The Importance of Church Attendance!
If You Want to Kill the Church
Never go to your church or meetings held there, if you do go, be late, it’s no one’s affair.
If the weather is bad, either too hot or snowing, just stay home and rest, for there’ll be others going.
But should you attend, be sure and remember to find fault with the work, each official and member.
Be sure to hold back on your offerings and tithes, the bills will be paid by the rest of the guys.
And never take office if offered the post, but eagerly criticize work of the host.
If not on a committee you’re placed, be sore!
If you find that you are, don’t attend any more.
When asked your opinion on this thing or that, have nothing to say, just turn ’em down flat.
Then after the meeting, shine out like the sun by telling the folks how it should have been done.
Don’t do any more than you possibly can, leave the work for some other woman or man.
And when you see faithful ones work themselves sick, then stand up and holler, "It’s run by a clique!"
This funny thing called Commitment is what we are currently studying. We looked at Romans 12:1 and we saw that commitment requires our entire body. We are supposed to sacrifice ourselves to be committed to Christ. Then we looked at Romans 12:2 and we saw that if we are to be committed whole-heartedly to God first, then we can’t conform to the world. We are told not to conform and so we need to choose where our commitments will lie. They will either be with God or they will be with the world. And now we come to a place where we need to ask ourselves a deeper question. Now that we understand commitment, what it is, now let’s look at what things we are supposed to be committed to. And there are a few things that Christians are supposed to be committed to, but let’s look at something that we may sometimes overlook. We as Christians, if we are totally committed to Christ, then we are to be committed to the church. More specifically, we are to be committed to church attendance.
I know, sometimes it is hard to see how important church really is. Many times we feel like we have so many other important things to do, but where does church sit on God’s importance level? Why do so many people have many reasons to not come to church?
Football in the fall. Basketball in the winter. Baseball in the spring and summer. A certain minister had been an avid sports fan all his life. But he had had it! He quit this sports business once and for all. You can’t get him near one of those places again. Want to know why...
Every time he went, they asked him for money.
The people with whom he had to sit didn’t seem very friendly.
The seats were too hard and not at all comfortable.
He went to many games, but the coach never came to call on him.
The referee made a decision with which he could not agree.
he suspected that he was sitting with some hypocrites -- they came to see their friends and what others were wearing rather than to see the game.
Some games went into overtime, and he was late getting home.
The band played some numbers that he had never heard before.
It seems that the games are scheduled when he wanted to do other things.
He was taken to too many games by my parents when he was growing up.
He didn’t want to take his children to any games, because he wanted them to choose for themselves what sport they like best.
Author Unknown, At Calvary, Covington, KY.
So what does the Bible say about the church? Are we really supposed to be committed in our church attendance? Let’s find out. Let’s open our study in the book of Hebrews 10:23. Let’s read 10:23-26. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully…” This passage is going to show us at what level of importance God puts church. And He is very serious about it as well as this passage tells us. So let’s look at the…
1. Importance of Church Attendance!
Notice v. 25 where it says, “Not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some.” What does that mean? What are we talking about? Well since the early church didn’t have an actual church building, I guess that wouldn’t fit. But it is talking about the weekly worship assembly that the early Christians had. Hebrews is a book written to Jewish Christians to warn them not to go back to Judaism. Christ is a much better sacrifice than those that the Jewish priests could offer, but still some Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were thinking about going back. As a result, they were starting to not show up at church. The reasons that they may have stopped coming to the assembly are numerous. Persecution, asleep spiritually, thought they were too good for church, etc. Yet the writer tells us to not make a habit of skipping church.
Then he goes on to say, “But encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near”. The early Christians here were encouraged to encourage each other to come to the weekly assembly. When you see a fellow Christian on the streets, you take time to say, “Hey, I hope to see you at church Sunday. I haven’t seen you in a while.” Whatever the situation may be, you are encouraging other Christians to be at church.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the hard part of this passage. This passage gets a lot tougher and a lot tougher to swallow as well. Let’s jump now to v. 26 and simply see what it say. It says, “For”. Stop right there. This is a big word here and we need to know exactly what it means if we are to understand the rest of the passage. Let me illustrate it this way. When Grant is doing something wrong I usually will look at him sternly and say, “Grant, you need to not take those toys away from your brother. It’s nice to share your toys.” Then he will look at me with that cute little face and pouty lip and say, “Why daddy?” And I say, “Because if you don’t you’re going to have to stand in the corner. You need to learn to be nice.” That is the same type of thing here. The writer says stop skipping church. Then we look around at each other, and then say back to the writer, “Why?” Then he says, “Because if you don’t, this is going to happen.” Then he proceeds to tell us all about a terrifying expectation of judgment and the vengeance of God.
So he is giving us a warning. Don’t stop going to church habitually or there are some serious consequences. And notice what the first really descriptive word he uses towards those who are continually missing the church assembly. He uses the word “sinning.” If we go on sinning willfully, wait a minute Stan, it’s a sin to habitually miss church on purpose. Well, the way the writer of Hebrews puts it I would have to say yes.
Some days, if I’m going to be honest with you, I wish the writer would have continued with verse 25 before he got to v. 26. I wish v. 25 ended with something like, “Don’t forsake the assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. On a lighter note, there are many situations that you as a Christian will face and so here is a list of things that you can skip church for.” I really wish that the writer of Hebrews would have done that because every single person in this room has other things they might rather be doing. We all have priorities, jobs, families that we don’t get to see during the week, ball games, and all sorts of things. Unfortunately, that clause isn’t in v. 25. He just says, don’t continually sin by skipping the weekly assembly.
Now I know the question that is going through your minds, because it is the question that went through my mind too. Why? Why should we be so committed to the church service, to the weekly assembly? What’s the big deal? Does church save you or something? Well, there aren’t any specific Scriptures that say, “Church attendance saves you.” So what is it about church that is so important?
2. Why is church so important?
After a long hard day, Misty and I are both tired. She has been chasing kids all day and I have been doing the work that I do around the building and around Petersburg. We both know that it is important to spend some time together but there’s still so much to do, laundry, dishes, cleaning up from the boys’ messes, etc. Now if Misty came to me and said, “Stan, I really would like to spend 10 minutes with you,” I have 2 choices. I can respond by saying, “What? No, I really have something else that I want to do.” Or I can say, “Sure honey, I’d love to spend 10 minutes with you,” even though I might have my heart set on going to sleep or playing Xbox. Which do you think my wife appreciates more? She appreciates it more when I willingly give up my time to be with her. She likes it even more when I look forward to our times together and I push to have them and don’t wait on her to push me to spend that time with her.
Church is about the exact same way. The weekly assembly, church, is a chance for you to spend some time with Christ as well as with other Christians. Which attitude do you think Christ likes better. “Oh you know, I really have a lot of other things I’d rather do?” Or, “I can’t wait till Sunday because that’s the day I spend extra time with Christ?” I hope that this isn’t a tough answer for you. Church is a reflection of your relationship with Christ. If I’m not spending any time with Misty, that’s a reflection on how our relationship is under the surface. If you continually skip church for everything under the sun and you make a habit of it, that’s a reflection of your relationship with Christ below the surface.
Beyond the relationship with Christ, there is another reason that church attendance is so important. Verse 25 of Hebrews 11 tells us to be at church and not to skip habitually, but the verse before it, v. 24, tells us why. It says, “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.”
In America we don’t really understand what persecution is. In foreign countries, Christians are being martyred at a faster rate than ever before in history. So they understand really well this idea of stimulating, encouraging each other. We have to fight a different battle. We have to fight the battle against complacency and laziness. We have to fight the battle of fear. Fear of speaking Christ to our friends and neighbors, co-workers and family members. We have a different battle to fight. And church is good because we can encourage each other to love and good deeds. Specifically we are talking about love for Christ and good deeds are the “giving a cup of cold water in Jesus name” and “ministering to the saints” that chapter 6, verse 10 speaks of.
The Bible speaks of this idea of encouragement, edification or stimulation in many places in the New Testament. For instance, Acts 11:23; 1 Corinthians 10:23; 14:26; 1 Thessalonians 5:11, 14; 3:2. But I want to look at one specifically. It is found in Titus 2:3, 4 and it says, “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children…” Everything within the church is to be done with encouragement and with a teaching mindset. When you teach someone you don’t have to rip them apart for what they’ve done wrong. You can encourage them to do better and teach them from the Scriptures. The Bible says, “Speak the truth in love.” So older women in this church, you do have a job to do, a ministry if you will. That ministry is teaching the younger women about life, about marriage, about family, all in the name of encouragement.
When you aren’t here, there is a part of us that is missing. There is encouragement missing that we could have. There is a part of the body that is gone. 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26 talks very plainly about how the church is a body. We are the body. We all have a different part to play and every one of us is needed and essential to the body. If we aren’t around, then part of the body is missing. Let me illustrate it this way. If there is a job to do on Sunday morning, and you are supposed to help with or do that job and you don’t show up. Suddenly that job is thrown into someone else’s lap. If you are the arm and you just don’t show up, then another body part has to try to make up for what’s missing. So the leg ends up trying to do the arms job. However, the leg can’t do the arms job because the legs talents and gifts aren’t the same as the arms.
Let’s illustrate it another way. There are some gifts that I have that you don’t have. And there are gifts that you have that I don’t have. If you don’t show up, and I try to cover for you, it’s going to be bad because I may not have the right gifts for the job. If I don’t show up on a Sunday morning, how many of you are going to volunteer to hop right up here and fill in? You see, when you are missing, there is a part of the body that is missing. We need you. This church needs you. I need you. I need all of you to help make this thing work. 5-10 people can’t do everything on their own. We need you to be here and to be an active part of the body so that we can do amazing things in Petersburg.
When my dad was dying in the hospital one of the things that will always stick with me is the way his body shut down. He never woke up after surgery and was on life support for the majority of the last 3 weeks of his life. I remember the Dr. saying that he had had a stroke during surgery. Well it turns out that he had had multiple strokes. Places where during surgery, blood clots were forming in his brain. This obviously affects so many areas of the body. My dad was able to go on for the majority of the 3 and a half weeks just on the life support. But then I remember the Dr. telling us that his body was beginning to shut down. Because the he had been having strokes, that was causing certain parts of his body to not work properly. And for 3 weeks, other body parts were working twice as hard to help keep him alive. The kidneys were doing all they could, the liver, his lungs and his heart. But they couldn’t keep up that rate of work to keep him alive. And one by one they all started to shut down. First the kidneys, then the liver and finally his heart. His blood pressure would skyrocket, them plummet, skyrocket, then plummet. Up and down, over and over. Till pretty soon his body couldn’t take it anymore and his body died.
What happens when the right arm is constantly working while the left does nothing? What’s wrong when your belly gets fat but doesn’t digest food so that the rest of your body can get nourishment? The elbow decides to quit so now the knee is working its hardest to try to make the arm bend? The heart only beats when it feels like it? What happens to that body? It shuts down and dies. It’s the old 80/20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Is that healthy? About as healthy as a body with not heart, lungs, liver, kidneys or brain. That body will eventually wear out. Ask yourself this question; “What would this church look like if every member were like me?” Would this be an empty church? Would this be a dead church? Would this be an alive, thriving, excited church? Would it be a bickering, complaining church? Would it be a half-hearted church? What would this church be like if every one was just like you? Unfortunately, the majority of churches in the world today haven’t figured this out yet. And I don’t want to be among them, because those are the churches that aren’t going anywhere.
I know that all of you were saddened to learn this week of the death of one of our church’s most valuable members – Someone Else. Someone’s passing has created a vacancy that will be difficult to fill. Else has been with us for many years, and for every one of those years, Someone did far more than the normal person’s share of the work. Whenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to for inspiration as well as results. Someone Else can work with that group. Whenever there was a job to do, a class to teach, or a meeting to attend, one name was on everyone’s lips, “Let Someone Else do it”. It was common knowledge that Someone Else was among the largest givers in the church. Whenever there was a financial need, everyone just assumed that Someone Else would make up the difference. Someone Else was a wonderful person, sometimes appearing super-human, but a person can only do so much. Were the truth known, everyone expected too much of Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone. We wonder what we are going to do. Someone Else left a wonderful example to follow, but who is going to follow it? Who is going to do the things Someone Else did? Remember, we can’t depend on Someone Else anymore.
I believe with all my heart that you guys can make this church amazing. I believe that there is enough commitment and enough heart within this room to move this church far into the 21st Century. There are enough amazing people in this church that God can work through us to do amazing things in Petersburg. There is only one stipulation. You have to be committed to it. I would simply like to challenge you to take a closer look at this idea of church attendance. Look at your life and see how committed you are to it. More importantly, look at how important it is to God. Look at how He talks about it in the Bible and see that it means a lot to Him. Then look at yourself and see if it is as important to you as it is to Him. Won’t you take a closer look today? That is my challenge to you.
(for a better feel, listen to this sermon at www.godshere.org)
