CHRISTIAN MEETINGS PART I

  1. The church being the believers’ new community
    1. In the beginning God created only one man. Adam was a corporate man. We were all created in Adam; that was the reason we fell when Adam fell.
    2. Hence, by nature man’s life is a corporate life, a communal life. Our life is a life that wants to meet or have fellowship with others. Even if given everything he needs, man could not live a happy life alone in an island. That is why man spontaneously wants to have friends. Man wants to be in a community or in a group of people. No wonder games, parties, reunions, picnics, dancing sessions, gambling sessions, drinking sessions and all sorts of worldly gatherings are common activities with which people are daily engaged. These are the ways people in the world meet together.
    3. The world is the community of fallen unbelievers. It is a Christless community. Therefore, the Bible tells us that he who makes himself friend with the world is God’s enemy (James 4:4). The Lord has already saved us from the fall and called us out of the world. We believers now belong to a new community, the church. The church in Greek is "ekklesia", which means the called out congregation or the assembly of the called out ones. Since, the church is the assembly called out by God from the world, it should meet continually. The brothers and sisters in the Lord should be our new friends and therefore we should love to meet with them. Christian meetings enable God’s called out congregation to be supplied, established, and perfected, that the goal of God’s calling this assembly may be accomplished.
  2. God’s ordination for the believers
    1. Hebrews 10:25 says, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." Here the assembling of ourselves together refers to our Christian meetings.
    2. God has ordained the way in which every living thing in the universe should exist. God’s ordination is the very law by which a particular species lives. If this living thing obeys the law, it will survive and be blessed.
    3. God is the same toward us who believed in Christ. God’s ordination for us, which becomes our law of existence and blessing is the meetings. As water is to the fish, air is to the birds, so are the meetings to the Christians. As the fish must live in the water and the birds must exist in the air, so the Christians must maintain their spiritual existence and living by the meetings.
  3. A requirement of the spiritual life
    1. Every kind of life has its own characteristics and usually, many characteristics. The spiritual life we believers have received, being the life of God in us, also possesses many characteristics. For example, the hatred for sin and the desire to draw near to God and the willingness to serve Him also its characteristics.
    2. One of the many characteristics of our spiritual life is to flock together. John 10:3 and 16 show us that since we are saved, we are the Lord’s sheep. The characteristics of the sheep’s life is to flock together and dislike isolation from the other sheep. Hence the Bible says that we are not only the Lord’s sheep, even more His flock (Acts 20:28; I Pet. 5:2). In order to be a sheep which shares in the blessing of the flock, we must meet together with the flock.
    3. Our Christian life should not be like of a butterfly, which does well on its own. We should not be like a butterfly that is outwardly beautiful and colorful but individualistic. Our life is like the sheep’s life, requiring that we flock together and live a meeting life.
  4. The different kinds of meeting for the believers to attend
    1. The bread breaking meeting. Acts 20:7; I Cor. 11:20, 23-25
    2. The prayer meeting. Matt. 18:19-20; Acts 1:14; 4:24-31; 12:5; 12:12
    3. Meeting for the exercise of the spiritual gifts and for mutual building up. I Cor. 14:26
    4. Meeting for reading the Word. Acts 15:30-31
    5. Meeting to listen to the messages. Acts 20:7
  5. A believer of Christ should attend all meetings of the church continually and steadfastly until the Lord’s coming back - Acts 2:46; Heb. 10:25
    1. In Acts 2:46 the believers continued steadfastly in their meeting life in the temple and from house to house. The word steadfastly means we believers should be fix, unchanging, constant, unswerving, and firmly loyal to our meeting life.
    2. Hebrews 10:25 also says, "Not abandoning our own assembling together, as the custom with some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more as you see the day drawing near. We should continue to meet until the Lord’s coming back. Those who love His appearing should never stop meeting. Whether we can receive a reward or discipline depends on how healthy is our church life or meeting life. Our proper church life today will become our reward tomorrow.
    3. As the Lord’s coming is drawing near the world’s evil is increasing and the more worldly things and affairs frustrate us and cause us to be discouraged. Many things around us can make our heart cold. So without the meeting we could not survive just as the fish without the water dies. Hence, meetings are crucial to our Christian life. In every meeting there is an exhortation and supply to encourage us to go on. The meetings will also incite us or stir us up to love the Lord and to love the meeting with the saints and stir us up for good works (Heb. 10:24-25). So we need to be good imitators by imitating those who are faithful and absolute in attending Christian meetings. Our meeting life today will cause us someday to meet the Lord face-to-face in a glorious way.