Audio Transcript
The alarm buzzes on Sunday morning. You hop out of bed and prepare your heart for worship and get dressed and go to church, all eagerly expecting to meet God there with the people of God. I hope that’s true, and I hope that’s true this weekend. It should be true of us.
But it can go another direction. The alarm goes off. You pause, and in that pause comes a question. Maybe you debate it for a moment. Should I just turn the alarm off and fall back to sleep? You’re tired. Last night was late. And you think to yourself, I’ll skip today. Just this once. The problem is, that won’t end with “once.” Once leads to twice leads to a third time. So, today on Ask Pastor John, we’re asking: Do we need to go to church every week?
It’s Bridget’s question, a relatively new believer and a college student: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for this podcast! In Hebrews 10:24–25 [in our Bible reading tomorrow], the writer emphasizes the importance of not neglecting to meet together as a church, but instead calls us to encourage one another, especially as the return of Christ draws near. Can you help me understand this text in two ways? First, why do we go to church every week? Is that pattern in the Bible? And second, how do I know if I am achieving Hebrews 10 rightly by going to church services every week? How would I know? Thank you!”
Historic Patterns
I think it is good now and then to step back and ask why we do some of the most familiar things that we do. Why do we eat three times a day and not two or four? Why do we pray before we eat? Why do we have family devotions or personal devotions? Why do we have church services once a week or twice a week or three times a week? Why do we sing as part of the service of worship? Should we even call it a “worship service”? I know people who think that since the New Testament never calls our gatherings “worship,” we shouldn’t call them worship either. So, should we? Why is there such a thing as preaching? Why is it so central in the Protestant church? And on and on.
Just as important as asking those questions is that we ask them in the right spirit. And I think that includes having a lot of respect for historic patterns of Christian behavior that have gone for years and years — hundreds of years. It’s very likely that a good deal of careful thought has gone into these things, most of which we know very little about. We don’t know all the thought that’s gone in. It’s likely that in our present questionings we have a lot to learn. I certainly have a lot to learn in asking some of the most basic questions of why we do what we do.
So, I think we should be humble and eager to understand and slow to become iconoclasts, tearing down things, or anarchists, who just love to tear things down rather than do the hard work of building them up. Oh, my goodness, the work it takes to build things and the ease with which they can be torn down — what a contrast. Oh, to devote our lives to construction rather than destruction.
Four Marks of Fellowship
So, Bridget is wondering about why we worship weekly, and she refers to Hebrews 10:24–25 and asks, “How do I know if I’m achieving this? And what is this?” Here’s what the text says:
Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Now, let’s notice four things.
First, Christians should meet together. It doesn’t say what kind of togetherness. It could be a worship service, or it could be a small group gathering. You can’t tell from these verses, but what’s crucial is this: Don’t be a loner. Don’t be a lone-ranger Christian. Be with other Christians regularly. It doesn’t say how often, but it does say why.
“Don’t be a lone-ranger Christian. Be with other Christians regularly.”
And that’s the second thing to notice. When you come together with other Christians, make sure that you aim to encourage others and to be encouraged in your faith by them. It’s mutual back-and-forth. And my simple counsel to people for how to do this is this: If you come together in a smaller group, say, and you aim to encourage others, how should you get ready to do that so that when you walk into that group, you can do it?
The counsel is, when you’re having your devotions in the morning, look out for some simple truth that encourages your heart to keep on trusting Jesus. And then tell the group what you saw in your devotions. That’s how you encourage each other. That’s the easiest way and the most helpful way I’ve ever thought of for how a small group works like that to be mutually encouraging.
The third thing to notice in these verses is that the aim of the encouragement is to stir each other up to love and good works. In other words, the encouragement is not just to keep the light of faith burning, but to let the light shine in doing good things for other people.
And fourth, it says that we should do this with all the more urgency and frequency as we see the day of Christ approaching.
Now, why would that be? Why is it important that we be busy at doing good deeds and loving each other and encouraging each other all the more as the day of Christ approaches? It’s interesting what 2 John 6–7 says. It says, “This is love, that we walk according to his commandments. . . . For many deceivers have gone out into the world.” In other words, when Christians love each other and their enemies the way we should, it’s a great protection against being deceived and drawn away by the world in the last day.
Jesus described those days like this: “Many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:10–13). So, exhorting each other, encouraging each other, stirring each other up to love is essential, and all the more during those deceptive pressures of the last days.
Is This True of You?
So, Bridget, in view of that, how can you know if Hebrews 10 is happening in your life? And very practically, these are the questions I’d ask, and I think they’re the way you know based on what the verse says.
- Do you regularly meet with other Christians for this kind of mutual encouragement? If so, you’re doing the text.
- Do you come to those meetings ready to encourage others with the promises of God, perhaps something from your morning devotions?
- Do you welcome encouragement from others? Are you eager to receive it from the things that they share?
- Are you drawn by these things — these gatherings and these sharings — to do good works for other people, to let your light shine for Christ (Matthew 5:16)?
- Do you find yourself more resilient against the deceptive forces of our culture because of coming together with other Christians?
Those would be some of the ways you can tell if you’re experiencing Hebrews 10:24–25.
Weekly Worship
Now, just very briefly, what about weekly worship? We don’t base that custom — the church never has based that custom — merely on Hebrews 10, because Hebrews 10 does not say “weekly.” In fact, in Hebrews 3:13 it says we should encourage each other daily. The weekly pattern for Christians getting together — to sing together, to eat the Lord’s Supper together, to sit under the exposition of Scripture together — that pattern almost certainly was taken over from the Jewish synagogue by the earliest Christians in the New Testament.
We see in the New Testament that Jesus practiced this weekly custom as a faithful Jew in Luke 4:16. And then when Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, in a sense bringing into being the dawn of a new creation — new creatures in Christ, a new people — the Christians distinguished themselves from the synagogue by doing the same thing on the first day of the week instead of the last day of the week the way the Jews had done it. For example, we read in Acts 20:7, “The first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them.” Or 1 Corinthians 16:2 says, “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.”
And that first day of the week came to be called “the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). And now, for two thousand years, the church in all of its branches (with just a few tiny exceptions) has gathered for worship at least once a week on the Lord’s Day, Sunday, the first day of the week, and for much of that history churches have met once, twice, three times a week.
When the church is healthy and strong, Christians love to gather for corporate worship and for mutual encouragement.
