Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “And let us consider one another for inciting to love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom with some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day drawing near.” The more we study these two verses, the more we can realize that they refer to the group meetings. The meetings spoken of here are meetings in mutuality. Verse 24 speaks of “inciting to love and good works,” and verse 25 mentions “exhorting one another.” Verse 25 tells us not to forsake the meetings—not the meetings in a general sense but in the sense of “the assembling of ourselves together.” This indicates that as Christians we should have “our own” meeting. Before the Hebrew readers of this Epistle were saved, they had the Jewish way of meeting. Now as Christians they needed to have a Christian meeting, which they should have considered as “their” meeting. As Christians we should take care of the Christian meeting, which these verses call “the assembling of ourselves together.”
In the church we have different kinds of meetings. We have a meeting on the Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day meeting is not the same as the Sunday morning service in Christianity, but we do take advantage of the fact that the Lord’s Day is a holiday in most nations. However, Sunday is not the Christian word for this day. Sunday is a term of idolatry, referring to the worship of the sun. To us, this day is the Lord’s Day, and on this day we have a meeting. On Tuesday we may have a prayer meeting, and on Wednesday we may have a mid-week meeting. Besides these, we have the group meetings. Among these four kinds of meetings, we should consider that the group meeting is our own meeting. The number who attend the group meetings should be higher than the number who attend the other kinds of meetings. Most brothers and sisters attend the Lord’s Day morning meetings because most of them came from a traditional background. According to this background, “Sunday” is the time for Christians to worship God. If one does not come to the Sunday morning meeting, he is not regarded as a faithful Christian. However, the group meetings should be eighty percent of our church life. If in a local church the attendance in the Lord’s Day morning meeting is higher than that in the group meetings, the saints in that church are still religious and in their traditional way. When in a local church the attendance in the group meetings is higher than that in the church meetings on the Lord’s Day, that church is in the proper way. Whether a local church is in the proper way or not depends in part on the attendance in the group meetings.
The Gospels and Acts speak of different kinds of meetings. Matthew 18:20 says, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.” According to verse 19, this is not a meeting in mutuality but a meeting for prayer with a particular burden. In Acts 12 there was such a meeting in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark (v. 12). A number were assembled together to pray for Peter’s release from prison. This was not a group meeting in mutuality for inciting and exhorting.
Before the day of Pentecost, there were only one hundred twenty Christians meeting together. They had been with the Lord for as long as three and a half years. Probably most of them had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had traveled with the Lord and seen His human living. Some of them had seen how He was arrested and judged, and a number of them had seen how He was nailed on the cross and how He hung there for six hours. They saw how the Lord was buried, and eventually they also saw how He was resurrected. They were with the Lord for forty days, from the day of the Lord’s resurrection to the day of His ascension, enjoying His appearing and His hidden presence. Finally, they saw the Lord Jesus ascend to the third heavens. The one hundred twenty had received an excellent view of the Lord. This made them bold and even beside themselves. After the Lord’s ascension, they returned to Jerusalem and prayed in one accord for ten days to be clothed with power from on high. On the day of Pentecost they received the outpouring of the Spirit, and they began to preach and to propagate Christ.
Acts 2:46 says, “And day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they took their food with exultation and simplicity of heart.” Acts 5:42 says, “And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and bringing the good news of Jesus as the Christ.” These verses tell us that the Christians met in their homes, and the number of home meetings was according to the number of homes. They met in this way for preaching Christ, teaching, breaking bread, prayer, and fellowship. However, there is no indication of the way they preached and taught. In principle, it must have been in the way of mutuality.
On the day of Pentecost, three thousand people were saved and baptized. It is helpful to consider how three thousand people could have been baptized on the same day. The homes of that time had a pool which was used for bathing. Acts 16:31-34 tells us how Paul and Silas preached the gospel to the Philippian jailer and his household. Verses 33b-34a say, “And he was baptized immediately, he and all his household. And he brought them up into his house and set a table before them.” The phrase “he brought them up” indicates that the jailer and his household were baptized probably in the bathing pool in the lower part of the house. On the day of Pentecost, the three thousand were probably baptized in the homes of the believers. Moreover, the baptisms were probably not carried out by a few persons only, such as Peter and John, but by many persons. In the Gospels, when the Lord Jesus fed the five thousand, He told the disciples to make the people sit down in groups (Mark 6:39-40; Luke 9:14). The disciples must have learned this way from the Lord. On the day of Pentecost, when three thousand people were to be baptized, the disciples probably divided them into groups. In this way the one hundred twenty could baptize three thousand persons in less than a day.
From that time the believers continued to meet in their homes by groups (Acts 2:42, 46). Acts 5:42 says that in the homes “they did not cease teaching and bringing the good news of Jesus as the Christ.” We may ask how there could have been enough teachers for all the home meetings. According to the principle in the New Testament (1 Cor. 14:26), it is doubtful that only one person in each group taught and all the others listened. The newly saved and baptized ones, being full of the Lord, must have had something with which to bubble over. They all could have said something regarding their salvation. It is doubtful that all of the many new believers were dumb, waiting for Peter or John to say something. Peter and John could not have been in every group meeting. The first meetings of the church must have been “bubbling” meetings. Everyone there must have been beside himself.