On the Lord's Day

Encouragement today from E.J. Young for all of us who walk as strangers and exiles on the earth (Hebrews 11:13):

"If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken” Isaiah 58:13-14 (ESV).

“Why, however, is there mention of the sabbath at this point [in the book of Isaiah]? Is it not that the sabbath was a unifying ordinance which at all times (and particularly in times of apostasy and exile) would bind the people together as no other ordinance would do? For the sabbath was not merely a Mosaic ordinance; it was far more. It was instituted at creation, and is a pattern of the heavenly sabbath rest which the redeemed are to enjoy in the presence of their eternal God. In the great calamity of the exile [to Babylon] that was to come upon them, Isaiah stresses the sabbath as in a sense the heart of true devotion to God. He who keeps the sabbath as it is intended to be kept will be happy in the Lord of the sabbath.”