“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:23-25

Several centuries ago in a mountain village in Europe, a wealthy nobleman wondered what legacy he should leave to his townspeople. He made a good decision. He decided to build them a Church. No one was permitted to see the plans or the inside of the Church until it was finished. At its grand opening, the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of the new Church. Everything had been thought of and included. It was a masterpiece.

But then someone said, “Wait a minute! Where are the lamps? It is really quite dark in here. How will the Church be lighted?” The nobleman pointed to some brackets in the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, which they were to bring with them each time they came to worship.

“Each time you are here,” the nobleman said, “the place where you are seated will be lighted. Each time you are not here, that place will be dark. This is to remind you that whenever you fail to come to Church, some part of God’s house will be dark.”

When you miss worship, your part of God’s Church is dark. One writer put it this way as he described the effect of a person who willfully misses Church: “Last Sunday I voted to close the Church, not intentionally, not maliciously, perhaps but carelessly, thoughtlessly, lazily, indifferently, I voted. I voted to close its doors that its witness might be stopped. I voted to close the Bible on its pulpit – the Bible that had been given to us by years of struggle and by the blood of martyrs who died that we might have it to read – For, you see, I could have gone and should have gone, but I did not. I stayed away from Church last Sunday and by so doing cast a vote to close its doors.”

W. E. Gladstone: “I need public worship, and I want England and all the dominions of Britain to know that I count Jesus Christ as the one supreme matter for men and for all men to know by my example.”

Robert E. Lee (President of Washington College after the Civil War): “When Sunday comes, my place is at God’s House. I want my former soldiers and now my neighbors and students all to know that the chief thing in my thoughts and my adoration is the will of Jesus Christ and His Church.”

George W. Truett: “Failure to attend Bible Study and public Worship is always the first step on a downhill slide spiritually and morally.”

“There is more to the Christian life than going to Church but one who does not attend Church cannot say he is living a Christian life."

A deaf man who loved the Lord kept attending Church well beyond the time he had gone totally deaf. As people asked him, “Why do you continue to attend Church? You can’t hear a thing that is happening.” He answered, “I just want people to know whose side I am on.”

Whose side are you on?