From New Testament times, the church met for worship on the first day of the week, the day of Jesus’ resurrection. The Lord’s Day has absorbed some features of the Jewish Sabbath but also differs in important respects. It is a day that incorporates within it all the festivals of the Christian year.
The word sabbath means a time of rest. In Israelite and Jewish religion, times of rest are the weekly Sabbath, the monthly new moon, the sabbatical year, the Year of Jubilee, and special festal Sabbaths. Sabbaths were times of release from the economic bondage of heavy work or constant indebtedness; they were declarations that the needs of the people were supplied not by their labor but by the Lord.