In the world today, all of God’s commandments are ignored, neglected, and despised to one degree or another. There is one commandment that has been subject to assault even from the professing church of Christ itself. That is the Fourth Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The Puritan pastors who wrote the Westminster Larger Catechism were right when they said about the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, that “Satan with his instruments much labor to blot out the glory, and even the memory of it, to bring in all irreligion and impiety.” We have seen the evil one make such progress in this battle in our generation that we have to wonder if he is declaring, “Mission accomplished!” What sensitive Christian does not grieve over the empty pews in churches, especially on Sunday evenings, which have been abandoned for the idols of the NFL, the NBA, or the Mall of America.
The church historian Philip Schaff wrote that observance of the Lord’s Day “is a wholesome school of discipline, a means of grace for the people, a safeguard of public morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family. Next to the Church and the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the chief pillar of Christian society.”
Many Christians today are calling for a return to the faith of our nation’s founding fathers. The Lord’s Day was a pillar of their religious worship. The godly Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Those who have a sincere desire to obey God in all things, will keep the sabbath more carefully and more cheerfully, if they have seen and been convinced that therein they do what is according to the will and command of God, and what is acceptable to him; and will also have a great deal more comfort in the reflection upon their having carefully and painstakingly kept the sabbath.” As Edwards points out, we should observe God’s day because the Bible tells us, not just because our forefathers did it. But we fool ourselves if we think we will see the blessings they experienced if we are unwilling to imitate their devotion to God.
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