Opening Prayer

I’m excited to talk about family worship. It’s a topic that I hope will either encourage you, refresh your zeal, or introduce to you as a new practice that will bless those in your household.

Let’s pray. God, we thank you so much for this morning. We thank you for this opportunity to look at your word and consider what is profitable, what is useful, consider the means of grace that will enable us to grow and be sanctified and be more pleasing to you. God, please help us to do that. I pray that this would be an encouragement to everyone who’s here. And I ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Chair I Broke

In the past, I did air conditioning for about seven years, and I remember one of the most embarrassing, pit-in-my-stomach moments I have ever had. I was 21 years old, and I was doing an air conditioning tuneup at a customer’s house. Part of my check was to go to every vent in the house and check airflow and temperature, and everything was going really well until I got to one vent that had a chair underneath it.

Because the chair was there, I couldn’t reach the vent, and so I did what any sensible person would do. I stepped up onto the chair, and after a couple seconds, I hear creak, snap. I look at the chair. The chair is broken. I noticed for the first time in that moment that chair looks kind of old. The homeowner comes running in. She looks at me on the ground, looks at the chair, and she says, “Mima’s chair.”

Just getting worse and worse by the second. It was an heirloom. It was a family heirloom, and I snapped it so that I could be extra thorough on my air conditioning tuneup for $69. She starts crying. I call my manager, and he comes out and promises her we’re going to make it right. They ended up finding an antique craftsman to repair it, and she was happy. I don’t know how much that repair bill cost, but I was expecting to be fired.

My manager graciously looked at me afterwards and said, “Did you learn your lesson?” I said, “Yes, sir.” And that was it. I never heard about it again. From then on I used a ladder every time I checked registers. I never stepped on a customer’s chair again. I learned to use the right tool for the job. In fact, I had the right tool available to me the whole time in my vehicle, and I just didn’t pull it out and use it.

Think of a typical household—dad, mom, kids—and we will address other situations later. Dad has a responsibility to shepherd and lead his wife. He and his wife together have a responsibility to bring up the children. Those are no tasks for the faint of heart. They’re sweet tasks, but they aren’t easy. You need to use the right tools.

This morning, I want to present family worship as an essential tool in those endeavors. Today, I’ll demonstrate three stimulating considerations of family worship.

A Husband’s Pursuit of His Wife’s Sanctification

We’ll start by looking at Ephesians 5. Go ahead and turn to Ephesians 5:25–27.

“Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.”

I’m not going to do a complete exegesis of this passage or the surrounding passages, but I want to highlight some things that will serve our purpose well. I want to talk about the husband’s need to pursue his wife’s sanctification.

The text says that husbands are to love their wives just as Christ loved the church. Notice these characteristics of Christ’s love. It was utterly sacrificial. He gave himself up for her. Christ put the good of the church ahead of his own well-being. He didn’t avoid the things that demanded effort or discomfort or even pain. Those of you who know the gospel understand that Christ went to the cross and bore the wrath of God as a sin offering on behalf of everyone who would ever believe in him, so that though sinful and guilty, they can be declared righteous, innocent, and adopted into God’s household.

So husbands, as you look to lead your wives, sacrificial love is the modus operandi for your leadership. But look at the purpose stated here for Christ’s sacrificial love. What was he aiming at? So that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. Christ was aiming at the sanctification of the church. This is positional sanctification.

Christian, when you believed the word of God and the gospel, Christ set you apart as his own forever. You have been sanctified. This positional sanctification came through the means of sacrificial love on the cross. So because of what Christ did, every believer is justified. Every believer is declared to be righteous and free from sin. And every believer still alive needs continual repentance, confession of sin, and pursuing holiness. We don’t yet experience the fullness of our purification, sanctification in the gospel, and we won’t in this life. But we must be ever striving for greater purity of heart, greater holiness. This is called our progressive sanctification.

So husbands, Christ provided the salvation and positional sanctification of all God’s people at the cross so that the church would be presented to himself in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless. It’s an incredible reality, and it’s one that none of us husbands play a part in. We are beneficiaries of this work. But every believer must partner with Christ, with the Spirit, in the aim to see that they and those around them are growing in godliness. And especially in this context, the husband to his wife.

This is part of your duty. Certainly not all of your duty to your wife, men, but it’s an important part, and it’s the element that we’re going to focus on today. It is your responsibility to conspire for your wife’s sanctification.

Bringing Children Up in the Discipline and Instruction of the Lord

Second stimulating consideration of family worship is to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Look just down a few verses at Ephesians 6:4.

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

We didn’t look at the whole context for either of these passages. But if you scan the section, you will see submissional relationships: wives submitting to husbands, children submitting to parents, slaves submitting to masters. In all three of those relationships, the one in authority owes something to those who submit to them. A wife must submit to and honor her husband. Good. But a husband must love and care for his wife. It’s easy for us to see the ugliness of a man who doesn’t love his wife, but always asserts his own authority and demands his honor. It’s dishonorable.

In the same way, parents must recognize we hold that same attitude when we demand obedience of our children according to verses 1 through 3 in this passage, but neglect the ministry and care of verse 4. If you’re a parent, hope to become a parent, if you’re a grandparent, or if you just know someone who’s a parent, this passage needs to be in your repertoire.

Notice in verse 4 who Paul commands. This command is addressed to fathers. Paul knows the word for parents. He uses it in verse 1. But specifically he gives these commands to fathers. This doesn’t deny or neglect the role of mom in the home, but it does say dad is the leader, and dad is ultimately responsible for the way these things play out. Mom’s influence is significant. She is a fundamental, essential help, laboring alongside her husband and with all of his trust in these things.

Five Ways Parents Provoke Their Children

The first command here in this passage is do not provoke your children to anger. In the context when Paul writes this, in the ancient world fathers were viewed to have an authority that far exceeds what we view a father’s authority to be today, to the point of the father having the right to put family members to death on a whim. There’s no legal check to his power. God’s view of fatherhood is so far from that one. It is so far from domineering control.

Paul’s first desire for fathers and parents in the church is that the children would not be provoked to anger. To provoke your child doesn’t mean that you always make decisions they would approve of. It doesn’t mean that you become child-centered in your thinking. This is what it means to provoke your child: it’s a continual, repeated pattern of treatment that builds up until it boils over in anger, frustration, resentment, bitterness. It’s a tragic picture, a child who’s embittered against their parents, who are actually the primary source of God’s wisdom and care and love.

One commentator notes how a child is like a flower that closes off to storm clouds but opens up utterly unfurled to the light and warmth of the sun. Parents hold great influence over their children. They can cause their children to shut down and shut out in anger, and likewise they have the greatest influence in watching their children bloom to full flower. So parents must take care not to provoke.

There are some great lists in different resources of ways that parents often provoke their children. Here are some from the book The Faithful Parent by Stuart Scott and Martha Peace. A proud parent won’t be able to admit that they are wrong, and they will demand that their children quickly admit when they have done something wrong. A proud parent will be quick to shame their child publicly.

There’s a despairing parent who’s always glass-half-empty, always recounting regrets and failures in parenting. Not only will they struggle to be an encouragement to the child, but they will be motivated by fear and are often therefore unpredictable. Rules and standards might change from one day to the next depending on what mom and dad happen to be worried about that day.

The controlling parent micromanages with a harsh, overbearing tone. Their presence is more like thundering storms than sunny skies. They lack kindness. They often use anger and a raised voice as a manipulation tactic to get obedience. A child who lives under this kind of parenting will often be left wondering, are mom and dad in a good mood today? Are they in a bad mood?

The child-centered parent will stumble their kids. And you might think, how could that be? They give the child what the child wants. Shouldn’t that child be happy? They let the child decide what to eat for dinner, where to go to church, when to go to bed, all the things that a child typically lacks the wisdom to think through and make judgments on. This could be due to laziness, just to avoid difficult problems that take effort to work through. Sometimes it could be wrongly thinking that this is how you express love to a child: you center your home around them. What happens is that the child ends up making foolish decisions and has to suffer consequences that the parents could have easily spared them from. At some point the child has to leave the house and find out that the world doesn’t actually revolve around them like their parents modeled.

These are just a few of the ways that provoking your child to anger can happen. But this is the task of parents, to ensure that the normal patterns, the normal behaviors, the parents’ attitudes, aren’t marked by these things and aren’t leading to provoked children.

Discipline and Instruction — Paideia and Noutheteo

Then we get to the positive command: bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is what you’re supposed to do. This is an arduous task, but it’s one that is motivated by love for the child. This word bring them up is the same word in chapter 5:29 when it says no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it. Husbands are to nourish their wives. Same thing here. Everything that the child needs to be nourished, healthy, strong, is to be provided for by the parents.

So to say that a parent should work hard to provide food and clothing and a home to live in is certainly true. But here Paul’s using this term to describe the nurturing of the soul. Notice they’re to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Those are the means that the parent has at their disposal. Let’s talk about discipline first. Discipline is a word that often gets tagged onto corporal discipline, the rod. That’s a part of it, but it’s much more.

This word for discipline is training. It’s the word paideia, which is familiar if you’re in the classical school movement. It’s the comprehensive training, the whole-life training that takes a child from needing to be guided in everything to being a mature adult. It’s formative. It’s instructive. While it doesn’t really refer to vocational training, it does refer to these three things all intertwined: education, academics, but especially moral and religious training is the emphasis. Successful paideia turns a child into a thoughtful, virtuous, faithful adult. Of course, only God can make outcomes certain, but that’s what we pray for. That’s what we’re laboring toward.

This word instruction is verbal teaching. It often has the element of warning. It’s in the same word family as noutheteo. It’s a word group that has been rightly highlighted by biblical counseling movements. It’s instruction with warning of the consequences if you go against that instruction. So both of these words, discipline and instruction, are to be in the Lord. So as parents train, educate, instruct, it is as though the Lord were standing behind all of their instruction. It is as though the parents are the tools in the hand of God for the training of the children.

So parents have the important responsibility to ensure that all the discipling, educating, training is done with the Lord’s pleasure in mind.

Parents Are Ultimately Responsible

Here are some implications. God cares about how your children learn. He cares about what they learn. If history is learning what man has done rather than what God has done in the world through man, you’re doing it wrong. If our children learn science as leading to anything else but Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God, it’s not how it was meant to be done. If they’re learning Bible, scripture, theology, from a source that softens God’s holiness, downplays sin, downplays that Christ is the only rescue from sin, downplays the infallibility of scripture, obviously those things are no good.

So God cares about the training of children, and parents are the ones ultimately responsible to see that the child’s life training is in line with God’s desire. Of course it’s okay to contract things out. It’s okay, and often beneficial, to get help. But because parents are ultimately responsible, they need to know what’s going on. They need to be involved on some level.

I was talking recently to a father whose family has done homeschooling, Christian schooling, public charter schooling. His experience with the Christian school was that they needed to be on top of whatever the school was teaching. They ultimately found out that this Christian school was soft-pedaling parts of scripture that the world finds tough to swallow. He also explained to me as they got older and went into charter schools, he would go one by one through each of his children and ask, “Okay, first period, what did the teacher say? What did you learn? Okay, what about this? All right, second period.” It’s a lot of work, but he was involved.

I can testify as a homeschooling dad that no curriculum is perfect, and I have found problematic things taught in the most unsuspected places. I highlight all that to say the method—whether you do public, charter, private, Christian, homeschool—that’s not the most important thing. It does need to be thought through. But what is important is that in all facets of the child’s education, training, and discipling, parents must be personally involved.

You may not be the one to teach your kids science, but you need to teach them a biblical worldview, how to think about those things. You might not be the one to teach them history, but they must learn from you that God is sovereign over everything that happens on this globe, past, present, and future. They might have a Bible class. They might go to NGM, but you parents are responsible for the discipleship of your children. What you cannot under any circumstances do is hand over the education, training, and discipleship of your children to the public school, Christian school, homeschool curriculum. It’s the parents’ task.

Sometimes in our culture, there’s the stereotype that dad goes to work and that’s his domain. Mom is the one who’s primarily in tune with educational decisions and training of the child. Dad has his area of expertise and mom has hers, and they keep it pretty separate. Dads, you must be involved in the training of your children. According to this passage, even if the involvement is mediated through a wife’s more direct involvement, that’s okay. But you must be engaged in taking these things into account.

Family Worship as the Right Tool

So a husband must pursue his wife’s sanctification. A father must provide discipleship and biblical worldview to his kids. And here’s the punchline: there may be no tool in your tool belt as useful as family worship in those things. It’s useful because its intended purpose is to lean into those kinds of things. It’s useful because you can talk to and instruct your whole household at one time. Everyone’s together. Everyone’s engaged. And it’s useful because it is a regular, planned, scheduled time for your family to be in God’s word. I would say it’s useful enough that I think it ought to be considered essential.

Now, you might be thinking, how can you say that? There is no verse in my Bible that says, “Thou shalt practice family worship.” It’s true. I have no command from the Lord. We do have examples in scripture. I won’t turn to each one, but feel free to jot these down.

Genesis 18:19 says that God chose Abraham. And part of the reason he chose Abraham was for the purpose of Abraham commanding his children to keep the way of Yahweh.

Abraham had the responsibility to instruct his children in the ways of Yahweh.

Joshua set the expectation of serving Yahweh in Joshua 24:15 when he said, “As for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Timothy was taught the scriptures from childhood, presumably by his mother and grandmother. It says in 2 Timothy 3:15 and it also says there in that context that the scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

I am so encouraged by that. I can’t save my kids. Only God can do that. But what I can do is I can pray for them every day while my heart still beats. I can bring this word that is able to make them wise unto salvation to them every single day as long as I have breath.

So there’s no direct command. It’s kind of like reading your Bible every day. There’s no direct command. If you miss a day, I wouldn’t say you’re in sin. But it’s so in line with other commands and teachings in the scriptures that if someone said, “I absolutely refuse to read my Bible daily. I’m not going to do it,” okay, can I ask you about that? What’s going on in your heart, brother? Why are you saying that? It’s no command to lead your family in family worship, but it is so in line with the passages that we’ve looked at and others that if someone refused it, I’d have some questions.

Again, family worship is a regular, consistent opportunity for a husband to nourish his wife and for a dad to have hands-on influence in bringing his children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It’s by no means the only tool in your toolbox, but it should be one you use regularly.

I want to be sensitive. There’s probably people here who have adult children, and you can look back and recognize, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything like that. I don’t want you to despair. I don’t want you to take undue blame without trusting the sovereignty of God. I don’t want you to wallow in guilt and regret. God is in control. God gave you your children. He knew who you were when he did. Trust him and start now or soon. It’s never too late.

Methods of Family Worship

All right, I want to move on to the methods of family worship. These will be practical helps and ideas, and there is no single right way to do family worship. You don’t have to take these as law, but they might be helpful things to consider.

The Who of Family Worship

First, the who of family worship. In general, everyone in the household should be expected at family worship. Sometimes family worship is viewed as primarily for the children’s benefit, and so only one parent needs to be there. I don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. The husband should view this as an opportunity to serve his wife as well and not only the children. Whoever is leading family worship should view it as an opportunity for his own heart to come to God’s word and worship. So it’s not just for the children.

Something to be said here too for empty nesters who no longer have children in the home. That doesn’t mean family worship loses its benefit or its help to your household rhythm. But in general, everyone in the household should be present, including believing and unbelieving children. They all need to hear God’s word.

And there can be caveats here. If an unbelieving grandparent moves in to be cared for and doesn’t want to be a part of family worship, I can understand where there would be situations where not everyone will be there, and you’ll have to think that through case by case. But so far we have primarily been addressing a typical household of parents and children. I understand that’s not the case for everyone.

This would be a wonderful practice for roommates, especially if you’re both believers, a sweet opportunity to encourage each other in God’s word and to pray for one another. If you’re a child in a believing home that doesn’t practice family worship, you can ask your parents. See if they’d be willing to do this. Ask them if you can read the Bible to them at some point in the day. Ask if you can have a regular time to pray as a family.

I know that it’s also the case for some that dad is unable to lead family worship. If dad is unable to lead family worship, either because he’s an unbeliever or because he’s not present, mom or anyone else who’s appropriate can and should step in to lead the family in worship together. I’ve even read about a situation where siblings were orphaned and the oldest brother took it upon himself to lead his family in family worship. If dad is present and he is a believer, I think he should lean into this. But wherever that can’t happen, whoever is able should feel the freedom to serve their household in this way.

Note to grandparents, want to highlight you for a moment. You have a wonderful opportunity. Your grandkids hear all the time about how they must obey God’s word, seek wisdom, honor their parents. It would go a long way for them to hear it from you too. Or maybe your grandkids don’t hear any of those things, and you might be one of the few opportunities for them to hear God’s word, hear the gospel, take those things in. I can say from personal experience it is sweet to hear kids, parents, and grandparents all singing, praying, reading God’s word together. It’s memorable. It’s impactful.

One more thing to consider, not a rule, but an additional ministry as part of your family worship: when you have visitors or you’re hosting somebody who’s not normally in your home, I have found it sweet to include them in family worship, even if you do something a little shorter so you still have time for fellowship. I have been encouraged by other families doing that for us. That is how we were first introduced to family worship when we came to this church. Someone welcomed us into their home and included me and my family in with what they were doing.

The What — Word, Prayer, and Singing

Now we’re going to move on to the what. What does family worship entail? I’ll give you three things up front. I would suggest that three core elements of family worship are God’s word, prayer, and singing. Remember this will look different in every household. These should be bent to whatever is useful for your household.

First, God’s word. You should read it. This is the heartbeat of family worship. You get in God’s word, talk about it, and respond to it as a family. Some families just start in Genesis 1 and keep going. Others do New Testament in the morning, Old Testament in the evening. Some families with young children have found it profitable to take short breaks in reading the Bible in order to read an accurate Bible storybook for a little while. Some aim for one chapter at a time, others do shorter. Whatever works for your family, I would encourage you to do. But have a plan with the aim of eventually bringing your family to the whole counsel of God.

One of the things that I’ve seen done that seems to be helpful is popcorn reading. One person reads a few verses and then popcorns to the next person. They read a few verses, and so on. It helps to keep everyone engaged. If you have younger children, it’s a great practice for reading out loud. One really helpful resource that I want to commend to you is the family devotional guide produced by Generations of Grace. It’s the curriculum that we use here in our NGM ministry. There’s five days of readings. It gives a passage to read, then some scripted commentary with discussion questions at the end. And to top it off, the five weekly lessons culminate with whatever the kids are going to hear that coming Sunday in NGM. It’s just a wonderful resource. There are others that can be used profitably. This is also a wonderful time for Bible memory, to make that a habit in your home.

The second element of family worship should be prayer. Pray before you read the Bible to remind yourself of who you are worshiping. You are coming to God. Let your prayer help to bring sobriety if that’s needed, to settle everyone in, and remind them that we don’t want to be thoughtless. Neither should it be dull or super serious, but you don’t want to be unthinking. Then pray at the end. Help your family obey or respond to what you read about. What you’re actually doing here is modeling for those in your household what their own personal Bible reading and prayer could look like. You come to God reverently. You respond humbly. If there are cares, you cast them upon God, and everyone in the household gets to watch as God cares for you.

You can also use that time to lead your family to think about others as more important than themselves. You can ask each person who’s someone in need they would like to pray for. Maybe help them think of people they know who have needs.

Lastly, you sing. You sing together. One, maybe two songs is good. You might be worried that you can’t sing, can’t play an instrument. It’s fine. Hopefully, you have someone who can carry a tune in your household, but if not, you could practice. Why sing together? It prepares your heart to read God’s word. It glorifies God. Your whole family gets to participate in the ministry together. That’s another reason, thinking of Colossians 3:16, which says:

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God.”

When you sing together, you all get to encourage one another with the truth as you sing. One implication of that is you should sing loud enough to be heard. You also get to teach lyrics. I was talking with someone this morning about how lyrics aren’t quickly forgotten. You can teach them the songs that are sung at church so that they can participate well on Sundays. But whatever songs you sing in your household, let them be doctrinally sound. Let them be rich, because you may be choosing the songs that will be stuck in their head for the rest of their life. Don’t you remember songs from when you were a child? Lyrics that haven’t gone away and probably won’t anytime soon. It’s a sweet opportunity.

The When and Where

Next, the when. First, you should aim for daily family worship. I recognize that’s not always possible. Small group nights, Sunday evenings, those things might be difficult, but consistency is important. It would be far more fruitful to do 10 minutes every day than 4 hours every Saturday. People in your home have other commitments, sports, other events in the evening. You should try to find a regular time where you can include as many people as possible on a regular basis. If you have to change things, change them. You’re not locked in. But strive not to let good things block out something that could be really important, really useful, really sweet for your family. Guard that time.

Many people, if you go read a book on family worship, recommend morning and evening. I’ve heard of some families where everyone can be home on a lunch break, so they do family worship at lunch and in the evening. But if doing family worship twice a day sounds daunting, don’t worry. Just do it once and praise God for it. Gathering your family together once a day, every day, to come before the throne of grace, to ask for God’s help, to look at his word, will have profound impact on your family. One benefit to worshiping together twice a day is that you can have one instance focused on reading through the whole Bible systematically and another that maybe focuses on particular needs or on particular parts of your Bible, like the book of Proverbs, for instance.

The where of family worship: it could be anywhere, the couch, the dinner table, the bedroom after everyone’s gotten ready for bed and about to retire for the night. Wherever you do it, try to have it somewhere that’s not distracting. Try to have everyone’s Bibles or song lyrics all ready to go in that place. We’ve adjusted in our house the time and location throughout the years according to the needs of the home and age of the kids. If you were to join us once and come back two months later, it’d probably be different.

The How — Be Brief, Simple, and Serious

Finally, the how. I’m going to give some notes on how you do family worship. First, be brief. If you’re leading family worship, you aren’t preaching a 1-hour sermon. Shorter is better. Take note of your household’s attention span.

Be simple. Your goal is to be understood, from your prayers to whatever remarks you make. Don’t shoot above the level of your household’s ability to understand. Let it be profitable for them. When I first started, I really wanted to sound like one of my favorite preachers I liked listening to on YouTube. It just wasn’t helpful. Kids are like, “Dad, why are you yelling at me?” But you want to be understood. Asking questions helps maintain engagement and helps ensure everyone is understanding.

If you’re listening to this and you feel as though, I don’t think I could lead family worship. I don’t feel equipped to do that. Again, there are various guides and Bible handbooks like the MacArthur Bible Handbook or a commentary that will help make a passage’s meaning clear. Feel free to ask around, see if people have used something that they like and that’s benefited them here in the church. But you need to know you don’t need to say anything eloquent or grand. You’re not preaching a sermon. It can be as simple as, “Wow, do you see how God judges lying? We shouldn’t lie. We should tell the truth, huh?” Yeah, we should. It really can be that simple. Can you believe God’s power? Can you believe what he did? Read it. Isn’t it amazing? Yes, it is.

You be impacted. You be affected by the scripture and the sentiment that God is working in you as you strive to understand it. Share that. That sometimes requires the one who’s leading family worship to be the most prepared. Maybe go read the passage ahead of time. You might look at a resource or guide so that you can think of words to share with your family. But sometimes we make it seem a lot bigger and more grand and have these very lofty expectations, and it just doesn’t need to be that. It can be so simple.

Next, be serious. I say that especially with households with children, with children who love to joke around, be silly. It’s not a time for excessive joking and frivolity. Train your children to sit down, to listen. It takes time, but it’s a really important skill. You’ll be glad when they learn it. But also, don’t be so solemn. Don’t be boring, that it’s just dull. Don’t read the passage in such a way that it makes the Bible seem boring. The Bible is not boring. Inherently, it is not boring. And if we think it’s boring or someone else thinks it’s boring or we make it seem boring, it’s actually because we’re boring. Read it with some life. And don’t be theatrical either.

I want to give a note to children who are in here. Children, if you are in a home that practices family worship, come every day with fear of God, honor for your parents, ready to listen, and be very thankful that you are in a home that worships together regularly.

Eight Rewards of Family Worship

All right, we’ve covered the who, what, when, where, and how. And you’re thinking, where’s the why? The why is number three on the outline, the rewards of family worship. I’m going to name eight rewards of family worship.

1. You get to evangelize the unbelievers in your home on a regular basis.

2. You get to ensure that everyone in your home reads or hears God’s word daily. Even if they’re struggling to maintain their own Bible reading plan, you make sure God’s word is in their minds.

3. It helps to maintain household harmony. It’s hard to meet with God and maintain your bitterness for someone sitting next to you at the same time. Those aren’t congruous, parents.

4. It aids in your raising and discipling, your bringing up of your kids. You get daily time set out to instruct and shepherd them. And it’s outside the moments of conflict or discipline. So helpful.

5. Everyone in your family gets to practice the normal patterns of worship that happen in the church.

6. You prepare everyone in your family to understand and participate well on the Lord’s day.

7. You also get a front-row seat, parents, into how your children are processing and thinking about what they’re reading, what they’re learning in scripture. You get a front-row seat to how they are applying it or not applying it. It’s helpful information. You also get to model good hermeneutics. That’s a word that just means, how do we read and understand the Bible? You get to model that.

8. It provides a regular time for parents to pass on their own faith to their children. It’s great for children to hear and learn from a pastor or an NGM teacher. We need help. Not downplaying that. But it is also important. It is meaningful when children get to be discipled by their own parents. It’s a spiritual inheritance.

John G. Patton’s Testimony

With that last one in mind, I want to read to you a quote from John G. Patton. He recounts his common experience of family worship in his home that his dad led, and how that set the course for the rest of his life, ultimately going into the mission field.

“How much my father’s prayers at this time impressed me, I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand. When on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in family worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus, and for every personal and domestic need. We all felt as if in the presence of the living Savior and learned to know and love him as our divine friend. As we rose from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father’s face and wish I were like him in spirit, hoping that in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged and prepared to carry the blessed gospel to some portion of the heathen world.”

John Patton never forgot those moments. They were so impactful in his heart. I commend this practice to you so heartily.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. God, we thank you so much for this opportunity. Again, we thank you for getting to consider your word, getting to consider the duties of husbands and parents. We thank you for the opportunity to look at this wonderful means of grace in the life of a household and to look at it from different angles and different sides.

God, I pray for all of us that you would invigorate in us the desire to influence those in our household. Strengthen that, and specifically to influence them for godliness. That you would strengthen our love so that we might be willing to work, to understand, to labor, so that we can pursue the good of those we live with.

God, we thank you so much for your sovereignty. God, we come to you humbly knowing that we cannot save anyone in our household. We cannot make that happen. But no one is too far that they cannot be saved if you determine to save them. God, we thank you that there’s always hope. Praying for those in our family who do not know you or have rejected you. God, would you save them? Would you save our families and our children? And would you motivate us to be means? Would you motivate us to share and preach the gospel? And I thank you for getting to talk about this practice as a tool to do just that.

Please bless the rest of our Lord’s day. I ask that you would enable us to come to your word in just a few minutes with hearts full of worship, full of the desire to honor and glorify you, and full of the desire to submit to your word, to know it, to be shaped by it, and to respond to it appropriately. God, we love you. We thank you. We pray this in Jesus’ name.