A special presentation with Pastor Mark Finley on the importance of family worship and devotion.

<p>A special presentation with Pastor Mark Finley on the importance of family worship and devotion.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Living Hope SDA Church

Mark Finley

The Importance of Family Worship

And if you're just slipping in, Tommy has a study guide.

If you don't have 1, just raise your hand and he will be more than happy to put a study guide in your hands.

If you are watching online because we're live streaming this program.

We will post the study guide online a little later to be sure that each 1 of you can receive a copy of the study guide.

The topic that we're going to address is rebuilding the family altar or how to revitalize your devotional life.

And as we look at the topic, I have really 2 goals.

Many of you are already having family devotions, but I want to help you to enhance those family devotions, so that those family devotions can even be more meaningful in your life.

We'll talk also about principles for those of you that may not be part of an immediate family, but you're living alone, you may be single, how to have a meaningful devotional life as well.

So 1 motivation is to revitalize devotional life.

The other motivation behind that is to really give you some practical principles.

I want, certainly, by the end of the class to bring some practical principles, and I brought a number of devotional aids that my wife and I either have used through the years, we're currently using, that we think will be helpful to you as well.

If you are here at the end of the class, I have a special little booklet that I'm gonna give to you called, What Happy Couples Know.

When I was with It Is Written Television, we interviewed 4 couples.

1 couple was in their 20s, 1 was, they just had gotten married, the other couple was in their 40s, another couple in their 55-60 range, another couple in the 70-80 range.

So we had the full range of marriage, about 50 years of experience, from the 20s to the 70s, and we developed a series of TV programs called What Happy couples know, the principles that they discovered.

So I have a little booklet on that that we'll be happy to give you at the end of class today.

Well, throughout the Bible, The concept of the altar is very, very prevalent.

If you look, for example, in the Old Testament sanctuary, there are 2 altars.

There's 1 that is in the court, which is the altar of burnt offering.

Then there's 1 in the holy place, which is the Altar of Incense.

The altar and the burnt offering represents the sacrifice of Christ, and so we worship because of his sacrifice.

The Altar of Incense, of course, represents the intercession of Christ.

So worship has to do with understanding his sacrifice for us on Calvary and the intercession of Christ.

When you look throughout the Old Testament, you see the people building altars.

Judges 6, Gideon builds an altar to worship God.

Jacob meets God, and in Bethel he erects an altar.

And then the psalmist David talks about his joy in worshipping, and you'll notice that in the second paragraph, and I'd like you to read the text with me at Psalm 43, verse 3 and 4.

So let's read together, O send out your light.

Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your tabernacle.

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and on the harp I will praise you, God, O my God." Now look at that text.

And the Holy Spirit leads us to the sanctuary, that's God's holy hill, the tabernacle and the most holy place in the presence of God.

We come to the altar of God, which represents worship and we find exceeding joy.

So it's at the altar, it's at the family altar that families find exceeding joy.

It's at the altar of worship that we as individuals find joy.

Now commenting on these altars in Child Guidance page 518, Ellen White says this, like the patriarchs of old, those who profess to love God should erect an altar to the Lord wherever they pitch their tent, that is wherever they live.

So we're admonished, build an altar just like Gideon built an altar, just like Jacob built an altar, just like there were altars in the sanctuary.

Now that's not a physical altar, but of course it's the spiritual language of erecting a spiritual altar.

Fathers and mothers should often lift up their hearts to God in humble supplication for the selves and their children.

In such a household, Jesus will love to tarry.

So when we establish the family altar, and we're coming there morning or evening, or we establish personal devotions ourselves, Jesus loves to tarry there.

So I'd like you to think of the altar as the place of worship, and as you come to the altar, Jesus comes with angels.

Jesus comes by His Holy Spirit and Christ is with you.

Now there's a tragically, in a survey of the Seventh-day Adventists around the world by the General Conference, we've just taken a world survey to try to get a grasp of what our people believe, understand, their practices and I was rather shocked when I learned that only 52% of Seventh-day Adventists have personal worship on a daily basis.

That means 48% of our members do not have daily worship.

But it becomes even more tragic when you look at the figures of family worship.

It's really troubling that only 37% of Seventh-day Adventist homes have family worship.

That's really tragic when you think about it.

That means a whopping 63% of Adventist homes are not having any family worship.

And we wonder why the latter reign of the Holy Spirit has not fallen.

We wonder why many of our churches are not more deeply spiritual.

We wonder why there is this laodicean complacency.

Well, if 63% of Seventh-Havenist homes are not having family worship, you can be understanding why you have this spiritual complacency.

Now, what are some of the reasons why people are not having family worship?

People get up, they've stayed up late the night before, and they feel pressured, they feel hurried, and they rush off.

2, the pressures of living in a postmodern culture were shaped by the culture around us.

3, the distractions of mass media culture.

It is very fascinating to me that the average American spends 2.4 hours a day, I put social media, but that's a little inaccurate, it's on Facebook.

If you take all the social media, it's going to be much more.

2.4 hours a day on Facebook, yet there's not enough time for family worship.

Things are too hectic, they're too rushed, they're too much in pressure.

Can I suggest to you that something is wrong with our priorities?

If we can spend 2.4 hours on Facebook and we cannot look up and see the face of Jesus in our family altars.

And there's a fourth reason that I didn't give you there, and it's a failure to understand its importance.

I think if you don't see family worship as incredibly important, there's a Bible passage that I'd like you to turn to in Proverbs chapter 22.

It's a text that I have read for years, but I never understood it fully until the last few years.

It's a text that either can give you great joy or great sorrow.

It says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he'll not depart from it.

Family worship helps us to train up our children in godly ways.

Now I've had parents come to me and they've thrown up their hands and they've said, Pastor Mark, I really feel so guilty.

Because I read that text and it says train up a child in the way he should go and when he's old he won't depart from it, I must have failed in the training up of my child.

I must have done something really wrong because he did depart from it.

In the Old Testament, most of it's written in Hebrew, but some in the Old Testament is written in Aramaic.

And this particular passage, the Hebrew words of the text have an Aramaic root.

It says, if you rub the gums of your child to help them to nurse, the taste will never leave their mouth.

Many Hebrew babies could not learn to nurse.

They couldn't learn to suck their mother's breasts.

So the mother, the Hebrew mother, would take her finger and she took a little glass, little wooden pitcher of water and mixed date sweetness in it.

Then she'd take her finger and she would put it in that water and date sweetness, the baby needed to learn to nurse and put it in the baby's mouth.

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The Importance of Family Worship

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