The Family Altar

Moses gave the command to the fathers of Israel in words a whole household could understand:

“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 LSB).

In that command the words are on the father’s heart before they are in his children’s ears. A man teaches his household out of what he has first received himself, and the teaching happens in the ordinary hours of a home: at the table, on the road, at night and in the morning.

The apostle lays the same charge on fathers under the new covenant: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4 LSB). The instruction of the household belongs to the head of the household. Earlier this month, in “The Father Who Began,” I wrote that the first thing a father leaves his children is the fear of God. That inheritance is handed down at the table, one evening after another.

The churches of the Reformation gave this duty an order. The Church of Scotland’s Directory for Family Worship (1647) pressed two kinds of worship on every home besides the public assembly: the secret worship of each person alone with God, and the worship of the family together. It names the ordinary worship of a household as prayer and praises, the reading of the Scriptures, and catechizing in a plain way.

The Family Altar is a free daily podcast built on that order. There is an episode for each day from Monday to Saturday, and each runs about a quarter of an hour. The episode is for the father alone. He hears it in the morning, on the road, or wherever he is before the evening comes, so that he comes to his table already filled with the Word he will open to his household.

Each episode opens with a psalm from the Scottish Psalter of 1650, the psalms set in verse so that a household can sing them. Then come two chapters of Scripture from the Geneva Bible of 1599, following the calendar Robert Murray M’Cheyne gave his congregation in 1842. M’Cheyne assigned four chapters to each day, two for the family together and two for each Christian to read alone, and the episode reads the father his two private chapters. After the Scripture comes the Heidelberg Catechism, one Lord’s Day each week. Then comes a short reading from the Reformers and Puritans on the duties of a household, and a prayer from the same faithful men. On Saturday the Belgic Confession takes the place of the catechism, and the episode prepares the household for the Lord’s Day. On the Lord’s Day the podcast is silent, and the father takes his household to the assembly of the saints.

Every episode closes by naming M’Cheyne’s two family chapters for that evening and the catechism question of the week. The father gathers his household and prays. He sings or reads the psalm. He reads the two chapters from his own Bible, in the translation his household reads. He asks the question of the week and reads its answer, and he asks the same question every evening until the household knows it. Then he prays for his household in his own words. A quarter of an hour is enough. Every episode page carries these readings and the question on a card for the table, and “How to Lead Your Table” sets out the whole order.

A man may ask why a father needs a recording when he has a Bible of his own and can read it himself. The Family Altar adds nothing to Scripture. Every word in it comes from Scripture or from the historic sources named above, apart from the few plain lines that introduce each part. It serves as a calendar and a guide. It keeps a father moving through the whole Bible in a year, and it sets the catechism and the prayers of faithful men beside the text for his own instruction. The work of leading the table remains his.

I made The Family Altar because I love the church of Jesus Christ, and I long to see her households reformed and restored, with fathers taking up again the place God gave them at the head of their homes. I made it first for my own household, and it is free to every father who will use it.

The first week is released on Monday, October 12, and a new week follows every Monday after it. A father may begin at Week One on any Monday. The episodes are at kenduffy.net/altar, in Apple Podcasts, in Spotify, and in Amazon Music. The site carries the full text of every episode, a way for a father to keep his place on more than one device, and an email each Monday morning with the week ahead, counted from the week he began. The Introduction explains the sources in full.

God gave this charge to fathers with the generations in view:

“For He established a testimony in Jacob And set a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers That they should teach them to their children, That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, That they may arise and recount them to their children, That they should set their confidence in God And not forget the deeds of God, But observe His commandments” (Psalm 78:5-7 LSB).

In Scripture the knowledge of God passes from one generation to the next along that line: from the heart of a father, to his children at his table, and from them to children not yet born.