Why Do Christians Worship Together on Sundays?
Chapters
0:00:40 Who Are Christians
8:9 Why Do You Christians Go to Church on Sunday
8:14 Christian Worship Has Its Roots in Judaism
00:00:00.000 | We get a wide variety of questions from listeners, everything from the infralapsarian to superlapsarian
00:00:10.600 | debate to the most perplexing details of eschatology to people who want to know what Calvinism
00:00:16.880 | is and Reformed theology is all about to people who want to understand the gospel in this
00:00:21.480 | very basic form and to people who ask, "Why do Christians go to church in the first place?"
00:00:28.440 | We never want to assume questions or answers, so I'll ask one that I see a lot in the inbox.
00:00:32.480 | It's a very simple one, Pastor John.
00:00:34.880 | Why do Christians go to church and why on Sundays?
00:00:39.640 | Let's start by answering the question, "Who are Christians?"
00:00:43.160 | I'm assuming a question so basic is being asked by somebody who's kind of looking from
00:00:49.080 | the outside and may not have a real clear idea of even who we are.
00:00:55.240 | Christians are people who recognize that even though, like all humans, we have been created
00:01:04.080 | in the image of God, we fall short of what God expects of us, and therefore we have sinned
00:01:13.440 | against Him and have belittled His glory by treating the things that He made as more valuable
00:01:23.600 | than He is Himself.
00:01:26.880 | Christians recognize that we deserve to be punished for this.
00:01:32.280 | We really do.
00:01:33.280 | This is a serious offense against the Creator of the universe.
00:01:38.200 | And even more, we recognize that God is not only just in His punishments, but patient
00:01:49.600 | and loving.
00:01:50.600 | He has sent a Rescuer, His Son, a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, into the world to bear the punishment
00:02:02.200 | that we deserve.
00:02:05.160 | And so the Bible says, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe
00:02:10.680 | in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."
00:02:15.680 | And that "saved" means saved from God's wrath, saved from God's punishment, saved from hell
00:02:22.000 | and given eternal life.
00:02:24.840 | So Christians are people who have believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who died
00:02:30.880 | for their sins, who rose again from the dead, who reigns in heaven today, will come again,
00:02:39.140 | and who are trusting Jesus day by day as their Savior from sin and judgment and as their
00:02:46.520 | supreme authority and as our greatest treasure.
00:02:52.220 | And those people, Christians, are described in the Bible as not being merely isolated
00:03:00.160 | individuals, but a corporate body with many members because they're all united to Jesus
00:03:09.320 | by faith.
00:03:11.180 | And it's because of this unity in Jesus, this corporate nature of Christianity, that the
00:03:18.400 | church exists.
00:03:20.480 | The church is not a building.
00:03:21.920 | It's not a structure of brick and mortar.
00:03:25.800 | The church is the assembly of Christians gathered to express that unity in Jesus and to worship
00:03:34.300 | Jesus.
00:03:35.700 | So the Bible says, "Now you, Christians, are the body of Christ and individually members
00:03:42.720 | of it," 1 Corinthians 12:27.
00:03:45.360 | So coming together in various assemblies is essential to giving expression to the fact
00:03:53.920 | that Jesus died to create a united people, not just isolated Christian individuals.
00:04:01.400 | So we find in the Bible then descriptions of those first century Christians gathering
00:04:07.120 | regularly.
00:04:08.860 | This is what the question is about.
00:04:10.360 | Why do you go to church?
00:04:11.660 | For example, in 1 Corinthians 11.18, it says, "In the first place, when you come together
00:04:18.880 | as a church," or 1 Corinthians 14.23, "if therefore the whole church comes together,"
00:04:27.280 | so all those texts are followed by instructions for how to behave ourselves in the gathered
00:04:33.880 | church.
00:04:36.520 | Then we find indications in the Scriptures of what we should do when we come together.
00:04:43.720 | So the question might mean, "Why do you go to church?" or "What do you do when you go
00:04:47.400 | to church?"
00:04:49.080 | Let me include some of these.
00:04:51.680 | All of these instructions in the Bible flow from the fact that Jesus is alive, Jesus is
00:04:57.960 | worthy of receiving our regular corporate attention and worship.
00:05:03.480 | In other words, these things that the Bible says we should be doing are not arbitrary.
00:05:09.240 | They are organically related to the fact that Christians know and love and follow the living
00:05:16.080 | person of Jesus Christ, who died to create a people for himself, a worshiping people.
00:05:24.120 | So for example, it says in Ephesians 5.19, "We should address one another in psalms and
00:05:29.520 | hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord."
00:05:33.720 | So if you go to any typical church, you're going to probably hear a good bit of singing.
00:05:39.480 | And that singing is designed to give heartfelt expression of praise to God and praise to
00:05:45.600 | Jesus for all that they've done to save us from our sins and from the wrath of God and
00:05:52.880 | from hell and from a miserable eternity.
00:05:57.120 | And then we read instructions about corporate praying, not just singing, but praying.
00:06:02.200 | For example, 1 Corinthians 14.16 says that we shouldn't pray in public in an unintelligible
00:06:10.480 | way because then other people won't be able to appreciate what we're saying and say a
00:06:15.720 | hearty "Amen," which is the whole point of public praying.
00:06:20.680 | And then we read instructions about preaching, the inspired Word of God.
00:06:25.680 | Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching."
00:06:35.320 | And then he adds to the young pastor, Timothy, "Preach the Word."
00:06:40.840 | So a regular part of most Christian church services is a sermon where a pastor is called
00:06:47.200 | by God and gifted by God to study and understand the Bible.
00:06:51.720 | And then he stands up and he proclaims what God has said in the Bible for the encouragement
00:06:58.040 | and the strengthening and the unifying and the motivating of the people of God to be
00:07:02.960 | about obedience and service among their fellow man for the glory of Christ.
00:07:09.320 | And then, of course, we read instructions in the Bible about the Lord's Supper and
00:07:14.200 | baptism, these two ordinances, we call them, that are supposed to mark Christian gatherings.
00:07:22.800 | For baptism, it's just a once-in-a-Christian-lifetime event that introduces you through the death
00:07:29.380 | and resurrection of Christ and through the immersion in water into Christianity.
00:07:34.360 | And then the Lord's Supper is that repeated experience of participation with Christ as
00:07:42.960 | we eat the bread and drink the cup to signify his broken body and his shed blood for our
00:07:49.040 | sins.
00:07:50.040 | And different churches do it different frequencies.
00:07:52.280 | Some do it every week, some do it once a month.
00:07:54.960 | The Bible doesn't tell us how often we have to do it.
00:07:57.680 | It just says, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the
00:08:01.960 | Lord's death until he comes."
00:08:05.160 | And if the question means, "Why do you do it on Sunday?
00:08:10.600 | Why do you Christians go to church on Sunday?"
00:08:13.840 | The answer is that Christian worship has its roots in Judaism.
00:08:21.720 | It was born among Jews, and the Jewish Bible is the first part of the Christian Bible.
00:08:29.200 | And among the Jews, it was said in the Ten Commandments, "Remember the Sabbath day
00:08:34.440 | to keep it holy."
00:08:36.280 | The Sabbath day was the seventh day—Saturday, not Sunday—and so there was a one-day-in-seven
00:08:44.120 | rhythm as the Jews gathered.
00:08:47.480 | And in the first century, when the Christian church was being born through the coming of
00:08:52.720 | Jesus, that was the custom, because we read in the book of Acts of Paul going in on the
00:08:59.080 | Sabbath day to the synagogues and joining with the Jews to preach Christ.
00:09:05.040 | And the reason Christians switched and began to worship on the first day of the week is
00:09:13.720 | because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week, and that came to
00:09:20.160 | be called the Lord's Day, Revelation 1:10.
00:09:23.960 | And we read examples of the gathering on the Lord's Day or the first day in Acts 20, verse
00:09:30.040 | 7.
00:09:31.040 | They gathered on the first day of the week, and in 1 Corinthians 16, 2, they were to come
00:09:36.280 | together and give their offerings on the first day of the week.
00:09:40.520 | So that's why we do it on Sunday.
00:09:44.160 | Jesus rose from the dead, created a new people for himself, inaugurated a new humanity, a
00:09:50.520 | new creation with a new day of worship.
00:09:54.840 | So let me sum it up like this.
00:09:56.920 | The reasons Christians go to church on Sunday is because they have been rescued from their
00:10:03.720 | sins.
00:10:04.720 | They've been rescued from our sins, united with a risen, living Christ, and with each
00:10:11.480 | other through faith in Jesus.
00:10:15.400 | And because of that union with Jesus and with each other, the Bible, God's Word, calls us
00:10:24.080 | to regular, weekly expressions of our corporate joy and thankfulness before God in worship,
00:10:33.080 | not just isolated Christian individuals scattered around, but corporate gatherings, praying
00:10:38.400 | and singing and hearing God's Word and celebrating the ordinances of Jesus.
00:10:44.200 | Boy, that's quite a summary answer to several fundamental questions.
00:10:48.080 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:10:49.600 | And tomorrow we're going to be back, and we're going to go deeper, much deeper, and we're
00:10:53.720 | going to look at the very purpose of why Christians exist in the first place.
00:10:57.600 | I mean, talk about foundational questions.
00:10:59.640 | You won't want to miss this one.
00:11:00.640 | We're going to take a closer look at Revelation chapter 13.
00:11:05.480 | For apps and for past episodes, and to get us a question of your own, go to our online
00:11:09.200 | home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:11:10.200 | And I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:11:11.200 | I'll see you tomorrow.
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