From the Pastor’s heart
Your Sunday OR God’s Sunday?
It is common for people to make a reference to Sunday as a day of their own. We often hear people say “This is my Sunday and I just want to enjoy it for myself.” But the question that I want you to join me in asking and reflecting upon this week is, can a truly Bible-believing and worshiping Christian claim Sunday as a day of his own, to be spent according to his own personal preference or liking? In other words, is Sunday as a day (the whole day) yours or God’s? Of course, all days have been created by God (Genesis chapters 1 & 2) and they all are God’s gracious gift for all people whom God created here on earth.
But among all the seven created days of the week, there is one specific day that the Lord God appointed and preserved to be consecrated (set apart) by His redeemed people for public worship in the Church. I know every time the issue of dedicating one specific day in a week for the purpose of worship comes up, many contend hastily and zealously to make an argument that God must be worshiped every day, not just once in a week on a Sunday. Personally, I can’t agree more with anyone who makes that case. God should be worshiped and glorified by all His children every day and all the time (1 Corinthians 10:31).
But I also want people to understand and appreciate God’s appointment of one specific day of the week, which is Sunday or “the Lord’s day”, for holy worship, and also both physical and spiritual rest for his own people based on the will and teaching of God Himself in his word, not based on man’s independent interpretation and notion. So let’s do that. After delivering the people of Israel from the bondage in Egypt, God gave them the Ten Commandments to serve them as a perfect reflection of God’s character and standard of their holy living before the Lord. And as the Israelite (and you and I) learned from God’s holy Word, the first four commandments of the moral law teach us how to love God, largely, how to love him in worship on the day of His choosing. You see, it is very important for you to understand the fourth commandment in the term and spirit that God Himself prescribed or dictated it in his Word.
What does the fourth Commandment say? “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). It was a clear command on and for God’s worship by his delivered people. At the giving of this command on worship, the Lord was addressing the people of Israel as one assembly (gathering) to remember one day out of the seven days in a week in doing one thing: in setting apart (setting aside) the day to be part of the gathering of God’s people in the temple (God’s house) to praise and worship the Lord, and to do that by resting from all the physical labor that they were doing during the six days of the week (Exodus 20: 8-11) for the spiritual refreshment of their souls.
So you see, the first aspect of Sunday which really should sink into our minds, is the fact that Sunday is a day of worship, the personal property of God, something the Lord gave to his people as a gift for them to gather together, to praise and declare his glory with acts of worship. Even God the Creator Himself, “the one who never becomes weary and never dies”, had to rest on this day.
But why did He rest? He did not rest because He was tired and was in need of relaxation after six days (Isaiah 40:28) but to enjoy the completion and beauty of His handiwork on the created universe (Genesis 2:1-3) and set an order (ordinance) for His people to enter into physical and spiritual rest on this day, in order to take a delight in the finished work of God’s creation and redemption worship. That, my friend, makes the Sunday a creation and redemption order to be continued, starting from the day it was created to eternity.
There are people today who argue that God’s people are no more bound by the fourth Commandment because Christ came to fulfill it— and the whole Law— for us so that we will not be condemned by not doing it. Yes, my friend, Christ indeed has fulfilled the law for us to satisfy the demands of the Law for perfection in the sight of God. As Paul beautifully puts it in Galatians 4:4-5, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” So Christ kept the law for us, to rescue us from God’s condemnation of us by the law, and trust in Christ alone for our justification. The death of Christ on the cross, which was the satisfying of the demand of the Law, was never meant to make the moral law, including the fourth commandment, useless or irrelevant to today’s day of worship.
Remember what our Lord Jesus Christ himself said in the gospel, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them”, which means not to tell you to ignore and treat them as non-existent, but to do them as the expression of your honor and worship to Him, your Creator and Redeemer. The phrase “Do not think” is highly important. It meant, do not assume or have your own human conviction that it is the case. Listen to what I have to say about why I fulfilled the Ten Commandments for you. It was for the purpose of freeing you from their condemning power, and you should, not involuntarily, but gratefully embrace them to use them to present a living and pleasing worship to God the Father.
We see this being reiterated by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself when He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Did He then mean, “Show your love for me by keeping my commandments, but hey, about that fourth commandment on the Sabbath? No worries, you don’t need to be concerned or feel obligated about it because it’s no longer binding.” No, that was not what Jesus meant. But He meant, “Express the love that you have for me by keeping all the Commandments, and when you do all of them, including the one on public worship on Sunday, it will never be burdensome.”
“For this is the love of God, that we keep His Commandments. And his Commandments are not burdensome.” So you see my friend, to have a high regard for and acceptance of the Commandments of God but with the exclusion of the fourth Commandment, or with a low view of that one, would be a misunderstanding of the relationship between the gospel and Law. Because in the gospel, believers are united with Christ by faith as one body to declare the praise of God the Father in worship, and then live out their Christian life for the glory of God by loving and keeping His Commandments.
Now let me bring you back to the true aspect of Sunday as a day of Worship in our day or in the New Testament Church. To build upon what I started earlier, unlike the other six days of the week on which we are free to work, earn our living and enjoy all the things that the Lord has given us for ourselves through our leisure time and recreation in a way that honors God, Sunday is the personal property of God that the Lord gave to His people as a gift to enter into His spiritual rest and blessings through a day of worship. And this is not the teaching and call of the Old Testament only. But even the New Testament points us to this day as a creation and redemption order to be continued as God’s unchangeable law, that requires the observance of a day of rest for the purpose of worship and ministry in harmony with the teaching and practice of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also known as the Lord of the Sabbath.
Keep this in mind, you and I are not Lords of the Sabbath. It is not us who do whatever we want to do on a Sunday, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself in our midst. As worshipers, we benefit from all that He does for us as the Lord and the owner of the day (Matthew 12:5-8).
In the New Testament we see the seventh day of the Week (Sabbath) continue as the first day of the week (the Lord’s Day) because it was the day on which Christ was raised from the dead to finish the work of our redemption (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2). That makes this day the order of creation and redemption, the day of rest. Not just rest, but rest in order to worship the risen Lord the whole day.
God’s rest on the seventh day is the pattern for our own Sunday (day of worship). Just like the Lord, we are to cease one day a week from our worldly labors and enjoyment to celebrate our accomplished redemption, as we all together, through a public worship of God’s people, look forward to its completed application in the eternal Sabbath (rest) that is waiting for us in heaven.
“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. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fail by the same sort of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4: 9-11)
Beloved, what we do in the house of the Lord every Sunday is a foretaste of what is waiting for us in heaven. However, many struggle, and, heaven forbid, disobey the command of God to make it to church on a Sunday to worship God. That’s why the writer of the Hebrews used the term “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest” because the Israelites were having a hard time in sacrificing their own pride and worldly pleasures to enter into the day of rest through Christ’s finished work of salvation in worship which was the foretaste of heaven.
The writer’s exhortation in Hebrews 10:25, “Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near”, was to show believers the strong connection between the Christian Sabbath here on earth and the one that we will have in heaven, in perfection and with Christ physically, and to urge all of us to continue growing into a worshiper of God, through a faithful attendance to the worship of God in the visible local Church and the benefit of the ordinary means of grace.
Well then, what about you, my friend? What do you think after reading this article from your Pastor’s caring heart? Is Sunday yours or God’s? Are you spending your Sunday on pursuits of God’s choosing or your own preference? In the love of Christ and through this article, I would like to encourage you to reflect on your own personal understanding and conviction of the Lord’s Day, and how it should be sanctified by you for God’s worship for the purpose of doing what is pleasing to the Lord concerning this day.
In the love of the great Shepherd!
Your friend and Pastor!
Zecharias
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N.B After reading this article, if anyone of you would like to have more discussion with me on this subject, my Thursday counseling times are open for you all or we can pick another time that would work for both of us to meet and talk.
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