worship

Look God in the Eyes

June 28, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

In Lewis’ Screwtape Letters he describes the temptation of praying to the “god” that is “up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling.” Our enemy wants us to worship anything other than the Triune God. He doesn’t mind if the god we’re worshipping closely resembles Jehovah, just so long as we aren’t worshipping Jehovah himself.

Man has the bad habit of thinking he can keep God in his pocket. Man wants a god he manage. One that fits with what he imagines a god should be. A god that coddles him, but strikes terror in his enemies. A god who sits only as high as the rafters.

But that isn’t the God we come to worship. We worship the God who made heaven and earth. The God who revealed Himself to our first parents and then to the patriarchs, prophets, and psalmists. The God who is not to be likened to another, and who has no equal. The God who came in human flesh, died in place of sinful man, and was raised by the Father’s power.

Have you been entertaining low thoughts of God? Have you been holding up a mirror and convincing yourself that that is what God must be like? Have you been settling for an Americanized god who is safe? Have you crafted idols so as to avoid making eye contact with God?

The remedy for all these vain imaginations is to forsake the habit of trying to pass off our knock-off idols for being the Triune God, and come to God on His terms. His terms are these: cast away all your idols, and then meet with God as He revealed Himself. In short, turn from your idols by looking God in the eye. Which is to say: look to Christ.

Not a Bother

June 21, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

There is a feature of our worship service that can be quite distracting if you aren’t expecting it or accustomed to it. That feature is the sound of about a hundred knee-high saints. Our nation is increasingly disinterested in children, as indicated by our birth-rate. Even in the church, Christian parents have grown accustomed to dropping kids off at Children’s Church. Apparently, children are deemed to be a distraction, with all their squawks, wiggles, bathroom trips, loud whispers about the cavernous condition of their belly, and so on.

First, a word to you little ones. Children, we’re glad you’re here, and we want you to learn the songs, say “amen” with all the gusto you can, and, if you’re baptized, join us in eating the Lord’s Supper later in the service. Listen closely to the sermon each week, you may just hear about monstrous dragons, and how the King Jesus defeated them all.

Second, a word to parents, grandparents, and all the rest of us. The presence of these little saints isn’t a distraction. Of course, train your children to sit still. Work on the songs throughout the week. Pray the Lord’s Prayer regularly in your home. With a cool head, take them out to the car or restroom if they need a little, ahem, course correction.

But let me be emphatic, their presence here is necessary to our worship. We are storming the gates of hell in these prayers, these songs, this Gospel trumpet which is declared by the Word preached & eaten. These little ones are knights & handmaids of King Jesus. They aren’t an inconvenience, or a distraction, or inferior citizens of Christ’s Kingdom. Our nation thinks of children as optional add-ons. We see them as part of our weaponry in obeying Christ’s command to subdue the nations to His Gospel.

How great a judgement rests upon us as a nation that permits the slaughter of unborn babies, debases young children by bringing them to be groomed in sexual perversion at Pride Parades, and then shuffles them off to be cared for by others so as not to inconvenience the selfish lifestyle of their parents. Our Father in Heaven calls children a blessing; yet all too often, even in the church, we treat our children as a bother. Our failures to discipline, and train our children, bringing them to worship with us are all a warning light that we’ve adopted the world’s attitude towards children, not the Bible’s.

A Swarm of Locust – Joel 1

May 19, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Introduction

The phrase “senseless tragedy” is often employed when describing some crime or calamity. But as Christians, no tragedy is senseless. How are we to understand national tragedy? Can we call COVID-19 a judgement? If so, what are we to make of it? Joel gives us the pattern for how to respond to such tragedy, by his response to a swarm of locust.

The Text

Joel 1:1-5

The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth. […]

Summary of the Text

After the brief personal introduction (v1), Joel invites the old men to give their assent to the uncommon magnitude of the tragedy that has befallen Judah, and then commands them to tell of this tragedy to future generations (vv2-3). Typically this command to tell future generations is in regard to great deliverances by the Lord’s hand (Cf. Ex. 10:1-2, Deu. 6:7, Josh. 4:6, Ps. 44:1), but here the devastating tragedy is to be retold to children’s children. The plague is then described in vibrant simplicity: the land has been devastated by wave after wave of locust (v4). A plague which had once been part of their deliverance, was now a plague come upon them for their chastisement.12

The drunkards are implored to weep, for their source of pleasure is cut off, and now must face the world (v5). The locust are likened to a foreign nation, fierce as lions (a theme then developed in 2:1-11 and then employed by St. John’s Apocalyptic vision); and the ruination the locust swarms brought was total (vv6-7).

The nation of Judah (often likened to a virgin, Cf. Amos 5:2) is to lament like a bereaved virgin (v8). The reason for the lamentation is that the locust swarms have utterly consumed the elements of the meat and drink offerings (vv9-10). The farmers and the priests are both exhorted to mourn, for the livelihood of the one and the ministry of the other are cut off (vs11-13).

The response to the tragedy should not be passivity. Rather, in the midst of the mourning, the priests should gather the elders and call a fast (v14). Joel provides a prayer for the nation to pray (vs15-18). The locust plague heralds that the Day of the Lord is soon at hand, and that Day will bring an even more severe judgement (v15), the rites of worship are unable to be performed, and joy and gladness along with it (v16), the Promised Land, which ought to be a land of rest, is laid desolate (v17), the flocks groan in the pangs of starvation and drought, and winnowing must follow (v18). Joel then speaks for himself (v19), demonstrating the spirit of true contrition. While the devastation was total––even the wild beasts who receive their meat and drink from the Lord (Cf. Ps 42:1, 104:21) were touched by this devastation (v20)––from the Lord alone could there be restoration (Cf. 2 Chr. 20:12).

Meat & Drink Offerings

Leviticus 2 gives the prescriptions for the meat offerings. For the grain/meat offering, the worshipper would bring fine flour, oil, and frankincense. The priest would take a portion of these elements and burn them, while the rest would be a portion for the priests.

The drink offering (Lev. 23:16, Num 15:6-7) varied in amount (between a quarter to half a hin––which is a little more than our modern gallon). It was never offered on its own, but always accompanied other offerings, and was explicitly only to be performed once Israel entered the land (Lev. 23:10). The wine could only be enjoyed once Israel entered her rest.

When examining the Mosaic offerings, the propitiatory nature of the sacrifices is often prominent. However, what ends up in our peripheral vision is that because our sin has been covered we’re enabled to meet with God (Ex. 29:42). So to, Christ’s sacrifice––which cleanses us from sin & guilt––enables our fellowship with God, and with God’s people (Cf. Heb. 10:18-25, 1 Jn. 1:3 & 2:1-2).

Invitation to Mourn

The locust swarm, and subsequent famine, directly impacted this important symbol of faithful worship. In light of this devastation, Joel invites all the people of the land to mourn and lament. While the mourning over the fact that the sign of communion with God was cut off, Joel is eager that they not neglect what the sign pointed to: their covenantal union with God by His free grace. Whether it be in the sacraments, or in our corporate or individual worship & piety, we can often perform all the external duties without having done so out of true faith. This is how we can make sense of what blind unbelief calls “senseless tragedy”; tragedy comes in to waken, disturb, and rattle us.

National lamentation is a bitter pill that only God can prescribe, and which we desperately need in our own time, in order to heal our cancer of proud self-sufficiency. Edward Topsell put it this way, “Oh how stubborn is the conceit of our hard hearts, which will not be taught till they smart, nor yet be instructed till they be corrected.” Tough cuts of meat often need to endure a salty brine to make them tender. While specific sins are noticeably unmentioned, the sin which Joel seems to be confronting throughout this book is that of heartless worship. As Calvin put it, “[Joel is] reproving the hardness of the people, because they do not feel their plagues.” They have become like Pharaoh. Stubborn nations and sinners often need a salty brine of suffering in order to soften their hearts. But national tragedies should bring about national lamentation and thus, in the end, national repentance and reformation.

But the plague of locust isn’t merely an event that happened and that Joel is simply responding to. He’s not using the locust swarms as a helpful sermon illustration. Rather, Joel wants us to see that the tragedy transpired at Yahweh’s command and according to His purpose, and, as such, are revelation. Swarms of locust are Divine revelations. God was saying something to Judah through clouds of insects.

When God Shuts the Temple

So what was God saying? We get a main clue by what Joel highlights as worthy of great mourning. The wheat, oil, and new wine were cut off. As a direct result, the rites of worship in the temple would also be unable to be performed. God is the one who sent the swarms, and so it was by His hand that the meat and drink offerings were suspended. God, who commanded Israel to commune with Him and meet with Him by these offerings, put His foot in the side of these offerings. The God of the offerings cancelled the offerings.

When man is in rebellion to God, the primary symptom is various attempts to invert the Gospel. Man tries to make God palatable to man, instead of making man acceptable to God through Christ. We have churches ordaining women to offices which scripture explicitly state are reserved for men. We have churches repenting for sins conjured up by the woke-craft of Marxist mobs. We have churches providing cover for sodomy and all other varieties of sexual pollution. They do it all in an attempt to make God palatable to man, instead of bringing man to God.

But closer to home, many “Bible-believing” churches have an orderly worship service, a liturgy based on biblical principles, they have bread and wine on the table, and water in the baptistry, and yet they are tombs. God has seen fit, this year, to empty many such churches. God shut the temple. God shut the church. God cancelled the meat and drink offerings.

Faithful mourning, as Joel demonstrates, can only come from loving what God loves and hating what He hates (Cf. 2 Cor. 7:10-11). This pandemic we face should bring us up short. God hates false religion so much that He cancelled church. God hates pretentious and presumptuous worshippers, and so he sent them to cover their faces and hide in their houses. God hates faithless worship, and our confessional standards, our orderly liturgies, our commitment to solid doctrinal teaching won’t save us.

May the Smoke Ascend

But this is why Joel invites Judah to mourn. We mourn that God has withdrawn Himself, and we plead with Him to relent. True mourning longs for the glory to be restored. For the smoke to ascend once more.

When Christ ascended, He brought us with Him. Our worship is the offering of ourselves, and it is in our worship that we ascend to God by Christ as a sweet savor. But if our worship is all tidy and in order, but our hearts are full of bitterness, our minds are polluted with lust, our hands are covered with the blood of hatred towards our brother, God will look on it all and say, “Time to shut it down.”

Only through Christ, can our worship be made right. He has entered the holy place in the heavenlies, that we too might enter in and offer right worship. We are to be the offering which ascends to God in Christ. We are to come to God, not try to get God all trimmed out with all the things that are palatable to our culture or our tribe, chanting the right slogans the whole way. The only way to enter in, the only way to ascend with the smoke, is to look to Christ. To put it another way, clouds of grasshoppers should make you look to Jesus.

Prepare for Worship

February 9, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Have you ever seen a theatrical performance where all the actors have clearly invested a lot of time to know their parts? The show’s going off without a flaw, and then one actor enters the stage who doesn’t know his lines or stage directions, and keeps ruining key scenes.

Unfortunately, that actor’s glaringly bad “performance” will become the thing which is remembered. I bring that up not merely to say, “don’t be that guy,” but also to highlight what our corporate worship ought to be. The Reformation restored the work of worship to the people, the congregation. Worship isn’t a performance of people up on stage, while the audience watches.

Rather, we are the performers. We are the actors. We are the set. Which means that our corporate worship requires work. It takes attentiveness. It takes preparation.

First off, and above all, it demands that we come in the right garments: the righteousness of Christ. Knowing that our filthy works of self-righteousness are odious to Him. But as we come to God, to bring our worship, and are dressed in Christ’s righteousness by faith, we are filled with His Spirit to render good works which God accepts. These songs we will sing, these prayers we will offer, the Word which we will hear, these tithes we will give, the Supper we will take are good works which God has called us to.

So, know your part. We print next week’s songs in the bulletin and post them on the church website/app, so work on the songs beforehand as a family so as not to be caught off-guard. Get the ironing done Saturday so that you’re not scrambling for clean trousers on Sunday morning. Do all this so that together, as the congregation of the Lord, we execute this service of praise to the Lord as a thing of glory.

Another Inch Forward

February 2, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

When a nation goes to war, it does no good to rally their resources and spill the blood of their sons just to grow squeamish at the first sign of resistance. They must persistently engage the enemy until the battle is won.

The battle of Iwo Jima is a remarkable instance of this. It was of vital importance to capture that strategic outpost. Many days, the goal was simply to inch forward to a slightly better position to fire upon the enemy. Slowly, after a month of grit & determination to win, by crawling forward inch by inch, the U.S. troops finally bested the enemy.

Worship is warfare. We’re in locked battle with those who worship Humanity. Their sacrament is the abortion of babies and the satiation of their various lusts, their songs are political slogans, their prayers are cancel campaigns, their righteousness is found in good works (as defined by current sentiments).

Our weekly worship is in direct conflict with this false religion. We are forgiven for sins by the sacrificial death of God’s own Son. We lift songs of praise to the only Source of true delight. We offer prayers to One who made every star and grain of sand.

The enemy will oppose us, but we must not be turned aside. Our worship culminates in this meal. Here we are fortified for the fight at our daily posts as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, students, teachers, employers, and employees.

Inch by inch, week by week we advance Christ’s Kingdom. This meal is like another charge into enemy ranks. In this bread which is the body of the Lord, and this wine which is the blood of the only sufficient sacrifice for sin, God is lifted up. God in Christ is held forth to you. And as He is lifted up, His enemies are scattered (Ps. 68:1).

So come in faith and welcome to Jesus…

God Wants You to Fight

January 9, 2021 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Did you know God wants you to fight? Now He doesn’t want us to fight each other. He doesn’t want us to fight and hurt widows or orphans. But he does want us to fight sin, to fight bad guys, to fight evil in us and around us.

How do we fight evil? Not with swords or guns first (maybe later). We first fight by trusting Jesus, worshipping Him joyfully at church each Sunday, loving our neighbor, and praying daily “thy kingdom come.” That is how God wants us to fight.

A Psalty Sense of Justice

July 8, 2020 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

The other day I tweeted something that I suppose you might say, took off:

A generation grew up singing about God's sloppy wet kisses in youth group instead of God's great mercy & justice as found in the Psalter; then we wonder why they joined the woke mob.
— Ben Zornes (@benzornes) June 30, 2020

The conversation (if that is what you call a comment thread on social media) sifted out into a few camps, and I want to take this opportunity to expand on the original tweet.

The first camp came rushing to the defense of the song alluded to. The second camp thought my tethering of mushy worship ballads to looters in Chicago was like a VW Beetle towing a F150 up a Montana logging road at 55mph with a 40ft. rope. To put that in more boring terms, they thought I’d made a stretch. The third camp disagreed with me, arguing that the over-sentamentalized church music of the last 50 years has infected Boomers and––as a result––their children (in resentment) have joined the social justice mobs.

Now, as Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me ‘splain.”

Objection 1

The song itself––”How He Loves”––was not the point of my original statement. But the song is quite illustrative of a tendency within modern worship songs to sensualize our piety. This isn’t anything new, per se, as this sort of “language of lovers” is found in the Zwinglian corners of historic Reformed hymnody. But the problem in our modern context is that the utilization of the language of lovers is used to such an overwhelming, never-ending, reckless way that in the mind of the worshipper Jesus is reduced to a spiritual boyfriend.

“How He Loves” is the epitome of this sort of worship song. There is a now famous line in it: “Heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss” (which are in fact the original lyrics). Some who recognize the impropriety of such language in reference to the Lord Most High, have reworked the lyrics to not offend Grandma in the back row (who still is a bit skeptical of these new fangled choruses).

But when we come to Christ, we come to Him as our brother, our friend, our bridegroom, and above all, our King. While our affections are to be stirred in our worship of the Lord Jesus, they must be godly affections. Our worship in song is not to be only emotional. The trap in modern worship is to evoke feelings at any cost, regardless of the theological content of what we’re singing.

Some pointed out that scripture (particularly Song of Solomon) has highly erotic language describing the relationship of the Bridegroom with the Church. The difference is that Scripture comes to us as a united whole. We sing “I am a worm and no man (in Psalm 22:6)” along with “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth (Sng. 1:2)”. Modern worship songs croon about Christ the bridegroom/lover to the exclusion of other themes.

In full disclosure, I led the song in question––and others similar to it––which I regret having used as corporate worship songs. Mea culpa. Over time, I came to see that such expressions were not helpful in fostering the aforementioned godly affections. Instead, I noticed that the fruit of these songs was what I came to call emotional masturbation.

Objection 2

This inflamed emotionalism is how we arrived at the place where this generation––raised on songs which did not inform their mind as well as stir godly affections––seeing injustices and being malnourished in that quarter they instead found a sense of justice by following the emotional mobs of worldly vengeance and vigilante justice. These youth who grew up in the church were not shaped by the mercy and justice of God which is declared in the Psalms, they were shaped by a mindset that worship = club music/love ballads.

As I’ve recently said elsewhere:

Worship in modern evangelical parlance has come to mean, almost exclusively, music. To be more exact, the sort of music that consists of three chords and the truth, give or take a chord, and give or take the truth.
Worship Like You’re told

You cannot feed on a diet of emotionalism and not end up with an atrophied sense of what God demands and desires in our worship of Him. He desires mercy, not sacrifice. He desires us to walk humbly and do justice. He doesn’t call us to come into His presence in order for us to get a tingly spine. Your hot yoga class can accomplish that just fine.

God calls you to come into His presence as a living sacrifice. He calls you to walk in view of His mercy. He calls you to sing about His justice, which includes asking Him to bring vengeance upon His and our enemies (in the imprecatory Psalms). The Psalter teaches us to see that we are captives in need of deliverance, and so we learn to turn to Him alone to save us. It teaches us to think about the themes of creation (and how God made the world…you know with male and female as the only genders…but that’s another wasp nest I’ll whack some other time). It teaches us to think in terms of redemption and restoration coming from God’s hand alone, since no man is righteous, not a one.

Our sung prayers, especially as we sing the Psalms, help us to see that God is the great Avenger of His people, but they must walk in faithfulness to His Law. And then the New Testament helps us to recognize that the Law only exposes our sinfulness. Which is why we need to sing about the blood of Jesus.

We’ve raised a generation on vapid lyrics full of emotional language, orgasmic chord progressions, and plopped on top of that saccharine beverage a dollop of pop-psychology sermonettes by preacherettes. We’ve taught our children that they aren’t mature enough to sit through an adult service, and so we’ve taught them that whatever content is contained in a “grown up service” isn’t for them. When they grow up, they find that there is substantially no difference between their youth pastor’s sermons and the senior pastor’s sermons, the only difference is the sermon illustrations are more for Boomers.

But their gender diversity counselor at the community college points out a lot of the inequities, problems, injustices, and discrepancies that are present in our nation/culture. Their pastor is telling them to unhitch from the OT. Their humanities professor is telling them that Marx was right. And because their diet of worship has been ha-la-la-le-lu-jah x10, they do not have the immune system to fight the socialist bug. So, there they are manning the barricade of CHOP, or supporting BLM’s satanic form of justice.

Objection 3

I have some real sympathy with the final objection raised to my tweet. I agree that Boomers have just as willfully gone along with much of the inanity of our modern worship nonsense. They couldn’t stomach the hot gospel of Calvin, Knox, or Watts; so they opted for the self-help that felt much cozier ’cause it sounded like what Dr. Phil was saying.

As I mentioned earlier, these Millennials and Zoomers came (or are coming) of age, and see that there isn’t much of a difference between their youth group antics and the “adult service.” Which tells them that mom and dad just wanted to get away from them. These kids were told that God the Father “just gushed over them with luuuv,” but then they came to see that Mom and Pop sure didn’t overflow with love to them.

So, they hungered for a father’s love. But the patriarchy, they were told, should be smashed. It has been replaced with the bloodlust of bitterness and vindictive vengeance. So, yes, we sent our children to youth group to sing ooey-gooey love ballads, and when they found out that we did so to get away from them, it shouldn’t be Breaking News on CNN to find out that they ran to the arms of the Father of Lies.

So Come to the Father

But the love of Father God is strong.

It cannot stand injustice. It cannot stand a stubborn knee in the neck of a man pleading for mercy and receiving instead a death sentence without a fair trial. The Father’s love teaches us to ask Him to “defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy (Ps. 82:3).” The Father’s love cannot stand hypocrisy of using tax dollars to slaughter unborn black babies. The Father’s love refuses to tolerate the shame that is fatherless homes for Whites, Blacks, Asians, or any other ethnicity.

The Father’s love cannot be separated from the blinding light of being pleased to crush His own Son, the only innocent man who ever lived, so that you and I might be forgiven. The love of God assures us that all our animosity, guilt, shame, and sin are tossed in the sea, and God promises to not remember our sins against us (Ps. 79:8).

The Father of Lies will always demand another victim, another oppressor to overthrow, another stone to cast at someone other than ourselves. The Father of Light gave us the true victim, to suffer in our place, so that we might come to Him as adopted Sons and Daughters.

The church desperately needs to return to the Word, and find there the great love and justice of God as proclaimed in the simple Gospel news. You and I are condemned sinners. But God, through Christ’s sacrificial work, offers forgiveness for all our sin, and promises to welcome to Himself those from every nation and tribe who come to Him in repentance and faith. So sing the Psalter. Preach the Gospel. And get a Psalty sense of justice.

Corralling the Kids As an Act of Worship

September 19, 2018 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Lord of the Flies Church

A number of years ago I led worship at a “family-integrated” service. What I took from this experience was that “family-integrated” meant let the kids run absolutely wild, while the adults pretended not to see the wrestling match over in the corner. No really…there was a “Cowboys and Indians” game being played during the service. Having grown up in churches where you had Sunday School before church, and then everyone but little babies went to the main service, this breed of “family-integration” was new for me. That species of “family-integration,” in other words, was something I would not have wanted to align myself with.

However, later on, when I was helping to start a church, we made the decision to encourage families to keep their children with them during the service. A decision that could very well be termed “family-integration.” I’m grateful to now minister in a church where the normal arrangement is for the whole family to pile into a row to sing, hear the Word, and take the Lord’s Supper together. Some may call it “family-integrated.”

The question arose recently amongst my Social Media circle as to what my views were on keeping children in the worship service. My flinch is, “Of course keep them in the service.” Now, bear in mind, what I am envisioning when I think of children participating in the service is not the Lord of the Flies church I mentioned at the beginning.

What I am envisioning is something more akin to my childhood memories: being told to sit still, perhaps coloring, or once older jotting down notes or doodles of what I heard the pastor preaching. It seems odd that a Christian family would set out to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, only to send mixed signals to their children that they aren’t yet old enough to worship the Lord. So first, a defense of keeping your kiddos with you in a worship service. Second, some practical suggestions.

Bring the Kids Along

We have quite the number of OT precedents for the worship of God being a family affair. In Deuteronomy 31:12, Moses gave directions for frequent readings of the law:

“Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.”

This text implies not only a reading but also an accompanying explanation of what was read, i.e. a sermon. Ezra seems to be following this precedent when he reads the Torah to the people in Nehemiah 8:2 (see also Ezra 10:1 where children are specifically included in one of these gatherings):

“And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.”

Jehoshaphat also called together an assembly of the people Judah, and children are reckoned as being in that multitude (2 Chr. 20:13). Joel prophesying of the coming “day of the Lord” calls for a solemn assembly:

“Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet (Joel 2:16).”

On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached to a great multitude of foreign born Jews, and one of the primary OT texts he used was from that same section from Joel. Peter proclaims that Joel was prophesying about that day, the day of Pentecost (Cf. Acts 2:16-21). Peter assures them that the OT promises are for them and their children (Acts 2:38-39).

A final NT place to look for family inclusion is at the Ephesian church’s “send-off” for the Apostle Paul; note who was there. It was not only the elders in attendance, but their wives and children. This special prayer service was attended by families (Acts 21:5).

This is good Scriptural precedent for thinking of our corporate worship as being a gathering for all the saints, both young and old. Further, much of the modern discomfort with having children sit through a worship service is largely because we have adopted an unscriptural view of child-rearing.

Self-discovery has become the goal of parenting, and this inherently leads to expecting that children should be entertained, happy, and comfortable at all times. Another contributing factor is our culture’s stigma of children as inconvenient. This thinking has crept into church circles, and we whisk the kids off to be entertained by childish songs, told Bible stories where Christ is extracted from them and in His place is some moralistic duty, and where the children are taught they deserve to have a “good time.” Rather than teaching our children to grow to maturity, we have accommodated their immaturity.

Both Old and New Testaments make it quite plain that the worship of God and discipleship of the nations is to be done in the context of family life. So, it seems odd to exclude our children from coming to join with their brothers and sisters in Christ––of all ages––simply because we are worried they might cause a ruckus. What is more likely, is that we’re concerned they’ll embarrass us.

The Din of the Saints

Now for some practicals. The challenge of bringing your children into the worship service is an especially poignant challenge for those of us with wee ones. Toddlers are naturally more squirmy, want to explore, and fuss when their desires are thwarted by a parents strong arms holding them on the lap. So, how do you teach them to listen, participate, and grow in understanding what’s happening? Well, quite simply, they won’t learn if they aren’t present. Once you commit to wrangling the kiddos during the service, you need to remember a few things.

The noise your kids make is always more noticeable to you than for everyone else. You’re focused on them after all, and you probably won’t notice the crying baby on the other side of the sanctuary. I had this revelation one Sunday when the plague had descended upon our home and only I went to church. I imagined that if my kiddos had been there, in our usual spot, and I could be in two places at once, I would just hear the “din” of the service. Their noises are my responsibility, but their noises are just a portion of the joyful noise of a gathered body.

My wife and I work to teach our children to use a “church voice”, not fuss, and sit reasonably still. But all with the goal of teaching them to love and enjoy God and His people.

Make a point of practicing for church throughout the week. Teaching your family the songs your church sings, while encouraging your children to sit still in the safety of the living room is a great way to help the whole family look forward to worshipping together on the Lord’s Day. When you have family prayer or Bible time, don’t belabor it by expositing the entire 9th chapter of Romans for your four-year-old. But make it long enough to be a training ground for the littles to learn the discipline of self-controlled sitting.

Further, my wife and I work to make sure to rehearse with our children why we go to church. We remind them on Saturday night, “Why do we go to church?” They respond, “To worship God.” If their answer is, “To not wiggle or fuss, and by no means embarrass mom and dad,” our emphasis has gone cattywampus. We do teach them not to wiggle or fuss, but we want to emphasis what they can and should do, not what they shouldn’t.

What they should do is sing loud, say hearty amens, learn the creeds we recite, listen to the Bible, and get excited when the bread and wine is coming down our row. Throughout the service, I ask my two year old boy questions about what’s happening in the service. I remind him what to say and when. I ask him where the pastor is and what the bread and wine remind us of. At the end of each song I tell him, “Say amen.” He has mastered the art of loudly offering his amen with all the other saints. During the songs I help him clap the beat of the song so he is learning the rhythm of the songs, even if he doesn’t know all (or any) of the words.

If they grievously misbehave, I’ll swiftly take them to the restroom (or at our church there is a discipline room available), and give them a discipline. We strive, however, to make sure that church doesn’t become “the place where we get a ton of spankings.”

There are of course plenty of other practical odds and ends:

Make sure you get your kids to bed early on Saturday, so they have a good night of rest before church on Sunday.
Give ’em a good breakfast so their rumbly tummies aren’t a cause of stumbling. Perhaps have minimal snacks if they do grow too restless…
Don’t bring the toy box to church. For infants and toddlers a small toy may be appropriate to help them stay occupied, but this is something you want to grow them out of as soon as you can.
Our 5 year old brings pencils and paper and is only allowed to use them during the sermon, and she is supposed to try to draw something which the preacher is talking about. Our 2 year old sits on my lap, and I doodle for him on a blank page, or let him look at a Bible story book.

You Wrangle the Toddlers. God Wrangles You!

Finally, I think we have this misconception that unless you can hang on every word of the sermon, or hit every note of every song, that somehow the worship service will do you no good. Thus, we’re tempted to remove the seeming distraction of wrangling our small children. I like to jest that while I’m wrangling my toddlers, God is wrangling me.

I view every “hush”, every reminder not to wiggle, every distraction that comes with having wee ones in the worship service as a part of my worship to God. Now this doesn’t mean we should justify noisy, misbehaving kids. Again…no Lord of the Flies church please! However, my deepest desire for my children is to trust, love, and obey Christ. I want them to be mindful of their union to Christ’s body, the whole congregation of saints. My children are brothers and sisters in Christ, and I want to worship our Lord and Savior with them. They must see how precious and of utmost importance Christ is to me, and how better than in “going up to Zion” each Lord’s Day with them. So, offer up to the Lord the offering of the family rodeo in your row, and trust that God is working in you and in your children a reward of inestimable worth.