The Reformation not only led to a recovery of the biblical gospel, but also the biblical doctrine of the family. The various confessional streams of Reformation theology continued to develop and teach on the central importance of the family. The confessional doctrines and documents of these groups over and over emphasize the importance of family and are helpful tools to build up the family even in the 21st century.

Okay, I want to draw a thread back to Monty's message on the confessions and the catechisms, and I passed out Thomas Manton's introduction to the Westminster Confession. And the reason I've done that is that the Puritans really recovered the doctrine of the family, but the reformers recovered it first, and the Puritans actually built upon it. That's why you see in the Puritan era a massive outpouring of literature, books on matters of family life in the Puritan era, and I have stacks of them. And I've spent the last 20 years reading the Puritans on family life. But what happened in the Puritan era was that the reformers recovered the doctrine of the family.

You had Martin Luther actually having a marriage, a real live family and a real live biblically ordered marriage. You had Calvin doing the same thing. Luther and Calvin shook the Roman Catholic world. When Luther was alive, 25% of the population had taken vows of celibacy. And the reformers stood up and said this is unbiblical.

Luther was very funny when he talked about it many times. There's this one place he says man just look at yourself. Look at yourself. You were created to have babies not to be celibate. You know you were created for this, okay.

So you had a recovery of the doctrine of the family in the Reformation in its seminal levels. But the Puritans built on it. And one of the great Puritan writings is the Baptist Confession of 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith written about the same time. And it's very interesting when you read the introductions to the confessions, to these two confessions, you'll find the same thing in both. I have various introductions to the Baptist confession and they zero on the same thing that I had before you here in Thomas Manton's epistle to the reader before the reading of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The reason I chose Thomas Manton, he's very elaborate and he goes on for a long time. And there's no way we're gonna finish this. I wanna read it to you. I think it'll help you understand how pivotal the Puritans believed the family was and how critical it was that you, that families learned the 1689 and the Westminster Confession of Faith. As Monty pointed out, these things were written for children.

They're not highfalutin doctrine, it's the basics of doctrine. And I think we need to go back to an era when the basics of doctrine seem to be advanced to us today. So, Now, the first thing that you notice here is Thomas Manton's concern for the decay of godliness among the youth. Look at that first paragraph. Christian reader, I cannot suppose thee to be such a stranger in England as to be ignorant of the general complaint concerning the decay of the power of godliness, and more especially, of the great corruption of youth.

Wherever thou goest, thou wilt hear men crying out of bad children and bad servants, whereas indeed the source of the mischief must be sought a little higher. What's he saying? Parents? Everywhere you go, people are complaining about their children and the ungodliness of the rising generation. And he's saying, you need to look a little higher than that.

Don't stop with the children. And then he explains the root of the problem. It is bad parents and bad masters that make bad children and bad servants. And we cannot blame so much of their untowardness as to our own negligence in their education. Manton blames parents, not children, for the problem.

And then he says, "'The devil hath a great spite at the kingdom of Christ, "'and he knoweth no such compendious way "'to crush it in the egg as by the perversion of youth "'and supplanting family duties.'" So he's saying the devil is at work to supplant family duties. And he gives a pretty brilliant illustration of an egg. In other words, Satan wants to crush the egg before it can hatch. Here's what the devil knows. Once an egg hatches, once a baby comes into the world and into a godly family, they're going to hear the gospel every day.

He terrifies him. Terrifies him. Crush it in the egg. Crush it in the youth. And this is why you see the devil going after youth.

He knows exactly what he's doing. Yes. I didn't hear what Tim was saying. No, fine. OK.

Well, I actually thought you were going to say this is why you pushed abortion. I mean, oh, absolutely. You know, when you're talking about crushing the egg or the chicken and the egg, I mean, that's the devil wants to prevent children from coming into the world, especially to their homes of godly families. Absolutely. So abortion and littering babies would be a prime motivation of his.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And he's successfully pushing forward that agenda daily. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a direct line.

Notice the word supplanting family duties. Then he goes on, the devil works hard at destroying the duties of worship in the church. Now notice what he's doing, He's making a comparison between the worship in the church and worship in the family. That's what he's doing. So, the devil works hard at destroying the duties of worship in the church.

He striketh at all those duties which are public in the assemblies of saints, but these are too well guarded by the solemn injunctions and dying charge of Jesus Christ as that he should ever hope to totally subvert and undermine them. You got the idea? What he's saying is the devil does strike at the church, but the church has such distinctive and clear order to it that it's harder for him to strike the church than it is a family. That's the comparison he's making. It's easier for the devil to wreck your families than it is to wreck your church.

Now, in wrecking the families, he'll do damage to your church. More on that later. He says, He basically says the devil has greater success when he destroys domestic piety. But at family duties he strike-eth with the more success. Because the institution is not so solemn and the practice not so seriously and conscientiously regarded as it should be and the omission is not so liable to notice and public censure.

So what he's saying is that he he makes greater progress with the family. And I think we could list other reasons why he makes greater progress. You have different levels of godliness, of fathers and mothers, and all kinds of things like that, but he has greater success there. And notice he says, and it is not, and the omission is not so liable to notice in public censure. In other words, it happens behind closed doors.

In the church it doesn't happen behind closed doors. Everybody's looking. In the family nobody's looking. So the devil, while nobody's looking, has a greater ability to crush the egg in the family. Let me just stop for a second.

Why am I doing this? I'm doing this because I want us to raise the importance of family religion, family worship, family discipleship, the catechism of the confessions, real life, family life. The devil knows all this. He knows our families are more vulnerable and our own weaknesses often let him in the door. Okay.

Now, then he, in other words, he's saying, it's not noticed because it happens behind closed doors. Pray for your men. Ask them what's going on behind closed doors. Ask them. The devil hates their families.

The devil wants to destroy families. Then he notes something that I mentioned earlier that worship began in families. He said, 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 the time, and therefore, I suppose, when Cain went out from Adam's family, he is said to go out from the face of the Lord. So he's making the point that God began worshiping families and it ought to continue.

And he's really establishing that the fundamental priority of worship is in a family. And then he makes what I think is probably obvious to all of us. He argues that a blow against the family is a blow against the church. And so he says, now the devil knoweth that this is a blow at the root, at the root. So the Puritans believed that the family was very critical for the health of the church.

And he likens it, Thomas Manton likens the family like to the root of godliness in a church. And a ready way to prevent the succession of churches. Wow, the succession of churches. The progress of churches is hindered by ungodliness in a family. You know, I know many of us who are crying out to God for the planting of more churches.

We have a brother here, right, who specifically is crying out to God. Well, you know why it goes slow? Because we have ungodly families and we don't have children brought up in the training of the admonition of the Lord ready to do business with the devil in a local church. So that's what he's saying, blow at the root to prevent the succession of churches. Now, there's more to say about that, he'll get to it.

Then he says, if he can subvert families, other societies and communities will not long flourish and subsist with any power or vigor, for there is the stock from which they are supplied, both for the present and the future. So now, Thomas Manton says, it's not only the church, it's other societies and communities that are affected by the breakdown of the family. You know, why do we have so many corrupt politicians? Well, their parents didn't spank them when they were little. There are lots of reasons.

They didn't, they didn't, they weren't brought up to understand justice, right? They don't know justice if it slapped them in the face. They don't know their right hand from their left because their parents didn't teach them what was true and what was false. And he's broadening this out and saying that communities and societies are all affected by what happens in that family. And then he argues that the family is the seminary of the church and the state.

Look at this. He uses, By the way, Manton uses this language regularly, and the Puritans used this language too, that the family was the seminary of the state, and the seminary of the church. They repeated this in their writings on family life. For the present, a family is the seminary of the church and state. And if children not be well principled there, all miscarieth." How about that?

Everything miscarrys. Everything miscarrys without the family being in order. I don't know if that sounds like an extreme statement to you, but all the Puritans believe this. Richard Baxter said, if a pastor has a church and they don't have families that are practicing family worship, he says it will undo all. In other words, Baxter says your preaching doesn't matter that much if it's not happening in the family.

You know, a father can preach every day. A pastor preaches not very many times a week. And that's why he says, all miscarryeth. Everything else dies without biblical family life. A fault in the first concoction is not mended in the second.

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 taken therein. He's going to elaborate on this matter of youth being ill-bred in the family and what happens when they show up at church. He has some devastating language about that. You know, here's the truth.

Some of the church splits, some of the attacks, you know, you've endured as a pastor, some of the, some of the chumalts, the slanders, the backbiting, the whisperings, some of that happened because those children were ill-bred. They were not trained by their parents, not to back by, not to carry tails. Well, they did it with their sisters and their brothers and they did it and they just kept doing it and then they get in the church and now they're going to do it to people in your church and probably you. So it's really to our best interest as pastors to have our families in order. Because we're going to get those kids.

You know what? I just, I had a really delightful time. It was about three weeks ago. I was in Texas preaching at a conference. And a bunch of my old interns were there and they said, hey, could we have an intern lunch?

I said, yeah, let's do it. And I was so happy because there were a whole bunch of them there. And then they came to me and said, could we bring our wives? I said, yeah. And then they said, could we bring our children?

These are my old interns. You know, I had them when they were 18, 19, 20 years old. And, you know, five of them like had eight children and there they were, all their wives were there and they're having babies, you know, like crazy. And few of them weren't married. But, you know, those kids in those homes matter because they're going to be in the, they're going to be the leaders in the church.

My old interns are going to be leaders in the church and their babies are going to grow up. And I pray they fill those homes up with the word of God. So then he talks about how families train men to fill the offices of the church. Do you see this? By family discipline, offices are trained up in the church.

So you get your elders and your deacons out of families, that's the idea. One that ruleth his own house well, et cetera. And there are men bred up in subjection and obedience. One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God?

And then he makes a comment about Acts 21, where the disciples brought Paul on his way with their wives and their children. And then he says, he uses a different image. He said earlier that the family was a seminary of the church. Now he uses a different image, nursery. The family's a nursery of the church.

For the future, it is comfortable certainly to see a thriving nursery of young plants and to have hopes that God shall have a people to serve Him when we are dead and gone. The people of God comforted themselves in that in Psalm 102, 28. The children of thy servants shall continue. And then he speaks about how helpful it is to children and how it protects children. And just the grave importance of careful parenting.

So why am I dragging us through all these words? I want us to understand the perspective that you don't find hardly anywhere about how serious it is and I just want to I want to drive a dagger through all of our hearts and say wake wake up and recognize it here's the reality we all drift myself included and we cannot lose a sense of the importance of what is happening in our families. So he talks about the grave importance. He says, upon all these considerations, how careful should ministers and parents be to train up young ones whilst they are pliable and like wax, capable of any form of impression in the knowledge and the fear of God, which and be times to instill the principles of our most holy faith, as they are drawn into a short sum in catechisms And so altogether laid in view of conscience. Surely these seeds of truth planted in the field of memory, if they work nothing else, will at least be a great check and bridle to them, and as the casting in of cold water doth stay the boiling of the pot, somewhat allay the fervors of youthful lusts and passions." I think this is a really important statement here.

And Monty I think really, you know, brought it home but these short catechisms they do something to the conscience of the thinking. And what he's saying is that Even if you have an unbelieving child, it'll be like throwing cold water on their passions. It'll restrain them from doing more damage than they could do. That's the beauty of growing up in a Christian home, is that evil is dampened in that Christian home. It's a tremendous help even to the non-Christian child.

But I like the language he uses. It's like throwing cold water on a boiling pot. The boiling goes. And then Manton tells us of how earnest he is. I'm trying to reflect his earnestness But he said, I had upon entreaty resolved to recommend to thee with the greatest earnestness the work of catechizing.

I think his blood veins are popping out when he's writing this. And as a meet help, in other words an appropriate help, the usefulness of this book, he's talking about the Westminster Confession, as thus printed with the scriptures at large, but meeting with a private letter of a very learned and godly divine wherein that work is excellently done to my hand. I shall make bold to transcribe part of it to offer it in a public view. Now, he bears down on an issue that I brought up just a few minutes ago, but he contends that neglecting family worship, on the one hand, is the cause of corruption and divisions in the church. And on the other hand, on the opposite side, faithfulness in family worship is a cure for corruptions and divisions in the church.

The author, having bewailed the great distractions, corruptions, and divisions that are in the church, he thus represents the cause and the cure, among others. A principal cause of these mischiefs is the great and common neglect of the governors of families and the discharge of that duty which they owe to God for the souls that are under their charge, especially in teaching them the doctrine of Christianity. And then he talks about the similarity of families and churches. It's pretty obvious really. They are two separate institutions.

They are complementary, but they're not the same. The church isn't. The family is not the church and the church is not the family. We need to be really clear about that but he makes it very clear that there are similarities And so he communicates it like this. Families are societies that must be sanctified to God as well as churches.

And the governors of them have as truly a charge of the souls that are therein as pastors have in their churches. But alas, how little is this considered or regarded. Now, you know, the Bible is really clear that pastors will be held accountable for the souls of those that are in their churches. And that's very sobering. We will give an account for their souls.

But what Manten is saying is that we often don't remember that fathers also have responsibility for the souls of the people and their families. And then he talks about there's a double standard for pastors compared to fathers. But while negligent ministers are deservedly cast out of their places, the negligent masters of families take themselves as almost blameless. In other words, If a pastor's not doing his duty, you're gonna throw him out. But a father, you don't deal with him even-handedly if he's not doing his duty as a family shepherd.

They offer their children to God in baptism. They promise to teach them the doctrine of the gospel, blah, blah, blah, and they bring them up in the nature of the Lord, but they easily promise and they easily break it. They don't keep it up with regularity. They educate their children for the world and the flesh. Although they've renounced these and dedicated them to God, this covenant breaking with God and betraying the souls of their children to the devil must lie heavily on them.

Or hereafter. They beget children and keep families merely for the world and the flesh, but little consider what a charge is committed to them and what it is to bring up a child for God and govern a family as a sanctified society. Well I'm not going to read this whole thing, but I'm going to go, I'm going to drop down, I'm going to do a couple more clauses here. You get the idea. The earnestness, the seriousness of this matter, I think is pretty clearly communicated.

He talks about how the work of the ministry would be so much sweeter if the families worked together with the church. He says, oh, how sweetly and successfully would the work of God go on if we would but all join together in our several places to promote it. Men need not then run without sending to preachers but they might find that part of the work that belongeth to them to be enough for them and to be the best that they can be employed. One of the things he's saying is that you have a problem when families aren't in order and that is that the people are always running to the pastors for the answers. Instead, they ought to be taking care of the sin and their family as the head of the household.

That's the idea. Now one of the most surprising things about starting a family-integrated church about 19 years ago in my town was, it hit me after about a year and a half or two, I realized the counseling load just went way down, way down, and the reason is, those men believed they were responsible to minister to their wives and their wives weren't as broke up and needed some special counseling thing. And the problems in the families were less. So there was a lot less counseling. And I've asked family integrated church pastors all over America, they've experienced the same thing.

Your counseling load isn't gonna disappear. But if you have fathers really bringing the word of God from the genuis of their heart, and they love Jesus, and they're genuine men, then the wives are gonna be happier and more settled, not so fitful and longing. And the kids will be the same way because they have a father who's actually governing the home. Have you noticed that? It's really remarkable.

It's kind of like, you know, I just remember, you know, 25, 30 years ago, you know, the husbands and the wives were almost kind of like, here, let me plug into your umbilical cord, you fix me. But they don't do it that much in a family integrated church where there's actual family discipleship going on. It's very good for the pastors, counseling load actually. You know, he talks about the role of women, the critical role of women. Especially women should be careful of this duty because as they are most about their children and have early frequent opportunities to instruct them, so this is the principle service that they can do to God in this world being restrained for more public work.

So this is really a reflection of the biblical view of women, wives, being keepers at home and trainers of the next generation. And he's, they're saying they're restrained for more public work, why? To focus on their children. Boy, I pray for a new generation of bombs who are going to take the hit and all the work and heartache there is to raise little kids. Your wives have done it.

It's hard, hard work. I pray for a generation of young mothers who don't think that they were created just to go out and have nice little coffee clutches with their friends and share their emotions, but they actually have children to raise. They have eternal beings to take care of. It's way more important than all this other stuff. But it's very interesting that this author makes reference to biblical femininity and the role of a woman in a home and the prioritization of teaching children in the home by a woman and not going out and being the next CEO, but to take care of those children.

He goes on, Really, he says, and doubtless many an excellent magistrate has been sent into the commonwealth and many an excellent pastor into the church and many a precious saint to heaven through the happy preparations of holy education, perhaps by a woman that thought herself useless and unserviceable to the church. How about that? You know, one of the problems with the highly-programmed churches right now is that they yank wives, they yank mothers out of their primary duty. And I'm not here to claim that a woman can't be involved in local church ministry, I don't believe that at all. But there's an awful lot of pressure put on young moms to go have their ministry when they've got eternal souls in their home and we should let them go for it.

We should inspire them and tell them they're doing the best than they can possibly do with their life. Go for it, girl. Raise eternal beings, right? Okay, so that's, I'm not going to, you know, there's more here. He just, I mean there really is a lot of pastoral theology in this, but remember this was written as an introduction to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

And it's very obvious that this confession was written for parents to train their children. It's not high-fluid theology. And our children need to understand the confessions. You know, I'm like Monty, I'm a Baptist confession of 1689 guy and I pray that our churches in our network are confessional churches. Most of them are either Baptist confession or Westminster Confession churches.

And then there's a smattering of others. But, you know, I'm an advocate of churches embracing a historic confession. And there are a lot of very helpful things about that. It solves a lot of problems and a lot of controversies as well. Because, you know, what do you believe about the law?

Well, there it is right there. You know, don't slander us. Here's what we believe, right? It's stated very plainly. So, okay, I'm going to just open it up for thoughts or questions.

Thank you.