WELCOME
Good morning First Baptist. We welcome you to worship this morning. Be sure to remember your brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the week as you pray for them, and as the Holy Spirit brings their faces to your mind. Be sure to also connect with them in the ways that are possible. And if you have any questions or would like to talk to someone, please don’t hesitate to contact the church through the church telephone and leave a message. (519-733-4144)
Songs
Call to Worship
Come, let us sing to Yahweh. Let us sing praises to your name, O Most High to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night. For you, O God, have made us glad by your work. At the works of your hands we sing for joy.
Songs
Prayer
Confession:
Gracious and loving God, open our hearts so that we are able to admit to you the fullness of our lives – that which is beautiful and good, and that which is hurtful and hateful. We confess that we do not follow Jesus in all that we do. We love with condition. We judge and condemn. We cast the first stone and keep the logs in our own eyes. We do not turn to You as the source of our healing.
Forgive us, we pray. Forgive our sin and empower us to be imitators of Christ in love and service. Amen.
Assurance of Forgiveness:
Friends in Christ, know this: the mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting, and I remind you of this surpassing grace – in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Alleluia! Amen.
Summer in the Psalms
Sabbath, Made for Us!
Today's Message: Pastor Dave Page
You will notice that Psalm 92 is specifically titled “For the Sabbath.” For the ancient people of Israel, the Sabbath was a central practice of their faith. We read that in the Old Testament, God commanded his people to keep the Sabbath day holy. When the prophets warned Israel about their sins, the mistreatment of the Sabbath was listed as a specific problem. Now you would think that if the Sabbath was in fact that central, there would be many other Psalms dedicated to it; yet, what we find is that Psalm 92 is the only Psalm written that refers to the Sabbath. The other fact to note here is that in spite of the reference in the title, there is no other direct reference to the Sabbath in the words of the Psalm unless, the entirety of this Psalm is in fact a reflection of what the Sabbath should mean to us.
In many Christian circles and for many many years, there is and has been ongoing debate about the right way to observe the Sabbath. Even today, some see it as an add-on of the Jewish Sabbath and make decisions to end all work, except in essential areas – the Puritan view. Still others consider the Sabbath as a day for Christian worship but do not prohibit other positive activities.
Whatever the correct answer to this continuous debate is, there should be little disagreement among Christians that the Sabbath is at least a day to worship God. The Psalm we are to study this morning tells us something that it is certainly good to do – to “praise the Lord” and to do so throughout the day from morning until night. So, I would ask as we start: How do you approach the Sabbath?
How do you approach the Sabbath?
Do you even consider the idea of Sabbath as something to approach? Do you think of it as a day in which you have to go to church, a duty to be undertaken as soon as possible so you can spend the rest of the time with your family or get on to other things? Or do you think of it as a priceless gift of a day, given to you by God, where you can learn about him and then praise him? Is Sunday a delight or a duty? What might the Sabbath have to do with this theme of rest that we have been pursing through our summer trek through the Psalms?
Psalm 92 seems to be the words of the King of Israel:
Scripture Reading: Psalm 92
A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.
1 It is good to praise the Lord
and make music to your name, O Most High,
2 proclaiming your love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre
and the melody of the harp.4 For you make me glad by your deeds, Lord;
I sing for joy at what your hands have done.
5 How great are your works, Lord,
how profound your thoughts!
6 Senseless people do not know,
fools do not understand,
7 that though the wicked spring up like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they will be destroyed forever.8 But you, Lord, are forever exalted.
9 For surely your enemies, Lord,
surely your enemies will perish;
all evildoers will be scattered.
10 You have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox;
fine oils have been poured on me.
11 My eyes have seen the defeat of my adversaries;
my ears have heard the rout of my wicked foes.12 The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
13 planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
15 proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
The blending of oil with the horn of strength and the defeat of enemies most likely means the king is speaking.
Why is it important to see that the King is speaking here? Last week we saw King David, trusted that God would not abandon His king any more than He would turn His back on His creation, His promises, or His chosen people. So, who is this king?
The answer has to be Jesus. Decedent of David and the true King of Israel.
Many Christians, particularly in the western world, believe that Jesus’ coming and the new covenant, did away with the Sabbath because it was a practice stemming from the law of Moses. I would have you think differently. The Sabbath, I believe, is a design of creation itself, with God having practiced this time of rest on the seventh day. Through the words of Jesus, we see this:
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
Mark 2:27
Understand here that the Sabbath was meant for everyone, not just the Jews of ancient Israel. Psalm 92, does not celebrate the Sabbath itself. Rather, this Psalm tells us that from the start of God’s plan for creation, the Sabbath was not the purpose but a vehicle to transport us to the true purpose. A day of rest so that we could worship and fellowship with our God. It was not to be a burden, but a blessing. On the Sabbath we grow in fellowship with one another through the praise and worship of our God. The Sabbath was and should be a weekly reminder that we are called by a faithful God who will keep His promises to His people. Psalm 92 is indeed a Sabbath Psalm in that it encourages us to worship and praise our God.
Questions
So, here are the two questions I would pose to you at the outset of our discussion:
Do you love Sabbath or as some would say the Lord’s Day?
And
Do you view it as indispensable to your life as a Christian?
Here we stand, another summer season is drawing near its end, another school year is upon us, and we’re preparing to settle back into a routine. Here’s the reason we suggest that a Scripture passage like Psalm 92 is exactly what we need as we think about our daily life as disciples of Jesus. In many ways, Psalm 92 tells us about the Lord’s Day, especially what it is and what it’s for. You see as we keep coming back over and over again in these Psalms of Summer messages, there is a real battle for the health of our souls. Here comes Psalm 92, and like a fresh wind helping us to consider or reconsider, or even perhaps for some of us to discover the essential component in struggle for peace and rest in our fight for godliness; a God-ordained ingredient for our living of the Christian life – The Sabbath.
First, verses 1 through 4 – a psalm of delight. Notice even the inscription there at the top of the Psalm before verse 1, “A PSALM. A SONG FOR THE SABBATH.” As I said earlier, It’s the only Psalm in the Psalter that’s given this inscription. Of course all the Psalms are appropriate for the Sabbath and good for the Sabbath but the author here is cluing us in on the fact that it’s a Psalm that is especially appropriate for the Sabbath because it helps us to understand what this day is for. As we look at verses 1 through 4 we see very clearly that the worship and the assembly of God’s people is an absolute delight for this believer, total delight. What is it that fills this person with such total delight? We notice three things in particular.
Psalm 92:1
Notice verse 1 – it is God Himself that moves this believer to real delight; “It is good to sing praise to the LORD.”
“To sing praises to your name, O Most High.” That’s the Hebrew word, “Elyohn” – Most High. It’s a Hebrew title of majesty describing the absolute greatness of God above all in all of His glory. This God, the Psalmist says, this God, the God of our fathers, the Lord of all creation who is both transcendent above and yet immanent and as close to us as a whisper. This God moves the Psalmist to worship and bow down. God Himself moves him to total delight.
God’s Works of Redemption
Psalm 92:2
Notice verse 2. Not only is the Psalmist focused on God Himself, but also God’s redemptive works that move this man to delight. Look at what he says here, “proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night.” The Psalmist uses the language of the old covenant temple sacrifices at the time for the morning and evening sacrifice in the Holy Assembly of God’s people; this person loves to declare God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. His steadfast love – that’s an Old Testament word, a Hebrew word, hesed. It’s one of the greatest Hebrew words in all of Scripture. What does it mean? I love this definition. One scholar says, “Hesed is God’s stubborn determination to be true to His covenant and to be kind to your soul, no matter how long it takes Him, no matter how much it costs Him, and no matter what you deserve.”
Let me say that again, “Hesed, the steadfast love of God, is God’s determined will to be true to His promises, to be kind to your soul, no matter how long it takes Him, no matter how much it costs Him, and no matter what you deserve.” You see, the Psalmist can look back to the promises made to Abraham, to the exodus under Moses, to the times of Joshua and the Judges and King David, and the promise of an eternal King on Israel’s throne, and he is gushing with praise on account of God’s steadfast love when he thinks back on his loving kindness to his people.
You know, if this is the Psalmist’s reaction to God’s emphatic covenant love to His people, how much more should this reaction be true of us? This Church alone can look back on more than 200 years of evidence of God’s unrelenting faithfulness; not to mention the gift of Christ, the eternal Son of God, who in the fullness of time, took on flesh, swallowing up death and hell in His glorious resurrection so that all those who look to Him and are united to Him by faith are forever made clean and adopted into the family of God.
If that isn’t something to praise, I don’t know what is!
That’s exactly what the psalmist here is zeroing in on – the hesed of God. What better day, he says, than this day, on this day of rest and gladness, to sing about the glory and the faithfulness and the steadfast love of our God
A Psalm of Blessing
Not only a psalm of delight, this Psalm is also a psalm of blessing. We see this especially in verses 12 through 15.
Psalm 92:12-15
12 “The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
13 planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
14 They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green.”
It’s a day of delight and but it’s also a day. We so want you to see this – it’s also a day to experience every kind of spiritual blessing. You must understand that the Psalmist is not saying, “Listen guys, we’re going to have a rough time here, but don’t worry, it’s all going to pan out in the end. It’s going to be great then.” He’s saying, “No, no, let me tell you what. In the midst of a world that is flourishing with evil, a hostile anxiety fueled world that fights and is conspiring to make us give up and fail, the person in that kind of world, the person who really flourishes in this life is the person who delights in the Lord.”
There are two things that the psalmist points out to us especially:
The Blessing of Enduring Spiritual Health
He tells of the blessing of enduring spiritual health there in verses 12 to 15.
Psalm 92:14
“They still bear fruit in old age; they stay fresh and green.”
This is the perseverance of the saints. It’s a beautiful Old Testament metaphor for God’s continued blessing as the believer presses on in life, striving in faith through all ages and all stages and circumstances. The Lord is in the business of making His people like this and every Sabbath is another opportunity to look around and to witness and to get a taste of this heavenly power that produces this kind of endurance, even as it’s a foretaste and a picture of eternity. A blessing of enduring spiritual health.
The Source of Spiritual Flourishing
And then also notice, what is the source of the spiritual flourishing that he’s celebrating here. What is this thing, if we can call it that, that the psalmist desires to get out of worship? Is it some sort of emotional pick-me-up to get him through the week? No, not at all. Look there what he says in verse 15,
Psalm 92:15
“To declare that the LORD is upright. He is my rock…”
Don’t miss this. It is God Himself! That’s what he’s looking to get out of his worship! Church, when we come in the gathering of God’s people to worship God on His day, we come to fellowship with Him, we come to praise Him, to sing to Him, to become more like Him. We want to hear from Him. We gather to study His Word to do just that.
What we want out of worship is God, God Himself.
When you find a group of people who are committed to the idea that you experience God depending on the Biblical means of grace – prayer, fellowship, singing the Word, reading the Word, preaching the Word, and that an essential component of a peaceful life is and must be God’s people gathering to worship and experience God on the Lord’s Day – then from that day forward the Sabbath experience becomes a genuine spiritual blessing going on in our lives, even though sometimes our circumstances might be far from ideal. That’s what happened to me in Temple Baptist Church in Downtown Windsor of all places. Me, a farm kid(!), in downtown Windsor. Someone who should have been completely out of my element. Instead, what I found, finally, was the fellowship of God’s people. People who were seeking to get out of worship God, God Himself, God the Savior, experiencing God.
You see, there is real Gospel here in this little subsection of Psalm 92 because the Gospel is not just simply a get-out-of-jail-free card, is it? It’s not simply some kind of fire insurance. In the Gospel you get God Himself. Psalm 92 shows us that here is a day for the glory of God and for the good of each of us, a day where the Lord says to you, “Clear the decks, clear the tables off, put everything else off to the side and you can have Me all to yourself!” It’s a day of incalculable blessing.
Before I encourage you with some application points to consider, we likely need to address the fact that we are, for some of you, perhaps blurring the lines between Saturday and Sunday, between the old covenant Sabbath and the new covenant Sabbath or Lord’s Day. That simply underscores the enormous ramifications that the resurrection of Jesus Christ had and continues to have on the rhythm of life itself. Everything that was a believer’s delight and joy about an old covenant Sabbath Saturday now shifts to Sunday morning. In our ‘This We Believe’ document CBOQ (Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec) puts it just like this,
“We observe the Lord’s Day as the weekly festival of Christ’s resurrection, for the worship of our Lord, and the enjoyment of God’s world.”
You see friends, there is real Gospel here as well. Jesus Christ, who died and was buried but on the first day of the week, was raised for our justification. Romans 4 verse 25, and Psalm 92 show us that here is a day at the crossroads of creation and re-creation where we see and get a taste of the power of the ages to come, the triumph of Jesus and the rest and salvation for His people. It’s a Psalm that points us to, and tells us of, the Saviour. It’s what a day this is, and it’s what this day is for.
Application
There are any number of applications that we could make here about how we should prioritize the Lord’s Day. We could prioritize the Lord’s Day and see it as essential for our growth and essential for our quest for peace, rest. Or perhaps how we should cherish the Lord’s Day as a blessing and as a good gift from our heavenly Father. Or even more somberly, perhaps we should weep for our friends who really do believe that the fourth commandment has been removed and kicked to the curb and there is no longer a set aside day to experience God in all of His glory as He is among His beloved and gathered people.
The “Why” of the Lord’s Day
You know, inevitably, when this Sabbath issue arises, 99 times out of 100, the conversation quickly moves to a series of questions.
Can I do this? Can I do that? Can I go shopping on the Lord’s Day? Is it lawful to go out to a restaurant on the Sabbath or go to the beach?
Marlee and I have a long-established Sabbath pattern that we actually observe on Saturdays as Sundays are kind of a ‘work’ day for us. In fact, we have patterned it very much off Eugene Peterson and his wife’s experience of Sabbath:
“Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-satiated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord’s amazing grace.”
(E. Peterson, Tell It Slant)
Saturday prayer time with the guys, for me, time with Marlee culminates in worship with you, the Church.
The Sabbath should not be of duty or drudgery; don’t let it become that for you. “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath,” Jesus says. At its heart, the issue is ‘what is the Lord’s Day for?’
What is it to you?
You’ve got a God to enjoy; you’ve got a Saviour to praise. He rose on this day for you! You’ve got His Word to soak in and his table to feast at. You’ve got His creation to enjoy. You’ve got His beloved Church and it’s Brothers and Sisters to fellowship with. You’ve got feasting for your soul all day long. You have a day intended for REST! Don’t let it slip by. What a gift our Father has given to us!
So, do you love the Sabbath Day? Are you yearning for the Sabbath? Do you now see it as crucial, as indispensable to your life as a follower of Jesus?
Church family, we pray that you would come to love the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath, and not to keep it because it’s your duty but truly cherish it as a gift and as a God-given means to glorify Him and to enjoy Him, in a time of rest from the burdens of the world around you. Keep it as a regular part of beginning our weekly rhythm, forever.
Let’s pray?
Prayer
Gracious God and Heavenly Father,
You are faithful and mighty to save, both our Almighty God and loving Father. What a wonderful gift it is to be able to worship you in your sanctuary every Lord’s Day. It is our safe and happy place where we can sing praises to you and hear your Word. We are refreshed and strengthened as we leave church on Sunday. What a joy to have fellowship with other believers who encourage us.
You have created us, kept your covenant promises, sent your Son to die in our place for our sins, and you continue to sustain your people through the ages. Thank you, LORD! We know that though the wicked seem to flourish, they are like the grass that will wither and die; but the righteous are like the cedars of Lebanon that are solid and strong. We can bear fruit even when we are old when we belong to the Lord by being faithful and kind. Our strength comes from our faith in a loving and merciful Lord and from hearing his Gospel every week.
Be with us this week, LORD. Keep us from temptation, guide us in all that we do. Help us to be kind encouragers, so that we might build your kingdom and bring glory to your name.
In Christ’s name. AMEN.
Benediction
My friends, may you grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior. To God be the glory, now and forever, now and forever, Amen.