Okay, well, we are tonight going to continue our series of Covenant Life together, and tonight we are continuing our section from last week, Personal and Family Worship. Two weeks ago, I should say, we talked about the place, the biblical warrant, and a little bit of the house of personal devotions. And this week, we are going to consider the same with respect to family worship. So let me just, why don't you do this? Why don't you turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter six? We're going to be there in just a few moments. But before that, let me just read the sentence to you from paragraph three of our membership covenant. Because remember, as I bring everything back to the center here, what we're doing is we're going through our Grace Covenant Church membership covenant. We are reminding ourselves of what our covenant obligations are before God and before this congregation. We hope, with the help of the Spirit and the Word, our hearts are being stirred up, as it were, to be renewed again to a zeal to carry these things out for the glory of God and the good of our brothers and sisters, and the good and well-being of our own souls, knowing that God established the church for all the world to see the beauty and majesty of Jesus Christ. And if I could put it another way, we are the feet and the hands and the lips, if you will, of Jesus Christ. We are, if I could put it even more metaphorically, Jesus Christ to the world in our witness. In fact, there are some people of whom we are the closest thing they're going to see of Jesus Christ in this world. Now on the one hand, that's a little scary, isn't it? On the other hand, it reminds us that we need to glorify Christ in all that we do. So that when people see us, as we sang in that beautiful hymn this morning, they would forget the channel and see only Jesus Christ. I love that. They would forget the channel, not see the channel through which that witness comes, which is us, but just see Jesus Christ. So our sentence in paragraph three is this. We commit to practice personal and family worship to train our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So tonight, let's talk about family worship, and I wanna begin with just a simple question. What is family worship? Before you came to this church, raise your hand if you had never heard of family worship. Raise your hand. Okay, good. That's wonderful. That's a good sign. I would define family worship this way. A specific time set aside each day where the head of the family, whether that is the husband or in the cases of a single parent, maybe a single mom or a single dad, whoever the head is of that family sits down with his family, his or her family, reads scripture, explains the meaning, applies it, prays, sings, and instructs. This is something that we want to try to do every single day. Now the second thing I want to ask is this, do I really need family worship? Well, I want you to think about for a moment how much time the world, the flesh, and the devil has throughout the week to influence the thinking and the heart of your children. There are, don't need to remind you, ungodly influences at school, on the TV, social media, billboards, radio, friends, Christian and non-Christian. And of course, you know, you can shelter your children for a while, right? But there's pros and cons to that. In fact, if you carry on that sheltering helicopter parenting mode too long, what's gonna happen? they're not gonna be prepared for the world. So there's a sense in which it's a both and, you on the one hand wanna shelter them from some things, but there comes a point in the life of your child, and each child is different, where you're going to expose them to some things of the world, but you are going to supplement that with what? a Christian worldview that gives them a grid through which they can interpret those things in the world and distinguish between right and wrong, distinguish between wisdom and folly, decipher the voice of Madam Folly and Lady Wisdom and choose life. You can't shelter your children forever. Furthermore, you need to teach them how to think about all the things that they see and experience. You need to teach them, as I said, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And in order to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, they need to have a Christian worldview. And let me tell you something. A Christian worldview is not something that you can just hand a child a book or a teenager a book and say, you know, read this and call me in the morning, okay? It is a longstanding, gradual, progressive lifetime of instruction and lenses, if you will, spiritual and mental lenses that you not only teach your children, but they must catch from you, okay? Discipleship is caught, it's not taught. Okay, I love that phrase. There is some teaching involved in discipleship, but primarily discipleship is caught, not taught. A disciple learns by, if I could put it this way, osmosis. By being next to the One, the people in this congregation that reflect the image of Jesus Christ. And as young Christians look at them, they look at the husbands who are leading their wives, they look at the wives who are being the godly Sarah's in the world and godly Sarah's to their husband and to their children. As they look at teenagers who are following Christ in that season of life and they say, oh, that's how you do it. Through osmosis, they learn how to copy. So discipleship is caught, it's not taught. And that lofty responsibility of bequeathing, love that word, bequeathing to your children a Christian worldview is not the primary responsibility of the school, God help us, or the state, or the pastors, or the Sunday school teachers, or the TV, it's the parent's responsibility. And I thank God that we don't have at this church people who come and complain to us that, you know, pastors are not doing the job of rearing their children. Because I think everybody in this congregation gets the point that the primary responsibility of training your children is yours as parents. I like the figure of the man as the priest of the home. He very much is. Don't take that too far. Don't take it too literally. But like Job did in the beginning of the book of Job, he's praying for his children. He's interceding for his children. He's trying to instruct his children. And so it is our responsibility as well. So I hardly think, listen to me, I hardly think that after a child, I don't care what age they are, after a child has spent six days in the world with all its godless thinking and worldly influence, that coming to Sunday school for an hour and making a craft of Noah's Ark is going to be sufficient to prepare them to stand on their own two feet. Do you? I don't think so. Now, I want them to make crafts of Noah's Ark, that's great, but it goes beyond that, doesn't it? So what is the biblical warrant for children, or excuse me, for parents shepherding their children? And really, if I could put it another way, is there some type of biblical warrant or biblical blueprint in the Bible for family worship? Yes, there is. Let's look at Deuteronomy chapter six. Now this is just one of many passages. You could cross-reference if you want. Deuteronomy chapter 10, 18 through 21, it says something similar. But let's just listen to the words of Deuteronomy chapter six verses one through nine. This is the word of God. Let them fall on your ears and let the weight and the gravitas of this responsibility be received into your heart, not with fear, but with joy. Because if you are a parent who believes in Jesus Christ, you have the spirit of God within you. You have the very words of scripture bound up. You have Christ living within you and there is much hope, parents. So Deuteronomy 6. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it. that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and all his commandments which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey." Here's the famous Shema, Deuteronomy 6.4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. All these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. 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. Now that's pretty extensive, isn't it? I mean, let's put this into 21st century terms as you are sitting in your house at dinner, when you walk by the way, okay, while you're driving in your SUV, okay, maybe turn off the radio and catechize your children, test out those new catechism questions, ask them to cite their new memory verse, maybe sing a hymn with them. When you lie down before you go to bed, okay, you say a prayer with your children. When you rise up in the morning, maybe if the father has not left out for work yet in the morning and the family's together, he reads a portion of scripture, he prays over his children, he asks them specifically for what can I be praying concerning you. This is just life. Family worship, listen, is baked into life. It's just baked into everything that we do. Let me take you to Deuteronomy 4, 9 and 10. It's probably just a page before. Deuteronomy 4, 9 and 10. Moses says, that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children, how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, gather the people to me that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so. I told you the story this morning about Joel Beakey, that experience that he had in Latvia where he was accosted by two assailants, Russian mafia, and they had the knife in his back and all those things. And you remember that he said, the Lord kept giving to me this steady flow of promises. They were just coming to me. He said, even right now as I'm writing this, I can't remember verbatim all the words of those promises and those scripture texts, but in that moment, in a moment of utter fear, they were just coming to me. And he said, the only other time that I experienced this was when I was saved at the tender age of 16, and like a breaking of a dam, all these promises were just coming to me. Let me ask you a question. Where do you think that came from? That man was reared and cut his teeth on family worship. His parents gave to him the most blessed gift that parents can give to their children, which is a godly Christian upbringing. And if I can just encourage you this morning, my wife was telling me, she had a great observation today. She said, I feel like there's two ditches that parents fall into, especially in Calvinistic circles, when it comes to raising children. On the one hand, it's like, If my kids are going to be Christian, it's all dependent on me. Everything I do matters, and raising children is like baking a cake. You just get all the ingredients right, and if you get all the ingredients right, and you put it in the oven for the right amount of time, you pull it out, and bing! You've got Christian kids, okay? That's the formula, right? That's one ditch people can fall into. That's probably more the Armenian side. Then there's the other side, which is I think what we're prone to is There's nothing we can do. Nothing we do matters. We could have family worship every night, but none of it matters because it's all dependent on God's sovereignty. So, kay, sirah, sirah, whatever will be, will be. Well, both of those are ditches to avoid, right? What we do matters. What we put before our children or what we don't put before our children matters. And just as the Lord uses our prayers to fulfill his providence and flesh out his sovereignty, So he uses the efforts of our child-rearing to bring our children to the foot of the cross. And so we should not fall into this wicked, hyper-Calvinistic ditch of saying, well, it's just all up to God. Well, that's true, that's true. It's also up to God to provide for me, but I still get up in the morning, shave my ugly mug, and get out and get to work. because what I do matters. And the Lord determined that I would do that just as much as He determined that He will or will not save my children. And so what we do matters. And Joel Beeky was saved at the tender age of 16, I believe firmly, part and parcel through the means of his family, his father and his mother, putting before him family worship. So let me just make a quick comment on Proverbs 22.6, because I do want to dispel a few myths. Oftentimes people will go to Proverbs 22, six, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Now, let me ask a question and let's get interactive. Okay. Is Proverbs a book of concrete, absolute promises that will be fulfilled in every single case of the righteous? Yes or no? No. Proverbs is wisdom. Proverbs is Wisdom 101 that says, generally speaking, if you do good, good will come to you, and generally speaking, if you do wicked, wicked will come to you, okay? But then you've got, you know, Wisdom 201, Job and Ecclesiastes and Asaph and Habakkuk, and they come in and say, excuse me, it doesn't always work out that way, okay? And they give you their literature. Well, same way here. This is a general truism. It is a general truism. And by the way, I have seen this time and time and time again. I see this in my Presbyterian friends, families, blessed chain, unbroken chain of generation after generation after generation of Christians. because they are diligently seeking the Lord's face, not only in their own lives, but seeking to put it before their children. So it is generally true that if you train a child up in the way it should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it, but it's not a concrete promise. And so again, on the one hand, we should be careful not to fall in the hyper-Calvinistic ditch, and on the other hand, we should not fall into the ditch of thinking that everything that we do is going to necessarily produce a Christian. So is there historical precedent for family worship? There is, but I'm just gonna kind of pass by that this evening and let me come to E in your notes, if any of you even have your notes. Let me give you three reasons to catechize. Does anybody know what catechize means? Anybody? Instruct, that's all it means, okay? Catechesis is instruction. In fact, that word comes from the Greek, and that word is found in the book of Ephesians as well. So it's a biblical word. It's a biblical Greek word. It just means to instruct. Now, in our tradition, we have a longstanding tradition of, and to be quite honest with you, we got it from the Roman Catholics. I mean, the Roman Catholics have a catechism as well. And when the Protestant Church broke away from Rome, they of course kept the good things, okay? They didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. They kept the good things and shed the bad things. And catechism was one of the things that they kept. Of course, they completely revamped the catechism, because the Roman Catholic catechism, A, is almost all wrong, and B, is really long. Have you ever seen the Roman Catholic catechism? It is super long. It's not meant to be like a Q&A. It's like a digest of Roman Catholic doctrine. So the Protestant reformers, many of them made their own catechisms. Hercules Collins made a catechism. He was a Baptist who, I think in the 17th century, he took the Heidelberg Catechism and he tweaked it a little bit to make it Baptist and then gave that to his church. Of course, Charles Spurgeon made his own catechism. Calvin, Luther, everybody's got a catechism. Even Timothy Keller today has something called, I think, the New City Catechism. Catechism is a long-standing tradition that the reformed Christians have used to instruct and place into the hearts and minds of their children the Christian faith. And here's the thing, I know some people think, well that's a little antiquated, it's a little dated. Look, you want to come up with your own method, go for it. Okay. But the beautiful thing about the catechism is it's all there. Like, you know, it's one of those things like there's no need to reinvent the wheel. The wheel is already here. You can make another wheel and make it blue rather than red. But I mean, here's a wheel it's ready to go. And who has time to create their own catechism in today's busy schedule? So it's a longstanding good tradition. It's very helpful. And let me give you just three reasons why I think it is beneficial to catechize your children. Number one, A catechism encourages the unity of essential beliefs among God's children. So many people want to know what constitutes a true Christian essential teaching. What are the primary teachings of the Christian faith? Catechetical instruction can help promote unity amongst Christians by helping establish the fundamentals of the faith. The catechism is not going to go into highfalutin Christian theology. It's just getting to the basics. It's getting to like the doctrines of grace, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, creation, redemption, or creation, salvation, and recreation or glorification. It talks about prayer. It talks about what sanctification is, how it works. It talks about how to pray, just the basic Christian beliefs. And by the way, sadly, your average pew sitter in the Broadline Evangelical Church is ignorant even about these things. And these are things that we need to teach our children. So secondly, a second benefit to catechizing is that catechism promotes a faster, deeper understanding as verses are tied to appropriate questions. Children are helped to tie verses to meaning through the use of questions and answers. So children begin to understand the usefulness of God's word as they see how clearly it answers important questions, okay? And then finally, Catechism stimulates and motivates learning because most children, especially younger ones, love to answer questions. Questions are a teacher's most useful ally because through them one gains access to precious minds. If you think of it, if you think of Jesus' ministry, he often used questions, didn't he? And I was just talking to Sam Powell, and he was telling me how in school, I don't know if it was classical conversations or what, but they have these conversations that are built on what's called the Socratic model. Anybody know where that came from? Socrates. Socrates was one of the greatest thinkers, one of the greatest philosophers of the Western world. And you know that oftentimes the way Socrates made a person look like a fool is not by giving them a monologue. But he just kept asking them questions, and with every question he was feeding them more rope, more rope, more rope, until they put it around their heads and they hung themselves, philosophically. The idea is you can teach something and convey something to someone and have them included in the process by question and answer. So those are three reasons why it's helpful to catechize. But now let me move on to just give some practical suggestions for leading in family worship. And then I think we actually will get some time to get some discussion and questions. So I'm gonna suggest one, two, three, five practical suggestions, okay? Number one. Set aside, this sounds familiar, doesn't it, a time each day when the family can expect to sit down and have family worship together. You just, just like personal devotion, you have to have a time. Children, listen to me, please listen very carefully, children need structure. Right? Okay? Children need, if children don't know what to expect, what are they gonna do? They're gonna misbehave. They need boundaries. They need boundaries. I heard the story one time of a vast field. And at the end of that field, there was like this big ditch. And the children wouldn't go close to that ditch for whatever reason, which is kind of weird because children are naturally inquisitive, right? But then the authorities put up a fence. right up, that butted right up next to that ditch. And after that, the children went right up to the fence. Why? Because they need boundaries. With boundaries, they feel safe. With boundaries, they feel secure. With boundaries, they know what to expect. If you and your family worship just say, whenever daddy feels like it, you're not going to get children who are going to be conducive for family worship because they're going to be erratic and they're going to be crazy. You need a time where children can say, this time after dinner or before dinner or during dinner or whatever, this is when we do family worship. I remember Joe Gwynn was telling me a story one day over lunch that He said he saw one of his child's teenage friends, and this was years later, and he said that the teenage friend told him, Mr. Gwynn, I always knew what was going on at five o'clock at your house because I'd be playing with your son, and then all of a sudden he'd be like, it's 4.55, I gotta go. He's like, where are you going? We have family worship. Every day at five o'clock, they had family worship. And you knew where Joe Gwynn's kids were at five o'clock every single day. Wouldn't that be great if, you know, they used to have an advertisement on the TV when I was watching TV late at night. It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your kids are? Do you guys remember hearing that? Or if it's five o'clock, are you having family worship? That would never get on the TV, but wouldn't that be awesome? So set aside a time each day for family worship. Secondly, and this is very important. Heads, husbands, you must put some time, a little forethought and time into what you're going to read and what you're going to say, okay? Please don't go in willy-nilly. Treat this as seriously as you would treat a report that you would give to your superiors at work. You should, in all honesty, you should treat it more importantly. We're talking about the souls of your children. Don't go in there and say, well, you know, let's read this, and I really have no idea what it means, so let's just pray real quick. No, put some forethought into it. And in order to put forethought into it, it would also be helpful for you to have a reading plan for your family. Just as you have a reading plan for personal devotions, a Bible reading plan, you should have a Bible reading plan with your family. I'll just tell you anecdotally what we do. I told you two weeks ago that I got overzealous early on in our marriage and I tried to get too aggressive in reading the Bible. I've now in 2019 come to the conclusion that with my family, we should just plan on getting through the whole Bible probably in three years, right? I think it's basically what it comes down to. So we're reading like the second half of the Old Testament right now, or the second third of the, or the third third of the Old Testament. but have a plan, and sometime during the day, maybe during your personal devotions, peruse your family worship reading selection, and just prepare a thought or two. Just, this is what it says, this is what it means, and how does it apply, okay? Thirdly, While the style and content of family worship is gonna vary depending on the age of the children or even the absence of the children, here are some helpful things to include in family worship. Let me give you one, two, three, four, five. Five things to, this is kind of like a rubric for family worship, okay? So number one, you begin with scripture reading, okay? And as I said, think through a Bible reading schedule. It's good to have older children read the scriptures. You don't always have to read the scriptures. You can have an older child, especially who is learning how to read, read a portion of the scripture, or maybe have your wife read a portion of the scripture. You don't always have to do it, but read the scriptures. And then secondly, as I said, give a simple explanation and maybe one or two points of application. And in that application, if I can help you to mine out some application, just ask yourself this question, so what? Who cares? Ask yourself that question. As you read Deuteronomy chapter six or Joshua chapter 24 or whatever, when you get done reading it, ask the question, so what? Here's another probably more important question to ask, especially if it's in the Old Testament. How does this text point to whom? Jesus, okay? We're not religiously Jews, we're Christians. And so when we read that Old Testament, we should have our Christocentric lenses on, looking for Jesus in every page of scripture. So what does this have to do with us? How does it connect to Christ? If you have teenagers, you might ask yourself, how does this apply to peer pressure for teens, or sharing toys with my siblings for smaller children, or obeying mom and dad, the importance of the faith, church, prayer. This is where integrating your personal devotions and family worship can be beneficial. So say, for example, you read Colossians 3 in your personal devotions, collect a thought for your own life, and then think through how it applies to your family's life, and then present that exhortation in family worship, okay? Let me give you an example. Ask questions of your family. So for example, if we read Hebrews 13, and we come on Hebrews 13, 16. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. What would be a good question to ask your five-year-old after reading that verse? Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Share your toys, there you go. That's where that kid lives, right? They live in the world of Transformers and everything else. All right, and then now thirdly, catechize. Now instruction does not have to come from the catechism, but as I said, it's a time-honored tradition and I think it's helpful. There are all kinds of catechisms. If you want more questions about what catechisms to use, you can come and ask me. If you have small children, please come and talk to me if you don't have a catechism, because we use what's called the Truth and Grace Catechism. It is a wonderful program of not just catechism questions, but Bible memory verses that is integrated together with hymns. And what it is for ages two, and then three and four, and then five and six, it has a yearly goal of what you get through in that year, and it's very reasonable. Okay? So you can use that. And then after you've read scriptures, you've catechized, now you pray, ask for prayer requests, and then have each person pray. You know, if you have small children, just keep your prayers short. Keep them short so that the attention span is able to keep up as much as possible. And then when you end, sing the doxology or some other hymn. You can do all those things, scripture reading, catechism, prayer, and singing the Doxology, you could do all of that in 10 to 20 minutes. 10 to 20 minutes. And if you're just starting out and you're like, I can't even do 10 to 20 minutes, then cut off one of them, cut off two of them, and just do five minutes. Start with scripture, and then when you get a little more proficient, add in prayer, add in the doxology, and add in catechism. And finally, have realistic expectations in the beginning. Every family worship session will not be amazing. Every family worship session, can I just tell you, especially for you parents with young children, I'm just gonna be honest with you, I struggle with anger, during family worship, I'm just being brutally honest with you, it's gotten better, but early on I struggled with anger because those kids had the audacity to not sit still. They're three year olds, Josh, settle down. Okay, but you know what, can I tell you something? Do you know what else you're doing in family worship? You're teaching your children how to sit in church. And so it's incredibly important. But let me just remind you, don't get overwhelmed if your kids don't act perfectly. It's your job to teach them. And so it's going to be a process. Okay, so be patient and keep in mind that you're teaching them to sit in church. And who was it, was it Charlie Hodges who said, one of the best things that, he's a Christian counselor, one of the best things my mother and father gave me was the ability and the skill of sitting quiet and listening, even if I didn't care what they were saying. or even if I wasn't interested, but that gift has taken me through life and proved to be beneficial over and over again, not only in church, but in boring business meetings at work, or sitting through a story that somebody's tell you that frankly you don't care about, because you got an appointment, you got to get some. That gift is extremely helpful. So you're not just training them for church, you're training them for life. Now, let me end with this. Do you guys know who John Patton is? John Patton was a missionary to the New Hebrides, which was an island in South Pacific, and the New Hebrides was an island full of cannibals. He was a Presbyterian missionary. He lost how many wives, babe? Three wives, how many children? A number of children, many well-meaning Christian brothers and sisters before he went were telling him, you're crazy. You're going to be eaten by the cannibals. Don't go. Don't go. But he went. And I just want to read this story from his autobiography or from his biography about the time in his life when he was leaving home to go to college. And shortly after college, he would become a missionary to the New Hebrides. This is what he says. My dear father walked with me for the first six miles of the way. He's going to college. 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 hat in his hand, 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 we would lose sight. He would lose sight of me. I looked back and saw him still standing with his 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 towards 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, tears, the road, the dike, the climbing up on it and then walking away, head uncovered, uncovered, have often, often, all through 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 Pharisaism 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. What was the underlying motivation that led John Patton to love his father and his faith so much? Patton answers this way. He says, When on His knees and all of us kneeling around Him in family worship, He poured out His whole soul with tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus. And for every personal and domestic need, we all felt as if in the presence of the living Savior. and learned to know and love him as our divine friend. As we rose from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father's face and wish I were like him in spirit, hoping that in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged and prepared to carry the blessed gospel to some portion of the heathen world. With such a father as this, are you surprised that John Patton went to the cannibals? God bless the institution of family worship. And may the Lord use us, especially you husbands, to have the audacity to put Jesus Christ before your children in such a way that they embrace him and love him and come to him at the foot of the cross. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the gift of salvation. And Father, it is the ardent cry I know of every father and mother here that you would give to your son the souls of our children. Father, we recognize and confess to you that our attempts at pushing them in that direction are often fraught with confusion and sin and anger and grumbling and bad examples. Father, we confess this to you, but Father, fill up our broken efforts with the righteousness of your son. Fill us, Father, even more so with your spirit that we might find it a joy, not just a duty, though it is, but a joy and a privilege to bring our family before the word of God and to the foot of the cross and to give them the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ. Help us in 2019. For your honor and glory, we pray. Amen. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. You are dismissed.