Dr Greg Bahnsen - A Godly Attitude: A Godly Attitude Toward Time (Sabbath) (Part 2)

I'm continuing this Lord's Day morning a series of messages pertaining to our life as a congregation, and particularly a series dealing with godly attitudes towards certain things that bear on our life together. Last week we looked at a godly attitude toward worship. Next week we'll be looking at a godly attitude toward money. This morning, however, we're going to be considering the subject of a godly attitude toward time. And I'd ask you to turn with me in God's word to Isaiah the 58th chapter, Isaiah 58, which will take us our Scripture reading this morning, Beginning at Isaiah 58:1 Hear now the Word of God. Cry aloud, do not spare. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments they delight to draw near unto God. Wherefore have we fasted? They say, and thou seest not. Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge. Behold, in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and contention, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Ye fast not this day, so as to make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I have chosen the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Jehovah? Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh, then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go before thee the glory of Jehovah shall be thy rearward then shalt thou call, and Jehovah will answer then shalt thou cry, and he will say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, Then shall thy light rise in darkness, and thine obscurity be as the noonday, and Jehovah will guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul even in dry places, and make strong thy bones. And thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not and they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places. Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy of Jehovah honorable, and shall honor it, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah, and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it, and thus far the reading God's holy word. I warned my wife that it may be the case after I preach today that I'm going to go out to the car and hide from you all because it's not easy to preach this morning's message. It's sometimes a lot easier to come and stand before you and talk about piety in general, to give you some rather broad and abstract ideas as to how to live your lives and then realize that if it doesn't pinch too much, I can still face you and that sort of thing. A lot harder for a person who is called to the ministry to stand up and say to his brothers and sisters that he loves. I really think there are some particular things that we need to talk about, some things that we may not be doing in a way that's as pleasing to God as they should be. And now that duty falls upon me today, and I don't apologize for it. When I was ordained to the ministry, I took a vow that I would serve the Lord and be a minister of His Word, no matter what persecution would arise to me on that account. And so if what I have to say today does turn out to be offensive to any individual in the group, I can only say that if I have been wrong in expounding the Word of God, I want to hear that, and I will apologize for it. But if I'm not wrong in expounding it, I am doing you a favor to tell you these things. For, you see, when your pastor comes before you. You must remember the pastor is not some kind of high priest. We don't need a high priest. We have one. Jesus. I don't come before you as some kind of exalted religious official looking down upon you and saying, now look at what you're doing wrong. Look what you're doing wrong. You should really be more like me, your priest. I'm not your priest. I your coach. And though God has called you to a kind of ministry in this world, and he's called me to a ministry in this world, and my ministry happens to be, for the most part, teaching and expounding his word to you, we're all on the same plane and we're all learning these lessons together. And I'm only a coach, I'm not a priest. Now you stop and think about that. There's a big difference between Pat Riley criticizing the practice of the Lakers and Pat Riley criticizing the practice of the Boston Celtics. Pat Riley, for those of you who are not into sports, he knows the coach of the Lakers. When the coach of the Lakers, if he were to go into the gym when the Boston Celtics are working out, he might be real critical. He might want to say, oh, well, you think you're so good, but look at that. You did that wrong. You're running that play wrong, too. And this guy fell down over here and this guy's dogging it over there. Well, you guys aren't the great basketball players you think you are. You see, as an opponent, he might be real cutting in his criticism. Now, I don't know the man personally. He might not say anything, but you can understand how he could criticize another team and it would be taken as a real put down. But, you know, when Pat Riley goes into the gym and he criticizes the Lakers, no one takes it that way when he says, you know, we're trying to force this man away from the baseline. So what you've got to do is put your foot right on the baseline and force him out to the key where we can pick him up. No one says, well, why are you being so mean? Why do you have to get down on us? We're doing our best. No, he's the coach. And the coach's job is not to come in there and try to slice people up by saying, oh, you don't know what you're doing. It's to try to show you how to do it right, to help you. Now, granted, if he tells the guy this five or six times and he still doesn't start doing what he's supposed to. Then the coach might get down on him a little. But the point is, criticism is not always criticism. That's superiority, not criticism that's coming down on you. Often criticism, if it's in the spirit of a coach, is constructive. Please receive my words that way. This day we want to talk about time and how we use time. We want to have a godly attitude toward time. And we're going to. We're going to have to repeat a lesson that we learned last week and we're going to learn it again next week, and that's that in the Bible, we often have obligations that can be described as both general and special. In the case of worship, we found that the Bible teaches a general requirement of worship, and it also teaches a special requirement of worship. As God's people, we are called upon to worship him in everything we do and at every moment of our lives. We are, in the words of Romans 12, exhorted to be living sacrifices who are transformed by the renewing of our minds, something which is called our reasonable worship. And so if you ask, what is the biblical obligation to worship? I could answer, the biblical obligation is that in everything you do, to be a living sacrifice to God. That's the general requirement. However, within the scope of that general requirement, there's a special particular requirement of worship. As well as God's people, we're also bound to assemble ourselves together to offer corporate praise to God, to hear his word, to fellowship with one another and enjoy the sacraments. Fellowship with Him. We're bidden not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. In Hebrews 10. Indeed, Paul says, in the church we come together to worship God. In First Corinthians 14, Psalm 100 says, we enter his gates with thanksgiving, and that's what we mean by the Spirit special requirement of worship. And so there's general worship and there's the special requirement of worship within it. And we're going to find that same scheme when we talk about money next week. There is the recognition that God owns all of our money in general, so that it must all be used in a godly fashion. None of our money is to be used in an ungodly way. God owns all of our money. Nevertheless, it's also to be recognized that within the general obligation, there's a special requirement that 10% of that money be contributed to the Lord's work. We see a general requirement and within it a special requirement. That's true of worship. All of life is worship. But then specially we're to worship as God's people. Moreover, all of our money is the Lord's, but 10% of it is a token given to him as a special offering. And we're going to see that today, too. Today we're looking at the use of time. And if we study our Bibles, we'll see that that same scheme of general requirement and special requirement holds true for our attitude toward time. Because God's Word teaches us to see all of our time in general as belonging to God and to be consecrated to God's purposes. He owns every minute of my day, every day of my life, all my time is in his hands. And yet God's Word also teaches us to see a special time as set apart in particular unto God that we call the Sabbath. All of life is God's, and yet God has special ways of indicating that all of life belongs to him. And he has ways of doing that. When it comes to worship, when it comes to time, and when it comes to money, we have a special obligation to worship on a special day called the Sabbath. And a special part of our income is to be given to him there. And that's really what I'm trying to get across this month to you. So let's talk about time. First of all, the general requirement to sanctify all of our time. Time can be viewed in a number of different ways. We can look at time as passage. We can look at time as the precondition of change. Without time, there would be no change. We can see time as what coordinates plans and coordinates memories. But from a moral, and I think from a Christian viewpoint, time is especially to be seen as opportunity. Time is opportunity. When God gives time, that is the same as saying God gives opportunity. And how should we look upon the time? That is to say, how should we look upon the opportunity that God has given us in our life? There's a rather secular religious outlook, and I say that tongue in cheek. You can't be secular and religious in your outlook. But there is a kind of secular religiosity that's very popular in our culture that I want to warn you against. A secular religious outlook that says, look, I put in my time, now the rest of it's mine. I've put in my time, I went to church and now the rest of this time is mine. Or I went and did some evangelistic service, or I went to the rest home this week, the rest of the week is mine. Now why would I call that a kind of secular religiosity? Well, it's religious because the person recognizes that God is supposed to be served at some time or another. But it's extremely secular. Because the idea is, once God has been given his slice, the rest of it's mine. People are prone to split their use of time into two categories. Some for God's purposes, but the rest. And may I say to your embarrassment and to all of ours, usually the lion's share is ours. It's for me, some time for God, some time for me, most of it for me. But the Bible teaches otherwise. It tells us that all of our time and that all of our lives belong to God, who is our creator and our governor and our judge. And there's a nice illustration of that in the very law of God, when the Sabbath is laid down. When we think about the Sabbath, which we're coming to in a few moments in this morning's message, we tend to think of that time that's set apart that one day of the week. But the Sabbath law perhaps shouldn't be called the Sabbath law. It's a time law, isn't it? Because God doesn't just say, look, one day a week do this. He also says, in six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work. God doesn't say, I'll govern one day, you govern the rest. God says, I govern them all. And here's how I govern. Six for work, one for worship and rest. And my point is this general structure. God doesn't leave any time for us to decide for ourselves how to use it. He governs all of time. His commandment covers every moment of our lives so that there's no time in our experience which is not in one way or another, subject to God's prerequisites. All of our labors are to be performed at God's direction, and all of our labors are to serve God's ends. Just remember the cultural mandate. Why were we made to subdue the Earth? Everything we do in this world is to be bringing glory to God and serving his purposes. Remember the general obligation of worship that I taught you about last week. Who could possibly say, well, now, this is my time. It's Friday night, it's my time. Paul says, look, be a living sacrifice. Living sacrifices don't put in a time and punch out. You know, say, sorry, God, I'm going to come back and I'll sacrifice my life tomorrow, but tonight it's Miller time. No, the Bible doesn't allow that kind of thinking. The Bible says it all belongs to God, and our entire lives are to be conducted as living sacrifices to him. You're never going to reach a time when your duty to God has been put in and then effective direction over your life returns to you, so you can now live autonomously. God's never going to say, okay, now you become the boss for a while. You put in enough time. It just doesn't work that way. Now, I know that as I say this to you and as I look at you and how you're responding to this, you all know this. You also know that as obvious as the truth is that I'm telling you, very, very, very few people in this world live that way. Very few of us live that way. We have all been infected with this idea that God has his time, I have my time. But all, all of our time belongs to God. And so Paul says in Ephesians 5:15, look therefore carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time. Because the days are evil. And having called the present age this present evil age in Galatians 1:4, we go on to see Paul also saying in Colossians 4, walk in wisdom toward them that are without redeeming the time. You live in an age that is readily given over to wickedness and to evil. And so redeem the time. Buy up the opportunity is the way the Greek reads, buy it up, make it yours. Seize upon it to live wisely, not only before God, but before an unbelieving world. And so let's ask, as we look at the general obligation to make all of our time serve God's purposes, do we make effective and godly use of our time in general in these evil days? I wonder what a computer analysis of your time commitments would reveal about you. You know, it'd be nice if we could, and I'm making this up, but it'd be nice if we could, you know, attach some kind of a machine to us. You know, it would just record, silently and unwittingly, all day long, all week long, all month long, all year long, exactly what you're doing every moment of the day. So how much prayer time you put in, how much time you put in daydreaming, how much time you put in working out, how much time you put in dressing, how much time you put in shopping, how much time you put in watching tv, how much time you put in working, how much time you put in driving, going to church, helping a friend. I mean, everything. You name it, whatever you do, no matter how many categories. And there'd probably be a zillion of them, no matter how many categories this little computerized mechanism would pick it up, time it exactly every second. And then at the end of the year, we'd ask for a readout and say, okay, now, what are the percentages? How much of my time was given toward managing my life to become a more effective worker in God's kingdom? How much of my life was given to helping brothers and sisters in the Lord? How much of my time was given to evangelism or to prayer or to working? How much of my time was given to tv? How much of my time was given. Well, daydreaming. I've mentioned that already, but, boy, that's a good one. How much of my time was just bumming it? I'm not against bumming it. I'm sure against making it a major part of your life, though. Though in these evil days, what would a computer analysis of your time commitments reveal about you? Because, you see, that would tell us something about ourselves, wouldn't it? And I think I know in my case, I'm not saying that was false humility. And I'm sure in many of your cases, it wouldn't reveal what we'd want to see. Would it show wisdom? Would it especially show an exemplary wisdom to those who are out of outside the kingdom? If someone took that analysis of my life, Would an unbeliever be exhorted to a wiser form of life by looking at me? I don't know. Are your opportunities always utilized to bring glory to God? Even when you're relaxing in your recreations, even in your enjoyments? Is every opportunity used as a God glorifying opportunity? Are you organized in your life? Are you efficient in accomplishing things so the time is not wasted? That's another thing we're going to answer for on the Day of Judgment, the amount of wasted time. Because we wouldn't become orderly, we wouldn't become efficient in what we're doing. And so I have to ask you, are you buying up the opportunity? Do you buy it up especially to pursue fellowship with God's people and to deepen your understanding of His Word? Where in your scale of priorities as you make decisions for your day and week, where in your scale of priorities do you choose to take time for prayer meeting or Bible study or fellowship with God's people, or service within the congregation or evangelism before the world? Or is it possible that even though you wouldn't stand up and say it, especially now that I'm preaching this sermon, but is it possible that down deep you tend to say, well, that's my time. That's my time. But it's not your time because all your days and all your minutes are God's. That isn't to say every single one of us, every single time should be at prayer meeting. Let's understand. I know that there are God glorifying exceptions to that. But my point is, I do think we have an attitude problem. We tend to say, well, it's my time, I'm tired, I can't get organized enough in order to do all things, these things. So there is this general attitude to our time. But the Bible also has a special requirement with respect to time, which we call the Sabbath. In Exodus the 20th chapter, we read the Sabbath law, and it says, remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that was within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart. And how would it the Westminster Larger Catechism, which is the doctrinal standard of our denomination, has an exposition of the Sabbath which is, I think, very good on the whole. The one criticism I would make of it is I don't think enough emphasis is put upon the Sabbath as a day of rest for our bodies and souls as well. But nevertheless, I would like to read for you because we don't pay enough attention to these things. I'd like to read this morning the Catechism and what it tells us about the fourth commandment. We are asked what is required in the fourth commandment, and the answer provided is, the fourth commandment requireth of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his word expressly one whole day in seven, which was the seventh from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, and the first day of the week ever since and so to continue to the end of the world, which is the Christian Sabbath, and in the New Testament called the Lord's day. How is the Sabbath or the Lord's day to be sanctified? The Sabbath or Lord's day, is to be sanctified by a holy resting all the day, not only from such works as are at all times sinful, but even from such worldly employments and recreations, as are on other days lawful, and making it our delight to spend the whole time, except so much of it as is taken up in works of necessity or mercy, in the public and private exercises of God's worship. And to that end we are to prepare our hearts, and with such foresight, diligence and moderation, to dispose and seasonably dispatch our worldly business, that we may be the more free and fit for the duties of that day. And we have a couple of other questions which would be worth reading, but I'm going to skip down to one more. Why, particularly, is the word remember said at the beginning of the fourth commandment? The word remember is set in the beginning of the fourth commandment Partly because of the great benefit of remembering it, we being thereby helped in our preparation to keep it, and in keeping it, better to keep all the rest of the commandments and to continue a thankful remembrance of the two great benefits of creation and redemption, which contain a short abridgment of religion. And partly because we are very ready to forget it. For that there is less light of nature for it. And yet it restraineth our natural liberty in things at other times lawful, that it cometh but once in seven days, and many worldly businesses come between, and too often take off our minds from thinking of it, either to prepare for it or sanctify it. And that Satan with his instruments much labored to blot out the glory and even the memory of it, to bring in all irreligion and impiety. The writers of the confession were very wise and godly men. And they could take that one word remember, and they could extract that much truly biblical content. Why does God say remember it? Because we're so prone not to. And we don't make preparation for it. You know, it comes upon us, we say, oh, yeah, well, now we gotta get ready for church and do all these sorts of things. It's not as though we are living like for that day to come and making preparation. And when it comes, remembering the glory of it. Because in the Sabbath is a short abridgment of all religion, because the Sabbath remembers creation and redemption. And the divines are also wise enough in terms of the course of history and worldly affairs. The that if the Sabbath should ever be desecrated and forgotten, that all irreligion would be brought into a civilization. At the same time, Voltaire, the famous deist, said that the Christian religion would be destroyed if the Sabbath were taken away. He understood that. I don't think we Do. Our culture has steadily eroded the idea of Sabbath observance. It is almost so quaint now that people will laugh and ridicule the idea. I teach at a Christian school, and even among my colleagues, I think I'm looked upon as a hard nose when I suggest we shouldn't have tests on Monday so that we might encourage our students not to study on Sunday. The whole idea of keeping the Sabbath is just. It's old fashioned, it's worn out. But of course it. It shouldn't surprise you that at the same time, we have a culture that doesn't respect the Sabbath or think much of it. We have a culture that doesn't respect any of God's commandments. We kill unborn children in this culture and go right on living our lives. We steal and we defraud in this culture, we go right on living our lives. Sexual promiscuity is at a high point in the history of this country. And so you could look all around you and say, I don't know whether it's because the Sabbath is not kept. But a culture that isn't interested in keeping the Sabbath is not interested in keeping the other commandments either. And so here we have, within that general obligation to use all of our time to God's glory, a special requirement that this time be set apart and remembered as belonging to God. This is a special use of our time that stands in contrast to the other six days of the week on which we are to do all our labor. On this day we are commanded to engage in rest and worship. And so failure to honor the Sabbath, I want you to know, is first of all an insult to God the Creator. The commandment says, you shall keep the Sabbath because in six days I made the world and I rested on the 7th. And this is not meant flippantly. If it's good enough for God, you better know it's good enough for us. If God says, here's my pattern, follow it. And then we say, oh, no, we don't need to do that. You insult the Creator because that's his pattern. And he does say you are to follow it. Secondly, failure to honor the Sabbath is an insult to God the Redeemer. In Deuteronomy, the fifth chapter, we have a slight variation of the satisfaction Sabbath commandment. There it's not said that you keep the Sabbath because God created the world in that pattern. There it said, because God brought you up out of the land of Egypt, because God redeemed you and saved you and set you free from the bondage of slavery. Because God has saved you, you must keep the Sabbath. And I want you to know, and I say this to me as much as to you, when we don't keep the Sabbath, we insult the God of redemption. We say we realize the Sabbath is there to commemorate our redemption. But, you know, we think so little of our redemption God that we'll just go about doing whatever we want anyway. And it's insulting. When we fail to honor the Sabbath, we despise that eternal rest toward which we are pressing in this life. In Hebrews, the fourth chapter, the author of Hebrews says, there is a Sabbath rest that yet waits the people of God. And he's talking about the new heavens and the new earth, or, if you will, heaven that lies ahead for us. And we keep the Sabbath day because this day is a down payment. This day is a foretaste. This day is an anticipation and a foreshadowing of that eternal rest that we will have with God someday. And when we don't observe the Sabbath, what we're saying is we really don't care about heaven. In fact, I think a lot of people may not be very comfortable in heaven because they're so uncomfortable with the Sabbath. And so do you see the Sabbath, how important it is? God, the Creator, calls you to keep the Sabbath. God, your Redeemer, calls you to keep the Sabbath. God, who's providing heaven in the future for you, calls you to honor the Sabbath. So remember, failure to honor the Sabbath is just as much a transgression of God's holy law and as any other violation of the Ten Commandments. I have never been able to understand in all my life how either myself or other Christians can think so poorly of people who break the other nine commandments and so little of ourselves when we break that one. What do you think of abortionists? What do you think of sexual perverts? Now, I know you people. I know what you think. I know how you put these people down, and you should morally put them down. What do you think of yourselves when you break the Sabbath? That's one of the Ten Commandments too. You say, oh, but abortion and sexual perversity, they're capital crimes. Well, I got a word for you. In many instances, Sabbath breaking is a capital crime too. Our culture is not prepared to think that way. But that's what the Bible says. So let's remember that the Sabbath, this is a sacred institution. It calls for much greater concern, much greater attention than we usually give it. Now, finally, we come to Isaiah 58, all that by Way of introduction. Now, don't look at the clock and get worried. I understand, but I don't think you could understand Isaiah 58 if I hadn't said these things previously. We come to Isaiah 58. This is a marvelous chapter of God's Word. Cry aloud, bear not. Lift up thy voice like a trumpet and declare unto my people their transgression into the house of Jacob, their sins. I think God understands the psychology that I was struggling with at the beginning of this morning's message because he tells his servant, Isaiah, he says, you're not to whisper this, Isaiah, you're not to be hesitant about this. Don't speak this with some kind of mumbling. Isaiah, he says, raise up. Actually, the Hebrew amounts to. Give it full volume. Isaiah, don't spare. At this point, my people need to understand their sins. And if you hold back now, you're not a faithful servant. If you hold back now, they won't get the help they need. If you hold back now, I won't be glorified. And so let my people be apprised of their sins in this special area. Verse two tells us what that is. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments. They delight to draw near unto God. This is all sarcasm. These people act like they're perfectly all right. These people think they're very righteous. They think. They draw near to me every day. They think that when it comes to religion, they've got it all wired, everything's fine. Boy, have they got something coming. You'd better raise up your voice, Isaiah. Wake them up. Because their religion and their worship is hypocritical to me and I despise it. And I will not hear their prayers until they change their attitude toward it. It's a tough message. Look at the complaint of the worshipers in verse three. Well, why have we fasted? They say, and you don't see it. Why have we afflicted our soul? And you don't take knowledge of it? And then God's reply, behold, in the day of your fast, you find your own pleasure. You exact all your labors. Their worship was simply external. It was a matter of religious exercise. They were just putting in their time. And they treat worship days as ordinary work days. God says, but in verse 6, we find out there is a fast, there is a worship that is pleasing to God. And look what he says about it. Is not this the fast that I have chosen to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and God goes on. We don't have time to look at every verse, but the point here is that the word, the worship approved by God is a worship that brings departure from wickedness, departure from selfishness, and departure from oppression. In verse 8, God promises His people that when they reform their attitude toward worship and when they make it something that they do from the heart, then will come a day of revival, a day of blessing from the Lord will be theirs. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily, and thy righteousness shall go before thee. The glory of Jehovah shall be thy rework. Isaiah Then the glory of my people will come out. I will protect them, I will bless them, and it will be just like mourning to them when they learn to approach worship properly. In verse 9 he says, Our prayers will be answered. In verse 11 our souls will be satisfied when we finally reform our attitude toward worship. Well, now, what's so wrong with these people? Why is their worship not acceptable? What is their attitude? What's the deficiency in their attitude? And the answer is found in verse 13. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of Jehovah honorable and shall honor it, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in Jehovah. And God says, and I'll make you ride upon the high places of the earth. You learn to honor the Sabbath. And God says, you won't believe the blessing I'll give you. Then you'll know what it is to worship me. Then you'll know what it is to know me, and to be satisfied by me, and have your prayers answered, and you'll be exalted to ride on the high places of the earth. Learn to observe my Sabbath. Would you have said that if we had started out this morning and said, now what do you think the key is to reforming our worship and getting rid of our hypocrisy and being blessed by God? Would you have said, well, I guess we better change our attitude toward the Sabbath day? Well, that's what God. God says, that's what we need to hear today. My friends, the key to making our worship genuine rather than hypocritical. The key to giving delight to the Lord in our religious exercises is we must have a godly attitude toward time. We must recognize that the Sabbath is not a time for determining what we will do according to our own ideas, according to our own aspirations. But the Sabbath is the Lord's day, and it's to be governed by his revealed will for that special time. Now, I want you to understand verse 13. Because it's been used so poorly by many people who are Sabbatarians. You notice there it says, if you'll refrain from doing your pleasure, okay. And then let's say I'm doing something on the Sabbath that one of my Christian brothers thinks is not appropriate. He says, now, why are you doing that? And I say, well, it gives me pleasure. And then he quotes Isaiah 58. You're not supposed to do anything pleasurable on the Sabbath. That isn't what it says. After all, if I get pleasure out of worship, I'm in real trouble, aren't I? Because that's exactly what I should do on the Sabbath day. It isn't that we shouldn't get pleasure out of the Sabbath. In fact, the end of the passage tells us we're going to get a lot of pleasure out of it if we start living properly. The point is, you do your pleasure rather than God's. That's a way of saying you choose to do things because you think the time belongs to you. You make your own decisions. And the attitude is, it's my day, not God's, and that's what's got to change, because this is God's day and he directs it. Now, there's a lot of latitude as to what you'll choose to do in properly observing the Sabbath, mind you. But the point is, everything you do has got to be directed first of all by the idea that God has told me how to live my life on this day. This is his day. It's the Lord's day. Put your attitude toward tithes and offerings. We have a tithe box over there, and I don't know how much money is in it this morning. How many of you have been over to make your offerings? But what would you think if during the worship service, you saw somebody go over there and open it up and take out some of the cash and put it in his pocket and come back and sit down? You'd say, what a sacrilegious person he's stealing from God. What do you think of people who go home from church on Sunday and decide, well, hey, it's my time. Do whatever I want now? Think of yourself as people who have just taken something from God because you have. Isaiah says, you want to be blessed you want your worship to be right, then your attitude should be, this is the Lord's day, and what I do pleases the Lord on this day. And there's a lot of variety and a lot of freedom within those boundaries. But the fact is those boundaries have got to be observed. And so let's ask some tough questions. How should we how should we reckon the beginning and the end of the Sabbath? Pastor well, my answer to you is that you should attempt to give a whole day to Rest and worship, 24 hours, if you want to put it technically a whole day, and that this time should cover the worship service on the first day of the week. Now, I think that's true for everybody. Everyone's Sabbath includes when God's people get together to worship on the first day of the week. But beyond that, I believe that the reckoning of the day may legitimately vary from family to family. Some will observe sundown to sundown, some midnight to midnight, others sunrise to sunrise. As long as we all agree that the daylight hours of Sunday are commonly to be observed, I think we are observing what God would tell us in his words. For some people, you may begin your rest on Saturday evening, and that may be true for most of us. That's when we really finally start coming down from the week, as it were, preparing for the next day's worship or what have you. In which case, on Sunday evening at sundown, you might say, my new week is beginning. The Hebrews, by the way, counted the days that way, and you don't have to. But I think that is one possibility. Others may be a couple to the American, rather awkward idea. In the middle of the night, the day changes midnight to midnight. Well, if that's what you do, then you better be home from your dates on Saturday night before midnight. And then if you want to get up and study after midnight on Sunday night, Monday morning, it turns out to be, well, that's something you can do. Others may say, no, we're going to party all Saturday night and we're going to sleep all Sunday night. Well, that may be your decision, but the point is a whole day should be given to God, and that day should include the worship and daylight hours of Sunday. This being the case, I think there's very little legitimate reason for any of us to miss congregational activities on Sunday. Now, this applies most particularly to Sunday Sunday morning worship, but also it can be extended to our continuing education, our time of Sunday school, our church socials, our suppers and sings and other activities. And I do recognize that there's A strict moral. There's a difference between the strict moral obligation to be at worship service and then the more loose obligation that we participate the rest of the day in congregational activity activities. But nevertheless, it is a moral obligation. It's God's day. Why would we not participate in these things? After all, why should people leave before Sunday school? Why should people not give their time to singing God's praise or having dinner with their fellow believers in this church? I want to know what is it that's more important than these things? I'm not going to tell you in advance. Nothing is more important or on some occasions, you know, something that's not regularly the rules shouldn't get in the way. But what is it really in general terms that is more important than those things? Or are you saying to yourself, but Pastor, don't you understand that's my time now? Oh, no, it's not. What should get in the way of commitment to your own congregation, whether it's socials or service opportunities or youth meetings or anything else, what really takes priority over these things? And I've already told you that I don't say this to you as a high priest condemning you. I say it to you as a coach and a coach who's learning. Because our family hasn't figured out everything and certainly doesn't observe the Sabbath as perfectly as we would exhort others to do. So. It's another case where I say do as I say, not as I do. I'll give you an example of that. A while back my wife was given as a gift money for tickets to the performing arts center that contained, I forget, the number five or six concerts and the dates had been set for them. And one of the dates fell on a Sunday. And so my wife asked me, is it appropriate for us to go ahead and buy the series since one of the days is going to be a Sunday? Well, when I noted that it was going to be Sunday evening, and I figured it would be one of these sundown to sundown arrangements, I said, well, I don't like them scheduling things on Sunday, but I could see that would be all right. Well, then the Performing Arts center went and did something. They changed the time of the concert and it became an afternoon concert. So here we've put out the money and you know, you people realize your pastor's family doesn't have a lot of money for those sorts of things. And so here we thought, well, the money's been put paid and we can come to church and all that, but suffer and sing was going to get in the way of it. And so I told my wife, go ahead and ask your mom. You two go and I'll stay here because it's the pastor. I should be at supper and sing. And I now think that was really a bad decision. I think we should have just said, someone else can have the tickets or no one will have the tickets. But, you see, we shouldn't have missed or she shouldn't have missed supper in single for that. You see, if it's wrong to go to a sporting event and pay money on Sunday afternoon and miss the church's worship or fellowship, it's certainly wrong to go to a concert, too. And so I only tell you that not because I want to beat myself publicly, but because I want you to say, I realize I'm trying to think this out and become more consistent and learn from God's Word, too. This message is for me, but it's also for you. And I have to ask you some tough questions. When, if ever, should Sunday church activities be missed? I'm going to give you four answers here. I think, first of all, as a rule of thumb, we can say that you should miss Sunday church activities when you would honestly give the same excuse to your employer for not coming to an expected day of work. Think about what you would say if the pastor called you and why weren't you at church today? Okay? And you fill in the blank. And then just say, would you ever fill in the blank? That way if your employer called and said, why are you not at work today? There's more to it than that, but I think that probably covers 90% of the problems in our congregation in 90% of the cases. I don't believe you would ever offer, in honesty anyway, to an employer the excuse you offer for not coming to church or not coming to Sunday school or not coming to supper and sing or whatever it may be, you wouldn't ever do that. And yet you have a master, you have a God who owns your time and owns you, and you offer that to him. What do you expect God to think, by the way? When it comes to sickness, that's a real tricky one. And our rationalizations can easily get in the way because you might say, well, I've got the sniffles today. I can't go to go to church. And that may be true, and it may not be true. What I'm worried about is that if you had the very same condition of sniffles, you would get up and go to work. So you see, we have kind of like a Double standard. I'm not well enough to go to church, but I am well enough to go to work. I have a hard time with that. I think you should, too. Here's the second answer. Another reason for missing church on Sunday might be your participation in another congregation's worship service on an occasional basis, so that you might be with friends or family, perhaps to see some special event. But I want to add, this must certainly be the exception to the rule. This is not the rule. Or else your membership and fellowship in this congregation is meaningless. But there are occasions where you might worship somewhere else as the exception. Thirdly, someone might expect to miss church activities on Sunday. If you're out of town for legitimate business, don't go out of town. So you can't be here to come to church. But I mean, if you're out of town for legitimate business or if you're on vacation, then naturally you're not going to be here. And then fourthly, as the confession itself says, there are always going to be occasions when works of necessity or mercy keep us from the worship service on Sunday. If you're a nurse who's expected to be on duty at the hospital, someone's got to watch the patience. That's a work of necessity, also a work of mercy, by the way. And that, of course, is a legitimate reason not to be at church. There are also cases where the ox is in the pit. If your car breaks down, you can't be at church. And we understand that. God understands that. But within those boundaries, I hope you can understand what the Bible would tell you about Sabbath observance. It's certainly sinful to volunteer to work on Sunday. But now, Pastor, what if I'm compelled to work on Sunday? Well, I need to tell you that if you're compelled to work on Sunday, your employer is sinning. And your employer will answer to God for that. And even in our day and age, I do believe technically that your employer may be in trouble before the courts. Because even as Seventh Day Adventist and Orthodox J. Jews are protected, Christians are supposed to be protected. However, very few Christians stand up for their rights today for that. Nevertheless, your employer is sinning. And I think you should discuss that with your employer and attempt to raise a witness by your desire to have the day off. And I think you should make it clear I'm not asking for this so that I can go to the river. I'm not asking this so that I can go to the baseball game. I realize you have a hard time scheduling all the employers. I mean employees and Everyone else may be doing it, but I'm asking it for religious reasons. I'm asking it because I conscientiously want to worship God that day. I don't think you should be afraid to say that. What if the employer doesn't give in to you? Well, if that fails, maybe you want to try to work somewhere else, if that is feasible. I don't think it always is, believe me. And I do not think you should give up your family's livelihood. By that I mean necessities, putting food on the table, not just pleasures. You should not give up your family's livelihood by immediately losing your job over this matter. I think you should also attempt to get a schedule that maximizes time for church. Maybe you can go in at one o' clock if you are compelled to work at all. Or maybe if you stay there long enough, you'll rise in seniority and you won't have to work on Sunday at all. Maybe that's what you should you do, wait your time. But if those maneuvers after a reasonable period of time do not avail you, I do think it's to your best interest to try to land another job that will permit you to honor the Sabbath. But I hope you hear all those qualifications. I'm not some kind of simplistic, mindless person about the Sabbath. There are a lot of things you have to take into consideration. What about family engagements? We hear this very often. And I have to be honest with you, my friends. I think you should strive to be a witness to your family by your prior commitment to God's day and God's requirements. It breaks my heart to say this, but I'm afraid that so often the lifestyle of unbelieving relatives and friends. Maybe not unbelieving, just un Presbyterian. They don't care about these matters, even though they profess Christ. But their lifestyle tends to run roughshod over our Christian lifestyle and our Christian testimony, that is. I want you to encourage your friends and your relatives in your direction rather than having them bring you down to their own level. If they aren't Sabbath keepers, I'm not saying get up in the morning and excoriate them and walk out the door to church. You can quietly do it, but go to church. Say don't. This family goes to church. For this family it is the Lord's day. It's not the family's day. It's not my employer's day, and it's not this family's day. It's God's day. And I must obey God rather than man. And I must please him first. How about cleaning house or gardening or laying carpet or cleaning screens or painting, whatever? Well you see, those are just not necessary activities and they shouldn't take priority over God's day. It's really discouraging to see God's people give precedence to household interest over the house of God, especially on God's special day. How about working at the office after church or making real estate deals in your home or shopping for a car, going to a swap meet or on and on? Well friends, these are work and commercial affairs which are simply inappropriate on the Lord's day. And we're really engaging in rationalizations when we attempt to justify using Sunday for such things. I have known when we went to Jackson, Mississippi, the people who sold us our house, the realtors, they were Christian people and they would not work on Sunday. And they were always being told by the head realtor in the office they work, you'll never make a living do that. Sunday's the biggest day for showing and selling houses. And they were steadfast in their resolve not to do that. And you know, they were more successful than anybody else in the office. God honors commitment to him. God honors fidelity and he won't let you go hungry. You don't have to buy a house on Sunday or go to the swap meet. Etc. Etc. How about organized athletes, athletic events, professional sports? Well these are never appropriate when they conflict with the worship service and I think it's inappropriate that they should take priority over other church events. These are never appropriate when they call for commercial transaction, for instance buying a ticket over against watching TV for free. I do believe that any planned organized league sports probably shows a less than good attitude toward the day and the priorities that are appropriate for that day. But there is room for some discussion there. I cannot see nevertheless how sporting events can fit into the Lord's day except as non commercial opportunities for rest and recreation which do not conflict with more obvious duties of the Sabbath. So you will never hear me tell you that if part of your relaxation on Sunday afternoon is watching a Laker game on the tv, if it's really relaxing. I know some people get pretty bad attitudes when they don't like the way the game's going. But I mean if it's really relaxing, that can fit into the Sabbath. But don't try to say that going and buying a ticket therefore is equally all right. Or that missing church to go to a game. No, sports has got its place, but it's real subordinate when it comes to the Sabbath. What about Studying for school. Very simply, students, that belongs to the six days of labor, because that's labor for you. Oh, but Dr. Bonson, I enjoy studying. That's right. You're supposed to do pleasurable things. But you're to do God's pleasure on this day, not necessarily your own. And what about school events, especially public school events? Well, you see, these are an intrusion into holy time. Time set apart by God in schools which use Sunday for their activities. Be sporting or choral events or school parties. I've heard of all these kinds of situations. Schools are robbing from God just as much as we robbed from the tithe box. Because God. God doesn't define the Sabbath as a day for school events, much less public school events. And one last observation to keep in mind. I've taken a long time here, but I know the questions that are in your mind. I've tried to cover a lot of the territory. One last observation. And that's that. Let's remember that schedules. In this world, schedules are a lot more flexible than we sometimes pretend to ourselves. I say this to me, too. Someone says, well, we made plans to do such and such, and so we can't come to supper and sing. Well, you see, that's not really a sufficient excuse for missing the opportunity to use God's day and God's way for his worship. If, as is almost always the case, those plans could have been dropped or rearranged. There's nothing to keep us from calling our friends or relatives and explaining that we, we must reschedule a party so as not to interfere with our first love, the worship and fellowship of God's people. You do that? I do that. You do that all the time when it comes to things you really want to do. You know how flexible schedules can be? You don't hesitate to call people up and replan something when something else arises. But if it comes to church, oh, boy. Well, we made plans in advance, so we just. We have to miss. No, that isn't true. You made plans in advance, and you can change the plans if your priorities were different. Okay, so, I don't know. Maybe I need to go out to the car and sit and avoid you. But I have to say those things to you because God says, spare not. Raise up your voice. Isaiah, tell my people that their worship is hypocritical until they begin to look at the Sabbath as my day and not theirs. Don't let them say, we've put in our time time. Now the rest of the day is ours. It isn't. It's God's and to be used for God's special purposes. I want to suggest in closing that the use of God's special time is indicative of the godliness of our attitude toward time in general. You see, if we're bad Sabbath keepers, we shouldn't expect well. But in general, we've got a real good attitude toward time Everywhere else. We use our time in a very godly way. See, there was a time when God told Adam and Eve, here are all these trees. They're yours. Do with them as you wish. But there's one tree here, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's going to be a sign to me of whether you obey me or not. Do you think that Adam and Eve could say, well, about that one tree we're pretty sloppy, but about all the other trees, we're really, really righteous. God, it doesn't work that way. God has set apart one day a week. He says, that's my special day. Will you remember it? Will you hallow it? Will you make it special and consecrate it to me? Don't suggest that. You could pray to God and say, God, I know that I really don't care much about that one special day. But you can be sure God, I'm real righteous about the rest of the use of time. No, I'm afraid the one is probably indicative of the many. Let's pray.