I would invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 6, as today we're going to be looking at Luke 6, verses 1 through 5, as we continue on in the gospel according to Luke. As you know, Jesus has been Throughout these verses, the light that we read about in Isaiah 9 that had broken upon the Gentiles in Galilee. He had been ministering. He has driven out demons. He has cured those who are sick. He has cured paralytics. He has done miracles. We saw the miraculous catch of fish that occurred in the Sea of Galilee. And the Pharisees were witnesses to all of these things. but they are growing increasingly discontent with Jesus because he is rejecting their traditions just as much as the reformers, for instance, in the Reformation, rejected the accumulation of traditions that had been brought in by the church that had no foundation within the word. Now Jesus has come in, he's teaching the truth, he's teaching God's word, he's preaching the gospel, but it is rejected by men who prefer the old wineskins and the old wine that we read about last week. Well, before we turn, though, to the word of God, let's ask the Lord to bless the preaching of his word. Sovereign Lord, we pray now that you would help us to hear with understanding in our hearts. We know, Lord, that whenever your word is being preached, the devil is at our shoulder encouraging us not to listen. He'll try to draw our attention. To other things, trivialities, Lord, he'll set our minds a-wandering to and fro throughout the earth. Think on the things of next week, he always says, Lord, not on the things of here and now in this moment, the gospel call. We pray, O Lord, that you would not let him have his way with us. O Lord, let it be. that instead we are attentive to the words of Christ as they are being read. And oh Lord, help us, help us to be safeguarded from all of those things that would distract us. Help me to preach. I'm a sinner myself, a man with feet of clay. I cannot hope to reach hearts, but I know you can, Lord, and I pray that you would. And I pray all these things in Jesus' holy name, amen. Luke chapter six, verses one through five. I remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that he went through the grain fields and his disciples picked the heads of grain and ate them, rubbing them in their hands. And some of the Pharisees said to them, why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath? But Jesus answered them and said, have you not even read this, what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him, how he went into the house of God, took and ate the showbread, and also gave some to those with him, which is not lawful for any but the priest to eat. And he said to them, the son of man is also Lord of the Sabbath. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Sad to say, I believe that most modern Christians misunderstand the Pharisees. They will often call them legalists, and there is a sense in which that's true. They did hope to be saved by their own law-keeping. But the misunderstanding that Christians have is they understand the Pharisees as being too zealous for God's law, taking it too seriously, too literally, as it is found in God's word. But that was not the case. They weren't actually zealous for God's law as it is found in the Torah. They were zealous for their own traditions that the rabbis had been zealously creating since the return from the exile in Babylon. In many cases, their zeal for their tradition caused them to actually break God's law rather than keeping it. Jesus pointed that out to them in Mark chapter 7. If you would just turn back a book with me to Mark chapter 7. And specifically, I'm gonna start reading with verse one. Now the Pharisees and some of the scribes came together to him, having come from Jerusalem. I'm reading verse one. Now when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with the filed, That is, with unwashed hands, they found fault. So the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands? He answered and said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do. He said to them, all too well, you reject the commandment of God that you may keep your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and your mother, and he who curses father or mother, let him be put to death. But you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is corban, that is a gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect. through your tradition, which you have handed down, and many such things you do. In that example, in Mark chapter 7, we have unscriptural traditions that were actually causing the Pharisees to break the fifth commandment. And last week, we saw how the Pharisees had taken something good, something that is actually only prescribed once in the Old Testament, and that is the practice of fasting. And they had made it into something burdensome, something that men had to do on a weekly basis rather than doing it irregularly, fasting and praying that is, in order to become closer to God. They had instead twisted it, made it into a heavy burden for men's backs and a way, they thought, of getting honor to themselves. They would pray in public and disfigure their faces, as Christ says. They want everybody to see that they're fasting, that they're going through these works and so on. What they had done is they had taken the Word of God and they had said, not enough. And they had encumbered it with human traditions they had invented. And they had changed the purpose of things like fasting from an aid to piety into a means by which they might show themselves before the world as holy. And they felt that by doing these works, by following these traditions, they were actually working their way into heaven. and keeping themselves from sinning. Jesus, throughout his ministry, attempts to correct their understanding and put them back on the biblical track that they had strayed from to show them that all of the ceremonies and the law were designed to point to him, for instance, to show them their sinfulness, their need of him. But it seems like the words of the Lord are bouncing off their stony hearts like BBs off the side of a battleship at this point in time. Far from being humbled at the correction of the Messiah, they say to themselves, you know, we'll have to keep an even closer watch on this guy and his disciples because they are going further and further astray and misleading the people. So apparently, what we see in verse, or rather in chapter six, is that they had set spies to watch the movements of the disciples. They're watching Jesus, but they're not watching him to learn. They are not interested in the saving good news of the gospel, but rather they want to see when Jesus runs afoul of their tradition so they can catch him in something, so they can condemn him. In the first verse, therefore, of chapter six in Luke here, you see Christ and his disciples passing through a grain field. The disciples are hungry. And because they had no food, as they passed through the long rows of standing grain, they broke off a few heads, and after rubbing the grain from the husk, they ate it. One commentator called it, I don't know how he knew this, both tasty and nutritious. And so, apparently, some commentators really get into proving these things. But I'm told it was kind of like eating sesame seeds. This is the first century version of collecting and shelling a few peanuts. Now, if like me, the first time you read this, you went, hang on, aren't they stealing from the farmer? I mean, it's not their field. Isn't that breaking the eighth commandment? But please understand by doing what they did, the disciples were not stealing, believe it or not, from the farmers and his field. In Deuteronomy 23, 25, God had made provision for the poor saying, If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle in amongst the standing grain. You were allowed to break off a few heads of grain like they were doing. Any of you who have ever seen, you know, a giant grain field will know that by taking a few heads of grain, you're not leading to any financial loss. Bugs would take far more. in any given period of time. And the disciples, they are poor and hungry and they're merely doing what scripture told them they were allowed to do. But it's not the fact that the disciples were taking from the standing grain that was offensive to the Pharisees. It was the day upon which they were doing it. The disciples, you see, were taking this grain on the day when the Pharisees considered it unlawful to do anything at all except for the things that they had carefully lined out, the day of the Sabbath. You see, the traditions of the Pharisees identified no less than 39 different kinds of work that they felt constituted a violation of the Sabbath. Some of us are old enough, you don't have to admit it, I won't ask you to raise your hands, to remember the blue laws intended to enforce the Fourth Commandment here in the USA. There was, believe it or not, a day when on Sunday, restaurants, grocery stores, retail stores weren't open, kids leagues didn't play, there was all of that kind of thing, but that was nothing. Absolutely nothing compared to what the strict observance of the Sabbath under rabbinic tradition compelled people to do. For instance, in an Orthodox Jewish household, and the Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Judaism descends directly from the Pharisees of the first century, so they kept these laws and actually they added to them as technology and time went forward. In an Orthodox Jewish household, next to nothing occurs in the home on the Sabbath day. No food is cooked, no clocks are wound, and even the simplest of tasks does not occur. An orthodox believer will not add fresh water to a vase of cut flowers because that is, according to the rabbis, sowing. They would not remove spoiled fruit from a basket of fruit because that, according to the rabbis, is winnowing and sifting. Mud on your shoes is not removed. That apparently is grinding. You do not cut your nails on the Sabbath. That is shearing. An orthodox wife will not apply makeup. That is dyeing, D-Y-E-I-N-G, incidentally. She will not braid her daughter's hair because that is weaving. And if the man of the house wants to read the Torah outside, which is acceptable on the Sabbath day, he better hope the sun isn't shining too brightly. because he can't open the patio umbrella to shade his head, because that would be building, believe it or not. So again and again, you have all of these things. You can't find any of that in the Word of God, but it was added to it, these traditions. And in the jaundiced eyes of the Pharisees, the disciples were guilty, believe it or not, by simply breaking the heads off and rubbing them in their hands like that. an action more zealous or strenuous rather than shelling a peanut, as I said. This is reaping. When they picked the grain, they were threshing, they were reaping rather, and when they rubbed it, they were reaping. They were working, according to the Pharisees, on the Sabbath, which is a ridiculous interpretation. of the Sabbath rules, but it never occurred even to, it never even occurred to the Pharisees that spying on people you hated wasn't exactly a pious way of keeping the Sabbath either. But one of the things you have to remember is what Jesus had just preached on about wineskins and what, I mean, we should pity the Pharisees. They did not understand heart religion. They didn't understand spiritual religion because their hearts haven't been changed. They have made this gracious heart religion that God outlined in the Old Testament and the New Testament into a terrible, burdensome religion of works. So this is not obvious. I don't have to ask you, is this a religion of scripture, accusing people of threshing by breaking off heads of wheat? Or is this how you should spend the Lord's Day? The answer is of course not. You shouldn't be spending the Lord's Day to make sure your neighbors aren't breaching the Sabbath. Sinclair Ferguson, one of my systematic theology professors before he became a Christian. He grew up in Scotland and in Scotland the Lord's Day was even more zealously observed even by people who didn't understand the gospel like his family or him at the time. He said when the Sabbath came along there were plenty of families that would send their children out to play and thus break the Sabbath, but his parents did not. So he would pull up a chair to the window and watch And then when they came out, he'd say, Mommy, they're breaking the Sabbath. It's not an interest in your own piety. It's making sure that others don't have any fun on that particular day. So that's not hard religion at all. It's man-centered religion. It's the same kind of religion of the man who stands in the temple and says, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as a tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. That's not heart religion. Heart religion is the man who stands in the temple and beats his breast and says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner who knows his need, who knows that by his own works he can never justify himself. Now, any hypocrite can spend the Lord's Day in external duties. Do this, do this, keep watch on your neighbors, and so on. But only someone who knows the humbling and the saving power of the gospel can truly keep that day in their hearts and use it aright as a day of delight, a day of joy, a day in which we are focused upon the Lord and His redeeming work. So how does Jesus answer these unjust accusations of the Pharisees? And he does. Does he tell them, perhaps, that the observance of the Sabbath day has been done away with? Does he say, now there are only nine commandments? He doesn't do that. Does he say the disciples, I've given them a special dispensation, they're no longer to abide by the Lord's day, or rather the fourth commandment in this case. He doesn't say that either. Christ does not do that here. He doesn't do that anywhere in the Gospels. Instead, again and again, Jesus proves from the Scriptures that his disciples were not violating the Sabbath by their actions. Then he painstakingly tries to show the Pharisees that it was they, not the followers of the Son of God, who did not understand the Sabbath and by their traditions, they had made it into an unbiblical burden rather than the blessing it's intended to be. The disciples picked grain because they were hungry and they had nothing to eat and Jesus immediately draws a parallel between their actions and those of David when he and his men were in similar straits, when he was fleeing from Saul, fleeing for his life. In 1 Samuel 21, David and his men, they're on the run and they're hungry and they enter into the tabernacle. And there, there was the showbread that was set out on the table. It was set out ritually. It was a sign of God's blessing to his people. And it was not normally lawful for anyone to eat it, save the priests, and that only after they had put out the new bread. The high priest of Himalaya, who gave that bread, gave it to them because he understood that the ceremonies and the sacrifices that he presided over as the high priest, according to the law of God, weren't intended to be an end in of themselves. When we make religion an end and the signs an end in of themselves and do these things as though they had power in themselves, we misunderstand biblical religion. The signs are meant to point us to God, not to themselves. It is not merely by doing stuff that we gain any sort of grace from God. So the high priest, he knew the sacrifice of goats and bulls and lambs, that that in and of itself didn't take away sin, that all of these things were intended to point towards the mercy that God would show by sending the Messiah, the true Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He also knew that God desires His servants to be shown the same kind of mercy that He shows to us. David and his men needed the bread, so Elimelech gave them the bread out of mercy. And what Christ is emphasizing is that God never intended His law, His moral law, to be used as an excuse for not doing deeds of necessity or mercy. The law of God was never intended to compel men to starve. In the same way, the Sabbath should not be construed as requiring the disciples to go hungry, and to be faint, and to do that just to abide by the made-up rules of the Pharisees. The Pharisees, though, they didn't stop to consider, and it's doubtful whether they cared, how well an extremely hungry man could concentrate on keeping the Sabbath holy unto the Lord. When we go out and we do missions today, there are those who say, you know, we should only be distributing food. And then there is another group that says we should only be distributing the word of God. But experience shows that people who are starving to death don't listen very well. One of the things that we therefore need to do is to feed men and teach them the gospel. To send men to hell with a full stomach is no blessing, but to leave them in their dire condition and not have sympathy on their bodies is also a very bad thing. Both must go hand in hand. But the Pharisees, they felt that the observance of minutia was more important. And the neglect, they observed the tiny little things. And that which was truly important, they let go. That's the way that religious hypocrites have always done it. The Pharisees were constantly guilty of observing traditions in minute detail. For instance, they would say that if you carried one fig in your pocket, That was breaking the Sabbath by carrying a burden on the Lord's Day. But if you cut the fig in half and you carry half and your wife carries the other half, you can do it because you're not carrying. I mean, that's ridiculous. How on earth does that point us to Christ and grace and mercy from God? It doesn't at all. All it is, is trying to get around the observation of the law that should point them to their own inadequacy and their own inability to keep the Sabbath perfectly. And therefore, their need of that perfect Sabbath-keeping Redeemer. They were concerned about how much of a fig you could carry, but they weren't concerned about their parents starving, as Jesus pointed out to them. They're breaking the fifth commandment in order to observe their traditions. And know this, brothers and sisters, please, friends, know that no commandment of the Lord God is to be so twisted, it makes us neglect our duties of charity and necessity. We are never to interpret our duties in a way, our duties to God, that is, in the first table, in a way that causes us to break our duties to man as expressed in the second table. It should not be. So, for instance, do I have a duty to God to provide for his church? Absolutely. My reverence expressed in the first commandment and the third commandment should cause me to tithe. Should I steal in order to pay my tithe, though? The answer is, of course, no. That's not a keeping of the commandment. The fourth commandment, that is the commandment regarding the Sabbath day, is never to be interpreted in such a way that we are, made unkind and unmerciful to our neighbors. The Pharisees and the religious hypocrites were constantly guilty of perverting the law of God in that fashion though. Jesus will give another parable where he will talk about a Samaritan who cares for somebody when the priest and the Levite went by a man who had been beaten and who was bleeding and dying in the street And the Samaritan is touched with his need and the Levite and the priest hurry by because they don't want to become ceremonially unclean because perhaps he had died and they would be afflicted. But brothers and sisters, having said all of that, our problems with the Sabbath today are not the problems of the Pharisees. If they were, the rest of the Sabbath day sermon that I'm delivering to you, that is the Christian Sabbath, would be very different. I would tell you about the foolishness of placing man-made rules over your God-given duties of interpreting the law of God in such a way that keeping the letter of the law ends up making you violate the spirit But I have to tell you, in modern day America, an overzealousness for the fourth commandment is not a problem that we have. We are not suffering from too much Lord's Day reverence. Not at all. The traditions of the Pharisees were at least concerned, although badly, with trying not to break the commandment. But our traditions today, such as the holy post-service brunch, are largely concerned with ignoring the Lord's Day. with making it into a day of labor for others, for instance. Not keeping it holy. And this was not the way of Christ. Take seriously what he himself says to us in Matthew chapter 15. You can turn there if you'd like to read it for yourself. I'm not making this up. This is Matthew 15, 17. Jesus there said this. Do not think I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever doesn't teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Christ does not do away with the fourth commandment here or anywhere else in the gospels. Instead, our Lord proves in the scriptures that his disciples were not violating the Sabbath by their actions. Then what does he do? He painstakingly tries to show the Pharisees that it was they and not the followers of the Son of Man who did not understand the Sabbath. By their invented rules and restrictions they had taken what was intended to be a blessing, a day of rest, a day of worship, a day of reflection, of meditating upon the work of the Lord. They had taken this foretaste of heaven, and they had made it into this unbiblical burden. Rather than a blessing, it had become a curse. J.C. Ryle puts it well. He says, the plain truth is that our Lord did not abolish the law of the weekly Sabbath. He only freed it from incorrect interpretations and purified it from man-made additions. He did not tear out of the Decalogue the fourth commandment. He only stripped off the miserable traditions with which the Pharisees had encrusted the day, and by which they had made it not a blessing but a burden. He left the fourth commandment where he found it, a part of the eternal law of God of which no jot or tittle was ever to pass away. May we never forget this. If you are ever in a similar situation, if you are called a legalist, perhaps, because you are zealous for some point of God's commandments. I remember watching as a young student, and it was very sad, was being called a legalist by a professor of theology because he would not swear. He said, my mother told me that this is against the commandments of God to let no profane word. And the professor said, you're being a legalist. Grace means we can speak however we blanking want to. I was shocked at the time. If you're ever in a similar situation though, either accused of sinning by not observing, and this is another thing that happens. We have our own traditions in the church. I remember once being confronted by an angry older man. I've told you this before. He told me that we weren't doing worship right. Why weren't we doing worship right? Because you end the service with an altar call. And we never did. I would tell people they needed to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I left them sitting in their seats. And we all know, as I've pointed out, that this area is especially holy. If you make it this far up, you're bound to be saved. In your seats? Maybe not, you know. Where's that in the Word of God? It isn't. It's a tradition. But, as I said before, we can make our traditions into things that we expect to be done and then call people who don't do them cultists or weird or unholy. But if that ever happens to you, hand them the Word of God and say, where is this tradition to be found in the Word of God? And if they cannot show it to you, then feel no compunction to keep that particular tradition. Now, Jesus, throughout the scripture, here and elsewhere, he points out that there are three kinds of works that are always acceptable on the Sabbath. They are the works of mercy, the works of necessity, and the works of piety. What is a work of mercy? A work of mercy would be, for instance, your child comes to you. They have cut themselves rather deeply, and they're bleeding everywhere. And you look at them, and you say, did you have to do this on a Sunday? I can't help you. I'm so sorry. You wouldn't do that, would you? No, you would bind up their wound, take them to the doctor. And the doctor, when he meets you, is, oh, that needs stitches, but I can't do it. That'd be sewing on the Lord's Day. Come back tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be too infected by that. They don't do that. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, even Marines do the work of the Lord, do the work of necessity on the Lord's Day. So do policemen, firemen, doctors, those who keep power plants running. They are all doing works of necessity, works that cannot be interrupted on the Lord's Day. So we see works of mercy, works of necessity, And then there are works of piety. I have to tell you, this is the busiest day of the week on my register. I do not get much of a rest. I do try to block out some of Monday. It's usually a complete and utter failure. But nonetheless, works of piety are acceptable on the Lord's Day. You come to worship. You worship the Lord. You worship with your family. You spend time speaking of the things of faith, and life, and practice with your brothers and sisters in Christ. These are all wonderful things to do. Go watch, if you can't read on this day, and reading the Word of God, reading theology is a wonderful way to spend your Lord's Day. If you can't, go watch a Ligonier video. Have R.C. Sproul, God rest his soul, that wonderful man who has done so much. For people like me, have Him explain the Word of God to you. He'll do it far better than I do, and it will be good for your soul. You will obtain grace. So, works of mercy, necessity, and piety, always acceptable on the Lord's Day. Second, Jesus talks about the true intention of God for the Sabbath. It was meant to be a day of blessing, a day of rest, a day of delight. A modern commentator, Royce Grunler, puts it this way. The source of the law itself, the Son of Man, has given permission to his followers to pluck grain on the Sabbath, for he is the Lord of the Sabbath and restores its true intent as a day designed to benefit, not deprive men of well-being and health. The Pharisees obscured God's intent for the Sabbath and turned it into an excuse by which they try to justify themselves as righteous. by works of tradition. Finally, Jesus points out that the Sabbath itself was his. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, and therefore the weekly cycle of one day of rest is something that's meant to point to Jesus. You remember what Jesus said in Matthew 11, 29, or I hope you've heard it, I hope you remember it. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. And it's in Jesus that we find that true rest for our weary souls. I hope you have found the rest that can only be found in Jesus Christ. The Sabbath day pointed forward to him and only in him do we have a real Sabbath. You can rest from all of your labors on the Sabbath day, but if you don't know Jesus, you don't know the rest of that day. You don't know what we are being pointed to. That's why the author of Hebrews, for instance, says to Christians in Hebrews 4.9, there remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work just as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. The Sabbath then is Christ's day. Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. Have you considered that? He did not cease to be the Lord of the Sabbath when he ascended. He has always been the Lord of the Sabbath. That Sabbath ordinance was given to us not by Moses on Mount Sinai. It was given to us by God in the garden. and it's meant to point to the rest that we need so very badly. Now, by his completed work and resurrection, I do need to make this point, he has changed the day upon which we have that particular rest, but it remains a perpetual memorial of his completed work, and also a gift for us. If I would, if you would turn, this is obviously not the scripture, but I would turn you to 932 in your purple, Or is it, what do we call that, is that mauve or? Burgundy, that's a great word, there you go, burgundy. Your Burgundy Trinity Psalter hymnal. 932, page 932. Under chapter 21 of religious worship in the Sabbath day, I'm gonna read paragraph seven. Now as I said, this is not the word of God, but it is a good statement of systematic theology based upon the word of God. And here the Westminster Divines write, as it is the law of nature, this is section seven, that in general a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God so in his word by a positive moral and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath 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 in scripture is called the Lord's day. and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath. You remember how John had said, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. I hope you are in the spirit on the Lord's day as well. This is intended to be a reminder of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we begin our week with. It's no mistake that the Apostolic Church gathered on Sunday in order to celebrate the resurrection of their Messiah, the one whom they had seen raised from the dead. And so too, we, week by week, we start our weeks with a reminder of not just the resurrection of Jesus, but our own coming resurrection if we believe in Jesus. and as a day of rest that allows us to get ready for work. Now there are many people who choose to throw away the Lord's Day. They choose to work on that day, or to run themselves ragged taking their kids to games and things like that. They neglect that day of rest and they begin to break down. Guys, the Lord said not even your donkey should be worked seven days a week. And yet, unfortunately, we live in a culture that tries to keep us constantly awake, constantly working. Worse even than the Egyptians did to the Hebrews. At least they gave them hours to sleep in. They didn't actually tell them they had to watch Netflix all night and then go to work in the morning. We do. We have a culture that is trying desperately to destroy the Lord's Day. To make it just another day for work and recreation. Unfortunately, great inroads have been made. Very few people spend this day in rest. Spend this day thinking about the peace that it points to. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. But I hope that's not you. Now, I will say one word. It is possible for us to do the kind of legalistic interpretation of this particular day by which we become more preoccupied with what we can't do than what we can do, and actually begin watching what other people do. I remember one, I'm not proud of it, one day, and this is many years ago, a young man came in, and he had a coffee cup full of steaming coffee, and a logo on the side said Dunkin Donuts, and I knew He knew he had bought that coffee that morning. He had entered into commerce. I looked him in the eye and I say, been buying coffee this morning, huh? And he looked at me shocked and he said, no pastor, I just recycled the cup. I filled it with coffee at home. And my countenance fell and I was shocked at myself and I said, Brother, I am so sorry. I shouldn't have accused you. That was very pharisaical of me. And then he got this big smile. He's like, no, I'm having you on. I bought it after all. I just wanted to do that. I'm like, ah, adding the ninth commandment violation to the fourth. So, but it did expose in my heart that tendency towards, you know, doing that kind of thing. Beware of that in yourself. Be looking to how you keep the Sabbath holy, not how other people keep the Sabbath holy, unless those are the little people in your house who you're called upon to care for and nurture in the Lord. We need to train them though by example. They'll be looking to see how do we act on the Lord's Day. Hopefully we show them that on the Lord's Day we love this day because it speaks so much of Jesus and points us to the day when we will spend that eternal Sabbath rest with Him. Let's go before Him now. God, our Father, I do ask now, Lord, that you would help us to keep this day holy in our hearts, not because we think that we've become more righteous by doing so, or that by merely observing the sign, we gain something, but rather because of what it points us to. He points us to that wonderful rest that you have stored up for your people. Here on earth, we labor and we are weary, but there is day coming when our labor will no longer be burdensome, when we will worship face to face and no longer as through a glass darkly, and how we long for that day. May it come quickly. May we enter into that perfect Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God. And we pray these things in the name of the Lord of the Sabbath,