Definition · Webster 1828 · Scriptures · Corruption · Roots · Usage · Related
📖 Biblical Definition
Lord’s Day observance is the keeping of the first day of the week—the Lord’s Day—as the Christian Sabbath, set apart from common employments and recreations for the public and private worship of God and for holy rest. The first day is called ‘the Lord’s Day’ because it is the day of Christ’s resurrection, the day He repeatedly appeared to His disciples, the day the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and the day on which the apostolic church gathered to break bread, hear the Word, and give their offerings. By Christ’s resurrection and apostolic practice, the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh day to the first, so that the Christian Sabbath is now the Lord’s Day. Its observance, grounded in the fourth commandment as a perpetual moral law and in the example of the apostolic church, involves both rest and worship. The day is to be kept holy: laid aside from one’s ordinary labors, businesses, and worldly recreations (works of necessity and mercy excepted), and devoted to the worship of God—chiefly in the public assembly, and also in the family and in private—and to the duties of piety and mercy. The Westminster Confession sums it: the day is to be kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe a holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. The Lord’s Day is not a grievous burden but a gracious gift—a weekly feast of worship and rest, a foretaste of the eternal rest that remains for the people of God, and a means of grace by which the soul is refreshed and the week sanctified. Its faithful observance honors the risen Christ, feeds the soul, blesses the family and the church, and witnesses to the world; its neglect—the secularizing of the day into one of labor, commerce, and amusement like any other—robs the soul of a chief means of grace and the resurrection of its weekly memorial.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Webster 1828 defines the LORD’S DAY as the first day of the week, observed by Christians in commemoration of Christ’s resurrection; the Christian Sabbath.
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LORD’S DAY — The first day of the week, observed as a day of rest and worship in commemoration of our Savior’s resurrection; the Christian Sabbath.
OBSERVE, v.t. — ...To keep religiously; to celebrate; as, to observe the sabbath; to observe a feast or a fast.
📖 Key Scripture
Revelation 1:10 — "I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet."
Acts 20:7 — "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them."
1 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."
Isaiah 58:13-14 — "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day... then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Lord’s Day observance is corrupted by the secularizing of the day into one of labor, commerce, and amusement like any other—and, oppositely, by a legalistic Sabbatarianism that buries the day’s gladness under a mass of petty prohibitions.
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Lord’s Day observance is corrupted in the modern age chiefly by secularization—the reduction of the day to a common day like any other, given over to labor, commerce, sport, and amusement, with perhaps an hour grudgingly spared for worship if convenient. The cultural supports that once protected the day have fallen, and the church has largely capitulated, so that for many professing Christians the Lord’s Day is a weekend of shopping, recreation, and rest from religion rather than rest unto God. This robs the soul of a chief means of grace, the family of its weekly sanctification, and the risen Christ of His weekly memorial; it treats as common what God has made holy, and it forfeits the rich blessing promised to those who call the Sabbath a delight and honor God on His holy day.
The opposite corruption, less common today but a real danger, is a legalistic and joyless Sabbatarianism that buries the gladness of the day under a heap of petty, man-made prohibitions—a grim catalog of forbidden activities that makes the Lord’s Day a burden to be endured rather than a delight to be embraced, and that majors on negative restriction while missing the positive joy of worship and communion with God. This was the Pharisaical error our Lord rebuked, who had made the Sabbath a yoke; He taught that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and that works of necessity and mercy are lawful on it. The recovery of right Lord’s Day observance steers between secularism and legalism: the day is to be kept holy—set apart from common labor and worldly amusement for the worship of God and holy rest—yet kept as a delight and a gift, a weekly feast of worship and rest, a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath, in which the soul is refreshed, the family blessed, the church fed, and the risen Lord honored on the day that bears His name.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
The day is the kuriakē hēmera (the Lord’s Day)—the first day of the week, the day of resurrection—kept holy as a delight unto the LORD.
Usage
"Lord’s Day observance keeps the first day—the day of resurrection—holy for worship and rest, the Christian Sabbath."
"The Westminster Confession bids men observe a holy rest and be taken up the whole day in the worship of God and the duties of mercy."
"Secularism reduces the Lord’s Day to a common day; legalism buries its gladness—true observance keeps it holy as a delight."