How about that? Navigating the cultural chaos by the love of God that's in Jesus Christ. Amen, thank you. You know, we began this gathering by saying that the only hope for the family is the power of the gospel at work in a human heart that transforms the affections and then makes the soul desire to obey. And this is the only power that protects from this cultural chaos that we are in the midst of.

And you won't need to worry about your children in the midst of the chaos if Jesus Christ owns their hearts. You know, as I listen to the messages, they all really concluded with the beauty of Jesus Christ, and that wonderful gospel that changes everything. And you know, the messages all contain warnings, and they all contain solutions to really particular problems that we face. And I'm really grateful for all that we've heard. I want us to be aware of the cultural vulnerability that we exist in.

Maybe you noticed there were three messages preached here on Lot in Sodom. This is one of the remarkable stories of the collapse of a family as a result of syncretism. The defilement of an entire family whose consciences were defiled and dulled by the people of Sodom. We're all vulnerable to that. The delivery systems of the culture are in the films and the music and in the internet sites that we look at, we're all very vulnerable to those things.

It's also really important that we understand something. Things have changed. Christians are now the new cultural heretics. And this is the way totalitarian societies always operate. If you read the liberal press, it's very clear that Christian propositions and the very church of Jesus Christ are now being regarded as enemies of humanity, threats to human flourishing, destroyers of safe spaces.

If you're a Christian, welcome to the new reality. And we've found ourselves in a world where two great pagan religions have taken hold. The social justice movement, and the sexual revolution. And we need to remember the words of the Apostle Paul to the Colossian church, or I'm sorry, the Apostle Peter, I'm sorry, the Apostle Paul, see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of the world rather than Christ. So I hope on the one hand you've heard a warning that things have changed.

I've also hoped that you've heard that God is sovereign and God has appointed you for this moment. We're here because God wanted us to be here and He wanted you and your family to exist in this culture by his sovereign wisdom. And so we shouldn't fear, and we shouldn't feel like second-class citizens, we actually have the eternal word of God, and we have the Savior, Jesus Christ. I also want to give thanks to God. I'm praising God for you.

You've been attempting to recover biblical home life. And most of you are living totally differently than the people in your communities, and sometimes even the people in your churches. And you've, some of you a long time ago decided that you had sinned against the Lord. And some of you mothers went home and you've been raising your children. I praise God for you.

And it's hard work and I praise God that you've taken the labor of love that God has appointed for you to raise a new generation and to be the front line minister of the gospel to children. You mothers who bear these great burdens, you have eternal souls. You have eternal bodies in your home. You have eternity in your house and you dare not be distracted. And you didn't want to be distracted by it, and that's probably partly why you're here.

And you've been marginalized as a result of it, but I praise God for you. I praise God for all the men in this room who, many of you, many years ago, you realized that God had actually called you to be a shepherd of your children, and you started reading the Bible to your children, and nobody else in your community hardly is doing that. And you live in a world where often when people find out that you're doing that in the church, they're offended. I praise God for you, that you've done the simplest, most powerful thing you can do in your home and in your church and in your culture, and that is to open your Bible and read it because you trust it and you love it, you love the words. And you heard God say to you, teach your children when you sit in your house, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, and you said, I wanna do that.

And you also read somewhere in the Bible that it says, be fruitful and multiply, children are blessing. You said, You know what you said? You said, I wanna do that. God said that. And I praise God for you.

I praise God for all the children running around here, as difficult as it might be to navigate that chaos. That's God's kind of chaos He's thrown into you, you know? Everybody needs a little chaos from heaven. And he does that with children. I praise God for you.

You know, a lot of this conference has really been, you know, warning lights, but so many of you, I'm sure it's felt like you're just preaching to the choir, but there's another generation coming behind you. And they haven't bled like you bled. They haven't suffered like you suffered. They haven't had to make the change like you've changed. They've just grown up in this world.

And at some point, it'll be really important for them to engage the battle. They have a new battle ahead of them, by the way. The stakes are higher than they were for me and the other men who battled. Your children are gonna have to be stronger. They're gonna have to have the word of God more deeply embedded in their hearts.

And until they leave your home, please fill them up with the word of God. Help them memorize it, help them know it, help them know heavenly wisdom from Genesis to Revelation. That's how you inoculate against this world. And many of you have sought a church life that's more of a reflection to the word of God. I praise God for you that you started doing that.

The church, evangelicalism has lost its way and you wanted to try to somehow discover true Christianity in the church. And you understood how futile It is to try to navigate the cultural chaos in a lukewarm, lawless, commandment-free, shallow, evangelical, moralistic church. You realize That really wasn't something that was a child of the word of God, that there was something greater. If you have that kind of shallow Christianity, you and your children will be swallowed up. I really like the way Albert Mohler spoke of this.

He talked about it as thick Christianity. He said, you don't pass on thin Christianity. You only pass on real Christianity. Where people love God and they love to keep his commandments. And I know many of you have been in churches where you know the pastors are really afraid to ask you to keep the commandments.

But God actually calls us to keep the commandments. You know, I've been reading in Jeremiah for the last several days, over and over again, you find these words, do not follow the dictates of your hearts. You know, Pragmatism is a death grip to the church. Lukewarmness in a church and compromise on all these matters of doctrine that we've spoken about is disaster for a church. And so what will the church do?

And it's very important that all of us work together for the establishment of biblically ordered churches, fiercely biblically ordered churches. This is so important. The church is the body of Christ. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, making the church of inestimable importance. I praise God, at least for the churches that I know of and the pastors that I'm aware of that are particularly in the NCFIC network of churches.

You know, over the years I've traveled and met with leaders of these churches face to face. You know, this year alone, I was in Oklahoma and Alabama and Indiana and Virginia and Missouri and Rhode Island and Washington and Utah and Idaho and Texas, and in about 10 days I'm gonna go to California meeting with pastors of these churches. And I praise God for these men. Here's some of the things that characterize these men's churches. They really do believe that scripture is sufficient and ought to define the whole proposition of the nature and the functionality of the church.

And they really believe that the word of God should govern family life, not the culture. And they're preaching a gospel that's consistent with a reformed soteriology, that salvation is by grace alone, apart from the works of the law and that true salvation expresses itself in works of righteousness and that lives change when they actually have received Jesus Christ. And They're engaged in the expository preaching of the word of God, believing that scripture is the voice of God in the church. I'm so delighted to go and preach with these men. They're fearless, I love them.

You know, they're little churches, They don't have big platforms to protect. The majority of these churches have adopted a historic confession of faith, like the Baptist Confession of 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith and other historical doctrinal underpinnings of the church. They're not out there trying to make it up. They're not pragmatically going to try to figure it out by themselves and write their own doctrinal statements. They've embraced the regular principle of worship, which argues that Only God has the authority to regulate worship in the church.

And many of them believe that if you, if you invent elements of worship In your church, it's idolatry. That's what John Knox said, all inventions in the brain of man in the worship of God are idolatry, exalting the affections of man. They've embraced the principle of biblical church government and they're striving to establish a biblically ordered leadership in the church through qualified elders and deacons. And These churches are age-integrated in their worship and their discipleship. And their churches don't divide up into cultures.

Their churches are resisting the temptation to create youth cultures and old people cultures in their churches. Because the church is a family of old and young and rich and poor and wise and foolish. And they believe the church should be like a family, just like your family, with a lot of diversity. Here's a category blower. All the wives in these churches are raising their children at home.

Now, they're not stuck at home. A lot of them are like the Proverbs 31 woman, but they really do believe that they were by nature appointed by God to help their husbands to take dominion and to raise the next generation. And they believe that they're doing the greatest work that a woman can do. I praise God for that. And you know, they're very weird in their communities.

And some of you even go to churches where that's not really a reality. The fathers really believe that they're the primary spiritual leaders of their families. And as imperfectly as they do it, they desire to engage their families in the worship of God and the reading of scripture. They're also having Children, lots of children. I was going to give a message at this conference called Have Lots of Babies, because the Bible really casts that vision.

The reason you should have lots of babies is God said you should have lots of babies. It's really pretty simple. The Bible, there's no contradictory message in the Bible to that proposition. But you know what? While the whole world is saying don't have babies, you deserve a break today, you need some me time.

You have had lots of babies. I don't know of another gathering, maybe there is one, I don't know of another gathering that has so many children in families as this gathering here. I praise God for that. Children really are a blessing. They are eternal souls.

Here's the reality. Nobody goes to heaven unless they're born on earth. Nobody goes to heaven unless they are first born and then born again. And God, I believe God desires you to have lots of children because God wants to populate heaven with lots of people who used to be babies in your houses because they heard the gospel every day, and you loved them as best you knew how. God's populating heaven with people who are brought into the world as babies.

I think God likes babies. I think he likes to see them born and then I think he likes to take them to heaven. Almost everyone in these churches have taken their children out of the public school system, and they're now giving them an actual Christian education. Nobody does it perfectly. But anybody who thinks that these public school systems are safe for your children needs to actually take a look at those schools.

In these churches, there's a commitment to church discipline. In these churches, there's a high value on hospitality. People actually know each other. They are churches where people really actually know each other. And in a lot of these churches, they eat 52 meals together every year on Sunday after the preaching.

Lots of them are like that. And it totally changes the sociology of a church. It's also kind of challenging. Here's a problem. There is an advantage to going to church and everybody being gone by noon.

Because if you stay around, you get to know people, and they might offend you. They might not treat you right. And it might cause problems. But God brings those problems to teach you how to love people. There's a lot of sanctification that gets missed in churches where people don't know each other because there's just not enough people around to offend them.

You need to be offended. You need to be mistreated, you do. That's how the love of Jesus Christ actually is demonstrated in the world. That's why there's so many commands, so many assumptions that there will be problems in the church. Therefore, love one another from the heart.

Forgive one another. Think the best of one another. You know, all these things, These are just matters of love. And God blesses people in churches where folk actually know each other, but it can be problematic. You know, sometimes as a pastor, I thought, boy, it really would be kind of nice if everybody just left at noon and nobody had a chance to get mad at each other.

That's not Christianity and that's not the church. You know, these are small churches. These are churches of 50 to early on the high end, you know, 300 people. And the average church in America is about 75 anyway, but on balance, you know, these are smaller churches. I think churches like that really provide hope in the midst of cultural chaos, And I wanna see those tribes increase.

I wanna see a continuous growth of biblically ordered gospel preaching churches, where the families are really being reformed according to the word of God. And I know that's what you wanna do, and I praise God for you. I praise God that you've been willing even to suffer some shame in the face of man in order to try as imperfectly as we've all tried to somehow have some kind of biblical order in our lives. We really were created to be ordered by God. We were created to be under his authority.

We were created to be regulated by his word and the power of the Holy Spirit, which helps us to be regulated by him. That's why Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments, and I'll send you a helper." And that helper is going to help you to keep the commandments. We have help from heaven. What a blessing it is. Well, we've said in so many different ways that beholding the glory of Jesus Christ is the answer to the cultural chaos, the cultural chaos of your heart, the cultural chaos of your family, the cultural chaos in the church.

So on the one hand, I just want to end this conference with a word of warning of the kind of world that we live in, but I'm praising God for what I've seen and what I'm seeing now. It's so encouraging. I'm having the privilege of seeing the fruit of a lot of this now, after 20 years. And I really liked the fruit. You know, it was some time ago, there was a popular CCM artist, very well known, who was engaging with some of the things that we've been saying, particularly about church life and youth ministry and things like that, and he said, what kind of bubble are you living in, Scott Brown?

And I thought, you know, I like my bubble better than your bubble. Everybody lives in a bubble. Everybody does. And I praise God if the bubble is a biblically ordered church and a biblically ordered family. That's a great bubble.

You know, you have your programs, perhaps. I published two passages of scripture that I'd just like to read as a concluding note for this conference. It's right on the first page where I tried to profile what we were going to attempt at this conference. Isaiah 58, 12, Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations.

And you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." This is our work in the world until Jesus comes. Things aren't right in the world, and we're here to bring the kingdom of God to set as much a right as we can. And then Isaiah 44, three through five. The means for this restoration and rebuilding. For I will pour water on him who is thirsty and floods on the dry ground.

I will pour my spirit out on your descendants and my blessing on your offspring. They will spring up among the grass, like willows by the watercourses. And one will say, I am the Lord's. Another will call himself by the name of Jacob. Another will write with his hand, the Lord's, and name Himself by the name of Israel.

Here's my prayer. That maybe even today, Certainly in God's timing, that your children will say to you, I'm the Lord's, I am His, and He is mine. And that is hope in the midst of the chaos. Let's stand. I'd like to pray and then we will close with some singing together.

By the way, I've just loved the sounds of the voices. It is my favorite sound in the whole world. Let's pray. Father, you have sent to us men who have, with all of their hearts, have labored to communicate the glory of Jesus Christ. They have pounded their hands on the ground to try to communicate your beauty.

Lord, help us to take every bit of beauty from this that we can. We thank you for your inerrant, sufficient word. We thank you that you've promised never to leave us or forsake us. We thank you that you're the one who's the ruler of the kings of the earth and the nations are nothing, they are less than nothing, they are a vapor. But you, oh Lord, are eternal in the heavens and you sent your holy son, Jesus Christ, to be our holiness, to lay upon us his robes of righteousness, that we might become sons and daughters, and that we might say, I'm the Lord's.

Lord, I pray that you would multiply that as a result of what we've done here. Because we know that there's nothing of any value unless you do it by the power of your Holy Spirit through the work of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. And all of God's people said, Amen.