The Fourth Commandment Part One

How they apply, but also trying to get down to the root of the difference between legalism, moralism, and a gospel centered understanding of the Bible as a whole and especially applied here. And I think one of the things that we've seen as we've gone through, as we've gone through each of these commandments, is that we tend to look at these commandments as legalists and essentially miss the deeper meaning. Ironically, the legalistic approach to these commandments is actually lowering the standard, not raising the standard. I think that was probably seen most clearly as we looked at the third Commandment last time. So as has been our practice, we'll take two sermons on this commandment. One to look at the commandment and what is required of it, how we're to understand it and interpret it, and then the other will give to the application of it. Exodus chapter twenty, beginning in verse eight, remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord. On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, your livestock, or the sole journer who was within your gates. For in six days the Lord made. Heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord has blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy a man and a man. Remember, as we look at this series on worship, in the first four Commandments, we're working off for a definition of worship, that definition of worship that says true worship happens when we set our mind's attention and hearts effect on the Lord, praising him for. Who he is and for what he has done. And our goal here has been to set our minds attention rightly on the Lord based on the proper understanding of these commandments. Remember that idea of the law of worship based on these first four commandments, every man must worship the One True God rightly, reverently, and regularly. From the first commandment we get the idea that every man must worship the One True God. It is not optional. We saw that it is not okay for people to worship other gods. This is where evangelism and missions comes from, not just the Great Commission, but even the First Commandment compels us toward evangelism and missions, because it's not okay that anyone out there anywhere is failing to worship the One True God. From the second commandment, we get that we must worship the One to God rightly. From the third commandment, we must worship him reverently, and from the fourth Commandment, we must worship him regularly. This also led us into our discussion about the regulative principle of worship. You remember, there are two basic approaches, historic approaches. I gave you a third contemporary approach, but the two historic approaches are the regulative principle and the normative principle. One of them is one of the ways that we looked at. It was that this sort of Anglican approach versus the Puritan approach. On the one hand, there are those who believe that we can worship the Lord in any way that is not expressly forbidden in his word. We worship according to what he has said in scripture, and in any way there's not expressly forbidden therein. It's the normative principle. The regulative principle says that we must only worship God in the ways that he has expressly and specifically commanded, and not in any other ways, not by any other means. Now, as we deal with the Fourth Commandment, as Elder Bolta has said, there's a great deal of confusion around the Fourth Commandment, a great deal of contention around the fourth Commandment. So let me first say what I cannot and will not be doing in these two sermons on the Fourth Commandment. Number One, I will not give an exhaustive defense of our Sabbatarian position. I'm working off of our confessional assumptions there and also off of some of the things that we've covered before. I'll make that clear. Secondly, I will not give an exhaustive defense of a first day Sabbath. That would be an entire sermon or series of sermons in. And of itself. I will allude to that, but not give an exhaustive defense to that. Those individuals who are arguing that we ought to be worshiping on Saturday as opposed to Sunday. What I will attempt to do Number one, I will attempt to explain how our position on the law that lays the foundation for our convictions leads inevitably to our convictions about the Sabbath. Our understanding about the Sabbath is rooted and grounded in our understanding about the law. It's interesting there are a lot of people who there are a lot of people who decide not to take the sixteen eighty nine as their confession of faith, and the overwhelming majority of them, if they are Calvinistic Baptists, reform Baptist, they would identify themselves a reform Baptists. But then they say that they don't want to take the sixteen eighty nine, they want to take some other confession, not sixteen eighty nine. Overwhelmingly and virtually every instance, it's because of their position on the Fourth Commandment. The sixteen eighty nine is clear on the Fourth Commandment, and so some people will not take the sixteen nine eighty nine as their confession. Some will take the sixteen eighty nine as their confession, but then say that they just. Disagree on the Sabbath. Whenever someone says that to me, I say, actually, I think you're wrong. Actually I don't believe that that's your only contention, And immediately we go to the chapter on the law, and in every instance it is, well, yeah, I don't exactly agree with that. Why because if you understand the law the way that our confession does. Then you will understand the Sabbath the way that our confession does. Thirdly, I will assume our confessional position on the first day Sabbath. I'm assuming that position, not trying to prove that position. I'm assuming that position. And this can sometimes be difficult, especially in this age of you know, recording and posting sermons. There are a lot of people who listen to sermons out there and they have no sense of the local church whatsoever. Here's what I mean by that. They listen to a particular sermon that was preached in a local church and then they get upset because in the sermon you didn't address this, this, this. And this right. There's a whole series of messages. That you're preaching at your church for your people, and this is what matters. Amen, This is what Matt. God forbid that we should preach for an audience that's not here. Amen, somebody now, praise God that we have technology available so that people can listen to what we're doing. But we don't need to shape the messages that are delivered to the people of God in a local church around the people who are not here. And so on. Something like this where you could literally spend. Weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks on each of these issues. It's not my intention to satisfy the questions of everyone out there. I don't want to change the series all of a sudden just because we've gotten to the fourth Commandment. I intend to do the same thing that we've been doing with the other commandments based on those same assumptions. And so because of that, there's three questions essentially that we have to answer. Three questions that we have to answer. Two of them will focus on today, and then two in the last message of the series. The one question that we have to answer is is there still a sabbath? Is there still a sabbath? Because there is division among Christians. Now, I will also say, even though there's division among Christians, there's also well, there's division among Christians over this issue as to whether or not there is still a sabbath. Here's some arguments against argument number one. The fourth Commandment is not repeated in the New Testament. And this is an argument really from classic dispensationalism. Because of the way that classic dispensationalism views the law. It's not repeated in the New Testament. It's part of the Old Covenant. It's part of Israel's covenant with God. It's not part of our covenant with God, because it's not repeated in the New Testament, which leads me to the second one. The second objection or argument against it is that we are New Covenant believers. We are New Covenant Christians. We have a new covenant relationship with God. The Sabbath is part of the Old Covenant. We are not part of the Old Covenant. So number one, it's not repeated in the New Testament. Number two, it's part of the Old Covenant. We're in the New Covenant. And then argument number three is that sabbatarianism is by definition legalism. Sabbatarianism is by definition legalism. The only way you can hold to the perpetuity of the Sabbath is to be a legalist who keeps the Sabbath the same way Israel did in the Old Testament. Okay, so these are the main arguments against their still being a sabbath or the Fourth Commandment still being a binding commandment. Arguments four. Remember, the argument against is that it's not repeated in the New Testament. Listen to this from Richard Parcels. Did you know that the first fourth Commandments are not repeated in the New Testament word for word, and neither are the ninth and tenth. In light of this, no one in their right mind agrees that only the fifth, sixth, and seventh and eighth commandments carry over into the New test Testament, and therefore are the only ones applicable to Christians. The essence of. All ten of the ten Commandments carries over into the New Testament. This is what we expect from Jeremiah's prophecy and elsewhere. So again, that argument, well, we don't hold to the fourth Commandment because it's not repeated in the New Testament. None of the first four commandments is repeated in the New Testament, none of them, and the Knight's not repeated, the tense not repeated. So again, this argument is hugely problematic. We have to base our position on something other than whether or not it's repeated. We have to base this on the threefold division of the law. Remember we talked about this. The Reformed approach, the Reformed covenantal hermeneutic is based on this threefold division of the law. There is the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law points to the coming of Christ. The ceremonial law is fulfilled in the person and work of Christ. We have his work in types and shadows in the Old Testament, and they are fulfilled in Christ. So we don't slaughter bulls, lambs and goats anymore, amen, because of the once for all sacrifice of Christ that those things pointed too. So that's the ceremonial law. The civil law. The civil law was the law that governed Israel as a nation in the ancient Near East. We are not Israel in the ancient Near East. We are not bound by the civil law, except when we talked about this fact. Those principles in that civil law, and in fact, the common law that the laws of the United Kingdom and by extension and heredity, the laws of the Republic of Zambia are based upon, are rooted in the moral law itself. So some of these same laws that you will find in Israel serve as guides and principles for the law everywhere all of the world. But we don't take them over one for one, here was the law in Israel. Therefore, here's the law for us when I'm bound by the civil law in that way. However, the moral law is forever binding for all people everywhere. No one escapes the moral law. And that's not just the second table of the law. Remember there are two tables of the law. The first table of the law is the first four vertical commandments. They give us our duty toward God. The second table of the law is those last six horizontal commandments that give us our duty toward men. And if we understand that the moral law is summarized in the Decalogue, that it is summarized in the ten Commandments, that the essence of the moral law is summarize that, then we have to understand that not only does the commandment about murder and adultery and lying have to apply to all people, everywhere, at all times, but the fourth commandment also does. It is part of the unchanging, timeless, transcendent moral law. It was not just for the Old Covenant. It is for all of God's people in all times. So that's the first question that we have to answer, and we'll look at that in the text here. Second first question, is there still a savage? Second question, if there is. What day is it what day is it? Is it supposed to be Saturday or is it supposed to be Sunday? Now those who argue for Saturday, and this is really a more recent phenomenon, especially since the Seven Day Adventist Ellen G. White was the leading prophetess of the Seventh Day Adventists. She predicted the return of Jesus Christ middle of the nineteenth century. She set the date, the date passed. And instead of acknowledging that she was a false prophet and stepping down, she said that Jesus actually returned spiritually, but he didn't return physically to the earth because of a couple of things that weren't happening, like his people weren't keeping the dietary law, and like the fact that his people were worshiping on Sunday when it's supposed to be worshiping on Saturday. And then badabing baba boom, there we go. Along with it was another claim that we'll look at here in a moment, but. Well, we'll just do that. When first the claim was that the pope in the fourth century changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. The pope pope did that, not the Apostles, not the New Testament. The pope did that, and he did it in the fourth century. We don't have any documentation of this, but the pope did in the fourth century. The other thing that's interesting about this, and again I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I just came back from leading a British Reformation tour going through those principal sites of the British Reformation, which means we went to a lot of places where people were burned to death, right. We went. One of the places we went to was a White Horse Saying at Cambridge, where people like Tyndale and Latimer and Ridley and Cranmer and Barnes and Bilney and others would meet in the early fifteen hundreds to talk about the work of this guy in Germany named Martin Luther. And it's really how the Reformation came to England and the name of the men who met there in what was called Little Germany at the time. The White Horse Inn is also a list of names of men who would be martyred because there would be a Roman Catholic monarch to come to the throne after Henry the eighth and bloody Mary would martyr hundreds hundreds of Protestants. And these individuals would rather burn than accept Catholicism. They would rather burn than accept the idea that they couldn't translate the Bible into English. By the way, some of the people who were burned to death, A couple of individuals were burned to death in England in the sixteenth century because they were caught with a copy of the Lord's Prayer in the English language. That was a crime punishable by death having the scripture in the English language. And so Tyndale's work just invaluable. Well, why do I labor this point, because here's what Ellen G. White would have us believe. Ellen G. White would have us believe that. These individuals who were willing to be burned to death in order to get the Bible right, in order to have the freedom to translate the Bible correctly, These individuals who later on a generation later would give us our great Confessions of faith, who would spend years hammering out what the Bible says about these things, that on all these other things, they were willing to be burned to death and die. But on a Sunday Sabbath, the Pope can just say in the fourth century, it's not Saturday, it's Sunday, and all of a sudden, these men they're not willing to stand up against that. Do you see how crazy that sounds, how ridiculous that argument is. It flies in the face of the entire history of the Reformation, and it's just not true. A second argument they make is based on a quote unquote literal reading of the Commandment, and we'll see that that's not the case either. The argument is if you read the commandment literally, and again, if you've been here for any of the other messages, then you'd understand that that's problematic for most of the first four commandments because we have to understand them in our new Covenant context. Amen, if you read the second Commandment literally, then the only anything that's forbidden carved images, right, I mean, if you read it literally. But we've seen that it's about a whole lot more. Than just that. Another argument, similar one, is that the law is unchanging, that the law is unchanging. And again, we understand that the moral law is summarized in the ten Commandment. So the moral law that's summarized in the Tin Commandment, absolutely it's unchanging. However, our application of the Decalogue as written does change with the advent of the New Covenant. Well, there's a third question. Number one, is there psil Sabbath? Number two? If so, what day is it? Oh? By the way, the answer to we'll answer those. And the third one is how is it to be kept? How is it to be kept? So is there still a Sabbath? Our answer is yes, Okay, what day is it? Our answer is first day of the week, the Lord's Day, not Saturday. The Lord's Day, first day of the week. You're not going to go to hell if you go to shirts on Saturday. Amen. However, ironically, people who argue for seventh day sabatarian is it would argue that you are going to hell if you're worsep on Sunday. More on that later. So third question, how do we keep it? How do we keep it? What are the rules? And this is where we get back to on the next session, this whole idea of application using those same principles that we've used for the rest of the these commandments. There's a couple of approaches. One is the legalism approach, literal old Covenant reading of the commandment. How do we keep it the exact same way that Israel kept it. And again that was legalism, it was bondage. I'll never forget. In Israel's leading a tour in Israel, and one day I made the mistake of getting on this Shabbat elevator, the Sabbath Shabbat. Now, the Shabbat elevator is not like the other elevators. You're in a hotel in Israel, and on Shabbat, on the Sabbath on Saturday, there's the elevators for everybody else, and then there's the elevators for the people who. Are still hardcore. Most of the Jews in Israel are secular, not practicing at all. But then there are those who are hardcore, and you know them by their clothes, by the ringlets in their hair, by the hats. You know them right. And on Shabbat they have the Shabbout elevator. Well, what is the Shabbout elevator. Well, the Shabbot elevator is the one that opens on every floor. So I push the button, I'm talking to somebody, you know, and the elevator opens up. I get in and it's the Shabbot elevator. So at every floor it felt like it took me a day and a half to get to the bottom. Why the shabbout elevator, because this is the bondage of legalism. You can ride the elevator, you just can't push the button because pushing the button would be work and it would violate the Sabbath. That is bondage. That's what legalism looks like. People, And you hear that, and immediately your immediate thought is that is utterly. Ridiculous, and it is. It is. But that's the bondage of legalism. That is not I repeat, that is not the essence of the Fourth Commandment. So legalism unchanging law. There is a second one, and that is the idea of liberty. Liberty and the New Covenant and the glory and joy and privilege of this commandment and our acts of mercy and necessity. Again, more of that in the application time. So let's look at our text a couple of things. Why do we keep the sabbath? Number one, we keep the Sabbath holy because God made it holy. We see that in verses eight and eleven at the beginning and the end of the commandment. Look at the first line of the commandment. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That's verse eight. Look at the last part of verse eleven. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. The pattern is here in this passage. But the pattern is also there and the rest of the commandments. Remember those three major movements in the first three commandments. The first commandment, I am, therefore you shall not. The second commandment, you shall not because I am. The third commandment, you shall not because. The Lord will. Not. Now this final movement in the fourth commandment, we have you shall because the Lord did. You shall because the Lord did. And this is incredibly important because remember we said this about all the commandments. But I can't reiterate this enough. We are who we are, and we do what we do because God is who God is. The moral law is a reflection of the character of God himself. It is a reflection of the glory of God himself, the righteousness of God himself. And so we can't divorce these commandments and our understanding of them from our understanding of and appreciation for, and reverence for who God is. We remember the Sabbath day and we keep it holy because God is the one who hallowed it. God is the one who set it apart. God is the one who showed us something of himself through this particular commandment. He showed us something of what it means to be holy through this commandment. In fact, this day being holy means that it's a day that's set apart. It's a day that's unique. It's a day that's not like other days, just like God is set apart, unique and not like any other creature or being that we could possibly imagine. This idea is also one that said, it's his people apart. His people are set apart because of this day. If people are identified as a peculiar people because of this day, that is hallowed and set apart, because God hallowed it and set apart. So we keep the Sabbath holy because God made it holy. Holy. We also keep the Sabbath holy because God made everything. Look at verse eleven again, we'll look at nine and ten. Really on the application part. Okay, So don't get all nervous. Wait a minute, we didn't do. We'll get to it. I promise, Lord will it okay? For in six. Days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Notice the interchange there between seventh and Sabbath. We'll get to that more. The Sabbath is commemoration of God's work in creation. We see this in Genesis chapter two, verses one through three. This is what's being alluded to. And there we read, thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done. Here what's amazing about this, And we've talked about this before and a message work series that I did on work, And if you remember, we said that work is not a product of the fall, and we tend to think of work as a product of the fall. But here we see work before the fall. In this one paragraph, work appears three times and the fall has not occurred. Secondly, we see that the one who was working here, the first worker in the Bible, is not man it's God. We work because God works. Amen. We work because God works, not because the world is evil, not because of the Word. In fact, I've said it before, I'll say it again. We're going to work in the new heavens and the earth. Heaven is not going to be just disembodied spirits with halos laying on clouds and playing harps. Amen, we get new bodies. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. If that doesn't excite you, you're still in your twenties. You wait till you get to the place where you say, I remember when I used to be able to do that. Amen. Somebody, why do we get these new bodies? And what are we going to do with these new bodies? If there's going to be a restoration of this perfect place that God God created, and we see that in the end of the Bible, then there's going to be a restoration of this perfect existence that God created for man. And work is not a product of the fall. God's the first worker. We work because we're made in the image of God. But guess what we rest from our work because God rested from his work and were made in the image of God. Do you see that God made us in his image. This is not just a command that He gives us. But remember what I said, the Moral Law is a picture of the righteousness of God. It's a picture of the character of God. It's not just these random things that God gave. One of the mistakes that we make is we look at the moral Law and we say, well, yeah, these commandments are good because your life will be better if you do these things than if you don't. Oh that's not the point. That may be true, but that's not the point. So when we go looking at the Decalogue and looking at the tin commandments, we don't go looking for the benefit that we derive from keeping the law. We look at the character of God that is revealed and the fact that we belong to God. We are in covenant relationship with God. Were made in the image of God, and we reflect his character and his righteousness as He has revealed it in these commands. That's true here in his first command. It's rooted and grounded in creation. It is a creation ordinance. By the way, we see this principle, this principle of the Sabbath, before the fall and before the giving of the Decalogue. Why because the ten Commandments are a reflection of the perfect character of God. God didn't watch man, you know, all the way up through Genesis, you know, in the first part of Exodus, and then say. Okay, I've watched you long enough. Now I think I've got ten rules that I help you do better. You see the righteousness of God reflected in the Decalogue. Before the Decalogue is given. When Moses came and gave the Ten Commandments and said, honor your father and mother, the Israelites didn't say, wait, what, what manner of rule is this? You should not commit adultery? Wow? That changes everything. You should not commit murder, are you? Are you serious? You should not steal, you should not bear false witness. You find where did this stuff come from? No, none of. It was strange. All of it was revealed and reflected in the character of God long before the Decalogue was given. And that is true of the Fourth Commandment as well. It's right there in creation. It's not invented on Sinai, and it doesn't disappear on Calvary, just like the rest of them don't. So we keep the Sabbath holy because God made everything. Thirdly, we keep the Sabbath weekly because the Lord made the week again, For in six days the Lord made the heavens in the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. They rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the seventh day, the Sabbath day, rather not the seventh day, but the saventh. Day, and made it holy. So so here's a question. What is a week? And why is a week seven days? When I ate, some people have lobbied for that, Some of the cultures have done things like that. Why not why not eight? Now, in order for you to understand why I'm asking this question, and it is a rhetorical question, let me ask you a few other questions and maybe you'll see my point. What is a day? Well, I know your answer is, well, a day is a period of twenty four hours. Okay, that's the measurement. But what is it a measurement of. It's the measurement of the amount of time it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis. You look up in the heavens and you can figure out what a day is. Some comes up, some goes down day. Nobody has to tell you that you could be born in the middle of the Sahara, raised by lions, and eventually you would come up with the idea of a day. Aymen, Okay, what's a month? Well, a month is approximately the amount of time it takes for the. Moon to go through its full cycles. Moon month, right, you're getting even the word comes from there, right, So again, we can sit you out in the Sahara raised by lions. You'll figure that out. Eventually you'll have the concept of a month. What's a year, Well, a year would be a little more difficult for you to figure out, especially if the lions didn't decide to let you live that long, but eventually you would figure out a year. Now the day, right, that's measuring the amount of time that the Earth takes to rotate on its axis. A month, it's the cycle of the moon. A year measures the amount of time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun. Some of you're still looking at me with that look. Can I ask you a question? Have I left you? You were born in the Sahara, raised by lions hyenas. Whatever you'd come up with a day, wouldn't you? Eventually, if you paid attention, you'd come up with a month. Eventually, if you paid attention, you'd come up with a year, seasons would change, you'd come up with the idea of a year, But how would you come up with the idea of a week. There's nothing in the heavens that you can look at to measure the concept of a week. The only reason we have the concept of a week is because of creation. Nature can't give you a week. Nature doesn't create a seven day week. God creates a seven day week. And only God creates a seven day week. And he does so to remind us that He created the world. And when we punctuate our lives with this one day in seven remembrance, essentially, we are reminding ourselves of the God who created everything in six days and then rested on the seventh. Finally, we keep the Sabbath day on the Lord's day because Christ rose on the Lord's day day, because Christ grows on the Lord's Day. Look at the commandment again, if you will, beginning there verse twenty eight, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. The seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. Ask yourself this question, is that a specific reference to the days of the week or specific reference to a pattern of six days' work, one day rest. While you ponder that one listen to this from our confession Second Lended Baptist Confession of sixteen eighty nine, Chapter twenty two, verse paragraph seven. As it is the law of nature that in general a 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 hath particularly appointed one day in seven for sabbath to be kept holy unto Him. That's the principle. One day in seventh, 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 into the first day of the week, 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 being abolished. Westminster Larger Catechism, Question one sixteen. What is required in the Fourth Commandment? The Fourth Commandment requires of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such times as He has appointed in his word expressly one whole day and seven, which was the seventh day from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, and the first day of the week ever since, and so to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath, and in the New Testament is called the Lord's Day. Sound familiar. All the Reformed confessions speak this way again from rich Barcelos. We worship when we do in light of the coming and resurrection of Christ. But Sabbath keeping is still our privilege Hebrews four to nine. However, we do not meet on the seventh day of the week looking back to the original creation and redemption from Egypt. These were symbolic of a greater creation and redemption to come. Nor do we look forward to the first coming of Christ, since this has already taken place. Just as the historical basis for the application of the Fourth Commandment under the Old Covenant is two fold, creation and redemption, sold, the historical basis for the application of the Fourth Commandment under the New Covenant is twofold. The resurrection is. Both the formal inauguration of the new creation and the guarantee of our redemption. By the way, isn't it interesting and you think, well, I mean, you just made that up. He says, you do it to commemorate. You do it to commemorate creation. You're making this stuff up about doing it to commemorate is redemption. Nope. Deuteronomy chapter five. Go to Deuteronomy chapter five. Who's the author of Exodus? Thank you Moses. Who's the author of Deuteronomy? Moses, same author. This is from a series of sermons that Moses preached when he gave the law again, observed the sabbath day to keep it holy. As the Lord your God commanded you six days, you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter, or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the sole journer who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Wait a minute, that hounds new. That sounds new because it is new. Remember there's two very important points here. Number one, the ten Commandments is a summary of the moral law. The principles are there, and they are applied in various ways. You shall remember that you are a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. So in Exodus, we're keeping it, and we're remembering what creation and Deuteronomy we're keeping it, and we're remembering what redemption. So the idea that we would attach the Sabbath principle to our redemption in Christ is completely in keeping with the principle of the Fourth Commandment, completely in keeping with it. But not only. That, the idea of the Sabbath is not just past and present, but it's also future Hebrews chapter four, beginning of verse eight. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his work, as God did from his Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. There is a rest yet to come, and our sabbath rest, that Lord's day rest that punctuates our life. That one day and seven is not just a reminder of creation. Six days he created the world. Seventh day he rested. Way this is And again I don't mean to chase rabbits, but I just cannot avoid this right here. If we allow people again eighteen fifty nine, Darwin Publishers the Origin of Species, all of a sudden, you have new inventive ways of interpreting the Bible, and we have different theories of how you can so because we got to be able to get billions of years into the Bible so that the science, so that the science people out there who believe that the world is billions of years old can respect us, right, And so we have the gap theory and the day age theory and all these sorts of things. And now, all of a sudden, a day doesn't mean a day in Genesis. It just means a period of time, so that you can have billions of years and you can fit. Evolution into the scriptures. Huge problem. Because the Fourth Commandment assumes that they were twenty four hour days. A man somebody. The fourth Commandment assumes that they were twenty four hour other words, if it wasn't, then basically the fourth Commandment would mean you need to take six periods of time of whatever length, and then one period of time of the same epy. If day doesn't mean day, then that's the way we'd have to read the fourth Commandment. But in Genesis, yom means day. Day means twenty four hour period. God created the world and everything everything in six literal twenty four hour days, and then he rested, And so we remember his creation and his rest. Presently we remember our redemption in Christ, and that early in the morning on the first day of the week, he rose from the grave, and we gather together as new Covenant believers to commemorate a redemption that we have in God took on flesh, became a man, died for sin, and was resurrected on the first day of the week. So, yes, yes, we changed, amen, yes we did, but we kept the moral principle. What's the moral principle one day in seven that hasn't changed. By the way, it's the same thing we do with the other commandments. We don't go and try to tease out the live. What is Jesus doing on the Sermon on the mounth. You've heard it said you shall not commit murder, and you think, because you've never taken anybody's life, that you're not guilty. But you know what, you don't get it, have no idea. If you've hated someone in your heart, you're guilty of violating that commandment. Because it's bigger than legalism. What's he going after? The moral principle of the commandment? And that's what we see here in this commandment. So is there still a sabbath? Yes? There is, Yes, there is. There has to be. If we understand the threefold division of the law, and we do, and we understand that the ten Commandments are summary of the moral law, and we do, then how could we remove any of the commandments? We can't. We can't. Now I'm kind of going to leave you hanging because there's that third question. Okay, so what do we do? What does it look like? Well you'll get that the next time, Lord William, the Lord lets us all terry long enough to finish the series. Then we'll look at the application of it. But it's going to be the same principles that we've been working with before. This is not about legalism and list keeping. This cuts straight to the heart, just like the rest of the commandments do. And whatever I'm going to say, you know that it's going to point to what it is that we're remembering and what it is that we're commemorating. And when you have a shabbacked elevator. You're not commemorating. You're conforming outwardly and leaving the heart completely and utterly untouched. Worse than that, you are hardening your heart because you believe that your outward conformance makes you holy, and it does not. So when we get to the application part of it, know that that's where we'll be aiming. But for now, the first two questions is there is there's still a sabbath? Yes, yes there is. When is it first day of the week, the Lord's Day? In fact, that phrase day of the week it appears seven times seven times the New Testament seven times every time the phrase is first day of the week, seven times, first day of the week. It's a significant day. It's the day when our Savior rose from the dead with all power in his hand, and when we gather on that one day and seven we gather not just to look back and to commemorate our God who created the world and everything in it, but we also look back at the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the reality of that in our lives. Right now. Today we commemorate and we celebrate as we worship God, and we look forward to the rest that is to come. Let's pray, Gracious God, our heavenly Father, How we thank you and praise you for your goodness, for your mercy, for your kindness toward us, for the privilege of worship, for the privilege of gathering together in your presence, among your people, and setting our minds attention and heart's affection on you, and for praising you for who you are and for what you've done. Thank you for reminding us of how the Fourth Commandment does precisely that, how the Fourth Commandment exists to remind us of who you are, to remind us of what you've done. That it exists so that we might commune with you and reflect the character of the God who created the world and who redeemed us at the cross. Grant by your grace that this might be at the heart of our worship before we pray this and Christ's name. Amen.