Church Attendance

In the past when I've written and spoken about the Armor of God, I set the premise that you were on a battlefield as your nation was attacked by an enemy army, and the fate of your country rested solely on that particular battle. I then got across the idea that with that much at stake, preparation for the fight would be absolutely essential, and the fact that you would lose the battle for you if it were missing, stressing the importance of understanding the armor that we as Christians have been given as we battle daily against the world and Satan.

But with this article, I want to set up that same scenario. That same enemy army is attacking you, the stakes are just as high as they were before, the battle is about to commence, but this time…you’re prepared. You have on your armor, your weapon is in hand, you’ve spent the last several months training on how to defeat the enemy, you are truly ready for the fight. So as the enemy army crests the hillside and you see the vast amount of soldiers ready to crush and bring you down, you ready your weapon, and turn to your army to make sure that they are ready as well, that they are fully committed to the fight, just as you are. And that’s when you realize that your army is gone, that you are well and truly alone on this battlefield as the enemy charges towards you. I want to ask, how long do you think you would last in that scenario? Would you be fully able to defend your country against an entire invading force all by yourself? Of course not! You could’ve been in a TANK on a steep mountainside and the enemy would still eventually get to you simply due to strength in numbers. Preparation for combat is vital, as I mentioned, it’s something that I preached on a while back. But what I want to focus on this morning is that preparation alone doesn’t win the fight, and the fact that the fight simply cannot be won alone.

You probably know where I’m going with this analogy (and you also read the title of this article-), but I hope it’s an analogy that sticks with you for a little while. I want to talk for a few minutes this morning about fellowship and attendance within our Christian family, right, having those reinforcements behind you as you wage battle against the world. Because the Bible lets us know that even if we are the most prepared we have been in our entire lives, if we’ve equipped that whole armor of God, if we’re ready to take on the enemy, that that may still not be enough to overcome the world, there needs to be another element to the war that we wage on sin. And that’s what I want to investigate with this article.

So if you have a Bible nearby, turn to the passage that everyone immediately turns to when discussing this topic: Hebrews 10. Hebrews 10:23-25 read: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, ²⁵ not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Now, as church attendance and being there for your Christian brothers and sisters is brought up, most people will use verse 25 is a catch-all: the Bible says don’t forsake the assembly, don’t forsake the assembly, right, it’s a COMMAND for us to come together with our Christian family. And on the surface, yes, this does seem like a very valid reason to maintain that attendance, to not forsake the assembly. But what I have found time and again within the church is that whenever something is directed simply as a command, and any practical use we may find for it is thrown out of the window, it becomes obligatory and thus unfulfilling for the people involved. It’s a lot easier to do something that you want to do, that you’re motivated to do, than it is to do something that you’re forced or commanded to do, right? This was part of the logic that I applied to our treatment of the Lord’s Supper within the Church of Christ; I found that we were so focused on the actual COMMANDS revolving around the Lord’s Supper—gather together on the first day of the week, break bread and drink the cup in remembrance of Christ—that we tended to overlook the actual overall impact and significance of the memorial itself. We weren’t participating in the memorial to remember Christ, we were doing it because we were commanded to. And this type of thinking can lead to problems, which is certainly the case here in Hebrews 10.

So my goal is to rid us of this mindset, that we attend services because we’re commanded to, because we have to. When you examine the context of that particular verse (the reason that I started in verse 23 instead of jumping straight to 25), you realized that the writer of Hebrews isn’t just saying “don’t forsake the assembly,” but he’s saying “you shouldn’t WANT to forsake the assembly, that’s not a notion that should EVER be appealing to you, and here’s why.” So we’re going to examine the reasoning behind the assembly of the church, why we’re told to crave and observe it, and how it can affect our Christian walk.

If your Bible is like the one that I used to study for this sermon, then you will notice a few paragraph breaks or headings over specific portions of this chapter. For me, verses 1-4 were labeled “Animal sacrifices insufficient”, 5-10 labeled “Christ’s death fulfills God’s will”, 11-18 labeled “Christ’s death perfects the sanctified”, and finally, 19-25 labeled “hold fast your confession.”

Now this progression makes a bit more sense when you understand the entire message of the book of Hebrews, and it’s a message that, frankly, applies to a lot of Christians today. The Hebrew audience to which this was written were of Jewish belief before being converted to Christianity. But the pull of the old ways and old religion were slowly sinking them back into Judaism, so the writer of this particular book lays out the case as to why Christ and the life that He set out for us is greater than the old law and old traditions. And that’s exactly the way that this chapter plays out! He begins by saying that those old traditions—like animal sacrifice—weren’t necessary anymore, that they were insufficient. Well, why was that the case? Next paragraph, because CHRIST’S DEATH fulfills God’s will. A more perfect sacrifice had been offered, bulls and goats were no longer necessary. Okay, so what does this mean for our relationship with God? What’s the next step? Next paragraph: Christ’s death perfects the sanctified. Jesus dying on the cross does exactly for His followers what animal sacrifice was believed to have done for those under the Old Law: cleansed sin. Of course we know now that, again, Christ’s death was the more perfect sacrifice, it was the ONLY one that could truly cleanse sin. But in dying on that cross, He gave us the opportunity to be cleansed, to be perfect in His blood. And what does that require from us? Next paragraph: Hold fast to your confession.

That’s exactly why traditions and rituals and following commands simply because they’re commands is not what the church today is supposed to be. That’s what the writer of Hebrews was trying to keep his audience AWAY from! He didn’t want them reverting to the old, inferior covenant based on exactly that: tradition and ritual. Instead, he offers the alternative of Christ and His death on the cross. He draws a contrast between the old law—one of sacrifice and ritual—and the new law—one of being cleansed by the blood of Christ. So it’s obviously clear as he builds up to verse 25 that the Hebrew writer was not simply giving them another command or another tradition that they were forced to follow in order to maintain religion. It would be completely against everything he had said thus far in the chapter! The point that he makes in that specific paragraph, “Hold fast to your confession”, is that—once again—the new covenant is more perfect than the old, that the salvation offered by Christ is the true salvation. He wasn’t giving a list of do’s and don’t’s, he was laying out the case for why New Testament Christianity—the Christianity that we observe—is better than those traditions and rituals.

And that takes us to verses 23-25. The whole chapter thus far has followed this chain of logic, that ultimately, Christ is better and His new covenant is better. Verses 23-25 are the end result of this fact, what the audience should do as a result. Read it again; “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, ²⁵ not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

So the first thing that the writer has the audience keep in mind is holding fast the confession of faith. This is the baseline; you can’t give up your faith, can’t give up the gift of grace for the lure of the old covenant. And this stricture doesn’t have quite as much application for us in this room, since we’re New Testament Christians, we all understand the message of the Gospel, we don’t worship by the Old Testament. So, thus far, we’re on track according to the Hebrew author. But he goes on.

“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works”. This is a bit of a change of tone, because it isn’t self-focused or a command that can be applied in the singular. So far, everything that the writer has mentioned can be applied or obeyed by an individual: understanding the insufficiency of animal sacrifice, a realization of Christ’s death and its importance, taking part IN that more perfect sacrifice, holding fast the confession of faith, these are all things that a single person can do, for the most part, alone. But now we’re given a new element in this formula: Considering one another. All of a sudden, Christianity and the New Covenant aren’t personal, they aren’t singular. According to the Hebrew writer, the logical conclusion of understanding the message of the Gospel is to both continue striving in it—holding fast to your confession—but also to consider your Christian brothers and sisters.

Think back to that analogy I presented as I began this article, because the problem that I presented on that battlefield is the exact problem that the Hebrew writer solves in this paragraph. The writer tells us that simply being a Christian—hearing, believing, repenting, confessing, being baptized, etc.—isn’t enough for us to maintain a Christian worldview. He even lets us know that preparation for maintaining the fight—like applying the Armor of God—isn’t the only step either. Christianity isn’t a closed process, it isn’t a battle that you fight alone. The Bible lets us know that our Christian brothers and sisters are to encouraging us, exhorting us, stirring up love and good works, pushing us to be a better Christian each and every day. And that we, likewise, are to do the exact same to them.

We’re all familiar with 1 Peter 5:8; “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” We use this verse to depict the severity of Satan, the nefariousness of our enemy. And yet notice how he’s described; a roaring lion, a predator, seeking whom he may devour. Satan isn’t described as just this colossal force that is attacking everyone at the same time with the same amount of force, the way we sometimes tend to think of him. This verse doesn’t just depict him as a brute of evil. He is described instead as a cunning killer, who knows just when to strike a potential victim. And this verse serves as a warning: that’s exactly what he’s doing, seeking potential victims.

And as we consider the idea of Christian fellowship and exhortation, I want to focus on the conditions in which Satan found it the perfect time to strike against the ultimate target, the ultimate prey: Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This would be the most meaningful victory for Satan that had ever happened if he managed to cause Christ to sin, as it would invalidate the entire plan that God had created in order to bring him—Satan—low. Satan needed to get this one right if he had a chance for victory in the struggle against God. And in Luke 4, we see how he chooses to attack. Luke 4:1-2 reads: “Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, ² being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.”

We see the entire life of Jesus in the flesh throughout the four Gospels. Birth to death, resurrection to ascension, we are able to watch the progression of our Savior’s life. So when was it during this whole arc of the life of Christ that Satan chose to strike, to make his most meaningful attack? Verse 1 tells us that He was in the wilderness. Verse 2 says He was physically weak from hunger, having fasted. This is when Satan, that roaring lion, that cunning predator, chooses to strike.

Now notice, it’s not the lack of physical nourishment that marked Jesus as weakened, it’s not just because He was hungry; in John 4, we find Jesus suffering from thirst, asking the Samaritan woman for water at the well. In Matthew 21, we see Him curse a fig tree for not producing fruit because He was hungry. It wasn’t the physical weakness that prompted Satan’s attack. So then what was it? Verse 1: He was in the wilderness. Jesus was ALONE. The Son of God, typically surrounded by followers and apostles, had left Himself alone. And that was when Satan chose to attack. That should say something to us, church. The Father of Lies made the most important attack, tried to make his most critical kill, only when his potential prey was most vulnerable. And Satan considered Jesus at His most vulnerable as Jesus when He was alone. That was what prompted those temptations. And why is that?

And that brings us back to Hebrews 10:23-25. Because these verses are offering us the alternative to the alone, weakened figure that we find in Luke 4, the figure that Satan chose to tempt. We are told instead to CONSIDER one another, to make sure that NO ONE finds themselves in that position; alone and weakened. We stir up love and good works this way, we are able to encourage others to maintain their Christian walks just as others encourage us to do the same. And that’s one of the ways we deter Satan! Notice; Christ had the Armor of God on His side, of course He did. He’s the example that I used when I discussed the Sword of the Spirit, using the scriptures as a way of defeating temptation. But even with that preparation to battle Satan, Jesus still endured the attack, still had to fight back. Because He was alone, because He didn’t have His reinforcements—His followers, those who would hold Him accountable—with Him.

Which finally brings us to verse 25. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Thus far, this passage that we’ve examined—Hebrews 10—has followed a chain of logic: the Old Law isn’t enough, Christ IS enough, here’s how that’s the case, here’s why you should maintain your faith in it, as well as encourage one another to maintain THEIRS. And this is the next link in this chain: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. Hopefully by now you’ll understand why this isn’t simply a checklist-command that the writer issued to MAKE SURE that the audience was attending every time the congregation gathered. This was simply the next step in his instruction as to how a proper faith or “holding fast to the confession” can be sustained. The writer understood the cunning of our enemy; he knew that division and singularity equaled weakness. So instead of introducing this system where each believer would be alone on a battlefield, waging war against a world doing its best to tear them apart, he pleaded with them to all join together as one body—as one CHURCH—and wage that war TOGETHER.

And this is achieved partly through church attendance, the main focus whenever verse 25 is discussed. The logic he gives in that verse explains why: Exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching”. Exhortation, encouraging your brothers to carry on and aid them in the fight if they need it. This goes back to what I discussed here a few weeks back: the Christian lifestyle guarantees a battle, we’re assured that we’ll endure persecution from the world. Christ also tell us that this persecution can cause us to stumble and even lose our faith. AND THAT’S WHY EXHORTATION, ENCOURAGEMENT, IS SO ESSENTIAL TO CHRISTIANITY, why the Hebrew writer included this in his methodology of being a Christian! How different would this scenario look if, instead of simply crumbling to the world whenever it attacks, you had an entire body of believers, an entire army of encouragers, ready to lift you up and push you to strive forward in the faith? How different would the church look…how many members do you think we might not have lost…had this been ingrained into our mindsets?

But unfortunately, this isn’t always what we see. My dad often says that the biggest lies in the world are told on Sunday morning, across virtually every church, by virtually every member: “How are you doing?”…”Oh, I’m fine. I’m doing good, we’re well”. Here we are, an entire group of people that the world is intent on destroying, and yet, somehow, all of us are always fine, no matter what. And I’ll be the first to admit, I fall into this trap all of the time, I probably fell into it this morning; it can be awkward to share your battles, your struggles, with your friends or even family, it can be saddening to think that you might weigh them down with your problems. But the Bible doesn’t say that we simply fold because a situation can be uncomfortable, in fact, the Bible doesn’t even WANT scenarios like this to be uncomfortable! The point of the church being a body is solely FOR THE PURPOSE of bringing together people who are bound to struggle, so that they can exhort and encourage and HELP one another throughout those struggles.

So you can get into the nitty-gritty of what this verse actually seems to mandate, how far you can toe the line of attendance without actually breaking the direct command. You can reference Matthew 18:20, where Jesus lets us know that He is present when only two or three are gathered in His name. You can go on about God judging your heart, not your actions. At the end of the day, attending worship and being involved in the lives of your Christian brothers and sisters isn’t something that we do because we’re commanded to. It’s something we do because it’s critical, imperative, to maintaining their Christian faith, just as we hope for the same whenever OUR faith is challenged. Christianity isn’t a battle that we fight alone, and I hope with this article I’ve given you at least a glimpse of what a united body of believers can look like, and what they can achieve.

-Reese