Why Set Aside on the First Day of the Week?

 

I see two possibilities about why Paul instructed the Corinthians to save a little on the side on the first day of the week instead of on some other day.

 

1. Because the first day of the week was not holy, and that's when "acts of worship" were to be conducted. (This seems to be the most common view.)
2. Because the business week had concluded Friday at sundown, and there was not time to calculate the profits/losses of the week before the Sabbath started, when such calculation work was forbidden (at least for the Jewish believers who were still walking according to the law, as was Paul - Acts 21:24; at a minimum, this would have been a lifelong habit for the Jews converted there in Corinth (Acts 18:4)), and the first day of the week therefore was the day when the books would be balanced from the previous work week, and when it made the most sense to ear-mark a part of the week's intake for the Judean fund-raiser.

The Worshiping Outsider

Josias walked into the synagogue, half-expecting to see the members of this new sect called "Christians" eating human meat. Instead, he found them chanting in unison, hands raised to God, the psalms he had grown up chanting himself.

Then the chanting stopped, and an elderly man stood up among the people, and with a deep but somewhat gravely voice, spoke the words, "Brethren, we are to love one another. We are to build up one another. We are to use our gifts which the Holy Spirit has granted us, to make one another stronger, better, more loving, more serving. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, love one another!"

In one great and loud chorus, the congregants shouted, "Amen! Blessed be the Lord God and his Son our Savior, Jesus Christ!"

Josias thought to himself, "Well, except for thinking a dead man is the Messiah, who has been crucified and then raised from the dead, these folks aren't too terribly horrible, I suppose. Just nuts. Obviously not of God."

Then the woman standing next to him turned to him and spoke: "I have heard from God's Spirit that you need to apologize to your wife. You should not have broken her spirit with your speech this morning."

Josias was taken aback on several levels. A woman! Speaking to him! As if she was an equal to him! And accusing him of hurting his wife!

And then the realization dawned. How did she know I spoke harshly to my wife this morning?

But before he could open his mouth to challenge her speaking to him, the man on the other side spoke to him. "God has revealed to me that you want to live righteously. He is pleased with this. But he is not pleased with your secret - the one concerning the girl in the market. It is time for you to repent of your thoughts that violate your marriage; you need to find a different place to shop."

Josias was stunned. No one but he knew his mind wandered to this young woman. No one but he and ... God!

Josias was disturbed. Who were these people? Who were they to be speaking so intimately to him, so authoritatively, so accurately?

But again, before he could open his mouth, the whole congregation turned his way, some smiling sadly, some looking somewhat stern. For a few moments, a cacophony came his way, and he heard just snippets -- "God loves you, but...", and "your sin separates" and "choose life", when he heard one louder voice: "Brethren, one at a time, please. God is a God of order, not chaos."

Josias felt a light touch on his arm. It was the first woman who had spoken to him. He felt acceptance from her, which disturbed him, and not just a tiny bit. Another woman next to her, who could have been the first woman's sister, or cousin, or even aunt, spoke: "God loves you. He knows you can be a powerhouse for his kingdom. But you must be honest with your scales. You can no longer cheat your customers with dishonest weights. And you must do right by your wife. And you must do right by the girl you've entertained in your mind. God demands that you repent."

And Josias knew. He knew these people knew. He knew how these people knew. And he fell to his knees, and cried out, "Oh God! My God!" And then he fell forward with his face to the ground, and speaking into the floor tiles, declared, "God is indeed among you people! I am a sinner. He has revealed my heart to you, and you know my secrets, and have reproved me. How can I live before God, unclean?"

And the first woman, kneeling next to him, spoke again. "Your unclean-ness is taken by the Lord. He was wounded for your transgressions, bruised for your sins. In Jesus, there is forgiveness."

And from that moment, Josias' life, and those of his wife and children and customers, would never be the same again. 

Perspective

 

First pure. Then peaceable.

 

When I was a youngster in a conservative Church of Christ, I often worried about what was most important. I knew Jesus had said that the most important thing was to love God with all your being.

 

I wondered what it meant to "love God". Did that mean to feel warm fuzzies toward him, or what?

 

I also knew that Jesus had said that to love him is to obey him.

 

There was my answer: to love God is to know his legal requirements and to obey them.

 

And not just part-way.

 

I also knew that James had said that the wisdom from above is first pure, and then peaceable, and that if you break the law in any one tiny detail, you've broken it all.

 

So obviously, we must be pure in our doctrine, and we must obey it exactly.

 

So the focus was on having the right doctrine, and keeping that doctrine, and the crux of loving your neighbor was convincing him of the right doctrine and getting him to keep that doctrine.

 

So we could never really be "peaceable" with those having incorrect doctrines. It does no good to love your neighbor by mowing his lawn when he has the flu, if you haven't yet convinced him to believe and keep right doctrine. And we certainly can't consider him a brother in Christ if his doctrine has prevented him from keeping the legal requirements necessary for becoming a Christian, even if in all other ways, including loving others and reflecting the qualities of God, he outdoes us by a significant margin.

 

First pure, right? Then peaceable.

 

First, correct doctrine and obedience. Then loving actions.

 

That's the way it was for me.

 

That's the way it still is for many.

 A Brief History of the Church of Christ

The original church of Christ was founded on the Jewish feast-day called (in English) "Pentecost".

 

This church was exclusively Jewish, praised God daily in the Jewish temple with all its Jewish temple activities (including robed choirs, and musicians with loud instruments, and incense, and animal sacrifices, and face-to-the-ground ritual prayers three times a day), and lived communally, considering their possessions as belonging to the commune.

 

They had no deacons, but as time passed, the need arose for dedicated servers to distribute food, to "wait on tables". These servers eventually became known as "deacons", and were originally men-only. It is unclear if these deacons did the actual grunt-work of food distribution, or if they were administrators in the food-distribution side of things. At least one of them side-lined as a proclaimer of their group's message.

 

This church made other changes as time went on. One of the first big changes, besides the creation of the new office of "deacon", was a pulling-away from the communistic format; people, even Christians, just aren't wired to maintain such an economy for long; their communism soon showed itself impractical, and a less severe sharing lifestyle took its place.

 

At first this church got along well with the general populace of their fellow Jews, but got cross-ways with the political elite, who were blamed by this church for an illegal murder of God's chosen leader for the nation and the world. (It was God's resurrection of this chosen leader, Jesus, that motivated the early church to turn the world upside down with their message.)

 

This conflict with the Jewish elites led to a persecution of the church by the political leaders, which resulted in scattering the church members, disciples ("students", "learners", "followers"), out of the area of Jerusalem where the movement had begun, into surrounding cities, and even beyond.

 

As the church moved outward, away from the Jewish temple with its accouterments, they kept their lifelong traditions of studying each Sabbath day (Saturday) in the synagogues (Jewish houses of learning, particularly for learning their scriptures) of the various towns where they landed. There they made more converts to their new religion of "Jesus is Master", from among the Jews already in those synagogue groups.

 

Even further from the central beginning place, their message was heard by non-Jews in the synagogues, "Gentiles" who were drawn to the Jewish religion being taught in those synagogues. Many of these Gentile "God-fearers" were drawn to this message, and were initiated into the disciples' "Way" by being immersed in water in the name of Jesus The Chosen One (or “Christ”, from the Greek for “anointed one”).

 

As the Gentile population of the Way increased, some of the Jewish segment of the Way insisted they needed to convert to full Judaism before being considered as truly part of the Way. This was a subtle, but extremely important psychological alteration of the message of the Way. Originally the thought was that religious salvation was provided to believers in Jesus because of what Jesus had done to save them, and the believers were declaring their loyalty to him in their immersion. Now the subtle psychological shift was made that the believer had to meet certain criteria (ie, being fully Jewish) in order to be saved, that salvation was dependent on their right-ness rather than the right-ness of Jesus given to them as a free gift.

 

This led to another large morphing of the church of Christ, that non-Jewish believers did not have to become Jewish in order to be part of the new community of Christ. The decision was made by the early church leaders who were still in Jerusalem, that since neither Jew nor Gentile was saved by “being Jewish”, but by faith in Jesus, then the Gentiles did not need to “become Jewish” to be saved. This decree was disseminated to all the towns where disciples were meeting in synagogues. The only “Jewishness” required of them was a few basic restrictions common to all non-Jews living among Jews, as specified in the Jewish scriptures (Lev 17-18).

 

Whereas Jesus intended these two broad groupings within his church to be united in purpose and spirit, with Paul urging them to be eager to maintain the spirit of unity in the bond of peace, making One New Man out of the Two, regardless of outward differences, the differences proved to be overwhelming for many. After the Jewish capital, Jerusalem, and its central temple, were destroyed in war, fewer Jews were drawn to the religion of Jesus, and the community turned even further away from Jewishness. Many non-Jewish believers took the destruction of Jerusalem as a sign that God was finished with the Jews (despite being told point-blank that was not the case), and they themselves began to avoid any association with Judaism.

 

A result was yet another alteration to the nature of the church. They now wore the name “Christian” to distinguish themselves as something different from their Jewish roots, and they eschewed all things Jewish, such as the observance of the Sabbath, and the keeping of Jewish holy days, and the use of instruments in their praise activities. Whereas the first generation of believers understood that God had moved out of the Jewish temple into the hearts of the Jesus-followers, the later generations re-adopted the old idea that God needed a physical temple to dwell in. (This was a Jewish idea from of old, but not exclusively Jewish; it was a dominant belief among pagans also.) So it wasn’t terribly long before grand basilicas, church buildings, were being erected, and the believers were instructed to come into the churches (the word now referring to the physical structure “where God dwells” instead of the people in whom God dwells), where they could meet with God every Resurrection Day (Sunday). Sunday was already important to the Christians, having been the day when Jesus rose from the tomb, and the day of that first Pentecost, and the day of other significant events, but now it was firmly codified as the Christian day for meeting with God in the Christian “temples”.

 

Other changes began to show up in some branches of the church, while other branches stayed more with the older original ideas. Still other branches adopted even different ideas and forms. Eventually the dominant branch, at least as most of Today’s world is concerned, became the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Centuries later, particularly after the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s made copies of the Bible more readily available to more people, disciples began to see that their Roman Catholic religion had moved far from the original first-century religion, and many efforts were made to reform the Catholic system. This resulted in many new “churches”, often protesting so vehemently against the Catholic system that they became known corporately as “Protestants”.

 

Then some of these Protestants developed the idea of abandoning all modern religion, and “Restoring” the original first-century religion of Christianity. Thus was born, in the late 1700s, the Restoration Movement.

 

The believers in this movement also had their various divisions, among which is the modern-day American “Church of Christ”, which itself has various branches (some of whom deny the validity of the others).

 

Although the idea of restoring the first-century church is noble, in reality, these believers are far more still affected by their Catholic history than they realize. They have more in common with the other groups (“those Protestants”) than they do with the original church of Christ established on Pentecost. They go further than others on some issues, and are probably closer, at least in outward form, to the late-first-century church than other modern-day groups. And most significantly, many of them believe they have reached full “Restoration”, and therefore they *are* the original church, and that they are the only group who is that original church. Thus they do not see themselves as one of the many “denominations” (named groups) of the Protestants; they are the original, and the others have no real claim to be that church, or even descendants of it. But the truth of the matter is that all modern-day “Christian” groups, warts and all, are descendants of that original church.

 

That original church didn’t stay the same. It evolved, with God’s approval, over time. It did not stay static in form. There is no going back to the original. There are only close approximations to a general snapshot-in-time of that first-century church at its various stages. We should get as close as is practical, realizing that exactitude can’t be achieved, and should welcome as siblings all other believers who strive to be loyal to the Master, even if they “miss it” in details we are “certain” we have nailed.

Vote for Censorship!

 

[Social media sites] are speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.

-- Kamala Harris, https://x.com/Loveof1776/status/1830023534141157758

 

 Oh, censorship. A vote for Kamala is a vote against the first amendment.

 

========

 

There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech....

-- Tim Walz, https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1821215515605381197

 

A vote for Kamala Harris / Tim Walz is a vote against the first amendment.

 

Don't Come In to God's Presence. Be in God's Presence.

 

Going to "worship service" was the way of the old covenant.

 

In the old covenant, God dwelt in his Holy Temple. To serve him, or to prostrate before ("worship") him, you went to where God was; you went into the temple. See Psalm 100:4:

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name.

When you walked through the gate of the temple, you were in the presence of God, so you hit the dirt, face-down, to prostrate before ("worship") him.

 

But things are different in the new covenant. God no longer dwells in a house made by human hands, where we go to prostrate before him, nor does he need any human hands to serve him.

 

Instead of going to bow before him in this temple on this mountain or in that church building on that hill, we bow before him in spirit, because that's where he now dwells, in the temple of our bodies. He left the brick-and-mortar temple, to take up residence in his new temple, made of living stones; he dwells in his people now.

 

We no longer appear before him three times a year, at special worship services, or once a week, at special worship services. That's old testament thinking.

 

In the 300s A.D. the Catholics started building new brick-and-mortar "temples", and reintroduced to the church the old covenant mentality of "coming into the Holy Place to worship God". We inherited that old covenant thinking from the Catholics, and now defend it as if it is new covenant thinking.

 

But in the new covenant, we are now in God's presence continually; we no longer "enter into his courts" to prostrate before him as was done in the old covenant. We should continually be prostrate before him, in spirit, because we are continually before him.

Receive the Holy Breath

 

For consideration:

 

Genesis 2:7 (WEB) Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

 

John 6:63 It is the breath who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are breath, and are life.

 

John 20:22 When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Breath!"

 

Acts 2:4 They were all filled with the Holy Breath, and began to speak with other languages, as the Breath gave them the ability to speak.

 

Acts 2:17 ‘It will be in the last days, says God,

that I will pour out my Breath on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters will prophesy.

Your young men will see visions.

Your old men will dream dreams.

 

Acts 2:38 Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Breath.

The Lord's Supper as an Agape Feast?

 

It is my understanding that we really don't know what the Passover meal practices were in Jesus' day, but that the Jewish writings of a few centuries later described the Seder (Passover meal) as we basically know it today, and said these were ancient practices at that time. But I'm far from an expert, so I could be far off the mark.

 

It is interesting that Luke refers to a cup before Jesus breaks the bread, and then refers to "the cup after supper", as if was a thing then, like unto what we now know about the Four Cups of the Seder meal, one to open the Seder, one just before the main meal, one just after the main meal, and one to close the Seder. But that could just be coincidental wording.

 

Regardless, the meal in 1 Cor 11 *appears* to not be a yearly meal, as was the Passover Seder; it appears to be often enough to help feed the poor of the assembly (v. 22). We know that scripture mentions:

• eating meals daily as being a function of the earliest church (Acts 2:46),
• and a "sub-Jewish" class of widows being neglected in the daily serving of meals (Acts 6:1),
• and certain church shepherds who only fed themselves during "love [agape] feasts, when they feast with you" (Jude 1:12),
• and false teachers who "revel in their deceit while they feast with you" (2 Peter 2:1, 13).

It does not seem a stretch to assume (while remembering it's only an assumption) that the Lord's Supper in Corinth was one of these "agape feasts", which incorporated within a larger meal a segment dedicated to "showing the Lord's death until he come", just as the Passover was a full-blown meal with segments dedicated to certain remembrances (such as the modern-day Seder practice of taking the middle bread from the middle of a three-pocket bread-holder pouch, breaking it in half, wrapping half in a white linen cloth and hiding it for the kids to find, with the finder "redeeming" it for some little prize), which Jesus explained had always pointed to him ("This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me." - 1 Cor 11:24).

 

Like in the 2 Peter and Jude references, some in the church, particularly the [deceitful] shepherds and teachers, were using this meal as a "Feed Me" opportunity, rather than as a "Let's feed Jesus' sheep" opportunity. It wasn't the feast that Paul condemned or canceled; it was the selfishness attached thereto.

Bow and Serve

 

Ex 20:5 ...you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God,

In Hebrew, "bow" and "serve".

Matt 4:10 Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’”

In Greek, this root word for "worship" is "proskuneo" (προσκυνήσεις), which means "to bow submissively before", and the root word for "serve" is "latreia" (λατρεύσεις).

 

This is a common theme throughout the Bible: bow/prostrate, and serve.

 

Bowing/prostrating is just what it says; falling on your knees and planting your face to the ground, like you sometimes see Muslims on TV doing. It's the idea behind "every knee shall bow". It is not singing, or praying (although praying is often done while bowing), or running, or eating, or driving, or any other action verb. It is bowing//prostrating.

Serving is things like sacrificing animals, singing in the choir, playing an instrument in the praise activities, bringing an offering to God, cleaning the threshing floor, distributing food.

 

Neither of these has anything to do with emotion, or warm fuzzies, or loyalty, or fear. (Those are covered by other Hebrew and Greek words, also often [mis]translated as "worship".)

 

In Hezekiah's day (2 Chron 29), this king arranged for a "rededication service", to rededicate the people and the temple to Yahweh's ownership. During this service, the Levitical priesthood served with things like animal sacrifices and playing music, while the people bowed.

28 All the assembly worshiped (bowed), the singers sang (a service), and the trumpeters sounded (a service). All this continued until the burnt offering was finished.

29 When they had finished offering (a service), the king and all who were present with him bowed themselves and worshiped (bowed submissively). 30 Moreover Hezekiah the king and the princes commanded the Levites to sing praises (a service) to Yahweh with the words of David, and of Asaph the seer. They sang (a service) praises with gladness, and they bowed their heads and worshiped (bowed submissively).

In Paul's hypothetical Corinthian assembly, with its hypothetical unbelieving visitor:

1 Cor 14:24 But if all prophesy (a service), and someone unbelieving or unlearned comes in, he is reproved by all, and he is judged by all. 25 And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed. So he will fall down on his face and worship (bow submissively before) God, declaring that God is among you indeed.

"bow" and "serve". Only for God.

 

In Romans 12:1, Paul describes Christians as spiritual Levitical priests, performing services. But rather than serving in a brick-and-mortal temple, he says that our logical service ("latreia") is to present our bodies as living sacrifices, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

In John 4:4, when Jesus says that bowing ("proskuneo") is no longer to be based on a physical location, in this church sanctuary on this hill or that one on that hill, he says that true bowers are to bow in their spirit, truthfully. This is also a 24-7 proposition.

 

When we insist on "worshiping" the old way, in a dedicated holy building, on a dedicated holy day, we scoff at Jesus' teaching. It's not about bowing in a dedicated holy building, at a dedicated time, doing dedicated works of service. It's about being a holy building (know you not that you are the temple of God, who dwells in you?), and not just part-time, but full-time, always serving God in everything we do, in word and deed.