In the history of Reformed churches, the Lord’s Day practice has been to gather for corporate worship twice, usually morning and evening. True, there is no command in Scripture to worship twice on the Lord’s Day. However, I would say that a person needs a good biblical reason not to come twice if his or her church has two worship services on the Lord’s Day.
D. Martyn Lloyd Jones said it even more boldly. At one point in his Preaching and Preachers he wrote that from time to time the Lord brings a special blessing upon a worship service and sermon. That is, there are times in a church’s life where a service and sermon are blessed in such a way that people know the Lord was there. It’s something awesome, something to pray for, something for which to be very thankful! Here’s Lloyd-Jones:
So I say to these ‘once-ers’, if you do not come to every service you may live to find a day when people will tell you of an amazing occurrence in a service on a Sunday night or on a Sunday morning——and you were not there, you missed it. In other words, we should create a spirit of expectation in the people and show them the danger of missing some wonderful ‘times of refreshing…from the presence of the Lord’ (Acts 3:19).
That should be followed by a question: why is it that any Christian should not long for as much of this as he can possibly get? Surely this is quite unnatural. It is certainly un-scriptural. Take the way in which the Psalmist in Psalm 84 expresses his misery and sorrow because he could not go up with the others to the House of the Lord. ‘How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!’ ‘My soul longeth, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.’ He thinks then of those who are having the privilege: ‘Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee.’ He thinks of them with envy because he cannot be with them. Nothing is comparable to being in the House of God. ‘A day in thy courts is better than a thousand…’ Surely this ought to be instinctive in the true Christian. There is something seriously wrong spiritually with anyone who claims to be a Christian who does not desire to have all that can be obtained from the ministry of the Church.
You can find Lloyd-Jones’ quote on page 154 of Preaching and Preachers.
Shane Lems
Hammond, WI, 54015
The Reformed Reader Blog 