We open our Bibles together this morning to the last book of the Bible, Revelation chapter one. We read the scriptures this morning in light of the fourth commandment of the law of God. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. We're going to read Revelation chapter one and then two other shorter passages in the scriptures. The word of God, in Revelation chapter 1. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein for the time is at hand. John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come and from the seven spirits which are before his throne and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead Prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him, even so. Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. I, John, who Also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was in the aisle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia, unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyra, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the seven candlesticks was one like unto the Son of Man. clothed with a garment down to the foot, and gird about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in the furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, And out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not, for I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen and the things which are and the things which shall be hereafter. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. The seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. Now turn in your Bible to Mark chapter 2. Mark chapter 2, the last part of that chapter at verse 23. Mark chapter 2 at verse 23. And it came to pass that he went through The cornfields on the Sabbath day, and his disciples began as they went to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto him, behold, why do they on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful? And he said unto them, have ye never read what David did when he had need and was in hunger? He and they that were with him, how he went unto the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat, but for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him. And he said unto them, the Sabbath was not made for man. The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the son of man is Lord also, of the Sabbath. And then in the Old Testament, if you turn to Isaiah, perhaps a familiar passage to you, Isaiah 58, 58, and the last two verses of Isaiah 58, verses 13 and 14. Isaiah 58 verse 13, if thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, that should be interpreted this way, if you do not trample with your foot the Sabbath down. That's the idea. Don't trample the Sabbath. From doing thy pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord honorable and shalt honor him. not doing thine own ways, nor finding thy own pleasure, nor speaking thy own words. Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. On these passages of Holy Scripture, We come this morning to Lord's Day 38 of our Heidelberg Catechism, that creed which teaches us our only comfort of belonging to Jesus Christ in life and in death. Lord's Day 38, page 22, in the back of our psalter, question 103. Reading together, what does God require in the fourth commandment, first, that the ministry of the gospel in the schools be maintained, and that I, especially on the Sabbath, that is on the day of rest, diligently frequent the church of God to hear his word, to use the sacraments, publicly to call upon the Lord, and contribute to the relief of the poor as becomes. a Christian. Secondly, that all the days of my life I cease from my evil works and yield myself to the Lord to work by his Holy Spirit in me and thus begin in this life the eternal Sabbath. Revelation chapter one is the record of a Sabbath day in the middle of the Aegean Sea on an island called Patmos, roughly in the year 91 or 90 AD. It's a transcript of a worship service led by the aged Apostle John, with only a handful of believers with him who were all under severe restrictions. Not the restrictions of COVID-19, but they were imprisoned there with John for their testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse nine, I, John, a companion in those who are in tribulation for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. We are on the island called Patmos, he says. This worship service began in a very beautiful way with a benediction over the congregation to the words grace to you and peace from God from him who is and which was and which is to come and from the seven spirits which are before his throne a greeting so glorious a benediction beginning a worship service to immediately focus our eyes to God and to his presence and to the hope that we have in God And then that benediction was followed by a response on the part of the congregation, this all happening in the Sunday worship service. They responded, unto him who hath loved us, verse 5, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and to his Father. And then as the service continued, it centered in hearing the voice of Jesus Christ, who John first hears behind him as a voice of guidance and instruction. And then he turns and he sees him in all of his majesty and glory. And Jesus Christ, through the word, reveals himself to this congregation as the one who is in the midst of his church, as the one who is the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns forever. And in this service, they found rest. They found a food for their soul in a world filled with turmoil. And this service laid the foundation for their week in prison, the coming week. But if you had been there, or if there was a Roman guard looking at this through the bars, you would have felt of yourself nothing You would not have been moved or stirred because to participate in this worship service required this. I was in the Spirit, verse 10, on the Lord's day. I was in the Spirit. John says, I was in the Spirit of Christ. He doesn't mean there that he was speaking in tongues. It doesn't mean there that he had received the second baptism, so to speak, of the Holy Spirit and all of that. It simply means the gift of the Holy Spirit by divine grace in his heart, whereby his heart was now upon spiritual things in Jesus Christ. that he was confessing that morning, I belong, not to myself, but to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. He means that his mind and that his heart was focused through the Holy Spirit upon God and his word, and therefore he was blessed in that worship service. The Roman guard could observe, he could sit there perhaps, But he was not really moved. He could not participate because the spirit of this world was in his heart. He wasn't focused on the heavenly realm of Jesus Christ and the power of his grace. He was focused on himself in this world. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. Are you and I in the Spirit on the Lord's day? How do you approach Sunday? How do you think about the Sabbath day? What comes up in your mind when you think of the worship service on a Sunday? What is controlling your spirit, your heart, your thoughts. I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day. This is the expression, the height of our expression until we're in heaven. This morning is the expression of the work of the spirit in our hearts and is done this morning out of our union to Jesus Christ. That's the way we keep the Sabbath day. So I call your attention to in the spirit on the Lord's day, we wanna see that Sunday and especially worship services are a special day that we are to keep Secondly, that we do this out of a spiritual delight. It must be done out of a spiritual joy. And then very briefly, we'll note what the catechism says about a faithful observance of Sunday. The fourth commandment, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, is a command from the Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, that we, with our families observe every week one special day called now Sunday the Sabbath day remember the Sabbath day and that we do this continually throughout our whole life long and that the church is to do this even on to the day that he returns in glory Keep the Sabbath day holy is the command of our Savior Jesus Christ. Remember the Sabbath day. To remember is to call to your mind, to call to your heart something that is precious to you, and then to act in harmony with what you remember. You remember your wife's birthday. You remember your anniversary. You put your heart upon those days. The thief on the cross said, Lord, remember me when you come to your kingdom. We are told in Hebrews chapter 13 concerning prisoners and those who are persecuted for Christ's sake this morning, remember those who are in bonds as bound with them. Don't just have a passing thought, but remember them and pray for them. Do something. Pray for them. Remember the Sabbath day. Don't just have a thought, oh it's Sunday. but remember it in your heart and so act according to your remembrance, to observe, to keep this day, to keep it holy, says the commandment. Remember this day as the best day of the week, set aside, to keep it holy means to make it, to see that it is special, that it is sacred, that it is set apart even from the other days. Every day belongs to the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. We are his every day of the week with joy in our hearts and we want to serve him. But nevertheless, he says there is also a special day called the Sabbath day. Gather together, forsake not the gathering together, he says in Hebrews chapter 10. Gather together. Make this day special in your hearts. Don't spend the day because you can. If you're able to be here, come here. Don't spend the day watching services at home. Don't sit in the pew, tuned out, but remember this day in your heart and keep it. The fourth commandment is the forgotten commandment in the world. The world has no time for such a thing as the Sabbath day, a Sunday of rest and worship of God. This is rejected in our secular culture because of atheistic evolutionism, evolutionism rejects not simply that God created the world, but rejects that he created it in six 24-hour day, and then a seventh 24-hour day called the Sabbath, he rested. Creation is not only what God created, but it's the time that he created. He created time and put time into days of 24 hours. And put those days into seven days in a week. And then he said, of those seven days, there's one, the last one then, that I sat and rested and glorified myself in what I had done in the first six days. And God said, this is the pattern for Earth. But evolution rejects this. And often Christianity, more and more, under false teachings, is rejecting this. It says that the fourth commandment is no longer a commandment for Christians to follow. And now it becomes just another day, perhaps a day that we glance a little more at God. But it's your day. It's a day for sports. It's just another day. It's a day for you. God says this is my day. This is a special day. Four reasons why it's special. I've alluded to the first one already. It's special because God created one day in seven in the beginning to be a Sabbath, a rest for man. The Sabbath ordinance is a creation ordinance. We read in Exodus 20 verse 11, for in six days the Lord created heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Adam, if he had not fallen into sin, would observe that day of rest. God himself on that day rested. Genesis chapter two, the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them and the Lord rested from the work that he had done. That does not mean that God was weary, that God was tired, that God did nothing. Rest for God is not doing nothing, but rest for God is glorifying himself in his work that he has accomplished. And so also for us, the Sabbath day is one day in which we may come apart, cease from our earthly calling, and we may devote ourselves wholeheartedly to resting in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. It's a creation ordinance. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man. Secondly, the Fourth Commandment is part of the Ten Commandments, which we call, children, the moral law of God. In the Old Testament, this is important for us to see this, in the Old Testament, God also gave civil laws, that is, laws unique to Israel, how he would govern them, how they would plow a field and all kinds of things like that. And he gave to them not only civil law but ceremonial laws. Those ceremonial laws were a shadow pointing ahead to Christ and they regulated how Israel would worship. And there were ceremonial laws in the Old Testament that were attached to the fourth commandment, the Sabbath days, such as we read in the book of Numbers that God did not want people picking up sticks on the Sabbath day, that he did not want them picking up manna on the Sabbath day, that there was such a thing as a Sabbath day's journey. These were Old Testament ceremonial laws. These have been fulfilled in Christ and are no longer the law for the church. But the fourth commandment is part of the ten commandments. It is not absolved. It is part of the existing moral law of God. We would not come, would we? Well, society would and sinful nature would. But would we come to the seventh commandment and say, well, Thou shalt not commit adultery. That's really not applicable anymore. That's really sort of a choice that you want to make. Thou shalt not kill. Is that still in force today? I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Is that still in force today? Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Jesus observed the Sabbath on earth. Jesus kept the Sabbath on earth. When you read of him in the New Testament on the Sabbath day, you find him in a place of worship called the synagogue, or you find him appearing to his disciples who are gathered together in the upper room. Number three, it's a special day because It is now the Lord's day. And that means it's the day that belongs to Jesus Christ. Every day, I said, belongs to Jesus Christ, but this is a day in which he calls us in the commandment that we may set down our earthly calling wherewith we serve him and glorify him, and we may devote ourselves to the spiritual things of our soul and to him. I pointed out to you a few Sabbaths ago that when we read the law of God in Exodus 20, the Sabbath day, the fourth day, the fourth commandment is grounded in creation. And then I pointed out to you that in Deuteronomy 5, which we read this morning, the Sabbath day is not grounded in creation. is grounded in redemption. Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt and the Lord thy God brought thee out through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm. That's the work of redemption. And that's very important. And that explains why the Sabbath is no longer at the end of the week, Saturday, but it's at the beginning of the week, Sunday, because the work of redemption that Jesus came to do was sealed was completed in the day of his resurrection. Jesus Christ arose on the first day of the week. On the day in which his work of salvation was crowned with glory, it was completed, and he gathered with the church that they could worship, changing. He's the Lord of the Sabbath. He may change the day. He changed it to the first day of the week. And the disciples understood that. and they began to gather, according to the New Testament, on the first day of the week. Pentecost was on the first day of the week, it was a Sunday. The Apostle Paul in his missionary labors, Acts 20 and 1 Corinthians 16, observed the Sabbath on the first day of the week, on Sunday. He says to the Corinthians, I'm going to pick up a benevolent collection. I'm going to come in the future. And I'm going to pick it up on the first day of the week when you are gathered together in worship. It's the first day of the week. It's the Lord's Day. It's a special day. And therefore, the last reason is that the Sabbath is a sign of God's perpetual covenant with his people. It's a sign that this special day that God has made a covenant with us and we are his people on the earth. It is the mark. The Sabbath is the mark of the church. Take that away and there's no visible mark. of the church. The Sabbath is the mark of a Christian. No, we're not just Sunday Christians. We're Christians every day of the week. But this is given by Christ, Christ who enters in a special way into this place this morning because we're worshiping This is the mark to all the world that we belong to Jesus Christ. Take it away out of your life and the life of your children and all the other marks of being a Christian will fall away in time. Sabbath worship is a confession that God is God. upon whom we depend, worthy of all of our praise, that Jesus Christ is his Son and our Savior, who is the strength of our life. You cut the Sabbath from our life, and you have cut the umbilical cord of a Christian. Jesus said in Matthew 24, verse 20, when he's talking about the end of the world, He's talking about those days that the people of God will have to flee to the mountains. And he says, pray. It's a very practical word. Pray that your flight be not in the winter. You have to flee in the winter. to leave your home and shelter for the sake of Christ, to flee before the world in the winter. Pray that it not be in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day. He doesn't mean to say, well, if it's on the Sabbath, you know, you can only go so many miles. You can't run on the Sabbath. He's not, he doesn't mean that. He means that so urgent, so hard will be your life that you will not be able to stop with the people. You will not be able to call upon God's name publicly. You won't be able to stop with the people of God to have the Sabbath day. What spiritual distress, he's saying, will come upon you if the world so persecutes you that you can't keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath. is the umbilical cord to the Christian life. Now those were all reasons why it's a special day, but the heart this morning of all of this, all of what I said is biblical and true, but there's another reason that we give the Sabbath, and that's because To our new man in Jesus Christ, it is a delight. It is a joy, and it is a need. Isaiah 58 said, call the Sabbath a delight. The Apostle Paul said, and said this for all born of God, I delight in the law of God after the inward man Jesus said in Psalm 40, and we say it in him, I delight to do thy will, O God. Thy law is written in my heart. The fourth commandment is not an external commandment. It's not a commandment that you can do simply by going to a church and sitting and giving an hour or two every week. And now you've kept the Sabbath. that this is commanded, this is demanded of you. The Sabbath is not kept by me if throughout the whole Sabbath I'm saying, when will this day be over? And I can get back to life. Then I have not, I could have done everything outwardly, that is exactly right, but I have not kept the Sabbath before the Lord God. The Sabbath is a delight to the new man. It's not an inconvenience. It's not a dead tradition. But the new man, Psalm 42, pants for the Lord's day. David, as he's being persecuted and fleeing from his enemies, pants like a deer for streams of living water and says, I remember I was with them in the multitude who kept the holy day and I can't do it now. This day is my delight. It's my spiritual nourishment. Has COVID-19, which is receding in our memory, has that lesson receded in our memory? When we could not or did not meet the masking and all of the rest. And then in the church, coming to the elders, I'm speaking of our church in Georgetown and young men with their families saying, pastor, elders, this can't go on. My children and I have to actually come to church. I can't teach them at home with a video. I need to be with the people of God under the preaching of the word. This is why we pray for those who are withheld by the hand of God, who can't come to the worship service. We're thankful for our online services. What a blessing. But that's for those circumstances. It's not for us if we have the ability to come to the house of God. This is why we pray for those who neglect the house of God in their life. We're not just all traditionalists. We're not all legalists. We're not. No. No. I miss something. I know something's not right. Because the Sabbath is a delight. The scripture uses the word rest. The Sabbath is rest. Physically, yes. But it's the enjoyment of deliverance. It's the rest of my conscience in the precious blood of Christ. It's the rest in the knowledge of a sovereign God who has preached to me Sabbath after Sabbath. It's a rest in this wicked world where I long and thirst. There is no spiritual nourishment to be found in it. It's a rest from the burden of sin, from the weight of trouble. It's the enjoyment of fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, speaking, worshiping, getting to know them, resting. So Sunday is a day of activity. It's a day of spiritual activity. it can become one of the busier days. And maybe we need to guard a little bit against that and make sure that we have time to simply sit in our homes with our family and we have time for spiritual things. But it can be very busy. Visiting the needy, attending worship services, programs, meetings, young adult meetings, young people's meetings, time to visit the aged, It's a busy day, but it's not the busyness of moaning and groaning, but it's the busyness of delight. I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day. What spirit? What spirit is in us? So often we display the spirit of that Roman guard It meant nothing to him in that worship service on Patmos. We have his spirit, the spirit of those who are the companions by grace of Jesus Christ, ready to suffer with him. We delight in this day. We delight in the fellowship that we have with God. We delight in the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins. We delight in the hope of heaven that is set before us. We love coming to church as God blesses us with a family. But we embrace those who come who don't have a family, who are single, whose life perhaps by God's grace is different. We embrace them as fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. We embrace those who are widows, those who are lonely. Because in this house, Christ meets with us and we have communion with him on the Sabbath day. On this day, God gives to us certainly what the world cannot ever give to us. But he gives to us that which is very special fellowship with each other in God, in the truth, receiving the riches of the salvation of God. Delight yourself in this holy day. Call it honorable and good. We look forward to it. Our catechism, just briefly yet, three quick points on the observance of the day because the catechism does give us a simple outline, a simple structure for keeping the Sabbath day. It has three points. It says to us, first of all, The focus of the day must be on the preached word. The focus of a Sunday must be on the preached word. The catechism surprises us how it begins the answer to the fourth commandment. What does the fourth commandment require? First. It doesn't say first that you don't work. You don't go to your job. It doesn't say that. But it says this verse, that the ministry of the gospel and the schools be maintained so that I especially on the Sabbath day may hear the word of God. The argument is, very plain, that central to keeping the fourth commandment is the preaching of the gospel of Christ. John heard a voice behind him and he turned around and he saw that it was the voice as of the sound of many waters, the voice of a trumpet, the voice No man speaks as Jesus Christ and as he speaks to the exposition of his word to us. The central thing of Sunday is the focus on the word. The catechism, when it talks about the ministry of the gospel in the schools, it's referring there not to our good Christian schools that we support, that we love, But it's speaking there of seminaries. It wants, it's talking about seminaries where preachers are prepared to sound the glad tidings of the gospel, especially on the Sabbath. The argument is central to the keeping of the fourth commandment is the preaching of the gospel. So the fourth commandment also involves us in our prayer. for ministers. We want ministers in this last age. We want men pastors after God's own heart. We want men who are filled with conviction for the truth, pastor's hearts. We want them because we have to hear the word. We have to worship on the Lord's Day hearing his word. This is why we want a pastor here. We want a pastor, we pray to God, send us a pastor who can regularly, knowing us, bring to us his word. The second focus of the Lord's Day is public worship, public word, public worship. We gather together for public worship in this sanctuary to call upon the name of the Lord, We come to church to be fed. We come to church for communion of the saints. That's good. We need that, but that's not first. We come to worship him in this place. That's first. We come to ascribe to Him that which is His all glory and all honor as the only true God. We come because He is God worthy of praise and honor and worship. We are comforted when we bow before Him and see Him in His glory and majesty and then finally We come for the word, we come for worship, we come for the week ahead. It's the first day of the week today. We need strength to journey in this week. We need that spiritual strength. So as Christians, we do not have two lives. We don't have a life on Sunday. And then we have a life on Monday through Saturday. We don't have two lives. We have one life. Sunday is not the time that I'm a public Christian. Anybody riding by, seeing us in our good clothes, would say, oh, they must be Christians. They're not Hindus. They are Christians. It's not simply, I'm a public Christian on Sunday, and the other six days of the week, I'm a private Christian. And nobody would know. But the Sabbath is the day where we are refueled spiritually. We are strengthened. We gather together provisions of the Word. We encourage each other. We strengthen each other in the Lord. that we may journey the rest of this week in the strength of the Lord. Call the Sabbath day a delight to your heart. Call the place where you gather for worship, honorable, joyful. the Sabbath day holy, the mark of a Christian, and enjoy on that day, throughout your life, but enjoy on that day the rest that will be ours, the beginning of it, the rest that is promised to us when he comes again. Amen. We thank thee for thy word. Thy word is truth. We know that it is delivered to us in great weakness. Wilt thou use it in power? May the spirit that was in the Apostle John, the old man in that congregation, for they were in the spirit on the Lord's day, Holy Spirit, one Spirit given to the church. May that Spirit, Him, be in us on the Lord's Day and always. And may we call the Sabbath our delight. Amen.