Lessons in Family Worship
One of the greatest father-and-son duos in history is Philip and Matthew Henry. Their technique is summed up in a sermon preached in 1704. On April 16 of that year, the great Bible commentator Matthew Henry preached an abundantly practical sermon entitled, A Church in the House, A Sermon Concerning Family-Religion.
The sermon summarizes the things that his father taught him about family worship and what he himself was doing in his own home. It illuminates the details of spiritual life in the home, for he shows fathers very specific ways to make their houses little churches.
The content and the potency of a man’s vision of home life is foundational, for that vision will determine what kind of home he has. Furthermore, the home he grew up in will have a dramatic formational effect on that vision. If he grew up in a flophouse or a crack house, a godless house or a luke- warm house, his vision for his own household will be affected. But if he grows up in a household of God, it makes all the difference in the world.
I believe this is one of his best works. Henry (1662-1714), an English non-conformist pastor and Bible commentator, is an emblem of faithful fatherhood. It is said that the Henry household was like unto the “gates of heaven” where the parents governed all family life by the Word of God. It was a home full of the truth and the happiness and the mercies of the Kingdom of God.
The Importance of Mr. Henry’s Sermon for Our Time
We live in an era when most families do not understand the biblical doctrines that govern home life. For this reason, we are afflicted with a shallow understanding of the way home life should be conducted under the government of God. The Puritans, however, understood those doctrines, and Matthew Henry was an exemplary communicator of them. In times like these, we need the biblical vision of home life to refresh our memory in the midst of our spiritual amnesia.A Church in the Houseis the kind of message that we need today. It promises to expand our vision beyond the thinking of our own era and fortify us with timeless principles that the Great Designer has established.
The content and the potency of a man’s vision of home life is foundational, for that vision will determine what kind of home he has. Furthermore, the home he grew up in will have a dramatic formational effect on that vision. If he grew up in a flophouse or a crack house, a godless house or a luke- warm house, his vision for his own household will be affected. But if he grows up in a household of God, it makes all the difference in the world. On this subject, Matthew Henry is not a cold academic, for he draws from Holy Scripture and his rich life experience and then communicates the best practices that create “the gates of heaven” on earth.
Henry argues that every house should be as a little church. This is an important sermon because in it he casts a vision of the beauty of a Christian home under the loving direction of the head of that household—a father who functions as prophet, priest, and king. In this sense, a home is a type of the Church. Scripture proves that there are similar qualities of church and home life. For example, as Christ is the head of the church, so is the husband the head of the wife (Ephesians 5). Further, in the Christian home children are trained and in the church they are equipped (Ephesians 4, Ephesians 6). Also, in the Christian home there are brothers and sisters and in the church we are all brothers and sisters. The church is a household (Galatians 6:10; Ephesians 2:19), and the home is a household. Similarly, the church is charged to deliver the whole counsel of God (Acts 20) while home life is meant to be saturated with the Word of God—when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6). The connections between church and home are obvious.
He especially pleads with heads of household to make the Bible central to all of life.
It is better to be without bread in your houses than without Bibles, for the words of God’s mouth are and should be to you more than your necessary food. But what will it avail you to have Bibles in your houses, if you do not use them? To have the great things of God’s law and gospel written to you, if you count them as a strange thing? You look daily into your shop-books, and perhaps converse much with the news books, and shall your Bibles be thrown by as an almanac out of date?
He addresses many of the roadblocks and challenges in establishing homes dedicated to God. He addresses how it is accomplished during times of excessive busyness, heavy travel, times of transition, and singleness. He even shows how to have “a church within the house” when you are living in a godless home. Henry believed that making the family a little church was the key to reformation and that there would be no reformation without it. This reformation that Henry conceived was a reformation of healing and happiness. He wrote:
Now I know not any thing that will contribute more to the furtherance of this good work than the bringing of family-religion more into practice and reputation. Here the reformation must begin. Other methods may check the disease we complain of, but this, if it might universally obtain, would cure it. Salt must be cast into these springs, and then the waters would be healed.
A Good Mentor for Fathers
What is clear from Henry’s writings is that he understood the teaching of Scripture on the family in a way that most modern people do not. He is a good mentor for fathers living in any century, but particularly the twenty-first, when the practices of biblical family life have been at such a low water mark in the church.
The Influence of His Father Philip
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Matthew Henry’s mentorship is his relationship with his own father, Philip Henry, in the home of his youth. This father and son from the seventeenth century present some of the best role models in Christian history for the dynamics of fathers passing on their faith from one generation to the next.
Matthew maintained the exemplary patterns of his father in his own home. The lifestyle in his home was so much like that of his teacher that his great commentary had its beginnings in the notes from Phillip’s expositions before his family in his home, when Matthew was a mere stripling. Matthew used his handwritten notes from these same commentaries to instruct his own children. Then, he had his children copy down his expositions, leaving them with their own personal record of the teachings of their father, written in their own hand. These simple notes were the beginnings of the great commentary series on the whole Bible that we enjoy today.
Out of the rich soil of family worship grew one of the greatest Bible commentaries ever written.
Out of the rich soil of family worship grew one of the greatest Bible commentaries ever written. Of course, Matthew Henry is best known for this wonderful set of commentaries on all of the books of the Bible entitled An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments. His warmhearted and accurate expositions are beautiful testimonies of a son who was walking in his father’s footsteps.
Famous saints like George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon used Matthew Henry’s commentaries, and recommended them. One commentator says that George Whitefield read it through four times, the last time on his knees. Spurgeon said, “Every minister ought to read it entirely and carefully through once at least.”
Practical Help for Spiritual Disciplines in the Home
Biographer J. B. Williams recounts the spiritual disciplines practiced in Matthew Henry’s household. In the following description you will see the genius and simplicity of his methods in his home.
He was comprehensive; but neither tedious nor hurried. The exercise commenced by invocation…unless the chapter was short he divided it into sections; confining himself generally, to eight or ten verses, of which he gave a brief, and edifying explanation. How the houses of the good old Protestants were perfumed with this incense daily, especially on Lord’s Days, we, says Mr. Henry, “have heard with our ears, and our fathers have told us.”
Prayer succeeded singing. The whole was usually comprehended within the space of half an hour, or a little more. When prayer was over, his children received his blessing, which he pronounced with great seriousness, solemnity, and affection. The better to engage the attention of his family, he required from them, at the close of the exercise, an account.
On the Sabbath the same order was observed, the household assembling about eight o‘clock. Nor were his public engagements on that sacred day allowed to interfere, either with the observance itself, or his own personal attention to it.
The worship being concluded, Mr. Henry took his family to the solemn assembly. After dinner he sang a psalm, offered up a short prayer, and so retired to his closet till the time returned for meeting the congregation. In the evening he generally repeated, in his own house, both the sermons; on which occasion many neighbors attended; the repetition was followed by singing and prayer; two verses more of a suitable hymn were then sung; the blessing pronounced, and the younger children catechized. After supper he sang the 136th Psalm; then catechized his elder children and servants; heard them repeat what they could remember of the sermons; and concluded the day with supplications.
Besides the daily oblations, and Sabbath services which have been noticed, Mr. Henry often kept family fasts; sometimes in unison with invited friends; at others with his own household. And frequently he fasted alone. On these occasions, like the believing patriarch, he wrestled for “spiritual blessings.” And whatever were the cares or fears, or trials of himself, or his friends, they were committed, with filial simplicity and confidence, to God.
His piety at home, embraced the whole compass of relative religion; he was an “example to believers,” not only as a husband, a father, and a master; but also as a son, a son-in-law, a brother, and a friend.
Beautiful Home Life
He fostered a beauty in his home life that is both rare and recoverable. It was maintained by three primary means: consistency, simplicity, and leadership.
He kept at it on a daily basis and it was simple, for the curriculum was the Bible itself. Nothing new had to be created. On the contrary, he drew from the deep well of Holy Scripture.
God-Centered Home Life
Matthew Henry strove for a God-centered home, and he seemed to take every opportunity to breathe the joy of the Lord into it. Tender words toward God were constantly brought into the home.
One small piece of evidence of this is a copy of the baptismal covenant handwritten and signed by him and his daughters. They would recite it each Lord’s Day in the evening. It is a beautiful Trinitarian devotional and a tender-hearted covenant which pulsates with the proclamation of the goodness of the Lord.
This baptismal covenant was signed October 20, 1686. J. B. Williams says that Matthew took pains that his family understood it through explanation and regular recitation. Here is how it reads:
I take God the Father to be my chiefest good and Highest end. I take God the Son to be my Prince and Savior. I take God the Holy Ghost to be my sanctifier, teacher, guide, and comforter. I take the Word of God to be my rule in all my actions. And the people of God to be my people in all conditions. And this I do deliberately, sincerely, and freely and forever.
Matthew Henry was an exemplary father who understood biblical order in the church and the home.
He patterned his family life in the manner of his father Philip who diligently held family worship in his household without break in the pattern, no matter what other demands were placed on him.
Matthew is an example of a father who maintained patterns that cultivated a beautiful and godly family life. Creating this kind of home life is one of the great difficulties for heads of households today, particularly as everything in modern life seems to work against it. I commend these two mentors to help a new generation of fathers on their journeys to become like their heavenly Father, in all of their fatherhood activities, that we might make our houses little churches that are like unto the gates of heaven.
©2009 Homeschooling Today magazine, Nehemiah Four, LLC