Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

Exodus 20:8-11

Dear Friends in Christ,

Sometimes it just pays to go to church.  A little research on the Internet brought me to an article that began with these words: “Going to church is good for your soul, sure, but did you know it may have other benefits, too? There are at least 5 surprising improvements you might experience in a few areas of your life if you attend church services regularly.”  Those 5 areas included the following: Better sleep; less risk for depression and suicide; more stable, happy, and sexually satisfying marriages; longer life; and lower blood pressure.  That article was further substantiated by another one which dealt with a study that was done a few years ago by the University of Texas which found that church attenders live up to seven years longer than non-attenders, and the most regular attenders have the longest life expectancy of anyone.  But there’s more.  A Johns Hopkins University medical researcher discovered that the risk of fatal heart diseases is almost twice as high for the non-churchgoer than for men who attend once a week or more.

So it appears as though it really does pay to go to church.  In fact, sometimes it even literally pays to be a regular churchgoer, at least according to one insurance company called GuideOne which offers some interesting benefits to its policyholders that include the following: They will waive the deductible for an insured churchgoer involved in an accident while on the way to or from church.  In addition to that, medical payments will be doubled if your auto is involved in an accident while you’re driving neighbors or guests directly to or from a scheduled worship activity.  And pastors will love this next benefit.  This insurance company will pay $750 toward tithing or church donations if the insured is injured in an accident involving the covered car.

So again I say that it pays to go to church.  But I really don’t think that God had in mind any of those reasons I just mentioned when he made church attendance one of his top 10 Commandments.  For there are far better reasons and far greater benefits that go along with regularly attending church than the ones we’ve just looked at.  So this morning, as we continue our study of these great laws of God under the theme “The Fundamentals of Our Faith; Straight Talk for Crooked Lives,” we’re going to spend our time examining the 3^rd of those laws where God commands us to “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”

And while there is so much that we can talk about here in connection with this commandment, I thought it might be best to begin by getting real practical and tackling some of the most common excuses that people give for not going to church.  And believe me, after 38 years in the ministry I’ve heard just about all of them.  In fact, as we work our way through these excuses, you might recognize a few of them because you may have very well used them a time or two or more yourself.  Like how about this one:

   “I work hard all week long and Sunday is my only morning to sleep in.”  I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that excuse because if I did, I’d probably be able to retire an independently wealthy pastor.  So what do we say in response to this excuse?  I’ll tell you what I typically say.  When someone says, “I work hard all week long and Sunday is my only morning to sleep in,” I’ll usually reply with something like this: “I’m sure glad Jesus didn’t say that on Good Friday.”  You know, he very easily could have.  He’d had a pretty rough week and an especially tough night.  He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane; manhandled by the temple guards who had come out to arrest him; unjustly tried before a kangaroo court made up of the Jewish Council known as the Sanhedrin who then ganged up on him and pummeled him with their fists when they declared him guilty of blasphemy.  He’d had no sleep, nothing to eat, probably nothing to drink.  As true God he knew everything else that was coming his way if he chose to go through with it all: the trial before Pilate; the whip on his back; the spit in his face; the crown of thorns on his head, the heavy cross beam on his shoulders; the nails in his hands and feet.  All I can say is I’m sure glad for your sake that I wasn’t the one God selected to be your Savior because I would have run as fast and as far away from all of that as possible.  But Jesus didn’t.  Like he told his disciples in John 10:18: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.”

Now, my friends, if Jesus could get up on Good Friday and go through all of that for sinful, unworthy, undeserving human beings like you and me, then surely we can get up on Sunday morning, no matter what kind of a week we’ve had, and give him that time of worship in his house that he so rightly and richly deserves?  So our 1^st excuse is not a very legitimate one, is it?  It holds no water with God.  In fact, I really believe it is a personal insult to Jesus when we use it.  Which takes us to our 2^nd excuse:

   “I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.”  Now you might be surprised to hear me say that that’s true.  You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.  I think, for example, of our shut-ins that Pastor Mike and I have the privilege of visiting each month.  Most of them are not able to go to church, and yet I consistently see in them and hear from them a strong and unshakeable faith in their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not to mention an intense and burning desire to be here in God’s house with God’s people for worship.  But even though I would say that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian, let me be quick to add that I truly believe any sincere Christian will want to be in church and will make every effort to be there, partly because God commands it, and partly because we need the spiritual nourishment and sustenance that God offers us here. (SHARE ZIVA’S NOTE)

   Some of you have heard me share one of my all-time favorite stories about a young pastor who went to see one of his members one evening who had been absent from church for a long, long time.  This man lived in a very nice house which had a sunken living room complete with a wood-burning fireplace.  As they sat in that living room, neither one said a word.  It was a very awkward moment.  The man was uncomfortable because he knew why the pastor had come.  And the pastor was uncomfortable because he didn’t quite know where to begin.  Then he got an idea.  He got up out of his chair and walked over to the fireplace.  He took the tongs and reached into the midst of the fire and removed a single burning coal which he set off to the side by itself.  Then he went back to his chair and sat down.  Both of the men watched as that coal became dimmer and dimmer until finally it went out completely.  After a few minutes the pastor got up and placed the coal back into the fire again and it immediately ignited.  Then, without saying a word, he headed for the door to leave.  As he did so, his inactive member called out to him and said, “Thanks, Pastor, for the fiery sermon.  I got your point.  I’ll see you in church this Sunday.”  And what was the pastor’s point?  Remove yourself from the fire of God’s Word and God’s Sacrament, and God’s people and sooner or later your faith is going to go out.  So excuse #2 is not a good one either.  Nor is excuse #3 which is:

   “There are too many hypocrites in church.”  That used to be the #1 excuse I would hear from people early on in my ministry.  And while I’ve heard of some pastors who answer that excuse by saying that there’s always room for one more, I never felt that would get the person to come back.  So after thinking it through, I finally developed a standard response that I would give when someone tried that excuse on me.  Basically, I would say something like this: “You know what?  You’re right.  There probably are too many hypocrites in church.  And that’s sad, but did you know that Jesus told us to expect that?  In fact, he once devoted an entire parable to it.  It’s called the parable of the weeds and the wheat.  In that parable the wheat represents the faithful people of God while the weeds represent the ones you might call hypocrites.  And Jesus says that those weeds are planted in the midst of the wheat by the enemy, who of course is Satan.  And why do you suppose Satan sows weeds among the wheat?  Why else but so that good churchgoing folks will be offended by them and stay away from worship.”

Then after I’ve said that I’ll go on and say something like this: “Do you by any chance have any hypocrites in your work place?”  “Oh sure,” they’ll say.  “My work place is infested with hypocrites.”  To which I’ll reply, “Have you ever thought of quitting your job because you have to associate with those hypocrites?”  “Why no, I would never do that!”  “Why, then, would you want to basically quit the church because there might be a few hypocrites there?  And besides, what do those hypocrites have to do with you and your relationship with God anyway?  Why would you let them interfere with something as eternally important as that?”

As you can see, my friends, this too is just another flimsy excuse that doesn’t hold up when analyzed and scrutinized in the light of God’s Word.  Are you ready for another one?  Are you squirming in your pew yet?  By the way, that’s not my reason for going through this little exercise this morning.  Rather I just want you to see the fallacy, the weaknesses in the excuses that people so often use these days for not going to church.  So let’s move on to another one:

   “I can worship God out in nature while golfing or fishing.”  You know what?  There’s a lot of truth to that.  You can worship God out in nature.  In fact, nature has been called God’s cathedral.  There have been times when I’ve gone fishing on a crisp, cool fall morning when the birds were singing, the sun was rising, and the trees that were turning their fall colors were reflected in the calm water of the pond.  Experiencing one of those magical mornings can leave me standing in awe of my Creator who made all that beauty for me to enjoy and it can evoke in me a true spirit of worship.

But I’ll have to be honest with you, I don’t normally do that when I fish and I sure don’t do it when I’m out on the golf course when I’m chasing that little white ball all over the place trying to get it into that tiny hole so far away.  I’m ashamed to admit that there have been times when my behavior on the golf course has been less than appropriate for a child of God.  If you ask her, Marilyn will tell you about the time I was playing in an intramural golf tournament while attending the seminary and as my frustration began to build, it finally got the best of me after one particularly bad shot and I let that club fly as far as I could throw it.

Now thankfully, your pastor has mellowed and matured a lot since then, but my point is that those who say they worship God out in nature while golfing or fishing or boating or whatever, in all likelihood are not doing that.  Which takes us to the #1 excuse that I hear people use for not going to church these days.  You’d probably never guess what it is, unless you were a pastor because I hear it a lot.  Here it is:

   “I don’t have an excuse.”  On the one hand I’m thankful that those who say that are at least honest enough to admit it, but on the other hand, it breaks my heart every time I hear it.  You know why?  Because I can’t even imagine how much it must break God’s heart when he extends the invitation to his people to come and meet with him in his house and without any excuse whatsoever, they stay away.  They reject the invitation.  Remember, this is the God who created you and gave you life.  This is the God who loves you far more than you could ever know or comprehend and certainly far more than any of us deserve.  This is the God who lived for you, who died for you, who rose for you – all so that you could live with him forever.  How sad that we who have been given and offered so much would treat his invitation so carelessly, so recklessly, so flippantly.  That’s why the next time I preach on Aug. 4, I want to continue our study of the 3^rd Commandment by looking at some very good and wonderful reasons why we should take this commandment seriously and why we should make every effort to be in God’s house not just once every 6 or 7 weeks or on a hit and miss basis as is so common these days, but whenever its doors are open for worship.  Amen.