Household Worship - Part 14 - Blessings

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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may be seated dearly father uh thank you for this morning i pray that you would bless our continued study in household worship and particularly as we end this i pray that you would encourage everyone here to pursue household worship with all faithfulness in jesus's name amen okay yeah thank you go for it okay so just like last week uh this week we are going to have uh a lot more quotes uh than we had in previous lessons a little less in the way of scripture proofs a little more in the way of just seeing how saints in ages past have thought about these things and phrase things eloquently uh to yeah to encourage their peers toward uh household worship all right so today we're looking at the blessings of household worship along with that some of the curses for unfaithfulness in it but primarily blessings and we're breaking this up down into three categories as happy homes happy churches and happy nations okay happy homes happy churches happy nations all right so first of all uh curses will be on those families do not call in the name of the lord uh deuteronomy 28 47 through 48 says because you did not serve the lord your god let's serve as a another word for worship remember because you did not serve the lord your god with joyfulness and gladness of heart because of the abundance of all things therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the lord will send against you and hunger and thirst and nakedness and lacking everything and he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you so this is talking about the people as a whole their failure and worship will lead them to rather be slaves of other nations um zechariah 14 17 and if any of the families of the earth do not go up to jerusalem and worship the king the lord of hosts there will be no rain on them now a lot of times families will get translated into uh in translations as either peoples or tribes or something else because these are likely referring to more than singular households at the same time this is the word that's used it is just the word family that's used in a lot of these passages talking about the families of the earth that need to go to jerusalem otherwise they will not receive blessings from the lord uh richard baxter says and if god shall not govern in your families who shall the devil is always the governor where god's government is refused uh curse is not experienced in this life will be greater in the next so a lot of people would respond at this point and say well it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of curse and not uh not pursuing household worship that doesn't mean that there isn't it just may not be in this life ecclesiastes 8 11 says because the sentence is sentence against an evil deed did not is not executed speedily the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil so in other words uh uh people are inclined to more evil to build up more judgment against themselves when things when uh when they do not receive judgment psalm 73 19 says how they are destroyed in a moment swept away utterly by terrors luke 16 25 says but abraham said child remember that you in your lifetime received good things and lazarus and like man and bad things but now he's comforted here and you are so there's some uh justice to that that the uh the curse is not experienced in one's lifetime would be felt in greater force in the afterlife uh joe 21 30 the evil man is spared the day of calamity that he is rescued uh oh yeah this is part of a question that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity that he is rescued in the day like do you think that these things are the case um yeah so if an evil man escapes judgment in this life do you think that means he will also escape judgment and death the answer is no uh this next uh this little poem here uh has gone through several uh iterations so this is uh homer's iliad uh remorphed um rather than to speak of olympus to speak of the almighty by thomas doolittle and then i've also updated it so that it actually rhymes in modern english that's a common thing with uh with old poems that they they rhyme to them but they don't rhyme to us and a lot of times it's like the best line at the end that you know just totally loses it um yeah i forget uh death be not proud ends like that death thou shalt die but it but it it had rhymed with like mightily or something something that in our ears doesn't rhyme at all or like you know tiger tiger burning bright in the forest of the night what immortal hand or eye could fame frame thy fearful symmetry symmetry you know like a lot of these things don't uh yeah i like to update old poems so anyway this one has gone through several iterations uh the wicked men feel not the almighty's blow forthwith his wrath is sure when it is slow at length his plagues and greater load shall fall on them their wives and their children all all right so yeah thomas doolittle is citing that as something that is uh a truth recognized even in pagan cultures right that that god's uh wrath will come in in greater measure if it doesn't come on this life all right blessings will be on uh i should say on on those families that call on the name of the lord proverbs 333 the lord's curse is on the house of the wicked but he blesses the dwelling of the righteous okay so there's blessings on the the household of the righteous so i'm 115 13 he will bless those who fear the lord both the small and the great all right so this next quote is from john newton people know who john newton is this guy yes who knows who's john newton yeah yeah he wrote amazing grace right uh happy is the family where the worship of god is constantly and conscientiously maintained such houses are temples in which the lord dwells and castles garrisoned by a divine power i do not say that by honoring god in your house you will wholly escape this year a share of uh in the trials incident to the present uncertain state of things a measure of such trials will be necessary for the exercise and manifestation of your graces to give you a more convincing proof of the truth and sweetness of the promises made to a time of affliction to mortify this the body of sin and to wean you more effectually from the world but this i will confidently say that the lord will both honor and comfort those who thus honor him seasons will occur in which you shall know and probably your neighbors shall be constrained to take notice that he has not bid you seek him in vain if you meet with troubles they shall be accompanied by supports and followed by deliverance and you shall upon many occasions experience that god is your protector preserving you and yours from the evils by which you will see other suffering around you okay so he's acknowledging christians aren't going to take trials in this world but they will have particular comforts from the lord that even others will be inclined to notice and he's he's saying all this in the context of families that are faithful in household worship yeah happy is the family where the worship of god is constantly and conscientiously maintained all right now this next quote is from richard baxter uh by the way this hasn't come up but um richard baxter had a very odd view of justification that puts into question his orthodoxy a lot so um like a lot of his writings are really good this is not necessarily an endorsement of all uh that he says and i know there are some crowds where i would quote richard baxter and they would just go out like i don't need to listen to him because you know they they dislike him so much so anyway but he he wrote a lot about christian ethics in a very detailed manner that exceeds a lot of a lot of other writings to live where god's law is the principal rule and where you may be daily taught the mysteries of his kingdom and have the scriptures opened you and be led out by the hand in the paths of life where the praises of god are daily celebrated and his name is called upon and where all do speak the heavenly language what a sweet happy life it is this is it not like us to heaven of anything upon earth but to live where there is no communion with god where the marks of death and damnation are written as it were upon the doors in the face of their impious worldly lives and where no man understandeth the holy language and where there is not the least foretaste of the heavenly everlasting joys what is this but to live as the serpent seed to feed on dust and to be excommunicated from the face and favor of god so he's saying to to live in a family where there's a worship of god it's very much like heaven it's closest thing to heaven on earth to live in a family where there's uh where there's not the worship of god it's the closest thing to hell on earth all right if religious duties are not set up in your families there will be no more sinning there and wickedness abounding in them it would be an effectual way and means to make those in your families more obedient and better towards you if you would call on them that serve the lord and you were more in prayer with them thomas do little so there's a lot of yeah religious duties are an excellent way of addressing sin and wickedness in your family so yeah you'll increase the righteousness of your family all right household worship also beautifies the home proverbs 24 3 through 4 says by wisdom a house is built and by understanding it is established by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious precious and pleasant riches okay so yeah by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches so even a poor man who is building his house with wisdom will fill his house with good things this devotional altar will be the best ornament to your houses no pictures stately rooms or household goods will be such neat and splendid furniture as this worship of god the finest hangings and most beautiful paintings are but sordid and disgusting filth to this it is this that renders a beggar's cottage far more honorable than a prince's palace without it oliver haywood yeah so it's a way of beautifying your home okay household worship is a gift that makes up for what may lack in corporate worship act 1711 now these jews were more noble than those in thessalonica they received the word with all eagerness examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so okay so they're they're in their homes examining these things to see if they're they're so when these are not what they're being taught in the synagogue oliver haywood says family worship will make up a defect in or want of public ordinances providence may cast your lot in a place where the streams of sanctuary run low or muddy in this case house wells may do you much service so in other words there's supposed to be you know a river of the word of god flowing from uh corporate worship but if that stream gets clogged up for whatever reason you know the um yeah the pastor's not doing a good job maybe you don't have a pastor for a season etc right what is the uh what is the cure for that the cure for that is a well at your own home by which you are getting the water of god i do find it interesting how more and more i realize that people expect this to be the primary way that they are receiving the word of god and while this is has a certain place above others it is not the most regular way that they are supposed to be receiving the word of god um you know uh yeah people i remember i remember in college uh one of my christian mentors telling me about the importance of being a self -feeder you know so that like there will be seasons in your life where you're at churches where you're not being fed very well but you need to be a self -feeder like especially if you're going out into the mission field or anything like that you you need to be a self -feeder you can't you can't just wait for others to feed you this is something that you need to be doing yeah okay right yeah if you see there's a lot of factors that would go into deciding to worship somewhere else and if you really see this as the only place where you get fed right then it will lead you to more desperate measures when maybe it doesn't call for that right and i'm saying this i'm not really i'm just talking about like any church you may find yourself out um yeah what you should be asking and i hear a lot of time rhetoric that says if your church does this leave your church something like that you should uh you should be where you can best serve god there's really very few things that in and of themselves make a church a false church right all churches are mixed with error and corruption that's what our confession says there's no there are few singular corruptions that you could look at and say this definitely makes it a false church but uh you need to calculate everything together you need to think about your gifts your needs what you have to contribute to the body what this body uh has and you should be you should be thinking where can i best serve christ and the answer may be that i can best serve christ elsewhere but those those are the questions you should be answering rather than oh is this particular thing so bad that someone should leave if they see it like that's not even thinking about the question rightly because it's not realizing that there's a particular relationship that such that you would answer that question differently than any other person because they have been gifted differently and put in a different station yes maybe you're called to be it's really bad maybe you're called there to turn it around but then he said but that's good if you're a bachelor but if you're married and have a family you shouldn't put your family through that right what do you think about that well there's still there's still other things like to consider you know whether or not you are in ministry yourself whether or not you are equipped to fill those needs um yeah when you have a family you have to consider those things more i wouldn't recommend you know a man with a with a family go to a um you know hostile homicidal murderous uh village where to evangelize right like that's okay maybe that's for someone else at this point and these are other mission fields that would be more appropriate for you or something uh and the same is true with churches right there's but you've got to you've got to consider what your gifting is and everything um but yeah like one okay so just to throw out one thing i often hear this about that is probably true most of the time but i still think warrants questioning whether or not this is the wisest way of speaking is if your church has women pastors as a woman pastor you need to leave okay now think about this there's first of all the pastor is not the church okay so bad pastor does not make a bad church uh secondly the uh you know there could be a large pastoral staff and this is someone who just has the label of pastor right and is not actually doing any of the preaching or something like that there's all kinds of there's all kinds of categories that would go in here you know and you could say well am i in a position where i could you know affect the change to change how these titles are used more biblically or you know to make sure that men are the ones teaching like bible says things like that right those are all questions that you should be answering now yeah most of the time you find yourself in that situation it's probably not a church where they've got any kind of church government that you could fix things you know it's probably like the corruption is probably set in so deep that it's not really worth the fight you live in an area where there are tons of other churches right that's the other thing is a lot of times these questions are assuming that you've got the the plethora of consumeristic options right when i'm when i'm thinking about this question i'm always thinking would you say this to someone who lived in a village with only one church you know and there's nothing else around right so there's just a lot of questions to answer yes what is it it is different than being a part of a church where you have a particular covenant commitment to care for the body than visiting a place where you don't so that's one that's one distinction there that would make me less inclined to say yeah just go to your parents church or wherever you're headed right yeah i mean if you have if you have other options i would go to them if there are no options i i think that might require a little more thought i'd have to i'd have to think more about how bad it is yeah yeah how much of a mop because you know most churches like worship is really something very that has to be really carefully done they're almost every church probably has something like slightly off about how they do worship including our own right and so like you can't just say oh if there's any kind of corruption in the worship i can't be part of it you really don't have to be asking like to what degree is this making a mockery of god you know as opposed to honoring him all right uh yes well it depends on what we're talking about like obviously there are false churches that have transubstantiation right and i would say no like right there um yeah if they're uh you know we try to do things in a particular way where we break the bread like jesus did and i don't think if you're not breaking the bread it's not the lord's supper anymore anything like that i do think there's something right about trying to follow the scripture as closely as possible um you know and have wine right that kind of thing but yeah these changing details doesn't necessarily make it no longer no longer the lord's supper so that's what you have to be asking yourself yeah or how well do they fence the table you know if they you know if they're a little looser about it that doesn't necessarily make it not the lord's supper anymore right that would be one thing the other thing is what does it mean that they have women pastors is it that there's someone who's called the the women's pastor right like that's pretty common in churches where yeah preaching on sunday right that's the person who's preaching every week yeah that'd be a bigger deal um so yeah i would i just think these things need to be considered holistically and like the one size fits all answers are kind of they might work for most people in this particular culture right given you know the number of options given what that corruption usually means about the rest of the church etc i guess i'm adding a bunch of implications yeah right and so in that yeah i i think i think the conclusion people are coming to is usually right but i don't think they're necessarily thinking about the right way all right so anyway all that all that to say that yeah household worship is really what what makes your family robust despite you know the the varying health of the church throughout the years household worship produces good offspring for the next season proverbs 17 21 he who sires a fool gets himself sorrow and the father of a fool has no joy um you know the bible talks about children being a blessing from the lord but they're really only a blessing when you invest in them well right if you raise them up to be fools they cease to be blessings right and they're just sorrow for you uh psalm 112 1 through 2 praise the lord blessed is the man who fears the lord who greatly delights in his commandments his offspring will be mighty in the land the generation of the upright will be blessed so offspring will be mighty in the land okay richard baxter again a holy and well -governed family does tend to make a holy posterity and so to propagate the fear of god from generation to generation is more comfortable to have no children than to beget and breed up children for the devil this really is true like a lot of people yeah i mean a lot of people are you know ask themselves questions about well will i be happier with kids or without and they're they're usually thinking about like how much work they're going to be and things like that and they should be thinking about like what the end of having children is you know having adult children that's really what you should be thinking about not what it's like to have kid children um and yeah and if you have adult children that are serving the lord that's an incredible blessing if you have adult children that you have raised up for service to the devil uh is not a uh it brings a lot of sorrow and even if it even if by no fault of your own um they are uh they have not been they're not among the elect right and god has not saved them it's still the case that you know well -raised children who know christian principles are going to be a more of a blessing to society and to you than one who does not abide by christian principles okay so this is this kind of is true regardless of of uh salvation status in some senses brethren i wish it were more common i wish it were universal with this is a spurgeon with i wish it were universal with all christians to have family prayer we sometimes hear of children of children of christian parents who do not grow up in the fear of god and we are asked how it is that they turn out so badly in many very many cases i fear that there's such a neglect of family worship that is not probable that children are at all impressed by any piety supposed to be possessed by their parents yeah well it is it is like a common question it's like oh but this is such a this is such a christian family such a good righteous family how did their children end up and a lot of times the answer is well were they really in the home um you know if there was there might be piety on sunday but is there piety throughout the rest of the week that would at all impress their children with uh with the importance of that all right uh james w alexander when the father and mother begin to descend into the autumn of life the behold their offspring prepared to walk in their steps there is a church in the house when death enters it is to make but a brief separation and into eternity sees the whole family in heaven without exception or omission now obviously as i've already stated you you cannot by your own will determine god's election at the same time god uses means and so there is a there's a particular hope of uh children being saved through the blessings of family worship now uh yeah when he says there is a church in the house the i've i've avoided uh using any of these proof texts throughout this whole series but the traditional interpretation even among baptists for the uh phrase a church in their house when you see that in scripture like in romans and elsewhere is that it is talking about household worship that it's not talking about a a uh a local church congregation that decides to meet in a person's home that it is talking about a sizable household that has regular worship um now i i've not been completely convinced of that i've been more and more convinced especially as i've seen how universal of an interpretation it was back then so i've avoided using any of those as proof texts but you ought to know that this was a like a really common interpretation of what those verses meant that they were talking about household worship when it talks about a church in a church in her home etc yes well i mean right well well yeah that was lydia's so in in uh acts 18 is that uh lydia is uh or acts 8 um yeah lydia just has a large household you know she seems to be a very rich woman who has a large household so that and yeah she has hospitality so that doesn't seem like a local church or anything obviously what she has before paul shows up can't be a church because he basically is a planter and then it's out of there that he plants a church in corinth right and the church in corinth is not meeting in lydia's home but yeah later on in romans uh yeah you see like the church in her home when it talks about uh i forget who was talking about phoebe maybe all right uh okay so that's that's happy homes any questions about happy homes let's move on to happy churches household worships household worship blesses the church uh this is samuel davies i've read this quote before but it's a good one so i'm going to read it again uh if you from henceforth make conscience of this important duty it will be a most happy omen to your families and to this congregation uh anybody remember who samuel davies was um so he was a um an american uh preacher who oh i'm trying to remember there are some more important details but uh he also uh was the pastor for i think it was i think it was patrick henry's mother and so like it's likely patrick henry got a lot of his speech abilities from from samuel samuel davies there's something there's something else important about him i think he was the i think he was the president of princeton after jonathan edwards if i remember correctly i think that's it yeah all right if the grateful instance of every of family devotion were ascending to heaven every morning and evening from every family among us we might expect a rich return of divine blessings upon ourselves and ours our houses would become the temples of the deity and our congregation feel his gracious influences our children would grow up in the knowledge and fear of god and transplant religion from our families into their own wherever they should be formed our servants and slaves would become the servants of righteousness and heirs with us of the grace of life the animosities and contests that may now disturb our households and render them like the dens of wild beasts would cease vice would wither and die among us and languishing religion would lift up its head and revive this would certainly be the consequence in several instances if we were but to maintain family religion in a proper manner for god has not commanded us to seek his face in vain and if this desirable success should not be granted universally we shall still have the comfort to reflect that we have done our duty yeah so just a very um i mean you might call it idealized but he does concede at the end that even if it doesn't pan out that beautifully you would have still done your duty um but yeah there are a lot of blessings to have be had by household worship um by the way like more and more as i've you know this is the 14th lesson 14th and final lesson in this i really it is it is kind of becoming the thing to me that i feel like is the the um panacea for everything you know not not really there are other things in the christian life but man like this really is at the root of everything you know it's at the root of yeah individual problems at the root of church problems it's the root of nation problems like if you have family worship a lot of these problems resolve themselves yes right yeah i think this is from a sermon and i think later on in the sermon he does say that that that that this is kind of a necessary feature to be called a christian home yeah household worship makes one fit for church worship it is long of them that ministers preach as to idiots or barbarians that cannot understand them and that they must be always feeding their auditors with milk and teaching them the principles and catechizing them in the church which should have been done at home thus pastors are discouraged and the church is defiled religion disgrace and infidels hardened through the impious disorder and negligence of families so that's this is a one that resonates with me like as a as a preacher like i know i'm when i'm preaching i'm preaching to all kinds of people people who have you know who might have just come into the church who have zero exposure to christianity i also know that i'm preaching to a lot of people who are raised in christian home but still do not know many christian things about the bible or theology and so i have to i have to explain things that i wouldn't otherwise have to explain i was reading uh man there was a joel beakey book about taking your family to church that was it had one it had two paragraphs that were just really good that i i recorded somewhere um i won't read because we don't have that much time but basically he was saying that it's important to be well versed in scripture so that pastors can teach at the level they need to teach at like when jesus was teaching he was challenging people with hard things he's telling them to cut off their hands and eyes and he's not stopping and saying oh and by that i don't really mean every time you know so right or he's saying that to the he's talking about god being like the unjust judge who the persistent widow comes he doesn't stop and say now god is actually just you know i don't he doesn't spend 15 minutes explaining how god is just so he can compare him the unjust judge right he just makes the analogy to the unjust judge uh you know he's describing how his how he is the bread of life and people are rejecting that and he's he's not concerned to like explain this to every last person you know there's some who are getting it there's some who are not and a lot of people will hold this against jesus right a lot of people hold this against ministers when they feel like oh that should have been more carefully handled right so that people didn't come away with any kind of misunderstanding about it but you look at how jesus did it man he like he said hard stuff and didn't apologize right didn't couch it in a hundred different qualifications you know and it's there's two ends of this like one is you know preachers need to be able to be bold to do what's needed to be done they need to be aware of who they're speaking to they need to be bold and and congregations need to be ready to deal with hard sayings and yeah how do you get prepared for that family worship household worship makes one fit to represent christ church do you wonder that even in the reformed churches there can be so many unreformed sinners of beastly lives that hate the serious practice of the religion which they themselves profess it is ill education and ungodly families that is the cause of all this oh therefore how great and necessary a work is it to cast salt into these corrupted fountains that one was richard baxter all right any questions about happy churches yes yeah i think that i think that might be overriding the father's authority i mean he could certainly have material that he would want them to go through but to dictate what family worship itself would be would be a different thing um yeah yeah now obviously like we've seen the directory of family worship the pastors ought to have you know if there's something out of the ordinary you know like the father can't lead family worship the pastors ought to have some say in it so that we can make sure that everyone's upholding their covenant to uphold family worship but as far as the material that's something the father needs to have freedom in yeah and actually if you look at the whole puritan controversy was around um was around this kind of thing like the right the church of england makes the book of common prayer you know they dictate the churches go through these passages if they do these things right and and the puritan churches that want purity and worship that are non -conforming right they're all saying no we need the freedom to preach what we want to preach and go to whatever passage we need to go to and so they break off at the church of england right and there's yeah that's where the puritans came from so i think the same is true in in families you know the father needs to have to say what he needs to say etc all right uh household worship blesses nations uh jeremiah 1025 pour out your wrath on the nations that you know not on the people's real word is families just like i was mentioning before that call not on your name pour out your wrath on the nations that know you're not on the families that call not on your name besides the public worship of congregations mercifully established in this land in great purity it is expedient and necessary that secret worship of each person alone and private worship of families be pressed and set up that with national reformation the profession of the power and godliness both personal and domestic be advanced that was from the directory of family worship in the preface so in other words the directory of family worship is being put forward as like you would think about it as being primarily for happy homes but it's being put forward as something for national reformation like this is necessary for a whole nation to be revived um all right a quote from james w alexander like talking about raising up patriots no man will be less likely to love his country for having been taught to pray for it every day uh reformation of larger societies begins with the reformation of the smaller societies that compose it now this is that's just kind of like an obvious truth in some ways but uh you know that the the whole is made up of the parts consider that family reformation is a necessary means to public reformation and to hand down religion from one generation to another that's thomas doolittle and one more richard baxter quote and no doubt the beauty of such holy and well -governed families has convinced many and drawn them to a great approbation that means approval of religion and occasioned them at last to imitate them okay all right now the last thing i want to go over here is thomas manton's epistle to the reader of the westminster standards so i had quoted last time one paragraph of the preface the one of the final paragraphs of the preface to the baptist confession talking about family worship the this epistle which was frequently distributed with the westminster standards from thomas manton is all about family worship like the whole thing about family worship when you think about the westminster standards you might think oh the confession and stuff this is like for the church his whole thing was no this is this is for your family's good um and and not for your just for your family's good but for the ultimate curing of the nation too right so i find that very interesting that i primarily think of the westminster standards as being something for the church and he's thinking about it as being on the two polar ends of societies right it's actually for the family for the good of the nation of course the church too but like he's really talking about those poles all right so i would like to read the whole thing to you uh christian reader i cannot suppose thee to be such a stranger in england as to be ignorant of the general complaint concerning the decay of the power of godliness and more especially of the great corruption of youth wherever thou go thou goest thou will hear men crying out of bad children and bad servants whereas indeed the source of the mischief must be sought a little higher it is bad parents and bad masters that make bad children and bad servants and we cannot blame so much their untowardness as our own negligence in their education the devil has a great spite at the kingdom of christ and he knows no such compendious way to crush it in the egg as by the perversion of youth and supplanting family duties he striketh at all those duties which are public in the assemblies of the saints but these are too well guarded by the solemn injunctions and dying charge of jesus christ as that he should ever hope to totally subvert and undermine them but at family duties he strikes with more success because the institution is not so solemn because the practice is not so seriously and conscientiously regarded as it should be and the omission is not so liable to notice in public censure this really does sound a lot like c .s