We Need Correcting

“Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:” (Ps 17:13 AV)

This is an interesting statement.  The wicked is the sword of the LORD.  It may be interesting, but it is also accurate.  If the people of God sin against the LORD, who remains as the means of God’s chastisement?  There were Assyria, Babylon, Medea-Persia, Rome, and Germany to name a few.  When God’s people need correcting, it is often the wicked whom the LORD uses for that correction.  The book of Judges is a history of this very pattern.  The people of God fall away and the LORD used her neighbors as the means of turning them back to the LORD.  The church is no different.  We read of the great commission in three of the four gospels.  We read that our LORD and Savior told the church to scatter.  We are told to take the gospel into the world.  Yet Acts tells us even after the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, they remained in Jerusalem.  It took the persecution of Saul to scatter them.  It took the sword of the wicked to motivate believers to do what the LORD has instructed them to do.  Now, we can fast forward to 2020.

The last few months have been the least from what we call normal.  With the vast majority of citizens being asked the shelter in place or stay at home, our lives are anything but normal.  All non-essential businesses are told to close their doors.  This would include houses of worship.  We would argue that places of worship are the most essential of all.  One could make the case man is body, soul, and spirit.  If a hospital or mental health clinic is essential for the well being of the individual, so too is the house of worship.  Some would argue that online services would suffice.  This is not true.  All one had to do is survey the people of God and they will tell you that in-person ministry and corporate ministry bring much-needed healing that electronic fellowship cannot provide.  And, I would be right there to make the same argument.  But let me address all who might consider themselves believers.

There is a difference between a hospital or clinic and a health spa.  There is a difference between a grocery store and a restaurant.  There is a difference between a gas station and a car wash.  The first of these are places we must go to and are willing to sacrifice our well being to patronage.  The second, although similar, is not something we would be compelled to go to even if we were risking life or limb for it.  Which brings me to my point.  We have been treating church much like a non-essential or a house of entertainment than we have a place of true worship.  When we orchestrate our services to please ourselves rather than to acknowledge the one true God by repentance and obedience, we are treating the house of God as a consumer product.  Give the world some credit.  They can see right through all this.  They can see the vast majority of what we call essential ministry is nothing more than non-essential entertainment.  But there is another aspect we must consider.  We have our day of grocery shopping.  We schedule it.  We plan for it.  We budget for it.  Only a serious illness would keep us from it.  However, when it comes to attending the house of God, we see it as a preference rather than a conviction.  The world sees this too.  They see nominally committed Christians and judge that if we do not treat church as an essential, coming as often as the doors are open, then why should they?  We have done this to ourselves.  We have dumbed down our services to the most carnal level.  We have treated attendance as optional.  Now, when the world calls our bluff, we cry foul.  Perhaps this should be a great teachable moment for the church.  If we treat the fellowship of the saints as anything less than an essential, the sword of the wicked will take it from us.  If we treat corporate worship no differently than the world would treat a sporting event, maybe we deserve what we are getting.  It is about time revival hits.  It is about time we apologize to the world for our hypocrisy and when restrictions are lifted, treat the command to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as a non-negotiable.  Perhaps when we get to the other side of all this, we can confess to the LORD we have shamed His house by treating it like a stand-up comic event rather than true repentant and humble worship that demands a change in the lives and hearts of God’s people.