Verses on Christian assembly on Sunday/Lord’s Day/the 1^st day /8^th day of the week:

Verses are quoted from the English Standard Version

 

The three annual religious feasts in the law of Moses had worship services on both Sunday and Saturday:

o        Exo 12:16  On the first day [of Passover] you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you.

o        Lev 23:35-43  On the first day [of Pentecost] shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.  36  For seven days you shall present food offerings to the LORD. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the LORD. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.  37  "These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim as times of holy convocation, for presenting to the LORD food offerings, burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, each on its proper day,  38  besides the LORD's Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your vow offerings and besides all your freewill offerings, which you give to the LORD.  39  "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD seven days [Feast of Booths]. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest.  40  And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.  41  You shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month.  42  You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths,  43  that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."

o        Num 28:18  On the first day [of Passover] there shall be a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work,

o        Num 29:1  "On the first day of the seventh month you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. It is a day for you to blow the trumpets,

o        Neh 8:18  And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.

o        Matt. 26:17  Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?"

o        Mark 14:12  And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?"

 

Additional Old Testament Week-long Consecration ceremonies included worship assemblies on both Sunday and Saturday:

o        Lev 9:1-5  On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel,  2  and he said to Aaron, "Take for yourself a bull calf for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and offer them before the LORD.  3  And say to the people of Israel, 'Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both a year old without blemish, for a burnt offering,  4  and an ox and a ram for peace offerings, to sacrifice before the LORD, and a grain offering mixed with oil, for today the LORD will appear to you.'"  5  And they brought what Moses commanded in front of the tent of meeting, and all the congregation drew near and stood before the LORD.

o        2 Chron. 29:17  They began to consecrate on the first day of the first month, and on the eighth day of the month they came to the vestibule of the LORD. Then for eight days they consecrated the house of the LORD, and on the sixteenth day of the first month they finished.

o        Firstborn animals and sons were to be concsecrated to the Lord on the 8^th Day as well in a special ceremony.

 

The Command in the 10 Commandments emphasizes one day in seven rather than a particular day

o        Exodus 20:8-11  "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  9  Six 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 the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

 

Jesus rose on a Sunday

o        Mark 16:9  Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.

o        John 20:1  Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

 

The early church met and did its functions on Sundays:

o        John 20:19  On 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."

o        Acts 20:7  On the first day of the week, when we [Paul and Luke and the believers] were gathered together [in Troas] to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

o        1 Cor 16:1-3  Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do.  2  On 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.  3  And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

o        Rev 1:9-11  I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.  10  I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet  11  saying, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."

 

The Apostles warned Believers in Jesus against legalistic observance of the Jewish Sabbath

• Col 2:8  See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ…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.
• Heb 4:3-13  For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest,'" although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.  4  For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works."  5  And again in this passage he said, "They shall not enter my rest."  6  Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience,  7  again he appoints a certain day, "Today," saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."  8  For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.  9  So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,  10  for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  11  Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.  12  For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  13  And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

 

Phillip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church (Vol 2 § 60, pp. 201-205)

The celebration of the Lord's Day in memory of the resurrection of Christ dates undoubtedly from the apostolic age. The original designations of the Christian Sabbath or weekly rest-day are: “the first,” “first Sabbath” the first day of the week (Matt. 28: 1; Mark 16: 2; Luke 24: 1; John 21: 1; Acts 20: 7; 1 Cor. 16: 2), and the Lord's Day, which first occurs in Rev. 1: 10, then in Ignatius and the fathers. The Latins render it Dominicus or Dominica dies. Barnabas calls it the eighth day, in contrast to the Jewish sabbath. After Constantine the Jewish term Sabbath and the heathen term Sunday (dies Solis) were used also. In the edict of Gratian, A.d. 386, two are combined: " Solis die, quem Dominicum rite dixere majores."  On the Continent of Europe Sunday has ruled out Sabbath completely; while in England, Scotland, and the United States Sabbath is used as often as the other or oftener in religious literature. The difference is characteristic of the difference in the Continental and the Anglo-American observance of the Lord's Day.

 

Nothing short of apostolic precedent can account for the universal religious observance in the churches of the second century. There is no dissenting voice. This custom is confirmed by the testimonies of the earliest post-apostolic writers, as:

• Barnabas (Ep., c. 15: "We celebrate the eighth day with joy, on which Jesus rose from the dead, and, after having appeared [to his disciples], ascended to heaven." It does not follow from this that Barnabas put the ascension of Christ likewise on a Sunday.),
• Ignatius (Ep. ad Magnes. c. 8, 9),
• and Justin Martyr (Apol. I. 67).
• It is also confirmed by the younger Pliny (Stato die; in his letter to Trajan, Ep. X. 97. This "stated day," on which. the Christians in Bithynia assembled before day-light to sing hymns to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a sacramentum, must be the Lord's Day).
• The Didache calls the first day "the Lord's Day of the Lord." (Ch. 14)

 

Considering that the church was struggling into existence, and that a large number of Christians were slaves of heathen masters, we cannot expect an unbroken regularity of worship and a universal cessation of labor on Sunday until the civil government in the time of Constantine came to the help of the church and legalized (and in part even enforced) the observance of the Lord's Day. This may be the reason why the religious observance of it was not expressly enjoined by Christ and the apostles; as for similar reasons there is no prohibition of polygamy and slavery by the letter of the New Testament, although its spirit condemns these abuses, and led to their abolition...

 

The fathers did not regard the Christian Sunday as a continuation of, but as a substitute for, the Jewish Sabbath, and based it not so much on the fourth commandment, and the primitive rest of God in creation, to which the commandment expressly refers, as upon the resurrection of Christ and the apostolic tradition. There was a disposition to disparage the Jewish law in the zeal to prove the independent originality of Christian institutions. The same polemic interest against Judaism ruled in the paschal controversies, and made Christian Easter a moveable feast. Nevertheless, Sunday was always regarded in the ancient church as a divine institution, at least in the secondary sense, as distinct from divine ordinances in the primary sense, which were directly and positively commanded by Christ, as baptism and the Lord's Supper. Regular public worship absolutely requires a stated day of worship.

• Ignatius was the first who contrasted Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath as something done away with (Ep. ad Magnes. c. 8, 9).
• So did the author of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas (Cap. 15.    This Epistle is altogether too fierce in. its polemics against Judaism to be the production of the apostolic Barnabas.).
• Justin Martyr, in controversy with a Jew, says that the pious before Moses pleased God without circumcision and the Sabbath (Dial c. Tryph. Jud. 19, 27), and that Christianity requires not one particular Sabbath, but a perpetual Sabbath (Dial. 12 “the new day comes on account of all this). He assigns as a reason for the selection of the first day for the purposes of Christian worship, because on that day God dispelled the darkness and the chaos, and because Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his assembled disciples, but makes no allusion to the fourth commandment (Apol. I. 67). He uses the term " to sabbathize "  only of the Jews, except in the passage just quoted, where he spiritualizes the Jewish law…
• Dionysius of Corinth mentions Sunday incidentally in a letter to the church of Rome, A.D., 170: "Today we kept the Lord's Day holy, in which we  read your letter." (Eusebius, H. E. IV. 23)…
• Irenaeus of Lyons, about 170, bears testimony to the celebration of the Lord's Day (In one of his fragments concerning the passover, and by his part in the Quartadecinianian controversy, which turned on the yearly celebration of the Christian Passover, but implied universal agreement as to the weekly celebration of the Resurrection.), but likewise regards the Jewish Sabbath merely as a symbolical and typical ordinance, and says that "Abraham without circumcision and without observance of Sabbaths believed in God," which proves "the symbolical and temporary character of those ordinances, and their inability to make perfect." (Adv. Haer. IV. 16)
• Tertullian, at the close of the second  and beginning of the third century, views the Lord's Day as figurative of rest from sin and typical of man's final rest, and says: "We have nothing to do with Sabbaths, new moons or the Jewish festivals, much less with those of the heathen. We have our own solemnities, the Lord's Day, for instance, and Pentecost. As the heathen confine themselves to their festivals and do not observe ours, let us confine ourselves to ours, and not meddle with those belonging  to  them."  Contra, Jud. c. 4:   " Unde nos intelligimis magis, sabbatizare nos ab omni opere servili semper debere, et non tantum septimo quoque die, sed per omne tempus."   He  thought it wrong  to  fast  on the Lord's Day, or to pray kneeling during its continuance.    "Sunday we give to joy."    But he also considered it Christian duty to abstain from secular care and labor, lest we give place to the devil. (De Orat. c, 23: " Nos vero sicut accepimus, solo die Dominicae Resurrectionis non ab isto tantum [the bowing of the knee], sed omni anxietatis habitu et officio cavere debemus, differentes etiam negotia, ne quem diabolo locum demus.”)  This is the first express evidence of cessation from labor on Sunday among Christians.    The habit of standing in prayer on Sunday, which Tertullian regarded as essential to the festive character of the day, and which was sanctioned by an ecumenical council, was afterwards abandoned by the western church. Other passages of Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen see in Hessey, l. c, pp. 375 ff.
• The Alexandrian fathers have essentially the same view, with some fancies of their own concerning the allegorical meaning of the Jewish Sabbath.

 

We see then that the ante-Nicene [before 325 AD] church clearly distinguished the Christian Sunday from the Jewish Sabbath, and put it on independent Christian ground. She did not fully appreciate the perpetual obligation of the fourth commandment in its substance as a weekly day of rest, rooted in the physical and moral necessities of man. This is independent of those ceremonial enactments which were intended only for the Jews and abolished by the gospel. But, on the other hand, the church took no secular liberties with the day. On the question of theatrical and other amusements she was decidedly puritanic and ascetic, and denounced them as being inconsistent on any day with the profession of a soldier of the cross. She regarded Sunday as a sacred day, as the Day of the Lord, as the weekly commemoration of his resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, and therefore as a day of holy joy and thanksgiving to be celebrated even before the rising sun by prayer, praise, and communion with the risen Lord and Saviour. Sunday legislation began with Constantine, and belongs to the next period.

 

The observance of the Sabbath among the Jewish Christians gradually ceased. Yet the Eastern church to this day marks the seventh day of the week (excepting only the Easter Sabbath) by omitting fasting, and by standing in prayer; while the Latin church, in direct opposition to Judaism, made Saturday a fast day. The controversy on this point began as early as the end of the second century. Wednesday, and especially Friday, were devoted to the weekly commemoration of the sufferings and death of the Lord, and observed as days of penance, or watch-days, and half-fasting (which lasted till three o'clock in the afternoon).