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.
John 7:53-8:11 Initial Notes
53 [Everyone went to his home.
Chapter 8
1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them.
3 The scribes and the Pharisees *brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court,
4 they *said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act.
5 “Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?”
6 They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.
7 But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
8 Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court.
10 Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?”
11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”]
John 7:53-8:11 are not in the earliest and best manuscripts. The Christian faith is unique in that we are encouraged to investigate, like Nicodemus, and see what is true. We aren’t to have blind faith. The Bible never claims to be the way to life. While cults around the world blindly follow the doctrine of one man or their own sacred writings in dogmatic fashion, the Bible is different in Christian faith and life.
I do believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible in its autographs, but it is not the source of life or the way to Heaven. Jesus is. We find life not in our scriptures but in Christ alone. The Bible is not the fullness of the revelation of God… Jesus is.
Because of this, we have the freedom to do good textual criticism to see what might or might not have been written in the autographs but was added later. Through good textual criticism, we have been able to identify John 8:1-11 as such.
God has been good to preserve so many manuscripts to the extent He has so we can know what He has inspired biblically. With this in mind, we don’t neglect passages like John 7:53-8:11, but we carefully examine them and compare them to the explicit claims of true scripture in the rest of the Bible—holding fast to what is inspired and being cautious about what is not.
Have a question about today’s devotional?
Alex Southern Baptist Chapel 
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