For a long time, it was assumed that Reformed churches would hold a service both on Sunday morning and Sunday evening. Although still practiced in many congregations, this pattern is no longer necessarily the expectation or assumption concerning how the Lord’s Day will be observed. If we believe in Reformed principles, however, we must consider well what the best use of the Lord’s Day is. The Westminster Confession of Faith 21.7 says,
As it is of the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto Him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.
As God engraved his law upon humanity as those made in his image, part of that law was that “a due proportion of time” be used for worship. By using a whole day for worship, bookending it with divine services, the Reformed have tried to honor God’s will for his creatures concerning how we use our time for his honor. Although a full biblical defense is beyond the scope of one short post like this, the purpose here is simply to outline a rationale for holding an evening service.
The Lord’s Day
The Lord’s Day is Sunday, which God gives to us so that we may set aside our troubles of the world and look to a greater hope. This rest is not an arbitrary thing though. In Genesis 2:1–3, God kept and modeled the first Sabbath.Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. Read more»
Harrison Perkins, “A Rationale For Evening Services,” Modern Reformation (February 17, 2021)
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- Recovering The Lost Treasure Of The Second Service
- More On The Second Service
- When the Borderline and Sideline Converge: Sunday Evenings
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008).
- Resources on the Christian Sabbath (Updated)
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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I read an article by W. Robert Godfrey. His line was : you dont have to do an evening service but if you are not- what are you doing instead?
Where do we see Sabbath keeping prescribed or described in the epistles?
Wrong question.
Where do we see the weekly sabbath, instituted in creation, long before Moses, overturned?
We need no re-affirmation in the epistles. Where do they prescribe marriage between a man and a woman?
This is why the ancient church, the medieval church, the Reformation church, and post-Reformation church observed the Lord’s Day as the Christian sabbath.
https://heidelblog.net/2010/10/resources-on-the-christian-sabbath/
See the chapter in RRC and we’ll talk.