Lesson 5 - First Day Texts

Lesson #5 --

Section #1 --THE FIRST DAY TEXTS IN THE BIBLE

p 20 -- Introduction - In our previous study, we noted the doctrine of the Sabbath, and by following the Bible method for understanding doctrine - "line upon line and precept upon precept" - we brought together the outstanding verses in the Bible on that subject. Now in all fairness, because so many people observe the first day of the week in honor of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, making it a Sabbath for worship, we need to note all the verses in the Bible which mention the first day of the week. As we study these verses, we should ask ourselves a question. Do these texts give me a command to observe the first day of the week in place of the seventh day?

Genesis 1:5 -- And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Note - This is the only verse in the entire Old Testament which mentions the first day of the week. It is referring to the first day of Creation on which God brought into existence the mass of the earth, and set it in motion, thus along with the creation of light, established day and night.

Section #2 -- THE FIRST DAY IN THE GOSPELS

Note - In the Now Testament, there are eight references to the first day of the week, six of which are to be found in the Gospels and apply to the same first day, namely, the day on which Christ arose from the dead. Lot us examine these.

Mark 16:1-2 -- And when the Sabbath was past ... very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came to the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

Note - This text merely tells us that when the women came to the sepulchre on the first day of the week to anoint Jesus' body, the Sabbath was post.

Mark 16:9 -- Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week.

Matthew 28:1 -- In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week.

Note - This is merely stating the same thing we found in Mark 16. Jesus arose on the first day of

the week, and certain women came after the Sabbath to the tomb in the early hours of Sunday

morning. Weymouth translates this verse thus - 'After the Sabbath, in the early dawn of the first

day of the week."

Luke 24:1 -- Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulchre.

Note - We noted this verse carefully in our previous lesson, and found that it was one of a series which outlines the days connected with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the previous chapter, it is clearly stated that the day before the first day is "the Sabbath day according to the commandment." (Luke 23:56) In this verse, there is no intimation that the command had been changed.

p 21 -- John 20:1 -- The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdaline earl unto the sepulcher.

Note - This verse says nothing more than the other verses noting the activities of Christ's followers on the resurrection morning.

John 20:19 -- Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, ... the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus ... and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

Note - This is the first appearance of Jesus to His disciples- as a group after His resurrection. Mary had seen Him. (John 20:11-18) He had appeared to two disciples as they walked home to Emmaus. (Luke 24:13-32) It appears that Simon Peter also saw Him. (Luke 24:34; 1 Cor. 15:5). However, all of this testimony had not convinced the group that Jesus had indeed risen. Thus their gathering together was not to celebrate the resurrection, but "for fear of the Jews." Jesus' appearance was to quiet their fears and to convict their hearts. (Mark 16:12-14) The time of this meeting would correspond to our Sunday night. This is the last text in the Gospels which mentions the first day of the week.

Section #3 -- PAUL AND THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK

Acts 20:7 -- And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech till mid-night.

Note - This is the only recorded religious service in the New Testament to be held on the first day of the week. It was a night meeting, corresponding to our Saturday night. (Bible reckoning of time places the first day of the week from sundown Saturday till sundown Sunday.) A careful study of the context of this verse reveals some very interesting facts:

(1) Paul was on his way to Jerusalem. (verse 16) He stayed in Troas seven days. (Verse 6)

(2) The group of men Paul had with him left by boat that night for Assos, and planned to pick Paul up the next day. (Verse 13)

(3) Paul's service was interrupted, by the accident of Eutychus, who, because of Paul's long preaching, had fallen asleep while sitting in a window. (Verse 9)

(4) After this incident, Paul broke bread with them, and preached till the break of day. (Verse 11)

These verses are merely recording a farewell meeting Paul had with the believers at Troas. However, it is also an incident of humor found in the Bible. You will observe that prior to this recorded experience, the narrative is in the first Person plural - "we" - and resumes with verse 13. The experience itself is told in the third person - "Paul." Naturally as Paul again joins his traveling companions, they ask him about the meeting the night before. He told them about the traumatic experience with Eutychus. But they asked Paul as to why this should have happened. He had to confess it was because he was a long-winded preacher. No doubt on other occasions they had chided him about going "over-time." Luke could not pass up this opportunity of telling about it.

I Corinthians 16:2 -- Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.

Note - Paul had placed a burden upon the individual members of the churches to have an offering ready for the poor believers in Jerusalem (I Cor. 16:1, 3) This verse is not a command for a collection to be received at a church service, but asking that each one from his own funds, set aside a gift each week, and let it accumulate at home, so that the sum might be placed in the hands of

p 22 -- representatives when Paul would come by on his way to Jerusalem. Two other translations of this verse will aid in our understanding of it. Weymouth reads: - "On the first day of the week, let each of you put up and keep any profit he may have made: so that there may be no collections made after I come." Lamsa, basing his translation on the Eastern Text, renders the verse thus - "Upon the first day of the week, let each of you put aside and keep in his house whatever he can afford, so that there may be no collections when I come."

Section #4 -- ANOTHER TEXT

Note - With I Cor. 16:2. we have surveyed all the verses in the entire Bible which mention the first day of the week. In none of them do we find an express command authorizing the observance of the first day in honor of the resurrection of Jesus: nor do we find the least suggestion that the first day was to replace the Sabbath of the Law of God as given at Mt. Sinai. There is, however, another text which is sometimes used to suggest this idea. We shall note it also.

Revelation 1:10 -- I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.

Note - Which day is the Lord's day? Using the analogy of Scripture - the comparing of spiritual things with spiritual - we can find our answer in Mark 2:28, where Jesus declared - "Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." So instead of this verse applying to the first day of the week, it in reality refers to the Sabbath as the true Lord's day.

Section #5 -- HOW DID SUNDAY WORSHIP BEGIN?

Acts 20:29-30 -- For I know this, that after my departing ... of your own-selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things.

Note - Paul states that after his death, men would arise in the Church itself speaking perverse, that is,. erroneous things, which would be contrary to what he himself had taught. This is what has occurred. The Roman Catholic church, professing to be the true successor to the apostles, has altered the day of worship, and boasts about it. (See Insert - next page.)

Matthew 15:9 -- In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Note - We love Jesus because He has done so much for us. Because of this, we do not desire to offer before Him a vain worship. But He stated plainly that if our worship is according to the doctrines of men, it is vain worship. Thus we are presented with a choice of worship, that which is of men, or that which is in spirit and in truth, according to the Word of God. We must keep in mind that God cannot accept from us worship contrary to His word, any more than He would accept the worship of Cain.

(Webmaster Note: See also Hebrews chapter 4 - Here Paul is talking specifically about the Sabbath; note especially verse 8-11. Also see Facts of Faith, by C. Edwardson)

p 23 -

(Webmaster note: Interesting to note in this letter is the date of 1905 and the amount offered ($1,000). In today's money that would maybe be close to $1 Million offered by a Catholic Priest for Protestants to prove from the Bible only where they are obligated to God to keep Sunday holy, which Father Enright here shows is a sign of the Roman Catholic's power to think to alter God's law. As he states, he offered this amount over and over again, and nobody stepped forward to prove it.)

p 23 -- Lesson #5 -- Quiz

1. -- There are ____ texts in the Bible which mention the first day of the week. Of these, ____ are found in the New Testament, ____ and of them refer to the same first day, namely, the day of the ____.

2. -- In studying these texts which mention the first day, we should ask ourselves a question. Do any of these verses ____ us to keep the first day of the week as the Sabbath in place of the ____ day of the week?

3. -- When Jesus met with His disciples as a group after His resurrection, they were assembled in the upper room "for ____ of the ____". The reason they could not have been meeting in honor of the resurrection was because they did not ____ the reports of those who had seen Him alive earlier that day.

4. -- The only religious gathering recorded in the Bible which occurred on the first day of the week is recorded in _____: ____. The record states that Paul ____ until ____ and was ready to ____ on the morrow to meet those who had started ahead by boat. This meeting was a ____ meeting Paul had with the believers in Troas on his way to ____.

5. -- Paul after he left Troas visited with the elders of the church at Ephesus. He warned them that ____ he should die, men would arise in their own ____ and speak ____ things to draw disciples after themselves.

6. -- Jesus stated that in ____ men worship Him who follow the ____ of men. Give text - ____:____.

ADDITIONAL CONCEPTS FOR STUDY

The Lord's Day of Revelation 1:10 -- In 1982, the book The Sabbath in Scripture and History , was edited by Dr. Kenneth A. Strand, and has a distinguished group of contributors. One section - "Sunday in the New Testament" - discusses the Lord's day of Revelation 1:10. (pp. 125-127) What Dr. Walter F. Specht wrote on this verse needs to be carefully noted.

The designation - kuriake' hemera (first e has long sound) (Lord's day) - is to be found in no other place in the New Testament. Kuriake' by itself became the designation for Sunday in later Greek, and so is today. The Latin equivalent - Dominica dies, found in the Vulgate of Rev. 1:10, became the name for Sunday in ecclesiastical Latin. This is the basis for the assumption that Sunday is "the Lord's day" of Rev. 1:10. But it must be asked - Was this the usage of the word at the time that John wrote the book of Revelation? It is conceded that John wrote his Gospel

p 24 -- after the book of Revelation; and in the Gospel, he refers to the day we designate as Sunday, simply as "the first day of the week."

Some commentators have interpreted "the Lord's day" of Rev. 1:10 as equivalent to the Old Testament - "Day of the Lord" - conjecturing that John was transported in vision into the scenes encompassed by the coming Day of the Lord. This hardly conforms to the context. The first thing John sees is Jesus in the midst of the Lampstands ministering to His church in this present age. (Rev. 1:11-13, 20) Further, John is specific as to the place he was - "on the island called Patmos." Then why not also the time, since he appears to be giving the time and place of the vision.

Another explanation of the expression - "Lord's day" - is that this refers to an annual celebration of Christ's resurrection, which was later called Easter. On this Specht wrote:

A basis for such an annual celebration might well be seen in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where the Lordship of Christ is especially emphasized. Was Paul suggesting such a celebration when he wrote "For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival" (1 Cor. 5:7. 8)? The fact that Christ arose on the day when the offering of first fruits was presented by the Jews seems to form the background of a later statement: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (chap. 15:20).

Then the final suggested interpretation of kuriake' hemera (first e has long sound) is that this is the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. On this position, Specht wrote:

Finally, if one interprets the phrase "the Lord's day" according to the analogy of Scripture, a case can be made for regarding it as a reference to the seventh-day Sabbath. The Sabbath was set apart for sacred use at Creation (Gen. 2:2.3). The intermediate agent in that creation, according to several New Testament passages, was the Lord Jesus Christ. The fourth of the famous Ten Words describes the seventh day "as a sabbath to the Lord your God" (Ex. 20:10ff.). In the book of Isaiah God calls it "'my holy day'" and "'the holy day of the Lord'" (Isa. 58:13). All three of the Synoptic Gospels quote Jesus saying, "'The Son of man is lord even of the sabbath'" (Mark 2:28; cf. Matt.12:8; Luke 6:5)

But if John means the Sabbath in Revelation 1:10, why should he refer to it as "the Lord's day"? The book of Revelation has as its background the conflict between the "Lord Caesar" and the "Lord Christ." Christians were facing persecution and the threat of martyrdom because of their refusal to recognize Caesar as lord. For them there was but one Lord Jesus Christ (I Cor. 8:5. 6). Deissmann has shown that there were special days devoted to the Roman emperor. Would It not be appropriate under such circumstances to exalt Jesus Christ as "the ruler of the kings on earth" (Rev. 1:5). and to refer to the Sabbath as the real "Lord's day"?

The final paragraph of this section reads:

In conclusion, one may say that there is not sufficient data given in the book of Revelation to be certain of the correct interpretation of the phrase "the Lord's day" in Revelation 1:10. The popular attempt to equate it with Sunday does not rest on evidence supplied by Scripture but upon postapostolic usage of the phrase, long after John's time. The view that the phrase refers to the eschatological day of judgment is doubtful. More attention should be given to the possibility that the phrase refers to an annual resurrection celebration. And study could well be given to the idea that what is meant is in reality the seventh-day Sabbath.

This paragraph leaves the whole question in an unsettled state which in turn presents some major problems. Two concepts are set forth for study:

(1) kuriake' hemera (first e has long sound) refers to an annual celebration of Easter, or

(2) it refers to the seventh day of the week.

If number 1, then there is only a single step from an annual celebration to a weekly commemoration of the same event.

Quiz Answers --

(1) nine, eight, six, resurrection. (2) command, seventh. (3) fear, Jews, believe. (4) Acts 20:7, preached, midnight, depart, farewell, Jerusalem. (5) after, midst, per verse. (6) vain, commandments. Matthew 15:9.