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Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:24-25
Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider one another so as to incite one another to love and good works, not abandoning our own assembling together, as the custom with some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more as you see the day drawing near.” The more we study these two verses, the more we can realize that they refer to the group meetings. The meetings spoken of here are meetings in mutuality. Verse 24 speaks of inciting one another to love and good works, and verse 25 mentions “exhorting one another.” Verse 25 tells us to not abandon the meetings—not the meetings in a general sense but in the sense of “our own assembling together.” This indicates that as Christians we should have “our own” meeting. Before the Hebrew readers of this Epistle were saved, they had the Jewish way of meeting. Now, as Christians, they needed to have a Christian meeting, which they should have considered as “their” meeting. As Christians, we should take care of the Christian meeting, which these verses call “our own assembling together.”
In the church we have different kinds of meetings. We have a meeting on the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day meeting is not the same as the Sunday morning service in Christianity, but we do take advantage of the fact that the Lord’s Day is a holiday in most nations. However, Sunday is not the Christian word for this day. Sunday is a term of idolatry, referring to the worship of the sun. To us, this day is the Lord’s Day, and on this day we have a meeting. On Tuesday we may have a prayer meeting, and on Wednesday we may have a mid-week meeting. Besides these, we have the group meetings. Among these four kinds of meetings, we should consider that the group meeting is our own meeting. The number who attend the group meetings should be higher than the number who attend the other kinds of meetings. Most brothers and sisters attend the Lord’s Day morning meetings because the majority of them came from a traditional background. According to this background, “Sunday” is the time for Christians to worship God. If one does not come to the Sunday morning meeting, he is not regarded as a faithful Christian. However, the group meetings should be eighty percent of our church life. If in a local church the attendance in the Lord’s Day morning meeting is higher than that in the group meetings, the saints in that church are still religious and in their traditional way. When in a local church the attendance in the group meetings is higher than that in the church meetings on the Lord’s Day, that church is in the proper way. Whether a local church is in the proper way or not depends in part on the attendance in the group meetings.
The Gospels and Acts speak of different kinds of meetings. Matthew 18:20 says, “Where there are two or three gathered into My name, there am I in their midst.” According to verse 19, this is not a meeting in mutuality but a meeting for prayer with a particular burden. In Acts 12 there was such a meeting in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark (v. 12). A number were assembled together to pray for Peter’s release from prison. This was not a group meeting in mutuality for inciting and exhorting.
Before the day of Pentecost there were only one hundred twenty Christians meeting together. They had been with the Lord for as long as three and a half years. Probably most of them had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had traveled with the Lord and seen His human living. Some of them had seen how He was arrested and judged, and a number of them had seen how He was nailed on the cross and how He hung there for six hours. They saw how the Lord was buried, and eventually they saw how He was resurrected. They were with the Lord for forty days, from the day of the Lord’s resurrection to the day of His ascension, enjoying His appearing and His hidden presence. Finally, they saw the Lord Jesus ascend to the third heaven. The one hundred twenty had received an excellent view of the Lord. This made them bold and even beside themselves. After the Lord’s ascension they returned to Jerusalem and prayed in one accord for ten days to be clothed with power from on high. On the day of Pentecost they received the outpouring of the Spirit, and they began to preach and to propagate Christ.
Acts 2:46 says, “Day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they partook of their food with exultation and simplicity of heart.” Acts 5:42 says, “Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and announcing the gospel of Jesus as the Christ.” These verses tell us that the Christians met in their homes, and the number of home meetings was according to the number of homes. They met in this way for preaching Christ, teaching, breaking bread, prayer, and fellowship. However, there is no indication of the way that they preached and taught. In principle, it must have been in the way of mutuality.
On the day of Pentecost three thousand people were saved and baptized. It is helpful to consider how three thousand people could have been baptized on the same day. The homes of that time had a pool that was used for bathing. Acts 16:31-34 tells us how Paul and Silas preached the gospel to the Philippian jailer and his household. Verses 33 and 34 say, “He was baptized immediately, he and all his household. And he brought them up into his house and set a table before them.” The phrase he brought them up indicates that the jailer and his household were baptized probably in the bathing pool in the lower part of the house. On the day of Pentecost the three thousand were probably baptized in the homes of the believers. Moreover, the baptisms were probably not carried out by a few persons only, such as Peter and John, but by many persons. In the Gospels, when the Lord Jesus fed the five thousand, He told the disciples to make the people sit down in groups (Mark 6:39-40; Luke 9:14). The disciples must have learned this way from the Lord. On the day of Pentecost, when three thousand people were to be baptized, the disciples probably divided them into groups. In this way the one hundred twenty could baptize three thousand persons in less than a day.
From that time the believers continued to meet in their homes by groups (Acts 2:42, 46). Acts 5:42 says that in the homes “they did not cease teaching and announcing the gospel of Jesus as the Christ.” We may ask how there could have been enough teachers for all the home meetings. According to the principle in the New Testament (1 Cor. 14:26), it is doubtful that only one person in each group taught and all the others listened. The newly saved and baptized ones, being full of the Lord, must have had something with which to bubble over. They all could have said something regarding their salvation. It is doubtful that all the many new believers were dumb, waiting for Peter or John to say something. Peter and John could not have been in every group meeting. The first meetings of the church must have been “bubbling” meetings. Everyone there must have been beside himself.
Group meetings in which the saints “bubble” are the proper church meetings and the proper church life. A group meeting is a meeting full of mutuality. In such a meeting everyone speaks, and everyone “bubbles.” Such meetings are full of activity. It is doubtful that the meetings of the thousands of new believers on the day of Pentecost kept a certain sequence, with a particular brother praying, another brother calling a hymn, and a designated brother reading the Scriptures. They simply “bubbled,” sang, and testified in their group meetings.
Many times if no one instructs the saints to begin to read the Bible, to pray, or to sing, no one will do it. We should not need to be instructed as to what to do in the meetings. We are living persons. We should come singing and praising. However, in many of today’s meetings, if no one says, “Let us read the Bible,” no one opens the Bible. That kind of meeting is still very much in the traditional way of religion. Many times our reading of the Bible in the meetings is done in a set way. It is of the flesh to do something with the purpose of being different from religion, but we do not need to be the same every time. If a certain verse is wonderful to us, we can read it in a living way. If in a long list of verses we find Hebrews 10:24-25, we can say, “Hallelujah for Hebrews 10:24-25!” and read it before we read the other verses. Then when we come to the phrase incite one another to love and good works, we can say, “Oh, incite! We need to incite one another!”
Our old way of meeting can be seen in the big meetings as well as in the group meetings. In a recent conference meeting there were seventeen hundred attendants, but the meeting still kept a fixed sequence. When the saints began coming together, no one declared the banners, read the Scripture references, or called a hymn. Sometimes most of the attendants in a meeting are quiet. This quietness is like the dumbness of idols (1 Cor. 12:2). Some may say that to shout “Hallelujah!” in the meetings is not the proper worship of God. However, God would rather that we be beside ourselves in the meetings than worship in a dead way.
The quiet way of meeting is the tradition of religion. Traditional Christianity has influenced us to meet in this way. Before we were saved, we already knew how to worship God in the traditional way. Even a Muslim knows how to meet in a “Christian” way. If a Muslim becomes a Christian, he will feel that he already knows the way he should worship as a Christian. However, the many new believers on the day of Pentecost had no idea how to meet. They knew how to meet in the Jewish way, but on that day they saw something that caused them to be beside themselves. They no longer cared for the Jewish things. Therefore, they met in their meetings in a “bubbling” way. Our meetings should be full of shouting, praising, singing, and speaking in a “bubbling” way. This is the way for Christians to meet. When we bring new believers to this kind of meeting, they will receive a proper impression of the way to meet, and they will never forget that impression.
Young children do not need to be introduced and formally organized in order to play together. If they are simply put together for a few minutes, they will mingle together and become a lively group. Living children play well together. Even if you charge them not to play too actively, they will still do it because they are so living. When we go to the group meetings, we also should be living. We should not go in oldness. If we are dead and stale, we lose our capacity to have a proper group meeting. We were regenerated years ago, but now we need to be transformed and renewed. We need to get out of the old habit, thought, concept, and logic. We need to get out of the old Christianity. The only way to do this is to pray. We should not pray superficially but from our spirit. When we pray, we should also make a thorough confession of all our failures, defects, shortcomings, wrongdoings, mistakes, and transgressions. We should confess our criticizing of others, our backbiting, our gossiping, and our vain, idle words. Our confessing should not be once for all. We need to confess every day, several times a day. In this way we will pray ourselves into our spirit. We will be happy, rejoicing, and joyful the whole day. We will be persons filled with the Spirit and possessed by the Spirit. We will become different persons. We should not speak negatively but always speak positively. We should no longer gossip, criticize, or speak idly. We should simply speak Christ, speak grace, speak mercy, speak God, and speak the holy Word. This will change the very essence of our being. We need such a change. I hope we would all live in this way.
Living in this way will cause us to be Christians who meet all the time. Even when we are not in a meeting, we will be joyful and rejoicing persons. Then when we come together with others, we will still be this way. We will be very willing to open ourselves and fellowship. We will be able to present to the saints what we have, what we are, and what we know. When we come together with others, we will take the lead to be such a person. Then the others, especially the new ones, will follow us.
We should come together with six to eight brothers or sisters to practice this kind of group meeting. If we are not able to have this kind of meeting with one another, then we will not be able to do it with the new ones. Instead of taking the lead to be living, we may take the lead to be dumb. After five minutes of dumbness we may say, “Let us open up to fellowship,” but no one would fellowship. This kind of meeting is dumb, calm, and cold. There is no warmth, no spirit, and no life. In such a meeting the Spirit is quenched. First Thessalonians 5:19 says, “Do not quench the Spirit.” We quench the Holy Spirit by quenching our human spirit. Sometimes when everyone is singing “Hallelujah!” in the meeting, we do not join in, or we sing in a cold way. This quenches our spirit. We need to join in and open up. Then our spirit will be stirred up. When our human spirit is stirred up, the Holy Spirit within us rises up, and we receive the benefit. We must learn to not quench our spirit.
Our spirit is our most tender part and our most excitable part. No other part of our being can be excited in a proper way as our spirit. Every spiritual person must be able to be beside himself in his spirit. If we are too composed, we cannot be spiritual. The apostle Paul knew how to weep (Rom. 12:15; Phil. 3:18) and, at the proper time, how to be joyful (4:4). A person who is too sober-minded never laughs and never weeps. It is difficult for the brothers to be spiritual, because they control themselves too much. The sisters, however, do not control themselves as much. In this sense it is easier for them to be spiritual. In the four Gospels women such as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna (Luke 8:2-3) were all spiritual. Judas, on the other hand, had a very clear, sober mind, a mind that considered how much money he could gain by betraying the Lord. We must learn to not quench our spirit, and we must learn to release our spirit. We should all learn to be “females.” Then we will have the capacity to have proper group meetings.
