Martin Lloyd-Jones said:

“Possibly one of the most devastating things that can happen to us as Christians is that we cease to expect anything to happen. I am not sure but that this is not one of our greatest troubles today. We come to our services and they are orderly, they are nice — we come, we go — and sometimes they are timed almost to the minute, and there it is. But that is not Christianity, my friend. Where is the Lord of glory? Where is the one sitting by the well? Are we expecting him? Do we anticipate this? Are we open to it? Are we aware that we are ever facing this glorious possibility of having the greatest surprise of our life?

Or let me put it like this. You may feel and say — as many do — ‘I was converted and became a Christian. I’ve grown — yes, I’ve grown in knowledge, I’ve been reading books, I’ve been listening to sermons, but I’ve arrived now at a sort of peak and all I do is maintain that. For the rest of my life I will just go on like this.’

Now, my friend, you must get rid of that attitude; you must get rid of it once and for ever. That is ‘religion’, it is not Christianity. This is Christianity: the Lord appears! Suddenly, in the midst of the drudgery and the routine and the sameness and the dullness and the drabness, unexpectedly, surprisingly, he meets with you and he says something to you that changes the whole of your life and your outlook and lifts you to a level that you had never conceived could be possible for you. Oh, if we get nothing else from this story, I hope we will get this. Do not let the devil persuade you that you have got all you are going to get, still less that you received all you were ever going to receive when you were converted. That has been a popular teaching, even among evangelicals. You get everything at your conversion, it is said, … and nothing further, ever. Oh, do not believe it; it is not true. It is not true to the teaching of the Scriptures, it is not true in the experience of the saints running down the centuries. There is always this glorious possibility of meeting with him in a new and a dynamic way.”

~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones, on John chapter 4

by G.I. Williamson

It’s a matter of first importance that we hear the truth of God. You might just as well hear no gospel at all as to hear a false gospel. The apostle Paul said that “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse” (Gal. 1:8)! And having said it once, he said it again (v. 9). It’s only by hearing the truth that we may believe to the saving of our souls.

But it’s almost as important to take heed how we hear, as it is to take heed what we hear. “So pay attention to how you hear,” says our Lord. “To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given. But for those who are not listening, even what they think they understand will be taken away from them” (Lk. 8: 18) .

Those who are careful with respect to what they hear – who won’t attend or belong to a church that doesn’t uphold the truth of God – seem to have the true faith. Yet the words of Christ clearly disclose to us the fact that the soul’s true welfare is not absolutely sure from this one fact alone. If we don’t take heed how we hear, we may have taken away from us even that which we now seem to have.

How then ought we to hear the Word of God? Certainly the first thing is to be sure that we hear it regularly. When the Bible speaks of not neglecting our meeting together, as some do (see Heb. 10:25), it indicates what our constant practice should be. The person who’s not diligent and faithful in being present to hear the Word of God may be concerned about what he hears, but he is not concerned about how he hears. How faithfully do you hear God’s Word?

Second only to this is the need to concentrate. We must give God’s Word the consideration it deserves. Much of the benefit that we ought to receive from the preaching of God’s Word is lost because the mind is occupied with other thoughts. We read that the noble believers of Berea “listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth” (Acts 17:11).

They didn’t go home from the service to bury the Word of God under news, or sports, or entertainment, or other diversions. They gave the whole day to the due consideration of what they’d heard. We ought to examine what we hear carefully. We ought to meditate on it quietly and intently. And when we’ve compared what we’ve heard with other parts of Scripture that we know, we ought to strive to “take it to heart” and correct ourselves accordingly. “So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it” (Heb. 2:1).

Finally, we ought to hear the Word of God in the humble posture of prayer – asking God to convict and cleanse us, to renew and strengthen us according to his Word. We hear much about the weakness of the pulpit today. We ought to hear more. May God speed the day when those who now sleep in the pews may wake up and demand the pure Word of God from every pulpit in the land. But in the meantime, I venture to suggest that not a little of the cause for the spiritual weakness of our day is the fact that even in such churches as do still preach the pure Word of God, many people do not take heed how they hear.

Doubtless both pulpit and pew need to pray more earnestly for each other. We need zealously to pray that God will send forth from the pulpit of our church his Word with power and authority. And we need to pray that it may then be received “not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13).

If Jesus himself were to speak from the pulpit next Sunday, you wouldn’t have any time for or interest in other things. His message would be on your mind and in your conversation all day. May God grant that Jesus Christ himself will indeed speak to you next Sunday as his servant proclaims his Word. Pay attention, then, to how you hear.

reprinted from The Presbyterian Guardian May 1962 (slightly edited)
https://www.opc.org/cfh/guardian/Volume_31/1962-05.pdf

In a “Sermon on the Nativity,” Martin Luther said:

The inn was full. No one would release a room to this pregnant woman. She had to go to a cow stall and there bring forth the Maker of all creatures because nobody would give way. Shame on you, wretched Bethlehem! The inn ought to have been burned with brimstone, for even if Mary had been a beggar maid or unwed, anybody at such a time should have been glad to give her a hand.

There are many of you in this congregation who think to yourselves: “If only I had been there! How quick I would have been to help the baby! I would have washed his linen! How happy I would have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!” Yes you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than the people of Bethlehem.

Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why don’t you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbour. You ought to serve him, for what you do to your neighbour in need you do to the Lord Christ himself.

Shane Lems writes:

Church attendance in the United States has always waxed and waned. It is not accurate to say that church attendance in America was excellent around the turn of the nineteenth century and has declined ever since. Instead, there have been various tendencies in attendance: sometimes attendance trended upwards, sometimes it trended downwards.

R. Kent Hughes, pastor, author and professor, wrote a helpful list of anti-church Evangelical trends back in 2003. These developments, he said, show that many who call themselves Christians have a very low view of the church and of church membership. Hughes’s discussion of this topic is very insightful; below I’ll summarise, explain, and expand on his insights since they are still relevant today.

1. The Hitchhiker Mentality

A hitchhiker is a person who wants a free ride for a limited amount of time. He doesn’t take ownership of the car, maintain it, or help with its repairs; he simply wants a ride and will bail if anything goes wrong or if he’s finished riding. This is how many people think of the church and church membership:

You go to the meetings and serve on the boards and committees, you grapple with the issues and do the work of the church and pay the bills—and I’ll come along for the ride. But if things do not suit me, I’ll criticise and complain and probably bail out. My thumb is always out for a better ride.[1] Many Christians today have the mindset of just coasting in a church for a time and then leaving when they feel like it. They don’t get involved in the life of the church; they don’t donate their time and energy; they never ask what they can do to help; and they don’t invest their lives in the church. They are irresponsible and immature in this aspect of their lives, and have little concept of duty or service.

2. Consumer Christians

These are ecclesiastical shoppers [that] attend one church for the preaching, send their children to a second church for its youth program, and go to a third church’s small group. Their motto is to ask, “What’s in it for me?”

The consumer mentality “encouraged those who have been influenced by it to think naturally in terms of receiving rather than contributing.”[2] These are the kind of people who want to take from the church but never give. Church for these types of people is a commodity that exists to offer them something they want or need.

This view—a consumer view of the church—is a characteristic of the entitlement mindset of our culture. Everyone—especially younger Americans—believes they are entitled to certain rights and benefits, as if they are royalty to be served. The customer is king! This view has crept into the church: “If the church doesn’t serve or suit me, I’m out. If my needs are not met, I’ll go somewhere else.” Church shopping, consumerism, and entitlement all go together to be part of this anti-church Evangelical trend. To be sure, there are churches that make this trend worse by using consumer-centred church growth methods.

3. Spectator Christians

Spectator Christianity feeds on the delusion that virtue can come through viewing, much like the football fan who imagines that he ingests strength and daring while watching his favourite pro team. Spectator sports and spectator Christianity produce the same things—fans who cheer the players on while they themselves are in desperate need of engagement and meaning.[3] These are the people who like sitting lazily in the bleachers, but do not want to get in the game. The bleacher seat is good enough for them, thinking (implicitly or explicitly) that the Christian faith can be “caught” by watching from the stands and not committing oneself to stepping on the field. In other words, these are the people who are content with watching others follow Christ, but never really doing it themselves. They watch others to feel good about life or themselves, but not to learn how to die to self and live for Christ.

4. Drive-Through Christians

The fast-food drive-through means you can get (unhealthy) food in no time and with no effort. Since we’re in a hurry, we just want to quickly eat something that tastes good and then get on with our urgent business. The result of this kind of lifestyle is not good: it leaves unhealthy and typically overweight people who are stressed out because they have such busy lives.

Something similar happens when a person views the church like a fast-food restaurant: People with this view get their “church fix” out of the way by attending a weeknight church service or the early service on Sunday morning so that the family can save the bulk of Sunday for the all-important soccer game or recreational trip. Of course there is an unhappy price extracted over time in the habits and the arteries of a flabby soul—a family that is unfit for the battles of life and has no conception of being Christian soldiers in the great spiritual battle.[4]

5. Relationless Christians

Despite the Bible’s emphasis on Christians regularly assembling to worship and fellowship, today some people say “the best church is the one that knows you least and demands the least.”[5] This goes hand in hand with the trends already mentioned. People want to hitchhike through church life—making small talk with the driver but never really getting to know him personally. To many people, the soccer game or vacation are more important than the people at church, so why bother to start relationships within the church?

This becomes evident when people baulk at the idea of membership. Few people appreciate church membership today because it goes against their selfish desire to be on their own, it means they are accountable to others, and it means they need to share their lives and help others when needed. For most people, it’s much more fulfilling to go to a movie Friday night than help the needy church family move into an apartment down town.

6. Churchless Worshippers

This trend is also common, since many people today think that they can worship God alone, on their own, when it is most convenient and beneficial to them. Why wake up early on Sunday and go to a place where there are strange people when I can just sleep in and worship God while I watch the football game alone? Although this line of thought is completely unbiblical, it is quite common today. Hughes put it this way:

The current myth is that a life of worship is possible, even better, apart from the church. As one person blithely expressed it, “For ‘church’ I go to the mall to my favourite coffee place and spend my morning with the Lord. That is how I worship.” This is an updated suburban and yuppie version of how to spend Sunday, changed from its rustic forebearer [namely, Emily Dickinson, who said 100 years ago], “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—I keep it staying at Home.”[6]

Hughes is right-on with these trends; I’ve seen them myself since I became a pastor some years ago. The ethos of American culture (consumerism, individualism, narcissism, dislike of authority, lust for entertainment and fun, busyness, and so forth) directly contradicts the ethos of the biblical view of the church. They are quite at odds.

It’s helpful to think about the above trends for these reasons: 1) so we ourselves don’t get caught up in them, 2) so we can understand the mindset of those who are caught up in them, 3) so we can patiently dialogue, discuss, teach, rebuke, and preach to those struggling with these trends, 4) so we can help keep the church from catering to these trends, and 5) so we can better preach the gospel that frees people from all these “isms” (narcissism, consumerism, individualism, etc.). Since this is the cultural air we all breathe, every one of us needs to be constantly reminded of the biblical view of the church, and of the loving, patient Saviour who is her Head, Husband, and Redeemer.

Endnotes

[1] R. Kent Hughes, Set Apart: Calling a Worldly Church to a Godly Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003), 128.

[2] Ibid., 129.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 130.

Shane Lems serves as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Hammond, Wisconsin. Ordained Servant Online, December 2016.

Matthew Roberts writes:

How should we keep the Sabbath? Let’s start with the Sabbath command in Exodus:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…” (Exodus 20:8-10)

God tells us to keep the Sabbath holy. “Holy” means “set apart especially for God’s use”. Note well—this does not mean “for us to use for God”; it means “for God to use us for his purposes”. But of course, since we’re his creatures, God’s using us for himself is also the very best thing that can happen to us.

So how do we keep the Sabbath day holy? How do we let God use it for his glory and our good?

 

Not a chore but a celebration

The main thing to grasp is that the Sabbath is a celebration. It’s not a chore but a delight. This is true of all God’s laws, of course. The fact that we often think of the Sabbath as a stifling restriction on our freedom says far more about our hearts than about the Sabbath command. That’s what sinful people think of all God’s good commandments! For example, the command not to commit adultery sounds incredibly restrictive to sinful human ears. But in fact it leads to blessings for everyone, whether married or not, which are infinitely better than the joys we imagine adultery might lead to; and which are the very opposite of the miseries adultery in fact leads to.

Now it’s the same with the Sabbath. It’s not a restriction to kill us but a blessing to give us life. It’s a celebration! It’s like a weekly Christmas day, or more accurately, a weekly Easter day—a day for celebrating the fact that God has made us and has saved us for himself through Christ.

 

So first, it’s a day for celebrating the goodness of God’s creation

When I was a child my parents would let us have golden syrup on our cereal on Sunday mornings. ‘Sunday Syrup’, as we called it, got the Sabbath right. The Lord’s Day is a day for the best food, the best wine, for eating together and celebrating God’s goodness in creation. We should see it as a feast day—a day of glorious rest from the normal run of life, a day of joyful celebration with our family—and especially with God’s family, the church. We keep the day holy by celebrating the incredible goodness that God has given us in making us and in providing all the good things of creation for us.

That’s why it’s a day to rest from work. Work is good, but it’s not everything. We’re supposed to enjoy and delight in the good gifts of God’s creation.

Resting from work is an act of faith. We show that we trust that God is God and we are not. The world will keep on running without us. The most common reason Christians give for working on Sunday is ‘I just have so much to do; I can’t get it done otherwise’. But that’s exactly why we should rest. You see, when we do that we show that we think that our lives are in our hands, when in fact they’re in God’s. God commands us to rest for this day and to trust that he has the results in his hand. The more we feel the pressure to work the more we need the discipline of trusting God, not ourselves, that resting on the Lord’s Day gives us.

Proper rest requires preparing in advance. You have to pack and plan properly for a holiday if it’s going to be a holiday. It’s the same with the Lord’s Day. Do the vacuuming, laundry, shopping, ironing, meal prep on Friday and Saturday. Do that and you’ll be able to rest properly on Sunday. It’s the same with paid work (or full-time study)—you’ll only rest if you’ve planned in advance that you’re not going to work on that day. Otherwise other people’s expectations, and your own pressure on yourself, will be too much to resist.

Of course, if our rest comes at the expense of having others work for us, then we haven’t yet grasped what the Sabbath is about. God is Lord of all creation. Christ died to bring in the new creation of all things. So Christians should not employ others to work for them on the Lord’s Day. That’s why God forbade having your servants or your ox or your donkey work for you on the Sabbath. The rule of thumb we follow in our family is that we don’t spend money on the Lord’s Day. We don’t buy or sell or do any kind of business, because that’s a form of making people work for us.

Now Jesus was clear that it’s right to do good on the Sabbath, and specifically caring and healing is an appropriate use of the day. The Westminster Confession calls this ‘duties of necessity and mercy’. So working in healthcare is certainly not a breach of the Sabbath. Also things which are a necessity for others’ wellbeing are appropriate—if you work for an electricity company, for example. For the same reason it’s acceptable to use electricity on the Sabbath! But we do well not to pay others to work for us in things other than true necessities. Buy your milk and bread the day before.

Rather than seeing this as a restriction on what we can do for ourselves, see it as an opportunity and invitation to do things for others. So instead of thinking ‘Bother, I can’t do the shopping’, think, ‘Who could I invite round for lunch/tea? Who in the church would be cheered up if I visited him/her this afternoon? Is there anyone on his own today who would love to be with people? Or someone I could take a meal to because she’s not well?

Real rest requires thankfulness to God. It’s not just a day to have fun, though it should be thoroughly enjoyable; real enjoyment comes from receiving things from God with thankful hearts. So learn particularly on the Lord’s Day to thank God for the things he has given us.

 

It’s a day for celebrating the goodness of our redemption

That last reason links to the very heart of the Sabbath day. It’s for the worship of God. Gathering with fellow Christians to worship God in our churches isn’t something we do on Sunday because it’s a convenient day to do it. It’s the very centre and purpose of what the Sabbath is about. Leviticus 23:3 describes it as a ‘holy convocation’. ‘Convocation’ means ‘calling together’. The risen Lord Jesus seems particularly to have met with the disciples on the first day of the week. John’s vision of the heavenly worship in God’s throne room in the book of Revelation happened on the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10). The purpose of the day is so that God can call us together to meet with him to worship him.

Even the word ‘church’ speaks of this: the Greek word means ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’, which deliberately echoes the ‘gathering’ of God’s people at Mount Sinai when God first set them free from slavery in Egypt. And as the book of Exodus makes clear, the reason he freed them was so that they could gather and worship him at Mount Sinai. So since the Sabbath celebrates our freedom from slavery to sin (Deuteronomy 5:15)—which is what the exodus was all about—then the heart of that freedom is that we get to assemble to worship together the God who made us and who has saved us.

So make meeting with the church the main thing in the day! Come to church expecting to meet with God, and be ready to listen to him. God takes us through the gospel again in every service to remind us again how to relate to him rightly. The things that happen in a service are designed by God as tools he uses to work in us and change us. He speaks to us in his Word to make us more into his images. He calls us to pray so that he can answer and we can grow in our trust in him. He shares the meal of the Lord’s Supper with us, to assure us of his grace and call us actively to put our trust in Christ crucified again for our lives. Our morning service is the main place we do this. The evening service provides an opportunity to end the day doing the same thing.

Make the whole day about the church. That doesn’t mean being at church the whole day—but seeing it as a day to spend with your church family. That’s why it’s great to spend the day with other Christians from church, including your lunch and afternoon. If you have your own family, make it a day very special for them; pray together in the morning, eat together at lunchtime. And it’s all the better if you’re able to show or receive hospitality to join your family with others from the wider church family.

And why not invite non-Christians to join us? The Sabbath is a foretaste of the coming new creation. That means that it’s a shop-window for all the blessings of the gospel. Our neighbours should look over our garden walls or into our living room windows on Sunday afternoon, and see something that they too would love to be part of. Why not invite them to join in? Or even better, invite them to come to church and see for themselves what it means for human beings like them to meet with the living God who made them? I suspect that the majority of those who become Christians from a non-Christian background do so because they were invited to church by a Christian. The glory of the gospel of Christ is on display as his people worship him on the Lord’s Day in a way that happens at no other time.

And if you do have time on your own, don’t slip back into doing chores. Sit down with a cup of tea and read a good Christian book, or catch up on reading the Bible.

To sum up, God gives the Sabbath to us to be a delight (Isaiah 58:13–15). Naturally, we struggle to believe that. But if we do, then we find that God uses it to be an incredible blessing to us—the focal point of what it means to know God as our Father through the Son by the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

slightly edited from http://www.trinitychurchyork.org.uk/resources/blog/post/how-should-we-think-about-the-sabbath-part-2

TO DELVE DEEPER:

• A Sign of Hope
  by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.
• Why on Sunday?
  by O. Palmer Robertson
• Proper Sabbath Observance: The Sojourner’s Sabbath
  by Herman C. Hoeksema