Cited in sermons
Gilfillan
3 sermons · All people cited
The Christian Sabbath, Part 3
Three passages in the New Testament — Romans 14, Galatians 4, and Colossians 2 — are commonly marshalled against the abiding validity of the Fourth Commandment, but careful exegesis reveals that none of them address the weekly Lord's Day Sabbath. Romans 14 concerns Christian liberty over matters indifferent, principally Jewish dietary laws and Israel's feast calendar; Galatians 4 rebukes the Judaizers' demand that calendar observance supplement faith in Christ for justification; and Colossians 2 warns against a syncretistic heresy that mingled Christ, Judaism, and angel worship. In each case Paul is dealing with Israel's ceremonial calendar, not the moral Sabbath commandment rooted in creation and redemption, which remains binding on the new covenant people of God and is observed on the first day of the week in light of Christ's resurrection.
The Fourth Commandment
The Fourth Commandment, as confessed in the 1689 London Baptist Confession chapter 22, binds all men in all ages to set apart one day in seven for the worship of God. This exposition of Deuteronomy 5:12–15 traces the Sabbath from its creation ordinance grounding in Genesis 2, through its Sinaitic rationale of creation and redemption, into its prophetic anticipation in Isaiah 56 and 58, and finally to its New Covenant fulfillment on the first day of the week as the Lord's Day. The sermon argues that the Sabbath's moral principle — one day in seven devoted to God — is permanent and continuous across the covenants, while the positive element (the particular day) shifts from Saturday to Sunday in light of Christ's resurrection. Hearers are called to receive the Sabbath not as a legalistic burden but as God's gift, and to guard equally against Pharisaic rigidity and antinomian dismissal.
Matthew 12:1-14
Jesus' conflicts with the Pharisees over Sabbath observance in Matthew 12:1–14 are not evidence that he abolished the fourth commandment, but that he cleared away the Pharisaic misinterpretation encrusting it. This Bible study is the second half of a biblical theology of the Sabbath, tracing the commandment through Christ's own teaching on the law (Matthew 5:17–20), the resurrection, the apostolic practice of first-day worship (Acts 20, 1 Corinthians 16, Revelation 1:10), and the eschatological Sabbath rest of Hebrews 4. The argument throughout is that the Decalogue is trans-covenantal, that Christ fulfilled rather than abrogated the fourth commandment, and that the shift from the seventh day to the first day reflects the same creational-redemptive logic — now centred on the risen Christ as head of the new creation.