“[Family is] a place of acceptance, nurture, and growth that empowers family members to participate…in God’s ongoing acts of compassion and salvation.”
Dolores Leckey

In the last post I claimed that one of the primary ways that we instruct our children in the way of the Lord is through family worship. Unfortunately, the practice of family worship has been on the decline amongst the overwhelming majority Christian families. As a result, children are grow up in the church but with time they drift away or become nominal Christians. To be blunt, forsaking family worship is a failure of biblical child-rearing. Joel Beeke, author of “Family Worship”, says, “Family worship is the foundation of biblical child-rearing.” This means that if we desire to raise our kids biblically, we will actively work to disciple them through family worship.

At this point you may be wondering where you can find a template or instructions for Family Worship in scripture. While there isn’t a specific passage that lays out a clear and concise description we can take a look a the overarching themes of scripture; covenant and representation.

To quote Beeke,

“God deals with the human race through covenant and headship, or representation. In daily life, parents represent children, a father represents his wife and children, church office bearers represent church members, and legislators represent citizens. In spiritual life, every person is represented by either the first or the last Adam (see Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15).”

This theme of representation runs throughout scripture and focuses on the responsibility of parents (especially fathers) to lead their family in God’s ways and instruct their children in the meaning of worship. Abraham and his family were to represent God among the nations, Moses represented God’s people on Mount Sinai, Job represented his children by offering sacrifices to God. This pattern presents itself in Old Testament as well as the New Testament. To this end Beeke states, 

“The relationship between worship and family life continued in New Testament times. Peter reaffirmed the promise to Abraham, the father of the faithful (Romans 4:11), when he declared to the Jews in his Pentecost sermon that “the promise is unto you and your children, and to all who are afar off” (Acts 2:39). And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7:14 that the faith of a parent establishes the covenant status of holiness, privilege and responsibility for his or her children. The New Testament church, which included children with their parents as members of the body (Ephesians 6:1-4), and the experience of individual believers such as Timothy (2 Timothy 1:5, 3:15), affirm the importance of faith and worship within families.”

Parents have a unique responsibility to teach and remind their children about the covenant of grace that God has established with his people. Parents also function as representatives. They represent God before their children by being loving and faithful, extending grace, instructing and disciplining for the purpose of maturity. And they represent their children before God by pleading for the joy of salvation on their behalf, living in faith and repentance, and bringing them into the family of God.