The King's Hall - Covenant Succession： Children & Worship (Part II)

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

00:00:03.860 Possibly our most important book yet is now available for pre-order.

00:00:08.300 It's called The Longhouse, How Feminism Conquered the West and Made Us All Miserable.

00:00:13.400 And in it, Eric and I take you through the dark history of feminism,

00:00:17.240 what it's done to everything from politics to church life to the economy,

00:00:21.220 and what to do about it.

00:00:23.040 Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.

00:00:26.600 and as a thank you for pre-ordering you'll get 10 off automatically we'll also be signing the

00:00:32.200 first thousand copies so pick yours up today this past soccer season the league in which my son and

00:00:38.720 daughter were playing had to make up two games due to rain price of living in houston the consensus

00:00:44.300 in the league was that sunday was the only available day so the makeup games were scheduled

00:00:48.980 for sunday afternoon my family and i sat down to discuss the matter but no discussion was really

00:00:54.220 necessary. There was no way we were going to participate. Sunday is the Lord's Day. Playing

00:00:59.620 youth soccer games on Sunday makes a definite statement about the priorities in a community.

00:01:04.620 Interestingly, the most flack from our decision came not from irreligious people involved, but

00:01:09.980 from the Christians. You can go to church, then run home and change for the game, one man said.

00:01:15.140 One of my children's coaches said, I'd be glad to pick them up if they're somewhere you have to be.

00:01:19.860 Nobody seemed to get it.

00:01:21.300 We weren't making a decision based on the hectic nature of our Sunday schedule,

00:01:25.840 nor was it a question of our adhering to a legalistic requirement handed down from our denomination.

00:01:32.020 It was a matter of principle.

00:01:34.700 Sunday is more than just another day.

00:01:37.200 Youth sports leagues are great, but they're not sacred.

00:01:40.260 Sunday is.

00:01:41.560 Again, I do not believe that there is a legalistic requirement not to play any games on a Sunday,

00:01:46.660 nor do I believe that the policeman fireman or airline mechanic who goes into work on Sunday is

00:01:51.820 out of the will of God I do however think that there is a huge difference between someone whose

00:01:56.520 job requires working on Sunday in a soccer league that just doesn't care quoted from the ever-loving

00:02:02.660 truth can faith thrive in a post-christian culture by Vadi T. Bauckham Jr. the Kings Hall

00:02:09.060 podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world

00:02:16.660 Well, welcome back to the King's Hall Podcast.

00:02:20.980 King's Hall Podcast.

00:02:22.640 We are going through a series right now on Covenant Children,

00:02:25.640 and this is part two in Covenant Children in Worship.

00:02:29.500 But first, I would like to introduce my two co-hosts.

00:02:33.420 We have Eric Kahn. Say hello, sir.

00:02:35.360 A.K.A. Leroy Jenkins. Yes, sir.

00:02:37.540 I am ready to roll here on this podcast.

00:02:41.700 Starting right out the gate.

00:02:42.880 Dan's face.

00:02:43.680 Starting right out the gate.

00:02:44.560 make a Dan make disappointed

00:02:46.420 faces. Can you imagine if we had video on

00:02:48.500 this podcast? It would be, hey, people, donate.

00:02:50.920 We'll get video. Donate.

00:02:53.000 Donate to the King's Hall. Email Dan.

00:02:54.580 You can see Dan's face. Email Dan, and then you can see Dan.

00:02:56.440 I don't know if I'm going to make it that long.

00:02:58.120 The disappointment. The disappointment.

00:03:00.220 His headphones are halfway on. I've swung from firing

00:03:02.300 Eric to

00:03:03.460 firing myself. Just firing yourself. 0.98

00:03:06.300 Yep. Oh, excellent. Brian,

00:03:09.100 give it

00:03:09.400 your best shot at an intro.

00:03:13.480 Hey, good listeners.

00:03:14.560 it's good to be back with you look it's been hectic around here thank you it's been pretty

00:03:18.880 hectic we've all been like tossed to the winds i feel like the last few weeks yeah and uh just

00:03:24.540 going real hard but uh we're glad to be back in the king's hall i am it's always a pleasure

00:03:30.320 gentlemen to sit down with you to talk about important things and uh hopefully you guys enjoy

00:03:36.480 it as well hopefully you're edified but man covenant succession so big covenant succession

00:03:41.660 I also want, if I could, I just want to give a quick shout out to everybody who came to

00:03:46.180 County Before Country.

00:03:47.280 Yeah.

00:03:47.820 We saw a lot of people.

00:03:49.040 We did.

00:03:49.520 In Chop Chop shirts.

00:03:50.760 We did.

00:03:51.460 We saw a lot of Brian's music shirts.

00:03:53.120 So many.

00:03:53.320 A lot of Hardman podcasts.

00:03:54.340 So, yep.

00:03:54.720 Thank you for all the supporters.

00:03:56.160 Thank you.

00:03:56.260 It was great to meet a lot of you.

00:03:57.500 Yes.

00:03:58.200 And I even went there actually just to get Brian's to sign my t-shirt.

00:04:02.340 And I refused.

00:04:03.480 And he refused.

00:04:04.680 No, it was the sweetest little like 11-year-old girl came up to me and handed me a scrap of

00:04:11.060 paper and a crayon and said, Mr. Mr. Mr. Soviet, can you sign this piece of paper for me? And it

00:04:18.900 was the most conflicted moment of my life because it was the adorable little girl. And then I was

00:04:24.520 like, you are wildly overestimating the importance of the person you are standing in front of.

00:04:29.480 So I, I, I did. So now you have to send my t-shirt, but I won't sign Eric's t-shirt.

00:04:34.020 Dang it. Yeah. I'm just excited to see on the Twitter when this episode is released,

00:04:38.460 your enemies come out and say the self-important, Brian.

00:04:41.620 Yeah, I am.

00:04:42.320 So thanks again, giving out autographs.

00:04:43.720 I am extremely self-important.

00:04:45.700 Actually, it's one of my best qualities.

00:04:48.460 That's one of your worst.

00:04:50.180 I think that's what you meant.

00:04:53.080 Anyway, so in our last episode,

00:04:56.280 we only got through two of the five theses

00:04:58.200 that we have on this episode.

00:05:01.660 And so we needed to split it up into a part two.

00:05:04.360 The first one was children are one of the most important members

00:05:07.660 of the body of Christ.

00:05:09.260 And the second was,

00:05:11.480 children are and should be valued

00:05:13.560 by Christian culture

00:05:14.440 more than any other culture. 0.99

00:05:16.500 That's all we got through.

00:05:18.560 Those are some weighty things, though.

00:05:20.180 They are.

00:05:21.020 So today, we have to get through three points.

00:05:23.440 We can do it.

00:05:24.300 Okay, here they are.

00:05:25.680 The modern American church

00:05:27.360 doesn't have the tools

00:05:29.140 for winning the hearts of,

00:05:30.980 keeping, or making converts

00:05:32.900 of their children.

00:05:34.240 That's a strong statement.

00:05:36.220 We'll have a lot to say about that.

00:05:37.660 for it number four a robust regulative principled and historical liturgy is the only vehicle that

00:05:46.280 can reliably accomplish the discipleship of children into adult members seems like brian

00:05:53.220 so they wrote that one yeah a lot of big words in there and i use them without any concept of if

00:05:59.840 they should be used or not dan that was a brilliant sentence the only problem no m dashes

00:06:04.000 no independent clauses linked together with a series of questionable uh punctuation but

00:06:10.020 otherwise it's it is a run-on though so number five children should be instructed by their

00:06:15.800 fathers through participation in sunday corporate worship and family worship so that's where we're

00:06:21.200 going today are those three things i'm excited to talk about them because especially with point

00:06:25.740 number four i read it and i'm like wow that is no number three that is very strongly worded yeah

00:06:31.180 And so I'm very excited to get into this. So let's talk about it. Point number three, or thesis number three, the modern American church doesn't have the tools for winning the hearts of keeping or making converts of their children. Do you guys agree with that statement? I wrote it. Do you guys agree with it? Disagree with it? Take exception anywhere?

00:06:53.640 I do agree with it. 0.96

00:06:55.580 I think generally the modern American church has demonstrated that they don't have the tools.

00:07:00.600 I don't think this is actually a matter entirely of theory.

00:07:03.480 I think this is a kind of question you should be able to look at the fruit and say, let's just see the numbers.

00:07:09.400 Like, do they do well?

00:07:11.020 And I think we all know that the answer is no, they do poorly.

00:07:15.500 I think of my own youth group experience growing up.

00:07:18.660 I wasn't in the adult service until I was about 18,

00:07:23.220 until I was actually on staff at the church leading worship.

00:07:25.620 And it was because I was in youth programs from childhood all the way up to

00:07:30.580 young adulthood.

00:07:31.800 And when I do an inventory mentally of the faces and the names that were in my

00:07:37.480 cohort of youth within two or three grades of me in either direction, 0.94

00:07:42.080 I wouldn't be surprised if over 90% of them are apostate. 0.98

00:07:47.140 Yeah. 0.97

00:07:47.580 So I was, I was going to weigh in.

00:07:49.060 I was looking this up earlier and the statistics,

00:07:52.040 this is according to churchleaders.com.

00:07:54.020 You can see other outlets, Barna and others.

00:07:56.960 There's some variation in how you count the data.

00:07:59.120 Yeah.

00:07:59.560 They say that 70% or more of youth stop attending church after the

00:08:04.600 graduation of high school.

00:08:06.180 Wow.

00:08:06.860 These are children of members.

00:08:08.140 70%.

00:08:08.420 70%.

00:08:09.060 Wild.

00:08:10.160 Yeah.

00:08:10.400 So I think that the portion of the statement,

00:08:12.640 the thesis that's the most controversial isn't the winning the hearts of,

00:08:17.580 or keeping, it's the making converts of their children. I think that's going to be the point

00:08:23.200 where people are like, well, hold on. Because according to my church, we have X number of

00:08:28.120 baptisms, X number of decisions for Christ. That's how a lot of the megachurches in the megachurch

00:08:33.680 model measure the health of their church is by convert and baptisms. Well, when I do that

00:08:39.440 inventory of that 80, 90% that are apostate, again, 80 or 90% of those apostates were baptized

00:08:45.940 in youth group. 80 or 90% of them came forward in some kind of altar call scenario at youth camp or

00:08:52.380 on a Sunday morning, youth service, or, you know, most of them professed faith in Christ at some

00:08:57.880 point and yet fell away, became apostate, you know, deny Christ. And I hope that many of them

00:09:05.420 return. Many of them are still living, you know, we're not that old. So it's not like I have no

00:09:10.480 hope for any of them. I don't want to communicate that at all. And I also don't want to communicate

00:09:14.500 that all of their parents were idiots or anything like that. Many of their parents were earnest 1.00

00:09:19.560 Christians. And particularly when I think about the generation before my generation, the reason 0.99

00:09:24.840 those kids were there in the youth group was because the parents were Christians.

00:09:29.540 They somehow valued them.

00:09:30.300 Yeah. They wanted their kids to be Christians. They wanted them to profess the faith. They

00:09:34.040 wanted them to hold fast, wanted them to be godly and mature and discipled. And yet something

00:09:39.700 failed. And I like that you said they don't have the tools for doing this because the intention

00:09:44.780 was there in a lot of these, the intention was there. And then they were handed a certain set

00:09:50.540 of tools and practices that were supposed to result in discipled, mature Christian adults

00:09:57.160 out of this church pipeline. And yet it massively failed. And so that tells me that there is

00:10:06.220 probably something in the methodology there's probably something in the tools that they're

00:10:10.080 using that uh are faulty yeah that was going to be the question that i asked is is is what's wrong

00:10:16.480 with the tools what are they lacking um and as you were talking about youth group i mean i'm

00:10:21.260 thinking about my experiences in high school with you know we're basically mountain dew and video

00:10:26.460 games you know you begin with a round of would you rather and then there's some shallow teaching

00:10:32.300 and again you play video games or watch veggie tales and have a little dodgeball tournament

00:10:36.340 whatever and surprisingly people weren't kept but as i'm asking about the tools so i hope you guys

00:10:41.800 will answer that i i was also thinking about proverbs train up a child in the way you should

00:10:46.620 go and he will not depart from it if we have 70 percent of kids leaving the church they're actually

00:10:52.800 doing what they were trained to do yeah the question is what was that and again dan back

00:10:58.660 back to the question, what's wrong with the tools? What tools does the church have and what are they

00:11:04.560 lacking? Yeah, I don't want to belabor this point just to, I will answer your question, but it's

00:11:09.400 easy when you're a generation removed to despise and to hate your parents or your Christian

00:11:18.160 forefathers because of the wrong tools that were used. And I'll say what those, I think what those 0.68

00:11:23.820 tools are. But it's easy to turn around and despise them and to actually not honor your

00:11:28.500 father and mother, which in a cruel twist of fate and ironically will produce the exact same fruit

00:11:35.240 in the lives of your own children. They will despise you because you're training them how

00:11:41.740 to teach or how to treat their elders and those generational sins could be passed on. So just be 0.59

00:11:48.300 aware of that roots of bitterness in your heart and things like that. But yeah, honor your father

00:11:52.940 or mother, even where they, even because a lot of, so in this topic, a lot of our fathers and

00:12:00.000 mothers in that youth group environment that I'm describing, again, many of them had good

00:12:04.960 intentions and they were discipled to do something and told that it would work. And it did not,

00:12:11.520 but they acted in good faith, many of them, in their leaders, in their pastors and their

00:12:16.660 shepherds, which is why teachers are always judged with greater strictness because teachers

00:12:21.260 have the responsibility. They're not just ordering their homes. They're also ordering

00:12:25.280 thousands of homes, hundreds of homes, dozens of homes. And so if the fruit proves out that

00:12:31.700 there was folly in the foundations, there's a responsibility certainly for every household.

00:12:36.420 There's a greater measure of responsibility on the pastors and the leaders and the shepherds.

00:12:41.080 So I think that was a good point. But keep-

00:12:42.660 Yeah, absolutely. So some of the tools, we've talked about this in past episodes,

00:12:46.520 but it was like 30 episodes ago. I think episode two was on the seeker-sensitive movement.

00:12:51.260 Wasn't it on like decisionist? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like within the first five, we did several

00:12:55.500 that were really related to this. Yeah. Yeah. So one, one principle that I would like to appeal

00:13:00.580 to is that the, the walls of the church are permeable. So either out or in the walls are

00:13:07.080 permeable. And you can see this throughout history with different influences. Like during Constantine,

00:13:13.340 there is all of a sudden like preference given to Christians and there was an influx of pagans

00:13:18.720 into the church to varying degrees anyway.

00:13:21.840 Yeah.

00:13:22.200 But you get my point.

00:13:23.700 And so what it started using, what, Roman architecture?

00:13:26.640 Yeah, they started using Roman architecture within the churches.

00:13:29.920 Yeah, on the exterior and even in the sanctuary of the churches,

00:13:33.160 like Roman pillars and things like that.

00:13:35.140 It just became an influence within the church for good or bad.

00:13:40.620 For the project of this season to be successful,

00:13:43.400 the project of seeing a new Christendom built,

00:13:45.440 there will need to be thousands and thousands of Christian men and women who are equipped to stand

00:13:50.100 for the truth of scripture against the errors of both the liberal church and the pagan culture

00:13:55.680 this is one reason we're so glad to be partnering with our sponsor for this season

00:13:59.780 Reformation Heritage Books. Reformation Heritage Books offers a large selection of helpful

00:14:05.040 and theologically rigorous resources on everything from biblical theology to history to blue-collar

00:14:12.120 family discipleship, the type of library and resources that could make the kind of men and

00:14:17.160 women I just described grounded in the rich heritage of the Reformed faith. We'd like to

00:14:22.120 highlight one resource in particular, their Family Worship Bible Guide, that presents rich devotional

00:14:27.900 thoughts on all 1,189 chapters of the Bible, including searching questions to promote

00:14:33.660 conversation and to help you in leading your family in such a way as to say with Joshua,

00:14:38.320 As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

00:14:41.340 Tap the link in the description of this episode to pick one up today.

00:14:51.020 In 2023, Indigo Sundries became one of our sponsors.

00:14:54.520 At the time, their business was little more than a side hobby, generating a couple hundred dollars a month.

00:14:59.100 But because of their partnership with us and because all of you chose to support them,

00:15:02.620 they've grown enough to make it their full-time livelihood.

00:15:04.680 This is what happens when Christians support Christians.

00:15:07.000 Our communities are strengthened and faithful businesses thrive.

00:15:10.000 So if you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people

00:15:13.700 and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you.

00:15:16.440 Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.

00:15:26.980 In our day, I think recently, we've seen that permeability.

00:15:30.760 instead of the salt and light going out of the church

00:15:35.480 and influencing the culture,

00:15:37.860 it has been the culture permeating inside the church.

00:15:42.220 And so some of this has led to functionally,

00:15:46.640 not emotionally,

00:15:48.260 so I want to be careful with that,

00:15:49.960 functionally hating your children.

00:15:52.860 And the reason I say that is because

00:15:55.060 you have to ask the question,

00:15:57.320 and we answered it, I think, in the last episode.

00:16:00.760 Who are the people of God?

00:16:03.240 Who should be gathered in worship of the holy and living God?

00:16:07.560 Who is in the congregation?

00:16:10.040 Does God hear the worship of the children?

00:16:14.800 Yes.

00:16:15.680 Yeah, it's believers and their children.

00:16:17.260 Believers and their children.

00:16:18.160 And what has happened, essentially, is that the model and the tools that the church has adopted has been more of a conference style, more of a...

00:16:28.160 I mean, TED Talks are more modern, but you understand what I'm saying with this example

00:16:33.980 is that with a TED Talk, a church is like treated as a TED Talk. You have your talk,

00:16:40.440 not even a sermon. You have your coffee shop. You have childcare. It's like a nice date.

00:16:45.900 And so it's been more of a convenience and experience model. You're going to church for

00:16:50.500 an experience, which targets felt needs, and it becomes emotionally charged. And so you can't have

00:16:58.500 this emotionally charged experience with felt needs and have it actually succeed in keeping

00:17:06.220 your kids, because it becomes centric on the person having the experience. It becomes centered

00:17:11.820 on the person having this feeling of closeness with God, of being built up, whatever the target

00:17:18.280 it is, but it actually doesn't deal with the core, which is calling out sin. That's one of the aims

00:17:25.160 of preaching is to address sin and to lead people to repentance, to lead people to the throne of

00:17:30.800 mercy and grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, and to build a people together into the body of

00:17:36.520 Christ. But instead we treat it like independent persons having independent experiences. That's

00:17:42.460 one of the tools. I've got another one, but so let's talk about that for a second.

00:17:45.840 Yeah, absolutely. I think when you think about the worship of God's people, you're continually saying several things at the same time about who you are and what you're doing and what you're for. The corporate worship of the people of God, when it's properly engaged in with believers and their children, the company of the saints, the people who are in this thing, the preacher is saying constantly, this is who we are.

00:18:12.560 This is what God has said we are, what we're for.

00:18:15.420 Here's how to live.

00:18:16.660 We're a city on a hill, lit up with good works.

00:18:19.240 You're in.

00:18:19.980 You're the people.

00:18:21.020 So go and be the people.

00:18:23.000 So when you tell the whole congregation that and the children are present,

00:18:27.180 you're going with the grain of Christ's ministry when he said,

00:18:30.240 bring the infants to him, bring the children to him,

00:18:31.980 that he could bless them and instruct them.

00:18:33.840 You're saying you're in.

00:18:35.900 You're a part of this company.

00:18:37.320 When you take them all out and you put them in age segregated silos and you say it's because we can instruct them more appropriately to their age or whatever, you're saying something.

00:18:50.360 You're saying, in my opinion, you're functionally saying, you're not in.

00:18:55.960 This isn't you.

00:18:57.060 You're not a part of that company of saints.

00:18:58.900 There's lots of structure.

00:18:59.980 There's lots of problems as well in the content and all the other things.

00:19:02.940 but I think that's... Yeah, I think that leans in well to another emphasis, I think,

00:19:07.480 that you get in the tools that have been mishandled, and that's church as an educational

00:19:12.560 experience. Yeah, church as a lecture. So that's what you're talking about in a way. You're going

00:19:16.620 to segregate into age-appropriate sort of groups, and there is a place for that. We do that on Sunday

00:19:22.800 mornings in catechism as Sunday school classes before worship. And so I guess before we move

00:19:29.120 into that. Maybe we've defined this in the past episode, but I think it would be good to redefine

00:19:34.780 it. What is Sunday worship? What's it for? Yeah. What is it? Like, what is it for? Why would we

00:19:42.140 lead with the idea that removing children from corporate Sunday worship is a bad thing? What is

00:19:49.340 it that we're removing them from? We're removing them from the corporate worship of the people of

00:19:55.680 God, whereby the people of God come before their God to remember and renew the covenant of their

00:20:00.860 salvation, to receive their instruction as covenant members, and to give honor and praise

00:20:06.020 to their Lord, to commune with him, to be consecrated by his word, to be sent out and

00:20:11.260 charged with his instructions for the week. So we're fundamentally doing something covenantal.

00:20:17.120 We're saying there is this covenant that we're in that has been accomplished by the blood of

00:20:21.520 our Lord Jesus Christ. And that covenant establishes a people. It makes a people,

00:20:27.360 and we are that people. And it establishes along with those people duties. And so we're going to

00:20:32.220 receive our duties. And even more foundationally, maybe than our duties, we'd say it establishes a

00:20:37.040 relationship between the covenant God and the covenant people, where he invites us to fellowship

00:20:42.100 and commune with him around the Lord's table. So all of that's happening on a Sunday. And it shows

00:20:48.280 you how impoverished the view of worship is, that it's a lecture, that it's an evangelistic

00:20:54.580 exercise, that it's even just merely praise or worship. If you just reduce the corporate

00:21:00.300 worship to just praise, we're telling God his greatness. It's an element of our corporate

00:21:05.000 worship, but it's much more than that. It's also covenantal, encompassing all those elements.

00:21:10.580 Yeah, I think it's helpful, too, to remember the word for liturgy, which is tied to,

00:21:14.480 we would tie it to covenant renewal worship, which is Brian has been describing.

00:21:18.280 Liturgy means the work of the people.

00:21:20.340 And so really what you're doing in a robust liturgy,

00:21:23.280 everybody has one, some are just shallow,

00:21:25.340 but in a robust liturgy,

00:21:26.800 you're teaching and training people

00:21:28.400 how to live as Christians,

00:21:29.820 not only in those moments, but in all of life.

00:21:32.720 So confession, communion,

00:21:35.140 being sent out, consecrated,

00:21:37.200 and then sent out into the world.

00:21:38.720 It gives you a pattern for all of life.

00:21:40.880 And when we do covenant renewal worship,

00:21:42.980 that liturgy requires active participation

00:21:46.520 by the people in the congregation.

00:21:49.080 The difference is everything that Dan has described,

00:21:51.920 a lecture or praise or listening to entertainment,

00:21:56.880 the problem is that's all passive.

00:21:58.880 You just sit there and watch other people do the work

00:22:02.180 when in fact you're the one supposed to be doing the work.

00:22:04.280 This is also why we put an emphasis on congregational singing

00:22:07.620 because the people are supposed to be the ones worshiping,

00:22:11.040 not just people up front and you watch them do it.

00:22:13.780 We're not coming to...

00:22:15.140 Participation.

00:22:15.640 We're not coming to receive—I've said this before. I say this all the time to our church. Our gathered worship isn't a situation where the people of God come to receive spiritual goods and services dispensed by a religious class of professionals who dispense those goods and services in exchange for your tithe.

00:22:35.440 So that's a totally antithetical model to the biblical picture.

00:22:39.940 Biblical picture, yes, pastors and elders are facilitating the right worship of God and guiding the people as shepherds,

00:22:44.940 but they're guiding them towards the worship of their God, which is a thing we do together.

00:22:49.840 We're all doing the company of the saints.

00:22:52.180 And when you reduce, when you take any, many of the errors we've made in worship come from taking one element of what the saints do

00:22:59.980 when they gather for worship on the Lord's Day and making it all consuming.

00:23:03.380 so the sermon can become the whole thing.

00:23:06.500 Or in some liturgies, actually, the opposite error happens.

00:23:09.040 The communion becomes the whole thing.

00:23:10.920 In some errors, we have evangelism becomes the whole thing.

00:23:14.820 Should all three of those things happen in the world?

00:23:17.140 Yes.

00:23:17.440 I mean, every week I'm talking to saints, but within the service,

00:23:22.500 even the shape of the service itself, there's going to be an invitation

00:23:25.580 to repent of your sin, trust in the Lord Jesus, and be saved every single week.

00:23:30.500 it's not gonna be an altar call

00:23:32.160 but every week that's there

00:23:33.640 there's evangelism

00:23:34.380 there's biblical instruction

00:23:35.440 there's praise

00:23:36.680 there's communion

00:23:37.900 not any

00:23:39.540 no single element

00:23:40.940 of that liturgical experience

00:23:42.840 dominates and crowds out

00:23:45.060 all the others

00:23:45.740 yeah one of the ways

00:23:46.940 that happens

00:23:47.900 in a liturgy

00:23:49.300 that actually is

00:23:50.160 this is going to be

00:23:50.900 our next thesis

00:23:51.780 but

00:23:52.220 is that

00:23:53.380 it's very clear

00:23:55.040 that there are people

00:23:55.780 that are in

00:23:56.400 and there are people

00:23:57.480 that are not in

00:23:58.360 they are out of the covenant

00:23:59.600 it. Even in inviting people to the table, we don't practice closed communion. We practice

00:24:05.440 close communion, meaning you don't have to be a member and it's just closed to everybody else.

00:24:10.040 Of our local church. Yeah, of our local church. You have to be a member of the big C church.

00:24:13.800 Yeah. You have to be a Christian. And we make that very clear. 1.00

00:24:16.540 Give a biblical admonition. Yeah, that's correct, that you are invited if you are a Christian and

00:24:20.880 even giving certain elements like being baptized and things like that. And so even in that,

00:24:26.640 we make a distinction. This isn't seeker sensitive as in like, well, yeah, just come,

00:24:30.980 don't worry about it. You know, come later. There are very much so elements that these are covenant

00:24:35.540 people and these are not covenant people. Now, one of the things I wanted to back up for just

00:24:39.680 a moment, even though we're going to get into it in our next theses, is you guys both have used the

00:24:45.320 term covenant renewal. And so one of the things that I think people might, that haven't heard this

00:24:50.740 term are familiar with the concept, the theology or philosophy, is that they might think, well,

00:24:56.540 hold on. You're saying that we have to renew the covenant. What if we don't go to church? Are we

00:25:01.320 like out of the covenant? Do I have to keep going to keep the covenant going?

00:25:05.840 Is it like the Aztecs sacrificing slaves to keep the sun coming?

00:25:10.120 Sure. Sure. Or even like there's certain theologies that would say like, if you don't

00:25:13.880 continue participating in the covenant promises, then you're out of the covenant. You have to keep

00:25:17.580 the covenant in this way by continuing to participate in that way. I mean, is that true?

00:25:23.100 Is that not true? Like, what the heck does that mean? Yeah. When I say remember and renew the

00:25:28.600 covenant of our salvation, what I'm basically saying is that we're coming together because

00:25:33.300 we're a forgetful people to look to and remember what it is that God has done in Christ to save us,

00:25:39.620 which is the covenant. He has shed his blood. It's a covenant signed in the blood of Christ.

00:25:46.180 He's fulfilled the conditions of the covenant.

00:25:48.720 He's fulfilled the law.

00:25:50.360 He's given us his spirit.

00:25:51.580 He's put new hearts in us.

00:25:52.780 We are in his covenant.

00:25:55.060 He's done it.

00:25:56.120 And then he calls us as members of the covenant to do things,

00:25:59.740 to participate in and continue our life within the covenant.

00:26:03.220 It's not that we do to get in.

00:26:06.360 We're in by his saving grace.

00:26:08.980 And then as his people, his covenant people,

00:26:11.580 we're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people for his own possession.

00:26:15.000 were to then live in the land in a certain way. We're in the land. Now here's how you live in the

00:26:20.700 land. So when I say remember and renew the covenant, I mean that our whole lives should

00:26:25.260 orbit around the covenant realities of what God has done, that our whole life is in this thing.

00:26:32.080 Our whole life is to live at peace with the laws of his covenant, to live within it.

00:26:37.780 So we remember it. We look to his promises. We confess our sin. We go to communion. We do all

00:26:43.760 the things that week after week lift our eyes from ourselves, his promises into what he's

00:26:48.700 accomplished and what he said he's going to continue to accomplish. So when I say renewal,

00:26:53.400 I don't mean that the covenant dies without us, that the new covenant is like, you know,

00:26:59.140 it's done if we forget one week, if you're sick one week, or, you know, even if someone falls away

00:27:03.980 and they apostatize. Well, no, the covenant's not done. When I say renew, I mean, we are

00:27:10.460 continually being renewed. We're going in. We're remembering. We're confessing. We're eating with

00:27:14.620 the Lord. Some people confuse justification and they conflate and they collapse all of salvation

00:27:20.400 into justification. Justification is a momentary declaration of God whereby you're declared

00:27:24.820 righteous. 2 Corinthians 5.21, declared righteous. He's put all of your sins away from you as far as

00:27:31.280 the east is from the west. But salvation is much bigger than justification. You can think of

00:27:35.600 justification like a door. And then you go in and there's this whole life, your sanctification where

00:27:40.800 he's making you holy. And so when we say renew, I don't mean get justified again or anything of

00:27:46.020 that sort. No, that's happened. Christ died once. By faith. Yeah, you were regenerate once.

00:27:54.620 You can never be unregenerate. It's a one-time thing God did. When I say renew, I mean that we

00:28:01.280 are going in and we are participating actively within the life of the covenant people. And that

00:28:07.080 is a renewing thing. It renews us. It renews our understanding. It renews our faith in the promises.

00:28:12.020 It feeds us. There's actual grace that God is dispensing moment by moment, including through

00:28:17.540 these forms of worship, the logical ordering of this idea of covenant renewal worship, which

00:28:23.440 basically includes the normal features of a reformed historic liturgy in a certain order.

00:28:29.740 it's taken from the ordering of the covenantal practice of the Old Testament, where there's a

00:28:36.720 call to worship. We don't come uncalled. God calls us to worship. And then there is a confession of

00:28:43.300 sin. We confess our sin. You can think of the animal, the people, the priest confessing sin

00:28:48.200 over the animal. And then there is a consecration by the word of God. The priestly sword would cut

00:28:53.640 up the sacrifice, and it would burn the sacrifice, which would then ascend as the smoke, a food

00:28:58.180 offering before God. It's symbolic of God eating with the worshiper and you communing with God

00:29:05.520 over this table. And then you're sent out to the kingdom. You've come to the temple. You've come 0.82

00:29:10.520 to the priestly work. And then you're sent out with this commission to go and live life as a

00:29:16.400 member of the kingdom, wherever the Lord sends you. So you see this ordering of worship in the

00:29:21.600 covenant, and the New Testament elements are all there and logically cohere within that order as

00:29:28.740 well. You see these elements featured within historic Reformed liturgies, and basically what

00:29:34.840 you're doing is you're just preaching even with the liturgy that God is consistent throughout

00:29:40.040 the Testaments in his worship. Yeah, and I would just say as a side note, if people want to read

00:29:45.120 more about that, Uri Brito talked about that as well when we had him on, but Jeff Meyer's book,

00:29:50.440 covenant on the Lord's service. Yeah. The Lord's service, Jeff Myers. He's a PCA pastor.

00:29:56.320 Yep. That's right. You know, so one of the things that, that the modern American church,

00:30:01.700 especially in like the seeker sensitive movement, the mega church movement, or even just kind of

00:30:05.400 like shallow Christianity misses with not thinking in the terms of covenants is that

00:30:11.900 just like in the old covenant, the new covenant has correlating blessings and has correlating

00:30:18.680 curses. And so, Eric, I was wondering if you maybe could talk to where the modern church would

00:30:26.380 actually hamper their people from not taking the nature of the covenant curses and the covenant

00:30:32.920 blessings seriously, and maybe how that's played out. Yeah, that's a great question, Dan. This is

00:30:39.020 maybe like, I have no idea what... What I want? Yeah. I'm not sure. It's not on the notes.

00:30:46.320 Whatever it is, it's not right on a teleprompter.

00:30:48.460 I don't know what that is.

00:30:49.340 I've never seen that.

00:30:50.980 Do it live.

00:30:52.120 I'll write it and we'll do it live.

00:30:54.600 It isn't on the notes.

00:30:55.700 I'm just curious what line you were thinking on that.

00:30:58.420 Yeah, so you have different curses.

00:31:00.060 Say, like, when Paul is talking, he'll give, like, a whole cluster of sins, right?

00:31:06.580 And he'll say, these people don't inherit the kingdom of God.

00:31:10.500 These people are going to be damned. 0.70

00:31:13.360 Like, adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 0.99

00:31:16.220 Yeah, I see what you're saying.

00:31:16.860 That is a curse.

00:31:17.740 Yeah.

00:31:17.940 So what happens when you have churches that then refuse to preach on things as simple as adultery, making a covenant with your eyes?

00:31:27.240 You know, things like that.

00:31:28.100 Just the basics.

00:31:29.520 Preaching against, for example, like gossip and malice and bitterness. 0.99

00:31:33.880 Men who practice homosexuality. 0.92

00:31:35.460 Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying now. 0.94

00:31:37.140 So a lot of this, too, I think it goes back to something that was popular in Acts 29 with Matt Chandler, right?

00:31:43.280 There's this story of a pastor who was telling a story about a rose and sexual immorality.

00:31:48.740 Yeah.

00:31:49.040 And it was like a woman is the rose, and this pastor was saying, you know, you're just plucking the petals off.

00:31:54.640 Yeah.

00:31:54.920 And, you know, you're giving yourself away to all these men.

00:31:56.880 And then at the end, like, it's kind of filthy, and who would want that?

00:32:01.480 And, of course, Matt Chandler said, well, Jesus wants the rose.

00:32:03.320 and we wouldn't say that that woman can't be redeemed and god god isn't going to restore her

00:32:08.500 but there is also even in that case there's a reality where you've done real curse work to

00:32:14.340 yourself and so i think there's just there's not been a lot of preaching on just practical

00:32:19.120 sin and and how that shows up in the life of the body one of the ones that i've always gone to

00:32:24.860 first corinthians 6 is feminacy um it ties into the hard man podcast so we've addressed it but

00:32:30.720 people are like, no, effeminacy doesn't, that's not something that would send you to hell.

00:32:35.840 And you're like, actually, I have a passage for you.

00:32:39.040 Actually, 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and 10.

00:32:41.440 That's correct.

00:32:41.960 And so then you think about things like you're saying, like, okay, well, what if the church

00:32:46.800 was preaching through the items in that list so that their people could identify them so

00:32:52.840 that they could live holy lives?

00:32:54.940 Again, as Brian said before, I already hear the criticisms.

00:32:59.620 What you're saying, if you do these things, you'll be justified?

00:33:02.180 Absolutely not.

00:33:03.060 We're saying if you are justified, the Spirit is in you.

00:33:05.780 You should desire to live in God's blessing

00:33:08.640 and to avoid the things that he says are curses.

00:33:11.440 It's not do this and live.

00:33:13.720 It's you have been made to live and so do this.

00:33:16.420 So walk in life.

00:33:17.260 It's completely inverted.

00:33:19.240 And the charge of legalism, what it does is it misses the grain of Scripture.

00:33:25.700 So even thinking about the covenant community aspect,

00:33:28.380 think about how Moses could not lead the people into the land. Moses is like a picture of the

00:33:32.900 law, the Mosaic law. It took Joshua to lead them into the land. They crossed the Jordan 0.68

00:33:38.100 to go into the land of Canaan and begin to do the work. The real work of the kingdom then began 0.54

00:33:42.440 of displacing Canaanites and living in the land as covenant members, right? So there's a picture 0.89

00:33:48.720 right there for us that it's not through keeping the law that we crossed the Jordan.

00:33:53.740 we need Joshua which is literally their same name as Jesus Yeshua Joshua so so we need Christ to do

00:34:00.240 that but once the people got in the land did they stop living by the Mosaic law no they were the

00:34:04.800 people of God so they lived by the law and and they they when they did that when they lived within

00:34:10.640 the land that Joshua had brought them to that Yahweh had brought them to by grace sheer grace

00:34:15.940 not there these guys were like took 10 minutes out of Egypt before they're grumbling against

00:34:21.440 the living God and longing for slavery, right? So these aren't like, they're just like us. These

00:34:25.840 people are just like us. God's sheer grace brings them into the land. And then he sets before them,

00:34:30.060 Moses set before them, the final like exhortation before they go in. Here are the blessings and the

00:34:35.040 curses. People of God, you are the people of God. Therefore, live with God in the land. Worship him

00:34:42.020 faithfully. Don't set up idols in the land. Don't syncretize with the local molex. Don't do all of

00:34:47.620 that gay stuff. Don't get in, you know, you need a couple of Phineases to grab the spear and start 1.00

00:34:52.380 running people through when they're, when they're given into sexual immorality and worshiping

00:34:55.760 demons, right? Live with God. And if you do, God is going to bless you because God has woven into

00:35:01.780 the fabric of reality that when his people walk at peace with his law, when by grace and through

00:35:07.740 faith, just like they did back then, by the way, when by grace and through faith, the people of

00:35:12.180 God, obey God in the land that he's brought them to, he blesses them. And when they don't,

00:35:17.620 there's curses, right? We act like that reality is utterly removed. And bringing it back to

00:35:24.840 children, this is what we're teaching our children. When we give them an antinomian,

00:35:31.080 feelings-centered, constant evangelism-centered, Christian TED Talk, entertainment, and we don't

00:35:38.080 disciple them to that they are christians and so live like christians for the sake of god's blessing

00:35:44.520 yeah you're absolutely right and so much of like go to proverbs one of the reasons i think like

00:35:49.280 jordan peterson has been so popular among young people well obviously like the way he says

00:35:55.160 obviously that's pretty good in michael foster too um for different reasons obviously one one

00:36:00.960 christian one maybe probably not we don't know but i would say this they're both really good

00:36:06.580 at giving very practical advice in a Proverbs-like way to young people.

00:36:11.640 Think about what Proverbs the father is saying continually to his children.

00:36:14.940 Hey, do you see that lazy guy?

00:36:16.400 Do you like that?

00:36:17.100 Do you want that?

00:36:18.380 Do you want your fields to look like that?

00:36:20.140 Don't do that.

00:36:21.520 So you're finding just simple ways to teach object lessons to children

00:36:25.080 in ways that are practical.

00:36:27.120 We were talking about this morning chapel at St. Brennan's.

00:36:31.160 And the boys said, yeah, we love Pastor Dan's chapel messages.

00:36:36.060 And I said, well, why?

00:36:37.640 And Benjamin said, he goes, well, because Pastor Dan's always like, hey, don't do this. 1.00

00:36:41.280 It's stupid. 1.00

00:36:42.060 It'll ruin your life. 1.00

00:36:43.100 All right, let's pray.

00:36:44.580 And he's like, I understand it.

00:36:46.560 It's very practical.

00:36:48.040 And he said, I'll sit there and chew on it for the day and go, yeah, that's right. 1.00

00:36:50.840 That is really dumb. 0.98

00:36:51.820 Yeah, I do actually kind of want to do that sometimes. 1.00

00:36:54.200 It is dumb. 0.84

00:36:55.060 Yeah, don't reject authority. 1.00

00:36:56.320 That's a dumb thing. 0.81

00:36:57.240 So back to the curveball that I threw you about coming, curses and blessings and things like that. 0.98

00:37:01.620 What happens, I think we've seen.

00:37:04.200 Yeah.

00:37:04.360 What happens when a church denies teaching and instructing children, hey, remind them, Deuteronomy 6, when you rise up, when you lie down, when you go on the way, when you eat, when you see a monument, what are you supposed to do?

00:37:20.980 You're supposed to instruct the children.

00:37:22.660 These are the works God has done.

00:37:24.080 This is how he's blessed us.

00:37:25.420 If we don't do these things, if we don't walk in faith, if we don't continue as a people of God, not that you're saved by works, all the disclaimers and everything like that.

00:37:33.220 But if you actually walk in adultery and you do not repent, you are going to hell. 0.94

00:37:39.780 Like when you don't tell children, homosexuality is a grievous sin. 0.98

00:37:44.300 It is a horrible sin not to be celebrated. 0.55

00:37:47.360 And then you actually give your kids over to pagans to be discipled to say, no, no, this is not a bad thing.

00:37:54.200 This is something that we should celebrate and have parades for.

00:37:57.440 What is going to happen? 0.58

00:37:58.960 Your children will be cursed.

00:38:00.220 Well, and I haven't brought up education because the next episode is going to be on education, I think, Lord willing.

00:38:07.140 So right now we're talking about why worship and children, children in worship is key to covenant succession.

00:38:13.160 That's sort of the thesis of the last two episodes, of this episode being part two of really the same topic.

00:38:17.940 I got excited. I didn't mean to steal your thunder.

00:38:20.260 No, no, no, you're fine. And I just want to hand wave that so people don't think like, well, duh, there's this big other thing.

00:38:25.040 You know, they work together, but it really is the case that worship is so much more important than we practical, pragmatic moderns think it is.

00:38:33.300 Because you don't see it doing anything.

00:38:35.720 Right.

00:38:36.160 Like, you have the big examples where it's like, hey, I used to do this thing, and I repented, and I don't do it anymore.

00:38:42.860 Praise God for that.

00:38:44.140 But it's not like math, you know, where you're attending school and you're like, I used to not be able to do algebra, and now I can.

00:38:50.620 Now I know what the letters are doing in there.

00:38:52.800 I didn't know what the letters were doing. What was I supposed to do with that X in there and

00:38:56.480 that Y? Yeah, now I know. It is. It's different. And worship, so the mistake that even people in 1.00

00:39:03.500 our camp can make, though, is to too quickly talk about education and neglect the centrality of

00:39:10.180 worship, because actually, in the land, when you think about what it is, when you look at that

00:39:16.080 picture from the Old Testament of the covenant people of God dwelling in the land with their

00:39:19.580 God faithfully. At the center of it, like, yes, education, highly important, but at the center of

00:39:25.600 it is actually the worship, right? It's when the worship becomes polluted that the bad things

00:39:31.740 happen, right? And of course, education has to serve and feed, but that's the key is that education

00:39:37.000 even serves the worship. It's not the other way around. Education isn't in the center, and then

00:39:42.360 worship is one of the peripheral things. It's the people of God are the temple, and out of the

00:39:47.180 temple comes the water, right? And so there at the center is the worship of God, the people of God.

00:39:53.380 So you can't too quickly dismiss the importance of what God is doing covenantally when his people

00:40:01.080 gather in his name on the Lord's day and worship him. And when our children are present for that,

00:40:06.080 when they're being brought up as members of this thing, instructed week in and week out in the

00:40:10.800 worship of God, having the imprint of the word of God stamped on their hearts, seeing mom and dad

00:40:16.880 confess their sin, coming to the table, all of these things, don't underestimate them just

00:40:22.320 because it is an hour or two on Sunday and education is, you know, six to eight hours,

00:40:27.940 more days a week. Education is highly important, but it's so key. So key. Are we in the fourth

00:40:34.000 thesis yet? Let's just do it. We've really overlapped at this point. Well, yeah, you have

00:40:38.720 to compare in order to say like, why is one thing bad? Saying the other thing is good. So at number

00:40:43.440 four we'll just transition and then i've got something i wanted to say okay uh a robust

00:40:47.920 regulative principled and historical liturgy is the only vehicle that can reliably accomplish

00:40:53.340 the discipleship of children into adult members another way to say that is i'll say a robust

00:41:00.960 scripturally principled and historic sunday corporate worship is the best yeah it's the

00:41:09.880 vehicle to accomplish discipleship of children into adult members.

00:41:15.120 Can I ask you a question?

00:41:16.180 Yeah.

00:41:17.320 I believe that's true.

00:41:19.440 And in our church, I think that we're living that out.

00:41:22.580 But I've also been to churches with high liturgies who believe in covenant renewal,

00:41:27.100 and their daughter is wearing a miniskirt in the front row.

00:41:30.860 So there's like a caveat here somewhere where you're saying,

00:41:36.040 like, yes, if you thoroughly apply it, like, you have to thoroughly apply it once you leave.

00:41:44.060 Yeah, and a proper historically Reformed covenant renewal liturgy will include a robust teaching

00:41:53.600 of the law and the gospel. It will include a robust application of the text. The text will

00:41:59.780 make significant contact with our lives. So the pastor, this is a key, I think, for pastors to

00:42:06.160 remember. And there's a lot of pastors who listen to this, so maybe this will be helpful.

00:42:10.400 Christendom Bible College offers a one-year certificate in the humanities for students

00:42:14.600 who intend to pursue a degree or for students who prefer to begin their chosen occupations

00:42:19.240 upon completion of our program. Older students who never attended college or who went to a college

00:42:24.860 where the humanities were less robust will also find our program stimulating and suitable.

00:42:30.320 Located, steps from the Ohio River and the town of New Richmond,

00:42:33.960 we're unaccredited in order to remain free to teach

00:42:37.080 as our biblically-minded consciences demand.

00:42:40.060 As servants of Christ, we won't wear the yoke of the woke.

00:42:44.460 Instead, we stand on the shoulders of Christianity's giants,

00:42:47.900 not to stew in nostalgia, but to see through the culture war's fog,

00:42:51.740 for the glorious days of a Christendom still to be built.

00:42:55.600 Our exceptional faculty are committed to the historic,

00:42:58.040 Biblical Foundations of Our Faith.

00:43:00.680 Come be a part of Christendom Bible College.

00:43:03.820 Visit us on the web at christendombiblecollege.org to learn more.

00:43:08.560 While there, be sure to sign up for our email updates

00:43:11.480 and receive your free three-chapter excerpt

00:43:14.080 of our very own Dr. Frank J. Smith's new book,

00:43:17.440 Race, Church, and Society.

00:43:24.040 When you look at the command to know the state of your flocks,

00:43:28.100 Part of knowing the state of your flocks is knowing what kind of weeds they've been eating,

00:43:33.760 what kind of dangers they have.

00:43:35.500 Whoa, that sheep looks like it's been mauled by a coyote.

00:43:38.800 I should probably figure out what to do about that.

00:43:41.420 So you need to know the state of your flocks.

00:43:43.400 And if you're, as a pastor, conducting this glorious liturgy,

00:43:47.020 and it is glorious, it is rich, it's meaty, it's ribeye steak, well-marbled,

00:43:52.340 it's 83% European butter.

00:43:54.780 I mean, it's glorious.

00:43:55.840 Irish butter.

00:43:56.700 It's glorious.

00:43:57.920 It is glorious, okay?

00:43:59.720 Eric's eyebrows are like raising up.

00:44:01.720 Eric's like getting excited.

00:44:03.220 If Eric were on a lie detector test right now,

00:44:04.960 I'd be like, ooh, he's excited.

00:44:07.020 I'm sensing the juices flowing.

00:44:09.680 I can taste the ribeye.

00:44:11.080 So that's great.

00:44:11.940 You got to have that.

00:44:13.020 But if you're a pastor,

00:44:15.340 you're giving them all this great instruction. 0.96

00:44:17.120 Here's the green pastors where you ought to go. 0.97

00:44:18.880 Look at all of it. 0.97

00:44:19.860 And then you never look at the flock

00:44:21.080 and be like, have they gone there?

00:44:23.380 What traps are they in?

00:44:24.880 Like what's their, you need to know the state of your flocks.

00:44:27.180 You need to be able to, like, this is why the preaching is not something that you can just

00:44:31.020 throw on YouTube and watch a sermon from somewhere else.

00:44:33.280 It shouldn't be the sort of thing that you can just watch a sermon from across the country

00:44:37.480 and get everything you need.

00:44:39.200 Because you need a pastor preaching who knows you, who's saying, oh man, I've seen, we've

00:44:44.300 got a lot of new members maybe, and a lot of young Christians, and maybe some of them

00:44:48.340 are really wrestling with, I don't know, maybe they're tempted to go to the mysticism

00:44:53.400 of the Eastern Orthodox Church or they're getting into some of these sort of ditches. I'm going to

00:44:58.160 preach on that. I don't know. I don't care if somebody in California or Texas or Idaho needs

00:45:01.540 it. My people need it. Oh, look, there's a lot of miniskirts showing up and the ladies are doing

00:45:06.340 their thing and going, hey, let me take you aside, young lady, and explain to you why you don't want 1.00

00:45:10.540 to do that. It's bad for you, bad for my husband and my sons. The pastor needs to know this too. 0.99

00:45:16.400 so a lot of it though really gets down into an aspect of pastoral ministry that everything we

00:45:25.400 teach everything that we do in the service i think the reason it works well in our church is

00:45:28.800 because ultimately there's courageous pastors who will then take it and say we're going to apply it

00:45:34.840 to you and you and you and me and you and your your wife my everybody is being held accountable

00:45:41.180 in a very loving, edifying way.

00:45:45.840 It's kind of like Richard Baxter

00:45:46.880 and the reformed pastor.

00:45:47.840 He said, all the preaching I ever did,

00:45:49.760 it never really came home to roost

00:45:51.340 until I counseled the people.

00:45:52.660 I went in their homes and I said,

00:45:54.420 yeah, I see your son's not respecting you.

00:45:56.620 Here's what you need to do about that.

00:45:58.340 Yep.

00:45:59.220 Yeah, it's the same way with like church government. 0.77

00:46:01.400 So let's say we've got a lot of Baptists.

00:46:04.040 Let's say you're a congregationalist church.

00:46:06.520 Can that be a righteous model of church government?

00:46:09.980 If you have godly people, absolutely.

00:46:12.880 If you have godly leadership, absolutely.

00:46:15.220 We have more of a Presbyterian model.

00:46:18.480 Is that going to save you?

00:46:20.020 No.

00:46:20.540 The model will not save you.

00:46:22.000 The liturgy will not save you.

00:46:23.900 If you have wicked men who are leading a godly liturgy, just like in the nation of Israel when Jesus arrived, like, hey, do as they do or don't do as they do.

00:46:34.740 Do as they say.

00:46:35.300 Don't do as they do when Jesus is addressing the Pharisees. 0.98

00:46:37.640 because the model wasn't bad

00:46:40.460 the new covenant is a better model

00:46:43.280 but the old covenant

00:46:45.140 wasn't bad

00:46:46.000 it was just fading away

00:46:47.680 you can look at this

00:46:51.120 in the history of Presbyterians

00:46:52.960 Presbyterian government won't save you

00:46:54.820 PCUSA

00:46:55.740 they had a Presbyterian

00:46:57.860 they had church courts

00:46:59.680 high liturgy

00:47:01.240 they had the hymnal

00:47:02.940 they had preaching

00:47:04.400 the people were apostate

00:47:06.940 Yeah. People rejected their Lord. So you, you can't, you can't make like the tool is good,

00:47:13.080 but one of the, one of the keys that we just have to remember, even in all this talk about 0.51

00:47:17.860 building new Christendom is that they who labor, labor in vain unless the Lord builds the house.

00:47:24.180 Okay. We need at the heart of this thing, the Lord to come in, unless the Lord comes into the

00:47:29.820 temple, it's just a tent or a building, tabernacle, unless the Shekinah comes down. Like there's a 0.97

00:47:35.060 reason that the curse was Ichabod, the glory has departed. Ichabod, Israel, your apostate, 0.96

00:47:40.760 the glory has departed. The Lord's left. Your tent may be just as beautiful, but the Lord's not 0.94

00:47:45.100 in it anymore. Your system's glorious, but the Lord's not in it. So that's why a lot of these

00:47:49.000 things, people want a method. People want a GPS roadmap where they're like, they plug in the

00:47:52.700 destination. Well, if I do this and then I do this and I do this and I do this, everything will work

00:47:56.740 out. It's like, not necessarily. That's not, you should do all of that. But at the heart of it,

00:48:01.300 we also need a people who are calling on their God to say, come and build. Yeah, this whole project

00:48:04.740 is bottom up, right? It requires a people that actually love God and worship him and are

00:48:11.120 righteous. So you could compare and contrast stories like in Nehemiah, for example, you have

00:48:15.400 the people that are actually like, they've repented and they want to build the walls of Jerusalem

00:48:20.180 versus like Jeremiah. Both you have actually righteous leaders, but in Jeremiah, the story

00:48:27.120 is way different because the people are actually, they hate God. And so it doesn't matter how good

00:48:32.240 the preaching is. Yeah. The people don't want it. They don't want it. And so one of the things

00:48:39.820 that's really ironic, so let's say you have godly leaders, you have this robust historical liturgy.

00:48:47.560 One of the things, one of the side effects that you get is that you will actually have experiences.

00:48:53.060 i mean singing uh four-part psalms yeah with one another is amazing yeah another thing is that you

00:49:03.140 will actually have education yep because it's not just a sermon that carries all the weight either

00:49:08.060 it it's actually uh quite the experience and quite the education weekend and week out you're

00:49:15.240 learning something every week even if it's something as simple like eric said as a pattern

00:49:19.700 of life, the covenant renewal worship teaches you, like, I've sinned. What must I do? Well,

00:49:26.660 it's the same pattern. It's confession. It's hearing the truth of God. It's...

00:49:32.080 Yeah, even all the tools. I think, like, the music that Brian's writing, we were talking about

00:49:36.860 the YouTube... Brian, what's the name of the YouTube one you did in four parts with all of

00:49:40.960 them together? Oh, yeah. I've done My Soul, I Great Creator Praise Psalm 104, and I've done

00:49:45.320 when Zion's fortunes got restored, Psalm 126.

00:49:49.900 Yeah, so one of the fundamental things

00:49:51.220 that we believe about anthropology

00:49:53.240 is that media, including music,

00:49:57.380 shapes the affections, desires,

00:49:59.760 and the will of the human heart.

00:50:01.980 Yeah.

00:50:02.180 And so getting those tools in our people's hands

00:50:05.760 so that I come home and my wife is listening to that

00:50:09.280 and my son said she's been listening to that song

00:50:11.600 for three hours straight.

00:50:13.860 She's learning her part.

00:50:14.860 She's learning her part.

00:50:16.040 Amelia was sitting at the piano yesterday playing the alto part so that she could learn.

00:50:20.100 Yeah.

00:50:20.440 So I think that's part of what we're doing that flows out of this regular principle historical liturgy.

00:50:26.760 We have psalm sing tonight.

00:50:29.120 We are training the hearts and minds of our people.

00:50:32.380 We have St. Brennan's.

00:50:33.620 The kids are going to learn wonderful things.

00:50:36.040 I think part of it, too, is then like we're not saying like have a great liturgy and just leave it there on Sunday.

00:50:42.180 but it is like that picture of the temple

00:50:44.620 where it's overflowing in all of our lives

00:50:46.600 and then what happens to your life

00:50:48.640 like now when it's like 0.99

00:50:49.840 I'm surrounded by Christians in that frame

00:50:52.720 of mind all the time 1.00

00:50:54.600 I'm going to live differently

00:50:56.440 and interact with my community differently

00:50:58.220 yeah not just you but your children

00:51:00.580 my children there is no transition

00:51:02.340 it's not like oh you're in the big leagues now

00:51:04.420 you were in kids service

00:51:05.380 you were doing your own thing being taught by some college age girl

00:51:08.980 and now you've got to go

00:51:10.900 into adult worship and you it's and it's boring it's boring because we had all the kitty songs

00:51:14.740 and now you're yeah no you should hear our kids belting out crown him crown him yeah i mean they

00:51:22.700 are belting it out there is so the the transition there is no transition they are in they are in

00:51:29.120 the congregation yeah worshiping god i asked little little winifred winifred 16 months old

00:51:34.980 So, yeah, where is God?

00:51:37.600 She's my favorite, by the way.

00:51:38.880 In my heart, she points at her heart.

00:51:42.020 Are you baptized?

00:51:43.060 She pats her head.

00:51:43.800 I'm baptized.

00:51:45.300 And so from the very beginning, she's there.

00:51:48.400 When we sing the doxology, she's in her high chair at the table.

00:51:51.480 Yeah.

00:51:52.120 Praise God, hands go up.

00:51:54.160 She's seeing, she's imitating, she's learning.

00:51:56.440 She's figuring this out.

00:51:57.480 It's worked into the grain of her soul from the very earliest days.

00:52:02.400 and she's hearing this message over and over

00:52:04.700 and over and over. You're in.

00:52:06.800 This is who we are. This is what we're for.

00:52:09.040 This is our God. Here's how to come

00:52:10.780 to him by grace and through faith.

00:52:12.840 And yeah, there's going to be a moment. Here's how to continue.

00:52:15.100 There's going to be a moment when my kids are regenerate

00:52:16.940 and I pray for that.

00:52:19.020 And with some of them

00:52:20.700 it will be probably fairly obvious. With some of them

00:52:22.800 maybe less so and I won't really know

00:52:24.660 exactly when.

00:52:26.880 But from the very beginning

00:52:28.320 they're being told, these are

00:52:30.840 your people. This is your God. Serve him. And again, unless the Lord comes in, nothing's going

00:52:37.420 to happen unless the Lord comes in. A robust regulative principle in historic liturgy can't

00:52:41.560 save your children. No. But when we say a robust regulative principle in historic liturgy is the

00:52:46.040 only vehicle that can reliably accomplish the discipleship of children and to adult members,

00:52:49.880 we're saying basically that what you should do is situate yourself, your church, your family

00:52:54.940 firmly in the historic stream of the people of God. You should stand there. You should not

00:53:00.660 move the old landmarks. You shouldn't try to reinvent things and say my father and mother

00:53:05.220 were stupid. They didn't know those hymns, those stodgy things, let's get rid of them. 1.00

00:53:10.320 Let's reinvent worship according to a sociological, psychotherapeutic view.

00:53:14.480 Let's figure this thing out.

00:53:15.000 We've had a picture of that. That's why we're saying modern church doesn't have the tools.

00:53:18.700 We've done that. We've already done that. So what we need to do instead is worship the

00:53:23.280 living God, bring our children into it, and teach them to worship the living God.

00:53:26.080 And that's why I think, coming to the last point here, that this is such a key point. Children should be instructed by their fathers through participation in Sunday corporate worship and family worship. That's really at the heart here of this whole thesis, is that if we're going to have Christendom, if we want to build a new Christendom, we're going to need covenant succession because that's the work of many generations.

00:53:49.120 So we're going to need vehicles whereby the covenant can be passed on from generation to

00:53:55.600 generation, where it can make contact through the generations. One of the normative means that God

00:53:59.660 has appointed for that to happen isn't just through the conversion of the lost, but one of

00:54:04.880 the primal means is through the discipleship and conversion of our children, discipleship of our

00:54:10.420 children. And so if we really want to see new Christendom, we've really got to get this in this

00:54:16.380 blue collar everyday sort of way. Fathers, do you want to build Christendom? Don't try to go do 0.57

00:54:21.260 something, you know, impressive tomorrow necessarily. Instruct your children through

00:54:27.480 corporate worship, through family worship. Bring them in. Teach them to be Christians. Tell them

00:54:33.280 they're in. It's just normal, normal stuff. And as we do that, instead of trying to reinvent it

00:54:38.860 every generation, I fully expect the Lord to bless. And we are not doomed with 80 or 90%

00:54:46.060 apostasy or 70% apostasy generation to generation. We're not. That's fruit of a bad tree. We're not

00:54:52.560 doomed with that. People get so black-pilled on this stuff, I think. Just go, I guess that's how

00:54:59.220 it is. They all act like your children all have to go through some wild period of apostasy, 0.72

00:55:04.140 like we do have to lose most—well, maybe they'll come back when they're older. We have to adopt

00:55:07.620 some kind of unbiblical once-saved-always-saved in the sense that if they just pray the prayer 0.82

00:55:12.040 they're in. Well, I know little Bobby grew up to marry a crack hoe and he's dealing math, but 1.00

00:55:19.520 he prayed the prayer. He's fine. We don't have to comfort ourselves with these lies 1.00

00:55:24.920 when we just embrace the normative means of covenant succession.

00:55:29.420 Yeah, I think that's really huge. And I think the other thing, it goes back to the promises,

00:55:34.220 right? That we're, you know, train up a child in the way you should go. Obviously that's Proverbs,

00:55:37.900 but we have an entire slew of promises that we base our parenting on and then we go act in faith

00:55:45.020 and I think if we're doing that and I think part of this is the key to it is if we're doing that

00:55:51.740 and not living hypocritically then our children are going to see that so one of the things I

00:55:56.440 always tell people is you know pointing to David in the Psalms he says I will live with integrity

00:56:01.240 in my house why my house because it's easy to go to church and put on a nice face but then how do

00:56:07.100 treat your wife and your kids. So just make sure that as a function of worship, confess your sins

00:56:13.480 to one another. Yeah. I try to make sure I, this will be surprising, but I regularly sin against

00:56:19.760 my wife. And so one of the things I do is I will repent to her in front of the children if they

00:56:25.900 saw the sin. You know, maybe I was crossed with my words or I just short-tempered or whatever.

00:56:31.300 Repent. Let them see you repent. You're demanding and calling them to, you know,

00:56:35.820 I'm sorry, please forgive me.

00:56:37.560 I forgive you as Christ also forgives me.

00:56:39.720 We're asking our kids to do that.

00:56:41.800 Well, you do it.

00:56:43.660 You be somebody who puts a guard on your emotional self.

00:56:49.320 Yeah, your day at work was hard.

00:56:51.180 Or, yeah, you're worn out from caring for the kids all day.

00:56:55.040 But is that an excuse to just take it out on your kids?

00:56:58.920 And then would you do that to your girlfriend at church?

00:57:02.020 Probably not.

00:57:03.320 So your kids see those things.

00:57:05.100 And they see what you really are. They see what your heart really is. And so, again, just be quick with your kids to confess and say, look, dad was wrong. I'm sorry for yelling at you. I was wrong to do that. Please forgive me. And at the very least, then you're not a hypocrite. You're living authentically from worship to the rest of life.

00:57:25.160 Yep. No, that's great. So I know we've talked a lot about Sunday morning worship. One of the

00:57:30.420 things that we mentioned in our theses is that fathers should instruct their children through

00:57:36.560 family worship. I'm sure that a lot of our listeners are probably familiar to some degree

00:57:42.240 or another with family worship. I mean, Reformation Heritage Books has a great guide on

00:57:45.920 leading family worship. I guess, what do you guys do for family worship? How often you do

00:57:53.220 family worship? Like, what advice would you give for somebody who maybe has not been leading their

00:58:00.020 family in family worship? How should they get started? I'll start with the most basic thing.

00:58:05.420 I'll let, Eric, you do family worship proper. I want to talk about something that's related

00:58:10.120 that I think is very powerful as well, and that is shaping the average day so that there are

00:58:18.020 moments throughout the day that are like micro family worship moments. Like for example,

00:58:23.860 I think there should be a time in the evening and our family does this, you know, we miss here and

00:58:28.440 there. We have psalms, things, some nights, we're out late, whatever. We have young kids where we're

00:58:31.740 doing Bible and praying and catechism. But one of the most powerful things I think is to make sure

00:58:38.640 the life of my family is shaped around singing prayer and the things of God, right? So we're

00:58:44.300 praying regularly in our home multiple times a day around meals. We're singing multiple times a

00:58:50.880 day. My school-aged children are at St. Brendan's where we begin the day with chapel, reading the

00:58:56.600 word of God, hearing it applied, singing together, then moving into our classes. So our goal should

00:59:03.720 be even on a bigger level than just family worship, should be for our families lived in life

00:59:09.080 to have this shape. And what can encourage you, I think, in that is that, yeah, you're going to

00:59:13.980 miss some evenings of family worship proper, right? You're going to miss some. It's going to

00:59:18.140 happen. Like we're human. We have full schedules. Young kids need to go to bed sometimes early and

00:59:22.940 we're out late, whatever. But don't be disheartened. Look at the whole picture of your life

00:59:28.300 and see that for a lot of us, we probably get more praying and singing done than we think

00:59:34.560 if we fail to look at all those little moments of prayer before the day begins or lunch table,

00:59:42.020 dinner table, all those things. So I'd want to encourage fathers to not neglect those little

00:59:46.820 moments and also be heartened that your family prayer life might be better than you think.

00:59:52.320 Yeah. And one thing I'll say to add to that and then jump into kind of what we do for proper

00:59:57.000 family worship is early on in the pietistic Christianity mainstream movement, one of the

01:00:03.460 things, like John Piper had this thing where he was like, no Bible, no breakfast. And it was like,

01:00:08.500 if you don't get up and have 45 minutes to pray and read your Bible, 0.99

01:00:12.560 you don't get to eat, you pig. 0.99

01:00:14.320 You know, that was kind of the feel to it. 0.97

01:00:16.060 And one of the things I realized in leading family worship,

01:00:19.120 it would actually be better.

01:00:20.140 I'm fully convinced of this.

01:00:21.640 If you have 40 minutes in the morning, maybe you got up a little late,

01:00:24.320 maybe you had a ton of things you had to do, feed the chickens, whatever.

01:00:27.020 Things get out of control.

01:00:28.600 I would rather go and read the scriptures and pray with my family

01:00:31.860 than do it by myself.

01:00:33.420 It used to be the opposite.

01:00:35.660 So there was like this idea that like praying with your family or reading the scriptures together as a family didn't count.

01:00:41.040 Like it didn't count.

01:00:41.940 Yeah.

01:00:42.020 Like that's not actual, quote unquote, quiet times.

01:00:45.260 I'm giving scare quotes.

01:00:46.520 So that said, I would say the importance of family worship can't be underestimated.

01:00:51.260 Generally, what I tell people is let's try to keep it simple.

01:00:54.080 I think the biggest mistake guys make early on is you have this like 14-part service.

01:00:58.400 You're wearing little kids out.

01:01:00.060 They're not paying attention.

01:01:01.060 Then you get really frustrated with them.

01:01:02.820 We keep it very simple.

01:01:04.020 So I use the Vanderbilt Daily Lectionary online.

01:01:07.100 They've got day-by-day Bible readings that will take you—they're usually matched with each other.

01:01:13.820 You can find them throughout the year every day, and they're also based on seasons if you follow the church calendar.

01:01:19.400 So Pentecost, Advent, they will line up perfectly with those, and they're usually fairly—there's usually three fairly short readings.

01:01:27.840 These are also the ones that I would use as a pastor for Sunday worship.

01:01:32.460 Again, they fit the church calendar.

01:01:34.600 And it means you're going to get something from the Old Testament,

01:01:36.760 from the prophets, from the Gospels, and the New Testament epistles.

01:01:39.980 So you get a pretty well-rounded piece of Scripture.

01:01:43.160 It's really easy to follow because even if you skip a day, it doesn't really matter.

01:01:48.100 You just pick up right whatever day it is.

01:01:50.000 And what they usually do is they do a really good job where they will overlap.

01:01:55.740 So you read something in the Old Testament about Pentecost,

01:01:58.320 and then you'll read something in, like, Acts chapter 2.

01:02:02.400 And it really helps you see, oh, wait, there's a connection here

01:02:05.060 between what's going on.

01:02:06.680 So that's really helpful.

01:02:08.000 Use that tool.

01:02:09.080 Pray with your family.

01:02:10.120 Pray for your kids.

01:02:11.560 And then sing, as Brian said.

01:02:14.000 Make sure that, again, as a function of what we're doing in the church service,

01:02:19.060 take those things and use them.

01:02:20.180 So for us, doxology, Psalm 134, everybody knows them.

01:02:24.460 They're memorized.

01:02:25.520 Let's make a habit.

01:02:26.300 but maybe you start the family worship with one and you end with the other.

01:02:29.640 And again, we try to keep it pretty simple, pretty, pretty short,

01:02:32.920 pray for one another. And, and that's, and that's it.

01:02:36.760 Yeah.

01:02:37.720 And I think that one of the keys that you mentioned is if you miss a day,

01:02:40.840 just pick up. Yeah. Pick up, pick up the next day. Don't,

01:02:44.560 don't get on a big guilt.

01:02:46.720 The habit is what's important. Yeah. I mean,

01:02:49.420 there are some weeks where we have three nights where I'm like,

01:02:53.600 we did our catechism. We did our, we did that almost every night. We're like almost 99% nights

01:03:00.800 we're singing and praying before bed. Right. But like the catechism and the other elements,

01:03:04.620 sometimes it's a, it's a three week night or a three night week.

01:03:09.300 When I think especially like for both of you guys, I would say this adjust for small children.

01:03:14.900 Oh yeah. Like Brian said, like some nights it's like, okay, somebody is having the emotional

01:03:18.680 meltdown. They're going to need to go to bed early. I got to take care of all these issues.

01:03:21.960 I think it can be a mistake if you're like

01:03:24.240 no matter what

01:03:25.320 we will do a 45 minute family worship

01:03:28.380 I mean the way that I have it set up right now

01:03:30.580 because I have four boys

01:03:32.320 my oldest is five years old

01:03:34.280 and so the youngest two

01:03:36.580 one is one and one is zero

01:03:38.460 now he's six months old

01:03:39.860 six months old and 20 months old or whatever

01:03:42.020 they go to bed early

01:03:43.760 and so it's just me and the big boys

01:03:46.700 and my wife

01:03:48.180 and we have a whole bedtime routine

01:03:49.900 and so I read them a story

01:03:52.000 like we're going through

01:03:53.340 on the shores of Plum Creek

01:03:55.620 Laura Ingalls Wilder

01:03:56.520 but then I have a passage that I read them

01:03:59.340 and then we do their catechism

01:04:01.300 and then we sing a song

01:04:02.960 and then I teach the boys to pray

01:04:04.840 and that's about all I can do

01:04:07.040 it takes about 10 or 15 minutes

01:04:10.320 depending on how much I read

01:04:12.100 so I mean

01:04:14.480 is it the ideal?

01:04:17.400 no

01:04:17.780 it's not for me

01:04:19.560 not for me it's not the ideal it's not hope what i hope to have when they're instead of five and

01:04:25.200 three 15 and 13 yeah but realistically it's it's it's what it is at the moment you know so yeah

01:04:31.900 so that's what i do uh almost every single night i don't know how i'm able to do it every night but

01:04:37.320 it is very rare that we have to skip yeah so it's a nice thing about little kids too though

01:04:42.680 that i found was like my boys i'd be like all right go to bed and they're like no doxology

01:04:47.820 yeah that's part of it why don't you just knife me in the back dad yeah what do you mean no

01:04:53.440 doxology no singing we didn't sing and pray dad like i'm sorry pray for daddy for his repentance

01:04:59.960 for forgetting and neglecting this important duty the other thing is when you're when you're

01:05:03.920 regularly correcting your children and having discipline conversations yeah this is also a

01:05:09.600 part of the preaching of the word of god in your home because the instruction is to teach them as

01:05:14.300 they rise up, as they lay down, as you go in and out, as you work. So it's like, you're also not

01:05:20.660 trying to get everything done in those five to 15 minutes. You're living a life where everybody

01:05:26.120 is learning the shape of this covenant life. Everybody's learning how to live within the

01:05:31.540 rhythms of the world God made, being disciplined in accordance with it. So it's like very, very

01:05:36.720 simple blue collar things over a long period of time. Those are going to be what prove effective 0.90

01:05:43.060 as means to wear, oh wow, wear grooves in the road. So one of the things that you hope for

01:05:51.400 through all of this, through creating the routines, through consistent Sunday morning

01:05:55.360 worship with robust liturgies, with singing the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to one another,

01:06:01.940 with family worship, is that your kids, they become ingrained by this. They are educated and

01:06:08.000 informed by covenant life in the new covenant, fellowship with Christ and with the body of

01:06:14.520 Christ, so that when they grow up, why would they depart from that? This is what life is.

01:06:22.380 That any other model that would be pitched to them would be just a hollow replacement,

01:06:27.680 that it would not satisfy, because they need to worship God with the people of God. They need to

01:06:34.280 pray. They need to bless their food. They need to read their Bibles because they have been trained

01:06:40.380 to love those things. And that is what our hopes are through all of this. Again, nothing that you

01:06:46.000 do is, you know, through your works is resulting in regeneration. That has to be a work of the

01:06:52.260 Holy Spirit. So there's no guarantees in life, but there are promises in the scriptures. And so

01:06:58.740 this whole episode, I just hope the things that you take away are just consistent patterns of

01:07:05.760 faithful obedience to the scriptures as it relates to your children. And may God bless your children.

01:07:12.280 May he keep them in the covenant and they never depart from it. Steadfast and unmoving. And may

01:07:19.760 God bless you all. And remember, Festin Alente, make haste slowly. This is a long project. When

01:07:25.840 you've got lots of young kids. It seems like you're not making any, any ground, but keep at it

01:07:33.000 and may God bless you. We'll see you next time.

01:07:43.480 Well, in case you didn't know, we have another King's Hall show called The After Hours,

01:07:47.340 and it's available only to our patrons. We have a great time in The After Hours. I play hype songs,

01:07:52.400 which brian loves sometimes we even talk about brian's cut we talk about recent news on x and

01:07:56.840 answer listener questions overall it's a great time so to encourage you to head over to patreon.com

01:08:02.940 slash the king's hall if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content

The King's Hall - September 09, 2022

Covenant Succession： Children & Worship (Part II)

Episode Stats

Transcript