Devoted to the Lord’s Day
Acts 2:41-45 (ESV):
41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
42And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the pray ers.
43And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey quotes Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” This is a significant reminder for all of us today! Are we conscious of building personal habits that lead to excellence and a great future? If we are not careful, we may develop certain hab its that can deprive us of a great future.
Before going further, let me ask: How do you understand personal habits? According to Merriam-Webster, the basic definition of habit is: “a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior” or “a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity.” In other words, habits are behaviors we do automatically because they have been formed through repetition and ingrained over time.
There are definitely some habits that can negatively impact our future. Here are some specific examples:
1. Procrastination – It is the act of delaying or postponing tasks or decisions and choosing to engage in less essen tial activities. The Bible is clear that we need to redeem our time because the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).
2. Associating with people who lack meaningful values – We need to be careful with the people we hang out with because the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:33, “Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals.” (ESV)
3. Neglecting God’s Word – The Bible clearly declares in Psalm 119:105, saying, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to mypath” (ESV). The reality is that God wants to guide us in our journeys. Neglecting to obey God’s Word can lead us to a more complicated life.
Our Sunday sermons have been focused on challenging us to develop positive habits that can lead us to build our own Christian lives and the ministry God entrusted us. We started the series by discussing seeking the empower ment of the Holy Spirit; then, on the past two Sundays, Pastor Jerome and Pastor Muyiwa discussed the necessity of the Bible in our lives. This morning, my emphasis is our personal devotion to the Lord’s day. In the first-century church, the believers devoted themselves not only to the apostle’s doctrine but also to fellowship, which certainly implies their commitment to worshipping together on the Lord’s Day (Acts 2: 42). I would like to bring to your atten tion how critical this habit is in our lives today. Let’s examine three essential areas if we are to commit to the Lord’s Day:
I THE CONSECRATION OF THE SABBATH DAY
If you have been a believer for quite some time now, I’m pretty sure that you have learned the Old Testament command regarding keeping the Sabbath Day holy, which is the fourth commandment out of the Ten Command ments found in Exodus 20:8-11:
8“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9Six days you shall labor, and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
When you examine the Ten Commandments, the first four address how we should relate to God, while the last six discuss how we should relate to our fellow men. That is why when Jesus summarized all the commandments, He came up with two significant divisions (Matthew 22:37-40):
1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 2) Love your neighbor as yourself.
With the first four responsibilities towards the Lord, the fourth commandment was stated longer to avoid mis understanding. The Lord plainly stated that the Sabbath Day must be set apart as a Holy Day because it allows God’s people to pause from work, spend time worshipping the Lord, and develop their love for Him. This is the main reason why Sabbath Day became known as Lord’s Day.
In order to impress on God’s people that God is serious about this commandment, He later in Exodus reiterates the command and establishes the consequence if they disobey Him:
Exodus 31:12-17 (ESV):
12And the Lord said to Moses,
13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.
16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever.
17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”
When you examine these verses, the first thing that God establishes in verse 13 is that the Sabbath Day would be a “sign” of God’s relationship with the nation of Israel. In the New Testament, the counterpart of this truth of a “sign” would be baptism. As we submit ourselves to baptism, we publicly take the honor of identifying ourselves in the finished work of Jesus, which is His death, burial, and resurrection. You find this truth in Romans 6:3-4 (ESV):
3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
So, baptism is not for salvation but for believers to demonstrate their faith in Christ, who died and resurrected for our salvation. This is why when a person believes in Christ, the next natural step is baptism. This is what they did in
our main text – “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (v. 41). The proper sequence in our Christian life – believe, baptize, and belong to a church.
Therefore, just like baptism, for the Jewish nation, their devotion to the Sabbath Day or
the Lord’s Day will help identify them as a nation possessing this special relation and covenant with Jehovah God. No other pagan nation will have a Sabbath Day celebration.
Next, the death penalty for people who violate this law. You might think that God is so cruel for imposing the death penalty on people who violate His command. But the truth is that it is for God’s people to understand the value of rest and relationship attached to the Sabbath Day. Think about it: God didn’t really need to rest after the six-day creation. But for all of us humans, we need to pause from work and move away from stress and anxieties, and we need time to recharge ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
More importantly, we must build our relationships with God first and then with our family. The Sabbath was, first and foremost, a time with the Lord. Listen to God’s words in Isaiah 58:13-14 (ESV).
13 “If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasureon my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly;
14 then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
This passage helps us understand that keeping the Sabbath means never using the Lord’s Day for our own pleasure. Instead, we need to prioritize the Lord and “delight” in Him by worshipping Him and nurturing our relation ship with Him. I love the truth that we should look at the Lord’s Day as a delightful day. In other words, it should bring great joy to be able to celebrate the Lord’s Day. Verse 14 also provides the attached blessings when we prioritize the Lord: “I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.” This statement directly points to promotion and prosperity. Prosperity because with the lands Israel has inherited from the Lord, He would bless their agricultural lands, resulting in greater harvest. What’s the New Testament counterpart of this promise:
Matthew 6:33 (ESV):
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Are you guilty of using the Lord’s Day for your own pleasure and not making God the priority in your life? I challenge you today to recognize that it is to your advantage to prioritize the Lord by devoting yourself to the Lord’s Day.
II THE CHANGE TO THE SABBATH DAY
If the Sabbath Day is essential, why do we worship on the first day of the week instead of the seventh day? Are we violating the Sabbath law? To answer these questions, we must highlight three significant reasons for chang ing our practice.
A. The Sabbath Day was a sign between God and Israel.
If we go back to the passage we looked at earlier, Exodus 31:13, we read, “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your gener ations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. We already explained this sign as the visible manifestation of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. It helped identify the nation as God’s people as they submitted to the Mo-
saic Laws.
B. Jesus Christ completed the Sabbath Day.
In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” When Jesus declared these words in His Sermon on the Mount, He was referring to His ultimate purpose of satisfying the demands of the Mosaic Law through His crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus completed the demands of the Old Covenant, usher ing us into His New Covenant, the Covenant paid by His own blood.
The apostle Paul perfectly spoke about this in Colossians 2:16-17 (ESV):
16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
To understand the essence of this passage, let’s illustrate it by you coming home from a long business trip and your wife picking you up at the airport. Coming out of the airport, you saw your wife waiving from a distance, so with your excitement to run to meet her. It would definitely be ridiculous if you tried to embrace her shadows instead of her body. That’s what the apostle Paul is helping believers understand – The laws were the shadow, and Christ is the substance.
C. Jesus Christ changed the Sabbath Day to His Resurrection Day. You have to bear with me in showing you sev eral passages to establish the change:
1) John 20:19 – Jesus chose to appear to His disciples on the first day.
19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
2) Acts 20:7 – The early church met on the first day.
7On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.
3) 1 Corinthians 16:2 – The collection of offerings were done on the first day.
2On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.
4) Revelation 1:10 – There is a day designated as the Lord’s day, a day that belongs to God. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet
The reference to the Lord’s Day clearly indicates that God designated a day that belongs to Him. In the Old Covenant, this day was the Sabbath, but in the New Covenant, it is Sunday. Evidently, the change is based on the Gos pel of Jesus Christ. So, every time we worship God on the Lord’s Day, we continually proclaim the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, how should we act towards the Lord’s Day? To answer this, let’s move to our third point:
III THE COMMITMENT TO THE LORD’S DAY
The great evangelist Billy Graham once commented on how believers are approaching the Lord’s Day: “Our great-grandfathers called it the holy Sabbath. Our grandfathers called it the Sabbath. But today, we call it the weekend.” I trust you, and I are not making this mistake today. Like the first church, we must devote ourselves to ful filling the Lord’s Day.
Allow me to go back to our main text, verse 42. When Dr. Luke stated that the church
“devoted themselves to . . . the fellowship”, the Greek word he used for “devoted” is
“Proskartereo,” which brings about two basic meanings, “to be earnest towards” or “to perse vere.” In other words, the first church became so passionate about fellowshipping or meeting together that they would not allow anything to stop them from doing it.
Without a doubt, Satan and the enemies of the Gospel will do everything to stop believers from doing some thing that honors the Lord. If you follow the Book of Acts, you will find the church being threatened, harassed, and persecuted but the church kept strengthening each other and kept meeting together. The apostle Paul was one of the people who persecuted the church before Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. With these persecutions, the He brew believers received this exhortation found in Hebrews 10:24-25 (ESV):
24And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
The backdrop of this passage was the severe persecution of the Hebrew believers, and some have decided to return to Judaism. However, despite everything they were going through, they were commanded not to neglect meeting together and to continue encouraging each other. Do you know that your physical presence can bring so much encouragement to others?
Lately, there have been some major shifts to some evangelical churches to stop live streaming their services because many Christians have used it as an alternative to physically attending church. The argument is that if we are going to relate to our wives and children intimately, we won’t settle for doing it through Zoom or Facetime.
So, our challenge is to recognize that it is to our highest advantage to devote ourselves to worshipping the Lord physically on the day He consecrated to be used for Him. Let me also address our parents this morning. You have the responsibility to impress on your children the importance of the Lord’s Day. Karen Burton Mains, the c0-director of Mainstay Ministries based in Wheaton, Illinois, reminded parents, saying:
“Do you rush, push, shout, and generally behave unpleasantly on Sunday mornings? Do you complain about church? Are you irregular in your attendance? Are you excessively concerned about things that aren’t really im portant? Do you often criticize the pastor, the choir, the service length, and the usher team? If so, don't be surprised if your children grow up viewing Sundays as the worst day of the week.”
I totally agree! As Christian parents, part of the legacy we can leave our children that will continually benefit them and their future children is the devotion to worship and serve God on the Lord’s Day. A huge part of our faith in Christ is acknowledging that we are nothing without Him. So, consistently setting aside one day a week to worship and serve the Lord is not a big ask from Him. It could be the other way around. He could have imposed six days for Him and one day for us, and we could have been forced to do it. Today, I trust that we would consider it a privilege to de vote ourselves to worshipping and serving Him consistently every Lord’s Day.