Joshua 24
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to the Old Testament, to the book of Joshua. Our reading
today is Joshua chapter 24 verses 1 through 28. We continue in our little series
we began several weeks back on the means of grace, the means
by which God communicates his grace to us. We’ve looked at
the word. We’ve looked at baptism. We’ve
looked at the Lord’s Supper. We have considered prayer. We
have looked at fellowship. And last week we studied the
topic of suffering. All of these are means or ways
by which God or through which God communicates or gives his
grace to us as we live life. Today we want to look at the
subject of family worship or family piety or personal worship. We can call it under a variety
of different things based on our situation in life. And we want to turn our attention
to the Old Testament, to the book of Joshua, where the covenant
was renewed between God and his people, between Yahweh and Israel
at Shechem. And this is after Joshua has
fearlessly led the people of Israel into the promised land.
They fought off the giants. They have received their inheritance
or their places in the land as their inheritance from God. And
so he is challenging them. He is warning them. And he is
having them promise before God that they will choose this day
whom they will serve, whether it will be the God of Israel,
Yahweh, or the gods of the peoples of the land. Let us hear from
God’s word together. Verse one of Joshua chapter 24.
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem. He summoned
the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel. And
they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the
people, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Long ago, your
fathers lived beyond the Euphrates. Terah, the father of Abraham
and of Nahor. And they served other gods. Then
I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him
through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac. And to Isaac,
I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country
of Seir to possess. But Jacob and his children went
down to Egypt. And I sent Moses and Aaron and
I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it. And afterward,
I brought you out. Then I brought your fathers out
of Egypt and you came to the sea and the Egyptians pursued
your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. And
when they cried to the Lord, he put darkness between you and
the Egyptians and he made the sea come upon them and cover
them. And your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived
in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land
of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan.
They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand. And you
took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you.
Then Balak, the son of Zippor, the king of Moab, arose and fought
against Israel. And he sent and invited Balaam,
the son of Baor, to curse you. But I would not listen to Balaam.
Indeed, he blessed you. So I delivered you out of his
hand. And you went over the Jordan, and you came to Jericho. And
the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites,
the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Girgashites,
and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And I gave them into your hand,
and I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before
you, two kings of the Amorites. It was not by your sword or by
your bow. I gave you a land on which you
had not labored, and cities which you had not built and you dwell
in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards
and olive orchards that you did not plant. Now, therefore fear
the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the
gods that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt
and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes
to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether
the gods your father served in the region beyond the river or
the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me
and my house, we will serve the Lord. Then the people answered. Far be it from us that we should
forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For it is the Lord our
God who brought us out of, and our fathers, up from the land
of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great
signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went,
and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord
drove out from before us all the peoples of the Amorites who
lived in the land. Therefore, we also will serve
the Lord, for he is our God. But Joshua, he said to the people,
you are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God, and he will
not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake
the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you
harm and consume you after having done you good. And the people
said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. Then Joshua said
to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have
chosen the Lord to serve him. And they said, we are witnesses.
He said to them, then put away the foreign gods that are among
you and incline your heart to the Lord, to the God of Israel.
And the people said to Joshua, the Lord, our God, we will serve
and his voice we will obey. So Joshua made a covenant with
the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for
them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words
in the book of the law of God. And he took a large stone. He
set it up there under the Terebinth and it was by the sanctuary of
the Lord. Joshua said to all the people,
behold, this stone shall be a witness against us for it has heard all
the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. Therefore, it shall
be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God.
So Joshua sent the people away, every man to his inheritance. Let’s pause and pray together.
Our Lord and God, these words are exciting to hear. They’re
exciting because it speaks of a people, our people, your people,
who are excited, overjoyed to worship you and serve you. Lord,
but it is full of weightiness. It is a heavy word. It is a word
that reminds us that if we are unfaithful, that you, you will
come to us. You will discipline us. You will
chase in us as a father who loves his own children does in this
world. And so we ask Lord to give us
Give us eyes full of faith to see the goodness in your word.
Give us ears that hear. Give us hearts that understand.
Give us wills that are willing to do what you ask for Jesus’
sake, for our sake, for the good of our neighbor, and ultimately
the glory of God. This we ask and pray in the name
of Jesus, our great savior. Amen. One of my family’s favorite
restaurants in Greensboro has a wall full of quotes. And if
we walk in that restaurant and we spend all our time reading
the quotes on the wall, we never end up at the register at the
front where you place your order for food. We were there on Friday. That was my father’s day outing.
and we were standing there reading the quotes on the wall. One of
them says something like this, the only job where you ever start
at the top is digging a hole. There’s another one that says,
why wait to strike until the iron is hot? Start striking the
iron and it will get hot. But one of the quotes that I’ve
seen there over the years that always stands out, I went through
the pictures in my phone trying to find it from several years
back when I first saw it. It’s a quote from Ronald Reagan,
and it’s not a political quote. It’s a family quote. And Ronald
Reagan said this, at least according to the wall on the pizza restaurant
in Greensboro, all great change in America begins at the dinner
table. All great change in America begins
at the dinner table. And so as we discuss today, some
topics related to Father’s Day, some topics related to our study
of the means of grace, as we think about leadership in the
home, and as we study or look at a practice that is largely
overlooked and really extinct in the life of the Christian
in America and probably most of the world, I want us today
to look hard at the subject of family worship. Some may call
it private worship, some of it may call it personal devotions,
daily devotions, family devotions, call it what you will, but I
want you to think of these things, Father’s Day, the means of grace,
family worship, And think of it in light of Joshua’s speech. Joshua was a father of the people
of God. He was their leader. Moses was dead. And it was Joshua
and Caleb who brought the people out of the wilderness and into
the promised land and settled them into their various inheritances
in the land of Canaan. It was Joshua who now was an
old man who had fought the battle of Jericho. It was Joshua who
led all the people in battle. It was Joshua who had kept them
spiritually and physically safe. He was God’s man. He was God’s
leader. He was the man for that time
that God used. God chose to serve the people
of Israel. And he’s issuing to them in his
old age, just before his death, if you just read a few more verses
on past where we read, Joshua passes away, Joshua dies, Joshua
goes the way of the earth. But he’s challenging them, he’s
warning them, and he’s renewing the covenant between the people
of God and God himself, Yahweh, there in the land of Israel. And he says, you all can do what
you want. I recommend you follow Yahweh.
I recommend you put away all the foreign gods of your fathers,
of your neighbors, and of the people who used to inherit this
place. And I recommend you follow Yahweh. As for me, and as for
my house, we will serve the Lord. As for me and my home, we will
follow King Jesus. I want us to think about this
subject today. I want us to think about it in
light of the family and our need as parents. Our need is grandparents. Our need is great grandparents.
Our need is spiritual mothers and fathers in the church to
nurture families and children in following the Lord Jesus in
this world. We’ll think of some hardships
and difficulties and some facts and some statistics, some roadblocks
and some challenges, but I wanna start at the tip top if we can. And I want us to first answer
this question today. What is worship? If we’re gonna
talk about worship in the home or family worship or private
worship, personal devotions, family devotions, it would be
good for us to define worship. Well, worship is simply this,
it is giving the glory that is due to God alone to him. We come into the house of God
and we worship him. We tell him who he is and what
he’s done. We speak back to him the words
he has spoken to us. We recount our experiences, the
goodness of almighty God. It is giving glory that is due
to God. Brothers and sisters, we have
been saved by the Lord Jesus. We have been saved by the Lord
Jesus from worshiping other gods to worshiping the one true and
living God. Think of the story of Abraham
who is living beyond the river. Beyond the river means beyond
the Euphrates. He was living in one of the greatest countries
of the world. It would be like living in New
York City today, just old times. He had everything he wanted,
art and culture and money and wealth. He had friends, he had
all the things he needed. And God says, move to the country.
Leave your family, leave your loved ones, leave your idols. and go to a land that I will
show you, and there you will dwell, there you will worship
me.” Worship is giving glory to God, which is do Him. And we have been saved by grace,
through faith in Jesus. We’ve been brought out of a far
country where we worshiped idols, and we’ve been brought into the
promised land to worship the living and true God. Our confession
of faith speaks of worship and it speaks of worship in this
way. It says God is the Lord and sovereign of the universe
who is to be feared. He is to be loved. He is to be
praised. He is to be called upon. He is
to be trusted and he is to be served. The scriptures we are
reminded through the Old Testament, but also the words of Jesus when
he spoke to those who challenged him on what are the great commandments.
We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all
our mind, with all our soul and all our strength. And so worship is giving glory
to God. It is giving him the glory that
is due his name. And we do so according to the
scriptures. Worship is worshiping God. It
is giving him the glory that is due his name. And we worship
him according to the scriptures in the way that he wants to be
worshiped. I want to remind you of something
as we consider this important subject, what is worship? God
made us to worship him. And even after the fall of mankind
into sin, God still wanted to be worshiped and adored. And
he had to make a way. And that way was through his
son, the Lord Jesus, that we could again come near, that we
could again have fellowship, that we could again come into
the presence of God and we could behold his glory. We could see
his face, experience his goodness and speak to him and tell him
of his wonder and his grace and his glory. And so we must remember
as creatures, as human beings, God made us to worship him. We
fell into sin because of Adam, and God has now recreated us
to worship him. And we will spend the rest of
life in eternity before the face of God in the new heavens and
in the new earth, worshiping the living and true God. Friends,
that’s only a snippet of what is worship, but I hope it gives
you a good taste, a good understanding of the basics. It is simply giving
God the glory that is due his name. A second question. What
then is family worship? Well, you gotta think about worship
in a number of ways. Together today, you have come
into the house of God. You’re in what we call corporate
worship. Corporate, the body. It’s the body of Christ worshiping.
And we gather here at 2250 Saddle Club Road in Burlington, North
Carolina, 27215. And we come together today in
faith. We come together today in the
name of the Lord Jesus. but we don’t worship alone. We
gather this day with those who around the globe call on the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And not only that, we gather
together with that great festal gathering, our loved ones whose
spirits have been made perfect and who are surrounding the throne
of God night and day, worshiping him. And so we gather to worship,
not just here, not just around the world, but we gather with
the saints who are in heaven and in glory worshiping. We come
to the Lord’s house on the Lord’s day to meet the Lord with his
people. Worship is corporate, but worship can also be private.
Some of our forefathers have called it secret worship. We
worship God alone, privately, personally. We go to our closets,
we wake in the morning, we spend our time in the evening, we read
the word, we pray the word, we sing the word, we meditate on
the word, we hide the word in our hearts. But worship can also
be in the family. We’ll say a bit more about that
in just a moment, but I wanna say to you one other thing. I
think something you understand well from our study of the book
of Titus. Worship is also all of life. God has made us for
himself. God has made us that we might
glorify and enjoy him. And over and over and over, we
like to speak of our daily living, our daily obedience, our daily
faithfulness to God as an act of worship. A friend of mine
tells the story of a dear friend who does not like
to do the dishes. And so over the kitchen sink
in that person’s home, they have divine worship three times daily. And what that person’s perspective
is this, is that everything I do is for the glory of God, everything
I do. And so you could put that over
the laundry machine. You could put that in your tool shed, out
in the garden, over the lawnmower. You could put it over the diaper
changing station in your home. Those of you who are tasked with
the weekly rolling out of the trash, you could put that over
the garbage cans. You could put it at your work station, in your
office. Everything you do is an act of
worship to the glory of God. But you see, it takes place in
different places. We come today because we’re called by God to
worship him together as a body. We go to work, we serve, and
we worship in all of life. But I want us to think for just
a few moments, what is family worship? If worship is giving
glory to God, if worship is giving God the glory that is due his
name, can and should it be done within the context of the family
or the home? and break that apart any way
you wish. You may be married. You may be empty nesters. You
may have grandchildren living in the home with you. You may
be in the house by yourself, but can you worship God in your
home? Well, if you study the scriptures
and you read the Hebrew way of life, you’ll remember that over
and over and over throughout the scriptures of the old, even
the new testaments, God’s people lived in families. God’s people
lived in families and the head of the household was to take
his family before God morning and evening. His job was to lead
them in the Passover. And you know, in the story of
the Passover, it says something like this. And when your children
ask, why don’t we eat the bread? Why do we eat the lamb? Why do
we put the blood on the doorpost? Why do we keep this feast and
do these particulars? You as the father are to say,
there was a time, dear child, when our people, when our forefathers,
your great, great, great grandparents were under Pharaoh. He treated
them harshly. They were slaves in Egypt and
they were miserable and they cried out to God and God sent
them a deliverer in Moses. And Moses came with Aaron and
delivered the people from Pharaoh through plagues and through speaking
the word of God. And there was this Passover where
if they put the blood on the doorpost, God would pass over.
But the firstborn, the children, where there was no blood on the
doorpost, they were taken, their lives, by God himself, the angel. of death. And so we read passages
like this where the head of the house is to lead his family in
observing who God is and what he has done. This goes on throughout
the Old Testament, throughout the Old Covenant. You bump into
it again in the book of Acts when the preachers of the New
Testament, the preachers of the gospel of Jesus are doing their
apostolic work and they say, repent and believe every one
of you, you and your whole household for the promises of God are for
you and your offspring. They are for you who are now
and those who are far off. If you make your way through
the history of the church, you’ll read some of the early church
fathers, for example, Tertullian, who spoke of the glory and the
value and the benefit of a pious or a holy home, where there was
a sweet marriage, where there were children, where the word
of God was read, where it was discussed, where there was prayer
and instruction and catechism and singing, and where God was
held at the center of the home. We read in Deuteronomy chapter
six about how as parents we are to sit and walk and dwell and
live and eat and do everything literally with our children so
that as we walk by the way and as we talk by the way, the children
begin to understand who God is and what he has done. And so
dear brothers and sisters in the home as Christians, we can
continue in this ancient path. If you make your way through
church history to the reformation, You find that Martin Luther conducted
in his home what was called table talk. And in Luther’s home in
the black cloister, you might find dozens of people at his
dinner table, eating his wife, Catherine’s good food and hearing
his good soul food. As he talked about the word of
God and discussed with those who would gather the glories
of who God is and what he has done. Now, make your way past
Martin Luther and a little bit more into our history as Scottish
Presbyterians, as those in the Reformed and Presbyterian faith.
Did you know that we have, it’s gone now, but we had a directory
for family worship in our church? And I’ll explain in a moment
why it is gone, but in the post-Reformation standards of the church, not
only was there a directory for the public worship of God in
church, but there was a separate directory ordering and showing
how families and homes ought to conduct themselves in private
or secret or family worship. And so you make your way through
the rest of church history into modern America, And you think
about modern America, what has taken place and how it has hurt
the family. It has hurt the church. But even
in our own denomination, the Associate Reform Presbyterian
Church, we carried forward until about 1977 mention of family
worship as a practice in the life of our families, of our
congregations. In fact, every January, every
January, we fill out what we call our statistical reports,
how much money we took in, how much money we spent, what went
to missions, what went to the denomination, how many are coming
to Sunday school, how many in the women’s groups, how many
in the men’s groups, who went on mission trips, who were elders,
who were deacons, did a deacon or elder pass away? All these
sorts of statistical questions. You know, a question is now missing
from our statistical report. This used to be a question of
our denomination. and God willing, it will be put back. But there
was this one question, I’m not sure when it was taken out, but
this one question was this, how many family altars are there
in your congregation? How many families have some sort
of active worship in their homes on some regular and routine basis? What a wonderful question. And
so dear brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, you
as, an individual in private, you as the leader of your home,
you as couples, you as a family, and those with you who are in
your home and at your table maybe. You can read the word. You can
discuss the word. You can pray the word. If you’re
so inclined, you could sing. And you can enjoy the special
presence and communion with each other and with God. A couple
of years ago, we were at a large family Thanksgiving gathering
out in Tennessee. And at that particular family
gathering, a lot of hustle and bustle, a lot of children, a
lot of grandchildren, a lot of dogs and other assorted beast
in the room. And the room got quiet for it
was time to say the blessing. And it was simple. The head of
the house stood up and read the Bible, and a hush went over the
room, and then there was prayer. And it changed the tone for the
rest of the afternoon. It was sweet, it was wonderful. And friends, let me just encourage
you, whether you do something big and long and drawn out because
you’ve worked at it over time, or you just start simple and
read a verse, say something about it and say a prayer, God will
be with you and bless you, and your home will be better for
it. I wanna talk third about the
benefits. family worship? What is worship?
It is giving to God the glory that is due his name. Can it
be done in families? Yes, it’s in the scripture, it’s
in church history, and it’s a wonderful thing. But what about the benefits
of family worship? It has been said that growing
churches are made up of growing families. And so if we have a
church full of households that are worshiping God in all of
life, worshiping God corporately when the elders call us together,
but worshiping privately, secretly, and with family, we will be a
healthy and thriving church. Another benefit to think of,
and this is one that our family has experienced and found great
promise and goodness in, If you have family worship with your
children, particularly when they are little, they will then be
able to sit in big church. It’s almost like a testing ground,
a proving ground, a training ground. If you read the word
and sing the word and pray the word with your children when
they are little, and then you take them to the Lord’s house
on the Lord’s day with the Lord’s people of whom they by covenant
are a part, they will then be able to participate. And it’s
such a blessing. Additionally, connected to that
thought, if you read the Bible, you read the catechisms, you
sing the hymns and you pray the word, your children will have
a literacy of the Bible, of the things and the stories and the
ways of the church that most children are not getting today. To speak negatively, we’re raising
our children on pop culture. We’re raising our children on
music and lyrics and values that are meaningless. It’s like feeding
them a box of Twinkies, no nutritional value. And so what we put in
them spiritually or intellectually is what will come out of them.
And so let me encourage you to think on this so well. There’s
a book that was written by a Princeton Theological Seminary professor,
a lady by the name of Kendra Creasy Dean. I’m not sure where
she is in the faith. I’m not sure where she is denominationally
or theologically, but she is dead accurate on this, her subject. And the title of her book is
called Almost Christian. And she takes it from that section
of the book of Acts where one of the governors before him,
the apostle Paul, has to give an account of what he has done
and what he’s accused of by the Jews. And he says to the Apostle
Paul, thou hast persuaded me almost to be a Christian. And so the premise of her book
is this. We have taught in the church, whether in big church
or little church or in youth group or children’s church or
whatever, we have taught something called moralistic therapeutic
deism. Now, what does it mean to be
moralistic? It means be good, right? Be good, do good, behave. Don’t shame your mom or your
dad. What is therapeutic? Feel good. What is deism? There is a God. He’s not really
sovereign. He’s not over this universe and
he really can’t help you out that much. But if you feel like
you need him, give him a call, give him a shout out, say a prayer.
And so the church over the last 50 years has really entered into
a failed experiment that a secular, not a Christian, but a secular
student of the American church has assessed as moralistic, therapeutic
deism. And so we’re wondering why the
second and third and fourth generation after us from the church doesn’t
love the Lord. It’s because we haven’t given them Christ. We
haven’t given them worship. We haven’t given them salvation
by faith through Jesus alone. We’ve given them moralism. Be
good, child. We’ve given them therapy, feel
good, honey. And we’ve given them deism, best
of luck to you in life. I hope that all I’ve taught you
about sports and education and I’ve got you into the right college,
I hope that bodes well for you. And there’s a God and maybe if
you get in big trouble, you can call on him. But dear friends,
we have the opportunity to change the world at our dinner table. And at our dinner tables, reading
the word, singing the word, praying the word, and recalling with
and together as a family all that God is and has done for
us in Christ. Just change the story of the
Passover. When the kids ask, why do we
go to church? Why do we keep that feast once a month on Sunday
where the elders come up and stand around that table and they
bring us this little bitty morsel of bread and this little thimble
full of drink? And you say to them, because there was a day
when we were enslaved not under Pharaoh, but under Satan. We were in darkness, we were
in bondage, we were in night, we were dead and God in Christ
has brought us alive and that meal, that supper, those things
we do at church, strange as they may be to the world, strange
as it may be to your friends and your loved ones, we do this
because Christ has loved us. Dear friends, we are in a time
where over the last 150 years or so in America, we have seen
great decline in religion, No, in the Christian faith. And that
decline has come because of the enlightenment. Man is the measure
of all things. Man is the measure of all things
and not God. And that’s an ancient old lie,
isn’t it? It’s just like that ancient old lie when Satan came
into the garden and said to Adam and Eve, did God really say?
And so we’re living in a culture that has put the word of God
away. We’re living in a culture that
is also secularized. It’s a culture that is divorced
from the reality that there is a creator and a sustainer of
the universe and that he is the Lord and the author of life.
And he’s given us a book. He’s given us in this book his
marching orders. And this is how we are to live
as Christians. But we’ve become secularized. We may attend church
on Sunday. We may say grace before the meal. But we’re largely a secular people,
a secular nation, we like to say. And sadly, we have traded
the dinner table for the minivan. We’ve traded the dinner table
for the suburban. And if any of you have a suburban
or a minivan, I apologize. But what I mean by that is this.
We are so busy now. Instead of gathering our children
around the table, we are ferrying them and carting them and taking
them all over the place. And so we may wake at six or
seven in the morning. We may leave the house for school
and work and all these other activities. And we may land our
plane about eight 30 or nine o’clock at night. And we’ve not
been together and we’ve not been together in the presence of almighty
God. You know, this world we live
in is busy. It takes up our time. We have left the days of cottage
industry where families usually work together and produce together.
We’ve gone to work. We’ve gone to the industry. We’ve
gone into the marketplace. We’re commuting hours and miles
to work nowadays. And we often don’t see one another. But wouldn’t it be a blessing
if we thought back to the Reformation, if we thought back to our forebears
in the Church of Scotland, if we thought about this wonder
of a directory of family worship, And we began to put into practice
in our homes, in our private lives, the worship of the living
and true God together as families. Yes, corporately, yes, all of
life, but maybe around the dinner table or some special time during
the week. Did you know that every conservative
Presbyterian and reformed denomination in America now no longer has
mentioned a family worship in their directory for worship?
I mentioned to you earlier, it was out in our denomination in
1970. But do you know when that decline started? It started in
1888. And you know why it started in 1888?
Because at one of our general synod meetings, a group of people
made a motion to take it out because most families by then
had quit doing it, and the elders and ministers of the church did
not want to have to discipline the families of the church who
weren’t doing family worship. Isn’t that interesting? It used
to be in our denomination just over a hundred years ago, a thing
to be done. And if it was a thing not done,
the elders would come and speak and encourage and promote it
in your household. And so our denomination in the
last year or so has begun again to reconsider family worship.
And so a committee was put together to study the merits of family
worship. And it seems to be a thing that we want to put into practice
in the lives of our congregations. Dear friends, let me commend
to you this old path, this old way, this old practice. We’re living in a time when not
only is family worship neglected and probably non-existent in
most homes, Lord’s Day corporate worship is as well. You talk
to most American church families and they may happen to make it
to the Lord’s house on the Lord’s Day to meet with the Lord’s people
once, maybe twice per month. That’s discouraging. That’s heartbreaking. And we wonder how can the family
succeed as we strive to live for the Lord in this hard and
dark world? Let me encourage you. Some of
what I may have said sounded a little weighty to you, a little
daunting, a little discouraging to you. Let me encourage you
in this way. Start some kind of tradition in your house. Set
a meal time. Set a special time in the living
room. Make a no phone rule. That’s really hard now, isn’t
it? No phones. Eat together, sit together, talk
together. Ronald Reagan was right. Change
can come in America through the dinner table. Some of you have
special tables in your home. You’ve got your chairs and maybe
your grandmothers. You’ve got your napkins, your
dishes, your place settings. You’ve got those when you’re
married. You’re celebrating your anniversary and you’re wondering
why you ever asked for those things because you never use
them. They’re too hard to clean. All the rest. You got your candles.
You know, maybe some of you have a table that’s not so special.
It’s just there and it’s got the mail on it, the bills to
be paid. It’s got your lazy Susan with your pills and your vitamins
on it. Who knows? Make sure whatever the case is,
that there’s a Bible. And you think of the words of
Ronald Reagan, that America can change. Now take it a step further. The family can change. Take it
even a step further than that. The church can change through
the table. We’re at that table, we say,
as for me, and as for my house, we will serve the Lord. Amen,
let’s pray together. Our Lord and God, we come before
you today as your people, bought at a great price through the
precious blood of the Lord Jesus. Lord, we want to love you, we
want to know you, we want to affirm you. We’re just plain
busy. Life flies by. We go here, we
go there. We pay bills. We go to this appointment
and that appointment. We have work hours. We have yards
to mow. We have cars to wash, oil to
change. We have groceries to buy, food to cook. We have downtime
and me time and sick time and all sorts of busyness. Lord,
help us in this busy world to stop for a few moments, to read
your word, to think on your word, to pray your word back to you,
and to receive your great blessing when we gather together in the
presence of two or more where you promised there to be also.
Lord, make this something that we desire to do because we see
it as good in your sight and a great benefit to our souls.
And we pray that here in our congregation, here in our family
of families, that as we do this, as we commit to this, as we think
on this, that it would be a great blessing to our city, to our
town, to our area, to our state. and even to the ends of the earth
because of the changes that can take place as we bow our knee
often to you. Help us in this. Help us in this.
Help us to be faithful, to desire it, and we ask it in Christ’s
name. Amen. Let us respond to God’s word
as we sing number 462, Savior, like a shepherd, lead us.