Well, in order to help us to build, we've been looking back in history. And last night we looked at the church in Geneva and how thinking was applied, how biblical thinking was put into practice. And that in the Reformation, there was this marvelous revolution of thinking. It was biblical thinking. And how important it is for us to do the same.

To take every issue of life and lay it before Almighty God and open up His holy word and say, oh Lord, shine your light on this subject that I'm about. And we gave some illustrations about that and It is comforting to see the many victories all throughout the Church of Jesus Christ as there is this desire to think biblically about everything. So the Reformers began a new foundation and there were builders upon that foundation. We call them the Puritans and that's the subject of our time this morning. The Puritans took it to the next level.

They took all the things that their fathers learned and then they applied them in a more granular way. They took them and they concentrated on the particular areas of life that God would reform. Out of the Reformation and through the blessing of the printing press, thousands of books were distributed. It's when you look back at that era, it's remarkable to see the publishing that went on during that era. And I've made it my aim to collect books from the Puritan era, to read the words that they penned that might help us.

The Puritans, as they were building on this foundation that began with the Apostles and was added to during the Reformation, they coined a term. They coined a term called family religion. And they coined that term because of the things that they saw in Holy Scripture regarding the family. They built a doctrine of the family. The Puritans had the most concise and rich doctrine of the family in all of history, my belief, and they categorized all the issues of family life like no one else had before.

This is why J.I. Packer says that the Puritans were the godliest generation since the first century. They they believed the testimony of their fathers and they continued to mine, they continued to dig, they continued to elaborate and do exegesis. They kept pulling the stuff out of Holy Scripture. And as a result, they came up with a term called family religion.

There's a friend of mine who's a collector of antiquarian books. And he sends me books, tells me what's out there and he sent me a book a few months ago by Philip Goodwin and he told me that in this book is the first appearance of the term family religion and he says he believes there are only four or eight copies of this book left in the world today and the copy that he sent me was very beat up but they coined this term family religion. Let's just take that step back for a minute and let me give you sort of a big picture of what they were saying about the family. First of all, they spoke passionately about the seriousness of a father's role in home life. And they extolled his role and they explained the details of how he should conduct himself in everyday life.

So in the Puritan era, you had a group of pastors who had very, very specific and taxing things to say toward their fathers. We'll get to some of that later. Secondly, They spoke in detail of the father's role as head of the household. And thirdly, they spoke passionately about family worship. And this is not the worship of the family, this is the family worshiping God.

And they wrote much about family worship. This book that I just referred to, Philip Godwin's book on family religion, here is the, here's actually the title of the book. Don't you love Puritan titles? They're as long as your leg and they just go on and on and on. The book is entitled Family Religion Revived, or a treatise on as to discover the good old way of serving God in private houses.

So to recover the pious practice of those precious duties unto their primitive platform." The Puritans didn't throw any words away and when they entitled a book, they wanted you to really get what was in it. And so this is the title of the book. You know, we like two or three word titles, but not the Puritans. I like the big titles. I think they're wonderful.

I would like to give you two extractions, two quotations, from this book that I transcribed. And this session this morning is going to be sort of a tour through the statements of the Puritan fathers, the great Puritan pastors who understood family religion and communicated it. So I want you to, just beforehand, I want to beg your patience because we're going to read many quotations from the great Puritan writers on family religion. And it may be laborious, perhaps, but I want us to get it. I want us to get it lodged in our minds the way that they said it.

And so that's what we're going to be doing. Here's here's Philip Goodwin. I want you to just notice the terminology. I want you to notice the language that they use to explain family life. I love this verse right out of the gate.

Look well into thy heard. Or says the Hebrew, put thy heart into thy heard. A man's heard should even lap in his heart, and his heart should be laid out upon his herd." Do you notice the tenderness of language here? The loving atmosphere of family life, the hearts, the imagery that's cast here is just unparalleled. 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. By the way, always I just copied the way he had it there in his own text. 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 to look well into thy herd." Isn't that beautiful? Here's another one from him. A man ought to have of all in his house so as to know their faces, as to understand their cases, conditions, dispositions, capacities, necessities, iniquities.

Is this the picture of a disconnected father? Absolutely not. This is the father that is on deck. He knows what's going on because he's there. He's taking time.

I think in our terms today we would call this the results of quality time and quantity time. And then he says, a good expositor reads it, take thou exact knowledge of all under your charge, so as to correct and amend whatever amongst them thou findest amiss." Isn't that beautiful? What a beautiful call. Now, these statements here have just been extracted out of the principles of Holy Scripture. Let's go to Matthew Henry.

Matthew Henry was one of the great Puritans. He was a nonconformist, he was an expository preacher, he often conducted his ministry in homes because his license to preach was not granted as a result of the persecutions of the day. And Matthew Henry wrote a sermon called A Church in the House, a sermon concerning family religion. And I was in a friend's home a couple of years ago, And he had an original copy of this sermon. And I read it in his house.

And I was so captivated. I was just lost in it. And so I ended up photocopying it. This sermon has never been republished since it was preached in 1704. But I've got some photocopies back in the back if you'd like.

It's three bucks. It's about, you know, the cost it took to produce them. But it is, because it's the, you know, the Puritan era English, it's a little bit difficult to read, but I really like it. I like the way it reads in the original. But Matthew Henry preached a sermon called A Church in the House and the proposition of the book is this, every house should be as a little church and he's careful to say that it doesn't displace the church but it is it is it is a blessing to the church.

And so he goes on in detail in this book how a father makes his house a little church. The section on prayer in here is so wonderful. A family can take his section on prayer and just follow it and have extended beautiful prayer times that are really are just unparalleled. His counsels regarding the reading of scripture and the prayers in the home, the singing in the home is just as lovely as it gets. And it's just shocking to me that this has never been republished since it was originally preached in 1704.

Matthew Henry has so many things to say regarding family religion. Here is one of his more convicting statements. 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 that they should be brought up for him." Now listen to this. 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 up under his banner and do not make conscience of training them up in the learning of Christ's scholars and under the discipline of his soldiers.

What he means is, why did you give them a Christian name if you don't fill them up with knowledge of God through reading Holy Scripture? And that's what he meant. Now, Matthew Henry is known for his commentary set. It's one of the most beautiful commentaries ever written. And by the way, you can buy his commentary set so inexpensively, and it's so wonderful.

George Whitefield read it through four times. The last time he read it on his knees, Spurgeon said every believer should read the commentary all the way through at least one time. He has this beautiful commentary series, but most people aren't aware of how that commentary series came about. Here's how it came about. Matthew Henry grew up in the household of his father, Philip Henry.

Philip had a vision for family religion, as all good Puritans did. Philip Henry never missed family worship, and it was very simple. He would read a section of scripture, and they would pray, and they would sing. Philip made sure that nothing else in life intruded upon this priority. And Philip Henry had an interesting practice.

He had his children write commentary on the passages of scripture that they were going through at the time. So all of the Henry children, including Matthew, ended up with a commentary on the whole Bible written in their own hand when they left their father's house. So Matthew leaves his father's house like every boy, good boy should do, And he goes and he has his own family. And I think he had seven daughters and one or two sons or something like that. And he took his notes and he also had his own children make their own commentary in their own hand.

And The Matthew Henry Commentary Series was put together by this time of family worship as Matthew would make notations as he would go through the Bible. The notations of his children actually were, Some of them were included in his commentary series and his preaching. That's how this great commentary series was born. It was born in a household where a father conducted family religion daily. The Puritans viewed themselves as expositors of scripture.

And every father should be an expositor of scripture. We pray that God would raise up Bible expositors to feed the church in our generation. I also pray for fathers to be family expositors in their own households. Here's another statement by Matthew Henry. This is a statement lifted out of this sermon on family religion.

Thirdly, let those that are remiss and negligent in their family worship be awakened to more zeal and constancy. Perhaps some of you have a church in your house, but it is not a flourishing church. It is like the church of Laodicea, neither cold nor hot, or like the church of Sardis, which the things that remain are ready to die, so that it hath little more than a name. He says in another place, I beseech you sirs, make a business of your family religion and not a by business. Let it be your pleasure and delight and not your task and drudgery.

Contrive your affairs so as to the most convenient time may be allotted both morning and evening for your family worship. For your family worship so as that you may not be unfit for it or disturbed and straightened in it. Notice a couple of things here. First, he speaks fairly harshly to fathers who do not conduct family worship, who did not make time for it. That's one thing you notice.

And he urges us to make it not a sideline in life, but something huge, something that takes up a big portion of family life. You know, you can fill your family life with anything you want. You're the head of your household. What will you fill it with? My experience is that there are so many things that are good to do in this world and if you do them there will never be any time for family worship.

The Puritans were very consistent in their counsel regarding family worship. Two things, morning and evening. That's the consistent counsel you find, at least that I've been able to find, in the Puritan writings that I've read. You know, most families feel pretty happy if once or twice a week they gather their families around. The Puritans would have nothing of that.

I pray that you would have nothing of that. It's always a struggle. Satan is at war against family worship and family Bible reading. Satan wages war against my family every single day. There's always something else to replace it that might even be termed good.

And especially if you have a larger family, how hard is it to bring everybody in the family together for just a few minutes. I mean, isn't it staggering how long it can take to get everybody together? It can take, you know, minutes, hours to get everybody sitting in one place. It's hard. There are so many forces at work against it.

Here's another by Matthew Henry. I could spend the entire time just quoting Matthew Henry on the family. He really understood the biblical doctrine of the family. Here's what he says, you're shameless if you do not conjunctly praise him for his bounty such as an house is rather a stye for swine than a dwelling house for rational creatures. Ah yes, would that the pastors would have boldness like Matthew Henry to confront their fathers.

Well the problem with confronting your fathers is every time you point at a father you've got three fingers pointing right back at you. But still we should raise this standard. I believe we must recover the pattern of the Puritans. I do trust that we would. You can live any way you want in this world, but there is a better way.

There's the way of wood, hay, and stubble. And there's the way of precious stones and jewels. And this Puritan understanding of the family that has been lost over the centuries needs to be brought back. And you know what we need to do? We need to build on it.

The apostles laid it out. The reformers began to revive it. The Puritans brought it out again and they laid bedrock and they published books. Now what will we do? Well, we desire to build upon it even more and to be even more faithful to it.

Well there was another personality, another Puritan, Philip Dodridge, who was actually a contemporary of Matthew Henry and was affected and ministered to by the Henry family, Philip Doddridge. I also have photocopied an ancient copy of this sermon, and again the title is a brilliant Puritan title, a plain and serious address to the master of the family on the subject of family religion. Now, Philip Dodridge walked in the same manner as Matthew Henry, and this sermon here, this work is directed specifically to the master of the house. Notice he calls them the master of the house. Why does he do that?

He does that because he thinks biblically about everything. And the Bible presents the father as the head and the master of the house. Here's Philip Doddridge. That they will think themselves authorized by your example to be a like negligence and so you may entail heathenism under disregarded Christian forms on your descendants and theirs in ages to come. Philip Dodridge likened negligence in family worship to be heathenism.

I believe that if Matthew Henry and Philip Dodridge and Richard Baxter were here today, he would regard many of the families in our churches as heathen because of their neglect of family worship. He says, on the whole, God only knows what a church may arise from one godly family. What a harvest may spring 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. He is saying that neglecting family worship is a treacherous neglect.

He calls it heathenism. Matthew Henry says you might as well live in a pigsty. Do you get the passion from the Puritans? Dodridge says, how many hours a week do you find for amusement? While you may have none for devotion to your family.

My belief is this. It's the lawful amusements of this world that are stealing the glory of God in the family and in the church and in the nation. It all starts in a little household in this nest. It starts where the Bible is placed and laid there and then opened up and simply read. This is where we win or lose for the glory of God from one generation to the next.

The purpose of the family is the glory of God, but in our homes we squander its time on amusements, most of them lawful amusements. I'll just be very plain with you. I'm declaring war against amusements in the church. And it doesn't get that many happy responses for me. But I'm devoted to it.

I think it's right. I think that if our Puritan fathers were here, I think if the Apostle Paul were here, he would cry out against the saturation of amusement that has so filled our churches and our lives. We just happen to live in a time when amusements are just so available and so lawful for all of us. But the struggle with amusement is not a new one. You don't have to live in this century to have a trouble with amusements.

The Puritans faced it as well. They spoke against all kinds of amusements. It's interesting. Read Spurgeon on amusements. Read Baxter on amusements.

If you want to be stabbed 100 times, read these men on this. Philip Dodridge was consistent with his fellow Puritan brothers. I ran across a work that Philip Dodridge produced. It's a six volume set. He called it The Family Expositor.

And in it he goes through scripture. And I just think the title is fascinating. He called it the family expositor. Why did he do that? Because he didn't believe that theology and Bible exposition was just the territory for preachers.

He believed that fathers should be expositors, that there should be family exposition going on all the time. That's what the Puritans believed. They were expositors of scripture. It's interesting when you read the Puritans and their successors, You see how they pick up the language of their predecessors. Here's George Whitfield.

Whitfield says, oh how great importance the wise and holy education, oh I'm sorry Richard Baxter. Here how did I get on Richard Baxter? Okay, Richard Baxter. Let's talk about Baxter for a minute. I thought I was going to get to Baxter later.

Richard Baxter was so passionate about the condition of his families in his parish, that when he would go from house to house, he would inquire if a father was catechizing his children. And if he found that a father was not catechizing his children, he would give him books to read. No, that's not true at all. He would put him under church discipline. Okay?

He was brought under formal church discipline for not catechizing his children in his household. That's how much the Puritans valued the spring of the church that would issue its waters into the rest of it. So Baxter says, oh, how great importance is 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 of the state and the happiness of the world. Isn't that amazing? He relates the family worship to the happiness of the world.

That's what they believed. They really believed that what happens in your little family is a fountain for all of life. 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 many millions must lie in hell forever will know so much of this inhuman negligence as to abhor it. He calls...

If you're neglecting family religion in your household, he's calling it inhuman negligence. He's calling it calamity, a great calamity. And yet in our days it's hardly regarded as something important at all. The exemplary Christian brings his family to church, they listen to preaching, they might go to a Sunday school, we could talk more about that at another time, but the exemplary life of the Christian family is nothing compared to what Scripture would call for and what our forefathers recommended. George Whitefield, to what greater degree of apostasy must he have arrived, who takes no thought to provide for the spiritual welfare of the family.

Whitfield believed, he believed the deposit that was given to him by those that went before him, and he believed that it was apostasy to neglect family worship. He says, but man, not every governor of a family be in a lower degree liable to the same censure who takes no thought for the souls that are committed to his charge. Now this is a, do you see the next line? For every house is as it were a little parish. Where did that come from?

Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry said that decades before. He was reading Matthew Henry on the family. And he, like the good Puritans, the good preachers of the Great Awakening, understood the importance of it. Every governor as it 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." Isn't that amazing?

To see the passion of this generation of believers. Whitfield said, Those governors that neglected are certainly without excuse, and it is much to be feared if they live without family prayer, they live without God in the world." The great Puritan Thomas Manton said, a family is the seminary of the church and state, and if the children are not well principled there all miscarryeth." All miscarryeth, he says. And this just speaks of the fruitfulness of family government. They all believe that what happens in the hours of your home sitting there were important for everything else that happens outside of it. That's the point.

The time in your family is precious because it casts forth a vision of life into the community life. That what happens in the four walls reading Holy Scripture is fruitful. Here's Manton again. If youth be bred ill in the family, they prove ill in the church and Commonwealth. There is the first making it or marring and the presage of their future lives to be thence taken.

By family discipline, officers are trained up for the church. You know, most men maybe don't think intuitively that their households are the training grounds for the elders of the church. You know, we cry out today, where are the elders of the church? Why do we lack elders? Here's a reason right now we lack elders.

We lack elders because fathers are negligent. You know there are many men who say, why I moved to this community and I can't, you know our church is so weak. You know why it's weak? It's weak because fathers are not doing their duty. And so how do we fix that problem?

We fix it one day at a time by taking little Johnny on the knee and reading scripture and speaking to him about the holy things. Helping him understand the whole counsel of God by being a family expositor, starting in Genesis and going all the way to Revelation, over and over and over again. I would so encourage you, don't jump all over the Bible. Start at the beginning and go to the end, and then go back and start at the beginning and go to the end so that your children have the whole counsel of God so that when they are elders and there's a problem in the church and someone asks themselves a question their mind sorts out and they go to Genesis 3 16 they go to Ephesians 5 22 That's the kind of elder we need in the church today. There's no other way to get it.

Do you think you can get elders like that just from seminary? I honestly don't think so. And so we need family shepherds to rise up. 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. Here's what he's saying. There is no way in the world a shepherd can adequately teach his flock because there's just not enough hours. Life can't happen. You can't conduct business.

You can't do life if the minister is the only one doing the teaching. He's saying your only hope is to do it in your homes. There's no way your pastor can teach your children well enough in the times you bring them to church. It's not enough. It's a paltry.

It's a small percentage that's necessary. And that's his point here. The Puritans believe that. Here's Baxter again. Get masters 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 his own shoulders." Do you get the picture? These men believed what is so clear in scripture that God gives fathers as heads of households to teach the Word of God when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up. And when they do that, they provide much help to the ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ. Baxter says, if we suffer to neglect this, we shall undo all. Isn't that wild?

If we neglect this, you just might as well forget it. Forget church life if fathers are playing games. That's what that means. What are we like to do ourselves to the reforming of a congregation if all the work be cast on us alone and masters of families neglect that necessary duty of their own, which by they are bound to help us. If any good be begun by the ministry in any soul, a careless, prayerless, worldly family is likely to stifle it or very much hinder it.

Whereas if you could but get the rulers of families to do their duty to take up the work where you left it and to help it on what abundance of good might be done. You want to talk about reformation? Baxter said this, you're not likely to see any general reformation until you procure a family reformation. Until 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. Jonathan Edwards.

Ah, interesting. Interesting language from Edwards. Do you get it? Every Christian family ought to be, as it were, a little church. He's just building on the language of the reformers and their successors, the Puritans.

Consecrated to Christ and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. If these fail, all other measures are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful. So, I hope that we all believe that. I hope that we all here in this room, the 90-some families, will engage in the practice of the teaching of the holy things to their children by eliminating some of the silly or unimportant or even lawful interesting occupations that might gobble up your family time.

It is a war that you'll have to wage every day. But my prayer is that God, even right here in this auditorium, would raise up men who would prepare the future elders of the church, who would teach the future Phillips daughters of the church, who would come alongside their sweet daughters and do just what Matthew Henry did. Help them to create a commentary of the Bible in their own hand. I've read a number of things that the Henry daughters have written and they are as sweet as you can imagine toward God. It was because they had a father who cared for the souls of little girls.

We're not just to care for the souls of our boys, absolutely not. In doing this we teach our wives and we help them with the spots and the wrinkles in their own lives. We do it, yes, for our sons and we do it for our daughters, that they would be daughters of Zion as wise as the wisest that have ever walked the face of the earth. That's the purpose of a family, is to create this kind of life. Well, we have the details of family worship, family religion in the Puritan scheme, morning and evening, scripture reading, prayer, and singing.

Very simple. Here's what I advocate for men. I always get the question, how does a father teach his family scripture? And I say this, I can teach you in 30 seconds how to do this. Open up your Bible and start reading it.

Pray for the needs of the church and the world, and sing. And if you can't sing, at least do the first two. But it's very simple. I encourage fathers, don't go out and buy a bunch of tools. Just read the Bible.

Let the words of scripture be the guide for it all. Well, there's some major cultural impediments to all of this. One is that there's this force field. There's this power on our heads. And it's that the role of teaching has been so comprehensively given to professionals that fathers do not see themselves as the primary role of teaching.

And so we're blind to it. And we're just, you know what, if you grew up in America in this generation, you're blind to this just like all of us are. Our fathers didn't do it, and we're blind to it. So we have to overcome this cultural bondage that has come upon us. And secondly, men in our culture most often operate naturally as consumers, not producers.

They don't see themselves as acquiring wisdom and then giving it out. They see themselves as entertainment robots who have plopped themselves in front of the next entertainment opportunity and call it happiness. Well, it's neither. It's neither productivity or happiness. And number three, the images of manhood center around men who are perpetual party boys, not teachers.

And that harms us as well. So our inclinations are all off. We have to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil working upon us. Now one of the commonly reported problems in churches like ours is this. I'm just quoting a friend of mine who sent me a note.

He said, The continued evidence of lazy, non-participatory fathers that give lip service to family discipleship, yet lack real commitment. Well, that God would continue to rescue us from this, all of us fall into wrong patterns from time to time, I know I do. As much as I desire it, as much as I understand the structure of it, I'm attacked just like every other man and it's a struggle to maintain. But I would just say wage the war, men. Fight hard.

Kill the enemies of it as best you can and keep on going and God will bless it. Let me just close with one last statement by Richard Baxter that I hope will just perhaps sum up all of what I've tried to communicate here this morning. 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. Would you pray with me? Not by might, not by power, but by your spirit. Oh Lord, we say to you that we would be activated by a work of holiness from heaven to do this work. That it would not be our work but energized by you for your own glory.

That it would not be for the duty but for the glory. It would be for the happiness. It would be for the strength and the perseverance of the next generation. That it would be for the love alive in the home and in the church that there would be love in this world and that the light of the gospel would never go out from one generation to the next. Amen.

Again. Thank you.