Soon after my husband and I moved
back to St. Louis from Philadelphia and rejoined Covenant Presbyterian Church,
we got a call from a friend inviting us to join a new supper club that she and
her husband were forming. After she
described it to me, I asked when it would meet.
“On Sunday evenings,” she
replied.
“Do you mean you’ll have it after
the evening worship services?” I asked.
“Well, no, Mary Beth…you know,
we’re not under the Law anymore; we’re under grace. You don’t have to attend your Sunday evening
worship service.”
“Oh,” I said, “I know I am free to
miss it—but why would I want to? These are the people that have stood with me
through the hardest times of my life. It’s
the most wonderful way to end the Lord’s Day, being with them and worshiping
together. Thank you for your gracious
invitation—but we would just miss too much if we intentionally missed evening
church once a month.”
It was clear that my answer
surprised my friend, but it impressed her, too.
It piqued her interest to the point that she and her family visited our
church for a while, just to see what caused me to love it and its people so
much. (They continued to hunt for a church home and ended up in the church
where she grew up—perhaps that’s where she found her people as well.)
My answer also caused me to reflect
on why attending Sunday evening worship is the habit of our lives. Even before we met, both my husband and I had
the habit of regular Sunday evening worship attendance. So, when we married, it was only natural that
the habit would continue, as it has to this day, 42 years later.
One reason why both of us attended
evening worship as single young people was the fact that we were both
relatively new Christians and had a hunger for learning the Bible and being
with other believers. Both of us really
liked our pastors (before we met we belonged to different churches in different
denominations) and their preaching. Both
of us had made good friends at our churches that we enjoyed being with during
and after the evening services. I
especially loved our elderly Scottish assistant pastor who led the hymn singing
with passion and a heavy brogue! For
both of our congregations, the evening service was simply an important part of
the life of the community. And as
typical singles, we liked being out and about with other people rather than
being home alone.
After we got married, we received
more teaching about the Sabbath principle of observing the Lord’s Day. When George Robertson was preaching through
the Psalms, he showed us how Psalm 92 refers to evening worship. The introduction to the psalm says “A psalm.
A song. For the Sabbath day.” And the first two verses say,
It is good to praise the LORD and make
music to your name, O Most High,
to proclaim your love in the
morning and your faithfulness at night,
[italics mine]
to the music of the ten-stringed
lyre and the melody of the harp.
We learned that the principle of
Sabbath rest goes back to creation. That
is how the Lord explained it when He gave the fourth commandment to Moses in
Exodus 20:8-11:
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping
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, neither you,
nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals,
nor the alien within your gates. For in
six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
In the New Testament we learn that
Jesus fulfills all of the Law for us, and He Himself is our Sabbath rest
(Hebrews 4; Romans 5:19; Hebrews 5:8-10).
We find the disciples, after His Sunday-morning resurrection, gathering
on the first day of the week, “the Lord’s day,” or Sunday. So, as G. I Williamson explains, “it is the proportion alone—and not the order—that
is fixed by the commandment.”[1] J. I Packer concurs: “The relation is just a
new way of counting six-and-one, so that Lord’s Day observance is the Christian
form of Sabbath-keeping.”[2]
Whether you call it the Sabbath or
the Lord’s Day, the day recurs weekly; it recognizes some sort of
distinctiveness for one day in seven; it celebrates redemption in Christ and
his resurrection, which is a fulfillment of the concept of rest embodied in the
Sabbath; the one who is worshiped on the Lord’s Day is the bringer of the truth
of the Sabbath rest of salvation to which the Old Testament Sabbath pointed
(John 5; Hebrews 3-4), prefiguring the future rest of the consummation; and
includes the notion of worship and, finally, the concept of lordship.[3]
There is great freedom in how we
choose to keep the day “holy” or set apart, yet we ignore observing it to our
peril. God made us; He knows we need
rest. And He has graciously provided the
means that give us true restoration—including a day of rest set apart unto Him
and for us—because we were created
“to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (WSC Q & A #1), which includes the
here and now.
Countless lists can be found with
suggestions about what should and should not be done on Sunday. A simple and helpful one comes from H. G. G.
Herklots. Paraphrased, he says that the
Lord’s Day should be:
1)
A day of worship.
2)
A day of rest in the sense that Christians do
not cause others to do unnecessary work for them.
3)
A day of real recreation, which by its changed
occupation refreshes the mind and body and spirit “after divine service.”
4)
A day when a Christian goes out of his way to
help those who are in need.[4]
He sums it up this way: “For Christians, Sunday is the most
important day of the week. A week
without Sunday can be like a ship without a rudder. On the Lord’s Day Christians come together into
the presence of their Lord: it is here that the Christian family realizes its
unity as at few other times. This does
not happen automatically. Sunday must be
remembered. But if it be also hallowed it may hallow all
the week.”[5]
On so
many Sundays, such as one recently when assistant pastor Chris Smith gave a
wonderful message during the evening service on Psalm 13, we drive away from
the church saying, “Can you believe what we learned today?” And, “What better
way could there be to end this day?” To
be able to express prayer concerns and have them prayed for by the men and
women of the congregation; to see a little hand go up during hymn requests and
hear the child’s voice say, “Number 100, please, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ verses 1
and 4;” to hear God’s word faithfully and thoughtfully preached; to sing new
songs as well as familiar old hymns; to spend time afterwards talking with
church family members—yes, I’m free to miss all that. But why would I?
If
attending Sunday evening worship is not the habit of your life, I encourage you
to give it a try—especially during the summer, without having to get your
children up for school the next day.
Train your children and your own hearts in the blessing of setting aside
the whole of Sunday to the Lord, book-ending it by morning and evening
worship. I don’t think you’ll be
disappointed, and believe you will find it to be a very good thing.
[1] G.
I. Williamson, The Shorter Catechism for
Study Classes, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1970), 43.
[2] J.
I, Packer, The Ten Commandments (Appleford,
England: Marcham Manor Press, n.d.), 6.
[3] A.
T. Lincoln, “From Sabbath to Lord’s Day:
A Biblical and Theological Investigation,” ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1982), 398-400.
[4] H.G.G.
Herklots, The Ten Commandments and Modern
Man (Fair Lawn, NJ: Essential Books, 1958), 81.
[5]
Ibid., 81-83.
