August 24, 2020 Show with Angelo Valle on “Developing Biblical Family Worship in Your Home”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlyle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 24th day of August, 2020.

Before I introduce my guest and topic today, I just want to remind you that I will be manning an exhibitor's booth this Friday and Saturday in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors Conference on the Basics of Biblical Counseling.

I hope that as many of you will join me in attending this conference and will greet me at the Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitor's booth there. Dale Johnson, the Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, also known as ACBC, will be speaking on a number of topics, the need for biblical counseling, the definition and goal of biblical counseling, progressive sanctification, qualifications of a biblical counselor, secular and integration theories, what makes biblical counseling biblical, and a Q &A session with the audience.

This is going to be held from Friday night all day Saturday until 5 p .m. That's August 28th and 29th, this Friday and Saturday. And the event will be held at the High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Scranton.

For more details, you can go to biblicalcounseling .com forward slash scranton-pa-training. That's biblicalcounseling .com forward slash scranton-pa-training. You can also go to highpointbaptist .church.

I hope to see you there this Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And now I am thrilled to have back on the program someone who I've interviewed once so far, and I am very confident, God willing, that this is just the second of many interviews to come.

I really thoroughly enjoyed my first interview with this dear brother. His name is Angelo Valli, not only a fine Orthodox Presbyterian pastor, but his name is also the name of my favorite vineyard. Angelo is pastor of Christ Reform Church of Alexandria, PA, and today we are discussing developing biblical family worship in your home, and we're also going to be introducing illuminance Bible curriculum.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd Zion Radio, Angelo Valli.

Thanks, brother. I appreciate to have you again and to think about these very, very important matters. Yes, I was excited last time when we spoke about John Owen, but today we can talk about family worship and development and this new Bible curriculum my wife and I developed at KBB Publications.

Great. Well, first of all, tell our listeners about Christ Reform Church of Alexandria, PA.

Sure. Christ Reform Church of Alexandria, PA is an independent Reformed church. We're actually the only Reformed confessional church in Huntington County, Central Pennsylvania. I've been here seven years.

We've seen a transformation in the culture and life of the church. It was formerly a United Church of Christ congregation until the late 2000s, and our ministry here since 2013 has been to lead them back.

They've done that through prizing our people in that way, and so we've been very grateful to spend our time here in preaching and teaching, again, the Reformed faith that we've inherited from our faithful forefathers before us.

Amen, and although this is an independent Reformed church, you are yourself an ordained Orthodox Presbyterian minister.

That's right. According to the book of church order, which of course stays by my bedside as I read it for fun, I am a minister laboring out of bounds. That means I am credentialed with the Central Pennsylvania Presbyterian Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but our congregation part of the OPC.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about Christ Reformed Church in Alexandria, Pennsylvania, go to crcalexandria .org, crcalexandria .org. Now, let our listeners know about this Bible curriculum that you and your wife developed,.

Illuminance.

Sure. So, my wife and I have taken family worship very seriously, and it's a long story, but it seems we have some time, so it's useful. My wife said, how should we understand? You would either get one that is robust in theology for children, and the theologian to powder it, but it won't do you well.

And so, in our endeavor to do it, again, I just finished the THM, the Lessons to Theological Seminole, of going for a classical model in education, so that everybody had theologically signed it on the classical model.

The dialectic's still really going back and forth, and then for the understanding the grounds or reason to what we wanted to do, was to have what we were naturally doing at the dinner gateway, the more substantive curriculum.

And again, that's something you can find at kvbpublications .com.

K, V as in victory, B as in boy.

Publications .com.

Okay. Well, we also have some exciting news for our listeners. For the remainder of this month, which is only until this weekend, if you go to that website, you can get a free download of this curriculum by typing in the code word IRONSHRUPPENSIREN, and that's all one word, there's no spaces.

IRONSHRUPPENSIREN, and it's also all caps.

That's right.

IRONSHRUPPENSIREN, and we'll be announcing a little bit later a repetition of this information, but it's kvbpublications .com, kvbpublications .com, and then the code word IRONSHRUPPENSIREN will get you a free download for the remainder of August.

That's right. It's the family worship booklet that's available. That's part of what I wanted to talk about. It's a seminar that I gave a couple times already on the grounds for family worship, and what worship looks like in the pew with your children, and then also what worship looks like in home.

That's very near and dear to my own heart.

The Importance of Family Worship in the Home

Great. Well, our subject is developing biblical family worship in your home. Why is this important? There are Christians who might be thinking, even if they would never say it out loud, hey, I take my wife and kids to church every Sunday, twice, morning and evening.

I take them to Wednesday prayer meetings. We work long hours. We're all really tired. Can't that suffice? Why are you adding something else for us to feel guilty about? Why is this an important thing for families to be participating in?

One of the things I always like to highlight is that my wife and I were not raised... In fact, I think my wife was raised in whatever is the very... Evangelism can produce several hundred attendees. They didn't believe in membership.

They had a youth pastor. They had a kids pastor. They were so large, they even had an assistant kids pastor. What I regularly saw was that it was possible to go to public worship and not see public worship until you were in seventh grade.

We had the segmenting of families. That was a normal feature. So on the one hand, the one part I want to talk about is the importance of including children in public worship. Secondarily, I also saw that often one of the issues was that parents thought that the children's field was not their own job.

It was the job of the kids pastor until the kid tapped out, then it was the job of the youth pastor until the kid tapped out, and then it was the job of the senior pastor. And that's not necessarily a biblical model, to have this kind of segregated or sectarian view of ministry, because on one level it inherently abdicates the role and responsibility of the parent their God-given duty.

Practical First Steps for Leading Family Worship

Well, for those of our listeners who are not yet doing anything more than praying before meals and praying before bed with their children, tell us some practical advice and counsel on the bare bones starting point on how they should begin developing this kind of habit and tradition in their home that actually becomes something that they grow to look forward to, enjoy doing.

And I don't mean to be blasphemous or heretical by saying this, but fun and everything else that would be involved in family worship that, of course, has God and His glory first and foremost in priority.

I think that's a brilliant question. So again, I would encourage the listeners today to take advantage of that pre-download at kbbpublications .com with the iron sharpened iron coupon code in all caps, because the booklet that they'll download for free is to that end, to practically say, what do I do?

What does this look like? So I'm just going to be talking about some things from there. The first thing I would recommend is taking a deep breath. Often we can get very stressed out about thinking about, how do I lead my family?

Is it going to be weird? Is it going to be awkward? It's only that fear that's there because we've been programmed in some way, shape, or form to think that theological education, maybe do it at the mute and read a section, a paragraph, whatever you feel is appropriate.

For you, again, of this, like, who was there? Who do you think this passage was necessary in the Bible? How do you think it's meant to affect and fulfill this passage? Look at the Old Testament, trying to do a religion.

Well, how does this make them think of and freak out and change places? There's an explosion of noise from them singing. And so my youngest daughter loves singing the doxology, and the other one loves...

And then after we sing, we pray. Now, sometimes we might ask our kids to pray, because we want to model to them that their prayers are important, that they can talk to Jesus. And it's not just mommy and daddy who get to pray.

And so sometimes we'll say, who wants to pray? And we'll have hands, and we'll say, no, I'm going to talk to Jesus. No, I'm going to talk to Jesus. Which, of course, becomes another issue that you need to take care of.

But we want to model to them that all it is, really, is read, and you can remember those three things, and just commit yourself to that. That's really the skeletal structure that you can build off of in all sorts of ways.

Mothers Leading Family Worship and the Role of Timothy's Mother and Grandmother

We have an anonymous listener who asks the question, if there is no saved male in the household, is it appropriate for the mom to lead family worship?

I think that's a great question. I think the answer is yes. We can think about Timothy. It's very important that when Paul identifies the reality of Timothy's godly lineage, he points to his grandmother and his mother, which I think is rather interesting.

He points to Lois and Eunice and his own catechesis. I think it is appropriate and proper for a godly mother to raise a child. We might think of St. Augustine. His mother, Monica, didn't stop praying later in life.

If there is no godly male, it does not prevent the woman from teaching the children. That's their job. That's where they come in, and I think that's appropriate. I think there's something really special and beautiful in greater detail to see that role.

Thank you, Anonymous, and anybody else who'd like to join us, let me remind you of our email address. It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And as always, give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We do have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks,. We who are Reformed tend to be very meticulous about the regulative principle of worship.

The idea that we are only to be conducting things in the corporate gathered body of saints when at worship that are specifically outlined in Scripture. I was wondering if home and family worship would have the same strictness about the regulative principle, or do you believe that there is more freedom and creativity to do things as long as they are not against the teachings of Scripture, but might involve things that are more fun for children, etc.?

That's a great question. I do think that there is a difference between public gathered worship. I think there's a uniqueness. For example, I can, for example, one of the things I do with our children, sometimes I make trumpet noises, or if I hear of animals, if we're going through the book of Numbers, hear an animal that you don't sound to, my youngest might make the noise of that.

Finding age-appropriate ways to encourage them to listen was so incredibly important, and it helps engage them where they are developmentally. And so I think there are fun and appropriate ways that are not counter-oxylogical purposes.

Yes, and obviously if animal noises break out in your corporate gathered worship, you might want to find a new congregation. I think you might be experiencing one of those false charismatic revivals.

We will not be having the third lecture.

Let's see here. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, would you recommend that there be, at least on a certain day of the week, as a part of family worship, the watching of a Christian video?

Great question. Yes, I call that the Lord's Day. I think we should have, we try hard at our own home to screen. So we really try to control screen time at the house. We have little ones who are aged, and so he likes to listen to that.

But yeah, there's also a program which you can get at kbbpublications .com. We wanted to design something that was substantive to help families, even in family worship.

We have to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

We'll be right back with Angela O 'Valley and more on developing family worship in your home, right after these messages from our sponsors. Was your business shut down during the COVID -19 pandemic, depriving you of earning any money, causing you to default on your rent as you try to survive without income?

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Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full program is Angelo Valley, pastor of Christ Reformed Church of Alexandria, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing developing biblical family worship in your home, and we are also introducing Illuminance Bible Curriculum. And as a reminder, if you go to the website for the Illuminance Bible Curriculum, and you enter in the password IRONSHARPENSIRON, all one word and all capitals, no spaces, you will receive a free download of the family worship booklet that is being offered.

And that is at KVB, that's King Victory Boy, kvbpublications .com. And send me an email if you're having any difficulty downloading that free booklet. And by the way, what does KVB stand for, Angelo?

Great question. I was hoping you'd ask me. It's about Katerina Von Bora.

Oh, Martin Luther's wife.

That's right. So part of my family, we spent a couple of years helping at a local OPC church, which is how I was able to come into the OPC. A good friend of mine was a pastor there, and he had some vocal record issues with Creek Scripps Library.

And so we made it a practice to get a special book for the Lord's Day to read together. And so Simon Etikhar, Kallen, for taking the brilliance and the breadth of church history and making it various books, a whole family to study church history and see how God has been faithful through the ages.

Well, at a Banner of Truth conference on Katerina Von Bora, which was, I think, written by Rebecca Van Doodyward. It feeds these various guests, provided a work and study, and it was this foundation to train their children in the knowledge of the Lord, working together for theological education.

My wife and I, V .B.

That's great.

And we have had Simon Etikhar on this program as a guest, and I'm sure we'll be having her back as well in the future.

Oh, that's excellent. Yeah, she's a wonderful woman.

Let's see here. We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, Is there anything that you can counsel us about in regarding keeping children quiet and attentive during this time when they might normally in church do so, but when they are in the confines of their own home, be less intimidated to act out?

I want to make sure I understand the question. Would you read it again one more time?

Basically, she's saying how do you keep your kids still and quiet during the family worship as opposed to at church, especially if your kids are used to going to church. They're usually well behaved. I mean, at times at the church where I attend, you hear outbreaks of this and that occasionally.

But I mean, kids might be more intimidated to act out and misbehave in a corporate worship setting than they are in the home.

Sure. Well, there's a lot of different work we're having on kbbpublications .com. There's a practical guide to parenting in the pew, and we use a recommended guide throughout various ages on how to approach worship, whether it be family worship.

But my three kids to church, and I got the opportunity to sit in the pew with my seven year old. He's very literate. He reads all the time. We encourage him to take notes. He has his own special notebook for taking notes, ready for either one.

It got me nervous when you said delicious after goldfish, and then I realized what you were talking about.

Times are hard, brother.

We have to adapt to what we have.

Mini goldfish. And every time she hears a word and she recognizes, says, Jesus. I'm like, yes, good job. He said Jesus. Or the Baptist. Okay, good. Yeah, he talked about John the Baptist. Or sin. Yes, sin.

And so depending on where they are, we have these different methods. Again, that's in the booklet that we're giving away for free for the rest of the week on kbbpublications .com. But the iron sharpens iron.

I hope you guys take advantage of that. We do work hard to get these pragmatic things, because that's where people really get nervous, right? They're all about, yes, we want to include children. Yes, but how you do it.

Yeah, I'm sure it did. We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, do you have any knowledge of church history in regard to private home worship? Is this something that has gone on for centuries, or is this more of a new concept?

Well, in my church history reflection, I haven't gone exhaustive to do that. One thing I did think that was interesting was in my perusal of the Church of Scotland in the 1600s, it was a punishable offense if a family, say a home family, worshipped as a discipline.

Wow. And so to go back to the initial question, to do that, they would expect whoever was in charge of the home, PA, Presbyterian Church in America, to create directories for family worship. The guy is that.

It was a very big deal. So at the very end, I would say that it's kind of Old Testament. Go down that rabbit trail there.

Of course. I should tell you, I mean, of course not. I don't mind. Continue.

No, that's okay. What I would argue is that what we see from the very beginning is that God created the family channel for redemption. And what I mean by that is not that we have this 1950s nuclear family that has solved everything.

No, no, no. What I'm saying is that God, from the beginning, created Adam and Eve in the context of a family. It wasn't like an awkward 90s sitcom where Adam saw Eve and he wondered if they were going to be friends and then go from there.

Proteus and Galileo, the first gospel message, and it was going to come through the seed of the woman. And then we see this, and again, of the earth shall be blessed. I find that Paul is going to highlight us that that's going to be chiefly through the seed of the woman who is the source of truth.

But of children who were sitting when they were lying down, there was this expectation that there would be a normative feature of the parents catechizing just neutral observers who happen to be there at church at all.

These are available. And so looking at that broader covenant, I would say that this idea of family worship has been since the beginning. And again, to highlight that, for example, Joshua and the people of God, after the death of Moses, enter into the promised land, make this memorial so that we can explain it to them.

A catechetical family dynamic immediately against our American individualism.

Inviting Other Families and Unbelievers to Family Worship

Well, that's an excellent answer. And we have another listener question for you.

Sure.

Let's see here. I was just looking at it and I somehow escaped my screen. Oh, John in Bangor, Maine, has a question. Is it appropriate, in your opinion, to invite other Christian families over your home while you're having your home family worship services?

Or is this something that should be regularly kept private for your own wife and children?

Well, that's a great question. One of the things my family loves to do is we love to eat. We're eating people. And we love to get together with family and friends. I think it's interesting that if you look in the Bible, food's always involved with the people of God.

And so if we say it's okay to have a physical, tangible meal with the people of God, why wouldn't we want a spiritual meal with the word of God, who is himself the bread of life, the Lord Jesus? I think one of the most beautiful things, nobody ever gets funny about that, if you want to pray for a meal, even non-Christians.

But I think the dynamic becomes something very specific, a way to model to them things that perhaps, or they add another dynamic to the table fellowship and discussion of sacred things. I think it is a good way to partake of family worship together.

Could it be a means of evangelism? Could you invite your non-brethren, your non-Christians over?

They're trapped, man.

They are trapped at your table, because you have their meal. They can't go anywhere. It's true, though. We've done that before with non-Christians, and even family members. We have made it a point to be delivering the word in that way, to read, sing, pray.

And it's great, because people who may be distanced from the Lord, they can be reminded of beautiful, beautiful things. I won't go into great details about this one, but there have been even times where people have been in especially difficult situations where we've been able to come together.

There's nothing more beautiful than hearing a child sing Amazing Grace. There's nothing more beautiful than having a child pray for you in the other room. Real evangelism, real community growth. Great.

We have, let's see here. We have a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. And Susan Margaret asks, you had just a little while ago, during your discussion, said you encourage your children to pray.

Why is it that we would, as Christian parents, encourage children to lead prayer in our midst when we would never do that with an unbeliever? I am saying this because I'm not referring to children that we are convinced are truly saved and understand the Word of God and have true faith.

But for those children that we are very skeptical about, or they're just too young for us to have confidence in the genuineness of their faith, why would we have them lead in prayer?

Perhaps it would be too much of me to presume that this person may be...

Yes, but you know what's interesting? Years ago, I attended an excellent conference on the Puritans led by a Presbyterian, Don Kistler. You may be familiar with Don Kistler. Kistler, a Presbyterian ordained minister and the original founder of Solideo Gloria Publications.

And he currently runs a publishing house by a different name. And I will look that up momentarily, perhaps during a station break, so I can announce that. I don't remember the name of it right now. I think it's Northampton.

I think it's Northampton Publications or Publishing or Northampton Press. But he said that it was a common belief amongst the Puritans, who were Paedo-Baptists, not to permit their little children to sing or to lead in prayer unless the parents were confident that the child had genuinely come to saving faith in Christ.

So I just thought I'd throw that in there. It's not just a novelty of Baptists. And by the way, and I actually think most Reformed Baptists would not view their household worship in that way. I think that the most Reformed Baptists would view things with more of a permitting of children to do these things.

In fact, I don't know of any Reformed Baptists that would agree with the Puritan practice, according to what Don taught.

I would agree with you. Most of them, I know, treat their children just like the covenant community, which is why we baptize our children. We believe that they have a—and not that, to be honest.

Although they would, Baptists, pretty much universally believe that children are not in the covenant unless they are truly regenerate.

Yeah, that would be the more of a Baptist approach. Again, being Presbyterian Reformed, with the inclusion of the children of believers, the grounds for that could be Genesis 17, Colossians 2. Just this idea that they're hearing the words of God regularly.

And so I am of the persuasion—I really like the language of the canon. The canons of Deuteronomy 17 are primarily written for—in that article, again, 1618, 1619, it writes, "...since we are to judge the will of God from his word, which testifies that the children of believers know in the knowledge and faith...".

At the point of belief, we have to ask, you know, what does it mean to be a believer? What does it mean? I mean, that's a deeper question than what the child is a—bar them from prayer. If you have a child who's in complete apostasy, pleading against the Lord, we have seen those things.

Well, I mean, would it have to be a case of extreme apostasy? So suppose you have a tiny little child, two, three, four, who just says,.