the Lord's day. And so I and where I began stand look ask for the old paths wherein is the good way and walk therein.

Closing Exhortation and Prayer

64:31 Let's pray. Our Father how we thank you for your word. We thank you for the gift of the Lord's day Sabbath. And we do earnestly pray that you will bless your dear people in this place that they may treasure this day that with all of their hearts they may say with the psalmist week after week and month after month I was glad when they said unto me let us go to the house of the Lord.

65:09 Father we pray seal your word with power to all of our hearts keep us we pray from in any way giving in to that contrary principle of remaining sin that would indispose us to delight in your day. May we by grace continue to grow in our love to our Savior and in the day that he's marked out for himself the day in which when we are gathered he appears in the midst by the Holy Spirit. Hear our prayers we pray in Jesus name. Amen.

65:51 Amen.