Under God’s ordained way, every man needs to sleep, work, and eat. In addition, man needs the proper enjoyment. But when sinners go about seeking for enjoyment, they end up in nightclubs and sinful places. As a result, humanity becomes degraded and people’s health is damaged. Their pastimes even force many into bankruptcy.
If you read the Bible carefully you will realize that the proper “pastime” for man is God. God is our proper pastime, and God is our real entertainment. We do not need to watch TV or go to the ball game. We only need to fellowship with God and to sing to God, and we will be filled with joy and satisfaction. In short, the Christian meeting is the proper entertainment of a proper living.
Our meeting here tonight is a kind of pastime and entertainment. This is our best pastime. The more you pass your time here the healthier, cleaner, and nobler you will be; you will have a higher morality and a more uplifted humanity. There is no entertainment that can match the Christian meetings. Sometimes I have heard parents say that they dare not let their children come to our meetings, because our meetings exhaust people; we meet every day. A few times I said to the parents, “If you do not allow your children to come to the church, where will they go? If you keep them home and look at them every day, even you eventually will be bored by them, not to mention the fact that they will never be bound by you anyway. Surely they will go to the dance halls and associate themselves with bad friends. What would you do then? But now they are coming to the church meetings, and you should feel happy, because the Christian meeting is the best form of entertainment.”
Someone once came to me and said, “Mr. Lee, you are marvelous. I admire your ability to draw people. In Shanghai you attracted a big crowd to your church. When you went to Taiwan you attracted more people. Now you are in America, and you have even captured the Americans. How did you attract and capture all these people?” I said, “I like your word capture. We Christians are those who are captured by Jesus. Isn’t this much better than being captured by card games or parties?”
When I first came to America in the sixties, I saw groups of “hippies” roaming the streets of Los Angeles. A few came to our meetings and were saved. When they came they all had long hair, long beards, and bare feet. Some even wore red headbands. It was such a strange sight. But, praise the Lord, they were saved one after another. After a few weeks their headbands were gone, and after a few months their hair was cut. After awhile the beards were gone, and they began to wear socks and shoes. They also began to testify in the meetings. When we saw this, our joy was unspeakable. We can never forget those times. Our meetings were full of God and full of entertainment. At that time, half an hour before the meeting time the hall was filled with people. If you came late you could not find a seat. And when everyone came together they began to sing psalms about exhibiting Christ. Once you stepped into the meeting, you could not help but be lifted into the heavenlies. Those were truly meetings of the exhibition of Christ.
The meeting is a kind of enjoyment; it is the proper pastime and entertainment of our lives. We must change our concept. When we come to the meetings, we are not here to do something; we are here to have some entertainment. If our daily lives are filled with joy, our meetings will be the same. During the last few days I have loved to sing a hymn. It is Hymns, #717 in our hymnal:
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
Though all things around us be trying,
Though floods of affliction like sea billows roar,
It’s better to sing than be sighing.
Then rejoice evermore, rejoice evermore,
It is better to sing than be sighing:
It is better to live than be dying;
So let us rejoice evermore.
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
When the darts of the tempter are flying,
For Satan still dreads, as he oft did of yore,
Our singing much more than our sighing.
O let us rejoice in the Lord evermore,
When sickness upon us is stealing,
No cordial like gladness our strength can restore,
For joy is the fountain of healing.
When you sing a hymn such as this in the meeting, do you not feel refreshed? And is this not a kind of entertainment? Our meeting is not a work; it is an expression of our daily life. It is because we live this way all day long that we come and express ourselves in such a way in the meetings. This is not a performance nor a theatrical play. This is our living.
If possible we should meet every day. This is quite scriptural. When the church first came into being, the disciples met daily in one accord in the temple and from house to house (Acts 2:46). Sometimes, to meet every day seems to pose some difficulties. To allow for that, we leave at least three evenings a week when there is no meeting. The other evenings we meet together to have some spiritual pastime and entertainment. This entertainment is not apart from God. It is an entertainment in God, and it is an entertainment in the church. We must have this concept, because once you have this concept, you will not go with the attitude of attending worship services. To attend a worship service is to have one man speaking while everyone listens. The result is the hierarchy of a clergy-laity system. This kills the Body of Christ. This form of worship service is absolutely wrong.