September 4-10th Family Worship Guide 2022

Bible Passage for the Week
Deuteronomy 20
Matthew 23:1-12
Galatians 3
Psalm 38

Verse to Memorize
2 Corinthians 5:21

Catechism Questions
Q. 46. Did our Lord Jesus Christ ever commit the least sin?
A. No; he was holy, blameless, and undefiled.

Q. 47. How could the Son of God suffer?
A. Christ, the Son of God, became man that he might obey and suffer in our nature.

Q. 48. What is meant by the Atonement?
A. Christ's satisfying divine justice, by his sufferings and death, in the place of sinners.

People to Pray for: 
Church: Christ Church Cincy
               Pastor Joseph Bayly
             
Ministry: The Fathers in the Church
               
                               
Civil Magistrate: Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore
                             
 
Song Recommendations:

May the Lord answer you in the day of worry
May the name of Jacob’s God bless you from on high
May He bring help to you from His sanctuary
May the Lord give to you the strength of Zion

When you bring offerings, may He find them pleasant
Share with you all good things when you come inquire
May He give help to you from the highest heaven
May the Lord do for you what you desire

Some will trust in chariots
Some will trust in horses
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God
We will rise, we will stand
We will lift our voices
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God

We will hope for victory and not be disappointed
In the name of Jacob’s God, raise our banners high
For we know the Lord will come rescue His anointed
Bow the heavens down and make our foes to fly

Some will trust in chariots
Some will trust in horses
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God
We will rise, we will stand
We will lift our voices
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God

We will stand while our enemies flee
We will rise but they’ll fall to their knees
Hear us, Lord, hear our cries and our pleas
And save us, O Lord, and make us free

Some will trust in chariots
Some will trust in horses
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God
We will rise, we will stand
We will lift our voices
We will boast in the name of the Lord, our God (x2)

We will boast in Your name; save us, Lord, our God

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Bible Passage for the Week
There are many themes that run all throughout scripture.  It would be hard to narrow them down to just one as being the most important.  As Jesus said “loving God and loving neighbor “are the two greatest commands.  Love is one of if not the main key for unlocking all scripture.  Another theme that runs throughout scripture and might make a claim as to being the most important is the division between the humble and the proud.  Scripture says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Pride is the opposite of belief and was central in Eve’s deception and Adam’s sin.  They proudly decided they knew better than God.  The rest of scripture is a war between those who boast in their own wisdom and those who humbly submit to God’s.   Pride makes us foolish.  It makes us lazy.  It makes us sinful.  It makes us hypocritical. Pride places us at odds with God.  Pride robs glory from God.  Pride makes us legalistic and keeps us from faith.

Our passages this week can help humble us if we listen with eyes of faith.  Starting off with Deuteronomy, we see that God will have the victory over his enemies.  God is using the Israelites to cast out the wicked from the land and is by his good mercy and grace giving His people an inheritance.  But notice that God doesn’t need the Hebrew army.  He doesn’t need great numbers.  He lets many of those who might fight go home.  He kindly lets those who are just married or courting to stay home from the battle.  He even says that cowards should stay away.   This of course teaches us that we must be careful not to be cowardly or too consumed with the things of the world because we will miss out on the battles before us and therefore on the glory that God shares with us in those battles.  But that said, the whole passage teaches us that God has no need for us.  He doesn’t need our wise battle plans.  He doesn’t need us to have vast numbers.  He can accomplish his will with many or with few.  He can accomplish it with none.  This ought to humble us and make us rest in Christ.  Let us boast in the power of God.

In Matthew, Jesus begins his long rebuke of the pharisees and leaders of the Jews.  In this rebuke He humbles them and us.  He first says that the people are to submit to these leaders when they teach.  Obey all that they command, he says.  This is humbling to us.  These leaders were not good men.  They are hypocrites and yet they still had authority and were to be obeyed out of deference to the office and to the truth of the commands that they taught.  It isn’t that Jesus approved of all they taught.  We know He didn’t because He spent a lot of time correcting it.  Therefore, Jesus isn’t saying for them to obey false teaching.  But He is still telling the people to submit to authority and even if a bad man gives a lawful command, we are to obey.  This is humbling to us.

Jesus also goes after the pride of the Pharisees.  They are hypocrites loving the praise of men.  They love to have everyone think how righteous they are.  They love the externals that make them look righteous while not having the humility of heart to trust Christ for righteousness.  Jesus warns then about being some who loves the externals.  He warns against the love of titles and praises.  

One question you might have is this: is Jesus saying we won’t have teachers or that we can’t call our dad “father?”   Its important to recognize that Jesus isn’t contradicting scripture when it says “honor your father and mother,” or “give honor to whom honor is due.”  Jesus is rebuking the love of the pharisees for their own honor.  He is rebuking their pride. Scripture in other places has godly men showing honor to those in authority by using titles of honor.  The Gospel of Luke and the book of acts is written to the “most excellent Theophilus.”  There is nothing sinful in showing honor to someone when you do so with sincerity and respect for the office of a person.  But the Lord Jesus would condemn those who demand titles for themselves and who would seek to lord over others.  

In the Church, God’s people are not to lord over each other.  They are not to worship men but to give praise to God.  Jesus is the head of the church, not the pope, not bishops, and not pastors and elders.  Jesus is our master.

Therefore teach your children to show respect to others.  Teach them to use “sir” and “mam”, “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” and call those in authority by their office.   But also teach them that Jesus is our king.  He is our master.  Teach them to be humble and not demand respect and honor. God is opposed the proud.

In the book of Galatians, we see how pride caused some to boast in their natural descent and in lawkeeping.  But the gospel teaches us that we are descendants of Abraham by faith.  We don’t boast in our family line.  Yes, God promises to be the God of those who love Him and to their children.  We believe that God’s promises are for us and our posterity.  Yet our salvation is not by natural relations.  It is by the work of Christ which is offered in the promises to us and our children.  Salvation is by grace through faith.  It is not through works so that no one may boast.   You must be humble.

Lastly, our psalm reading gives us a picture of this humility by way of repentance.  The Psalm writer knows his desperate need of God’s forgiveness.  He knows the depth of his sin and how his enemies assault him.  He is besieged on all sides.  His sins confront him.  His enemies mock him.  He is helpless apart from God.  Therefore, he cries out for mercy.  This prayer is humility and God is please to give grace to the humble.

Catechism/ Memory Verse
Jesus humbly suffered on the cross to pay the penalty for our proud sins.  Jesus could satisfy the wrath of God because He was holy and blameless but willingly took on our sins.  He was fully God and fully man.  He suffered and died for us.  

People to Pray for:
This week we are praying for Pastor Joseph Bayly and Alex McNeely as they lead Christ Church in Cincinnati.  Please pray that God would give them strength for the work.  Click on their name in this guide and check out their website.  Get the address and have your kids send them a card.  It would be a great homeschool project to encourage them in the faith.

This month we are praying for different members in our own body.  This week we are praying for the fathers in the church.  This could be those who are in leadership as church fathers or for those who lead their homes as family fathers.  Pray that they would reflect the glory of the heavenly Father in their work as fathers.  Pray that they will lead, discipline, and love.  Pray that they will have compassion for and sympathy with the frames of those under their charge.  Pray that they stand strong against sin in their own life and in the lives of their family.  

We are praying for Jeffersonville Mayor, Mike Moore.  Though he is a republican, he is quite liberal.  He supports sodomy and other perversions.  Please pray for his repentance.

Church History Spotlight
David Livingstone 1813-1873
Livingstone was born in 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, trained as a physician, and ordained as a missionary in 1840. His original plan was to work in China, but he was prevented from doing so by the Opium Wars. He therefore went instead to South Africa and travelled northward into the interior. The discovery of Victoria Falls in 1855, made him a national hero. In 1866 he began an expedition seeking the headwaters of the Nile. No news of him came back for several years, and it was thought that perhaps he was dead. A publisher sent a correspondent, Henry M Stanley, to find him. Stanley did find him, in 1871 (Stanley's greeting, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume," is the one thing about Livingstone that is remembered by persons who know absolutely nothing else about him.)

Livingstone died 1 May 1873 in Zambia. His body was buried in Wesminster Abbey. However, his heart was removed from the body and buried where he died. His friends said, "His heart was always with the people of Africa. It must remain here."

“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”-  David Livingstone

Highlight from the Westminster Shorter Catechism
Q. 4. What is God?
A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Psalm 113:5 Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high?

The catechism question today is made up of only three words, the longest of which is four letters.  This very short question, so easy to ask, is the most vital of questions to answer.  If we are made to glorify and enjoy God forever, we must know who and what is God. It’s a quick question to ask but the answer is something we can probe for eternity and still not come to its complete depths.  If we were left to find out on our own, we would never be able to come up with a truthful answer.  It is our sinful nature to answer this question with figments of our imagination, idols of our own hands and minds.  But idols have no real power, and we cannot enjoy them forever.  We need the truth.

Thankfully, we have not been left to answer this question on our own.  God has revealed himself.  He has done so in nature.  The stars proclaim his handiwork Psalm 19 says.  Romans 1:20 says “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
The creation reveals that He is.  He has also written on our hearts His law.  All people instinctively know that God is.   Many in their foolish sin try to suppress that knowledge. But just like trying to hold a beach ball under the water, the knowledge of God always comes to the surface, even for so called Atheists.  

While nature and our own internal conscience give us enough information about God to make us guilty for our rebellion to him, because of that rebellion we are, as said above, prone to idols.   God has in his mercy even while we were rebels, has revealed himself in His Holy Word.  Hebrews 1:1 “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.”  He has breathed out His scripture so that we may know him. Finally, He has most fully revealed himself in His Son.  John 1:18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.  God has himself given us the answer to the question about himself because only He can do so.  Because God is so far above us, we can only know Him because He has humbled himself to share Himself with us.