| I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” |
| —Psalm 122:1 |
In these current days, we can all see how the vast majority of Christian churches are struggling to stay alive. Congregations seem to have dwindling numbers and aging members, faithful but stagnant. Meanwhile, Sunday sports events draw crowds of thousands and enthusiasm never seems to wane. Even children’s sports teams that hold matches on Sunday do better with attendance than many churches.
From some 780 years before Christ, we can identify with the observation of the prophet Amos, as he quotes the people in his generation, found in Amos 8:4-6:
“When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath ended that we may market wheat?”—skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
Does that not sound like the world we live in? If people even occasionally attend worship services on Sundays, they often do so hurriedly, so that they can get back to buying, selling, and attending to matters other than meditation and prayer. Yet, upon a closer examination of the spiritual state of Christians in our society, it appears that shoddy attention to worship results in a lethargy that produces ungodly and sinful work.
May I be so bold as to suggest that what we give ourselves to on the Sabbath—our Sunday—determines the way we manifest Christ’s divine presence in our lives during the rest of the week? Any activity that requires us to forsake the gathering together with our fellow believers distracts and detracts from the effectiveness of our spiritual formation and our spiritual growth.
The prophet Malachi, the last prophet to write before the birth of Christ, had plenty to say about the way people in his generation approached worship. He admonished them for giving mediocre attention to their offerings before God, insisting that what they gave of themselves was far below the standard of excellence that reverence to God requires. In those long ago days, much like today, even the priests dedicated to serving God violated the covenants of the Lord.
Yet, God promised a messenger—a mouthpiece for the Lord—to purify His servants and to call His people back. God’s standard for worship requires the attention of His people to the purity of His cleansing power. Note the Prophet’s words from Malachi 3:2-4:
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in the days gone by, as in former years.
Perhaps God is preparing His church for His Son’s second coming, as He was preparing the people of Judah in Malachi’s day for the birth of His precious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We need an adjustment to our Christian culture that puts first things first, so that not only do we worship our God acceptably on Sundays, but we also give our devotion, our obedience, and our work the other six days to Him, as well. Out of joy and gratitude, we need to consciously and purposefully strive to please Him in every way.
As we consider all that God has done for us and continues to do for us, may we make necessary corrections to our priorities so that we can say:
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
