Honor God and Forget Not His Benefits
From the desk of Pastor Roland.
Hello, this is Pastor Roland. Today is Sunday, the Lord's Day. I honor and acknowledge God on this day and I thank Him for all His blessings.
Last night I was reading Puritan Hope by Iain Murray. This morning I looked to possibly find another of his books to read and I came upon Rest in God and a Calamity in Contemporary Christianity.
In this regard here are two quotes from an article by Alex Dodson entitled Forgetting the Christian Sabbath. I recommend it as thoughtful reading and a reminder of why we must be respectful of God and not forget our manners or duties.
"The way we treat Sunday is a symptom of the moral and spiritual condition of our nation. We have reached a point where honoring God on the Christian Sabbath is really not important anymore. Many evangelical church services have become so informal that the people who come for worship dress down as if they were coming to honor no one. In previous generations, coming to church was a time to dress up because the service was special and it was a time to honor God. That concept seems to be completely lost in many churches as even the pastor dresses informally. We dress up for our jobs but dress down for God. This may not seem important in today’s society but it also is a symptom of a spiritual problem in the nation. Iain Murray in his book Rest In God & A Calamity in Contemporary Christianity writes, ‘That contempt for God and the ten commandments brings judgments on nations is a clear truth in Scripture…Some believe that for Christians to bear witness to the fourth commandment in an unsympathetic world would be to impede evangelism. The reverse has tragically proved to be true. Bishop Ryle understood what would happen in England if Sunday became as any other day: ‘Break down the fence which now surrounds the Sunday, and our Sunday schools will soon come to an end. Let in the flood of worldliness and pleasure-seeking on the Lord’s Day, without check or hindrance, and our congregations will soon dwindle away. There is not too much religion in the land now. Destroy the sanctity of the Sabbath, and there will soon be far less…It would be a joy to the infidel; but it would be an insult and offence to God.’” (P. 33-34)
Isaiah 58:13-14 says, “’If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath and from doing as you please on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord’s holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.’” The mouth of the Lord has spoken.” When our nation starts honoring the Lord’s Day again, then we can know that our country is turning around. A nation that honors God will itself be honored. Our forefathers knew this and they honored God and God honored them. Instead of forgetting the Christian Sabbath, let us as a nation remember it and make it holy once again."
