SUNDAY MORNING? GOD ORDAINED OR MAN MADE?

Like me, the only Sunday morning meeting that you have experienced is what was known as the hymn prayer sandwich. We sang a hymn, we said a prayer, we sang a hymn, we had a bible reading, we sang a hymn, we had the notices and offering, we sang a hymn, had a sermon, we sang a hymn and then closed with prayer.

If you are Pentecostal or charismatic, the chances are you sang some modern songs, had the notices and offering, communion and then a sermon with maybe prayer for personal needs.

Probably 90% of all Sunday morning meetings and many Sunday night meetings fall into one of these categories.

The question we are going to try and answer is are they God ordained or man made? We shall refer to scripture for our answer.

The New Testament Church (NTC) originally was a sect of Judaism. Even thought they were followers of the messiah Jesus, they still were Jews and followed the tenants of the Jewish faith, meeting on the Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) and still met in the synagogue as part of their jewishness.

Obviously when the gospel was shared with the Gentiles, they would not have done this as gentiles were not allowed in the synagogue unless they were Jewish converts. That meant they would have formed their own expression of “The Way” as it was originally known and later they were called “Christians” at Antioch. Basically that meant “Christ ones” and was a title given to them by unbelievers as an expression of derision for their beliefs.

Whether they were the original Jewish believers or later gentile believers, they met together for personal growth and edification and to advance the kingdom of God. One thing is sure and that is they did not have evangelism campaigns because they did not need to. The scripture said that the Holy Spirit added daily to their numbers. If the Holy Spirit was doing the evangelising, anything that they may have done would have been a pale shadow of the spiritual power of the Holy Spirit so no evangelism was necessary.

The only recorded incidents of this were individual i.e. Stephen who met with the Ethiopian Eunuch and Peter who spoke to explain how someone was miraculously healed, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth which included an explanation of the gospel. There is nowhere in scripture where the church met together in a public building to sing songs, entertain the audience and preach the gospel.

How did they meet together then and what did they do when they did.

The first thing to note is that they did not meet on Sunday morning. The calendar week at the time was different to what we use. We run from Sunday to Saturday and from midnight to midnight. They ran from sundown to sundown beginning with Saturday sundown which was the start of the first day of the week. The seventh day known as the Sabbath and which God rested on when he created heaven and earth was from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. That is common knowledge and practice for the Jews.

You will also notice that in the creation record in Genesis God said at the end of each day’s creation “there was evening, and there was morning". God’s day finished and started in the evening not at midnight.

On that basis the first day of the week would have started at sundown on Saturday. How do we know this? Remember the young man Eutychus who sat at the window of the upper room and fell asleep whilst Paul was preaching. He fell out of the window onto the ground at about midnight. Fortunately, he did not lose his life as a result.

From this experience it was obvious that they had met on Saturday night as you cannot fall out of the window at midnight if your meeting is held on Sunday morning, unless your meeting last for about 14 hours.

This was a meeting of the church bearing in mind that there was only one church in each town as in the church at Corinth, the church at Ephasus or the church at Philippi, not the churches (plural) at Corinth etc. Having a visit from Paul they would have been eager to meet with him and hear what he had to say.

There is no indication that they met in a place that they had built to accommodate the body of Christ in that town. There was no indication that they rented a building. There was no indication that they met in the synagogue for meetings of "The Way". Therefore the only other place they could have met was outdoors, which obviously they didn’t or else Eutychus could not have fallen out of the window, or in an upper room in a house.

As it was quite common for those who could afford it to build a house with an upper room for meeting purposes, this was the most likely venue.

From this story then they met together in an upper room of a house on Saturday evening to hear Paul, a visiting apostle. The rest of the time they met in homes daily for meals together and to have fellowship, prayer and doctrinal teaching.

Not once in the scriptures do we read about meeting on Sunday morning to sing songs, have communion, take up an offering or listen to a preacher whilst we view the back of each other’s heads in a building known as “church”.