Watch Your Step

How do we conduct ourselves in God's house on God's day? Several of you have approached me recently to discuss this question. From the very obvious, like "How do we make sure no one gets run over in the parking lot?" to the very spiritual, like "How do we encourage each other to speak much of Christ?", these questions deal with how we ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
In our quest, then, to understand how to be a Christian family at church, before, during, and after worship, we are going to look together at four different passages that treat the Christian's conduct in the Lord's House and more broadly on the Lord's Day. This warning from Ecclesiastes is the first of them, and it will be followed next week by a discussion of Isaiah 58's promise to Sabbath-keepers and then the following Sunday by a look at how men should pray in church and how women should dress for church. Yes, Scripture explicitly addresses that and we are very much going to go there. Finally, we will navigate back to Luke on the fourth Sunday by looking at Jesus' declaration in Luke 6 that the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath. What does it mean that your Lord is the Sabbath's Lord too? We will get into all of these questions and more in the weeks to come. This morning, though, I hope to show you that God's house is the one place in the world that's free from vanity, and that we need to keep it that way.