But God has also given us the church to help interpret His Word through preaching and edify and foster community among His people. He knows the weakness of our own hearts.
John Calvin suggests that the church gives us "eternal helps."
"But as our ignorance and sloth (I may add, the vanity of our mind) stand in need of eternal helps, by which faith may be begotten in us, and may increase and make progress until its consummation, God, in accommodation to our infirmity, has added such helps, and secured the effectual preaching of the gospel, by depositing this treasure with the church" (Calvin, trans. Henry Beveridge, Institutes IV, i, 1, p. 672).
Have you ever considered how blessed we are to have the church? How lonely, how sinful we would be without it?
The church is endowed with "treasure," Calvin says - the treasure of the gospel. When the pastor stands behind the pulpit and delivers a sound message from God's Word, that is a gift of God to His people.
In The Pilgrim's Progress, Christian was travelling to the Celestial City, but he would have failed many times if not for the Evangelist. The Evangelist came to him more than once to preach the truth to him and to lead him away from trouble. The Evangelist didn't save Christian; what the Evangelist preached did. And Christian was eternally grateful for how the King saved and corrected him through the Evangelist.
Please don't fall asleep in church. Please don't harbor bitterness against God's people. Please go to church.
We've still got a long way until we're home, but God's church has been equipped to offer us eternal helps. Take them. And rejoice in them.
Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons and Art4TheGlryOfGod.