Gordon Cook

Again turn in your Bibles to that great prophet of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 58.

I think I said last Lord’s day that we had the last message on the Lord’s day in terms of Sabbath Lord’s day (when do we worship? we worship God on a special day) but there’s one final message and that’s going to be this evening, Lord willing.

Isaiah 58, verse 13. (Again when you read that word Sabbath, it has no negativity in it, it simply means rest. It’s a rest day.) Verse 13,

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable and shall honor Him not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasures nor speaking your own words and you shall delight yourself in the Lord and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.

We have been doing some mountaineering–that’s right, climbing mountains–seeking to appreciate the biblical panorama with respect to the whole subject of worship.

It’s a big subject. It’s hard to find a bigger subject and a more important one in the Word of God because you and I were made to worship God.

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Gordon Cook

If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you, please turn with me to Mark’s gospel, Mark, chapter 2.

We’re continuing our series on the subject of worship. We are focusing upon the question, When do we worship? and we have argued from Genesis to Revelation that there is a distinctive worship day; and no one had more to say about keeping a Sabbath day, or how to keep a Sabbath day, than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here in Mark, chapter 2, He has a controversy with the Pharisees; and we read in verse 23 of Mark, chapter 2,

Now it happened that He went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; and, as they went, His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain; and the Pharisees said to Him, “Look, why do they go do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

But He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry (he and those with him)—how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the High Priest; and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests; and also gave some to those were with him?”

And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord [κύριος (kurios)] of the Sabbath.”

The stock market has experienced a gigantic upheaval over the last year or so, especially in the last couple of weeks; and worship is often like the stock market in this sense–up and down; but in recent years it has been on a downward trend; and here’s some of the circumstantial evidence which I think could stand up in any court of law.
Sermons are getting shorter and shorter.

In many places, hymns—the good hymns of the faith—have actually disappeared.

In many places, there is no longer a corporate prayer meeting.

It all suggests (does it not?) that we are in trouble.

What’s the answer?

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Gordon Cook

Please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 58:13-14:

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the LORD; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

I grew up in Canada in several small mining towns. We lived in a province called British Columbia, in a little town about 100 miles from the Yukon border. And it was a beautiful place. It was a vast wilderness of forests, rivers, and lakes. And on more than one occasion, I believe, either me or one of my brothers got lost. It’s not a fun experience, but whatever you do, they say, “Don’t panic. Don’t just go off in any direction. If you do that you’ll end up going in circles.” No, they tell you to stay put or find some high ground. Climb a mountain. Get your bearings and see something of the lie of the land. And Christians can get lost as well, can’t we? Doctrinally, morally, even while we have a Bible in front of us.

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Gordon Cook

I would turn your attention to Luke 6. If I had one verse in the Bible to build the doctrine of the Lord’s Day or the Sabbath upon it would be this text found in Luke 6:5: “And He said to them, ‘The Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.’”

Heavy snow had fallen the night before and there were thoughts about canceling the event, but it was far too important. It was the inaugural address of the president of the United States. And after acknowledging the presence of distinguished guests and former presidents, the new elect president, John F. Kennedy, then spoke these words to the nation: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay the price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to ensure the survival and the success of liberty.” Towards the back end of that address the president quoted from the book of Isaiah the prophet and said, “Let the oppressed go free” (Is. 58:6). I’m sure he borrowed those words, not only from the prophet, but from Jesus Himself. Jesus gave something of an inaugural address back in chapter 4. Notice the text, Luke 4:18—and Jesus is also speaking here about freedom, but of a greater kind:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

And Jesus doesn’t simply talk about liberty or freedom, does He? Jesus actually sets men free. And Jesus will set men free from different kinds of bondage. For example, the horrible bondage of demon possession; you read about that in Luke 4. It talks about the horrible bondage of sickness and disease. He will heal that leper also; we read of that in Luke 4. There’s the horrible bondage of sin and guilt. He forgives a man in chapter 5. And then when we open up to chapter 6, Jesus, again, is setting men free, but from a different kind of bondage. It’s the horrible bondage of false religion. And where it manifested itself in a most overt or concrete way was when it came to the Sabbath Day and its practice and observance.

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Gordon Cook

Pastor Piñero and Pastor Martinez have asked me to bring four messages on the subject of the worship day. In the Old Testament it was called the “Sabbath.” We often call it the “Lord’s Day” from a New Testament perspective. That’s the subject I am going to address in these four meetings. Tonight we are going to look at it from the very beginning, the Creational Sabbath. So we go all the way back to Genesis chapter 2. And that’s where I would want you to turn in your Bibles please—Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:

Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

A few years ago I stood at the foot of Mt. Rushmore, one of the most memorable-historical sites in the United States of America. And as you probably know, carved into that massive granite mountain are the faces of four different presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. And it took approximately fourteen years before that project was finished. Now, apparently from time to time they have to power wash and clean the faces of those four presidents. If not, a significant disfiguration can result from the smog and the pollutants in the air. And I’m sure most Americans—I’m a Canadian by the way—would agree that that’s a very important monument to preserve. But now what would you think if someone came along and began to use chisels and hammers and removed the distinctive facial features of those four presidents? They decided to reshape their noses, their eyes and their chins, and so much so that you really couldn’t tell the difference between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, or Jefferson (he looked very much like Roosevelt when they were finished). I’m sure that would bother you. I’m sure the American public would be in an uproar. People would be incensed. It would be viewed as vandalism. And in all likelihood those responsible for that would be put behind bars. Nobody has a right to deface or to radically change the distinctive features of your former presidents. How dare they? How could they? Well something very similar is happening today in churches across the land.

The face of worship is changing. We are losing the distinctive elements of worship.

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