Committed to Gathering Together

Participating together with your church is incredibly important. We know that from the beginning and beyond, churches have gathered together on the first day of the week (affectionately called "the Lord's Day" by the Apostle John). We also know that churches have gathered together on other days and for other occasions in addition to worship on the Lord's Day (Acts 2:46).This pattern has not continued automatically, however. From the first century until now, believers have encountered obstacles to gathering together with their church. In fact, some may argue that while gathering together with your church may have been important in the past, it is less so today in our modern era. We should disagree with this perspective. We should insist on the opposite view instead, that gathering together with your church is more important today than ever before. Do you agree? Hebrews 10:23-25 underscores this conclusion by providing at five reasons to gather with your church as much as possible.

I. 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 New Testament 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 comrades did the same before the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 3:16-18).

II. 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 Thess 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?

III. 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.

A. By paying attention to each other’s needs.

Let us consider one another (Heb 10:23).This means that 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.

B. 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.

C. 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.

IV. 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 in to 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.

V. 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 New Testament. But this passage makes it very clear that you should not respond by decreasing your church participation. That is why I opened the sermon today by saying that gathering together with your church is more important today than ever before. 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.