A passage like this is a emphasis on gathering, and whether you take it from the first half of this chapter that is discussed and harassed over almost every conference I've been to in the last five or six years, whether you take it from the first half of the chapter, or chapter 10, or chapter 3, wherever you take it from, you get the concept that the practical authority of Scripture requires us to be a gathering people. of that out of the apostolic example found in Acts 2.46. Or in Acts 2.46, we're told how the early church continued in the Apostles' fellowship and in prayer and in breaking of bread. In my own mind, I don't doubt what they met daily. In my own mind, I don't doubt what they met every time they got opportunity to. And throughout the history of the church until the time of Constantine, that's often the case. Certainly by the first century AD, they were remembering the Lord on a weekly basis, rather than on a daily basis in many places, not everywhere, incidentally, but in many places the weekly custom had come to be that which was accepted after the pattern that we later read in the book of Acts. But they used every opportunity to gather as a people, for they had a life in common and a duty in common and a responsibility in common. And consequently, when the apostle writes the Hebrew epistles, many, many years later, I think, he says to them, he says in Hebrews 10, 25, that it's part of our duty. Now I use the word duty there in as hard a way as I can, part of our spiritual duty not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. And the emphasis that he makes there with a kind of a negative expression is that since it's your duty not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together, it is your duty to assemble yourselves together. And the thrust that I'm making is that for the local company, for the local company, the practical authority of Scripture requires the gathering. Now when you say how many times does it require it, that day becomes an issue that fellows like me can't dissolve. We can't decided, I don't think. What we can say is that an attitude of gathering always results in more meetings, not less meetings, if always results that way. When I was in the service of Fort Hood years ago, when my military company was saving us from a mythological threat coming out of Mexico or someplace like that, a group of us went to the post chapel on Saturday nights to pray for a gospel work among service men. Now, sometimes there would be 50 and sometimes it would be 55 with one of the chapels in Fort Hood to pray for that sort of thing. There were about 250,000 men there at the time, so 50 or 55 was not many. But the funny thing was, was that you began looking forward all week to the time when you met with those fellows to pray for these particular activities. And then men would decide that to wait all week to pray as a group, so you can pray day by day by yourself, but to wait all group as a day to pray, well, it's kind of a childish thing to do, to wait for a whole week for the group to get together. I worked on the Empire Radio Network, a big important position in high security, sitting there night after night playing battleship games and stuff like that while knocking off the code with both hands. Two or three of these fellows used to come by the shack, sometimes three or four, sometimes just one, sometimes nobody. But many nights, three or four would come by, and we were sitting there talking one night, and a fellow said, why should we have to wait for Saturday night to pray for people to be saved? He said, why couldn't we do it now? And if the key wasn't hot, we would do it then. found excuses for being with one another to pray for common cause. So if one sees that the practical authority of Scripture calls for a gathering, that it requires believers to be together for spiritual purpose, if he sees it, then the gatherings increase, they do not decrease. He knows that it's God's will for him to be assembled together, and he doesn't look up and say, well, how few times can we do it and please God? He looks up and says, if God is glorified in this, then there ought to be many assemblings and many buildings of ourselves. Now, the particular outworkings and details of that are to be dissolved or to be resolved, rather, in every local company and every group. But you have to say to yourself, basically this, is mine a mentality of gathering or is it a mentality of avoiding? And you look back at your own meeting. I'm a long way from home now so I can talk up. See, when you're home, you have to be, you know, all the victorious life preachers come from England to America. I mean, they don't preach it in England so much, they come here, but some do in England, too. Some do in England, too. Forgive me, but see, frankly, frankly, I don't know what meetings your particular fellowship has, but I can look you right in the eye and say, are you there when they have them? Now, if you're laid up in the hospital with your spleen and the calf, there's not much that can be done about them. And if you have seven orphans that you have to put to bed every night at six o'clock, there's not much to be done about that either. And if you're shift worker in the factory and they say you have to do it there isn't what can be done there but the legitimate reasons for not gathering cover just a tiny handful of people and the illegitimate reason of defying the authority of the word covers a great great many people the word says don't forsake it and my mind says but tonight is the night of the all-star game on the booth you're on you know on the screen now you may not be bothered with that sort of thing But see, I'm a great athlete. We great athletes are bothered by all kinds of thoughts. You know, tonight is the night of the volleyball contest, the international volleyball players, and so forth and so forth. You will quickly discover that for many of us, our lack of being faithful in the fellowship of the local company is simply a matter of defiance of the practical authority of Scripture. The Apostle says you ought to be gathered together. The Lord says this is the way you do my will. it was an absolute rigid law that you couldn't get away from. And now somehow we've kind of moved from that, you see, and we would like to do something else. And so somebody says, well, I don't think you need to, in Sunday night meetings, I stay home and I study my Bible. And in my mind, I'm always caught with a great conflict when I stay home and study my Bible with any degree of consistency. I soon want to go and share it with somebody else. I will be out to harass him after a while with my ideas or my thoughts. I don't say that nobody does that, but I do say it is rare, rare, rare. For our strength, is not an individuality in a corner, our strength is in the collective group bound together for spiritual purpose. And it's ironic that at Corinth, where so many things were wrong, it would have been easy for the apostle to say, stop, knock off all meetings for six months. In six months, I will come and we will get things straightened out, and you can have meetings with good order and all other things. As far as I can see, he never says it. He says, I don't praise you now, because when you come together in the present circumstances, it's for worse, not for better. But I don't tell you to stop. I tell you to hear the judgments of God and do his will and continue to gather. The practical authority of Scripture requires us to gather. And the individual who says how often? See, that becomes one of those questions that reveals, forgive me if it sounds harsh, but that becomes one of those questions that reveals a non-gathering mentality, or at least the tendency towards it. If the Lord had said we had that prayer meeting a Wednesday night as a matter of getting to heaven, he would have spelled it out in the book. And he kind of assumes that those who love him and know his word will want to gather for spiritual purposes. Now, when I say the scriptural authority requires it, I don't mean by requires it, did you lose your... See, we're saved by grace and we're kept by grace and we're God's children eternally by grace. I mean in terms of compliance requires it. Now, I have to understand there are always a few conscientious people who miss the point and then they feel hurt later. dies before he missed a meeting. He's got pneumonia one night. See, he's got pneumonia. He's got a fever of 107. They've got him in a straitjacket and he can't get out of the house. And then somebody talks about faithfulness the next time he's at the meeting and he feels crushed because he missed that one night. There are always a few overly conscientious. So you have to understand that the Lord has laid down laws of nature and life, and he doesn't expect us to violate them or to throw them out or overcome them. And there are circumstances that keep one from gathering. But I would like to tell you that the believer who loves to gather does not take those circumstances lightly. And I have visited the believers who love the meetings and love the company of God's people who haven't been able to be out for months. And they mention the meetings with them and their eyes fill up with tears. And they look at you and they say, oh, oh, how I wish I could be there. On the other hand, see, there are those who kind of look around and any reason at all becomes a good reason for not going for the gathering of the believers. It's like having some speaker they don't like, some loudmouthed chap who shouts a lot, having somebody they don't like, or some quiet brother that they can't hear well. You kind of think, see, that the verses in Scripture gave a lot of conditions for when you gather and when you don't gather. What they really do is give conditions of attitude on your heart and the importance of the authority of God's word. Now, check this. In any good meeting or good assembly or good church, there will be a lot of various things going on that you may not be. a part of. And so when the ladies sewing circle is meeting, that doesn't mean the elders have to go and loan to sew. We are not talking about particular interests. We are talking about the gathering of the church, the gathering of the company for spiritual exercise. And they may need more help with the Boys Brigade or the Yawana or the Junior Crime Fighters. They may need more help with one of those groups. But every brother is not obligated to the particular interest of one or two other choir, I think. We'd use more tenors. But we don't need everybody in the choir. If we get everybody in it, there's nobody to sing to. Think how that would sound, Jim. But whatever the case is, see, we're not saying that everybody's interest has to be your interest. But when it comes down to those things given in the Word of God, the people of God, for prayer and for ministry and for edification, for remembrance of the Lord, and for those wonderful things, then the practical authority of Scripture requires that we gather, not and to fulfill God's will and to give a demonstration that the word is really our authority. Now I want to make a second point here based largely against the threats that is found in verse 18 and 19 in 1 Corinthians 11. It requires that we gather, but requires that we gather in proper spirit. See, says the apostle, when you come together in a church, I hear that there be divisions among you, I partly believe it. I've always thought that that was said kind of ironically. Some people don't like you to say that, but that's a private feeling. He says, I partly believe it. Back in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he tells him he knows a great deal about it. And here he says, I believe it. I believe it, he says. And also there's got to be divisions of opinions, heresy, schisms among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest to you. There have to be means of testing so that good men can be shown up and bad men can be shown up. So says the apostle, in the light of that, when you come together in one place, it's not to eat the Lord's supper because, he says, you then sit down, everybody picks up, and this may be in a love feast type of thing, but everybody picks up and forgets what's going on. There is nothing sacred or sacramental or moralistic about it. They simply fall down and begin to glut themselves and act like they're remembering Christ in a feast of love. No, says Paul, that's not it. What he says is, is don't stop meeting, but learn to be gathered in a proper spirit. And a proper spirit, by spirit there I mean a proper frame or a proper attitude of mind, so that they come not to hash out divisions so that they come not to make great heroes of their own people and reject others, but they come in an attitude of preparation and participation and presentation, but they come in an attitude of mentality which says, it's the word of God we want to honor, the person of Christ we want to lift up, and we want to give all of ourselves to do that. Now I have tried to think about these things in the order that they appeal to me, so first see, it requires us to gather, and I always get weirded. of people to say, well, you know, when I just go, I get irritated, so I don't go. You'll never get cured that way. You get cured by going and working on the Spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. You never get cured. Maybe never is too strong a word, but it's the word that appeals to me. The individual who says, well, I don't get much out of it, I don't go. He will never get anything out of it, and he will never give anything to it. So the big requirement is to fellowship, to gather, and the second together in a right spirit you can't control a wrong spirit when you're waiting the group you know it'd be great see if you went in and the assembly's meeting for prayer and somebody said do we have any more requests and you raise your hand and you said yeah yeah you said i've got an ugly spirit about this meeting and we should pray that i'd get spiritual help with it sounds childish doesn't it well maybe it is childish but you never get help with those things if you just sit and soak in a stuffed chair at home and then somebody comes to the assembly and ministers on meeting You kind of glower at him from a distance and, you know, wish he had to go to all the meetings you have to go to and all that kind of stuff. Meetings have been my life, incidentally. I don't mean religious meetings. I'm an academician. Academician is a fancy way for saying I teach. But I will, and meetings, you have meetings every day. And you get bogged down with meetings. But these meetings that we talk about, gatherings of believers, they're a different thing. They enrich the heart and enrich the soul. When I was in college in Tennessee, the back. Baptist preacher in the Southern Baptist Church in Dayton was a fellow named Robert E. Lee. A man with a glorious name like that had a pretty good ministry. I didn't know him personally very much. I went to another church, but I saw him from time to time, and when I was selling floor brushes, he always thought a lot, so I always thought well of Robert E. Lee. But in my first year in college, he was a new pastor there in Dayton, and it was rumored that Robert E. Lee was a post-millennial. That means he thinks Christ coming after the gospel makes the world's good and that Christ would come a long time after that and of course the college that was going to was a Christian college that had 300 kids in it every teacher was a fiery pre-millennialist talking that Christ was going to come any minute and all the students were hepped up over that and the idea that there was one of these ombre's in town who thought the church was going to make the world good enough for Christ that fired the whole school and so on a Sunday night it was announced that Robert E. Lee was going to preach on the millennium and at least 200 students went down the place was swamped you know now there are churches where 200 in the corner, but this is not Chattanooga or Greensboro. This is Dayton, Tennessee, where all the people in the whole place could have gone in one mall around Raleigh and had lots of room to ramble. And so the church was crowded with him, and when Robert E. Lee walked majestically out from the room where he sat before the service and saw all the students in the place, he knew that something was up. He was smart enough to know that. I happen to be with him. I'm sitting up in the balcony with my notepad when you get notes on this You know, I learned a lesson that night, which I haven't always been able to apply, but it was presented to me very clearly. Lee looked out and he said, my, he said, it's great to see everybody here. He normally had about 70 people. That night he had 300 and some. But he said, it's great to see everybody here. But he said, I wonder why you've come. He said, is it possible that some have come out of curiosity? He said, is it possible that some have come to criticize? He says, is it possible that some have come because they have no place better to go? just let him hang. But then he said this. He said, but with a great group like this, he said, I feel a powerful compulsion to preach the gospel. So he stripped his notes off and chucked them out like that and preached on John 3.16. Nobody ever found out what his millennial views were anyway. He got about six people to respond to the invitation. And we, you know, it was one of those kind of letdown type nights. We didn't hear about his millennial views. We just saw a few people saved. That was all. It's kind of a depressing thing. But I said to myself, you know, I said to myself then and there what he had said and what others said later too. The practical authority requires us to gather but in the right spirit. To gather in a spirit of humility before the Lord, in a spirit of dependence upon him, in a spirit of honoring his name, and that is required of us, but those who will not gather will never get the spirit corrected. I just can't tell you that too strongly. I don't have a chapter and verse on it exactly, although there are lots of implications in the Proverbs on it, but those who do not gather will not ever get the Spirit worked out right, unless suddenly there's a bolt of judgment in their lives that makes them think hard about God and God's Word. So these are two things in the practical authority. One, it requires us to gather, and two, it requires us to gather in right spirit, and three, it requires us to gather in that right spirit for biblical ends. Now, in this particular chapter, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is precious and important to us in a meeting like we had this morning. I can hardly tell you, I am a sentimental fellow, incidentally. I can hardly tell you how much a meeting like we had this morning means to me. I have often been in a morning meeting when I wanted to pray or I wanted to read a hymn and my throat would choke and all I could do was kind of blubber a little bit. There you pray for self-control. But I get wrapped up in it and I can hardly tell you how much they mean to me. But that is not the only thing we gather for. We gather to remember the Lord. We gather to perform those things as he's told us to perform. We gather for ministry. We gather for edification. And we gather for prayer. I have no doubt in the early church that they did that all in one meeting. I have no doubt that many of their meetings lasted hours and hours and hours. We were kind of fascinated. My wife and I, when we visited an assembly a couple weeks ago, where I have not been for some time. They have moved and gotten a new building and whatnot. And they are innovating. They're trying different things. I don't know how hard they're trying them. what the end result will be. But they're trying something different on one or two Lord's days a month. They, of course, I mean, everything has its problems. I'm not saying this is ideal. I'll just tell you what they're doing. They're meeting the member of the Lord. Then they're having a Bible study. Then they're having kind of little classes for the kiddies while they have the formal presentation to where they run about three hours on Sunday morning. And then they've all brought their sandwiches with them. And they sit in the basement of the church. And they eat their sandwiches and drink something spiritual, like hot coffee. And the basement, see. And they have a time of singing, then they have a time of prayer, then they have a time of informal Bible study, then they have something like a Christian film or something like that, or a period for Christian witness, and about 4 o'clock they go home. They meet from, say, 9 to 3 to 4. Don't do it every Sunday, but they're doing it occasionally. Then they don't come back that night. You don't condemn them since they spent seven hours in gathering. You don't say that they've blown it by not having a gospel meeting that night. Now, what the end result of that will be, I don't know, but in the nature of that meeting with all that's done, and I think they are far closer to a biblical pattern than those of us who have got it, you know, this is prayer meeting, so you don't want to get too thankful for anything. You want to ask. And this is the worship meeting, so you want to be thankful you don't want to ask. I think that we sometimes program ourselves out of a lot of enjoyment. But that cannot be resolved right here. What can be resolved right here is that the biblical authority requires the gathering in proper spirit for biblical ends. And those biblical ends may remember the Lord, to proclaim the gospel certainly as part of the whole picture, too, to minister to one another, to testify to the world of our knowledge of Christ. Certainly all those things are proper, and the Apostle breaks out this particular matter of the Lord's Supper and lays it out in great detail so that we can see the importance and significance of that. But I have said along with that that you have to tie in 1 Corinthians 14 and Romans 14 and see that the great purpose in our coming together from a human point of view is to build one another and to edify one another. want to tell you a funny thing, just your very presence in a meeting edifies others. If all you do is sit and fall asleep, your very presence edifies others. Now, falling asleep does not edify the preacher too much. Now, I guess I will speak out of personal experience here. I would sooner see 20 rows of chairs filled with people sleeping than 20 rows of chairs with nobody in them at all. There's always a chance that somebody might wake up. or that by osmosis you might get him. There's always that tiny chance, or that some stranger might come in the back for a place and look down and see the first rose filled and not know they were asleep and come in and hear the truth. Your very presence is edifying. Your very presence is edifying. If you don't say a word, if you don't squeak, if you don't peep, if you can't sing the hymn, your very presence is edifying. And I've been struck by that again and again. At Greenwood last Friday night, they were putting together the weekly publication for the Youth Congress. They've got a tradition that they wait and do it the last night, and it takes them all night to get the thing done. And it's a tradition that I don't know how they got, and they're stuck with it, though, but they're doing it just the same. So they're working all night. They start about midnight. They're working to afford to get the publication ground out, and they're grinding it out and working on it and doing a lot of other things, too. Now, I am not on a staff, and I'm not a part of the publication thing, so technically I don't have to be with them. I could go to my room and knock it off. I could disappear. But I've always felt in a case like that, since we're workers together, I've always felt that just being around and smiling is a kind of a help. And since I've always regarded myself as kind of an organizing genius, I quickly begin rearranging how they're doing things. That may be total, I mean, I may be false there, and occasionally maybe they wish I would leave. But there's a funny thing when you're working all alone, even if you're the only fellow that can do it, There's a kind of a beautiful thing if a brother comes in and just sits there. Now, if he gets in your way, you can always tell him to sit over there. But there is a certain amount of comradeship in brethren being together. And you know, here you are at the annual assembly prayer meeting, I mean the weekly prayer meeting, the weekly prayer meeting and Bible study. I'm not saying you have to have one, but if you do, here you are at the weekly prayer meeting and Bible study. I tell you without batting an eyelash that apart from those who are occupationally engaged otherwise, And those who may be ill, and those who have tiny kitties, they have to put to bed. Apart from those, you ought to see the same people there you see at the morning meetings, too. Now, that's not a law. That's just a principle of gathering. Now, there may be reasons why people can't gather that are legitimate. I've already said that 90 times. They may happen on the Sunday morning. They may happen on Wednesday. They may happen on Friday nights, prior to tell when they'll happen. But my wife came from a little church in Western Pennsylvania where a little man had pastored for years. years he had a stormy fiery but very fruitful ministry and so early in the days of our marriage i used to sit and chat with him while he tried to persuade me of one thing or another and i would listen to him with big ears and he said to me he said one night he said i looked out his was a church where the prayer meeting attendance was bigger than the worship attendance oftentimes he said one night on wednesday night i looked out and i saw that some of the deacons were not there and i saw that some other people were not there and so he said i looked at a deacon and i said brother I said, you take charge of the service. Then he said, I walked out and got in my car and drove to see those people to see what was more important to them than being gathered with the Lord and the Lord's people. And he said, Brother Taylor, he said, you wouldn't believe what some of them were doing that was more important. One fellow, he said, was shelling beans. Shelling beans. Now, mind you, you don't want to become a judge of others. That's the last thing in my mind. You don't want to become a big judge who goes around to stand valid excuse, invalid excuse. You don't want to be a judge of others. But the practical authority of Scripture requires a gathering in proper spirit for biblical ends. And just your very presence edifies. That's the end of your spiritual ministry to others, to edify and build. Just your very presence edifies. And about once every three months, I send out a report to the board members of the grand old Gospel Fellowship in Philadelphia to tell them what we did at the last board meeting. And so I felt very witty for one letter, and there had only been five members out of 15 present, and so I reported on the contributions made by the spirits of the ten men who were in present. And I assigned their spirits some pretty stupid statements. And one fell off at the next board meeting, and that's got a good attendance at the next board meeting. One fell at the next board meeting, did not think that was nice. Well, see, I said, if you'd been here to tell us what your spirit was really saying, guess that you would have saved a lot of trouble. And apart from that, friends, what I plead for, see, is not a new legalism. That isn't on my mind. But the practical authority of Scripture in our gatherings that says, one, you gather, you gather in a right spirit, you gather for biblical ends. And I want to tie one final thought to that. See, towards the end of this epistle, having talked about the, although we've not really talked about the Lord's work at all, but having at the end of that epistle, the apostle urges the man of verse 28 to examine himself. He urged them in verse 31 to judge himself, he urged them in verse 33 to wait for one another and to be patient to one another and to make sure that they don't come together in a big blundering situation. He urges all that on us. So the fourth thing I want to mention is that the practical authority scripture requires that the gathering not be an end in itself. The gathering is not the end of your responsibility. The gathering, if anything, is just kind of the beginning of them. You'll prepare yourself for the gathering with spiritual exercise and with development of souls. And when the gathering is over, you don't walk out and say, well, I was there, now back for a worldly life for the next three or four days. The gathering is not an end in itself. It's a means of communicating grace and blessing and mercy one to another and edifying and building one another. And the very fact that one is going to gather challenges him to judge and to cleanse and to learn to live charitably with other believers. The very fact he's going to be with him does that for him. that the gathering has a kind of a cleansing effect before you're ever there and after you're gone too. The practical authority. Now, if we were to run through an analysis of the Old Testament ceremonies, if we were to run through analysis of the New Testament ceremonies, if we would look at a church and wonder how all these people heard the letter at the same time, we would quickly discover that to people brought to the faith, gathering becomes enormously important. Let me tell you of my own mother, a tear-jerking story. But See, and my mother and I were converted on the same night, and we lived a good way from the church. It's hard to remember how far it was. The older you get, the longer it was. But it was a good two and a half miles out in the country. And in my mind, see, it's getting nearer three, but it was a good two and a half miles out in the country from the church. And my mother was converted on a Friday night gospel service. And she was with the services of that church on Sunday morning and the evening, and as her health permitted she never missed an opportunity for edification or strengthening and she said to me the following Wednesday she said we're going and we went and discovered about six other people went too but that did not bother my mother the fact that she was there was the thing that she was really interested in we're going and we walked it in snow and rain and every other kind of a commotion it never got too bad to go because she said that's where I am being built now I know in that's good too but we are not isolated individuals we are a corporate group and we find our maximum fulfillment in that group and the maximum glory to god comes from that group now i don't want to give you the impression that i am angry about these things i'm really not but i'm often disappointed with myself at how often i say i believe the bible and then don't accept its practical authority And especially when it comes to the fellowship. So tonight I've been trying to discuss for you the practical authority of Scripture in our gatherings. And the Scripture authoritatively teaches us that, practically speaking. One, we should gather. Two, we should gather in a proper spirit. Three, we should gather in a proper spirit for biblical ends. And four, that gathering should not be an end in itself, but a means of teaching us to edify and strengthen and to cleanse our lives one for another Lord willing tomorrow I would like to talk with you in the morning about the practical authority in our government that is in the government of our companies and of our people look at other scriptures and other concepts but I'm really serious when I say that for the body the authority of scripture gives it its right to be now the minute it lays that authority aside it no longer has technically the right to exist it's one thing to just blatantly lay it aside like the modernists do and say we're done with it it's another thing to lay it aside by saying we believe it but it's not going to govern us in some ways of course they are different but in other ways they are disgustingly alike my final point is to check yourself and your own company with regard to the practical of the authority of scripture in your gathering and in your ideas about gathering and then not only to say I believe it but I will give myself to it I think I'll ask you to simply join me in a closing word of prayer we're thankful father for the communion of saints we're thankful for the wonderful body that is known as the body of Christ into which we are bound by his love and his mercy and trusting in him. We are thankful for the blessings of fellowship. We are thankful for a conference like this where we are edified by so many people in so many ways. And what we ask, Father, is that the lessons of a conference like this and the joy that we have in being gathered here might be the lessons that will mark us as we take the authority of Scripture in the practices of our local meetings. Direct us to that end, we pray, and teach us the value of obedience to an all-wise and all-purposeful God and to His Holy Word. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we ask help in these matters. Amen.