I’ve so often heard people appealing to Acts and the New Testament as our model for how our church should be today, but I’ve never heard anyone appeal to any Old Testament passages for why and how we should do church today. And I know, in the Old Testament they had a temple, they were under the old covenant, Jesus hadn’t come yet, they were in a much different culture, etc. BUT I can’t help but see some references to the church in the Old Testament. I had the opportunity to teach through Nehemiah 10 yesterday and the last verse is very interesting, it says,
We will not neglect the house of our God.
How easy is it for us to neglect the house of our God? We have the command in Hebrews 10 to not neglect meeting together, but we don’t take it seriously. It’s so much easier to use Sunday as a day off to recover and prepare for another week.
It’s become much more trendy recently for evangelicals to question to authority of Scripture and the necessity of a local church body. But I have yet to find a text in Scripture that supports either of these thoughts. No, it’s not the easy way, and sure there are more things even I would rather be doing on a Sunday, but we have this command throughout Scripture to not neglect meeting together, to not neglect the house of our God.
So how can you go about taking care of the house of our God this week? What things do you need to do in your life to reorient your life around God and meeting with his people? What things do you need to let go of to better serve God?
Pastor Mike's Musings 
Shelly Buffington
/ February 20, 2014Mike, the house of our God, the new “temple”, if you will, is our body. Since Jesus’ death and resurrection, WE are the temple…..so, to use old testament scriptures to defend going to a building in our times doesn’t really hold water with me….God is not in a building anymore, He is in every one of us, wherever we are. Acts 17:24-28, “24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”