Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning’s Scripture lesson is taken from Revelation 1:10-18.

I chose this passage of Scripture because it helps us answer our next investigative question about worship, “When is the church to worship?”

For many Christians today this question is not even on their radar screen.

If asked that question they would answer, “When ever we want.”

We see this demonstrated in the weekly schedule of many churches.

Worships services are now offered on Saturday and many weekday evenings.

Such a wide variety of choices is very agreeable to our consumer oriented society, but does it agree to the Word of God?

What we find in texts such as Revelation 1:10-18 and the witness of the early church is that Sunday, called the “Lord’s Day” is the New Sabbath.

The “Lord’s Day” is the New Sabbath

Perhaps no change is more unexpected and shocking than the shift in days in which the early church worshipped.

One only needs to read the Old Testament in a very cursory way to discover how important to God Sabbath keeping was.

Even though the early Jewish Christians would still worship with their Jewish brethren on Saturdays for evangelistic purposes, but it was on Sunday they gather with their fellow Christians to worship!

The name they chose for this new day of worship is significant, they called it the “Lord’s Day”.

This indicates that they considered Sunday to be a holy day.

We find similar language used for Communion, they called it the “Lord’s Supper.”

No one would consider the “Lord’s Supper” just another meal—it is a holy meal meal, set apart for God’s people to commune with Christ Jesus!

In fact, by calling it the “Lord’s Day” rather than the “Sabbath” the early Christians were communicating that this new day of worship was even more holy than the Old Covenant Sabbath.

The Old Covenant Sabbath commemorated God’s completing his creative work.

In contrast, the Lord’s Day commemorated the completion of God’s redemptive work in Christ, for it was on Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead!

This is why I entitled my sermon today, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today!” and why we are closing our service today by singing this hymn.

Every Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection!

Notice in our text today how prominently the resurrection is in Christ’s message to John and his churches.

This is the message we all so desperately need to hear.

Death is our great enemy and we need to be reminded constantly that Christ has defeated death.

This is way Christ has ordained Sunday as His Day and has give this day to the church as its day of worship!

If Sunday is even more special and more holy than the Old Covenant Sabbath, how do we honor and keep it?

How to Honor and Keep the Lord’s Day

It is here that God’s teaching in the Old Testament is so helpful to us.

Remember that Paul teaches the Corinthian church that everything that was written in the Old Covenant was written to teach us in the New Covenant.

Let’s remind ourselves what God inspired is prophet Moses to write in the Old Covenant.

The first thing God tells us to do in order to honor and keep His holy day of worship is to Remember to Keep it Holy.

Remember to Keep it Holy

In the pressures of daily life it is easy to forget that the Lord’s Day is a holy day.

There never seems to be enough hours in a day, days in a week and weeks in a year to accomplish all that life demands of us.

We all know the feeling of having one day flow into another without us being aware of it.

The pressure is always there to treat the Lord’s Day as just another day.

If we don’t conscientiously remember and set Sunday aside as a special day it become just like any other day.

Even in the early church this was a problem.

The author of Hebrews writes this:

If we don’t intentionally remember to keep the Lord’s Day holy we will quickly fall into the habit of treating it just like any other day.

This is why we need to Rest from the Ordinary on the Lord’s Day.

Rest from the Ordinary on the Lord’s Day

In the Fourth Commandment we read from earlier, God reminds Israel that they have six other days each week to devote to the ordinary, common pursuits of life.

All of life falls under God’s sovereign blessing and care—the common everyday labors and activities we do are good and should be done to the glory of God.

There is a real sense in which all of life is worship, but the importance of God’s people gathering together in corporate worship is so important that we need to intentionally rest from the ordinary to insure we keep the Lord’s Day holy.

I am not going to devote time this morning on what or what not a Christian can do on the Lord’s Day.

This is a very important topic, but I don’t have time to cover it as a should.

What I want to do is establish firmly the general principle of resting from the ordinary or common pursuits in order to protect the holy pursuits we should be doing on the Lord’s Day.

In other words, if some type of labor or recreation is causing you to forsake the meeting together of the saints on a regular basis you have a problem that can quickly get out of control.

This breaking of fellowship not only hurts you spiritually, but it hurts others.

Hear again what the author of Hebrews writes:

As we established earlier in this series, corporate worship is the primary way Christ has ordained for his church to make disciples.

If you are neglecting Lord’s Day worship, your growth as a disciple and the growth of others will be hindered.

Your presence in worship is an encouragement to growth in others.

Your absence is a discouragement.

Perhaps this call to rest from the ordinary seems like a burden to you—you are being asked to give up something—be it an opportunity to make more money or an opportunity to enjoy some time of recreational pursuit.

This is why it is so important that we Rejoice in the Gift of the Lord’s Day.

Rejoice in the Gift of the Lord’s Day

Isaiah wrote this:

In these verses Isaiah the prophet is reminding us that God’s holy day of worship—the Sabbath under the Old Covenant and the Lord’s Day under the New Covenant—is a gift that should be delighted in.

We should delight in this gift of a holy day of worship, because if we honor and keep it as we should we will be blessed in the rest of life.

The world is filled with people who work hard and never get ahead; people who play hard and are never refreshed.

They don’t get ahead and they are not refreshed because they don’t have the Lord’s blessing!

On the Lord’s Day...

The Lord Has Prepared a Place of Refreshment for His People

A text that is found in almost every Christian’s favorite list is Psalm 23.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and He has prepared a place of refreshment for His people—the Lord’s Day!

The Lord’s Day worship is to be an oasis for God’s people in the wilderness of this world.

The worldly will find Lord’s Day worship boring.

Living in Vanity Fair as they do, they want the excitement of a water park rather than the refreshing waters of Christ’s Word.

The replacement of Lord’s Day worship with programming as found in many of today’s mega-churches is not a sign of progress, but of worldliness.

Christian, Lord’s Day worship, doesn’t look like the world, because it is not of this world.

Jesus is the living bread and living water that has come down from heaven.

and

Because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, he ever lives to be our true bread and true drink!

The church gather’s on the Lord’s day to feast on Christ, the living bread and water.

This is what makes this day so special and holy.

It is unlike any other day.

Let us not neglect it as some are in the habit of doing.