What we're going to talk about is we are going to talk about falling in love with a pattern of scripture in our generation. A pattern that has, that the knowledge of which has been lost and the actual, and of course the actual practice of it has been lost. One of the things we so desire to say with all of our hearts is that we ought to find ourselves loving the law of God. Not to find ways to circumvent it or create our own alternative reality around it, but to see it, to take it into our hearts and to love it with all of our hearts, to cherish it and nourish those thoughts, let those become seeds that grow and expand and become gigantic elements in our lives. That the laws of God would overtake the worldly laws that have developed in our hearts.

That we would love it, that we would not despise it, that we would not try to find ways to get around it. Not that it would get us to heaven, not that it would secure our salvation, Not that it would raise us up in pride toward anyone else in the world, not for that at all, but for this one thing, that there would be faithful, trustful hearts bent toward the Lord. So, I would like to give you two passages of scripture that I would hope that we would love more in the church and in the home. And then I would like to talk about the implications of that for a man's visionary thinking. Specifically, in these passages of scripture, we find a man's multi-hundred year plan for his life.

And then lastly, I would like to zero in on a generation of believers who understood this. They wrote about it voluminously and they practiced it and the shepherds of the church in this era, the Puritan era, established these principles. We have been riding on some of the capital that was produced by these practices that the Puritans inaugurated. The Puritans discovered the law of God. The reformers renewed an understanding of it and the Puritans took it to a whole another level.

We're going to talk about the Puritan doctrine of the family, but not the entire doctrine of the family. One particular aspect of it, and we're going to quote a number of these who J.I. Packer said was the godliest generation since the first century. Okay, so there are two passages of scripture. Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Psalm 78.

I'd like you to turn to Deuteronomy 6 first and we'll read beginning in verse 1. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you, your son and your grandson, all the days of your life that your days may be prolonged. And then Psalm 78 Verse 1, a contemplation of Asaph, give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable.

I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have known and heard and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength and His wonderful works which He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children. That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of the Lord, but keep His commandments and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God." In These two passages of scripture, we find two things. We find the hearts and we find the practices.

In Psalm 78, we learn that the problem with Israel is that they did not set their hearts aright. They did not love the laws of God, and therefore they did not carry them out. In these passages of scripture you have a multi-generational picture. You have you, your children, their children yet to be born, and the children of their children on out. In Deuteronomy 6, you, your son, and your grandson all the days of your life.

You have this multi-generational vision that's common to these two passages of scripture. And it's a man's hundred year plan. God Almighty has appointed every man to at least a one hundred year plan. He needs to be thinking about it in that way. He needs to visualize his life as under this government of God during at least 100 years.

This stretches out to the generations. That he's not just thinking about himself, he's not just obsessed about his own career. His energy, his life is poured out for these coming generations. He pictures his life like the Apostle Paul did when He said that He was poured out as a drink offering. And that's the calling of every man.

And that drink offering's result is that there be faithfulness to God in the coming generations. That one generation to another would praise the Lord God. And there are two things in Deuteronomy that fathers are charged to do, to observe them and to fear the Lord their God. It's that context. The observation, meaning the application, and the fear of God is the fuel for a man's life as he lives it out.

Those are the things that build his life. Observing them and fearing the Lord his God. This means that every man would have in some way a ministry to millions as God would give him the increase by his own sovereign hand. And so one of the exciting things about doing a conference like this for us is that we know that if One single man's heart is turned toward the fear of God to keep His commandments all the days of his life. And that if you would teach his children and be thinking about those not even born now, We know that millions are on the table when you're engaging one man and his wife.

Millions are implied. And so it's a joy to be able to engage in this because we know that if one single family turns in this direction, we're talking about millions upon millions, myriads upon myriads, for what? To be before the throne of God, free from the bondage of sin, set free by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Times of refreshing have come in. The ministry of the Word of God has come.

The clear waters, the rivers of the waters of life which make glad the city of God are there. That's why. It is so that heaven would be full of worshippers. And this is why God has given men this multi-generational plan. And there are the players.

You, your son, and your grandson all the days of your life you letting the Word of Christ dwell richly within you mortifying sin, keeping your vessel in purity and in honor, laying aside all filthiness, not giving your lives to this silly game-oriented entertainment driven culture. No, Not a man like that, but a man who's investing his life in meaningful, forward-going, dominion-taking for the Lord Jesus Christ. That means filling himself up and everyone around him with the Word of God, and taking everyone with him toward the heavenly city. A life, a rich life in the church, investing his energy into God's most precious possession, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not doing his own thing in his own house thinking he's conducting church when he's just in his house, no, but gathering with the larger church and integrating with with this bride of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it's you and it's your son. And in these passages of scripture, we learn that fathers should teach their sons and to bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord, to secure their honor and their obedience, to walk along, talk along with them instead of outsourcing them to other entities. And then there is your grandson. That means that your life's responsibility in teaching and nurturing this transgenerational vision of God is beyond the years that most people check out of the process. It's all the days of your life.

You're not done when your son's 18. You're not done when you're a grandfather. The idea that now everything is so wonderful because you get to play with the grandchildren and have no other role in their life is a silly, undiblical idea. Grandfathers are to be dialed in and diligent toward their grandsons and their granddaughters and they are not passive in it at all. No retirement, no squandering the inheritance for the next generation, but a community of faith here surviving against the pagan cultures of this world through you, your son, and your grandson, all the days of your life, to put millions of mouths to praise the Lord Jesus Christ on this earth from one generation to the next.

How the devil hates that. He hates every part of this. Now, I'd like to talk about how the Puritans applied this, because they were a generation, somehow God opened up their eyes and they saw it. It started with the Protestant Reformation localized in many ways in Geneva, where there was a reformation of family life in Geneva. Most people think of the Protestant Reformation as a reformation of justification by faith alone, and it is.

But That was just one issue that was on the table. Because unbiblical ideas had crept into the church in every area of life, particularly family life. You had godparents, you had children being committed to marriage when they were babies. You had all kinds of unbiblical ideas that had crept in to family life. And the reformers were attacking those things with ferocity and they were exposing them.

And in Calvin's Geneva they set up, every Thursday they conducted the consistory which was a court to deal with all the issues that were happening. Most of them were family issues. So they were writing the rule book from Holy Scripture regarding the family. And they were dealing with courtship. They were dealing with all the issues of manhood and womanhood and marriage and pre-marriage and all that kind of stuff and they were reforming it all and they had distinct convictions that arose out out of Holy Scripture.

Here's an interesting one. They were vigorously opposing forced and arranged marriages in Geneva. Why? Because in the Bible You see love, you see affection in marriage. And so they believe that marriages should have the element of affection in them.

And so they would not have, they preached against forced marriages. And where did they get their ideas about marriage? Well, you can look at their understanding of family life and say, well, I don't think this is right, I don't think this is right. But here's the heart of it. They desired the law of God to govern their family life.

So they began writing about it and you can see in Calvin's Institutes and in his commentaries and Martin Luther in his passionate interest in reforming marriage and family life. He was just so bold on this. Look at the boldness of Luther on the issue of fertility. The issue of children. Luther was extremely demeaning to those who contradicted Holy Scripture on the issue of fertility and children.

He called people names. You know, if we did stuff like that, oh, things would be way worse for us. Well, how bad can it get? But Luther was as bold as a lion on these issues. And then the Puritans began to build upon this doctrinal foundation regarding the family.

And they really did a marvelous job of restoring a biblical doctrine of the family. And many, many, many writings came out and they're just as rich as you can imagine. So I'd like to talk about family reformation in the Puritan era. But on this one subject of the government of the household under the Father, and the teaching of the Word of God, That's what I want to, I want to just zero in on this one thing. Why spend a whole session on this, when there's so many other subjects?

Well here's what I believe. This issue is so critical. If a father can get this right, A lot of other problems are taken care of in the home. So one thing that happened in the Puritan era is that a term was coined, family religion. Now when you hear this term, family religion, in any of the Puritan writings, it's one of those terms that means a hundred things.

Family religion among the Puritans meant all the doctrine of biblical manhood, womanhood, the father, the head of the household as prophet and priest and king and his government over his realm. It meant really everything regarding family life. And I'm collecting Puritan works on family religion, and it's just a marvelous, rich, rich study. I read these books and I just can't believe what's being said and how clearly they understood the biblical doctrine of the family. One of the things that they were very clear on is the seriousness of the role of a father in home life.

They really got this. We need to get this back. Fathers are trivialized in today's culture. Fathers today are the couch potato buffoons in these sitcoms who have nothing to say. They're idiots.

And they're treated as idiots as well by everyone around. They cast a vision for the father as the head of the household, the teacher of his wife, the lover of his wife, the teacher of his children, and the one who would be gathering together a little church so that God would be glorified from one generation to the next. They understood family worship. They cast a dynamic vision for family worship. Not worship of the family, but the family worshiping God Almighty.

And the term family worship is of course for us is a term of endearment. But this was a term that the Puritans brought forth to us as they studied Holy Scripture regarding the family. Let me give you some statements of some of these Puritans. I'm going to quote from these Puritan writings now to give us a sense of how they thought about the Father's role in family worship. So hold onto your hat because we're going to go through many, many statements that are very explicit and also very challenging to us.

Here's Philip Goodwin from his book on family religion. It's entitled, Family Religion Revived or a treatise as how to discover the good old way of serving God in private houses so as to recover the pious practice of those precious duties unto their primitive platform. Now that's a mouthful. Don't you love the titles of these Puritan books? They take several, often an entire paragraph to explain what's in them.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have titles like that today? Well, maybe we actually should. But Philip Godwin's book on family religion is the first place that we find the term family religion. And a friend of mine actually sent me one of these books. He says there are only four or five of them in existence today.

The first place that family religion was the term surface in the Puritan era. And it surfaced because of Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and it surfaced because the Puritans looked at those passages of the Scripture and they said how can we find terminology, How can we find ways to communicate the heart of this? And that's what they did. Here's Philip Godwin. Look well unto thy herd.

Don't you like that? Especially if you love cows, like I do. You would appreciate this statement. Look well unto thy herd. Or says the Hebrew, put thy heart into thy herd.

A man's herd should even lap in his heart, and his heart should be laid upon his herd. Do You see the tenderness coming through here? This is the Father heart of God coming through. A man's family though they may be sometime out of his house, yet they should be at no time out of his heart. Nor his heart out of them, but ever studiously striving and always solicitously set to do the good.

The good, the eternal good of their immortal souls should ever be upon His heart. And His heart there upon in daily diligence, be thou diligent to know the state of thy flock and look well unto thy herd." Do you see the attentiveness? Do you see the tenderness, the passion, the knowledge, the desire to be with the herd, the flock. This statement so well communicates really the heart of God for fathers in family life. Here's another statement by Goodwin.

A man ought to have in his house so to know their faces as to understand their cases, conditions, dispositions, capacities, necessities, iniquities. A good expositor reads it, take thou exact knowledge of all under thy charge so as to correct and amend whatever amongst them thou findest amiss. Here is the role of the priest in the household who understands where the hearts of the children are there. The only way you can understand the condition of your children is by being with them in life. To experience the pressures and the difficulties, you will not know their sins unless you are with them.

And when their sins come out, then you have opportunity. And also, they will not know how to deal with sin unless they see you deal with sin, your own sin, when you are with them. And this is the context of sanctification that God gives to all of us. He puts us in families for this reason. But to know the cases and conditions and dispositions and capacities.

Notice how they understood the differences of all the children in the household, how every child is not the same, and they don't need the exact same thing. They need a tender shepherd who can look them in the eye and say, my son, I understand this is your great gift, your great capacity, and yet at the same time, this is your great liability in this life. A father has to be with his children enough to know if you send them off and delegate the responsibility, you will not know the contours of their souls as well as you should to be their shepherds. And so this is Philip Goodwin, what an amazing statement. And then we come to Matthew Henry.

Matthew Henry was perhaps one of the quintessential fathers of the Puritan era. I love to talk about Matthew Henry. I discovered a sermon that he preached in 1704. It's pictured here on the screen. A sermon concerning family religion delivered in April 16, 1704.

Matthew Henry preached this sermon and I was in a friend's house and he had an original copy of it and I was just lost for a couple of hours by it. In this sermon, Matthew Henry casts a vision for beautiful home life. It's absolutely amazing. He tells fathers how to lead their families in prayer. He tells fathers how to lead them in the word.

I was so captivated by this sermon that I read it over and over again and then had it typed up and then began to work with the manuscript. One of the young ladies in our church typed up this manuscript And I thought, you know, every man needs to read this. So my son got on his computer and laid the book out so it could be readable because these Puritan works are often very difficult to read. And just this week I just got the first copies off the press of this sermon, a church in the house restoring daily worship to the Christian household. So we worked with the text and tried to update as much as we could without messing it up.

Did not want to mess it up too much. And you know, My son laid this book out in a very readable format. I love the way he laid it out. It takes out brilliant quotes and sets them out. But this, I just believe every father needs to go do what Matthew Henry did in his household.

That's what I think. How did this happen? You're familiar with Matthew Henry, the author of the great commentary set that is so wonderful. Spurgeon said, everyone must read this commentary set one time. George Whitfield read it twice, or three times.

The third time, he read the whole commentary on his knees. Matthew Henry's commentary, where did this come from? Here's where it came from. Matthew Henry grew up in the household of his father, Philip. His father, Philip, conducted family worship every day.

His father, Philip, made his children write notes of his leading them in family worship as they would go through the Bible. Matthew, Henry, and his brothers and sisters entered adulthood with the commentary of the Bible written in their own hand. Matthew turns around, he has eight daughters and some sons. He does the same thing, just like his father. They never miss family worship for any reason at all, unless some terrible calamity has happened.

And Matthew Henry leads his family in family worship. And he too asks his children to write a commentary of the Bible in their own hand. Where did Matthew Henry's commentaries come from? His preaching and also the collecting together of the notes of the children in that commentary. And this commentary set, which has been such a blessing to the Church, arose out of the fertile soil of family worship.

That's where it came from. These men believe that fathers should be expositors of the word. Where are the expositors of the word of God in the families today? We have expositors in the pulpits, But we also need expositors in the family. Matthew Henry just has much to give to us.

Here's Matthew Henry. He says in this sermon concerning family religion, this very convicting thing, He says, why did you give them a Christian name if you will not give them the knowledge of Christ and Christianity? God has owned them as His children and born unto Him and Therefore he expects they should be brought up for him. You are unjust to your God and unkind to your children and unfaithful to your trust. If having by baptism entered your children into Christ's school and lifted them under his banner and you do not make conscience of training them up in the learning of Christ's scholars and under the discipline of soldiers He says that you are unfaithful.

You are unjust if you neglect this work he says again thirdly let those that are remiss and negligent in their family worship be awakened to more zeal and constancy some of you perhaps have a church in your house but it is not a flourishing church, it is like the church of Laodicea, neither hot nor cold, or like the church of Sardis, in which the things that remain are ready to die, so that it hath little more than a name." And so he, in this sermon, just appeals to fathers to resume their constancy, to be more detailed than they ever have, not to forget it. He knows, we all know, how there's a war against this practice in our hearts and the whole culture. How many issues are there coming at you, fathers, to put this aside? Hundreds of issues every day. There's always a reason.

There's always a priority. There's always a fire to put out. And yet God has called us to this. Matthew Henry is just calling us with an urgent calling to restore the practices. Here's another quote I love out of this.

I beseech you, sirs, make a business of your family religion. Not a buy business. Let it be your pleasure and delight and not a task and drudgery, contrive your affairs so as that the most convenient time may be allotted both morning and evening for your family worship so as that you may not be unfit for it or disturbed and straightened by it. He's saying don't make it a small priority, make it a big priority, make it your business just like you would for the provision of your own household. Set aside time.

Allocate it. He's saying, make a time and don't let anything get in the way of it. He says, regarding houses that do not pray. By the way, the section on prayer in this sermon is worth the price of the entire thing. It's so wonderful.

But he talks about houses that do not pray. You are shameless if you do not conjunctly praise him for his bounty. Such a house is rather a sty for swine than a dwelling house for rational creatures. Is your house a sty? You pigs, you terrible, horrible pigs.

That's, Matthew Henry was not against using dramatic language to speak of things that are greatly important. And so he says that your house could be like a sty for swine. Now is your house, and how would we know that? If you do not pray. You know my son and I got up this morning and we read some scripture and I wanted us to pray and so many things pressed right into it and we walked out of the house without praying there was just so much to do before we came here this morning.

And you know what? It was wrong. It was the wrong thing for us. Whose fault was that? It was the shepherd's fault.

The shepherd, had he been a little bit more diligent on the front end, could have made it happen. Okay? That's just the absolute reality. He was not a victim. He was an inactive couch potato PMSing father.

Passive Nail Syndrome, PMS. So that's Matthew Henry. Then, Now that you've been called shameless and conducting a household that's more like a sty, we'll move to Philip Doddridge. Philip Doddridge was also an English Puritan. He was a contemporary of Matthew Henry.

He knew the Henrys. They collaborated together. And he wrote this sermon called A Plain and Serious Address to the Master of a Family on the Subject of Family Religion. I learned just recently that Philip Dodgeridge, he published a set, a six volume set, called The Family Expositor. It's about this thick, about this much a book.

And he, like the Puritans, believed the fathers should be expositors. And he used this book to equip fathers to exposit scripture. He wrote it and put it in the hands of fathers so that they too would be expositors of Holy Scripture. Here's Philip Dodridge. They will think themselves authorized by your example to a like negligence and so you may entail hedonism under disregarded Christian forms on your descendants and in their ages to come.

Here he calls those who do not conduct family worship purveyors of hedonism. And he's accusing the readers of disregarding Christian forms and is appealing to bring them back. Dodgeridge said, on the whole, God only knows what a church may arise from one godly family. What a harvest may spring up from a single seed, and on the other hand, it is impossible to say how many souls may at length perish at the treacherous neglect of a single person and to speak plainly by your own." Here he calls neglect a treacherous neglect. Did you see how the Puritans thought so differently?

We think that family worship is some kind of option. If we can hit it a couple times a week, everything is beautiful and we can go on our own way. Puritans didn't believe that at all. We need to recover the mentality of the Puritans regarding this practice. He said, how many hours in a week do you find for amusement?

While you have none for devotion in your family. You know, we as a, you know, we, Kevin and Don and I, we spend some of our time in this life encouraging people to reject this amusement driven culture and to stop spending time in amusements. And we're shouting it from the housetops, boldly. And we have many who have gone before us, Spurgeon, some of The great Baxter were vigorous opponents of the wasting of life through amusement and entertainment. That's one thing we've learned from them in this generation, and we want to be just like them in that sense.

Here Philip Doddridge is just saying, how many hours in a week do you have? What are you spending it for? Well, that's really the challenge that all of us face on this subject of family worship, because there are so many priorities and interesting things that people can do with their lives. And God would make sure that we do not leave out the things that are clear and commanded for the things that are just part of our traditions. We so nicely set aside the commandments of God for the sake of our traditions.

Here's Richard Baxter. Richard Baxter says, Of how great importance the wise and holy education of children is to the saving of their souls, and the comfort of their parents, and the good of the church and the state, and the happiness of the world, and how great a calamity is, which the world has fallen into through the neglect of that duty. No heart can conceive but that they think what a case the heathen, infidel, and ungodly nations are in, and how rare true piety is grown, and how so many millions must lie in hell forever, will not so much of this inhuman negligence as to abhor it. He calls it a great calamity and an inhuman negligence. It's remarkable to me the language that the Puritans developed to explain the fallout of family worship and the neglect of the principles in Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and lots of other places in Scripture.

But they arrived at these conclusions from the reading of Holy Scripture. Here's George Whitefield. To what greater degree of apostasy must he or have arrived who takes no thought to provide for the spiritual welfare of his family? Whitefield calls the neglect of family worship apostasy. I'm just not aware of modern commentators using language like this to speak of this subject.

And the reason is we have forgotten the law of God. There is a law in Israel, Asaph says in Psalm 78, that he commanded his fathers to teach their children. There's a law in Israel for this. It's not something that we should just slightly set aside at all. Here's another in George Whitfield, but man, but man, not every governor of a family be in lower degree liable to the same censure who takes no thought for those souls that are committed to his charge.

For every house is, as it were, a little parish. Every governor, as was before observed, a priest, every family a flock, and if any of them perish through the governor's neglect, their blood will God require at their hands." Now, again, we have very strong language, very passionate language about that. It's interesting, George Whitefield said that every house is a little church. You know where he got that? Right here.

A hundred years before Matthew Henry preached the sermon, he said, every house should be as a little church. Not that the house replaces the church. The household doesn't usurp the authority and the practices of the church, but every house should be as a little church and every father be a governor, just like what Feale says. And he again uses very, very striking language to explain the importance of it. Again what Feale says, these governors that neglect it are certainly without excuse.

And it is much to be feared if they live without family prayer, they live without God in the world. He says that we're without excuse when we neglect it. He also said, shall I term such families Christians or heathens? Doubtless they deserve not the name of Christians. Whitefield believed that if you weren't conducting family worship, you weren't catechizing your children, you were living like a heathen.

Now he says, he asks, should he term families like this heathens? That's quite possible. It's quite possible that if a father's love for his children and his wife flags so much that he does not teach them holy scripture. It may be that He never had faith in the first place. He never loved the law of God enough anyway.

It wasn't saving faith. It was interest in Christianity, but not a desire to produce the works in keeping with repentance. The Puritans believed it was very, very severe to neglect family worship. The fruitfulness of family government was extolled in so many ways. Here's Thomas Manton.

A family is the seminary, the church, and the state, and if children be not well principled there, all miscarryeth." Of course, we believe that today, that this fountain has dried up in this world, and we want to revive it according for the glory of God. Manton also said, if youth be bred ill in the family, they prove ill in the church and Commonwealth. There is the first making or marring and the presage of their future lives to be thence taken. Family discipline, officers are trained up for the church. Manton was one of those Puritans that believed that the Church was fed by the fountain of godly family life.

Here's William Gouge. It is impossible that a minister who it may be hath many hundred children under his charge should well instruct them. It is therefore requisite that each parent look to his own children. Now, I know that there are some former youth pastors and current youth pastors here in this room today. Here's what most youth pastors know, that unless it's happening in the home, then their work is almost impossible.

That's what he's saying here. He said, how can you have many hundred children under your charge, oh minister? He's talking about the family integrated gathered church. That's what he's talking about. He's saying, you can't deal with each one of these children.

They must be dealt with in their homes. This just assumes a family integrated worship experience. But he's saying, even that won't get it. It doesn't even get it just to bring your children together for the worship of God in a multi-generational fashion. It has to happen inside the home.

That's his point. Baxter said the same thing in a different way. Get masters of families to do their duty and they will not only spare you a great deal of labor, but will much further the success of your labors. If a captain can get the officers under him to do their duty, he may rule the soldiers with much less trouble than if all lay upon their own shoulders. Here he's talking about the spreading out of the workload.

You know, family integrated church pastors have discovered something, and that is that their workload has changed. It doesn't go away. But, instead of having all of the members of the family coming to him with their problems. Many of the problems are dealt with in the family, inside that household. And they never come to him because he's dealing with them.

He's dealing with sins. He's dealing with issues that are in family life, and his work is spread out, his counseling load changes. In some ways it drops. Not that pastors should have lives of leisure without counseling, but I will tell you this, if fathers are doing their jobs, your counseling load as a shepherd will drop. And that's what Baxter is alluding to here.

He also said, if we suffer to neglect this, we shall undo all. What are we like to do ourselves to the work of reforming of a congregation if all the work be cast on us alone and masters of families neglect that necessary duty of their own by which they are bound to help us, if any good be begun by the ministry and any soul, a careless, prayerless, worldly family is like to stifle it, or very much hinder it. Whereas if you could get the rulers of families to do their duty and take up the work where you left it and help it on, what abundance of good might be done. Baxter believed that fathers were shepherds, and that they would take the work of the ministry and the church, and they would take it on farther. They would keep it going in the day and on into the week.

What a blessing it is to have a church full of fathers who have that in their hearts. You know, I serve as a shepherd in the church where the fathers do have that in their hearts. And they are doing business with God in their households. And the work goes farther, and it's much sweeter when it's also engaged with the fathers. We gather them together, we teach them, and we send them out to continue the work of the ministry that God has laid upon our hearts.

And it's a beautiful thing. Baxter also said, you're not likely to see any general reformation until you procure a family reformation. Some little religion there may be here and there, but while it is confined to single persons and is not promoted in families, it will not prosper nor promise much future increase. We believe that here the reformation must begin. Here the Gospel must be preached every day in the homes.

Here the children are disciples to be mighty warriors for God. Here is where the Word of Christ dwells richly in the minds and hearts of all the children so that when they grow up they're ready to be elders. They've already read through the Bible many, many times. They know more about Holy Scripture than the PhD graduate of a seminary today. And you know, believe me, I know a number of very young people who know more and love more of Holy Scripture than their seminary graduates who are ten years their senior.

Jonathan Edwards said it this way, really repeating the heartbeat of his puritan forefathers. He brought forth English Puritanism and brought it into the church life in Northampton, Massachusetts. Every Christian family ought to be, as it were, a little church, Does that sound familiar? Consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual.

If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful. Here's just kind of a top level view of what the Puritans were advocating in family worship. First of all, morning and evening. Scripture reading, prayer and singing. It's really very simple.

They were advocating daily, twice daily, application of the gospel in their homes, where the governor of that family would fight against all other pressures, push them aside with manly strength and bring the family together under the mighty hand of God through the sword of the Spirit. Here are a number of cultural impediments to all of this. First of all, the role of teaching has been so comprehensively given to professionals that fathers don't see themselves as having this primary role. And it makes them blind to it and naturally negligent toward it. And so they outsource it or they don't do it at all.

The second pressure or impediment in our culture is that men in our culture most often naturally operate as consumer boys. Consumers not producers, they're party boys. They like to play. They like their play way too much, and they see themselves as, in whatever they're doing, as getting into that moment of pleasure when they're playing again. And you know, this is a cancer in the church today.

And then images of manhood centered around men who are perpetual party boys, they're not teachers. Here's one thing that we need to constantly be aware of. This is a commonly reported problem in family-integrated churches. We start these churches and we desire that fathers would preach the gospel every day, that these would be the most God-centered, gospel-oriented families and churches, that God Almighty is raised up, that His word and His law is preached every day, and then we still find negligence in the task. Evidence of continued lazy, non-participatory fathers that give lip service to family discipleship, and they lack real commitment.

So even a conference like this is designed to fight against that, to bring up the issue, to raise it up and say, brothers, how are we doing? Does anybody need to repent of their negligence of their family? Does anybody need to return? Well if your family's like mine, I sometimes drift off and I've got to bring myself back. Maybe you're in that situation now and the Gospel has gone fallow in your home.

The Word of God has gone silent. There's actually a famine of the Word of God in your home. Is that true? Well, if it is true, God is merciful and He desires you to come back and to restore things that have been lost. I'd like to close with this final statement by Richard Baxter because it communicates a number of things that we've been trying to communicate in this conference.

Baxter said, we must have a special eye upon families to see that they are well ordered and the duties of each relation performed. The life of religion and the welfare and glory of both the Church and the State depend much on family government and duty. If we suffer to neglect this, we shall undo all. I beseech you, therefore, if you desire the reformation and welfare of your people, Do all you can to promote family religion. And of course we believe that this is one of the reformational areas that's critical for our day today.

We trust that God will plant it deeply within your hearts, that the Gospel would be preached every day in these homes, that a new generation would arise who know the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me? All these things we know, Lord, are dependent upon the work of your Spirit. Would you give us a work of grace, a mighty work of grace, where all the world is filled with the glory of God, and every family is speaking it with all of their hearts all across the face of this earth that there would be more and more worshippers who have something to say that is beautiful and from heaven. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, so we have a few minutes before noon, and I'd like to take any questions that any of you might have. And I would also too like to just throw this out to you, Kevin. I'd like to have a way to loop back around to some questions about your message. I don't want to leave that. I just felt like that was so helpful and critical for us.

So any questions? So if you do have a question for Kevin or any of us, you know, you don't have to just focus your question on this session. Not so much a question but a comment that fits with one of the points you brought up about 10 minutes ago. You had a listing of, I'm trying to just think how it was actually worded, but basically a delegating of authority for teaching even in the public realm. I'm a public educator who we homeschool.

Something that some of you might surmise, at least perhaps when you were involved with your children in public education, if you ever were, but a very common criticism that teachers levy upon the parents of the children that they teach is essentially that well, why don't these parents take care of their kids? Why don't they do what they're supposed to do? And you know, this fits with what you were saying, Scott, and yet it's kind of a two-edged sword. There is a presumption on the part of parents oftentimes that the educators will almost raise the kids to some extent. And yet the teachers lament all the, frankly, the garbage that they get in terms of the actual child in the classroom, and it's gotten worse.

I've talked to very seasoned teachers who've taught 30 plus years, maybe longer, and they say how bad it has gotten because there is a breakdown in the family essentially. And it is not my job as a public educator, and I say this because public education is not my first love, even in terms of vocation. But it's kind of a bogus argument that public educators make, is they have usurped, we've socialized the raising of kids, which is wrong. And this is something that's Scott Brown, probably I'm getting your names mixed up, Kevin Swanson mentioned the other day. It's just a paradigm shift that has transpired over numbers of years and, you know, numbers of generations.

But again, my point being is that public educators lament and basically bad talk parents amongst themselves and yet they don't recognize that they're a big source of the problem themselves by virtue of it becoming an institutionalized approach, a socialized approach to raising kids. My parents were public school teachers in Orange County, California for 30 years and I think it might have been 15 or 20 years they retired, but they said the same thing. The garbage coming out of the homes was absolutely beyond belief. It's easy to point, you know, You can talk about the garbage coming out of the schools, but it's a two-way street, isn't it? It really is.

I just got a question for you. In discussing some of these things, as we know that some of the homeschoolers, as opposed to maybe some public school folks, Homeschoolers seem to be more adept to receiving this kind of material and this approach. However, when speaking with other people that are in the system who are committed to those kinds of things. I do share the gospel with them. You share my opinion of the thing.

But one thing I find is that it's so well entrenched that some things are very difficult to overcome as far as foundational elements requiring time to reset all the primary understandings. First of all, come back to the scriptural model and then bring them from there. Do you find that you, your experience in this question goes to the rest of the speakers as well, that what do you find most effective? Do you take them back, like I was saying, to the scripture and then bring them from there? Or do you find that there's other ways to reach those folks as well that are effective.

Yeah, scripture. Here's what, it's a thinking process. You know, I was promoting this CD from Doug Phillips, How to Think Like a Christian. And the principle there is throw up a subject and then start in Genesis and go to Revelation and see what God has said about that subject. You might not find the word homeschooling, but you find a lot about education.

So, my encouragement would be to read scripture to those people who don't get it, what God says about education. And if you compare what God has said with the current practice, it's pretty obvious. If training should be in the discipline, in the training and the admonition of the Lord, and that the fear of the Lord is the crux of the matter, and you have education that's completely bereft of that, I mean, in our environment, God is federally mandated to be exercised from the system. All knowledge of God, all Christian principles, is federally mandated to be exercised from the process. Christian parents need to understand that the Bible has very, very clear things to say about education.

So I would start there. I would go from Genesis to Revelation and read the passages of scripture that bear on the matter. Usually I take them right to the Shema right off the bat and then we start with the basic principles first. But the most difficulty, maybe this may not be a shock, but comes from church ministers. Mostly Sunday school folks, youth in general.

And so requiring going back to the creeds and the fundamentals of where that's supposed to come from. So in laying the foundation, sometimes it becomes a dialogue between maybe what they felt was important, what they're trying to do. And you don't wanna tear them down, obviously, but when you're laying that foundation again, it can have a tendency to put that, this is what they do for a living, this is what they do with their time, and have you found that difficulty to be something you've maybe dealt with in some peaceful manner to perhaps refocus their energies on something that would be more in alignment with the parent in that role rather than destructive? Does that sound? Right, yeah, sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes it's not.

I mean, we're near the gates of hell here when you're talking about sending a whole generation to be educated by pagans. We are dropping our children off at the gates of hell, where God has been removed, where the devil is working. In my mind, this is not a Christian preference issue. Christians do not send their children to the pagans to be educated. That's not what godly people do.

Give me some evidence in scripture that this is what the godly should do. On the contrary, scripture is very clear how children should be educated. And if I were to announce to my fellow pastors in my community that I was going to send them to this pagan school, which is like the gates of hell, they say nothing. Now, we have a double standard. We just need to be clear about something here.

We have a double standard operating in the church today. Faith and practice and the disconnection of it is devastating at church today. And it would be right to put me under church discipline if I sent my children to a Muslim school. Wouldn't everyone agree with that? But we're so free to send our children to schools that are thoroughly pagan.

And I mean every brand of paganism is working in those schools. So I don't believe it's a personal choice issue. I believe It's the difference between a pagan lifestyle and a biblical lifestyle. So I would just encourage us to be bold about it and to allow any upheaval or disruption to relationships to happen. You know why?

Because eternal souls are in the hanging in the balance. It's the children yet to be born. It's the children that have been born. We're talking about sending our children to pagans to fill their minds with every god-hating idea? Absolutely not.

We should stand up and tell the truth about this issue. I have a question for Mr. Swanson. He talked about the principle of individuality and I was wondering what he meant by that. Got to get the book.

The principle of individuality is the principle of Christian liberty. But I don't even mention that in the book. The way I present it is that there is, God allows, God permits, God establishes liberty in the education of our children. And actually the status system narrows it down and says these are the academic expectations for a ten year old or an eight year old. It's what I expect you to teach your children.

If they're not achieving the third level, the number three on the spine of the book, the number three on the door that goes into the third grade classroom, if they don't achieve that in eighth when they're eight years old, there's something wrong with them. The Word of God does not say that. The Word of God allows lots of flexibility. Our children have no idea what grade they're in. Becca Joy doesn't know what grade she's in.

She doesn't know. Now she may do some four stuff, some five stuff, some six, some seven, some eight, what are you doing? She's all over the map. So I express that in all my presentations when I bring out homeschooling. We get out of the box, we just educate our children to the talents, gifts, and abilities that our children have received from Almighty God and we affirm them in those talents, gifts, and abilities.

We care less what standardized tests come out with. We care less. We don't care what the standardized tests say about our children. Why? Because the standard is the book of Proverbs.

Amen? That's the standard. Okay. Kevin, my question is for you. When you were talking earlier, you were talking about the industrial revolution and how fathers left the homes.

I'm going to stick my neck out here. Certainly you're not suggesting that believers become like the Amish, are you? And retreat from the world because I think it's pretty obvious that most of the men sitting here all have jobs where we can't be at home and actually do what Deuteronomy 6 says in that type of sense because we're not all farmers. Let me use that analogy. So how do we deal with that in light of our culture?

What we do is we hide God's Word in our hearts and let it drive everything. Let it drive our economics, our education systems, our institutions. But let's be careful we don't tie burdens too heavy on people to bear. Let's be careful we're not Pharisees with this sort of thing. God puts us all in different paths.

You know, by the way, we are accused of being Amish. You know, home schoolers are constantly being accused of being Amish. What are you guys trying to create a much Amish? It's because we are somewhat Separatistic and separatists usually short-circuit the system. They're not in the system trying to purify it They're instead of going to Hollywood and try to create movies out there they go to San Antonio.

You see, they tend to prefer third-party candidates. They don't like to work within the Republican Party for example. So yeah, there tends to be a lot of separate-istic aspects to some of our ilk as we try to bring the laws of God the bear in our family church and state. So sometimes, yeah, we are separatistic instead of Puritan, and that tension always exists. That's a challenge.

It's always a challenge. But I think what is our standard is the laws of God. That is somehow we have to bring back the principles of God's word, God's law, hopefully Deuteronomy 6.7, also Genesis chapter 2, which says that the husband and the wife form a unit, a body, I think an economic unit that establishes dominion takes dominion Together in the garden wherever we happen to be and the problem is the Marx's of the world have Segregated the family economically as well as educationally So somehow we have to bring this unity back together. It's difficult to do. We're talking more entrepreneurism all the time on our radio show because we really believe it's better to be an entrepreneur if possible, if at all possible.

In fact, 1 Corinthians 7 says it's better to be free, if you can be free, from the unnecessary servitude of men. And I'd lump into that tyrannical government debt, as in banks that hold you in the servitude of debt, the Bible refers to debt as servitude. I would include in that the unnecessary servitude of men in corporate structures, especially those corporate structures that segregate the family. It's difficult these days to walk into a corporation like Lockheed Martin with all of your children and say this is my family We're gonna Mia. We're here to apply for this job.

Okay. We work together you have to understand We're biblical in this family all right, so so my my wife's over here She types 80 words a minute my daughter. She answers phone. She's incredible you out of here on the phone They they don't hire people that way I'm sorry you know and I understand that Aquila and Priscilla were tent makers together. They were tent makers.

Rebecca was feeding her father's sheep David was feeding his father's sheep Joseph and his brothers were taking care of the flocks. Yeah, that's the way we've been doing it for 5840 years until the communist manifesto Okay, yeah for a fifty fifty eight hundred forty years we saw families as a unit the modern corporate system has Segregated the family dramatically, and it's been terrible Absolutely terrible for the family, so what do we do? We don't recreate an agrarian society. We don't need to go back behind the Industrial Revolution the same Technology that segregated the family can reunify the family All we do is we use technology to drive the law of God. That's all.

We hide God's system, God's socio-economic system in our hearts. And then we use our technology to drive it. So there's a lot of folks doing telecommuting. We got a lot of people in our church now that are doing home businesses, telecommuting, more contractual labor, etc., etc. By the way, you need to get my new book, The Second Mayflower, coming out in two to three months.

I'm talking about a radical reformation here in the 21st century which includes economics. And I bring all this out in my book. But anyway, yeah, thanks. Good question. You know, the Internet has turned out to be a great blessing to the entrepreneurial movement among us.

I've got a number of guys in our church who, they work for Microsoft, they work for all kinds of companies, you know, 3, 000 miles away. And they're able to work from their homes and things like that. The ideal, I mean, we want to be careful, you know, the ideal is not for a man who's working in his household, but he's progressively moving to the integration of his family life and discipleship life all together and church life. How can he do it? It may take some time, but he should have the biblical vision in his mind and let that vision saturate his mind and his heart to have affection for it and then cry out to God and say Almighty God help me, help me get to where I have a picture of this that's communicated in scripture.

And then I just believe that God will open the doors, God will be faithful, He knows how to answer the prayers of an honest man who desires a different kind of life than is served up in this world. And you know, we are not anti-technology. We are nothing like the Amish. Nothing. I am online right now.

We do not reject it. I love the way you said that. To take technology and use it to drive the Kingdom of Heaven. That's what we should do. And everything, let everything that has breath and every inanimate object that we can do, use it for the glory of God.

And so we are so unlike the Amish in that way. A question as far as what you brought up, Scott. We can see as modern Christians when you say, I'm going to put my kids in the Islamic school or in the JW school, our fur rises up in the back of our head. And we see the Christian school, oh, that's the Christian way. How is it, or Kevin, maybe you want to answer this, how is it that our thinking, What principle have we forgotten or never learned that this area of neutrality runs amuck when we look at what is normally just all of the pagan thought gets the free ride as neutral and we only see certain things as being, oh that's really bad and oh here's really good and then we give a free ride to all the garbage in the middle and we can't see it What principle are we not is not being taught from the pulpits or?

There's something from the law here that we're really missing. Well, there shall be no other God before me That's the the only law that the neglect other than that they're doing good That's it that's it It's impossible to worship all gods at the same time. People have this impression that somehow we can be pluralistic and all gods are equal in the pantheon at least out of the academic institutions. It's impossible. It's impossible.

You can't worship all gods. You can't be atheistic, monotheistic, and polytheistic at the same time. It's hysterical to watch these public schools struggle with that incredible paradox. They can't do it. They want to be all things to all people, but they offend everybody in the process.

So it's a laugh to watch them try. It's a wonderful way to get elected to be a polytheist and do this, but it's not a great way to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the other thing I would say is that I think as Christians we have seen the religious freedom issue in the wrong way. And there's a debate right now happening, the homeschool movement on this particular issue, on the issue of religious freedom. Is total religious freedom possible?

See, I think a lot of Christians have the wrong perspective on religious liberty. They think that we can impose total religious liberty. And it can happen in politics, it can happen in the church, it can happen in education, it can happen in some spheres. In some spheres of life, We can allow total religious liberty. I say no I Say no there has to be a limit to that Now I draw the limit in different areas.

This is difficult not to say again. You start applying God's law to life, it's difficult. We get into some debates on these issues. We're not going to resolve this thing overnight. And yet I'm holding to the point that, and there were people that fought for total religious liberty, the founding of this nation.

Thomas Helwyth from 1596, he was an independent from England that fought very hard for total religious liberty. Well, I'm not fighting for that. I happen to think that if somebody is engaging in human sacrifice as part of his religious program somewhere in Phoenix, Arizona. We're sending the civil magistrate after him, and I think we ought to legislate some capital punishment in that case. Human sacrifice is not appropriate.

Why? For one reason, for two reasons. Number one, we are not to serve any other God with those sacrifices. That according to Deuteronomy chapter 16, I believe it is. There's a passage that says you don't allow it in your civil state.

You don't allow anybody to serve any other God. Second reason, Christians look to the Word of God and say there is one sacrifice, one human sacrifice allowed in all of human history, only one, only one, that is the sacrifice of Christ and that ameliorates the justice of God, of God, forever and ever, for anybody who will believe in that sacrifice. And if somebody, some other religion says, I've got another God, and He requires a human sacrifice too, in fact, more human sacrifices, it's going to happen in Phoenix, Arizona, I say on the basis of my faith, my religion, my intolerant theistic Christian religion, I'm sending the civil magistrate after that person and we're going to hang him. Okay, Now here's one other line I would draw. If a Muslim walks up to the INS agent with a Quran in one hand and kill the infidel tattooed in the other, I'm not letting them into my country for religious reasons.

Because I actually uphold the law of God contained in the Old and New Testaments. Again, is religious liberty total? No, it's not. And this is a myth that has to be dispelled with. And it's unfortunately, right now there's a brand new book that's being marketed among homeschoolers that is promoting total religious freedom.

And the book is very anti-Scripture, anti-Old Testament, anti-Calvin, anti-Puritan, anti-Pilgrim, anti-anybody but the guys who espouse total religious liberty in the 1500s and 1600s. So this debate is alive and well on planet earth and I would encourage you to hold to the position it's impossible to be neutral and it's impossible to allow for total religious freedom. Again, where you draw the line can be a little dicey, a little rough at times. We've got to debate that out and work it out.