Just this past week, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to pass a resolution on the importance of family worship. I am greatly encouraged that among all the important issues to address in our day, our convention leaders and messengers saw fit to make this a priority and pass this wonderful resolution affirming and encouraging biblical family worship. I encourage you to read it below.
Matthew Henry, the great Puritan preacher and author, wrote these words: “I know not any thing that will contribute more to the furtherance of this good work than the bringing of family religion more into practice and reputation. Here the reformation must begin. Other methods may check the disease we complain of, but this, if it might universally obtain, would cure it. Salt must be cast into these springs, and then the waters would be healed.”
This message is designed to help fathers (and parents generally) fulfill their high calling and privileged blessing of leading their families in worship and discipleship. Our age is one which professionalizes Christianity and calls on the clergy to do the work of ministry. But God has not ordered it so (Eph. 4:12
)! The command to transmit God’s Word and make disciples in the home is given to parents directly (Dt. 6:4-9; Eph. 6:4). They are the teachers, trainers and worship leaders of their children. Therefore, if we are to recover biblical ministry and biblical church life, it must begin with a reformation of family worship. I pray that this message and these resources will help us all be more faithful to raise our children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). May Christ get all the glory in every home!
Here is a short video from John Piper about how he got his children started in private devotions:
“Here the reformation must begin.” Those were the words of Matthew Henry on April 16, 1704 when he preached an abundantly practical sermon entitled, “A Church in the House, A Sermon Concerning Family-Religion,” as an encouragement to fathers to develop the spiritual life of their families in their homes. Henry exhorted that “every house should be a little church.” His point was not that the home should replace the church, but that the home should become a fountain of blessing for both the local church and the community at large.
His precedence is thoroughly biblical:
“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)
For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments (Psalm 78:5-7).
Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)
It’s time that modern fathers listened to the ancient words of Scripture and the wisdom of godly men of old who raised their children in the ways of Jesus Christ. Let’s stop pointing fingers at the public schools, the fractured government, and weak youth ministries. Parents - God has called YOU to be the primary disciplemakers in your home! I urge you to look at the attached document, Family Worship Resources, and begin the journey on leading your own wife and children in the worship of Jesus Christ. Let’s band together and encourage one another to live and lead worship in our own homes. Let’s make “every house a little church.” Soli Deo Gloria!
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