There is a reason that Sunday has been set apart as a special day unto the Lord. Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week and the Holy Spirit was given to the church on the first day of the week (John 20:1, 19 Acts 2:1-4).
If we take Sunday (the Lord’s Day, Revelation 1:10) seriously, we stand in a long line of godly men including New Testament writers (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2) as well as the church fathers Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo Eusebius of Caesarea and the Puritans. Thomas Watson writes,
‘The reason why God instituted the old Sabbath was to be a memorial of the creation; but he has now brought the first day of the week in its room in memory of a more glorious work than creation, which is redemption.’
I have grown in my understanding of The Lord’s Day over the years. The reality is that for a long time I probably saw it as day like the rest of the week with a church service inserted into the morning. It was Thomas Watson who started my thinking more deeply about the seriousness of the commandment as well as its many benefits. He calls Sunday ‘the queen of days’ and writes, ‘The business of the week-days makes us forgetful of God and our souls: the Sabbath brings him back to our remembrance.’
If the Lord’s Day truly is ‘the queen of days’ then we have a duty, as parents, to think about how we can best prepare our children for it.
1. Six Days for Our Children, One day For the Lord
We are blessed to be in a church that takes family seriously. The emphasis is on the responsibility of parents to raise their own children in the admonition and instruction of the Lord. The job of parenting is not left to the church. As an extension of this way of thinking, families worship together on Sundays, which means there is no Sunday School. Children sit through the sermon!
I realise this might seem a little harsh to people who have not come across this way of doing church. Nevertheless, we are teaching our children an important concept. Six days of the week basically revolve around the children (we teach them at home, cook for them, taxi them around etc.) yet the first day revolves around the Lord. It is not too much to insist that our children learn to sit through two church services on a Sunday without adults on standby to ensure they are entertained. At its most basic level, children are reminded who is Lord and who is not.
I will be the first to admit that this takes some patience, especially at the beginning! My husband sometimes preaches, and I remember Sundays when I have been minding seven children under the age of ten, including twin toddlers, in the pews! We have had to work hard to teach them to sit through a service without causing too much distraction to other church members.
Nevertheless, ultimately this way of doing things is extremely fruitful. As a mother, I remember many Sundays helping out in creche or Sunday school when I left church services feeling like a starving women who has seen good food from a distance! After looking after children all week, the last thing I really wanted to do is to look after my own (plus some!) while missing the preaching of God’s Word. Secondly, it profits my children. They might not listen to every word of the sermon, they might (by their own admission) drift off some of the time, but even from a young age they do start to hear at least some of what is said. They do not need a hundred retellings of David and Goliath, complete with a puppet show. Little ears are ready for doctrine (cf. 2 Timothy 3:15).
2. Preparation For the Lord’s Day Begins in Family Devotions.
Teaching children is about setting them up to win. In our homeschool, I do not throw impossible tests at them. If I pitch a lesson too high, I quickly figure out why they are struggling and work hard to ensure they have mastered basics. If learning is impossible, the fault probably rests more with the teacher than with the student. In the same way, if we want our children to be able to sit through a church service (and to be able to understand some of it as they grow in maturity), we need to set them up to win.
How do we do this? Firstly, we are consistent in doing family devotions through the week. We meet at the same time and in the same place and even toddlers quickly understand that for a few minutes they can sit still and listen. Secondly, we catechize our children. Sermons can be filled with long words, but if we have already drilled into our children their meanings, they have a fighting chance of understanding something of what pastor is talking about. Here is an example:
Q. What is justification?
A. Justification is God regarding sinners as if they had never sinned.
Q. What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is God making sinners holy in heart and conduct.
3. Practical Pointers
I doubt we are not the only family who regularly discover missing shoes, unbrushed hair and mismatched outfits on exiting the house. I do try and make a point of ensuring that we are ready THE NIGHT BEFORE! This means that the children must show me the clothes they are going to wear to church before bed on Saturday evening (I don’t trust them!). Ideally, dinner has been planned the night before and any other concrete items (such as piano music) are ready to go. If we arrive at church feeling stressed, harassed and generally unprepared then we are less likely to give our attention to the Lord and to profit from the teaching.
4. A Note on Sports
Several years back, one of my sons very honestly said to me that although he was very glad he was home educated, the one reason he would like to go to school is so that he could play football in a team. We heard him out, thought and prayed about it and hit the internet. We discovered a football club down the road and my two boys love their Saturday morning sports.
I am so thankful that we made one stipulation at the beginning. We agreed that we would make it a priority to transport our boys to Saturday football if we possibly could, but that we would not even consider taking the boys to football on a Sunday (even in the afternoon). My son is actually a very talented football player, and as I expected, he was soon asked to play for a team that played on Sundays. My husband explained to the coach that since we were Christians, he would not be able to join.
My point is that my son never made this into an issue. He knows the ground rules. He has a sincere faith in the Lord, he knows what the Bible says and he also knows that the Lord’s Day is for mum and dad as well. I am so thankful that we dealt with the situation before it arose and were not harassed into making a decision that would have robbed the Lord of his worship, and us of the peace and blessing of the Lord’s Day.
Conclusion
As I have already written, I have increased in my understanding of the Lord’s Day over the years. I have deep regrets over the many times that I treated Sundays as a secular day and am convicted even as I write of those times when I arrived at church unprepared or when I have wasted hours that could have been better spent. After all, our Christian walks are full of faltering and unsteady steps. We have broken each the commandments, but out of love towards the one who kept all the commandments perfectly and yet atoned for such a wretch as I, we can strive to be obedient to the law with increasing measures of faith. We also teach our children to do the same.
‘When the falling dust of the world has clogged the wheels of our affections, that they can scarce move towards God, the Sabbath comes, and oils the wheels of our affections, and they move swiftly on.’ Thomas Watson
