Family Worship Part 2

We talked about the importance of family worship. Today, we're gonna be talking about what family worship should actually look like.

Any questions about last week, the importance of family worship? Okay, let's go ahead and just first talk about frequency.

When should family worship happen? First of all, daily, like I said.

And then, remember also, one of the reasons I said people should engage in family worship is because the

Lord's Prayer says, give us this day our daily bread. We're supposed to be praying with and for others, and if your family is the one that you're supposed to be praying with, then, therefore, you should be worshiping

God as a family. People should be drawn to pray together if they are serving the

Lord. However, the passage also talks about give us this day our daily bread, right?

So, this is something that should be happening daily. Now, on top of that, if you look at the past, of what

Puritans and others have written, everyone is ready to concede that they can't be too dogmatic about it.

However, the most serious of worshipers in the past have argued that it should be twice daily, it should be twice daily, once in the morning, once in the evening.

That comes from passages like Psalm 1 through 2, where David says, it's good praise to the

Lord to make music to your name on the most high, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night.

There's a lot of passages that talk about morning and evening worship. Now, you know, we start off with daily bread, and yeah,

I'll say a lot of what we're gonna go over today is going to be my thoughts on the matter, right? These are a lot more tentative than things

I was saying last week. Our confession only talks about daily family worship.

But anyway, yeah, I do think it should be twice daily. Oh, we talked about, give us this day our daily bread.

What were meals in the Bible? Meals seem to be both morning and evening.

1 Kings 17 says, the ravens brought them bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening.

They drank from the crook. And so, yeah, Christians are to pray before meals if that's something that belongs to you, to sanctify food, then it makes sense that as families gather once in the morning, once to eat food, these things should happen.

So this is a, you know, we're talking about several chains of statements here that are somewhat tentative each, but I do think it has a significant weight.

1 Timothy 4, 5, excuse me, 4, 4, 3, 5 says, for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer.

And that's talking about food, but not only is food made holy, it is made holy by the word of God.

Yeah, this is something that in the morning should be sanctified with prayer, so it should be, it is, yeah, so that's one thing.

You look at what the Bible says about food and praying for your daily bread, I think that's one implication. The other times, there's several times that the

Bible seems to recommend praying three times a day. Daniel, 6, 10 says, when

Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had leaders, and in the supper chamber of the poor

Jerusalem, he got down on his knees three times a day, praying to give thanks before his God, as he had preached, as he had done for his city.

Psalm 55, 17 says, evening and morning, and at noon, I utter my complaint to him, and he hears my voice.

And yet, the family is dispersed throughout the day. Obviously, two of those are going to be ones that you would be gathered for to enjoy.

So that would be, once again, morning and evening. Additionally, the pattern of Old Testament worship.

First Chronicles, 16, 41 through 40, excuse me, 40 through 41, says, and he let

Zadok, the priest and his brothers, the priests, before the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place that was at Gibeon, to offer burnt offerings to the

Lord on the altar of burnt offering, regularly, morning and evening. To do all that is written in the law of the

Lord, he commanded Israel. First Chronicles, 20 through 30, says, and in a day when they would stand every morning, they came praising the

Lord, and likewise in the evening, talking about the Lord. Ezra 3, 3 says, they set the altar in its place, for fear was on them, as the peoples of lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the

Lord, burnt offerings, morning and evening. So there's this consistency in Old Testament worship with God being worshiped daily, morning and evening.

And yeah, it seems to us that they use the Old Testament as the pattern for our worship, and that's a different covenant.

Consider how often the New Testament makes analogies to Old Testament worship in order to explain how we ought to be worshiping

God. Just one example, First Chronicles, 9, 13, says, do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar to share in sacrificial offerings are doing for it as a support to the pastors?

All right, so I very frequently see patterns of how Old Testament worship worked in indicating how

New Testament worship should work, not in the acts of the worship itself, but some of the principles behind the worship, right?

And it's God being worshiped daily, morning and evening. It seems to be one of those. Psalm 141, 2 says, may my prayers be set before you like incense, may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

So David says that his prayers should be like the incense, and we read the Bible several times that the incense represents the prayers of the saints, and then why is it lit morning and evening?

Because we ought to be praying to God morning and evening. All right, so when in the morning and when in the evening?

Well, I would argue, if you're trying to do this with your family, as soon as the last person wakes up and before the first person goes to sleep.

So this is, and different families have different situations where people are working on schedules.

I grew up in a family where my dad was, you know, working just really on shifts because he's a air traffic controller, so sometimes he'd be all night, sometimes he'd be all day.

And I wouldn't see him because of my good time schedule. I wouldn't see him for three days at a time or something.

And families have different situations, but if this is a priority, you figure out how to, how to make something work in order to lead your family.

Of course, you can't all the time give people like business trips home for a week or something like that, but yeah, you can delegate, you can make this happen.

All right, any questions about frequency? I've already thrown out the caveat that I can only stay with minimal since the law of non -carrier, but any thoughts on frequency?

Yes. You don't have an express, you know, explicit command, but I think you do a good job there with the sense of it, that if you put it together, and also the

New Testament, which of course rules over the old, but I would agree with you that the sense of it is at least more in the evening, and then the

New Testament seems to elude strongly to that. So I think you handled it correctly, that it's not absolute, here's the command, but the totality of Scripture is supported.

Yeah, and it's similar to what I mentioned last week for, because the whole thing of family worship is something where we don't have explicit proof text, right, it's all implications of Acts of Scripture.

Why would someone resist daily family worship? Why would they resist more immediately? What is the reason behind these things?

Is it really that it's too oppressive of something to be saddled with, or is it rather that this person would rather seek her own pleasures, you know?

Did it be unlawful to kick her or hurt her? Why would you resist considering some of these implications?

Let's talk about the contents of family worship. What should you include? Okay, so our confession says, the reading of Scripture talks about worship including the reading of Scriptures, preaching, hearing the word of God, teaching and polishing one another in Psalms, and in the spirit of Psalms, singing with the praises in our hearts of the

Lord, as also in the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, are all parts of religious worship of God, to be performed in obedience to Him, understanding faith, reverence, and the

Holy Spirit. Moreover, psalmic revelation, with the fact that it has been exhibited upon special occasions, ought to be used in a holy and religious manner.

So this is our confession summary of what the Bible includes as being acts of worship. Now, of those, which ones are regular?

The regular ones, you know, I'm concluding a special time for Thanksgiving or Passover, the regular ones are prayer, reading, singing, and the

Lord's Supper. And then the latter one is a church ordinance, it's not something that families have to get together in the churches to do together.

So that is just three regular things, reading, praying, and singing.

Or, I've heard it more celebrally, but it has proclamation, petitions, and praise.

So you have three pieces there. Now, occasionally, maybe it would include a special holy time for Thanksgiving, or a special holy time for baptism, but a general family worship would just be those three things, reading, praying, and singing.

And then, that's very simple, right? You can read, pray, and sing. It's not an ordinance too much.

So with all three of these elements in mind, let's consider what the Bible would look like. Once again, we don't have a lot of explicit direction on the details of what this looks like, but we are to consider totality of the

Word, and where it leads us. Our Confession, the first chapter, says, there are some certain things concerning worship of God in government and the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the life and nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the

Word, which are always to be observed. So there's a lot of things that are not explicitly said in Scripture about how we are to worship, but it is permissible for us to figure out what we are to be using

Christian wisdom, Christian prudence, and in society. Like, for example,

I was reading a book on gay abortion, and it said, yeah, it said, if we had not known that it were different in other families,

I would have never thought to mention this, but you should be dealing with it on your own, right? Now, I don't know why

I think that's that important, like I said, but this is an example of where, you know, considering what the

Bible says about the different postures, where it's in a society, I think that would be the best for a gay abortion. And that was

James Alexander, which I haven't mentioned last week, because it's probably the best book on gay abortion, but that was one of the parts that's a little.

Actually, before we talk, so no particular, once again, no particular word to describe this

Scripture, but we should see, and our two -way communication with God, that our speaking to God is a response to him speaking to us, and thus

I think it is right for us to put the word first. And then our prayers and singing are a response to that.

Now, between singing and prayer, which should come first, when you look at David's psalms, which are both prayers and praises, right?

Both singing and praises to God. You know, the most, not the whole thing, but some of the most rejoiceful parts of that are in the end of the psalms, right?

Each psalm, you know, praises and petitions to God, and then praises to God for answering them. So I think it would be right in the general to sing after having praised.

So, the word I would describe, I'm gonna stop giving caveats at this point.

The word I would describe is reading, prayer, and singing. Any thoughts so far before we start getting into what reading, prayer, and singing looks like?

Are you gonna cover prayer as you go through as a segway to the following question? All right, so what should be read?

The Bible. So first, this means the actual Bible, right? A lot of people, during family worship, they will do something like use a children's

Bible that's just, you know, a one sentence summary of five chapters of the Bible, or something like that.

And they end up tailoring their family worship to a child, which sometimes can be appropriate, but if you are not reading the actual scriptures, you're reading something else that is similar to scripture, but not scripture.

I don't think that's appropriate, because that's not how we worship. That's how we read the Bible, not something that's a summary of the

Bible. And you know, what I experienced as a kid, in my family's devotions, was usually a reading of some kind of devotional material, which,

I don't remember if it was, you know, we started out with a reading of God's Word, or not, I think sometimes we just read, chicken soup for soul, or something like this in the

Bible series. Or maybe, whoa, that's called chicken soup for soul,

I think, and anyway, it's, you know, like heartwarming, and I don't know if there was, well, there might have been a scripture reference at the end, or something like that, but it's these heartwarming stories, so I don't know if there's a scripture reference.

I don't know. Yeah, it's not, that's not the Bible. You should be reading the

Bible. Okay. All right, secondly, you should read the whole, some portions will be more appropriate than others on certain occasions.

You know, if something's going on, you feel like you need to go somewhere, scripture, go for it. But you should not be avoiding scripture.

So, yeah, a common suggestion that, so I've already given you a lot of books on this topic, a really common suggestion in new writing and older writing is, in the morning, read one chapter of the

New Testament, and in the evening, read one chapter of the Old Testament. Now, I don't know why that's such inconsistent with our communication, but I used to, because I had so many guests in my home frequently, what

I decided to do is instead, is when it's just our family, to read a chapter of the Old Testament. When we have guests in our home, we need to read maybe, you know, a portion of a chapter of the

New Testament. Because, obviously, we have, you know, we have various exposure to the

Bible, and it seems good to focus on the New Testament when we have guests in our home. But if it were just us,

I would be doing what's typically recommended, which is a chapter of the

Old Testament. Yes.

Would you go sequentially and cover, as we're doing, chronicles, for example? Like, genealogies, would that be part of worship?

Or would you skip to the more common? Engaging. Engaging, yes. Yeah, no, all of it, all of it.

Yeah. First of all, all scriptures, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16 says, all scriptures bring a life unprofitable for teaching and righteousness, that the man of God may be completely put for ever to work.

And then Acts 20, verse 26 -27 says, therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the will of the

Father, I am not stricken from declaring the impossible, saying, it is, and I have a lot to say to you as you preach to all the household.

Now, you, as a leader of a household, would you have the love of your hands if you decided to skip significant portions of scripture?

And I think the answer would be yes, if you decided that this would be appropriate for your family, I just wanna focus on these parts, because it's too difficult.

You know, even something difficult in the relationship, like, this is equal to 23, if you do not read that chapter, you can go through that later.

But these things are not to be taken for granted. And that's a, well, that's an awkward one for a family with, you know, children, but they ask a question, so you explain it to her, and then you get her to read it to you.

When she was seven, and she had not sold her children, but Jesus died, because death was too scary.

And like, so she would just read parables and stuff. Yeah, I've heard that too, there was people not talking to their kids about hell, and things like that.

You know, that's, people talk about, well, it's a religious trauma that they're having, because, you know, the church tells them about hell.

I mean, it was, I remember that being a very important thing for me as a kid, recognizing the eternal consequences of certain people who died, and any of those things.

And I talked last week about how it can be very valuable to expose kids to similar adult things, because otherwise, where are they going to encounter those things?

It's going to be in the world's good, they're hearing it from the first. Who should read?

Gayly had not sold, so I just have all of his, reading around after all this time, that wasn't working as well, and I should just read.

And also, it's the way to describe it. And if you're, if you were the one responsible for making sure your family was ever murdered, it is reasonable for the head of households to read.

Now, obviously, there are times where, you know, sometimes my voice goes out because I've got sick, so I'll have, you know, maybe

Sarah or one of the kids read the problem that I have in Gmail. You know, one of the responsibilities, you should have that duty.

Next, how? How should you read? The answer is, well, you should learn to read well. It is a substantial task.

Ministers were called to read the word well, so as a minister to your family, you should be learning the word well.

1 Timothy 4, 13 says, until I come to talk to you, devote yourself to the Holy Roman Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

So this is, we usually think of the reading of the word as meaning something, which is very, that's not, that's not so important.

You know, you can hand that off to someone else. I've even had some ministers that would never have, that would never have women teach or read scriptures, all right, because this is a task that's not important for the ministers to do.

You know, the minister never reads scriptures as someone else, you know, I'm not gonna read it, but this is something that ministers are called to do and prepare ministers for your family, you should do it, and it's something that's supposed to be done well.

And it's, yeah, and for those who are reading Bible talks about the ministry of reading the scriptures, it's a good thing to remember.

Okay. Can I ask, what does well mean, in this case? Yeah, so, yeah, and particularly, you should consider all these things with these children, without removing or losing the solemnness of the education, that you should be engaging in what you need to be.

And this is something where I think I've improved a good bit. If you've been here for a while, you've listened to me read the past, just to sort of check if I've really improved, and in a way that I see, you know,

I tend to speak very fast, still, and I don't know that that will ever change, it's a little unnatural for me to speak at pace, a lot of people do, but, you know, try to capture some of the emotion, the words that are going to be said, so that people who aren't engaged with reading the scriptures, they understand it better, if they can hear the different meanings of the different sentences.

There's all kinds of ways to speak, but if you really acknowledge them, then all the color of the sentences is lost, and it's real hard, it can be hard to follow.

That would imply, I think, that you look, you read ahead, you know, because if you're gonna go through all scripture, especially when you get to genealogy, some of those names are hard, right?

Even after practice, sometimes you have to slow down, but getting the sense of the scripture, too, would imply that you're gonna read ahead, you're gonna look at that paragraph, whatever you're gonna read, and gain the emotion behind it.

Sure. So I've thought about whether or not you should read ahead, I think a good substitute for that is just being familiar with the words in general, and if, yeah, you know, you feel like you have to do 30 minutes of practice, or you have 15 minutes of family worships, yeah,

I'm not trying to stop you with things that are too difficult, but yes, knowing things ahead of time.

Also, as far as pronouncing things, I feel like that's a very modern problem. What you see in older times is that people would only read out loud.

So for example, I forget what, was it Ambers who discovered, or I guess he discovered

Ambers reading silently, and he was very surprised by this. If you see it in the

Bible, you can hear what you mean, you can read it loud, and that's how Philo over the years has done it. So in the past, the way people read it was rarely silent, like it was sounding out each syllable, and that's how they knew what it was.

And so I think our problem with the names of the Bible is that we read just by, like, grabbing a chunk and trying to process that instead of actually reading syllables.

And if we're reading like people used to read, where we're actually sounding out syllables, the names would be just syllables, and we'd never heard it.

I see Sarah smiling over there. Want to hear it again? You want to tell us a story about?

When Sarah first became a Christian, she was reading the

Bible, she was reading the Bible, and she was telling me about how she finally made it out of Genesis and into Exodus. And that's how she was just kind of like, oh, yeah, there's an

X in there, there's an I, or something, maybe. So no, yeah,

I know you sound out words, so it's actually not that hard to do a lot of the hard words, as opposed to reading out the words, just looking at the words in some kind of dyslexic fashion, guessing at what the word is.

Okay. Yeah, what should be taught? Okay, so the preaching, the reading of the word comes with also teaching the word, teaching also the hard word.

So what should be taught? So a summary of the passage should be offered at the moment of the reading. Nehemiah 8 says they read the book from all

God clearly, and they gave sense to the people who understood the reading.

It's one of the first examples you have in the Bible of preaching the word, which basically is the Bible being read in the summarized.

So also it's appropriate to observe salient points in the text, details of the passage, timeliness.

It's good to allow questions to be interchanged and misunderstandings to be corrected. You may not always get the answer.

That's fine. The passage of the passage is really difficult, and that's important, and not just since it's your capacity that you can be able to find the wrong answer or just issue a new number on your capacity so that they can give you an answer and then you can bring it back.

So you don't have to have all the answers on the spot. That's not something to worry about. But it does, once again, speak to the importance of being a believer in your house too.

I think this is, so that's good for the evening. Any thoughts on the reading of the word and teaching?

Okay, let's move on from there. All right, so who should you pray? Once again, generally in a household, however, a whole family may be invited to pray.

In my own case, I'm going to have a whole family pray. You need to order all the men and women, or males of the family, so you need to order the baby, et cetera.

All right, and so, yeah, there's this question that people have, who should children pray? And this is something that I've often practiced in service because I recognize that many of our children are unconverted and won't be converted for many years.

But yes, children should pray for several reasons. One, you should assume, first of all, that our children are unconverted, that they have,

I mean, generally, any child in the number has some kind of profession. That's why you should just assume that it's meaningless.

Secondly, how is it that we learn something taught in family worship? Third, Jesus told us to suffer for those children to come to Him, suffering, yeah.

Call them to come to Him. And if we're telling them, no, stay away from Jesus, then you can't talk to Him.

That's a problem. Prayer is an element of praise from our confession.

That means, what it means is that while all the other elements of worship are things that we have to be told by God in words for them to be right for us to use.

For example, I tell the truth, I always use God in my prayers. Other things in worship, because we've been told it's good.

Prayer is an element of natural worship. In other words, it's just obvious. If there's a Creator, you must seek

His favor by calling out to Him. And so, given that it's natural worship, then we are to do, then even the unbelievers, it's called to do this.

Fifth, we encourage children to sing to God while you hear the preaching. Why not encourage them to pray? This is part of it,

I would think, because those who are getting these arguments about not having children to pray, they're crying for their children, singing to God.

Our concern is that while their worship isn't accepted by God, if they're coming here early, then why would you have them sing?

Why would you have them be here, et cetera, et cetera? Yes? Would Acts chapter 10 with Cornelius, would that support what you're saying?

How his prayers were heard? Well, but his prayers were heard, but he wasn't converted until Peter preached in the

Holy Spirit throne. So his prayers were heard in some manner prior to conversion. That seems to support what you're saying.

I don't know about that, because it does seem in the beginning of that outpouring of the

Spirit was distinct from conversion, was distinct from regeneration in those early days. So, for example,

So you think he was regenerated before? Yeah, yeah. Never mind. So for example, there are different interpretations of what the disciples of John were asking for when they came to the apostles.

They said, you know, we don't know about the baptism of Jesus, we only know about the baptism of John, and then they're baptized.

Now, some people interpret that as a lot of baptism. The interpretation I prefer, which if you recalibrate on this topic, and then pass it to her, and Jesus is baptized, people are just talking about the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit. The baptism of John is the baptism of Jesus, so for whom it all mattered. Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't have to say baptism to us, because he had the baptism of John, and we had the baptism of Jesus.

So if those were actually one baptism, then what the disciples of John received and asked is actually the outpouring of the

Holy Spirit. Yeah, so there are passages in the scriptures that talk about prayers, but they cannot be accepted.

But, yeah, I think we're just saying for every person's decision, you have your child come to you once again, which you should assume.

Even though it is rarer for children to be converted in early years, you should just assume that they are.

Yeah, another question, this is another thing I've heard, is I've heard people say, yes, children should be converted, but they should not be converted in the

New Testament. If they're not converted, they don't have an instance of a mediator. There's only one mediator to come on in, and once again, the mediator says, disciples and children should come to him.

They should come to him, but they're not. All right, great.

What should prayers be about in the Old Testament? Well, the Lord's Prayer is our model.

So all the things of the Lord's Prayer, however they can be shaped by the passage of the Spirit, and they can serve as a passage.

So there's a passage about serving the Lord, and the prayer is giving you strength to serve him.

The passage is about the return of Christ, and the prayer is the return of Christ. These are the things to pray for.

Secondly, you can pray for the dead, especially in a household, to pray for the whole family for their dead.

And as Jesus told us, I guess this day, our daily bread, obviously needs to be released to the family.

We pray for it. Okay, so any thoughts on what prayers should look like?

Do you have each one of you, your kids pray, I mean, whatever they, so it's their own prayer, whatever they, or do you limit them or anything, or, you know, just keep going?

Yeah, a lot of us have a problem. Usually it's getting them to speak at all. But no, so one thing to do is, for concerns with family, there's a lot of times where we'll write them down in index cards, and then one of the kids will distribute the index cards to the kids so they know what to just pray for.

Because otherwise they're just gonna be saying it every time, you know, and if it's a specific day, we're just gonna randomize it.

I think I took it to some university, and I saw the university do this. Early this day, I saw that they had cards for doing this.

And I was like, oh, that was a good idea. Yeah, so that's how, you know, we end up assigning them a prayer.

We, in the morning, we have each other, you know, two kids to go, and then we're gonna get back. Sing, all right, so what should we sing?

God says, Psalms, hymns, and serious songs. Ephesians 5, and I can't even address it enough, but there's

Psalms, hymns, and serious songs. Singing may be melody to the Lord in your heart. Colossians 3 .16

says, let the word of Christ, love, and the ritual of teaching acknowledge you one another in all wisdom.

Sing Psalms, hymns, and serious songs with thankfulness, and in your hearts together. All right, so should we sing hymns or should we sing

Psalms? How should we sing? Once again, the answer is, well, this is an opportunity.

A lot of people, when we sing once a week in church, have said, you're singing about twice daily.

It's an opportunity to really grow, and you're really gonna praise him. Just, first of all, your voice is a muscle.

Or, you know, the person who exercises once a week has a serious disadvantage compared to the person who's exercising seven times a week, right?

Not that I would recommend necessarily to exercise seven times a week, but sing it with your voice.

If you are singing regularly, your voice is going to sound much better than the one who is singing it regularly.

It's just a simple biological reality. Now, beyond just doing it, and if it proved in that way, it is a, you have the opportunity also to try to improve in other ways, too.

You can learn how to do the hymns. You could learn an instrument, if you wanted to. You know, and it's just your family.

You know, it's not gonna be a real big mess now, of everything, right? And improving in small, small ways.

You can learn to sing parts. So, we've done that. We've learned one part at a time. You know, you can find

MIDI files where you just play. You know how in our handle, it has all the notes in it for each syllable, there are typically four notes, right?

And each one of those soprano, alto, tenor, and bass represent a different part. And so, you can play a song with just, you know, if you find a

MIDI file or something where you play a song with just the bass, and you learn the bass, or just the tenor, and then learn the tenor.

And once you get it enough times, you can sing that while the other person is singing the other one. And that's just memorizing it.

You can also try to follow along on the notes itself as well as the ones in the files, and then you can just increase your ability to actually guess at, you know, where the notes are jumping to.

So, I'm not very musically trained. I took a little piano.

I had a few voice lessons in school that was involved in musical theater. But that wasn't it.

But I've improved my ability to do musical theater over the years, just a little bit here and there, you know, for, let's just say, for my children.

And it's not something that's out of my reach in any way to improve. And maybe you've heard me say this before, but everything else that we do,

I talk about improving the vibrating, I talk about improving the prayer life, a lot of areas of the

Christian body that we can talk about improving, but you rarely hear people talk about improving your singing. Rather, what you usually hear is a lot of excuses about, oh, you wouldn't want to hear me sing, or, you know, just a lot of excuses for just being quietly in church.

So, I'm 33, 33, and I sing to him a new song, but I still sing on the streets with loud shouts, loud shouts, which should be, which should be loud and sustained.

And, yeah, if you feel like your voice is adding more cacophony and harmony, you know, learn to, yeah, practice.

And this is something that you can practice. And, like I said, if you're practicing with the voice of David, just by, you know, just by feeling the worship, that's a great opportunity.

Any thoughts on any of the three programs we're seeing? All right, let's move on to the next section.

Incorporating additional materials. So, a lot of times people will incorporate other things in the church, what my thoughts are on children's bibles, but I think it's important to keep the worship of God distinct from anything that's not the worship of God, that's prescribed in scripture.

So, in as much as some things is not a bible that you would want to incorporate into teaching kids, and unless it is designed to all men and women what was read,

I would keep it as something that is outside of that portion of worship.

So, for example, when we teach the kids catechism, we teach them that while we're all gathering, rather than worshiping the self, then in worshiping, we start reading.

And that's a distinct part of worship, all right?

So, and other suggestions for catechism, I would recommend doing catechism with your area church, baptist catechism, baptist pentecostal catechism, if you want to follow along in that.

There are songs that you could use to memorize, that's how we memorize them. And a lot of people choose to go with children's catechisms, so there's, like they can call little friendly ones or catechism for boys and girls.

A lot of people want to do that so the kids understand more. You know, a few, one of them initially, as they were teenagers, said no more full doctrine.

I think you can have them start memorizing when you need them, even if they don't understand it. And then you can explain parts of it to them, right?

If they don't know what you're trying to explain to them, like whatever it means. It's not a, I don't think they actually learn less because they're doing, using a deeper catechism.

I think that it's an opportunity to memorize things that will become more meaningful to them in the future, and it's an opportunity to teach them new pieces here.

And also, I think that a lot of families end up thinking fairly, and it's good to deal with things for your own situation, but thinking a little too narrowly about their own situation.

They think, you know, I'm a small kid, so it should be about the small kid. Well, you also, typically, you know, you have a wife, you know, you're multiple adults in the household, you're just yourself.

Family worship is for everyone, it's not just for the kid. A lot of people think of it like the kid. They think they start family worship once they have a kid, and they're like, oh,

I don't have a family. But like I said last week, family worship is probably poorly named.

It depends on the household worship, and if you are part of the household, these things should get admitted to you as well.

Not if I were to put it in context, where I see children's catechism would be a little less beneficial.

Something else is that I occasionally get told that I should write a book on parenting, so I'm sort of an expert.

Me having a lot of kids does not make me an expert. But I have thought that if I had a book called

Scalable Parenting, which is a, it's a computer science show, and we talk about like, you know,

I have an operation that's scaled, or whatever. It's a science software, so it can handle, you know, any amount of requests, as long as you throw enough machines at it.

I think that that's generally how you should think about parenting. God's pattern for parents, over the course of human history, you know, people not having birth control, they have non -contact.

This is how our channels breed out. Kids at young ages, kids at old ages. And so if you are, if you were designing your parenting in a way that would only work with your particular situation, when there's only little kids, or only older kids, then it's worth considering whether or not that's really the right way to go in.

If that's not the, you know, if you think about the circuitry of human history, and God's intention for parents, if that's not how it's typically done.

Now, like I said, you can deal with things for your own situation, but it's very good to ask the question, if this would work for a range of ages, is it even the right way of going about it?

And so, I think about the catechism, and I think about, we should just go ahead and use the Baptist catechism, which is designed for,

I mean, it's designed for parents. It's designed for adults, and it's designed for kids.

Also, we have an MRI spy together, so what we do is, in the morning, we work on biology, and in the evening, we work on what all kids are assembling, and then we start reading.

Great. Any questions on actual catering? Any additional catering, or sustainable catering uses that you'd like to share?

Catering. Catering. We assume that we'll go to the catechism quite often.

The Baptist, or the Westminster larger, and we have a bible, she said, that gives those references for any major passage, in the footnotes, it says, you know, it leads you to the catechism, that helps.

Yeah, that's a good point. Actual resources like what? Well, that's what I'm asking.

I'm just so interested in catechism, as being something that's not part of any worship power, or even practicing it.

Right. But it's an additional teaching. So, yeah. To kind of just guide. Yeah, like a common one in Southern Baptist circles, where this is not something that's true for the common ones.

I use kind of like the value of visions. You know, so that's a common one. Yeah, and there's times kind of like, you know, when

I find myself struggling to pray, and really kind of getting myself in a constitution to be able to pray before God, I'll consult the value of visions, which is kind of getting back on the way to start thinking prayerfully in your mind, and you need guidance when you're really, you know, forming in my prayer, so it's very helpful.

Very deep prayers by the Puritans, I like that. All right, well, let's break into some examples here.

So this first one, let's see, we've got 15 minutes, so some of these are going to be a bit premeditated, but we're going to go through a few in our worship processions here.

So this first one, it says, morning, day, and we're going to have like, seven words on the three verses of the morning, so three different verses, three different verses of the three verses.

Like, do you know the three verses? Ephesians 5, Hebrews 11. Don't look at it now, don't look at it at the beginning.

Do you remember? Now? Now. Now? Now, faith?

Now, faith. What? Conviction?

Conviction. Right, yeah, good job. Faith, is the insurance thing a good word?

Conviction, I think, let's see. Let's see if we can get through that. And then, let's read

Matthew 12, 33, 36.

12, 33. 12, 33. Yeah. Okay, so I've got, this is the final line we serve in the worship scourge, and so I can write where we stop each time.

And so this is actually, this is actually where we stop. This is, I'm just continuing the little glass head and then we are done.

So, Matthew 12, verse 33 says, either make the tree good and its root good, or make the tree bad and its root bad, for the tree is no man's fruit.

You brute vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For I am the abundance of the heart that now speaks.

The good person that was a good church brings forth good, and the evil person that was an evil church brings forth evil.

I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give account for every character of the word they speak.

For by your words, you will be justified. By your words, you will be condemned. All right, so what does it mean that a tree is no man's fruit?

Deacon, do you know what that means? Flick, do you know what that means? You don't?

What about the fruit trees that we have? Do they ever have bad fruit? No, sometimes they do.

Maybe, what does it mean? What does it mean by your actions?

You're a Christian, yeah, but your heart, your heart doesn't mean what comes out of a tree, and that bad fruit is a bad tree.

Same thing with your actions. If your action is bad, your heart is bad. And so, who is

Jesus talking about here? Who was he talking to in the last passage?

Do you all remember? There's the Pharisees, right? Pharisees, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they had blasphemy from the

Holy Spirit, and so, but it's actually, so he's talking about them.

He said it all in the Word of Life, or it's how you speak of the majority. But he's also talking about himself here, because they were evaluated by his fruits, right?

They were saying, look at all these good fruits. How many must you be dominated by power and wills above?

All right, you all remember what wills above means? Yeah. Deacon, do you remember what it said it means?

What? You forget it?

Maybe a few of you remember. Yeah, he's Lord of the Floss, that's right. Yeah, so he's talking about himself, and his fruit is good, and I'm not the first to see it.

So, how do you have a good fruit? You need to be in line with producing good fruit.

Yeah, sought him, asked for his greatness, and you will be in the grace of good fruit as well.

Does that make sense? Yeah, okay. All right, now let's go ahead and sing.

We're gonna sing. What was, what was one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four.

All right, now this is an example of one where we learn new parts.

We get to sing the. Must be like the Von Trapp family. Yeah, exactly. Oh, we're missing, we're missing some.

Which one? What are you traveling to? 132. Yeah, and let's see.

Yeah, I'm gonna sing the melody for the first one, so it's very impersonal, and then I'm gonna sing the bass after that.

So, keep going without, you know, the soft notes. Don't listen to me too much. Well, let me try. All right.

Let's see. Let's see. ♪

Happy for goodness, happy for grace, with favor.

♪ ♪ From thee we'll get, so we in our blindness, ♪ ♪

Straight from thee our Lord, said Savior. ♪ ♪

Strength and love, help us now.

♪ be singing, be our praises ringing.

Heaven's bend our story, of our Maker's glory, all upon the earth our story.

Sun, thy rays be sending, thy bright beams expanding, light to all the earth our story.

Moon and stars, rays of fire, give her glorious name, the highest heaven's name.

Oh, my soul rejoice ye, sing thy praises, boys, sing, sing the hymns of faith adorning.

All who may not be, shout your voices free, bow down in the dust before Him.

He is God, Salvador, faithful and the

Savior, here and there forever. Alleluia, splendor to the people known above, the

Savior. Alleluia, singing, he revealed no greedy, hearts that yield

Him glad, He came. Blessed are ye, endlessly, sinners spared forever,

He shall walk in heaven. All right, let's do another one.

Let's say good evening, and we're in a little custom, and we're going to sing a song together, and, well, okay,

I said that was short, but we skipped over it. So, typically, I would have created the

H -T -S -H -T -S, but I don't have it, you know what I mean. I'll offer that prayer for the next one.

All right, 1st Kings 13. And in the interest of time,

I'm going to read, just go ahead and read the whole chapter, I'm going to just do the first paragraph.

And behold, the man of God came unto Judah, by the word of the Lord Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings.

And the man who cried, he saw the altar by the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus says the

Lord, behold, the Son shall be born into the house of David, just as I am in name, and he shall sacrifice upon you, the great priests of the high places to make offerings upon you, and the human bones shall be burned upon you.

And he gave a sign, the same day as day, this is the sign, the Lord has spoken. Behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out.

And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar of Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, and seized him.

And his hand, which he had stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.

The altar also was torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign of the man of God, again by the word of the

Lord. And the king said to the man of God, Entreat not in favor of the

Lord your God, pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the

Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him, and it came as it was before. And the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.

And the man of God said to the king, If you give me half your house, I will water this place.

For so it was commanded by me, commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying,

You shall neither eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way that you came. So he went another way, and did not return.

Do you all remember who Jeroboam was? Who was Jeroboam? Who was

Jeroboam? Do you remember who Jeroboam was?

Go ahead and answer. He's the first king of the northern tribes. Yeah, he's the king of Israel, so it is

Jeroboam. Jeroboam is the king of Israel. And what did

Jeroboam do when he got onto the city of Israel? Do you all remember? Do you remember?

Do you remember? He built something that God didn't like. Yes. Yeah, a temple he built.

How many of them? Do you remember? Yeah, he built a temple.

And what happened to this temple? Yeah, gold caps.

So he had built altars for people who worshipped God. But that was not religiously worshiping.

It was religiously worshipping Jerusalem. So he sent his prophet to tell Jeroboam what he was doing was wrong.

Jeroboam's hand seized up and pointed at the hand. All kinds of things God was doing to show him this false religiousness.

Do you think that this kept Israel from worshipping God that way? He thinks it did not.

We're going to see that as we keep going here. But the

Lord is good, and he told the king that it's better to have right worship than half the kingdom.

So let's go ahead. Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the instruction against us. Particularly, I thank you for your truth, that we may not worship you according to our own devices.

Protect this church from all worship, and our family. This is our true desire.