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.
You need the saints, and they need you.
Week 4 of 4
Do not forsake the assembly
A private religion is too small for a house.
Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is.
Hebrews 10:25
Some men love Jesus in theory and treat the church as optional, especially when the church has failed them or bored them. Hebrews does not give that option to people who have a confession. The assembly is where you are provoked toward love and good works, and where you hear the word with your household beside you. A father who outsources the faith to his wife’s attendance, or who keeps a private spirituality that never sings with the saints, is teaching his children that the body of Christ is a hobby.
Scripture
Formal study reading, written for this series
Formal study reading, written for this series
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
The first church had a shape: teaching, fellowship, the table, the prayers.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
Gladness about the gathering is part of a man’s witness.
NASB, the Amplified, and the ESV open on Bible Hub. The Legacy Standard Bible opens on its own reader. Close, Expanded, and Easy on this page are original study readings. WEB is the World English Bible, public domain.
The house is not the whole church
Family worship is not a replacement for the assembly. Deuteronomy’s father still stood with Israel. The early church met from house to house and in the temple. A man who says “we do church at home” because he will not submit to brothers, to preaching he did not write, and to people who annoy him, is often protecting his sovereignty, not his doctrine.
Hebrews 10 comes after a warning about shrinking back. Neglect of the assembly is not a scheduling quirk in that chapter. It is one of the ways a heart drifts. You bring your household among the saints so their faith is not the echo of one man’s voice. They need other fathers, other mothers, a table that is not only yours.
In the house
Be there, and be glad in front of them. If you have a real wound from a church, do not pretend it is nothing. Also do not make your children carry your cynicism as if it were discernment. Find a congregation where the word is opened and the people are not an audience.
Serve somewhere visible and somewhere hidden. A father who only attends and never belongs teaches consumption. A father who belongs teaches that the body has a claim on a man.
Seven days
At the table
- 1What are your children learning about the church from your face?
- 2Have you made the living room a bunker instead of a doorway into the body?
- 3Where do you need brothers who can tell you no?
- 4What would gladness look like without pretending the church is already perfect?
Your note
Stays on this device. No account.
A prayer
Father, you did not save me into a private room. You saved me into a people. Forgive my contempt for the assembly, and my habit of letting my wife carry the faith in public. Make me glad to go, and useful when I get there. Knit this house to your church, for the sake of Jesus, who is not ashamed to call us brothers. Amen.