Why Do We Worship on Sunday?

2 views

0 comments

00:00
All right, well, let's pray.
00:01
Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.
00:02
We thank you for the truth.
00:04
We thank you for the gospel.
00:06
And we know that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation to all who believe.
00:11
And so Father, as we trust in you, as we trust in your gospel, we come around the word today to study a subject which has been quite divisive in the history of the church.
00:21
And I pray that you would use this time to bring clarification, to bring wisdom, and to bring understanding to those who will hear it so that we might not be led away by every wind of doctrine, but that we might be affirmed in our understanding of the truth.
00:37
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
00:41
All right, well, today we're going to answer the question, why do we worship on Sunday? In almost every Christian tradition, one day in the week is set aside for corporate worship.
00:56
You wanna, you gonna start out? Did you have a question? Oh, I thought you put your finger up, okay.
00:59
In almost every Christian tradition, one day in the week is set aside for corporate worship.
01:04
This is directly related to the biblical teaching of the Sabbath, wherein God instituted from creation one day in seven that was set aside for rest.
01:16
Exodus chapter 20, verses eight through 10, gives us the 10 command, well, Exodus 20 gives us the 10 commandments, verses eight through 10 gives us the explanation of the fourth commandment, which regards the Sabbath.
01:27
It says in verse eight, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God, on it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
01:48
So we see that in Israel, the 10 commandments which were given by Moses to the people of Israel included this command to honor, to remember the Sabbath day.
02:00
And the vast majority of Christians do not celebrate the Sabbath, but we celebrate Sunday.
02:09
Sunday is not the Sabbath.
02:12
Sunday is the first day of the week.
02:15
Saturday is the Sabbath.
02:18
It is the seventh day.
02:20
And this has led to a great deal of confusion in the church.
02:25
Those who hold the Saturday worship claim they are Sabbath keepers, and they are ultimately the only ones who are being obedient to God, and everyone else is in disobedience.
02:37
So by you being here today in the church on Sunday, you are here in disobedience to God because he would have you do your acts of worship and your day of rest on Saturday.
02:50
The vast majority of those who worship on Sunday don't know why they do.
02:57
The vast majority of you, if I were to ask you to take out a piece of paper, write down, why do you worship on Sunday rather than on Saturday? You probably wouldn't know the answer.
03:05
And I'm not casting dispersions on you as a class.
03:08
I'm casting dispersions on the church because most people in the church don't know why.
03:13
They do it because mama did it, and mama did it because her mama did it.
03:16
It's like the old ham with the end cut off.
03:18
You've all heard that story, right? Lady goes to dinner and a woman had a ham and it had the end cut off, and she said, why is the end cut off? This ham, that's part of the meat, that's good meat.
03:27
And she goes, well, ever since I was a kid, my mama cut that end of the ham off.
03:30
And she said, well, that's not, you shouldn't do that.
03:32
It's good meat.
03:32
And she said, well, mama taught me to do that.
03:34
So she called mama and she said, mama, why are you cutting? She said, well, my pot wasn't big enough for the whole ham.
03:40
You know, so that is the reason most traditions come into place because they do not have an understanding of where it came from.
03:48
And I admit that the vast majority of Christians worship on Sunday simply because somebody told them they should.
03:56
Well, that's when the churches are open.
03:59
As a result, somebody will come in as a, as a Sabbatarian, somebody who holds to Saturday as the Sabbath, and they'll come in and they'll confuse people.
04:11
And they do, because they'll throw out a lot of Bible verses that talk about the Sabbath.
04:15
They'll throw out a lot of things from the Old Testament about God commanding us to keep the Sabbath and those things.
04:20
And they'll say, you're in disobedience if you're worshiping on Sunday, not Saturday.
04:24
And thus they create confusion and division in the church.
04:31
So my thesis for this lesson is this.
04:34
We should be able to biblically and logically articulate why we worship on Sunday.
04:40
If we worship on Sunday, you should know why you do.
04:45
You should be able to, because somebody may come to you one day and say, you know what, Jimmy, you're a sinner because you're not worshiping on Saturday.
04:50
You ought to be able to answer that.
04:55
And not just because mama told me, and not just because that's what I've always did, right? So that's what this lesson is for.
05:04
So we're gonna look at three parts.
05:06
I didn't make you an outline, I apologize.
05:10
But the three parts are simple.
05:11
We're gonna look at the Sabbath and the Lord's work.
05:13
We're gonna look at the Sabbath and the Lord's day.
05:15
And we're gonna look at the Sabbath and the Lord's will.
05:18
So that's the three parts of our lesson, the Lord's work, the Lord's day, and the Lord's will.
05:22
So let's look first at the Sabbath and the Lord's work.
05:28
The word Sabbath means what, does anyone know? Means rest.
05:34
It actually means to cease, means to stop.
05:38
And the idea is to stop working, means to rest.
05:41
You have heard the word sabbatical.
05:45
I, last year, when I went on my little vacation, I put a sign on my chair, it said on sabbatical, it meant don't call me.
05:50
You know, that was, I was on vacation.
05:53
Sabbatical means to rest, to cease from labor.
05:57
And resting one day in seven was established by God when he created the world.
06:02
Genesis, you guys are studying through Genesis.
06:04
You remember Genesis chapter two? It says in verse one, on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.
06:11
He rested, God rested.
06:14
Now it's important to note that God didn't rest because he needed to rest, because God is an infinite being, all-powerful being.
06:19
It's not as if he went, whew, man, that was tough.
06:22
You know, I had to sit down here on my celestial armchair and take a siesta.
06:26
No, that's not why God rested.
06:28
God rested on the seventh day to create a pattern for man to follow.
06:33
In fact, he would later, Jesus would say, Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
06:39
So the idea is this was made for you.
06:41
It was made for benefit.
06:42
It was made to give you, and it's interesting if you study the way patterns work, like sleep patterns.
06:48
Most people who work nights rather than days don't sleep as well as people who work day and sleep at night, because we have a sleep pattern that's sort of a natural thing.
06:57
The lights go out, our bodies tend to be tired and ready to sleep.
07:00
The same thing with the days.
07:03
Most of us can't work past seven or eight days without being absolutely exhausted.
07:09
It's interesting that most everything else in life works in fives and tens.
07:12
We have five fingers and 10 fingers.
07:13
We have five toes and 10 toes, and we do everything in fives and tens.
07:16
Mathematically, everything goes on 10 is the number.
07:20
Why isn't it that we go 10 days without working? Because we couldn't do it.
07:25
God establishes this pattern.
07:26
Six days work, seven day, we take a day off.
07:30
And that's why we kind of establish the world that way.
07:33
The whole world sort of works on this function of a seven day week.
07:37
And we try to have at least one day off, unless you're a preacher.
07:41
No, I'm just kidding.
07:42
We try to have at least one day off in that week.
07:45
Well, God takes this principle that he establishes in creation, the one in seven day of rest.
07:53
And he will later, in Exodus 31, give that to Israel as a sign of his relationship with them, what we call the covenant that God makes with Israel.
08:06
Exodus 31, verses 16 and 17.
08:09
Therefore, the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations as a covenant forever.
08:17
It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth.
08:24
And on the seventh day, he rested and was refreshed.
08:26
It says there, the reason why Israel gets the Sabbath as a sign is to remind them of God, their creator.
08:36
It said they'll rest every seven days to remember what? That God rested on the seventh day.
08:41
To remember that he took that seventh day as a rest.
08:44
So, so too will they follow the same pattern.
08:48
One rest day in seven, mandated in Israel.
08:51
And this day would be a sign of the covenant between them and their creator.
08:56
Now, once established for Israel, the Sabbath was to be faithfully kept by everyone in the nation.
09:03
In fact, punishment for breaking the Sabbath was absolutely severe.
09:09
If you wanna write this down, Numbers 15, verses 32 to 36.
09:15
It says, while the people were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.
09:22
And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation.
09:26
They put him in custody because it had not been made clear what should be done to him.
09:32
And the Lord said to Moses, the man shall be put to death.
09:35
All the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp and all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones as the Lord commanded Moses.
09:46
So this guy, he's gathering sticks on the Sabbath.
09:48
And somebody says, boy, that sure is a bad, that sure is a, that's a difficult punishment just for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.
09:54
But what is he doing? He had just seen Moses go up on the mountain.
09:58
He had just seen Moses come down with 10 commandments and the fourth one that says, do not do any work on this special day.
10:05
And he flaunted God's commandments and went out and did his own will on the Sabbath day.
10:11
And God said, no, we will make an example of this individual and he will fall by the stone for having broken my holy law.
10:20
God is often mocked and accused of impropriety for this event.
10:23
Yet it's important to understand that this man clearly knew the commandments of God and knew the God with which he was trifling because he had seen Moses go up onto the mountain and come down, face shining like the sun.
10:36
So this man knew whom he was trifling with and chose to do so anyway.
10:44
The Sabbath would later become for Israel a time for rest and meeting.
10:50
And this is the important thing because there seems to be a paradigm shift because where the day would begin as a day of rest where they wouldn't even leave their homes.
10:58
If you read the Old Testament, it says don't even leave home.
11:01
Don't do anything, just rest.
11:04
It would later become a day for gathering in the synagogues.
11:08
And by the time of Christ, the Pharisees had created a lot of rules that went with the Sabbath day.
11:18
Jewish scholars created 39 separate categories for what would constitute work.
11:24
And then those categories had subcategories of what would be recognized as work.
11:29
So like you could only take a certain amount of steps.
11:32
You could only feed your animals a certain way.
11:34
You could only cook food if it was only cooked at a certain temperature, no higher.
11:37
There was all of these rules which went along with the Sabbath because it was their attempt to not do any work, quote unquote work, on the Sabbath but still get to maintain life and business and move forward.
11:51
So the Pharisees created their own Sabbath laws and we'll see Jesus breaking the Pharisees' rules.
12:01
Jesus never sinned, right? We agree? The Bible says he who knew no sin became sin for us.
12:05
Jesus never sinned.
12:06
He was tempted in all ways as we are but yet without sin, Jesus never sinned.
12:09
But he did break Pharisaical Sabbath rules.
12:13
He and the apostles were going through the grain fields.
12:15
The apostles were picking pieces of grain, eating them.
12:18
And the Pharisees said, no, look at there.
12:19
They're reaping on the Sabbath and that is wrong and you've broken the Sabbath.
12:24
And that's, no, we, no.
12:27
Broken your rules, we haven't broken God's law.
12:30
So it helps us understand too that there was a myth, by the time of Jesus, there's a misunderstanding about the Sabbath.
12:35
There's a misunderstanding what it's for.
12:37
Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
12:40
And Jesus said, I'm Lord of the Sabbath.
12:42
I can do what I want.
12:44
I'm God in the flesh.
12:46
I can, you know, and I'm not saying God, I'm not saying Jesus would have broken the Sabbath law that God had given, but certainly he was not bound by the rules that the Pharisees had established.
12:59
Now, something to keep in mind, and this is often argued by the people who say the Sabbath is necessary.
13:05
They'll say, you're a follower of Jesus.
13:08
Jesus kept the Sabbath.
13:09
You have to keep the Sabbath.
13:12
That is a false syllogism.
13:17
That's saying Jesus was a, Jesus kept the Sabbath.
13:23
Jesus, you're a follower of Jesus.
13:25
That means you have to keep the Sabbath.
13:26
That's false.
13:26
In the same way, this is false.
13:28
Jesus was a Jew.
13:29
You follow Jesus, you must be a Jew.
13:32
That would be false, right? It's the same false as the first statement.
13:36
It's the same, but you'll hear people say, they'll say, Jesus worshiped on the Sabbath.
13:39
So should you.
13:41
And they'll argue, so did the apostles.
13:46
They'll say the apostles also worshiped on the Sabbath.
13:50
Well, is that true? Well, yes, Jesus attended synagogue on the Sabbath.
13:54
The apostle Paul went into the synagogue on the Sabbath, but you'll notice this.
13:57
If you read in Acts 17 and Acts 18, where the apostle Paul went into the synagogue, you know why he went? The text is very clear.
14:06
He went in to preach Jesus.
14:08
He went in to tell, when are you gonna get the Jews together on the Sabbath? When are they gonna be collected together in synagogue? Where is he gonna go to proselytize the Jews, to evangelize the Jews? On the Sabbath.
14:21
That's when and where he's going for that reason.
14:23
He's not going to sit under the authority of the rabbi.
14:26
He's going as himself, a missionary to the Jewish people.
14:30
So to argue that, well, Paul went in on the Sabbath, so that means we should worship on the Sabbath is a misunderstanding of Paul's entire purpose for going.
14:40
He's going with a missionary outreach.
14:43
And also, again, when we talk about Jesus keeping the Sabbath, what was Jesus' purpose in coming into the world? He came for this one sole purpose, to keep the law of God perfectly, so as to be a substitute.
14:58
He said, I did not come to abrogate the law.
15:01
I didn't come to put away the law.
15:03
I came to do what? Fulfill the law.
15:07
So Jesus was bound under that law, and he kept it perfectly, okay? Some argue that because of Jesus and the apostles going into the synagogue on Saturday, that that establishes a custom that Christians are demanded or commanded to follow.
15:31
However, as I've already said, Jesus' reason for keeping it was to fulfill the law.
15:35
Paul's reason for going to synagogue was to pursue Jews for Christ, and to argue that we're establishing Christian orthopraxy by doing so is to misunderstand the whole reason for their going into the synagogue in the first place.
15:48
Something to note very quickly, and I know I'm going fast.
15:50
Am I running off? Have I lost anybody? Are you full? No, no, I'm good.
15:55
I'm good.
15:57
The Sabbath law is the only one of the 10 commandments which is not reiterated in the New Testament.
16:08
The Sabbath law is the only, hi, good morning, sir.
16:12
Good morning.
16:13
It's nice to have you.
16:14
Come on in and have a seat.
16:17
It is the only one of the 10 commandments that is not reiterated in the New Testament.
16:22
All of the other nine moral commandments are reestablished, but the Sabbath is not given in the New Testament as a command.
16:31
The New Testament scripture never mentions any Sabbath gatherings for the believers to fellowship or to worship.
16:38
It's not there.
16:40
But one would say, well, that's an argument from silence.
16:44
And I would say, yes, but it's a pregnant silence.
16:48
As we will see, the church begins gathering very early on the first day of the week, and there's no outcry.
16:56
You would think that if the purpose was to continue the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath command of meeting on Saturday, you would think that at that moment that the church began to meet on the first day of the week, that there would immediately be an outcry.
17:10
There would immediately be an attempt to draw a line in the sand and say, no, we're going to do this.
17:15
But we don't see that.
17:17
In the historical record or the biblical record.
17:21
Outside of the historical narrative, which is the gospel and acts, the recognition of a day that is to be held above all other days is only mentioned three times.
17:33
And I want to read the scriptures to you, the three scriptures where a day is mentioned, and I want you to tell me what you recognize in all three of these scriptures.
17:42
Number one is Romans 14, five and six.
17:46
Listen closely.
17:48
One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.
17:55
Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
17:58
The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord.
18:01
The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.
18:09
So right there in that passage, he says you have some people who esteem a day and some people who don't.
18:15
Both need to be convinced in their conscience.
18:18
Now, Galatians four.
18:21
You observe days and months and seasons and years, and I'm afraid I've labored over you in vain.
18:27
Now, this is Paul.
18:28
He's speaking to the Galatians.
18:29
Now, the context of Galatians is they've been infiltrated by false teachers, the Judaizers, who are trying to force Jewish customs into the Christian fellowship and say that you must be a Jew before you can be a Christian.
18:40
You must first go through the process of becoming a Jew before you can become a Christian.
18:46
Paul repudiates that.
18:47
He says it's another gospel.
18:49
He says it's worthy of anathema or a curse.
18:53
And here we see in Galatians four, he says you're observing days and months and seasons and years.
19:00
And it's like I've labored over you in vain.
19:04
It's like you're not even listening.
19:06
Why? Because you're still trying to hold this tradition.
19:10
You're still trying to hold this law as if it has salvific value.
19:16
It's like I taught you for nothing.
19:20
Colossians two, verses 16 and 17.
19:25
Therefore, let no one pass judgment over you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
19:36
These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
19:44
So what did he just say about the Sabbath? It's a shadow of something, the things to come, which are what? The substance belongs to Christ.
19:56
That's what, it's a shadow of the work of Christ.
20:00
And he said, you've got all these Old Testament.
20:02
By the way, the interesting thing, people who hold to the Sabbath often don't hold to the other feast days.
20:09
They don't celebrate Gom Kippur, they don't celebrate other feast days throughout the year, but they celebrate the Sabbath.
20:17
And they don't do the sacrifice.
20:19
No, they don't sacrifice either.
20:21
But the thing that you notice in common about all three of these verses that mention a special day is what? It says that holding a day above another day is not a necessity in the life of a believer.
20:37
Holding one day above another is not a necessity in the life of a believer.
20:44
My mother, you talk about what mom's taught.
20:47
My mother taught me the reason we worship on Sunday is because that's the day of the week that the Lord was resurrected.
20:53
We're getting there.
20:54
I promise, you've jumped four paragraphs ahead.
20:59
No, there's a reason why we come on Sunday.
21:02
But my point in the first part of this lesson is to establish this, a very simple principle.
21:07
The reason why they hold to the Sabbath is because they're holding to the law of the Old Testament and they're saying that you must maintain this law.
21:16
The Apostle Paul comes along and says, this law is fulfilled in Christ.
21:19
What was a shadow in the Old Testament has had its fulfillment in Christ and thus the Sabbath law has found its fulfillment in Christ and that's where I wanna, it will probably end up spending the vast majority of the rest of today and I'll just come back next week and finish.
21:34
But I wanna go to Hebrews four because this is really to me the answer to all of this.
21:40
Hebrews four deals with this question at length.
21:45
Go in your Bible to verse one, Hebrews chapter four and verse one.
21:50
I know I've been saying a lot of scripture but now we're actually gonna read some together.
21:54
This is kind of a lengthy, we're gonna read 11 verses, chapter four.
22:12
Now what word does the word chapter four word begin with? Therefore, what does that mean? That means what came before it has something to do with what's about to be said.
22:20
So let's go back a verse, go back to verse 19 of chapter three.
22:26
It says, so we see that they, this is speaking about Israel, were unable to enter because of unbelief and it's not just Israel, but it's the Israelites that were in the wilderness who did not believe and God kept them from going into the promised land.
22:40
Y'all remember that story, that the Israelites are in the wilderness and it says everyone 20 years old and older, actually it was 20 years old and younger, didn't get punished but the ones who were older did get punished.
22:51
That first generation that went into the wilderness never made it to the promised land.
22:54
They ended up dying, every one of them to a man in the wilderness because they did not believe.
23:00
And so this is what the writer of Hebrews is referencing and he says, therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
23:15
For good news came to us just as it came to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
23:26
For we who have believed enter that rest as he has said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
23:38
For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way and God rested on the seventh day from all of his works.
23:47
And again, in this passage, he said, they shall not enter my rest.
23:55
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again, he appoints a certain day, today, saying through David so long afterwards in the words already quoted, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
24:14
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.
24:19
So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
24:33
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
24:43
Okay, so let's get a little bit of context here.
24:47
What did the promised land of the old covenant represent? It represented the rest for the people of God, even though when they went in, they ended up going to war and not rest because of disobedience and other issues.
25:01
But what does Christ represent to the believer? Christ represents our rest.
25:13
For we cannot work for our salvation, we must rest in him.
25:22
The Bible tells us very clearly that he is our rest because by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God and not of what? Works, it's not of works, lest anyone should boast.
25:38
We who come to Christ enter into the rest of God in him because we have ceased to try in any way to establish a righteousness of our own.
25:52
But as the apostle Paul says, we give up our righteousness and we receive instead the righteousness of Christ.
25:58
We have no righteousness of our own.
26:01
We cannot work for our own goodness.
26:03
We cannot work for our place in heaven.
26:04
We cannot merit our salvation.
26:07
Christ himself has done the work.
26:10
He has established a righteousness, which he gives us by grace through faith alone.
26:17
So right there, we have our rest.
26:20
Our rest is in Christ.
26:23
And the reason why I bring this up is because of this.
26:26
Jesus Christ ultimately is the fulfillment of the Sabbath.
26:32
What was intended as a shadow, 2 Colossians 2 says, it was a shadow of what was to come.
26:38
The substance of that shadow was Jesus.
26:41
What was represented in the day of rest is fulfilled in he who brings our rest in him.
26:49
We do not labor for salvation.
26:53
We rest in a savior.
26:55
I wanna read to you a quote from, it's a source that I use.
27:07
The writer to the Hebrews exhorts his readers to enter into the Sabbath rest provided by Christ.
27:14
After three chapters of telling them that Jesus is superior to the angels and that he is our apostle and high priest, he pleads with them to not harden their hearts against him as their fathers hardened their hearts against Jehovah in the wilderness.
27:30
Because of their unbelief, God denied that generation access to the Holy Land saying they shall not enter my rest.
27:36
In the same way, the writer to Hebrews begs them and us not to make the same mistake by rejecting God's Sabbath rest in Jesus Christ.
27:45
There remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his work just as God did rest from his.
27:54
Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.
28:01
There is no other Sabbath rest besides Jesus.
28:05
He alone satisfies the requirements of the law and he alone provides the sacrifice that atones for sin.
28:11
He is God's plan for us to cease from labor of our works.
28:15
We dare not reject the one and only way of salvation.
28:20
End quote, that's the quote I was reading.
28:24
So what was typified by a day of rest in the old covenant is fulfilled in our eternal rest in the new covenant.
28:34
Make sense? Well that, I'll go a little further because I want to move now to the Lord's day since you've already mentioned this.
28:44
No, it's fine, it's fine.
28:47
Because if we understand Sabbath and what it means and its purpose and how it is fulfilled in Christ, now we can move forward and ask the question, well, we still meet one day in seven, why did we choose Sunday? Because that's the whole question of the lesson today.
29:01
Anyway, if we know that in the old covenant they had the Sabbath and the Sabbath had its purpose in representing God's rest and Christ fulfills by becoming our rest, what now? Well now we move to understanding the Sabbath in the Lord's day.
29:18
The early church designated the first day of the week for gathering.
29:23
This is well documented throughout the New Testament.
29:25
If you wanna write down a few verses, Acts chapter 20 and verse seven says on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked to them intending to depart on the next day and he prolonged his speech until midnight.
29:42
So here's what happened, they gathered together on the first day of the week, they broke bread together, which is a reference certainly to having communion as well as eating a meal together, but also Paul preached and he preached until midnight.
29:55
So you're welcome.
29:58
Cause I don't preach until midnight.
30:01
But so Paul has, there's a situation happening where the people of God, the church have gathered together on the first day of the week, they break bread and they hear a message.
30:11
We see in first Corinthians 16, it says now concerning the collection of the saints, as I directed the church in Galatia, so also are you to do on the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside, store it up as he may prosper so that there will be no collecting when I come.
30:28
So what is he saying there? On the first day of the week, bring your offerings.
30:34
So we see at least by example in the New Testament, there is the gathering together for fellowship, for instruction, for giving.
30:47
And we see this in the New Testament as an example from the early church.
30:50
Now, it is not long until we start seeing a phrase come up, the Lord's day.
30:58
How many of you ever heard me say the Lord's day? Say welcome to church here on the Lord's day.
31:03
That phrase, the Lord's day, it's te kuriake hemera.
31:10
It's the Lord, based on the root word kurios, which is the word for Lord, also the word which was in the Greek Septuagint for Yahweh.
31:19
So the Lord, this is the Lord's day.
31:22
It's the day that belongs to him.
31:24
And in Revelation 1.10, when John begins to receive his visions from the Lord about what will soon come to pass, it says he gets revelation on what day? The Lord's day.
31:40
What day did the spirit fall? In Pentecost, on the first day of the week.
31:44
There's all kinds of references to the first day of the week if you read through the New Testament, but we see John in Revelation 1.10 calls it the Lord's day.
31:55
The new Bible dictionary says this, speaking of that, this is the first extant occurrence in Christian literature of this phrase, the Lord's day.
32:07
The adjectival construction suggests that it was a formal designation of the church's worship day.
32:13
As such, it certainly appears early in the second century.
32:17
So by the middle of the 100s, by the way, the 100s of the second century, the first century is, you know, the time of Jesus Christ, the time of the apostles.
32:25
By the middle of the 100s, it was a normal part of the vernacular.
32:30
Sunday was called the Lord's day.
32:33
So it didn't have anything to do.
32:37
Yes, we're getting there.
32:41
Why was it referred to as the Lord's day? Because Jesus raised on the Lord's day.
32:48
And too, also, like I said, if you go back, you can see the spirit fell on Lord's day, Peter's first sermons on the Lord's day, the first great wave of the revival, which is 3,000 souls are saved on Pentecost.
33:01
It's all happening on the Lord's day.
33:03
This is a very important day of the week for the church, at least in the sense of how it was seen by the early church.
33:11
But yes, why was it important? Because Jesus didn't raise on a Saturday.
33:16
Jesus raised on a Sunday.
33:19
And so we celebrate the day Sunday as a weekly celebration of his resurrection.
33:26
You know, every year we have Resurrection Sunday.
33:29
Some people call it Easter.
33:30
I choose not to call it Easter, and there's a whole other reason for that.
33:32
But we call it Resurrection Sunday.
33:36
One time a year, we have this big Resurrection Sunday celebration.
33:42
But you know what? The reality is we should celebrate every Sunday.
33:48
Because every Sunday, we are reminded of one sublime truth, that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, came to the earth as a man, the man Christ Jesus.
34:00
He was born of a virgin.
34:01
He lived a sinless life.
34:03
And he went to the cross and paid the penalty for all who would believe on him, taking upon himself the wrath of God and providing to them the perfect righteousness that he had earned through a life of sincere obedience to the will of his Father.
34:24
And we celebrate his resurrection, which vindicated his truth.
34:31
Because you know what? If he was still in that grave, Paul said there'd be no reason to believe in him.
34:36
First Corinthians 15, it says, if there is no resurrection, then all of you, your faith is in vain.
34:41
But in fact, Jesus has been raised, Paul says.
34:47
And that is absolutely, amen.
34:49
That's the reason why we celebrate.
34:51
That's the reason why we come to church.
34:52
And we've chosen to gather on Saturday.
34:54
I wanna say this.
34:55
Now next week, I'm gonna make a little mark here, is next week, we're gonna come back and talk about this.
34:59
There has been an attempt in the church throughout the centuries to make Sunday Sabbath.
35:05
And that's not right either.
35:08
There are certain qualities of Sabbath which we carry over into Sunday, such as gathering for worship, prayer, and things like that.
35:14
But the idea that we maintain the Sabbath law by coming on Sunday is also a misunderstanding.
35:20
So next week, we're gonna do that.
35:22
We're gonna talk about how the Lord's Day is not a Sabbath day, okay? It's an important day.
35:30
It's a day we worship, but it's not Sabbath.
35:33
And you'll understand why next week.
35:36
So let's pray.
35:36
Father, thank you for your word.
35:38
Thank you for the truth.
35:40
We thank you that Christ is our Sabbath.
35:43
We thank you that Christ is our rest.
35:45
May it be that as we go into worship today, that we will worship you in spirit and in truth.
35:51
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.