Dale Partridge - How a Sabbath Keeping Church Transforms Society with Corbin Clarke

00:00:00.000 Good morning.

00:00:03.620 Our scripture reading before Elder Corbin's sermon today is Exodus 20, 8-11.

00:00:13.360 Hear the word of the Lord.

00:00:17.260 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

00:00:20.540 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord

00:00:26.200 your God.

00:00:27.460 On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter,

00:00:33.060 your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock,

00:00:36.740 or the sojourner who is within your gates.

00:00:40.540 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them,

00:00:45.780 and rested the seventh day.

00:00:48.220 Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

00:00:52.080 This is the word of the Lord.

00:00:55.200 Well, good morning, church.

00:00:56.700 If I were a wiser man, I would have had a sermon on Father's Day.

00:01:04.120 But, in God's grace, we're not preaching on Father's Day or a sermon on Father's.

00:01:11.580 We're not going to be beating you over the head with all your responsibilities and telling

00:01:15.440 you ladies how wonderful and perfect you are. 0.99

00:01:18.660 That's the normal way to go about it.

00:01:21.640 Instead, we're going to be talking about a completely different topic.

00:01:25.380 This morning, we're going to study the Sabbath day.

00:01:28.500 Now, the title of our sermon this morning is

00:01:31.000 How a Sabbath-Keeping Church Transforms a Society. 0.56

00:01:36.740 That's a bold title, but I think it's true. 1.00

00:01:39.700 And hopefully this morning, you'll see that it's true.

00:01:43.460 Now, this morning, our nation faces two distinct issues.

00:01:47.480 first number one we are the busiest generation that has ever lived we live in an age where we

00:01:58.620 are constantly connected to one another we live in an age where the internet has allowed us to

00:02:05.120 take work home there's no distinction between personal and secular between what you do at your

00:02:12.960 nine-to-five and what you do at home in the four walls of your own home. That line has been blurred.

00:02:22.120 We no longer have good categories. We no longer have this clear distinction. Everything has been

00:02:30.400 melted together because of our busyness. We no longer have good boundaries. That's our second

00:02:36.360 point. That's our second issue. We struggle in America to say no. We struggle to have good

00:02:44.520 boundaries. Time for us, time for the Lord, time for our family, and time for work. Ecclesiastes

00:02:52.080 is good on this. There's a season for everything. God is a God of order. He desires for us to have

00:02:58.060 good order, yet we don't. We struggle to have good boundaries. In my own life, I've seen this issue

00:03:08.080 firsthand. I grew up with an excellent father, a father who showed me right from wrong, a father

00:03:15.220 that showed me what it was to work hard, to be a hard-working man. Without his example, I am half

00:03:22.520 the man that I am today. But being the busy man that he was, he struggled with exactly this issue

00:03:29.580 that I'm talking about this morning. This issue of busyness and boundaries. I remember many days

00:03:36.120 coming home from school and dad sitting at the dinner table with laptop open, iPhone in hand.

00:03:43.540 I could come sit down and talk to him, but it'd be in between phone calls. It's a hard life. It's a

00:03:50.720 hard thing to grow up without any sort of good structure. If

00:03:57.540 this is you, if you resonate with any of these words this

00:04:01.180 morning that I've said, I'd encourage you to listen to this

00:04:04.160 sermon. I'd encourage you to hear the words from the

00:04:08.080 scriptures that teach about this good rhythm of work and rest.

00:04:12.940 Work is a blessing. It's a great thing. Often we're

00:04:16.620 allergic in our culture to work. It's not a bad thing, but it can become an idol, something that

00:04:25.340 we become a slave to. We have to be careful of this. So if you're a note taker, I want to give

00:04:32.360 you the structure of the sermon this morning so that you can follow along in your notes.

00:04:37.780 We begin with our main point. Our main point this morning is that a Sabbath-keeping church

00:04:43.800 teaches the world about God's good order and rule in society.

00:04:50.280 A Sabbath-keeping church teaches the world

00:04:53.560 about God's good order and rule in society.

00:04:58.080 We're going to examine that main point with three sub-points.

00:05:02.580 You can go ahead and write these down.

00:05:04.320 The first sub-point is, what is the Sabbath?

00:05:08.220 How can we know how to keep the Sabbath

00:05:09.840 if we don't know what the Sabbath is?

00:05:12.260 We need to know what the Sabbath is.

00:05:13.800 Our second is when is the Sabbath? If we're going to learn what it is then we

00:05:20.280 need to know when we're supposed to keep it. And our third point is what is work?

00:05:26.200 How do we know how to Sabbath? How do we know how to rest if we don't know what

00:05:31.580 we're resting from? Those are things we're going to be exploring this morning.

00:05:36.500 Now a principle we have to keep in mind right off the bat is that the Lord

00:05:42.080 blesses a Sabbath keeping society, the Lord blesses a 0.63

00:05:47.360 society that values the Sabbath, and the Lord curses a

00:05:52.160 society that does not keep the Sabbath, that has no value on

00:05:56.160 the Sabbath. The scriptures are plain in this regard. We see

00:06:01.000 in Isaiah chapter 58, verses 13 and 14, it says, if you turn

00:06:07.920 back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on

00:06:11.260 my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable. If you honor

00:06:19.140 it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take

00:06:24.720 delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth. I will feed you with

00:06:30.420 the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. It's clear that the Lord

00:06:39.160 blesses a people that keep his Sabbath. Whenever we read

00:06:43.140 passages like this, it's important to note that when we

00:06:45.680 read things like, I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob,

00:06:48.760 your father, that scripture is speaking to you. Because of

00:06:53.480 Jesus Christ, because of his finished work, he has united us

00:06:56.900 to our old covenant brothers and sisters. We are one people.

00:07:02.540 So when you read, I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob,

00:07:05.600 your father, that's your heritage, Christian. That's

00:07:08.860 your heritage. That's your blessing. This scripture is

00:07:13.940 speaking to you. It's equally clear from the scriptures that

00:07:20.160 the Lord hates it. He hates it when we do not worship him on

00:07:25.720 his holy day, when we do not sanctify the day and keep it as

00:07:29.540 God intends us to keep it. In Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 27, it

00:07:35.600 says, but if you do not listen to me to keep the Sabbath day

00:07:40.220 holy and not to bear a burden and enter by the gates of

00:07:43.020 Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its 0.64

00:07:47.340 gates and it shall devour the places of Jerusalem and shall 0.95

00:07:51.620 not be quenched. It's strong language, but I think the point

00:07:57.760 is clear. The Lord blesses a people that keep the Sabbath day, and he cuts off a people that do not.

00:08:08.400 We in America used to be a people that knew what this meant. We used to know how to keep the 0.92

00:08:15.080 Sabbath day holy. In America, we used to have laws that regulated our Sunday mornings and our whole

00:08:22.660 Sunday gathering. These laws are known as blue laws. These

00:08:28.300 laws forbade regular work on Sundays. You couldn't go to

00:08:32.140 your job on Sundays. It was illegal. It also forbade any

00:08:36.100 buying, selling, traveling, any public entertainment or

00:08:41.320 sports. Sorry, football fans. There was a time in America

00:08:45.520 where American football was not a thing. It was against the

00:08:49.660 law. Many of these laws are still in place today. In my old home state in Indiana, I grew up

00:08:59.100 remembering people who were frustrated because they couldn't buy alcohol on Sunday before they

00:09:04.160 went to the Colts game. That's a distinct memory in my mind. These blue laws are still in effect.

00:09:10.720 They're still part of our present life. In North Dakota, there's a law that says, quote,

00:09:16.100 quote, large retail stores shall not be open until noon on Sunday, end quote.

00:09:22.600 This is obviously to encourage Sunday morning worship.

00:09:26.840 You need to go to church in North Dakota, not go to the store.

00:09:31.060 In Pennsylvania, there was a law that says, quote, hunting on public land is prohibited

00:09:37.260 on Sunday.

00:09:39.460 Absolutely prohibited.

00:09:41.160 it. This kind of throws out the whole nature is my church

00:09:45.680 crowd, doesn't it? Nature is not your altar. Nature is not the

00:09:51.780 sanctuary. You have to be in church. These laws have become 0.73

00:09:58.660 more of a rarity for us today than a norm. This idea of

00:10:03.520 leading a culture through legislation is foreign in our

00:10:07.160 minds. It was not in early America, but for us today, this is a hard concept. We don't like it

00:10:14.700 when there's restrictions placed on what we can and cannot do. There's an aversion in our hearts

00:10:20.700 to hear from anybody what we're allowed to do or not allowed to do on Sunday. We want to go to

00:10:27.220 Costco. We want to shop on Amazon. We want to be able to go pick up beer before the Colts game.

00:10:35.160 These are things that we want to do.

00:10:38.280 And we don't like it when these laws butt in the way.

00:10:42.020 But the question is, should we be doing these things?

00:10:46.280 Should we be going to Costco?

00:10:49.520 Should we be shopping on Amazon?

00:10:52.440 I know that in my own life, I've struggled with this.

00:10:55.780 I've recently come to the conviction that the Sabbath day is holy

00:11:00.100 and we should not be doing such things on the Lord's day.

00:11:05.220 This conviction is the reason why I want to preach this message so boldly this morning.

00:11:11.040 The Bible reveals a day set aside for the worship of God and for us to rest in him,

00:11:17.400 not for us to do our own thing, not for us to be isolated,

00:11:23.440 not for us to be the individualistic people that we so desire to be.

00:11:28.180 Remember, a Sabbath-keeping church

00:11:32.100 will teach the world about God's rule and order in the world.

00:11:37.760 This means that your neighbor will see the way that you keep the Sabbath

00:11:41.920 and will do likewise.

00:11:44.660 Your neighbor is watching you.

00:11:47.820 The world outside is watching the bride to see

00:11:51.540 how she interacts with God's word and God's law.

00:11:56.880 Chick-fil-A is known.

00:11:58.180 for their Sabbath keeping.

00:12:00.120 They're known for their chicken sandwiches.

00:12:02.100 They're known for their awesome sauce.

00:12:04.880 But they're also equally known

00:12:06.960 for their Sunday morning

00:12:09.340 or their Sunday day

00:12:11.360 abstinence from business.

00:12:14.720 Yet Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable businesses

00:12:17.500 in the fast food industry.

00:12:20.460 Why?

00:12:22.380 Because the Lord is blessing them.

00:12:24.540 He's blessing them for their Sabbath observance.

00:12:28.180 Chick-fil-A has the idea. We in the church struggle with this idea. We struggle to be the

00:12:37.300 shining example that God intends the church to be. We struggle to be the evidence of the law to the

00:12:44.140 people. And since we've stopped observing this holy day, our nation no longer has this shining

00:12:51.720 example. Our neighbors no longer see in your life and in my

00:12:57.600 life what it means to take a whole day, to take 24 hours set

00:13:04.160 aside only for God. I ask you, what would it look like for you

00:13:10.460 to do this? What would it look like in your life for you to

00:13:14.500 take 24 hours, a whole day, not just three hours on Sunday

00:13:18.840 morning we all know we should do that not just not go into the office sunday after you're done

00:13:25.480 with worship what does it look like for you to take the whole day to stop to rest to worship god

00:13:39.000 this morning we're going to examine this commandment that elder west read for us

00:13:44.760 If you open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20, we'll be in verse 8 to begin.

00:13:55.720 And as you're getting there, I'd like to lay out for you what this passage of Scripture is.

00:14:01.500 If you're familiar with your Bibles at all, you know that this passage, Exodus 20, is the Ten Commandments.

00:14:08.400 It's God's moral law to his people.

00:14:10.620 And where we are in the Exodus story is that God has taken his people, the Israelites, out of the land of bondage and slavery in Egypt, and he's led them to Mount Sinai, where he's now covenanting with them, giving them his law and his blessings on them so that they would have their laws.

00:14:33.740 God has taken this people out of a land where they were constantly working.

00:14:39.320 This people knew no rest.

00:14:42.620 They knew no time away from the slave-like labor that they were enduring.

00:14:47.640 And in fact, Pharaoh, in an act of cruelty, added to their labor.

00:14:52.780 He took away their straw and required them to make more bricks.

00:14:57.740 It was harsh, horrible work.

00:15:01.460 No time off.

00:15:03.060 You don't get any time off as a slave.

00:15:05.620 You're constantly working.

00:15:08.020 And so when the Israelites would have heard

00:15:09.600 in the fourth commandment,

00:15:11.220 remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, 0.65

00:15:13.520 they would not have heard what we hear,

00:15:15.840 which is that God's trying to take a day from you.

00:15:19.580 In fact, they would have heard God's blessing to them,

00:15:24.060 that they were not going to be slaves

00:15:26.240 like they were in Egypt,

00:15:28.120 that they would have time away to worship God,

00:15:32.520 to rest in him.

00:15:34.500 So don't hear this commandment as God trying to steal a day from you

00:15:38.360 as though you owned the day anyways.

00:15:41.080 All the days are his.

00:15:44.380 God in the fourth commandment is blessing you with one day and seven

00:15:48.880 to rest and to worship him.

00:15:52.020 So let's read our passage of scripture this morning.

00:15:55.940 It says, starting in verse 8,

00:15:58.240 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

00:16:00.860 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

00:16:03.740 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

00:16:07.360 On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter

00:16:11.300 or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock

00:16:15.260 or the sojourner who's within your gates.

00:16:18.700 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,

00:16:21.800 the sea and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh day.

00:16:25.940 Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

00:16:29.360 we're going to begin with our first point here of what is the sabbath day and i want to answer that

00:16:38.620 that question right off the bat if you're keeping notes here's the definition of the sabbath day

00:16:44.120 the sabbath day is a 24-hour day of intentional rest given to the world in order to worship god

00:16:53.020 and to be refreshed by him.

00:16:56.420 The Sabbath day is a 24-hour day of intentional rest

00:17:00.820 given to the world in order to worship God

00:17:03.380 and to rest in him.

00:17:06.100 Now we see here in the Ten Commandments

00:17:07.840 the Lord laying down his moral law.

00:17:10.280 We have this division in the moral law.

00:17:13.500 There's two tables of the law.

00:17:15.840 The first four commandments are our duties to God.

00:17:19.620 How do we show love to God?

00:17:22.440 The last six commandments are our duties to one another.

00:17:27.080 How do we show love to each other?

00:17:29.640 That's how the law is divided.

00:17:31.860 Jesus in the New Testament even divides the law this way.

00:17:34.980 He says all the law and all the prophets is summed up in loving God and loving your neighbor.

00:17:42.680 It's how the law is divided.

00:17:44.720 And it's no different here in the Ten Commandments.

00:17:47.220 we see this as still binding on New Testament Christians. 0.92

00:17:53.980 There's nothing in the moral law

00:17:55.720 that seems to have been done away with.

00:17:58.400 All of these laws are still in effect.

00:18:01.740 This is the way that we've historically understood

00:18:04.420 the Ten Commandments.

00:18:05.220 This is why we teach it to our children.

00:18:07.980 We want our children to do these laws,

00:18:11.000 to live according to God's laws.

00:18:13.780 Why?

00:18:14.660 Because it's good.

00:18:17.220 God's goodness has not changed.

00:18:19.740 His character has not changed from Old Testament to New Testament,

00:18:22.980 yet sometimes we think it has.

00:18:26.060 Sometimes we struggle to see the continuity between the covenants,

00:18:30.880 the continuity between old and new.

00:18:35.240 We have to be able to say things like,

00:18:38.180 if you want to love God, you'll keep the fourth commandment.

00:18:41.540 You'll keep the Sabbath day holy.

00:18:43.780 If you want to love God, you'll have no other gods but Him.

00:18:47.220 If you want to love me, you're not going to run up here and steal my wallet.

00:18:50.420 It's a great way to still show me love.

00:18:53.200 These things still apply.

00:18:55.720 They're still here.

00:18:57.420 But there's some who think that it does not.

00:19:00.660 There's some that think the fourth commandment particularly is not a moral law, but rather

00:19:06.420 a ceremonial one.

00:19:08.140 John MacArthur, who is a faithful pastor, a faithful exegete, we love John.

00:19:13.700 we're not going to rag on John, but I think John gets this wrong. He interprets the fourth

00:19:20.820 commandment through the wrong lens. He says, quote, the Sabbath is the only one of the ten

00:19:27.160 commandments that is non-moral and purely ceremonial, and it was unique to the old covenant

00:19:33.600 and to Israel. The other nine commandments, on the other hand, pertain to moral and spiritual

00:19:39.960 absolutes and are repeated and expanded upon many places in the New Testament.

00:19:45.020 But Sabbath observance is never recommended to Christians, much less given as a commandment 0.91

00:19:50.560 in the New Testament."

00:19:51.760 According to MacArthur, God, for some strange reason, decided to mix in a ceremonial law

00:20:00.980 in with the other nine moral laws.

00:20:04.180 This is strange.

00:20:06.160 This is a strange reality.

00:20:07.860 Why on earth would God do this? 0.99

00:20:09.960 He would have to assume that his New Covenant Christians would someday learn, oh, this is merely ceremonial. 1.00

00:20:16.980 We should just put that away.

00:20:19.940 But if you look at church history, this is not the case.

00:20:23.760 His church has not recognized such a thing.

00:20:27.140 MacArthur's interpretation is quite alone.

00:20:31.280 We have many men throughout church history that actually affirm Sabbath-keeping for Christians.

00:20:37.440 Men like Clement of Alexandria, Ambrose, John Christosim, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr,

00:20:48.960 Origen, St. Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Wycliffe, Charles Spurgeon,

00:20:56.060 John Knox, and John Calvin were men who were known for their Sabbath keeping.

00:21:00.640 They were known by how they kept the Sabbath.

00:21:02.780 J.C. Ryle, Herman Bavik, John Murray, R.C. Sproul.

00:21:07.440 St. Clair-Ferguson, the Heidelberg Catechism, the

00:21:12.300 Belgic Confession of Faith, the 1689 London Baptist

00:21:15.200 Confession of Faith, the Westminster Confession of

00:21:17.680 Faith, and catechisms, all, all say the Sabbath remains. 0.95

00:21:25.640 We are to keep it.

00:21:28.920 It is not a ceremonial law, but a moral one.

00:21:32.680 the second and more biblical reason why the Sabbath remains is because in the fourth

00:21:41.800 commandment it gives the reason why the commandment was given at all look down at your Bibles in verse

00:21:48.560 11 of Exodus chapter 20 it says four and six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth now wait

00:21:57.180 When you begin in verse 11 with the word for, you can translate the word for to

00:22:04.680 the word because. What it's insinuating is a purpose clause that everything that

00:22:12.280 was said up to this point finds its purpose, its telos, the reason why it was

00:22:19.000 given in the following sentences. So we see the reason why the commandment was

00:22:24.380 given. It says, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that's in

00:22:30.540 them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

00:22:38.780 What we see is that the Sabbath is not something that's ethereal, something that's ceremonial,

00:22:45.100 that's been put away with in the death of Christ. We think the ceremonial law has been put away in

00:22:50.620 the death of Christ, but this is not one of them. The Sabbath law is a creation ordinance. It's

00:22:57.020 something that God has laid down within the very fabric of the creation itself. There is no reason

00:23:04.000 to suggest that it has ended. As long as the creation continues, so will Sabbath observance.

00:23:11.700 So the question is, why? Why did God put the Sabbath in creation? Why did he do that?

00:23:20.620 Did God need a rest?

00:23:23.760 Was he tuckered out after six days of hard work

00:23:26.520 and the seventh he needed a day off?

00:23:30.100 No.

00:23:32.000 R.C. Sproul, in a sermon on the Ten Commandments,

00:23:34.820 is good on this.

00:23:35.660 He says, quote,

00:23:36.480 The Sabbath is rooted in the very act of creation.

00:23:40.840 God rested on the seventh day, not because he was tired,

00:23:44.360 but because he was setting a pattern for us,

00:23:47.400 showing us the importance of resting from our labors

00:23:50.080 and focusing on him, end quote.

00:23:54.540 God rested on the seventh day

00:23:56.260 to show the world that the work was done,

00:24:00.340 that there was no more work to do,

00:24:03.280 that it was finished.

00:24:05.940 God rested on the seventh day

00:24:07.800 to give you a pattern to model your life after.

00:24:13.000 That's why he rested on the seventh day.

00:24:16.740 Jesus tells us in the New Testament

00:24:18.500 In Mark 2, 27-28, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

00:24:25.240 So the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath.

00:24:29.220 Also in Matthew 5, 18, he says,

00:24:32.000 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth have passed away,

00:24:36.400 not an iota, not a dot will pass away from the law,

00:24:41.300 until all is accomplished.

00:24:44.880 You may be thinking, Jesus is our Sabbath.

00:24:49.400 Jesus is the fulfillment of the law.

00:24:52.260 Yes and amen.

00:24:53.680 He absolutely is the fulfillment of the law.

00:24:56.140 He is our Sabbath.

00:24:58.460 But this does not change our moral obligation

00:25:01.660 to keep this commandment intact.

00:25:05.900 If Jesus is the fulfillment of the law,

00:25:07.920 that means that he also has fulfilled all the love

00:25:11.000 that is required by us to give to God.

00:25:14.340 But do you still owe love to God?

00:25:17.500 Absolutely.

00:25:19.360 Jesus has shown all the love that we could possibly give to our neighbor.

00:25:24.160 Yet, are you still obligated to show love to your neighbor?

00:25:28.560 Of course you are. Of course we are.

00:25:32.920 This is why Jesus says, if you love him, you'll keep his commandments.

00:25:38.280 We, as God's covenant children, as new covenant Christians,

00:25:41.940 are obligated to serve God through observing the Sabbath.

00:25:48.500 We show love to God by keeping the Sabbath day holy and sanctified.

00:25:54.660 Keeping Jesus' commandments extends to the Ten Commandments.

00:26:00.140 This leads us to our second question this morning of when is the Sabbath?

00:26:07.580 When do we observe the Sabbath day?

00:26:10.680 It's important to note here that worship and Sabbath have always gone together.

00:26:16.280 God's people have always worshipped him

00:26:19.700 on the Sabbath day

00:26:20.440 that's something you have to ingrain

00:26:23.680 in your mind

00:26:24.600 that there's no separate day

00:26:27.720 between the day that you are to rest on

00:26:29.600 and the day you are to worship God on

00:26:31.320 they are united

00:26:32.740 we actually see this in the New Testament

00:26:35.900 Jesus gives us this example

00:26:37.840 in Luke 4.16

00:26:39.920 it says

00:26:41.900 and he came to Nazareth

00:26:43.800 where he'd been brought up

00:26:45.060 And as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

00:26:54.140 It's Jesus' custom to go on the Sabbath day, to read the word of God, to worship God on the Sabbath day.

00:27:03.940 There's no divorcing that practice.

00:27:07.360 It's important to see consistency between this old covenant,

00:27:11.680 old Sabbatarian keeping and the new covenant practice of Sabbath keeping.

00:27:18.540 Jesus obviously intended for worship and Sabbath keeping to go together.

00:27:22.860 So we too have to make them go together.

00:27:26.880 We worship God this morning on Sunday because Sabbath and worship go together.

00:27:33.480 Why does this matter?

00:27:36.640 It matters, because as Christians, you have to root everything that you do, every one

00:27:44.620 of your practices, in Christ.

00:27:48.660 That's where they belong.

00:27:51.340 If Jesus worshipped God on the Sabbath day, so must you.

00:27:56.580 The question you're probably asking now is, I see Jesus worshipping in the synagogue.

00:28:02.540 I see that as a reality.

00:28:04.280 But Jesus worshiped God on Saturday.

00:28:09.640 They worshiped God on Saturday.

00:28:12.080 So why are we doing it on Sunday?

00:28:15.240 What happened?

00:28:17.900 One simple thing happened that changed everything.

00:28:23.100 The resurrection.

00:28:25.400 When Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose from the grave on the third day,

00:28:31.000 the first day of the week, he started a new creation.

00:28:36.800 He started all things new.

00:28:40.140 The New Testament speaks of all things being new

00:28:43.560 as Jesus has created them to be.

00:28:46.360 Through his death, burial, and resurrection,

00:28:48.700 all things have changed.

00:28:51.940 The old has passed away, the new has come.

00:28:57.180 We see the early church recognize this shift

00:29:00.000 almost immediately.

00:29:02.640 They knew that their gathering was to change

00:29:05.220 from Saturday to Sunday.

00:29:07.500 In Acts 20, verse 7, it says,

00:29:10.760 On the first day of the week,

00:29:12.320 on the first day of the week,

00:29:14.940 we came together to break bread.

00:29:17.880 Paul spoke to the people,

00:29:19.380 and because he intended to leave the next day,

00:29:21.460 kept on talking until midnight.

00:29:25.160 This is a plain example of the church recognizing

00:29:29.280 that something had shifted.

00:29:31.160 The day had changed.

00:29:33.040 If worship and Sabbath-keeping go together,

00:29:35.200 then something changed.

00:29:36.480 Now they're worshiping on Sunday, the first day.

00:29:41.140 That's a shift.

00:29:43.680 Paul affirmed this shift in the New Testament.

00:29:46.980 In 1 Corinthians 16, 2, he says,

00:29:50.080 On the first day of every week,

00:29:51.900 each one of you should set aside a sum of money

00:29:54.540 in keeping with your income, saving it up,

00:29:57.160 so that when I come, no collections will have to be made.

00:30:02.040 Paul is saying that the church was not to gather money when he came.

00:30:06.780 They were to gather it up on the first day.

00:30:09.100 And because of our modern age, because of the internet,

00:30:11.660 we don't give the same way that the church used to give.

00:30:14.260 They used to give with physical money and coins,

00:30:16.760 and we had to be gathered together.

00:30:19.680 Tithing and giving have always been a part of historic worship.

00:30:24.440 Always.

00:30:25.800 We've always given in the worship setting.

00:30:29.500 They're united.

00:30:31.380 Today we can give online at any point, at any time,

00:30:34.400 and so we struggle to see that reality,

00:30:36.400 but that's the reality here in 1 Corinthians.

00:30:40.280 When the church gathered together and gave,

00:30:43.360 they're worshiping God together on the first day.

00:30:48.600 It's not just these two passages.

00:30:51.460 It's not just these two passages that show us

00:30:53.800 that the early church understood this reality.

00:30:57.300 Justin Martyr, who lived within one generation

00:31:00.340 of the apostles, says, quote,

00:31:04.000 and on the day called Sunday,

00:31:07.140 all who lived in cities or in the country

00:31:10.080 gathered together in one place

00:31:12.580 and read the memoirs of the apostles

00:31:16.140 or the writings of the prophets, end quote.

00:31:19.320 It's clear that this day, Sunday, became the day for the early church to gather together,

00:31:31.680 to worship God, to rest in Him.

00:31:37.320 All the biblical evidence supports this.

00:31:39.880 All the extra-biblical evidence supports this.

00:31:44.200 We recognize that the day changed.

00:31:47.640 This is nothing new for us as New Covenant Christians.

00:31:52.600 We know that several Old Covenant signs changed under the New Covenant.

00:31:57.600 In Passover, as the Old Covenant Christians used to observe it, it changed to the Lord's

00:32:04.160 Supper.

00:32:06.260 That circumcision in the Old Covenant marked you as one of God's covenant people.

00:32:11.140 That sign changed to baptism.

00:32:14.320 in the Old Covenant, God's people rested on the seventh day, which is Saturday, and

00:32:19.740 under the New Covenant, because of the resurrection, we now rest and worship God on the first day.

00:32:28.060 There's precedence for these types of shifts.

00:32:32.840 This has been one of the rare points of unity in church history and across almost all Christian

00:32:39.040 denominations, apart from the weird Seventh-day Adventists,

00:32:43.640 all Christians, whether you're Catholic, Eastern Orthodox,

00:32:47.660 Protestant, all different types of Protestants,

00:32:50.880 we all gather and worship God on the first

00:32:54.960 day, on Sunday. We're unified in

00:32:59.040 this. And while all of us are unified in

00:33:03.060 what day we are to be worshiping God, very few of us

00:33:06.800 actually observe it.

00:33:09.300 Very few of us actually keep the Sabbath day holy.

00:33:14.760 We should know what day we are to worship God on

00:33:17.520 because it tells the world what you believe about God.

00:33:23.020 You have to see this reality.

00:33:26.040 We have to know what day we are to worship God on

00:33:29.260 because it preaches a message to the world.

00:33:32.160 We're telling the world what we believe

00:33:34.140 about our relationship with God.

00:33:36.000 In the Old Covenant, God's people worked in order to get rest.

00:33:40.620 They worked six days, and then they rested on the seventh day.

00:33:44.020 That is not the New Covenant, New Testament reality.

00:33:48.640 Under the New Covenant, we do not work in order to gain a rest.

00:33:53.460 The order is precisely the opposite. 0.93

00:33:57.040 Christians rest, and then we get to work. 1.00

00:34:01.660 That's the order.

00:34:02.620 This is why we worship God on Sunday

00:34:06.640 We rest in the finished work of Christ

00:34:10.640 And then we get to work

00:34:12.220 It's the basic Christian doctrine

00:34:16.020 That we're not saved by doing good works

00:34:18.740 By our obedience to the law

00:34:20.520 We're saved by grace

00:34:21.900 Alone

00:34:22.960 Ephesians 2, 8-10

00:34:25.900 Speaks of this reality

00:34:27.540 It says, for by grace you have been saved through faith

00:34:30.720 And this, not of yourselves

00:34:32.260 It's the gift of God, not of work so that no one may boast.

00:34:37.440 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

00:34:43.340 which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

00:34:48.280 We've been created in Christ Jesus for good works.

00:34:55.020 This is the pattern of life that we preach when we Sabbath on the first day.

00:34:59.120 that we've not been saved by doing good works.

00:35:02.940 We've not been saved by keeping the law.

00:35:05.480 If you think that that's your relationship with God,

00:35:07.860 you need to repent of that belief.

00:35:10.460 You don't keep the law to get God happy with you.

00:35:15.500 That's not the New Testament reality.

00:35:19.520 The New Testament speaks of the grace of God on your life,

00:35:23.460 that he has sovereignly decided to save you,

00:35:26.960 to put his love on you.

00:35:29.120 That you can do nothing to earn it.

00:35:33.980 Once you understand that reality,

00:35:36.880 you now get to work.

00:35:39.800 You now obey.

00:35:42.100 It's a completely different emphasis.

00:35:46.820 It's a completely different mindset shift.

00:35:51.300 We have to recognize that our Sabbath keeping

00:35:54.380 preaches a message.

00:35:56.420 It preaches the message of the gospel.

00:35:59.120 Remember, a Sabbath-keeping church teaches the world about God's good order and rule in a society.

00:36:09.620 You, this church, teach the world through your Sabbath-keeping about God's good order and rule over our society.

00:36:19.800 We have to pause each week from our work with full assurance and confidence

00:36:25.140 that God is our only hope of salvation and rest

00:36:29.220 and there is no other place.

00:36:31.740 You have no other rest.

00:36:34.540 You have no other assurance.

00:36:37.360 It's Christ or nothing.

00:36:42.000 Can this honestly be said of the way that you observe the Sabbath?

00:36:46.780 Are you preaching this message through your obedience

00:36:49.840 or are you preaching the opposite?

00:36:52.100 it? Are you telling the world that you treat this day like

00:36:55.600 any other day? That it's low in your mind? Because trust me,

00:37:02.400 they're watching. So to recap, we've examined what is the

00:37:10.900 Sabbath day. We've seen that it's one day a week set aside

00:37:15.040 for intentional rest and worship of God. We've also seen

00:37:21.140 what day of the week that we're to worship God on

00:37:23.280 and the gospel implications that that has.

00:37:27.960 But now we need to turn and look at what is work.

00:37:31.820 We need to define what we are to be resting from.

00:37:35.500 If you look with me again at Exodus 20,

00:37:39.540 in verse 9,

00:37:41.220 it speaks of the specific type of work

00:37:44.060 that we're to be resting from.

00:37:46.180 It says,

00:37:46.880 six days you shall labor and do all your work.

00:37:52.300 Now, it's interesting, this passage uses two different words in work.

00:37:57.100 It uses work and labor.

00:37:59.000 So what are these words?

00:38:01.760 These words are two different Hebrew words.

00:38:06.020 The first, labor, is the word avad.

00:38:10.200 It means servant-type work.

00:38:13.460 To work for labor to another.

00:38:16.880 to make oneself a servant.

00:38:19.900 That's the type of work in focus with the word labor, avad.

00:38:24.020 The other word, work, means your business, your career.

00:38:30.780 It's the Hebrew word melecha.

00:38:32.860 It means what you do to make money Monday through Friday, normally.

00:38:37.860 It's your normal career work.

00:38:40.180 So what's in focus in this commandment is our menial servant-type work,

00:38:46.880 and our career, our money-making work.

00:38:52.560 Now, since many of us know we are not to be doing our career-type work on the Sabbath day,

00:38:58.400 I don't need to sit here and preach on that.

00:39:01.940 But what we do need to understand is this word avad, this menial servant-type work.

00:39:07.880 What's in focus here?

00:39:09.320 It becomes clear when you examine the word, why God decided to forbid not just the heads of house from working,

00:39:19.180 it's not just you as the head of house who's to stop working, but your children, your servants,

00:39:26.720 the NASB or the LSB translate that as slave, your slaves are to stop working.

00:39:33.200 Even your oxen and livestock have to stop working.

00:39:37.160 Nobody gets to work on this day. It's an expansive blessing. It's a societally

00:39:47.300 implicatious blessing. Everybody in this society must rest. No matter what your relationship with

00:39:56.800 God was. That's not in view here. You have to see that. The society as a whole is implied. Even

00:40:04.880 the traveler who may or may not have come to Israel to worship

00:40:08.580 God, even this traveler has to stop and worship God to rest

00:40:15.700 in this day.

00:40:16.740 They don't have a choice.

00:40:19.860 When God forbids servants, livestock, travelers from

00:40:24.340 working on the Sabbath day, in effect, he's forbidding all the

00:40:28.120 menial tasks, all the little things that would have been

00:40:30.620 assigned to them to stop working also.

00:40:34.880 Try and put yourself in this day.

00:40:38.140 As a head of house, you're not going to go out and wash your dishes.

00:40:42.580 You had servants for that.

00:40:44.860 As a head of house, you're not going to go repair the barn.

00:40:48.700 You had servants for that.

00:40:51.080 That's not what you were going to be doing.

00:40:53.480 Yet, their work is in focus.

00:40:56.760 That work that you would not be doing as the head of house, that too must stop.

00:41:00.820 Why would God do this?

00:41:06.720 Why would God forbid such overarching restraints on work?

00:41:12.400 Why would he do that?

00:41:14.820 Because work, no matter how small and insignificant,

00:41:20.180 can become an idol.

00:41:23.440 God knows that we are forgetful people,

00:41:26.420 that we need a practice of remembrance.

00:41:29.580 That's why he begins the commandment with the word remember the Sabbath day.

00:41:35.000 The word remember is repeated over and over and over again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

00:41:41.800 We're called to remember because we forget.

00:41:46.320 It's why we have to come together every Sunday to worship God, to be reminded, to be exhorted, to be encouraged, to worship God, to learn.

00:41:59.580 We have to remember, God wants us to break this cycle

00:42:03.740 of all work, of no rest, and to take a day to rest in him.

00:42:12.320 Many of us here have adopted an unhealthy relationship with work.

00:42:20.140 Many of you have adopted the curse of Pharaoh.

00:42:24.680 You reject the blessing of God in giving you this commandment.

00:42:28.860 to rest one day in seven.

00:42:32.840 Many of us know no time off.

00:42:36.880 Many of us know no days away from work.

00:42:40.280 Just because you're not in the office

00:42:41.540 doesn't mean you're not working.

00:42:46.180 Our society is looking to you

00:42:48.780 to see your relationship with work and with rest.

00:42:54.700 If they see you Monday through Friday in the office

00:42:58.620 and then Saturday and Sunday in your yard working,

00:43:02.360 that's preaching a message.

00:43:04.960 It's preaching something.

00:43:07.140 It's telling the world something

00:43:08.620 about your relationship with God.

00:43:13.080 By our negligence,

00:43:15.340 we teach the world to neglect the law.

00:43:20.560 When we neglect the law, the world neglects the law.

00:43:23.660 If we don't value the law,

00:43:25.420 why on earth would those who don't have Christ

00:43:27.740 value the law.

00:43:32.240 When filtered through the lens

00:43:34.000 that we've been hitting over and over and over again this morning,

00:43:38.500 that Sabbath keeping preaches a message

00:43:40.400 of the finished work of Jesus Christ to the world,

00:43:43.120 it's easy to see why God's commandment is so broad.

00:43:46.580 You have to keep this filter in your mind.

00:43:49.180 What we're not going to be doing this morning

00:43:50.800 is giving you a list of do's and don'ts.

00:43:53.780 That's where this conversation falls off the rails.

00:43:56.000 I don't want to go down that road.

00:43:59.280 What you should be filtering your Sabbath-keeping decisions through

00:44:03.820 is does this preach the right message?

00:44:08.260 Does this preach the reality of the finished work of Christ?

00:44:13.000 Or does what I'm doing today preach a different message?

00:44:18.540 Does it tell the world that you're not trusting in Christ?

00:44:22.380 That that work can't wait until Monday?

00:44:26.000 don't rob yourself of the blessing of the Lord.

00:44:32.920 When God calls us to rest,

00:44:35.940 what he's doing is he's calling us to stop from all types of work,

00:44:41.040 to be refreshed by him and to thank him

00:44:44.380 for the abundant blessings that we have in Jesus Christ.

00:44:48.720 We have to see the commandments this way.

00:44:51.200 God's not stealing anything from you.

00:44:53.940 He's giving you a great gift.

00:44:56.000 take it 0.84

00:44:58.160 observe the Sabbath

00:45:01.540 we are to take this time

00:45:07.220 to fellowship with him

00:45:08.700 to rest in him

00:45:11.860 in ways that are not possible

00:45:13.620 Monday through Saturday because you're working

00:45:15.740 God has given you this day

00:45:18.920 in order to take time

00:45:20.500 to worship him in ways that are not possible

00:45:24.000 because you have a job.

00:45:26.780 You have other things to do.

00:45:29.680 These things are not wrong.

00:45:31.540 These things are good.

00:45:32.520 God has given us work which is good.

00:45:35.640 He made us to work.

00:45:37.560 Our passage from Ephesians says so.

00:45:39.980 He made us to do good work.

00:45:46.100 So there is types of work that is good,

00:45:50.020 or all work is good,

00:45:51.300 but there are types of work that we are allowed to do

00:45:53.860 on the Lord's Day, on the Sabbath day,

00:45:56.480 and there is work that we should not be doing.

00:45:59.400 There's necessary and unnecessary work.

00:46:02.040 If you look at the Westminster Confession,

00:46:05.080 it says this very clearly.

00:46:07.080 It teaches a good doctrine on necessary and unnecessary work.

00:46:11.040 You may ask, what is necessary work?

00:46:14.260 Necessary work would be the work of police officers,

00:46:18.580 the work of doctors, firefighters, and farmers.

00:46:23.860 things that have to be done.

00:46:26.960 They can't wait till Monday.

00:46:29.020 If somebody's arm got cut off,

00:46:30.800 I pray that the doctor's not taking a Sabbath rest.

00:46:34.280 I hope he's there to stitch it up. 0.63

00:46:38.940 That's necessary work.

00:46:40.560 It's work that needs to be done.

00:46:43.020 But the unnecessary work,

00:46:44.760 the things that do not have to be done on the Sabbath day,

00:46:47.700 ought not be done on the Sabbath day.

00:46:50.740 as we close

00:46:54.040 as we wrap our sermon

00:46:55.840 up this morning

00:46:57.240 we have to see

00:46:59.500 the societal implications of Sabbath

00:47:02.280 keeping

00:47:02.560 we have to see that not just

00:47:06.440 your own personal relationship

00:47:08.560 with the Lord is at stake

00:47:10.500 in your Sabbath keeping but

00:47:12.140 all of our community is at stake

00:47:14.640 we have to see that when we keep

00:47:18.560 the Sabbath as a church

00:47:19.880 We're teaching Prescott what it means to be a Christian. 0.67

00:47:24.260 What it means to be a Sabbath-keeping Prescott.

00:47:28.780 We don't just want general Christian culture.

00:47:32.280 We want Christian laws.

00:47:34.560 We want laws that reflect God's good law. 1.00

00:47:38.400 We want Sabbath laws.

00:47:41.180 We don't just want less blue laws, we want more blue laws. 1.00

00:47:45.840 We want blasphemy laws. 0.54

00:47:48.340 We want laws that teach our culture. 1.00

00:47:52.980 We know that laws control a society,

00:47:56.620 but there's something else that equally controls a society.

00:48:01.900 Those that are in control of the calendar

00:48:04.360 have equal control and say in a society. 1.00

00:48:09.340 The homosexuals understand this. 1.00

00:48:12.140 They get it. 1.00

00:48:13.720 What month are we in?

00:48:15.720 Pride month.

00:48:18.540 They have a whole month.

00:48:21.220 They understand that if they can get a society

00:48:23.820 to celebrate something,

00:48:26.240 if they can get a society to celebrate sin and degradation,

00:48:31.360 that the society will follow.

00:48:33.340 And is it not?

00:48:35.780 Are we not following that pattern?

00:48:40.460 We have to shift our mindset and understand

00:48:43.080 that we are to take dominion of the calendar.

00:48:47.540 We should desire Easter to be on the calendar, the nation to

00:48:53.780 observe Easter. We should desire Christmas to be on the

00:48:57.680 calendar, Good Friday, Sabbath observance. All these things we 0.77

00:49:03.260 should want on the calendar because they teach a society

00:49:06.300 what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's evil.

00:49:09.540 We need to think this way

00:49:15.680 We need to keep the Sabbath holy

00:49:18.900 Because the Lord desires us to rest in Him

00:49:21.820 We need to keep it because we're preaching this message

00:49:24.720 That Jesus Christ's work is done

00:49:27.860 There's no more

00:49:28.880 We're resting in His finished work 0.89

00:49:33.340 And when you keep the Sabbath

00:49:35.620 You tell the world you're resting in it too 0.69

00:49:38.700 God has called you to go and get the nations

00:49:44.480 Through the Great Commission 0.92

00:49:46.800 God has told you to go into the world

00:49:49.060 and get the nations 1.00

00:49:50.560 You have to see Sabbath keeping 0.96

00:49:54.000 as part of this dominion mandate

00:49:56.200 You have to see it as part of our call

00:50:00.240 to go into the world

00:50:01.740 to preach the gospel message

00:50:03.420 and to live the Christian life

00:50:05.140 It's your mandate

00:50:08.960 And I encourage you, Christian, to go and do it.

00:50:12.600 Amen?

00:50:13.860 Let's pray.

00:50:16.680 Heavenly Father,

00:50:18.940 your law is so good.

00:50:23.700 Your law tells us right from wrong, good from evil.

00:50:28.800 Your law helps us to understand how we're to live.

00:50:33.860 I pray, Lord, that as we seek to be obedient to your law,

00:50:37.960 that we would understand we're not earning things from you but we're

00:50:43.300 showing love to you I pray Lord that every person in this church here today

00:50:50.700 would understand the grace and mercy that Christ has died for them and that

00:50:56.380 they can live in a place in a constant state of rest that they can go into

00:51:02.860 Monday ready, ready to work, not because they're trying to

00:51:07.940 please you and earn something from you, but because they're

00:51:11.500 trusting you. Because they're looking ahead to the future

00:51:15.700 Sabbath rest that we have in Christ. Lord, thank you for

00:51:20.180 these blessings. Shepherd our hearts to thank you more for

00:51:25.080 your law. Help us to be Psalm 119 Christians who behold

00:51:31.420 glorious things in your law. In Jesus' name, amen.

Dale Partridge - June 20, 2024

How a Sabbath Keeping Church Transforms Society with Corbin Clarke

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