We’ve all seen those warnings on drug commercials and medications. Communicated in small print and rapid recitation is the fact that prolonged use can produce long-term adverse side effects.

While I wholeheartedly applaud the Church’s current creativity in utilizing an online presence amidst this crisis, I am concerned about the long-term adverse side effects. So, even as we minister now, we must keep the long-term in mind, and shepherd the flock that the Holy Spirit has made us overseers accordingly (Acts 20:28). 

What most are doing now, gathering around our computers isolated in our homes, is not church, and we must communicate that.  It is the best available alternative, and the Church is not a building but a people. Yet, we must be aware that this new paradigm may be very appealing to some and quite unappealing to others, and accurately assess why.

First, we, as a people, tend to be lazy and, like the students that I witness daily at my daughter’s school bypassing the paved sidewalk to carve a barren path in the grass, will take the path of least resistance. This new temporary stopgap measure of online worship and small groups may appeal to many, given its ease and relative anonymity.

And advancing technologies will continue to provide new possibilities; however, just because we CAN doesn’t mean we SHOULD utilize them. Our standard for accountability is sola scriptura, and our motivation is the full spiritual maturity of our people in Christ (Col. 1:28).

Second, there may be a large group of church attendees who find this current scenario woefully unappealing…for all the wrong reasons.  Drawn in by large, emotional worship experiences, quality production values, and state of the art facilities, some find themselves longing for a quick end to quarantine.

Truthfully, many of them are unsaved. Sadly, the church today is full of unconverted people, often drawn by false teachers, tickling their ears with false gospels, cheap grace, and self-help talks disguised as sermons, bereft of sound doctrine.

And while it is certainly an occasion for joy when an unsaved person chooses to observe a worship service of believers, it is also important to remember the primary purpose for worship. 

Steve Lawson in his book, Famine in the Land, states

These first gatherings of the church were designed primarily for edifying believers, not for evangelizing unbelievers. Of course, they were reaching out to the unsaved, for “the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47). But this “evangelism explosion” was the result of their teaching, not the stated purpose of it. They gathered for edification; they scattered for evangelism. The primary focus of their corporate worship gatherings was for building up the believers, not for reaching seekers. When this priority becomes reversed and the church meets primarily to save the lost, the apostles’ teaching soon becomes compromised and diluted.

And what of believers frustrated amidst this current scenario?  R.C. Sproul in his book Truths We Confess, states the following about this statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

Saints by profession are bound to maintain a holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God.

Our purpose for assembling together is to worship God, to offer the sacrifices of praise. If people are leaving church because they are bored, that is revealing. The answer is not to put on dramatic presentations on Sunday morning or to include Christian rock music or any other form of entertainment. If people are bored, they don’t have a sense of coming into the presence of God. No one has ever been confronted with the living God and walked away bored.

So while the current online prescription is the only available, let’s beware the danger of long-term exposure to anything less than a biblical expression of a worship service.

If you find memorizing Scripture difficult, let me encourage you by helping you to learn something from each of Paul’s 13 New Testament epistles. 

I guarantee your success! 

“Impossible!” you say.

Nope.

Say with me, “Paul.” 

Okay. You now have committed to memory the first word of each of his letters. 

Take a look:

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God…(Romans)
Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God…(1 Corinthians)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…(2 Corinthians)
Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father…(Galatians)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…(Ephesians)
Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus…(Philippians)
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God…(Colossians)
Paul and Silvanus and Timothy…(1 Thessalonians)
Paul and Silvanus and Timothy…(2 Thessalonians)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope…(1 Timothy)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus…(2 Timothy)
Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ…(Titus)
Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus…(Philemon)

That is the way the Greeks wrote a letter: they began a letter with the name of the author, which honestly seems a lot more reasonable than how we, today, put it at the end.

Another thing to notice is how often Paul establishes himself as an apostle.  

John MacArthur explains why,

“Now, this is something that Paul repeatedly did, and there were many reasons why he did this. You do not find the other writers of the New Testament doing this in the way Paul does. Of course, not all of the apostles wrote in the New Testament, but nevertheless, Paul is the one who is continually identifying himself as an apostle. And I think there are some very specific reasons why he does this. He says: “called an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.”

He had not lived and walked with Jesus Christ in His pre-death years. He had not seen the resurrected Christ before He ascended into heaven. And the qualifications for an apostle, according to the Scripture – Acts 1 – were that they know Christ in His post-resurrection reality, and that they be specifically and personally and directly chosen by Christ. They had to have seen the resurrected Christ and been called specifically by Him into the apostolate.

That’s the reason we can’t have any apostles today. That’s the reason there couldn’t be any past the biblical ones, because no one since then has seen the living resurrected Christ, and been specifically commissioned by Him. He has ascended into heaven, where He is until He comes again. So, the apostolate has ceased. It was foundational, according to Ephesians 2:20.”

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So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

Therefore it is necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us— beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection.” So they put forward two men, Joseph called Barsabbas (who was also called Justus), and Matthias. And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two You have chosen to occupy this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they drew lots for them, and the lot fell to Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles. (Acts 1:21-26)

This past week I read the following quote on Jonathan Edwards, about how he handled being voted out of his church at the end of his ministry, for taking the biblical stand that communion should be only for believers:

“That faithful witness received the shock, unshaken. I never saw the least symptoms of displeasure in his countenance the whole week but he appeared like a man of God, whose happiness was out of the reach of his enemies.”

It is impossible to not contrast his behavior with the current political climate in the United States.

One must ask, “What enabled Edwards to handle such a difficult situation with such apparent grace and peace?”

Interestingly enough, I ran across the following insights from H.A. Ironside in my study of 1 Corinthians:

In the third verse we have the apostolic salutation, “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” We are saved by grace, but of course this is not the grace to which he here refers. He knows that is settled, these people who are sanctified in Christ Jesus are already justified by faith, saved by grace. It is not that which he is thinking of when he says, “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” And then again all Christians have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We read in Romans 5:1, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God”—it is a settled thing—“through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He is not praying that these Christians may obtain that grace of which he speaks here.

First of all, it is grace to sustain in all the trials of the way, grace to enable us to overcome in every hour of temptation. In Hebrews we are bidden to “come boldly unto the throne of grace”—upon which our great High Priest sits—“that we may obtain mercy, and find grace for seasonable help” (Heb. 4:16). We need grace every day of our lives. The grace of yesterday will not suffice for today. We need to go to God morning by morning, to draw down from above by meditation and prayer supplies of grace to start the day aright. But throughout the day we need to learn to “Pray without ceasing” that our hearts may continually be reaching out to Him that new supplies of grace may come down to us constantly. We cannot keep ourselves, not for one moment, therefore the need of the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

And the peace, I repeat, is not peace with God, but that peace of God of which we read in Philippians 4:6, 7: “Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

You see this has nothing to do with the sin question. That is settled. We have peace with God because our sins have been forever put away, but this has to do with the question of things that would keep us anxious, the trials of life that press upon our hearts…

My brother, my sister, not a trial ever comes to you, there is not a perplexity you are called upon to face, there is not a need you will have to meet, but God invites you to come to Him about it, and you have the promise, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phi. 4:19).

(Excerpt from Addresses on the First Epistle to the Corinthians)