Read: Acts 2:42-47

How important is the Sabbath and corporate worship?  Many years ago between my four years of college I lived in Holland for a year in a Mennonite exchange program.   Holland was once part of the ocean but the industrious Dutch built great dikes far out in the shallow sea, and so reclaimed the land.  As their dikes hold the ocean back, on the landward side the people occupy their homes, farmers till their land, and the wheels of commerce turn.

There is an illustration in those dikes that pertains to the Sabbath day of corporate worship.  In fact many of the rural lowlanders in Holland have a quaint way of referring to Sunday, the Christian Sabbath.  They speak of Sunday as God’s dike because what God’s people do on this day each week serves society in the same way a dike serves the land.  As the dike holds back the sea, so does Sunday and the worship experience help to hold back the flood of evil which is forever threatening to overflow the people.

God interposes the instruction and inspiration of Christian worship as a bulwark against wrong.  The Christian Sabbath is civilizations strongest social buttress against the flood of evil, fear, and despair which press up hard against us.  What we do in worship each Sunday is strengthen our dikes, to help keep them in good repair.  In worship we are not merely doing something for ourselves, we are also doing something for the world.  We are taking part in an unceasing effort which involves many millions of people and stretches over many centuries of time.  Let’s be aware of this vast body of Christ called the church that we are involved in, and let’s be glad in it just like the early believers were in Acts 2.  Acts 2:42 says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer.”

Make it Personal:  How important is Sabbath day worship to you and your family?  Are you a part of it so that you can hold back the things that are trying to pull at you and pull you away from the Lord?  Worshiping together with the brothers and sisters in Christ is so very important and this past year we have realized this in a new way.  Hope to see you this Sunday!