The fourth commandment reads, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Ex. 20:8). Note that it does not say, "From this point on, the Sabbath should be regarded as holy." Instead, it says to remember that it is already holy; the command is simply to keep it that wayHow Does God\'s Law Apply To Me?
It seems clear that the apostles taught Christians to worship on "the first day of the week" (Acts 20:7), the day of Jesus's resurrection, "the Lord's day" (Rev. 1:10), treating it as the Christian Sabbath. These changes were momentous, but the pattern of praise, thanks, desire, trust, purity, and service, which constitutes true worship, continues unchanged to this day.Concise Theology, Ch 37
What is the reason that many professors are no more holy and humble, but waspish and peevish and harsh, and of a rugged disposition, but because they have not studied the gospel more
I find our Savior taking for granted the continuance of the Sabbath when He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem. "Pray ye," He says to the disciples, "that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day" (Matt 24:20).
There are five things that were given to the father of the human race in the day that he was made. God gave him a dwelling place, a work to do, a command to observe, a help meet to be his companion, and a Sabbath Day to keep. I am utterly unable to believe that it was in the mind of God that there ever should be a time when Adam's children should keep no Sabbath.
Under the new covenant... the Sabbath is renewed, with a casuistry of doing good rather than doing nothing (Luke 13:10-16; 14:1-6), and is recounted, on the basis of one-plus-six rather than six-plus-one.Concise Theology, Ch 37
The day was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, not on the ground of a particular command, but by the free spirit of the gospel and by the power of certain great facts which he at the foundation of the Christian church. It was on that day that Christ rose from the dead; that he appeared to Mary, the disciples of Emmaus, and the assembled apostles; that he poured out his Spirit and founded the churchHistory of the Christian Church: https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc1/hcc1.i.IX.57.html
the Jewish Sabbath was hedged around by many national and ceremonial restrictions, which were not intended to be permanent, but were gradually made so prominent as to overshadow its great moral aim, and to make man subservient to the sabbath instead of the sabbath to man.History of the Christian Church: https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc1/hcc1.i.IX.57.html
Make the Lord's Day the market for thy soul. Let the whole day be spent in prayer, repetitions, or meditations. Lay aside the affairs of the other parts of the week. Let the sermon thou hast heard be converted into prayer. Shall God allow thee six days, and wilt not thou afford Him one?
Idleness breeds temptation. Our vacation is the devil's term; when we are least at work for God, then is Satan most at work about us. By doing nothing men learn to do evil. Yea, idleness is the burying of a living man.
Seek not great things for yourselves in this world, for if your garments be too long, they will make you stumble; and one staff helps a man in his journey when many in his hands at once hinders him.
What if God will that His people should have a taste of hell in this life, that so they may be sensible of and very thankful for their deliverance from hell and the wrath to come? There are three things in hell: torment of body, horror of conscience, loss of God. By our pains and torments, gouts and stone, we think of the torments of hell, or may think. By the horror of conscience that we meet withal, we may think of the horror of conscience there. And by God's withdrawing and God's departing from us here, we may think of the loss of God forever there.
What is affliction? Affliction is all that is contrary to one's will; thereby God eats out the core of our wills. Whensoever therefore you meet with any affliction, pray over it and beg that God would eat out the core of your wills thereby; and the more the core of your wills is eaten out, the more willing you will be to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ.Works 3:342
we should celebrate the Sabbath not in such a manner (nor with such a strict and exact observance) as was required by Judaism or as superstition had imposed, but with a moderate, reverent rest of the sort that is needed for the worship of God.Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 21
Why, then, did He "rest," and why is it recorded on the top of the second page of Holy Writ? Surely, there can be only one answer: as an example for man!
The due observance of it, in which the churches of England, Scotland, and America, to their incalculable advantage, excel the churches of the European continent, 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. Besides the Christian Sunday, the Jewish Christians observed their ancient Sabbath also, till Jerusalem was destroyed. After that event, the Jewish habit continued only among the Ebionites and Nazarenes.https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc1/hcc1.i.IX.57.html
As it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time, by God's appointment, be set apart for the worship of God, so by his Word, in a positive moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all ages, he has particularly appointed one day in seven for a sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which is called the Lord's Day: and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished.London Baptist Confession 1689
Every church, according to the example of Christ's disciples and primitive churches, on every first day of the week (being the Lord's day), should assemble together to pray, prophesy [preach sermons based on Scripture], praise God, break bread, and perform all other parts of spiritual communion for the worship of God, their own mutual edification, the preservation of true religion, and piety in the church.
alas! in many places, there is no day in the week, wherein the devil has been more served in revellings, drunkenness, and all manner of ungodliness, then on that Day. We have been so far from esteeming it a delight, that no day has been a greater burden to us, accounting the work of that day most irksome, and the time most tedious.A Glimpse of God\'s Glory