Why Worship Connected + Family Worship Guide 2 Kings 4

Worship Connected is written to complement the weekly Lord’s Day sermons of Springs Reformed Church (SRC) by focusing hearts, minds, and lives throughout the week on the preaching passage and connecting household worship with the church’s gathered worship.

At SRC we distribute a weekly guide running from the Lord's Day to Saturday with Monday-Wednesday reviewing the sermons that were preached the Lord's Day at the start of the week and Thursday-Saturday previewing the sermons that will be preached the coming Lord's Day.

However, for the posts here I will link to the guide from Thursday to Wednesday so that all are aimed at the Lord's Day as the peak of the 7-day rhythm as seen in the image above. The Lord's Day post includes links to the sermons.

In addition to a brief comment on my preaching series of Christ in the Old Testament, I will also give brief comments on the how and why of Worship Connected. This week we are considering How Elisha points to Jesus in 2 Kings 4. One thing different about Worship Connected this week is that we had a joint evening worship with Black Forest Reformed Church so only had 4 days devoted to the 2 Kings 4 sermon and 2 days devoted to Psalm 124.

Thursday 2 Kings 4:1-7, 38-44—Multiplication of Miracles.

Friday 2 Kings 4:8-37—Great Joy, Great Grief, Great Joy

Saturday Psalm 124—Unless the Lord Had Been on Our Side.

Lord’s Day

Monday Luke 4:14-30—In Elisha’s time…

Tuesday John 10:1-30—Jesus’s sheep follow him

Wednesday Romans 8:31-39—If God is for us, who can be against us?

If you find it useful to use these in your household/family worship, consider asking your pastor to speak to me about him developing something similar in your congregation.

Thoughts for Pastors:

Gordan J. Keddie notes regarding both the Christian and Hebrew Sabbath that it is a “day of rest and gladness. … [It] stamps a basic rhythm on human life and asserts the ownership of God over this world in time and space.”[1]

Indeed, the Sabbath is a delight, and that weekly rhythm plays a part in the delight. David and Karen Mains, in their book Making Sunday Special, share of their adventure on a Jewish tour. The guide had noted, they recall, that “we … were the only Gentiles to crash the Jewish tour bus.”[2] On that tour, Mains recounts, “On Wednesday we began to hear comments such as ‘Oh, Shabbat will be in Tel Aviv. Shabbat will be in Tel Aviv.’ Sure enough, on Friday afternoon, we checked into a hotel in Tel Aviv and joined some new Orthodox Jewish friends to participate in the evening Shabbat meal.”[3] On return from their trip, David explored this Jewish understanding of the Sabbath.  

He discovered that the Sabbath for the devout Jew (Friday evening at sundown to Saturday evening at sundown) was so special it took three days to anticipate it. … Three days to look forward to Sabbath, then the high point, the day itself, then for observant Jews, it was so special, they took three days to reflect back on its wonder. This three-day reflection created what David has come to term the rhythm of the sacred.[4]

Now, imagine your own congregation excitedly anticipating Sunday worship each week. Imagine they are prepared for your sermon, having thought about it for three days. And then the day arrives! Imagine that the Holy Spirit convicts, encourages, and instructs them during worship and they spend the rest of the Lord’s Day and the next three days reflecting and considering how God would have them apply it to their lives and talking about it with their family and others.

Why not stop imagining and, with the Lord’s help, begin facilitating this weekly rhythm of delight in worship!

[1]  Gordon J. Keddie, Ten Words from God: An Exposition of the Ten Commandments (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, 2023), 75.

[2] Karen Burton Mains, Making Sunday Special (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1987), 20.

[3] Mains, 20.

[4] Mains, 20.