Why Do We Gather on Sunday?
Hebrews 10:11-25
For more than two-thousand years, churches have been gathering together on Sunday. This happens in Russia and the US, China and Brazil, Israel and Uganda, Iceland and Australia. It happens in cities and farmlands, deserts and jungles, mountains and valleys. It happens all around the world, but why? Why do Christians worship the Lord on Sunday?
As believers, we should learn (and be reminded) why we do things. When don’t know why we do things, other priorities may pull us away or we may go through the motions out of ritual rather than genuine desire.
To understand why we gather on Sunday, we should first correct some wrong perspectives on this subject.
Sunday worship is not an old covenant requirement.
In the beginning, God created the world, the universe, and terrestrial life in six days (Gen 1). Then he reserved a seventh day to rest, observe, and celebrate his creation (Gen 2:1-3). The Old Testament (OT) tells us that he did this, but it never requires people to observe a weekly day of rest as a pattern until the giving of the Mosaic law (Exo 20:8).
This law served as the basis of a covenant God made with Israel. If they observed this law, among others, God would preserve and prosper them in the land. If they did not, he would expel them from the land for an extended period.
It is important to know that this sabbath law included more than a weekly, seventh day rest. It also included an annual observance of various sabbath feast days and holidays and occasional sabbaths which consisted of an entire year. The importance of these sabbath observances ended when Christ died on the cross (Col 2:14).
Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
That’s why the New Testament (NT) does not require us to observe Jewish holidays and festivals. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating these holidays for instructive value, it is wrong to insist on their observance (Col 2:16-17).
Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
When advocates for Judaism pressured believers to observe Jewish holidays, Paul said:
You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. (Gal 4:10)
Recognizing these things, we need to understand that Sunday worship is not a Christian version or replacement of the OT, Jewish sabbath observance. God’s command to the nation of Israel and required expectation to observe special days and festivals has ended. Jesus Christ fulfilled the purpose for which those days were intended.
Sunday worship is not a pagan or Catholic tradition.
Some people claim that by worshipping on Sunday, churches follow a pagan tradition which is somehow associated with a false god of the sun. This claim has no merit and is historically false.
Others claim that churches worship on Sunday due to an order from the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church in 321 AD. Though Constantine did give such a command, it did not change or establish a specific day for churches. His decision only acknowledged the long-standing practice – which already occurred – of churches from the previous two centuries of church history.
We worship on Sunday, as the Lord’s Day, because it is biblical, just as churches have done from the beginning.
Sunday worship is a new covenant result.
While Sabbath observance was a key aspect of the Old Covenant which God made with the nation of Israel through Moses, churches gathering together on Sunday was and continues to be a result of the New Covenant which Christ has made with us through his blood (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).
It is necessary to point out that Sunday gathering is different from Sabbath observance in a very important way. Whereas Sabbath observance was a requirement of the Old Covenant, Sunday gathering is a result (not a requirement per se) of the New Covenant. Furthermore, while the Sabbath observance recognized God as lawgiver and judge, Sunday worship recognizes Christ as Savior and resurrected Lord.
Since we have no explicit command to gather and worship on Sunday, then why do we observe this tradition and follow this practice? We find the answer to this question by tracing an important development and pattern throughout the NT from start to finish.
The Lord resurrected on Sunday.
All four gospel accounts tell us that Jesus resurrected on the first day of the week, which is Sunday (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Another way of saying this is that God chose the first day of the week, Sunday, as the day of Christ’s resurrection. When you read all four of resurrection chapters, you see that the disciples responded to the resurrection with humility, praise, and joyful celebration, which are attitudes and behaviors which should characterize our Sunday worship.
So, Sunday gathering serves as a weekly remembrance of and response to the resurrection of Christ!
The Lord revealed himself to his disciples on Sunday.
After he rose from the grave, Jesus visited his disciples in a room with closed doors.
First, on the day of his resurrection (John 20:19). In this meeting you will notice again that they worshipped the Lord. They also listened as he taught them and corrected their thinking.
Next, on the day one week after his resurrection (John 20:26). One week following his first reappearance in the upper room, he appeared to his disciples again. And again, he did this on Sunday, the first day of the week. The Bible does not tell us explicitly that “God chose the first day of the week to be a special day for Christians.” Instead, it points out that Jesus used this day for a special purpose, by rising from the grave and reappearing to his disciples on this day.
The Lord sent the Holy Spirit on Sunday.
This may be easy to overlook, because the book of Acts doesn’t state directly that the church started on Sunday, that Pentecost happened on Sunday, and that the Holy Spirit was given to believers by Jesus – as he had promised (Luke 3:16; John 14:26) – on the first day of the week. To know this, you need to know something about the day of Pentecost.
This day was more than the one-time event of Acts 2. Pentecost was an annual feast day required by the Mosaic law. It celebrated the grain harvest (kind of like Thanksgiving for us today). It happened on the first day of the week, because the law said:
Count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD. (Lev 23:16)
This puts the day of Pentecost each year on “the day after the seventh sabbath.” What day follows the sabbath, or the seventh day, which is Saturday? Sunday. So, the Lord resurrected on Sunday. He appeared to his disciples on Sunday, then reappeared to them again on the next Sunday. Then he sent the Spirit and started the church on Sunday, too.
Churches continued to worship the Lord on Sunday.
Throughout the NT, many years after the resurrection of Christ and the start of the church, we find that churches continued to gather together on Sunday.
On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. (Acts 20:7)
On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. (1 Cor 16:2)
He asked them to collect a special offering for another church with material needs, and he asked them to make their contributions on the first day of the week. Why would he specify this day? Because this was the day when they already gathered together.
As we recognize the pattern of our Lord and the practice of the early church, we must also recognize that this is not a direct command. Instead, it is a longstanding tradition which the Lord himself established by his choice of Sunday for resurrecting, reappearing, and sending the Spirit. Churches adopted this pattern for themselves. Church history beyond the first century, NT record gives us many examples of churches continuing this practice without relenting, and this practice has continued until today – for good reason.
Christians eventually called this “the Lord’s Day.”
The final book of the NT seems to tell us something more about this weekly day of worship and gathering. The last living apostle, John, described something that occurred to him while he was serving a prison sentence of banishment on an island called Patmos.
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. (Rev 1:10)
This is the first and only time in the NT where this phrase occurs. This was the day which he and his Christian audience viewed as a day of special significance for the Lord. Again, they did not recognize this because the Lord commanded this as a covenant requirement. Instead, they recognized a pattern established by the Lord and continued to gather as a church and worship (even when gathering was impossible) on “the Lord’s Day.” The NT pattern and evidence indicates that this was Sunday, the first day of the week.
Having answered the question of why Christians worship the Lord on Sunday, now it is time to ask this question in a different way. Why do Christians you worship the Lord on Sunday?
Why do we you worship the Lord on Sunday?
The pattern set by our Lord and the practice followed by the early church and churches throughout the world until now is enough reason to impress upon your heart the desire and commitment to gather with your church on Sunday. Still, this should be neither a ritual habit, a legal observance, nor an empty tradition for you to mindlessly follow. It should be something about which you are personally excited, determined, and committed to doing because of what the Lord has done and because of how the church has continued to respond to him by gathering on the Lord’s Day.
A good example of this may be the way that we view the simple practice of birthdays in America. Children look forward to celebrating their birthday, but somewhere later in life, they begin to lose interest. They appreciate their birthday when it comes, but not with the same enthusiasm as when they were a child. Still later in life, they wish that their birthday would come and go with little to no recognition. Why? Because they do not want to face the unstoppable reality that they are growing older with time.
For believers who are more than two-thousand years removed from the events of the resurrection, the reappearance of Christ, and the beginnings of the church, the longstanding practice of gathering on Sunday may easily seem to be a mundane tradition with a distant past. But we must recapture the joy and significance of this day.
Perhaps Sunday church gatherings excited you more at some point in your past than they do today. If so, then you must ask the Lord to rekindle your passion and desire to gather with God’s people, to receive the teaching of the Lord from Scripture, to serve one another, to encourage one another, and to fellowship and eat with one another as a church on the first day of the week. In closing, let’s look at five reasons why we should gather on Sunday, from Heb 10:23-25.
You strengthen the testimony of your salvation.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. (Heb 10:23)
In the first century, gathering together with your church included a degree of risk. The unbelieving Jewish community threatened to act in hostility toward church gatherings (Acts 17:5-9). The Roman government also became increasingly suspicious of Christian activity. But nowhere does the NT suggest that persecution and hostility provided good and understandable reasons to withdraw from church. Instead, church participation in the face of hostility provided an opportunity to demonstrate the genuineness of your faith.
A professing believer who cited persecution as his reason for refraining from gathering with his church due raised questions his faith. Meanwhile, those who gathered with their church despite persecution made it very clear that they trusted in the Lord – just as Daniel declared his faith by open prayer to God in the face of hostility (Dan 6:10) and just as his three friends did the same before the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 3:16-18).
You show respect to the faithfulness of God.
For he who promised is faithful. (Heb 10:23)
God is faithful (Lam 3:23; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 Cor 10:13; 1 Ths 5:24; Heb 11:11). He is reliable and trustworthy in every way. Are you? There are many ways to show appreciation for God’s faithfulness to you. To do this, you should respond with faithfulness to him. The Bible clearly teaches here that faithful participation with your church is an appropriate, expected response to God’s faithfulness towards you. Be faithful to participate with your church because God is faithful to you. Are you committed to gathering with your church like God is committed to fulfilling his promises?
You minister to the needs of one another.
Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works … exhorting one another. (Heb 10:23-24)
Assembling with your church is a matter of ministry and service, not just showing up and attending. When you gather with your church, you should bring with you an expectation to participate. Jesus Christ, our Lord, exemplified this perspective of being a servant (Mark 10:44-45). It is the responsibility of every Christian to follow his example. Every believer is a minister, called and equipped by God to serve one another through church participation (Eph 4:11-12). To this end, Hebrews 10:24 outlines three particular ways that you should expect to serve others in your church when you gather together.
By paying attention to each other’s needs.
Let us consider one another. (Heb 10:23)
This means we should pay careful attention to the needs of fellow believers, and we should endeavor to meet those needs. While a prayer chain is good and while social media can help us to remain in touch, nothing raises awareness of our needs like actually gathering together.
By nudging one another to loving behavior and good works.
In order to stir up love and good works. (Heb 10:23)
You should nudge one another to become more loving and more focused on doing good works. Gathering together as a church gives you the opportunity to stimulate some change in the thinking and motivation of other believers.
Have you experienced this yourself? Have you returned from a church gathering stimulated to improve in your love (your affections towards God and people) and in your good works (your good and helpful behavior towards others)?
Another related question is whether you have influenced such change and progress in the hearts and minds of other believers when you gather with them at church.
By encouraging one another to persist in what is right.
Exhorting one another. (Heb 10:24)
You should encourage one another to persist in doing what is right. This encouragement, though, can take a variety of forms. It can be the kind of encouragement that provides consolation, comfort, and uplifting words. It can also be the kind that offers strong words of rebuke and correction. Whichever type of encouragement is needed, you must gather together with your church to receive and to provide this encouragement.
Pastors alone cannot and should not do all the caring, nudging, and motivating that must go on in a healthy, growing church. But this is what happens when believers are not committed to gathering together with their church. A few faithful attenders do the majority of ministry, while everyone else attends sporadically and in an unpredictable fashion - sometimes here and sometimes not.
You obey God.
Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some. (Heb 10:25)
God expects you to assemble together with the people of your church. Apart from any other reasons or motivations, this should be a strong enough reason to assemble. Here, the New Testament clearly warns you not to abandon your church. Don’t leave church participation behind. Don’t stop gathering together. That’s the ongoing expectation that God here clearly provides.
The word forsake means "to stop doing something that has been going on for a long time." In this case, the ongoing activity is gathering together with your church. Apparently - as early as the first century - some believers were settling into a consistent habit of staying away from church. But the writer of Hebrews portrayed them as aberrations to avoid, not examples to follow.
Don't settle into the habit of staying away from church. The word forsake does not mean "don't miss" church or "don't ever be absent." That would be impossible for sure. This word emphasizes the choice that you make, but it does not address decisions that someone else makes for you. For instance, when you have a fever, you should stay away from church for sure. When your supervisor requires you to work, then you should go to work (although you may want to consider changing your job or your shift if this happens a lot). And if your parents tell you to stay at home, you should stay at home.
The question here regards discretionary choices. Choosing to stay away from church for the following reasons and more needs to be prayerfully considered: general tiredness, homework, entertainment and leisure, house projects, school and family reunions, weddings of extended family, and so on.
There is no rule in the Bible that says you should never miss church for these kinds of things. But when these things accumulate, you begin to develop a general trend of not gathering with your church, and this is what Hebrews 10:23-25 addresses. Do not make discretionary choices that create a general trend of not gathering with your church. When this happens, you are making one-too-many discretionary choices, and you are not prioritizing what God prioritizes.
You prepare for the return of Christ.
And so much the more as you see the day approaching. (Heb 10:25)
As the world spins and time marches forward, the day that Jesus Christ returns grows closer. Challenges to your faith, hostility towards Christ, and obstacles to faithful church participation increase. So how should you respond?
I could suggest a number of things from the NT. But this passage makes it very clear that you should not respond by decreasing your church participation. We are two-thousand years removed from when these verses were written, and their authority still stands.
Another way of looking at this is to say that we are two-thousand years closer to the day of Christ. Unfortunately, the general trend of American believers seems to be gathering together with their church less and not more. May the opposite be true for you and your church.
To any believer, I praise God for your desire to gather with your church. I praise God for the work of grace and change that he is working out in your life. And I pray to God that you will value gathering with your church more and more in the days and months ahead. Sunday worship, midweek prayer meeting, days of prayer, fellowship gatherings, and so on. May God enable you to raise your practice of gathering together with your church to a level of higher priority in the year ahead!
For more than two-thousand years, churches have been gathering together on Sunday. This happens in Russia and the US, China and Brazil, Israel and Uganda, Iceland and Australia. It happens in cities and farmlands, deserts and jungles, mountains and valleys. It happens all around the world, but why? Why do Christians worship the Lord on Sunday?
As believers, we should learn (and be reminded) why we do things. When don’t know why we do things, other priorities may pull us away or we may go through the motions out of ritual rather than genuine desire.
To understand why we gather on Sunday, we should first correct some wrong perspectives on this subject.
Sunday worship is not an old covenant requirement.
In the beginning, God created the world, the universe, and terrestrial life in six days (Gen 1). Then he reserved a seventh day to rest, observe, and celebrate his creation (Gen 2:1-3). The Old Testament (OT) tells us that he did this, but it never requires people to observe a weekly day of rest as a pattern until the giving of the Mosaic law (Exo 20:8).
This law served as the basis of a covenant God made with Israel. If they observed this law, among others, God would preserve and prosper them in the land. If they did not, he would expel them from the land for an extended period.
It is important to know that this sabbath law included more than a weekly, seventh day rest. It also included an annual observance of various sabbath feast days and holidays and occasional sabbaths which consisted of an entire year. The importance of these sabbath observances ended when Christ died on the cross (Col 2:14).
Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
That’s why the New Testament (NT) does not require us to observe Jewish holidays and festivals. While there is nothing wrong with celebrating these holidays for instructive value, it is wrong to insist on their observance (Col 2:16-17).
Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.
When advocates for Judaism pressured believers to observe Jewish holidays, Paul said:
You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. (Gal 4:10)
Recognizing these things, we need to understand that Sunday worship is not a Christian version or replacement of the OT, Jewish sabbath observance. God’s command to the nation of Israel and required expectation to observe special days and festivals has ended. Jesus Christ fulfilled the purpose for which those days were intended.
Sunday worship is not a pagan or Catholic tradition.
Some people claim that by worshipping on Sunday, churches follow a pagan tradition which is somehow associated with a false god of the sun. This claim has no merit and is historically false.
Others claim that churches worship on Sunday due to an order from the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church in 321 AD. Though Constantine did give such a command, it did not change or establish a specific day for churches. His decision only acknowledged the long-standing practice – which already occurred – of churches from the previous two centuries of church history.
We worship on Sunday, as the Lord’s Day, because it is biblical, just as churches have done from the beginning.
Sunday worship is a new covenant result.
While Sabbath observance was a key aspect of the Old Covenant which God made with the nation of Israel through Moses, churches gathering together on Sunday was and continues to be a result of the New Covenant which Christ has made with us through his blood (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25).
It is necessary to point out that Sunday gathering is different from Sabbath observance in a very important way. Whereas Sabbath observance was a requirement of the Old Covenant, Sunday gathering is a result (not a requirement per se) of the New Covenant. Furthermore, while the Sabbath observance recognized God as lawgiver and judge, Sunday worship recognizes Christ as Savior and resurrected Lord.
Since we have no explicit command to gather and worship on Sunday, then why do we observe this tradition and follow this practice? We find the answer to this question by tracing an important development and pattern throughout the NT from start to finish.
The Lord resurrected on Sunday.
All four gospel accounts tell us that Jesus resurrected on the first day of the week, which is Sunday (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Another way of saying this is that God chose the first day of the week, Sunday, as the day of Christ’s resurrection. When you read all four of resurrection chapters, you see that the disciples responded to the resurrection with humility, praise, and joyful celebration, which are attitudes and behaviors which should characterize our Sunday worship.
So, Sunday gathering serves as a weekly remembrance of and response to the resurrection of Christ!
The Lord revealed himself to his disciples on Sunday.
After he rose from the grave, Jesus visited his disciples in a room with closed doors.
First, on the day of his resurrection (John 20:19). In this meeting you will notice again that they worshipped the Lord. They also listened as he taught them and corrected their thinking.
Next, on the day one week after his resurrection (John 20:26). One week following his first reappearance in the upper room, he appeared to his disciples again. And again, he did this on Sunday, the first day of the week. The Bible does not tell us explicitly that “God chose the first day of the week to be a special day for Christians.” Instead, it points out that Jesus used this day for a special purpose, by rising from the grave and reappearing to his disciples on this day.
So, Sunday gathering serves as a weekly remembrance of Christ’s personal closeness with and commitment to his followers. It also serves as a weekly anticipation of his second coming. Will he come back for his people today?
The Lord sent the Holy Spirit on Sunday.
This may be easy to overlook, because the book of Acts doesn’t state directly that the church started on Sunday, that Pentecost happened on Sunday, and that the Holy Spirit was given to believers by Jesus – as he had promised (Luke 3:16; John 14:26) – on the first day of the week. To know this, you need to know something about the day of Pentecost.
This day was more than the one-time event of Acts 2. Pentecost was an annual feast day required by the Mosaic law. It celebrated the grain harvest (kind of like Thanksgiving for us today). It happened on the first day of the week, because the law said:
Count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD. (Lev 23:16)
This puts the day of Pentecost each year on “the day after the seventh sabbath.” What day follows the sabbath, or the seventh day, which is Saturday? Sunday. So, the Lord resurrected on Sunday. He appeared to his disciples on Sunday, then reappeared to them again on the next Sunday. Then he sent the Spirit and started the church on Sunday, too.
So, Sunday gathering serves as a weekly reminder of God’s special work through the church today, in this period of time between Christ’s first and second comings. It also provides us with a fresh awareness of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives, empowering us, unifying us, and changing us to become like Christ - giving us an opportunity to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit to one another - “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).
Throughout the NT, many years after the resurrection of Christ and the start of the church, we find that churches continued to gather together on Sunday.
On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. (Acts 20:7)
On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. (1 Cor 16:2)
He asked them to collect a special offering for another church with material needs, and he asked them to make their contributions on the first day of the week. Why would he specify this day? Because this was the day when they already gathered together.
As we recognize the pattern of our Lord and the practice of the early church, we must also recognize that this is not a direct command. Instead, it is a longstanding tradition which the Lord himself established by his choice of Sunday for resurrecting, reappearing, and sending the Spirit. Churches adopted this pattern for themselves. Church history beyond the first century, NT record gives us many examples of churches continuing this practice without relenting, and this practice has continued until today – for good reason.
Christians eventually called this “the Lord’s Day.”
The final book of the NT seems to tell us something more about this weekly day of worship and gathering. The last living apostle, John, described something that occurred to him while he was serving a prison sentence of banishment on an island called Patmos.
I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. (Rev 1:10)
This is the first and only time in the NT where this phrase occurs. This was the day which he and his Christian audience viewed as a day of special significance for the Lord. Again, they did not recognize this because the Lord commanded this as a covenant requirement. Instead, they recognized a pattern established by the Lord and continued to gather as a church and worship (even when gathering was impossible) on “the Lord’s Day.” The NT pattern and evidence indicates that this was Sunday, the first day of the week.
Having answered the question of why Christians worship the Lord on Sunday, now it is time to ask this question in a different way. Why do Christians you worship the Lord on Sunday?
Why do we you worship the Lord on Sunday?
The pattern set by our Lord and the practice followed by the early church and churches throughout the world until now is enough reason to impress upon your heart the desire and commitment to gather with your church on Sunday. Still, this should be neither a ritual habit, a legal observance, nor an empty tradition for you to mindlessly follow. It should be something about which you are personally excited, determined, and committed to doing because of what the Lord has done and because of how the church has continued to respond to him by gathering on the Lord’s Day.
A good example of this may be the way that we view the simple practice of birthdays in America. Children look forward to celebrating their birthday, but somewhere later in life, they begin to lose interest. They appreciate their birthday when it comes, but not with the same enthusiasm as when they were a child. Still later in life, they wish that their birthday would come and go with little to no recognition. Why? Because they do not want to face the unstoppable reality that they are growing older with time.
For believers who are more than two-thousand years removed from the events of the resurrection, the reappearance of Christ, and the beginnings of the church, the longstanding practice of gathering on Sunday may easily seem to be a mundane tradition with a distant past. But we must recapture the joy and significance of this day.
Perhaps Sunday church gatherings excited you more at some point in your past than they do today. If so, then you must ask the Lord to rekindle your passion and desire to gather with God’s people, to receive the teaching of the Lord from Scripture, to serve one another, to encourage one another, and to fellowship and eat with one another as a church on the first day of the week. In closing, let’s look at five reasons why we should gather on Sunday, from Heb 10:23-25.
You strengthen the testimony of your salvation.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. (Heb 10:23)
In the first century, gathering together with your church included a degree of risk. The unbelieving Jewish community threatened to act in hostility toward church gatherings (Acts 17:5-9). The Roman government also became increasingly suspicious of Christian activity. But nowhere does the NT suggest that persecution and hostility provided good and understandable reasons to withdraw from church. Instead, church participation in the face of hostility provided an opportunity to demonstrate the genuineness of your faith.
A professing believer who cited persecution as his reason for refraining from gathering with his church due raised questions his faith. Meanwhile, those who gathered with their church despite persecution made it very clear that they trusted in the Lord – just as Daniel declared his faith by open prayer to God in the face of hostility (Dan 6:10) and just as his three friends did the same before the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 3:16-18).
You show respect to the faithfulness of God.
For he who promised is faithful. (Heb 10:23)
God is faithful (Lam 3:23; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 Cor 10:13; 1 Ths 5:24; Heb 11:11). He is reliable and trustworthy in every way. Are you? There are many ways to show appreciation for God’s faithfulness to you. To do this, you should respond with faithfulness to him. The Bible clearly teaches here that faithful participation with your church is an appropriate, expected response to God’s faithfulness towards you. Be faithful to participate with your church because God is faithful to you. Are you committed to gathering with your church like God is committed to fulfilling his promises?
You minister to the needs of one another.
Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works … exhorting one another. (Heb 10:23-24)
Assembling with your church is a matter of ministry and service, not just showing up and attending. When you gather with your church, you should bring with you an expectation to participate. Jesus Christ, our Lord, exemplified this perspective of being a servant (Mark 10:44-45). It is the responsibility of every Christian to follow his example. Every believer is a minister, called and equipped by God to serve one another through church participation (Eph 4:11-12). To this end, Hebrews 10:24 outlines three particular ways that you should expect to serve others in your church when you gather together.
By paying attention to each other’s needs.
Let us consider one another. (Heb 10:23)
This means we should pay careful attention to the needs of fellow believers, and we should endeavor to meet those needs. While a prayer chain is good and while social media can help us to remain in touch, nothing raises awareness of our needs like actually gathering together.
By nudging one another to loving behavior and good works.
In order to stir up love and good works. (Heb 10:23)
You should nudge one another to become more loving and more focused on doing good works. Gathering together as a church gives you the opportunity to stimulate some change in the thinking and motivation of other believers.
Have you experienced this yourself? Have you returned from a church gathering stimulated to improve in your love (your affections towards God and people) and in your good works (your good and helpful behavior towards others)?
Another related question is whether you have influenced such change and progress in the hearts and minds of other believers when you gather with them at church.
By encouraging one another to persist in what is right.
Exhorting one another. (Heb 10:24)
You should encourage one another to persist in doing what is right. This encouragement, though, can take a variety of forms. It can be the kind of encouragement that provides consolation, comfort, and uplifting words. It can also be the kind that offers strong words of rebuke and correction. Whichever type of encouragement is needed, you must gather together with your church to receive and to provide this encouragement.
Pastors alone cannot and should not do all the caring, nudging, and motivating that must go on in a healthy, growing church. But this is what happens when believers are not committed to gathering together with their church. A few faithful attenders do the majority of ministry, while everyone else attends sporadically and in an unpredictable fashion - sometimes here and sometimes not.
You obey God.
Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some. (Heb 10:25)
God expects you to assemble together with the people of your church. Apart from any other reasons or motivations, this should be a strong enough reason to assemble. Here, the New Testament clearly warns you not to abandon your church. Don’t leave church participation behind. Don’t stop gathering together. That’s the ongoing expectation that God here clearly provides.
The word forsake means "to stop doing something that has been going on for a long time." In this case, the ongoing activity is gathering together with your church. Apparently - as early as the first century - some believers were settling into a consistent habit of staying away from church. But the writer of Hebrews portrayed them as aberrations to avoid, not examples to follow.
Don't settle into the habit of staying away from church. The word forsake does not mean "don't miss" church or "don't ever be absent." That would be impossible for sure. This word emphasizes the choice that you make, but it does not address decisions that someone else makes for you. For instance, when you have a fever, you should stay away from church for sure. When your supervisor requires you to work, then you should go to work (although you may want to consider changing your job or your shift if this happens a lot). And if your parents tell you to stay at home, you should stay at home.
The question here regards discretionary choices. Choosing to stay away from church for the following reasons and more needs to be prayerfully considered: general tiredness, homework, entertainment and leisure, house projects, school and family reunions, weddings of extended family, and so on.
There is no rule in the Bible that says you should never miss church for these kinds of things. But when these things accumulate, you begin to develop a general trend of not gathering with your church, and this is what Hebrews 10:23-25 addresses. Do not make discretionary choices that create a general trend of not gathering with your church. When this happens, you are making one-too-many discretionary choices, and you are not prioritizing what God prioritizes.
You prepare for the return of Christ.
And so much the more as you see the day approaching. (Heb 10:25)
As the world spins and time marches forward, the day that Jesus Christ returns grows closer. Challenges to your faith, hostility towards Christ, and obstacles to faithful church participation increase. So how should you respond?
I could suggest a number of things from the NT. But this passage makes it very clear that you should not respond by decreasing your church participation. We are two-thousand years removed from when these verses were written, and their authority still stands.
Another way of looking at this is to say that we are two-thousand years closer to the day of Christ. Unfortunately, the general trend of American believers seems to be gathering together with their church less and not more. May the opposite be true for you and your church.
To any believer, I praise God for your desire to gather with your church. I praise God for the work of grace and change that he is working out in your life. And I pray to God that you will value gathering with your church more and more in the days and months ahead. Sunday worship, midweek prayer meeting, days of prayer, fellowship gatherings, and so on. May God enable you to raise your practice of gathering together with your church to a level of higher priority in the year ahead!
Posted in Sermon Manuscript
Tagged with Sunday, Worship, The Lord\\\'s Day, Sabbath, Church, Ecclesiology
Tagged with Sunday, Worship, The Lord\\\'s Day, Sabbath, Church, Ecclesiology
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2 Comments
A very good message on Sunday worship. Very helpful.
Jay, we're glad you found it helpful!