Corporate Worship by Doug Van Meter, pastor of Brackenhurst Baptist Church, is an insightful and timely resource that addresses a matter of great importance for all local churches: the biblical call to respond to divine revelation in a manner that is informed by Scripture, marked by reverence, and shaped by rational conviction.
In Chapter 10, titled “The Day of Worship,” Doug explores the significance of the Lord’s Day by “surveying the biblical data and the early church’s understanding of the Lord’s Day.” The following ten key takeaways from that chapter offer truths that both challenge and equip leaders and congregants to honour the Lord’s Day with greater understanding, intentionality, and joy.
Though informed by the fourth commandment, the Lord’s Day is not merely a transfer of the Jewish Sabbath. “The Sabbath was designed primarily for rest,” Doug writes. “The Old Testament does not view [it] as a day of worship. It was only during the Babylonian exile, with the advent of the synagogue, that the Sabbath became a regular day of worship.” The Lord’s Day, by contrast, is explicitly a day of resurrection worship.
God instituted the Sabbath as a day of rest for His people—not as an arbitrary rule, but as a reflection of His created order. In Exodus 20:8-11, His command ties the Sabbath to the creation pattern of work and rest: “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest”—a pattern He laid out when creating the world. While the specific day of rest has shifted in redemptive history, the principle of rest remains relevant for all humanity.
Sunday became known as the Lord’s Day because Jesus rose from the dead on that day. In addition to that, Doug notes that “many, if not all, of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to His disciples happened on the first day.” As a result, it became customary for the early church to gather on Sundays in joyful commemoration of Christ’s resurrection.
Just as God began creation on the first day, so Christ’s resurrection—also on the first day—marks the beginning of the new creation. Sunday worship, therefore, is not only a celebration of Christ’s triumphant resurrection, but also of the new creative work that flows from it. It is a weekly declaration that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Doug writes, “Christians had come to associate the first day of the week as ‘the eighth day.’ They believed that time, as we know it, with its perpetual cycle of seven days, would one day come to an end. An ‘eighth day’ would be realised when time on earth would be done and God’s people would enter eternity (p. 173).” The Lord’s Day symbolised this.
Doug points out that “resting on the seventh day was not unique to ancient Israel.” Many Ancient Near Eastern cultures also observed rest on the seventh day, but they did so out of superstition. The number seven—and its multiples—was considered unlucky, and the seventh day was viewed as one of potential misfortune. In contrast, the Sabbath—and later the Lord’s Day—was radically different: a day marked by delight, trust, and celebration. Christians are therefore called to a joyful, not superstitious, observance.
Before Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and his establishment of Sunday as a day of rest, Saturday remained the primary day of rest, and Sunday was an ordinary workday for all citizens. Remarkably, even though it was a regular workday, early Christians chose to worship on the first day of the week—gathering early in the morning and again late in the evening. It was during these gatherings that the day came to be known among them as “the Lord’s Day” (Revelation 1:10). Their willingness to meet at such inconvenient hours reveals that, for them, the priority of worship far outweighed personal comfort.
Doug rightly observes that millions attend church each Sunday, often out of tradition rather than theological conviction. Their motivation is shaped more by habit than by a serious understanding of the day’s theological significance—namely, that it was uniquely set apart by the early Christians to worship the risen Lord.
The gathering of the body on the Lord’s Day is not only for individuals to deepen their personal relationship with God through worship. The scriptural command not to forsake the gathering (Hebrews 10:25) is coupled with the exhortation to “stir up one another to love and good works.” In corporate worship, as Doug urges, “Jesus and me” must give way to “Jesus and us.” It is a time to exalt God together—and in doing so, to edify one another and bear witness to the watching world.
Too often, we reduce Sunday to a day for errands, leisure, or catching up on work. But Scripture—and the example of the early church—calls us to honour this day by prioritising worship, setting it apart as uniquely the Lord’s.
Chapter 10 reminds us that the Lord’s Day is not a footnote in the Christian life, but a vital, God-given rhythm that points us back to Christ’s resurrection, forward to our eternal rest, and around to joyful worship together. Let us recover the significance of Sunday—not as a burden but as a blessing.
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