Revelation Chapter One, The Lord's Day

Revelation 1:10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,

Verse 10 opens with John worshipping or having fellowship with God on the Lord’s Day. He is, “in the Spirit.” Paul speaks about being in the Spirit in Galatians, contrasting our state of being with living carnally. He refers to this as walking in the Spirit, verses walking in the flesh.

He says of this, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh…but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law,” Galatians 5:16, 18. Christ our Lord told the woman at the well, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth,” John 4:24. Elsewhere John writes, “Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us,” 1 John 3:24. This collage of verses conspire to demonstrate that without God the Holy Spirit leading and enabling us, God will not accept our worship. True worship is grounded in the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Those who profess Christ and reject the personhood of the Holy Spirit offer to God worship He will not accept, because it is carnal, not spiritual worship. It is the offering of the flesh, motivated not by His Spirit, but by human will. The Holy Spirit, who directs and empowers the church, gives to us spiritual gifts, and enables His saints to offer to God worship that is acceptable when it is done in Him. Yes, even genuinely saved believers can (and do) offer carnal worship from sources outside God the Holy Spirit; and these forms of worship are not accepted, either.

Being led by the Holy Spirit frees you from the Law, Paul informed the Galatian church. The Law is a type of master, unyielding and unmerciful. The Law wasn’t given to demonstrate mercy; it was given to demonstrate God’s holiness and accentuate the nature of sin. The Holy Spirit is another Master, merciful, loving, infinitely wise. He knows what is best for the individual, and illuminates a path each of us must walk, step by step in His care and under His guidance, as He sanctifies us daily on our journey on this earth. Jesus explained that God is a Spirit; He is not a material creature, but an eternal being, separate and above creation. Nothing on this earth is, of itself, acceptable as far as offering it in a form of worship. 

God doesn’t want our money, time, or blood and sweat. Fleshly vows mean nothing to Him. He wants us, wholly and without reservation surrendered to Him, yielding to the Holy Spirit completely, believing that Christ’s work was done on our behalf so we need not work more, or harder, to contribute or supplement, see Hebrews 4:10. Rather, we sanctify our lives to serving Him in all things from the moment we wake until the moment we sleep, from the moment we are saved until the moment we die. He wants our loving, zealous devotion, for our every choice and thought and action to be filtered through His truth, governed by His Spirit, cleansed so that every waking moment of our life is worship. This is what it means to be walking in the Spirit, to be in the Spirit; we are in Him in the sense that we have fully embraced this truth and live it, not to earn or to gain, but because of what God freely gave to us already. Our life is now gratitude, love, and mercy toward others. Our primary want should be His glory and man’s good. But it is man’s good as God’s word defines it, obeyed from the heart because God is our Father and Savior, and we seek to please Him–again, not to earn or gain—but to show filial love.

Furthermore, John says that he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. The Didache was a manual within the Christian church for worship and instruction, said to be written around the late first century, before the close of Scriptural canon. It links the phrases the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:20) with the Lord’s Day, strongly intimating that the Lord’s Supper was to be partaken in during the Lord’s Day, which was on a Sunday. The Didache goes as far as to infer that the Lord’s Supper was to be observed each Lord’s Day, demonstrating that Sunday worship had become the norm before the last of the apostles had passed away. 

John records that Jesus rose on the first day of the Jewish week, John 20:1. This is a testimony Luke agrees with, Luke 24:1. Although Mark does not use the same phraseology, he does impress the point that Christ rose the day after the Sabbath day, Mark 16:1. Since the Sabbath falls on a Saturday, marking the end of the Jewish week, Mark is referring to Sunday morning. Matthew gives additional testimony, stating that Jesus rose after the Sabbath, on the first day of the week, Matthew 28:1. The disciples appear to have chosen this day as their day of worship to honor the day Christ was raised from the dead, as we see in Acts, “Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread,” Acts 20:7, see also 1 Corinthians 11:20-34.

Certain Christian sects or cults, such as the SDA’s or Churches of God, insist that the Sabbath is the proper day of worship for the church. But the testimony of the New Testament does not agree with this assertion. The SDA church rests too heavily in the Law, which Paul informed us that if the Spirit led us, we were not under it. The Law and the Sabbath are Jewish and belong to Judaism. The bent to remain legalistic and subservient or enslaved to the Law permeates the church or cult that elevates the Law and Sabbath observance to the fore. Paul, when writing to the Corinthian church, told them that they were, “ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” 2 Corinthians 3:6. He would go so far as to call the Law the ministry of death (2 Corinthians 3:7) and the ministry of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:9). He finally expressed that the old covenant was passing away; a thought the writer of Hebrews concurred with, 2 Corinthians 3:11, Hebrews 8:13.

Finally, John heard a loud voice behind him. He likened the voice to a trumpet. Now we must skip about just a little to get this portion of the verse in proper context. In Revelation 4:1 we read, “And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, “Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.” What is meant by, “after this?” John is a member of the church, the body of Christ. He lived (as we live) in what Christ referred to as, “the things which are,” as opposed to a coming time: “the things which will take place after this,” Revelation 1:19. Both the “things which are”, and “after this” represent the church age, which is sharply terminated by the Rapture of the saints to meet the Lord in the air. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord,” 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17.

The church age, or dispensation if you prefer the term, is encapsulated in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. After these things, Christ focuses John’s attention to the world after the Rapture of the saints, the removal of the church and the Holy Spirit’s unique presence in it which heretofore restrained the coming of the Lawless One, the Antichrist. From chapter 4 onward the reader learns what is to happen to the world, “after this.” The body of Christ will be complete and the church will be removed before the wrath of God begins to be revealed to a Christ-rejecting world. The trumpet here is not to be confused with the trumpet judgments of Revelation in chapters 8, 9, and 11. In ancient Israel the trumpet was used to issue military commands or camp movements, Numbers 10:1-10. The trumpet, coupled with the singular command, “Come up here,” Revelation 4:1, suggests the movement of the host of the Lord of hosts. He is calling us from the earth to meet Him. The loud voice of our present verse is the Lord Jesus Christ, filled with command. He has come in glory and is ready to begin His address of the church’s spiritual state to John.