TheoBros Memo Issue #29: 5 Quotes to Encourage You On the Lord’s Day
Sunday mornings PRE-CHURCH can be a bit of a battle.
TheoBros and TheoSistas,
There are days, my friends, when we hit that snooze button three times on the ol’ iPhone and long to enjoy that sweet, warm feeling of being under the covers and keeping those eyes closed. I get it, it happens, and I can sympathize more and more with the struggle as my two youngest sons wake up every night with a sudden urge for water — or the urge to scream, or the urge to jump in our bed, or the urge…you get it.
Sunday mornings PRE-CHURCH can be a battle.
But there are no ordinary Sundays. Each Lord’s Day has been ordained by God for us to grow, edify, learn, laugh, teach, evangelize, and seek unity with Christian folks from various walks of life. The same discipline and focus we exercise during the week at our place of employment is required Sunday. I know, that sounds a bit contradictory: “We need to discipline ourselves in order to rest,” but it’s true. Hebrews 4:8-11 makes a similar point regarding our future eternal rest.
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
The work is in believing:
Believing all your sins have been completely washed away by the blood of Jesus by faith alone.
Believing you are a saint, complete in Christ despite the past week’s failures.
Believing Christ is seated on His throne, exalted in the Heavens, regardless of what you discovered while you were doom-scrolling on Twitter.
Believing God is worthy of genuine love, adoration, and praise for His Word and His works, despite your lack of sleep.
We need Sundays, and we need to come battling to believe.
Here are 5 quotes on the Lord’s Day to encourage you:
Owen Strachan: “If Jesus died to purchase your soul from the dead and grant you everlasting life with God, can you get up in the morning and make it to church, or nah?”
John Piper: “Accept the gift of one day's rest a week. Humble yourself to believe you need it. And be willing to admit that your wealth and your significance and your true advancement in life depend far more on God's labor than on yours.”
Kevin DeYoung: “Do you make corporate worship a priority? You’re here this morning, so you’re thinking, ‘Whew. Yes, I’m here on the Sabbath sermon.’ But do you feel the need to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection with your brothers and sisters? I hope so. I daresay that the discipline of corporate worship is even more important than that of private worship—though we certainly want to do that as well. Perhaps even more strikingly, do you think of Sunday as climax or collapse? This is where it even hits my own heart. I think it’s often collapse. Friday is climax. Saturday? Yes! But Sunday is: ‘Oh, Monday is right around the corner. I’m so tired from everything that happened yesterday. Why do we live in the Eastern time zone? All of these games are on so late!’ Sunday becomes a day of collapse. We must prepare to worship.”
Alistair Begg: “We cannot make much of ourselves and much of the Lord Jesus Christ simultaneously. If people leave worship saying, ‘What an amazing preacher!’ we have failed.”
Albert Mohler: “We are to make it a priority of our lives that on this day we will be with God’s people, we will be with the redeemed, we will be with the saints, and we will gather together to prepare for eternity, to be confronted with the Word of God, to edify one another and to yearn for that eternal rest which is promised unto us by the grace and mercy of God.”
Thank you!