Episode 115: What you Missed out On

In the name of the glorious Trinity, Father and Son and Holy

Spirit, forever Amen. Glory be to the everlasting

mercies which sent you to us, O Christ, the light of the world

and the life of all. Give us wisdom by your law and

enlighten our impulses by Your knowledge.

Sanctify our souls by Your truth and grant that we may be

obedient to Your words and may fulfil Your commandments at

every hour. O You who enlightens the

rational with the knowledge of Your greatness, do enlight, O my

Lord, our thoughts, that we may meditate upon Your holy and

divine Scriptures at all times. O Lord of all, Father and Son

and Holy Spirit, forever. Amen.

This episode is directed in love and kindness to those who missed

church yesterday and many other Sundays.

And I want to start by saying you don't know what you are

missing out on or you don't know what you missed out on.

Let me share a number of the blessings you forfeit where,

whenever, for whatever reason, and whenever you miss church for

whatever reason. I'm going to read Psalm 84.

That's going to be a passage. How amiable or how adorable are

thy tabernacles, O Lord, the hosts and tabernacles, you know

that was the place where they would go and offer their their

sacrifices and their prayers, right?

So today our tabernacles are our churches and the altars.

My soul longs you, even faints for the court of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh give praise for the living God.

Yes, even the Sparrow has found a house and the pigeon a nest

for herself where they have raised their young, besides 9

altars. O Lord of hosts, my King and my

God, blessed are they that dwell in thy house.

They shall praise thee forever. Blessed is the man whose help is

from thee, in whom heart are thy ways.

They have passed through the valley of weeping, and have been

have made it a dwelling place. The Lord givers shall cover it

with blessings. They shall go from strength to

strength. The God of Gods shall be seen in

Zion. O Lord God of hosts, he my

prayer give ear. O God of Jacob, Behold, O God,

our shield, and look up the face of thine, anointed for a day in

thy courts. Listen to this a day.

A day in thy courts is better than 1000.

I would choose rather to dwell in the House of my God than to

dwell in the tents of the wicked.

For the Lord God is our supply and our helper.

The Lord will give grace and glory.

No good things will be withheld from them that walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in thee.

All about being in the House of the Lord, in the course of the

Lord, in the altar of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord.

So as I said, what I'd like to touch up on and concentrate on

is, well, the message I'd like to give is what you miss out?

What we miss out when we miss church for one week, for two

weeks, for a month, 2 month, two months, since last Christmas,

last Christmas, or the last special occasion, a baptism,

wedding, be it a funeral that we haven't attended church.

This is what we miss out on, beloved #1 the ambience, the

blessedness of the House of the Lord.

When you enter the House of the Lord, why is it that when we are

talking and we're engaged in conversations and what have you,

in humor, and soon as we enter the House of the Lord, for those

who respect and honor and Revere the presence of the Lord, we are

quiet, we are silenced. We enter the House of the Lord

and we focus on the front, which is the altar or the cross that

that is in the altar. We miss out on that when we we

forfeit that ambience and our souls will be longing for that

ambience. We miss out on the protection of

being in the House of the Lord in the presence of the Lord

being protected. Beloved, yes.

You know, people will say what do you mean being protected from

natural disasters, from wars? Yes, possibly, possibly, but not

so much being protected from the flaming arrows of Satan the

enemy and his demons that are shooting against us.

Yes, you will say, you know, even a church.

Sometimes when I sit there and I'm trying to concentrate,

Robbie, but my mind goes away. My mind wanders and sometimes

even evil things come to my mind.

Do you know why? Let me tell you why, beloved,

just imagine and this is a life experience.

I was at home one afternoon in Australia and I used to play

soccer for the the Assyrian Church youth group.

I was left or right defense. I got a call and one of my

teammates said we have a game against another team.

It's such a place come as soon as I got in the car, I I dressed

up, got in the car, went to the field.

As soon as I got onto the field, I started kicking the ball.

And then, you know, a minute after that we started playing.

And the first pass that was given to me was was what we call

a hospital pass was it wasn't a good pass.

I had to stretch my leg and I stretched my groin.

Now why? Because there was no warm up.

Just imagine you get on a field and you start running and

putting everything you have into it.

You're going to be sick because there's no warm up.

Your body is in shock. There needs to be a warm up

before we enter the House of the Lord.

And what is that? Warming up is when you come to

the early morning prayers, the the early morning prayers

slaughtered supper. It always begins an hour before

the actual service of the the celebration of the Divine

Liturgy of Holy Qurbana. One hour if it's at 10:00 AM be

it it begins usually at 9:00 AM or 9:15 if it's at if Raza

starts at 9:00 AM. If the liturgy starts at 9815

and that is where you enter the House of the Lord and you sit in

the ambience and the peace and the and the tranquility of the

House of the Lord and you start clearing the mind.

You start talking to the Lord. You invite, invoke the Holy

Spirit to come into your mind, your heart, your soul, to clear

everything away so that you are focused on the liturgy that you

are going to enter into. Yes, some say, well, we don't

understand the language. You don't need to understand the

language. Even if you do understand the

language, you still won't come. That's an excuse.

And we've proven that to be invalid.

How? California, Central Valley

residents, oh, we don't understand the service.

We don't understand their aromatic language.

It's gibberish. Well, it's not.

It's a language Jesus spoke. Well, we serve the liturgy in

the English language. The attendance is still

unsatisfactory, more than unsatisfactory.

So it's not the language barrier.

It's not it's the loving the the world, loving the world and

what's in the world, loving to be everywhere there is joy and

celebration and and and jubilee and dancing and and smoking and

doing whatever you want to do, right?

Drinking, being being drunk and being, you know, disorderly

immorality. We like to be in those presence

rather than in the simple ambience, blessings, presence of

our Lord in his house. My recommendation is, and I

encourage you, yes, those who struggle cheering church during

the service with your minds wondering, no, this Sunday, this

coming Sunday, Yeah, next Sunday, go to church early, go

to church 1015 minutes early, half an hour early.

Just sit there and pray and meditate on what you are doing,

where you are, and what you are going to enter in whose presence

you're going to enter. You are depriving your soul of

the joy and peace of being in the House of the presence of the

Lord. When we don't enter the, when we

don't attend church, beloved, we miss out on praising and

worshipping the Lord in the house at his presence with your

heart, with our hearts and minds and body.

Yes, some will say, well Jesus explains, Jesus commands, Jesus

has told us that if we are to pray, we can go into our room

and pray. Let me ask you a question.

Those people that are homeless and most of them believe in God

because when you approach them, they actually bless you.

God bless you when you speak to them.

They know Jesus Christ they know.

So when one of those homeless people wants to pray, is he to

go and find a room? A room?

I need a room to pray because the Lord Jesus said that I can

enter a room. There is no room.

So what does then the Lord in tell when he says that he who

prays must enter his room? Meaning enter your mind, your

soul and what other place than the church?

Because there's not that many distractions.

The next door neighbour's dog will not start barking, the the

next door neighbors will not start playing their Maruchi

music or what have you. The phone will not go off.

Although today people are so disrespectful, even if we have

the signs every now and then during the slides, please switch

off your phone. They are so arrogant and

disrespectful to God and to those around them.

They still leave their phones on or they're on their phones.

Well, that's not Facebook telling you, Hey, hey, come look

at me. That's not your Instagram

telling you, look at me. That's you wanting to engage

yourself, right? But there is no, there should be

no distractions in the House of the Lord.

So come into the House of the Lord and then you enter your

room, your room, you pray to the Lord in your heart and body.

Why do I say body prostrations? Don't be reluctant, don't be

ashamed. Some of you have reached out and

said that I'll be I want to kneel before the altar of the

Lord during church. Some do God bless you.

But it's that's just that some people look at me.

I don't know how people are going to proceed, but don't

worry about the people. You're not there for the people

you're not there. You're there for Christ and for

your own salvation. You're there for your own

forgiveness and cleansing. Kneel.

Kneel before the Lord. Because in Matthew chapter 15,

Matthew 15:24

verse 24, the Canaanite woman kneeled before the Lord to

receive healing for her daughter.

In Matthew chapter 17, verse 14, the man knelt before the Lord

Matthew 17:14

Brickley, and he knelt and begged for mercy for his Son,

and he received it. In Matthew chapter 8, verse 2,

Matthew 8:2

the leper knelt before Jesus Christ and he received

cleansing. Who do we kneel before when

we're at the church? Not the priest, not the deacons,

not the patriarch, not the bishops, not the people, not

just the altar. The material in the altar?

No. We kneel before the Gospel of

our Lord, which is the Word of God, the Divinity, the Word of

God, God Incarnate, Jesus Christ Himself.

We kneel before the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which denotes

his humanity. He was crucified on that cross.

We kneel before the Holy Eucharist, the Purbana Khadijah,

which is the real presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and

wine which we receive from the Chalice and the Peyton kneeling

according to verse three. If the animals, the Sparrow and

the pigeons have found place to rest, you know, you see in many

church buildings, you'll see that the, there are, there are

nests of, of birds, pigeons, sparrows.

You know, I believe that when they've, when they've knitted

their net or when they have have built their nest there, they've,

they've understood in some way that this is the house where our

Lord our Creator will be praised and he will dwell in it, in his

spirit, in the word, in the Eucharist.

You see, we deprive ourselves from that rest as well.

That is the rest of the body and the mind and the soul in the

House of the Lord. We deprive from the rest of the

mind, body and soul, from the hustle and the bustle of this

world, the politics, the finances, the work issues, the

family issues, relationship, health, disasters, immorality,

cruelty, and the list will go on and on and on.

One resting place is the House of the Lord, which is the

Church, Umrah. You see how blessed is the

Assyrian language. We have two words Church in the

English language will denote denote the building and also the

body of Jesus Christ. But in the Assyrian language we

have ETA and we have Umrah, Umrah, dwelling place.

We usually refer to the buildings as Umrah.

We do say sometimes we go to ETA.

Yeah, we are going to go to the ETA to celebrate and partake in

the ETA of the worship of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Umrah,

which is the dwelling place. Never mind who's there.

What's going on? Not understanding the language.

And I just refuted that. I'm sorry.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I refuted that.

Steven, how many years have we had English Raza here?

At least 13. Yeah, I could not be doing it.

Just at least 13 years of English service, Right?

We get the same 30 to 40 attendants and thank God they

are not those who attend the morning Mass, although some of

the choir people do because they have to.

We need a choir. Where are you, O beloved youth?

It was for you. The church went out of her way,

and rightly so, to reach out to you.

Where are you at 4:00 in the afternoon?

You know what? At 10:00 in the morning?

You're sleeping. Yes.

OK, fine. We understand.

You don't understand. You don't understand the

language and and the liturgy. Where are you at 4:00 PM

preparing to go out to your usual hangout places on a

Sunday, fishing, hunting, whatever it may be.

So there's no excuse. So I should strike that not

understanding, but giving it the benefit of the doubt.

Never mind what's going on in church, the politics of the

church, the problems of the church, the schisms of the

church we have. Don't worry about that if you're

not a part of it, don't worry about it if you're not a part of

that problem. You focus on the Lord Jesus

Christ. If you're not a part of that

problem, be a part of fixing the problem.

If not, don't worry about it. Don't deprive yourself from the

House of the Lord. Many people say to me, we don't

attend fellowship. And unfortunately, as much as I,

I, I am, I am, you know, disheartened to admit it.

Is that when we enter fellowship, we're supposed to

share Christ with one another, but we're too busy about quickly

being served food. And we argue, why isn't the food

ready? Why I'm I need to take my

tablets? And then as soon as we sit on

the table and the gather and the the conversation begins.

It's either gossiping, it's either cussing or it's either

hatred. And you know what, we just don't

want that fellowship. How sad is that?

But God bless you at least attend your church service.

Come and worship. We're going to be look at what

else you're depriving yourself with from.

Don't deprive yourself from the blessed rest in the House of the

Lord. The strength verses 5 and seven.

You are our prayer, our shield, the strength that we received in

the House of the Lord. You're missing out on the

strength to strength being strengthened.

You know, it's a pit stop. It's a pit stop.

You're doing your laps seven days a week.

You're doing your laps, and on the first day of the week,

that's that pit stop. Pit stop for new tires, right?

The first thing they do is change their tires.

Well, the tires are like the shoes in the parable of the

Prodigal Son, which denoted the grace of the Spirit and the

prompting of the cultivation of holiness in us.

We come there and we are prompted by the Holy Spirit.

By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we are corrected, we are

rebuked, and we are GED on. We are encouraged to continue

our life, our struggle, our toil, continue soldiering on

every day and trying to attain that holiness that we have been

called to. We become refueled by the

sweetness of the Holy Scriptures that are read from the Old

Testament, from the Law, from the Prophet, from the the the

the Pauline Epistles, from the Holy Gospel itself, which is the

power of God to reinstate and return us to the pious living in

Jesus Christ. For all those who have been

believed, who have believed in Him and have been saved to

continue a life, a pious life. For those who have been saved

and are trying and struggling to live the new life in Jesus

Christ, to attain eternal life. There is an reevaluation in this

pit. Stop reevaluating the strategy

and the tactics. How am I going to, you know,

the, the, the 10 laps to go? What tactics am I going to use?

Am I going to drop back a little bit?

Am I going to go from the inside or go up, up the fence?

No, no, we don't. We know it's it's not, it's not

actually a race, but we re evaluate our strategy in life,

our tactics in life. We re evaluate where we are in

life with Jesus Christ because if there is no Jesus Christ,

listen to me, please stop everything.

Stop everything again, stop the vacuuming, stop the washing of

the dishes. Pull to one side if you have to

stop looking at the screen. If you're if you're listening to

the to this episode on your computer, stop.

Just stop for a second and listen without Jesus Christ.

If Christ is not the center, the pinnacle of your life, you have

no life because Jesus is life. And at church we re evaluate our

situation, our place with Jesus Christ and his church in faith

in general. Where do we stand in faith in in

general in church you re evaluate because again the

disrupt this distractions are minimal.

Yes, I know I know again and I pray that those who attend

church who listen to this episode at least you leave your

phone in the car. You don't need it with you.

Oh, I'm running a business. You can't run a business.

You can't love Mammon and the Lord leave your business for an

hour and a half. I assure you, you're not going

to go broke. You won't have to declare

bankruptcy. In actual fact, God will bless

you immeasurably with things that you didn't even think of,

you didn't even imagine. In church, we evaluate.

Am I only a mere hearer of the word?

And I'm a quick to respond Amen and shake my hand in agreeance.

But I don't do that word. Have I conformed to the patterns

of this world because the world says it's right, because

Hollywood says it's right, because legislations say it's

right, Does that mean I say it's right where Christ is telling me

and and command me that no, that is not right in my eye?

Where do I stand? Have I conformed to the patterns

of this world? We're missing out on much needed

correction and conviction at times, beloved conviction.

We need that. We need to be corrected.

We need to be admonished. And I've always confessed, and I

will confess, and I think I speak on behalf of a lot of my

brother priests, that when we are preaching, we too go through

conviction and correction. If no one does, I assure you, I

confess. I'm telling you I am convicted

at times because we're human beings.

We've fallen, we miss out on the heartburns.

You know, heartburns are, I said not to be good, you know, and I

have, I've had reflux for 50 years at least, right?

But sometimes it's good for your heart to be burned during the

exposition of the Holy Scriptures, when they are read

and when they are expanded upon. During the sermon in Luke

Luke 24:23

chapter 24, verse 23, the two disciples who were on their way

on the road to a Maus, look at what they say.

They said to one another. Were our hearts not burning

within us while He was speaking to us in the road, while He was

explaining the Scriptures to us? That happens during the service.

And again, you yourself have been an example and a witness to

when I receive messages on Messenger, text messages on on

Instagram, on Snapchat, on WhatsApp, on Viber.

When you message me and say, Robbie, your sermon today

touched my heart. I was in tease.

That is not my sermon. That is not my sermon.

That is Jesus Christ speaking to you through the rusty tool that

is in his hand and he's using it.

That is Jesus Christ speaking to you through the vessel, the

unworthy vessel that he has chosen to speak to you through.

We need that heart. But, and we received that during

services, during the church services, not only from reading

the Scriptures, I'm sorry, even the hymns at times.

Because I have sinned, we sing your beloved, receive the nails

and the spear on my behalf. That burns the heart, beloved,

that must crumble you and say, yes, Jesus died.

Jesus received the crown of thorns, The the, the, the, the

spear and the nails. Jesus received them for my sake

because of my sins. If there's no confession and if

there's no conviction and if there's no admonishment, our

hearts are now turned to stone and we need to come back to

Christ so that he can soften that heart.

Finally, and yet not final, we miss out on the assembly of the

body of Christ by which we are encouraged.

Beloved, we are encouraged to come together as Christians, not

only in weddings, not only in parties, not only in

conventions, not only at festivals.

No, no. But at church.

As Christians, as a Syrian Christians, yeah, we take pride

in our Syrianism. Yeah, I'm proud to be, you know,

for those who say, oh, Khashoggina doesn't have an

ounce of nationalism in his heart, define nationalism for

me. Define it.

Is it wrapping a flag around yourself and dancing at the

pool? Is it wrapping a frown, a flag

around yourself and just taking pictures of yourselves and

dancing? I think, I think that's this.

That's this refuting the, the flag.

No. Is it holding the flag and using

it as a, as the head of the of the dance, the handkerchief?

No, That flag is our is our identity.

I think nationalism is this, when you know that you are a

Syrian, but you mostly know that you are a Christian Assyrian, a

Christian Assyrian. And if you're out of the realm

of Christianity, don't dare to call yourself Assyrian.

Yes, I'm going to get all these negative messages now.

Glory be to Christ our Lord, glory be to his name.

Come together as Assyrians come together in the body of Christ

that church. Encourage one another.

Pray for our Assyrian nation. The fast, the rogation of the

Ninevites is approaching. And I tell you, I tell you,

those who wrap the flags around them won't be at church kneeling

before the Lord and beseeching the Lord to protect Assyria and

to bless Assyria. And if it is his will and only

his will, that Assyria may return.

Not my own wisdom and understanding and my philosophy.

No, no, no, the will of God our Creator to sharpen as iron

sharpens one another. We deter ourselves.

We, we, we, we are missing out of all these blessings when we

come to church. And this hasn't even scratched

the surface. Beloved, I haven't even

discussed message. Missing out on confession,

forgiveness, absolving of sin, absolving of sin, celebrating

and honoring Jesus by commemorating His life, His

ministry, His suffering, His crucifixion, His death, His

burial, His resurrection, and His ascension.

I haven't even spoken about that.

It is true that in verse 10 the psalmist writes, one day in your

court or your church is better than a 10,000 I have desired to

dwell in the House of God more than to dwell in the tent of the

wicked. Beloved, this is what we miss

out on. We miss out on the blessings

that God has provided graciously for His people and in particular

for His children through His Son out of Jesus Christ.

Praise and glory be to His holy name now that all times and

forever. Amen.

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double edged sword. Until next time, God bless you

all.