Myths of Marriage, "Family worship is not important"

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Yeah, if you don't have a church, if you're looking for a place to worship, I would love it if you could join us for worship over at Sunnyvale at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, or this is a good church too,
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Calvary Baptist Church. I'd love it if you could join us over there or Pastor Derek over here.
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That'd be great. So, let me go ahead and open up with some words from Scripture.
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So, each month we go through a different passage of Scripture or a different theme, and depending on who's here, they'll have different talks.
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So, when I'm giving a message, it's usually on a myth about marriage. I say usually, but every single time
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I've done it on that, I probably won't keep. So, today's myth about marriage is that it's not important for families to worship together.
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It's not important for families to worship together. Now, there's several different ways that people believe this myth.
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So, the first one is practically. There are a lot of people who will say it's important for families to worship together and then not practice that, not actually worship together with their family, not actually have a daily practice of worship before God.
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There are those who knowingly reject the idea. There's actually quite a number of people who would say it's not important, or they're willing to say, well, maybe this is a good practice, but I don't think
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God really requires it of anyone. You're kind of going above and beyond here if you do this. I don't see this in Scripture.
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And then the last category would be those who have just never even considered the matter. And so, for example, how many people here have even heard of the term family worship?
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Raise your hand if you've heard the term family worship before. Yeah, so maybe half the room, so that would mean half the room hasn't.
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Half the room hasn't heard of the term family worship. Well, that's where I was about 13, 12 or 13 years ago.
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I had never heard the term. My pastor, the church I'm at now where I'm a pastor, when
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I started going there, I wasn't a pastor. I just got started in my career, had moved over here from Virginia.
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About one or two years in, he pulled me into his office for a chat about some things, and he asked me if I had been praying with my wife.
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And I didn't understand what this question was about. Like, where is this coming from? And he told me that it was important to pray with my wife.
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Like, well, I pray. She prays. Why do we have to pray together? And he didn't really explain it at the time.
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Maybe I didn't ask the right questions, and I didn't realize that it was actually in our church covenant.
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I had agreed. I didn't even realize I had agreed to, as part of that church body, be practicing family worship, to be praying with my wife and my kids.
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I just didn't know, and I never really considered it. It was only several years later that I came across more people talking about family worship, and I realized that, well, this is something that is actually an important thing to consider.
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It's actually something biblical. It's actually something that I had apparently committed to when I joined this church and haven't been doing for the past four years.
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And then I began to practice it. It was quite a blessing for me. So what do
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I mean when I say family worship? So family worship, you have different elements of worship. For example, there's baptism,
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Lord's Supper, fasting, prayer, reading your Bible, scripture reading.
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Now, only three of those would be appropriate regularly with your family to do. You can't do the
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Lord's Supper if you don't have the church gathered together. You can't do baptisms if it's not a public declaration of the faith.
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It's just something private in your home. The only three there that you can do with your family are pray, sing, and read scripture.
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And so that's what I'm talking about with family worship. Now, I had grown up in a home that had done this occasionally, but, one, we weren't using the
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Bible. It was usually something else other than the Bible to go through, some kind of devotional book, and we called it family devotions.
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And then, on top of that, most of the time, my father wasn't there for this because he worked odd hours.
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He was a—well, he still is—an air traffic controller. And so he wasn't always around in the evenings when we'd do this.
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And my mother would lead, and she was very charismatic. And so what she would do is she would turn off the lights, and we would sing the same song and repeat for about 10 minutes, which, for a child, it was quite the experience, even though I felt like, this is a little mystical.
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Is this what the Bible wants us to do when it's talking about families engaged in prayer together?
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So why is this important for you? Why is this important to you as a single to talk about family worship? Well, I've mentioned this before with some of the topics
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I address. Sometimes I address topics on dating and single life, sometimes about marriage, sometimes about parenting.
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Well, I think it's important for you, as you are single, as you are preparing for marriage, to be thinking about what kind of things family life would involve.
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And then, on top of that, to be thinking about the right things that you would want to talk to a potential partner, talk to a potential spouse about, so that you're asking the right questions, having the right conversations.
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And if this is something that should be an important part of family life, well, then it certainly should be an important part of conversation with a potential spouse.
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So with all that in mind, let's talk about the biblical case for family worship.
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And I'm going to go through a lot of passages, as I usually do, so I apologize if it's hard to keep up.
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But there's something that I want to read you beforehand. I meant to grab this, but let me just grab this from my bag real quick. So there's a quote
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I really love from James Alexander, who wrote on family worship. Because a lot of people, when they hear about this topic, and they've never seen it before, even though it was very common in past ages for this to be just understood, this is what families do together.
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In our era, it's not that common, so people tend to be pretty skeptical. They say, well, where is this in Scripture?
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And this is what he writes. This is someone in the 19th century writing. There are some duties so plain that they are rather assumed than commanded in the word of God, and the number of such is greater than might be supposed on a superficial examination.
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So in other words, the Bible assumes a lot of truths that it doesn't always speak explicitly.
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A lot of times you can't just find chapter and verse that says thou must do X. He says this is especially true for those duties which belong to the family relation, as, for example, those of the mother to her baby.
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So where does the Bible command all the things that you're supposed to do for a child, that you're supposed to change them, that you're supposed to nurse them, et cetera?
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You might be able to derive those things a little bit from direct passages, but ultimately you have to look at the larger truth that God desires mothers to care for their children, and these are the things involved in caring for a child.
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And so very simply put, the Bible instructs heads of households to be caring for their families, to be providing, to be protecting for them, and we all understand what that means physically, that that would mean providing for them.
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You know, every day the father is working to make sure that the family is provided for, to be protecting, so making sure that no harm comes to them.
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Now if all those are important physically, how much more important would they be spiritually? You know, how much more important would it be to have that in mind as you're going about your day, and not just once a week?
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And also there are a number of commands about raising up children that would suggest this as well.
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So, for example, Deuteronomy 6, 6 through 7 says, And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
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You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
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So fathers are supposed to be teaching their children the words of the Lord. And then
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Proverbs 22, 6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.
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Now these are truths that a lot of people will, you know, eagerly acknowledge, but then they're very happy for those things to be primarily organic and not structured, right?
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Like, oh yeah, well occasionally when something bad happens I'll explain, you know, God's purposes in the world, or occasionally, you know,
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I'll say something about God here. Is that really the right way of going about parenting, is to rely on those kind of organic interactions and not have structure?
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You know, everywhere else you have structure, and then the organic things flow from that. You know, you have church life, and there's all kinds of, you know, caring for your brothers and sisters in need, all kinds of stuff that flows out of church life, but the main core of it, as God has instituted, is worship together as a church.
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And so, similarly in family life, yes, it's good to have all these organic things, but are those, or is it right for there not to be some kind of foundation, some kind of structure from which those organic things are coming?
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Is it really sufficient just to have what is organic? I'll give you an example of this.
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Who here is familiar with the unschooling movement? You ever heard that before, unschooling? Now, if you were a fan of that,
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I'm not really making, intending to make too much of a comment on this, but it's this idea that it's better for children not to get formal education.
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You know, not to, they'll learn to read when they want to read, they'll learn math when they want to learn math, they'll learn all these things.
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And so there are some families who have decided to unschool their children and basically just let their children pick up whatever they happen to pick up, whatever they happen to learn.
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Now, I saw a TV special about this where an investigative reporter went to a family and did some standard tests with the children who had been unschooled all the way up until middle school or high school.
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And what do you think the results were? Do you think they were going just as well as their peers? No, of course they were going miserably.
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They would have failed every subject. Now, I don't know how much of that has to do with the nature of the test, but I think reason says pretty clearly that if someone's not being invested into it in a very intentional way, with some kind of education, they're going to fall behind where they should be.
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Now, if that's true with secular education, right, with having a child learning day by day, education -wise, you know, math, reading, etc.,
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how much more true is that with spiritual things? And what way should we have this instruction of the child with family worship?
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Showing them how to pray, showing them what the Bible says, and singing alongside them to teach them what kind of emotions they should have before their maker.
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So we're going to walk through some passages here that are going to show examples of and commands to which the implication is that families should be worshiping together.
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So in Genesis, in the first several chapters, you have a lot of examples of people worshiping God. And where is it that Cain and Abel learned to worship
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God? Why is it that they're worshiping God? Well, certainly they learned this from their parents. And it says that Enoch walked with the
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Lord. Now, what does it mean that he walked with the Lord? Where did he learn that from? Was it not from, you know, his ancestors,
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Adam having walked with the Lord in the garden? And then it says that Noah walked with the Lord. Once again, what does it mean that he walked with the
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Lord? Does it just mean he obeyed what he said? Or does it mean some richer communion that was happening?
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And obviously it's a richer communion. And where is he learning that from if it's not his family sharing that with him?
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And then later on, you see why Abraham was chosen. In Genesis 18, 19, it says,
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For I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
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Lord by doing righteousness and justice so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.
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So God is choosing Abraham in order to instruct his children in the way they should go to teach them how to worship the
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Lord. And what do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob do every time they arrive at a new place? They make an altar, right, to worship
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God, to make sure their children understand that God is true worship. And consider this as well, is that as Israel is being led and being taught to incorporate these things into their families and to teach their children, you're familiar with the phrase during Passover, when they ask you, why is it that we do this?
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You shall say X, right? God institutes these various feasts so that families would be gathering before him together in a worshipful feast that is designed to communicate to the children what they ought to believe concerning God.
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It says in Deuteronomy 14, 26, And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.
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And this is just one example of a regular feast. This is not even one of the yearly ones.
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This has to do with regular tithes. And you see that phrase throughout
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Scripture, that you shall eat this feast before the Lord, before the Lord meaning in a worshipful setting with your whole household.
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Now let me give you some examples of people who are worshiping the Lord with their family.
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In Joshua 24, a famous passage, it says, Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness.
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Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. So what does it mean to serve gods?
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If you have an idol and you're serving it, what are you doing before it? You're worshiping before it. That's what it means to serve a god.
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And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the
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Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So what is he talking about, serving the
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Lord? He's not just talking about obeying him. No, he's not just talking about doing the things that God commands. He's talking about worshiping before God with his family.
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In 2 Samuel 6, David goes home to his family and blesses them, a blessing being a religious worshipful thing in Scripture.
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And then in Acts 10, we have this example of Cornelius. It says, At Caesarea there was a man named
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Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, a devout man who feared
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God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.
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So it talks about him fearing God with all his household. Now what does it mean to fear
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God? What is the quintessential way that one fears God is one worships him as he commands. And he's doing this along with his household.
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He's leading his household in worship. And once again, these aren't explicit. They aren't catering to someone who's coming very skeptically, demanding to be shown this in bright red letters saying,
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Thou must worship with your family. But it is evident from the pattern that is assumed in Scripture that this is what one ought to be doing.
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And now consider this. Consider all the commands that God gives to families. These also imply a family worship.
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So, for example, Malachi 2 describes the purpose of marriage. It says, Did he not make them one with a portion of the
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Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So why did
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God – what was one of the reasons why he gave Eve to Adam? It wasn't just so that he wouldn't be alone.
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It was also because God desired godly offspring. That not aloneness extends to even having more people on the earth, not just man and wife, but even more people on the earth.
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And it's been said that the family is the nursery of religion. This is where worship of God should be taught, especially given this passage that talks about God's purposes in marriage to be raising up godly offspring.
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Consider also that it says in Ephesians 6, 4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the
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Lord. What is this instruction that they are to have? Is it not teaching them from his word?
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And then in 1 Peter 3, 7, it says, Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the women as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you.
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In some translations it says joint heirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
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Now, consider that here when it says your prayers, that's plural. Now, it could be that Peter's just talking to fathers, but there's something more going on here, because he's talking about why is it that those prayers would be hindered.
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He says, they are joint heirs with you. The wives are joint heirs with their husbands. And if you are to remain dwelling with her in unity so that your prayers might not be hindered,
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I believe it's talking about joint prayers. I don't believe it's just talking about the husband's prayers on his own not being hindered, but they're joint prayers as they are joint heirs not being hindered.
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And so that implies that a husband and wife are joined together in prayer.
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And so likewise, you would have the whole family being joined in prayer, not just husband and wife.
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Now, I think it's also—now, so far we've just been talking about the importance of worshiping
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God together with your family. There's the other question of, well, how often should this be? Is it really enough to be once a week, or should it be something more than that?
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I do believe it should be something more than that, and let me give you some particular passages, not just the practical argument
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I gave before about, well, this is what you do with education, this is what you do with providing. Isn't spiritual education, spiritual providing, so much more important?
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Now, that's a good argument, but let me show you some things from Scripture here.
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When it says in 1 Kings 17, it describes Elijah and how he's receiving food from the ravens.
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And what this evidence is is that in biblical times, it was pretty common to only eat two meals a day.
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It says, and the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.
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So if prayers in Scripture are often mentioned as happening in accordance with food, you know, thanking
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God for the food, or give us this day our daily bread, it's meaningful for these prayers, for this worship to be before God in the morning and in the evening.
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And this is what you see as a pattern throughout Scripture as it talks about morning and evening worship. And in 1
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Timothy 4, verse 4, it says, For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving.
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Right, so that's, usually people are used to thinking about food. You know, they receive food, they don't have to, you know, you don't have to abstain from pork like they did in the
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Old Testament. You can receive it all if it's received with thanksgiving. For it is made holy by the word of God in prayer.
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But this doesn't just apply to food, this applies to everything. In fact, it applies to your whole day. Your whole day is good as long as it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer.
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And how would you do that? By actually going before the Lord in worship to pray before Him, to worship
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Him. And who would you do this with? Naturally, it would be the unit that you live in that would be with you at those meals or wherever it may be.
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So, then we have a number of examples in Scripture of people praying three times a day.
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So Daniel, for example, those people are familiar with that example, where he's praying before the Lord three times a day. Psalm 44, 55, 17 says,
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Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice. Now, if we have a couple of passages talking about people praying before God three times a day, but typically families are only together at the beginning or the end.
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Once again, which of those two, who would you be worshiping God with? It would be the beginning and the end, the morning and the evening.
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And you have the whole pattern of Old Testament worship, where incense is lit before God in the morning and in the evening, and you have examples where prayer is described as being like that.
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Now, you might think, well, you know, should the example of temple worship really guide our worship today?
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Paul draws analogies from the temple a number of times to demonstrate, you know, that worship is to be supported, for example, financially for the priests, right?
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If the priests were supported, then also ministers of God are to be supported. If this happened with the temple, you know, and they couldn't eat with idols, and that means this for you, etc.
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You see these examples in Scripture where he's willing to make analogies from the temple to make his point. And Psalm 141 .10
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says, Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.
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That there is a comparison between this formal worship that God had created in the
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Old Testament, that that is now supposed to be modeled in the way that we come before him.
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And so if we're coming before him morning and evening, and that's when we're with our families, the Bible describes that heads of households are to be showing their children how they are to serve the
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Lord. You know, that being a religious sort of thing. These all together imply a family worship, a religious worship before the
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Lord. And consider how important this is, too. My church uses a confession, a confession of faith as a, it's like a statement of faith.
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You know, you see a lot of statements of faith that are like 10 points. Confession is, you know, that, but imagine more like 100 points.
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And in the preface to this confession, it talks about the importance of family worship, and it says that if, it says, you know, many children grow up to, and this was written back in the 1600s, it says many children grow up to part from the
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Lord, and they are guilty before the Lord alone. No one else is guilty on their behalf. However, blood will be on the hands of those who did not raise them in the way that they ought to go through family worship.
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And so, you know, this is just so important. And so consider what this means for you as a single person.
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What does this mean for you? Well, first of all, you can begin practicing this in your own household.
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Now, I call this family worship, and a lot of people call this family worship, but I think a better name would be household worship, which is whatever household unit you are in, that is who should be worshiping together.
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And so even if you're just one person, you should be serving the Lord on this regular daily basis, and that would include prayer, reading the
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Bible, and singing. I know singles feel very awkward singing by themselves if they're the only person in the house, but this is how we worship
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God. It's reading, praying, and singing. And not only should you be developing this in your own life so that you're prepared to do it together with the family, but consider what this means especially for the men.
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So for the men here, if you're preparing to lead your family in worship, then you should be studying the
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Bible, knowing it well, so that you'd be able to answer questions that your family has about it. That's one application.
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And then also, as you're meeting people that you're considering marriage with, you can also be asking the question, would this person be ready to serve
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God in this way with me? So for men, that would be, would she be willing to allow me to lead her in this regular worship?
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And for women, you can be asking men, would you be willing to lead your family in this worship of God on a regular basis?
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And maybe these people will be like me where, before I got married,
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I'd never heard of this, but you can find out whether or not they are open to serving the Lord this way, if this is what
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God has called his people to. Now, if anyone here would like to learn more about this, there's a lot of resources
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I can recommend you, more in -depth resources. But there's one short book by Don Whitney just called
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Family Worship. Yeah, that's Family Worship by Don Whitney. If you're just looking for a real brief introduction, it's just a small little book.
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And let me leave you with this, that considering how Christ leads his bride, his family, you know, the
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Bible talks about the church both as his wife, talks about the church as his brothers, talks about the church as his children, right?
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So we're his family in a number of ways, and what does he do for us? Well, he washes his bride with the water of the
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Word. He leads us in worship. And David, in the
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Psalms, he leads the people in worship, selecting what they are going to say, how they are going to go before God.
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In 1 Chronicles, you see that he orders the temple on how they're going to worship before God. And who is the final son of David?
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Who is the great Davidic king that leads his people ultimately into this kingdom of God and into glory?
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Jesus Christ. And so we have the great privilege of participating in that by not only being led by him in worship, but even for heads of household leading families in worship and for those under heads of households enjoying that worship with their families.
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So let me go ahead and pray for us, and then we'll have time for discussion. I forgot to prepare questions, so I'll make up a few questions right after I pray, and then we can do that.
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Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for all these people. Thank you for everything that you've given us, and I pray that you would help us all to contemplate what your
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Word says about how we are to go about in our families, how we are to go about thinking about these things, even as single folk.
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God, I pray that you would give us wisdom. You give us wisdom generously without reproach. In Jesus' name, amen.
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All right, so a couple of things. First, if you don't have a—it looks like most people got a name tag.
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If you don't have name tags, they're over there on the table. And also, there is a sheet there for signing up for reminders about these dinners.
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That might be passed around. Maybe we can start passing it around. I don't know what the best way of doing that is. And also,
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Spencer over here has another list for singles doing various meet -ups and hikes,
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I think. Right? Is that something you guys need to do? It's twofold. It's people share messages with each other.
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Okay, so a discussion group. Different events. Okay, so a discussion group for singles in this area. If you're interested, you can talk to Spencer about getting on that list.
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And so go ahead and at your tables. Discuss, one, whether or not you were raised this way, you know, with family worship.
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How much did family devotions like that enter your life? And then, two, what you think about doing that with your family, you know, when the
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Lord provides you with one. So those two things, what you grew up with and what you hope to have in your family.