No Christian approves of worshiping idols or disapproves of honoring parents. No brother or sister will accuse you of being legalistic if you’re against stealing or are in favor of telling the truth. But I know many people who object to Sabbath keeping and approve of using the Lord’s Day for work or personal pleasure. We don’t argue about the other nine; why is the fourth commandment a catalyst for more heat than light?
These are some of the questions the Rev. Bruce Ray considers in his book, Celebrating the Sabbath: Finding Rest in a Restless World. Ray laments the low view of the fourth commandment in churches today. Churches today cater to the busy lifestyles of churchgoers by creating more services on more days for shorter periods of time. Ray uses the term “McSabbath” to describe the state of the Lord’s Day in most churches in America. Read the rest of this entry »
Trinity OPC in Franklin, PA has provided a complete set of lessons from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. These lessons are helpful resources for catechetical instruction in the home and at church.
In his article Implementing Family Worship Joel Beeke offers a veritable soup-to-nuts approach to family worship. He offers several suggestions
to help you establish God-honoring Family Worship in your homes. We trust this avoids two extremes: an idealistic approach that is beyond the reach of even the most God-fearing home, and a minimalist approach that abandons daily Family Worship because the ideal seems so out of reach.
As many families know, family worship is a difficult task. Though many reformed families know its importance, being disciplined enough to have family worship every day (let alone twice a day) is very challenging. Beeke’s article can help families to begin or renew the practice of family worship without becoming too intimidated or unrealistic.
Read the article
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has provided a very helpful resource by including the Trinity Hymnal on its website. This is much more than a help for pastors who are putting together an order for worship. The online hymnal is tremendously useful for families who would like to sing through the hymnal, but may not have anyone who can read music and/or play the piano. The reason being is that along with a searchable index of lyrics comes the ability to listen to the hymns. After getting a feel for the hymn the family could then either sing a cappella or sing right along with the computer-generated accompaniment. Now we only need to ask if computer accompaniment is inside or outside the bounds of the regulative principle!
