Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

Hebrews 10:25 — King James Version

not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:25 — New International Version

 

The following may appear harsh, unloving, and nothing resembling how a Christian ought to speak or write or think. Let us not have any misunderstanding. I wrote what I did here out of concern, out of love. Agape love. Believe it or not. People are not islands. No one is so strong, so developed spiritually they cannot benefit from or do not need the preaching of others in their ears, and to be among other believers. I’m not saying we’re going to like everyone in a church. Let’s be realistic and honest, shall we?

We may be born anew, made into new changed men and women by the Spirit of God, but that does not mean our individual personalities are removed. There are folks in the church my wife and I attend that I love, like and enjoy. Some I give a hug to when I see them. Other people there? Ehh, not so crazy about them. I love them as fellow believers, as children of God, but I might not like them much. Our personalities might not work well together. I might think they’re way off base. That doesn’t mean I stop going to that church. I’ve sat and heard some things said in adult Bible classes before our service that I am going “Have these folks read the Bible What are these people paying attention to and doing in daily life!?” It’s how it is. Let’s not lie or pretend. I might not understand them. As I don’t know their circumstances. I might not even like them much. But I love them as brothers and sisters in the image of God, in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fully aware I am flawed and far, far, FAR from perfection and it’s certainly understandable if people don’t like me, and so are other folks in the same boat, well, not the same boat because we might not agree, but the thing is we’re all upon the same sea heading in the same direction. We are the Lord’s. Period. We are not of our own selves if we are Christ’s. And part of being part of a church is understanding things like this. So we need to stop being self-directed and be Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, God, and Scriptures directed. This ought to bring us into a church body to become part of that body.

There is no perfection here on earth. Not in any individual. Not in any pastor. Not in any church. Do you attempt to remove yourself and run from yourself and discard yourself because you’re not perfect? Or do you imagine yourself perfect? No? Then how can you determine there’s no need, no benefit in you seeking out, finding, and attending a Bible-centered, Bible-preaching church regularly?

Okay. That said let’s move on…

I’m not here to get into a scholarly debate about who wrote Hebrews in the New Testament. I’m not here to debate, argue, or get bogged down as so many do.

I understand and believe there have been and are any number of folks in certain places, at certain times that have been truly born anew, crucified the old person with their faith and obedience on the Lord Jesus Christ, being transformed into a new being that haven’t been able to attend a church. They do not have one anywhere close to them. They live in a very hostile environment. I understand the exceptions.

But let’s not mince words or kid ourselves or attempt to deceive ourselves or others.

If able, if a person lives within an hour’s drive of a Bible preaching [expository preaching of the whole Word of God not adding to or omitting anything] that person is without excuse and very adept at making excuses as to why they refuse to get their body into a Christian church to GROW spiritually, to MATURE in Christ, mature in the Spirit, mature in the Word of God!

This is not accomplished in isolation. We’re not to be as so-called gurus sitting on a mountain top waiting for some poor lost soul to come along and ask us the meaning of life.

No one — no one — is wise enough, holy enough, mature enough, learned enough in the Word of God, no one HAS ARRIVED as any true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and child of God is constantly honed and sharpened by SANCTIFICATION.

No one is so perfect, just, and spotless that they can sit outside the body of Christ haughtily making excuses as to why they can’t go to a sound church and be a part of the body of Christ.

Alone? In isolation? Not attending a sound Bible-preaching church on a regular basis?

How can you logically, objectively, make use of good sound sense to square it that you’re so far along you don’t need a church.

What that amounts to? Really? You think yourself better than others. You don’t really love people. You really don’t understand why God came to earth fully truly man and fully truly God.

It’s about being among the fellowship of true believers.

It’s about no matter how much you’ve read the Bible, studied it, or researched things and have your concordance and Christian faith books almost worn out from use — you on your own could not, can not, never will discover spiritual truths and helps on your own that can be had to further your walk with the Lord than focusing on a sermon from a sound preacher who might offer up only one small golden nugget in his sermon to your ears, but that one little nugget may prove to be the riches you personally needed at that time. To grow. To cope. To soldier on.

Here’s one more thing to consider — why are you denying God to use you for His purpose and service in another person’s life? Another believer’s life? Why are you refusing to permit God to use you as He can and would like to? For others? You may not realize it but God may have wonderful plans for you in the life of other believers, or even unbelievers attending a certain church.

A person that lies to themselves convincing themselves there’s no church that fits them, that is what they are looking for is arrogant, rebellious, deceitful, dodgy, and, well, as I wrote at the beginning of this sentence — a liar.

Do you believe each person that is truly born anew by the Supernatural power of the Spirit of God is then a part of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ? With Jesus as the Head?

Then why do you rebel and first, ignore the Head? Secondly, how can you possibly be removed, have the body opened up, remove you, set you aside, alone, and then pretend everything is well and there aren’t any conflicting messages going on, that a vain, foolish, and vile secular way of thinking hasn’t entered in.

No part of the body can be removed from the body and survive. Let alone thrive, grow, increase in spiritual wisdom and understanding, and in the fellowship which is vital to the health of not only your particular part in the body, but the damage is done to the whole body as a result of thinking avoiding, isolating oneself from a church body is acceptable unto the Lord our God.

Unless you live in North Korea, Imperialistic Communist China, Iran, or other Islamic nations you haven’t a leg to stand on.

In America, Canada, all of Europe, and other pockets of this world there are sound churches where the Bible is taught and believed.

Where is the genuine deep love for Christ in not going to a church but making excuses for not going?

Too many well-grounded sound doctrine teachings have been utterly neglected, omitted, added to, stirred, shaken, and poured out as a much different cocktail than what is contained in the Word of God.

Judgment is coming. For all. Even the elect, the saints, and the professed believers.

In pondering what your judgment might be like before the Living God try to imagine what your eternity will be as a result of being like a spoiled child that doesn’t want to eat their peas, only as the years have passed you’re now a spoiled adult saying “I don’t want to go to church, I don’t like that church, I don’t like church and you can’t make me!” using the same tone and voice you used aloud saying, “I don’t want to eat peas, I don’t like peas, and you can’t make me eat them!”

Who are you o man, o woman, to stand before the Lord and think you know better than God? Who are you o man, o woman, thinking you’re well-fed enough, mature enough, sound enough in your professed Christian life you don’t need others, you don’t need other believers in your life, you don’t need to hear the Word of God preached. What does it say about the hearing of the Word in the Bible?

Humm…

I’ll tell you what. You remain rebellious, making lame excuses, lying about the real reasons, remain belligerent and arrogant, and refuse to eat your peas, I mean go to church and I’ll continue as I am attending a Bible-preaching church on a regular basis, building relationships with fellow true believers, hearing the Word of God preached to me not myself reading and preaching to myself…

…and let’s see how it all works out in the end.

I’ll go the way I have.

Are you so cocksure of yourself and how far along you are as a professed Christian you’re willing to in truth wager, gamble, your outcome? All because of “I don’t want to go to church! I don’t like church, I don’t like that church, and you can’t make me go!”

Spoiled child. Rebellious child. Crawling along, sucking on a bottle of skim milk alone rather than being fed meat to grow by.

How can I write such things? Because I was once one of those that believed, in error, that I could go it alone. I didn’t need a church. I searched, and I went around to numerous churches. And I always found something wrong with them. Some I went to once, some I went to for a period of months. I never found one that suited me.

I had to learn the hard way. Foolish, arrogant, ignorant as I was. Now, many of the places I spent some time in were not places of sound Bible teaching or expository preaching. Many were hollowed-out dried dead bones kind of places where a motivational talk, an entertainment show, a comedy act was in front of people but it didn’t resemble an assembly of true disciples of Christ because the Word wasn’t being preached, or wasn’t being preached truthfully. False teachers. Con men.

It turned out it was me. Excuse making me. Arrogant me.

I had to learn it is about the Lord’s Day. The Sabbath. About being part of an assembly singing hymns, real hymns offered up in praise of the Lord. As a group coming together. It is about the prayers of others offered up, of the pastor’s prayers, of the reading of the Word. And then the repository preaching of a sound man of God placing his faith in the Holy Spirit to help him feed us needing to be fed. Not always able to get the proper nourishment in thinking we can feed ourselves.

Do you like eating alone?

Then why do you think eating alone of the Word of God is okay?

How did I learn this? Because God led me to a sound Bible teaching, Bible-preaching church. Within a 40 to 45-minute drive from our home.

Such churches exist. It’s up to you to find one and regularly attend. Not because I said so, no, no, no! I’m nothing. But because you need it for your spiritual health and growth. A part of the body not attended to properly will grow weak, ill, and eventually die, or cause death.

Seriously.

What body part are you? Because you certainly aren’t the Head. And what part ought we to listen to and obey?

How is that possible as a detached, isolated body part not in the circulation attached to the body which is attached to the Head?

Explain that to me in the comment box found below. I’ll read and listen. Go ahead…

 

Ken Pullen

Saturday, June 4th, 2022

A CROOKED PATH

 

Must I Join a Church to be a Christian?

 

June 3, 2022

By Jeff Robinson

Reprinted from Founders Ministries

 

I have heard many versions of this notion over the years, phrased as both a statement and a declaration. “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian—do I?”

More often than not, it’s been put this way: “I love Jesus and the Bible, but I don’t love the church.” Or those more inclined toward a naïve spiritualism have spun it as, “I can spend time with the Lord out in the woods. I don’t need the distraction of other people. Just me and nature and God.”

Yet, after years of hearing these pithy aphorisms and being asked this question (with the “no” answer often strongly implied), I remain unconvinced that one can be a Christian and intentionally remain outside the visible, local church. Granted, the grounds of a sinner’s salvation in Scripture are clear: Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. True, the Bible never adds “church membership” as a condition of salvation. But note the qualifier “intentionally” in my thesis—it is the key pillar in my argument. I am here assuming the individual making this query is intentionally seeking to avoid church membership and church attendance while claiming to be a follower of Christ.

A Window into the Soul

Why do I make such a statement that finds no straightforward substantiation in divine revelation? Because church membership and faithful attendance/involvement in a local congregation provide crucial evidence that one has in fact experienced the effectual grace of the living God. One’s attitude toward Christ’s church functions as a spiritual X-ray machine, exposing the condition of the heart.

How can I make this assertion with such confidence? The imperative in Hebrews 10:25 may be marshaled here as strong evidence for my claim. There, the writer of Hebrews warns us about “neglecting meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb 10:25). What is “meeting together” but the writer’s assumption that God’s people are to be regularly gathered in worship? Gathering together as a body is the command of Scripture. And to openly reject and repudiate such a command provides a critical window in the heart of an ostensible believer. After all, did not our Lord say “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15)?

Not only are we disobeying the command of Scripture when we say church membership/attendance is optional, we are also showing open contempt for the very people “which Christ bought with His own blood” (Acts 20:28). Thus, it is very important to ask: Is it possible for a genuine Christian to reject the very thing Christ loves? Paul draws a parallel between Christ’s sacrificial love for the church and marriage in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” If Christ loved the church enough to lay down his life for her, how can we then say gathering with other believers as commanded is tertiary to the redeemed life?

On the evidence of Scripture, we must conclude that for one to claim to be a devoted Christian and yet disclaim Christ’s church is an oxymoron. It’s like saying, “I want to drive a nice car, but I’d rather not have an engine.” Or, “I love to eat, but I despise food.”

A Deeply Practical Question

Certainly, this is an important theological question, but it also has massive implications for the Christian life, for what we believe determines how we live. Often, I think such rejections of the church are founded on a lack of understanding of the practical nature of the church. God, in His infinite wisdom, has given us the church for our good. Indeed, I think some may embrace Christ, but fail to see what they are missing by remaining outside the church.

Perhaps an illustration will provide some needed light.

On Saturday afternoons as a child, I often watched the weekly television program, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. As I reflect back on that show, I recall something that emerged from the zoologists’ study of animal herds; the camera would show one crippled, weak animal (usually a wildebeest) falling behind the rest of the pack and ultimately left behind as the other animals fled across the plain. Another camera would show a pride of lions observing the herd, scouting for an easy meal. Their eyes suddenly fixated on the limping wildebeest. And you know what happened next.

This is a useful parable for the Christian life. Left alone, like the ailing wildebeest, Christians are easy prey for Satan’s devices. Why? Because avoiding the church leaves the alleged Christian to be pulled away from the pack of fellow believers, the place where he or she will receive vital support and protection, through God’s means of grace, support, and protection necessary to grow into the mature manhood Ephesians 4:13 demands.

So what are we missing by taking opting for the woods, the golf course, or a late wake-up call on the Lord’s Day? Much indeed. Here are a few elements—all of them crucial to a god-ward life—that are cast aside:

Biblical instruction and exhortation.

“But,” you say, “I can virtually gorge myself on preaching today through the Internet.” True enough, but that provides only one element of the well-balanced spiritual diet you need to grow into a healthy Christian. Relying on electronic media (alone) to feed your soul is like eating every meal in a restaurant by yourself and not taking meals at home with your family. It’s simply not healthy.

Your soul needs more than (even good) information—even Satan knows the Bible’s theology and is fully aware that it is true. In a local church, your preacher is also your pastor who presumably knows you. He knows your life, your family, and your overall situation because a faithful pastor knows his congregation. This positions him to speak God’s Word authoritatively and uniquely into your life. Not even the best expositor can do that comprehensively through a downloadable file. You need propositional exposition (teaching) wed to penetrating exhortation (application).

“You need propositional exposition (teaching) wed to penetrating exhortation (application).”

Additionally, your pastor or pastors will supply you with biblical instruction and exhortation systematically every Lord’s Day and at other times when the body gathers. God has ordained preaching as the means to both save and sanctify his people. The Word and His Spirit conspire as his chosen means of illumination so we come to know God and ourselves more accurately (as Calvin put it). But it is also God’s chosen means of conviction so that we see our sins more clearly, flee from them, and pour focused prayer on specific areas of persistent sin so that those sins will be mortified. Remove both instruction and exhortation and you lose vital means of sanctifying grace.

Sanctification and orientation.

As Paul David Tripp so memorably puts it, sanctification is a community project. To help us wage war on sin, we need the assistance of our entire platoon. If we are immature saints, we need to be under influence of mature saints. If we are younger saints, we benefit from spending time with older saints. And on it goes. Titus 2 is often—and rightly so—marshaled to undergird women’s ministry, but I think in principle it applies to all Christians. We need each other to grow in grace to receive the final two benefits of body life.

Accountability and discipline.

In 1 Timothy 4:16, Paul exhorted young pastor Timothy to set a guard about his life and doctrine. Likewise, the church functions as a watchman on the walls of the lives of all Christians. By participating in the body, you are submitting to the authority of your elders and fellow church members, granting them access to your life and doctrine. You are saying to church leaders and fellow parishioners, “In the day you see me flirting with unbiblical doctrines or slouching toward worldliness or ungodliness, I want you to come after me, love me enough to expose my blind spots, and lead me back to the path toward the Celestial City.”

Loving, corrective, redemptive church discipline as outlined in Matthew 18:15-18 is a vital part of such watchfulness. A faithful church body will love you enough to employ this means of grace as a way of pointing you back to Christ, our ark of safety, should you stray. Without this, it is virtually certain that you will become wounded, weak, and wary, and you will meet the same fate as the wildebeest, torn asunder by a savvy predator whom Scripture depicts as “a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).

Encouragement and fellowship.

The Word of God builds up and encourages God’s people, and God’s people build up and encourage God’s people. That’s the second part of Hebrews 10:25, “encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” As the world becomes more and more enslaved to sin and unrighteousness, and as the Day of the Lord draws near, encouragement and fellowship within the body of Christ will surely grow increasingly indispensable as a means of perseverance.

“The Word of God builds up and encourages God’s people, and God’s people build up and encourage God’s people.”

There is much within the news cycle over which we might wring our hands. We live in a world of bad news, as the streets declare the sinfulness of man. In our own country, a moral revolution is well underway and Christianity is being pushed further and further toward the periphery of our society. Thus, it is easy to fall prey to discouragement.

The encouragement of and fellowship with fellow saints has never been more important. We need to be regularly in conversation with those who are positioned to remind us that we are aliens and strangers in this land, that we are not home yet, that there is a greater Lion who is also a Lamb who will triumph in the end, present appearances notwithstanding. Without such gospel encouragement and fellowship, surely we would soon find ourselves shackled in the dark and dank dungeon of Doubting Castle under the baleful eye of the Giant Despair. We desperately need Hopeful and Faithful as our companions on our dangerous journey away from the City of Destruction.

A Better Question Still

I’m not sure the proper question is “Do I have to join a church to be a Christian?” Rather, a more penetrating and diagnostic query might be, “What is my attitude toward the local church and what does that say about my commitment to Christ?” It’s more a question of “ought” than “must.”

This is a better diagnostic question because it penetrates to the heart and lays bare our thoughts and attitudes toward the church for whom Christ died.

, , , , ,