The Lord's Day

[0:00] Thank you.

[0:30] Thank you.

[1:00] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[1:36] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So what I want to do today is just say thank you once again for joining us and also thank you to Pastor Ray and for allowing me to step in and to teach today.

[1:54] I'm really excited to be able to dive in to the Word with you. So let me ask you a question. Have you ever been sleep deprived? For those of you who are parents, you're probably nodding your head right now, right?

[2:08] My wife and I, Caitlin, we have three children from youngest to oldest. Their names are Margo. She's three and Alistair's five. And then Joretta is almost eight, which still seems hard for me to believe that I have almost an eight-year-old.

[2:21] But I certainly know what it's like to be sleep deprived. Now my wife and many women who are watching this probably will realize that they might have taken the lion's share of the sleep deprivation, especially in those first few weeks after bringing the baby home.

[2:37] But fatherly.com actually conducted a survey where they asked for fathers to submit different instances where they experienced sleep deprivation as a couple.

[2:52] In fact, they even say that the National Sleep Foundation estimates that new parents get 68% less sleep than they actually need. And I felt that to my soul.

[3:04] I know exactly what that feels like. Consistent sleep deprivation can negatively impact your brain. It can negatively impact your mood, all the way to your overall judgment. In fact, being awake for just more than 19 hours can affect your brain in the same way as being legally drunk.

[3:22] I think that that's wild. So here is the first submission about sleep deprivation. Mark from Michigan says this, We don't have a cat, but my wife did when she was little.

[3:36] There's this stray that comes up to our door every once in a while and he must have been hanging outside late at night. My wife was so tired that she just opened the door and let him in.

[3:48] It must have been a subconscious thing from when she was young. The stray cat came in and slept on the couch all night. I didn't freak out. I just woke her up and I pointed to it and I said, So who's your new friend?

[3:59] He still comes around though, even though we kicked him out. That was Matthew. How about this one? The first line of this one always cracks me up because I think we all know where it's going.

[4:10] He says this, Classic sitcom moment here. My wife stored her breast milk in the refrigerator. Some of you are already saying, Oh no. I mistook it, he says, for regular milk.

[4:23] I'm good for a midnight snack, usually cereal about three times a week. So I stumbled downstairs. I poured myself a bowl of Trix, my favorite cereal. And I thought that they tasted weird, but I was so tired as I was eating them that I didn't care.

[4:35] When my wife woke up the next morning and asked me, What happened to my breast milk? I said, I've now put two and two together. Oops. That's Logan from Minnesota.

[4:48] And I have one more for you today. This one made me laugh when I was reading it the first time. He says, I fell asleep on the dog bed. I was so exhausted that I sort of melted into the dog's bed at the foot of our chair.

[5:01] I started in the chair and I kind of rolled onto the ottoman and I ended up down on the floor on the dog's bed. My wife has a picture of it. I was just wrapped up in the fetal position, dead to the world.

[5:14] It was comfortable though. I totally get why the dog loves it. And Ivan even says, I might try it again. So those are some funny stories about sleep deprivation.

[5:27] But it's something that I think we all realize, right? That we need rest. That our bodies need rest. It's hard enough though to take time to get enough sleep at night.

[5:40] I know the feeling of sitting on the couch and enjoying a movie or watching something on TV and just not really wanting to go to bed just yet. Just five more minutes.

[5:51] Or let me finish this chapter. Whatever the case may be. But here is the first point today. Our rest is important to God. Our rest is important to God.

[6:05] Speaking of these points today, if you're someone who likes to take notes, feel free to take free notes on paper or as you go through today's sermons and any of the sermons that we have for you.

[6:18] But also just know that we have linked through a free app called YouVersion, which is a Bible app. You can go there and go to events and then navigate to find our church, which is First Christian Church of Greensburg.

[6:31] And you actually would be able to then download that and fill in the blanks as we go. So our rest is important to God. The principle here is as our bodies need rest, so too do our spirits.

[6:46] But how do we do it? As I said, sometimes it's hard enough just to get to bed and get the physical rest. What about our spiritual rest? For many who have seen the Ten Commandments before, the answer might already be screaming in your head, the Sabbath.

[7:02] The Sabbath, of course, is how we get our spiritual rest, or at least in part. You know, when I was a kid, I still remember we had the Ten Commandments posted in a prominent place in our house.

[7:13] As soon as you would walk in the door of our home, right on the wall was a key ring, the light switch for the living room, as well as the front porch, and then above it was this plaque.

[7:26] And on that plaque was like a golden piece of metal, and inscribed in it were the Ten Commandments. And it was neat because as soon as you would come in and put your keys on the ring, they would be there right in your face.

[7:37] And when you would leave, right before you would head out the door, you would see the Ten Commandments right there. So you may be familiar with these Ten Commandments, or you may be on the other side of that situation, and maybe you're just hearing the Ten Commandments for the first time.

[7:53] Either way, you've probably heard that term Sabbath. So where does the Sabbath, where does that word even come from? So let's dive in a little bit deeper and try to figure out exactly what was meant by Sabbath.

[8:08] So first, I want to take us to Exodus chapter 20, and we're going to be in verses 8 to 11. So while you're turning there, I just want to talk a little bit more about it.

[8:20] So Exodus chapter 20 is the classic, or what most people think of when they think of the Ten Commandments. So this is when the Hebrew people, the Israelites, the Jewish people, were underneath of Mount Sinai.

[8:38] They had been exodised out of Egypt. They had been under bondage for a long time. There's a series of miracles, and they're finally here at Sinai. And this is where it feels like history is about to be made, right?

[8:51] Now you may be wondering, well, why were they right up next to a mountain? Well, think about it like this. If you're out in an open field, and wind comes through, and there's nothing to block the wind, it can be nice when the wind's blowing through, and it's nice and warm.

[9:04] But when it's rainy, or when it's snowing, or when it's really windy even more than normal, it almost amplifies everything, right?

[9:14] So this is this classic telling in Exodus chapter 20 about the Ten Commandments. So they're under this mountain because it provides them some shelter, okay?

[9:24] So they're under Mount Sinai. We're going to skip through all the way to verse 8 today and talk about the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

[9:37] Exodus 28. Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God.

[9:48] On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your town.

[9:59] Do you get it? Nobody should be doing work. If we're in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

[10:11] Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. You know, if you're like me, you might think to yourself, that's almost kind of an anticlimactic ending to what was this amazing story, right?

[10:26] The story I'm talking about, of course, is the Genesis account of creation. So this is not the first time we've heard about Sabbath. It's the first time that we've seen it given as a command.

[10:38] But this whole idea of working for six and resting for one actually doesn't appear, or doesn't, it actually appears earlier on in Scripture.

[10:50] It appears clear back in Genesis chapter 2. So let's go back to Genesis chapter 2 and let's take a look at it here. Genesis chapter 2, verses 2 and 3 says this, By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing, and so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

[11:09] I just want to pause there for just a moment to say that's what I mean when I say it was almost as anticlimactic. He spun almost as easily as thinking something. In fact, we commonly will say that God just thought creation into existence, right?

[11:24] And then he makes space and matter and the heavens and the earth and then he makes plants and then he makes animals and then he makes man. And so it's just getting more and more intense as he goes and then you get to the seventh day and he rested.

[11:41] Let's look at verse 3. Then God blessed the seventh day. He made it holy or set apart because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

[11:55] I think it goes without saying, but I also think it's important too to note that God didn't need rest. He wasn't tired from all of his labor.

[12:07] He didn't wipe his brow and say, whew, I need to sit down, take a breather, and drink a glass of galactic iced tea. No, he didn't need rest.

[12:17] Yet he showed us that you needed to rest. And that's point number two today. He modeled, God modeled rest from the beginning.

[12:30] And then he called it a Sabbath. Sabbath, we oftentimes think that it means rest. But I believe that scripture teaches that it's more than simple resting.

[12:44] It's ceasing from what you had been doing the previous six days. So it is restful. It's something that's good for us, right?

[12:56] But it's also more than that. It's ceasing from your normalcy. It's ceasing or stopping what you had been doing the previous six days. So to put that into context, if you were a carpenter, say, you would perform all of your carpentry duties for six days, but on the seventh day, God was commanding them, don't do carpentry if that's your normal job.

[13:19] In fact, we know that the original, one of the original places where Sabbath is even talked about is when God was giving manna to them while they were wandering through the wilderness to the Israelites.

[13:31] And he was saying that you're going to collect this manna for six days, but on the seventh, you're not going to collect any. In fact, you need to prepare on Friday, right, the sixth day, so that on the seventh day, Saturday, or the Sabbath, you don't do that same thing.

[13:48] You don't collect your manna. So it's a ceasing from your normal work. Okay? Now, 11 chapters after the classic telling in Exodus chapter 20, Exodus 31, says this.

[14:04] This is going to be Exodus 31, verses 12 and 13, and we're going to skip to verse 15 all the way through 17. Here's what that says.

[14:16] Then the Lord said to Moses, Say to the Israelites, You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you, so you may know that I am the Lord your God who makes you holy.

[14:31] Verse 15. For six days work is done, but the seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.

[14:42] The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever.

[14:55] For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed. It's kind of an interesting story, isn't it?

[15:08] He's saying that this is going to be something that is unique to you and I. Did you notice all of the talk of how he said, Moses say to the Israelites that you guys and I are going to be doing something together.

[15:20] We have a covenant, which is, you know, kind of like fancy Bible talk for promise. We have a promise, an agreement between us, a contract, a covenant between us.

[15:31] And he says that this will be what? It will be a sign. And that's point number three for today. Saturday Sabbath keeping was a sign of the Mosaic covenant.

[15:47] It's part of the Mosaic economy is another term for that, the Mosaic covenant. So every covenant had a sign. Every major covenant that we can read about in the Bible had a sign.

[16:00] It was almost as if, if you do this, then I will do this. And between us, we're going to have a sign that says, I'm continuing to keep my promise, God.

[16:12] You know, in the times of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they had a sign. The sign of keeping the promise was not to eat of the knowledge, or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

[16:23] But they broke that. They did indeed eat from that and then were cast out of the garden. For Noah, God said, hey Noah, I'm not going to destroy the earth ever again via a flood.

[16:37] And so this was an unconditional covenant on God's part. So he presented the rainbow. Every time you see this rainbow, know that I am promising you and I'm keeping my promise that I'm never going to flood the earth again.

[16:48] For Abraham, it was circumcision. For Moses, the sign of the promise, of the contract, the covenant that he had with God, it was the Sabbath.

[17:00] For the people of Israel, it was to keep the Sabbath. Jesus changed everything. You see, that was what we might call the old covenant.

[17:12] Jesus presented this new covenant. He changed everything. He completed or he fulfilled without abolishing the law. He kept the moral laws in life and he fulfilled the ceremonial and the civil laws in his death.

[17:27] So some of you might be asking, well, what does that exactly mean? Here's what I mean. All of the laws that were given to us in the Old Testament can be categorized roughly into one or two buckets.

[17:39] In the first one is the civil or the ceremonial laws. Those were laws that helped the Jews, the God's people to live rightly. To live rightly by what?

[17:51] To live rightly by the moral laws, which is the other category. So the moral laws are God's morality revealed to us and we know that our God is unchanging and so those laws never changed.

[18:07] He kept, Jesus kept, the whole of the law. He certainly kept the moral laws and he fulfilled the ceremonial laws in his death.

[18:18] There's a lot of symbolism in the Old Testament and there's a lot of symbolism that points to, all of it in fact, points to Jesus. We know that the whole of creation, in fact, the whole of the Bible points to Jesus.

[18:35] Everything in the Old Testament pointed to the coming of the Messiah. And so all of these ceremonial laws and these civil laws were to help them to see, to recognize when the Messiah would come.

[18:49] So in his death he became the perfect sacrifice, getting rid of then the sacrificial system, but certainly not getting rid of God's morality. Essentially, the Mosaic Covenant, Judaism, was completed.

[19:05] It was set aside or abrogated is the fancy word for it. It was set aside. But the law of the Lord, the moral and the eternal character of God is still absolutely in effect.

[19:16] Therefore, we see Jesus upgrading the moral laws to even loftier heights. He's making it even harder. He says, I didn't come. Don't even think for a second that I came to get rid of the laws.

[19:27] In fact, I came to fulfill them. But he turns the thou shalt nots or the do nots into a do statement or into a you should statement.

[19:38] For example, it's no longer just have no other gods before me. Jesus raises the bar and he says, no, it's love God with all of yourself, all of your heart and soul and mind and strength.

[19:51] But he showed flexibility to the Mosaic laws or to these civil laws, especially when it came to the Pharisee's laws or the Pharisaical laws regarding the Sabbath.

[20:03] And that's why we see the Sabbath sort of fall out of view in the New Testament after Jesus' resurrection. This is why we see a different day instead shift into view.

[20:15] So here's point number four. Jesus established a new covenant with us. He established a new covenant with us. This is sort of where on the script you would read enter the Lord's Day.

[20:31] So what is the Lord's Day? Well, the Lord's Day we celebrate on a Sunday. In fact, Christians all over the world for many centuries now have followed it on a Sunday.

[20:41] The Lord's Day, it's a day for the Lord. It's also, you could call it the Christian's Sabbath. Now, a quick note before we move on. Not all theologians, not all pastors see this the same way.

[20:53] And I think that it's safe to say that no one human has all of the answers to questions especially like this. So there is room for debate. There's room for conversation in this. But I want to continue on for a time but I just want to make sure that you know that there are people on both sides of the aisle on this issue who love Jesus, who are well respected, who are well educated, who just don't quite see everything that I'm saying quite the same way.

[21:19] Alistair Begg says this. He says, Legalism teaches, I obey, therefore I am accepted. But Christianity says, I am accepted, therefore I obey.

[21:31] So we now have this freedom to choose. We have this freedom to choose when we worship. But why choose Sunday? Right?

[21:42] Why choose Sunday? Well, here's a list of reasons why we believe God said, hey, Sunday's a special day to me. Number one, Jesus' resurrection was actually on a Sunday.

[21:54] That right there is probably reason enough to celebrate on a Sunday. But there's more. His walk on the road to Emmaus along with the two disciples was on a Sunday. It was the same day as his resurrection, in fact.

[22:07] One week later, on a Sunday, he revealed himself to Doubting Thomas, which, by the way, I wonder if Thomas is tired of hearing that when people get to heaven and he says, hey, my name's Tom.

[22:20] Oh, Doubting Thomas. And he's like, guys, come on. I did it one time, right? Come on. I don't want to be known as Downing Thomas anymore. Hey, that's a different subject for a different time.

[22:31] Anyway, Pentecost, which was, if you remember, the day where the Holy Spirit first indwelled man, it was a powerful and mighty day, was on a Sunday. It was the 50th day after the celebration of first fruits, which was the first harvest of barley or whatever grain they had planted that year.

[22:49] That was a Sabbath, that first fruit celebration, seven weeks, 49 days, and then an additional day to get to 50 means that we were on a Sunday. And there's also this new covenant, this new covenant symbolism and where we switch the seventh day rest to a first day Christian Sabbath.

[23:15] You can see here that W.R. Godfrey says this, in the old covenant, the day of the Lord was the seventh day and in the new covenant, it's the first day. What we see is people in anticipation worked and looked forward to rest and in the new covenant, we begin with rest and then are sent out to work.

[23:34] So that shift shows how Christ is the center of history, how His coming in one sense changes everything, but the change is a matter of fulfillment, not of cancellation.

[23:48] Fulfillment, not of cancellation. Sabbathing, or an intentional and regular ceasing from our normal lives, is a concept that I think is alive and well and it should be.

[24:01] Gathering together as a body of believers is vital to our growth as individuals and we now know that we can accomplish more together than apart. Consider this too, that the practice of intentional ceasing, of Sabbathing, right, and reflection on God shouldn't just be something you do as a check mark or something you do on the way to the thing you really want to do, right?

[24:27] It's not to be treated as a mere convenience, even though we love convenience. convenience. We do love convenience, don't we? Even though Jesus is our Sabbath daily, the practice of gathering together and coming to church, coming to Wednesday night programming, going to Sunday school, focusing on Him, it's all an important practice.

[24:51] It shouldn't become, as Bruce A. Ray calls it, the McSabbath, right? The convenient version of resting weekly.

[25:02] You know, the McSabbath is kind of like, it might look different for different people. It might be the, oh, I'm on my way to vacation, so we're just going to rush out of church as soon as the sermon's over.

[25:17] That might be McSabbathing. And I'm not saying that this is all wrong. Once again, we're not under the law, we're not under legalism anymore. There's freedom in Christ, of course. But consider that, consider, am I treating the Sabbath as sort of a McSabbath, as just a convenient thing to do to help me feel better about myself?

[25:38] It may be making sure, the McSabbathing might be make sure that you get out of church because you want to catch the kickoff or catch tip off. Now that we're not under the law, we fix our eyes on Jesus.

[25:50] We rest in Him daily. He is our Sabbath fulfilled. But once again, it's so important to come together as a body of believers and we see that in the Acts church.

[26:02] Instead of asking then, what can't I do on Sunday? Right? Instead of wondering, is this considered work? Am I breaking my Sabbath?

[26:13] If I'm choosing to take a weekly time to reflect on God, am I breaking it by doing X or Y or Z? Instead of asking those questions, ask, what should I do on Sunday?

[26:26] What can I do to get myself aligned with God? How can I do better this upcoming week? What helps me to realize this? How amazing is God?

[26:39] He created everything. How amazing is His grace? He has redeemed my soul. In that statement or in those series of questions and statements, there's sort of two parts in that.

[26:55] Let's look at that again. How amazing is God? He created everything. Under the old covenant, we would worship on a Saturday and it was to help us look back and remember that God is creator.

[27:11] How amazing is His grace? He has redeemed my soul. We now have freedom in Christ to worship on Sunday. today. We have this amazing opportunity to worship Him, to reflect on Him as Redeemer.

[27:29] Pray with me. God, thank You so much. Your Word is such a deep well. It's a beautiful thing that You've given to us.

[27:40] We ask that You would give us a hunger and a thirst to read more, to be more in tune with You, to pray more. Lord, we thank You for the fact that You are indeed the Creator, but God, You're also the Redeemer.

[27:57] We pray and we ask, God, that today You would put it in front of us perhaps in a new way how important it is to rest, not just physically but spiritually to reflect on Your ways and to align our hearts with Yours.

[28:13] God, we pray today that You would help us to do that, to align ourselves with You, to walk daily with You, and to rest in You. It's in Your name we pray.

[28:23] Amen. Hey, just a quick couple of announcements or things that I want to make sure that you know about before we end our time here together. If you are someone who's wondering about faith, if you're somebody who doesn't have that sense of rest within their soul that only Christ gives, we want to invite you to reach out to us.

[28:46] You can call our church office anytime during our business hours which is, or office hours rather, which is from 8 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

[28:57] That number, by the way, is 812-663-8488. You could also reach out directly to me by emailing me at Tyler at FCC Greensburg dot com.

[29:11] You could email Pastor Ray at Ray at FCC Greensburg dot com. You could email Pastor Steve if you talked with him before at Steve at FCC Greensburg dot com.

[29:22] You get the gist. You can email any of us because we all are on the same boat, especially in this. We want to help you know Jesus even more. So make sure to reach out to us.

[29:35] We want to come alongside you as many have come alongside us before as well. So thank you once again for joining me today, for diving deeper into what it means to Sabbath. Have a great week.