The Lord’s Day

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We’re going to be in Luke 24 tonight, and we’re going to start in Luke 24, and we’re going to talk about the concept of the Lord’s Day. If you have your copy of our doctrinal statement, if you have the Baptist faith and message, we’re going to be on page 14 and look at a little paragraph at the bottom of page 14, section 8. It says, the first day of the week is the Lord’s Day.

It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private. Activities on the Lord’s Day should be commensurate with the Christian’s conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And that means that we come together to worship on the first day of the week, which is Sunday.

We can and should worship throughout the week, but Sunday is the day particularly that we come together to worship together. it’s for regular observance it’s not just something that we’re supposed to observe here and there it’s not one Sunday a month two Sundays a month it’s supposed to be a regular Christian observance it’s something that we’re supposed to do regularly I understand there are churches in our area I think there’s a church not far from here that’s almost entirely older people they don’t have a pastor they can get somebody to come lead services every other week and so that’s what they do. And I don’t mean to disparage them they’re doing the best that they can under the circumstances but ideally we’re supposed to meet together weekly for worship and for fellowship.

Now the reason we do this is it says it commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead. We come together on Sundays because we don’t just commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on Easter Sunday we commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead every week when we come together on Sunday. One of the things we’re going to look at tonight is how the disciples shifted their primary day of corporate worship from Saturday to Sunday.

Now they as devout Jews believed in a Saturday Sabbath, and that was a law. That was something they were supposed to do. And yet the resurrection of Jesus Christ was powerful enough of an event that it changed their entire worldview and it changed their practices to things that they couldn’t have even imagined doing before.

It should include exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private. That really should be every day, that we should worship God in public, we should worship God in private, we should worship God everywhere we go. Activities on the Lord’s Day should be commensurate with the Christian’s conscience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That means that you and I are each responsible to obey the conscience that God has put in us as the Holy Spirit leads and always looking to the Lord Jesus Christ as to what we do on Sunday.

You know, should there be a rule that you should only go to church and home? Well, no, that shouldn’t necessarily be a rule. You know, some people will go golfing on Sunday afternoon.

Is that a sin? The Bible doesn’t say that’s a sin. And if the Holy Spirit hadn’t told them not to do that, it’s not my job to tell them don’t go golfing on Sunday afternoon.

Some people will be in the deer blind on Sunday morning before church. Is that a sin? No, there’s nothing in the Bible that says that that’s a sin.

Okay, I’ve known people who thought it was a sin to go to a restaurant on Sunday after church You’re making somebody else work. And is that a sin? I think if the Holy Spirit tells them, you go home and you make yourself a sandwich, then that’s what they need to do.

But what this is saying, and what I understand the scripture to teach, is that the way we observe Sunday, the way we observe the Lord’s day, is a matter of conscience. And if you’re persuaded in your mind and in your conscience that you’re honoring the Lord Jesus Christ the best way you can on Sunday, which, by the way, should go for any day of the week, that we should be doing things that we are persuaded are honoring to the Lord Jesus Christ. If you’re honoring Him, then it’s not up to somebody else to make the rules for you. Again, I could go to all sorts of these examples, and I know a couple of you, when I said that about the restaurants, looked at me like, really?

There are people that think it’s a sin to go to a restaurant? Oh, yeah. and probably a few decades ago, it would be more shocking to say it wasn’t a sin to go to a restaurant in some circles, in some churches.

Now, you may be wondering, what’s the big deal about Sunday? Why are we even having a message about this? It is a big deal to a lot of people.

I remember when I started out preaching, I was filling in at a church in Oklahoma City, And while we were in their heaven services, our cars got flyered with literature on a Sunday morning about how worshiping on Sunday was one of the marks of the devil, was one of the marks of the Antichrist from our friendly Seventh-day Adventist church not too far down the road. Well, I was, let’s see, I’m trying to think of what year this would have been. I was about 21 and hot-headed, and I totally scrapped my Sunday night message that I had planned and came back with a scathing message called What’s Wrong With Sunday Worship, and basically outlined the reasons why there was nothing wrong with Sunday worship.

I still stand behind that. I also would not, I personally would not criticize the Seventh-day Adventists and tell them they were doing anything wrong for worshiping on Saturday. I worship on Sunday, they worship on Saturday.

As long as we are worshiping the same Jesus Christ, it really doesn’t matter to me. And I say the same Jesus Christ. Because I hear all the time, well, it doesn’t matter what we do, what we believe, as long as we love Jesus. Oh, yes, it does, because there are all sorts of, the Bible even says there are false Christs that would arise.

And not every church that claims to worship Jesus is worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. We need to be very clear about that. As long as we are worshiping the same Jesus Christ, I don’t care if you do it on Sunday morning.

I don’t care if you do it on Saturday afternoon. I don’t care if you do it on Tuesday at 3 o’clock in the morning. As long as you’re getting together with your body of believers and you’re worshiping Jesus Christ, you’re not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, that is the main thing.

When I was working to start a church in Norman years ago, we were sent out of a church in Blanchard to do that. Well, we were just getting started. We were still going to, those of us who were on this church planting team, were still going out to Blanchard for Sunday services.

And we were getting together. We were gathering groups of people for small groups and worship and Bible study throughout the week as people had the availability. And a lot of times we had people said, Well, you’re supposed to be starting a church, and you’re here on Sunday.

Yeah, that’s because we’re having church in Norman on Tuesday. And now that group is meeting on Sundays. But for them, for that time, that was what worked for us as we were trying to gather people.

So I want to be very clear, as we’re about to get into Luke chapter 24, I want to be clear on a few things. Just because I talk tonight and say, you know, Sunday is when we worship. I don’t intend to disparage anybody that meets any other day of the week.

You know as well as I do that there are some Christians who have to work on Sundays. There are Christians who are in the military. There are Christians who are police officers.

There are Christians who work in the medical field, EMTs. People that run our power stations. There are Christians who cannot not work on Sundays.

Society would fall apart. I think it’s important for them to be part of a body of believers and be worshiping God together. I don’t care if it happens on Tuesday.

As long as they’re getting together and worshiping Jesus Christ. I also want to be very clear in this that Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath. I may draw some flack for that, I don’t know, but I’ve seen it even in some older statements of faith. The first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath.

I believe there is a Sabbath that God set up for the Jewish people on Saturday, from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. And that was the Sabbath. There were rules about not working.

There were rules about going together and worshiping. There were rules that accompanied the Sabbath. Now, a lot of the things that he said accompanied the Sabbath no longer apply.

And there’s nowhere in Scripture where I see God commanded the Sabbath to be moved from Saturday to Sunday. That’s one of the criticisms of the Seventh-day Adventists. They say, well, you people never had authority anywhere in Scripture to move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.

They’re absolutely right. And nobody did. Nobody did move the Sabbath.

The thing is that we as Christians are no longer under the Sabbath. Jesus is our Sabbath rest. Jesus is our Sabbath rest. We didn’t move the Sabbath. We didn’t take all those rules and carry them forward to another day.

Sunday is something completely different. It’s the Lord’s day where we come together to lift up Jesus Christ together. So let’s look at the first nine verses of Luke chapter 24.

Hopefully you’ve already turned there with me. It says, Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

And then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this, that, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. Then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, They said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.

Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now if you look back at verse 1, it’s a familiar story to you. there’s the story of Jesus’ resurrection, or at least the story of the women discovering that he had risen. If you look back at the very first verse of this, it says that it was on the first day of the week.

Now, then, as now, the first day of the week is Sunday. Honestly, I get a little more irritated by seeing calendars that start on Monday than I do by the idea of anybody working on a Sunday. Because the Bible says the first day of the week is Sunday.

And the reason that’s important is because that is the day that Jesus Christ was discovered to have risen from the dead. Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, Jesus rose from the dead. And it was on Sunday that the message of Jesus’ resurrection was first proclaimed.

It was on Sunday that the angels first said to the women, Why are you here looking for somebody who’s alive among the dead people? It was on Sunday that the women first ran back to tell the disciples that he had risen. It was on Sunday that Peter and John ran to the tomb to check it out for themselves.

It was on Sunday that that message was first discovered and was first proclaimed. And so we gather on Sundays, first of all, to worship Jesus and commemorate his resurrection. Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to worship together any other day of the week.

If so, what are we doing on Wednesday? Right, but we’re worshiping together. If this meant you could only worship on Sundays, then we’re violating God’s word by getting together on Wednesday.

Now, this doesn’t mean Sunday is the only day we can worship, but it means as a church, one of the ways we visibly witness to the resurrection is we have decided that Sunday is the day we’re going to meet together and worship. Again, as I said, a church that meets, I think one of the churches we looked at on the Lottie Moon video this morning, didn’t it say they met together on a different night of the week? Was it a Thursday?

Maybe I’m just imagining that. I could have sworn there was a Tuesday or Thursday church meeting they were talking about there. And that was the day they got together for church.

I’m not saying those are not real churches, and I’m not saying they’re not worshiping. What I’m saying is the reason we get together on Sunday. The significance of Sunday is that points to the resurrection.

Why would we worship on Sunday? why wouldn’t we worship on Sunday? That’s the day our Lord rose from the dead.

And so we’re simply coming together to do something similar to what they did on that first Easter Sunday morning was to get together and talk about Jesus, the risen Lord. And so we come together on Sunday to worship the risen Lord. Let’s look at a couple other things tonight.

If you would, turn with me to Acts chapter 20. and to be honest I’ve told you this before messages where we have to jump around to a bunch of different passages and they’re not my favorite thing to teach because I’ve seen far too many preachers who say well let’s look at a third of this verse and let’s skip around to a different testament and here’s two verses and three chapters back here’s another half a verse and it’s real easy for people to build aberrant doctrines that way. I’d rather take you through a whole passage and say in context this is what God’s word says but there are some subjects where you have to pull your material from all over the place so we’re going to look at a few different places tonight.

Acts chapter 20 starting in verse 7 excuse me starting in verse 7 it’d help if I would turn to the right page here starting in verse 7. Now on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread. Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.

There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together, and in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep, and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. It says, but Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him, said, do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him.

Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten and talked a long while, even until daybreak, he departed. And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted. So in that story, they’ve come together for worship, they’re breaking bread, that either means breaking bread in fellowship, they were spending time together, they were having a meal together, or it means they were observing the Lord’s Supper.

But either way, they were together as the church doing something of spiritual significance. They were listening to a sermon by Paul, which, by the way, it’s hilarious to me that Paul preached so long that somebody fell asleep, and he fell asleep so hard that he fell out of a third-story window and died. I know that’s kind of morbid, that that would be funny to me.

I’m able to laugh about it because Paul then, you know, the man came back to life through the work of God. Sometimes when I feel like my messages are boring, I have to remind myself I haven’t preached until someone died yet. Until somebody fell out of their chair.

I will occasionally hear snoring. I will occasionally hear snoring, but nobody’s fallen out of the chair yet, so that’s good. But what they were doing was they came together on the first day of the week for teaching.

They came together on the first day of the week for fellowship and for teaching. They were meeting together. And so when people will say, well, there’s nothing in Scripture that tells you to have church on Sunday, what do you think they were doing here?

They weren’t going to see the latest episode of the Paul show, because clearly it wasn’t for entertainment purposes if the guy fell asleep. No, they were there having church. They were having fellowship, and they were having teaching.

They were doing just what we do every Sunday. And we follow in that tradition of coming together. And it is a tradition, even though it’s found in the Bible.

It is a tradition because we don’t see where the Scripture says you have to meet on Sunday. It says that’s what they did. But to those who say, well, there’s nothing in Scripture, yes, there is.

The Scriptures allow us to meet on Sunday. And we follow in the tradition of the apostles in that regard by coming together on the day that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead and coming together for the purpose of fellowship and the purpose of being taught. And we’re carrying on something that they’ve done for 2,000 years to come together once a week, at least once a week.

Now, they were together and they were being the church every day, which I think is the right way to look at it. But they were at least coming together on Sundays for fellowship. and we need that folks we need that for us to live the lives that God intends us to live for us to be obedient for us to bear the kind of fruit we’re supposed to the fellowship of the local church is not optional we need each other we live in a hostile world we live in a world that is hostile toward what we believe and sometimes we need to come together and be strengthened We need to come together and encourage one another periodically, and strengthen one another periodically, and cheer each other on to serve him for the next week.

There’s a meeting I go to once a month. It’s a political meeting, and it’s in the city, and I’ve been going to it for years. Helped start this group back when I was in college, and got out of it for a while when I moved to Arkansas, got right back in when I came back.

And the group, just like church, the attendance goes up and it goes down, and over the years it’s ebbed and flowed, and there’s no way to know for sure how many people you’re going to have there each week. And it’s a long investment of time because it’s an hour drive over there. The meeting itself is a couple hours long, and then an hour drive back, and usually I’m getting home around 1030, and I’m exhausted from this thing.

And Charlotte says, politics are not Charlotte’s thing, so she doesn’t understand why I go anyway. And she says, why do you go to this? Why do you still, even though it’s an hour away, why do you still drive for this?

And I said, it’s a lot like church for me when it comes to politics. Because my political views are very much in the minority. I don’t want you thinking I’m a communist or something.

I’m just a very, very, very small government guy. And my politics are very much in the minority, even in my own party. And what I found is a group of people who share my general outlook on life.

And sometimes, you know, in elections and things that are going on in politics, you feel very much outnumbered. And I start to look at it around me and say, I’m all alone. And once a month, I go meet with some people that think like I do.

and we have dinner together and we complain together and we listen to speakers together to tell us what we could be doing and I realize I’m not alone and it kind of winds me up to go back and fight for another month. That’s what church, that’s why I compare that to church because that’s what church is supposed to do. We live in a world, and by the way, I’m not saying that my politics are the only Christian view.

I’m just saying what I get out of this is what we’re supposed to get out of church. We live in a world that is hostile toward the gospel. We live in a world that it’s always been hostile.

We live in a world that is increasingly hostile toward everything connected to Jesus Christ. Oh my goodness. I read an article yesterday where a professor said, he was talking about the Me Too movement, and said that Mary was impregnated against her will by God, and he was a bully for having done so. That she could not have consented to it.

And of course my head immediately explodes. Luke 1. 38 says, Behold the handmaiden of God.

Behold your servant. Be it unto me according to thy will. That sounds like consent to me.

I went and read the rest of the article. And he said because of the power dynamic in the relationship, because he’s big bad God up here, and she’s a little teenage girl, she couldn’t possibly give consent because of the threat of force. And I thought, read on a few more verses even, and she’s singing songs about how happy she is that God chose her.

Shut up. Sorry. I normally try to be more loving and gracious, but I read that and all I could think was shut up.

It’s professors talking about the Bible and it’s doubtful whether they’ve ever seen one in its natural habitat. Why am I telling you that? Because it’s not just a rabbit trail that I did just think of it, but it’s not just a rabbit trail.

Fifty years ago, would a professor have spoken publicly and said anything that ridiculous? No. But we’re bombarded with messages like that today.

In our society, nobody can be offended. But we can constantly offend people who love Jesus Christ. And I’m not saying I want to silence those people. I don’t believe in silencing people.

What I’m saying is, if you don’t realize that we live in a world that is increasingly hostile toward Jesus Christ, there you go. And depending on what your life is like day by day by day, in between Sundays, you may feel it more than some of us do. But there are times that we as Christians, if we’re paying attention, are going to feel like I’m all alone out here.

I’m all alone. Last person out, turn off the light over the baptistry and lock the door. I’m all alone out here.

You know what? We come together once a week to be taught and have fellowship and be reminded. We’re not alone in the fight.

We’re not alone in the faith. And to get wound up to go out there and do battle again for another week. And by the way, when I say do battle, when I say fight, I’m not talking about earthly weapons.

Not talking about anything to do with violence. I just want to make that very clear. But we have a fight against an enemy who is not flesh and blood.

We war against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness. And sometimes the fight can feel lonely. So we come together with our brothers and sisters to be prepared to do battle for another week.

And we’ve chosen to do that on Sunday because that’s the day Jesus rose again from the dead. Now let’s look at a couple more things. I need to move on quickly through this material tonight.

1 Corinthians chapter 16, if you turn there with me real quick. I just want to show you two more things tonight, and then we’ll be dismissed. Notice I didn’t say I just want to show you two more things, and we’re almost done.

Just said I want to show you two more things. 1 Corinthians chapter 16, starting in verse 1, it says, Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so you must do also. On the first day of the week, there’s that phrase again, the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come.

And when I come, whomever you approve by your letters, I will send to bear your gift to Jerusalem. So Paul was talking about a need that there was in Jerusalem, and he said, just like I’ve talked to the other churches about giving and supporting this need and doing ministry, he said, so I’m sending that to you as well. So that when you come together on the first day of the week, when you meet together as you always do for worship, go ahead and take up a collection then.

He said so that you don’t have to wait until I come there to do it. Go ahead and take up the collection. And one of the things that I see from this is that we follow in their footsteps to gather on Sundays to give and serve.

Now we should give to the Lord every day of our time, of our energy, of everything that we have to give. We should serve him every day, but there’s something about coming together to give and serve on Sundays. That’s why some of you have ministries in this church that take place on Sundays.

You’re giving and you’re serving on Sundays. We take up an offering on Sundays. Okay, you teach Sunday school on Sundays.

You don’t normally come in here and teach to an empty room on Monday through Friday, do you? No, didn’t think I’d ever seen you. Brother Ken doesn’t come lead an empty room in song on Sundays.

No, he comes and serve. I mean, you might lead an empty room in song on Sundays. He doesn’t come up here and, well, that point just fell all apart, didn’t it?

He doesn’t come and lead an empty room in song on Tuesday afternoon. We come together and he serves and leads our music on Sunday. We should be serving every day, but there’s something special about coming together to give and to serve in commemoration of Jesus and what he did for us on Sunday.

And then the last thing I want to show you tonight is in Colossians. And I think that this is particularly important to understanding the whole thing. Colossians chapter 2.

I could probably preach a whole message on just this chapter, but I won’t. Colossians chapter 2, verse 16. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. And I see where people still debate, well, you’re wrong for worshiping on Sunday.

You’re wrong for worshiping on Saturday. You’re wrong for not celebrating the Passover. You’re wrong because you celebrate Christmas.

Don’t you know about the origins of Christmas? By the way, I read some interesting articles on the origins of Christmas, and if you’ve heard that it’s based on pagan traditions, I’m not so sure that’s true. I’ll have to try to find that article again and share it with you.

But we hear that. Well, Christmas is based on pagan traditions. You’re wrong for celebrating it.

And on and on, and we like to pick at each other about what we do celebrate or don’t celebrate or what day we do worship or don’t worship. And it’s enough. Paul said right here in his letter to the church at Colossae, don’t let anyone judge you about what you eat or drink.

I don’t think he’s talking about it’s okay to go out and get hammered at the bar and don’t let anybody judge you. Because the Bible is pretty clear about drunkenness. But some people would eat certain things and they’d be offended by others who would eat certain things.

Just like we do today. We do this, well, maybe not over food and drink, but we do the same stuff today. I’ve seen a man come unglued because a teenager who’d never been in a church before in his life walked in and wore a ball cap.

Leave the boy alone. Leave him alone. He’s here.

Thank God he’s here hearing the gospel. Leave him alone. He was more offended.

This man in particular, he was more offended by the idea that the kid was wearing a baseball cap in church on Sunday morning, then he was offended by the idea that the kid might die and go to hell not knowing Jesus Christ. This says, don’t let people judge you in food or drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths. It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate the Sabbath, whether you observe the Sabbath on Saturday or you worship on Sunday. It doesn’t matter whether you observe the Feast of Tabernacles or the Passover or whether you don’t.

All these things, he says in verse 17, these things are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is Jesus Christ. All the rules that the religious establishment at that time was looking at and saying, well, you’ve got to do this. You’ve got to follow this rule and this law and make this sacrifice and observe this festival. He said those things were all just to point people to Jesus Christ in the first place. So where I want to leave off with this tonight is to tell you that all the little details, if they’re not specifically spelled out in scripture, and in particular in the New Testament.

If these things are not given as commands by God, these little details, then they’re really not all that important. The day we gather to worship together does not matter nearly as much as our commitment to Christ. We could come together and worship on Sunday, and it’d be totally meaningless if you look at the message from this morning. The Pharisees came together to worship and they liked to look like they were worshiping and serving and they were just so godly and yet it was all about them and it was all this self-focused worship that God was just offended by.

God was disgusted by. Jesus called them hypocrites. We can easily come together on Sunday or Saturday or whatever day you think it ought to be and put on a good religious show and it be meaningless.

In vain do they worship me. Matthew 15, 9. In vain do they worship me.

The day we do it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the commitment to Christ behind it. And so I want to leave you with that. I want to leave you with that.

Don’t be focused on the details that are not, if they’re not things God commanded. I’ve also seen where women have been asked to leave a church because they were wearing pants. Wearing pants.

Instead of a dress. seen all sorts of things and you you probably have stories like that too you’ve seen things where churches majored on the minor things and you know we might do that here too on some things I don’t have anything in mind when I say that but there might be things that we judge one another over or that we judge others over when it comes to our worship that have nothing to do with the commitment to Jesus Christ. Some of you ladies come in wearing jeans, wearing pants, and you worship Jesus Christ just as hard as I’ve ever seen anybody. We’re not called to get hung up on the day that we worship or all the other little details.

It’s supposed to be about Jesus Christ. I don’t think he could have been any clearer in Colossians chapter 2. And so I hope that I keep that in mind. I hope that I remind myself of that, and I hope you’ll remember that as well, that when we come together to worship.

It’s not all the shadows and all the types and all the symbolism that comes before that is the main thing. It’s the Christ that they pointed to.