In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses what family worship should look like. Today, we live in a culture where family worship rarely happens. Fathers need to take responsibility to diligently lead his family to read and study the Scripture and to spend time in prayer with his family. It is not a responsibility that can be outsourced to others.
Psalm 150:1-2 (NKJV) - "Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty firmament!
Praise Him for His mighty acts; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!"
The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Elder Training. This message is entitled, Family Life, and is hosted by Scott Brown. Okay guys, welcome back. So we're going to dive into Church in the House. We talked about the church, now we'll talk about the home.
I was In the living room of Jim Zeas many years ago, and he handed me this ancient manuscript of this sermon, and I was so captivated by it. I loved it. Matthew Henry seemed to say almost everything that needed to be said about family worship. And so I determined to republish the book in a single volume like this and the more I read it the more I like it it gets better every time and the more I learn about the worship of God and families the more I think that Matthew Henry really understood this very very clearly now I think when we consider this book, the first thing I'd like for us to just consider to frame the subject is the culture that we live in. We live in a culture where family worship almost never happens among people in the church.
We live in a culture like the one that I live in, right here in North Carolina. If I get up at 5.30 in the morning and drive into work, I'll pass children standing out in the dark at the edge of their driveways waiting for a bus to come pick them up. And they go through their day, they have after school daycare and activities. They come home, they go to their sports tournament, they get back late at night, they fall into bed and they repeat that the next night they go to youth group the next night you know this family is scattered in five different directions and Families in the church do not worship together today. That's the the environment that we live in it's a tragic situation that is destroying the church and So this book I think is so important for our times.
It's important to dig up the gold of the past and bring it to the surface and let it be seen for what it really is. So that's what I like about this book. Guys, any comments that you have? One thought that I had in reading this book that I think is very important, especially from the elder discipleship thought. One of the things is we talk about family-integrated churches, a lot of people that will walk into a family- integrated church, the reason they'll walk into a family- integrated church is because some young man made an inappropriate advance to their daughter or they saw what was happening to their son from going to Sunday school or this or that and they'll be coming into a family integrated church to escape from something, to escape from the church environment that they're in.
And one of the things that if you want to lead a family integrated church that you have to understand is, hey, Sunday school has lots of serious problems, but if you just let people come into your church and instead of their children getting any discipleship, you end up believing that they get none, Right? This has to be the replacement. The replacement has to be an understanding that the fathers need to be held accountable to training their children. This is the biblical pattern. When we look at the Sunday school movement, the primary fault of the Sunday school movement is you had fathers who were unwilling to train their children, and instead of putting them under church discipline, what they did was they substituted the Sunday School movement.
If what we do is we eliminate the Sunday School movement without holding the accountability of some fathers and the things that Matthew Henry is saying in this book, We're going to do even more damage to the next generation. Amen. Well, let's click through some of the sections in this book. So in the introduction, on page 13, Henry says, He shows fathers very special ways to make their houses little churches. He says it is better to be without bread in your houses than without Bibles, for the words of God's mouth are and should be to you more than your necessary food.
And page 17 he says now I know not anything that will contribute more to the furtherance of this good work than the bringing of family religion more into practice and reputation. Here the Reformation must begin." I think that's a really significant statement here the Reformation must begin other words other methods may check the disease we complain of but this if it might universally obtain would cure it salt must be cast into those these springs and then the waters would be healed. Now these are fantastic statements from Matthew Henry. Any thoughts on this guys? Just when we think about this especially in relationship to what we were talking about, about the regulative principle of worship, this comes back to the same thing.
What's the focus of your household? Is the focus of your household God or is the focus of your household man? If the focus of your household is man, all you're going to do is worry about your daily bread. If the focus of your household is God, then what you're going to worry about is spiritual bread. So it comes back to, right, this is the theme that flows through everything.
Where's the focus of your life? Is it God or is it man? Amen. You know, in this introduction, you know, which I wrote I make a comment about Who Matthew Henry was well Matthew Henry grew up in a Christian household headed by his father Philip These two I think are some of the best role models for the developing of family worship and for for passing the faith on from one generation to the next. Matthew Henry grew up in a home where his father required that the children take notes when his father taught them And he ended up with a written commentary of the Bible, all the Henry children did.
And then Matthew turned around and did that same thing. He had his children take notes. Some of the commentary sections that we have today are because his children pulled out their notes and filled out what was lacking in Matthew Henry's personal notes for his preaching. That wonderful commentary set, part of it was pulled together from the notes of his children. This Family worship had an enormous impact upon successive generations of Christians.
George Whitefield read these commentaries. Charles Spurgeon highly recommended them. Whitefield, I think, read them two or three times the last time on his knees. So these are beautiful commentaries that come out of really the rich soil of two things, family worship and the normal preaching in a church. Hey, questions, please fire your questions over on this thing.
One question is, family altars are mentioned. Is this a literal altar or a type you got any comments on that Dan I would say first of all that altar is a dangerous word I don't like the word altar altar is intended to sacrifice that's what you're doing on an altar as you kill things and so but Matthew Henry clearly is talking in a figurative sense, not that there's literally a cross that you bow down before us. We just talked about Matthew Henry would hold to the regular principle of worship, which would deny all those things. So he is just talking about a type, a place to gather and to worship God. Right.
I think one of the questions that comes up a lot when people read this book and when you talk about a church in the home is how literal a church in the home are you talking about. And there's very often a great deal of confusion as far as taking this church and the home and comparing it to the corporate church and the church that we meet with. Yeah, well of course Henry makes a distinction in the book and he says that there are two separate jurisdictions, the home and the church, and they are different. When he uses the term church and the house, He doesn't really mean it literally. It's obvious when you're reading, you'll get to a section where it's very, very clear where he debunks the idea that the church is the house and the house is the church.
He doesn't believe that at all. He believes they're separate. And he makes it very clear. They have different functions. But they have many of the same activities.
And when you look at Ephesians 5 where Christ is basically Christ is the model for every husband and as Christ being the model for every husband he was prophet priest and king and he is head of a church. So in that sense the family is a church not in the church sense of Christ being the head of the church But there is the sense that he needs to lead in all three of those areas as prophet He needs to be proclaiming the Word of God as priest He needs to be going before God in intercession for his children and his King He needs to be providing he needs to be protecting he needs to be doing all those things that come under that role But that doesn't actually make him a king. It doesn't actually make him an elder of a church, but on the other hand He still has those responsibilities for those small little flock that he's been given. You know, Charles, if you look on page 27, you know, Henry makes this very clear. He says, We must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together under excuse of exhorting one another daily at home.
Far be it from us to offer anything that may allow the invading of the office of the ministry or laying it in common, in other words, taking it lightly, and the usurping or superseding of the administration of the sacraments. No, but these family churches, which are but figuratively so, must be erected and maintained in subordination to those more sacred and solemn establishments in other words your family worship does not replace the corporate worship of the church let's see there's a huge mistake a huge blind spot an error that exists in people's minds that if they have church-like activities in their home that that's the church not true the church is characterized by church government biblical church practices biblical discipline biblical preaching biblical sacraments and things like that so the church in the home are different Matthew Henry makes that very clear So then in chapter 2 he says, you know, churches are sacred societies on page 29, incorporated for the honor and service of God in Christ in two ways. First, they're devoted to God, and second, they are employed for Him. So should our families be. And he mentions that more than once in the Old Testament we read of the dedication of private houses, that it was a common practice, that we must give our houses to the Lord, as Henry says, to be to Him for a name and for a people.
It's a wonderful statement. Henry has a very high view of the sacred life that can exist in a home. We've kind of moved on but one thing that really struck me in the introduction is the number of times that he would do very repetitive things that I don't do in my house. It's kind of interesting that every Sabbath he would sing the 136th Psalm. He talks about every Lord's Day in the evening they would recite the Lord's Prayer.
They were very repetitive in what they did. I mean I'm not sure if that wisdom or not but I do know that we're not as repetitive and I can see that there could be some real blessings that repetitive. I think one of the things that was most striking to me and perhaps you can kind of expand on it is something I've seen at least at Hope and I've seen in practice in men's homes I've been in, these things don't just happen in the home. It's very easy to want, you know, just to sit down with the Bible and suddenly your family would just fall in line around you, everyone will wrap around you, their attention will be directly upon you, and when I go home and I do this this is not how it happens in practice you know it's a fight it's a struggle and the discipline and the determination of us as a man to lead our family seems very very central to this yeah this is a constant war nobody does family worship or brings their children up in the training the admonition of the Lord without waging war against all kinds of incursions distractions there are always a hundred really good things that will destroy this I mean and it's constant in my family we're regularly going back into recalibrate mode my guess is it probably some of your families are like that too.
And maybe tonight God will use it to throw you into recalibration mode to say, no we've drifted, no we have forgotten the Lord, we've not filled our house with the knowledge of his will, we've quit reading, we quit praying, we quit singing, we quit worshiping God, and perhaps God will use our time here tonight to convict, you know, any of us or all of us to really to raise the bar and be very determinative leaders, to be good shepherds, to be good kings and prophets in our households and to make sure that our households are full of the knowledge of God. And one thing that I liked on page 26, Henry writes, All agree that masters of families who profess religion and the fear of God themselves should according to the talents they are entrusted with Maintain and keep up religion and the fear of God in their families as those that must give account This is one of the things that we need to keep in front of our own minds and in front of the minds of the people that we're leading is this is something that you will give an account for.
As a leader, since God has put you into a realm of authority, and it doesn't matter what authority, every authority has a responsibility to proclaim God and honor God. And as the head of a family, you will give an account for how you're doing that to your family and how you're either leading them towards God or leading them away from God because there are only two choices. There's not a third choice. And if your family is focused on the television, if it's focused on sports, if it's focused on all these other things, understand that is leading them away from God and there's only two choices. You are either with me or against me, Jesus says.
You are a son of God or a son of Satan. He keeps drawing over and over again in Scripture. He draws a very black and white. And so the question is, as men we have to understand which way are we leading our families, towards God or away from God. Those are the only two choices.
You know, and there's a great question, Dan, which is a perfect follow-up for what you just said. You know, Todd Vander Voorst asked, can you please discuss practically how you go about holding the fathers of your church accountable for family discipleship. Not good enough. Not well enough for sure. Our desire is when we meet with men to ask them how they're doing specifically not just on this issue but other issues regarding their marriages, purity, handling the internet, are they dealing with pornography, is there any area of secret sin, but this is one on the list.
Shepherds should be asking the people in their flock, are you conducting daily family worship? That just needs to be part and parcel of what shepherds do. If you lived in Kidderminster, you know, in the 17th century with Richard Baxter, if he found that you were not catechizing your children, you'd be brought under church discipline. That's how far we've drifted, you know. Does anyone know any church on the planet today who has disciplined a church member for refusing to conduct family worship?
Well, I'm not aware of one. I'm aware of churches that are over 100 years old that almost all of them have that clause in their Constitution. That was a standard clause in the Constitution. If a father will not lead his family in worship, that is a testimony that he is not a Christian, he should be put out of the church. Right.
We'll get to this. You know, Henry gets very, very strong in chapter 2 about this. In fact, I've just put up on the screen for you to look at this on page 41. You are unjust to your God, unkind to your children, unfaithful to your trust. If having by baptism entered your children into Christ's school, we won't comment on that, and listed them under his banner, you do not make a conscience of training them up in the learning of Christ's scholars and under the discipline of his soldiers.
Matthew Henry had very, very stern things to say about the neglect of family worship. I thought what he said on page 30, the master of the family gives up all his right, title and interest in his house and all that belongs to it unto God to be used for him and disposed of by him. Do we think of it that way? Do we think that the family that we've been given, we've been given it with a stewardship to point it towards God, a stewardship to understand that it was given to us so that we could praise God. The purpose of every man's salvation is to glorify God as God and to be thankful.
Is that what the center of your household is? And if you're shepherding people, is that where you're pointing them? Because we need to be actively working to point people towards glorifying God, whether it's in regular principle or whether it's in family worship. And sometimes everybody in the family is not glorifying God. Here's a question from one of the brothers who says, it seems that a spiritual storm rages every morning when we sit down to family worship.
This is new to us since September 2009. Our oldest son especially becomes visibly altered. When our time of worship is over, it seems to pass. Is this common or unique? Can you offer advice?
This is a fantastic question because there are disruptions to family worship when ungodliness is ruling and reigning in a child's life when there's rebellion or sullenness or anger that those things tend to come out it could be that there there is a an unbeliever and unbelievers are sometimes very recalcitrant. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're very honorable and compliant. But this does happen in families. You know, in families today, they find themselves as a mirror of families of old there's a Jacob and an Esau there is one who loves the Covenant and one who hates it so we have to recognize that there will be some spiritual warfare that that we're engaged in from time to time in our family worship.
There are a number of recommendations we'd like to make on this. Dan, why don't you start? I've got a few that I'd like to talk about. The first thing that comes to mind is that we have to understand that in our families there will be unbelievers at times. In that 2 Corinthians 2, 14 through the end of the chapter is what it reminded me.
Now thanks be unto God which always causes us to triumph in Christ and maketh manifest the Savior of His knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet saver of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one, we are the saver of death unto death, and to the other, the saver of life unto life, and who is sufficient for these things. We should not expect If a son is in rebellion, it is going to be like he is sitting in rebellion to God, not just rebellion to you. Family worship would be like him sitting by a graveside and smelling the dead body.
The fact that he would be upset, the fact that he would dislike it that should be expected we can't expect it to all that just be the sweet savor of life that's only going to be the savor of life to those who are living but at the same time we keep them there at the same time we constrain his rebellion by the use of the rod. At the same time, we understand that this is a battle and that we have to fight the battle. But we should not expect that those who are in rebellion to God to say, oh, worship is the sweetest time of the day. No, to them it is the scent of death to those who are dying. Right.
A couple of practical things to consider. One is it can be very helpful to sit down with that child who's really struggling with the time and explain, not just once, but in a number of different ways over a long period of time. To explain what you're trying to do. And to explain the spiritual nature of it. To explain the sweetness of Christ that you're wanting to communicate.
To help them understand that your desire is to somehow unfold the beauty, the glory of God, the happiness of His kingdom, and to explain that though they may not enjoy it, but at least tolerate it without disrupting it. Doing this before the time, long before the time, at a helpful moment rather than the heat of the moment. The heat of the moment often, you know, causes a blow-up. There have been a number of times in my own household where there's been a disruption or some rebellion or something like that that's taken place, and I just don't want to do it anymore. And my reaction is, we cannot do this in this atmosphere.
There's a truth to that, but I've been very helped by my own wife, who will often say, no, let's press on. And she's right in that. We'll press on. We'll trust the Lord that the words will fall, even though they're difficulty, but that we would not completely dismantle the time in response or in an ungodly reaction. Often we get angry.
This is a time when we need to check our own hearts because you know something is being disrupted and we're being challenged and often righteous anger turns to unrighteous anger and so then we begin to sin against our families. I've sinned against my family a number of times in this manner where I've gotten frustrated and then overreacted and said things that I shouldn't have or just shut the whole thing down and said well we'll come back to this later. There are many temptations for family shepherds in this whole arena but I think my one recommendation I would make then is, as I already said, prep those children. Spend time explaining with the kindness of the Lord toward them. Secondly, Guard your own heart when those times happen.
Seek a godly reaction. Seek what scriptures would guide you. A gentle answer turns away wrath. There are many things that we need to be governed by in order for worship to be pleasing to the Lord as well. And if we're in a rage or we're embarrassed or we're just mad that time just got away from us, you know, we set aside this time and now it's gone.
Look, it's your fault. Thanks a lot. Now we're all going to go head off to the races. There are tremendous temptations for us. I would say let Scripture be your guide as well, and to let not the heat of the moment govern your disposition, but to seek the Lord and to be governed by Him during that time as well.
One other thought that I had is that it's also very important for us to check our own heart. Why are we doing the family worship? Are we doing the family worship with a true desire to worship God? Or is it just out of duty? Are we doing the family worship with joy?
Because the reality is it could be that your children also react to you if you're just doing it because hey It's something I'm supposed to check off. You know hey We're reading through the Bible this year. I've got three chapters. We're gonna make it through these three chapters I don't care, and this is the duty that you sit down shut up, and let's get this done right And so one thing that we have to understand, and don't set your family worship in this pattern that you say it will not be broken. If you see that it is not a time of joy, switch and sing songs.
Sing hymns. Sing spiritual songs. Do things so that it's a time of worship and maybe even dance in your home. Somebody sang here, but that's up to you. And there might be appropriate times, but it's just important for us to remember that as leaders of the home, our attitude, we are leading people to the attitude that we have.
If our attitude is this is a drudgery, this is a duty, that's what our children will have, that's what our wife will have. If we're leading our children with this is joy, they're much more likely to have joy in doing it. Yeah, one of the brothers here has a comment about when your children may seem altered during family worship, that later on they may give evidence by a comment or an action that demonstrate that God's Word does not go out in vain. That's why we in family worship, I really want this to be clear. In the same way that teachers in the church, preachers, should preach the Word in season and out of season, so should family worship leaders preach the Word in season and out of season.
When there's a contrary wind against it, or if the sails are full and being propelled by all that are there, in season and out of season, the Word will not return void. Let the Word of God go out. Have faith in God that He will use that. And trust in Him. Not the atmosphere that you've been able to engineer and create, but in God and God alone.
Let the Word of Christ dwell richly and let it go out. And when I said, you know, are you doing it with joy or with duty, let's be clear. There's three steps. Joy, duty, or nothing. Nothing's the worst.
If you can't do it with joy, do it out of duty. But it's better to work towards joy. That's what you should have. Henry says that. I may have quoted it here in this thing, but Henry, he really speaks to all these issues.
When you're traveling, when you have difficulty, he really touches them all. Let me answer a question. He mentions family confession in the book. How should this be integrated into family worship? Specific sins, general sins, etc.
It's by Brent Kendall. One thing that struck me when he lists through the five things that should be in elements of prayer, those five things should be in elements of prayer irrespective of the audience of the prayer, or not the audience of the prayer but the group that's gathered together for the prayer. As an individual the sins that you confess are very specific to God. But at a family level they can be specific to the whole family. You don't want to get into specific, you know, I was looking at pornography last night.
I mean, that is not edifying to the other people that are there. All you're going to do is disrupt your family and cause problems. But so the level of the confession of sin would be appropriate for the size of the gathering and the people that are there. But one thing that really struck me when you look at these five points is too frequently, even in corporate worship and as elders, you'll be leading prayer at corporate worship. That we forget a lot of these actions.
It's so easy for us to flip prayer to be about, here's my list of petitions. Prayer is first and foremost praising God. That is the first thing that you do in prayer. That is the most important thing that you do in prayer. And the same things with confession, the same things and it comes back to the same idea.
What's the focus of it? Is the focus of it God or you? If the focus of it is you, all you want to do is list your petitions. All you want to say is, here God give me this, give me this, give me this, give me this. If the focus is God, it starts with praising God.
It starts with confessing your need for God. It starts with all these things. And it's appropriate to do all of these five things that he lists at every level. And the level of confession of sins would be very... It would really depend on the group of people there and what level is appropriate.
And there are family sins, and we have to understand that. That our families tend to sin as families because they're all being led by the same sinner. Hey, I absolutely love these five directions that he gives for prayers. When I look back, some of the most wonderful times of prayer in our family happened when we just walk through these step-by-step. It takes a long time because everybody's giving thanks for family benefits and making intercessions and all these things.
It does take a lot more time. But we've had really the sweetest times of prayer when we followed the pattern that he brings. Hey, there are a couple of questions on the table here that I'd like to sort of combine. One Michael Matarco quotes Deuteronomy 6-7 in response to the idea that we can't say that we don't have the gift of teaching and Michael says it does not say Deuteronomy 6-7 does not say and if you have the ability that shall teach them And the implication is it just says you shall teach them whether you think you have the ability or not. And then James Spangler is asking, what does that teaching look like?
Did you need some great lesson plan? Can you speak to the simplicity of it? And so my opinion is the teaching should follow the simple patterns that we find in the worship in the church. It should have some kind of mirror, not that it has to be a perfect mirror, but there should be scripture reading. Just the reading of Scripture.
Again, the Word of God will not return void. And no baptisms or Lord's Supper, by the way. No baptisms and the Lord's Supper, right. That's a function of the church, not the family. Some people believe that it's lawful for them to take the Lord's Supper in their family at home.
We think there's absolutely no pattern in scripture for that that that's not something that family should do they should gather with the larger family of God to do that and baptism is the same way but we're reading scripture and we're singing and we're praying for each other and for for those that are around us Henry really recommended this simple pattern as well. And it'd also not be too long and too laborious. Often, you know, we can exasperate our children by making it too long and too laborious. In the Henry households, both Philip and Matthew, they got to the point and they worshiped God and then they went on their way in a half hour or a quarter of an hour. That's how long they did it.
One of the things that actually that Dan was saying earlier about making the time of blessing and being kind to your children, it kind of goes back to Todd Vander Voorst's question about how do you hold people in your church accountable? And I don't know if our elders even realize in some ways how they hold us accountable because If you ask any man in our church about being held accountable, they'll tell you about how that Scott Brown will come and look at you and he'll ask you a question and he will just look at you and he will sit and wait for your answer. And it's a very uncomfortable sort of silence Because and there are men in this room sitting right now here laughing and nodding their head who have had the stare of Scott Brown Fall on them as far as being held accountable You find yourself speaking to fill the silence and trying to answer this question One of the things with with your children and with holding men accountable in the church is that you can't turn it into something that you just do in five seconds. You can't just turn it into something that you do and you treat it as a passing duty.
You have to take it serious. And I don't know if Scott knows that he's doing it this way, but it's a very effective way in holding them accountable is to treat it as a very serious thing and take that time and I've been meaning to say that since Todd asked the question earlier and just hadn't had the chance. One other thought I also had on Dame Spangler's question. We also have to understand that fathers are given real authority. In other words, as Scott and I ask questions about how people are doing family worship, if somebody says, hey, we spend three hours in the morning, I'd say great.
If somebody said we spend five minutes in the morning, I'd say great. Because the reality is the father does have great leeway. What we do is a lot more complicated than some other people do. But God has given fathers real authority to say what should the worship of God look like in our household. And it's important for us, you know, somebody that has one year olds and two year olds and three year olds, it's going to look different than somebody that just has teenagers.
These things will look very different, and a father should get discernment and wisdom from the Scripture, but he should be going and saying, How do I bless my family the most? How do I make my family focused on God the best? And not exasperate their children. Your family moves in age and capability and you have to recognize that as well. And my home, my youngest is 15 years old.
These are people that are able to read like and think like and understand like adults very different than when they were three four or five years old we do it differently today although we read Scripture just like we did when they were three we sing just like we did when they were three you know I think that's what we would recommend. Keep to those simple, beautiful things that God has recommended. Trust those things. Bet the farm on them. He had Scripture singing and prayer.
One other thing that I'd like to encourage you to do is to both encourage your children to ask you questions and your wife to ask you questions as you read scripture for you to ask your children and wife questions. These are questions, this is what Jesus Christ did when he taught. He frequently asked questions. And so as you read something, don't just let it be, again, it can become this checkmark. I read my three chapters today.
Instead of actually taking the time and asking questions and making sure that people have engaged their minds on it. This whole thing about asking questions. Just recently, I was talking to Dan, or we were in a conversation or something, and he said just what he just said, ask your children questions. I thought, you know what? That slipped off the table for me.
The next few times that we got together, I was pounding my shoulder with questions. You know what? It freshened the time. It made it sweeter. It was better.
So I think there are all kinds of things that we can play ketchup. Play ketchup! Get her done, you know. Turn around, you know, make the turnaround. Don't just wallow in where you are.
If you want your theology to be sharpened to have a better understanding of who God is, just get your children to ask you lots of questions. Yeah, or your wife. Or your wife, even better, yes. Let's see, there's a question about visual aids in family worship. We advocate the use of Scripture.
God has given us words, not visual aids. I would recommend against using kiddie Bibles with kiddie pictures and illustrations, funny pictures of Jesus and the disciples, pictures of Jesus, my perspective, they're violations of the second commandment. There's a time where we got the Bibles out of our house that had second commandment violations in them. And I would even caution you against other violations, I mean not of second commandment, but whenever you start to make these things pictures instead of the words that God has given us, understand in a sense you are adding or subtracting from scripture. Because God is describing real people when he describes Moses.
When you put any other person there, it's a different person than who God's actually describing. And there will be extra baggage that's brought in there, and your children will remember, what does Moses look like? He's this old guy with this big white beard because of the Ten Commandments movie that most of us have seen the reality is What does he look like? Probably nothing like Charlton Heston and what we do is we all walk in with these false views of what people do and we carry These things forward in they're not scriptural and so the visual aids I find to be in the long run more damaging than they are in the short Run an aid to them to understand Words are sufficient. Yeah.
Amen. God. Yeah, we've got has given us words not images Question Scott, what is your family worship look like today? Well like I said I've got older children so it probably looks differently. We try to read through the Bible every year so we read about four chapters together and We often sing don't always we always pray that's what we do.
We're gonna do that for this year We're also gonna read a chapter in the book of Proverbs you know each day of the month and If we don't get to that all together and We try to read through the Bible out loud. Each person reads five verses and we just go around the circle until we get it done. If we don't meet together as a family, then we want our children to be doing that individually. That's how we're doing it right now. Having little children act parts out, I'd be curious as to what my brothers might say here.
We didn't do that when our children were young. I don't know, what do you guys think about that? Charles has the youngest. We didn't do it when my children were young either. My children have definitely done some things along those lines.
My children frequently act out with impromptu stories that we've told them. They'll alternately be Rebecca and Isaac and get married. And my wife takes them aside and tells them that brothers and sisters can't get married. But we find them acting out passages from Scripture all the time, though we don't incorporate it directly into family worship. Yeah, and I would just say whatever role playing there be, it ought to be with an atmosphere of honor and care.
You know, children should understand that whenever they handle the Word of God, they should do it in a respectful, humble way. It's not a time for joking or making jokes out of it. I think the way that it's done probably is really important to consider. And I do think there's a very different thing when two children decide to play out Isaac and Rebecca because the reality is they don't Have authority and that means something from the fact that they have not decided This is what it looks like they understand that this is what we imagine it looks like, which is different than with authority as a father says, okay, you do this and this is what happened, and you do this and this is what happens. There's just a different level of acceptance that this is truth that doesn't happen when they make it up themselves?
I think some of these questions are in some ways touching on the Regulative Principle of Worship that we talked on in the first half and how the Regulative Principle affects family worship, which was one of the questions earlier. And so I mean, they're very relevant questions. Here's a question about catechisms. Do you use catechisms? And if so, how do you incorporate them?
Thanks, Chris, for that question. My perspective is that catechisms can be very helpful. They can establish doctrinal integrity. But as for me and my house, we really didn't use catechisms that much. The reason we didn't was we didn't have time.
So we only had time for so much, and I wanted that time to be given to the words of Scripture in priority over a catechism. I mean, I actually recommend them, we just did not use them in the Raising of Our Children. I'm in the same category, and one thing that we kind of decided what's more important to memorize? Man's interpretation of Scripture or Scripture. And we spent a lot more time on the memorization of Scripture and not on catechism questions.
Now on the other hand, we used to meet with another family on Sunday evenings and I taught through the larger catechism for years so that they understood what the catechism was and understood the questions but not just memorize them without understanding. If they're going to memorize something, not without understanding, but if they're going to memorize something that you don't spend the time describing every word of and understand that and tie it back to Scripture, it would be much better for them to hide Scripture in their heart. It's the decision I made, but if you want to use catechism I think that's great. All the Reformers use catechism that's just not where I ended up. Amen.
So chapter 3 on the PowerPoint here he answers the question why should we turn our houses into little churches and then he gives you know a number of reasons that God will come to you and dwell with you in them it is a very desirable thing to have the gracious presence of God with us in our families The first and foremost reason is the presence of God. And he talks about furnishing your houses for the preference of God. What a wonderful thing. And then he says, secondly, if you make your houses little churches, God will make them little sanctuaries. And in page 62 he says, Wherever we encamp under the banner of Christ, the angels of God will encamp around us and pitch their tents where we pitch ours.
I love this quote on page 63. You'll see in the PowerPoint, If you would insure your houses by the best policy of insurance, turn them into churches, and then they shall be taken under the special protection of him that keeps Israel, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. What a beautiful thing that he mentions here. Thirdly, he says, if you do not have a church in our house. Any thoughts?
I mean, one thing that I underlined after three was, if religion does not rule in your family, sin and wickedness will rule there. There are only two choices. There is no neutrality. And that's true, right? If you're not encouraging this in your churches, if you're not doing this in your family, there are only two choices.
Either God's dwelling there or sin and wickedness rule there. So let's continue chapter four. He speaks of neglecting family religion. He just urges if you've neglected, pick it back up. Move on.
Put on resolution that you may set up this tabernacle tonight before tomorrow do not plead your own weakness and inability to perform family worship make use of the helps that are provided you I beg you for Christ's sake and for your own precious soul's sake, He's just appealing with tremendous urgency. He's just encouraging us to revive as much as we possibly can, and quickly, and let us have tremendous zeal for it. In chapter 4, He speaks of the comfort that we have when Christ is in the head place in the home. So he makes some tremendous arguments for all these things. If we would have strong churches, over the long haul We must have strong family worship.
How will we bolster this generation to be different than the generation that we grew up in? That is, that we wouldn't rely on once a week in Sunday school. We would think we would despise that as an exclusive use of the training, the admonition of the Lord, but that we would do it every day of the week think of how much more impact think of how much more knowledge of God is implanted when you do it every day we would recommend you do it morning and evening that's what that's what the Puritans recommended If you're not engaging your family in some form of family worship, morning and evening, get back on the train and make that happen. Just do it. Get it done.
I think that's what Matthew Henry is saying in chapter 4. And one of the really important things is to understand consistency. That's one of the things he did in the earlier chapter. But it's more important to do it every day than to have these verse where you say, oh, we're going to spend an hour every morning doing it, and that lasts for a week, and you stop doing it. Consistency, consistency.
Every day, going before the Lord, make it short if that's what you can do at first. If that's what your children are used to that's fine but consistency. I liked what he said here, I beseech you sirs make a business of your family religion and not a by business. We tend to make it that our families are about making money, that our families are about pleasure, that our families are about recreation, our families are about this and our families are about that. The question is, are our families about God?
Is that the business of your household or is your business all these things in the world because that's where your heart really is. Amen. Amen. Andrew Bradderick has a great question here. What's your recommendation on family worship in families where there's no father present?
We hearken back to young Timothy, whose mother and grandmother taught him the Word of God. That woman becomes the head of that house. And she now has a double responsibility. A difficult load, for sure. But it is one that she should take up with vigor and play the role of Lois and Eunice in her household.
And the teaching of a mother has wonderful strength to it. And so that head of that house, that mother, should take that on. And a related, not a question, but a related point that he makes in point eight that I'd encourage people to especially anybody that's single is You know, he says if you're solitary what you should do is spend more time praying by yourself and there's some truth there And I don't deny that But the other thing that you should do is go worship with families and families if you know that there's a single man That it's living in your community invite him into your home to worship with you Don't just let his only worship be on Sunday morning where he worships with other people Let it also be other days invite them into your home This is one of the things God says He put solitaries into families, and we should be doing the same thing. We should be imitators of God as dear children. This is what He does.
This is what we should do. And we should train these young men how to worship in a family, and that you do by the pattern of inviting them into your home. Sure. And how do elders encourage the single mother? They need to take special care of her to find out how she's doing because her burdens will be greater, her susceptibility, the discouragement because she's carrying the load that was really meant to be carried by two, you know, will be more difficult for her.
So prayers, fastings for these families, you know, should be a normal part of elders' lives. You have a single mother in your church, you know, there ought to be fasting and prayer for her in a way that may be different, you know, than everybody else in the church because she does have more difficulty in executing her duties. And more inviting them into your home as well. Right. So Charles, Dan, any final shots here, any final appeals for all of us to encourage us along this way?
One thought that struck me some years ago that I'll repeat is that what we've ended up doing through the Sunday School movement is create first generation Christians over and over and over again. There's no such thing as second generation or third generation Christians. When you look at Matthew U. Henry's commentary, it's from a second and third generation Christian. It's from that his father did this, he did this, his children do this.
And so from that, their theology gets better. From that, there is a carrying forth of understanding and knowledge. What we need to do is we need to re-establish that. I think that I've made the comment before when you read Jonathan Edwards, he reads a lot different than the modern writers do. Why is that?
Because they had generations beforehand that were teaching these things. And once we take it so that it's just an hour every Sunday, It's not going to get the job done. It's not going to get the intellectual depth. It's not going to get the glory of God properly. It takes work and it will take generations to get it back, but it's possible.
But it starts with us now. Are you training your children so that they can train their children that they'll understand God a lot better than you do. Amen. To those who would be the caretakers of the church of God, they must first have a church in their home. How can we wrestle with you on this with all of our hearts?
How can we so urge that the Word of God would fill our homes? What could we say? You know, Matthew Henry in his book pulls no punches. He chastises you. He berates you.
He gives you reasons you should. He gives you effects of it. He just tries to walk very thoroughly over a landscape that's important to cover. Anyway, so we so commend the practices that are here. I pray that as a result of our time you'll be having prayer times that follow a careful pattern of praise and intercession and appeal, confession, that there would be more worship of God in all of our houses all across this land Because of the time that we spent I pray that God would use it in my own life to give more heart more fire more Joy more happiness more Carefulness more questions, you know all those things so that we would have houses that are filled up with the knowledge of God.
If you want to do something in this world that's a blessing, let the worship fill your house. That's what we would pray. Many blessings to you. Dan, could you close us in prayer? Yeah, let me read a verse, and then I'll close us in prayer.
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land. We have to understand that we can complain so much about what's happened in this land But it starts with what we're doing in our homes. Let me close in prayer. Oh dear Lord We do call upon you to convict our hearts Convict our hearts in the ways that you've given us these household You've given us wives and children so that we can shepherd them for your name's sake Lord we ask you to convict us to let us be using our time Let us be using our resources to glorify you as God Let us be proclaiming the glories of your name in our households Let us be truly worshiping the Creator of the universe to whom is all honor, all praise. Lord, we know that we do not do this without you.
We do not do this unless you call us and draw us and convict us. Lord, we thank you that the Spirit guides us to truth and guides us to these things. Lord, we just ask You for every man here. Let them start by worshiping You in their household. And then, Lord, let them exhort one another in love and good works and to worship You in all the families that are in their churches, Lord.
Lord, we just ask you to let it go through this whole land, a worship of the God in heaven. We ask this in your son's name. Amen. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org.
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