Household Worship - Part 8 - Preparation

Be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning. We pray that you bless our study in household worship, that you would be pleased to see our homes run orderly in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so today we're gonna talk about preparation, and originally this was gonna be both long -term and short -term preparation, but eventually it just became a long -term preparation, specifically preparation for changes in the household.

By changes in the household, I mean the set of members that would exist in the household.

So, you know, having a spouse, having a child, et cetera, that kind of thing. All right, so first thing to consider in such changes is, first of all, understanding your current duties.

Faithfulness in executing lesser duties implies faithfulness in executing greater duties.

Luke 16, 10 says, "'One who is faithful in very little "'is also faithful in much. "'One who is dishonest in very little "'is also dishonest in much.'"

So a lot of people think that they can jump into some new thing, and that's when they'll get it together, is when they have the bigger responsibility.

And I have seen people take on larger responsibilities where when questioned, if you haven't been handling your smaller responsibility well why do you think you can handle this larger responsibility well?

And they'll say, oh, because it's so important, I know I'll have to rise to the challenge, right?

And this is foolish to think that you can just kind of bypass negligence and current responsibilities, and look forward to getting your act together when you have larger responsibilities.

You should handle your current responsibilities well before you take on larger responsibilities, yes.

Sure, let's just, for now, let's just talk about responsibilities of the same category.

You know, like it says in 1 Timothy 3, 4 -5, I'll just read the next verse.

He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

So here we're talking about analogous responsibilities, right, I'm not saying that the person who, yeah,

I'm not saying all small responsibilities relate to all large responsibilities. I'm sure there are many small responsibilities

I neglect. You know, I did not, I was not a very good flosser for a long period of time, right, never flossed my teeth.

Didn't necessarily reflect on how I dealt with other things, but yeah, so we're talking about analogous responsibilities, right?

If you can't handle a small household, why do you think you can manage a large household? If you can't manage yourself, why do you think you can manage others?

Okay, all right, so let's talk about that both for leaders and for followers, right?

Faithfulness and self -control is required for those who will have authority slash control over others.

Titus 1 .7, for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach, must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

Proverbs 16 .32, however, slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

So you see, there's a relationship between self -control and then having authority over others, right?

If you can't even rule over your own spirit, why should you be able to rule a city, right?

Why should you be able to rule others? So yeah, if you're planning on, you know, having greater responsibility in your life, particularly over others, especially, you know, this is especially true for single men who will start households, right?

You should not think, well, I can live my life without real self -control, and that doesn't reflect on whether or not

I will be able to manage others well. No, if you cannot manage yourself well, of course you're not going to manage others well.

There's a relationship between self -control and then other control. All right. Same thing for faithfulness in service and labor is required for those who will engage in greater service and labor, right?

If you're a woman living by yourself, and then you will join a household where it will be a wife, and you need to take care of things for a husband, or other situations, we're gonna talk more about other situations, what the

Bible says about servants and things like that later. But, obviously, you would need to make sure you are faithful in the small things you have first.

Matthew 24, 45 through 47 says, who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time?

Blessed is the servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.

Okay, so you see the example of the servant who's doing faithful things in a small way, and then eventually the master sets him over everything.

Proverbs 22, 29, do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men.

So, yeah, being faithful with one's labors implies greater status.

All right, I thought this quote from Daniel Cawdry was pretty good, Daniel Cawdry being a Westminster divine, one of the guys who worked on the

Westminster standards. While a man is single, he has care almost of none but his own soul, and much liberty to study how to serve and please

God. But when once he has a family made up of these three relations, anybody know what the three relations are?

Okay, Ephesians five, six, Colossians two to three, right, it is spouses, parents, children, and master, servant, right?

Those are the threefold relations. It is interesting, and I might say some more on this in a minute, it is interesting how all these old books really break down all threefold things, they're really interested in the whole of Ephesians and Colossians when it addresses the threefold relationships.

I find it interesting that modern books do not do this. Now I get that like servants are more rare in our context, but even with family life, they typically, books today typically address marriage distinct from parenting.

And while on one hand that could be reflective of oh, you know, these are more focused works that are trying to go deeper into just marriage or deeper into just parents, but this is never true, rarely true anyway, right?

Like usually it's actually more surface level than some of the older Puritan works that are written on the threefold relations.

And so it seems to be reflective that people think of, they don't necessarily think of the category of households all together like that, right, where oh, okay, there's these threefold relations in households, like these are all kind of, different species of the same genus, is that the right ontology there?

But they are to be thought about together. But now really a lot of people address marriage kind of distinctly, they think of it as something very distinct than their parenting.

A lot of times people will live a long time being married without children, right, intentionally so, because they are thinking of these as completely distinct projects and they're not really thinking of them as all one project the way

Ephesians and Colossians think of them. Those are observations

I think that are worth our meditation, how the Bible thinks about these things and how we tend to think about these things.

Yeah. All right, understanding future duties. Excuse me for a second here.

I should just always grab one since I do anyway. All right, understanding future duties.

Planning ahead avoids difficulty. Proverbs 22, three, the prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.

Planning ahead requires understanding your capacity for the task. Luke 14, 28, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost whether he has enough to complete it.

Planning ahead requires work. Proverbs 24, 27, prepare your work outside, get everything ready for yourself in the field.

And after that, build your house. All right, yeah, and then I just mentioned these passages, right?

Excuse me, I said, I think I said two to three, Colossians three to four right there. Yeah, those core relational duties are found in those passages, the threefold relations.

Yeah, and a lot of people enter these things not ready for all that they entail. Like I said, a lot of people enter marriage only ready, like, okay, so the best situation is you're ready for all of family life, right?

One step down for that is you ready yourself just for having a wife or having a husband, and then not also making sure that you're ready to have kids.

Like a lot of people enter marriage without the financial stability that would be able to support a whole household, right?

And that's considered very normal now, but it's really not the scriptural norm is that you would enter with the readiness for all the household relations, yes.

Yeah, live with their parents still, like while being married, not starting a new home. Right, yeah,

Tim called it an act of supererogation, right, supererogation is where you go above and beyond your duties, which is like a

Roman Catholic concept. In Protestantism, you cannot exceed beyond God's standards, which is perfection.

Yeah, so there is, yeah, it's very common that people enter marriage not ready for all that marriage entails, and they're not even looking over themself, right?

They're not even, they're not thinking about their current responsibilities as preparations for future responsibilities, right?

The man typically does not think that, you know, how

I manage this small space that I have available to me now, you know, my finances, et cetera, are indicative of how our preparation for being able to do these things in the future.

And this is why, this is why there are folks like Jordan Peterson who are really popular right now for saying basic things like clean your room, you know?

It's like, oh, wow, it is important to have my own small affairs in order before I take on larger affairs.

Like, these are fairly obvious observations, but they're so uncommon that it really doesn't take much to have a large platform and say things like that.

And then, yeah, a lot of women who will enter marriage, you know, if they are, if they do understand that the role of a woman as a homemaker would be to take care of the home, they enter that without also seeing that that means that the time before that should be spent in preparation of those tasks, right?

There are, I mean, there are a lot of women who do believe that, right? That believe the role of the woman is to be a homemaker, et cetera, but then all their years before that, they're not actually preparing to be a homemaker, right?

They're not like learning to cook well or anything, like learning household tasks. They're just thinking, okay,

I will do that when I get there, and that's just a very foolish way to go about preparing for future responsibilities, right?

You want to understand that if you're gonna take on responsibilities in the future, and that's your expectation, you should be preparing for them now with the smaller responsibilities, okay?

Any questions about that? All right, so this all has implications for who you would choose as a spouse, right?

Who you would choose as a husband, or who you would choose as a wife. First of all, Christians are only to marry other

Christians, as it says in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, yes. I guess the way

I put it is people should be thinking towards those ends. You know, I don't think this all necessarily has to be like you've got something written down on paper with what the plan is.

Like, a lot of people, because it's so abnormal to think ahead about these things, they really do feel like they need to sit down and like read books and write, you know, write a plan down, and maybe that is helpful right now, where it's not like a very natural and normal thing to just see and kind of have a sense of expectations of what it's supposed to look like.

But I do think that in a lot of circumstances, it wouldn't be needed if you were just living life with this mindset, where, you know, all throughout your teenage years, et cetera, you're like anticipating, like, this is what the trajectory would look.

You know, I'd have a job in order to have a home in order to have, you know, support a family, et cetera. You would have an idea.

But yeah, it is good to have short -term plans, long -term plans. I haven't done it in a while, but some of y 'all are familiar with OKRs, you know,

Objectives and Key Results, things a lot of the software companies use around here to manage projects, right?

I have set OKRs for the home occasionally. You know, get the family together, come up with them, yeah.

I mean, if you're gonna pursue work life with excellence and put that kind of thoughtfulness into it, it is worth doing that in whatever capacity makes sense for the home, too.

Okay, all right, was that a question over here? Did I say something? Okay, well, so part of what we're talking about is preparing for these things.

So if you're talking to a woman like that, I would recommend not marrying them until they understand what you would want them to be as a wife, right, that you would want them to follow

Titus to, you know, et cetera, and to, you know, learn how to love her husband working at home, et cetera,

Proverbs 31, that kind of thing. If you find yourself not having, had the important conversations that were necessary, not thinking about these rightly, and you find yourself in a marriage like that, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of different factors to consider.

First of all, is she a Christian? Because that's gonna depend whether or not you could, the degree to which you can involve other people in the church to help you.

But, yeah, I mean, I think speaking with confidence about the matter is important. I don't think it should necessarily be like a tentative request that the husband is making, if that's what you're asking.

But, yeah, I don't know. Do you have any other specifics? I mean, you don't find yourself in that situation, so you're asking hypotheticals that I'm not sure how important they are to answer, okay.

All right. Christians are called only to marry other

Christians. First Corinthians 7 .39, a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the

Lord. Second Corinthians 6 .14, which I believe is actually talking about real idolatry rather than being married at the same time.

It does have applications to other aspects of life, including being married. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness.

Yeah, a lot of people, part of the reason why there are many people who are on the fence about whether or not this is really that important, it is because they don't have in mind household worship, you know, a family serving the

Lord together in a religious sense of serving, right. They're just thinking about, oh, okay, you know, we'll get along, we'll share leisure moments together, we'll raise kids together.

Maybe it's important so that we're both on board with taking the kids to church, that kind of thing, right.

And so, the reason why you see such a spectrum of even true Christians, the way they think about this and how important it is, is in part because they aren't thinking about the duty of household worship.

If you think of this as a duty, you'll realize, oh, wow, there's no way, there's no way this is gonna work out well without a believing spouse.

This is like 100 % a necessity, not just because it's some arbitrary rule in scripture, but the whole duty of the household cannot be fulfilled well without a believing spouse.

So, yeah, these are, kind of what I'm pointing out here is part of the preparation for, because this is not just on getting married, right, this is on household worship.

Part of the preparation is thinking about what household worship would look like and whether or not this person would be a help to you in that, and by help,

I'm meaning it in the symmetric way, husband or wife together. Although, obviously, husband and wife are going to help each other in the asymmetric ways, right, the way the wife assists the husband or the husband assists the wife.

All right, yes, what do you mean, help me out?

No, I'm saying, yeah, I'm saying that most people are coming into it just thinking about the lifestyle and because the lifestyle doesn't have the concrete element that's of actual family worship, right, that's why they are fuzzy on why this is really a requirement.

But if you do think about, like, the concrete religious morning and evening family worship, it is, you realize, yeah, this is really important to pick someone who is going to be with you on that.

All right, first of all, spousal encouragement in worship is asymmetric.

I'm gonna have a lot of things to say about wives here because the Bible talks about wives very frequently when it talks about worship.

The role of the husband is a little more assumed if he's the one leading than, of course, his situation is important, but anyway.

Ezra 9 -2, for they have taken some of the daughters to be wives for themselves and their sons so that the holy race is mixed itself with the people of the lands.

And in this faithlessness, they handed the officials and chief men has been foremost. So if you know Ezra 8 and 9,

Ezra becomes aware of the situation where a lot of the people have married foreign wives and have been led astray into idolatry.

And so the necessary step, they decide, is to put away the wives and children and send them back to their lands.

And this is, yeah, and so what you see here is that, like, you can imagine, okay, well, that's women marrying into Judah where there are any women being sent out to marry into other lands.

And if there were, then it's kind of assumed that it's more of a lost cause, right?

Because the husband is the leader at that point. And it's, so yeah, the husband's role as the leader is one that is of special importance.

But then the wife is frequently in focus as the one who is either encouraging or discouraging him in this task of leading in worship.

So yeah, Ezra 9 was about these, primarily the chief men, but being led astray into idolatry so that the worship going on in their households is one of idolatry.

Consider the different ways that husbands correct wives and wives correct husbands. Ephesians 5 .25 says,

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the word, or with the word, right?

So there's an assumption that the primary way he's correcting her is with the word.

Okay, but consider what 1 Peter says about wives correcting their husbands. Like wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.

Now this is, of course, not to say that a wife can't ever call scripture to mind to her husband, that kind of thing.

But it is to say that the primary mode in which they are correcting each other, one is more implicit and subtle than the other.

And so there can be a thought that, like I imagine all these people in Ezra are thinking, you know, there's no way, like I've got control of my own household.

This wife isn't going to change my mind about these things, or Solomon, marrying the many foreign women, et cetera.

But wives have major effects on their husband even without saying a word, right?

So there's a lot of effect. Yes, Gretchen? Sorry, I didn't hear that last part.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I said, I'm not saying that they wouldn't share a word. I'm just saying that the understanding in 1

Peter is that they are capable of swaying a husband's without a word, right?

And many, yeah, many husbands have been swayed. But that can happen in either direction, right? So 1

Peter is talking about a husband swayed in a good direction, but it can also happen in a bad direction, as we see throughout the Old Testament when these men are led astray into idolatry, right?

I don't think there's any reason to think that these wives were primarily, you know, like arguing and demanding that their husbands serve idols.

Like, which wife of Solomon is going to demand that the king serve idols, right? Rather, this is something that's happening without any kind of use of authority or command or anything like that.

So, yeah. All right, okay.

Wives can discourage godly worship. Genesis 3, 6. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

So, obviously, the very first instance of sin, the man is, yeah, tempted by the wife, and then she, yeah, she leads him astray in this way.

All right. Second Samuel 6, 16 through 23. Excuse me.

This is just verse 20, I believe. I have a different printout than you all do. I forget what the actual one is.

And David returned to bless his household, but Michal, I never know how to pronounce your name.

Sometimes I say Michael. Sometimes I say Michal, Michal. The daughter of Saul came out to meet

David and said, how the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.

Right, so David worshiping the Lord, his wife discouraging him in the task.

First Kings 11, four. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the

Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. Okay, so that's the common one that I mentioned a few times already.

Right, and the wives can also encourage in godly worship. Consider that, all right,

Genesis 31, 16. I'll read it, and then I'll let you guess what this is talking about. All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children.

Now then, whatever God has said to you, do. Who is this speaking?

Any guesses? Rachel and Leah. Yeah, Rachel and Leah are talking to Jacob and telling him that, yeah, that he should go worship his

God in his father's house as he, as is appropriate, right? Now, of course, there's also like the idol being taken out with Rachel, and this is why she dies early, but yeah, there's an encouragement to right worship there.

All right, Judges 13, 23. But his wife said to him, if the Lord has meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a green offering at our hands or shown us all these things or now announced to us such things as these.

This is talking about Manoah and his wife, right? So Manoah, yeah, concerned about the angel of the

Lord peering to him, doesn't know how to take it. His wife is an encouragement to him in that. 1

Samuel 1, 23. But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, as soon as the child is weaned,

I will bring him so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever. Right, so Hannah suggests this good work to do to her husband, he agrees, and she is, you know, enabling them as a family to do this good work in giving

Samuel to the Lord. Okay, so all these things are true.

You need to be thinking before you change your household situation, whether it be marriage or any other situation, but especially marriage, whether or not this person is going to be an encouragement to you in worship or not.

For men, don't just assume that you will not be swayed in one direction or the other by your wife.

She has a lot of power, even without uttering words, to take your heart in one direction or the other.

Women, yeah, obviously, you want someone who is going to lead in worship if you, yeah, if you find a man who's not dedicated to the

Lord, it is not going to, it's going to be a difficult situation to deal with.

All right, any questions on marriage before we go on to other household members?

Yes, right, well, like I'm saying, it's typically explicit, like it is, like it's with the word, right, and so the husband's, like a lot of that is just stuff we've talked about in previous sessions, right, the husband is the one who, you know, organizes family worship, leads the family worship, et cetera, is calling that and organizing the family, and so in a lot of ways, it's very clear.

Now, yeah, there can be certainly other encouragements in the Christian life where he is, you know, encouraging her to reconcile relationships, stuff like that, but when it comes to the, yeah, the actual religious worship, it is simply by the command of, like, let us worship together, that kind of thing, yeah.

Right, sure, yeah, yeah, it's important to, yeah, it's important to dwell with your wife in understanding, yeah, we are going to be,

I think next week, we'll be talking about that verse more and what it means to dwell with understanding.

The Proverbs always also say that, I think it's Proverbs, it might be the, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's

Proverbs, say that you should know the condition of your flocks, right, and so that dwelling with understanding doesn't just apply to the wife, although it especially does, it also applies to the children, like a husband should have a sense of his whole household so he's able to lead them well, and it seems true of a pastor, of course, too, he should know the needs of his people, the kind of applications he should be making should be ones that they need to hear, that sort of thing, yes.

Sure. Yeah, I think the testimony of others is pretty helpful, right, so, yeah, if they're involved in a church community, hearing what those people say about them, right.

There's also, yeah, just observation yourself of them in a church setting, that kind of thing.

Talking about these things directly, yeah, counsel from others, that kind of thing. What kind of thing would you imagine one would be tempted to try out the relationship to see how they fare in it?

Like, which aspect of it? Oh, yeah.

An authoritative relationship, yeah, or one where you have any possession over the other person, or claim to them, right.

Right, well, you can still, so as you're auditioning for the role, right, it makes sense to, it makes sense that you would be saying those kinds of things as problems come up, that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think there's plenty of opportunities without playing the role of an authority or one who has a claim on the other and where they have to obey, and they're auditioning for the role of follower, right, so they decide whether or not you're up for the task.

Is this advice, counsel, I want to hear, and, you know, am I, and then, you know, they are, am

I one who is able to submit to someone like this, yeah. All right, let's move on to adding others to the home.

So, children are interesting because typically, you do not choose your children, and they do not get to choose you.

Yeah, they come by the providence of God. However, there is a case with adoption or servants, as scripture addresses.

There's also the case of impoverished friends who might come and stay with you for a season, or maybe sick relatives, like these are, these are some common cases in our culture where you would expand your household for another and include them in.

So, consider these effects of other members in your household. Treacherous household members may make it difficult to serve the

Lord. In 2 Samuel, you have, and I'm not including the whole story here, but Ziba misrepresents

Mephibosheth so that he is, Mephibosheth is permitted to live with David and eat at his table, right, and he enjoys the blessings of David.

Remember, Mephibosheth is Jonathan's son, who is Saul's son, and so this is this kind thing that David has done in welcoming a member of Saul's family into his home, but there is a report from Ziba, the servant, that Mephibosheth is looking to betray

David, right, and so he, and so this ends up being a major thing in consternation, a major source of consternation.

So, yeah, treacherous household members can make it difficult to serve the Lord. They can be a distraction.

And Christian household members may assist in serving the Lord. Consider the servant, Philemon. I appeal to you for my child,

Enesimus, whose father I became at my imprisonment. Formerly, he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.

Yeah, you also have some other interesting examples.

You have Joseph, the husband of Mary, right?

He chooses to enter into this relationship knowing that he's going to have this adopted son, and he does so knowingly that this is a good thing, right?

These are, yeah, these are important things to consider. It would be unwise, for example, you know, if you have a friend who is needy, just to welcome them into your home without an understanding that this person is either gonna be a help or a hindrance in the task of serving the

Lord, and to have an understanding with them of what that would, of what their relationship in the home would be.

All right. Considerations before joining the household as a member. Exodus 2 .15,

when Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

Excuse me, I just have a, one random word in Mephibosheth there. Forget that. So, here

Moses, trying to serve the Lord. Now, of course, there's the details of him killing the Egyptian, et cetera, which is not really my point here.

My point is that as he serves the Lord more and more, of course, his consternation with Pharaoh grows, right?

His, the antagonism between him and Pharaoh grows, and he was a member of Pharaoh's house.

Like, a lot of people don't think about that when they see the scene of, you know, Pharaoh and Moses going at one another, right?

Moses was a member of Pharaoh's household, and he is, and they are opposed to each other, and so, yeah,

Moses was not able to, as he began to serve the Lord, he realized he could not be part of Moses's, or Pharaoh's house, yes.

Oh, that may be. I don't know those details, but you still have a, you still have a case where he is in the, he has a friendly, warm relationship where he's with the household of Pharaoh, whoever that Pharaoh is, right?

And then he's, and then he has to leave. Like, he can't, he can't be around Egypt anymore, yeah.

Yeah, I think this has some implications for employment in general. Yeah, so, it is interesting.

The model that you typically see in the Bible, and throughout a lot of human history, is that a lot of the work that is happening, employment that is happening, is happening around a home.

So, working on something means being part of that home that is doing that thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of factors that have changed that. A lot of them have to do with the quantity of socialism in our government, right?

So, like, if you make sure that everyone who would have had the role of a servant is lifted up so that they can, so that they have the welfare to live on their own without doing that, you don't have servants, right?

If you have minimum wage laws that would not allow for the live -in situation, that makes sense, right?

If you have really high taxation that keeps people from building up a lot of wealth. And remember that the money that is taxed, if you think of it as money that could be saved and not just money that would be spent, like, all of it could have gone to savings, and it would increase exponentially with investments.

Like, the kind of wealth that we're talking about people having, right, would be the kind where it wouldn't be just that they'd have a little bit more but they'd actually be able to serve, or provide for a number of other people.

Right, so there's factors like that. There's also, like, and those are factors I consider bad, right? And those are factors that seem good, like, oh, well, now it's possible to commute longer distances, right?

So there's a lot of different factors that make the world that we live in now not what it was.

But given that what the Bible is addressing is a situation where, you know, servants are doing both of these things, are both living at a place, and they are working at the place, as opposed to a situation where someone commutes an hour by train or whatever, you know, that we should consider that there are some implications.

Obviously, it wouldn't for household worship, which is happening morning and evening, right, while you are with your family.

But, I mean, it is the case that employers frequently turn employees away from serving the

Lord, right, cause them to be silent about the gospel, cause them to, you know, be complicit in various pieces of their agenda.

That's real common around here, obviously, yeah. I don't know.

I didn't live back then. I'm not that old. I'm not that old. I don't know why. To dinner. If a business is small enough, right, right now, like, corporations have grown to really large sizes.

I'm not saying any of that is necessarily wrong. I'm just saying that it is very different, and some of the factors that have enabled that sort of thing make me a little suspicious about what the world would look like if you didn't have sin, but you did have this size and prosperity and technology, yeah.

All right. Let's see. Yeah, and then, once again, you know, me having gone back, and like, at this point,

I've read a bunch of books on this topic, and just how the Puritan authors are so frequently addressing the threefold relations, right, like, they're assuming that most households have all three going on, or maybe not most households, but a lot of households, all three going on, and then we treat it as something that's just like a novelty of history.

Yeah. Is that a question? No, okay, all right. You were just like, pfft.

Okay, let's talk about dedicating houses. Now, this one is gonna seem wild to you, but so dedicating, all right, the

English translations use the word dedicating for different Hebrew words. So dedicating, the word literally mean initiating a house.

It's pledging to continually maintain it for holy purposes. First Kings 8 .63.

Solomon offered as a peace offerings to the Lord 22 ,000 oxen and 120 ,000 sheep.

So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated to the house of the Lord. So they're beginning to use it for its purpose and saying, like, this is the trajectory on which we will continue to use this house of the

Lord. Okay. Dedicating, the Hebrew word meaning sanctifying, you'll see that occasionally, is a different concept, and that is pledging to eventually release it for holy purposes.

So Leviticus 27 .14, when a man dedicates his house as a holy gift to the Lord, the priest shall value it as either good or bad as the priest values it, so it shall stand.

So that's, you know, the man dedicating the house. It gets valued so that if he ever decides that he wants to undo that, he can add a fifth to it and get it back for himself so that he can pass it off as an inheritance to his children.

Okay, so this is kind of similar to Corbin that you see in the New Testament where people, like, pledge away their stuff and then their parents can't use it and say, oh, sorry, you can't use it.

So that kind of dedicating is a different concept, different word. English uses the same word, but it's a different concept.

The word for dedicating is a Hebrew word that you are already familiar with, probably, most likely.

The verb dedicate is hanuk. The noun is hanukkah, okay?

This is like the Feast of Dedication, right, that when Jesus goes to the Feast of Dedication, that's celebrating how they dedicated the temple again after the

Maccabean Revolt, that kind of thing. Okay, so that is the word we're talking about, is hanukkah.

All right, so dedicating buildings is not just religious buildings that are being dedicated.

It's not just the temple or the altar that gets dedicated, right? Nehemiah 12, 27, and at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, they sought the

Levites in all their places to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgiving, and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres.

All right, dedicating a house is not just for nations, so this is not just something that they would do as like a holy nation, you know, but it's also something that happened as families.

I would like to read all of Deuteronomy 21 through nine here so you can go ahead and turn to that,

Deuteronomy 20. There's gonna be a lot of similar things that I want you to notice that are not just about the house.

Okay, when you go out to war against your enemies and see horses and chariots in an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the

Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people and shall say to them, hear,

O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies. Let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the

Lord your God is he who goes with you to fight you against your enemies to give you victory. Then the officer shall speak to the people, saying, is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it?

Let him go back to his house, lest he train in the battle, and another man dedicate it. And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit?

Let him go back to his house, lest he die in battle, and another man enjoy its fruit. And is there any man who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her?

Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her. And the officer shall speak further to the people and say, is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted?

Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own. And when the officers have finished speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.

All right, so you see there's a couple of other situations, not just the house. There's also the vineyard, there's also the wife, right?

If you're betrothed to a wife, but you haven't consummated the marriage, go start your marriage, enjoy, you know, a year of marriage together or whatever the case may be.

If you've planted a vineyard, you've not enjoyed the fruit, go enjoy the fruit. You've built a house, but you've not dedicated the house.

So dedicating here, in part, refers to, yeah, refers to that initial enjoyment of it.

Deuteronomy 28, 30 says, and this is talking about a curse, right? And it mentions all those things. You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her.

You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. Right, in the, so you don't get to, yeah, you don't get to enjoy these things in this curse.

So this is a, so given that context in Deuteronomy 28, it lets you know in Deuteronomy 20, what it's talking about is like this initial use of it.

In part, that is what it means, right? This word, and I should have mentioned this earlier, this word hanukh is also the word used in Proverbs 22, 6.

When it says train up a child, it's actually saying dedicate a child in the way he should go and he won't depart from it. Okay, so it is like this initial trajectory setting, right?

It's this initial enjoyment, et cetera, until it has reached a stage of maturity and can function on its own, right?

So you've just started the vineyard, go finish that off, enjoy the fruit, and then, you know, it is something that is on its own.

You've got a marriage, you need to spend some time with your wife, beginning to make sure that marriage is going in the right direction.

You've got a house, a new piece of property, you need to set things in order, you need to both enjoy it and set it in a particular direction so that, you know, it will be, it will continue, yes.

Well, it certainly, it certainly talks about,

I mean, it certainly would have implications for judgment, right, if you don't train him up in the way he should go. It was more negative.

Oh, okay, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was looking at it in Hebrew. It did seem like it just said, you know, train him up and then this will happen, but okay.

Dedicating a house should involve prayer and praise. Okay, so it is not, so what

I'm going to argue for is this is more than just the initial, more than just the initial trend setting.

Okay, so there's the enjoying, there's the establishing so that it can function well, but then prayer and praise.

Consider Psalm 30. Different translations translate this heading differently.

The King James Version says a psalm and song at the dedication of the house of David. Psalm, the

LSB says a psalm, a song at the dedication of the house of David. The ESV just goes full interpretive and it says a psalm of David, a song at the dedication of the temple, right?

So the LSB and the KJV are more literal here in the ordering of the words.

It does say at the end there is a

Lamed before David, which means like, it can mean to David, but this is how the psalms are typically prefixed when they are of David is with Lamed before David.

So that is why a lot of modern translations will say of David, like this is written by David and it's not talking about the house of David.

But at the same time, what is the question? The question is, what is the house? Is the house the temple?

It's not really common in scripture. I don't know of any place where the temple is just called the house, like by itself without some meaningful context.

You know, it's usually called the house of the Lord. And then other times when it's just referred to with a single word, it'll use another word, like palace, it'll say the palace, but it won't just say the house without an understanding of who the house is of, right?

The house of the Lord. So in which verse?

Is this in 2 Kings? Or 1 Kings, I mean, yeah, let me look, right?

Yeah, but that is all like with the context of what the house is, right? Right, and so Psalm 30 doesn't mention these things, right?

Yeah, so that, I mean, this probably is a verse that would use the word house, given that it's been talking about the house of the

Lord. Yeah. Yeah, so those do use the word the house, but yeah, it is in context of the house of the

Lord, right? Whereas Psalm 30, there is no context. And moreover, consider that David was not around for the dedication of the temple, right?

If he is writing this for the temple, it is in anticipation of the temple, which is what a lot of people interpret this as being.

But the more traditional interpretation, which I am fond of, is that he is talking about the dedication of his own house of Cedar.

And if you consider all the, like the words of this Psalm, it is about God's personal deliverance of David, right?

It's a personal thing, it's not primarily national. So consider

Psalm 30. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and just read it here.

I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.

O Lord, my God, I cry to you for help, and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol.

You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. Sing praises to the Lord, O you, his saints, and give thanks to his holy name, for his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. As for me, I said my prosperity, I shall never be moved.

By your favor, O Lord, you have made my mountain stand strong. You hid your face, I was dismayed.

To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord, I plead for mercy. What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me. O Lord, be my helper.

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.

O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. All right, so consider how this is all very personal about David and his life.

This is not like a national thing about the nation. Of course, David, and you could argue that David as king is representing the nation, but, and certainly from a

Christian perspective, we should apply this to the household of Jesus Christ, which is the church, which is the temple.

So I'm not talking about this not having application to those things, but the question is, what was the original occasion of this?

And if David is writing it, and he was not around at the dedication of the temple, and it is all personal things written about his life, does it not make sense this is something that he is doing with the dedication of his own house?

John Gill says the following. There seems to be something more than all this in dedication, for though it does not signify a consecration or dedication of it to holy uses as the dedication of the tabernacle and temple, if there was something done, some ceremony used at entrance into a new house, a good man entered into it, no doubt, with prayer and praise, as the 30th

Psalm was composed by David at the dedication of his house, and perhaps it was usual to have their friends together to make a cheerful entertainment on the occasion, you know, a housewarming party.

So, yeah, of course it would be good if you have new beginnings.

Now, the new beginnings we were talking about before has changed to the membership of the household, but considered like the physical property where the household resides has some implications.

I mean, if they're going to pray dedicating the wall of Jerusalem, it makes sense to pray, dedicate your home to use by the

Lord. It is something to, it is something to celebrate, yes? Yeah, it's just in the inscription.

Right, yeah, it's thankfulness for him to have gotten where he is so that he is an established person, right?

So, but the inscription says that it has to do with the dedication, right? And what is the dedication of, given the contents of the

Psalm? Like, that is the question. So, yeah,

I would not, I don't think it's something that should be tread into too lightly, you know, changing actual physical property where you reside or having something new.

And it is something where, you know, if you are in a new physical space, and, you know, we experienced this moving here from Mountain View to Sunnyvale, is, you know, you have to get a new order in your home.

There's different expectations for what the kids are supposed to do, what the chores are gonna be, you know, what things are gonna look like, how, where the family's gonna meet for family worship, et cetera, right?

There's a setting the rhythm of life that comes, so there's the initial enjoyment, there's the setting the rhythm and expectations, and then, is it not right for those things to commence since they really are new with prayer and praise?

Now, I'm not suggesting any kind of special ceremonies. When I was a kid, my dad had one of the pastors come to our new house when we had a new house, and he went around with oil and made little crosses on the windows, right, of all the, and prayed over each one of the rooms.

Now, yeah, I'm not suggesting coming up with any kind of ceremonies like putting oil crosses on windows.

What's that? No, it was all the rooms, yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, yeah, he wasn't on the outside.

No, he was on the inside. Yeah, so I'm not suggesting, now, this might sound weird, like I'm talking about baby dedications or whatever, right?

Like where it's this whole distinct ceremony. I'm just saying that it is right to begin to not just think in a weighty way about new members of the household, but also how the property itself would be used, and to commence that with a sense of need, just like they would let a man skip military service in order to take care of such things.

Like, it's that significant. You should think about if you were to move into a new home or a new place with a sense of weightiness about how that place should be used.

All right. Or if you were to build a new structure on your place, even. Okay. All right.

Any questions? All right, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Holy Father, we thank you for your word.

Your commandment is exceedingly broad, as you say. It applies to so many different things. There are aspects where it can be difficult to discern what we are to do.

Things like how modern employment should be viewed, and things like that. I pray that you would give us wisdom by your word, that you would continue to open our eyes by the