Christian, when you come to the corporate gathering on the Lord’s Day, whether 10 others show up with you, 100 or even a crowd of 10,000, you are actually part of something so massive, so momentous, you would hardly believe it. You have come to an event so big it makes the Superbowl look a small family picnic by comparison. Embracing what Scripture reveals about our corporate gathering together allows us to say ‘farewell’ to boredom forever. Your Sundays will never be the same!
The word, under which you will now gather week in and week out, applied to you for the direction of your souls, is infinitely — I choose that word carefully — infinitely more authoritative than all presidential directives put together. The word of God in Scripture that will come and break over you week after week is infinitely wiser, deeper, sweeter, purer, stronger, more effective, more transforming, more durable, more lasting, more satisfying than all the directives and all the legislation that will come out of Washington for the next four years. Every week.
Not only that, but as you gather as the eternally loved people of God, under the word of God, in the power of the Spirit of God, you will in fact — in reality, in this room — meet God. God will come to you. There is a unique and manifest presence of the living God reserved for his family gathered in worship. I know whereof I speak, personally.
He will be enthroned, uniquely, on your praises (Psalm 22:3). He will reveal himself to you as you love him together in this room.
He will heal broken marriages as a husband and a wife singing together in the presence of God feel the impossible become possible.
He will humble the most arrogant sinner who walks through these doors. He will humble him, and he will walk out after meeting God in worship as a little child.
He will shine his light on your utter confusion as you walk in, and you will leave knowing what way to go.
He will catch you falling over the cliff of hopelessness as you walk in here, and by the end of these services you will feel ground under your feet.
He will convict you of the ugliness of a hidden habit that is quietly destroying your life. And you will walk out after meeting him under the word, by the Spirit in worship, not resolving to be free, but free.
I wonder if your expectations are that high. This is what he does when his people gather in worship.
1. Understanding the Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3) John MacArthur
For some Christians, Sunday is the new Sabbath…which means no work, travel, or exercise. For others, Sunday is just another day of the week. What do you need to know about the Sabbath and Sunday worship?
For a fuller and richer treatment of this issue, the following series by Pastor Dan Caffese is highly recommended at this link.
Are the Sabbath laws binding on Christians today?
We believe the Old Testament regulations governing Sabbath observances are ceremonial, not moral, aspects of the law. As such, they are no longer in force, but have passed away along with the sacrificial system, the Levitical priesthood, and all other aspects of Moses’ law that prefigured Christ. Here are the reasons we hold this view.
1. In Colossians 2:16-17, Paul explicitly refers to the Sabbath as a shadow of Christ, which is no longer binding since the substance (Christ) has come. It is quite clear in those verses that the weekly Sabbath is in view. The phrase “a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day” refers to the annual, monthly, and weekly holy days of the Jewish calendar (cf. 1 Chronicles 23:31; 2 Chronicles 2:4; 31:3; Ezekiel 45:17; Hosea 2:11). If Paul were referring to special ceremonial dates of rest in that passage, why would he have used the word “Sabbath?” He had already mentioned the ceremonial dates when he spoke of festivals and new moons.
2. The Sabbath was the sign to Israel of the Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 31:16-17; Ezekiel 20:12; Nehemiah 9:14). Since we are now under the New Covenant (Hebrews 8), we are no longer required to observe the sign of the Mosaic Covenant.
3. The New Testament never commands Christians to observe the Sabbath.
4. In our only glimpse of an early church worship service in the New Testament, the church met on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7).
5. Nowhere in the Old Testament are the Gentile nations commanded to observe the Sabbath or condemned for failing to do so. That is certainly strange if Sabbath observance were meant to be an eternal moral principle.
6. There is no evidence in the Bible of anyone keeping the Sabbath before the time of Moses, nor are there any commands in the Bible to keep the Sabbath before the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai.
7. When the Apostles met at the Jerusalem council (Acts 15), they did not impose Sabbath keeping on the Gentile believers.
8. The apostle Paul warned the Gentiles about many different sins in his epistles, but breaking the Sabbath was never one of them.
9. In Galatians 4:10-11, Paul rebukes the Galatians for thinking God expected them to observe special days (including the Sabbath).
10. In Romans 14:5, Paul forbids those who observe the Sabbath (these were no doubt Jewish believers) to condemn those who do not (Gentile believers).
11. The early church fathers, from Ignatius to Augustine, taught that the Old Testament Sabbath had been abolished and that the first day of the week (Sunday) was the day when Christians should meet for worship (contrary to the claim of many seventh-day sabbatarians who claim that Sunday worship was not instituted until the fourth century).
12. Sunday has not replaced Saturday as the Sabbath. Rather the Lord’s Day is a time when believers gather to commemorate His resurrection, which occurred on the first day of the week. Every day to the believer is one of Sabbath rest, since we have ceased from our spiritual labor and are resting in the salvation of the Lord (Hebrews 4:9-11).
So while we still follow the pattern of designating one day of the week a day for the Lord’s people to gather in worship, we do not refer to this as “the Sabbath.”
John Calvin took a similar position. He wrote,
There were three reasons for giving this [fourth] commandment: First, with the seventh day of rest the Lord wished to give to the people of Israel an image of spiritual rest, whereby believers must cease from their own works in order to let the Lord work in them. Secondly, he wished that there be an established day in which believers might assemble in order to hear his Law and worship him. Thirdly, he willed that one day of rest be granted to servants and to those who live under the power of others so that they might have a relaxation from their labor. The latter, however, is rather an inferred than a principal reason.
As to the first reason, there is no doubt that it ceased in Christ; because he is the truth by the presence of which all images vanish. He is the reality at whose advent all shadows are abandoned. Hence St. Paul (Col. 2:17) that the sabbath has been a shadow of a reality yet to be. And he declares elsewhere its truth when in the letter to the Romans, ch. 6:8, he teaches us that we are buried with Christ in order that by his death we may die to the corruption of our flesh. And this is not done in one day, but during all the course of our life, until altogether dead in our own selves, we may be filled with the life of God. Hence, superstitious observance of days must remain far from Christians.
The two last reasons, however, must not be numbered among the shadows of old. Rather, they are equally valid for all ages. Hence, though the sabbath is abrogated, it so happens among us that we still convene on certain days in order to hear the word of God, to break the [mystic] bread of the Supper, and to offer public prayers; and, moreover, in order that some relaxation from their toil be given to servants and workingmen. As our human weakness does not allow such assemblies to meet every day, the day observed by the Jews has been taken away (as a good device for eliminating superstition) and another day has been destined to this use. This was necessary for securing and maintaining order and peace in the Church.
As the truth therefore was given to the Jews under a figure, so to us on the contrary truth is shown without shadows in order, first of all, that we meditate all our life on a perpetual sabbath from our works so that the Lord may operate in us by his spirit; secondly, in order that we observe the legitimate order of the Church for listening to the word of God, for admin-istering the sacraments, and for public prayers; thirdly, in order that we do not oppress inhumanly with work those who are subject to us. [From Instruction in Faith, Calvin’s own 1537 digest of the Institutes, sec. 8, “The Law of the Lord”].
For further study, see D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).
