Well, we've been dancing on the edges of Babylon trying to understand the will of the Lord and we I think we've heard quite a bit first of all that God wants to bless Babylon with his people and God wants to bless Babylon with prayerful people and industrious productive people. I want you to open your Bibles to John chapter 17. John chapter 17, there's a tremendous principle and a warning for us in John 17 verse 15. I'm preaching on this because a young man came up to me and he quoted this to me and I thought this is what I want to say at the end of this conference. John 17 verse 15.

This is the inerrant all-sufficient sweeter than honey word of God. John 17 15. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth. Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would help us to understand these words as we depart from this place to walk with you in this world of Babylon, Amen. This passage of Scripture makes it very clear that Jesus Christ wanted his children to remain in the world. He wanted them to remain in Babylon. He had a purpose for them in Babylon. But what does this not mean?

It does not mean assimilation into Babylon. It does not mean accommodation to Babylon and it does not mean isolation from Babylon. Now we live in a world where where the church is actually being assimilated into Babylon. Despite the conservative mood, we actually remain a nation under judgment. There people are talking about Christianity and Jesus Christ, but the version of Christianity that they're talking about really is a secular religion.

It's what has been called Christless conservatism here at this conference. It's not true Christianity. You've got some of the best-known Silicon Valley Executives saying they're Christians and by the way, they're also homosexuals at the same time This You have a Christo secularism is what you have going on today. You know, many of the most visible leaders in Washington who say the name of Jesus, they're part of this group. But the reality is, Even though we've had a conservative resurgence, the country hasn't really changed.

The abortion rates are rising in the United States of America. The climate worshipers are not declining. Pew Research says that fewer and fewer people are identifying as Christian. Have you heard of the nuns? Many people who once identified as Christians are now calling themselves the nuns.

In other words, no religion at all. Twenty percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal word of God. That's down from 40% in 1980. The slide continues. Same-sex marriage support has risen from 27% in 1976 to 71% in 2023.

This has not actually been turned around by our current administration. We should not think quite yet that America has escaped the wrath of God. Our prayers should be urgent. 98%, maybe even more, of Americans grew up in the state-run indoctrination centers called the public schools and our universities that are corruption centers. But this goes deeper into the church itself.

I don't know if you saw a couple of years ago, Ligonier did a study, they called it the state of theology. 65% of evangelicals agree that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. That's just an abandonment of the doctrine of original sin. 53% agreed that the Bible contains ancient myths. It's not literally true.

53% over half of evangelicals. 43% of evangelicals agreed that Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God. 37% of evangelicals agreed that gender identity is a matter of personal choice and they agree with this statement that the Bible's condemnation for homosexual behavior does not apply today. Welcome to mainstream evangelicalism. One out of three evangelicals in the mainstream churches believe that sexual ethics in the Bible are outdated.

There's obviously something far beyond confusion regarding these historic doctrines. Think about the children of Israel, the best and the brightest of Jerusalem as they were paraded into this remarkable, glorious, stunning city of massive buildings, incredible investments by the state, statues, shrines everywhere. Imagine these young men walking into Babylon and looking at this absolutely wonder wondrous world. We should recognize that the devil's first attack is consistent with all of his attacks since the Garden of Eden. He first attacks a marriage and then he attacks the children in that marriage.

And the children, one of the children, 50% of the first two children of Adam and Eve were corrupted. So you have this severe attack. The devil wants to destroy your children. And you've gotta stand in the way of that. And you need to understand where you live.

You live in Babylon just like the Hebrew children. The church is being assimilated into the culture. One of the most obvious, one of the most common matters of assimilation in the evangelical church is Sabbath breaking. It's the most common, and it's often the first to go in a worldly church. And I want to just talk a little bit about what the scripture says because we've been advocating in many of the sermons here the centrality of the worship of God for God's people.

And this matter of the Lord's Day is a critical matter. What does the Scripture say about the Lord's Day? I like what Jason said. He said, you know, the Lord's Day comes up every week it's gonna come up 52 times every year you better figure out what the Bible says about it because it's gonna it's gonna hit you in the face every week and you should understand whether you actually believe what the Bible says. So I'm gonna give you several things that you and your children need to know about the Lord's Day.

And the first is that it was established at creation. That's Genesis 2, 2 through 3. What you have is a broad understanding in evangelicalism that the Sabbath day was established in the Ten Commandments. That's just not true. It was established at creation.

God established a day of rest for himself as a pattern. This fact is repeated in Mark chapter 2 verse 27 that God rested on the seventh day. God himself rested on the Sabbath as a pattern for humankind. To rest on the Sabbath is to be godly, to be like God. Secondly, before the law of Moses was given, the Sabbath was clearly being practiced.

In Exodus chapter 16 verses 22 to 23, the people of God knew about the Sabbath and they observed the Sabbath before the law was given on Mount Sinai. And you can look at it yourself, Exodus 16, 22, and 23. It was being practiced as a creation ordinance mandate before the Ten Commandments. And then it was obviously given in the most obvious place in scripture in Exodus chapter 20 and in Deuteronomy 5, 12 through 15, where it was repeated and the fourth commandment is what if you read it it's a long commandment it's very it's very extensive But one of the most striking things about the 10 Commandments in Exodus chapter 20 is God assigns the family as the one who implements the keeping of the Lord's day. It's fathers and mothers.

It's the family jurisdiction that ensures the keeping of the Sabbath. And in Exodus 20, the Sabbath is a day of duty and holiness, and it is a holy day. That means it's like no other. The Lord's Day is meant to be like no other day it's not it's your you break away from the things of your normal life and you dial down into the things that God has commanded in the Sabbath. And of course you have the prohibition for working and things like that.

Next, the prophets spoke of the indispensability and the perpetuity of the Sabbath. In Isaiah chapter 58, children need to understand that the prophets in many places upheld the keeping of the Sabbath. In Isaiah 58, we learn that God ordained The Sabbath as a day of delight. It's it's as the Puritans called it the market day of the soul It's the best day of the week work is suspended and you get to spend the day just considering the greatnesses of The beauties of God and and you will delight yourself in the Lord in Jeremiah the prophet it becomes very clear that the Babylonian captivity the primary reason for the Babylonian captivity was that Israel refused to keep the Sabbath for 490 years. Why did the children of Israel end up in Babylon?

Because they did not keep the Sabbath day and God meted out a judgment of one day, one year of captivity for every seven years of neglect of the Sabbath for those 490 years. That's why the captivity was for 70 years. In Jeremiah 17 19 through 27 we learn of God's judgment against Sabbath breakers. In Ezekiel 20 verse 12 we learn that it is a day to remember that God sanctifies his people. In Nehemiah 13, we see a very dramatic picture of how repulsive it is to God for his people to do business on the Lord's Day, they, in the days of Nehemiah, they were continuing their usual commercial activities.

And Nehemiah did some pretty extreme things. And he actually was pulling on the beards of men who were breaking the Sabbath. You know several years ago Kevin Swanson and I were in Australia and he was talking about Nehemiah and he's running back and forth on the platform and I'm sitting there in the front row and he jumps off he's talking about Nehemiah and he jumps off the platform and came over and he grabbed my beard just to illustrate what happened in Nehemiah chapter 13 The prophets were very clear about the perpetuity of the Sabbath. In Jesus Christ himself in Matthew 12 verse 8 and in Matthew 24 verse 20, It's very clear that Jesus Christ was teaching the Pharisees how they were breaking the Sabbath by bringing into the Sabbath ordinance unbiblical laws, unbiblical ways. You could only walk a certain distance.

You can only do this. You can only do that. Well, that wasn't in the list of anything that God gave to his people. Jesus is contradicting the corrupt methodology of keeping the Sabbath. He wasn't defeating the Sabbath.

And basically what Jesus says is, I created this, I define it, observe it the way that I have prescribed it because the religious leaders had encrusted Sabbath keeping with all kinds of harsh unbiblical and actually very ridiculous laws. Jesus does many of his healings on the Sabbath I think is a picture of what God designs to do when he brings his people together in the worship of God. He designs to sanctify them, to heal them, to change them, to encourage them, to bless them, and that's why he designed his people to get together one day in seven. In Matthew chapter 24 verse 20, the Lord Jesus assumes Sabbath keeping will continue throughout the New Testament era he says pray that your flight may not be on the Sabbath day The Sabbath day was a day of healing. Here's another in Mark chapter 2 verse 27.

Jesus Christ makes it very clear that the Sabbath was good. The Sabbath was made for man. It was good for the body. It's good for the soul. It's good for the heart.

It's good for the conscience. It's good for the family. It's good for the nation. It's actually good for your relationships because you're brought together to worship God and center your life on God. Next, in the Acts of the Apostles, in Acts chapter 20, verse seven, your children need to know, and you need to know, that the observance of the Sabbath continues in the ministry of the apostles in Acts 20 verse 7 and 1st Corinthians 16 2.

It's very clear that the apostles, because of the resurrection, they transformed the Jewish Sabbath into the Lord's Day, the day of resurrection. That's why we celebrate the resurrection every time we gather together. The reason we worship God on Sunday is because of the resurrection, and this was from that time forward called the Lord's Day. I think that's the terminology that's probably most appropriate for the church today that we celebrate the Lord's Day. The Apostle Paul and the churches he visited observed the Lord's Day on Sunday.

If somebody wants to say, well no, I think it should remain Saturday, I just think you have to ask, well, you're gonna have to do something different than the church has done ever since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And you'll have to defend that. In Colossians chapter 2 verse 16 we often find people using that as a refutation of the observance of the Lord say I'll just read it. So let no one judge you in food or drink regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. This verse, this single verse is used to refute the regular observance of the Lord's day as just simply figurative.

Paul is actually referring to something that he's speaking of very, very specifically, a festival or new moon Sabbaths. Paul is not extinguishing Sabbath day or the Lord's day worship. He uses the word Sabbaths to refer to the Jewish feasts in the ceremonial law, which did pass away. So be careful if you want to throw out the entire testimony of scripture over one verse, and be careful to understand the terminology that the Apostle Paul uses. Next in Hebrews chapter 4 we learned that the Sabbath Remains because there is rest in the atoning work of Jesus Christ Modern churches often use this passage of scripture to reject the celebration of the Lord's Day Because Jesus fulfilled it and made it no longer Applicable, but that's not what what Hebrews 4 means The text does not necessitate the interpretation of the abrogation of the Lord's Day any more than the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery, is abrogated because Jesus fulfilled it.

The Lord Jesus Christ affirmed the Sabbath or the Lord's Day observance. And then next I would just have to ask the question, do you really believe there are nine commandments or do you believe that there are ten commandments? And upon what authority would you nullify one of the commandments of God? Which one of the Ten Commandments do you think should be nullified, and on what basis would you nullify that commandment? I don't see that there's any indication that any of the commandments have been abrogated.

And if you think that there are only nine, then why not six commandments? Or how about eight? Or the first four or five? And I just think you have to think through that It is interesting in the Ten Commandments if you say that the Lord's Day Sabbath is abrogated Abrogated is work also abrogated because that's also loaded into the 10 Commandments. So it's very clear to me that one of the most obvious Matters of assimilation of the Church of Jesus Christ is a rejection of the Lord's Day and a Populist that believes that you can do whatever you want to do on the Lord's Day now I recognize there's tremendous controversy probably in this room, you know, about this matter.

Typically it's the enemies of Jesus Christ that want to destroy the Lord's day. During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries thought they could destroy Christianity by destroying the Sabbath. That was their intention. They they failed to wipe out Christianity, but what they did is they decided no a seven day week is not appropriate. A ten day week is appropriate, And so they threw out the seven-day week and the Sabbath rest, and they established this new revolutionary calendar.

They did it for 12 years. No Sundays, no rest, and it was a disaster. And finally they realized this is really harmful for everybody, and they went back actually to a seven-day work week. So the church is being assimilated into the worldview of Babylon in many, many ways. And church leaders and church members have to be very diligent to understand how they are being assimilated and how they are accommodating themselves to the culture.

And you know, so what about you? What, how are you working this thing out? And again, it's really important that you work this out using the Bible And the bible alone because it comes around 52 times out of the year I like what Robert Murrick McShane said about it. He said this, It is a type of heaven when a believer lays aside his pin and loom, brushes aside his worldly cares, leaving them behind with his weekday clothes, and comes up to the house of God. It is like the morning of the resurrection, the day when we shall come out of great tribulation into the presence of God and the lamb when the believer sits under the preached word and hears the voice of the shepherd leading and feeding his soul.

When the Hebrew children walked into Babylon, there were all kinds of practices and cultural principles that they were walking into. And remember what they said, Daniel said, we will not defile ourselves. And this is the call of the Church of Jesus Christ To be separate to stand out from among the corrupt nations of the world to live differently to live According to the Word of God and according to the Word of alone to recognize that it's scripture and it's scripture alone not our family practice not our history not even our nation necessarily but actually it's the Word of God and the Word of God alone that should decide all of the controversies in our culture and in our minds. The devil wants to assimilate your children in Babylon. And I think that the assimilation is most clearly seen in the breaking of the Lord's day in the modern evangelical church.

You know, Isaiah made it very clear what this day is all about. Isaiah 58 Verse 14, 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. It's a real blessing to a family when fathers and mothers they do their duty and they bring their entire household under the delight of the Lord. That they themselves they delight in the Lord and they delight in the worship of God they delight in the singing they want to hear the prayers they want to fellowship with the Saints and be a comfort to one another to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice and to bring their children together into the church and show them the treasuries of the kingdom of heaven of all the beauties of the Word of God the fellowship of the saints and the love of God that exists between believers as they have patience with one another and they love one another from the heart and they forgive one another and they pray for one another to bring children into this beautiful place and that parents would be such wonderful and diligent tour guides for the worship of God, that they would prioritize it, that they would get ready on the day before, on Saturday, so that the Lord's Day is a day that's completely dedicated to Delighting in the Lord.

How much more delight does your family need? Well, God has designed a day It's the day of delight that you might ride on the high hills of the earth. That's where he wants you to be riding while you're in Babylon. He wants you to be productive, riding on the high hills of the earth, building and dwelling and planting and getting married and getting your kids married and having children and being fruitful and multiplying, and all in the context of delighting yourself in the Lord. I just charge you to make the Lord's day a day of delight.

And you parents particularly do everything you can to make it a day of delight for your children so that they will know who God is so that the first thought that comes to their mind when they think of God is God is good. He is the delight of my soul. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you. Thank you for gathering us.

We've heard so many wonderful things over these last three days. I pray that you would bring them up. I pray that you would help us as we go down the hill to find ourselves rejoicing in all the things that you have done. Lord, I pray for these parents especially that you would give them grace, give them energy, give them love for their children, that they would love you and that they would teach their children diligently when they sit in the house when they walk by the way and when they lie down and when they rise up And all of God's people said amen Okay, well we have some announcements and after that we are dismissed.