What is family worship? (Click the arrow to the left)
As Christians, particularly Christian men, we are responsible to lead our households with strength and resolve in the ways of Christ. Leading our families in devotions and family worship is one way to lead our families, raising our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, Jesus Christ (cf. Deuteronomy 6:7; Ephesians 6:4).
In my house, we do morning and evenings. In the morning after we eat breakfast together, we all have our quiet times. We read our Bibles seperately and journal what we see. In the evenings before bed, we talk about what we saw in our morning Bible reading, I share my insight from my own devotional time, we ask questions from the New City Catechism, we sing a couple worship songs together, and then we pray as a family. Family worship doesn’t have to look like this. It may look different for every household, but I want to invite you to join me in leading our families well. Every weekday on this blog, I want to provide a guide for fathers to lead their families in some form of family worship. If your household doesn’t have a father, I believe the responsibility falls to the mother. Design a routine that works for your family, but be intentional about leading in the only way that matters instead of getting too caught up with the affairs of this world. Every Christian man is the pastor of his home. I believe the most important thing we can do for our children is (1) lead them in the home and (2) be faithful to the church as a family. As the family goes, so goes the nation. Our job as pastors to our family matters.
Daniel 9:24-27
24 “Seventy aweeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.
25 “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a adecree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until bMessiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.
26 “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.
27 “And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of aabominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
About 550 years before Jesus was born, Daniel was confessing his sin and petitioning God. Gabriel, an angelic messenger from God, met with Daniel in a vision and prophesied about a time when God would remove the sins of His people.
Daniel’s “weeks” in Daniel 9 are very cryptic, and people disagree about what the exact timing of Daniel’s “weeks” is, but notice a couple of easily recognizable elements:
- Daniel was told that the Temple in Jerusalem would be rebuilt.
- After the decree to rebuild the Temple was issued, there would be an anointed one—a ruler.
- The armies of this coming ruler would destroy the Temple after it was rebuilt.
- This ruler, the abomination of desolation, would stand over the Temple after destroying it until his own appointed time of destruction.
This was all an eerily accurate prediction of the liberation of the Jews by Cyrus (Persia), the incursion of Pompey (Rome) after the Temple was rebuilt, the destruction of the Temple under Titus’s Roman armies in the First Century AD, and the fact that Rome already had an appointed time for its own destruction before becoming a superpower in the first place. It was foretold that the events surrounding the coming of the messiah and freedom from sin would be such that no one could fake the coming of the messiah because no one could control these types of worldwide events. God told us about them 550 years before they happened so we would be able to believe His testimony about His Son, Jesus Christ.
The messiah would come after the decree to build the Second Temple but before the destruction of the Second Temple. He could not appear before or after and be in line with biblical prophecy. This messiah would come specifically to remove the sins of His people, not topple the empire God sent to shepherd His people, Israel. Jesus did come just as Daniel foretold. After Jesus made atonement, the Abomination of Desolation, Titus or Rome, did destroy the Temple just like Daniel predicted. Titus even offered pagan sacrifices on the Temple grounds. Daniel was correct about everything, and Jesus is the only one who qualifies as messiah according to the world-shaking events prophesied about. We can be confident in our faith because there is so much proof provided in the prophets about what would be—and has now come to pass.
Today’s question from the New City Catechism:
Q- Should those who have faith in Christ seek their salvation through their own works, or anywhere else?
A- No, everything necessary to salvation is found in Christ.
Galatians 2:16 says,
16 nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.
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