Make that Isaiah 56, I'm sorry, read the whole chapter. This is the word of God spoken many years ago by the prophet Isaiah. Thus says the Lord, preserve justice and do righteousness for my salvation is about to come in my righteousness to be revealed. How blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil. Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, The Lord will surely separate me from his people. Nor let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant to them. I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than that of the sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off. Also to the foreigner who joined themselves to the Lord, to minister to him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants. Everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast to my covenant, even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar. For my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples. The Lord God who gathers the dispersed of Israel declares, yet others I will gather them to those already gathered. All you beasts of the field, all you beasts in the forest, come to eat. His watchmen are blind. All of them know nothing. All of them are mute dogs, unable to bark. Dreamers lying down who love to slumber. And the dogs are greedy. They are not satisfied. And there are shepherds who have no understanding and have all turned to their own way, each one to his unjust gain to the last one. Come, they say, let us get wine and let us drink heavy, strong drink. And tomorrow will be like today, only more so. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, we ask that you'd bless your word. We ask as we look this evening at the idea of Sabbath, that you would impress upon us the truth of your word, that you would make clear to us what you say concerning this topic. And we ask, Father, that we might be blessed as those who keep your Sabbath, who honor you, and to seek our blessing from you and not our own hands. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Look this evening at the idea of Sabbath. This is a topic. I don't know, maybe you talk about it a lot, but my experience is we don't talk about it much. When I'm interacting with somebody and the topic of what to do on Sunday comes up or what they're doing on Sunday or what I'm doing on Sunday, I'm always usually a little apologetic about it. Like, well, you know, we probably won't do that on Sunday. I don't know if we'll join you doing that. We live in a culture that even a Christian culture that has so lost the idea of keeping a Sabbath, perhaps A generation ago, there would have been more of a people who had reasons why they didn't keep the Sabbath. But for many today, it's just not something they think about. And for some, it's something they think about, and it's no longer something that's kept. It's almost becoming a distinctive, a distinctive of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I say that very carefully, and many of our other Reformed friends would would not like that comment, and I don't mean to I don't mean to offend anyone needlessly, but even among reformed churches, it's not something that is upheld. Which brings up a question, is that because it's not in the Bible? Has exegesis allowed us to draw conclusions that the Sabbath no longer continues today? Is it just not the thing to do anymore? When you talk to someone about Sabbath, almost immediately people get defensive. If you're to say to somebody, well, we'd rather not do that on Sunday. Well, why? How come? I'm always kind of dragging my foot. You know, I don't really want to start a fight right here in the middle of the road on what they're doing on the Lord's Day. Well, we just we don't do that sort of thing on the Sabbath. Well, why not? I'm a Christian. I didn't say you weren't a Christian. I just I don't think that we should be. It raises the hair on people's backs so quickly. Well, I'm going to try and three sermons to talk about the Sabbath. Today, we're going to look at the continuing validity of the Sabbath. We'll look with a little bit of overlap next week at Jesus Christ, our Lord's practice of the Sabbath. And then we'll look at the third week at the change of the day, which is a sticky question. Is the Sabbath for today? If you talk to some members of my family, they tell you, no, the Sabbath was for Israel. The Sabbath was like a shadow and a type. It's kind of like sacrifice. It pointed to Jesus. And now that Jesus has come, we don't sacrifice bulls. We don't burn incense unless it's like an incense candlelight service. Then you burn incense. We don't sacrifice bulls. We don't light incense and we don't celebrate the Sabbath. It pointed to our resting in Christ. And that's happened. We do that now. Others might just simply say, well, you know, it couldn't work today. Strangely enough, in his book, by this standard, Greg Bonson, who writes that the case law of the scriptures is to be applied today in great detail, has an appendix by Gary North on why the Sabbath is no longer for today. In our modern society, it just isn't practical. It seems Well, whatever you think about the enemy, that something seems to be funny there. Others might give you further reasons, drawing a very sharp dichotomy between the economy of the of the nation of Israel and our own. But by and large, whatever the reason, it's just not done. In fact, at times you'll hear people say things as if it's almost irresponsible to keep a Sabbath, if you're a man, And your family is hungry. If you need money, it is irresponsible of a man not to be working. You need to have a job. I mean, how is it that in a modern economy like our own, we could even think about taking off a day? You'd get swamped. Your competitors would outpace you in a moment. Lots of questions swirl. But the question that ought to be established first is what does the Bible say? And if the Bible says the Sabbath is to be kept and it's very difficult to do well, then we've got some hard work to do in keeping it. If the Bible does not say that we're to keep a Sabbath and it's difficult to do, well, there's no good reason for us to do it. So today we're going to limit the field fairly severely. I'm not going to talk about everything that could come to bear on this issue. I'm going to as a given. I tell you that I come to the scriptures from perspective of covenant theology, and I suspect most people here do, but I'm not going to defend that today. But what I mean by covenant theology is that God has made a promise that he will draw out for himself a people. He made that promise in the third chapter of Genesis and that that people he will redeem, forgive their sins, that he will organize them into a worshiping body. And with that in mind, we can then look at the way God worked that out in the Old Testament, drawing a people for himself out as the nation of Israel and the way God then opens that up in the New Testament, no longer bound by nation, but a church, worldwide church. I'm not going to defend for you covenant theology tonight. I'm just going to tell you that is my perspective. And I think it's the perspective that is very clearly borne out in the scriptures. Well, The only place I know to start when talking about Sabbath is the book of Genesis. We'll get to the part in Isaiah that we read just a little bit ago, but let's flip to the book of Genesis. In the second chapter we read, Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his works, which God had created and made. It is my contention that in the second chapter of Genesis we have laid out for us what I'm going to call, I didn't make this term up, a creation ordinance. What do I mean by creation ordinance? By creation ordinance, I mean something that is established as a pattern for mankind in creation. It means it is not just binding on those who would seek to align themselves with God. It is binding on everything that was created. More specifically, everything that was created after the image of God, mankind. What do I mean by creation ordinance? Marriage. When Jesus is asked a question by the Pharisees about marriage, he doesn't say, well, Moses did say, although he could have, he doesn't say, well, Abraham No, he goes back to creation. He says from the beginning, it was not so. And he then says that God gave one man and one woman. Marriage is established in creation. God places his establishes it, meaning he provides a woman and he says the two shall become one. It is for all of mankind to follow. Most in every nation of the world, we have some form of marriage. It's certainly not a given, but when people do it, they're blessed. I once had someone say that, well, one man and one woman, that's a Western thing. It's not a Western thing to the degree that it is a Western thing, the West will be blessed, but it's not a Western thing. And even if it were a Western thing, it's not a Western thing. It's for all mankind, work, work is to be done. God placed Adam in the garden and he said, keep it. I don't know what all Adam was doing in the garden. Before thorns grew up, but he told Adam to keep it, it was work that was done, work isn't caused by the fall, work is a creation ordinance, it is something that mankind must do by virtue of the fact that he is mankind and that God has created him that way. And in the same way. Sabbath. is mentioned here. Man's Sabbath isn't necessarily mentioned here explicitly, but God sets a pattern. It says on the seventh day, God rested from all his work. We are created after the image of God. There might be any number of discussions we could get into here about whether or not God had to rest, whether or not we have to rest. We're not going to talk about that, but simply saying we are created after the image of God. We reflect. Him. And God rested on the seventh day. God sets an example for all mankind of rest. This is this is not tied to the nation of Israel, you'll be hard pressed in the book of Genesis, at least this far in to find the nation of Israel. You'll be hard pressed to find the nation of Israel at all in Genesis, except in a promise given to Abraham. So this is not for Israel, this is for Mankind, if you are finding yourself tonight, a member of the human race, listen up. God established a pattern for us of resting one day out of seven. Well, some might say, look, this is not a creation ordinance. God nowhere says man has to rest here. Sabbath was instituted by God at Sinai. It is tied inextricably from the nation. That's not my contention, but perhaps some would say that this was given at Sinai. This was a sign of the covenant that God made with that nation, not with you, not with us, but with that nation. Therefore, it passed away with that nation. Well, please turn with me to Exodus chapter 16. This is where the nation is in the what will soon be called the nation of Israel. This group of slaves has been redeemed from Egypt. They've been pulled out of bondage. They've been saved by God's mighty hand. They've walked across the sea on dry land. The mightiest army on earth is drowned in pursuit of them. And as soon as they get out into the desert, they find something they don't like. Their food is bland. Their food tomorrow doesn't seem to be clearly there. They're having to trust God. They don't much like that. So they begin to say, look, Meat and onions and good food there. You brought us out here to kill us. And God didn't like that much, but he is patient with them and he gives them manna from heaven. And meat, but they are to collect each day. You remember this story? God says, don't collect more than you need. If you collect more than you need, it's going to rot by next morning. So some people go out and they collect way too much and it's all wormy the next day. God said, you collect. Just as much as you need each day, because I'm going to provide for you tomorrow. I don't need you providing for you tomorrow. But when you get to the sixth day, you're to collect two days worth. That way, you're not out collecting on. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, 22 of Chapter 16, now on the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, This is what the Lord meant. Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning. So they put it aside until morning as Moses had ordered and it did not become foul, nor was there any worm in it. Moses said, Eat it today for today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it. But on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none. It came about on the seventh day that some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, How long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my instructions? See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, he gives you bread for every two days. He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. The house of Israel named it man. And it was like coriander seed white. And its taste was like wafers with honey. And Moses said, this is what the Lord has commanded. Let an omer full of it be kept throughout your generations that they may see the bread that I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. And Moses said to Aaron, take a jar and put an omer full of manna in it and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron, Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The sons of Israel ate the manna forty years until they came to the inhabited land, and they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. Prior to the arrival of Sinai. prior to the giving of the law, prior to the making of what we might call the Mosaic Covenant or the covenants at Sinai, where God reestablishes his promise to make a nation for himself, that he would establish the children of Israel as his people. And he gives them the law and he teaches them how they will approach him. And he gives them the Sabbath there as well. But prior to getting there, prior to making it to Sinai in the midst of this manna situation, They're instructed to rest on the seventh day. This is God reinstituting what he had already instituted. I say reinstituting because he had already instituted it. He had instituted it at creation. All mankind, not just Israel, all mankind should have been resting on the seventh day, on the Sabbath day. They weren't. Or at least we don't have any evidence that they were. And God, as he draws his people out, even before he gives them the law, he says, you're going to do what I told you. You're going to rest on the seventh day. We also get a sense of why, because God provides for them. God provides for us. So God commands us to follow his example. Well, very soon, if you only flip over two pages, we have the next major Sabbath passage. And you all know what this Sabbath passage is. This Sabbath passage is the fourth commandment. So let's read it. Verse eight of chapter 20 reads, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord, your God. In it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Hmm. Sometimes we call this the moral law. We call it the moral law, which is a bit confusing. All law is moral. If it's against the law, it's immoral. And by that sort of phraseology, we might say that to God said to sacrifice and we sacrificed or didn't sacrifice it would be an immoral act. But that's not what we mean. Of course, keeping the law is moral and keeping any of the law or not keeping any of the law is immoral. But when we speak of moral law as opposed to ceremonial law or case law, Uh, it's, it's kind of the reformations way of breaking up what we call law in the Pentateuch. Um, so let's talk first, just for a short moment about ceremonial law and what do we mean by that? Ceremonial law, those things which seem, uh, excuse the phrase, somewhat arbitrary. In some way, God is commanding either in the sacrifices or in the way in which people are to interact with one another. Rules that rather than being in some way tied to the Ten Commandments show something about the nature of God. So you come up with a rash and you got to spend 10 days outside the camp. Now, you might look at that and say, well, it's clearly, you know, it's for health reasons. You know, if I got a rash, I don't want to give a rash to somebody else. God is is explaining for us how to contain an outbreak. Well, maybe, but usually you're also not allowed in the assembly. And it's not that you're just not allowed around other people. You're outside of the camp of Israel. It is God's way of kind of showing. His holiness, if you were disfigured, If you had a disease, if you in some way had the image of God marred, you were not allowed in the temple, in the tabernacle. You were not allowed in the immediate presence of God. And in fact, very often you were removed from even the presence of the people of God. It illustrated something about the holiness and the goodness of God. When we look at the sacrificial system, we call that ceremonial, that which is passed away, that which is fulfilled in Christ and is no longer necessary. And certainly if you are a devout Hebrew. You love the Lord, you recognize the grace that he had extended in your life and you sacrificed. To not sacrifice would be not showing forth the fruit that Greg preached on this morning. It is obeying the Lord, it is sacrificing, it is showing forth fruit, but it's also picturing for you every time you do it, the salvation that the Lord is bringing, the sacrifice of Christ. So that's ceremonial, those aspects of the law that perhaps they seem somewhat arbitrary, but they are pointing us to either aspects of the nature of God or of the coming salvation of Jesus Christ. And those are the things that we often say pass away, those things which were very clearly pictured. and fulfilled in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and are now done away with. Well, that's not what we're talking about when we speak of the Ten Commandments. When we speak of the Ten Commandments, we're talking about what we call the moral law. These are those things which are not ceremonial. They are not symbolic. They will not be fulfilled, but rather they are the standards that God has given for behavior. They are the standards of the way in which we relate to God and we relate to men. These do not pass away. I think in my popular thinking growing up and commandments were kind of like, you know, an abbreviated list. It's kind of like God giving us a few examples of things he doesn't want us to do. By the way, don't do these things. You can keep this in your pocket. I didn't have a view of the Ten Commandments that was very holistic. That is to say, seeing in the Ten Commandments the whole of what God requires of us. But that is my that's what I'm proposing to you this evening. The moral law is all of what God requires of you. When you are judged on the last day, when you stand before the Lord, that which is called sin and is held against you or not held against you, if you're in Christ, will be those applications of the Ten Commandments that you've broken. This is why this sort of catechism and all the reformed catechisms or reformed confessions of the Reformation did an exposition of the Ten Commandments. If you understand the Ten Commandments, you understand what God requires of you. You understand what sin is. Maybe you don't understand it completely in every possible application in detail, but the Ten Commandments are a summary of all that God commands us. Anything that is sin is in some way a violation of one of those ten commandments. If what you've done does not violate one of those ten commandments in any way, it's not sin. Well, perhaps if it was against your conscience, then maybe it was sin, but we won't get into that today. Why am I going to this length? Well, because the fourth commandment is contained in the Ten Commandments. Because down that list, among which are you shall know the gods before me, which is certainly binding on you, even though you're not Jewish. And thou shall not murder, which we're all pretty well in the whole of Christendom agreed that that is still binding. Is. This idea of resting. Of keeping a Sabbath. Which then begs the question, how come that's the only one that doesn't count anymore? If we are known by the company we keep, if who we are around in some way indicates who we are, then what surrounds the fourth commandment ought to indicate for us something of what it is. So we've seen that it is established in creation, or at least that's what I am postulating to you. Proven in some way by the fact that prior to the giving of the law, God still expected all the earth, but specifically those he was calling out to obey it. To follow him in the example of resting on the Sabbath, when he finally brings his people to the mountain and establishes his covenant with them. That covenant of grace that had been promised in Genesis is established to this particular people, the nation of Israel, as they stand at the bottom of Mount Sinai among the laws given to him of the whole of the conduct of mankind, what is required of man, what he will be held to on the last day. Among those given is the Sabbath. Might be asked, well, is it is it not? Is the Sabbath not a sign of God's promise to the nation of Israel? And I say, absolutely, it's a sign. Is the commandment perhaps a little bit shadowy? Calvin Calvin had a little bit of a much as we love Calvin, a little bit of a funny understanding of Sabbath keeping. Now, I think he would shame us all in his actual Sabbath keeping. But in his understanding of it, he doesn't quite line up. With what we're expressing here this evening, he said it was a shadowy commandment. And what he meant by that is that it in some way is fulfilled in Christ, that it pointed forward to something that it would have been fulfilled in some way. And I'm trying to give you reasons why I think that's not true. And that's much of the reasoning that's given today. Often when someone has a reason why they don't keep the Sabbath as well, it's fulfilled. It's done away with it. It pictured Christ. Well, It is a little shadowy and by shadowy, I mean that it did look forward to salvation, but it looked back to creation as well. And in the first listing of the Ten Commandments, God said, you keep the Sabbath because I keep the Sabbath. I have at times heard people say, well, that last day of creation never ended. We're still in the Sabbath. You know, there were the first six days in that last day and we're still there. I don't really hold to that. It seems to me that the other days were 24 hour days, and I'm inclined to think that the last day is a 24 hour day as well. Now, God is perhaps still resting from his work of creation, but he's working in other ways, as Jesus tells us. But the Sabbath also looks forward to or looks back to in the case of the nation of Israel, the salvation of God. Or better yet, looks back to and forward to for the nation of Israel, the salvation of God in the giving of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, we're told they're not that we keep a Sabbath because God did in creation, but we keep a Sabbath because God ransomed them from Egypt as Christians, as those whose history is the nation of Israel, we might say God ransomed us from Egypt. And it is because of the salvation that he has procured for us that we keep a Sabbath. Well. Well, one more thing there, and that is simply to say in Deuteronomy, let's let's turn there and that way we can have it before us Deuteronomy chapter five. I'll read it again. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This is verse twelve of chapter five. As the Lord your God commanded you six days, you shall labor and do all your work for the seventh day of the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or the sojourner who stays with you so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. It's often said. While we live after the time of Christ, therefore, it's fulfilled. And certainly the nation of Israel, as they stand before Sinai, lived or if they stand in the plains of Moab, as they are in Deuteronomy four, was living prior to the time of Christ, prior to that pinnacle of salvation, that final work of salvation that the Lord accomplished through his son, Jesus Christ. However, it was in remembrance of God's salvation that they were keeping a Sabbath, which at least seems to. line up with our situation today is very much in remembrance of what God has done that we keep the Sabbath the same way it was in remembrance of what God has done. But flip over with me the book of Hebrews. Our sermon tonight might be a little light on New Testament. And if that seems like a shortcoming, it will be picked up on in subsequent sermons. We read in chapter four of the book of Hebrews. Let me give you a bit of a background here. There's a problem that the pastor who writes Hebrews is confronting, and that is in his absence, his congregation is wandering away from Christ. They're being persecuted in some manner. Most likely, they're being persecuted by the unbelieving Jews. And it seems to them easier to go back to Judaism, to walk away from Christ. And it's in the midst of that that he writes this sermon and he encourages them with blessings if they continue on in following Christ. And he curses them. of what will happen. And he strikes fear into their hearts of what will happen if they walk away. And that's what he's doing. He's oscillating between the great blessings and encouragement and the great threatenings of what will happen if you walk, if they walk away. And this is where he writes chapter four. He says, therefore, let us fear if while promise remains of entering his rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed, we have had good news preached to us just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he has said, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world, for he said somewhere concerning the seventh day and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again, in this passage, they shall not enter my rest. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached them failed to enter because of disobedience, he again fixes a certain day today, saying through David, After so long a time, just as has been said before today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts for Joshua had given them rest. He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his. Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest so that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience. He compares our situation today to the situation of the nation of Israel in the wilderness, and that is through their faithlessness. They were missing out on entering the promised land. I'm not going to do justice to this passage in the time that we have left. Suffice it to say, you'll see the word rest listed in your text more than a few times. The Greek word there is means laying down. I won't say the Greek word and mispronounce it in front of all of you. It means rest means laying down. He gives them rest. He makes them lie down, except where you find in verse seven, the Sabbath rest. And there you have the word, and I will say at this time, even though I still might be pronouncing it wrong, sabbatism sabbatism. This is a word that you're not going to find anywhere else. For all I know, the author coined it himself. Can't look it up. If you look it up in a lexicon, the authors of the lexicon will tell you what they think it means in this passage, but they can't cite anything else. There's some obscure play by. I'm forgetting the guy's name, a Greek poet where he perhaps in some critical text of a play, he uses this word, but that doesn't help us much either. But it seems so apparent what the word is. It's like baptismos, sabbatismos, it's to bathe yourself in one instance and to keep a Sabbath in the other instance. And in both instances, we keep a Sabbath. Looking forward to the rest that we will enjoy in verse seven. Or rather, verse nine, I'm sorry, so there remains a Sabbath rest. The word remains in English where we don't have past tense or future tense or present tense can have a bit of a flexibility. That is, we could say it remains to be seen what will happen, meaning at some point in the future, we'll find out. But we can also talk about something more presently. There remains a doughnut on the table in the other room. Right now, there is a doughnut left. In Greek, you do have a more highly declined language and you have a present tense there that remains presently. There is right now a Sabbath resting for the people of God. It's not that there is some day yet to come, which is certainly the intention of the whole passage. We need to be striving forward. It wasn't when God brought the people out of Egypt that they could rest. It wasn't when God brought the people into the land they could rest. There was something yet to come. It wasn't even when David cleared out the land of all its enemies that they could rest. Rather, there was still something left to push forward to. And that's what the pastor in the book of Hebrews is pushing us forward to, striving for that. rest that is yet to come. And one more thought about this passage in verse 10. For the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his. Well, we won't say that. Let's move on. One last item. Book of Isaiah, where we started. Isaiah 56 follows pretty closely on the heels of Isaiah 53, and Isaiah 53, by anyone's contention, speaks of the Messiah. Isaiah 53 speaks very clearly of the suffering servant that will come, who will be bruised for our iniquities, who God will crush and who will be our salvation. Isaiah 54 goes on to talk about the fertility of Zion, how blessed the people of God will be. That's you. That's the church. Goes on to talk about the mercy that God will extend. And in verse 56, he talks about the reward for obedience. And there's one word that pops up here multiple times. How blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil? Well, that in and of itself doesn't seem to. Tell us today we need to keep the Sabbath. But in that same verse, we're told, well, in verse one, we're told, thus says the Lord, preserve justice and righteousness. Calvin's take on this is that with those two words, justice and righteousness, kind of like in Psalm 119, we say I have done judgment and justice. That is, I have loved my neighbor. I have kept the law towards him. This is the second half of the Ten Commandments. How blessed is the man who does justice and righteousness. But then he goes on. How blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the Sabbath. And at least here, Calvin's thoughts on it. And I like them is why I'm just quoting Calvin. So you don't think that I was the one who came up with this. That here he's listing off the first half of the Ten Commandments, Synecdoche is the word apart for the whole by listing Sabbath, he means keeping the whole. of the first half of the law of God, having no other God, not making an image, not taking the name of the Lord in vain in keeping the Sabbath. This is to say how blessed is the righteous one, even though I only list three things, justice, righteousness and Sabbath keeping. But that lines up very nicely, doesn't it? With what we said about the moral law, about the perpetually binding nature, about the rewards that we expect and that God promises when we keep them and about the fact that they continue to bear upon us. But we go on to read, for thus says the Lord in verse four, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and who choose to please me and hold fast to my covenant. Verse six, also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant. Even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the people's two thoughts. One, how many units were allowed in the temple at a time? Sounds like a joke. It's not a joke. There's no punchline here. None. How many foreigners were allowed in the temple at one time? None. You had to cease to be a foreigner to enter the temple. You had to become an Israelite. And if you didn't want to become a full Israelite, they put a little gated area out front where they sold animals. You could worship there. And Jesus didn't like that too much. But you weren't allowed in. But, think of the predicament you would have been in. Whether you were a, perhaps this isn't a comfortable thought, a eunuch. who came to know the Lord or a foreigner who came to know the Lord. And yet you were, by virtue of the very law of the God you loved, restricted from entering the temple. You were not allowed to offer sacrifice. You are not allowed to do those things which you, with your new heart, long to do. God's promise here is what? God's promise here is you still have access to him. And he lifts off among them the keeping of the Sabbath. He lists off among them one of the most clearly and externally visible things that we can do in love towards God, and that is to honor him by setting apart a day for him. And that is to say, if you keep covenant, if you keep my Sabbaths, if you do that, which you can do, you have access to me. But in context of Isaiah as well, Isaiah 53 and following, we Isaiah 56 follows on the heels of Isaiah 53 and following. I know that's not a surprise to anyone here. Isaiah 56 looks forward to the day when the eunuchs will enter in, when the foreigners will enter in. And blessing is promised for keeping the Sabbath, a day when the temple of God will be open to all. Do I mean that the temple needs rebuilt? No. Do I mean that the temple is in some way absolutely necessary for some future time period of the Jews or for us today? No, what I mean is that which has become the temple of God, that is you. The veil has been rent and you are the Israel of God. You are the temple of God. The Holy Spirit resides inside of you. And today, through the blood of Jesus Christ, Blessing is promised to those who will keep his Sabbath. We'll end with that. Think of the Sabbath as a sign. Sure. Think of the Sabbath as a symbol. Sure. When you see a rainbow. What do you think? You engineers probably think water refracts at a certain angle whenever it hits light and you have it, but the rest of us normal people. It's a promise that God will never flood the earth. I remember talking to a little girl in Scotland, or talking to her parents, and she'd gone to visit the school that she would be a part of the following year. So she was sitting in on one of the last days of classes at that school. That class that she was in would move on the next year, but she would be there with that teacher, and they were learning about rainbows, and the teacher was explaining that as water hits As light hits the water, it refracts and that what we see is white light is actually and she's going on to describe all of this. And a little girl stood up and said, that's not true. You're telling lies. She said, excuse me. And she said, you're telling lies. She got quite adamant about it. And she said, well, how do you think rainbows happen? And she said, God puts them there. The promise that he's not going to flood the earth anymore. And the teacher, having no idea what she was talking about, said, all right, honey, sit down. Thank you. And afterwards, you walk up to the parents, the teacher that is, and says, is that like something from church or something? Nonetheless, for that little girl, having been instructed, a rainbow was a symbol of God's promise. It was a sign of the covenant, as it were. Every time she saw that, it meant to her that God had made a promise that he was going to keep. And in the same way, the Sabbath is a perpetual promise. The rest that we look forward to, is not going to be found whenever the Israeli-Lebanon conflict is fixed. The rest that we look forward to is going to come when our Lord returns for us. It is going to come when we go to sit in the presence of God. And in as far as we're not there yet, we practice and enjoy a sign each week of God's salvation and of the rest that we will one day enjoy, and that is Let's have a word of prayer. Father, we come before you with a whole new list of sins to confess, and that is sins we've done today. The idea of keeping a Sabbath in our society is a challenging one. And as we think about how we keep a Sabbath and how we honor your Sabbath, as you've commanded us to, it is challenging. And yet, Lord, we're often not convicted because it's just not something that convicts us. We're better than most. Lord, I ask that you would, as we study your scriptures, open up for us the truth of your word, that you would apply to our hearts. What you've said concerning Sabbath, We ask, Father, that you would also then renew our conscience that we might once again be concerned for what it is we do on your holy day, how it is we enjoy it, how it is we look forward to it, how it is we are blessed in it and how we bless our children through it. And we ask, Father, that you would, through these passages and many others, once again give us a tenderness of conscience as you give us a desire to honor you. specifically with regard to your holy day. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.