Have you ever wondered why businesses are still closed on Sunday in Norway? Have you ever wondered why that is? I mean, Norway is, after all, a secularized country, right? It's no longer a Christian nation constitutionally. It is self-professed as a secular country. Christianity is no longer the state religion. So it's a bit of a curious fact that most businesses still observe some shadow of the Sabbath principle to not work. Yes, there's a few places open, but not many. But when you think about it, it's really not curious at all, really. A secular culture makes man the center, right? A secular culture makes Me and you, the center of reality. We are the, by the secular definition, we are the center of our own universe. A secular culture makes us the center. And when God is out of the picture, the only thing left that is holy and sacred is the self. Therefore, Sunday remains a so-called holy day, right? Sunday remains a so-called holy day in this country and other countries that have similar secular practices. But it now serves a different religion, doesn't it? It serves secular humanism, the religion of the self. In other words, the Lord's day has become my day. the Lord's day has become my day for most people in this world and most people in this country. But unfortunately, unbelievers are not the only one guilty of making the Lord's day my day. The Christian church today in far too many places has reduced the Lord's day simply to the Lord's hour. this one short little time where we worship together. Too many places the Lord's Day has been reduced to the Lord's Hour. As a consequence of theological minimalism and broad evangelical culture, and even in parts of our Reformed community, the Lord's Day observance is reduced simply to attending one weekly service, if that. Sadly, even for many who identify as Christian, even that one weekly Lord's Day service is treated as an optional exercise, something to do if there's nothing else on the calendar that gets in the way. And for some people, virtually any type of calendar appointment will trump going to the Lord's house to worship. So this phenomenon underscores the point that even Christians are not immune from the secularized tendency to reduce the Lord's day to my day. So how do we fix the problem? That's the question we're going to be asking as we think about the Lord's day. Ultimately, it's a matter of the heart. Ultimately, it's a matter of the heart. We have a heart problem that leads us to corrupt the day, to make it about us rather than about the Lord. But I also believe that it is a doctrinal problem too. Poor theology and theological minimalism also leads Christ's church astray. When I say theological minimalism, I say the kind of teaching that really the only thing in the Bible that's important is the gospel, which is like a truncated reduced version of the gospel, and that everything else we just agree to disagree. which creates this huge vacuum for pragmatism, for whatever you or I think is best then at that point. That is the hallmark of broad evangelicalism, this theological minimalism. How low can we reduce theology to keep as many people so-called united together? But as a result, we throw away most of the Bible in terms of what we actually practice from week to week. So I will argue that poor theology and theological minimalism is also a problem that has led Christians around the world to a very poor practice of how we observe the Lord's day. We need to know what is God's desire. What does scripture teach about the Christian Sabbath? And we need to note not only for the fact that we will see this morning that God's greatest anger and wrath was unleashed on Israel because of their failure to rightly keep the Lord's day, but also as we'll see next week in the New Testament, that failing to come together led to the falling away from Christ for many in the early Christian community. And so our own souls, the safety of our own souls is at stake as we consider God's will for the Lord's day. Before we begin, I need to preface this message by saying a few things. First, this one sermon has turned into three sermons. So I was originally planning this week to preach one message on the Lord's Day and then to move on to our Walk Through the Bible series. But as I got into the study, there was no way that I could do justice in a way that would be easy for you to take in and for our whole community to meaningfully think about this by just doing it as one sermon between two series. So we're going to take three Lord's Days, Lord willing, to cover this topic. This week we're going to look at the Old Testament background for the Christian Sabbath or the Lord's Day. Next week, we're gonna look at how the New Testament applies the principles of the Old Testament and what that then looks like for us as a Christian community. And then the third week, Lord willing, we're gonna look at what are the biblical principles that encourage an evening service as we consider doing that again as a church family and reviving that practice. So that's the first preface. The second one is regarding terminology. So when we talk about the Sabbath in the Old Testament, the Israelites met on Saturday, which was the last day of the week. So the whole week built to the Sabbath. In the New Testament, we talk about the Lord's Day, which is a phrase that John uses in Revelation 1. Revelation 1.10, he talks about being in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. And the Lord's Day was the first day of the week, because that's the day the Lord rose from the dead. And in our Reformed tradition, we refer to the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath. And we're going to explore the theology of that in coming days as well. So if I say the Christian Sabbath or the Lord's Day, I use those terms together as one in the same thing. And we're going to explore the biblical theology and trajectory of going from the Old Testament Sabbath to the Lord's Day today and in the coming weeks. A third preface, I want to say that I owe a great debt to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's report on the Committee on Sabbath Matters, which is a great resource if you want to study this more in depth. I would highly commend the OPC's report on Sabbath Matters. So with that said, Let's dive into the text. So this morning we're going to look at the Old Testament background for the Lord's Day or the Christian Sabbath. The Christian Sabbath is rooted in the Old Testament in three ways. First, and we're going to look at these in part, first is the creation principle. The creation principle. In the Old Testament, the Lord's Day is a calendar revolution It's a calendar, and I use that phrase very literally, meaning that literally, Israel's calendar revolved around the Sabbath. The Lord's Day is a calendar revolution. Did you know that Israel's very calendar I don't know that they had things that they pinned up on the wall like you and I did. They certainly didn't have phones. But their literal calendar revolved around two events. There was a yearly event that marked the beginning of the year, and that there was a weekly event that marked the beginning and end of each week. the Passover marked the yearly calendar. We're not gonna study that today, but in Exodus 12, we learn God says, this is gonna be the beginning of months for you. So in Exodus 12, in the initiation of the Passover, God is marking Israel's calendar, whatever their calendar was, probably influenced by the Egyptians, whatever their calendar was, it's now gonna begin with the Passover. As God says, this is gonna be the beginning of months for you. So their whole annual existence revolved around something that God did, and namely the Passover. Namely God passing over his people in Egypt because of the sacrificial blood of the lamb on the doorposts. But, In focus with what we're going to look at in these coming weeks, their weekly calendar revolved around the Sabbath, that their whole week built as it were going towards a climax to the day of rest on the Lord's day. So their whole way of conceptualizing time was built around God's redemptive activity. Their year revolved around God's redemptive activity in Egypt and delivering them from their captors. And their week revolves around God's creation activity in Genesis 1. And I want to look at that for a moment. Of course, in Genesis 1, we see God at work in the first six days. I'm not going to read that whole text, but then after that, moving into Genesis 2, we find God, who does not need to rest, resting. In Genesis 2, We read, thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. And if you recall, this is some time ago now, but in our message on Genesis, you can go back and look at that in our walk through the Bible series. We looked at how many scholars, and I agree with them, view the creation week itself as a template for our regular week. A template for a regular week that the holy week, as it were, of work and rest is ingrained in how God created. and how the creation account is given to us in Genesis 1. Six days to work and one day as a holy rest. This calendar revolution, this thing that their entire lifestyle was built around, centered on God's creative and redemptive work. God gave them a day every week to rest in order to remember. And I think that's an important distinction that we're gonna see this morning. He gave them a day of rest in order to remember. That those things are not two separate things, but one thing. A day of rest in order to remember. Their whole week led to the day of holy rest. And that day of rest is for the enjoyment and satisfaction of God's labors. Now, when I have a day off, which I like, I hope you all have a day off. Sometimes you look back and you can enjoy the work you did, whether it's, you know, my wife loves to clean the house and then just rest and enjoy the satisfaction of the clean house, right? Maybe some of you like to build things or work on projects, whether in your professional work or at home. And it's nice to just take a moment to step back and enjoy what you've done, right? And there's nothing wrong with that at all. But the Sabbath day is a day where we rest to enjoy God's labors, right? In Genesis 1, God rested from his labors. And as we will see this morning as we move through the Old Testament background, that Israel rested to remember what God did, God's works for them. God's work, his creative and his redemptive works. So before the fall, before sin came into the world, God had established a seventh day to be a day of rest from work and a day to remember what God has done. So that's the creation principle. Now, number two, and we'll spend a little more time in this section, we have the law. The Christian Sabbath is rooted in the Old Testament law. We'll look at this in several ways in this section. First of all, the moral law is reflected in the Ten Commandments. And in the Ten Commandments, we see the creation principle reaffirmed. In Exodus 20, verse 8, God says from Sinai, 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 to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son. or your daughter, so you can't just delegate your children to do your work, right? Or your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who's within your gates, so you can't make anybody else do the work either. It's a day of rest for everyone and everything. For in six days, and here's the creation principle in verse 11, for in six days the Lord made heaven and 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. This creation principle was not something that was like a one-off thing for God when he created the heavens and the earth. It becomes the principle basis for rest for the Old Testament people of Israel. It is a day, a holy day to rest. But like I said a moment ago, it's also a day to remember. In the retelling of the law in Deuteronomy chapter five, Moses links this idea of remembering. Verse 15 of Deuteronomy five, you shall remember, this is included in the text on observing the seventh day. In verse 15, he says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. This is a day, the setting that day apart is a day where they would remember how they got to where they were. that any blessings that they had in the present moment was a result of God redeeming them from the most powerful force in the ancient Near East at the time. It was a day for remembering God's redemptive purposes and activity over them. So what could the Israelites do or not do on the Sabbath? I'm just going to give you a few examples. So stated negatively, some of the things that you couldn't do on the Sabbath would be things like no work. which is obviously affirmed in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, also reaffirmed in the retelling of the law. Deuteronomy means the second law, like the second telling of the law. It included things like planting and harvesting. So don't turn your combine on and start harvesting the fields or plowing the fields on the Lord's Day. It included kindling fire. They weren't to even kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. They were not allowed to gather fuel on the Sabbath day. So any kind of basic household work or any kind of industrial professional work, they were not to do on the Sabbath day. but stated positively of positive things that they could do on the Sabbath day is that it was set apart for the Lord for sanctified physical rest. Sanctified physical rest. In Exodus 31, we read, the Lord said to Moses, you are to speak to the people of Israel and say, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths. So after all the other commandments in Exodus and everything given at Sinai, God concludes by saying, above all, you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest. Holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed. So here we see that God has set apart this day for a kind of rest and refreshment. But what does that mean? Does that mean go to the Hitta and just kind of take it easy? Does it mean I'm just going to sleep in and nap all day? Is that the kind of refreshment that God has in mind? And I would say, no, certainly take a nap on the Lord's day. We're not getting into New Testament principles yet. We're still in the Old Testament, but certainly I think the Israelites would have been allowed to stop and rest physically. And that was part of even the command to not do any household work. That work should have been done during the week so that you could have a proper rest and stop. And that's good for them and enjoyable. It should be refreshing. But at the same time, we see that this is a solemn rest for some kind of more important purpose. The word biblical commentary commenting on this This idea of a solemn rest is that it can be rightly translated and interpreted as a day set apart to the Lord. This phrase, holy to the Lord, that we see in verse 15. Holy to the Lord means set apart. The word holy and the word sanctify are the same root word. The meaning, the idea that undergirds holiness or sanctification is set apart. So a day holy to the Lord is a day set apart for the Lord. That's what holiness in its base root meaning means, set apart. So stated positively, as we study the Old Testament more, we see that the Sabbath day that is holy to the Lord is a day that is set apart for public worship. A day for public worship. In Leviticus, we see this connection even more clearly, where The Lord says in Leviticus, you shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19.30. And as well in Leviticus 26.2, you shall keep my Sabbaths and reference my sanctuary. I am the Lord. So this idea of the Sabbath and of reverence for the sanctuary are together. And when we learn about reverence for the sanctuary, we read about that in Exodus. In fact, that statement that I read to you on keeping the Sabbaths is reaffirmed in Exodus 35. And in Exodus 35, where the Lord says, six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day, you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord, right after, Chapter 35, you get, sorry, right after this statement in chapter 35, you get statements on the giving to support the tabernacle and on all the things that were to be done with the sacrifices in the tabernacle. So the Sabbath is directly connected to public worship for the Israelites. And what was the consequence of failure? I passed over it in a reading, but Exodus 31.14, you shall keep the Sabbath because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. So this is a statement to strike fear in the heart of Israelites. God cared so much about the Sabbath that the penalty for failing to keep it was death or being cut off from the people of God. We have seen in this Old Testament survey so far that this Sabbath rest is a creation principle. We've seen that it is a principle at the center of the law and in the worship of Israel. One whole day, not one hour, set apart for the Lord, sanctified rest and public worship. It's an eternal covenant that God made with Israel. Exodus 31-16, therefore the people shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever, an eternal covenant. And that physical death was the punishment, which just to give you a sneak preview to the New Testament next week, we'll see that the failure of observing public worship in the New Testament was spiritual death. the falling away of one's own soul. And physical death is foreshadowing this, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let's look then at the third and final way we see the Sabbath grounded in the Old Testament, and that is through the prophetic witness. Number three, the prophetic witness of the coming age. The prophetic witness of the coming age. While Israel is given this glorious picture and teaching on how the Sabbath should be kept, they were far from keeping it well. In fact, in many times and places, the people of God despised God's Sabbath. In Amos 8.5, mocking fall in Israel, the prophets is quoting the kinds of things they're saying. When will the noon moon be over that we may sell grain and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale? They were at this place where they couldn't wait to get the official observances of God's religious worship done so they could get back to the business of life. when will this be over so we can get back it's such a drudgery to follow the commandments of the lord in this day i can't wait for it to be over that was the horrible heart attitude of the israelites that the prophets are calling out and are condemning that God speaking through the prophets are condemning them for their horrible attitude for keeping God's holy days, including the Sabbath. At the heart of it, even when they were showing up, it was all vanity and vain worship because their hearts weren't in it. The Lord condemns Israel through the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 1.13, where God's sick and tired of their hypocritical worship on the Sabbath. God says to them, bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen because your hands are full of blood." Your hands are full of blood. If I might dare to be political for a moment, this same kind of vanity is what we see when Donald Trump claims to be a Presbyterian and Joe Biden claims to be a Catholic. So I'm drawing on American politics right now. It's an abomination in God's sight. When your hands are full of blood and lies and deceit, and yet you claim to worship God. God here is not condemning the very institutions he established for his religious worship. He's condemning the heart attitudes of the Israelites who are performing them to no good purpose. It's all lip service. There's no heart for God. There's no love for God behind it. And so being faithful to his word, God exiled the people from the land. And why? So that God's promised land could enjoy a Sabbath of Sabbaths. Jeremiah 25, therein we read about 70 years of captivity. God, through the prophet Jeremiah, says the Israelites are gonna be in captivity for 70 years. And reflecting on what Jeremiah says, the writer of the Chronicles tells us, 2 Chronicles 36, 21, that all of this was done to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. And this exile, that was God's punishment on Israel for failing to keep the Sabbath among a host of other moral sins and failures. We read in Leviticus 26, 34, that then the land, this is the promise of the curse if you don't keep the Sabbath for the Israelites, then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate. While you are in your enemy's land, then the land shall rest and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate, it shall have rest. the rest that it did not have on your Sabbath when you were dwelling in it. So we see that God cares so much about the Sabbath that he actually exiled the people when they failed to keep it. Both whether they failed physically to keep it and observe it, but all the more in their hearts, they failed to keep it well. But does that mean that all of that is done away with now? Well, we read in the prophets about the age to come. And there we see the Sabbath principle remain. In Ezekiel 44, where we have this great depiction of the age to come, of the rebuilding of the temple, it's this eschatological, this end times kind of picture of the age to come and the Sabbath is there in the future vision. And indeed, in Ezekiel 45, there will be a prince. who will lead the Israelites in the worship of God. Ezekiel 45, 17. It shall be the prince's duty to furnish the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings at the feasts, the new moons, and the Sabbaths, all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He shall provide the sin offerings, the grain offerings, burnt offerings, and peace offerings. to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel. And spoiler alert to next week, this is talking about Christ. Christ is going to be the one to offer the ultimate sacrifice and to lead God's people in holy and reverent worship. But the Sabbath principle is still in view, and we're going to see Jesus' teaching on that next week. But in the meantime, one other vision from the prophets that is vital for our understanding of the Sabbath in the Old Testament and the view of the age to come is found in the final chapter of Isaiah, the great prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 66, verses 22 and 23, we read, for as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain from new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath. All flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. So in Isaiah's vision that the Lord gave to him of the new heavens and the new earth, there is this vision of all peoples gathering from Sabbath to Sabbath to worship the Lord. All flesh. shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord, from Sabbath to Sabbath. I'm not gonna give us much application this morning, because we're waiting to get to the New Testament, Lord willing, next week. But the one application I do wanna give you is to simply consider solemnly and seriously the nature of the Sabbath in the Old Testament and the priority that God gave to the one in seven day of rest to be set apart to the Lord, to be refreshed in what he has done for his people. Consider these verses in these sections of scripture that I've shared with you this morning. We've seen in conclusion that the Sabbath for the Israelites was a calendar revolution, their whole week built around it. They did all of their work ahead of time to be ready to rest and remember on the seventh day, their entire existence, their entire concept of time. revolves around this day of rest. It's not just something that they did as a hobby every now and then, or when they felt like it. Their whole lifestyle, if I can use that phrase, revolved around the Sabbath day. And everything they did throughout the week prepared them for that day. We saw this calendar revolution and the creative principle. We saw it in the law and we've seen it in the prophets. This was their reality. And the Old Testament points that this is not just going to be a reality for Israel, but for all flesh. I want to close by just reading one text of scripture from Isaiah. The end of Isaiah concludes with this promise of all flesh worshiping from Sabbath to Sabbath. But that same chapter, closing chapter, begins with something that is an eternal principle, not just for the Israelites, but for us too. And this is going to lead us into next week, Isaiah 66.2. We responded with this verse to our scripture reading today. but this is the one to whom I will look. He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. Whatever the New Testament does with the Sabbath principle, and we are gonna get into that next week, let's tremble together at the word of God and consider the solemnity of the Sabbath day for the Israelites and let that inform us next week as we turn to the New Testament to see what that means for us as the people of God today. Let's pray.