TPW #19 | Family Worship Encouragement from Matthew and Phillip Henry

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Paul warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving one another and being deceived.
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The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.
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The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers.
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They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.
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Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture.
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That was, that was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation, brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.
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Welcome to the Protestant Wish in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And today is part two of the family worship sermon series. This sermon covers primarily just some encouragement and some practical tips and advice and also a look at the family life of Matthew Henry and his father
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Philip Henry, as they are just an incredible, wonderful example of covenantal faithfulness and instruction and really some mind -blowing things about that family and their piety and the things that they did and what they accomplished.
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And also, hopefully we'll give you some background into that wonderful commentary, Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole
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Bible. For many who don't realize that that actually grew out of family devotions and his own notes that he took listening to his father
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Philip Henry expound Scripture during times of family worship. So, pretty amazing stuff. I hope that you enjoy this second part.
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Well, thank you for coming back this evening. Please take your Bibles and turn to the book of Malachi. Malachi chapter 1, the very last book of the
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Old Testament there, Malachi 1 and our reading will be verses 6 through 14 this evening.
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And you'll want to stay there because we will be walking through that passage as part of this evening's message.
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Malachi chapter 1 verses 6 through 14. This is God's Word. A son honors his father and a servant his master.
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Then if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my respect?
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Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who have despised my name.
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But you say, how have we despised your name? You are presenting defiled food upon my altar.
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But you say, how have we defiled you? In that you say the table of the Lord is to be despised.
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But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you present the lame and sick, is it not evil?
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Why not offer it to your governor? Would he be pleased with you? Or would he receive you kindly, says the
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Lord of hosts. But now will you not entreat God's favor, that he may be gracious to us?
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With such an offering on your part, will he receive any of you kindly, says the Lord of hosts?
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O that there were one among you who would shut the gates, that you might not uselessly kindle fire on my altar.
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I am not pleased with you, says the Lord of hosts. Nor will I accept an offering from you.
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For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name will be great among the nations. And in every place, incense is going to be offered to my name, and a grain offering that is pure.
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For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. But you are profaning it, in that you say the table of the
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Lord is defiled, and as for its fruit, its food is to be despised. You also say, my, how tiresome it is, and you disdainfully sniff at it.
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Says the Lord of hosts. And you bring what is taken by robbery, and what is lame or sick, so you bring the offering.
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Should I receive that from your hand, says the Lord? But cursed be the swindler, who has a male in his flock and vows it, but sacrifices a blemished animal to the
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Lord. For I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is feared among the nations.
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May God bless the reading of his infallible word. Let's pray, please. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be gathered here again this evening on this
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Lord's Day. It's always such a joy to bookend the Sabbath with another service of worship and to hear from your word again and to be together and to fellowship with one another.
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We pray that you would help us to listen to what this passage teaches and to hear the instruction from your word on how we are to carry about this great duty of family worship, to learn from great examples from history, and learn from their faithfulness and to see the fruits of it.
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We pray you would bless us now to that end. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. It's easy to get excited about doing family worship, but then life will begin to happen, and the fires will die a little, and faithfulness will start to become a challenge.
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This evening, I want to go over four things with you. Number one, an overview of Malachi 1, 6 -4, that passage we just read.
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I'd like to talk a little bit about the family life of Matthew and Philip Henry. I'm sure all of you have read sections of Matthew Henry's commentary on the
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Bible, Matthew Henry and his father, Philip Henry. They were an extraordinary family.
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And then talk a little bit about some nuts and bolts of family worship, some practical advice on that issue, and then fourthly, an encouragement to be faithful in this sacred duty.
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So first, I want to go over this passage from Malachi chapter 1, the life and times of the prophet
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Malachi. Scholars admit that the book is somewhat difficult to give a really precise date to, but they're in agreement that Malachi prophesied during the times of Ezra and Nehemiah.
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The temple was rebuilt under Ezra, and Jerusalem's wall was rebuilt under Nehemiah. This was a period of incredible grace, love, and patience on God's part to the people of Israel.
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Ezra and Nehemiah, along with another guy named Zerubbabel, led exiled Jews from Babylon back to the promised land, which they had, by their gross disobedience and sin, been thrown out of by God, according to the covenant.
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The covenant curses had been brought down heavy upon the people. The northern kingdom had been destroyed by the
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Assyrians, acting as God's disciplinary arm against them a couple hundred years before the southern kingdom fell to Babylon.
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And while most Jews from the northern tribes disappeared, never to be heard from again, but remember we also heard in the
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Gospel of Luke from Anna. Remember who Anna was? Anna was the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher.
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And the tribe of Asher was one of those northern tribes. One of those rare moments where we do hear something from someone from the northern tribes.
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But God graciously preserved a remnant from the southern tribes, which lived in Babylon during the years of captivity.
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Toward the end of the book of Ezra, however, when God allowed them to come back and they rebuilt the temple, the people began to marry pagan wives again.
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Towards the end of the book of Ezra, Ezra chapter 9, we read this in verse 2. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands.
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Indeed, the hand of the leaders and rulers has been foremost in this trespass. So when I heard this thing,
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I tore my garment and my robe and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard and sat down astonished.
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Ezra was shocked by this. This was the very thing that God exiled us for in the first place. And here, God has let us come back and now you guys are doing it again.
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And then in Ezra chapter 9, later on in verses 6 through 8, Ezra prays this wonderful prayer.
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He says, oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to you. My God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.
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Since the days of our fathers to this day, we have been very guilty for our iniquities. We, our kings and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder and to humiliation, as it is this day.
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And now for a little while, grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a peg in his holy place that our
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God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. And that's the end of his prayer.
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Toward the end of the book of Nehemiah, the same kind of thing starts happening. Nehemiah comes after Ezra and they rebuild the wall around Jerusalem.
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And then they have a great feast that they celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles and they have their national confession of sin.
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And then they rehearse God's faithfulness and everyone seems to be doing better. And we're going to be faithful now towards the end of the book of Nehemiah.
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You have the same thing that Nehemiah was not quite as diplomatic about it as Ezra was. But Nehemiah 13, 23.
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And then that's the end of that section of Nehemiah.
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The road to outright blatant apostasy from God begins with small compromises, namely half -hearted worship.
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It's usually where it starts. Worship is not merely a Sabbath activity, however.
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Idolatry and the neglect of divine things and the neglect of pursuing holiness are always at the heart of apostasy and spiritual decline.
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So let's walk through Malachi 1, 6 -14. And then we will discuss the family life of Philip and Matthew, Henry, and also touch on Jonathan Edwards just a little bit as well.
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So look back at your Bible there. Malachi 1, verse 6. Here God, speaking through Malachi, says,
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We know from this passage and from many others that God is provoked by half -hearted worship.
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In fact, to the church in Laodicea in the New Testament, the Lord Jesus dictated those seven letters.
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And to the one at Laodicea, he said this, Now, we no longer have a priesthood or offer unblemished animals or blemished animals or the blind or the sick.
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The offering that we make now is of ourselves, our bodies. We no longer bring an animal or a lamb or a goat or anything like that.
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We bring ourselves. We are the offering. We give our whole lives to God, our bodies, our minds, our time, talent, and treasure, everything we have in this world.
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Remember Paul, in the great statement of application of all the great grace and mercy that God has shown to us in Romans 12, 1, he said,
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I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, in view of the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.
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It's kind of a strange way of saying that. A living sacrifice. All the sacrifices under the old covenant were animals that died.
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And yet we are a sacrifice, but we're a living sacrifice. Holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
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Can Malachi's prophecy be applied to us today? Definitely. When we consider our personal worship of God, our personal study of the word of God and family worship.
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What is it that we bring to God? Think about what Malachi is rebuking the people of Israel for.
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He prophesied during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, when these compromises were starting to happen. And the first thing
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Malachi brings forward is you guys are bringing blemished offerings to God. Can we make the same errors?
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Can we make the same kinds of sins? Is it the lame, the sick and the blind that we offer?
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Or is it a blemish free offering that he requires of us? That verse 8 there, offer it then to your governor.
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Would he be pleased with you? God says that. Try this on the civil magistrate. Try this on your employer.
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Try bringing him what you bring me. Would he be pleased with you? John Calvin said about this.
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God here complains that less honor is given to him than to mortals. Isn't that a hammer blow of a sentence?
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God is complaining to his people. You guys are bringing me less than what you would give to other sinners who are mortal.
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And here I am the eternal God. And you bring me these lame animals. For he adduces this comparison.
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When anyone owes a tribute or tax to a governor and brings anything that's maimed or defective, he will not receive it.
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Folks, try paying half your taxes this year. It's not going to work. And Calvin says, hence he draws this inference that he was extremely insulted for the
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Jews dared to offer him what every mortal would reject. And I would add, try it on your employer too.
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Would he be pleased with you? We bring to God things we would never bring to our employers. Tardiness, half -hearted work, a wandering mind, toleration of laziness and daydreaming, and all the rest of it.
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Why does God get the very best of our leftovers? Our problem is so often we're half -hearted creatures about what we ought to be the most passionate about.
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And all who know Christ all must be thankful. I want to encourage myself and all of you, because we're all guilty of these things.
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Christ died even for our half -hearted worship. He died for and has forgiven us even of our half -hearted family worship, of our coldness at times.
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And has brought us true forgiveness by his precious blood. Praise his name. I had a seminary professor who taught a section of pastoral counseling.
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There was a whole bunch of different guys they had teach that class, and each one of them gave a section of the final exam.
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And this one guy that taught very helpful stuff, very helpful material in that pastoral counseling class. And I remember at the end of his classes, he did like three or four classes worth of lecturing.
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And at the end of it he said, Guys, I know you're busy, I know you all have a lot of work to do, but here is a list of things that you are going to have to answer on my section of the final, and you're going to have to reproduce this stuff on the final exam.
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Now guys, I've had men come to me, because this is usually one of the last classes they take to get their
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Master of Divinity, who did not memorize this stuff. And they did not pass my section of the final.
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And I had to fail them, because they didn't do this. And I want you all to know ahead of time that if you don't know these things, and you can't answer these questions and reproduce this stuff on the exam, here are his exact words,
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I will nail you, he said. And you will fail. Even if you come and beg me with tears in your eyes, that you already have a pastoral call,
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I will give you an F in this class. So don't beg me for mercy later, I already told you ahead of time.
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And I remember thinking, Why would this guy have to say this to seminary students? Don't we recognize how monumentally important the stuff is that we're learning?
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I would think that if there was ever a group of people who would understand, we don't need to be scolded for laziness or half -hearted work, it would be seminary students.
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And yet, we did need to be scolded for that. Even seminary students can be half -hearted. So I want to encourage all of us, be passionate and be full force in all that you do.
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Especially what you do directly for the Lord, and of course everything we do is directly for the Lord. Be tenacious and work hard at everything.
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Be tired and worn out doing your duty. Be faithful to family worship, and ruthless in your devotion to it.
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I had another professor, Dr. Alan Curry, who had us keep track in 15 -minute increments of everything we did for two full weeks.
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That was profoundly disturbing to see at the end of two weeks, what we actually had done, what I actually had done in two weeks.
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And one of his comments, when he had looked at everything that we had all done, I remember him saying this, and he just kind of threw this out to the class to let it sit like a weight on us.
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He said, Guys, it looks like many of you are more committed to physical fitness and working out than you are to reading scripture and personal private worship of Jesus Christ.
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And just let it sit there for about five minutes, and we're all kind of like, Yeah, that hurt. Look at verse nine there,
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Malachi 1. But now entreat God's favor, that he may be gracious to us. While this is being done by your hands, will he accept you favorably, says the
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Lord of hosts? Who is there even among you who would shut the doors so that you would not kindle fire on my altar in vain?
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I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts, nor will I accept an offering from your hands. For from the rising of the sun even to its going down, my name shall be great among the
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Gentiles, and every place incense shall be offered to my name in a pure offering. For my name shall be great among the nations, says the
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Lord of hosts. But you profane it, in that you say the table of the Lord is defiled, and its fruit, its food is contemptible.
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You also say, Oh, what a weariness, and you sniff at it, says the Lord of hosts.
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And you bring the stolen, the lame and the sick. Thus you bring an offering. Should I accept this from your hands, says the
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Lord? Can you believe that? People were offering stolen animals. That's like doing devotions from a
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Bible you stole from somebody. Verse 14, But cursed be the deceiver who has in his flock a male and takes a vow, but sacrifices to the
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Lord what is blemished, for I am a great king, says the Lord of hosts. And my name is to be feared among the nations.
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Would have been tempting to do that. I mean, if you had an animal that was blind or lame, or has some kind of a genetic flaw, you wouldn't want it reproducing.
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You don't want to kill the best of your flock, right? But that's what the law said you're supposed to do. Notice verse 13.
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You also say, Oh, what a weariness, and you sniff at it, you sneer at it.
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So many look at family worship, private Bible reading and devotions, and even Sabbath observance with this very attitude.
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What a weariness, what a drag. The Hebrew verb, translated here as sneer, means to breathe or to puff at, to sniff at.
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A young man emailed me a question this past week. He listened to the sermon I preached called
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Sinful Neglect of Scripture. And he asked me this really good question. I asked his permission to share this with you.
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He asked, how does one get that feeling of hunger and passion for God where one cannot be pulled away from the scripture, even if the house is on fire?
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If you get my meaning, how does one read scripture not for the benefit of keeping its precepts, but for the benefit of knowing the one who preserved it for us?
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Good questions. Great questions. Because by nature, even as Christians, there's still a lot of sin in us.
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And I wrote him back and said this. How do we get that feeling of hunger and passion for God? That's God's part.
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Our part is trust and obedience. Feelings may or may not come later. We just do it because God commands it.
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Feelings come and feelings go. God's children hang on and obey, even when the feelings wax and wane and are gone.
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Even when we feel cold, you still just obey. You still do what is righteous. Pray and tell
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God exactly what you see as your sins in this regard. I've always encouraged that. Be as transparent as the songwriters.
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Lord, my heart is cold and distant. I don't feel like praying right now. I don't feel a zeal for holiness like I once did long ago.
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Restore my first love in my heart. Lord, revive me. Just listen to some psalms on this.
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I sent these to this young man. Psalm 80, 17. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the son of man whom you made strong for yourself.
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Then we will not turn back from you. Revive us and we will call upon your name. Restore us,
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O Lord God of hosts. Cause your face to shine and we shall be saved. You hear what that psalm writer is asking?
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Lord, let your hand be upon me. Let your right hand be pressing down on me.
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Upon the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will not turn back from you. Revive us and we will call upon your name.
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So much of our prayers need to be like that. Lord, stir that fire that was once there. The fire that used to burn so bright for the lost around me.
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And for you and for your glory. For holiness. Where has that gone? Lord, light the fire again.
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Psalm 85, 4. Restore us, O God of our salvation. And cause your anger toward us to cease.
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Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you?
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You know what I'm talking about. When you feel there's not, the rejoicing's not there the way that it once was. The psalm writer felt it.
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Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in you? Psalm 119, 25.
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My soul clings to the dust. Revive me according to your word. Psalm 119, 37.
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Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things and revive me in your way.
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So where do the feelings come from? They come from God. But our duty is simply to trust and obey him.
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Regardless of how we feel. How I feel is not relevant to what's true or what's right. I might feel good.
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I might feel bad. I might feel excited. I might feel depressed. But you still just do what is right. You still do your duty before God regardless of how you feel.
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Okay, secondly this evening, the family life of Matthew and Philip Henry. This is an encouraging thing. I hope that you'll learn from this.
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Matthew Henry preached in 1704. Quote, It is better to be without bread in your houses than without Bibles.
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For the words of God's mouth are and should be to you more than your necessary food. End quote.
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I'm very thankful somebody found that manuscript. They had been lost. It was preached in 1704. Somebody found it.
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Never been published. And read it and thought, Wow, someone's got to get this out there. A church in the house.
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Family worship happened twice a day in the Henry household. Morning and evening. Philip Henry, Matthew's father, expected his children to take notes and to write down his family worship messages for future use.
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Matthew Henry left his home as a young man. Get this. He left his home as a young man with a handwritten commentary on almost the whole
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Bible. From writing down his father's thoughts on Scripture this became the foundation of his later commentary on the
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Bible that so many of us use today. Matthew Henry, when he was grown and had his own children do the same,
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Matthew Henry had seven daughters. I now know how he feels. He had seven daughters and all of them would sit and take notes when their father did family worship.
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And when Matthew Henry died, one of his daughters noticed that there were a few gaps in his commentary notes so she cobbled together her notes and her sister's notes and filled in the gaps.
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The edited final copy became what we have today in the six -volume commentary. So always remember, when you pick up that commentary, when you read that warmly pastoral and very in -depth scholarly commentary on Scripture, it did not just come out of thin air.
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It did not come from the pen of just a great scholar and a smart fellow. It began with a little boy listening to his father read and explain the
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Bible. Do you think Matthew Henry loved and respected his father Henry? How do we know that?
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This little guy sat there and wrote down everything his dad said about the Bible and kept it and then passed it on to his daughters and then they edited it and put it all together.
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Do you think faithfulness to family worship, prayer, Bible reading, godly conversation about spiritual things and singing, you think that can have an impact on future generations?
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How many people have been blessed by the commentaries of Matthew Henry? George Whitefield, when he was doing his itinerant ministry and traveling on horseback all over the place and traveling by carriage all over to preach, evidently what he was doing was reading
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Matthew Henry's commentary on the way to each speaking engagement and that's where he was getting a lot of his sermon material was from Matthew Henry's commentaries.
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Whitefield was said to have read that commentary set four times from cover to cover on his knees.
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Family worship, family worship, nuts and bolts. I would encourage you to allocate about a half hour.
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I already mentioned this this morning. You don't want to be tedious and you want to pray first. You're always open in prayer. Pray following the
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Lord's prayer and worship God in prayer yourself. Try to show your children, show your family this is how you worship
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God and praise him in prayer. If we are deeply concerned for our families and children that they are worshipers of the living
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God, we have to show them what it is to worship God in front of them. Pray for the advancement of the kingdom of God next, for missions, for your family and its legacy, for your children's salvation, for their future spouses, for their own godliness, for humility, for a love for God's word and his truth.
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That's one thing I remember. My father prayed for my salvation in front of me my whole life to the point where it almost offended me.
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I'm like, man, this guy thinks I'm hell fodder or something. But he prayed all the time in front of me for my salvation.
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He prayed for my wife's salvation, for my future children's salvation in front of me. And you know what? That made a huge impression on me when
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I was little. It really did. Demonstrate to everyone what it is that you hope that they become one day and then pray for the list of prayer requests of your church, the things that you know are going on at church, the people who are sick, the people who are going through difficult times, the people who are pregnant with covenant children.
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We always pray for those in my house. To do this well, we must regularly be before the throne of God on our knees in his word.
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The effectiveness of our family worship will be determined directly by the intimacy of our own walk with the Lord and our closeness to his word, the
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Bible. Read a passage of scripture, not necessarily an entire chapter, but read a whole section of scripture.
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Make some comments on it. Then ask your family to tell you what they heard. To make some comments on it themselves.
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This can be a great opportunity to ask your children, how would you explain this passage to your own family one day?
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You will find that people will jump at that opportunity. How would you explain this to your own son? How would you explain this to your own daughter?
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And then I would encourage you to sing together. Try to sing together. We've sung the doxology a lot over the years.
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When your kids get a little older, sometimes they don't want to sing as much, but when they're real little, they typically will love to sing with you.
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We used to sing Like a River Glorious, to God be the glory, amazing grace, the doxologies that we were singing here.
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And then closing prayer. It doesn't need to be overly elaborate, but you want to show them by example that reading the
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Bible, listening to God's word is a priority for us in this home. This is going to be the heart and soul of everything else that we do as a family.
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Whatever it is that we're working on, if we're washing the dishes or we're cleaning the cars or we're doing this or that, we are a family that is in the service of God.
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And you all need to understand that. That's what you want to communicate in it. Now I want to encourage you all to be faithful. It's easy to get overwhelmed by some of this if you're not used to doing it or if you've faltered some in your faithfulness to it.
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My advice to you is do more, take steps. God will help you and will bless plentifully and abundantly your efforts.
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God is anxious to bless us for what we do well. And family worship has got to be a priority. What I mean by priority is this.
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Would you skip a vacation that you had planned, gotten approval for from your workplace and spent $5 ,000 on to secure?
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I bet you you probably wouldn't miss that if you had done that. What are the chances you would not show up for that vacation?
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Your commitment to family worship needs to be relentlessly consistent. It needs to be on that same level. A thousand times more important to you than a vacation, an appointment, getting to work on time, sports practice, or a
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Saturday game. Will you ever do this perfectly? No, but you must fight to be consistent. You want to be consistent over the long haul.
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And remember Malachi 1, 6 -14, don't be content to bring a skinny sacrifice to the
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Lord or a lame or a blind or a weak sacrifice. Don't be content to bring the best of your leftovers instead of the best of your best to the
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Lord. Family worship is a sacrifice of praise that we bring to God. There are plenty of men in this world who settle for less.
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Don't just be one more. Give your very best time and mental energy to this eternally significant task.
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I was invited many years ago by Pregnancy Care of Cincinnati to speak to 16 pregnant women who were showing at the time they were that pregnant and just two men about fatherhood.
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Two of the dads were there with their pregnant girlfriends. None of them were married. And the other 14 pregnant women were alone.
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And I remember thinking, you really want me to come and speak about fatherhood to this group? And they warned me about this and they said, but it can have a great impact if even just one or two of the men show up.
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If one or two of the dads show up, talks like this can be very good for them. And doing that with just two out of the 16 dads there was very, very painful.
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I actually brought my three eldest children with me on that one. The heavy emphasis in what
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I said though was on duty. And I just kept looking at those two guys that were there. And I also preached the gospel to them as clearly as I know how to.
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And one of those young men grabbed me after the talk and we exchanged email addresses. We still communicate.
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Even to this day, we still do. He really wanted to do the right thing and wanted to get married and wanted to try to be a spiritual leader.
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It was such an encouraging thing. I was very encouraged by him. And like I said, I still hear from him occasionally. He told me how much he had already done wrong.
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He had a couple other kids from two other women as well. And he's like, I don't know what to do. How can I even begin to make this right?
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It's one of those things. I mean, I told him you need to marry this woman that's got your child right now and you need to do everything you can to be a good husband, a good father.
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You need to join a church. And I tried my best to encourage him to do what was in his power. And I said, look, he told me how much he had done wrong.
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And I said, we've all done a lot wrong in life. What's done is done and you can't change the past. You can't change what you've done.
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But you can do better from here forward. And with the help of Christ, we can do better. God is eager to bless us in our attempts to be faithful in our obedience to him.
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Don't worry about what you've done wrong in the past or how you may have been unfaithful in the past. Especially things that are hard and unnatural for us.
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Like this, like these things can be. A man who has never actively led his family in this way, who suddenly decides to try, can often feel very awkward and inadequate about it.
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Even those who have tried for a long time can still feel awkward and inadequate about it. Wives, children, please encourage your dads as much as possible.
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Encourage the good that they do try to do. They have hearts of gold but feet of clay. And most of us are not actually as sure of ourselves as we try to come across.
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Dads, like the men, the fathers who are here, most of us are not as sure of ourselves as we try to come across, even in our own homes.
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There is a brokenness and a burden for the family that beats deeply in the heart of every Christian husband and father.
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So, wives and kids, please try to encourage your husband and dad when he tries to lead.
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It is not an easy thing to do. And it's very easy to give up and to stop trying. But men, that's not an option for us and we cannot do that.
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God blesses us when we do our duty. God blesses faithfulness. An often unnoticed fact of God's law is its incredible grace and mercy, even in the way that it's stated.
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Yes, grace and mercy are shown even in the way that God words His commandments. I remember this jumping off the page a few years ago, reading
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Exodus 20, verses 4 and 5 about the second commandment, the making of graven images. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
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You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments.
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I thought, wow. He visits iniquity only to the third and fourth generation, but is anxious to bless thousands that honor
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Him and keep His commandments. It's almost like God is throwing out an invitation to us to be faithful.
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Be faithful. I will bless your descendants and their descendants and their descendants. The small little steps of obedience that you take,
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I will bless them and multiply them, just like the five barley loaves and the two fish. The little that we bring to God, He's anxious to multiply it for us.
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Do what you know is right, what is commanded in Scripture, and God will multiply it exceedingly. Don't think that our
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God is stingy with the way He loves us and the way that He is anxious to bless us. God will bless our duties.
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And if men step up and are willing to try, I'm going to try to do this. As flawed as I am and as messed up as I am, and it's probably not going to be that great anyway,
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I'm going to try to do this right and watch God bless it. Watch God bless you doing your duty.
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Remember question three of the shorter catechism, what do the Scriptures principally teach? Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty
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God requires of man. When we see duty and we understand it, we have to respond with obedience to that duty.
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In a book called The Fruit of the Family Tree, there's a paragraph in that book about Jonathan Edwards that goes as follows.
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From Jonathan Edwards, who married also a wonderful woman, Sarah Pierrepont, have descended 12 college presidents, 265 college graduates, 65 college professors, 60 physicians, 100 clergymen, 75 army officers, 60 prominent authors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 80 public officers, state governors, city mayors, and state officials, three congressmen, two
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United States senators, and one vice president of the United States. Not bad. Compare this with the worthless descendants of Martin Kalakak.
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Martin Kalakak was a young soldier of the Revolutionary War. His ancestry was excellent. But one wild night, up the
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Hudson River, Martin forgot his noble blood. In this night of dissipation, he met a physically attracted, feeble -minded girl.
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They produced a numerous progeny with a large percentage of feeble -mindedness. They grew up lazy, thriftless, shiftless, trifling, thieving people.
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This line has given 480 descendants. Among them have been 143 known feeble -minded, 36 illegitimate, 33 sexually immoral, 24 confirmed alcoholics, 3 criminals, 8 keepers of brothels.
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Now by feeble -minded here, the author is referring to being an educational dropout or failure of being a social degenerate of some kind.
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What characterized the Edwards family? What made it so that there were those amazing descendants that came from that man and that woman?
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Family worship. It was one of the most important things that Edwards pushed and pushed and preached on.
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Family worship and a culture of godly conversation in the home. Consider the impact that we do have on others, especially on our families.
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The decisions that I make will affect my descendants for generations to come. We often don't think in those terms, but our decisions really do have a very far -reaching, far -reaching impact.
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Let us endeavor to do well to pass the faith on to the next generation by having it deeply in our own hearts first.
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It is never wasted time when you are praying, studying God's word, seeking to memorize it, when you're seeking to grow in holiness, when you're putting sin to death, when you're walking closely with God.
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That's going to have a massive impact on everyone around you, everyone that knows you. Remember Deuteronomy 6, 1 -9, we looked at this morning.
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Psalm 78, 1 -8. Ephesians 6, 4. The nation's future existence and the spread of the gospel will very much depend on what happens in the living rooms of Christian people.
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It's one of the most practical ways we fulfill the Great Commission. We don't have to be necessarily foreign missionaries, and we don't need to be a church of a zillion programs.
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So much of the spade work of the Great Commission is done in living rooms and Christian homes.
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It's done by a husband loving his wife. It's done in a wife who dearly loves her husband and encourages him always and helps him be a much better man than he ever could have been on his own.
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The Great Commission is fulfilled. It's done by obedient children who are happy and thankful to God that they have parents who not only provide for them physically, but who care about their eternal happiness and set
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Christ before them in the Word of God every day. Children, if you have parents that do that, if you have parents that talk to you about the things of God and who read the
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Bible to you, you need to thank God for your parents. When you go to bed tonight, you should praise God.
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Lord, of all the places I could have been born, of all the people I could have been born into their family, you gave me a father and a mother that actually care about my eternal happiness and teach me the
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Word of God and teach me about the gospel and bring me to church so I can learn more about you.
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Lord, thank you for that. Children, if you have a love for your parents, your heart turns towards your parents. And parents, your hearts are turned towards your children in that way.
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That's a sign of spiritual awakening. And it's a glorious thing. You remember what was said about John the
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Baptist? He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. That's also from the prophet Malachi. And the hearts of the children to their fathers.
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Remember that. Small steps of obedience, small steps of faithfulness, because God is anxious to bless them.
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And I want to close with a verse that I hope will stir your heart in that regard, to know how gracious God is.
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Ephesians 3 .20 Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.
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Amen. If you're sitting there thinking, maybe God will bless. Maybe God will help us. Maybe God will take our steps to do this well and maybe he'll do something.
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I want to tell you, he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that you ask or even think, above all that you ask or think, according to the power that works in you.
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So remember that. Your God is a loving father. He is anxious to bless your faithfulness.
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Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you that you've given us these simple commands in scripture would help us to maintain a close communion with Jesus Christ in our own daily lives.
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We pray that you would light the fires in our hearts to have a holy hatred of sin, to seek to eradicate it from our lives, to walk humbly and closely with you so that we love our families and love our wives, so that wives love their husbands, so that children are thankful for their parents who teach them the scriptures and teach them about the gospel.
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We pray, Lord, you'd help us to be faithful in all these things, that we might glorify you and that generations and generations of young people would grow up into great redwoods for Christ who will then teach the next generation the same thing.