"No More Excuses!"

Isaiah 58:13-14

 ¹³ "If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
       and from doing as you please on my holy day,
       if you call the Sabbath a delight
       and the LORD's holy day honorable,
       and if you honor it by not going your own way
       and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

 ¹⁴ then you will find your joy in the LORD,
       and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
       and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob."
       The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Dear Friends in Christ,

    If you were here last Sunday, hopefully you can recall that we spent our sermon time taking a look at some of the most common excuses that people give these days for not coming to church and we answered them from what I believe was a very biblical perspective.  In case you weren’t here, let me just quickly run through those excuses. 

“I work hard all week long and Sunday is my only morning to sleep in.”

“I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.”

“There are too many hypocrites in church.” 

“I can worship God out in nature while golfing or fishing.”

“I don’t have an excuse.”

    If you want to know how we answered those excuses, you can find that sermon in both printed and audio form on our church’s web site at salemlc.org.  But all of those excuses reminded me of this little tract that I came across years ago.  The front part of it shows the large doors to a church and it says: “Look inside for reasons for not going to church.”  You open it up and voila!  It’s empty.  Then on the back it says: “There are no good reasons.”  Although I guess I would take issue with that.  For example, if you’re down with the flu or some other contagious illness you probably need to stay at home rather than spreading your germs here.  And I do know that there are people who have to work on Sunday and who can’t be here because of that.  It was 28 years ago today on Feb. 22, 1981, that Marilyn and I missed church, but I felt we had a pretty legitimate excuse as  Marilyn was in labor and we were at the hospital awaiting the arrival of our first born child.

   Well, having answered all the common excuses that people give for not coming to church, today I want to spend my time focusing upon some great reasons why we should go to church.  And I want to begin by asking you to imagine that God appears to you one day and almost like the proverbial genie in a bottle he says: “I have come to tell you that I am granting you one wish.  Ask for whatever your heart desires and it will be yours.”  What would you ask for?  How about a huge windfall of cash to come floating into your bank account that would enable you to quit your job and live comfortably the rest of your life?  Or maybe a brand new house complete with everything you’ve always wanted in a home but that your current house is lacking?  Or how about a nice shiny new car with a hi-powered stereo, moon roof, and built-in GPS?  I suspect that given the option, most of us would probably ask for something on the material side of life.

   But that’s not what David did.  In Psalm 27, it sounds as though God gave him the option to make one wish and it would be his.  And you’ll never guess what David asked for.  He said: “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.”  You understand what David was saying there?  “If I could make one wish of the Lord, here’s what it would be: that I could be in church everyday.”  Now some of you are probably thinking: “Is this guy crazy?  Is this guy for real?”  I mean, if you could have anything you wished for, especially all those material things I mentioned earlier, who in their right mind would wish to be in church or God’s house every day?  Well, apparently David had some pretty good reasons for feeling that way, so let’s spend our time this morning examining 5 great reasons for attending church as often as possible.

   Reason #1: It disciplines us to worship God.  One thing that I’ve discovered over 27½ years of ministry is that going to church is one of the easiest habits to get out of and one of the hardest habits to get back into.  I’ve found that if a person or family misses 3 Sundays in a row, I’d better be contacting them because there’s a very good chance that we won’t see them back if they hit a 4^th Sunday in a row.  I don’t know why that is, but it’s true.  And that’s why we need the discipline of weekly worship.

   It’s really no different than your job.  If your boss left it up to you as to when you want to come in and work, your job attendance would probably be hit and miss at best.  But because he requires you to be at work each day or else suffer some consequences, it helps you to be disciplined about your job so that you set your alarm and get up and get ready and arrive at work when you’re supposed to. 

   The same thing holds true with school.  If you as a parent told your child that it was up to them as to when they went to school, do you think your child would be disciplined enough to go to school every day?  Probably not.  And the more they missed, the easier it would be to miss again.

   So we need to be in church every Sunday to keep us disciplined in our worship of God.  Now some of you may be thinking, “Yeah, I understand that, but I can’t find anywhere in the Bible where God says you have to go to church.”  Well, I would beg to differ.  Currently we’re studying the 3^rd Commandment which says “Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.”  So what was the purpose of the Sabbath Day?  Actually, it served a two-fold purpose.  According to Leviticus 23:3, “the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly.”  So it was to be a day of rest, a day in which you take a break from your normal work routine and give your body a chance to rest and rejuvenate itself for the coming work week.  But it was also a day when God’s people are to assemble together for the high and holy purpose of worshiping him.  So you need to ask yourself, are you keeping the Sabbath Day holy by absenting yourself from that time of sacred assembly?  Of course not.  Another passage from Hebrews 10:25 reinforces this when it says: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

   That word encourage really leads right in to another good reason why we should attend church regularly.  I’ll call it mutual encouragement.  Let’s face it.  There is something about worshiping in a church full of God’s people that is both uplifting and encouraging.  If you’re truly serious about your Christianity, it’s encouraging to see lots of other people who are just as serious because then you don’t feel like you’re all alone.  It’s sad to say, but we’re living in a time right now where it’s easy to feel that way.  A few months ago I read a book written by, believe it or not, a college student named Abby Nye entitled Fish Out of Water.  She’s a strong Christian and in that book she describes what it was like to leave her Christian home and the church she was raised in and go to a secular university where from day 1 she found her faith being challenged, attacked, mocked, and villified.  Hence the title of her book.  She felt like a fish out of water.  But when she went to church and worshiped with fellow believers, she realized that she was not alone.  And the encouragement that she got in those worship services helped to sustain her through the rest of the week.

   But not only is it encouraging for you to worship with a church full of your fellow Christians, you can’t begin to imagine what it does for the pastor.  May I be frank with you?  Without a doubt, the biggest burden that I carry in the ministry is not for those who are battling health problems or marital problems or job-related problems or losses of loved ones.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I care very deeply and passionately about all those people and what they’re going through, but nothing weighs more heavily on my heart each and every day than those members in our congregation who are regularly absent from worship and who have resisted all efforts to return to God’s house.  It’s hard for me to explain it or describe it, but sometimes the burden becomes almost unbearable for me because I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know how to reach them.  And yet I feel responsible for them because they are part of my congregation, they are part of the flock that God has entrusted to me.  But I’ve got to tell you, when one of them responds and returns, there are few things that encourage and excite and ignite me more.  And I can understand exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said in Luke 15:10: “I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

   That takes us to a 3^rd reason why we should attend church regularly.  And that is because the church is a specified place where God’s presence is seen and felt.  Everything in this sanctuary points us to God or reminds us of him and what he’s done for us.  What’s the first thing you notice when you walk into this sanctuary?  The beautiful stained glass cross in the front, a reminder of the price that was paid and the sacrifice that was made to rescue us from the eternal consequences of our sins.  Then we have the altar up here which is a symbol of God’s presence among his people.  We have the eternal light that remains lit in here all the time and reminds us of the ongoing presence of Jesus here who once called himself the light of the world.  We have the 2 candles on the altar which again symbolize Jesus as the light of the world.  But you probably didn’t know that the 2 candles also symbolize his 2 natures: his human nature and his divine nature, the fact that he was both God and man at the same time.  We could go on and on.  The God-centered and Christ-centered hymns we sing point us to our Creator and Savior.  The Scripture lessons we hear, the sermons that are preached, the prayers that are said are all designed to take our focus off of all the garbage that we have to deal with throughout the week and instead get our hearts, our minds, and our eyes fixed and focused upon those things that matter for eternity.  You can’t get that anywhere else, at least not like you can get it here.

   Then a 4^th reason why we should attend church regularly is perhaps the most obvious and that is to worship God.  The word worship is an interesting word.  It comes from 2 Anglo Saxon words, weorth and scipe, which when you put them together means “the act of letting someone or something know how much they are worth to us.”  When we come to church to worship God, we are expressing to him how much he is worth to us.  Now think about that for a moment, my friends.  If we don’t come to church, if we use some of those excuses we looked at last week and mentioned earlier, if we claim we’re just too tired or too busy or too stressed or too whatever, what message are we sending to God?  Don’t you think he’s going to get the impression that he’s not worth very much to us at all?  And forgive me for saying this, but maybe he really isn’t if we can’t even give him that one hour or that hour and 15 minutes a week that he asks of us.

   And that takes us to one more good reason why we should attend church regularly.  And that is so that God might serve us.  This, to me, is the best and most surprising part of worship.  I say surprising because I would imagine that if we took a poll here this morning and asked you to define worship, most of you would give an answer that would reflect that worship is something that we do for God.  And as we’ve already mentioned, that is part of what worship is.  But I believe the old Germans captured the true essence of worship when they came up with the following word for it.  They called it Gottesdienst.  Literally, that word means “God serves.”  And that’s why I say that this is the best part of worship.  For every time the doors of this sanctuary are open for worship, God promises to meet with us and serve us.  Remember what Jesus once said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

   Now think about that for a moment.  If I announced today that in 2 weeks we were going to have Billy Graham preaching in this pulpit or Max Lucado leading us in worship, do you think we’d have any empty pews that day?  Of course not.  But every Sunday we have Christ’s own promise that he will be here – and not just be here but actually serve us while he is here – and people come up with every excuse imaginable to not be here.  My friends, this church should be packed and every pew should be filled every single Sunday if not for any other reason but that one. 

   So come and let the One who loved you so much that he was willing to die for you serve you.  Come and let the One who longs for you to spend eternity in his presence speak to you through his Holy Word.  Come and let the One who calls himself the Good Shepherd feed you with his life-giving and faith-strengthening Sacrament.  Come because God will be here for his people when they gather together in his house for his purposes. 

Amen.