The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #1

Recently we looked at the concern the Church of Scotland had that fathers conduct family worship. Today we continue in this vein by looking at the first article of the directory for private worship. Although the language is archaic, with a little careful reading, it should be comprehended.

I. And first, for secret worship, it is most necessary, that every one apart, and by themselves, be given to prayer and meditation, the unspeakable benefit whereof is best known to them who are most exercised therein; this being the mean whereby, in a special way, communion with God is entertained, and right preparation for all other duties obtained: and therefore it becometh not only pastors, within their several charges, to press persons of all sorts to perform this duty morning and evening, and at other occasions; but also it is incumbent to the head of every family to have a care, that both themselves, and all within their charge, be daily diligent herein.

From this we see a concern that every believer be privately marked by regular prayer and meditation. This is seen by the church leaders of the time as the right preparation for all our duties – be they as husband, wife or child. Pastors were seen as having a duty to encourage very strongly all those in their congregation to perform prayer and meditation on God’s Word at both ends of the day (and other times to). Additionally, the heads of families (in most cases this would be the father) are responsible not only for there own spiritual feeding in this manner, but all in their household. This was a challenge to me as a father. Although we read the Scriptures together and pray together morning and night, I do not regularly check to see my children are reading the Scriptures on their own. This has encouraged me to do this more regularly.

Letter #1

I Won’t Believe Unless God Speaks to Me

Regarding your question about the friends who say they will not believe unless God speaks to them or reveals himself to them in a special way. First of all, I would ask them how do they know that he isn’t already doing so. This will probably surprise them. But this is the teaching of the Bible. Creation speaks of God every second of every hour, every day, throughout all ages. I’m sure you would have learned Psalm 19 as a child.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Here David poetically describes the truth that all of creation is a message from God about him addressed to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. This speech of God’s is able to cross any language barriers. It goes throughout all the earth. So God is doing amazing things and speaking amazing things every second. He is revealing himself every minute of the day through his creation. So the problem is not that God is not revealing himself…the problem lies somewhere else.

Think of it like this. Let’s say you visit someone who has a house right next to the motorway. Perhaps you have been living in the country all your life. When you visit this friend’s place, you will certainly notice the sounds of the cars whooshing past. You ask your friend how they manage to live with such noise. And what will their answer be? They don’t even notice it any more. In fact likely as not, they will find things extremely odd if they went to live in the country. Something would be missing, but they won’t be able to put their finger on it. It’s like this with God’s speech to us. The sun, the planets, the stars and the moon are all speaking to us. Actually speaking to us and telling us about God. But we have heard their voices our whole lives, and the background noise of their speech no longer signifies anything to us. Were they to stop (which is impossible, for all creation even the very stones must cry out testifying to God), we would suddenly realise that something has stopped. Something would be missing. So in one sense, our problem is that we are so used to God speaking that it has just become part of the background noise.  

But the problem is even deeper than this. For in our example, the person living next to the motorway can train herself to hear the sound of the cars passing if she concentrates. Our problem is our naturally rebellious hearts do not want to hear God. It’s a problem of our hardness of heart – our spiritual blindness and deafness. For example, Romans 1 teaches us that creation itself is sufficient to know God. Here is what Paul says in Romans 1:18-20.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

In other words, according to Paul, the knowledge of God is plain. So plain that God holds each one of us without excuse. We should be able to see his power and his divinity through his creation. But the rebellious human heart suppresses the truth. We bury it deep within us and any time this knowledge attempts to come to our consciousness in our natural rebellious state we push it back down again. The human heart does not want any reminders of God and his claims on us. 

This rebellious suppression of the truth is so bad, that it will reject even the most miraculous evidence of all. Take a look at the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. In this parable, the rich man ends up in torment, and he asks for the poor man Lazarus to be raised to life and tell his sinful brothers to repent so they can avoid his fate. In the parable, Jesus has Abraham tell the rich man that even if someone rises from the dead, they will not repent if they refuse to hear Moses and the Prophets. I think the point Jesus is making through this parable is that repentance comes not so much through seeing something miraculous and it changing you. Rather as Paul puts it, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17). Jesus’ point is even further underlined by the response to his own resurrection from the dead. This is a resurrection that was testified to by hundreds of people, including the apostles, all of whom (except for John) died gruesome deaths testifying to the risen king. (They were in the position to know whether the resurrection was a lie, but they died claiming it was true.) Even so, many of the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day carried on suppressing the truth even though they knew he had risen. Although the knew Jesus’ claims about rising from the dead (Matthew 27:62-64), when it actually happened, they tried to cover it up by paying the guards who had seen things to lie. (Matthew 28:11-14).

So in summary, God is speaking through his creation. He has spoken in his word which is powerful to change hearts. And he has spoken fully and finally through the Word, Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, we have the final and full revelation of God to us. As John puts it, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side; he has made him known.” (John 1:18). How can a God who has not a body like men reveal himself in the context of a world of suppressors of the truth? He becomes a man to make himself known. The incarnation is the great one-off miracle that reveals God to every human being.

Can miraculous events occur? Can God speak audibly? Can he come to us in visions? Of course. He’s God. Is this enough for a doubter to believe? No. God must change our hearts. Does God ordinarily work through visions and audible speech to draw people to himself? No. He usually uses ordinary means. It is his Word about Christ by his Spirit which breaks down our sinful rebellion and draws us to himself. 

Another question to ask these friends might be this one: Are you willing to bet your eternal soul that Jesus is not the king of the universe and requires you to repent and submit to him just because he doesn’t appear to you in the manner you want him to? Think about romantic relationships. Let’s say a guy wants to get to know a particular girl he is attracted to. He asks her out to watch drag racing with him. She’s not interested in drag racing and says no. Perhaps she suggests coffee instead. What would happen if the guy stubbornly says, “No, I want you to come to watch drag racing with me.” That’s just not going to happen. If he wants to get to know the girl, he must do it on her terms, not his own. God is there and he is not silent. He speaks, but we cannot demand that he reveals himself to us on our terms. He is God. He gets to dictate the terms of our relationship. If we refuse to accept this, we will never know him. 

A Father’s Duty in Family Worship

Recently I was reminded of the Directory for Private Worship which was put together by the 1647 Assembly at Edinburgh. The document gives directions for family worship. The General Assembly believed that family worship was so important to the purity of the Christian faith, that they appointed “ministers and ruling elders in each congregation to take special care that these Directions be observed and followed.” So seriously did they take family worship that where the elders found families not engaging in family worship as prescribed, the head of the family would first be privately admonished, but if he continued in his negligence, he would be debarred from the Lord’s supper.

While this may seem excessive to our modern sensibilities, we can hopefully see the propriety of the concern. Firstly, they were right to see the importance of the Christian faith being taught and practised in the home. It is not enough for our Lord to be mentioned once a week at church and then ignored the rest of the time. Deuteronomy 6 reminds parents that daily regular teaching of children is to be conducted. Secondly, the ASsembly was correct in holding fathers responsible for this duty. God has given fathers authority in the family unit, and he holds them responsible for the training of children as Ephesians 6:4 demonstrates.

This is not something for men to take lightly. While our church leaders may no longer bar us from the table, we should not hold lightly our duty in this area. God still holds us responsible and he will hold us to account. One thing our family has developed and grown in over the years is pairing meals with Scripture and prayer. We always eat together at the table for breakfast and dinner, so we almost always read Scripture together and pray as well.

In a series of posts we will look at the directions set out in the Directory for Private Worship.

Are you serving your children up to cannibals?

There are only two things wrong with our schools: everything that our children don’t learn there and everything they do. The public schools, with their vast political and bureaucratic machinery, are beyond reform. That does not mean that persons of goodwill should not offer themselves up as missionaries of truth and goodness and beauty, to teach there, as in partibus furibundis. But we would be quite mad to send our children there, We send missionaries to cannibals. We do not serve the cannibals our boys and girls.

Anthony Esolen on schooling in Out of the Ashes

Nothing but Blind Pitiless Indifference

Many of my readers are no doubt familiar with Richard Dawkins, probably the world’s most famous and outspoken atheist and critic of religion. The author of The God Delusion has recently had his 1996 humanist of the year award withdrawn by the American Humanist Association for statements that demean marginalised groups.

Just what statement was this? It was a tweet.

Harmless enough right? Well, not in this age. Especially not for the secular humanists. There is a beautiful irony in this. Rev Richard Dawkins has not caught up with the implications of his materialist religion. He’s the chap who wrote, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Here’s what happens when your religion has no transcendent authority mate. If there is no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, there certainly is no rationality. You’d be best just to watch which way the mob is going and run with them. Alternatively, you could stop suppressing the truth, believe in the God who is and who is the reason there is truth and rationality. That’s God’s voice you are hearing in creation that causes you to know men can’t really identify as women.

Who is changing Whom?

For a generation now, the air has been thick with the talk of “changing the world,” but who is changing whom? There is no question that the world would like to change the church. In area after area only the church stands between the world and its success over issues such as sexuality. Unquestionably the world would like to change the church, but does the church still want to change the world, or is its only concern to change the church in the light of the world? Something is rotten in the state of Evangelicalism, and all too often it is impossible to tell who is changing whom.

Os Guiness in Impossible People

Masculine and Feminine Imagery

Recently I’ve been thinking about why Christianity seems to currently appeal more to women than it does to men. As a man, I’ve found church services somewhat difficult for years now, despite acknowledging Christ as my King and Saviour and leading and teaching my family the faith.

A recent thought I’ve had is the images or metaphors we use for the faith. Some of these are more feminine and others more masculine. Consider first the way Christianity can be described as a relationship with Jesus. Songs can be sung about this relationship and we can celebrate Jesus as our friend and the lover of our soul. Obviously, these are biblical truths. This metaphor appeals to a more feminine approach to faith.

Now consider the way we can describe the faith in military terms. Jesus is our king. We are in a battle, but the powers of darkness are being subdued and Christ will make a footstall of all of his enemies. Again, biblical truths, but this imagery resonates far more with a masculine approach to faith.

Does the church need to balance out the relational imagery a bit more with the more masculine warfare imagery to engage men? Imagine if in our church services we sung more songs that focus on the kingship and authority of Christ and the destruction of evil and the danger of the battle we faced. Imagine if the tunes we used were more majestic and triumphant. Imagine if our services were like military briefings where the troops were updated on the battle, encouraged and given their orders as they go back out into the battle during the week.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t the main issue men have with church, but I think the imagery we use is probably symptomatic of a larger problem – a feminine approach to faith that disengages men.

Envy – the sin nobody readily admits to

The following is an extract from Douglas Wilson’s blog, which I’ve become a bit of a fan of. You can find the full post here. It’s an extract from a short sermon on the topic of envy which seems to me to be a very important topic at present.

In striking contrast to many other sins, nobody readily admits to being envious. Envy is petty and malicious. Envy is unattractive to just about everybody, and in order to operate openly in the world, it has to sail under false colors. Envy is clandestine; envy is sneaky. To admit to envy is to admit self-consciously to being tiny-souled, beef jerky-hearted, petty, and mean-spirited, and to admit this is dangerously close to repentance. To be out-and-out envious is to be clearly in the wrong, to confess yourself to be an inferior.

And so envy often decks itself out with the feathers of admiration, and tends to praise too loudly or too much. One writer said to “watch the eyes of those who bow lowest.” The praise can come from someone who does not yet know his own heart, or it can come from someone who is trying to position himself to get within striking distance. Guard your heart; don’t allow yourself to become an unctuous or oily flatterer.

Envy occupies itself much with matters of social justice, and becomes a collector of injustices, both real and imagined. Since envy cannot speak its own name, the closest virtue capable of camouflaging the sin is zeal for social justice. And since true Christians should be very much concerned with genuine justice, be sure to run diagnostics on your heart as you do so. This is because our modern political tangles are a veritable festival of envy, everywhere you look. Trying to find envy in our political disputes is like trying to find some beads at the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade.

And envy gets worse as a person’s gifts get greater—when dealing with talent, artistic temperaments, and great intellectual achievements. We sometimes assume that we can “cultivate” our way out of the temptation, which is the reverse of the truth.