And then take and turn in your Bibles with me, if you would, to Leviticus chapter 6. Leviticus chapter six, and we see some of the prescription here for offerings that are to be made to the Lord. One person asked me today if anyone has ever preached on family worship, the topic in general from Revelation, from rather Leviticus chapter six verses eight and following, and we're really gonna read through verse 13 as well. The answer to the question, has anyone ever preached on family worship from these verses? I don't know. is the simple answer, but that's what we're going to look at this evening. And so we want to turn our attention here. We're taking a couple of weeks. I'll be preaching this week and then next on some practical things like this. As we think about our calling before the Lord, Joel will be preaching next week in the morning, and then he'll be up at the college winter conference in the evening. And so I'll be preaching there. here again next Lord's Day evening. It's an important topic to consider because we're constantly in need of reminder and some of you might hear things today, you say, I'm just hearing this all over again. Nothing new here. It's still exciting when someone says to you, time for dinner. Not too many of us say, man, they told me that yesterday. They said it the day before that, when are they going to stop talking about this? No, no, there are certain words and there are certain instructions that we just love because it feeds our very soul. So I hope that that's part of your experience here this evening. Even if you don't learn anything new, there is something new and there is something fresh even in being fed with the same old words and the same old ideas when they come from a Savior who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's also true that we're at a place of transition as a congregation. Churches are always in transition, but we have many more young families, young couples than we've had before. We also have maybe more singles than we've had before, and I trust that there will be application for you, whether you're in either of those categories, or maybe you're in the category of saying, I'm widow or I'm single again or maybe I'm an empty nester now and things are changing and sometimes concepts that used to ring true maybe don't ring as true in our minds because we are sort of limited by our own perspective on our own place in life not being what it once was or not being yet what we would hope it might be and And yet we need to be reminded of the truth because it brings us back to the things that the Lord teaches us and what he thinks. So we're gonna give attention, first of all, to Leviticus 6, verses 8 through 13. Let's pray before we read God's word. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is good and that it is true, that it speaks life to us. And so we pray that you would nourish us with words of eternal life this evening. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. This is God's word, Leviticus 6.8. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, command Aaron and his sons saying, this is the law of the burnt offering. The burnt offering shall be on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning. and the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it, and the priest shall put on his linen garment and put his linen undergarment on his body, and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the burnt offering on the altar and put them beside the altar. Then he shall take off his garments and put on other garments and carry the ashes outside the camp to a clean place. The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it, it shall not go out. The priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and he shall arrange the burnt offering on it, and shall burn on it the fat of the peace offering. Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. It shall not go out. Thus ends this reading of God's word. You pick up the thrust of that text. The fire is not to go out on the altar. The altar, of course, is the offering of sacrifice that is made to the Lord. The people of God knew as they lived life there, even in the wilderness, around the tabernacle, that their access to God was prescribed by God and it was given to them through the tabernacle, through the holy place, and through the holy of holies. And the altar was to be there and it was to be kept going continually. The fire had to be stoked over and over and over again. And of course, what did that altar, what did that offering represent? Well, it represented to the people the sacrifices which would make them pleasing in God's sight. There was atonement for sin that was portrayed there upon that altar. And of course, it looked forward to the ultimate sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ. would offer himself once for all as we prayed a few moments ago and that altar was to point the people forward continually to see that God must always be pacified, his anger must always be satisfied, and that that doorway to heaven could only be kept open as it were through the sacrifice that would be offered. Now of course we know as we look at the old covenant that There was no remission of sins ultimately that came through the blood of those animals that were offered upon that sacrifice. It was simply a token that had them looking forward to Jesus who would be the sufficient sacrifice once for all. But the Lord wanted that fire to be kept burning throughout their generations as a way of keeping them close to himself. And we talk about keeping a fire stoked. Joel has been preaching for the last few weeks in those early chapters of Proverbs. And you'll notice from our sermon title here that we're mixing metaphors. Often we think of keeping the home fires burning in terms of romance, husband and wife needing to keep a passion alive at home. And we see in the book of Proverbs, the very close parallel there is between godly marriages and romance and the relationship between God and his people, because marriage ultimately pictures our relationship with God. And we know that keeping a right and pure and living relationship between husbands and wives is what keeps them secure. And so it is in our relationship with God. He is the one who has purchased our salvation for us, but how is that relationship nourished? Well, it's nourished morning and evening as we see pictured for us here in the Old Testament, as Aaron and his sons would keep this fire burning morning and evening. And notice what it says there in verse 13, fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. It shall not go out continually. There's going to have to be all kinds of effort that's exerted here. The priests have to be careful about how they dress. They've got to get the wood together. And there are Psalms that are sung about this. You think about Psalm 5, the arranging of our prayers in the morning. That word arranging is the Same word that's used for the arranging of the wood, of the sacrifice. So the prayer and the offering going together and the aroma being lifted up to the Lord. That's a picture of the offering. It's a picture of the prayer that's there as well. Then in Psalm 141, which we've sung earlier, we ask that the Lord would receive our prayers as the evening sacrifice. So there's this pattern that gets ingrained into the people of God, that their relationship with God needs to be stoked morning and evening. And in the old covenant, that needed to be there at the very center of the community, day and night, for as long as those people would be there. Now, where do we see these kinds of patterns in the scripture before this? Well, all we have to do is go back to the very front of our Bibles. What is the pattern of Genesis 1? There's morning and there's evening the first day and so on and so forth. All of life is regulated by God's design in terms of morning and evening. We think of this pattern and of course then we see that there are six days in which labor is to be done. The seventh day is a Sabbath that's holy to the Lord your God and we are to rest like God rested and to be refreshed. But we see that the altar here was to be kept burning continually. The people of God would gather one day a week. but there needed to be a reminder that that fellowship with God needs to be maintained throughout the whole week as well. So we see it in creation. We see it here in the offerings in Leviticus. We see it in the poetry of the Psalms as this sort of relationship is maintained between God and his people. And then I want you to turn to 1 Thessalonians 5. It's the second text that's referenced for you there. We know, of course, that the Lord Jesus comes in the flesh, and he was the sacrifice that was offered. Now, Paul is writing to the Thessalonians a couple of decades later, and he gives us these famous verses in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 16 through 18. He writes, rejoice always, pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Look again at verse 17. Pray, how? Without ceasing. continually. You notice the language of Leviticus chapter six being imported here to our passage in First Thessalonians. We are to be a people who are praying without ceasing. These verses, of course, have been very much in the news here in central Indiana because these were Tyler Trent's favorite verses. And what these verses speak of is not simply having warm feelings that would cause us to be happy, or to give us the sense that we can just sort of pray anytime we want to, true as that is, the sense of it here is an idea that's being imported from the Old Testament that praying without ceasing is employing the pattern of the sacrifice, morning and evening, so that the fire doesn't die. This, of course, is something that keeps relationships alive in a very vibrant way. Husbands and wives send one another off in the morning with a kiss. They greet one another again in the evening with a kiss. When that sort of relationship is maintained, there are a lot of temptations that could go on through the course of the day that can be endured if you know that morning and evening there's going to be a restoking of that fire. So it is in our relationship with God. We go, of course, to serve him in the world, knowing that every second belongs to him, but that reality is planted in our minds and it's rooted there as we go about the practice of praying without ceasing. Morning, we begin the day with prayer. Evening, we close the day with the evening sacrifice being offered up to God. And notice as we look at verse 18 here, that we're to give thanks then in all circumstances. This gives us a right frame of mind for all of life, no matter what happens. And he says that this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. All of that stuff of the Old Testament sacrifice, all of this is to be brought to bear in your life in the present in terms of that kind of practice with a different substance, as it were. Although in one sense the substance is the same, but different outward forms of it. We do all of that in Christ Jesus. Now one of the things I found fascinating in listening to the media more widely talk about Tyler Trent over the last few weeks and quote these verses is that many in the secular media are happy to read verse 16, rejoice always. They're happy to read verse 17, pray without ceasing. They're happy to read the first part of verse 18, give thanks in all circumstances. And then they stop there. and they fail to read for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This is very similar, you may remember, to President Bush speaking after 9-11 in the National Cathedral when he read from Romans chapter eight and of course was trying to be sensitive but he was using Romans chapter eight and reading the end of that chapter stating that there's nothing that will separate us from the love of God he stopped the reading right there. Why did he stop the reading right there? Because it goes on to say, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Family worship and prayer and these kinds of things don't matter and they don't ultimately make any difference if it is not in the context of knowing that Christ Jesus is Lord and the only reason we do these things is because he is Lord. You've heard it said that everything ultimately in terms of religion boils down to this, what will you do with Jesus? And it's so very evident in just the examples that I've given you that the world knows that this is the case. The world knows that the difference in religion, whether it's what we practice in public or what goes on in our homes, it all boils down to what you do with Jesus. And it's easy to get a snapshot of what our culture thinks by simply listening to how the culture uses scripture. We don't cut off halfway through verse 18 as we think about what it means to pray continually. We pray without ceasing as those who recognize that Jesus is the completed sacrifice. And this calling that is bearing upon us is in the context of being his servants as the one who has given himself up for our sins and who is now risen from the dead. He's seated at the right hand of God the Father, and he ever lives to make intercession for us. So Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians, he uses the same kinds of language. And then I turn, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 13, And in Hebrews chapter 13, we read in verses 13 and following, therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Notice again here in verse 15, we are to continually offer up a sacrifice. What kind of sacrifice here? It's a sacrifice of praise, in which we praise God and we acknowledge his name. And as we acknowledge his name, we're also then acknowledging who we are. So there is to be this continual offering of our voices to God in song. Does God mean in this that we should be singing every moment of every day? No, we look at the pattern of scripture We see how this word continually is used in the concept of these offerings being made to God, and we recognize that the pattern God wants to instill in his people is that you engage in these devotional exercises in the morning, you engage in these devotional exercises in the evening, they frame the day, and that gives us a mindset then that acknowledges the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout the whole of the day. This is a beautiful thing for us as the people of God and it ought to then inform our family worship. We recognize that one day a week we go as the people of God and we worship at the beginning of the day together and we worship corporately at the end of the day and this frames this day of rest. those commands are more explicit for us in the scripture than a command to perform family devotions or family worship in an explicit and regulated, if you will, kind of way, but the reality is still given to us as we look at God's word. If we think about Deuteronomy 6, and I encourage you to turn in your Bibles there, Deuteronomy 6, again, you'll see the same language that's being given to parents, We'll begin in verse four, page 151, if you have the church's Bibles. 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 with all 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 of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and, get this, when you lie down, And when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So here we have a command that the Lord gives to the families of Israel, scattered as they would be throughout the whole land, being called to teach their children when they rise up and when they lie down. Here's the pattern of Christian discipleship that we are to practice. And what we have in all of this then is the idea for the people of God that we are conditioning ourselves by the grace of God through these exercises to really walk in conscious communion with the living God. We want patterns of life to be established that become habits for us. that we almost don't have to think about, or at least when we don't think about them, we tend to move in the same direction anyway. This was, of course, Calvin's great goal as he worked the work of Reformation there in the city of Geneva, and he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion. And it's been rightly observed that we often think of that in terms of heady language. We think of it in terms of a systematic theology, but if you look at what Calvin was seeking to do there in the city of Geneva and the resource that he's writing, the word institute or institutes or institutions really in a practical lay sort of terminology today might be more readily understood as training, just simply training. And the word religion is not so much a Christian religion set apart from other religions in Calvin's context, but rather has to do with the practice of religion, piety. So some have suggested that really a more accurate modern translation of Calvin's Institutes would be Calvin's training in Christian piety. Just trying to teach us how is it that we're going to think and what was he up against? Well, he was up against the medieval idea that there are certain people who are called to be set apart and particularly holy. Those people go to the monastery. Those people are monks and nuns. And what Calvin was seeking to train people to do was to recognize that we're all called to be set apart as those who are entirely devoted to the Lord. And so what he was teaching people and the doctrine he was feeding them was to be the sort of thing that would frame their thinking morning and evening so that there would be a whole community of monks, as it were. who engaged in secular business through the rest of the day, but with the mindset of those who recognize they're totally given to God. And this is how the Lord frames our week for us. We rest in him the first day of the week so that we can labor out of that the following six. And then he gives us structures in which we call upon his name to condition our hearts and lives. And in this, what are we really preparing for? Well, we're really preparing for all of eternity. Because as we get to the book of Revelation, we see some of the same kind of language that continues to be set before us. And in Revelation 7, verse 5, and you can see a parallel in Revelation 4, 8. Revelation 4, 8 gives us the imagery of the four living creatures. Night and day, they never cease to say, what? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Now it's kind of interesting because in Revelation, you get the idea that there's no sun because there's no need of sun and there's no night and day, but using this kind of figurative language, it's saying night and day, they forever say these things. And you see that expression in various parts of Revelation. But again, it's carrying over the imagery of the Old Testament here, you see. What we're doing as we gather for our personal devotions or for family worship, morning and evening is we're just practicing for heaven. We're just tasting heaven as it were here on earth so that we would remember who Jesus is and who we are and how it is that we are to serve. And conversely, you can look at Revelation 14, 11, where you see the judgment that has come upon those who have disobeyed the Lord. And it says that the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they shall have no rest day or night. You feel the weight of this and why we need this kind of practice in our lives. There's going to be that kind of day or night experience, day and night experience one way or another forever and ever. Which one do you want? So the Lord calls his people to stoke the fire. to stoke the fire in your homes on a daily basis as you think about serving the Lord together. This is the command of your Savior, first of all, as we think about family worship. This is the motivation, this is the aim that we would be so given to the Lord that there would never be a second of our day, that we would not know that Jesus is Lord, and that we are his servants, and that all of his purposes will be fulfilled and that we can enjoy communion with the living God. Well, what is the practice then of family worship? There's the command kind of overarching picture of how it is that the Lord wants us to see our days built. Again, I note that when it comes to what happens through the week in our homes and in our families, the Lord gives us these big principles. The specifics of it are not worked out quite as closely. Now, if you look throughout history, You see that the practice of family worship has been there, and Donald Whitney, who wrote the book Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life, which we went through just a semester or two, maybe three now ago, I can't remember, in our Bible school class. He's also written a book on family worship, and there are a number of books on family worship. This one is one that perhaps does the best job of concisely capturing the history of family worship, seeing it not only in the scriptures, but also in the early fathers through various parts of middle ages, then the reformers as well as today. And I'd encourage you to look at that. Of course, the Westminster divines had the directory of family worship that they wrote up as well, in which they encourage families, heads of households in particular, to be leading their families to the throne of grace morning and evening. Of course, it's borrowing from these same concepts so that we would have this kind of mindset. This is a practice that is just that. It is practice, and let me tell you that it takes work. For those of you who are husbands and wives, it's harder than it looks to practice family worship on a daily basis. My parents practiced this through all of my growing up years, and when Elizabeth and I were married, I've said this before, one of the things that was surprising to me is how sometimes a week might go by early on in our marriage and I would stop and think to myself, why have we not had family worship? Why is it that it was so easy for my parents to do but so difficult for us to do? And I realized in that it wasn't easy for my parents, but they did it. They just did it. We have to commit ourselves to doing it. It is practice. It's practicing for heaven, but it's work. And so we have to commit ourselves to do it. What is it that we're called to do? Well, again, the pattern that we see here in scripture is morning and evening. This is gonna work out differently in different families. I confess in our family, we don't manage to have it morning and evening. But we do close off every day at evening, and we do teach our children in terms of their own personal devotions that they need to start the day with the Lord. And we want to make sure that this doesn't become a sort of overbearing practice for people who are in the household, such that it becomes something that's distasteful. It doesn't have to be long. but it is a time in which we set our hearts and our minds on the Lord, and it consists of three basic, very simple parts, and this has been true throughout the ages. It's reading, and it's singing, and it's pray. How do we accomplish these three things? Well, we have the book all laid out for us here right now. You can really start reading anywhere you want in the scripture, but set aside a time as a family where you'll read from the scriptures together. If you're in a place where your children are perhaps too young to fully comprehend all of the parts of scripture, something like Catherine Voss's Child Story Bible is a wonderful place to begin. It uses quotations from the scripture richly, but it tells the stories in a shorter, more narrative form so that children can understand. When we read, we can simply make a few comments if we're able as to how these things apply to our lives. And I encourage you in your homes to think about how the text relates to the specific things that are going on. There's no need for great profundity and carrying on at length. We simply want to point our children and others in the household to the Lord Jesus, to his saving work and to what he calls us to be and to do as his people so that we know that we have heard from him. Secondly, we're called to offer up this sacrifice of praise, that is the fruit of our lips. These are the praises of God and we have the Psalter that God has given us right in the center of the Bible and so we simply can sing one psalm. Matthew Henry wrote this, those who do well, that those do well that pray morning and evening in their families, they do better that pray and read the scripture, but those do best of all that pray and read and sing psalms. And Christians should covet earnestly the best gifts. And I should say that's actually from his father, Philip Henry, not Matthew. You see the emphasis here is the Lord does, he works something special in us when we sing. So again, let's not make this too complicated. What's our psalm of the month right now? 73C. What can you sing when you go home? If you sing nothing else, simply sing the psalm of the month. In our family, what we do is on alternating days, we sing the psalm of the month every day as we gather for family devotions. On alternating days, males in the house get to pick their favorites. Other days, females get to pick their house. And this is true whether we have guests with us or not. And it truly is a time of favorites. So sometimes we sing the same ones over and over and over again. And then we push for some variety as well, but simply making this a practice and making it fun. What is it that people want to sing? What is it that touches their heart? As we begin to sing and to sing together, the Lord works these truths in our hearts. And we see in Psalm 118, verse 15, the Lord describing how it's the singing that's to happen in all of the households, all of the tents of Israel. It's not just for the congregation to sing as a whole, but there's to be singing in all of these tents. So we're to read together, we're to sing together, and then we're to pray together. And one great emphasis that I think we all need in our homes is that when we have family worship, if there's any priority, it is that every person should be called upon to pray. It can be easy to say, maybe we don't have time for that. But what is it that we're trying to do as we gather for our family devotions? Well, it's to teach our children and to practice ourselves simply communicating with God. I think one of the great sins of the Reformation, if I can be so strong with that word, is to turn even public worship more into a house of preaching rather than a house of prayer, and giving people the sense of the biblical language, that this is where you come to call upon God. that this is the house of prayer for all nations. If we experience anything when we come together for worship in response to God, it should be that we all walk away with a sense that we have spoken to the living God and he has heard us. And so this should be our pattern in our family worship as well, that we're leading each person, not simply to sit silently and listen to other prayers, or even to encourage people to pray along, but to give people the actual experience of opening their mouths and learning to speak to the living God. Why? Because he hears us. And this is what children need to be taught. That we have a God who so loves us that he has given his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to us. And he has poured his spirit out upon us so that we might enter into fellowship with the living Savior. Where we actually talk with him. He hears us. And that relationship is the relationship that dominates all of life. And if we ever raise our children with a sense that God is distant and cannot be approached in prayer, and we do not teach them to pray, then we have missed our calling, brothers and sisters. So this is the practice of family worship. It doesn't have to be long. The result of this then is, as we've already noted, that when we leave after a time of 10, 15, 20 minutes seeking God's face together, our minds have been changed. These patterns are developing so that we recognize we're called not only to offer up this sacrifice of praise in the moment, but we're to give our lives as a living sacrifice to the Lord as we go to our beds and then as we rise and we wake again to serve the Lord. What is it then that, let me just add as well with that, that it's good to have a place to do this. It's also very good to be flexible. So often in our family, we'll have our family worship in the car. If we're out somewhere late in the evening, right, you've got all the resources you need right in your pocket, as long as you're not the only one there driving, someone can pull it out. You've got the app for the Psalter on your phone. You have Scripture Memory Verses, in the church app that you can go to and pull up at just a moment's notice to aid you in thinking about the scriptures and anyone can pray and you know this is another one of the misnomers in the Christian world is that you have to pray with your eyes closed. we can pray with our eyes open. There's no command in scripture that says your eyes have to be closed when you pray. And so if that's the space that we have that particular day, then we use that space to call upon the name of the Lord together. Just a word then about, well, how does this apply if we have no children? If you have children, we wanna be doing this in such a way that we're disciplining them, we're training them, they learn to sit and give their attention to God for a season. We're able to think about that with more clarity. But what if you are a single person? You say, I don't have a family. I don't have anyone to do this with. Well, let me give you this suggestion. First of all, we should all be seeking God's face personally in our devotions. If you're a single person, One of the ways in which you can practice family or social worship as people gather with you over time, maybe you've got guests in your home sometimes, or maybe it is that the Lord will raise up a husband or a wife for you. You have visitors perhaps spending the night with you at other times as you practice hospitality. One way you can begin to instill these disciplines in your life is this, do it out loud. Do it out loud morning and evening. Read the scripture out loud so that the walls get practice hearing this. Sing out loud because the practice, the exercise of singing is not simply what happens in our minds, but there's a whole body exercise that goes into giving ourselves to the Lord. And pray out loud. you begin to become comfortable with it, and then you just keep up that practice whenever others are with you. And the Lord has used this sort of family worship by one individual in remarkable ways through the course of the years. John G. Payton, who we'll hear from a bit later here in conclusion, he talks about how his father would gather with the family for family worship And he would pray out loud. And he would continue to do this, of course, even when no one else was around. But he was praying in particular this one day for a woman in the community who was known for being an immoral woman. And she happened to be passing by their house and crept up under the window to hear him praying for her. And she realized just what a burden she was to his soul. And that's what the Lord used to prick her conscience, to bring her to repentance and newness. of life in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was his out loud prayer for people in the community that was overheard. How might the Lord use prayers of a single person or a person who's worshiping? Oh, I don't know. I'm just telling you he does and he has done this in the past. And then what about singing? Well, you can think about the great missionary to Scotland, Columba, in the 6th century. He's the one who endured the Battle of the Salter with St. Finian after copying the Psalter and at the price of blood, he won the Psalter that he had copied and then he had to flee. So he goes to Scotland where he's missionary from Ireland to Scotland and he was known for converting large numbers of Scots and Picts as well who inhabited the land. And they didn't really like him being there that much because of course he was an invader from their perspective and one day he was at the mouth of the Ness River You think of the Loch Ness monster as the way in which you think about the Ness River probably more than anything. He was there at the mouth of the river, and we're told that he was singing Psalm 45 as part of his devotions, and there were a number of the Picts who came upon him to try to disrupt him, and his biographer notes that they were so amazed and so terrified at his singing that they left him alone. And these were the same people that he would then ultimately see converted and brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we get a good chuckle out of that, but this is what this kind of worship of God does. It changes us and it changes other people. And so this is my encouragement to those of you who are single, practice for heaven like you're gonna be practicing in heaven. practice for it now, and the Lord will use that. Those of you who are not yet married who will be married, it'll put you right in a good pattern for that already. You know, women who are looking for a guy to marry, they don't look, as one Christian sister of mine testified, for the guy who brings nothing to the fellowship meal. They look for the guy who knows how to make a casserole, bring it and serve others. The same thing goes with family worship. What are godly people interested in? They're interested in the kinds of people who already do and know how to do the very kinds of things they hope will be practiced in their family. This isn't rocket science, right? These are just good patterns of life. Well, what about empty nesters? What about those who say, well, I don't have children in the home anymore, and maybe some of you feel some pangs of guilt for not doing what you should have done with your children? Well, as Don Whitney says very aptly, start doing it now, if for no other reason, as an example for them, for your own good and as an example to your children who are out of the house. It's never too late to start this kind of devotion to the living God. These are basic truths from scripture that can be applied to every different age and category of life. There are a lot of resources to help with this. Well, what is ultimately the impact? Well, we've given and thought about some of the kinds of impact that there's been throughout a church history as people have learned to call upon the name of the Lord. Matthew Henry said, if there's going to be a Reformation, the Reformation will start here. It will start in the Reformation of calling upon the Lord's name in the home. And of course, that was part of what happened in the Reformation of old. And one fruit of that in the Second Reformation, as it's known in Scotland, was the example of John G. Payton. who you know grew up in the Reformed Presbyterian home there in Scotland and ended up going to the New Hebrides, and anyone who's ever written on family worship usually uses this in their book as the preeminent example of what this kind of devotion to the Lord does in terms of raising up laborers for the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to read for you his account, which is somewhat lengthy, but it's one that is is used often for very good reasons. So listen to the impact of family worship on this man. This is the account, first of all, of his father walking with him as he was getting ready to leave home in his travels, which would ultimately take him around the world. And he writes this. My dear father walked with me for the first six miles of the way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been but yesterday, and tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so, we walked on together in almost unbroken silence. My father, as was often his custom, carrying his hat, his lips kept moving in silent prayers for me, and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain. We halted on reaching the appointed parting place. He grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said, God bless you, son. Your father's God prosper you and keep you from all evil. Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer. In tears we embraced and parted. I ran off as fast as I could and went about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me. I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I left him, gazing after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I was around the corner in an instant, but my heart was too full and sore to carry me further. So I darted into the side of the road and wept for a time. Then rising up cautiously, I climbed the dike to see if he yet stood where I had left him. And just at that moment, I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike and looking out for me. He did not see me, and after he had gazed eagerly in my direction for a while, he got down, set his face toward home, and began to return, his head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears till his form faded from my gaze, and then, hastening on my way, vowed deeply and oft by the help of God to live and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as he had given me. The appearance of my father when we parted, his advice, prayers, and tears, the road, the dike, the climbing up on it, and then walking away, head uncovered, have often, often throughout life, risen vividly before my mind, and do so now while I am writing, as if it had been but an hour ago. In my earlier years, particularly when exposed to many temptations, his parting form rose before me as that of a guardian angel. It is no Phariseeism, but deep gratitude which makes me here testify that the memory of that scene not only helped by God's grace to keep me pure from prevailing sins, but also stimulated me in all my studies that I might not fall short of his hopes, and in all my Christian duties that I might faithfully follow his shining example. How much my father's prayers at this time impressed me I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand. When on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in family worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus. And for every personal and domestic need, we all felt as if in the presence of the living Savior and learned to know and love him as our divine friend. As we rose from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father's face and wish that I were like him in spirit, hoping that in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged and prepared to carry the blessed gospel to some portion of the heathen world." And thus he was. But it was that stoking of the fire, morning and evening in the home, that caused his heart to be set upon the Lord Jesus Christ and motivated him to offer up his whole life in service to the Lord. And this is what we're called to do, to be a people who are praying continually, giving ourselves to the Lord so that in whatever we're engaged, whether it's foreign missions, work in the home, or work in the community in some other way, we are completely given to the Lord for every second of the day. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the way in which you worked in the Old Testament and in the New, and the way in which you continue to work today to set our hearts on you. We pray, Lord, that you would stir up this kind of devotion, this kind of sacrifice within our own homes, and that we would become those who train our young ones, who train visitors who come through our door, and who train one another to call upon you and to see that fire kept burning day and night. Thank you Lord for the promise that we will be doing this for all of eternity, singing these kinds of praises to your great name. Bless us toward this end as we look forward to a new week and we pray this in Jesus name.