What does the Bible say about being late or lateness?

Every remembrance of our Lord Jesus brings responsibility of this nature. The object of Satan is to take from our Lord, for as great a period as possible, the engagement of my heart and my affections with Himself. He may accomplish this purpose in this way. He may introduce obstacles which in my lethargy I fail to surmount, so that I am ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes late; instead of being present before or at the appointed time, I arrive ten minutes after it. The Lord has lost ten minutes of my heart's service, and I have lost what I can never regain. Should we be late if the king of this country had promised to be here at a definite hour? Who would slight His gracious Majesty by being absent when he came? And the Lord Jesus Christ is faithful to what He promised, "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst." Let us always be present when the appointed hour comes.

We see therefore the contrast drawn in the tenth chapter between the supper of the Lord and an idol supper, and in the eleventh chapter between the Lord's supper and a man's own supper. We are certainly all in danger of falling into this latter error of making it our own supper. If we make it our own supper, we consider first our own inclinations, and study our own convenience. There are, alas, too many persons who seem to think that they can come to the Lord's supper just how and when they like. They rise very late on the Lord's day, and after a hurried breakfast arrive five minutes or more late. Possibly there may be a legitimate excuse on some special occasion, but if lateness is a habit, what does the practice show? It shows that such a person regards the Lord's supper from an human standpoint altogether, and sets aside its claims in favour of his own ease and self-indulgence. It shows a deadened conscience toward God too, for he would not allow himself the same liberty in the matter of his secular employment. He forgets that the Lord is there; he ignores the sanctity of His presence; he does not judge himself and his ways. The consequence of. such laxity is that those who, forgetting the Lord's presence, eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord, do so unworthily.

No, I do not think you would ensure punctuality by living next door to the meeting room. Certainly everyone could not live so near as that, so that such a suggestion could not be carried out by all. And it has been stated to me by persons of wider experience than myself, and who ought to know what they are saying on such a subject, that those who live farthest habitually come in first, and those who live nearest habitually come last. But I am not myself in possession of a sufficient range of reliable statistics to lay down any rule in the matter.

Still I do say that in my opinion the cause of habitual lateness is not the distance a person's house may be away from the place of assembly, but the distance his heart is away. You may reside within a hundred yards, but you will be none the earlier for that if your affections are a hundred miles or so off. You want something of the Psalmist's spirit, when he said; "My soul longs, yea, even faints for the courts of Jehovah" (Ps. 84:2).

Are you one of those objectors who say you don't know what to do with yourself when you are so early? You think it a waste of time to be there so long before others! Well, you surprise me. Such language seems to indicate that you scarcely know for what purpose we gather together. You must be aware that it is useless for believers to be together without the felt presence of the Lord. It is He Who by His Spirit bestows the blessing. Is it not fitting, therefore, that you should be there in readiness of spirit as well as of bodily presence to receive it? Is it not more proper, if I may put the matter so in all reverence, that you should wait for the Lord, than that the Lord should wait for you?

There is a passage in Luke's Gospel which speaks of the Lord crossing the lake of Gennesaret on one occasion, and we read: "It came to pass that, when Jesus was returned, the people received [or, welcomed] Him, for they were all waiting for Him" (Luke 8:40). Are you always when you come to the meeting in such an attitude of spirit to welcome Him? Hardly, if you have been rushing in all of a fluster because you are late.

To prevent misapprehension I had better say at the outset that there are some persons who are quite unable to avoid being late in their attendance. Such persons are to be pitied rather than blamed. Only it is to be hoped that they do not become so accustomed to their misfortune that it is never a matter of great concern to them.

However, if any of you whom I address cannot help being late, do try to be late properly. Some persons appear to overlook the fact altogether, that on such a deplorable occasion there is a certain etiquette to be observed. They blunder through the door, banging it after them, and stride with heavy tread to their seats, knocking knees and elbows as they pass. And the fact that they have at last taken their places is announced to all present by dropping a Bible or hymn-book on the floor. This is shocking behaviour.

I am not supposing that those who do this kind of thing do so with the express object of distracting others, and to make the fact of their lateness more obvious than it otherwise would be. No, such things are mostly done from sheer want of thought. They do not consider how their carelessness affects others. They should seriously consider the position: "Here is a number of persons assembled together, led by the Spirit of God to meditate on divine and heavenly matters, and if I am not careful I shall disturb them, and cause them to think, There is Brother Sluggard, or Sister Slowcoach, late again; and such a thought will not help them in their devotions."

But there is a more serious consideration even than this. The Lord is present on such occasions, and He is always present at the appointed time. The remembrance of such a solemn fact will surely hasten your steps, if anything will, to be present at the opening of the meeting, and, moreover, cause you to be more comely in the manner of your entrance, particularly when prevented from punctuality.

Do you ever try to remedy your bad habit of coming late? A good plan is to aim always to be early. The Jews were forbidden to give a person more, than forty stripes (Deut. 25:31). Their practice was to give "forty, save one" (2 Cor. 11:24), lest they should make an error in counting, and administer one stripe beyond the limit. If you were to strive to be five or ten minutes before the time, you would be almost sure that you would never be late.

What all our souls need, is a deeper realisation of His presence. It would correct many things that we have to groan over before Him. Would saints arrive late on the first day of the week if there was a just sense that the Lord is there? To whom are we gathered? Whom do we go to meet? Dare I keep Him waiting Who deigns to come into the midst of His gathered saints? Further, when together, what holy calm would prevail if His presence were duly realised! Nothing like haste or eagerness, and certainly no display of flesh would grieve us if all hearts realised sufficiently the simple, yet vital, fact that the Lord is there. It would enter into everything, affecting our dress, our words, our whole behaviour. The Lord give us to exercise our hearts before Him.

Believers are certainly not children of the evil one, but regrettably they may sometimes be like the unregenerate in their behaviour. For instance, there are believers who are never on time, who are always late at the meetings for prayer or Bible-study or edification or worship! Do you know about them? They lack spiritual energy. It seems that the round of meetings is a real burden to them. They go through the motions, but their heart is not in it. They need our prayers that they may be revived and energised and healed from their spiritual “fat heart.” May we be characterised by a fervent spirit, serving the Lord whole-heartedly!

"Oh," we hear some one say, "you forget that we have our meetings to attend; and I have a Sunday-school class and must prepare the lesson;" and perhaps another devotes an hour each week to tract distribution and visiting; and another holds a little gospel-meeting 'each week in some cottage which has been opened to him. Another has open-air preaching during the summer, etc. Are we to neglect these in order to carry out your schedule? Most certainly not. Forsake not "the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is." We should never allow ourselves to become neglectful as to attending the regular meetings. Promptness, regularity and attention to these things are certainly as little as we can render. How many have been stumbled by the absence of older Christians from meeting or their coming in late when unnecessary. We must surely make provision for these duties.

You may take it for granted that you will not require to put forth a great deal of exertion in order to acquire the habit of being late. Let the stated times of attendance, say at a meeting, become a matter of indifference to you for a while, and you will insensibly, but rapidly, become proficient in that unlovely art of being always behind the time. When you can be five minutes late without regret, it will be but a short and easy step to be ten minutes, and then fifteen minutes late. And so you will continue to decline from punctuality until you will not be disturbed in your self complacency even when you find you have arrived only in just sufficient time to hear the closing benediction pronounced.

It is ever so. Sloth says, "Put off work till tomorrow. Another time will do quite as well." So things are allowed to drift. No weeding. No digging. No sowing. But all the while the nettles are growing; the thorns are silently creeping over the flower beds, and the stone wall is toppling further day by day. Presently there is a crash. You rush out to investigate, and you find your trim garden has become a wilderness. All around you are the consequences of your own sheer neglect.

How common is this spirit of procrastination! We so easily neglect what ought to be done now, assuring ourselves (or others) that we shall do it without fail in the future. But tomorrow comes and goes, and it is still undone. The honest energy of faith is needed to strike sharply at this lax indolence, to put us on our feet; to have done now what ought to be done. Only the present is ours: the future we know nothing about: let us act while we have the time.