Weekly Family Worship

The following plan includes some suggested studies for your family’s worship this week. Setting aside two nights out of the week for family worship is a good starting place for those who have never consistently practiced it in their home. It is not the standard, but rather, it is a minimum that the family can build upon.

It is not necessary to use the formats below in order to have effective family worship. We provide them as a help to those who do not know where to start and as a means of aiding the parents in utilizing our Lord’s Day gathering in their family time. Each study includes suggested songs to sing together, prayers, Scripture readings, and follow-up questions. The current study will usually focus on the previous Lord’s Day to help us as we seek to apply the Scriptures to our lives and teach them to our children.

Jesus' Final Week- Thursday

Read John 13:1-20 aloud. 
The Jewish people were all crowded into the city to celebrate the Passover meal. This meal consisted of the cooked meat from the lamb that was sacrificed, bitter herbs to remind the people of the bitterness of their slavery in Egypt, and four cups of wine each with special significance related to God's redemption of His people from the Egyptians. Jesus uses this final meal with His disciples to share some last words with them before His death.

Note 1: You may want to explain how Jesus took the bread and the cup as symbolic of His body and blood. Today's passage doesn't mention this.

Here are some suggested follow-up questions:

1. Talk with your family about the significance of the various pictures during this time between Jesus and His disciples. Some examples include the sacrificial lamb, the bitter herbs, the bread, the wine.

2. During the Last Supper Jesus demonstrated a beautiful example of service to His disciples when He washed their feet. What ways do we serve each other as a family? What new ways can you think of to serve each other better?

Close with a prayer.
Thank God for making a way through Jesus’ perfectly obedient life and sacrificial death on the cross to pay for our disobedience against God. Ask Him to help us remember the bitterness of life without Him and to help us continually trust in Jesus as our Savior and serve Him as our King.