Rev. Mike Brown has a series of posts on his blog concerning the evening service here.

Also, I've added a link on the navigation bar "Archive: Evening Service" for ease of reference in finding all the things I know of on the web that explain why we have two worship services on the Lord's Day.

A Rationale for Evening Worship on the Lord’s Day
By Rev. Roland S. Barnes

38Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two one year old lambs each day, continuously. 39The one lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight; 40and there shall be one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and one-fourth of a hin of wine for a libation for one lamb. 41The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer as the grain offering of the morning with its libation for a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the Lord. 42It shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the doorway of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you, to speak to you there. 43And I will meet there with the sons of Israel, and it shall be consecrated by My glory. 44And I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar; I will also consecrate Aaron and his sons to minister as priests to Me. 45And I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. 46And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the Lord their God (Exodus 29:38-46).¹

It is very unusual in these days that churches have evening worship services even in the denomination of which I am a part, the Presbyterian Church of America. In the town in which I grew up, where there are now four or five PCA churches, not one of them has an evening worship service. This is also the case with respect to many other denominations as well. Yet this was not the case throughout the first nineteen and one-half centuries of the Christian Church. It was the normal practice of the churches of the United States to gather for evening worship on the Lord’s Day. Is there a Biblical rationale for evening worship on the Lord’s Day? Were our forefathers simply perpetuating a tradition which had no Biblical foundation?

I begin rather straightforwardly with a proposition: It is my conviction that God’s people, redeemed by His grace through the Lord Jesus Christ, ought to worship Him privately or publicly, morning and evening, each day of the week, and especially on the Lord’s Day. Yet attendance in churches that continue to have a Sunday evening service is down. The congregation which I serve probably has an attendance in the evening which is about 50% of that which is present in the morning. That is good when you are comparing it to other churches that have evening services, from whatever denomination. Yet, it is also a sad fact that there are many, many churches that have discontinued their evening worship services altogether. With the advent of television, other media, sports, and all else that takes place on Sunday, worship in the evening is on the way out. For many, worship on the Lord’s Day has become a matter of getting the perfunctory hour of worship out of the way so one can go about doing whatever he would like for the remainder of his day, not to be disturbed again until the next Sunday morning. For the first nineteen and one-half centuries of the Christian Church it was not like this. As far as can be determined, for nineteen hundred and fifty years (more or less) the Church accepted the reality of morning and evening worship on the Lord’s Day as a recommended practice based upon a solid Biblical foundation. It was thought, “Surely that is what we ought to do on the Lord’s Day.” No one even questioned it. When I was a boy growing up in Georgia, as far as I know, every church of every denomination worshipped on the Lord’s Day, morning and evening. Even as an unbeliever, I grew up in the church worshipping on the Lord’s Day, morning and evening. Our family was in attendance. Why did we do that? Why was that the practice of the Church for over nineteen-hundred years? Was this only a well established tradition with no Biblical foundation? Was this a practice imposed upon the Church by medieval theologians who could think of nothing better to do on Sunday? Did they required the people of God to worship twice on the Lord’s Day, morning and evening, with no more solid basis than an arbitrary assertion of will? What is the rationale for having a Sunday evening service on the Lord’s Day? It might seem strange to some even to raise such a question, but the realities of our day require that we consider it. I am sure that even those who are regular attenders of evening services of worship have battled with members of their own households about whether they should return again to worship on Sunday evening. In this paper I would like to present some suggested reasons why Christians ought to worship on the Lord’s Day, morning and evening.

The Practice of Israel
The first part of the rationale is simply this, evening worship on the Lord’s Day, and for that matter on every day of the week, was the practice of Israel as required by their God. In Exodus 29:38-46 it was required of the people of Israel (especially the priests who were governing the worship of God’s people) that every day, in the morning and also on the arrival of the evening, they offer up sacrifices at the altar of burnt offerings just outside of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was established when God formalized the worship practice of His people. When He gave His Law on Mount Sinai He required them to establish the tabernacle as the place of worship according to His decree. All the details concerning the construction of the tabernacle, including even the material out of which the tabernacle was to be made, were set forth by God Himself in His law. Even the manner in which the priests were to serve at God’s house, all of that is set forth in the ceremonial law. The tabernacle was erected in the middle of the encampment of Israel with all of the tribes gathered around it, and arranged in a particular manner so that all might see the place where God had pitched his tent in their midst. He was dwelling among them and manifesting His presence in their midst, by pillar of cloud in the day, and by pillar of fire at night. The only way that a holy God could dwell in the midst of a sinful people was by the offering of a continual sacrifice, holding off the wrath of God and securing His mercy. Thus every morning and every evening, publicly for all the people of Israel to see, sacrifice was offered unto God. It was a public assembly, a public event to be witnessed by God’s people. Exodus 29:43 states,

And I will meet there with the sons of Israel, and it shall be consecrated by My glory.

And verse 45 states,

And I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God.

There was not only this public act of worship every morning and every evening, but there was also the promised presence of almighty God. There on each day God would manifest His presence, and there he would speak to His people. Andrew Bonar, in his commentary on a related portion of Scripture from Leviticus 6, makes this observation.

His eternal justice flaming forth against all iniquity is declared to Israel in the fire of the altar. The fire is never to be extinguished. It burns all night long – an emblem of the sleeplessness of Hell. It is indicative of the wrath of the God that consumes the sacrifice that those for whom it is substituted might go free.²

He then references Revelation 14 verses 10 and 18 that speak of the judgment of God. He writes,

The smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever, tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.³

The offering of the burnt offering, the consuming of the sacrifice, was indicative of the wrath of God from which they had escaped, securing God’s holy presence in the midst of a sinful people. There they could look upon the sacrifice, morning and evening, and be reminded at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day of the grace of God secured for them. Andrew Bonar goes on to say that the whole camp saw this fire burning in the open court all night long, and then he makes this comment.

‘So shall you perish,’ might a father say to his children taking them to his tent door and pointing them in the gloom and silence of the night to the altar. ‘So you shall perish and be forever in the flames unless you repent.’⁴

So the sacrifices, morning and evening, were continually speaking to them of the gospel. They spoke of the danger of God’s judgment, of the substituted sacrifice, and pointed them to the need for the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Bonar states that it also exhibited to them the way of escape.

See there is a victim on the altar on which these flames feed. Here is Christ in our room, his suffering seen and accepted by the Father was held forth continually to the face of Israel night and day.⁵

This practice of morning and evening sacrifice preached the gospel to them every morning and every evening, every day of the week. This was established in Israel.

Not only was this the practice of the people of Israel collectively, but it appears to have been the pattern for the practice of personal piety as well.

Terry Johnson observes in his work entitled The Family Worship Book,

David based his devotional practice upon that of the temple. The morning and evening sacrifices provided the pattern for his prayers, which he offered morning and evening, and to which he even applied the language of sacrifice (Pss. 5:3 and 141:2; cf Ps 51:16,17). We continue this worship pattern in the New Testament, like David, substituting animals with “a sacrifice of praise…the fruit of our lips” (Heb. 13:15). It is our Christian duty to worship God daily.⁶

The Practice of the Early Church
Secondly, evening worship was the well-established practice of the early church as the new Israel. It has been noted by many Bible scholars that the nation of Israel served some peculiar purposes in the redemptive plan of God. One of those purposes was to be the crucible in which God deposited his covenant promises of a coming Messiah. It was out of Israel that the Messiah would come. Therefore, beginning with Abraham, all the way down to the establishment of the twelve tribes of Israel, and continuing all the way to the birth of the Messiah, Israel occupied this peculiar place and role in redemptive history. Thus there is much about Israel that is foundational for us as believers in Christ. There are principles that are well established in the life of God’s people Israel that carry over into the life of the Church. The Church is not a completely new institution, never foreseen by God, never spoken of in the Old Testament. It does not simply appear out of the air with no context. There is essential continuity between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. We know the practice of Israel was to be an example for us. In 1 Corinthians 10:6 the Apostle Paul states,

Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things, as they also craved.

Although Paul speaks here of Israel as a negative example, showing us what we ought to avoid, yet there is a positive side as well. There is much that is well established for our benefit and blessing in the life and practice of Israel: patterns of thought, well established principles of worship, the need for a mediator, the need for a sacrifice, the shedding of blood. All of these are well established principles which are not interrupted by the coming of Christ, but rather are embraced and come to their fruition in Christ. That which was in seed form comes to its fullness in the New Testament, in the life and ministry of Jesus. The New Testament does not interrupt God’s plan for the Jews, but rather completes it and fulfills it. The Church is, in fact, distinctly Jewish in nature, of course without ceremony or sacrifice because ceremony and sacrifice have been brought to an end. But all of that which is well established and revealed to the “Church” of the Old Testament, the people of Israel, is affirmed in the New Testament by the Church of our day. Those who advocated evening worship as the practice of the early church did not do so in a vacuum. It was not an idea they came up with one day out of the blue: “Oh, let us do this. It will be novel.” It would not be novel at all. They were not innovating at all. In fact, they were not initiating a practice foreign to the people of God. It was the well established principle and practice of God’s people throughout the centuries. Thus early Christians, rather than going to the temple to see evening sacrifices offered, offered up the sacrifices of praise and adoration unto their Sacrifice and their High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is clearly the case in the thinking of the early church fathers. Chrysostom (c. 347-407), in his work Exodus 29:38, makes this observation,

That God must be worshipped daily when the day begins and when it ends, and every day must be a kind of holy day thus it was commanded under the Law and certainly we Christians are as much at least obliged to God as the Jews were. Our grace is greater, our promises clearer, and therefore our righteousness should every way exceed theirs. Our homage to almighty God should be paid as frequently at least, morning and evening to be sure. God expects from us as well as from the Jews a public worship, a sweet savor or savor of rest as it is in the Hebrew without which God Almighty will not rest satisfied.⁷

He also writes in his commentary on 1 Timothy 2:1-4,

It means in the daily Service; and the initiated know how this is done every day both in the evening and the morning, how we offer prayers for the whole world . . .⁸

And on Hebrews 8:1-2 he comments,
Therefore we have need of prayer early and by night.⁹

The early church fathers saw this without straining or without twisting the Scripture, without pressing something novel upon the church. It was the clear application of a Biblical principle which had been well established throughout the centuries in the life of the church.

This principle continued to regulate the public worship of God’s people throughout the history of the church. The Medieval Church developed a practice of observing a daily mass based upon the principle of daily morning and evening worship; which principle was established by the Lord Himself in the instructions given concerning the practice of offering daily sacrifices, morning and evening.

Mr. Johnson observes,

While the Medieval church held daily mass based upon the preceding principle, Protestants moved daily worship into the home, where godly fathers served as “priests” in their homes. Thus the pattern in the best Protestant homes became that of daily private (personal) devotions and daily family worship.¹⁰

The practice of family prayers, morning and evening was a regular practice of protestant piety for centuries. When the Lord’s Day arrived, these families gathered together with the understanding that they should practice their faith publicly in the same manner as they practiced it privately in their homes. Thus they gathered on the Lord’s Day in the morning and again in the evening to worship the Lord.

The Practice of the Reformed Tradition
Morning and evening worship has been the norm of the Reformed church for nearly 500 years. This can be seen in the application of our text, Exodus 29, by the prince of Presbyterian expositors, Matthew Henry (1662-1714). We may take his comments on this same passage as typical of Reformed understanding and practice.

This teaches us to offer up to God the spiritual sacrifices of prayer and praise every day, morning and evening, in humble acknowledgment of our dependence upon him and our obligations to him.¹¹

If it can be established that we ought to worship our God privately and in families Monday through Saturday, morning and evening, then it can be clearly established that when we worship publicly on the Lord’s Day, on the Sabbath, we ought to be doubly careful to worship him both in the morning and the evening. In addition, Numbers 28:9-10 states that on the Sabbath there were additional lambs sacrificed in the morning and in the evening.

9Then on the Sabbath day two male lambs one year old without defect, and two-tenths of a measure of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and its libation. 10The burnt offering of every Sabbath is in addition to the continual burnt offering and its libation.”

The fact that additional sacrifices were offered on the Sabbath would seem to establish an added weight to the observance of the tabernacle worship that was practiced on that holy day. Every ordinary day, evening worship at the tabernacle was the regular practice of Israel as required by God. As the offering of the sacrifice was publicly displayed, the smoke of the sacrifice indicated to them that their God was in their midst. It told them that He was dwelling among them, that they were His people, and He was their God. On the Sabbath Day, the holy day of Israel, there was an extra sacrifice to be offered morning and evening.

Thus, the observance of evening worship on the Lord’s Day is first established upon the practice of worshipping the Lord on every evening of every day, every day of the week, Sunday through Monday. Clearly on the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, there is to be a special observance of worship in keeping with the Fourth Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” How are we to sanctify the Lord’s Day? How do we observe the Lord’s Day in such a manner as to keep it holy? One can hardly imagine that it would be appropriate to omit public worship on the Lord’s Day. And if it is appropriate to worship the Lord in the morning on the Lord’s Day, it would hardly be appropriate to omit evening worship. There was a pattern established in the morning and evening sacrifices. How could evening worship on the Lord’s Day be omitted if it was required of us to worship our God in the evening on the other six non-holy days of the week? It could hardly be established that one ought to worship God every evening of the week, Monday through Saturday, and then not worship God on the evening of the Lord’s Day. It seems to be even more compelling that one ought to gather with God’s people on the evening of the Lord’s Day to worship. Therefore the observance of evening worship or prayers was the well established application made to the Church taken from the practice of evening sacrifice. Many Reformed expositors have made this application, Matthew Henry being just one example.

A Logical Response to Creation and Redemption
Fourthly, the practice of worship, morning and evening, is a logical response to creation and redemption. Remember the creation story in Genesis 1. The phrase “evening and morning” is repeated in verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31; evening and morning the first day, evening and morning the second day, etc. Here is a pattern for life. Evening and morning together frame the passing of time. They are the bookends of each segment of our lives, each day that passes, each day that God sovereignly gives us by His grace and mercy. Thus it is fitting that the last thing you do before you go to bed at night is to worship your God; to pause, to pray and give thanks unto your God who has created you and redeemed you. It makes perfect sense, does it not, that upon waking in the morning the first thing you would do is to give thanks unto your God and to lift up your soul unto him in praise and prayer? It is perfectly logical to worship Him again in the evening for having given you another day in which to live and to serve Him? Such worship is assumed to be part of the daily life of one who knows God as His Lord and Creator. The Psalms are full of references to morning and evening prayers. Here are just a few examples:

In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch (Psalm 5:3).

But I, O Lord, have cried out to You for help, and in the morning my prayer comes before you (Psalm 88:13).

Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, Who serve by night in the house of the Lord! 2Lift up you hands to the sanctuary and bless the Lord. 3May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who made heaven and earth (Psalm 134:1).

May my prayer be counted as incense before You, the lifting up of my hands as the evening offering (Psalm 141:2).

Do you really have to be persuaded that this is right? Is there not a prima facia persuasiveness to it? That is, on the face of it does it not seem right? Is it not compelling that you as a creature made in the image of God, given your life by almighty God as a gift, and also redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, ought to, every night before you go to bed, give thanks unto God for the life given to you? And is it not also compelling that the first thing you should do when you open your eyes in the morning is to worship him yet again. Thus on the Lord’s Day when we gather together publicly to worship, would it not be compelling that we would gather in the morning and also again in the evening? That is what the church did for nineteen and one-half centuries.

Spiritual Benefits
Finally, the practice of evening worship promotes the practice of godliness. This is a practical argument. There is a practical order and rhythm given to the worshipping of God which is produced when God’s people gather to worship Him in the morning and again in the evening on the Lord’s Day. It frames the Lord’s Day, especially if you begin the night before in your home and prepare your heart for public worship. The Lord’s Day is well observed when God’s people come together in the morning on the Lord’s Day to sing the praises of their God, and then finally gather again in the evening to close out the observance of the Lord’s Day. This observance of morning and evening worship promotes a practical godliness and helps to structure our lives for the pursuit of piety. The fourth commandment tells us “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” It is a day; it is not the Sabbath hour or the Sabbath minute. It is the Sabbath day; it is twenty-four hours in duration just like the other six. There is a practical framing of the Lord’s Day when we begin to prepare ourselves as individuals and families for the coming of the Lord’s Day the night before, worship together in the morning as a congregation, and then worship again on the Lord’s Day evening with God’s people, bringing the whole observance to a close. The observance of Sunday evening worship is a great aid to those who genuinely try to keep the Sabbath holy. There is so much that is distracting in our day and culture that it is very difficult, even for those who are seeking to observe the Sabbath, to devote a full twenty-four period of time to acts of worship, service, mercy, and rest. If there is no evening worship service it is easier to dismiss the Lord’s Day and succumb to the appeal of the world and its many entertainments. However, when there is a worship service awaiting you in the evening of the Lord’s Day it is easier to keep your focus on those things that are in keeping with an earnest observance of the Lord’s Day.

Besides the practical benefit of helping to structure the Sabbath observance of God’s people, the practice of evening worship when faithfully observed will double the public opportunities that God’s people have provided for them to grow spiritually and serve the Lord. They will have twice the opportunities to pray together, to sing God’s praises together, to hear the reading and preaching of the Scriptures together, and to fellowship together. This cannot help but strengthen the Church.

Paul Alexander, in his little pamphlet entitled “Let’s Keep our Sunday Evening Worship,” makes this observation:

Experience also supports this point. Please forgive me for being just a little autobiographical at this point, but 37 years in one pastorate has given me a somewhat unusual perspective. I have been able to watch people in my congregation grow up, get married, raise children, and finish careers. In short, live out large parts of their lives during that lengthy tenure. My generalizations about my parishioners may seem too narrow a database to satisfy all the demands of contemporary scholarship, and I am sure that I am lacking in total objectivity. At the same time I am confident of one conclusion: Those who regularly participate in morning and evening worship over a period of years are the most stable and productive Christians. They are furthermore the most joyful and effective. Our present membership is 300. Over the years, more than a thousand have come and gone largely because of the nature of employment in Huntsville. Among those who have come to church twice on Sunday there is a remarkable record of family stability and spiritual productivity. Of course there have been exceptions, but from these families have flowed a constant stream of children who have grown to maturity honoring the Lord, marrying in Christ, and following the Lord in their vocations. This is what it is all about. Another interesting fact is that in all those years there have been only three divorces among those who have been regular in our morning and evening worship. I have been reluctant in the past to tell such a statistic in public for fear that the devil would attack more of our marriages just to embarrass us. Confident that we can trust the Lord to protect our people, I tell it now in order to give praise to the Lord and to the means of grace he has given us to make us strong in him. Participation in Sunday morning and evening worship is a proven means of helping God’s people to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. It is certainly not the only thing we need, but it is an important source of strength and blessing to those who have used it.¹²

There is a Biblical rationale for corporate worship on the Lord’s Day evening. When we practice evening worship in our fellowships we are following the biblical pattern established first in the morning and evening sacrifices of Israel and then mimicked in the morning and evening prayers of the ancient church. This is a pattern which we ought to seek to practice and affirm in the lives of our churches. It is our prayer that our God will bless us as we make good use of the means of grace on the Lord’s Day; that He will prosper us in His grace. This practice cannot help but strengthen the Church for its mission.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Addendum: In this paper we have considered a Biblical rationale for the practice evening worship on the Lord’s Day. It has been the focus of this paper to establish this rationale on the basis of the practice of morning and evening sacrifices in the worship of Israel. However, there are some other practical considerations that have to do with the government of the church that may also be considered. If one is a member of a church in which the elders have established the practice of evening worship, he should give due consideration to his obligation to follow the instructions of those placed over him by the Lord. (Hebrews 13:17)

Notes
¹ All Scripture quotes are from the New American Standard Version (La Habra, California: The Lockman Foundation, 1971).
² Andrew Bonar, Leviticus, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust 1978), p. 113.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Terry Johnson, The Family Worship Book, (Rossshire, Great Britain: Christian Family Publications, 1998), p. 16
⁷ http://anglicanhistory.org/sparrow/rationale/ofdaily.html “A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer,” Anthony Sparrow, D.D., London, 1672.
⁸ Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Volume XII, Saint Chrysostom, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 426.
⁹ Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Volume XIV, Saint Chrysostom, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 437.
¹⁰ Johnson, The Family Worship Book, p. 16
¹¹ Henry, Matthew, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Volume I (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company), p. 399.
¹² Paul Alexander, Let’s Keep Our Sunday Evening Worship, p. 4.

The Evening Worship Service
Ordained Servant 6:4 (October 1997): 83–84.

by Lawrence Eyres

“[God] hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto Him: which, ... 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 a Christian Sabbath” (Westminster Confession of Faith XXI, vii).

“The sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in works of necessity and mercy” (Shorter Catechism 60, emphasis added).

“The charge of keeping the sabbath is more specially directed to governors of families and their superiors, *because they are bound not only to keep it themselves, but see to it that it is to be observed by all under their charge; and because they are prone ofttimes to hinder them by employments of their own*” (Larger Catechism 118, emphasis added).

These quotations are an integral part of the Secondary Standards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church; and as such, all her ministers, elders and deacons have solemnly affirmed on oath that they “sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith and Catechisms of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture” (Form of Government XXI, 13-c (2)). Admittedly, there is and has been, since the founding of the OPC, wide variation in the degree of rigor with which the ordained servants of our church have lived up to the strictures of these quotations from our Secondary Standards. For example, J. Gresham Machen and John Murray differed in their conscience-directed practices in this regard. But lately I’ve become concerned because many churches under identical confessional standards have abandoned the evening worship service altogether. (I am not aware of any OPC churches having done so.) Some have substituted small group meetings for corporate evening worship. I personally have some problems with this, but if all members of the congregation are free to be involved, this substitution may fulfil the requirement of our standards. But in any case, it is my conviction that the abandonment of regular, corporate congregational worship on the evening of the Lord’s Day is a recipe for disaster.

One family, which had belonged to the church I served, was transferred to a city where there was no Orthodox Presbyterian Church. So they joined a church of a sister presbyterian denomination. The husband and father even served as an elder for some years in that congregation. But then the session decided to abandon the evening worship service because it was so poorly attended that they judged it impractical to continue. This family greatly missed the evening service. And, after a time, they sought out other churches with evening services to visit. But their children resisted—they had already become used to the new “freedom.” Presumably this family attended evening services anyway, but the effect of their own church’s decision had already made these children feel that it was a wearisome duty instead of a blessed privilege to attend God’s house at the end of a Lord’s Day.

True, it is still possible to worship as families in our homes on Sunday evening, and we should if an assembly of the larger Christian family is unavailable. But this is far from the biblical ideal (Hebrews 10:25). An obvious advantage of evening congregational worship is found in the fact that it is much easier to keep the whole day sacred if it is begun and ended with corporate worship. I’ve often used this (now old fashioned) illustration: A clothesline must have two posts. Otherwise, the clean clothes will fall to the ground and be soiled. Even when there are two posts, if one of them is weak it is apt to give way under pressure of the weight and fall with disasterous results. Not being dispensationalists, we Reformed Christians must take seriously the teaching which is found in Isaiah 58:13 and 14. We are not to “do
[our] own ways, nor find [our] own pleasure, nor speak [our] own words” on the Lord’s day. Rather we are to “call the Sabbath a delight, [and call] the holy day of the Lord honorable.“ True, this goes against our modern “need” to fill empty time with easy entertainment and fun things—all available at the push of the “power” button on the remote. But God’s Word is not idle advice, and obedience to it carries the sure promise of blessing: “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth [i.e. to rise above the nagging troubles of our workaday world], and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father [enjoy the blessings of the covenant]. The mouth of the Lord has spoken! ”

But, for those ordained office bearers in churches under the Westminster Standards, the importance of retaining the evening worship service—even though it is an uphill battle in this pleasure-mad age—is that we have “adopted” the Puritan doctrine of the Christian Sabbath. And it is not an incidental figment of the culture out of which it emerged. “There is a sabbatismos [keeping of the sabbath rest] for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). It is a creation ordinance (Genesis 2:2, 3 and Exodus 20:11). It is also an integral part of our redemption (Deuteronomy 5: l 5. See also the typology of the sabbatical system—of the sabbatical year, and the fiftieth year of “Jubilee” in Leviticus 25). And Hebrews 4 shows us how this comes to its glorious climax in the work of Christ: “For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God” (vss, 8 and 9). Quite obviously, that which remains is our Eternal Sabbath. But that is not only “then,” when the church enters
her consummate state, but it is NOW as well, for verse l l adds, “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience”! Certainly, none of the perfected saints will be able to fall into disobedience when the day of final consummation arrives! So it is clear that the sabbath principle is in effect all the way from the first creation until the completion of the new creation!

Finally, the abandonment of Sunday Evening Worship sends the wrong message both to the world and to the people of God: “From dawn till noon on the Lord’s day, attend to the things of God. Thereafter, do as you would do on any other day of the week.” There are those who sincerely agree with that advice, though I am persuaded it is sadly mistaken and misguided. But we are committed to keeping the whole day as “set apart” even from things that are legitimate on the other six days. Sure, it’s an uphill battle in these permissive times. Yes, many of our people are careless—almost to the point of causing despair on the part of their ordained rulers. But I believe that if—to begin with—there are only a few of the faithful who seem to want that blessing, we must be there to join with them in seeking the face of our God so that He may revive us in the midst of these years of spiritual drought, and “in wrath, remember mercy.”

Let's Keep Our Sunday Evening Worship

Paul H. Alexander, Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Huntsville, Alabama.

Found at http://www.opc.org/new_horizons/evening_service.html

One of the small pleasures of my early childhood was playing with other children outside the church after Sunday evening worship. For a half hour or more, the adults seemed to forget their parental responsibilities and we ran wild and free in the soft summer air of a Kansas evening. While our parents pursued more mature interests, we captured lightning bugs, played tag, or chased girls with toads we had caught. It was one of the high points of the week. Life without Sunday evening worship would have been a drag!

Fewer and fewer children would think so today. Sunday evening worship is not a part of their lives because an increasing number of churches are not including it in their schedules. Sunday evening worship seems to be on the endangered species list, and there is a lot more at stake than a child's game of tag. Sunday evening worship can meet important needs in the lives of God's people.

True, Sunday evening worship is nowhere specifically prescribed by Scripture—but then, neither is Sunday morning worship. Both services are established at the discretion and on the authority of the elders of the church on the basis of such texts as Hebrews 10:25-26 and 13:17. The historic fact is that the practice of worshiping twice on Sunday is a firmly established tradition in evangelical and Reformed churches. What has changed that would warrant a departure from the wisdom of our godly forefathers, who established and maintained this practice for so many centuries?

Below are four reasons which, I hope, may persuade us to keep this tradition alive, or revive it, as the case may require.

1. The Importance of Frequent Public Preaching
The need for the frequent preaching and teaching of God's Word is the primary reason for maintaining both morning and evening worship services. The apostle Paul urges Timothy: "Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction" (2 Tim. 4:2). In this concluding and climactic challenge of his apostolic ministry, Paul is following the example of Moses and all the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as that of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles. These great servants of God were preeminently preachers and teachers of God's Word. Preaching was the key tool they used to advance the kingdom, and they were at it incessantly.

Since the Reformation of the sixteenth century, Reformed churches have led the way in emphasizing the necessity for the frequent public preaching of God's Word. John Calvin exemplified this principle in his own practice of preaching nearly every day of the week, as well as on Sunday. First in Britain and then in the American colonies, our Puritan forefathers followed Calvin's example by preaching twice nearly every Sunday and often at a weeknight service called "the lecture." This pattern has characterized Reformed churches (and other evangelicals as well) until very recent times.

The preaching of God's Word, therefore, in both morning and evening worship services on the Lord's Day, has been regarded as an important application of this "frequent preaching" principle, crucial to the life of the church. Granted, this principle might be fulfilled at other times than Sunday evening, but experience has shown this to be the time that best suits most Christians. This practice has been regarded as axiomatic for Bible-believing churches and went almost unchallenged for nearly four centuries.

Not so today! "Church growth" experts are advising us that the evening service (and frequent preaching in general) is excess baggage, inhibiting evangelism and getting in the way of "small group" ministries now deemed more important than preaching. We are being advised that "the culture has changed," that evening worship no longer meets the "felt needs" of our contemporaries, and that we need a great variety of programs to meet the needs of every age and interest in our world. If we do not change with the culture, it seems, we will be consigned to the trash heap of irrelevance, or, what may be even worse, to smallness, a fate worse than death to the "church growth" mind.

We should be asking if this is really the time to reduce our own efforts at preaching, the means God has ordained and blessed for communicating his Word. Our times have been called "the information age" because of the rapid growth of data in every field of knowledge. The mass media are propagandizing us intensively with amoral as well as immoral messages that are quite obviously impacting our church people as well as the world. Add to this the vast bulk of distracting trivia that the media peddle as important, and we have a seriously confused populace. To reduce our preaching either in quality or in quantity at this point in history appears to be a concession to the worst side of modernity. It is a dangerous experiment. The tried and true method of frequent preaching is being cast to one side for the sake of an unproven methodology—right when there is the most crying need for the preaching of God's Word.

Writing in 1971, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke clearly to this issue when he said, "The most urgent need in the Christian church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also." A bit later in the same book, he said, "What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching. Not only a new interest in preaching but a new kind of preaching. A revival of true preaching has always heralded these great movements in the history of the church" (Preaching and Preachers, 1971, pp. 9, 24-25). This is the kind of guidance we need today.

2. Greater Breadth in Our Preaching/Teaching Ministry
Sunday evening worship provides an appropriate opportunity for pastors to present a broader scope of teaching and preaching than is possible in the Sunday morning worship service. The Sunday morning worship service has long been regarded as the time for a quite formal sermonic style. Given the majesty and holiness of God, and the awesome significance of the gospel, this is most appropriate. God deserves a worship characterized by deep reverence and high dignity, and the gospel is the most weighty issue before mankind.

Without departing from due reverence, it is also appropriate to employ a somewhat more informal style in the preaching and teaching of God's Word on such occasions as the evening service. Here the pastor may adopt a more conversational approach, such as our Savior employed on occasion in teaching his disciples. An evening service may have somewhat the atmosphere of an adult Sunday school class, using a variety of teaching aids such as an overhead projector and even questions and answers from the congregation.

This also has roots in Puritan practice. Our colonial fathers often used the "lecture" method as their Sunday afternoon or evening style of preaching. This meant that they would address topics of timely and practical interest that might not seem appropriate to the Sunday morning worship.

Whether or not a more informal or more topical style is used on Sunday evening, the point should be obvious that we need a greater breadth of biblical and theological instruction than can be given within the confines of the Sunday morning sermon. Our Christian colleges and seminaries are reporting that an increasing percentage of young people applying for training lack the basic Bible knowledge that used to characterize applicants. Failure to maintain Sunday evening worship and preaching will only add to the growing ignorance of the Bible and our confessional standards prevalent among too many of our people. To feed God's flock anything like an adequate diet of preaching and teaching, Sunday evening worship seems to be an absolute necessity. This is one of the things it takes to produce the kind of strong, well-rounded disciples needed to advance the kingdom.

3. Keeping the Lord's Day Holy
Morning and evening worship on Sunday is a valuable means of preserving the biblical observance of the Lord's Day. Like the morning and evening sacrifice which Israel offered to God, morning and evening worship marks the whole day as holy, setting brackets around it to remind us of its special purpose in God's plan. While we may differ on the details of Sabbath observance, some being more strict, others more lenient, surely we all agree that God requires us to keep this day holy.

This is my shortest point, but not the least important. The fourth commandment is of equal importance with the other nine. To treat it with contempt or indifference is to treat the whole of God's law and God himself with contempt and indifference (James 2:10). Those who may not accept the full teaching of the Westminster standards at this point, are, nevertheless, under a compelling biblical mandate to discover and practice what Scripture teaches on the keeping of the Lord's Day. To decry every other kind of moral decay without recognizing Sabbath desecration as a great evil is to betray our whole cause.

We must keep the Lord's Day holy. God requires it and we need it. We were created with a need for the Sabbath, and Jesus reminds us of this need in Mark 2:27. Against a culture that seems bent on despising the Lord's Day and all else that is holy, we need all the help we can get to hold our ground. The history of both ancient Israel (Ezek. 20) and the modern church provides sufficient evidence to convince us that to lose the Sabbath will eventually mean to lose all biblical distinctive and to lose our faith itself. The practice of morning and evening worship is conducive to preserving the sacred meaning of the day and, thus, the sacredness of all of life.

The ordained elders of Christ's church have been calling his people to worship twice on the Lord's Day for many centuries. If we will continue to hear that call, he will continue to bless us. This point leads naturally into the next. The preaching of the Word and the keeping of the Sabbath are keys to Christian culture, a whole way of life that blossoms and spreads through the faithful use of these means.

4. Maintaining and Propagating Our Christian Culture
There is a quality of spiritual life that develops and thrives around the worship of God twice on the Lord's Day. Something about being in church with God's people twice every Sunday has a wonderfully positive effect, producing not only Christian individuals but a whole Christian culture, a community lifestyle distinguished by its caring, Christlike quality, and a missionary zeal that reaches out to the whole world.

Such a church is modeled for us in Acts 2:42-47. Here is a beautiful example of a "normal" Christian church community. Frequent preaching and teaching of God's Word is obviously the very heart of this early church, and it was wonderfully productive of that first Christian culture, setting the pattern for healthy, self-propagating church life from that day to this. Churches that develop along these lines can expect God's blessing for generations to come.

Os Guiness sees the opposite in the modern "church growth" movement—the movement that, more than any other influence, has contributed to the abandonment of Sunday evening worship. Guiness warns that such churches may have "no grandchildren" because "the tools of modernity are successful in one generation but cannot be sustained to the third generation" (No God but God, 1992, p. 157). We should stay with the established pattern. It has proven itself.

Evangelical and Reformed churches of recent history have come in for their share of just criticism. We have been far from perfect. At the same time, we should be reminded that it is those churches, with their "twice every Sunday" pattern of preaching and teaching, that have produced the many positive benefits of the Reformed and evangelical movement. These "twice every Sunday" churches were all we had until about twenty years ago. This older model may not have grown as fast as the new streamlined "once on Sunday" types, but they produced nearly all of our present pastors and denominational leaders, just about every Christian college and seminary professor you or I ever met, and the entire modern missionary movement. This is no small achievement.

Experience also supports this point. Please forgive me for being just a little autobiographical at this point, but thirty-seven years in one pastorate has given me a somewhat unusual perspective. I have been able to watch people in my congregation grow up, get married, raise children, and finish careers—in short, live out large parts of their lives—during that lengthy tenure. My generalizations about my parishioners may seem too narrow a database to satisfy all the demands of contemporary scholarship, and I am sure that I am lacking in total objectivity. At the same time, I am confident of one conclusion: Those who regularly participate in morning and evening worship over a period of years are the most stable and productive Christians. They are, furthermore, the most joyful and effective.

Our present membership is three hundred. Over the years, more than a thousand have come and gone, largely because of the nature of employment in Huntsville. Among those who have come to church twice on Sunday, there is a remarkable record of family stability and spiritual productivity. Of course there have been exceptions, but from these families has flowed a constant stream of children who have grown to maturity honoring the Lord, marrying in Christ, and following the Lord in their vocations. This is what it's all about.

Another interesting fact is that in all those years there have been only three divorces among those who have been regular in our morning and evening worship. I have been reluctant in the past to tell such a statistic in public for fear the Devil would attack more of our marriages just to embarrass us. Confident that we can trust the Lord to protect our people, I tell it now in order to give praise to the Lord and to the means of grace he has given us to make us strong in him. Participation in Sunday morning and evening worship is a proven means of helping God's people to be "strong in the Lord and in his mighty power" (Eph. 6:10). It certainly is not the only thing we need, but it is an important source of strength and blessing to those who have used it.

Courage, Friends!

I have written this to encourage church members, officers, and pastors wondering about the present shift away from evening worship. I believe that we are seeing a major paradigm shift away from a tried, tested, and proven means of practicing our faith. Advocates for this change have not provided adequate reasons for us to follow them. Such changes in the past have proven disastrous. We have every reason to keep the course we have been following and to persuade those who might be wavering to return to this established pattern.

J. C. Ryle, a great evangelical leader of the last century, described a leader of the first Great Awakening in terms that should encourage us all in this direction. Ryle said, "The good old apostolical plan of incessant preaching, both publicly and from house to house, was nearly the only machine that he could use. He was forced to be preeminently a man of one thing, and a soldier with one weapon, a perpetual preacher of God's word. Whether in the long run the minister of the last century did not do more good with his one weapon than many do in modern times [late nineteenth century] with an immense train of parochial machinery, is a question which admits of much doubt. My own private opinion is, that we have too much lost sight of the apostolical simplicity in our ministerial work. We want more men of 'one thing' and 'one book,' men who make everything secondary to preaching the Word. It is hard to have many irons in the fire at once, and keep them all hot. It is quite possible to make an idol of parochial machinery, and for the sake of it to slight the pulpit" (Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, pp. 269-70).

Let's Keep Our Sunday Evening Worship!
We should reaffirm this practice and continue it. Last Sunday night, as I walked out of church, there were the children—out on the lawn catching lightning bugs, playing tag, and chasing girls with toads. I am praying it will still be that way until the Lord comes back. I am praying that all of you will join me in working to that end.

By Rev. Dr. Robert S. Rayburn, Pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA), Tacoma, WA.

Found at http://www.faithtacoma.org/content/nl-worship-08.aspx.

In previous columns, in discussing the worship we offer to God we have primarily considered questions about the contents, the order, and the ceremonial regulation of the morning worship service. But what of the evening service and all the more in our day when the evening service is rapidly disappearing from the Sunday schedule of the Christian Church? This is a great change and, in my view, a most unfortunate one.

A 1985 survey of the favorite hymns of British church-goers placed several evening hymns in the top ten (including The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended [No. 1], and Abide with Me [No. 7]). It is painful to contemplate generations of Christians growing up and not learning to sing these superb hymns so beloved of generations of the saints. But if there are no evening services, it is unlikely that these hymns will retain a place in the church’s mind and heart. The number of the elect who were summoned to faith and life in Christ by preaching in Sunday evening services must be very large. But now there are half as many services in which a man or woman, boy or girl, might hear the words of life.

Are there reasons for the church to meet twice on the Lord’s Day? Well, there must be, for the church has done so virtually without exception throughout her history.At Faith Presbyterian Church we love to sing Hail! Gladdening Light, one of the earliest Christian hymns extant, dating from at least the 3rd century and perhaps earlier. It was a hymn for the evening service of the early Christian church. The arguments for a second Lord’s Day service, that is, an evening service, include these:

First, provision was made in the liturgical regulation of the tabernacle and temple for both morning and evening sacrifices and these were explicitly required to be continued on the Sabbath day (Numbers 28:1-10). Second, Psalm 92, which is explicitly identified as a psalm “For the Sabbath Day,” reads, “It is good…to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night” (cf. Ps. 134:1). Third, in the New Testament we have record of evening worship on the Christian Sabbath, that is Sunday (Acts 20:7) and we have it in a book that very clearly intends to set before us facts representative of the life of early Christianity. Interestingly, what might be called the first Sunday “service” of the new epoch took place at night when the Lord on Easter evening met his disciples gathered in a room in Jerusalem. Fourth, just as morning has a special significance in the history of salvation (e.g. our Savior rose from the dead in the morning), so many events have sanctified the evening (e.g. the Savior’s birth, the transfiguration, the struggle in Gethsemane, etc.). There is something appropriate in the church worshipping at the time that recollects such sacred and important events. Fifth, there is the consistent witness of the Christian tradition, from early Christianity, to English Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism’s “afternoon” service, to Anglican evensong. Sixth, there are a variety of practical considerations that, together, strongly recommend the practice of an evening worship service on the Sabbath Day.

For example, such a service provides another opportunity for ministers to preach and teach the Word of God. All the more in our day, when the church is not as biblically literate as it once was, reducing the number of times Christians hear the Word read and taught is hardly a recipe for spiritual prosperity or renewal. I give my own testimony as a preacher that, were it not for the evening service – a well attended evening service for which I am very grateful – there are a many parts of the Bible the congregation would never have had taught to it and many biblical themes that would never have been taught so comprehensively were I limited to a single sermon each week. A long series on the Bible’s doctrine of affliction, or biblical ethics, or nearly two years in Samuel would be impossible to justify were only the Sunday morning sermon available to the preacher.

Further, the evening service provides a helpful structure to support the sanctification of the Lord’s Day. Christians universally find it much easier to keep the Lord’s Day holy and make proper use of its time if the hours following the morning worship are an interval between two services. Then there is a limited amount of time in the middle of the day to put to proper use before it is time to return to church. The definite structure of the day lends itself to obedience and to a wise use of the day.

In those churches where the Christian family is home from church at 11:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m., with the remainder of the day to its end stretching before them and with no occasion to return to church, the sanctification of the day is provided no support and now depends entirely on the determined exercise of the will. We are finding in American evangelicalism that this is a recipe for disaster so far as the holiness of the Sabbath day is concerned. But, if keeping the Sabbath holy is one of the great engines of Christian faith, holiness and joy, as the Bible teaches that it is, the loss of the Sabbath in the evangelical church is no small thing.

Furthermore, there is a character to the evening that lends to worship a particular character. Generations of Christians have known this from hallowed experience. The English poet, Meredith, has a line, “the largeness of the evening earth.” G.K. Chesterton, commenting on that line, wrote, “The sensation that the cosmos has all its windows open is very characteristic of evening…” The special character of evening hymns bears witness to the particular set of holy thoughts that crowd the soul in the evening hours. Christian worship on the Lord’s Day evening gains a special character from the hour.

God’s people through the ages have prized the second service. Christian children growing up with Sunday evenings at church remember them with a special fondness. Most Christians, I suppose, have the memory of a special spiritual atmosphere that attached to evening worship. We are, after all, talking about only another hour or two out of the entire week. Surely we should have a good reason, a very good reason, why we would not make a special effort to be in God’s house, to sing his praise and hear his Word, twice on the Lord’s holy Day. A day devoted to his worship and to the refreshment of our souls in him, surely is very naturally a day that begins and ends in God’s house, among God’s people, with his Word in our ears and his praise in our hearts.