A drum being banged in particular quarters at the moment is the call to have morning and evening services on a Sunday. The latest such call came from Banner of Truth here. And it is worth saying from the front end, the model of morning and evening services is a perfectly faithful and good way to spend your Sunday. It is a model that has served the Western church well and there are lots of practical arguments for maintaining it if it works well for you in your context. If it is serving you and your church well, it would obviously be perverse (not to mention lacking biblical warrant) to insist that you stop doing it. It is a faithful, legitimate model for church life when and where that serves the church well.

The problem I have is that the calls are not just, ‘this might be a good approach with some practical benefits that serves me in my context well’. The calls are typically an argument much closer to ‘must’ or ‘should’. Indeed, it is frequently couched in terms of biblical mandates and essentially lazy pastors – and sometimes their lazy, uncommitted congregations – who just can’t be bothered to take Christ and his commands seriously. But the issue here is that it all lacks biblical warrant. Let me look at the case in the Banner of Truth post and offer a rebuttal. But before I do, let me state for the record, that post did attempt to avoid the ‘must’ and ‘should’ language, which was a boon.

The pattern of morning and evening is clearly abandoned

Helpfully, the OP argued at the top end: ‘there is no explicit command in the New Testament to have two worship services instead of one.’ It could have left matters there and we could have all agreed that we are free to have two if it works for us and we are free not to if that suits our context better. But it went on to insist ‘there is, nevertheless, a clear pattern in Scripture of ‘morning and evening’.

Whilst it admits that this is first noted in creation in Genesis 1, it fails to recognise that the creative fiats are clearly not there to set Christian practices for patterns of worship. It is an act of egregious eisegesis to read into a pattern for New Testament worship into ‘God said, “let there be”… and there was evening, and there was morning – the second day.’ Employing this as the pattern for worship seems like a misstep.

The post is on safer ground when it notes there is a ‘morning and evening’ element to Old Testament worship under the Mosaic Law, rightly citing Num. 28:1–10 and Exod. 29:38–39 to make the case. What it fails to notice is that the command in Numbers is a daily sacrifice morning and evening, not an exclusively Sabbatarian offering. It is true that two lambs are to be offered on the Sabbath in addition to the daily offering. Whilst some commentators conclude this meant four offerings, extra-biblical evidence (cf. Josephus; Hillel) suggest the additional Sabbath lambs were offered at the same time as the daily morning and evening sacrifices. But it is evident these are daily sacrifices, doubled on the Sabbath. If we want to draw a direct parallel to the morning and evening pattern here, we are wedding ourselves to meeting daily morning and evening too. Not only does this argument prove too much for those who make it, the daily nature of the pattern suggests it is clearly not the pattern for the Lord’s Day specifically.

The strongest citation comes from Psalm 92, which is a specific song for the Sabbath, which declares:

It is good to praise the Lord
    and make music to your name, O Most High,
² proclaiming your love in the morning
    and your faithfulness at night,

The post rightly notes that the morning and evening is directly related to the sacrifices offered on the Sabbath. But as we have noted, these were daily sacrifices and the pattern for the Sabbath was a continuation of what was also done Sunday – Friday. That David rightly affirms that it is good – because it is the prescribed pattern of worship in the Old Testament – to worship morning and evening on the Sabbath, this is not a strong case for insisting this pattern should be continued on the Lord’s Day because it is part and parcel of the daily pattern. That they worshipped morning and evening on the Sabbath is true; that they did it because this was the daily pattern of sacrificial worship renders the argument null and void that this should be the specific pattern for the Lord’s Day. This argument either weds us to daily morning and evening services or it is not the pattern prescribed for us at all.

The point concludes this way:

It is not unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this pattern of morning and evening carries over into New Covenant worship, especially since the New Testament gives evidence of worship services that took place on the evening of the first day of the week (see Acts 20:7).

Except, two key points stand against this. First, as we have seen already, the pattern cited is a daily pattern or morning and evening sacrifices. It is quite evident that daily morning and evening services are not continued in the New Testament. Unless we want to take Acts 2:41-47 as normative for meetings (and that would be to assume these were specific meetings of worship in the temple courts), the pattern would be daily meetings not weekly ones. Further, there is no mention of morning and evening in Acts 2, but there is mention of that word daily. But it seems the pattern established across the churches is that of weekly worship rather than daily worship. We frequently read hereafter of the churches meeting ‘on the first day of the week’. But if that is true, this means the pattern of daily, morning and evening, worship/sacrifice is necessarily abandoned in the New Testament. If that pattern is abandoned, we cannot rely on morning and evening in the Sabbath command – which rests on morning and evening in the daily command – to argue for morning and evening on the Lord’s Day in the New Testament.

Second, whilst the post is right that there is evidence of evening services in the New Testament, the problem lies in the fact that there aren’t any morning services. Given that the pattern of daily, morning and evening worship is clearly abandoned, we have to ask why we read about evening services on the first day of the week but not morning ones. The obvious answer is because the first day of the week was a normal working day in the Empire. It is inconceivable that Christian slaves and workers would simply be given the day off by their unbelieving masters so they can worship. A refusal to work for “religious reasons” would certainly have been noted somewhere in the writings of antiquity; but it isn’t mentioned anywhere presumably because this didn’t happen. And if it was an ordinary working day, it is hard for people to have both a morning and evening meeting on what would be for most people the equivalent of just another Wednesday to us. The reason for evening meetings – and it is worth noticing Paul’s meeting in Acts 20:8 is a particularly late night one (this is no 6pm service) – was because people could only come after work. Not only does this have implications for how we might understand the Sabbath command in the New Testament (another issue for another day), it makes it very difficult to see how the OP can possibly be right when it says, ‘It is not unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this pattern of morning and evening carries over into New Covenant worship.’

This is the only biblical argument for morning and evening Sunday services that was advanced in the post and it rests on faulty grounds. The above point doesn’t do anything to insist that morning and evening services are wrong, or forbidden, of course. But it does mean we cannot insist that they are mandated, necessary or even an established biblical pattern. It means the most we can say is that it is something we might choose to do if and when helpful, but clearly the New Testament church did not see it as a vital or mandated matter because it is not the pattern they followed.

Sanctifying the Lord’s Day

The second argument – though not overtly biblical – also falls under the weight of its own terms. It states:

two worship services become like bookends on the Sabbath, allowing the Christian more easily to keep the day holy as we are commanded, rather than merely sanctifying a couple of hours in the morning! (Despite what is popular in our culture, it is still the Lord’s Day and not ‘the Lord’s Morning’.)

The only implication one can draw from this, however, is that ‘sanctifying the day’ only happens when we meet together. If only a few hours in the morning are sanctified with only a morning service so two services bookends the day, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the two service model still fails to sanctify the vast majority of the day in which you aren’t meeting. The only acceptable way to sanctify the Lord’s Day on these terms is to begin meeting at midnight on Sunday morning and not cancel your gathering until 11:59pm Sunday night. It is the only way to sanctify the whole day if this is true!

This seems a rather odd view of the idea of sanctification at any rate. It is notable that the only day ever called ‘holy’ in scripture, anywhere in its pages, is Saturday, the 7th day. And the way it is sanctified is by God himself. He sanctifies it so that it is holy (cf. Gen 2:2). Again, that may have implications for referring to the Lord’s Day as sanctified in the same way, given that the Bible nowhere refers to it, to Sunday, or to the first day of the week that way. But even if we want to overlook that, it has implications for what it means in the command in Exodus for the people of Israel to ‘keep it holy’. It already is holy. They aren’t called to sanctify it themselves. They are called to keep it sanctified, holy, set apart. In Exodus 20:8-11, the day is ‘sanctified’ or ‘kept holy’ by not working. This is underlined further in Deuteronomy 5:12-15 where the lack of work is supposed to be a reminder of God’s saving work in releasing his people from slavery i.e. unbridled work. Notably, in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, worship and meetings are simply not mentioned, which is telling particularly in light of the daily pattern of morning and evening worship that simply continues on the Sabbath. At a minimum, this tells us that worship and meetings actively do not sanctify the Sabbath.

Whatever our views on the Lord’s Day, then, it seems clear that the number of meetings we happen to have does nothing to make it more or less sanctified. If that is true – and biblically that would seem to be the case – we cannot argue that having two services on Sunday bookends the day and makes it more sanctified. If we really do believe this, we are wedded to meeting on the whole day, for a full 24 hour non-stop meeting. Again, this argument proves too much if it is true. But biblically, it isn’t.

Means of grace

Here, the OP actually pushes in a more cogent direction with its case, noting:

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey has half-seriously pointed out, the question isn’t, ‘Why two worship services on Sunday?’ The question more rightly should be, ‘Why not three or four?’

Certainly, based on the view outlined in the OP this is the more serious question. Though, again, causes problems. Because, per the argument above, why stop at three or four? Why not 10? Why not the 24-hour meeting-marathon required to ‘sanctify’ the day based on the view of sanctification in the OP? Indeed, why even stop at the Sabbath and/or Lord’s Day? Why did we ever stop the daily meeting? The logic ‘why not…’ inexorably pushes us to more and more until we are, in effect, all living on a commune enjoying 24-hour, 7-day-a-week services of worship.

The main problem with this position is it totalises one command i.e. meet together to the detriment of fulfilling the plethora of other things we are commanded to do e.g. do our work as unto the Lord (cf. Col 3:23; Eph 4:28, etc), doing good works among unbelievers (Matt 5:16; Luke 6:27-36) or sharing the gospel with unbelievers (cf. Matt 28:18-20; Rom 10:13-14; etc). Why should we not just have countless meetings because preaching is a means of grace? Ultimately, because other commands of Christ like sharing the gospel, showing hospitality, doing our work, caring for the vulnerable and on and on simply would never be done. It is for this reason it is rarely helpful when people talk about the need for more prayer, more evangelism, more discipleship, more whatever – all good and right things – because there is never an ‘enough’. It is to totalise one command of Christ at the expense of others and actually makes us unfaithful in the end. This is why the ‘why wouldn’t you want to?’ or ‘why wouldn’t you want more of…?’ arguments always fail – because there are always other things we might rightly and legitimately want more of too.

Second, it lands hard on preaching specifically as a means of grace. Which, to be fair, it is. But it is the message of Christ, the gospel, that is the means of grace. This will build up God’s people as it is being preached – but hold onto your ‘so why wouldn’t you want to?’ for a moment – because it can also build up God’s people as it is discussed in a small group, as it is shared around a meal table, as we talk about Christ with other believers. There is more than one way to receive gospel means of grace.

More to the point, we have to contend with the fact that two services in order to access the means of grace simply isn’t prescribed in scripture. It is neither mandated nor is ‘means of grace’ ever cited as the reason why it ought to be. By contrast, show hospitality is. Do good to one another is. A host of other good and godly things are too. It may be that churches who do not have two services are much stronger and better than those that do at some of these other things. It may even be that they may have a different format of meeting and find one more traditional service and one other kind of service builds the body in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus more effectively than two traditional services morning and evening.

We can’t escape the lack of any prescription nor any citation of means of grace in scripture for having two services on a Sunday. Which means we can’t use this argument to mandate it. We must also contend with the many churches, who have a different model, that outstrip those who insist upon two services in knowledge and love of Christ and love for the brethren. Which would suggest the traditional two service model as a means of grace might not be as borne out in reality as the essential some seem to argue it is.

Continuity with the historic church

The post argues:

Oftentimes Christians baulk at the practice of attending the evening worship service because it is not a part of their custom. What they must understand, however, is that if what they are accustomed to is only one service on the Lord’s Day, then they are not accustomed to the practice of the historic Christian church but to a modern novelty.

The post fails to recognise that two services is a relatively modern novelty too.

Not only, as we have shown, did the early church not follow this model. They either met every day (cf. Acts 2) or they met in the evening on an ordinary working day (cf. Acts 20:7). We don’t have any mention of how many times they met on any given day, only that the pattern seemed to be the first day of the week or daily.

Shoot forward a few centuries, the pattern of the historic churches was not morning and evening services. They followed the pattern of 7 canonical hours (which were actually 8 as matins and lauds were considered the same hour). By the 8th Century, the Cathedrals and parish churches had incorporated all these into their formal worship. It wasn’t until Cranmer and his introduction of the BCP that this was reduced to two: matins (morning prayer) and vespers (evensong). The Lutheran Church varied amongst itself, but the majority of the German Cathedrals kept the full canonical hours. It bears noting again, these are daily offices.

The practice of attending two liturgies on the Lord’s Day in Anglicanism went along with the continuing two times of morning and evening prayer that were to occur daily. The Anglican Church mirrored the pattern of daily morning and evening worship in the Old Testament. It was the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches who went in for the full seven canonical hours, along with some Lutherans (possibly arguing, against the downgrade to morning and evening, why wouldn’t you want to do more because – in a much more literal sense in Roman Catholicism – it is a means of grace?)

The point here being, it is just as much a modern innovation to only have two services on a Sunday as it is to have one. In the face of any biblical prescriptions, and recognising that the historic Protestant Churches haven’t all agreed among themselves how many services is proper, we should probably refrain from it ourselves.

Concluding comments

It seems to me the strongest of the arguments advanced in the OP is that of church history. Which is, in effect, then to argue solely from church tradition without any specific biblical warrant to underpin the case. More to the point, the case from church history ignores that the historic churches (pre-Reformation) had many more services than the post-reformation Protestant churches. It similarly ignores that these were daily offices, not just Lord’s Day meetings (more closely mirroring the OT forms of worship). But this fails to account for the NT evidence that stands against this being early church practice. There is also little recognition that the Protestant Churches did not all agree on how many services was appropriate.

However, it is the biblical arguments that stand against what weight we may put on the practice of the historic Protestant Churches. The NT broke with the pattern of OT worship in a variety of different ways. But specifically, the morning and evening form of worship, with the pattern seeming to be evening worship on an ordinary working day in the empire. The argument to sanctifying the day with two services is biblically incoherent and, if genuinely believed, should push back towards the Roman Catholic approach to canonical hours. Similarly, the argument to mean of grace totalises one command at the expense of many others and cannot sustain the argument it attempts to make. All told, the argument that insists upon – or even strongly encourages – two services on Sunday as an imperative simply doesn’t stack up biblically nor even on the terms on which the argument is made.

None of that changes what was said right at the beginning. Whilst there is no biblical mandate for two services on a Sunday and no implication that it is necessarily the better (or best) use of time, clearly the two service model may serve us well in different contexts. It may be that not only is there an appetite for two, three or even more services in our context, but running them truly is the best means of serving our people with the gospel and building them up in the faith. If that is the case, the Bible absolutely gives you the freedom to do it.

However, it may well be that is not the situation in your context. It may be that appetite for services isn’t there but is there for other equally important biblical things. It may be that one service and a very different offering is what works in your context. It may be a morning bible study and a more traditional service best serve your people. It may be one service with a strong culture of hospitality encouraging your people to spend more time together is what works. There are any number of other options. The Bible gives us freedom to do all these things too.

The bottom line is, the Bible simply doesn’t mandate how many times we must meet or how many services we must have. It gives us a whole range of commands – of which meeting together is one – and expects us to do them all and to balance all the demands of Christ on us towards him, our family, our church, our community and the wider world. But where the Bible doesn’t offer a prescription, neither should we. Where Jesus doesn’t make demands on us, we shouldn’t seek to bind others with demands he hasn’t made. If the Bible doesn’t prescribe a number of times to meet, we shouldn’t either and we certainly shouldn’t be judging our brothers and sisters who land differently on this to us. Let each be convinced in his own mind.