
Assembling
Fellowship
Evangelism
Discipleship
Teaching
Baptism
Continual Awareness of God’s Presence and Authority
Equipping Exhortation
The Lord’s Supper
Assembling
συνέρχομαι, synerchomai, Synagoge, Episynagoge The Bible is replete with references to us Gathering Together or Assembling to worship and or serve in unity with God’s purpose and worship in mind, Ex. 20:2-3. So important is this that Hebrews 10:24-25 teaches us that we are to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. I find the word Episynagoge to be of great interest, not only because it is the Greek word behind the English assembling from the passage
but it also is the same word used in 1 Thess. 2:1 of our gathering together to be with the Lord. The parallel is amazing because when we assemble together on earth to worship and encourage we point to the future day when we will all assemble together again, only this time with Christ physically and tangibly in our midst!
God’s desire is togetherness and in the days of the Hebrew saints it couldn’t have had more meaning. Many had begun to disassociate or disassemble with one another and the precedent for doing so was not a good one and certainly not one found in Holy Writ. The author exhorts them to remain close and assemble in love—stirring one another to good works. In a nutshell God is telling us that the weak need the strong in order to have the courage and the accountability to stand and grow strong in the faith, while the strong in faith need the weak in order to grow stronger and to take the lead on the battlefield. Surely the battlefield was being assembled in Rome and many would lose their lives in choosing to stand in the company of Christ. But remember this one thing; nothing has changed in the past two-thousand years. More than ever we still need each other to gain strength to stand firmly against the impending and encroaching mold the Culture of Darkness desires to press us into. We must assemble to show Christ strong and provide the line in the sand that separates the darkness from the light—holiness from uncleanness—Heaven from Hell and finally, truth from error.
Task Two
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