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Our next set of questions has to do with meetings.

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When do you meet? What about Sundays?

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Well, the first thing I'd like to do is…for a small donation… :) [using a non-serious tone and smiling]

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 :) [laughing]

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Um, this book is called Meetings in His Kingdom: Jesus Personally Leading His Church in Home, City and Multi-City Gatherings.

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 And there are some other booklets on related subjects.

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 They are all totally and absolutely free--always have been and always will be--as God provides the source for printing them.

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I don’t think it is proper for anyone to “peddle God’s word for profit.”

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I know I’m making a statement that is going to be difficult to deal with, along with the 5,000 other difficult things we have talked about already.

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In any event, that book has a lot of practical details, as well as vision, about how things could look where you are

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 and about what you can do if what you see around you isn’t what God wants.

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You’ll find some practical insight into the workings of relationships and gatherings and so on.

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So that book will be helpful in answering the question "When do you meet? What about Sunday?"

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But, here’s a little bit of biblical thought and then some practical considerations.

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First of all, it’s a commonly accepted thing in Christendom that Sunday is the "Christian day".

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 Saturday was Jewish day, Friday is Muslim day, and Sunday is Christian day--that’s the way things have generally been viewed.

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 But if you go back and take an honest look at the New Testament,

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the emphasis on Sunday then, and the emphasis on Sunday now, are just radically different (they are leagues apart).

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 I don’t think that's right. I think that if there was an emphasis on Sunday then, there should be now.

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If there is an emphasis on no particular day of the week then, that’s the way it should be now.

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There really isn’t any cause to do things differently than the way God's people did under the leadership of Jesus and the holy apostles.

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So I’d really ask you to look with integrity and honesty at the book of Acts and at Paul’s letters,

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 commonly referred to as the Epistles, and see if you really see Sunday as "Christian day."

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I’ll grant you Jesus rose on the first day of the week, and that’s marvelous. There’s a prophetic fulfillment there, and that’s good.

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 But it really doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re supposed to do as Christians in the church, unless Jesus said otherwise.

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If you look in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit’s record of how the church functioned under Jesus’ leadership in the post-resurrection era,

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 you see the phrase “first day of the week” show up in Acts 20.

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That’s it--the only place in the entire record where anyone that I know has been able to find a reference to that day of the week.

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 That single historical reference in the book of Acts says that the church gathered together, and it happened to be the first day of the week.

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They met until after midnight--and broke bread apparently after midnight, which would have been the second day of the week.

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 So, all those things are somewhat controversial.

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 But the point is simply this: if someone were to take an honest look at our lives together as Christians and make a record,

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it ought to come out fairly similar to the book of Acts in terms of what we emphasize, what our priorities are,

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 how we live together, what the guiding principles of our lives are, and what things are important to us.

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Frankly, the New Testament does not support the idea that the Sabbath day on Saturday changed to a Christian Sabbath day on Sunday,

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where Christians should dress up on Sunday morning from 9 to 11 and attend a “service.”

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That idea is not in the New Testament.

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Out of the entire New Testament, after the Gospels and Acts, you can find reference to the first day of the week exactly one other time.

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 That’s in 1 Corinthians 16 when Paul instructs the church to “lay by in store” on the first day of the week.

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The passage says nothing about taking up "collection", per say, on that particular day.

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It doesn’t say anything about corporate meetings. It doesn’t speak of passing a hat or a basket during a worship service.

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 The phrase doesn’t even necessarily imply that the believers were to do anything more than "lay by in store" in their own homes,

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 so that when Paul came to take this money and give it to the needy saints,

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 it perhaps wouldn’t be such a big strain on them to get the money together.

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The money would have already been earmarked for that particular purpose.

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 It wasn’t a standard collection that was to go into a standard treasury

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at a standard Sunday morning worship service.

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There was a particular need Paul had indicated by letter, perhaps a year and a half after he was gone from Corinth.

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He wrote them and asked them to begin to gather funds.

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It apparently wasn't something that they did on a weekly basis, as a collection, as a way of life,

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 during the year and a half that Paul had been in their city.

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It was something he suggested some time later for a specific purpose: to care for the needy in another part of the world.

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 There was no indication that any kind of collection would continue indefinitely afterwards.

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Anyway, to tie that passage into a ritual of passing a basket on a Sunday morning worship service is really stretching things a long, long way.

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I’m certainly not against it if the saints are together on the first (or any) day of the week, and a particular need comes up,

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 and someone says, “Hey, if anybody has anything to contribute towards the needy saints in Portugal, please drop it by.

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 I’ll be standing over here in this corner afterwards.” That’s organic.

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 That’s very similar to what Paul was saying. It was organic giving, not related to some holy day.

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Paul said to one church, “I fear I’ve wasted my time on you because you count one day as more holy or more sacred than another.”

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 I think we also have instruction not to judge someone who holds one day as more holy than another (Romans 14).

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But on the other hand, that’s listed along with meat sacrificed to idols

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and other things being something one with weaker faith would hold to.

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 I don’t think anybody who’s listening to this would want to end their life with “weaker” faith.

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Paul referred to the one who holds one day as more sacred than another, rather than each day alike, as having weaker faith.

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 I’d encourage you to really look into this whole matter.

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Now we are to be devoted to having gatherings, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.”

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 But it’s really important that we look at that phrase through honest eyes, not through the eyes of twentieth century Christendom,

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 which shows attending a synagogue-type service on Sunday instead of on Saturday

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--listening to a sermon, singing some songs, punching out, and going home.

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That idea isn’t in the New Testament. I wish it were--it would be easier and far less controversial.

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But look at the fruit of just attending something. Lives aren’t changed.

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Homes, teenagers, and lives are destroyed because there is such a lack of that family relationship

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 and so little input of the word of God daily into each other’s lives.

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 We desperately need the real thing. And anything that stands in the way of this reality isn’t innocent.

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 Anything that is a tradition of men, Jesus said, nullifies the word of God.

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I used to have a big argument with God when I was a leader, in the traditional sense, in a church.

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I said, “God, You promised Your Word wouldn’t return void.

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And yet, even though we have had a lot of people come to Christ, and plenty of neat things have happened,

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there are still so many other things that seem like they just won’t change.

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There doesn’t seem to be anything I or anybody else can do to change them.”

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 I just pleaded with God to show me why the scripture didn’t seem to be true, that His Word would not return void.

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I discovered a couple of things in the process of begging God for some insight.

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 First, the promise of His Word not returning void doesn’t mean everything always turns out great.

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His Word can be, as Paul would say, the aroma of life to some and the stench of death to others.

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To some it might bring conversion and great maturity, while to others the same Word would bring great anger and fury,

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exposing their hearts for what’s really there--animosity, envy, and other works of the flesh.

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 So “His Word not returning void” could mean either the aroma of life or the stench of death--a fact I hadn’t considered.

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