All right, let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time we can come today. Lord, let us look at this important topic of family worship. Lord, that the importance or the requirement, Lord, the joy and the benefits that come with it. Oh Lord, will you, again, just as we open your word and look at it today, prick our hearts. Lord, we ask these things in Christ's name, amen. We deeply want a revival of domestic religion. The Christian family was the bulwark of godliness in the days of the Puritans, but in these evil times, hundreds of families of so-called Christians have no family worship, no restraint upon their growing sons, no wholesome instruction or discipline. How can we hope to see the kingdom of our Lord advance when his own disciples do not teach his gospel to their own children? That was Charles Haddon Spurgeon. So we're going to look at family worship. what it means to come in here. As Ben says, there's so many topics that we have to do and family worship, I believe, I believe family worship is one of the fundamental, one of the foundational topics. If we don't get this right, we're going to fail in so many other areas. So we looked at it last week about our church covenant statement. For those that weren't here as we looked at it, we were reminded our church covenant says that you are in sin if you are not as a father conducting regular family worship in your homes. And then we looked, and what else did we look at? That as a congregation, we have covenanted together to hold one another up to that. So we've got to be there to hold each other up. When we find that one of our brothers are not doing that, we go to them and talk to them and say, hey, brother, you're not doing this in your family. You know, one of the things I get a lot of times, how do you get your children to sit still? How do you get your children to act the way they act? How do you do these things? And the one answer I always go back to, if you want to start there, you've got to start with family worship. You've got to start in the home, training your children, teaching your children, growing your children in the home. So we look at, that's what our covenant statement said. We said here, we believe it is sin not to do that in your homes. and we will hold you accountable and expect the same back if we're not doing that to be held accountable. Why would we go as far as to call it sin? And to list it there in our covenant statement? Because you don't see that. Most churches you go to, you don't see that statement that says, you need to be doing this in your home. But you do here. So why is it important? And to look at why family worship is important, I think first we've got to go and look really quickly at why worship is important. What is worship? So really quickly, I want to, I'm not going to go in an in-depth study of worship, but we're going to really look at the topic of worship briefly before we go into family worship. So worship, the worship of God, let's just start it out by saying the worship of God is probably one of the most intimate and most important things that we as people can do. It's not something that we just throw off and we might be able to do it here. We might, you do it your way, I'll do it mine. It's just a casual, no, the worship of God is one of the most important things that we will ever do. You look at, look at Isaiah. We've talked about this one many times. Isaiah chapter six. Again, we're all familiar with Isaiah chapter six. It says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw, also the Lord sitting upon the throne high and lifted up and his train filled the temple above it stood the seraphims each one had six wings and twain he covered his face and with twain he covered his feet and with twain he did fly and one cried unto another and said holy holy holy is the Lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory, and the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke." We see the seraphim worshiping God. Why? Because they were created. to worship God. Why are the seraphim so, that is their function, because they are created. Those seraphim were created to fly around the Holy God crying out, Holy, Holy, Holy. We say, yeah, but that was their job. We were created for, what were we created for? His glory. What is the chief end of man? Yes. Glorify God! How do you glorify God? You worship Him! We were created to worship God. We must understand that just like the Seraphim were created to worship God, we were created to worship God. You have to understand, God didn't create man because he needed something. He was not lacking or in want. So He made us to fill that void that he had. We were not made to complete God. That's something we've got to wrap our minds around as humans. We, as human beings, were not made to complete God. God was complete and whole before we were created. So we've got to understand that. We were not made just to simply go out and serve Him. He didn't say, you know what, I need a bunch of servants. I'm going to create mankind to go down here and serve me. He didn't create us to serve Him. He created us and He made us to worship Him and to call upon His glory and to glorify Him. That is what we were made to do. Man was made to worship God and as such, man will always worship something. Whatever his God is, he will worship. Because why? We were created to worship God. So when we look at this thing of worship, this topic of worship, we've got to understand worship is not what's pleasing to us. Worshipping is not... I want to go over here and find out what pleases me. And that's how I worship God. When I feel good about myself, now I can worship God. When I'm in the right mood, now I can worship God. It's not about what makes us feel good. It's what is pleasing and lifts on high and exalts the name of God. That is what biblical worship is. That is how we are supposed to worship God. It's not about us. It's about God. That's why when we look at all the churches and when we get into, I've even had people when they come here and I've talked to them, why didn't you come back? Well, that's just not how I worship. I can't worship with that kind of music. I can't worship like this. I have to have it here to worship. I have to have it like this to worship. You're worshipping the wrong thing when you say that. Worshipping is not about our environment. It's not about the mood that we're in. It's about who we're worshipping. It's about God. So when we say I have to be in the right mood or the right environment to worship God, We've got to check ourselves right there. Who am I worshiping? Again, you worship God not because the lighting and not because the music is right. You worship God because He is the sovereign God of the universe and created you to worship Him. That is why you worship God. So as we get caught up on this, well, it's got to be this way, it's got to be that way. Again, remember, you're worshiping on the wrong thing. We were created to worship God. That's the only reason we need to know when we go to worship God. We were created to worship Him. You don't want to freeze you up to be able to worship God. You're not so focused on yourself. Well, I've got to be this way. I've got to be that way. Set the mood right. I'm not concerned about our mood. That doesn't mean that we have chaos in our worship service. But it doesn't mean that we have to just have it just right so I can worship God. So, again, I just wanted to cover a little bit of worship before we get into talking about family worship, about why we worship, because we were created to worship God. You know, Matthew Henry, in his book, A Church in the House, he says, consider especially what they, our children, are designed for in another world. They are made for eternity. Every child Thou hast has a precious and immortal soul thou must be forever either in heaven or hell According as it is prepared in the present state and perhaps it must remove to the world of the spirits very shortly Do you see that Then he closes out. How have you prepared your family for eternity guys? We look at Matthew Henry when he says of our children He says of their precious and immortal soul. Fathers, I want us to take a gander. Look around you at those that you would call your children. You know, with all the mud stains and all the stuff that goes on, we must remind ourself. They are a precious and immortal soul. And their soul will either spend eternity in heaven or it will spend eternity in hell. How are we doing when it comes to preparing our family for the spiritual things. That is how we get into family worship. You know, we talk about being a priest or the head of the home. You know, a lot of times as men, we like to wear that badge, don't we? We are the priest of the home. We're the head of the home. We let everybody know that we're the head of the home. You know, the head of the home isn't something that you earn just so you have some respect from the rest of your family. The head of the home comes with a great responsibility, great duty. You know, how do we look at being the head of the home? Do we look at it like Matthew, Henry? He asked. Do we look at it as though that one who is responsible for preparing our family for eternity? That's what we're responsible for doing. You think, well, maybe my children are almost grown. I won't have to worry about that much longer. The way you prepare them for eternity is the way they're going to prepare their children for eternity. So when I talk to people and say, don't just prepare your children. I'm not just concerned with these children sitting down here on the front row. I'm concerned with their children's children's children. I'm concerned with their progeny 200, 300 years down the road. How will they be acting because of the way I instilled onto them? That is the preparation that I'm supposed to be doing in my home as the prophet, there as a priest, there as a priest, there as a home. So look around. Look around at your children, fathers. As we talk about this topic of family worship, what are we doing on our children here? Look at your children and just think about that for a second. Am I preparing their souls for eternity? What are we preparing them for? What is more important than that? What is more important than their souls, the eternal state of their souls? So we asked that question, now we're gonna go back and look and see. If I was to ask anybody, what is more important than the eternal state of your children's souls? I think every one of the fathers in here would say nothing, nothing. Now compare that to your calendar. Compare that to your day planner. What does it look like now? What are the actual facts? When the rubber meets the road, what does it really say is the most important to you? And as we see that, it opens our eyes a lot of times. We can say what we want, but our actions are gonna show what's really important. Let's look at Proverbs chapter four. Proverbs chapter four, it says, hear ye children the instruction of a father. Attend to no understanding, for I give you good doctrine. Forsake you not my law, for I was my father's son, tender, and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and he said unto me, let thine heart retain thy words, keep my commandments, and live. Get wisdom. Get understanding. Forget it not, neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee. Love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee. She shall bring thee to honor when thou dost embrace her. She shall give thee thine head, an ornament of grace, a crown of glory shall she deliver unto thee. Here, O my son, and receive my sayings, and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom. I have led thee in the right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be strained. When thou runnest, thou shall not stumble. Thou take fast hold of the instruction, let her not go. Keep her, for she is thy life. Enter not into thy path, the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it and pass not by it. Turn from it and pass away, for they sleep not, except they that have done mischief. And their sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. But the path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more into the perfect day. The way of the wicked is darkness. They know not what they stumble." My son, attend to my words, incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes, keep them in the midst of thine heart, for they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all thy diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a forward mouth and a perverse lips, put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on. and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand, nor to the left. Remove thy foot from evil." Here we see a father instructing his children. A father instructing his children on what? Wisdom. How are your children to get wisdom? You're not just going to pray wisdom into them. You're not going to pray, God, give my children wisdom. I want my children to be wise. I want my children to be wise in your ways and your statutes. Those are prayers that we ought to be praying. But what is the answer to that prayer? You see it every day when you look in the mirror. It is you, fathers. It is you that God is going to use as that vessel to teach that wisdom and understanding to your children. You look here, what does it say? Listen to the father. The father is instructing. Throughout this proverb and throughout so many of the other proverbs, we are continually reminded of our duty to teach our children. You know, I think, what is one of the key proverbs we hear about when it comes to teaching our children and training them up? Proverbs 22.6. You know, we've all heard it. Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart. That is good wisdom. When you train your children up, when you are sitting down daily with them, studying the Word, opening the Word of God with them, and going through it, you will train them up so that when they are old, most likely they are not going to depart, and they are going to understand that, and they're going to take that to their family and carry on. Again, we use that proverb as in the wrong way. We claim that proverb, meaning that if we've ever coerced our children for some reason to say a prayer, or we've had them in church all their life, that they're probably going to stray and come back one day. That's not what that proverb is teaching. The Jews also use this proverb not just as something to claim, they also used it as a warning. That if you train your children up when they're old, they will not depart. Do you understand? If you train your children and daily, the Bible is not important in your home. If you train your children up that their eternal soul is not important to the father, when they are old, they will not depart. and their children's eternal souls will not be important to them. Do you see? There's two sides of that Proverbs 22, 6. We've got to make sure that we are training them up for when they are old, the way we train them now, they will not depart. I'm not saying it won't ever happen. By God's grace, some of us have experienced that grace. But as a rule of general, they do not depart that path. So we've got to make sure that we are training them up. And you are training your children. You're training them one way or the other, but believe it, you are training your children up. Because God has given you that duty and that responsibility and you cannot shake it, you cannot throw it off. We have that duty, we have that responsibility. So you will be training your children. So, as fathers, I'm looking at you and I'm saying it's so important to train your children. Mothers, you've got the responsibility too. It's not just the father when he's away, when he's at work during the day. You're the one that's got to be going through during the day. Admonishing the children if you need to be. But we can sit here all day long and hit the fathers. But children, listen up. What does it say in Proverbs chapter 4? Hear ye, children, the instructions of your fathers. What duty do you have, children? Listen. Are you listening? Are you sitting through family worship, if you have it, and you're just, your mind's somewhere else? Do you sit here? You know, I know some of the little ones, after a long day, you may start drifting off. I understand that. There's a lot of you that are old enough not to do so. And, you know, I don't know how it is in your home. But Ben can probably attest, I know how it is sitting up here when I'm preaching to you. You know, Wednesday night, I'm 10 minutes into the sermon and we've already got people about to fall asleep or go, their minds are drifting elsewhere. You can tell, you're looking. You think you're being cute and you can, I'm not doing something, I can tell when you're drawing, when you're taking notes. You can tell that. Man, we're like, yeah, I'm just gonna. We can tell when you're taking notes on your phone and when you're actually doing something on your phone. You can see that. You're not tricking anybody, okay? We can tell that. When your phone's in your pocket and you pull it out every 10 minutes, you're not taking notes. If you are, you're taking bad notes. So we've gotta listen. We are training up our children. I let the cat out of the bag on that one, didn't I? But we can tell these things. And if it's the way it is in here, it's the way it is in our homes, fathers, we've got a lot of work to do. Because there's a lot of other stuff going on while the Word's being preached. While the music, you know, we hit Sunday night, Wednesday night, you know. Half of you weren't here. We had one of the smallest crowds on Wednesday night last Wednesday. And as we look at it, this relates to family worship. I talked about how so many churches are dead. You get a lot of the Fundamental Baptists, the really tight Presbyterian churches. When they're singing hymns, they're just dead. There's no life to those hymns. There's no difference here half the time. When we're sitting here singing, it's just dead. It's like dry bones. I was sharing the other night. You look up here and it's just like, Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord, unto me. And that's the way it looks sometimes. I mean, there's some. Why would you not want to be joyous? Is that the way it is in your homes? Fathers, that's where you get to instruct your children. You got to have some joy if you're singing that. Sing that like you mean it, with joy in your heart. But children, you got to listen. You got to listen to your father. Stop drifting off. You say, you know what? Well, I can't help it. This keeps me occupied. Get rid of it. Don't bring it in here. Don't bring it wherever you're doing your family worship at. Leave it aside if it's going to distract you. And fathers, it's your job to make sure that you're removing these distractions from them. So we start getting into family worship. Why? Again, why is it important? Because without this daily worship, what do we look like on Sunday? You know, we're not preparing ourselves. What are we going to look at? If we are man-centered all week long, we will tend to be man-centered on Sunday. If your worship, if your week is a man-centered week, you will bring that into Sunday and your Lord's Day will be man-centered as well. So it's important that we prepare. Again, how are our children? How are they going to know how to worship if we don't teach them daily? This is not, you understand, this is not where we teach our children to worship and hear in the sermon. We teach them in the home so they can come in here and do it. That's where we train them at. Sunday is the day we get to come to church. You straighten up, you dress nice, you put on your game day face. That's not what Sunday's about. You shouldn't have to change. It should be an overflow. It should be a reflection of what's been going on all week long. But so many of us, we do that, and you put on a good face. You come to church, you do the right things, you sit there, you do it, but that's not what's going on all week long. And that's what Sunday should be. It should just be a reflection of what's been going on in our homes all week long. You know, the reformers, they call it Sunday. The market day of the soul. The market day of the soul. I know especially you ladies. If you show up, if you decide you're going to go to the market without preparing, what happens? If you say, you know what? I'm going grocery shopping. I don't know what we're going to cook this week. I don't know what we're going to have. I'm going to go to the store. I'm just going to throw a bunch of stuff in the buggy and we'll sort it all out when I get back. What happens? Chaos. Chaos. Some of you may be saying, hey, that's my home, shush. But chaos ensues, why? Because you didn't prepare. You gotta prepare before you go to the market. The Sunday is the market day of the soul, and we ought to be preparing our soul before we come in here. If not, what ensues is chaos. So we've got to make sure that we're prepping our hearts and our souls for that. You know, the Lord's Day, again, we mentioned it briefly a while ago, the Lord's Day is meant to overflow from your, Your daily activities. By daily activities, I mean your daily worship, your daily study of the Word. The Lord's Day overflows from that. Do you understand that? When we come here on Sunday, it should just be an overflow, a bubbling up of what's been going on in your life all week long. And do you realize when you go into the week, your week should be an overflow and a bubbling up from what took place on Sunday. Do you see how they come together and work? Sunday feeds you and overflows you into the week. And as you go through the week and you worship, that overflows into this day here. It just works naturally. But when you're trying to do everything else all week long, do you realize why when you're trying to get ready on Sunday and for some reason Sunday morning is the most frustrating morning of the week? All shoes have lost their mate. You can't find anything. But that's what happens. You can't get this ready. You can't get that ready. Why? Because we haven't prepared all week long. It's not an overflow. We're trying to do something different. We've been living one way all week long and all of a sudden we try to step out of the chaos and come into Sunday morning and BAM it hits us and it shows and all we can do, it's all we can do to get in here with a straight face on. We're getting out of the car and you're trying to get that smile on, you're trying to You know, be refreshed before you get out of the car so that everybody doesn't see you. You want your church day face on. But it's because we haven't trained all week long and our week has been a week, a life of chaos. And we're trying to step out of that chaos and into something of order on Sunday morning. And it shows, it reflects. We've got to prepare all week long. You know, you go to Deuteronomy chapter six, Deuteronomy chapter six. Deuteronomy here in chapter 6 it says, Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord God commanded to teach you, that you might do them in the land whether you possess it. That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God and keep all of his statutes and his commandments which I command thee. Thou and thy son and thy son's son, all the days of thy life and thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe and do it, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily. And the Lord God of thy fathers has promised thee, in thy land that floweth with milk and honey, hear, O Israel, the Lord God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and thou shalt be frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and on thy gates, and it shall be when the Lord God shall have bought thee into the land which he swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not." Let's look here. What is he saying? You've got to be obedient. He says, not only are you to be obedient, but who else is to be obedient and obey these things? Your sons. Not only your sons, but your sons' sons! How do they do this if we do not teach them? We've got to be diligent to teach our children. What happens when we forsake? When we forsake what is given to us in Deuteronomy 6, to teach our children, to bind them on their eyes, to just everything they do, to teach them daily and diligently. What happens when we decide we're not going to do that? So I'm glad everybody asked it one time. Psalm 78 is a good example of that. I'm not going to read the whole Psalm. I've read it several times in here before. But as you just look at Psalm 78 real fast. It says, give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from our children, showing the generations to come praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. For he has established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to our children. that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments." and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that has set not their heart aright and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. The children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in the law." Why did their children turn back? What is taking place when we look at Psalm 78? What is taking place in Psalm 78 is the fathers have not passed down what they were supposed to do to their children. And now if we were to read the whole thing we would read that God rebukes the children and says you've got to put aside the ways of your fathers and follow my ways again. What a rebuke is that to us as fathers when God comes to our children and says put away the ways of your father for they have led you astray from me. What a rebuke! How do we guarantee that we're not leading our children astray? We teach them. We raise them up daily in the admonition of the Lord with the singing and the praying and the teaching of the word. So as we look at this, we'll go back another verse we're all familiar with is Joshua. Joshua 24, 16. I think we're all familiar with that. Joshua 24, 16, as Joshua was finishing up his time here on earth, he says, and the people answered and said, God forbid, we should forsake the Lord. And the Lord God, you know, I lost my place here. So we will, with the verse, Joshua says, what's he say? As for me and my house, what? we will serve the Lord. So as we look at that, we see, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Can that be said about us? Can that be said about us that as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord? We can say it all day long, but do our actions show that? Do we say, on Sunday, my house will serve the Lord, but the other six days of the week, we're gonna serve Mammon. The other six days of the week, we're gonna serve this sports team. The other six days of the week, we're gonna serve this club. The other six days of the week, we're gonna serve this piano place. The other six days, we're gonna serve this dance. Whatever it is we do, we've all got our little pet things we go to, okay? We can name them all, but we've all got our little things that we do. Is that where our time is invested at? I'm not saying they're wrong and that we should stop them, but are they stopping us from serving the Lord? And I'm going to say that right out front. If we've got stuff, I don't care how good it is. If it's stopping you from serving the Lord, then yes, you ought to stop it and not to remove it from you. If it's causing you to stumble in that area. So, As we look at Joshua, we look at our duty as fathers and what we're responsible for. One of the things we've got to understand is we call God, God the father. We don't call God the father because we looked at fatherhood and said, that's a good model. We'll use that and we'll proclaim God as the father. No, we don't get who God is as a father from looking at us. We look at God, and that's who we get our model of fatherhood from. And we say, wow, he's teaching us these things. God's giving us. Are we doing that in our homes? Are we trying to grow our children? We do that by worshiping. At the outset of this, we said worship is one of the most important things that we can do. I think worship, when you're truly worshiping God, is probably one of the closest glimpses into heaven that you can get. When we're worshiping God, what's it going to be like in heaven? It's going to be worship, praising of God. So when we're praising God in our worship, I think that's one of the closest glimpses. I wouldn't even call it a glimpse. It's so minuscule to what it's actually going to be like in heaven. So I don't really want to compare it, but that's probably still the closest we get. to looking in there and seeing that. Why would we not want that in our homes? Why would we not want that daily in our homes, in our families? You know, we prepare our children continually to master the temporal duties of this world while neglecting the eternal duties of their soul. Do you understand that? We spend so much time, so much money, so much emphasis on preparing their little temporal duties that they'll do while they're here. And I'm not saying these things aren't important. The way we work, our ethics and stuff, those are very important. But we spend so much time on that, which is temporal, and so little time on that which is eternal in our homes. So what is more? To train up our children in the ways and the knowledge of the world or the ways and the knowledge of God? And again, we can answer these all day long with the right answers. What do our actions say? These are recalibration sermons. These aren't here to teach you stuff that you really don't know. These are here to remind us that we have a duty and we need to recalibrate and we need to look at our lives and say, I'm saying it, but does my life line up to it? I'm saying our home needs it, but does our home really have it? As we start looking and seeing these things. So as we get into the family worship, father's is your duty. You can't avoid it. You can't pass it on. You own it. It's yours. The responsibility for family worship is yours and you own it. And the key to family worship, you know, I get asked this too a lot. What is the key to family worship? It's simple. It's the same thing as it is in here. The key to family worship is Christ-centered. It ought to be Christ-centered when you do your worship in your home. Again, Matthew Henry in his book, A Church in the House, says that masters of families who preside in the other affairs of the house must go before their households and things of God. They must be prophets as men who are called to keep up family doctrine. They are priests, men who must make sure the family worship has a tone of love and the seriousness of eternity for the souls of the household. Men are kings who are responsible to maintain family discipline and delight in honoring God. Then there is a church in the house and this is the family of religion. that I am persuading you to. So as we start looking at family worship, we're gonna look really quickly at the reasons we don't do it. Yeah, we've talked about why we should do it and what it involves. I want us to look at why we don't do it because I think this is where we're gonna find a lot of ourselves in here. As we recalibrate, we need to look and look at these things right here. Some of the reasons we don't is time. It's time. We just don't have the time to do it. I don't have the time to do family worship. There's just not enough time in the day. I'm just too busy. You know, you say, well, you don't know my schedule. You may be able to do this, but you don't know our schedule. We are so busy. We are here. We're there. We're here. You know, we don't have any room for it. We're just too busy for it. You may say you're too busy. What you're saying, when you look at your schedule and you say we're too busy for family worship, that's what you're saying with your lips. But what you're truly saying, what you're telling God is that these things are more important than family worship. Don't just say I'm too busy. That's not what you're saying. You're saying and you're teaching your children that these things that we've involved ourselves in are more important than the duties I have to teach you and to worship as a family and to praise God on a daily basis. That's what we're saying. So we've got our time. Another reason we have? No example. We don't have an example of this. No one's there to show it to us. I think a lot of us are in that boat. You know, we grew up, we didn't have somebody that was going to sit down. That's why you've heard Mr. Gardner say a lot. You don't know how good you got it. You've got somebody here to show you this. We didn't have that. We've had to study. It's been hard work to understand what we're supposed to do as fathers according to the scripture. You've got fathers that are teaching you that, I hope. But that's the reason I'm here. We don't have any example for somebody to show us. Another one we've got is fear. I'm too scared to do it. I'm fearful that I will not be able to do it. I'm fearful that I will sit in front of my family and I will act like a fool as I'm trying to train them up. God has equipped you. You know what, if you don't know the answers, you don't know the answers, go find the answers. You know what, again, as a practical teaching thing, one of the key ways to not look like a fool like you don't want to do in front of your children is before you sit down with them and go through a scripture passage, go through it yourself. Learn it. Pray over it. Study it. And know that scripture. See, one of the worst things you can do, and we've talked about it here, is just sit down with your children. As everybody's coming in the room to sit down and do family worship, you're just flipping through trying to figure out Let's see what we're going to go through tonight. That's not good. It shows. That's where the questions are going to come. You're not going to be able to answer them. So we have that fear that I'm going to do that. And a fear is going to be awkward. You think it's going to be awkward. When I sit down and I start wanting to pray, I start wanting to lead them in singing and going through the scripture with my family, man, that's going to be awkward. Can I share something with you? If you've never done it or it's been a long, long time since you've done it, This is going to be awkward. It's awkward when you sit there and you're calling everybody and they're sitting there looking at you like, what do we do now? The first time you do family worship, it is, it's awkward. But you know by the end of that first week, end of that second week of doing it, if you're diligent, you know what happens? If you stop doing it, you feel like you've let your family down. Your children are like, hey, what's up? What's wrong? Why aren't we doing this? Is something wrong? Are you sick? You know, what's going on? It just comes in. So don't let that awkwardness fear you. Work through it. Go through it. It is. So once implemented, that's the beauty. Once you start doing it, you're fearful now, but once you start, the fear you have is not gonna be a fear of how will I look? How will I respond? How will I do it? Your fear is gonna be when you stop doing it, you're gonna be like, oh no, I've let their souls down. You realize the importance of it, and you'll start realizing quickly the dangers of when you don't do it. So your fear will actually change. You'll grow from a fear of being awkward, a fear of failing, to a fear of, if I don't do this, the souls of my children are in jeopardy. So we see that. Those are some of the things. I think another reason we don't do it, and this goes back to today's church culture, is because the church will worship for us. Do you realize that? We don't even think about that hardly. But when you look at it, what does the church do? The church teaches us everything we want to know. The church is going to teach you. Fathers, we don't have to teach anymore because the church will teach you. You can take your children, sit them down from the cradle to the grave. The church will teach you what you need to know. Don't even study. The church will do the studying for us. You don't have to go and get all these books and read and read and read the Bible and constantly be in prayer in the Bible anymore because the church will do all the studying. They will put it all together in a nice little lesson, hand it to you so you know everything you need to know. So the church teaches for us, they study for us, they evangelize for us. You don't have to go out here and do it anymore. The church has professional evangelists or they have classes or programs where they go out and they do the evangelizing for you and they minister for you. You don't have to go out here and get your hands dirty anymore. You can just give a little bit of money to the church and they will minister on your behalf. And then we come to worship. The church will worship on your behalf. The modern church, think about it. They put up the band, they put up the worship leaders, they put up all these people up there. What do you have to do? You just got to stand there and enjoy it and enjoy and sit and relish and the worship is going on around you. Do you see? That's one reason we don't teach, one reason we don't pray with our family, one reason we don't study for this, and one reason we don't worship for them, is because the church has usurped its authority and it's taken that from us. And that still doesn't, they may have usurped it, but as fathers, you still have a responsibility in this. That is one reason. And then we've got the other reason we don't do it, and it's because men say, quite frankly, I just don't care. I just don't care about the things of God. I don't care about the spiritual well-being of my children and their progeny. I don't care about the souls of my family. I just don't care. And that's a big reason right there why so many men don't do it. They just don't care. But I want to quickly point out, don't just put everybody in that category. There's men that are trying to, in their mind, I'm trying to raise my children up, and I'm putting them over here in this program and that program. It's not that they don't care. So I just want to be careful and cautious, not just because somebody's not doing family worship. It's not just because they don't care. It's because they don't truly understand what their responsibilities are, and maybe they put it off on somebody else. They don't know that they're supposed to be doing it, and they're trying to raise their children up. There's people that are trying to raise their children for God. They just don't understand their duties in doing that. So there are a lot out there who just, just quite frankly, there's other stuff to do and they just don't care about this stuff for the Lord. They don't really care about the soul of your child. May that not be said about anybody in here. May we not be said as fathers, I just don't care about the souls of my family. So, you know, so as we look at that and let us know that if we're not doing our family worship apart from the mercy of God, If you do not instill this importance of obedience in them now, and this devotion to a holy God, and family worship is probably the main way we do this. If you don't do it now, apart from that mercy of God stepping in and intervening, your children and their children will not do it. Do you understand that? Your progeny will stray from the truths of God. That's why it's so important. You think, what happened to the church? The church started doing everything. and families quit worshiping together at home. Fathers stopped doing that. And they started straying away. Don't think for a second. If you stop your family worship, your children may be OK, but their children, you're going to start seeing that because the importance is no longer there when they're training their children up. You will see them start to stray. Without family worship, your progeny will stray from the ways of the Lord. So we look at the reasons why we don't. So now we want to come, in closing out real fast, I want us to look at the application. You know, we've given the importance, the dangers, and that of doing family worship. I want to look at it quickly, look at the application of how we do it, what it looks like. Because we can teach all day long, but if we're not showing you what it looks like, that's what we're trying to do is to apply this. So how does it happen? How does family worship happen? What is the first thing that must happen if you're going to do family worship? Let's just say you've never done it before and you're saying, okay, I'm convinced, I'm convicted, I need to be doing it. What's the first thing you do? Do it. OK? Step one, do family worship. Sit down to hold it, OK? So we're going to do family worship. That's the first step. You've got to make a sense that we're going to do it. Don't wait on the right timing. Don't say, well, we're busy this night. We're busy that night. We're busy this night. We'll start it on this night. No. If you're not doing family worship and it's because you're so busy, grab your schedule. Throw everything off of it. And say, you know what? We're clearing off a period. And it's going to happen. It's going to happen right here. We're going to start it. So what are the elements of doing family worship? To me, when you look at the scripture, the elements of family worship are the same elements you have in worship when you come in here to the corporate body. You're singing of the hymns. You're praying. And you're hearing the word preached. Those are your elements. I don't want us to say we can do the same thing. We're not the church, okay? Let me clarify that. Family worship is not the church. Don't be baptizing your children in the bathtub. Don't be running out and doing communion. That's not our job. Family worship is to be the praying, the singing, the hymns. You're not the church, okay? Your family is not the church. That is crucial. So some of the things you do, you're singing. How do you sing? Just as an application, and I'm gonna share how it goes at our house some, and that is when you're singing, get hymn books. You know what, get hymn books if you need to. Or if you don't wanna get the hymn books, maybe if money's there and you can't get the hymn books, you can go to the website, hit myself or Ben, or we can give you the link. Ben sends it out in the email. Go to that link, you can download the lyrics and the music and print it out. Each child can have their own book where you go through the songs, you print them out, and now you've got your songs we're singing. You print off the sheets, you can do it. You say, what about the music? Well, you can do it acapella. Many of us have pianists and other instruments in our home that we can play. Or you can do like we do sometimes and just play it on the computer and play the music behind it in the background and play the music. One of the other ways you like to do it is the email that Ben sends out is not just the email to say, hey, reminder, come to church. He's got the songs on there. Grab the songs. It goes back to how do we not look like this? You practice the songs. incorporate the songs that Ben sends out into your family worship during the week. You can go onto the internet and get every song that he sends you and get the lyrics to it, get the music to it. They're there. You download it, make your book, and now you've got your books to sing music by every week. as you go out the week. And you realize, you start off with five pages in the book, 10 pages, 20. Before you know it, you've got a whole book made. And incorporate even songs that you may want to sing that's not in there. You bring them in, and now you've got each child has their book that they come to the family worship with. So you do it that way. And you get into the singing of the hymns. You know, at our house, one of the things we like to do is have a song of the month, a hymn of the month. And every month, every day, you're singing that same song every single day for one month. Guess what? After a month, you know that song and you can sing it. You know, the old hymn book, after a year and a half, two years of doing that, not only do we memorize the songs, but we memorize the page numbers. You know, we can just look at it and tell. So you really get to where you can flow in that worship by doing that. And again, these are good ideas, good applications. Your family, you may figure out something differently, but these are some good applications if you're not doing it, the way to start doing it. And then you've got the teaching time and the Bible. A lot of men ask me, what do I do? How do I teach? I'll just go get a book, and I'll just read through a devotional book. There's some devotional books that are good. There's a lot of devotional books that are really, really bad. So I would be careful. If you want to use a devotional book, I think one of the best devotional books, Ben gave it to a lot of the men out here, is Spurgeon's Morning Evening. That's a really good book. But I would encourage you, go through a book of the Bible. Take your family through a book of the Bible. You say, well, I'm not a theologian. I'm taking my family through the book of Jonah. We sat down. I created a Bible study. I went through, made an outline. I'll share this outline if anybody wants it. I'll share it with you. And you can have it. It's just real quick. It takes about two weeks to go through it. It starts off, you know, the first night is looking at the historical context of Jonah, looking at it and saying, well, Okay, what else was going on in the times when this book was written? You know, asking them the Gardner question, is it a narrative or is it a discourse? See, you gotta ask them these questions. But going through that and you ask them these and then you set it up, okay? Day number two. We're looking at Jonah, Jonah's disobedience. Day number three, what happens when Jonah's run? Day number four, what happens to Jonah when he repents? Day number five, what about the pagan men on the boat with Jonah? And you see, you start going through it, and before you know it, you've got you a Bible study. And as a father, you've studied the scripture. You've looked it up. You've understood it. And now you can teach it to your children. And it's a structured way of doing it. Again, don't just pick up the Bible. And I'm going to start here tonight. Study it. Know it. And if you say, you know what? I want to start tonight. We're not doing it. I want to start, but I haven't studied up. I get this question a lot. The answer I give the men when I do that is go to Proverbs. Start in Proverbs. Work through it while you're getting something together. Just start in Proverbs 1. Work through the Proverbs through the book of wisdom. And then come in there and and take that while you're getting something together. Get started. Don't wait. Get started now. If the Lord's convicted you, wow, we haven't done this. If He's convicted you, do it now. Don't wait. You know what happens? If you're sitting here today and you say, that's right, I need to be doing that, and we're not. If you don't do it, guess what happens? If you say, we're going to start next Friday night, we're going to start. You won't do it. The world will seek in and it will grab you and it will choke you out before you have time to grow and sprout. Do it tonight. If you're really convicted and you're not doing it, do it tonight. Do it Monday night. When it's hard throughout the week, do it anyway. You've got to do it. So you've got singing, you've got teaching, and then you've got praying. When you look at the praying part of it, Pray. Teach your children to pray. Pray as a family. One of the things we do is, I usually will assign, especially the children, you pray for this and this, you pray for this and this, you pray for this and this, and then as a family, we pray for that. Altogether, how long does all that take? It really depends. It depends on how many questions are asked. In our home, the whole thing usually takes between 30 minutes to 45. It could take upwards of an hour, but usually our family worship is about 30 to 45 minutes of worship. There's no set time. I'm not saying if you go below 30, you're a failure. You've got to work that out for your family, especially some of the smaller family. It may not quite take so long to go through everybody and do things. So you have to set yours up. But these are some of the ways we do it there. And set a time. This is important. Set a time to do it. We've set a time in our house, 830. 830 at night, that is when we do it. Some people say, you know what? We like to do it at the dinner table. We'll eat dinner and we'll do our family worship. I'm going to tell you, if you're doing your family worship at the dinner table, That's not the time to be getting up, wives and daughters, and cleaning the table up and going into the kitchen and busying yourself there, okay? It's the time when you sit at the feet of your father and you listen to him being taught. It's the time you sit there at your husband and you listen to the word being taught. So, if you're doing that, don't do that. Don't, don't get up. And if you're gonna be an hour, if you're long-winded, you know, okay, maybe we wanna put this in the fridge real fast before we start, okay? but don't do it while it's going on, okay? You see, maybe you're early morning. You want to get up and do yours in the early morning, that's fine. But set a time so your children don't know, they know what it is. You know what happens if you say, you know what, we're going to try to do family worship every day. Some days it's this day, some days it's this time, and we just, we'll find a time. Guess what will happen? If you don't lock it down, you know, what's going to happen? Something's going to fill that spot. I know how it is in my schedule at work. Eric, you probably do the same. If you don't fill that time up on your calendar, what happens? Somebody fills it for you, don't they? That's what will happen to your family worship. If you don't lock it down and do it at that time, it will happen. What happens if you set it for 8.30 and something does happen and you don't get out there till 8.45? Do it at 8.45, okay? Don't just say, well, we missed it at 8.30. It's 8.33 now, we can't do it. No, you don't. What happens if you miss a day? Or you miss two, you miss three, you miss four, what happens? Start back, don't say, ah, we've missed it now, it's over. No, maybe that's where you're at now. Maybe you're struggling now saying, hey, we've been missing family worship, but I just really can't get it started back. Just start, just do it. Okay, that's what we've got to do. You've got to break in there and say, we've got to do it. So we've got to teach, we've got to sing, we've got to pray together, we've got to do it at a special time, and it doesn't matter who's there. It doesn't matter if you've got family or you've got friends. You know what, I mean, some of the best ways to reach people is when they see that, they're like, wow, I've never seen that. I want more of that. How can I have this in my home? Maybe a bad house guest, and it might run them off before you start. I don't know how y'all are, but I've had people, when we start telling them we're gonna do family worship, oh yeah, it's about time for us to go. But invite them over. Let them sit through it with you. Make them part of it. Incorporate them in it. So it doesn't matter who's there. And again, I think lastly, going out of this, make it a priority, not a formality. You see what I mean by that? If you just make it a formality, our church says we have to have family worship every day, so we're gonna do that. We're gonna have our quick family worship, read a quick word of scripture, check, we're done, everybody, and they're gone. you have your family worship before you say amen, there's like papers flying through the air where people have just made like their own little paths to get out and go somewhere else. That's your formality. It's just a formality you're checking off a box. It's got to be real and it's got to be a priority in your homes is that family worship. I'm telling you, it's a precious, precious, precious time. So as we close out, I went a little bit longer than I was planning on going. So, but we're going to close it out here looking at that. But real quickly, I hope we looked at the what worship is, the importance of worship, the importance of why is to come into our home and take place. And we see that and the importance and the duty as fathers of us to do that.