Reformed Church, Bellville: Sunday 1 December 2002, Morning Service

Our help is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
Amen

Psalm of praise: 116:1+4
Creed
Psalm 95:6
The Law
Psalm: 25:9
Prayer
Hymn 26:1+6

Scripture reading Hebrews 4

Text: Heidelberg Catechism: Sunday 38

Hebrews 4:9 "There remains, then, a Sabbath - rest for the people of God;"

We all know that we do not live for this earth alone. We live so that we may someday in the Hereafter on the New Earth live before the throne of God.

This complicates our life, for we generally see it as two worlds and two eras and two different lives.

Yet all these matters, namely that what we now are and that what we will be in the Hereafter, form a unit.
We cannot be children of God there unless we already are His children here.
We cannot here live in disobedience to God and think that someday in Heaven we will obey God.
Therefore we cannot in this life disobey God's command to rest on the Sabbath and then hope to enter the eternal Sabbath-rest with God.

The Lord created Heaven and Earth in six days. On the seventh day He rested. He did not rest because He was tired. He rejoiced in His work. As from that day God commanded that it should be kept as a day of rest.

This command was issued by God for more than one reason.

Certainly the one was that there would be one day for His people to rest physically. On that day they must not do any physical work.
A further reason is that there would be a fixed time for God's people to worship Him.
With it this day has the symbolical (Prophetic?) meaning that it proclaims that a time will arrive when we shall rest from all the work and strife of this life.

The meaning of that time is that it will be time when we shall continuously laud and praise the Lord.
It points to the situation in which we shall be with God in the hereafter.

Let us consider the life of believers in general:

There is always something about which we agonize.
For many it is difficult to be able to or to be permitted to earn our daily bread.
Our daily task exhausts us both physically and mentally and sometimes puts our faith under stress.

Out of love and concern about this the Lord in His wisdom decreed this day of rest, in that we may rest from our daily task and instead thereof practise our faith and worship.

We must therefore realize that this particular day is a day which carries with it particular responsibilities.

We must in obedience to Him use this rest that God gives us.
Obedience to God means that we shall use this day according to the rules as laid down by God.

There are people who, with the required excuses, use the day wrongly.

On this day they especially want to work because the company pays overtime.
Or they want to catch up with all the chores at home which have accummulated over time.
There are those who use it for pleasure.

The weekend must be spent camping or on the beach or caravanning etc.
With it the common worship with the congregation is discarded!

The excuses made by these belivers usually are based on human considerations and feelings (I feel that ...) but they are not excuses that will satisfy God's yardstick.

Those of us who commit this kind of sin must consider whether such a way of keeping the Sabbath shows that we are grateful to the Almighty God who blesses us with life and all that we have!

Then there are those among us who have taken the great decision that one service of worship is enough on a Sunday. What are you going to do when the eternal Sabbath comes and God sends you away to work or to holiday or to "rest" outside His kingdom because He has had enough of you and He wants to do His own thing?

There is a difference between the Sabbath and our Sunday.

Our Sunday is a weekday.
It is a day of rest and of worship.

The Sabbath is more than just a day of the week.

It carries the prophecy of life eternal and what it will be like.

Our Sunday therefore has many similarities with the Sabbath but is not the same.

Seek the Lord while He is still to be found - so it is written. This also applies to the Sabbath. Therefore we must do these things that make Sunday a Sabbath:

We must seek God in our worship and in our rest while He still gives us the opportunity in our time on earth.
The sorrow is that a day may come when it will be too late for us to do our duty!

Our lives must now already show the characteristics of the eternal Sabbath. Let us see what it will be like:

There we will not sin. Romans 6:11 makes it clear that our bodies will be dead to sin but alive to Christ Jesus.
The next verse explains that here sin seduces us with all sorts of desires. In the Hereafter there will not be any sinful desires which will or can seduce us.
Subsequently Romans 6 teaches us that we are instruments of sin as long as we are on earth. In the Hereafter we shall be exclusively instruments in the service and for the glory of God. Romans 6:14 gives a powerful and concise summary of the kind of life during the eternal Sabbath:

"For sin shall not be your master"

The Lord reveals that in this life we have all sinned and that we lack the glory of God.

It is a restless life.
Restless in the sense that we do not cease to sin and do evil.
Therefore we often fall through fear and stress.
Stress is also created by sin because stress comes from the things we (or someone else) did wrong.
Fear comes when sins (our own or those of others) revenge themselves on us.
With it the true believer also experiences stress about the judgment of the Lord over our sins which increase daily!

The Sabbath rest means that someday I shall rest of all my sins and evil deeds - in other words, that I shall discard them.

This means a complete change of place, because then we enter the holiness of God.
Therefore our manner of keeping the Sabbath must reflect this eternal rest with God.
If our joy in the Sabbath-rest now is already so great, how much greater hereafter, for in this life we see only the faintest glimmer of the glory of the hereafter.

To let the Holy Spirit work in us does not mean that we must now sit passively and wait for the Lord to work a miracle in us.

In fact we must be actively involved with the Lord - we must worship.
It also means that we must nurture and enliven the Church in which the Lord has placed us.

Therefore the first part of the Sabbath is that we must on this day study the Word of God.

We must learn the vocabulary of the Holy Spirit - then we can together with the congregation listen to a sermon and know what is happening because we understand what is being said and sung and done!
Then we shall understand the message and participate joyfully in the fellowship with God.

These matters are important because the Spirit and the Word create new life in us who listen and believe.

We have the guarantee that we shall enter this Sabbath rest through the cross of the Lord Jesus. He said that He was leaving to prepare for us that place where we shall spend this eternal time of rest.

A life of repentence shall come when we understand this great gift of grace.

Then we shall spontaneously on Sunday start to practise the principles of the eternal Sabbath.
Then we shall spontaneously love the eternal Triune God and worship and serve Him unreservedly - our whole life but especially on the Sabbath.

Let us read Heidelberg Catechism Sunday 38 together.

Amen

Closing prayer

Closing Psalm: 73:9 & 10

Hymn

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Amen

Ds MJ du Plessis
Reformed Church Bellville
1 December 2002
Scripture quoted from NIV