Well my mission here in this session is to talk about fortifying the rising generation and to think biblically about that you know we always have to go back to the Word of God for everything And I want to try to do two things in the time that I have. I want to try to develop a flyover biblical theology of this matter of what it means to fortify a rising generation. And I also want to speak of the fact that it's really grounded in the two great confessions of the faith, the Baptist confession of 1689 and in the Westminster confession of faith. And you have a handout in front of you which is one of the introductions to the Westminster Confession of Faith which is written by Thomas Manton. And I want to walk you through it because within his introduction to the Westminster confession of faith is really a representation of the biblical doctrine of the family and what it means to communicate the gospel to the rising generation.
So that's what I what I really want to do. Now what we do with our children determines the health of the church and it really governs the course of a nation and really of every institution that exists in the world What what what children do with their parents and what children do with their parents? Determines if it will go well with them or not and we fortify the rising generation by using the ordinary means of grace with our children in the church and in the home and so my focus here really is what happens in the home The church is so pivotal and I will speak of it but we're talking about with the Puritans called domestic piety and the way it's presented in the Bible is that domestic piety is really defined with what fathers do with their children and what they teach them. And it means that parents focus their families on the worship of God in the home. And they fully participate in the means of grace for domestic piety in the home and also the means of grace for piety in a local church and God has ordained these two institutions these two formational pivotal gospel preaching institutions to accomplish this matter These are two of the most important institutions because they are the gospel preaching institutions, the church and the family.
And in the context of the family, the Bible calls fathers to bring the word of God to their children, not just every day, but all the time. As Moses said in Deuteronomy 6 verse 7, when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up, that's a comprehensive life focus of a father. God has designed fatherhood to be the means by which the glory and the beauty of the kingdom of God is declared, the great deeds of God, the great salvation that there is in Jesus Christ God has given this to fathers I mean think of the evangelistic impact of a father who really does this where you know he's daily praising God in his house daily He's bringing the words of God to bear, you know, hundreds of days, thousands and thousands of words, praises coming out of His heart because it is in His heart. That's what Moses says, these things shall be in your heart. They're not fake, they're not put on, They're arising out of His innermost being.
And, you know, a father is really saying every day, today, if you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did in the rebellion. That's what fathers are supposed to do. This picture of domestic piety is a picture of a father who delights in the majesty and the power and the goodness and the superiority of the kingdom of God. And he first places himself under the teaching of the word of God and then he speaks of it. And children hear the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation.
I can't think of a better evangelistic track than the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation and that's really what God has designed fathers to do that one drip at a time one year at a time one decade at a time when your children are in your houses that you hear the gospel from a thousand different perspectives. It's like a diamond. And it's not like going to an evangelistic campaign and going forward because your heart was moved. It's really responding to God because you have seen a thousand facets of the diamond and you can do no other but to glorify God and to worship him and follow him all the days of your life and And at the same time in the context of a local church you have you know elders who are required to do what is commanded by God for the ordering of the proper worship and functionality of the church. And they gather the people of God for prayer and for worship and for singing and for fellowship and for discipline and for the observance of the two great ordinances.
This is what God has designed for the church. And you find the family and the church doing really very similar things, not exactly the same things, but they really have very similar purposes. And if you read the Bible carefully on this matter, you'll find that pastors and fathers do many of the same things. One time I wrote an article called Expository Fathers, because that's really what God calls fathers to do, is really to do the work of a shepherd in a home. And you know these two institutions both working in a complementary harmony, they really have a picture In Psalm 22, that great Messianic Psalm, where the Psalm shows how God brings the glory of salvation from one generation to the next.
And the Psalm ends in verses 30 and 31. Why all of this? Why is the Messiah coming? A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation.
They will come and declare the righteousness, his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has done this. So this is this is really the means of grace for domestic piety and for piety in the church as well. So that's what I want to talk about. I want to really begin with the confessional proposition first. And I have in front of me a copy of the Second London Baptist Confession.
This is a copy that the NCFIC published several years ago. We published it because we wanted to put way more verses in it than is normally found. Sam Waldron gave us a lot of his verses and we cobbled together verses from all over the place So it's very complete you have you can find it back back there at the book table But it's very interesting the way that that the 1689 begins in the introduction At the very end of the introduction, you read these words. There is one spring and cause of decay of religion of our day, which we cannot but touch upon in depth. This is the neglect of the worship of God in families by those to whom the charge and Conduct of them is convicted is committed and the author says this is There is gross ignorance in the younger generation.
There is instability in the younger generation. And there is profaneness because of parents. And The introductory author of the Baptist Confession is blaming parents for the problems in the culture. The author goes on, for they have not trained them up in the way wherein they ought to walk when they were young." Now just reading that phrase, he's quoting from Ephesians 6, 1-4. They've not trained them up how they ought to walk when they were young.
And they have neglected those frequent and solemn commands which the Lord has laid on them so to catechize and instruct them. And the author goes on to say that youth needs to be seasoned with the Word of God and the catechisms and this confession. The authors of these confessions were having children in mind. They didn't mean this as highfalutin theology. They really meant it for kids to be taught.
And we read this and we say, oh, this is so deep. They didn't think it was so deep. They thought it was for kids. And the Confessions were really crafted as a help for parents to do that. And It's remarkable how the authors of these confessions speak about it.
And so I want to walk through this handout that you have. And the reason I want to do it, well, it isn't the Bible, we understand that, but it really does represent a view that the Puritans had a family life, but it really represents It represents the biblical theology that I'm gonna try to reveal in a few minutes here And so I want us to just camp on some of the things that are here. And as you can see in the handout, I have a bold heading at the top of these various sections that have some description of what he is saying. And so I wanna just walk through these why. I want us to understand the seriousness of this matter.
And if we would fortify the rising generation, We should do it by the Word of God. Scripture is sufficient for these matters. And this author, Thomas Manton, he understood the biblical doctrine of the family and he communicates it quite well here with what I would just say, I think you'll agree with me, devastating language. So here we go. The first thing that we encounter here in Thomas Manton's opening to the Westminster Confession is his concern for the decay of godliness.
Notice he speaks of that there's this general complaint of the decay of the power of godliness, and especially the corruption of the youth. So, you know, his times are just like our times. We're concerned about the rising generation. And he says that we'll hear men crying out about bad children and bad servants. And so he's just documenting what I think is probably true in every generation.
Every generation needs to be concerned about the rising generation. And ours is not different. And then He explains the problem. And he explains the problem that there is a supplanting of family duties and thus family duties are being ignored. And he says, it is bad parents and bad masters that make bad children and bad servants and He says we we should blame ourselves He says the negligence is our own.
It's not other people don't blame other people Parents blame yourself by the way if you read the Bible the Bible actually does lay blame on parents. Train up a child in the way in which you should go. Now whether you interpret that as some do, train up a child in all the good things he should do and then he'll tend to do that later on in life. Or if you interpret it, which is a legitimate way, if you just let your child do whatever he wants to do, that's what he's gonna do for the rest of his life. Hey, whatever it is, the parents are to blame.
It doesn't matter how you interpret that verse, the parents are to blame. And you find this all over the, read the book of Proverbs, the Bible blames parents. Well, so does Thomas Manton. And then he speaks of the problem of supplanting family duties. You see that there at the end or in the middle of the paragraph.
And he says that the devil is crafty. He wants to crush the egg. In other words, he wants to get children while they're children and destroy them then. And he does it by parents, negligent parents. If you want your children to be destroyed, have the egg crushed in your home, then neglect the ordinary means of grace in a family.
That's what Thomas Manton is saying. Look at these words, the devil works hard at destroying the duties of worship in the church. He strikes at all those duties which are public in the Assemblies of Saints, but these are all too well guarded by the solemn injunctions and dying charge of Jesus Christ as that He should ever lose hope to totally subvert and undermine them. What Manton is saying is it's a little bit more difficult for the devil to do a wrecking ball on the ordinary means of grace in a church, but it's really easy for him to do it in a family. It's easier for the family.
Every father knows that, how much the devil wages war at any attempt to carve out any time to deal with your children in the word of God. The devil just hates it and he'll bring every imaginable distraction, you know, to distract you from it. And then he explains that the devil has greater success when he destroys domestic piety. He says, but at family duties he strikes with more success because the institution is not so solemn and the practice not so seriously and conscientiously regarded as it should be. And then he says, and the omission is not so liable to notice and public censure.
In other words, you can get away with it as a dad at home, but you can't get away with it as easy in the church. You know, I believe it was Richard Baxter, you know, the elders there in Kidderminster would often discipline fathers for not catechizing their children. I haven't actually heard of that ever happening in modern times. Discipline a father because he doesn't catechize his children well we are our brains you know have been pickled you know and juices that have really driven us away from this mentality and then he He notes really the history of worship and families and he makes it clear that worship began in families. He says this, religion was first hatched in families and there the devil seeketh to crush it.
The families of the patriarchs were all the churches of God had in the world for a time. And then he goes and he talks about Adam's family and things like that. And then he argues that a blow against the family is really a blow at the root of the church. He says now the devil knows that this is a blow at the root and a ready way to prevent the succession of churches. Get that pastors.
If you want to harm the thing that's probably greatest on your heart, the succession of churches and the planting of churches, make sure you don't miss how pivotal it is for fathers to ensure the succession of churches. It's so critical that we understand this and he says if he can subvert families other societies and communities will not long flourish and subsist with any power and vigor. And then he uses some language that many of the Puritans picked up and repeated that the family was the seminary of the church. You know, we're very concerned about the condition of seminaries and the focus and we should have means of training men for sure. But we often don't think of a family as a seminary.
The Puritans thought that way. And so, he uses the same language that the Puritans, many of the Puritans used. He says, for the present, a family is the seminary of church and state, and if children be not well principled there, all miscarieth. I mean, those are very striking words. He's saying if the family's not functioning, the church will be a miscarriage.
And he says if youth be ill-bred in the family, they prove ill in church and commonwealth. One of the big problems in churches is that you get people who weren't well-trained in their homes, And they don't know how to be peacemakers, and they don't know how to honor authority, and they don't really care for the authorities around them. They didn't honor their parents, and they're not gonna honor the elders of the church. And you get them and they cause church divisions, they end up hating one another. And especially in churches like ours, which are typically small churches, the people actually get to know each other, and it's a problem.
Don't you long for the days of the megachurch when you didn't really have to know anybody and everybody was gone by noon and all you had to do is crank a bunch of programs? Not in our churches, the people know each other and guess what? If they've been ill-bred and families and they don't know how to honor authority, you got a tiger by the tail. And the church is going to suffer as a result. You know, the worst problems in churches really end up boiling down to offenses and unforgiveness and lack of respect for authority.
And you get these people out of families. Fathers, I know many of you have little children, insist that your children obey you the first time. Insist that they understand that God has put you in a place of authority and please, please brothers, insist that they obey the first time. If they don't, they could be a future church wrecker. You really owe it to the Church of Jesus Christ to discipline your children and to walk with them.
And I, Thomas Manton understood that a long time ago. This is not, this is not some new fancy idea. And then he says something, he takes it sort of another level. Not only, Not only do problematic people and families become problematic in the church, families train men to fill the offices of the church. And I think this is really important.
By family discipline, officers are trained up for the church and Then he quotes for sympathy three for one that rule with his own house well in other words The family really is the nursery for church leaders it really The family is really the factory for church leaders. And you need to realize, particularly you have sons, you are fine-tuning the factory of the Church of Jesus Christ with your sons and you're doing it with your daughters, too. You know if your daughter grows up just to be a member of a church and is gonna counsel her husband on how to conduct himself or if your daughter is gonna someday be the wife of an elder, she needs to be a wise counselor. And she needs the instruction of the Lord. I cannot tell you how many times my own wife has rescued me by wisdom from heaven.
Pastors need wives who have had their minds and their hearts saturated with the whole counsel of God. They need that and every pastor knows that. Every Pastor knows how critical it is to have a holy wife beside him to really protect him from his own thoughts and his own impulses and inclinations. But he says, you know, families are filling the offices of the church and it's so critical. And then he speaks of this language again, that the family is the nursery of young plants.
And then He speaks of the grave importance of careful parenting and how it protects children. Here's how he says it. Upon all these considerations, how careful should ministers and parents be to train up young ones whilst they are yet pliable and like wax, capable of any form of impression in the knowledge and the fear of God and betimes to instill the principles of our most holy faith as They are drawn into a short sum in the catechisms Okay, what he's saying is that it is just so critical that we do this when our children are young. By the way, they can understand far more than you can imagine. When the Apostle Paul was writing to the Ephesian church, he just assumed that children were there, and he said, Children, Honor your father and mother.
Obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. He was speaking to the children. And he understood that the children could understand. By the way, they understand far more. You know, they might not be able to speak that well, but they understand a lot more than they can speak.
It's like learning a foreign language, by the way. You can understand a lot more than you can say. And children are remarkably insightful in some of the most complex concepts, and it's amazing. And he says here at the end of this paragraph, it will be a great check and bridle to them. And as the casting of cold water doth stay the boiling of the pot, somewhat allay the fervors of youthful lusts and passions.
In other words, the instruction in the word of God, even though your children aren't Christians, don't worry about it. It will dampen the work of the devil in their life. It will give them thoughts. It will help them to understand what is good and true, and it will be like pouring cold water in a boiling pot, as it were, according to youthful lusts. And then you can see Manton's earnestness.
He says, I recommend to thee with the greatest earnestness, the work of catechizing. It's hard work, everything is working against it. All the priorities of the world are gonna crash against this, you have to protect it. It really must be the first and most important thing that you do, or else it will get gobbled up and destroyed by everything else. And then, he contends that neglecting family worship, on the one hand causes corruption and divisions in the church, and on the other hand, faithfulness in family worship is a cure for the corruptions in the church.
Look at this, a principal cause of these mischiefs. The cause, fathers, that's the cause. Fathers who neglect to fill their homes with the Word of God. And then he speaks of the similarity of churches and families in the next paragraph. Families are societies that must be sanctified to God as well as churches.
Well you know all this to say, we could go, it would take quite a bit of time to finish this, but I printed it out for you just so you can have it and see what he says about it. But what you'll find really is how important it is to bring our homes into conformity to the Word of God in the matter of domestic piety. And it's critical that we do that, that we look to God and His word. And what God has really commanded is very simple. And we should trust God.
Over the last 20 years, I've tried to publish books that try to communicate what really is a means of grace in family life and biblical explanations of domestic piety. One of the books that we published a few years ago is called Theology of the Family. And this is 500 years of wisdom on family life on really basically every category of family life. Many years ago I republished, which really was a sermon that Jonathan Edwards, or that Matthew Henry preached in 1704 called A Church in the House. I renamed it Building a God-Centered Family.
I think this is one of the best manuals for fathers that's ever been written on how you build a God-centered family according to the things that God has commanded. Along with Joel Beekie, I published what became a trilogy by William Gogue, Building a Godly Home. There are three volumes of this. William Gogue wrote the most famous and the most important, I think, book on family life. It was the most popular book for about 200 years.
And I read a first edition of this book and it just completely shocked me about 15 years ago and I determined to republish it. We republish it in three volumes and you can get them back there. And then last year I published a book called Journey through the Bible which is designed to be a help for fathers. It gives a quick summary of every book of the Bible, a hymn to sing about that book, questions to ask. But it's really designed for a really quick reference for a father who wants to read through the Bible with his family.
My recommendation is read through the Bible over and over again in your family. Help them to see the contours and the personalities. Here's what happens when you do this, and we did this for about a dozen years in our family. Your children end up with a framework. Everybody knows it's going pretty fast to read four chapters a day.
But what happens is there's a fabric, there's a format, there's kind of a filtration system that happens. And your children are able to sort out things. And things become obvious to them. You know, it's interesting, you know, all this movement in the LGBTQ community, to my children it's just totally obvious. They don't even have to think about it because they have a framework and the framework really came from here.
And none of us have perfect understanding of anything and my children certainly don't, but I will say, I've seen this, they know how to filter the ideas. They know how to define and dissect the words that are coming over the transom in their culture. And so this is why Thomas Mann is so passionate about this. And his argument is teach your children the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. Teach them the confession, the Westminster Confession of Faith, and bring the catechisms to them.
Now, I'll confess, when I was raising my children, I didn't do much with the catechisms. I wish I did. The reason we didn't is it was all the time we had is to read the Bible So we just focused I thought well if we just do that That's good. I would reckon if I had to do it over again. I Would I would really saturate my children in the catechisms, And there's so many good ones out there.
Now let's talk about domestic piety in scripture from Genesis to Revelation. And I just want to give you sort of a quick Overview of what you see in scripture in this this whole matter and you know as Thomas Manton said worship really began In families and you know the very first scene of a family You know is a family worshiping and there's an offering Cain and Abel have brought an offering. You know, this family was worshiping God together. They were allocating resources and time to worship God. Worship began in families.
That's why the Puritans say that over and over again. And you see the same thing, the same pattern with Noah, you see the same thing with Job and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in their families. And you can just drop in to these various locations in scripture and see what this looks like. Even when the children of Israel were making their way through the wilderness, God commanded them to build a tabernacle. But do you remember how the service of the tabernacle was conducted?
It was by families. You had a collection of families that were in the north of the tabernacle, and some families allocated to the south and some to the east and the west. And they really had their whole lives pointed to the service of the worship of God. That's where they looked. And of course, these are types and shadows of what God has designed for us.
But these were realities for the children of Israel and the desert, and they really do help us to understand the heart of God for our families. And what does that mean? Well, it means many things, but here's one thing it means. The Church of Jesus Christ should be the central focus of your family's life. It should be the thing that defines everything about them.
A family that is not centered on the church of Jesus Christ can hardly call itself a Christian family. And I think we're all, as pastors, we're all disturbed about families who make the church kind of a buy business. It's a convenience mechanism. If they can, you know, if it kind of fits into their schedule, if you're gathering the church together on Wednesday night, I mean, this is offensive to me, but you have families who are trying to figure out Well, are we too tired to go tonight? I never asked that question the issue isn't whether we're the issue is that the elders of this church have called us to pray And whether we're tired or not is totally irrelevant, you know, I encourage the men in our church Don't make that decision every Wednesday.
I just make it one time You know, well that you know, you see this picture this type the shadow of that You know in in the Old Testament, you know Deuteronomy 6 1 through 9 is I you know I think it's sort of the Rosetta Stone of the doctrine of the family in the Bible. It really pulls almost everything together. If you go to Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, it's really a restatement. It's a fulfillment. It's really just a confirmation of that.
And there you have the central duty of a father is the evangelization of his children. And it's just a remarkably clear passage of scripture. It's repeated in Deuteronomy chapter 11, verses 18 through 20. When you get to Genesis chapter 18, verse 19, there's this remarkable moment where God, in almost in the form of a soliloquy is on the sidelines Abraham is engaging you know these angels that have come and Sodom is gonna get destroyed but God says you know should I reveal to Abraham why I Caused him to be born and and he says he says for I have known him Why Why did God know Abraham? I mean, the answer might be shocking.
But he says, I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him That they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him and Here I mean you have you have a very Interesting intermingling of a family life and the Great Commission there They're wedded together the Great Commission in Genesis 18 19 is is interconnected you cannot disconnect them and The very purpose for Abraham's life was to command his children so that there would be children from one generation to another. And we know that God has been creating children out of the loins of Abraham ever since. In Exodus chapter 12, you have Moses commanding fathers to answer their children every time they celebrate the Passover. And in the Passover, they're picking out lambs for themselves and they kill the lambs. And the whole family is part of this commemoration of God's power during their escape from Egypt.
And he says there in Genesis 12, 24, and you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. And I think every time a father opens up the Bible in his home he's doing this. He's continuing on this work to declare the gospel to the next generation. And as they read the stories from Genesis to Revelation, the children say, what's that all about? And a father has an opportunity to explain it.
In Exodus chapter 13, verses 11 through 16, fathers are commanded to explain the sacrifices and the law of the firstborn. In other words, fathers are the ones to explain to the children, why are we sacrificing these things? Why are we sacrificing these animals and these various things? And in Numbers 30, you know, you get this remarkable picture of headship in a home and how pivotal the role of a father is in governing the affections and the commitments of the family in that home. And what Moses does in Deuteronomy 30, he paints this picture of a scene in a family where a wife and a daughter wanna do something different than a father.
And the wife actually goes out and she makes a vow that she's going to do something, and the daughter has done the same thing. You even have in this passage a daughter promising to marry somebody, but she didn't have the permission of her father. And the wife did a similar thing she contracted with someone and but the father learned of it and He was displeased with it and in in this passage God gives the father and the authority to actually reverse a vow. I mean, we know how serious, how solemn vows are. You keep your vows, right?
But God in this passage actually gives a husband authority if he hears it in the same day, in other words, a reasonable timeframe, he can't hang them out forever, he can reverse their decision. He can even tell a daughter, no, no, no, you can't marry that guy even though you promised to. It's that serious. The authority of a father in the home to bring the truth of God in a home is communicated there in Numbers 30. In Joshua 24, as the children of Israel are going into the promised land, you have this profile of this courageous father, Joshua, and he's saying, As for me and my house, We will serve the Lord.
I mean he's really declaring authority over his family as for me I'm before the Lord and my it's my house God gave this house to me and we together not a bunch of scattered individuals going in their own direction. We together, we will serve or rather worship the Lord. That's the terminology that's used. We will be a family that worships the Lord. And I have all expectation that Joshua was practicing what Moses taught him in Deuteronomy chapter six.
You get to the most likely the earliest book in the Bible, Job. In the opening of the book of Job, you have a picture of a father who's governing his household well. And what is his greatest concern? Sin. And he's offering sacrifices every day.
And he's going to his children's houses. By this time they're grown up and he's meeting with them. But he's bringing them before the Lord on a daily basis for one reason. He knows the vulnerability they have towards sin. All of our children have tremendous vulnerability.
Well, there's a man in here who has over 40 grandchildren. You know, calculate the vulnerability of that. Well, the Bible actually calls him To be responsible to teach them you your son and your grandson all the days of your life You know we have this idea in our culture that you know when your children turn 18. You're kind of done well, That's not what the Bible says at all. The Bible says you're never done.
And when are you done? Well, you're done when you're dead. That's what the Bible says. And so you have this picture of job doing this, you know as his children Ever own old and you know that when you get to the Psalms you have you have remarkable pictures of family life in the Psalms You have you know Psalm 78 of this father. He's declaring how great and mighty God is.
I love this Psalm. Jesus quotes this Psalm. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old. Jesus is doing the same thing that Asaph was communicating in Psalm 78.
You can go to Psalm 127, Psalm 128. These are pictures of happy homes. How do you get a happy home? You fear the Lord. You don't fear man.
You don't fear the economy. You don't fear anything, but you've got a happy home because you fear God and God alone. And you know, you have Psalm 145. There are many places in the Psalms that you can drop into to understand this. Well, what about the book of Proverbs?
Well, the whole book of Proverbs is biblical counseling for fathers, for their children. You know, Proverbs is a father's handbook For the raising of his children and there's really nothing like it in literature It's very fast-paced. It's very hard-hitting it goes to about every possible situation in work or family or temptation or anything. And it helps you to understand your own heart and how you treat people, and it's just really a remarkable resource. It was used by Hebrew fathers to train their children.
You know Proverbs is written by a father, two fathers, to train their children. And the entire, I think the entire book of Proverbs is implied when you get to Ephesians 6, one through four. Fathers, bring your children up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. It's all documented there in the book of Proverbs, and it's a handbook. You go to Ecclesiastes.
There are numerous allusions to family life in the book of Ecclesiastes. Here's the summary. I'll just give you the summary. We even go through the book of Ecclesiastes in our church. Here's the summary.
A lot of really bad things might happen to you in this world. And you can't tell when they're going to happen, and you can't tell who they're going to happen to. And some of the worst things happen to the best people. But guess what? What should you do?
Enjoy your wife. Enjoy everything God put in your hands because God's in control. Don't worry about it. Ecclesiastes has enormously important implications for family life, especially for fathers who tend to fear. And I've never known a father who didn't tend to fear what was happening or what might happen to him.
Ecclesiastes is a tremendous balm to help you to just understand look God's in control enjoy what he's put in your hands he's gonna take care of you that's it. You know you get you get to the Song of Solomon you get more about family life you get to the prophets and you have Jeremiah crying out in Jeremiah 10 and he really talks about the wrath of God upon families that don't pray. He says pour out your fury on the Gentiles who do not know you and on the families who do not call on your name. The wrath of God on a family, why? Because they're not praying, really?
Yes, The wrath of God is on families, particularly on fathers who do not lead their families in prayer. Are you a praying family? I mean, it really matters to God. And while we all want to say, well, you know, I'm doing the best I can. God says He actually pours His fury out on families who don't pray.
You get to Malachi, the last prophet in the Old Testament, and he prophesies of the time of the Messiah, and there's certain things that will happen when the Messiah comes. And there are actually very surprising things that he lists. You know, what's the effect of the gospel? What's the first effect of the gospel and He he says it here he says He says the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children and the hearts of the children will turn to their fathers. That's what's gonna happen.
When Jesus Christ fills the heart of a father, His heart turns toward his children. And when the love of Jesus Christ gets a hold of a child, their hearts turn toward their parents. You know a happy home is a manifestation of the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Malachi couldn't be any more clear about that. You know, in Jeremiah 35 you have this remarkable picture, it's astonishing, of Jonadab and the Rechabites.
You know, this family had a daddy. Jeremiah is reflecting upon it. 300 years before, their dad, their dad, Jonadab, told his sons, Jonadab told his sons, don't drink wine, don't become farmers, and don't have livestock, live in tents. That's what he told them. And they did it.
They did it for 300 years. And Jeremiah brings them in to the court. And he asks them, he says to them, drink wine. You know what they said? Our daddy told us not to drink wine.
I don't think, This is not an apologetic of whether you should ever drink wine. I think the apostles did at the Lord's Supper, and so did Jesus. So that's not what this is about. This is about sons who honored their fathers, and God honored them. And God promised that he would never allow their name to be extinguished for all eternity Because they honored their fathers.
Well, Mo, you know Moses said it in the fifth commandment It will go well with you Paul the Apostle repeated it in Ephesians chapter 6 that it might be well with you. Well, you know there are so many touch points of domestic piety, you know, in the Bible. You know, You can go to Colossians chapter 3 and you have this remarkable picture of the way a home is designed to function. You have a husband who loves his wife and he's not bitter. He's not bitter against her.
And he lives with her in an understanding way you know he honors her he actually puts himself under her the head of the house puts himself under the wife yep that's how the Bible says it there there are ways that you submit to your wife you are the head you are responsible you do have authority you know But it's not an unbridled authority. You wash her in the water of the word. You nourish her, you cherish her. You honor her. When you honor someone, you're actually and you care for her even like you care for your own body.
And Peter explains that, or Paul explains that in Colossians 3 Peter does the same thing and in 1st Peter 3 So, you know you have these remarkable pictures of family life in the Bible. You know, you have a father in heaven. The father loves the son. And the father reigns and he designs work for his son and he delegates work for his son and the father shares his work with his son. You have the father exercising authority over his son in his incarnation and the son joyfully submitting to his father in his incarnation.
They are co-equal and co-eternal and the son loves the father. The son imitates the father's actions the son knows what the father is doing and And the Father teaches the Son and the Father praises the Son for His work in Genesis. Behold it was good. It was very good. You have these pictures of family life everywhere.
I've heard many people say There's hardly anything written about the family in the New Testament. And I'm wondering what version of the New Testament have they been reading? I mean, in Acts chapter 18 you have a husband and a wife, Priscilla and Aquila. They have a church in their house, they're bound together in love, they're serving the church, they're like this theological couple and they're instructing Apollos, the man who is mighty in the Scriptures. You know what, this is the most wonderful thing about marriage you?
Mingle your strengths and energies and your intellectual capacities with your wife and you go out you create a life Well that was Priscilla Anacuilla you know in in Mark chapter 9 24 you have a father crying out for his demonized son. In Mark 5, 22, you have a father grieving over his dead daughter. In John 8, you have a woman caught in adultery. In John 4, you have a woman with five husbands who bumps into Jesus. She had a family life of sorts.
In Acts 20, you have a picture of a young man sitting in an upper room listening to the Apostle Paul at midnight and he goes to sleep and he falls out of the window and God raises him to life. But I mean you have these pictures of family life all through the scriptures. In Acts chapter 10 you have children being converted in households. The household of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16 and Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. This is a picture of family life.
You had these fathers, their hearts were toward the Lord, and they brought their whole family with them. To say that the New Testament doesn't say anything about the family, I really, I fail really to understand that you know you have you know you have Jesus you have Jesus he's on the cross and what is what does he do? He commits the care of his mother to the Apostle John. He's protecting his mother. He's on the cross and he's protecting his mother.
And he gives, he says, behold, he says to John, behold your mother. And he says to his mother, behold your son. I mean This is a picture of holy, godly, protective authority in a family, in a real family. And Jesus Christ was actually a member of the family and He had a lot of brothers. It seems like they ended up following him at the end.
They had their doubts at the beginning. You know, the 12 apostles, they only came from six families. Hey, these apostles, they were a lot of brothers walking together. You know, God called these people out of their families and they served together as family members in the band of the Apostles you know in Titus 2 you have older women teaching the younger women in the church you know in Mark 10 you have children coming to hear Jesus and you know what he wants to touch them and You have you have children shouting hosanna when he comes into Jerusalem and you have a child providing bread and fish to feed maybe 20, 000 people. You have children in prayer meetings in Acts chapter 12 verse 13 In Luke chapter 2 you have a submissive Savior, Jesus Christ.
He submits to his father and his mother. He's at the feet of the teachers of Israel, but he's honoring his father and his mother. He's always about his father's business. And all these pictures happen in the context of family life. There are prayers that invoke God's blessing on the coming generations.
Ephesians 3, 14 through 21 is like that. In Matthew chapter eight, you have a son-in-law caring for his mother-in-law. That's Peter. He's caring for his mother-in-law. And Jesus comes and cares for her in a remarkable way.
In Mark chapter 5 verse 41 you have a little girl rising from the dead. Jesus says those words, little girl arise. Little girl. You have families being torn apart by the gospel in Mark chapter 10 verses 34 to 39 because the gospel can tear your family apart. You have two sisters in a family treating Jesus differently.
You have Martha and Mary in Luke 10. You have a centurion appealing to Jesus for his sick child in Matthew 8 verse 5. In Luke 12 13 you have brothers who are greedy and envious for their inheritance. In Acts 16 14 you have a widow making shawls for the other widows who lost their husbands In James 1 27 you have a command to take care of the fatherless and the widow In Acts 12 13 you have a young girl her name is Rhoda. She's in a prayer meeting and Peter There's a knock at the door, and she doesn't want to open it But when she does her heart floods with joy She's a young girl in a prayer meeting, in an upper room.
You have divine commands for marriage in Ephesians 5, 22 to 33. You have divine commands for child discipline in Hebrews 12. In Matthew 1, 18, you find a newly married couple with a child with a slanderous report upon their consciences. In Matthew 1 19 you have this man, his name is Joseph, this betrothed man. He's treating a woman wonderfully.
The first miracle that Jesus performed was at a wedding. The Bible begins with a marriage and it ends with a marriage. Well, look, there really is a way of the family in the Bible. And it's all over the Bible. And the ordinary means of grace are revealed there.
If you wanna fortify the rising generation, You have a handbook to do it. And read it every day. Saturate their minds. Just do the things that God has commanded you to do. When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
And bring your children up in the in the training and the admonition of the Lord and Because they are foolish children help them to learn how to obey authority Require it of them secure their obedience while they're while they are in your home and Don't pretend don't pretend that that little child who's ignoring you now Or waiting for you to count to three or hides behind you because he's embarrassed Don't think that that won't grow into further rebellion. It's rebellion. It's not being shy Deal with the matters that the Bible calls you to deal with and keep focused on it. The most powerful influence of a minister's life is going to come out of his family life most likely as his job that his generation spreads out throughout the earth, but God has called elders to be examples to the flock, and that's why they must govern their households according to the word of God, and they must manage their households well, or else they're not really qualified. We need fathers who manage their households well, or else we won't have a ministry like we're hoping for in the coming generation.
And I pray that you young pastors, you know, some of you have lots of children. You got a tiger by the tail. It's unbelievably pressurized. Your wife is about ready to give up on life because it's so difficult for her. And what are you gonna do?
Lead your family to the gentle waters of Shiloh. Walk with your wife, help her, and bring your children up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. This is the ordinary means of grace for domestic piety. Would you pray with me? Lord I pray that You would help us all.
We all fall short, have fallen short, in every way on these matters. But we thank You that You've given us signposts to know what we ought to do. Lord, We need such mercy for how we have failed, how we have sinned against you, how we have done our own thing, how we have pampered ourselves as fathers and as pastors. But Lord, that you would raise up a mighty generation of fathers who have their eye on these simple and ordinary means of grace that you've given so that the gospel would be spread throughout the earth as the waters cover the sea. Amen.