“My Time to Worship God” - Acts 2:46-47
April 10, 2005 (#2 of 7 on Covenant Discipleship)
Dr. Michael C. Yarbrough

          Around the evening cooking fires, the tribal storytellers told about what happened at the beginning of time.  God’s breath moved over the waters of deep, shapeless chaos.  Bodies of water took shape.  Lights were placed in the hard dome overhead, called the firmament.  Land was brought up from the waters.  Plants pushed up through the soil, bloomed, and bore fruit.  Animals of every kind came into being.  And then, God made humanity – both male and female in the divine image.  And God saw that all of it was good.  And then on the seventh day, so the stories went, God rested, satisfied with the way creation turned out.  This, they believed, was the plan from the very beginning.  They then collected these stories, and called them, “beginnings,” or, in their language, “Genesis.”

          As the Hebrew people understood time, there was a complete cycle that included seasons for planting, growing, and harvest.  In the cycle of the seasons, there was a time for the birth of baby goats and lambs, and changes of weather when the temperature turned colder and the rains came, and other times when there was no rain, and the heat turned everything brown and the streams dried up.  Yes.  There was a season – a time – for every purpose under heaven.

          Their seasons were divided into months based on the cycles of the moon.  In each month, there were four sets of seven days.  And they remembered that the Creator made everything there was in six days – and the seventh was set aside as special.

          When the Hebrew leader, Moses, came back from his alone time with God on Mt. Sinai, he brought with him ten rules from God to order their lives.  To follow the ten rules for living was to live at peace with each other and with God.  God’s fourth commandment for them was: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.  For six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it” (Exodus 20: 8-11).  “See!” they believed, “it was the plan from the very beginning!”

          The Ten Commandments (also called “the Laws of Moses”) were woven into the very fabric of Jewish life.  A complex code of behavior evolved among the Jewish teachers of the law that carefully defined what “labor” is so that the Sabbath could be properly observed and honored.

          Then, along came Jesus.  Although a practicing Jew, he broke the Sabbath rules when their narrow definitions did not serve the will of God.  He healed people on the Sabbath.  One Sabbath, his disciples even picked up some loose grain left by the harvesters in a field to eat – a clear violation of the religious law.  But Jesus was a Jew.  He went to the synagogue or the temple on the Sabbath to worship God.  He generally obeyed the laws of Moses, rarely living outside of their guidelines.  He gave the law a new heart.

          The disciples were Jews, too.  They kept the “Law” when it did not impede the ministry of Jesus.  They honored the Sabbath.  They went to the temple with Jesus.  They celebrated the Jewish feast days.  They understood themselves to be Jews who followed the true Messiah: Jesus.  After Jesus was no longer with them, Judaism provided them with a structure within which to live.  They didn’t throw away their Jewish practices; they simply added new Christian ones to their life together.

          The book of Acts gives us a mosaic – a whole collection – of pictures of the early Christian life after Jesus was no longer with them.  “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2: 46-47 – the emphasis is mine).

          Those first followers of Jesus began to meet together in each other’s houses for prayer, praise, reenacting the Lord’s Supper, and fellowship – but notice this: On the Sabbath (the last day of the week), they went to the temple for worship.  On the first day of the week, they met in each other’s homes.  It they were anything like Bread of Life Christian Church, their fellowship quickly outgrew any one house, and probably, like our Spiritual Life Groups, were scattered around the city.  The temple, on the Sabbath, was where they all could gather as one church.

          Have you seen the academy award winning (Best Picture – 1981) movie, “Chariots of Fire?”  One of its two main characters is the famous Scottish runner, Eric Liddell.  Son of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, he believed that his running was a gift from God, and it pleased God when he ran fast.  Liddell was chosen for the British team for the Paris Olympic Games, but his qualifying heat was on a Sunday.  In order to honor the Sabbath, Liddell refused to compete on that day.  To not run was to give up his chance to run in the finals and a chance for an Olympic medal.

          No amount of pleading or threatening by the British Olympic committee could get him to change his mind.  His decision made the headlines of all the British newspapers.  On Sunday morning, while athletes were running the qualifying heat, Eric Liddell was in church worshipping God.  Many thought he was crazy, or at least, unpatriotic.  Few admired his convictions.  But no one could deny that his Christian faith was important to him, and Christian worship, on Sunday, was a priority in his life.

          The American Protestant Church has lost something as the sacredness of Sunday has been eroded away by working at home, soccer tournaments, mall sales, professional sporting events, weekend parties, and trips.  We, American Christians have come to think of the weekend as either a mini-vacation, or the time to cram in all the shopping, household projects, and yard work that we cannot get done during the week.  And in the face of competition with a “to-do” list, what loses out?  Our worship of God.

          To gather with others for worship is to acknowledge the sovereignty of God in our lives.  Weekly worship provides us with a holy order – a spiritual rhythm to our chaotic lives.  Weekly worship is acknowledgement that Christianity is meant to be lived out within a community of faith.

          Jan Linn writes, in his book, Rocking the Membership Boat, “Attending worship is a public statement of our need for God.  It is also a way of saying that we care enough about one another to be present.  In community, people have to be present to be nurtured and nurture one another.  They have to be present to give and receive love.  Relationships require presence.  We are simply stating the obvious when we say we expect members to be present” (2001, p.14).

          To be a “Covenant Disciple” of Jesus is to understand that worship is vital to our spiritual health.  It is to make weekly worship a priority in our lives rather than a “leftover” if there is nothing else to do.  The ancient Hebrew people believed that this was the plan from the very beginning.  On May 22, you will be invited to make a one-year commitment to Covenantal Discipleship, and one of the promises you will be asked to make is to give your time in attendance to the worship of God at Bread of Life Christian Church.  There is no Olympic medal at stake here, but what will you do?

          Let us pray:

          Almighty God, you made the universe.  You gave us life.  Now you ask us to give you back one day a week – not even a full day – but just a morning.  Give us the conviction to accept the challenge, in Jesus’ name.

Amen.