WORSHIP
FAMILY
DR. JIM DIXON
DEUTERONOMY 6:1-9
MAY 4, 2008
“The Life of Anthony” was the name of a book written by Athanasius, and you cannot find this book in Barnes and Noble. You cannot find this book at Borders. Athanasius wrote the book in the year 357 AD. It was called “The Life of Anthony,” but who was Anthony? Anthony was born around 250 AD. Anthony spent twelve years living in tombs in the Valley of the Kings across the Nile from the Temple of Karnak from the region that was called Luxor. Then Anthony spent twenty years living in the Egyptian Sinai desert. Anthony was the founder of Christian Monasticism, the Christian monastic movement.
The word monastic means, “one who lives alone.” It sort of means one who worships alone, because that’s what monasticism was all about. It was about worshipping God and trying to find solitude and living a life of solitude to enhance the worship of God. Of course, over a period of time Christian monastics began to form monastic communities called monasteries. Of course, the idea of a monastic community is kind of an oxymoron. It’s “a community of people who live alone.” But in any event this represents the complexity of Christian worship. From the earliest centuries Christians understood that worship is sometimes a private matter, an individual matter. It requires solitude. But at other times worship involves community and worship is corporate.
Today we look at what it means to worship God as families and we certainly want, as Christians, to have our whole family worship God. I want us to look at this in two ways. First of all, I want us to look at the church’s role in family worship and then I want us to look at the parents’ role in family worship. So, we begin with the church.
In the year 1998, Barb and I were in Washington, D.C. I had been invited to be part of a group of 40 pastors to meet at a luncheon and Bill Clinton, who was then president of the United States, was supposed to speak to us. This was an awkward time for Bill Clinton because the Monica Lewinsky scandal had just surfaced. It was all over the newspapers. And so, the 40 pastors, as we met there with our wives, Bill didn’t come because he didn’t feel like facing 40 pastors. His wife came. Hillary Clinton came, and she spoke with us and had lunch with us that day. I must say she was very gracious. She confessed Christ. She spoke to us individually and she told me that one of her very best friends was a member of this church, Cherry Hills Community Church, which turned out to be true.
Two years earlier, Hillary Clinton had written a book and the name of the book that Hillary Clinton had written was called It Takes A Village. You might remember that book. I don’t completely agree with the book because I think for Hillary Clinton the village she’s talking about was most federal government, state government and community organizations. Her point was it takes a village to raise children. It takes a village to raise our children. Certainly, there’s a sense in which I would agree with that, and I believe for us as Christians the village is the church. It takes a village to raise our children and I think for us as Christians we would all agree the village is the church. The church of Jesus Christ is to help us raise our children and the church of Jesus Christ is to help us nurture our children and the church of Jesus Christ is to help us worship as families.
Now, first, Jesus founded the church. He came into the world to establish His church, to die for His people and for their sins, and to establish an eternal community. Jesus said, “I’ll build My church and the gates of Hell, the power of Hades, will not prevail against it.” Jesus wanted to make certain from the very beginning that children were part of the church. I think as you go through the Gospels you could easily conclude that there were times when the disciples kind of didn’t want kids around. But Jesus was constantly reminding them that children were precious to Him. He would gather children in His arms. He would say, “Forbid them not for to such belong to the kingdom of God.” From the very beginning, in the earliest centuries, we see churches rising up and including children and whole families in the church of Jesus Christ.
I grew up in the church and my brothers grew up in the church. In the very earliest days, we went to Hollywood Presbyterian Church in Hollywood, California, where Louis Evans, Sr., was the pastor and Henrietta Mears led the College/Career Discipling Ministry. Both of them were renowned Christian leaders. My parents fell in love through the ministries of Hollywood Presbyterian Church. But as the years passed our family moved to La Cañada Flintridge and we began to go to Glendale Presbyterian Church. I think I was around 5 or 6 years old when we began going to Glendale Presbyterian Church.
We were seemingly at church all of the time. On Sunday mornings we’d have breakfast and we’d all get in the car —Mom and Dad, my brothers, and me, and we would go to church as a family. We’d worship God as a family and Sunday mornings would start with Sunday school and then after Sunday school we’d have “big church.” I remember us as a whole family going and sitting in the pew together—Mom and Dad and the three boys—and we would worship together. As we grew a little bit older, Mom and Dad let us kind of sit wherever we wanted to sit but we were expected to be at church. Sometimes we’d go up in the balcony. Sometimes we got into a little trouble, but we were at church.
After church we would all go out to lunch and then we would go back to church. In the afternoon we would have choir practice. As we got a little bit older, we still went to choir practice and for me it wasn’t so much the music, but girls were at choir practice. Then after choir practice we had evening church and after evening church we had youth group and sometimes after youth group we had something called Christian Endeavor, which was kind of a time when kids got together and sang. It was a full day. And then there were many times during the week when we would go to church as well. It was just something that when we got in that car, we knew we were all going to church, the whole family, and we would worship God.
Sometimes the church would send us to camps or mountain retreats and we’d have mountaintop experiences. Later in my life when I went to theological seminary, the church, Glendale Presbyterian Church, paid for my tuition. I’m very grateful for the church of Jesus Christ and I must confess to you I sometimes get a little upset. I get kind of angry when I hear people rag on the church, and I hear it a lot.
You go “out there” and you hear people rag on the institutional church, the visible church, churches. I think in some ways it’s kind of an easy target because churches are flawed. Pastors are flawed. Christians are flawed. The Great Head of the church is Jesus Christ and He’s perfect. He is without flaw, but the church is served by under shepherds and I’m one of those under shepherds and I’m very much flawed and a sinner and messed up. Of course, the church itself, we the congregation, all of us, are messed up and sometimes churches do kind of dumb things. I think the church is an easy target but, you see, the church has been chosen by Christ and it is His vessel in this world. He calls the church His Bride.
I thank God for parachurch ministries like Young Life, Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. These are great parachurch ministries, and in a sense they are extensions of the church. But sometimes people in parachurch ministries tend to just rag on the visible church. I think that’s sad, because there’s nothing like the church. Parachurch ministries have a role, but they focus on specific age groups, even specific genders. At Young Life you’re working with high school kids. At Campus Crusade you’re working with college kids. MOPS is working with young moms. All of these things are great, but the church has to serve everybody. So you look at the institution of the church and it’s serving everybody from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave. For men and women and all ages the church is the vessel of God in this world, and we need to be careful when we attack the Bride of Christ.
I want to take a little tangent here. As I do this, you’re probably going to be thinking, “Where’s Jim going with this?” When I’m finished, you’ll probably think, “Where did Jim go with that?” In any event, in the Book of 2 Kings, chapter 18, we see a very strange thing. This is during the reign of Hezekiah. We see that in Judea and Jerusalem the Jews had begun to worship Nehushtan. Nehushtan was a name they had given a snake, the bronze serpent that Moses had raised up in the wilderness as recorded in the Book of Numbers, the 21st chapter. You recall in Numbers, chapter 21, that God instructed Moses to craft a bronze snake, a bronze serpent, and put it on the end of a pole and hold it up. The people of Israel who were afflicted, if they looked at the bronze serpent, they would be healed and saved. Apparently, over the course of years and centuries, the Israelites saved this bronze serpent or perhaps—the Bible really doesn’t tell us—they just built images of that original bronze serpent that Moses held up and they began to worship it and they called it Nehushtan. The snake actually became the symbol of Israel.
You look at a snake and you look at it biblically and you see that, as a symbol throughout the Bible, a snake kind of varies. Sometimes a snake is viewed negatively, sometimes kind of positively. If you come to Genesis 3, the snake obviously represents the devil. You come to Exodus, chapter 7, and you see Moses challenging the Pharaoh of all Egypt. He throws forth his rod and by the power of God it’s transformed into a serpent or a snake. Of course, we’ve already seen that in the Book of Numbers, in the 21st chapter, God instructed Moses to erect a bronze snake or bronze serpent through which God would save the people. And then in the passage in Matthew 10:16 you come to the New Testament and you see Jesus. He uses the image of the snake symbolically, but He says, “Be innocent as doves and wise as serpents” (or crafty as a snake). He kind of uses it in a positive way.
It was Haddon Robinson who is the Head of the Homiletics Department at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary who has said that in the modern Christian world the snake is kind of getting a raw deal. He gave a sermon where he went through this long litany of some of the virtues of snakes and how they benefit the world and mankind. I’m not going to go there and you’re glad to know that.
It is an amazing thing, though, to realize that at one point a snake was a symbol of Israel. But it is also true that at one time the snake was a symbol of the USA. The snake was a symbol of the United States of America. Did you know that? It was Benjamin Franklin who, in the year 1757, crafted a flag for Colonial America with the image of a snake. The message on the flag was, “Join or Die.” The snake was in eight parts, representing what were then eight colonies, “Join or Die.” It was crafted by Benjamin Franklin, with New England being the head and South Carolina being the tail. Then during the War of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the American flag contained at times a snake and the message on the flag was, “Don’t Tread on Me.” Do you remember seeing flags like that? That was the once the symbol of America. Of course, you don’t want to tread on a snake. You could get hurt. You don’t want to tread on the United States of America, or you could get hurt. We understand the message.
Biblically, you look at the church. You look at the church of Jesus Christ and never in the Bible is the church of Jesus Christ portrayed through the symbol of a snake. It doesn’t happen. I think most of us feel pretty good about that, but it is nevertheless true that as you look at America and you look at those two flags where we had the snake as the symbol of our country, the messages on those flags would best apply to the church. It’s the church you need to join. “Join or Die.” Isn’t that biblically kind of true? The Church is eternal. The Church is the divine community, the family of God. “Join or Die.” It’s the church where God would say, “Don’t Tread on Me.” It’s one thing to tread on the United States of America, and that, I think, irritates all of us when we hear people do that, but it’s worse still to tread on the church of Jesus Christ. So be careful. Jesus said, “I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
Look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 3, where Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are the Body of Christ and the Spirit of Christ dwells in you? Do you not know that you are the Temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? Whoever destroys God’s Temple, God will destroy him. For God’s Temple is holy and that Temple you are.” But you need to understand the passage because the “you” is plural; it’s not singular. For a long time in the history of the church there were those who thought, “Well, this passage is talking about suicide. You know, your body is the temple of God and the Holy Spirit dwells in you. Whoever destroys their body, God will judge them.” But that’s not what the passage is about at all because the “you” is plural; it’s not singular. “Do you not know that you, the church, is the Temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in it? Whoever destroys God’s church, God will destroy him. For God’s Temple, God’s Church, is holy, and that church, that Temple, you are.” This is serious business, and I want to encourage you to serve the church. I want to encourage you to serve the Bride of Christ because, in a very real sense, you ARE the church.
So here we are. We’ve got children. God has placed us here in the midst of Highlands Ranch, and what a sacred call. God has placed us in this growing community of almost 100,000 people and this is a family-dense area. This is a kid-dense area. It’s a sacred trust. It’s a privilege for us to be able to serve children and it’s a great and a grave responsibility and it’s the call of the church of Jesus Christ who said, “Forbid them not, for to such belong the Kingdom of Heaven.” We need you. We need you to serve the church. We need you to serve Christ.
Sheila was telling me that we have so many kids in our ministries here when you look at all of our kids’ programs—Awana, Vacation Bible School, and all of our Grace Place Sunday school programs. We have so many children, and this doesn’t count junior high and high school or Liquid. This is just 5th grade on down to the cradle. Those kids are so great in number that we need a thousand volunteers. This is a huge, huge task and a privilege and in a wonderful sense a joy.
We need a thousand volunteers. Right now, we need a hundred more than we have, and Sheila tells me that as we approach the fall we’re going to need yet another hundred. So we need two hundred more volunteers this year to serve the church and to serve Christ and to bless families and to bless children. We’re in this together, as Josh was saying earlier. Lisa was saying that too. We need you and the church is so important.
Barb and I some years ago went to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. It was sponsored by a parachurch organization called The Washington Fellowship. I know some people in The Washington Fellowship as good friends and some of them really don’t like the institution of the church. They don’t like Sunday morning church. They basically say to me they just get together and do a little Bible Study somewhere. Certainly, that’s an extension of the church wherever Christians gather, but they love to kind of rag on the church.
When we were there at the National Prayer Breakfast the President of Uganda got up to speak. He doesn’t go to church, but he shouts out to the whole assembly, “You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. You don’t need to ever go to church!” And the whole place just rose with thunderous applause. Barb and I looked at each other like, “Wow! What’s going on here?” There’s a bit of a movement like that out there, and I don’t think it puts a smile on the face of Jesus, who said, “I will build My church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” So let’s be the church. Let’s come together. Let’s make the church an expression of Christ’s love and let’s serve families and children and people and the hurting and the poor and the oppressed. Let’s BE the Bride of Christ.
I want to say a few words about the role of parents and family worship. In California now there is a piece of legislation which I hope does not become law. I hope it is voted out, but this piece of legislation would make home schooling of children illegal in the State of California unless the parents are certified by the State of California with teaching credentials. The tragic thing and the irony is that countless studies show that home schooling tends to produce wonderful children and highly successful kids. But this piece of legislation is currently on the docket in California. I think sometimes we would all agree that it seems sometimes even here in America that some of our rights and privileges as parents are kind of shrinking and being taken away. But there is one thing that can never be taken away from you as parents and that’s the right to nurture your children in the love of Jesus. What a privilege that is to bring your children up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.
In the Bible we see lots of parents. We see parents who provide wonderful examples. I mentioned last week Hannah and Elkanah, who were the parents of Samuel out of 1 Samuel, chapters 1, 2, and 3. We saw how, in the 3rd chapter of 1 Samuel, Hannah takes Samuel, her newborn son miraculously given to her by God though she had been barren, to the Temple at Shiloh and dedicates Samuel to the Lord.
I want to suggest to you that that’s what we all need to do as parents: Dedicate our children to the Lord. There’s a sense in which, symbolically and nominally, we do that through infant baptism and infant dedication. When you bring your child, your baby, to be baptized or dedicated, you are making a pledge to God that you will rear your child. It’s a sacred moment. You are making a pledge to God. It’s not just a right or a ritual. This is a sacred moment. You are making a pledge to God that you will rear your child or your grandchild in the nurture and the admonition of Christ. So this is a sacred charge and we need to follow Hannah and Elkanah’s example.
I think most of us, when we think of Mary and Joseph, think they were sure blessed to have Jesus grow up in their house. They were sure blessed to have the Son of God grow up before their eyes. And indeed, the Bible tells us that all generations will call Mary “blessed.” And yet in the mind of God I think God felt like His Son was also blessed and would be blessed to grow up in that house and have Mary and Joseph as Mom and Dad.
I really love what we see in Mary as we go through the pages of scriptures. You look at Luke’s Gospel, the 1st and 2nd chapter. You should go back and revisit those two chapters this week. Don’t wait until Christmas to read about the birth of Christ and the accounts out of Luke. Read them from time-to-time. They’re just wonderful chapters. And I love the way Mary… have you ever read “the Song of Mary” in Luke’s Gospel, the 1st chapter? “The Song of Mary.” It’s so beautiful. You see her heart. You see her love for God, her passion to serve God and His Kingdom. I love the response of Mary to the Angel of the Lord when the Angel of the Lord tells her that she’s going to conceive and bear a son though she is a virgin. Her response… I’m sure she understood the social stigma that would be attached to that. Nevertheless, she said, “Behold, I am the handmaiden”—“doula,” the slave—“of the Lord. Be it done to me in accordance with Your will.”
Mary and Joseph took Jesus at the age of eight days and they went to Jerusalem to the Temple to consecrate Him to God. Of course, we are told in Luke, chapter 2, that every year they ventured south from Galilee to Jerusalem for the religious feasts and festivals that they might honor the Lord as a family, that they might worship God as a family, not just at the Synagogue in Nazareth but at the Temple in Jerusalem. These were devout parents.
We want to be so faithful. We want to raise our kids in the nurture of Christ. I think there’s a sense in which, as parents, we need to release our kids. I think this is true from the very beginning. I think there’s a sense in which we release them into the hands of God but it becomes more literally true when our kids leave home and there’s a sense in which there is a new releasing of them.
I think of Jochebed, who was the mother of Moses, and how she lived in such a scary time when Hebrew male babies were being killed. And to save her son she placed him in that basket, put him in the midst of the bulrushes in the Nile, and set her baby adrift, praying that God would somehow miraculously save her child. She released her child into the hands of God, and I think that’s almost a symbol of what we all must do with our kids. It takes a lot of grace, doesn’t it, to raise children? A lot of mercy.
Barb and I thank God every day that our son Drew loves Christ and our daughter Heather loves Christ. Heather married a guy, Chris, who loves Christ. And little Abigail, our granddaughter, has just accepted Christ. We thank God and we know that’s all grace and that’s all mercy. So we pray for each other and our families and we pray for us as parents that we would have the mercy and the grace of God.
In the Bible there are some examples of bad parenting. I think Jephthah might be the supreme example of bad parenting. You read about Jephthah in the Book of Judges and Jephthah was the leader of the Transjordan Tribes. He was born out of wedlock. The Jewish people had kind of a love/hate relationship with him. They called him a bastard son and they kind of viewed him as a profligate, but they also respected his bravery in battle and his leadership skills. In a time of war, the Jews came to Jephthah and said, “Lead our armies.”
You know the story. Jephthah said, “Okay. I’ll do it if when we succeed and when we prevail you set me on the throne and that I will rule the Jewish people.” They were so desperate that they said okay, and then Jephthah makes this crazy prayer where he makes that rash vow to God saying, “God, if you will give me victory over the Ammonites, I will sacrifice to you as an offering the first person who comes out of my house as I come home.” We don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he thought a slave or a servant would come out the door. Maybe he didn’t think that a slave or a servant would be precious to God and equal in value in the sight of God. He certainly didn’t think his only daughter would come out that door, but she did and he sacrificed her.
You think about it—how he was supremely concerned with his own advancement, supremely concerned with his own career, and he wound up sacrificing his child. I wonder if this isn’t almost a symbol of what’s happening in many homes across America where parents are so concerned with their own advancement, their own careers, that children are being sacrificed.
So, we have this call from God. It’s a sacred call, this call of parenting to rear our children in the nurture of the Lord and to set the example of worship. Worship isn’t just something we do on Sundays in this building. Worship is our life. Worship is what we do minute-by-minute, moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. We worship with every breath.
There are many words in the New Testament for worship. There’s the word, “proskuneo” which means, “to kiss towards.” And we kiss towards God. Worship is loving God, but most of the Greek words in the New Testament for worship mean, “to serve.” Did you know that? It means to worship God and to serve God and to serve His Kingdom on earth. To offer your life in the service of God is worship.
“Latria” is the primary word for worship. Of course, latria literally means, “to serve.” In the Catholic Church there’s “dulia,” hyperdulia,” and “latria.” Dulia means “veneration,” and the Catholic Church venerates great Christians throughout history. Hyperdulia means “high veneration,” and it’s offered to Mary by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. But “latria,” “worship,” is only offered to God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we serve God. Latria. We serve God.
Another Greek word for worship in the New Testament is “leitourgia.” Leitourgia also has a root meaning of “to serve.” Another Greek word for worship in the New Testament is “therapeia,” from which we get the word “therapy.” But therapeia also has a root meaning of “to serve.” I think as we worship God it is therapeutic. I think as we serve God it is therapy. We need to understand that worship is service. So if we want to teach our children to worship God, they need to see us serving God with all of our heart and we need to bring them with us when possible as we serve God.
We have many short-term mission trips where as a church we work with you as parents in seeking to facilitate worship and the service of God. You can take your whole family to Juarez. Our most recent trip down there was just cancelled because of problems in the area, but most of the time it’s just a wonderful experience going to Juarez and working with one of the three colonias and helping a very poor family build a home and then worshipping God with them and serving God as you serve them and doing it as a family. Your kids will come back here and they’ll never be the same. YOU will never be the same.
We have so many wonderful family mission trips. We have a brochure that we’ve prepared specially, and you can get it at the Missions Outreach Table out in the lobby. But this year, 2008, we have a lot of family short-term mission trips. You can go to Belize with your family. Take your kids. You can go to China. Go to Mississippi and help with the continuing hurricane relief effort down there. You can go to Nicaragua. You can go to the Philippines. What an opportunity to go with your whole family and to serve God and worship God together. What an amazing experience. Maybe this year, as a family, instead of going to Disneyland or one of the national parks, go on a short-term mission trip as a family. I promise you you’ll have just as much fun. I mean you’ll really have fun, but it will change your life. And it has to do with the nurture of our children in the Lord and a chance to worship God together as a family.
I want to just close with a brief mention of Susanna Wesley. When I think of Susanna Wesley I kind of think of that old song written by Stephen Foster, “Oh! Susannah,” but in a different sense. You think of Susanna Wesley and you think, “Oh! Susanna! What an amazing woman.” What an amazing woman she was. Susanna Wesley gave birth to 19 children. They didn’t all live but all who did live she reared in the nurture of Christ. She reared them in the admonition of Christ. Her 15th-born child was John Wesley.
John Wesley founded the Wesleyan Movement and the Methodist Church and he was one of the greatest revivalist preachers in Christian history. He rode 250,000 miles on horseback (that wasn’t in one trip, that’s through the course of his life). But John Wayne didn’t even ride 250,000 miles on horseback. John Wesley preached 40,000 sermons in the course of his life. In fact, when John Wesley was 86 years old, in a 9-week period, he went to 60 cities and preached 100 sermons. But you see, his mom and dad, who were both in the ministry, taught him to worship God and serve Christ.
Charles Wesley came along just four years later and Susanna gave birth to Charles Wesley and he became perhaps the greatest hymn writer in the history of the Christian Church. He wrote 8,000 hymns. That’s like writing three hymns a week for 57 years. Unbelievable.
When you, at Easter, sing “Christ the Lord has Risen Today” (and I love that hymn), you sing that because Charles Wesley wrote it. At Christmas when you sing, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” (which I also love), you sing that because Charles Wesley wrote it. Of course, my favorite hymn is “And Can It Be That I Should Gain,” one of the greatest hymns ever written, was written by Charles Wesley.
The blessings on Susanna Wesley on the lives of her children continued generationally. In fact, her great-great-grandson, Samuel Wesley, wrote “Aurelia,” which is a beautiful melody which is the tune to “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord.” And so, the blessings just continued generationally. Don’t you want to be blessed like that? Don’t you want your kids and your grandkids and great-grandkids to be blessed like that? Because God is a God who blesses generationally. Through your faithfulness you can bless generations. So we want to be faithful as parents and we want to be faithful as a church. We want to come together and, in this sense, it does take a village. We’re in this together and we want to worship God as families and corporately as the Bride of Christ of the church.
As we conclude I want to just remind you that we need you. We do have this form that we encourage you to fill out and give to us as you leave. We have these two orientations, and the one orientation is this week, Thursday night, 6:30 to 8:00. Another one is a couple of weeks later. The information is on the card. We want to train you. We want to equip you. We want to help you and we want to bless you to be a blessing so join with us and serve Christ and His church. Let’s close with a word of prayer.