We've been walking through the short series on the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, and two weeks ago we began with the foundational discipline, which is the word, the hearing, reading, studying, and the doing of the word of God. And the word of God is foundational to thinking about any of the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life because the word those particular set inspired words that God has given us, He's given His people, so that we can know Him and what He wants and desires of us. And from there, last week, we studied the spiritual discipline of prayer. The habit of our heart where we pour our hearts, ourselves, to God in adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. And the Word and prayer, they flow to and from each other, back and forth. The Word ushers us into prayer, and then we pray the Word, which leads us deeper into the Word, and then as we're deeper into the Word, it leads us deeper into prayer, and on and on we go. And this morning, we get into the third discipline of the Christian life, which finds its foundations in the very Word of God, and it's that of worship. We're really looking at three domains of worship, three aspects, three areas where we worship God, and those include what we mainly think of on worship, what we're doing here in the corporate worship, but also to include family worship. In our private worship, and we'll look at each of those in that order. Let's start with a basic definition. What is that? What is worship? It's been described as. focusing on and responding to God. Another definition, which is succinct, is being preoccupied with God. Or this last one, having a God-centered focus and response of the soul to His being. There's a real sense in which all of life is worship. Our relationship with God is one of being a right worshiper, or not. After all, everyone on the planet will worship something. Everyone is geared, as Ecclesiastes says, with eternity written on their hearts so they will offer their affection to someone or something. The problem though, is that the invasion of sin, it disrupts this right worship. This right worship of God and inserts idolatry. It's where we worship the creature rather than the Creator. All of humanity falls into one of those two categories, whether we're in right relationship with God where He is worshiped or wrong relationship where He is not. There's no other middle ground, no other third category. It was John Piper who said that missions exist because worship doesn't. And applied there is worship of God, a critical critical aspect of the very mission of God that he enlist you church into is that he is gathering worshipers for himself. Gathering and evangelizing disciple of nations, gathering worship worshipers for himself for his very glory. Our spiritual forefathers were out in the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. What is the chief end of man? The answer, to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Dear congregation, this morning's study of the spiritual discipline of worship is tied to the very purpose for which you were made. Let's pray. Almighty God who dwells And on approachable light, we approach You now through Your Son, Jesus Christ, this morning. Would You help to usher ourselves into new realms of understanding, worship of You in spirit and in truth as we study this doctrine in the pages of Scriptures to see if these things are so. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen. It's a surprise to the non-Christian to hear that God expects your worship. And it's also equally a surprise to the Christian to hear God tells us how to worship. It wasn't too long ago I was Instagram doom scrolling and I saw this. It was a short clip. It was of a family who the it was the wife who had posted the video. Explain why they stopped going to church. And the video was a mosaic of like a one second clip of all the things the family did. They traveled, they had one of those buses, you know, that they made into like a family vehicle. It's like the trend these days to convert a school bus into a thing to live in and go travel. It seems sort of fun. That'd be fun for like a month, I think. But I'd want to go home eventually. And the words that are coming across the screen is we meet God in our experiences at the beach, in our walks in the forest, in the quiet mornings. All these things as a family. We don't have to be stuck. The implication in a singular place and hardwood and pews facing forward worshiping once a week. What a burden that is. That was the implication. What a burden to go to a building and to worship God. Many people feel that way. Many people resonate with that. They hear all of life is worship and they run off with that. before listening to another second of instruction or considering what the rest of the Bible says, they say, okay, therefore, I can worship God in my way, the way that I want to. Has that ever gone badly for anybody in the pages of the Bible? To worship God the way that you wanted to. Genesis chapter four. The first martyr. The first murder in the Bible. Cain killed Abel after God had no regard for offering Cain what Abel brought to him in worship. It's the understanding here that Abel was worshiping God. He brought his sacrifice in faith. And Cain approached God without faith. And God rejected him. He had no regard for his offering. Exodus 32, the incident of the golden calf. One being redeemed coming out of the land of bondage, out of the land of Egypt, where Israel followed the practices of the pagan nations, and they fashioned an image to worship God. Do you know what the name of the golden calf was? Yahweh. They said that this is God, but it wasn't God. It was idolatry. They named the god Yahweh, and God was not pleased, and they were forced to grind it up, and Moses made them drink of it. They tried to worship God by their own devices. Leviticus 10, there is the unauthorized fire that Nabat and Abihu brought before the Lord that violated His explicit commands to worship God on the explicit terms He gave, and they were consumed by fire that flashed from the mercy seat. upon the Ark of the Covenant. And consumed him. And his father was not allowed to mourn their death. Because they worshiped in a way they wanted to. And don't make the mistake that like, OK, those are all Old Testament examples. That was Old Testament God as though God has changed and He has not. Get into the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 11. There have been some that were coming to the Lord's table in an unworthy manner who died. Acts 5. Ananias and Sapphira were struck down by lying to the Holy Spirit. The very last verse of Hebrews 12 says that our God is a consuming fire. God cares about how He's to be worshiped. Well, where do we find that? Where do we first find this within the pages of the Bible? Well, it's actually the same place where we find the summary of the moral law of God. And where do we find that? Where do we find the summary form of the moral law of God? Well, it's in the very Ten Commandments. When we look at the Ten Commandments, we see there's a basic division between the first four and the second six. We call this the first table of the law and the second table of the law. The first four tells us how we relate to God. And the second six tells us our obligations, our duty to our fellow man, to our neighbor. Consider the first four with me. I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. OK, that preface is important to remember, because if we jump right into we parachute right into the Ten Commandments, he might be led to think this is what I need to do to keep the law to be righteous before God. And we need to remember that God is the initiator of salvation. We live in light and we worship in light of his redemptive acts. He redeems his people and then gives us the conditions of how we are to worship him. So commandment one, you shall have no other gods before me. Well, that describes us. The object of worship is to be none other than the living God. Commandment two, you shall not make for yourself the carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven or that is in the earth or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children to the third and fourth generation to those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. The second commandment describes the manner in which we are to worship in summary form. We're not to rely upon our own innovations, our own ideas, our own novelties to bring to worship, but to rely upon the way that God has revealed how he wants to be worship. Commandment three, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." Well, it's described as the attitude of worship. You could say it's the posture here where one is not to be flippant or irrelevant or apathetic. And commandment four, perhaps the most controversial of our day that people, we want to dispense of this so badly, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor in all and do all your work, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heavens and earth, the sea and all that is within them and rested on the seventh. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. And as I'm sure you've guessed it as you're looking at this pattern here, this is describing the time of worship, specifically a time for the people of God to gather to worship Him. And we'll return to this aspect a little bit later. I'll just flag this in passing, just note this, that there's a transition from the Old Testament to the New Covenant. We're not bound by the Sabbath laws in the same way, though we are expected to gather on the first day of the week to worship. God has not left us in suspense. He has not abandoned us to the ingenuity of the fallen mind. He has not left us to wander, to blindly grope for God. He has made Himself known. He has made Himself plainly known. He has revealed Himself to us in His words so that we can know Him and what He wants of us and how He wants to be worshiped. So extending this principle from the second commandment of the manner of which we are to worship, what else do we find in Scripture? What else can we do to fill us out, to flesh us out, that indicates how God wants to be worshiped and what elements are to be brought into worship? Well, there are at least five things, at least five elements, at least five things that are commanded within the pages of our Bibles. Here's the first one, and it's prayer. It's prayer. The Bible says a lot about prayer, as last week indicated. And though we're commanded to pray without ceasing, pray at all times, pray constantly, we are also commanded to pray to God in our time of public worship. 1st Timothy 3, Paul writes this, that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth. In other words, Paul writing to Timothy is writing how we ought to conduct ourselves in our gatherings and also part of the invisible church. In the previous chapter, he said this to Timothy, chapter 2, verse 1. First of all, I urge all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people. Well, there it is. This is what we're to do. In the gathering of the household of God, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving. We're commanded to do that, church. No, this teaching doesn't come without precedent. Recall, first of all, that Jesus, when he purified the temple, when it had been defiled, what did he say? My mind, quoting the Old Testament, my house shall be called the house of prayer. And though the temple no longer stands, we recognize that where the people of God gather, they are to pray. In Acts 1, when Matthias was chosen to replace Judas as an apostle, we find the disciples and the others were devoting themselves to prayer. Acts 5, when Peter was in prison, earnest prayers were made to God for him by the church. And v. 12 of the same chapter, many were gathered together praying. When the people of God come together, They are to pray. What else? What else do we see in our worship? The second thing. Singing. We're to sing. Ephesians 5.19 Be filled with the Holy Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. That mention of the Psalms here is important. The entire book of Psalms are songs available for the people of God to sing. These are inspired words to not only pray back to God, But we're given, you get to sing these back to God, because the Psalms Church, the songs cover the whole gambit of human emotion. John Kelvin called it the anatomy of the human soul, praise to lament, thanksgiving and on. These songs are to be sung in all sorts of occasions when we're gathered together. Though we sing together because that's what the congregation did in the Old Testament. When they gathered, they sang. That's what Scripture commands in the New. And that's what we will do when we gather at the end of history to praise God. Revelation 7 verses 9 through 12. After this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one can number, from every tribe, nation, for all tribes, for all peoples, all languages, standing before the throne, the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm wrenches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. and all the angels who are standing around the throne, and all the elders and the four living creatures, they fell on their faces and before the throne and they worshiped God saying, amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, amen. Church, our gathering on Sunday mornings is practice for that day. It's a preview. It's a taste. It's a trailer. It's a dress rehearsal. It's foreshadowing what's to come. If you are in Christ Jesus, you will see that day. You will get to see that day. It said, I'll just sit and meditate upon that. All the saints who have been slain, all who are dead in Christ Jesus and raised them, you will get to be among that great, great throng of people. How glorious will that be? The songs that we sing in church, we aim to be singable so that they focus on God and not on the person's amazing talent or ability up here. Like, how awesome would it be to have Whitney Houston? Cool. But who can hit that high note like Mariah Carey? Who could follow along with that? What happens in that moment when you have an amazing musicianship? The shift happens here from looking and praising God to looking at that person. So we want it to be singable and simple and not having these complex vocals. We want the volume to be able to sing not so loud that you can't hear yourself. Or if you have hearing aids and you're turning it down, it's probably too loud. You've never done that. Don't worry. You're doing a great job. It needs to be loud enough that if you don't have that desirable voice, you have just a little bit of confidence to sing with others. With the main instrument, church, when we gather, is you. It's your voice. That's the main instrument. The words of the songs that we choose are theologically rich so as to train you to think God's thoughts after Him. It's been said, I got this quote from somebody else this last week, that people sing their heresy before they believe it. You know, I struggle when I turn on the radio and I hear, is it Joy FM or K Love or whatever it is, Because it's not every song. I don't want to sound like I'm a bidder and I hate the music on there. But so many times there's just these theological faux pas or just bad theology. For example, let me just pick on one song, the song Reckless Love, which gets played and sung in so many churches. Guys, God's love is not reckless. There's nothing reckless about the character of God who is immutable and does not change. Church, if you sing that long enough, you will train your heart to believe it. We need to train our hearts to believe only those things which are true. So we sing because we believe, but we also sing so that we will believe. We sing in faith. We're believing that God will be pleased with our worship, not because we're on key or we have a desirable voice, but because our adorations are focused on elevating His character and His excellencies. He must increase and we must decrease. The third thing we do in our time of worship is preaching. It must be present in our worship church. It must be for a church to be a church. The gospel must be preached or it ceases to be a church. Preaching is a task that assumes. An audience. It assumes people are there. It assumes someone is being preached to, which is not a big jump to see how the following admonishment from from Paul to his protege, his son of faith, Timothy, was to preach the word to the gathering. Consider 2 Timothy 4 two. I charge you. In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His kingdom. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Church, preaching is necessary. As the scripture reading this morning, Pastor Curtis read, it is necessary so that people can hear the gospel. Preaching is a task, Church, that the Lord has given me. I take it very seriously. Very seriously, the best way I can serve you as a pastor, not the only way, the best way I can serve you is if I can preach to you an excellent sermon. And you'll see this at churches where preaching is neglected, the sheep are neglected. Where preaching is weak, the sheep are weak. When preaching avoids or ignores difficult teachings, you find that the sheep are malnourished and underfed. Where preaching strays from the text to find its own points, you'll find a group of people who build their lives not on the rock of Christ, Not on this firm foundation, but on sandy ground. And when, when the storms of life come, for they do, when the trials plague a person, those theological muscles which are atrophied, which are weak, will cause them to suffer without joy. Church, you will suffer. But whether you suffer with joy is a matter of whether your heart's been conditioned by the preaching of the word, been nourished by the reading of the word, and by your prayers to God. I pray that the men that we raise up in this congregation that preach at this pulpit will be mighty men of faith that will serve you well to be faithful to preach the whole counsel of God, to preach Christ and him crucified. So Joel Church, would you join me in praying for that, for the future elders in this church? The fourth thing, the fourth element that's present in our worship, it's the sacraments, the ordinances, as we call them, baptism, the Lord's Supper. Now, these aren't present at every gathering that we have, but they're essential. They're indispensable to our corporate worship. They are the gospel in visible form, which reminds us of who is part of this local body of believers. Baptism of one's profession of faith outwardly testifies this person has died and risen of Christ. They have been united to Him by faith. The Lord's Supper shows us the Gospel in tactile form that the body and the blood of Christ, the body broken for us is blood shed for us. And the warning that we're given from Scripture in 1 Corinthians 11 to discern the body to not take it in an unworthy manner. It reinforces this boundary around a local church, this sense of belonging to a group of believers who have these elders. Church, the office of elder is a gift to a local church because they watch over your very soul. The fifth element, the fifth essential in our worship is the weekly gathering. Now, we aren't under the Mosaic Covenant. It's expired. We aren't under it, but we are expected to set aside a time to worship once a week. Let's just consider how the pattern of taking one day in seven to the rest, one day in seven to rest, is a creation order pattern given by God himself where he worked for six days. And the seventh day he rested. And this was enshrined in the Ten Commandments. And when we read it this morning from the Ten Commandments, he enshrines it as a creation ordinance. That's a summary of the moral law. But when we get to the New Testament, there's this shift from the Sabbath to the Lord's Day. There is overlap between the two, but the two aren't exactly synonymous. Consider in Revelation 1, John was caught up in the Spirit on the Lord's day. There are days that are the Lord's, and there are days that are not the Lord's. Acts 20 v. 7, on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread. It's apparent from that passage that this is a weekly, corporate gathering of the church. But why on the first day of the week as opposed to the 7th? Why are we at the first day of the week and not the last day of the week? Why Sunday instead of Saturday? Well, because well, the Sabbath pattern is a creation ordinance. The Lord's Day is a new creation ordinance. Jesus Christ was killed on Friday and he went into the grave and rested from his redemptive work on the 7th. And he arose. as the first fruits of the new creation on the first day of the week. This pattern is to be observed, and this new covenant changes about what the Sabbath, what continues, what discontinues. Now, I don't have time to go into a full defense of all of this. I just simply want to make this observation, is that this is a gift, church. This is not just an obligation to us. This is a gift. This is a gift where we, instead of working and then resting at the end of the week, we now work out of the rest that God gives. This is a gift from God. We work out of the rest that the Lord gives us. It's an act of worship that requires faith. Here's how it requires faith. You give up one day a week to worship. There are things that you want to get done, you choose not to get done. There's schoolwork you want to study, you can't, you can't, you put aside. There are dishes they can sit. There's trash to be taken out, maybe you can take the trash out. If you get stinky. It's to trust that God can accomplish in one day what you can't accomplish in six. It's to worship. It's to live by faith. Isn't it weird? Isn't it strange that God gives us, this is something, this is created for you, and he says this is a gift to rest, to enjoy, to worship, and we treat it as it's a burden. Maybe it's a problem of our Western culture where we're overworked and too busy. Maybe that's the issue. One final passage on this pattern of setting aside a time to worship together, Hebrews 10-25. and let us consider to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near. Now Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians, Jews who had become Christians, who had endured this terrible persecution. They'd been put out of the synagogue, there'd been deaths had been declared over them, and they were considering leaving the faith. They were considering going back to Judaism, abandoning Christianity altogether. And this passage comes as a warning, a sober warning, in that context to neglect meeting together is to lead. It's to start that slippery slope to leaving the faith altogether. So don't neglect the gathering. as is the habit of some. There it is. Don't neglect it. This is not merely a duty. It's not here to twist your arm. You get this, church. This is a gift to you to come together. This is for you that the Lord has given this. And it's such a beautiful foretaste of the things that are to come. So we come to church in faith that what we're doing here is that this is the best time of the week. This is the best thing that we could be doing at that time. There's nothing else we could be doing that's better time spent. This is it. This is a gift from God. We get to sing and pray, pray with the saints to encourage one another, to lift each other up, to hear the preaching and the confessions of our sins, to profess our faith in Jesus Christ as a group and church that nourishes us. You need that. You remember during COVID when we couldn't meet, how lonely people are, how suicide skyrocketed, how self-harm skyrocketed. Church, you were made for community. You were made to gather together. Don't neglect that. The Scripture passage that Brother Pye read this morning comes from John 4. This is where Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman. And what is probably the most profound thing about worship said in the New Testament comes from this passage. I'm going to read just verses 21-24. Woman, believe me, the hours come when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and it's now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. and the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Now she asked, where are we supposed to worship? My forefathers say here, you Jews say here, and Jesus bypasses this dichotomy of whether we're supposed to worship is on this consisted side over here, the temple or the rival Samaritan temple. Instead, he gets to the heart of the issue that Jesus is ushering in this new era, this new epoch of worship, where one is not identified as a true worshiper by where they worship, but whether they worship in spirit. and in truth. Meaning, to worship in spirit is to have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit. It means you're a Christian. It means you've been saved. Only saved believers can offer pleasing worship to God. Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, and all other false religions, they don't offer worship to God, but just under a different name or in a different way. No, only those who have been washed by the blood of Christ can worship God because they have a changed will and desire to. And to worship in truth is to worship according to the way God wants to be worshipped. A manner suited to his revealed word. Dear church, do you worship? Inspirited in truth. Have you been saved? Have you repented of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ? And once saved, you worship him according to his word. Do you strive to worship Him the way that God wants to worship? Or do you take the attitude of the culture and say, well, we can do X, fill in the blank. That's the tendency for us as Christians. Just as humans, we want to know how far can I go without sinning? We become a little bit sheepish about our hymns. Maybe even ashamed about singing hymns. We say, well, where are the young people? So we concede to modern innovations. We bring in the light show. The lasers, the fog machine. I know I pick on it a lot. We bring in the different things to attract people to ministry, into the worship here. We want to look attractive and contemporary to draw people in. But you don't make believers out of people by acting like non-believers. True worship is simple. It's affectionate. It's God-centered. And instead of asking what can we do in worship, we should be concerned with the question, what should we do? What should we do in worship? Which brings us to these basic elements of praying, singing, the preaching, faithfully administering the ordinances, and our weekly gathering together. The simple test for this is just simply take out the bulletin, look at the order of service and ask, and is this what we do here in this order of service? Is this biblically justifiable? Is there something that we can stick this on these passages of scripture? Or do you look at something in order of service and you're like, ah, you're growing up in something in a service where there's something just that was odd or peculiar, like the puppet show. Did you have that? That was a big thing in the 90s. I was showing that to Christopher this morning, a book, How to Grow Your Church, the puppet ministry. Listen, that describes our corporate gathering. We had to spend so much currency there because the other two domains of our worship flow from that. But all these elements are pretty much, for the most part, except for baptism, the Lord's Supper, are present in these other places too, these two spheres, and that's the family worship and private worship. Well, what is that? What is family worship? Well, family worship is nothing more than the discipleship of your kids. your family at home with some of these elements we already covered. Let's consider the precedent for this. Deuteronomy 6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. And you shall talk to them when you sit down in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign in your hand, and they shall be on frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Joshua, the successor to Moses, takes this same commandment. Consider Joshua 24-15. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day who you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers who serve the region beyond the rivers or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. As head of his house, Joshua took seriously to worship God and God alone, and as long as he was the head of the house, he would lead them to know and serve the living God as best as he could. We learn that Timothy's mother took this duty seriously. 2 Timothy 2, one through five, I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. What did the instruction about faith look like for Timothy? He was in a mixed-faith household. His dad wasn't a Christian. He wasn't a Jew. 2 Timothy 3.15. From childhood, you've been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. He was taught the Word. He was taught the Bible. And Paul takes this commandment of training our children up in the Lord. He pulls it forward into the New Commandment in Ephesians 6. He says, Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Parents, this is a duty and a privilege that you get to participate in. In fact, when we look at our mission, To go and make disciples of all nations is about gathering people who will worship God. And we think about, well, that begins first by loving our neighbors ourselves. It begins with the little neighbors at home. In your household. Who live among you? That's that's where that begins. So how do you fulfill that role? Well, it's basic. And it's difficult. It's simple. And it's hard. Here's what you do, you need to commit yourself to three things, to read, to pray, and to sing. Read and study the scriptures together as a family, pray together as a family, and sing songs of praise together. And when you're doing these, you're weaving these elements together, just spending 15 minutes or so each day as often as you can. You're just using the means of grace where the Holy Spirit promises to use these things. Unleashing the Holy Spirit. He's doing the work. And in a minuscule session, you are training them for the corporate worship here where they learn to focus and give their attention and teach and praise on Sunday mornings. You can see our kids. You see how they're training and learning to become worshipers. You see the maturity levels on full display, don't you? I know, because they're right there. Well, how do you do this? How do you do this? Well, you begin with a regular time, like after supper or maybe after breakfast. Growing up, my dad did it right after breakfast. We did a Keys for Kids devotional. That association with food isn't unimportant, though it's not required. Just as the food feeds us, we turn to be spiritually fed. When they're younger, choose a storybook Bible and just walk through it chronologically. Read through it and ask a couple of basic questions. What was that about? Who did this? What happened? You just want simple questions for reflection. Keep it simple. Keep the big idea in view. Sing a song or two. We don't have to do the hymn of the Incarnation. I don't think we could keep their attention. Do the first verse of Amazing Grace, or Our God is So Big, the doxology, something like that. And then close in a prayer. You just want to demonstrate to your kids, faithfully and over time, that this is what worship looked like. And when they get older, you just trade one storybook Bible for the next. And I think we went through five in our household. And recently, we actually, we just switched to this or brought this up here. Reformation Heritage Books. Here's a little plug. Here's your commercial this morning, conservative. They make this family worship guide. It is their best seller. And what you do is you read a chapter of the Bible, and that's what we're doing. We're in Genesis 20. I have each of them read it for their older three, about five verses at each. And then we just ask questions. If you look in your sermon notes and your bulletin, you have five questions for going deeper. That's a good place to start. How does this point us to Jesus? What was it about? What was something that struck you? There's a lot of weird stories in Genesis for kids. Ask them, what was weird that you heard? Because then they're thinking about it. You're talking about it. You're explaining, what is circumcision? You're like, yeah, OK, we've got to talk about this. It's a big thing. It comes up a lot in scripture. And you're just talking, going back and forth. And then you finish with a couple of these reflections. I just want to commend one other resource. Family Worship Guide. There's at least six copies over here on our resource table. Looks so awesome over there. It covers these elements in more detail. It's just a great and easy thing to do. Right now, my wife and I, we, Laura and I, we, my wife and I, I talk like you don't know who she is. I think we get two nights a week minus not counting Awana and our Sunday morning time together. You don't have to try to get to perfection. Just get it going, get the muscles working and exercising. Many great resources. I want to come in and make the bigger plug. I've been looking forward to this for so long since a guy named Ryan Johnson, he was a co-pastor with me, a music pastor in Oklahoma when I was a pastor there. Him, myself, and Betsy Stahl, we've been working on writing a catechism. Now you guys have may have, a catechism is a question and answer tool. You ask like, what is the gospel? And you have an answer to it. What is a chief and a man? To enjoy God, to know God and enjoy him forever. You see some of those things up in our library, the Heidelberg Catechism, New City Catechism, the Westminster Shorty Catechism, the Baptist Catechism. These things have stood the test of time. It creates a theological scaffolding for your kids to hang their hooks on. Well, where do all these pieces of these things hold together? Well, we've been writing one to music, to hymnody. And what we've done, and I'm just so thankful for Betsy and Ryan especially, chosen the 52 most common hymn tunes, at least for English. most common hymn tunes that there are, and these 52 questions, so one a week that you can go through. And we've centered on what is the gospel? How can you be saved? What are the church? Who is God? What's to come? What's heaven? What is the kingdom? And guys, in 2025, in January, we're going to be unveiling this week by week, in part in our worship here in our gathering. And I so want to encourage, if you have young kids or just even in the youth group or whatever, to where we'll be printing these off, to take this and encourage yourself to study it with us. And if you're like me, when you go to sing this and you're at home, the kids don't want to sing with you because your voice is off key. It's written in meter. So it's like poetry. Now imagine this is Amazing Grace. That's the tune in your head. I'm not going to sing it. Here's the first question. What is the Gospel? Answer. Good news, the Savior in my stead has borne my every sin. Eternal life through faith in Christ, who soon will come again. That's it. It's pretty simple. This is something we want to encourage and we want to fan the flame of discipling and worshiping here at our church and at home. Okay, let's make the shift now from family worship to private worship. What do we do here? This is the final domain. The truth is, this is where all of our worship begins. It's worship and truth. There are many churches out there who people outwardly attend and go to church, and inwardly they hate being there. They go because this is what they're supposed to do. They're no different than what Jesus said in rebuke to the Pharisees in Matthew 15, 17-9. Wow, did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. You cannot. Worship in truth if you do not know Him who is the way and the truth and the life. If you don't know Him and realize in this moment for whatever reason the Holy Spirit's being pleased that you are a hypocrite, here's what you must do. Repent and believe the gospel. Repent and come to saving faith in Him. And maybe for whatever reason, God at this moment is exposing you the first time you've been here this morning, drawing yourself to Him. Don't resist the Spirit. Come in faith to Him. Repent and believe the Gospel. It would be a joy to talk to you afterwards about the One who knows everything about you. So what can private worship look like for you? Church, it begins by setting aside time to be alone with God. Psalm 88, 13. But I, O Lord, cry to you in the morning. My prayer comes before you. Psalm 5, 3. O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. Psalm 90, 14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Psalm 143-8, let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love for in you I trust. Church, the heart of the psalmist is to seek God in the morning. It's a habit worth considering. And I know the moment I suggest morning, some of you are like, oh. because I'm not a morning person. Here's the big idea. It's having a time set aside, but it's also worth considering that maybe the morning is the best time to be set aside. It was John Bunyan who I quoted last week. He said, he who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find him the rest of the day. It was Jesus who would often withdrew to lonely places and prayed often in the morning church. All the disciplines of reading the word, praying the words, meditating upon it, praying it back to God are not only for the corporate time of worship, not only for the family worship, but also for you and your individual pursuit. Of the heart of God. The way that you worship God when you're alone, the way that you approach God when you're alone is preparing you for how you worship him when you're here. So do you approach it like it's a chore? Okay, got to get it out of the way. Is it a checklist? Is it like taking your pills? Or is it something that you relish because it nourishes you, that you feel charged? Even when you've been awake all night, praying to God, for whatever reason He's kept you up all night, but you seek Him in the morning, and He charges you spiritually, and He nourishes you that day, sustains you in ways that your body, your energy cannot. The way you feed yourself daily prepares for how you're going to start that next week with worship. So people who barely eat anything, I mean, physically, what happens? Their stomach shrinks. Their bones, their muscle, their strength shrivels up. But if you are taking in the Word daily, you are strengthening yourself. You are strengthening yourself for Sunday morning with great eagerness and anticipation because you know that it's the Lord's day that you get to relish this time with the saints. Lift up your voice to Him and give Him praise. So church, here's the closing question for us. What are you doing to prepare for this worship time? And what is it that you need to be doing in your private time this next year? What's that next step look like for you? Are you approaching private worship like it's the news, like it's a day full of meetings, like it's a checklist? Or are you preparing your heart for glory? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this doctrine of worship. Lord, there's so many more words that could be said and. There's so much more to explore within the pages of Scripture and things to consider, but Lord, I pray that what was instructed would would be clear that what people need to hear they will remember and what they heard that they will put to work. Lord, would you help us now in this short time of reflection to? Consider what we're going to do. This next year, tomorrow, today. to begin seeking you in our private worship, in our family worship, and to prioritize and prize our corporate worship. In the name of Christ we pray, amen.