The Sabbath LBCF Chaper 22-7

Turn in your confession to chapter 26. I have an extra one here. So in chapter 22, the title is of Religious Worship in the Sabbath Day. And one of the distinctions that we make here at our church, that a lot of churches don't make, even churches that will say they're 1689 churches will fail to make this distinction. and I think they do it to their detriment.

So in chapter 22, paragraph 7, I'm going to read what it says in the Old English. Some of you have what's called the Modern Revised Version and so it's going to be a newer language. It might not sound the same. It says, As it is the law of nature that in general a portion of time by God's appointment be set apart for the worship of God, so by his word in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which was from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week.

Sorry, I said that wrong. Which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week. And from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day. And is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished.

So a couple notes from this chapter. When it says, it is a law of nature that in general, proportion of time by God's appointment be set apart for the worship of God, it's saying that it's just natural for us to know that we have to set aside time for God. it's not something that we don't know innately we are actually born with God's law written on our hearts and we may not understand it perfectly to be able to even articulate it in our unregenerate state but everyone knows they're Sabbath breakers from the earliest time the worldly people have that on them and that's why even in areas of the world where there where there is no Christianity, you will find that people still have days set aside to worship their God. Everyone knows they're supposed to set aside time for their God, and they just don't, they need missionaries and evangelists to come tell them to worship sometimes.

Not that they have to, they already know that. So then secondly, it says, so by his word. So as revealed in God's perfect revelation, in a positive moral, in perpetual commandment. He has appointed one day in seven. So a positive moral means that God has positively told us to do something. It actually a command that was given that maybe we wouldn have understood as perfectly as in the way he gave it So we know we to set aside time by nature it says at the beginning but God in his word told us exactly when we are to set aside time and how to do that and what to do in that time.

It says it's moral, meaning that it's a moral law. It's not just some suggestion God made, and it's not something without consequence to disobey God's command in the Sabbath. It is actually a sin. And in the same way that Adam and Eve sinned when they ate from the tree that they weren't supposed to eat from, when we break the Sabbath, we sin against God.

And you don't have to perfectly understand why to be violating His law. You just need to know you're violating it. But so it's moral. It's not an amoral thing. Amoral isn't the same as immoral. Immoral means bad.

And moral means good. But amoral means it's like totally outside of what morality means. It's neither good nor bad. It's actually bad to break the commandment to Sabbath. And it says it's perpetual, binding all men in all ages, meaning that God's command to Sabbath, God's command to rest one day in seven, just like his command not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to lie, not to covet your neighbor's stuff, not to take his name in vain, not to make idols for yourself, and not to not love him with all your heart and soul.

All those commands are binding on all men of all ages. So what it's saying there is that God's law wasn't given just for a particular people or a particular time. So a popular teaching that you'll find today is that God's Ten Commandments were given to Israel, the nation of Israel back in Exodus 20. And before they were given, they weren't in existence.

That people could do pretty much what they wanted and God wouldn't have held them accountable for that. and then after they were given the only people accountable to those ten commandments were the Israelites and so the pagan nations surrounding Israel that God saw fit to judge throughout the Old Testament people would say well they weren't accountable to those ten commandments and then some people will say that in the New Testament we're now not accountable to them because they say we're in this new covenant and this new covenant doesn't have anything to do with God's law. So we're not going to get into the details of why we believe it's still something to obey necessarily, but we don't believe that. We think it's binding all men, all ages.

And you will be held accountable to God for that. And if you're a Christian, it means Jesus was held accountable for every time you disobeyed every one of his commands. So it says God's particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him. It's really interesting the phraseology that's used because it does change from Saturday to Sunday.

And it's the pattern that there's six days you labor and then one day you're going to rest that we're to follow. And God has the prerogative to change which day that is. And he does that in the various distancations of time before and after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it tells us that, that beforehand it was Saturday, afterwards it's Sunday.

It's called the Lord's Day. And we're to continue it until He comes. And so if you look at Exodus 20, verse 8, just really quickly look at the proof texts here. If you don't have your Bible, you can just listen. That's okay. In Exodus 20, verse 8, God says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy Well first of all he says remember you don tell people to remember something that they weren supposed to already know all right there a sense that god expects people to know that there's a sabbath day and he says to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a sabbath to yahweh your god interestingly enough he doesn't He doesn't say Saturday.

He doesn't say it that way. It leaves open the possibility that he can change which day it is, but still follow the same pattern. And so you're to keep it holy. And how you keep it holy is for a different discussion, but the Bible gives us explanations of that. and there are people who take that extremely literally and try to make rules and lists of rules to follow, which is what the Pharisees basically tried to do with the Sabbath.

But there is biblical evidence for what are the types of activities we want to try to do on what is the Christian Sabbath. The next proof text was 1 Corinthians 16, 1 through 2. so basically tonight we're just establishing that there is one and it's Sunday we're not defining the implications of it you know what you should or shouldn't do necessarily as with all of God's laws and the keeping of them it's about your heart do you have a desire to please God and do things the way he would tell you and do you have a desire really to do what's good for you I mean, if I tell you stealing is bad, and I tell you it's bad for you because it's sin, you shouldn't steal even if there was no law against it in your land. Do you know what I'm saying?

So, you want to be thoughtful. When Paul's talking to the Corinthians, he assumes they meet on Sunday. He says, now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. He says, on the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so there will be no collecting when I come.

He's assuming that they're meeting on Sunday because they were, and he knew that. He probably was the one that told him to. And you'll see that throughout the New Testament, that the resurrection of the Lord inaugurated something new and different and better that still follows the pattern that God gave us, but it does change when we worship. There's cults today that think that you're actually worshipping on the Devil's Day if you worship on Sunday instead of Saturday.

It's called the Seventh Day Adventists. And if you meet one, they can talk a real good game about sounding Christian. And if you talk to them long enough, they'll twist themselves in knots with their false doctrines. Acts 20, verse 7. Remember, this is how I told you I want you to study the Confession. I want you to read it.

I want you to try to think about what the words mean in the confession itself. Just reading comprehension. And then go ahead and look up the verses and just see what the verses mean. There's lots more verses that will teach us about the Sabbath. We're just looking at the ones that the confession cited. Acts 20 verse 7.

It says, On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day. and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There is a sense that some people have, when it says break bread in the New Testament, a lot of people think it actually just means they were having communion, so they were having church. So the first day of the week, once again, is considered the Sabbath at this time.

That's when they were doing their worship. Is he checking out that noise And then in Revelation 1 John says I was in the Spirit on the Lord day right I'm going to turn there to make sure. That's a pretty well-known verse, I think. He says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. And so it's just a reference to the fact that we now call it the Lord's day too. and if it's the Lord's Day that helps us understand that it's the New Testament Sabbath.

And so you will run into people who will be so tied to their doctrine that they don't have to Sabbath the way God has said, that they will actually make fun of us for trying to obey what we think God's fourth commandment says to do. But because we love God and we love His law, we have a desire to try to do things the way that God has told us to do them. Not only because they're good for us, which they are, but because God's worth obeying.

And if we do things the way He said, we can expect better blessings. We can expect just the earthly results from doing things his way. When God tells you in Proverbs things like save money, it's not a punishment. When God tells you to save money and you learn how to save money, you find like, wow, this is actually, I'm rewarded by simply doing the things the way God says because he just knows better how to live life than we do.

He invented life. So these aren't rules that were made to curtail our fun. These are actually the manifestations in a sense or exhibitions of God's perfect attributes so that we can be conformed to the image of Christ and we can actually have great joy in him, even in the midst of this wicked world. So there's a lot more to the Sabbath than that, but suffice to say, we go to a 1689 church and we believe that the Sabbath is perpetual and that there is a meaning to it and that it can be discovered and it can be talked about and it can be worked out. one thing I will say though is that in the list of sinners that inherit a lake of fire and will not inherit the kingdom of God you don't see Sabbath breaker in there there is a sense that that it maybe is not quite as serious of an excommunicable type thing as like sexual morality and some of the other things that can happen and I think that because it can be a little bit fuzzy on what's right or wrong.

Some people may have different ideas of what would be considered acceptable work on a Sabbath. Some people might think a police officer shouldn't work on a Sabbath because it's working. Other people might say, well, that's a form of mercy and necessity to have policemen. So I'm not here to solve all those things. I think you deal with them on an individual basis.

And most importantly, you deal with it at a heart level. why are you doing what you're doing is what's most important and if your goal is to worship God and Him only the way that He has stated then I think you'll find the right answer eventually through your own prayer and study in your local church council any questions or comments on that? thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host Michael Coughlin I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.