# Excellent Article On the Sabbath Day By Sinclair Ferguson



## Backwoods Presbyterian (Jun 29, 2013)

Absolutely perfect defense of the 4th Commandment from Sinclair Ferguson...

A snippet...



> This view of the Sabbath helps us deal with the question “Is it ok to do … on Sunday? — because I don’t have any time to do it in the rest of the week?”
> 
> If this is our question, the problem is not how we use Sunday, it is how we are misusing the rest of the week.




Sabbath Rest by Sinclair Ferguson | Reformed Theology Articles at Ligonier.org


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## Scott1 (Jun 29, 2013)

Good article, good to see an ARP brother doing it, and being published by Ligonier as well.

The only other aspect I would touch on is that, as the Westminster Standards so aptly summarize, is that keeping the fourth commandment helps us keep all the others.

It checks our patterns of idolatry, tempers our behaviors by discipline and sins borne of impulse and exhaustion.

It is a ceasing from the ordinary work and play of the rest of the week in order to,
do something that foretastes of the coming glories of Heaven. It is something we have to strive for, now.

While the tone of the article is quite gentle and positive, it's time for God's people to quite fooling with rationalizing disobedience to this command and try, by God's grace to frame their lives by it.



> Q. 120. What are the reasons annexed to the fourth commandment, the more to enforce it?
> 
> A. The reasons annexed to the fourth commandment, the more to enforce it, are taken from the equity of it, God allowing us six days of seven for our own affairs, and reserving but one for himself in these words, Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:[634] from God’s challenging a special propriety in that day, The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God:[635] from the example of God, who in six days made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: and from that blessing which God put upon that day, not only in sanctifying it to be a day for his service, but in ordaining it to be a means of blessing to us in our sanctifying it; Wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.[636]
> 
> ...


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## JonathanHunt (Jun 29, 2013)

> But Adam fell. He ruined everything, including the Sabbath. Instead of walking with God, he hid from God (Gen. 3:8). It was the Sabbath, Father’s Day, but God had to look for him!



What have I missed here? Where is the evidence that Adam fell on the Sabbath? Or am I mis-reading this?


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## Peairtach (Jun 29, 2013)

The reference to Joshua by the Apostle is most appropriate because in one sense they had rest - they had entered the Land - but in another sense they didn't have rest - they were at war.

The same is true for us : in one sense we have rest in Christ and we have "entered the Land", this world being our inhertance, to be conquered by mission. At the same time we're at war, so we still need the weekly Christian Sabbath.

The reference to David is also apposite as we are told that David had given them rest from their enemies. Yet they still needed the weekly Sabbath. Why? Because although they had a relative rest, as we might sometimes have, they had not yet entered the full Heavenly Eschatalogical Rest.

Psalm 95 was peculiarly a "Sabbath Psalm" to the Jews, thus "Today!" was a Sabbath Day.

See "The Commentary on the NT Use of the OT" (Carson) on this passage, from which I got a lot of help.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2


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