Excellent Article On the Sabbath Day By Sinclair Ferguson

[Backwoods Presbyterian]

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

 

[Scott1]

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]

Q. 121. Why is the word Remember set in the beginning of the fourth commandment?

A. The word Remember is set in the beginning of the fourth commandment,[637] partly, because of the great benefit of remembering it, we being thereby helped in our preparation to keep it,[638] and, in keeping it, better to keep all the rest of the commandments,[639] and to continue a thankful remembrance of the two great benefits of creation and redemption, which contain a short abridgment of religion;[640] and partly, because we are very ready to forget it,[641] for that there is less light of nature for it,[642] and yet it restraineth our natural liberty in things at other times lawful;[643] 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 to sanctify it;[644] and that Satan with his instruments labours much to blot out the glory, and even the memory of it, to bring in all irreligion and impiety.[645]

 

[JonathanHunt]

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?

 

[Peairtach]

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.

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