Our church practices a non-age-segregated Sunday School. We start at 9:45am with a song. By the way, I recommend The Trinity Hymnal, Baptist Edition, as the closest hymnal to Scriptural worship as there is. I'll blog separately again on that sometime. We sing out of that. Then we meet for fifteen minutes in small groups and go over a lesson the spiritual head of household was to go over with his or her family during the week. Included with that is an accompanying personal devotion sheet in line with the family lesson. We come back together from 10:05-10:45am for teaching with Pastor Sutton. He just started Romans. Before that we had about two years on the family. A book will be coming out of that series from Pastor Sutton.
OK, this blog title, what say I? For many, many weeks we have read through Puritan Thomas Watsons book/series through the ten commandments. We did skip the fourth commandment. Then we went two weeks on The Law in general. This week we end it all with his sermon, The Wrath of God. The whole series is very, very good. You will have to pick out a very small portion to edit out some baptism and Calvinism, but very, very little. Normally, I gave out four pages every week. I read one page a night to my family on Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Fri nights. I have interaction, asking age appropriate questions as I read to encourage comprehension. They do the seven day daily digging on the sermon, reading passages on it and commenting. The goal, by the way, with this stratergy (Bushism) is to encourage leadership spiritually in the home instead of creating a caste of dependents on the church leadership. In our Sunday School members reports, we have accountability with the heads of household on their family study during the week. Do you see that we are perfecting the saints for the work of the ministry? Interesting, but I haven't really commented on the topic much yet. All context so far. Well here goes.
Watson exposes the wrath of God magnificently. Just some points without having the sermon in front of me. He justifies God's wrath by making an observation about sinning against gratitude. God has been loving and benevolent, so that when we sin, we do sin against His goodness. I remembered a family years back we had to discipline out of the church who we had given incredible care, highlighting their rebellion. Part of this exposition by Watson is warning about the wrath of God. How could a just God punish someone eternally for a momentary sin? The recipient has sinned against an infinite God, bringing infinite punishment. How long is infinite? I wondered if it was Watson who originated the whole illustration of an angel swooping down to pick up one grain of sand every year, so that by the end of his having collected all of it, eternity will have only begun. Have you thought about the kind of love and grace that will absorb that wrath? I can't help but think of eternal security at this juncture. Yes, our sin abounds, but His grace much more abounds!
4 comments:
I like the way you are doing your family devotions, and leading the church in the same. In our church, we teach on the family during the Wednesday night service. Family devotions is a frequent topic. We want families to do them faithfully, and we want to enable them. So, what your church does is a good idea. In your published devotion, do you include Hymns? Do you include Bible Stories? Memory verses? Lessons from Proverbs? I've been thinking that all of these could be good for young children (like mine). I'd love to see more on this in your blog.
Well.Pastor B...quite an amazing( all be it confusing) SS you have going here. The wrath of God? In some churches that would get you out the door. God is a just and loving God; Who is Watson?; I serve a God of love and mercy; full of grace; forgiveness comes at my true and from the heart repentance..again you are back to "eternal security" You a lot like that ole dog and bone..Touche'
Since my computer time is limited I will say it has been an interesting and educational adventure with some of your blogs, tho confusing at times.
I wish you well.
ILA
We have not included hymns in the published devotion, but we sing a new psalm every Sunday night and have encouraged the families to sing that through the week. When they come to Sunday night, they will know the psalm. We have only the lesson and everyone in our school has verses, so we go over those in addition to praying. Thanks Pastor Mallinak.
The same God Who is a God of mercy and grace is a God of wrath and justice. Did you know that there cannot be mercy and grace without justice and mercy? God is the God of the Bible, and one attribute of His cannot be separated from another because they form not separate attributes per se, but a Unified Oneness in Which He expresses every attribute equally at every moment. He does not dip or veer or lessen or even increase in any one attribute at any one moment because God is immutate and in Him is no shadow of turning.
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