"The Blessings of Church Attendance"

     Dear Friends in Christ,  

I’d like to begin my sermon this morning by asking you to use your imaginations for just a moment. And I want you to imagine that the Lord himself has just appeared to you and almost like a magic genie that’s just popped out of a bottle, he’s given you permission to make one wish and no matter what it is, he will grant it. What would you wish for? A large sum of money with which you could pay off all your bills and live comfortably the rest of your life? Or how about a lifetime of good health for you and your family? If you’re a student you might wish for a straight A report card and all the knowledge that would come with it for the rest of your years of schooling? Or how about something as grandiose and far-reaching as world peace? If you’ll recall, a fellow in the Bible by the name of Solomon once found himself in that position. And do you remember what he asked for? Wisdom – or as he put it, “Give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.” Not a bad request at all. And God honored that request by making Solomon the wisest man to ever live next to Christ himself.

But what about you? What would you ask for if God gave you one wish? David, Solomon’s father, answers that question for us in a most unusual and unexpected way in our text for today. He says: “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, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” What David is saying there is that if he had his druthers, if he could make one wish of God, he would like to be in church every single day of his life. Now I may be wrong, but I sincerely doubt that anybody here today, myself included, would make that our greatest wish, our greatest desire in life. And yet David did. So we have to ask why. Surely there must have been something in God’s house that held an incredible attraction for him. And indeed there was and there still is for us today. And that is what I want to spend my time talking about this morning on this Back to Church Sunday. Why do we go to church? Is it just a duty, an obligation we fulfill for fear that if we don’t God is going to become angry or upset with us and maybe even punish us? Or is there more to it? Hopefully after today we will all see that going to church regularly – not intermittently or infrequently but regularly – brings with it some wonderful and exciting blessings and some much-needed benefits that we’re just not going to get outside of these church walls. And as we hear of those blessings, it is my great hope and prayer that we will all be much more motivated to make our worship attendance the high priority in our lives that God would like for it to be.

Now as I was working on my sermon I came across this little article in my files entitled “If You Want to be Safe…”

Well, believe it or not, there are even greater blessings awaiting us in God’s house on Sunday morning than mere safety. And the 1^st one I would like to address myself to is fellowship. Webster’s Dictionary defines fellowship as “companionship, mutual sharing, a group of people with the same interests.” Fellowship was definitely an important part of the early Christian Church. In Acts 2:42 we read: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” In other words, they spent a lot of time associating with their fellow Christians. And oh how important it was for them to do that at that time primarily because of all the persecution Christians were experiencing at the hands of their enemies. They needed to hang together by mutually supporting and encouraging one another.

And we need to do the same, my friends, for we too find ourselves living right now in a culture that is not exactly friendly to Christians anymore, a culture that is becoming increasingly wicked and godless. Sometimes I think it’s pretty easy these days to feel like the prophet Elijah felt at one point in his life when he said in a moment of intense discouragement: “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

So lest we become discouraged like that, lest we start thinking that there are hardly any Christians left anymore and what’s the use of being faithful to God in such a faithless society, we need to gather together regularly in order that we might give and receive encouragement from one another. Like the saying goes: “There is strength in numbers.”

Then a 2^nd blessing of regular church attendance is that the church is a place where we can find rest and peace from the hectic and frantic pace at which most of us live our lives these days. It’s a place where we can be refreshed, renewed, and revitalized for the challenges of the coming week. I can’t tell you how many times I have had people tell me that when they miss church on Sunday morning, the rest of their week just doesn’t go right. For them, church is a weekly energizer. And in all honesty, that really was one of God’s reasons behind the Sabbath day. Remember how he instructed his people in the Old Testament to set aside one day out of the week for rest? In fact, that’s exactly what the word Sabbath means. And the reason God did this is because he did not design the human body to run full speed ahead 7 days a week, week in and week out. We have to take some time off to rest.

But not only do we need to take time off for ourselves, we also need to take time off for God. Notice I did not say time off from God but time off for God. And that really was the second purpose of the Sabbath day as far as God was concerned. In Lev. 23:3 we read: “There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly.” So God intended the Sabbath day to be a day of sacred assembly, a time for his people to come together and worship him. And please understand the meaning of the word worship. It literally means to let someone or something know how much they are worth to us. So in the light of that definition, we need to ask ourselves: If God were to judge his worth, his value to me on the basis of my worship attendance, how much would he think he is worth to me? Definitely something to think about, especially on this Back to Church Sunday.

Then a 3^rd blessing of regular church attendance has to do with the closeness to God that one feels in a church building. Now granted, you can feel the nearness and presence of God anywhere, but the nice thing about a church is that everything in here reminds us of God or points us to God, from the beautiful stained glass cross in the front of our sanctuary that reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice for us to the candles on our altar that remind us of Jesus who once referred to himself as the light of the world to the hymns that we sing and the words of Scripture that we hear.

I’m reminded of a story I recently came across about a married couple that took a vacation and stayed in a very luxurious hotel. They figured they could afford it if they avoided the hotel’s expensive restaurant and ate only cheese and crackers that they would purchase from a local grocery store. On the final evening of their vacation, though, they decided to splurge and eat in the hotel’s restaurant. After an incredibly delicious and gratifying meal, the man asked for the bill. But the waiter replied, “There is no bill. All the meals were included in the price of your room.”

Well, in a very similar way, each Sunday God prepares a banquet for us to enjoy in his house. In fact, he himself even hosts it. But in order to experience its benefits, we have to come. We have to be here. We have to accept his gracious invitation to partake. So rather than settle for the cheese and crackers of this world, why not come to the Lord’s house each Sunday and let him feed you with the richest of food that will satisfy and gratify your spiritual hunger forever?

Then a 4^th blessing of regular church attendance is that it gives us the opportunity to publicly testify to our faith in Christ. The emphasis there is on the word publicly. Unfortunately many people see their faith as a very private matter, something that is to be kept between themselves and the Lord. But that isn’t what Jesus said. In Matt. 10:32 he tells us: “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” Those are strong words, aren’t they? They speak of the strong commitment that Jesus expects out of those who claim to be his followers.

And by the way, speaking of Jesus, he never asks or expects anything of us that he was not willing to do himself. For example, in Luke 4:16 it says: “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read.” Did you catch that, my friends? It was Jesus’ custom to go to the synagogue, which was the Jewish place of worship back then, the equivalent to our modern day church building. There were no questions asked, no excuses offered. It was simply a part of his weekly routine. Now think about that for a moment. If we are going to call ourselves Christians, which means “little Christs”, doesn’t it make sense that it should be a part of our weekly routine as well?

And by the way, when you are tempted to come up with excuses for not being here, please, please, please, weigh those excuses in the light of what Jesus ultimately did for you on Calvary. For when the time came for him to go to the cross to suffer for you, to shed his blood for you, to die for you, he didn’t say, “I don’t think I’m going to do that today. I’ve had a pretty rough week and a very tough night so I think I’m just going to sleep in.” Rather he willingly went, like a lamb to the slaughter so that he could do for you and me what we could have never done for ourselves and that was to rescue us from our sins. So let that be your primary motivation for coming to God’s house and you’ll have no problem making it here on a regular basis.

Then one more benefit of church attendance that I want to focus upon this morning has to do with the knowledge, inspiration, strength, and spiritual growth that we receive through Word and Sacrament. My friends, may we never be satisfied with what I would call a status quo faith or Christianity. Instead may we see and understand the value of growing in our knowledge of God’s Word and growing in our faith in Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit work toward that goal because if we don’t, then our faith runs the risk of becoming weak and stagnant. Very similar to what happens to our bodies if we don’t get regular exercise. They grow weak and flabby and they are unable to support us when pushed to the limit.

My friends, don’t ever let that happen to you because I guarantee you as sure as I’m standing here today that there are going to be times when your faith is tested, when your faith is pushed to the limit. Trials and tribulations, heartaches and hurts, temptations and doubts will find their way into your life sooner or later. And you’re going to need more than a weak and flabby faith to carry you through them. You’re going to need the faith of a Louis Telger. Louis was a faithful member of my first congregation who loved the Lord with all his heart. He also happened to be our neighbor who lived right across the road from us. And he was a good neighbor because every year he brought over a load of rich cow manure and fertilized my garden with it. Well, after we left that congregation we received word that Louis had been diagnosed with cancer. He put up a good fight and maintained a positive spirit through it all, but eventually it became obvious that his battle would soon be over. So with the end near and his family gathered around his bedside, though I wasn’t there, I was told that Louis made a rather unusual request. There was a 4-bladed ceiling fan above his bed and he asked that it be turned in such a way that from his perspective it would look like a cross. That’s how he had lived his life, with his eyes always focused upon the cross and what his Savior did for him there, and it was how he was going to end his life. And so he did. And so may we, my friends. For barring the return of Christ to this earth, sooner or later we’re all going to face what Louis faced. The question is, are you ready? Are you absolutely certain that if you were to die today you would be in heaven with your Lord? If not, we here in the church can help you get ready and stay ready. So I hope you’ll give us that opportunity, not just once in a while but every Sunday. Come, then, won’t you? Come and partake of the gifts that God offers us here. Come and be a recipient of the blessings of church attendance that we’ve looked at today and many others besides.

            Amen.