A Busy Signal

Bulletin

Dan Peters
11/05/23 - Body of Christ

A Busy Signal
I heard a talk radio host one time say, “Nowhere in the Bible does it say you must to go to church”. I pulled over to call in the radio station, because he evidently never read it. But all I got on the phone was a busy signal. I made several calls, I just never got through. I wanted to share with him and the audience the passages that says so. But he was just too busy. First here is the main principle: “And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would not listen,” says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:13). If God gets “a busy signal” from you, will you not get a busy signal from God?
If you don’t listen to God, he will not listen to you. Just like in all our human relationships. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (James 5:16). The righteous person has taken the time to hear and heed God.
Please slow down and listen. “let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:23-26). The Hebrew writer saw some christians making it their habit of “forsaking our own assembling together”. He is obviously saying don’t do this. But some people are too busy for God, they have more important things. If you skip church, then you skip the Lord’s Supper, as the Hebrew writer goes on to say, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” (v.29). The “blood of the covenant” (v.29) is the language for the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s supper is designed to be eaten in church by the church, “So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” (1Cor. 11:33). Why wait? Because the Lord wants us to have the Lord’s supper together as Paul states at the beginning of this section, “For, in the first place, when you come together as a church “ (1 Corinthians 11:18).
Do we give God a busy signal? He calls, but we put God on hold. We are just too busy. But soon the reverse. “And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would not listen,” says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:13). “AND IF HE SHRINKS BACK, MY SOUL HAS NO PLEASURE IN HIM. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.” (Heb. 10:39). DP