Debunking: Church is On Sundays

In our western society, we like to have everything organized and compartmentalized. Even within the silverware drawer, the knives have their compartment, the forks another, and the spoons also have one of their own. We don’t just throw them all in together, creating a jumbled mess.
In life, we tend to be the same way. Monday through Friday, from 9-5, is the compartment reserved for work. Six to seven is the dinner compartment. The compartment we call Saturday may be reserved for household chores. And one hour on Sunday morning is for God and church.
Oops! We’ve suddenly got a problem. For God does not want just one hour once a week. He doesn’t even want just that hour plus fifteen minutes of devotion every day (or whenever we can fit it in). God demands our attention 100% of the time. As I have heard one Bible teacher say, God should not be prominent among many priorities. He must be preeminent over all others.
Genesis 4 tells us that Cain and Abel both offered sacrifices to God. Abel’s sacrifice was accepted. Cain’s was rejected. In discussion about why God rejected Cain’s offering, many Bible scholars say it was because Abel offered a blood sacrifice. Cain’s offering, being from the fruit of the ground, was bloodless.
Genesis 3:21 tells us that God made coverings of skin for Adam and Eve after they sinned. In order to provide these coverings, an animal had to die. Many scholars claim that Adam and Eve would have surely relayed this story to their two sons, and Cain should have known that only a blood sacrifice would be acceptable to the Lord.
Pastor John doesn’t fully agree with this, in part because the text simply says that Cain and Abel brought offerings, not necessarily sacrifices, to God. In addition, the sacrificial system had not yet been instituted.
Regardless of whether this had anything to do with it or not, one thing is clear. Cain was guilty of compartmentalizing his relationship with God. God wasn’t preeminent in his life. God wasn’t his top priority at all times. Cain did not follow the Lord’s counsel when He said, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its is desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). Cain did not do well. Sin did take mastery over Cain. I John 3:12 says that “his own deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” And we take this verse to be a general reference to how Cain lived his life, not just to the fact that he murdered Abel or to the fact that his offering was rejected by God. Cain did not make God first in his life.
So we need to make God our top priority, not just on Sunday, but every day of the week. We need to have church every day. Am I suggesting that Imago Dei get together every day? No. But what we need to recognize, as individuals, and as families, is that we are the Church. Hence, our entire lives are spent “in church,” whether we’re aware of it or not.
Therefore, we need to bring God into every area of our lives, including work, dinner, the chores on Saturday, and yes, even the football game on Sunday afternoon. Everything we do must be done in a spirit of worship toward God.

Questions For Study

1. Read Hosea 9:1-4 and Isaiah 29:13-14. What do these verses say about worship that God does not accept?


2. Read John 4:21-24. In these verses, what does Jesus say about worship? What does it mean to worship God in spirit and truth? How might this apply to what we learned about Cain and his offering being rejected by God?


3. What does it truly mean to worship God? How can I worship Him every day, in everything I do?