What makes Sunday Special?

Have you ever pondered the historical tapestry that led Christians to gather on Sundays? Prepare to be enlightened as this episode takes you through the corridors of early Christian history, dispelling the long-held myth that Emperor Constantine was the catalyst for Sunday worship. Instead, we uncover the scriptural and historical threads woven by the earliest believers, who celebrated Jesus Christ’s resurrection on the first day of the week. The narrative is rich with evidence from the New Testament, affirming that Sunday gatherings, replete with worship and breaking bread, were a tradition ignited by the most pivotal event in Christian faith—the victory over death itself.

Join us for today's episode! 

References
Why do Christians worship on Sunday?   https://www.gotquestions.org/worship-on-Sunday.html
Urban Legends of Church History 40 Common Misconceptions by Michael Svigel and John Adair

Do you want to learn how to study the Bible? Check out the YouTube channel Faithfullyliven youtube.com/@faithfullyliven

Do you want to read about how to live faithfully? Check out the blog http://lyfe102.org

Get a free Road Map to get started learning how to study the Bible https://mailchi.mp/88f9c9405da0/bible-study-road-map

Chapters

• 0:04 The Origin of Sunday Worship
• 14:39 Importance of Christian Worship on Sunday

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast, where we learn how to live for Christ in our daily lives.

Speaker 1: 0:11

I am Dwan, your host, and I would like to invite you on a journey with me to explore and learn how to be a faithful follower of Christ. Hey everyone, welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast, where we strive to encourage you to live for Christ faithfully by offering guidance on studying the Bible, how to understand the Bible better and how to remain faithful to historic Christianity. Have you ever wondered why we, as believers, worship on Sunday and not on the Jewish Sabbath day? Saturday, alright, so first things first. You have to get it straight that Sunday is not the actual Sabbath day. It's Saturday.

Speaker 1: 1:04

God established this observance of the Sabbath with Israel in Exodus 31, 16-17. And it says Israel, the Israelites, are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord Israel was to observe the Sabbath. So, after commanding Sabbath observance, in verses 12 through 14, moses gives the reason that the Sabbath was to be given to the children of Israel, and that's in Deuteronomy 5, 15, which says Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord, your God, brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord, your God, has commanded you to reserve the Sabbath day. So God wanted the Israelites to remember that he had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. So listen to the requirements for Sabbath keeping. He says a person placed under the Sabbath law could not leave his home on the Sabbath, he could not build a fire, he couldn't cause anyone else to work. A person breaking the Sabbath law was to be put to death. So because of this, the first century, in the first century, the early Christians were predominantly Jewish who followed the Sabbath tradition. So they kept the Sabbath day that their Jewish ancestors had kept before them. Corporate worship is a regular gracious reminder that it's not about you. You were born into a life that is a celebration of another called David Tripp.

Speaker 1: 3:14

So why do Christians, or why did Christians, start worshiping on Sunday as opposed to on Saturday? So there is there is like a general myth about why Christians now worship on Sunday, and I get this explanation of the myth from a book called Urban Legends of Christian History for Common Misconception, and it tells about the legendary story. So I'm just going to read it here. It says Exodus 28 says Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This commandment isn't a random audience tucked away in the ceremonial law of Levites. This is one of the big 10. No wonder the early church gathered to worship on saturday, the sabbath. But by the time, but by the time of emperor constantine 272 to 333 37, the day of worship for christians had changed from the biblical sabbath saturday to sunday. To make life easier for the mob of pagans suddenly flooding the church Accustomed to worshiping on the Sun God Sunday, church authorities changed the day of worship to accommodate the masses. Since that time, christians observed the Sabbath have picked on, put down or even persecuted for staying true to the Christian Sabbath Jesus, the disciples and earliest Jewish Christians had observed in obedience to the Ten Commandments. And then, lastly, they say in 2013, the urban legend of the original Christians worshiping on Saturday went mainstream.

Speaker 1: 5:06

In his best-selling novel, the Da Vinci Code, dan Brown put the myth of Sabbath-keeping Christians on the lips of the undetermined pragmatist Robert Langton. Originally, christians honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagan virgin's day of the sun. To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun. God's weekly tribute Sunday. Like several cult sect and hack historians before him, dan Brown laid the charge of the switch from Saturday to Sunday at the feet of Emperor Constantine, motivated by the popularization and thus paganization of Christianity and thus paganization of Christianity. We must never rest until everything inside us worships God AW Tozer. So, to lay aside the myth, the significant event that changed the course of our worship as Christians, which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, according to the New Testament, jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, which is Sunday. So it has been said that historical evidence has shown that Jesus' Jewish disciples in the first century commiserated or celebrated Christ's resurrection every Sunday, and so Jewish Christians may have continued to observe the Sabbath as a part of their culture. The first day of the week was a day of worship and gathering because of Christ's resurrection. So, as Christianity spread among the Jewish community and gaining followers from diverse cultures and backgrounds, sunday worship provided a way for Christians to be unified as believers. A way for Christians to be unified as believers. It became a day of communal worship, prayer, teaching and then celebrating Holy Communion.

Speaker 1: 7:34

So scripture doesn't mention any Sabbath or Saturday gatherings by believers for fellowship or worship. It is clear that the passages that are mentioned are on the first day of the week, sunday. For instance, in acts 27 it says that on the first day of the week we came together to break bread. And then paul urges the corinthian believers, he says on the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside some money in keeping with his income, and that's 1 Corinthians 16.2. So since Paul, kind of like, designates this offering as service, this connection has been linked to Sunday worship service of Christians. So historically, when you look at the Bible, sunday, not Saturday was a normal meeting day for Christians in a church and we can see this practice dates back to the first century Christians.

Speaker 1: 8:33

As Christians, we worship on Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it's important to remember that Sunday worship is not commanded in the Bible and Sunday is not to replace Saturday, because and become what we call like the Christian Sabbath. While we can see in the New Testament that Christians gather in worship on Sunday, the Bible doesn't state that Sunday replaced Saturday as the Sabbath. A key point to remember that, because of all of this, that we're not limited, we're not to limit our worship to any particular day of the week. We are to rest in God every day. It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates his presence to men, cs Lewis.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Alright, so let's talk about the Sabbath day a little bit more. So the observance of the Sabbath day was a commandment of the old covenant law in Exodus 28 and in 31, 12 through 18. And as Christians we are not under the law but have traditionally set aside Sunday as a day of worship and a day of remembrance of Christ's resurrection on Sunday. So some view Sunday as a Christian Sabbath and they're like transitioning or transferring the old covenant law about not working from sundown Friday to sundown Saturdayiday to sundown saturday to sundays. So within a new covenant it doesn't command us or restrict us from working on sunday.

Speaker 1: 10:29

Sunday is not the the christian sabbath the new testament described, just describes christians worshiping on sunday. So again we can see in acts 27 on the first day of the week we gathered with the local believers to share in the Lord's table and Paul is preaching this to them. And since he was leaving the next day, he kept talking until midnight. And then 1 Corinthians 16, 2 says on the first day of the week you should each put aside a portion of money you have earned. Don't wait until I get there and then try to collect it all at once. So when we look at these passages in acts and corinthians, we have to remember these passages are descriptive rather than prescriptive. They're telling us what happened instead instead of giving us a command to follow.

Speaker 1: 11:22

So Christians are described as worshiping on Sunday, but nowhere in the Bible is Sunday worship prescribed or a command for us to do. We have to remember that our worship. We're supposed to set aside a day for rest and worship the Lord, whether it's Monday, tuesday, wednesday. What's important for us as believers? To worship the Lord. Sunday is a day to be grateful for the things. You have to count your blessings and to appreciate the beauty of life. Author unknown. You have to count your blessings and to appreciate the beauty of life. Author unknown. All right, so what is this? What does this mean for us as believers today and how we can navigate our everyday lives? I like the application that's given in the book Urban Legends of the Christian Church. Side note if you want to get this book, I'll put information about it in the show notes. Okay, here's what they say application the observance of Sunday worship makes a difference for Christians today, just as it did for the early church.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Sunday worship was itself a confession of faith. It was the day God began his work of creation in Genesis 1, 1-3. And the day Adam and Eve were to commit their service and obedience to their creator Genesis 1, 28-31. Christ was raised on Sunday. You can find that in Matthew 28.1. And he taught scripture and broke bread with two of his disciples on Sunday. You can find the reference in Luke 24.13-35. And then the baptism of the Holy Spirit and establishment of the church occurred on Pentecost, which was also on a Sunday during which believers were gathered for prayer, and you can find that in Acts 2.

Speaker 1: 13:30

So they go on to say when we, as Christians, gather weekly on Sunday for worship, we are doing so as an ongoing testimony to key elements of our faith that occurred on that day Preservance of Sunday rather than Saturday, also a tender remark that we are people of the new covenant, which was intended to be different from the old. In this way, we confess that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law and that's Romans 10 4 and that we were created in him as part of a new creation. We find that in Galatians 6.15, in which old things have passed away and new things have become new, and that's in 2 Corinthians 5.17. Sunday is a day to thank God for all of his blessings of the last week. Author unknown.

Speaker 1: 14:39

So today, sunday remains the primary day of worship for most Christian denominations worldwide, and while some still maintain some elements of the Sabbath observance, the choice of Sunday as a day of worship symbolizes, like the core beliefs, of the victory that Christ has over sin and death. So it's important to remember that worship is the ultimate purpose. When we think about observing Sunday and worshiping God, you know we are worshiping the creator and savior of the world. Well, that wraps up our exploration of why Christians worship on Sunday. Until next time, remember God is always good and he's always faithful. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Do me a favor by following the podcast and leaving a review to help spread the word. I look forward to hearing from you.