Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on February 22, 2026.
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Audio Transcript
I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 13. Or if you want to follow along in the pew Bible, it’s page 926. Going to page 927. Looking at the purpose of Sabbath today. Beginning In Luke chapter 13, I’ll begin reading in verse 10.
As he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, a woman was there who had been disabled by a spirit for over 18 years. She was bent over, and this means completely bent over, and could not straighten up at all. In order to talk to anybody, she’d be continually turning her head, trying to look up. When Jesus saw her, he called out to her, woman, you are free of your disability. Then he laid his hands on her, and instantly she was restored and began to glorify God.
But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, responded by telling the crowd, there are six days when we should work. Work should be done. Therefore come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, hypocrites, doesn’t each one of you untie his own ox or donkey from the feeding trough on the Sabbath and lead it to water? Satan has bound this woman, a daughter of Abraham, for 18 years.
Shouldn’t she be untied from this bondage on the Sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were humiliated. But the whole crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things he was doing. Then we go to chapter 14. We read of another Sabbath healing.
One Sabbath, when he went in to eat at the house of the leading Pharisees, they were watching him closely. They were trying to find some fault in him. It was as if it was a setup that there in front of him was a man whose body was swollen with fluid.
In response, Jesus asked the law experts and the Pharisees, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they kept silent. He took the man, healed him and sent him away. And to them he said, which of you whose son or ox falls into a well will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? And they could find no answer to these things.
May we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that you give us understanding of it, show us how to apply it to our life, that we might live more like your son and bring others to faith by the way that we live in Jesus name. Amen.
We find here that Jesus healed on the Sabbath. And the Pharisees accused Jesus of working on the Sabbath. Because to them, healing was considered work by them. And Jesus pointed out that the rules of the Pharisees were actually kinder to their animals than they were to people. Just so you have a little bit more understanding, I’ll just give some research from Ken Crockett.
Ken tells us that the law had 613 commands. That’s what God had given to them in the Old Testament. But the Pharisees, in addition to those 613 commands, had created over 1,500 additional laws. There were more laws coming from people than there were laws coming from the Lord. Now, in Exodus 20:10, it says not to work on the Sabbath day.
But The Pharisees created 39 types of extra laws to prohibit the work. And we’re not talking about just 39 different laws. They had 39 different categories of things not to do on the Sabbath. Here are some examples. You could not spit on the Sabbath because it would disturb the dirt and you would be guilty of plowing.
You could not swat a fly on the Sabbath because you would be guilty of hunting.
And a woman could not look at her reflection in the mirror because she might see a gray hair and do what? Pluck it out. And she would be doing work.
39 categories of rules to follow on the Sabbath. Now, they did come up with some exceptions in case there were problems, because they had to make exceptions to the laws that they created that were not really needed. One of those was, if your house was burning down on a Sabbath, you could not carry clothes out of it. However, you were allowed to stop and put on several layers of clothes as your house is burning down, because it was okay to leave wearing clothes as long as you weren’t carrying the clothes.
Jesus is not against the law, but he was against all these burdensome rules that the Pharisees had created. In Mark, chapter two, there was another incident where Jesus was confronted about this. His disciples were walking along the road, and they were hung. So they pulled some grain off the field and they ate it. They confronted him and said, your disciples are working on the Sabbath.
They’re harvesting grain. Jesus responded to them, and he said, don’t you remember in the Old Testament that David and his men were hungry and they went to the tabernacle. And when they were there, they said, please, do you have any food for us? And the priest said, the only thing that I have is the bread that is consecrated and set before the Lord in the tabernacle. And the priest gave that to David.
It was the sacred food that no one but the priests were supposed to eat. But the law is supposed to be about people. The Sabbath is supposed to be about people. It’s not the other way around. Jesus told them that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
And he declared that because he is the Son of Man and he is the Lord, even of the Sabbath, it’s up to him to decide what is okay. So I think we all get the point that the Pharisees did not get. What Jesus did in healing the woman was the best thing to do. And the rules that the Pharisees had regarding the Sabbath, they had become more important than the Sabbath itself. So what does Sabbath mean to us?
Are we supposed to celebrate the Sabbath like the Jews did? And if yes, then how are we supposed to celebrate it? Let’s go back to Genesis chapter two, where we read this. So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed on the seventh day. God had completed his work that he had done.
And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day. He declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation. Here in the first chapters of Genesis, God is establishing a six days of work and a one day of rest or a one day of Sabbath. And as far as I know, we all still follow that today.
Does anybody have a calendar other than seven days? It’s been going on since the very beginning. In that Old Testament passage, we see that by example and by declaration, God made the seventh day a day of rest. We read here that God blessed it, meaning he welcomed. He looked forward to this seventh day of rest.
And God declared that the seventh day was to be holy. And when something was holy, it was withdrawn from ordinary activity and it was dedicated for some special purpose. So the seventh day of rest started in the first week of creation. The seven day pattern of six days to work and one day to rest predates Judaism and the law of Moses. God established that pattern from the beginning.
It’s for all of the world. It’s for all people. And since God set aside a day to rest from all his work, if God decided it was important for him to rest, how much more? Do what we need to rest. And Adam and Eve, who were created perfect, they still needed a day of rest.
But how much more do we imperfect beings today need a day of rest? If a day set aside for rest was good, we should realize that it’s a good thing for us to do today. Just as God created everything by His Word, he also, by His Word, created And he established the seventh day of rest by his word. Let’s go on to Exodus chapter 20. Now, in the Old Testament, where we see it coming up in the Law, we read in verse 8, remember the Sabbath day.
To keep it holy, you are to labor six days and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work. You, your sons or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything in them in six days.
He was able to get everything done in six days. So he could take a day of rest. We are supposed to live likewise. And then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
Moses gave this law from the Lord, but it wasn’t a new law. He’s saying it’s been here all along. Now, most rabbis, they did permit physicians to heal on the Sabbath, but it was just for a life threatening illness or disability. Jesus was not challenging the law about work, but what he was challenging is how the religious leaders were interpreting the law and how they were applying it. What did the Law command?
What did a Sabbath day of rest look like? Let’s go to Leviticus, chapter 23, verse 3. Again, we have it reiterated here in a shorter version. Work may be done for six days, but on the seventh day there is to be a Sabbath of complete rest. And it adds here a sacred assembly.
You are not to do any work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord wherever you live. So according to the Law, people were not just to rest on the seventh day, but they were also to gather for a. What does it say there? A sacred assembly.
One that was set aside with purpose to worship God, to spend time in fellowship, to encourage one another. What we now do on Sunday in Exodus 35:3, it says, do not light a fire in any of your homes on the Sabbath day. You would light a fire to cook a meal. So that means that they had to eat leftovers, okay? So Sunday’s a good day to do that for us.
What it’s saying is here, even whether it’s mom or dad that cooks, everybody needs a day of rest on Sunday. Even the preparation of meals, if it was work, was to stop. So we have to ask the question, what does rest mean? What constitutes these ordinary activities that we’re supposed to not be doing? And what is the special purpose that we see in the Old Testament?
We see that we’re to completely stop from our normal six days of work. Just as God continued to maintain everything. What was the work that he did that week? He stopped from. We have to ascertain what is our regular work that we’re doing that we need to stop from.
And we’re supposed to spend time in rest, physical rest, mental rest, emotional rest, but most importantly, spiritual rest. Recognizing that we have rest in the Lord God Almighty. And we’ll talk more about that later, how Jesus does that for us. And the third thing is that they met for a sacred assembly. They didn’t just go off by themselves and have a day of rest.
God said, it’s important that you come together in this time of rest. That’s the Old Testament. Let’s see what the New Testament has to say. What do we learn? There we go again to Mark chapter two, where Jesus told them the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
In other words, the Sabbath is not a day of religious rituals to burden people. That’s what the Pharisees were putting on them. It was no longer a day of rest because they were having to think of all these rules, I can’t do this and I can’t do that. And it became a burden. My house is on fire.
I can’t remember, am I supposed to grab my kids or put my clothes on first before I go out? It was not a day of rest. Instead, Jesus taught them that the Sabbath is a day of rest that’s supposed to be of benefit to people, not a burden to them. It’s a Sabbath for Christians. We know that the seventh day was set aside for the Jews, but what does it mean for the Gentiles that are coming to faith?
In Acts chapter 15, we have a discussion that is related to this because there were people in anti Antioch that were Jewish believers. And as Gentiles were coming to faith, they were telling the men, you have to go and get circumcised today if you’re going to be a follower of Christ. Do you think they accepted that easily? They were also telling them, you have to follow all the rules that the Jews were given in the Old Testament. So they sent a delegation to Jerusalem and all the apostles and all the the elders in the church there met together to discuss, are we going to place all of these rules upon the Gentile believers?
And the conclusion of that we read Here in verse 19 and 20 does not include that they have to celebrate the Sabbath, and it does not include that they have to be circumcised. But they did tell them some Specific things they needed to continue to do. The speaker said, therefore, in my judgment, speaking for all of them there, that we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God. We’re not going to place difficulties upon them like the Pharisees placed on us, but instead we should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, abstain from sexual immorality, abstain from eating anything that has been strangled, and to abstain from eating blood. If they needed to keep the Sabbath on the Sabbath, which would be our Saturday, this would have been the place for them to tell the Gentiles that they needed to do that.
Let’s go to Colossians, chapter 2, verse 16 and 17. Again, we had the mention of a Sabbath day. Here it says, therefore don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink, or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. These are shadows of what was to come. And the substance is in Christ.
Again, at the end of the message, we will talk about how Christ is pictured by the Sabbath. People were having disputes in the church. Some were saying, well, it’s okay to eat that, but it’s not okay to eat that. It’s okay to drink this, it’s not okay to drink that. I want to celebrate this holiday.
And you think you should celebrate that holiday. And there were new moon celebrations. All of this was going back to the law that people that were Jews that now accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. A lot of them were still celebrating these practices. It was part of their tradition, it was part of their law, and it was fine for them to do that.
But some of them were arguing with other people in the church, the Gentiles, and saying, you have to celebrate these same things and you can’t eat the certain foods that you eat. And there were arguments in the church, and it was all based not on what the Bible said everybody had to do. It wasn’t based on what Jesus Jesus told them to do. It was a matter of opinion. And what Paul is saying, don’t judge one another about these things that are just opinions in the church.
And one of those things was about, when is the Sabbath day? Do we worship on Saturdays? Do we worship on Sundays? Do we set Saturday apart or Sunday apart for a day of rest? He said, don’t argue about these things.
Don’t judge one another. And then he tells us, these are a shadow of what was to come. The substance is Christ. The picture that the Sabbath made is now going to be fulfilled in Christ. And that’s what we need to focus on.
Let’s go to Romans. We read a similar passage here. We welcome, welcome anyone who is weak in faith. But don’t argue about disputed matters. Now, we’re not talking about matters like Jesus Christ died on the cross.
He was buried, and he rose from the dead. That is the gospel that is proclaimed to us so that we can have faith in him for salvation. That is not a matter to dispute. We’re talking about these other things that are based on people’s opinions and what they think. He said, one person judges one day to be more important than another day.
Here we’re back to, well, Saturday is more important or Sunday is more important. Someone else judges every day to be the same. Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. In other words, you need to decide for yourself and be fully convinced. What day does God want me to set aside for rest?
And how am I to celebrate that and be obedient to him? Because verse six says, whoever observes the day, they observe it for the honor of the Lord. Unlike the Pharisees who were honoring the day itself. What’s most important is that we honor the Lord in the day that is our day of rest or Sabbath. Verse 7 says, for none of us lives for himself, no one dies for himself.
If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, we live or die, we belong to the Lord. It doesn’t say, if we live, we live for the Sabbath, and if we die, we die for the Sabbath. What’s most important here is the Lord. More important than the day is the Lord.
And arguing about such things as which day is correct is futile and unproductive. It’s an argument about opinions, not about certain truth. Romans 14:10 says, but you, why do you judge your brothers or sisters? Or you, why do you despise your brothers or sisters? They were judging each other.
They were saying, you’re wrong and I’m right and you’re less important, I’m more important. Whatever they were doing, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. Meaning we don’t need to judge one another, because ultimately we are going to be judged for God, by God. For it is written as I live, says the Lord. Every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will give praise to God.
So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. The point is here, however. God is asking you to spend a day of rest. And whenever he is asking you to do that, and what you do on that day. It’s between you and the Lord and Scripture, and you’re going to stand before God someday.
And if Scripture is telling you you need to spend a day of rest, you need to spend part of that day in sacred assembly, then, then God is going to hold you accountable for that one day. Acts 2:46, 47. When do we see the early Christians meeting? Well, early on it says that every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple. They broke bread from house to house.
That reference to the breaking of bread refers back to the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus broke the bread. But they not only had the Lord’s Supper, but they had a potluck supper. They ate their food with joy and sincere hearts. And during this time they were meeting together, they were celebrating the Lord’s Supper. They were having fellowship together, and they were all doing this as they praised God together.
And Scripture tells us, as all of them were doing this, that they were enjoying the favor of all the people. And every single day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. Meeting together, having the Lord’s Supper, enjoying fellowship, doing that on a daily basis, led to the church not growing week by week, but every single day. Acts chapter 20. Later on in the timeline, we see again it says, on the first day of the week, which would be our Sunday, we assembled to break bread.
Again, they’re celebrating the Lord’s Supper. And Paul spoke to them. There was a message. Since he was about to depart the next day, he kept on talking until midnight. We start to see the elements of what we do in worship.
We gather together on the first day, we have the Lord’s Supper, and we listen to God’s word being proclaimed. Not only find this in Acts, but we find it in Corinth, where it says, on the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he is prospering, so that no collection will need to be made when I come. On the first day of the week, they had the Lord’s Supper. They fellowshipped, they had a message, they had Scripture, and now it tells us they’re doing what they are giving their offerings to the Lord. If there was a day that Christians met regularly, it was the first day of the week, which is our Sunday.
It wasn’t the Sabbath day, which would be Saturday. And they did this out of honor of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which occurred on Sunday, the first day a week. The early Christians observed Sunday not as a Christian Sabbath, but as a day for Worship, especially to Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 10, 24 and 25. The question I ask, is it okay to rest one day and not meet together? I have people say, well, I go fishing on Sundays. That’s how I worship the Lord. Or I like to just go and sit in the woods and I like to be alone.
That is my way of worshiping. And what you need to see here in Hebrews, that is not what you’re supposed to be doing on the day of rest. The writer says, let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works. Not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other. And all the more as you see the day approaching.
We meet together to provoke one another to love and good works, to encourage, to exhort. Sometimes it means that you have to confront somebody. The word there, provoke, means to kick them in the pants. Okay, you need to be doing this or not doing that. But it also says, don’t neglect this gathering together.
And even in this day, it says that some were in the habit of neglecting the day, but instead we’re supposed to encourage one another to do it. Not less, but what does it say more and more and more as you see the day approaching the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? If anything, we need to meet more often than less often.
What were some key elements of early worship? We go to 155 A.D. justin Martyr wrote about a worship service that tells us a lot about what they were doing in the early church. And as we read through it, you should see that we attempt to do the same things in our worship services today.
Justin says Christians met on Sunday to commemorate the resurrection of Christ and the first day of creation. Memoirs of the apostles or writings of the prophets were read. The memoirs would be our New Testament, and what the prophets were would be our Old Testament. They did this as long as time permits. Reading scripture publicly was not just a random short thing.
They read it for a long time. And so it is in our services we take time to read scripture. And then he tells us that the president, the one presiding, who would have been the bishop or the elder, gave instruction, and he exhorted the people to follow these teachings. So there was an expounding upon the scripture that was read. There were prayers offered by the entire congregation together.
Then it tells us that bread, water and wine were brought forward, and the leader offered prayers and thanksgiving. And the people assented with the amen. They partook in the Lord’s Supper. The elements were distributed to all that were present in the meeting. But if somebody was absent, the deacons took the elements to those that were absent because it was important to participate in the Lord’s Supper communally, together.
Having the Lord’s Supper by yourself alone in the woods is not what scripture says. We’re to do that collectively as the body of Christ. And a voluntary collection was taken for widows and orphans, the sick, the prisoners and the strangers.
So how do we summarize all this together? I’ve got seven things here. First, one is God by example and declaration before the law established a seven day week that included one day of rest. The seventh day is a day to withdraw from ordinary activity, not from all activity, but ordinary work week activity, and instead to dedicate it for a special purpose. And that is to meet together for worship.
Seek the Lord about what a seventh day rest looks like for you. It’s up to your responsibility to read God’s word, see what the example is and say, God, how do you want me to set aside the seventh day of rest? What is okay for me to do? That brings about the, the refreshment and recognition of you. Then number four, once you ask God what you should be doing, you should practice a seventh day rest the way that God requires of you, not the way that somebody else tries to impose on you.
But also don’t judge others about what God requires of them. Because some people are going to feel like, well, I can do this on Sunday, you shouldn’t do it. Well, it’s up to us all to decide how God is leading us. Number six. Do not be bothered by others who judge what God requires of you.
Someone says, you did that on Sunday, you shouldn’t be doing that. Say, you know, I’m going to stand before God someday. I’m not going to be bothered by what you say. But ultimately you still need to keep in mind that you will give an account to God for what you do each and every Sabbath day of rest that you take. The Sabbath day is about healing, it’s about rest, it’s about family, it’s about fellowship, it’s about strong encouragement, it’s about worship.
Should Saturday be the day we worship? Well, just some thoughts on that. Jesus doesn’t command anywhere that his followers have to worship on Saturday. And the apostles and the elders of the early church, they did not command that believers have to worship on Saturday. And you know, we don’t actually know if our Saturday is truly the seventh day of a sequence of seven days that go back to Eden.
In other words, you can’t count backwards and Know that our Sunday is still actually on the first Sunday that Adam and Eve experience. The Sadducees actually changed their Jewish calendar to appease the Romans and they switched over to their calendar. It was such a big deal that a whole group of priests, the Essenes, left Jerusalem and they went to Qumran, where they felt like we need to keep the Old Testament calendar because that’s what God required of us. And we’re grateful to those men today because they copied the Scriptures. And if you’ve read about the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have these very old copies that show us that God’s Word has been maintained accurately.
The Jewish government and the religion in the Old Testament, they were united together. They didn’t have a secular government and a religious government. It was one and the same. So when the religious people said that we’re going to take off the seventh day, the government said, you’re going to take off the seventh day. And that was easy for everyone because everybody was following the same rules.
It was impossible for the Gentile Christians to do that in the Roman times because some of them were slaves and they were working for Roman masters that were not believers who said that you have to work seven days a week. And they couldn’t tell those people that were being forced to work that they were being disobedient to the Lord. They needed to take rest when they could. So what I’m trying to get at is Saturday doesn’t have to be the day that we spend our Sabbath rest. What are some things that we can do on a Sabbath day of rest?
Following Jesus example, we can bring about healing in others. Spiritual, mental, emotional and physical healing for people, doing things for others to help them. Activity or non activity that promotes rest and refreshment. You might take an extra nap. You might have devotional books that you read.
You might listen to podcasts. There are things that you can do on Sunday that are activities that promote rest and refreshment. But we’re not supposed to do the normal, everyday things that tire us. We can meet with family and other believers for worship, for fellowship, encouragement, meet to partake of the Lord’s Supper, for prayer, for giving of tithes and offerings, and scripture readings. We find all of this in the early church according to what the apostles were doing that have been with Jesus Christ.
The last thing we talk about today is that the Sabbath, like all of the law, is a picture of Jesus Christ. The Sabbath, as with all of the law, whether it was difficult or easy to understand, or difficult or easy to follow, it was supposed to create this anticipation of the coming Messiah and what he would do for us. In Hebrews 10, we read, Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time. Everybody else took a Sabbath rest, but the priests did not. In the Old Testament, every day they were offering sacrifices and they did this.
But the writer of Hebrews says, but this can never take away sins. But this man, after offering one sacrifice, not many for sins forever, on one day he sat down at the right hand of God. The various elements of the Sabbath symbolized Jesus Christ. They pointed to the coming of a day when there would be rest from trials and labors of this world. When the Messiah came, he was going to change everything.
And we’re not just talking about physical labors and physical trials here. His coming was going to take care of the sin problem that we have. We weren’t going to have to work for our salvation. We weren’t going to have to offer sacrifices to be saved, because Jesus Christ did that for us once and for all. Jesus will provide a permanent rest for his people.
The law had the Jews continuously laboring to make themselves acceptable to God. And what the law was pointing out, you’re required to do all this. And they’re saying, but we can’t.
And then God said, well, that’s the point. You can’t follow all these laws. You can’t make enough sacrifices, you can’t give enough tithes and offerings. You can’t pray enough to receive the rest that I want to give you. Rules and sacrifices that they could never perfectly followed one day were followed by Jesus Christ.
He became the needed Savior. He perfectly followed the law. He died as the perfect sacrifice to make people acceptable to God so that we can finally say, yes, I’m a believer. I can rest now in what Christ has done for me. Therefore we no longer have to keep the rules and offer sacrifices as a means of being right with God.
2nd Corinthians 5:21 says, he made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him, not in our works, but in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We go now to Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 9 through 11. It says, Therefore a Sabbath rest remains not for everyone, but for God’s people, for the person who has entered his rest, the rest that God provides, not of our own works. The person who has entered his rest now has rested from his own works. People think that they can obtain salvation by doing things. But when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, we set Aside those works, just as God did from his, he ceased his labor.
So when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, we also no longer have to work for our salvation. The exhortation here is, then let us then make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience. What does it mean to make every effort to enter that rest? The only effort required of you is to place your faith in Jesus Christ and to say, God, I’m trusting that what you did for me by Jesus, death, burial and resurrection is all I need. I don’t have to work for my salvation anymore.
And when you express that to the Lord, then you become a believer. When we rest from working for our salvation, we place faith in Jesus Christ for the perfect work that he has done for us. But on the other hand, to reject what Christ has done for us, to not enter into the rest that he provides by continuing to try to work for your own salvation by following rules and sacrifices, that is an insult or an affront to God Almighty to refuse the gift of rest that he offers to us. And that is why the punishment for not keeping the Sabbath in the Old Testament was also a picture of what Jesus Christ would do for us. According to the Old Testament law, if you didn’t celebrate the Sabbath and set aside that day for rest, you had to go in the timeout.
Is that what it says? You know what it says the punishment was. It was punishment by death. In Numbers 15, there was a man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. In spite of God’s plain commandment to cease from all labor on the Sabbath, he openly defied God.
And everyone thought, oh well, God wasn’t really serious about his law. Well, no, that’s not what happened. The Lord said to Moses, this man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp. So it will be to all who reject God’s provision for our Sabbath rest in Christ.
Now, if somebody didn’t come to church today, we’re not going to go pull them out of their home and stone them. That’s not what we’re talking about today. But we are talking about something far more serious. And that is that just as that man, for not following the Sabbath in the Old Testament, died in his sin, so those that don’t follow the way to rest today by placing their faith in Jesus Christ are going to be damned to hell eternally. So it will be to all who reject God’s provision for our Sabbath rest in Christ.
That’s why we say, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation. Make every effort to enter the rest so that you don’t follow into the same pattern of disobedience. In conclusion, today, are you spending your Sabbath day, whether it’s on Saturday or Sunday or some other day, the way that God wants you to do? Are you setting aside one day for rest and reflection and also for worship with other believers? And the other question is, if you haven’t experienced the rest of God, if you’re still trying to work your salvation out, thinking that if you do enough things or say enough prayers or give enough money, that you’re going to go to heaven and have a right relationship with the Lord, you need to set that aside and say that Christ has done all this for me by his death, burial and resurrection, so I can have rest.
I’m not going to affront God anymore by trying to do it myself. During the song here at the end, we’re going to have some prayer team members at the back. If you want to talk to somebody about how to know that you have true rest in Jesus Christ, or if you just need to pray with someone about something, just make your way out as we’re singing, and they will meet you at the back. So would you please stand with me now as I lead us in prayer? And our worship team members will be making it to the front.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the rest that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the tremendous price that he paid, that he came and he lived among us. He experienced life as we do, and he gave his life in an excruciating way on the cross, taking all of our sin and guilt and shame upon Himself that He might pay the penalty for those things so that we could be set free and truly rest in a right relationship with you. May we end this day, Father, asking you how we need to respond. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.