The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Scott Brown with the following message entitled, Lot the worldly father. Please open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 19. I'm going to read 19 verses 4 through 8. Lot is in Sodom. Lot has gained a position of prominence there.

He seems to have some kind of authority or some kind of voice in the city. It's hard to know exactly what that is but he is sitting at the gates. And he some years previous to this passage of Scripture, he separated from Abraham as the lands could not contain them together. And Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom. And then he ended up in Sodom.

And then he was sitting at the gates in Sodom. Verse 4, Now before they lay down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter surrounded the house and they called Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally." So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, and said, ''Please my brethren, do not do so wickedly. See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man. Please let me bring them out to you that you may do to them as you wish.

Only do nothing to these men since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof." Now there is so much to say about Lot's existence and final departure from Sodom and the things that surrounded all of it. We won't deal with that. We're going to deal with one particular aspect of his life as a father. Now the protection of daughters is that element and it's obvious that the protection of daughters reached a low point in Lot's household in Sodom And it brings to mind a fact of history, that there are times in history that are better or worse for daughters. And this slice of history with Lot and Sodom is one of the low water marks in history for the protection of daughters.

And so you have this picture of family life in Sodom. The story illustrates a number of things, particularly what really became a devastating syncretism in Lot's life. On display in this syncretistic condition that Lot was experiencing was his failure to protect his daughters. And while the failure to protect his daughters is only one of the many, many critical themes in Genesis in this passage, what is described here gives us a startling example of what a lack of protection of daughters looks like and it helps us to understand how a father, through pressures, through poor choices, can abdicate his responsibility, maybe even bit by bit, resulting in a grave peril to his daughters because there are times in history when the protection of daughters reaches a low point. This was one of those low points in history.

You might even think about your own period in history. Well, Lot's action and to the men of Sodom, these immoral men who are pressing against his door, is an absolute outrage. It's hard to even get your mind around how this can happen. Our natural response is how in the world could anyone possibly do anything like this with their daughters? And we're often so repulsed by the story that we actually miss the wider context of Lot and his life and what the Bible really speaks about him.

The core of the problem was a sinful incursion in Lot's life that ended up expressing itself in a lack of protection of his daughters. Now when we interpret this story we have to make sure that we're not too quick to distance ourselves from Lot. There's some lessons here for all of us and we need to examine the text and attempt to carefully discern what was really happening to Lot and his family Because this passage of scripture in Genesis is not the only place to go to understand what happened to Lot in Sodom. And so we have to interpret the story properly and Genesis 19 requires some careful investigation of the various other things that are said about this situation. If we just breeze over the narrative, we might just become filled with righteous indignation.

By giving sort of a cursory treatment of the narrative, it might cause us to think that the text centers around the evils and the pressures of homosexuality and different things like that. If we're not homosexuals, we're going to distance ourselves from what took place with Lot and Sodom, and miss the critical lessons that this story brings to us. So, because of the horror of the thought of what Lot did in Sodom, what we definitely want to say is, that's not me, I'm different, I'm a different category. To think that when we read this passage, that it just applies to everyone else out there who has brought disastrous things upon their daughters. But when we read the broader context of Scripture regarding Lot's life, it becomes very apparent that there's something more that Moses wants us to understand about this Genesis account.

And if you open your Bibles to 2 Peter chapter 2. In this section that spans from verses 4 through 10, Peter gives us a spiritual profile of Lot. We don't want to read about Lot and what he did with his daughters in isolation from a didactic text that gives us greater clarity about what was going on with Lot. And so 2 Peter chapter 2 is one of the interpretive keys to this passage. And so in this letter Peter speaking of the judgment against unrighteousness and how God through his indignation will deliver Satan and his hosts into the chains of darkness and and he looks into the past and he speaks about how God did not spare the ancient world and Noah's day and then Noah was a preacher of righteousness and then he turns to Lot and he speaks about Lot in this same context where God is rescuing the righteous.

That's the context of of 2nd Peter. So what we read in verse 7 is that God, for God delivered righteous lot who is oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked. For that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds. Then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment." Now if you just read Genesis 19 in isolation you have such a narrow understanding of what was happening in that moment where Lot opened his door and offered his daughters. We have to think more deeply about it than just dealing with that one surface situation which is so horrific for us to consider even so.

And if we have a tendency to embrace this narrow view of Lot which exists in Genesis 19, we might be surprised at what Peter says that in verse 7 he's righteous. In verse 7 he was oppressed by the filthy conduct in Sodom. In other words, it was something that was so disturbing to his soul that he was literally oppressed. He saw the filthiness of it. It wasn't as if he was blind to any filthiness.

He understood that there was significant filthiness there in all that was going on. He did not do what he did blithely in that sense. Verse 7, he tormented his righteous soul from day to day. He was literally gnashing his teeth, tormenting himself with the thoughts of what was going on around him. This is not a man who's just intentionally walking in wickedness.

In verse 8 he's called godly. And so Peter makes it very clear that first of all Lot was not just reveling in the excesses of Sodom and second he was absolutely outraged by the filthiness of his fellow citizen. Thirdly, he was deeply conflicted by what he observed all around him. So that's who Lot really is here. And I just want to submit, if your mind can consider it, That we're not so different than Lot in many ways.

We see the trends in our culture. We're absolutely outraged. We cast judgment on the sins that are running amok in our land. We're alarmed at the cultural indicators and like Lot, we see what's going on around us and we're very distressed by it, but there is no way like Lot that we can completely disengage ourselves from the evil influences of our culture because they are inextricably part of our lives in one way or another. And while Lot did get into Sodom, Sodom did get into Lot.

And we're no different than Lot. We were born into this world too. We were born into a wicked perverse generation and we shouldn't think for one second that somehow we're exempt from the incursions, from the bad thinking, from the cultural pressures that would cause this same kind of thing to happen to us as well. Lot was a righteous man. His righteousness was by faith alone.

He was a spiritual son of Abraham. He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. That's my view of Lot. He was not saved by his own works but by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a righteous man clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And yet knowing that Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom is so shocking, But this is what the Word of God teaches. Now, one thing that Peter makes it very clear to us is that Lot was standing against the culture of Sodom. And he was standing in judgment. If you look at verse 9 here, we see that the men of Sodom are saying to him, this one keeps acting like a judge. In other words, he's being ridiculed by the men of Sodom because he's so judgmental.

Lot wasn't just hanging around letting the evil happen around him. He was sitting at the gates and he was judging the sins of this city. And his righteous soul was vexed by it. So, why did he offer his daughters? Let me offer some thoughts about this.

First of all, it's very clear the text makes it abundantly plain that he was pressured by the surrounding situation. That Law was being threatened by the people of the city, not just a few of the people of the city, but by his entire constituency. The people he was serving with whatever level of authority he had in that society, which is unclear. He definitely had a voice in the gates and he was raising his voice. But people from all age groups, people from all locations around the city were demanding carnal relations with the visitors of his household.

Now we need to understand and I want to submit if your mind can allow it, we need to even sympathize with Lot for the fierce external pressure that was upon him to fit into the desires of the people around him. And let's make sure we don't forget to ask this question. How often do we do the exact same thing? How often have we been pressured by our constituency to compromise? How often have we made wrong decisions under the pressing fear of man?

How many times have we done the wrong things with our families because maybe another family member was looking with a bony finger pointing at us in judgment at what we wanted to do. How often have we compromised? How often have we been pressured by the situation around us and we've not done what we ought to do? The fear of man works in every generation. And let's not dismiss Lot because of his fear of man, when in fact there may be areas of the fear of man that we're grappling with even right now in this room.

Perhaps not as egregious as Lot's, but let's don't kid ourselves that we have the same problem as Lot did. You know when you're when you read something in Scripture that's so disturbing to you, if you read about the Pharisees, it's not appropriate to say, look at how horrible these men were. What is appropriate to say is, how am I like that in some way? And I think we should do that same thing with Lot. John Calvin comments that Lot quote was prepared to expose his own daughters to dishonor in order to save his guests.

In other words, There was some greater good that Lot was trying to achieve perhaps. Kent Hughes notes, Lot placed the sanctity of hospitality above the sanctity of his family. I remember reading someone who commented on this text who said that he preferred some social grace rather than the protection of his daughters. You know Lot didn't want to rock the boat with the men of Sodom with whom he desired to coexist. He didn't want to appear too odd.

And let me just submit that the Bible will make a man odd if he follows it. It will make him stand out like a sore thumb in many ways. And Lot was under this very same pressure. And what did Lot do? Well he did at least three things.

He first of all he opened the door to his daughter's vulnerability. Remember that door? When you go through the narrative and you look at the door, a door matters. The door matters. What you do with your door and your daughter matters.

But he opened the door to his daughter's vulnerability. But by opening the door he was actually promoting his daughter's vulnerability. And thirdly, as a result of his opening the door, the protection of his daughters were withdrawn. Now, you know, it's painfully obvious that Lot did not protect his daughters. And he did what was unthinkable to our sensibilities.

But his behavior reminds us that there are times in history when the social pressures cause fathers to disconnect their protection of their daughters. I want to say that again. There are times in history when the social pressures caused fathers to disconnect protection from their daughters. Lott lived in a culture where there was a ferocious pressure to withdraw protection from his daughters. He lived in a culture where it was normal enough, it was thinkable enough to offer his daughters to the men of Sodom.

So for we who are living in Sodom, It's appropriate for us to ask ourselves some questions. Like this one. What pressures are there in our culture that would cause us to withdraw protection from our daughters and lead them vulnerable. What pressures are there in our culture? You may not have had the wicked men of Sodom beating on your door, But I suspect that there may be other things knocking at your door that are equivalent in their final result.

Here's another question. What are the normal things that we do in our culture that add up to the withdrawing or protection of our daughters? What are the normal things in our culture that everyone accepts? And then of course the question, what about me? Have I been or am I vigilant as I should be to protect my daughter?

Now all that to say this, rather than condemn lot offhand, we must examine our own hearts, we must inspect our own lives, and learn from his example. The protection of a daughter is too important for us to do otherwise. Because Lot's an example of a father who did not protect his daughters. And he gives us some insight to some of the behavior patterns that make daughters vulnerable. So when Lot did what was socially acceptable in Sodom, it bought him a broken lineage and a destroyed family and defiled daughters.

That's what his syncretism got him. That's what his walking alongside of the men of Sodom and not crossing them up bought him. We pick up the story in later on where Lot has escaped Sodom and he's now in a cave. He's in a cave with his two daughters. There are so many warnings that sound out from that cave like a trumpet.

That cave just issues so many remarkable warnings. Because what happened in that cave shows what happened as a result of the defilements that took place. In verse 31 in chapter 19, now the firstborn said to the younger in that cave, our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come into us, as is the custom of all the earth. So the eldest daughter grows panicked by her lack of hope and she sees no human means for the fulfillment of what every girl wants and needs, a husband and a family and children. And her perspective brings us face to face with some pretty normal matters for those who have daughters.

I had three daughters. Here's a man who has seven daughters. Many of you have many daughters. What a blessing that is. But Lot's daughter was filled with fear.

She was afraid of the future. She was afraid of her own loneliness. She was afraid that she would be deprived of lineage and children and a family. All the things that daughters hold so dear. It's the same fear that grips the heart of every daughter and every age.

She fears that somehow she's going to be left out of marriage and family. Every young woman I've ever known faces this struggle. And what do you do in that kind of a situation? Because they start thinking, you know, no one will ever love me. I don't look like that model.

I don't look like that other girl. And so they're filled with fear about the future, which is why perhaps the greatest thing a father can do for his daughter is to fill her up with the doctrine of God. That she knows her God. That she knows that God is sovereign. That nothing can stay His hand.

That she knows that God does what He pleases. That there's not a hair of the head that falls to the ground that God does not govern every movement of. A daughter needs to understand that God is great, that God is sovereign, that He is good. And I really can't think of anything more beneficial for a daughter than for her to understand God. What's the greatest subject of study for a daughter?

God. Absolutely. This is why the Lord has commanded fathers to have the word His words in their hearts and to love His words and speak of them when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down and when they rise up. Why? To proclaim the greatness of God.

Like Asaph in Psalm 78 who speaks of the great deeds of God, the mighty works that He has done. Why? It says it right there in Psalm 78, that they might put their hope in God. That's it. This is the role of a father, to create a world where there is such hope.

Well Lot's daughters had lost hope and it brings us to one of the most important issues that fathers of daughters need to pay very, very close attention to and that is what's going on in the heart of your daughter. You know we saw in Numbers chapter 30 where you have this picture of a father and a daughter who are talking. A father knows exactly what she's doing and what she's committing to and what she's saying and he is so close to her that he hears it on a particular day and he weighs in on it on that day. He has a very current short leash on what's going on within his daughter's heart. It's a beautiful picture of a father and a daughter and their unity together.

But we need to understand what's going on in the hearts of our daughters. Here's what's going on in the heart of almost every daughter by way of temptation. Fear, that's one of her great enemies. Loneliness, that's another of her great enemies. Self-pity, purposelessness, these are some of the great, great enemies of daughters.

And a father needs to always have his antenna up to understand the presence of these attackers in her soul. Because they will be, she will be attacked on these levels for sure. You know one thing that a father needs to really understand, and I don't know where any of you are in your understanding of this, but a father needs to understand what's what's what music his daughter is listening to. You show me a daughter who's listening to the quote-unquote love songs of this world And I'll show you a daughter who's being defiled and discouraged and depressed with almost every note. Do you know?

Do you know exactly what your daughters are listening to? You need to know. Because she is being discipled. She has ear buds in her ears. She's being discipled by someone.

And a father needs to recognize how critical that is. That she's not listening to the voice of the devil every day, even though it just sounds so pleasing to her ears and soothing to her heart because the tones somehow fake her out that she's being helped when she's actually being destroyed from within. A father needs to understand that. These kinds of songs just drive daughters deeper into introspection and loneliness and fear and everything that is harmful to a daughter. Hopelessness in a young woman is a powder keg.

Your daughters, if they're insecure and lonely as they look forward in their future, come to their aid. Help them. Help them with God. Help them with your own presence. Help them by knowing what they're thinking and doing every day.

You know I'm sure your wives are just like my wife. She wants to know what I'm doing and thinking every day. The greatest help I can be to my wife is to let her know what I'm thinking and what I'm doing every day. And hey, my wife gets discouraged if she doesn't know. She wants to know.

You know daughters are like that too. They're just like that. Now I don't know if you've got a disconnected relationship with your daughter, but remember numbers 30 that would drive you into the life of your daughter. Remember a Lot. Remember what can happen.

Because there's so many forces in the culture today that cause us to disconnect from our daughters. We could itemize many of them. But you see this fear and Lot's daughters panicked and they sought a pragmatic alternative and they said come let us make our father drink wine and we will lie with him that we may preserve the lineage of our father. So they made their father drunk that night and the firstborn went in and lay with him and then it was repeated by the second born and Lot didn't even know what happened. Some spiritual leader of a family.

In this narrative, we can observe at least two ways in which the protection of Lot's daughters broke down. Now first of all you can see the breakdown of Lot's daughters protection in the character of their daughters. It's a reflection, their character is a reflection of what had happened to them and they'd placed their trust in human means. They did whatever they felt they wanted to do to bring the result that they wanted to create. Ray Stedman says this, these two girls were virgins in body, but they were already debauched in mind.

They had long since grown accustomed to obscenity and unrestrained luridness. So up in the cave on the mountainside they seized the thinnest tissue of excuses and the story ends in a foul orgy of drunkenness and incest. And Lot had nothing but heartbreak and grief to show for all of his years in Sodom, because he would not stand against the tide of Sodom. He did what seemed reasonable in his society, But he reaped a whirlwind as a result. La was trying to get the best out of both worlds and he lost everything.

He has nothing but wasted years to look back on. So let's think really critically about what things there are in our culture that pressure us to withdraw protection from our daughters. What are they? You know, I'd like for us to try to be honest about something here or at least consider something that might seem very offensive. I'd like to speak about our college system.

I'd like to speak about the way it's destroying our sons and daughters. A few years ago an author, Vigan Giorian, a professor of theology at Loyola University in Baltimore, wrote an article that appeared in Christianity Today. Did any of you see that article? It was several years ago, more than a half a decade ago I'm sure. The article was entitled, Dorm Brothel, the New Debauchery and the colleges that let it happen.

I'm just going to quote extensively from the article. You just sit back here. This won't be a short quote. Still in most American college co-ed dorms, the flesh of our daughters is being served up daily like snack jerky. No longer need young men be wolves or foxes to consume that flesh.

There are no fences to jump over, no chicken coops to break into. The gates are wide open and no guard dogs have been posted. It's easy come easy go. Nor are our daughters the only ones getting hurt. The sex carnival that is college life today is also doing great damage to our sons characters, deforming their attitudes toward the opposite sex.

I am witnessing a perceptible dissipation of manly virtue in the young men I teach. Nevertheless my more compelling concern about this state of affairs is for the young women, our daughters. Since my student years, colleges have abandoned all the arrangements that society had once put in place to protect the weaker sex so that they could say no and have a place to retreat if young men pressed them too far. And although even when these arrangements were in place, one could not always say with confidence that the girl was the victim and the boy was the offender. The contemporary climate makes identifying the predator and the prey even trickier.

The lure and availability of sexual adventure that our colleges afford is teaching young women also to pursue sexual pleasures aggressively. Yet, based on my own conversations and observations, there is no doubt that young women today are far more vulnerable to sexual abuse and mistreatment by young men than when I was a college student simply because the institutional arrangements that protected young women are gone with the new climate that says everything goes. In the new culture that our colleges incubate and maintain, everyone is a guy, everyone is familiar. Young men and women who have never seen any one of the opposite sex, naked or in underwear, other than family members, now must get used to being seen and by seeing others, perfect strangers in such a state. Everyone is available.

Everyone is there for everyone else. It would be antisocial not to be. Loyola College and the great many other colleges and universities simply do not acknowledge, let alone address, the sexualization of the American college. Rather they do everything possible to put a smiley face on an unhealthy and morally destructive environment, one that, and this is no small matter, also makes serious academic study next to impossible. Most of the rhetoric one hears incessantly from American colleges about caring for young men and women and respecting their so-called freedom and maturity is disingenuous.

Should we really count it to their credit that colleges are spending more and more resources on counseling and therapy when the direct cause of many wounds they seek to heal is the brave new world they have engineered, sold as a consumer product and supervised. This is the grisly underbelly of the modern American college. The deep dark hidden secret that many parents suspect is there but would rather not face. The long-term damage to our children is difficult to measure, but it is too obvious to deny. I remember hearing once that the British lost the empire when they started sending their children away to boarding schools.

I do not know whether anyone has ever seriously proposed that thesis. I am prepared, however, to ask whether America might not be lost because the great middle class was persuaded that they must send their children to college with no questions asked when in fact this was the near equivalent of committing their sons and daughters to one of the circles of Dante's Inferno. Now I don't know if you agree with that perspective, I do. But let's just make sure that we understand that there are times in history where the protection of daughters is at a low point. My perspective is that we live in one of those times today where the protection of daughters is at a low point.

And there's so many socially acceptable things that men do that eventually add up to the loneliness and the final destruction of their daughters. And there's so many people that that rage and rail against the things that we've been saying about what they call the stay-at-home daughter, the daughter that exists in her father's house until she's married. We've been running around this world saying that there really are only two states of daughterhood. There's the state of daughterhood where she's under the protection of her father. She has a head.

It is her father and he is designed to be her prophet and priest and king and he is her protector and he walks with her and he talks with her he knows her heart he knows what she's thinking he weighs in on it she says no honey not that way yes here are the waters of life We've been saying that that's one state of daughterhood, where a father cares for his daughter and he loves her. Then there's the second state of daughterhood, where a father gives his daughter in marriage. This is the biblical language. To give your daughter in marriage. There's really nothing in the Bible about some kind of independent phase that a daughter walks through where she somehow steps out of the care and authority of her father and She's in between the care and authority of her husband, where she's just sort of independent.

And she's free and vulnerable. She can kind of taste and go and do whatever she wants. There's really nothing in scripture like that for a daughter. There really are only two states of daughterhood in the Bible. Now, when you do find daughters seemingly stepping out of that state, disastrous things happen and we could speak of them if we had time.

But the states of daughterhood that are explicitly presented in Scripture provide a daughter with protection her whole life long. If her husband dies, then the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ takes care of her. Her family also is required to take care of her first as a first line of protection and defense. This is the way that this is your father's world where a daughter is protected. And yet what happens so often is that we set aside the things that are very plain in Scripture as we find ourselves in the midst of a culture that has found itself in a low watermark when it comes to the protection of daughters.

Because there are times in history where the protection of daughters finds itself at a low point. I believe we live in one of those times. You know Lot did what was unthinkable to our ears but his behavior reminds us that there are things that godly men think as thinkable that are really harmful, and in this case to daughters. You know what are the socially acceptable ways that we have disconnected protection from our daughters and exposed them to the destructive influences of the world? How about the whole fashion industry?

How about androgyny? How about the music of this world? How about the Title IX equal access principles that are completely contrary to many many doctrines of the Bible regarding modesty, regarding manhood and womanhood and things like that. How about sports? How about dance lessons?

How about grandma financed arts? How about performing? You know somehow We live in a culture where men don't think it strange that their daughters are standing up in tutus and performing in front of men. What has happened to us? And we teach our daughters that this is something that they ought to do.

And of course, grandmother has financed it. Novels, films, Shakespeare, and I don't even know what to do with this Amish love novels. I'm not even sure what that could possibly be. But there are many ways that fathers in this modern age where the protection of daughters is at a low watermark withdraw protection from their daughters. You know you make your own list.

Every man should make a list. He should find out what it is in this world that he is participating in that would bring harm to his daughter because The fact of the matter is God gives daughters heads, protectors, shepherds, priests, prophets, kings. You know, fathers, have you taken the proper steps to guard your daughters from harm? How do you do that? First of all, you fill them with a hope-filled life.

You fill them with a vision of the kingdom of heaven. You make a kingdom like that kingdom of heaven where there's love and delight and authority and submission and blessing. And you take that kingdom and you bring that kingdom to earth and you cry out to the Lord, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And you position them with a hope-filled life by filling them up with the knowledge of God. And you instruct them regarding the destructive influences that are around them.

You draw them near by taking time to listen to them. You give them a clear definition of what it means to be a woman so that they know very, very clearly what it means to be a woman in this age where everyone is a guy. And it's so unpopular to actually have some semblance of biblical femininity. It's offensive to so many people in the church to have any semblance of biblical femininity. You know one of the worst things you can do in your church is to have your daughter dress modestly.

I mean you get in more trouble if your daughter dresses modestly than if she gets pregnant. Because if she gets pregnant they'll throw a party for her. They'll have a shower. But if she dresses modestly they'll just call you and her a legalist. I mean that's the environment we live in.

We live in an environment where good is evil, bitter is sweet, where the value system has been turned over. You know we've spent many hours together walking through the various contours of biblical fatherhood. Now we spoke of heaven and really the beginning of the whole doctrine of a household and what it means to build a household and how God has used the imagery of a household to tell you what it means to be a father. That He has designed a household in heaven, a household of Israel, a household of faith, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and finally the Lord Jesus Christ speaks. And he says, in my Father's house are many dwelling places.

He's created a household to be a picture of the kingdom of heaven. We spoke about Moses, the man who urges the heads of the tribes of Israel to fill their houses with the Word of God, to saturate their families with the Holy Scriptures. Thank you, Mark, for bringing that message. We spoke of the man in Numbers 30 that Moses was speaking of when he brought the heads of the households of Israel together. And he said, this is the kind of family life you need to have with your daughters and with your wives.

And we spoke at length with This whole matter of Job as the priest of his home. What a blessing that was. Thank you, Sam. Appreciate the help there. I was helped.

We spoke of the Father, the perfect Father, who disciplines his sons and his daughters. We spoke of Eli, the father who would not restrain his sons. We spoke of David, and we looked at what David's tried to teach his sons, and then how Solomon turned around and did the same thing. We looked at Malachi and his prophecy that there would be a day when the gospel would return such fruit to the people of God. Where The Spirit of God would be poured out upon all flesh.

And the hearts of fathers would turn toward their children. And the hearts of children would turn toward their fathers. A mark of the power of the Gospel. It's a beautiful thing what the gospel does, isn't it? It brings love.

It makes priesthood. It makes a man open his mouth. It makes a man draw near to his daughter and his wife. It's such a beautiful thing. You can see how important and beneficial the gospel of Jesus Christ is.

We could go on and on about the many fruits of the gospel, but one fruit of the gospel takes place in the heart of a father and his heart turns. God turns a key and life is never the same again. What a beautiful thing. My prayer, brothers, is that God would give us such energy for this work. He's given us a very, very important work to do as men.

And my prayer is that God would raise up mighty men who would simply obey the Lord in these matters. I pray that this time has been kind of a refreshment. I know many of you have heard these things, some of you for many years. Some of you maybe not for very many years at all. But it's important to recalibrate.

It's important to drive a stake in the ground and say, yes, these things are true. We must recover them in our generation. There must be some people who will recover these things in this generation because they are so lost today. It's almost impossible to find men in our churches who have some semblance of the duties of biblical fatherhood. It's almost impossible, brothers.

And there are almost no Richard Baxter's alive today who will put a father under discipline for not catechizing his children. What has happened to us? We need to go back. We need to go back to another generation. And honestly it's not the generation of the Puritans.

It's the generation of those who spoke the Word of God and that we build our fatherhood out of Holy Scripture. We need a new kind of Father today. I pray that God will pour a spirit out upon us and we would be fathers like that because if you don't have fathers you will not have heaven in your family. And if you do not have fathers, you cannot have elders. And if you cannot have elders, you cannot have a mighty pillar and ground of the truth in the world.

These matters are so important. Men, don't disconnect yourself from the importance of a local church. Do you understand how critical fatherhood is for the life of a local church. If you want to make a mighty and holy church, you have got to make a mighty and holy family. Do we understand that?

Well God is adequate for all these things and He's provided for us a better covenant, better promises, and the power of His Holy Spirit. And isn't it remarkable that the truth of the matter is your families are so outperforming the family of David because of this work of the Spirit. Isn't it remarkable that God has done that? Isn't it remarkable that we know many, many men who are opening up their Bibles and their families regularly? We know many men who are doing that.

Brothers, let me tell you something. 15, 20 years ago you could hardly find a man in a church who did that. And I can stand up in gatherings of men today and ask how many of you are reading your Bibles to your children and almost every hand will go up. Do you have any conception of how radical that is? How reflective that is of the power of the Holy Spirit working in the world today.

When you have a man who has energy and a heart, heart enough to change the schedule in his life and put things aside and crack open this book, You have the beginnings of a revival and I believe that we have that. I've told this story so many times I'm going to tell it one more time before we close. It was the year was 2002 and I was in a room of about 700 men. It was almost exclusively men. And it was the first Uniting Church and Family Conference that we did.

And it was in St. Louis, Missouri. And I stood up in front of that crowd and I asked this question. And I'll never forget this question for the rest of my life and what I saw. I asked, how many of you ever had your fathers read the Bible to you?

I mean, how many even one time? How many have you have ever? And there might have been six, twelve, you know there are 700 men in the room, I don't know, but it was a very, very small number of men who raised their hands in that room. You know how disheartening is that? But the men in that room, their hearts had changed and they were desiring to do that in their homes that never happened in their homes growing up.

They had a fire that was beginning to burn in their souls and it was changing their lives and honestly that group of men in many ways to me were like caged animals. They were so hungry and they were willing to risk everything. They knew that if they began to do these things it would mean the loss of much. They knew that they would be marginalized. They knew that they would lose many of their friends.

They knew that they would get kicked out of some of their churches, and they did. And some of you are here, But I can stand in front of a group of thousands of people today and I can ask, how many of you have ever had your father read the Bible to you? Hundreds and hundreds and you can't even count them. Because there's a revival. Because the Holy Spirit is being poured out on a very sinful and imperfect people who have so much to learn and so much to grow toward in every area of our lives.

But I just want to tell you I thank God, I thank God for you men. I thank God for what's happened in the last decade. I've seen so many things happen in my own family life that I am I want to fall on my face in thanksgiving for what he has done. He has rescued my children by the Word of God, by the Word of His Spirit. And I've seen it happen in so many of your families.

He has preserved your families from so many defilements, because you have said, I'm going to protect my daughters. You have done that so many. I know you have. I've seen it. And I've seen you lose some of your friends as a result and how heartbreaking that's been.

And my admonition to all of us is let's love our friends, Let's love those men who might have harmed us in some way. Let's forgive them. But let's not lay down the explicit commands of the word of God to have a different kind of kingdom operating in our households. The kingdom of heaven is different than the kingdom of this world. And I'm grateful to be standing with men here in this room who understand that and who want to make more progress in it.

I know I do. Would you pray with me? Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon our children.

Oh, Lord, have mercy upon us in all of our weaknesses and the ways the things that we should have done and could have done but we did not. The ways we've fallen short. The blind spots that we still are afflicted with. Oh Lord open our eyes. Thank you Lord though for pouring out Your Spirit.

Thank You for rescuing so many of our children. Thank You, O Lord, for giving us the Word of Life in our homes. O Lord, we praise You for Your kindness to pour out Your Spirit in such a time as this. And Lord, I pray that You would give these men such a heart within them to love You and keep all Your commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. Amen.

The church and the family to the Word of God. And for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org.