Why Sunday?

Introduction

Have you spent much time, or maybe much time recently with a two or three-year-old child? And wives, I’m not talking about your husbands. But have you spent much time with a young toddler recently, or even if you can remember in times past your own children, you know that one of their favorite words is the word why? They rarely can accept some simple explanation or instruction without it being followed up with the inquisitive, but why? Even a simple statement that the sky is blue prompts the question, but why? And let’s just be honest, that’s irritating. And it’s irritating because so often we don’t know the answer. But as irritating as that practice might be, I’m going to argue this morning, it’s one that we need to replicate.

Sometimes it’s good to ask why. Even over simple things and routine things, not just a probing for further information, but also it’s good to ask why to understand our motivation for doing certain things. Have you heard the story about the mother who was teaching her young daughter how to cook? And it was around the holiday time, and the meal that she was preparing was a ham. And so as she prepared this ham, she cut an end off of the ham and put it in the pan, put the ham in the oven. And this daughter, she wasn’t a toddler, but she still asked, Mom, why did you cut the end off of that ham before you put it in the oven? And she said, Well, that’s just the way my mom, the way your grandma always did it.

That’s just the way you cook a ham. But why? It didn’t make sense to that young daughter. Why? And so she finally, just to quieten the daughter, said, Well, let’s call grandma. So they called grandma and put grandma on speaker phone, and mom explained, I’m teaching daughter here how to cook, and I cut the ham off because I can always remember when you cook ham, you’d cut that end off, and I put it. But she asked a question that I never thought to ask you, and that’s why. Grandma laughed and said, I cut the end of the ham off because my pan was too small. And it wouldn’t fit.

With our Christianity. Do we just do things because that’s the way we do things? If you were brought up in a Christian household, you maybe just do certain things in faith and worship and practice. Well, because that’s the way mom and dad did it, or that’s the way grandma and grandpa did it. That’s just the way it is. But do we ever stop and ask that important question? Why? Maybe the most foundational question, even of why are you here this morning? When’s the last time you really gave any thought? And to Rufus’ point early, any meditation on the idea of why am I here? Most often given reply would be, well, it’s Sunday. And that brings us to our topic this morning. Why Sunday? I want us to examine some probative questions about this day, this day of worship, this day that you have chosen to assemble together to worship God.

1. What Day Is This?

Why? Why Sunday? Why are we here? And why are we here on this particular day? For centuries. Sunday has been a special day for Christians. It’s been a day of assembling. It’s been a day of worship, and we’re going to reaffirm all of that this morning, but we’re just going to simply ask why? Why Sunday? As we seek to examine this question, we really start with the question of really what day is this? What is this day all about? Students of Scripture recognize a change has taken place in days. You go back to the old covenant and you recognize the day that is often spoken of in the old covenant is not Sunday. It’s not the first day of the week. It’s the term Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week.

And interestingly, the seventh day, the Sabbath day, wasn’t necessarily a day of assembling together to worship. It was a day of rest. It was a day given to the children of Israel. Let’s look at that. Do you have your Old Testament scriptures? Turn with me to the book of Leviticus. We’re at Mount Sinai with the children of Israel. And they’re given this law that would govern them as a nation and as a people in their relationship to God. And God lists out the obligations and the requirements that they would have to be his people. And notice what he says in Leviticus chapter 23. Let’s first look at verse 3. Leviticus 23, verse 3 says, Six days shall be a shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation.

You shall do no work on it. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all of your dwellings. Again, if you’re a student of the Bible, you know that. You know that the Sabbath day was this day of rest. You also know that it was built upon the principle, the pattern of creation. Six days God worked in the creation of the planet. The seventh day he rested. You know, not in the sense that he needed a nap and he was tired from six days of creation, but rested in the sense of cease. He did no longer did work or creative work on that day. And so God says there’s a pattern. That you worship your creator, you’re going to worship him, and you’re going to do some observances based upon that pattern of creation.

And just as God did on the Sabbath day, you will cease from work. There will be no work done on that day. But we read a little bit further, stay in Leviticus chapter 23, and go down to verse 15. And it says, and you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wheat offering, seven Sabbaths shall be completed. You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath. This day after the Sabbath became a figure of speech. By the time we get to the New Testament, the phrase, the first of the Sabbaths, is a phrase that’s translated in our English New Testaments as the first day of the week. And so this day, this day of worship that was given to them, this day of rest, is different than the day that we observe today.

Look with me in the book of Exodus now to establish this. Exodus chapter 31. We’re still at Mount Sinai. We’re still at the giving of the law and the establishment of this Sabbath law. And notice what he says in Exodus chapter 31. And in verse 15. Work shall be done. Work shall be done for six days, but on the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall be surely put to death. Therefore, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual governor, a covenant. This day of rest, this Sabbath day was a day that God said was for the children of Israel. And we recognize numerous New Testament passages tell us that that old covenant with its ordinances have been done away with.

And this is important to establish because sometimes we hear this mistaken notion that today, Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. You ever hear that? There’s really no foundation of that at all. Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath at all. The Sabbath has always been the seventh day. And it was a day of rest. The Christian’s day is the first day of the week, not the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week. And it’s a day, as we’re going to see this morning, a day of assembly and a day of worship, not a day of rest. And so this day is the first day of the week. That’s the term we often see in the New Testament, the first day of the week. We believe that John in the book of Revelation, when he spoke of the Lord’s day, spoke of this day, the first day of the week.

2. Why This Day?

Interestingly, our English word Sunday comes from the Greek language. And I’ll give you three guesses what Sunday means in Greek. It means the day of the sun. But interestingly enough, you want to know the term that the Greeks most often used for Sunday. They didn’t refer to it as the day of the sun or to Sunday. They used the Greek word Kuriake, which is Greek for the Lord’s day. So they recognized it not as the day of the sun, that bright thing that keeps us warm in the summer, but they recognized it as a day of worship and as a day of assembly. That’s what this day is. But then that raises the next question to our three-year-old mind. Why? Why this day? Well, a change of covenants not only brought about just a change of ordinances and regulations, because neither covenant is really about the ordinances and the regulations.

It’s about the meaning behind those ordinances and regulations. Remember the Sabbath day, that holy day in the old covenant, was established based upon the principle of creation. For in the old covenant, God was worshipped as the creator.

Think about how many of the psalms speak of the idea of God’s majesty and power being exhibited in the creation. And so in the old covenant, God is worshipped as the creator. He’s worshipped as the lawgiver. He’s worshipped as the one who has blessed the nation of Israel. But under the new covenant, we still recognize God as our creator. We still recognize Him as the lawgiver. But God is primarily and specially worshipped in the new covenant as our Savior and as our redeemer. And so we don’t just simply have a change of days to mix up the calendar. We have a change of principles and of how we worship and why we worship.

Sunday. Saturday, Sabbath day was the day that honored creation, but Sunday, the first day of the week, becomes the day that honors our God as Savior. And so let’s turn in the New Testament in Luke chapter 23. What day, if the Sabbath day was a day to honor God as creator, the day in which he rested from his creation, then what day does the new covenant necessitate us to worship our Savior? Luke chapter 23, go toward the end of that chapter. And in verse 55, it says, and the women, Luke 23, 55, the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

But then chapter 24 tells us, 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 spices which they had prepared, but they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

And so if we were Israelites under the old covenant, and we were going to worship Jehovah as our creator, God said, the Sabbath day is a good day to set aside as being holy, because it attaches itself forever to that creation story. But now, as new covenant saints, worshiping God as our Savior and our Redeemer, the first day of the week, when our Savior, having given himself and his body and his blood for our redemption and our salvation, arose triumphantly from that tomb on the first day of the week. We worship today God our Savior on this day. A day of life, a day of resurrection. And it highlights the importance of the resurrection. Think about the importance. Again, think about the Old Testament and the numerous references to God as creator, Him demonstrating His power.

Now think of the New Testament and the numerous references to the resurrection. It’s the theme of an entire lengthy chapter in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. The importance, the significance and the ramifications of the fact that Jesus has raised, been raised from the dead. Look as an example in Acts chapter 13. This was the theme of New Testament, first century preaching. Acts chapter 13. Look there, beginning in verse 16. Then Paul, Acts 13, 16, Paul stood up and motioning with his hand, said, Men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen, the God of this people, Israel, chose our fathers and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with an uplifted arm, he brought them out of it. And he establishes God’s mercy and God’s dealings with his old covenant people.

And now he establishes, skip down to verse 27, for those who dwell in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not know him, nor even the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, have fulfilled them in condemning them. And they found no cause for death in him. They asked Pilate that he be put to death, and when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb, verse 30. But God raised him from the dead. A recurring prominent theme of first century preaching was the resurrection. From Acts 2 to Acts 4 to Acts 13, throughout the resurrection figures prominently in New Testament, not just preaching, but in principles.

3. What Does It Mean to Us?

On a Sunday. Jesus was preached for the first time as our risen Savior. And so we see those examples of worshiping upon this first day of the week, a day of remembering and reobserving as we have just done. But we’ve got one more question that we need to ask. What day is this? Why this day? And then what does it mean to us? God has set aside, as he did under the old covenant, he set aside a day in which they were to cease from their labors to remember. You could say God was just being nice to the Israelites and wanted to give them a day off. Well, there’s probably something to that, but he wanted them to remember the creative work of God. And so today, God has set aside a day for us, a day of remembering to celebrate the redemptive works of our God.

It’s a day of worship. And it’s a day of assembly.

And I want to go back there to verse one. Where the apostle says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service or your rational or service that attaches itself to the mind and to reason. I believe that verse establishes for us that as Christians, we are worshipful beings. We worship God. And I believe that verse and other verses teach us that we worship God in a myriad of ways, or we should, every day of our lives. That we honor, we’re a living sacrifice, not just on the Lord’s day, but every day. We serve, honor, and I think we can call it worship Him. Unfortunately, some have a mistaken notion from that principle.

Oh, I can worship God anywhere, anyway, any day. Then I can skip Sunday, right? You’ve heard the adage, I’ve never actually heard anybody say this. I think I’ve witnessed people who practiced it, but you know, I can worship God anywhere. I can worship God on the golf course on Sunday morning. So why do I need to come to church? I can worship God fishing on Sunday morning. I can worship God in my recliner watching football on Sunday morning. So why do I need this day of worship? Total abuse of the concept that we can worship God and should worship God and glorify Him in our everyday lives. God, who is the object of our worship, has set aside a day, this day, in which we are to worship Him in this specific way.

And so, yes, can I praise God on the golf course at a lake or in my living room at home? Absolutely. But none of that precludes the fact that our object of worship has asked of us that we come on this day and assemble together and to worship Him. And if we understand the concept of worship at all, we understand that the object of our worship can ask us to do that. And we willingly do that. He’s called His worshipers to assemble on the first day of the week to worship Him in a specific way. And so this is not a day of rest, remembering the creative works of God. This is a day of assembly and a day of worship, the first day of the week that recognizes the redemptive works of God.

And so we honor Him this day. It’s a day of assembly.

In Acts chapter 20 and verse 7, it tells us that on the first day of week of the week, the disciples assembled together to worship God and to partake of the Lord’s Supper. And so why are you here? Why are you here this day? We are assembled together to blend our voices in song, our hearts in prayer and remembrance, to worship God.

Conclusion

It is to be a day of meditation, a day of reflection, a day of remembering, and a day of honoring. And I’m going to challenge myself to never forget what this day is all about. I’m going to challenge myself that at some point on this day, prior to assembling together, I want to ask myself these questions. What day is this? Why this day? What does it mean? And every Lord’s day, as I ready myself to assemble with the saints, or even as I drive to assemble with the saints, I want to ask myself, why Sunday? And to worship Him in spirit and in truth.