Church attendance

Church Attendance and the Sufficiency of Christ

All right, we are live. Welcome to Open Air Theology. My name is Jeff. I'm the pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church here in Tallahoma, Tennessee, and I also have a YouTube channel where this will be airing on.

It's called My Two Cents with Jeff Rice. I'm also a co-owner of Post Tenderbreast Luxe Bible Rebinding and co-owner of Post Tenderbreast Luxe Beard Care. So if you need your Bible rebound or if you need some medicine for your beard, please contact your boy.

And I'm gonna pass it over to my good friend Greg to.

Introduce himself. Yeah, so my name is Greg Mooring, Jr. as you can see there on the screen. I am actually the former pastor of Hagerman Valley Baptist Church where Brayden is currently the pastor. I was right there before him.

He is a dear brother of mine and I counted an honor and a joy to to fill in for him, you know. Maybe I'll get to come in where I'm not having to fill in for him. But yeah, I live currently, my wife and five kids and I, we live in Central Florida in technically, it's a unincorporated community called Donavista.

For those that are in Southern Idaho, it's kind of like a step up from Hollister. So for Ray and Teresa, well, I know you're supposed to be watching. But I work from home for the company that I've been working with close to four years now that I was working at when I was pastoring Valley Baptist.

I'm actually a native of Florida. I'm not one of those who just show up here because their states were locked down for two years. Now, are you.

One of those guys that we would read about on Facebook or in the newspaper about the Florida man? No, and actually there's something funny about Florida.

Man. The only reason that that happens is because Florida's got such an open record book for that stuff that they've got to fill the time somehow. So people are like, Florida man, look it up. So that's why you hear about Florida man is because we do it to ourselves.

But yeah, I haven't hit that level yet.

Okay, well, I like the yet part. So I had posted on Facebook that I was looking for someone, you know, that was willing to come on here and have a conversation with me. And Greg hit me up privately and wanted to come on and we had, you know, communicated on Facebook Messenger here and there and stuff like that and talked about doing some stuff with eschatology.

Him and I would differ a little bit when it comes to eschatology. And so it was going to have kind of like a roundtable with me, him and Braden and just have a, you know, cordial conversation. And so he contacted me and I was like, yeah, man, this sounds great.

I'd love to have you on. And I brought up the topic about church attendance and he was game and I was game. So I really think it's a good topic being that I've been, excuse me, preaching through Hebrews and I just got done preaching the text about in Hebrews.

Let me turn to it real quick. I'll just touch on it before we get started. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24 where it says, not neglecting to meet together as some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day draw near.

Now we don't have to touch on that text at the moment, but I brought this to his attention because this is something that's, you know, it's been on my heart recently. I'm going through Hebrews. I'm seeing the writer of Hebrews, you know, call out to these people to continue to trust Christ.

Do not forsake him. Do not go back to the temple. He is sufficient. His sacrifice is the only sacrifice that we need. And yet people did not trust in the sufficiency of Christ and they found themselves running back to the temple.

And it just really made me start thinking about, you know, church today in our context, right? And so I wanted to have this conversation. And he was game, so here we are.

Yeah, yeah. It's especially in our, I would say, in our current time. We're still certainly feeling the effects. Why, I don't know, especially when it.

Comes to church attendance with Covidia. Yeah, so first question, and I'll just ask, and we can rip off each other on it, but how important is it that we gather together? Christians, you know, how important is it for those that profess faith in Jesus Christ, how important is it for us to gather.

Together? I would say it's important, it's so important that you defy your governor during lock, when they command you to lock your church down, that you defy them, and maybe even openly. Because the King of Kings himself has said, as you just read, you know, Hebrews 10 25, it's actually, I've got a little thing just for some texts to handle, but we see, you know, Hebrews 10 25, it says, or in 24 again, it says, 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.

It's what it says. So if he says it... Now there's no way I can make this mean something else. No, I mean, you could, you know, if you're looking out, you know, if you're just playing with the text, but if, you know, you're just reading it, you know, it's the hermeneutical gymnastics that you've got to go through to do this, and hi Eric, but to, you know, to do anything other than what it says, to really try to make it to be anything else than what it says, is, it's a twisting of scripture.

Satan is your homeboy, and I just, it's too important. It is, you know, in the common parlance of 2020, it is essential. It is an essential service for.

The Christian. So I take it that you didn't shut down during COVID? No. Now.

That's not to say that it was easy, and it was tough, you know, and internally, you know, but it's, you know, because especially at that point, you have to reassess what Romans 13 even means, because, you know, by and large, we've not had to, in this country, really consider the, what it means to obey God and defy a tyrant, because it's not, we just haven't had that issue, but I've already, so I already, like, I watched way too much, I mean, way too many politics already.

I'm like, way up in it, have been since middle school. And I've kind of have a distrust for information that I'm given. And something back in 2020 just did not sound right, didn't smell right. And my suspicions in many ways have proven true.

I think I probably made plenty of comments, off-the-cuff comments during that time while preaching. In fact, prior to us not shutting down, I actually had preached out of Habakkuk 2 .20, which says, you know, the earth is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him.

Not really knowing, you know, not knowing really what is, what was going to happen. That if maybe my suspicions weren't true, maybe this really was going to be something on the level of the Spanish flu pandemic.

Maybe it was actually going to be something that was going to be like, tuberculosis is every single year, that we don't ever talk about because it happens in Africa and not in America. But that, you know, nonetheless, when you consider the wickedness of our land, and the wickedness of our world, and especially in our land to the tune of 60 million unborn babies, that, you know, 60 million pre-born image bearers who have been violently slaughtered in the womb, and yet we want to sing, God bless America.

I don't think God's going to really do that. And then of course, now we're in, you know, that month, that where we, you know, co-opt the sign of the Noahic Covenant, and celebrate, you know, a sinful lifestyle that got an entire city incinerated, that we, I didn't know what was going to happen.

I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But what I did know, and this was the thing that this was the struggle that I went through, and I wasn't the only, I wasn't the only pastor, we weren't the only church, but we were one of the few that did this in southern Idaho, and likely throughout the country, that I look back to men like Martin Luther, and then also look over the course of 2 ,000 years of church history, and say, this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

And what has the church done? It's met for worship. And I look actually at, you know, King David's example, when he took the census, and where he was, you know, willing to, where he was said, when God gave him the option, well, we could either have you, you can have a plague, you can run for your life again, or we can have an invasion.

Go with it, David. And his response was, I would rather fall into the hands of the Lord than the hands of men. And so for me, it's like, you know, we're going, we're going to look, we're going to reassess and actually look back to God's law.

God's law gives us explanation of, you know, if somebody's ill, you know, the leper was to be the one going unclean, unclean, unclean. Everybody wasn't presumed to be a leper. And so if you have an issue, stay home.

It's one, the Bible says, let's do that. And so, you know, for me, my own eternal struggle was you're dealing with this, but then really come down to two things. The fourth commandment in Hebrews 10, 25, don't forsake the gathering of yourselves together.

At that point, God has spoken. Who was Brad Little, the governor of Idaho? Who was he when his king has said otherwise? And, you know, and we were for, I don't know how many weeks it was, you know, for many weeks there in Hagerman, we were the only church open.

Continued, I was in the midst of preaching through the book of John that actually prayed and finished for me. You know, I preached, I think through half the book and then Braden finished the other half of the book.

So unbeknownst to us, we, you know, we tag teamed the book, but continued preaching expositionally through the book of John until, you know, it just, you know, that's just kind of how it was. Now, that doesn't mean that we care, that everything stayed as normal because it wasn't a normal time.

And I don't think it would be the, you know, the appropriate biblical Christian thing to consider, especially after having preached to back at 220, that I don't know what God is doing. You know, I have no idea.

You know, I didn't, I didn't have John Hagee on a moon telling me what was going on. But, you know, I didn't know. That was a dig, by the way. But, you know, I didn't, I didn't know what was going on.

So, you know, we did as a church, we did cut back on some things, but those things were just like, this is the essential stuff of like, if there's only things that are going to be met, we're going to meet for the Lord's day and we're going to meet for prayer.

And especially with Southern Idaho being Mormon, you know, overwhelmingly Mormon. And the Mormons, because apparently their God is so weak that he is so ignorant that he couldn't tell their prophet anything.

Maybe, maybe, you know, the heavenly father of Mormonism was like Baal and was caught on the toilet during COVID. I don't know. But my thought too, is we're in the midst of something as historic as this, whatever it is, whatever God has ordained to come to pass with this instant, you know, with this, why aren't we as believers meeting together?

There could, you know, there could very well be, you know, I don't know, there very well could be Mormons who are now, they don't have anywhere to go. They meet on the Lord's day. They don't meet for the Lord, but they do meet on the Lord's day that maybe, just maybe, they might wander in.

You know, you've got people who at a time are afraid of death, so much so that they drive around with a thing on their face, that why wouldn't we be open? We have the only message, especially in that town, you know, where, you know, the Christian witness isn't really huge.

I mean, there were some other, you know, there's two other churches that I would certainly call them Christian. I would say that we would definitely differ on some stuff, but would consider them brothers, but overwhelmingly it's Mormon, you know, either, you know, the number one Mormon or the other sect of Mormonism, the number two thing.

So what about right now?

What about right now, you know, where I wouldn't, you know, for the most part, you know, America is open, you know, churches are open, but the attendance is down. What do you think God's message for us is?

Like, I just feel like he's kind of, you know, shifting the sand, if you will. Yeah, he's separating sheep from goats, and not the final separation, but, you know, like it seems very obvious, you know.

If you profess to be a Christian, and it's safe, and you're still, and you know it's safe, I mean, you're hanging out at the mall, you're going to the movies, you're going to a concert, and you refuse to gather together on the Lord's Day, it's safe.

I think it's safe to say that you're not serious about your relationship with Christ, because you're not serious with your relationship with the body, the bride of Christ. Right. I.

Mean, it's just... Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I say this gets back to what Augustine and Calvin both said, and I agree with this. When I went to school at the Ludi Bible Institute, and I did their online program, and I figured which class it was, but there was a class where we actually got to read Calvin in class, and I was like, fantastic, I already have the book on my shelf, and I got to actually look at the quote out of the chapter, and I was like, okay, let me actually look at the whole thing, because I have access to the whole thing, and it was, you know, quoting a thing from Augustine, where it says that if the church is not your mother, God is not your father, and there were people like, oh, I'm like, hold on, let's consider who Calvin is.

First off, he's a reformer. He's not talking about Roman Catholicism. Augustine wasn't talking about Roman Catholicism, because Roman Catholicism didn't exist when Augustine was around, but they're right.

They're absolutely right, that if you profess to say that God is your father, and yet the very bride of Christ, that you're not getting sustenance from her? That you are not submissive to her? Is he really your father?

Or are you a bastard? Because it would seem to be that, and you can't, it's like this. If my kids go out of their way to disrespect their mother, my relationship between me and my children does not overcome the relationship I have with my wife.

Their mother is my wife first, and likewise, that if, you know, so if they're disrespecting my wife, their mother, there's things that are going to happen. And likewise, if you're saying, well, God is my father, you know, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, and yet you do not submit to the church?

Now, let's be clear about this. We're not talking of, you know, I'm a Baptist, so I'm not talking about a hierarchical structure. What I'm talking about is the local body of Christ that finds its representation in the eldership, you know, in its presbytery on the local side, and, you know, the actual elders of the church, and, you know, the deaconate, and the laity.

That's the church, and that is how our Lord Jesus has structured it as a, you know, I've been, you know, as an individual embassy of the kingdom in a locale. If you cannot submit to that family, that structure, and you can get away with it to where God is not reprimanding you at all and directing you back into the church, I mean, Hebrews is pretty clear about that.

Don't despise the discipline of the Lord because the Lord chastises whom he loves. If he doesn't chastise you, you ain't his kid.

Right, so as y 'all know that I do street ministry, so I set up probably a block away from our church. There's a little four-way, and there's a nice empty parking lot where I'm able to set up, and I'll set up probably three, four, or five signs, you know, that represent our church, Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, and the last time I was out there, a gentleman parked across the street, and he starts walking over towards me, and you can tell this guy was rough.

I didn't know if he was going to shake my hand or punch me. It was just kind of like, it was a 50 -50, right? Those were the best times. Yeah, yeah, and he's walking like he's, you know, like he's a little upset, and listen, dude's short stocky, and he jacked up, and the first thing he said to me is, why are you Baptists?

Why are you letting man depict what you are? And I started to answer, and then I kind of, you know, his attitude was, you know, like just being around him, like you can just tell he was angry, and I said, before I answer that question, let me ask you something.

Do you have a problem with me? I said, because you're walking over here like you have a problem with me. He said, oh no, no, no, no. You know, like, you know, he kind of toned it down just a little bit.

I said, I'll happily tell you why I'm a Baptist, but first you need to calm down. Calm down, brother. You know, I can't be explaining things if I'm going to worry about you punching me in the face, and so I just basically walked through, you know, the Protestant Reformation.

I explained to him why I was a Baptist. I explained to him that when you see the word Baptist on a church, that that means that they, that that local body of congregation believes that in order to be baptized, you need to be a believer.

I said, so that's what Baptist means, you know, but he calmed down, and then he told me, he said, yeah, I'm a Christian. I just don't go to church, and I relate it to what, like right at that moment, I hear Paul Washer in my head, and that quote from him.

I said, sir, you know what you just told me? He said, what? I said, hold on. Before I say that, let me just say it like this. What if I said, are you married? He said, yes. I said, what if I told you, man, I really like you, but your wife, I can't stand that woman, and he looked at me.

I said, that's what you're doing, and the whole time, I hear quote by Paul Washer, and he was like, I guess you're right, like his whole, like everything about him changed, like he's never had, I guess, a Christian man to stand up to him in the first place and put him in his place and then use logic to show him, but it was just really funny, and so I really called his Christianity into question, which brings me to my next question, and so like I hate to put it out here like this.

I don't want to put you on Front Street, and you get hate mail or something. Bro, okay, first off, I've been.

Kissed on the ear by a drunk on it, so everything else after that is totally normal. It's totally.

Normal. Yeah, you know, we're doing evangelism getting kissed by a drunk. Yeah, yeah, I've been there. Sloppy wet beer kiss. Yeah, like can a person be a Christian without being a part of the body of Christ?

Kind of this whole, you know, the old gospel country song, me and Jesus got our own thing going. Me and Jesus got it all worked out, and we don't need anybody to tell us what it's all about, so apart from...

I get it. We're not saved by the church, but can an individual be a Christian and not be a part of the local church? Now, I would say yes if there's no local church around. Yeah, and that would be... I know it's a tough question.

This is where we got to,.

You know, parse things. You know, it depends on how we're trying to... what we're trying to answer, okay? Yeah. So in the ultimate sense, no, absolutely not, because as Braden puts down there, that it is to be a Christian is to be a part of the body of Christ, you know, and this is, you know, we're, you know, the Protestant distinction between the visible and invisible church.

So ultimately, no, it is absolutely impossible to be a Christian and not be a part of the church. Now, on the local level, when we start getting into the... when we start getting into that matter of the local body, of the local visible representation, the redeemed remnant in a locale, you have, especially in this country, I say in this country we have absolutely no excuse, none whatsoever.

Correct. You know, you may have the brother or the sister who's in the middle of, you know, only the Lord knows where, and there's not a church within 300 miles. However, this is where I'll say this. I've been to Haiti before, and I have known Haitians Haitians on foot, walk one way, you know, the old adage of, you know, I walked up, you know, 20 miles one way, you know, uphill in the snow, both ways, barefoot, you know, with gangrene, you know, it happened every time, you know, that the... I've known of Haitian believers to walk, to go where they needed to go to get to church.

So if you have, I'll say this, if you have a prolonged behavior where you are persistently not engaged in the church, and you can do that without God getting on your case, I will, again, this is where I will come down and say I'm not the Holy Spirit, but if I've got to make an assessment right now at this moment, I would rather say you're not a Christian, and you best check it.

You had better get to your Bible, and you had better get to prayer, and find out whether or not you actually are in the faith.

But what if I'm watching on YouTube? I want to coach you.

Now, let's be clear that we're not talking about the person who is homebound. Let's be clear about this. We're not talking about the homebound believer who...

We're talking about those who are able, but unwilling. Who don't want to put on pants. That's what it comes down to. They're able to go. They're unwilling.

Yes, that for them, not wearing breeches is more important than Jesus. Again, the homebound person that's always been within the context of the church throughout history. The diaconate in the past, I think it was in, I don't know if it was Justin Martyr who wrote about it, that they would talk about how deacons would go, and they would take the Lord's supper to the invalids, the ones who could not attend church.

It's like this. When Paul tells them, he writes in 2 Thessalonians, I think, where it says, if a man's unwilling to work, he shouldn't eat. Correct. If a man is unwilling to go to church, whatever he shouldn't eat means in that context, that's how I would apply it.

Because if you can't get up, or if there's a difference between can and will, if it's a lack of ability, we do what we can as the church to accommodate those people. Correct. And I think that in this day and age, when you have the invalid, you have the person who's homebound, we make every effort to, especially, we can use technology, whether that's through CDs, if you still happen to make cassette tapes, that, or through a live stream, something like that, which I would actually, I'm of the persuasion that a live stream almost should be password protected.

When I was at Moody, we had to deal with this question. This is, I graduated in 2017, that the question of online service, is it church? I'm like, no, it's not. And this is way before COVID hits. I'm like, no, it is not.

It is not a replacement for being in with the body, if you can be. If you can be, and you are not. If that is how you're going to persist, I actually would say that it's incumbent upon the church to begin looking, and again, by the church, I'm meaning everyone, from the lady up, or to confront the person who is unwilling to go to church, and to confront them in their sin, going that actually what you're doing here.

Is sinful, because the Lord has commanded we are supposed to be here. Yeah, Acts 242 kind of lays it down real quick of what those who received the Holy Spirit, received the word, and were baptized did.

They devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, fellowship, breaking of bread,.

And prayers. Go ahead. Okay, so I hope you laughed in scorn when you had Fauci talking about having Thanksgiving via FaceTime. What is that? That is not Thanksgiving. That's stupid. That's stupid. But yet, churches are willing.

There have been like, let's have a virtual Lord's Supper, and especially if we actually look at, you know, you talk about Acts 242, and we look at the pattern of the New Testament church, and we look at the early church prior, you know, to somewhere in the 300s, you know, when we weren't afraid of having our heads cut off or being thrown to lions anymore, the Lord's Supper was a potluck.

People were getting together. They were, you know, to meet for church was meeting in somebody's home. Well, you need to.

Come to our church and check it out. We have a real meal after every service. We have the Lord's Supper, and then we have a real meal around the table, and it's not potluck. It's organized, an organized meal every Lord's Day where we fellowship and break bread.

Right, you know,.

If we look to 1 Corinthians 11 and his prohibition about getting drunk at the Lord's Supper, you can't do that with a thimble of welchers. So, you know, and you can't be a glutton when all you got is a piece of a saltine.

Right. But that being said, if that is how the Lord's Supper was to be taking place, and that is what was happening on the Lord's Day with the Lord's people, and that they were together as a family, like going over to grandma's, YouTube doesn't give you that, and it actually completely ignores the purpose of what the Lord gave us.

You know, I know Braden had just finished reading The Mystery of Christ, you know,.

Covenant of His Kingdom, which is such a good book. I mean, I recommended it to him. I did too.

I've been telling him, like, dude, I'm going to tell you, you might get Pentecostal in some chapters because there was times I was crying. There was times I wanted to get up and run around.

Because it was like, this was so good. I have a Pentecostal background, so it's very easy for me.

Yeah, so the chapter, when it got to the New Covenant, and he was talking about the Lord's Supper, and he had said in there that the Lord's Supper, the frequency with which you take the Lord's Supper is the frequency with which you are saying, Jesus, come back.

It's the frequency with which you, because Jesus himself said, you know, when administering the Last Supper and bringing about that ordinance, that he said, I'm not going to drink of this cup. I'm not going to eat of this bread until I eat again with you in the kingdom.

Well, if that's the case, and we're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes, one, what you're doing there with your church, that it's really saying, Lord, this buffet we got going on right now, we wish you were here right now.

Right now. Because it was like, right now, let's do this, Lord, and with the frequency with which we take part in that is to say, Lord, we want you here with us. We want you. You don't get that with YouTube.

You don't. I listen to RefNet all day long. So I'm guessing you have an opinion about that.

Oh, I'm opinionated. I'm incredibly opinionated. And, you know, and especially with, if the Lord's word is spoken on a matter, I try, I'm still incredibly opinionated with the things when the Lord hasn't spoke on it.

But, you know, that one, you know, I'm not going to fight so much over. But when the Lord has spoken, that's worth going to, you know, going to the mat for. Absolutely. Because He's spoken on this. And why?

It just doesn't make sense to me. This month, in just a couple days, so like eight days from now, will be the 20th anniversary of when the Lord saved me. In 20 years, I could probably count on maybe one or two hands, the number of times I've missed church.

And, you know, and it's not, and it's always, it's always because of there was some providential reason I'm not there. Not because I didn't want to put on my pants. And I'd rather see it on YouTube.

You know, like what if the pastor doesn't feel like putting on his pants, and then the congregation gathers? I mean, are they going to miss something?

Well, if he's not putting on his pants.

Hopefully he's not putting on his pants, he's not getting mad a little bit, right? Right, right. But I'm just thinking about that, you know, like, you know, like, I mean, if we just go when we feel like it, I mean, you know, like, like pastor, you know, preparing messages, you know, like, like with my routine, so I work a full time job.

Sorry. You know, from from eight o 'clock till midnight, I usually stay up and, and do my personal study and prepare my message. Right? And I'm doing this on up until, you know, Sunday morning, you know, because we don't have a church building, we have to, we have to rent.

And so I'm there by myself, I'm setting up. You have to get there early enough to where an hour before service, I have time to go back over my notes. Right? Listen, if I don't show up, like, you know, and listen, there's been many days where I didn't sleep that night, or I just I didn't, you know, I do not in the pulpit, I can feel like I do not want to be here.

I feel like crap, right? Right. I mean, you know, but what if I just decided, okay, I'm not gonna put on my pants today. I'm gonna stay at home. Right. You know, I'll just do it. It affects everyone. Yeah.

But I'd say to anyone. And again, I'm not trying to, you know, to, to, you know, bully the people that go to my church, you know, that miss him. I'm just saying, right, anyone that that's not what we're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. But, but even that it affects the service. Right, right. When, you know, when you look over and you see so and so's not here, it affects you. Right? Because we're family. And so I'm not too sure where I was going with it.

But I was just wanting to, you know, like, like, if you just had like, what I just read, you know, from x 242. And I know not every church has the Lord's Supper every week. And I pick on them for not because I just, you know, when I when I look at this, and they devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles, to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.

So, so what if next, this coming Lord's Day, I say, you know what, we're not going to have any fellowship. We're going to gather together, but we can't fellowship, right? Or we're going to gather together, and we're going to fellowship, we're going to have teaching and the Lord's Supper, but we're not going to pray.

Right? Or we're going to gather together, we're going to have prayer, fellowship, and the Lord's Supper, but there's not going to be any teaching. Right? Right. You know, like, what, what part of what.

The Lord has established for, you know, for, you know, you know, what I find amazing is that, you know, we live in a society where we want to have all the smells, bells, lasers, and fog machines, and like, that is what does it for us, because we're closet, either Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholics, or we're really wanting to go back to the old covenant system, where we get to, we need to slaughter a sheep and have blood on the walls.

But the fact is that the Lord, what He gave us for new covenant worship is so simple. It's so basic. It's actually, it's as if the Lord intended it to be easily replicated throughout the world, throughout history, and that you didn't have to have a huge building, but you could just get together, and duly constituted and all that stuff, you know, having the proper order and structure, but it's so simple.

But it is so simple, and yet we can't get off our keister to be there, to make, I know the 1689 talks about this, about making due preparation for the Lord's day. We currently go to a church that's 45 minutes away, because it's a Reformed Baptist church.

It's an actual Reformed Baptist church in Central Florida. It's a unicorn. We were attending a Southern Baptist church that just, you know, frankly, I'm too Reformed, and especially when it comes to my position on youth groups and things like that, it's very votey on that, that finding somebody, finding a church that by and large held that, it's like, how can I not go?

You know, especially as, you know, in this limbo that I'm in, where I'm not regularly preaching, I'm not pastoring a church currently, why wouldn't I go to a place where it's like, you know, people are like, it's 45 minutes away.

45 minutes. You know, I'll say this. I know, you know, there's a family back at Eastside Baptist Church, which was the church that called me out. It was a church that ordained Brayden, you know, that called me out to do church planning in Twin Falls, Idaho.

There's a couple that lives, like, way out in the boondocks. If they can make it to church, and it's out in the boondocks, I in Central Florida can drive 45 minutes to a church that faithfully exposits the scriptures, that faithfully observes the Lord's Supper, that, you know, is that you can hear the congregation sing, and they're singing, and that, you know, that all of those things, it's so important.

Why would we avoid it? I don't get it. It's one thing, again, if there's providential reasons, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about, especially in 2022, is going back to Hebrews 10, is the forsaking of our own assembling together.

That's what you're doing. If you are the person who is not getting to church, not because of, you know, that you're unable due to providential reasons. I'm not trying to bind your conscience because you've got, you know, you've got the flu.

Homie, stay home. Do what God said. You know, you're the leper at this moment, unclean, unclean, but if there is no providential reason for you not to be at church, you are expressly, I mean, we don't even have to argue from the fourth commandment because, you know, there'll be those who are like, the fourth commandment isn't valid in this day, but Hebrews 10 25 is incredibly valid.