It's good to see each of you here as we gather together for Bible study. If you will turn in the scriptures to Revelation 1.10, we're actually gonna look at several different scriptures together tonight. But we'll begin with this one, because it sets the tone. Very familiar words to us. Revelation 1.10, John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." It would be a wonderful thing if every single Monday when we woke up, we looked back at the day before and could say, truly, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Well, let's pray and ask for God's help as we work through the scriptures together. Our Father, we come before you and ask that your Spirit be poured out through the merits of Christ. open our hearts and our minds to observe things that we have perhaps not considered before or that if we have, Lord, to refresh us and to remind us and to renew us. Lord, you are worthy of giving our entire lives to you and certainly worthy of us giving us giving you one seventh of our life each week and devoted to your worship and your service. So, Lord, we pray that your spirit will awaken this ability to delight in the Lord of the Sabbath each and every Lord's Day. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Year 1789 was a massive year in history. For our own United States, George Washington was inaugurated as the very first president of the US. Also that same year, a young 24-year-old man by the name of Samuel Pierce began his ministry, which would last for a decade at the Canyon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, England. But something else happened in the year 1789. A revolution began. Does anyone know which revolution? The French Revolution. The French Revolution. And the French Revolution was of a very different character than our own American Revolution. It was a bloodbath in which literally tens of thousands of Frenchmen lost their heads, quite literally. The French Revolution was based upon the teaching of a group of men who were known as Enlightenment teachers or philosophers. This was considered the age of Enlightenment and basically these philosophers rejected biblical Christianity in favor of man's reason. In other words, they replaced the infallible revelation of God with the reason of man. As a matter of fact, there was a public ceremony in which a woman was crowned the goddess of reason and then enthroned in Notre Dame. The cult of reason, which this philosophy was called, was basically a state-sponsored atheistic religion that sought to destroy Christianity and eradicate it from France altogether. Well, whenever men try to dethrone God, What they wind up doing is destroying man. Because our dignity is based upon the fact that we're created in God's image, so take that away and you will destroy the sanctity of human life. The modern abortion movement is an example of that very thing. Let's dehumanize the child that's in the womb and therefore we can justify the extermination. Well, there was a Committee of Public Safety that was formed to supposedly advocate concepts like liberty and freedom of speech. You may have heard of a man named Maximilien Rospierre. He was the silver tongue orator, the apologist, as it were, for the Committee of Public Safety. But it's really ironic that they called themselves the Committee of Public Safety because the public was not safe at all under the Committee of Public Safety. Thousands of French citizens, as I've already mentioned, lost their heads at the guillotine. and they lost it because they spoke out or said anything or were suspected of saying anything negative to the government that existed at that time. So they died at the hands of people who supposedly were championing the freedom of speech. King Louis XVI and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, both lost their heads at the guillotine, as did Robespierre himself ultimately. But for our purposes here, in their attempt to destroy Christianity, One of the things the French government did is adopted what was called the French Republican Calendar. It was adopted on October the 24th of the year 1793. The first thing it did was to eradicate the use of B.C. and A.D. Why would they do that? because then all of history doesn't pivot around the birth of Jesus Christ. And they began their French calendar with the year 1789, the same year that the revolution began. The calendar also replaced the seven-day week with a 10-day week. And instead of working for six days and then taking the seventh day off, now workers had to work nine days straight and then take the 10th day off, which proved to be very unpopular with the populace, as you can imagine. Public worship was outlawed. You could no longer meet together in a church, church doors were closed, and instead on their 10th day of rest, the government would sponsor speeches on philosophy in the public squares. That's what took place. Now, why did the government think they could eradicate Christianity and institutionalize Christianity by changing the calendar? Basically, they decided, let's make Sabbath-keeping illegal. If we can eradicate the Sabbath, we'll destroy Christianity. And this was explicitly stated, some of you may have known of one of the Enlightenment philosophers, he went by the pen name Voltaire. Very wicked, ungodly man, very immoral man. He died actually before the revolution started in the year 1778, but he said once these words, quote, I can never hope to destroy Christianity until I first destroy the Christian Sabbath. Let me repeat that. I can never hope to destroy Christianity until I first destroy the Christian Sabbath. Sometimes the enemies of Christianity are more discerning than its friends. He understood something. Get rid of the Lord's day and I'll destroy Christianity. Almost some 70, 80 years later, another man in the 19th century who was a Calvinistic minister, Church of England man, wrote these words, quote, it is not too much to say that the prosperity or decay of organized Christianity depends on the maintenance of the Christian Sabbath. Let in the hood of worldliness and pleasure-seeking on the Lord's Day without check or hindrance, and our congregations will soon dwindle away. There is not too much religion in the land now. Destroy the sanctity of the Sabbath, and there would soon be far less. As a minister of Christ, a father of a family, and a lover of my country, I feel bound to plead on behalf of the Old Christian Sunday. My sentence is emphatically expressed in the words of scripture. Let us keep it holy. My advice to all Christians is to contend earnestly for the whole day against all enemies, both within and without. It is worth a struggle." End of quote. The man who said that was J.C. Rao. And if you looked at him, if you'd lived in that day, that sort of talk would be radical in our own day. But if you had come to him and said, oh, that's overstatement, that's hyperbole. All J.C. Rowell had to do was to take you to the edge of the English Channel, point across the way to France, and say, then explain that to me. Explain that to me. It's important to be recovered in our own day. We've begun a series on the subject of the public means of grace. And we began that series by talking about the centrality of the local church. If the local church is not central, it's obvious that the public means of grace are not gonna be central to you either. And then we follow that up by talking about the centrality of the Lord's day itself, of the Sabbath. And we talked about that last week and I gave you three arguments. to demonstrate the perpetuity of the Sabbath, which is denied today. Tonight, our focus then is to continue that study by asking the question, when did the Sabbath change from Saturday to Sunday? Is there any biblical evidence for that? How do we think through those things? Because do you find any commandment where the apostles say, now the Sabbath is gonna be on Sunday? gather on the first day of the week. Do you find that anywhere in scripture? Well, you don't. But is it a scriptural idea? Obviously, I believe it is. And I'm gonna seek to demonstrate that to you this evening. So I'm gonna do so under two basic headings. First of all, we're gonna consider seven Sabbaths abolished. Seven Sabbaths abolished. Secondly, the Lord's day established. So let's consider those things together. First of all, seven Sabbaths abolished. I gave you three proofs last week about why the Sabbath is still binding upon us today. Now I want to talk to you about three different texts of New Testament scripture that seem to indicate something else, that seem to consider it was abolished. They're all from the writings of Paul. And so I want to go through them. And I think the best way to examine them is just to look head on at them, look straight at them and be honest with them. So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the first one, which is Romans chapter 14, verses five and six. The Holy Spirit moved Paul to write these words. One person esteems one day above another. Another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord. And he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. Now, what's the context here? What is Paul addressing? What subject is he dealing with? Sabbath, it sounds like. But what's the broader thing he's focused on? Christian liberty. He's dealing with the subject of Christian liberty, legitimate disagreements that brothers and sisters have with one another, matters of conscience. And when you look upon this text on the surface of it, doesn't it seem to be indicating that regarding one day in seven as more holy or more important than the others is just a matter of Christian liberty. It's okay if you do regard it, it's okay if you neglect it. According to that mindset, if that's what this text is saying, then whether or not you observe the Sabbath is a matter of personal conscience. Now, are any of the other Ten Commandments like that? Okay, but it's just a matter of conscience. Whether you observe the day or whether you don't is the same thing as whether or not you enjoy a cigar occasionally, or whether you enjoy an alcoholic beverage in moderation, whether you have the freedom and liberty to do that, whether you observe the Sabbath, same category, if that's what this text is talking about. Next text gets stricter than this, and that's Galatians chapter four, verses nine through 11. But now, after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. Now here is something very different from Romans 14. There he's talking about a matter of Christian liberty. But here he's saying to the Galatians, and let's remember the context of Galatia, you should know it since Pastor Matt's been preaching on it. But what is going on in Galatians? The churches in Galatia had turned from the gospel. They were denying justification by faith alone in Christ alone and it embraced instead sacramentalism. They were saying you have to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses in order to be saved. So they had embraced circumcision and kosher diets and kosher days. and they were observing them from the Jewish calendar. And here, Paul is saying, by doing so, you've embraced a false gospel. What you're doing isn't a matter of liberty, it's a matter of sin. And I wonder, have you really believed in Christ or not? Have I labored in vain? Are you false converts? We'll then go to Colossians 2. Verses 16 to 17. Now, in my experience, when people who are trying to argue against the perpetuity of the Sabbath, they almost always go to Romans 14. That's the place they go. If I was an anti-Sabbaterian, I would always go to Colossians 2. That's where I would go. I'm surprised that more of them don't. Verse 16, so let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath. which are a shadow of things to come, but the substances of Christ." Now, in Romans 14, Paul's dealing with an issue of conscience. In Galatians 4 and Colossians 2, he's not dealing with an issue of conscience. He's saying here that the Sabbaths have passed away. They were a type and shadow that was fulfilled by Christ, but when Christ destroyed the old covenant, the Sabbaths were destroyed too. Now, looking at those texts on the surface of it, in some ways make you think, well, who in his right mind would believe in the perpetuity of the Sabbath then? Why would we still fight for this subject? Why would we contend that it is perpetual? Well, there's three things I wanna set before you to think about. The first is this, you must not interpret these verses in isolation from the whole counsel of God. because the Bible has more to say about the Sabbath than just these passages. We have no question that what Paul wrote in Romans 14 and Galatians 4 and Colossians 2 is given by inspiration of the Spirit, that it's infallible and inerrant. Its inspiration is not in question. It's the interpretation of these verses that we're wrestling with. And we must be careful not to interpret them in isolation from what the rest of the Bible says. The Holy Spirit, because He moved all of the authors who wrote all 66 books of the Bible, all of them are equally inspired. They are therefore equally infallible and inerrant. The Holy Spirit can't lie. The Holy Spirit can't err. That means the Holy Spirit can't contradict himself. What he says in one place is in perfect harmony with what he says in all the rest of the scriptures. And when Paul told Timothy that he had to labor diligently to rightly divide the word of truth, what he was saying is you must labor to interpret the Bible in a way that is a harmonious interpretation, which takes a lot of hard work, Lot of study, hundreds of man hours of study to do. But you can come up with that harmonious interpretation because it's the Spirit who gave it. It's the word of truth, therefore there is a consensus that you can come to in seeking to interpret it. So let's remember what we learned last week. Three arguments for the perpetuity of the Sabbath. First of all, we learn that from both the Old and New Testaments that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, that it was established in the first creation week. Therefore, it is binding upon all peoples in all places under all covenant administrations at all times. It's just like work, rest, Marriage, male headship, all those things were established in the creation week. There are creation ordinances for every people in every place. So that's the first thing, and we saw that from Genesis 2, Exodus 20, and from Mark 2, Jesus' own words. The man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for the man. Secondly, We learn from the book of James, which is in the New Testament, that the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, is an indivisible unit. You can't tamper with one of them without tampering with all of them. If you pull out the fourth commandment, you're going to destroy the other nine. No two ways about it. And third, we consider the fact that Jesus himself labored hard not to abolish the Sabbath, but to recover it, to restore it to its pristine use because it had gotten buried under Jewish legalism. So we saw all those things. Now, here's my point. Paul's words in Romans 14, Galatians 4, and Colossians 2 are in perfect harmony with all those things that we've seen. All of them come from the same Bible. What we have to think through is how do we give due weight to Paul's words and yet not throw out or jettison these other things that we've learned as well. We don't want to do violence to the words of Moses or of James or of Jesus himself in the way that we handle Paul's words. That leads me then to my second observation, which is this. In Colossians 2, Paul does not say that the Sabbath was abolished. He says Sabbaths, plural. There's a reason for that. Under the types and shadows of the Old Testament, there were more Sabbaths on the Jewish calendar than just the weekly one. I probably already tipped my hand to give this away, but you know how many there were? Seven, there were seven. Funny how that number seven sticks with the Sabbath, isn't it? There were seven different times Jesus had controversies about the Sabbath that we talked about, and there are seven different Sabbaths. Let me give them to you real quickly. The first one is the most obvious, the weekly Saturday Sabbath. Secondly, the annual day of atonement, Yom Kippur, still on the calendar. You see that the Jews still celebrate it. Third was the annual grain offering, later called Pentecost, by the way. The fourth was the annual feast of trumpets. The fifth was the annual feast of tabernacles. The sixth was the Sabbath year. Every seventh year, the Jews were not to plow up their land. They would let it lie fallow. They would let the land itself rest every seven years. They didn't do it. As a matter of fact, they didn't do it for 490 years when God put them into the Babylonian captivity. How long was the Babylonian captivity? It was 70 years, it was 70 Sabbaths, exactly. It was for the land lay fallow for all the times that they did not observe it. And then there was a final Sabbath week, it was called the year of Jubilee. The year when every 50 years, so twice a century, there was to be a Sabbath year where you let the land lie fallow, you let everybody out of prison. which sounds scary, but you had to realize in the Jewish law, you were executed for lots of stuff. So there were no murderers walking around because of that or rapists or anything else. They were all put to death. But people who had done petty crimes and things like that were set free. All debts were forgiven. Lands were restored. Remember when Jesus was in the synagogue and he read, I've come here to declare the acceptable year of the Lord. And everybody's looking at him. He was talking about the Jubilee. He says, I have come to fulfill that. I've set the captives free. I've canceled all your debts. In other words, Jesus is a fulfillment of it all. So when Jesus died upon the cross, he destroyed the old covenant. He destroyed the kosher calendar. He wiped out all seven of those Sabbaths, including the Saturday Sabbath. And I believe that's what Paul's saying in Colossians chapter 2. Listen to it again. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, kosher diets and kosher days, or regarding festivals or new moons or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Now I'll come back to that in just a moment, but here's my third observation, and this also has to do with the Colossians 2 passage. you must discern where Paul obtained the threefold phrase, a festival, a new moon or Sabbaths. He didn't just pick that out of a hat or pick it straight out of the air and say, let's just throw some phrases together. Where do you think he got those phrases from? The Old Testament, right? And if you go take your concordance and you look through them all, and I have, and look at every reference to a festival, a new moon, or a Sabbath, it had to do with the kosher calendar. And if you examine those texts carefully, With some frequency, you'll find that wherever this threefold phrase is repeated, it's always addressing the subject of preparations that need to be made for the festivals and the new moons and the Sabbaths if they were to be observed properly. Specifically, there are instructions in most of those contexts about making sure there were a sufficient number of clean animals that would be available to be sacrificed by the Levitical priesthood, because you were required to give burnt offerings on the altar in order to observe these days. So in other words, observing the new moons and the feasts, festivals, etc., required the existence of the Levitical priesthood, required animal sacrifices and the strict observance of kosher diets and kosher days. Are we required to do any of those things today? Absolutely not. Jesus on the cross abolished the Levitical priesthood. He abolished the necessity of animal sacrifices. He abolished kosher diets and he also got rid of the entire Jewish calendar. To use the language of Paul in Ephesians 2, he tore down the middle wall of separation that separated Jew from Gentile to make one people out of the two. Our liberty in Christ, yes, it's the liberty about things indifferent, things that the Bible's silent upon, but nonetheless, it's more than that. It's also our freedom from the ceremonial law. We are no longer obligated to observe any of those things because Jesus has abolished them. But does that set us free? Does the death of Christ set us free from our obligation to walk in obedience to the Ten Commandments? We just got through studying the New Covenant, right? What is the very first blessing of the New Covenant? It's regeneration, which is expressed in Jeremiah as this, I will write my laws upon their minds and upon their hearts. That language of, I will write my law, where does that come from? Where else did God write his law? X is 20, right? Ten Commandments, he wrote them on tables of stone. What he's saying is, I'm gonna take the same substance, that same law, but I'm not gonna write it on tables of stone. Instead, I'm gonna write it here, on your mind. I'm gonna write it here, on your heart, so that the regenerate man, the regenerate woman is motivated to love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, not from without, but from within. And that love looks a lot like obeying the Ten Commandments, that you worship the Lord your God only, that you don't take His name in vain, that you worship Him in the way He's prescribed, that you observe His day, that you honor your father and mother, that you don't murder anybody, that you don't steal, you don't lie, you don't cheat, you don't covet. All those things were driven from within and were expressed in obedience to His commandments, and that is all throughout the New Testament. Okay, so it's called by James the law of liberty, the law of liberty. So there's no contradiction between my liberty in Christ and obedience to the Ten Commandments. Now, can the Ten Commandments save you? No, but you are set free from the condemnation of the law, but not from the obligation to walk in what we call evangelical obedience to the law. Now, let me try to tie these things together, and I want you to imagine for a minute that you're a uncircumcised Gentile living in the first century A.D. who has come to faith in Christ, okay? Which day of the week did the early Christians gather for worship? What's that? Sunday, first day of the week, called the Lord's Day. Why is it called the Lord's Day? The day he rose from the dead, exactly. So the day that is owned by the Lord, we'll come back to that. All throughout the book of Acts, all throughout the letters of the apostles, we find attention that the first century Judaizers were zealous to make Gentile Christians kosher. Over and over again, the pressure, immense pressure put on them to be circumcised. Remember when Peter had to have a dream? Had to have a vision three visions of basically somebody said it I was reading a book recently said God showed him a non-kosher picnic and invited him to come to it. He dropped the unclean animals from heaven He says rise kill and eat and he says those two contradictory words. No Lord And he asked to show him three times Look, I'm telling you that you are not to call what I have called clean, unclean. And then three men show up at his door, who are all Gentiles, and he extends table fellowship to them. He lets them spend the night at the house. Then he goes with them to Cornelius' house, preaches to them, the Holy Spirit falls upon them, they're regenerated, he baptizes them, and then they invite him into the home. And he goes inside, eats with them, sleeps in their guest beds, and when he comes back to Jerusalem, they're all happy because Peter, has been with the Gentiles, right? What happens next? They're mad as a hornet. You went in to Gentiles, you slept in their guest beds, you ate at their tables, what were you doing? And he has to explain the whole thing to them. And they said, God accepted them without them being circumcised or adopting a kosher lifestyle. What was I supposed to do? If God accepted them, I'm not more holy than him. And I had to accept them as well. And then they sit back and go, oh, Well, I guess the Lord's opened the door to even the unclean Gentiles, right? But this controversy continues. Acts 15, people from the church in Jerusalem, Jewish men, go up without authorization to the church in Antioch that had mostly Gentiles. You must be circumcised and obey the law of Moses in order to be saved. And that winds up being the Jerusalem Council. No, you don't have to be circumcised because we're justified by faith alone in Christ alone. So they throw out sacramentalism, they embrace justification by faith alone. Now, imagine though, that you're living as a Gentile who's believed in Christ in the midst of all that. And the Judaizers are putting incredible pressure upon you to adopt the kosher calendar, to adopt the kosher lifestyle, to eat only clean things, to be circumcised, all those things. And what day would they tell you to go and worship God? Saturday. Right? So in other words, here are the Gentiles. They're uncircumcised. They worship God on the wrong day of the week. They don't come to synagogue on Saturday, but they do go to church on Sunday. They never observe the Passover. They skip Yom Kippur every year. They never allow their land to lie fallow every seven years. They never bring clean animals before the priest to sacrifice them. And not only did they not observe kosher diet, they love pork and they eat it with reckless abandon. I mean, their barbecue places are just popping up everywhere. And they don't think a thing about it. And yet you as believing Jews are called upon to accept them as they are, to say they don't have to become Jews in order to become Christians. They can become Christians simply through faith in Jesus and because God has accepted them, you have to accept them. Well, Because the Jews had such a hard time accepting them, they're putting all this pressure on. And if you're one of those Gentiles and you're receiving that, imagine that you get to read the book of Galatians for the first time. And there he says, don't submit yourself to a Jewish yoke of the seven Sabbaths of the old covenant. Don't submit yourself to circumcision. In fact, not only would that be wrong, it would be sinful. because you have the substance all those things were pointing to. You've got a greater priesthood. You have greater promises. You have a greater sacrifice. Why would you go back to the inferior types and shadows when you got the real thing? Wouldn't that comfort you and encourage you to have Paul telling you those very things? Paul, who himself was a very kosher Jew at one point in his life. Or then you read in Colossae. And he says to you, don't be intimidated when other people judge you because you don't observe the seven Jewish Sabbaths that are found there in the Old Testament. Don't embrace them and don't embrace the ceremonial trappings that are connected with it because Jesus has set you free from all of that. Now, all of this brings me back to where we began at the very beginning. Revelation 1.10, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. last book ever written in our Bibles. John is writing not to a bunch of Jews. He's writing to the seven churches that were in Asia Minor. There were actually eight, but he only includes seven here. The eighth one was Colossae. But he writes to the seven churches in Asia Minor. The first one, Ephesus, was founded by Paul in his third missionary journey. It seems obvious that Ephesus had planted the other churches. In other words, it was self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. And so it had planted these other churches. That's why Paul writes to Colossians and says, I wanna see your face sometime. Well, why had he never seen their faces? He didn't plant the church. The church in Ephesus planted the church. But he writes to these Gentiles. John does. And he says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. And he doesn't give any explanation to it. He assumes they understand what he means. Which day of the week am I referring to? It's an interesting grammatical construction. It's the same kind of language that Paul uses in the original Greek in the book of 1 Corinthians when he describes the Lord's Supper or the Lord's Table. Now let me ask you this. Does Jesus own all the suppers and all the tables and all the world? Yes. But does that make them the Lord's Supper? Absolutely not. There's a specific supper that belongs to the Lord Jesus, where his death is commemorated and remembered, right? It's the Lord's Supper, that's a possessive. It is the supper that he owns and that he's given to the local church, right? Same thing with the Lord's Day. There is one day in every seven, each week, that uniquely belongs to the Lord Jesus. The NFL does not own it. Jesus owns it, and it's His. And here is John, writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to a bunch of Gentiles, not Jews, and he says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. You know, that one day in every seven that Jesus owns? And he assumes that they know what it means. Now, if Romans 14 is saying that one regards one above another, and another regards every day alike, let each be convinced in his own mind, and Paul's rejecting the idea that there's a Sabbath and there's a new covenant, then we have to conclude that the Apostle John was a weaker brother, because he's honoring one day above another, and doing so by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he assumes that his readers understand the day he's talking about. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. So my point is this, the seven Old Covenant Jewish Sabbaths have been abolished, including the observance of the seventh day. But under the new covenant, the fourth commandment is obeyed by observing the Sabbath on the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's day, the day owned by the Lord Jesus. And Paul's reference in Romans 14 about honoring one day above another doesn't have application to Sundays. What he's talking about in our modern context is things like, do you observe Christmas and Easter or do you not? It's a matter of indifference. You're not sinning if you do, you're not sinning if you don't. Let each be convinced in his own mind. But the Lord's Day is fixed 52 days out of every year that we are to give this day to the Lord. And by the way, this is how the early church understood this. They wrote that way. They called the Lord's Day the Sabbath. Because something else you need to know, when John says the Lord's Day, he's borrowing language from the Old Testament, specifically Isaiah 58 verse 13. If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath," listen carefully, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath of the light, the holy day of the Lord honorable. In other words, the Sabbath is owned by the Lord. It's the Lord's day. That's the language that John is using in Revelation 110 to describe the Sabbath day. It's the Lord's day. So, we've seen seven Sabbaths abolished. Let's consider in the last place, the Lord's Day established. Please turn with me in the confession of faith. You don't have the Baptist Confession in front of you, you can get your Trinity Hymnal, you can turn to page 861. Now our Trinity Hymnal is a Presbyterian Hymnal, so it doesn't have our Baptist Confession in it. No one's perfect. But it has the Westminster Confession. It's a Presbyterian hymnal. And what it says about the Sabbath day is identical to what is in our Baptist Confession. Look at paragraphs seven and eight, which deal with the Sabbath. Paragraph seven, again, identical in our Baptist Confession, argues for the perpetuity of the Sabbath. Paragraph eight is how it's to be observed. So paragraph eight's next week. Paragraph seven's tonight. Paragraph 7, as it is the law of nature that in general a proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart for the worship of God, so by His Word, in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto Him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week. And from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian and Sabbath, notice the final phrase, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished. Hey, that sounds like what I just taught you from the scriptures, right? They're saying that same thing. But if you're going to understand these words and why they wrote the words the way they did, you've got to understand a little bit of what was going on in history in England at the time. This was written in the 17th century. Westminster Confession was published in 1646. These same words, these same two paragraphs were published, adopted by the Congregationalists in what was called the Savoy Declaration in the year 1656, 10 years after the Westminster was published. And then they appeared again in the Baptist Confession of Faith, which was published in 1677 and then publicly signed in 1689 by the Baptist ministers there. There's a, the history behind it is fascinating, and you can follow this. I'm gonna try to make it as simple as I can, but I'm indebted to a man named James Dennison, who wrote a book called The Market Day of the Soul, The Puritan Doctrine of the Sabbath in England. Now this was the 17th century, and you need to understand there was a massive conflict going on between the civil magistrates in England and the churches in England. And it came down to this. The kings in England and in Scotland, We're saying that not only am I the head of the state, but I'm also the head of the church. And I get to tell the church what kind of doctrine they're supposed to believe. And I get to tell the church how to worship God and so I can impose my liturgy upon them. And furthermore, I have the right to pick the ministers that will be preaching in each church. Because if you get to do that, you get to control the church, right? And so this was going on, well, how do you think that the Protestants responded to that? Did they say, okay, it's all right, King, if you say you're the head of the church? No. Or if you say the Pope's the head of the church, which that was also being said. No, they said there's one head of the church, and who is he? Christ is the head of the church, not you. Yep, you are head over Scotland and England, that's great. but you're not head of the church. And so these men became known as dissenters. They dissented from what the government was trying to do to them. And you need to understand that this didn't just become a quibble or an argument in the public square. If you resisted the king and said, you're not the head of the church, if you refuse to give what was called an oath of allegiance, in which you acknowledge the king to be head of the church, you would be severely fined. You might be imprisoned. You might be tortured. Some were drawn and quartered. I'm not gonna explain to you what drawn and quartered is, but suffice to say, you gotta be demon possessed to do it. Some had their heads taken off. Some were executed. Almost 20 years ago, 20 years ago this year, July of 2005, I was on a ministry tour in Scotland, and I visited the Haymarket Square, where many of our brothers in Christ were hung by the neck. I stood in the Gray Fires Chapel by a mass grave where numerous men were thrown after their bodies were killed. And as you walk down the streets of Edinburgh, you'll pass by these big posts that have these metal pikes on top of them. On those metal pikes was where the heads of some of our forefathers had their heads displayed as a public warning to everybody else. So all this took place to the point people were shedding their blood. You need to understand, men shed their blood to proclaim Jesus as the head of the church. Okay, that's what was going on. The Protestant Reformation in many ways was a contest of authority. Who is head of the church? And they concluded Jesus alone is the head of his church and therefore the scriptures are sufficient for all manners of faith and doctrine and worship and holiness. It's not the role of the civil magistrate to keep the doctrine of the church pure. Brothers and sisters, we don't want our government telling us which God to worship. We don't want our government telling us how to worship Him. Furthermore, we don't want us telling them what day we have to worship Him. God has told us that in His Word, and whenever the government puts their grubby hands on that kind of stuff, they're overextending their authority and intruding into authority God has not given them. I would go on and say, just as an aside, that when the government tries to force a certain kind of curriculum upon your children in education, the government has also overextended its reach, because that is the purview of parents. to decide about the education of their children. So those are the things we set forth. Now, for more than 1600 years, the Christian church had gathered on Sunday, the first day of the week. It was traditional for 1600 years to understand the first day of the week, Sunday was the Christian Sabbath. That was from the times of the apostles until the 1600s. Now, let me pause and say something here. If you're not convinced that the Sabbath is perpetual, then you're in agreement with most modern 21st century professing Christians in the United States. But you realize your position is a minority position when you look at it from the perspective of 2,000 years of church history. You are in the vast minority. The vast majority believe Sunday was the Christian Sabbath. But what happened in England was a view came about that was known as the prelacy view. the view that the government has the right to tell us what day to worship God. And it had four basic characteristics. And the man who was in charge at the time was a guy named King James, as in King James Bible, that same King James, that guy, was not a friend of the Puritans. All right, but first of all, here's the thing. Here's what the civil government claimed. Number one, they denied that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance. They said there was no Sabbath from Adam until Moses. Secondly, they said that the Sabbath came to existence on Mount Sinai and existed from Moses until Christ. It was uniquely a part of the old covenant and for the old covenant alone. So no Sabbath from Adam to Moses. There was a Sabbath or seven Sabbaths from Moses until Christ. But then the third thing is when Christ died upon the cross, he abolished the old covenant and with it, he abolished even the Sabbath. So there is no Sabbath today. But so that's really under the second thing. The third thing is the civil magistrates did recognize just practically speaking, you gotta set aside time each week if people are gonna go to church and worship God, right? So it was more of a pragmatic consideration. And since the church has been gathering on Sundays for 1600 years, not by any biblical authority, but just by tradition, we'll go with that. Okay, but then the fourth thing was they said, they denied the entire day had to be kept holy to God. Just the morning, just morning worship, not a whole day. And as a matter of fact, King James published a book called the book of sports. And the book of sports required by law, churches to provide secular entertainment like sports and festivals and things like that on Sunday afternoons, as a pragmatic concern to attract people to church. And drunkenness took place at these festivals. All kinds of sexual morality took place at these festivals, but they imposed upon the church. But you see what they're saying. We have the right to choose which day as a civil magistrate, you're going to worship God. And we have the right to tell you what kind of liturgy you're going to use. And we have the right to impose upon the church these requirements of having secular entertainments on the Lord's day. That's what was going on when our confession was written. Now, at the same time, there was a different group rising up, not the Puritans, but a group that would eventually be called the Seventh-day Baptists. Anybody ever heard of them? Seventh-day Baptists. There's still Seventh-day Baptists to this day, actually. I think there's a Seventh-day Baptist church somewhere in Hiram or Marietta. But the Seventh-day Baptists, they agreed with the kings, with the civil magistrate, that Sunday was not the Sabbath, and there was no divine authority behind changing the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. But they disagreed with the civil magistrate in many important ways. I'm gonna give you four things about them. The first three, the Seventh-day Baptist saw eye to eye with the Puritans. The fourth thing, they parted ways with the Puritans. Here it is. In agreement with the Puritans, they affirmed that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance. Secondly, the Seventh-day Baptist denied that Jesus had abolished the requirement of Sabbath keeping. Puritans would say amen. Third, They denied that the church had the authority to change the day from Saturday to Sunday or any other day of the week. The Puritans said, amen. But then the fourth thing was against the Puritans, the Seventh-day Baptist denied that God himself had changed the day to Sunday. So here's the fascinating thing about it all. When you read chapter 22, paragraphs seven and eight today, it's considered radical by modern Christians. They look at the Sabbath and keeping the Sabbath holy and they go, oh, that's just legalism. What's interesting is when these paragraphs were written, it was actually the mediating view between prelacy, the civil magistrates on the one hand, and the Seventh-day Baptists on the other. It was actually a moderating view between the two tensions. So you had the prelacy view was extreme left. Seventh-day Baptists, they were extreme right. But here in the middle is what I believe, and here I show my bias, was the center of biblical tension. I think the Puritans got it exactly right. So for the Puritans, this was their view. The Puritans believed that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance. Secondly, they recognized that the Saturday Sabbath was in place from Adam all the way until Christ. But third, they believed Jesus himself abolished the observance of the seventh day in favor of the first day of the week. and that the authority to do so doesn't come from a civil magistrate, doesn't come from a church, it comes from Scripture itself. God himself changed the day. And it's on scriptural authority that we do it. The Puritans viewed the one day in every seven requirement as a moral law. but then which day you observe the Sabbath is a matter of positive law. That is, that God has to show you in the covenant which specific day you're to observe the Sabbath. Now, I hope this has been helpful, but there's a big question, and it's this. That's what the confession teaches, but does the Bible teach it? Because at the end of the day, don't be convinced of anything just because a confession says it, how much ever you respect the confession. Because a confession is not inspired. A confession is not infallible. It has a lot of illumination, but it's not infallible. So the question is, what saith the Lord? Well, let me set it forth before you, and I think you'll find this convincing. The change of the day has both Old Testament prophecy, and New Testament precedent on its side. Old Testament prophecy, New Testament precedent. Start with Old Testament prophecy. I think you're all familiar with Psalm 118 verse 24. It says, this is the day the Lord has made. we will rejoice and be glad in it. Everybody know that one? There was a song, a popular song in the 1970s that came out from it. Any of y'all know this one? This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made. Well, growing up and hearing that song, the way it was interpreted and applied was today is Wednesday. So it's Wednesday, this is the day, this is the day that the Lord, and tomorrow morning when you get up and it's Thursday, you look at the calendar, you go, oh, it's Thursday, hit it. This is the day, right? But look at the context of Psalm 118, and that is not at all what it's talking about. Now, is every day created by the Lord? Yes, of course it is. But that's not what it's referring to. Psalm 118, listen, that's verse 24, but let's begin reading at verse 22. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. Okay, let's ask some questions. Who is the chief cornerstone it's talking about? Jesus. Who are the builders that rejected the chief cornerstone? The Jews and the Gentiles. They conspired together, right? Pontius Pilate. With Herod, it's fitting because Jesus died for Jew and Gentile. Jews and Gentiles together put him to death, right? Why did the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? And it's talking about them conspiring. So they're the ones who rejected Jesus. On what day did they show their rejection of Jesus? How did they show it tangibly? They crucified him. The one they rejected and crucified, God made the chief cornerstone. When did he make him the chief cornerstone? On Sunday, the resurrection. And this is not made up. Remember in Acts chapter four, verses 10 to 12, The apostles were being persecuted for preaching the gospel, and they said this, This is, and he quotes Psalm 118, this is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but has become the chief cornerstone. Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. So looking back at Psalm 118.24, what is the day the Lord has made? The first day of the week, the day He raised Jesus from the dead. We will rejoice and be glad. Who's we? God's people, the church. He's foretelling on the first day of the week, we're going to rejoice because that's the day God made Jesus the chief cornerstone. So it has Old Testament prophecy on its side. Let's talk then about New Testament precept, our precedent. Let's admit there's not a commandment given to us, changing Saturday from Sunday, although a pastor challenged me on that point about a month ago, and I'm gonna show it to you in just a moment, that there's actually a place which you could go, hmm, they're about commanding this, actually. But we'll get there. Okay, Jesus rose on the first day of the week. On that day, he appeared to numerous people. First of all, Mary Magdalene. He appeared then later to the women. Then he appeared to Simon Peter individually. He appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. And finally on that day, he appeared to the apostles. Now how many apostles were in the room, in the upper room when he appeared? You remember? 10, because Judas had killed himself and Thomas was not there, he was absent. Well, he appears, he's meeting with his people on the first day of the week. Does anyone know when Jesus appeared the second time? He made a special appearance to Thomas. Anybody know when He appeared to him? When Thomas was there, but which day was it? first day of the week. Listen to the language. This is from John 20, verses 24 to 26. Now Thomas, called the twin, one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, we have seen the Lord. So he said to them, unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails and put my hands into his side, I will not believe. By the way, he wasn't doubting Thomas. He was unbelieving Thomas. Now he was converted, I'm not saying he was unconverted, but he's being stubborn here. In the Greek he's saying, essentially, hell will freeze over before I believe he's risen. He's being stubborn. So Jesus makes a special appearance that includes Thomas, but the poor man has to wait for eight days before it happens. Listen to what happens next. And after eight days, his disciples were again inside and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said, peace to you. And you know what happens? He shows his hands and feet to Thomas, says, go ahead, put your fingers in here. Put your hand on my side, it's me. He apparently didn't have to. Remember what he did? My Lord and my God, and he falls down and he worships him. You believe because you've seen. Blessed are those who believe and they haven't seen. Right. But what does he mean after eight days? This is language used in the New Testament to describe Sunday week. So in other words, the first day Jesus, the day Jesus rose from the dead was Sunday. That's day one. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Children, how many fingers am I holding up? Eight days later, Sunday week, Jesus appears the first day of the week again. All right. Jesus appeared multiple times, proving with many infallible truths He was alive. Finally, He stands on the top of the Mount of Olives. He ascends to heaven. Ten days later, the annual Feast of Grain is celebrated, called Pentecost. Pentecost was celebrated as a Sabbath. You had Saturday Sabbath, and then you had a second Sabbath right after it the very next day on Sunday. That was the day of Pentecost. What happened at Pentecost? The Holy Spirit fell, and the New Testament church was born. On what day of the week? The first day of the week, while the Jewish people are celebrating a Sabbath. And then the early church habitually gathered on the first day of the week, Acts 20 verse 7. Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. If you remember what happened at midnight, a young man fell out of the window, died. Paul goes down, resurrects and says, he's okay, let's go back. And he preaches till the next morning. So I say that to say, if you think Pastor Matt and I preach a lot, or long, just realize we don't preach till midnight and then keep going till the next morning, all right? We give you the Cliff Notes version. But here's the point. They gathered on what day? The first day of the week. First Corinthians 16, one and two. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I've given orders to the churches in Galatia, so you must also do. On the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as they may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. He gave a command. He gave a command on the first day of the week. When you're gathered, go ahead and assemble and take up your offering then. So what's he implying? He's implying the church gathered on the first day of the week. One more, or two more, and then we're gonna make one application and some book recommendations. All right, the Apostle Paul sets forth the first day of the week as very important for a very specific reason. Have you ever thought about this? Why did God choose that the first day of the week would be the day Jesus rose from the dead? What was created on the first day of the week? Light. God said, let there be light. And there was light and God saw the light that it was good. There's a reason Jesus was raised on the first day of the week. Second Corinthians chapter four, verse six. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, first day of the week, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You know why Jesus was raised on the first day of the week? Because God created light at the dawn of creation. And Jesus' resurrection signals the dawn of a new creation when light comes the first day of the week. And then Revelation 1.10, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, the first day of the week. So, do you see where the framers of the confession get what they're saying? It remains for you and I to say some things about it. Let me just make one application, I'm gonna make some book recommendations. What is the significance of observing the Sabbath on the first day of the week? It has an evangelistic function, I would suggest, When the Jews gathered on the seventh day of the week, on that specific day to worship God, what were they saying? What were they saying about which God they were worshiping? We've gathered to worship the God who created the world in the space of six days and rested on the seventh. No other God but Him. The God, the Hebrew God of the Bible. That is who we've gathered to worship. Brothers and sisters, when you and I assembled together on the Lord's Day morning, What are we saying? Which God have we gathered to worship? We have gathered to worship the God who sent his only begotten son to die for sinners, and who raised him on the first day of the week. Around Easter, we usually think and focus upon the resurrection, and we should. We should. It's the anniversary literally in history, because it took place in the Passover week. That's why it takes place in April. So there's nothing wrong with that, but brothers and sisters, we celebrate it 52 days of the year by being reminded every time we gather, he is risen and he is risen indeed. That's why we worship God on the first day of the week. Okay, book recommendations, and I'll take comments and questions. I'm tempted to recommend a lot more books than I'm going to, but I'm gonna limit the number to seven. You know why? Because it's the Sabbath, right? Okay, so first one, Knots Untied by J.C. Rowe. One chapter in it is a book on, is it one chapter on the Sabbath. It is one of the finest treatments of the Sabbath I've ever read in my life. In fact, the next book I'm going to recommend to you is great because he quotes Ryle over and over and over again. Every quote you've heard me make about from Ryle has been from that chapter. So some of the things in Knots Untied we would say are knots tied tighter because he has like a chapter on infant baptism and things like that. So nobody's perfect, but his chapter on the Sabbath is absolutely wonderful. This is an older publication. You can get it from Banner of Truth now. So that's Knots Untied. The second one is Ian Murray, Rest in God. A little pamphlet from Banner of Truth. Matter of fact, the first five of these are all from Banner of Truth. He quotes Ryle over and over again, which is part of why I like it. But these two men are my favorite authors of all time, Ryle and Ian Murray, so it's a win-win for me. But absolutely wonderful stuff. Another one, Christian Sabbath. Again, booklet from Banner of Truth by Terry Johnson. This is probably the most comprehensive short treatment of the Sabbath I've ever read. Matter of fact, we recently changed to having this be required reading for our new members. Before that we had Glen Connect, which we still love Glen Connect's books, it's not that. But this one was more succinct and I think he does a better job of covering a larger portion of material, really. If you don't know, Terry Johnson is pastor of Independent Presbyterian in Savannah, Georgia. That's actually a picture of his church building right there. Angeline worshipped there many years ago. Call the Sabbath a delight. by Walter Chantry. Walter Chantry was one of the pioneer leaders of the Reformed Baptist movement in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Our friend John Miller actually became a pastor in the church that he was pastor in. This book, Call the Sabbath a Lie, it's worth the price of admission just for the introduction. His introduction is masterful. Very, very good stuff. Glen Connect, The Day God Made. This is a sweet book and the kind of book you can read on the Sabbath afternoon. Really good stuff. Glen Connect just went home to be with the Lord recently, and so did his wife. He was in his 90s. I had the privilege of meeting his daughter. His daughter was at Holly Quinn's wedding. They knew each other. And so I began talking to him and her husband says, I was really blessed by this man who pastored me when in the 1970s. I said, what was his name? I said, he's a Glen Connect. I said, Glen Connect? I know who Glen Connect is. And we started talking and I said, his books required reading. And then his wife looks at me and goes, well, he was my dad. I'm like, whoa! So anyway, really sweet book. There's a review by one of his grandsons of this book on Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. I love it. He says, this is his review. My granddad wrote this book, so it totally rocks! This is Guy Prentice Waters. This is from Crossway. The Sabbath has rest and hope for the people of God. My friend Steve Martin recommended this to me. He said it was one of the more edifying books he'd ever read, so I got a hold of it. He was right. Very, very well done. Last but not least, Here's James Innocent, Market Day of the Soul. The information I gave you about where the Puritans had to deal with Prelacy and the Seventh-day Baptists all came from here. I've read this book three times probably. I always find it a very edifying read and you understand, oh, that's why our confession says what it says. It makes a lot of sense out of that. So, that'll keep you off the street for a while.