Well, you just had the privilege of Kevin Swanson, what a privilege it is. And so now, under the providence of God, you get boring. All cannot be Kevin Swanson, But hopefully it will be proven that God uses regular gas just as much as any other high octane that He might have out in this world. So, I'd like to just tell you a couple things about the ministry that I'm involved in. I do two things.

I am a local church pastor at Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina, And it always pains me to be away from our little flock there. But what I do at the second half of my life is to be involved in family reformation and church reformation across the nation through an organization called the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. And the mission of this organization is to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life, to promote the centrality of the church and God's plan for families. We're there to recover the biblical doctrines of manhood and womanhood, the biblical doctrine of the family, to identify ways of worldliness that have crept into the church, to explain that the church and the family have complementary roles and really to restore the pattern of age-integrated discipleship in the church and in a complimentary way to raise up the biblical function of the family as means of God for building his kingdom. So that's what we're all about.

And we just published a new book called Family Reformation, The Legacy of Sola Scriptura in Calvin's Geneva. I believe we're in a family reformation today, but the family reformation that took place in Geneva during The Protestant Reformation has many of the same marks. The tumult of family reformation, the difficulties. As John Calvin preached the gospel in his church and expositionally worked through scripture, the family was transformed in Geneva and there were gigantic tumults over manhood and womanhood, over marriage and all kinds of different areas that the devil really had begun to work mightily and in the church. It was an era when femininity and motherhood were stolen from women and 25% of the population had committed vows of celibacy, 25%.

Calvin was waging war against a world where women were deprived of motherhood and children and marriage and many, many other issues. And so I commend this book. This book primarily is, it describes what was happening in Geneva and makes connections to our own time, but most of the book is composed of John Calvin's own words on the biblical doctrine of the family. There's a very rich biblical doctrine of the family in this book and I commend it to you. By the way, the interns at the NCFIC helped us write this book.

The last five months, we worked like crazy men to get this book finished. Two of those interns are here now. Could you just stand, Joseph and Andrew, that you're here? These two guys just spent five months with us. They helped us write this book.

They actually, here's what they did. They helped us write three books, totally build a new website, load it with dozens and dozens of articles and audio and video clips and research all manner of items regarding the biblical doctrine of the family and the church. They lived with us, they traveled with us, they ate with us, we just were stuck together for five months. And they've just finished this first term, so they're now here just kind of basking in the sun of their new life out of the NCFIC internship. If anybody's interested in the NCFIC internship, please come and see Peter or myself.

We're starting another one up here in August, and then there are openings for next year, 2010. This is a theological internship. It's a doctrinal research, writing, producing materials kind of internship. And our objective is to communicate the biblical doctrine of the family. What we're driving for toward the end of the year is a conference on the sufficiency of scripture.

This conference December 12th, 10 through 12th in Cincinnati we believe is gonna be a very pivotal conference. It's perhaps the most important conference we've ever done on the sufficiency of scripture. Here's the proposition of this conference, and I would just invite all of you to come to this conference here's why you should come to this conference, and you should bring your whole family, because we really want to train a new generation on the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture and how it applies to every area of life. Here's the proposition. In the 20th century, the church set aside the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture.

And look what happened. The church became an invention, a house of horrors in many ways. Let's don't do that in the 21st century. Let's recover this doctrine. Let's let church life be regulated by scripture alone.

And so what we want to do at this conference is bring together men that we know understand this doctrine. For example, Ken Ham is going to talk about the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the origins of the earth. Paul Washer is going to come and talk about What does it mean regarding the gospel to hold this doctrine? And Kevin Swanson is gonna come and talk about the biblical doctrine of education. Doug Phillips is gonna talk about a number of very, very controversial but very helpful subjects as well.

And Vody Baucom will be coming and talking about the biblical doctrine of manhood and womanhood. But what we want to do at this conference is try to paint the picture in as rich of colors as we can to help from the littlest child to the most seasoned church leader. What does it mean to believe that scripture is sufficient? That's what this conference is all about. Please come, bring your whole families.

By the way, this is a very inexpensive conference. We've been able to secure hotels for $49.99, nice hotels, and have lowered the cost pretty much to about half of what conferences like this are. So we just encourage you to bring your whole families. What's happening? Churches are helping their people come to this conference by paying significant amounts of the expenses just to send their families and their church leaders to this conference.

And if you're part of a church, I would just encourage you to do the same. So that's the ministry of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. Now, I would like you to open your Bibles to the book of Job. Of course what we've been saying here is that There are specific commands and patterns for fathers and God has given a particular role for fathers and he and he expects them to live it out And what we're going to talk about here in this session regarding Job is a father who deals with sin in his family. Job is a prime example who understood the biblical doctrine of sin and he put into practice ways of handling sin in his family.

And I would just like to sort of step back for a moment and tell you where I'm going in the treatment of this text in Job chapter one. First of all, we're gonna talk about Job's character and the various issues that come to light about his character. Fathers should have the same kind of character qualities as Job. Then we're going to talk about Job's family and what it was like and what happened there. Then we're going to talk about Job's possessions because that is mentioned here in this text.

And then finally we're going to speak about the defining qualities of Job's fatherhood and we're going to itemize five qualities of his fatherhood, and when we get to the quality of his dealing with sin, we're gonna camp on that and stay there for a while. We're gonna talk about the way that Job dealt with sin in his family, and then we're gonna make applications for the similar way that we must deal with sin in our own families. So that's where we're going here in this text. Job 1, one. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job and that man was blameless and upright and one who feared God and shunned evil and seven sons and three daughters were born to him.

Also his possessions were 7, 000 sheep, 3, 000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large household. So that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. So it was when the days of feasting had run their course that Job would send and sanctify them. And he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them.

For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus, Job did regularly. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them and the Lord said to Satan, from where do you come? So Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking back and forth on it. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job?

There's none like him on the earth a blameless man and upright one who fears God and shuns evil so Satan answered the Lord and said does Job fear God for nothing Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all those he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions and have increased the land but now stretch out your hand and touch all that he has and he will surely curse you to your face And so then we know the rest of the story. That God allows the devil to do exactly that, to touch Job. And he does with a fury. And so this text that we find here reveals a number of important things to understand about Job's fatherhood.

And the first thing we notice is that Job is a sanctifying father. Job deals with sin in his children's lives. And this is one of the great roles of fatherhood, that you would be placed by the design of God in your family to put your finger on the sins that are there, and that you would have a sanctifying influence in your family by how you deal with sin. Often because we idolize our families or we love our comfort so much or we're afraid of offending our children or we're so sinful ourself, we don't deal with sin in our families, but Job was not like that. So here we find in one of the oldest books in the Bible, it opens up amazingly with a man managing his household well and dealing with sin in his family.

And so this account brings to life so many of the trials that come into a man's life. Here we find Job, he's wealthy, he's in the prime of life and influence, he was in a pleasant place, he had a large family and it was functioning and wham, all of a sudden it's all taken away from him in the blink of an eye as disaster strikes. And this text is so helpful to help fathers understand that they live in a dangerous world, and yes, everything can disappear in a heartbeat. Every father faces that potentiality, that he may lose everything in a moment's time under the sovereignty of God. It also shows us a husband in a moment of tension in his marriage and how conflict can arise in a marriage from time of trial.

Often it is that divorce has happened when there's a death of a child or something that happens. But Job found himself in the same place that so many men find themselves, as all the foundations are shaking and his wife is depressed and ungodly and the whole ship seems to be rocking and ready to sink, but Job grabs the ship and he says, we're keeping this ship together. And the despair in Job's wife is so enormous she says, curse God and die. And he doesn't do that. He embraces her and he takes her.

He takes her with him and he helps her. Instead of letting her fall into her ungodly pity party, obviously, he casts a vision for heaven and he declares the glory of God like every father ought to do, every husband ought to do when his wife is depressed to help her to see the beauty of God, the sovereignty of God, the faithfulness of God, when her heart is so fearful about everything that he would read to her the great promises of God. There's a man in our church who has made it his practice to read the Psalms to his wife before they go to bed at night because he wants to fill his wife's heart with joy before she sleeps. I think Job was doing that as he cast a vision for the glory of God even though his wife was so depressed that she would say, curse God and die. Maybe you're that woman here today.

Maybe you're so discouraged. Your husband is so passive. He doesn't get it or whatever it might be. And you're afraid, just like Job's wife was. And what will you do?

What will you do in a time of trial? Well, we know what Job did, and he's a tremendous role model for all of us. We also see a man standing ready when the devil attacks. Often the devil attacks families, and the devil is attacking this family. We also see the tensions of manly friendships.

They're displayed where Job's friends fail him, and they end up becoming the spokesman for the devil. Some of the things they say are, they're just like your friends. They're just like all of your friends and all of my friends. Sometimes they diagnose it right and say what's right and sometimes they don't. But yet we still must be men who are friends.

And so there are these tensions of manly friendships. There's loss, there's restoration, and there's the story of a father, the man in the land of Uz. And what was he like? Well, Job's character is outlined very clearly here in verses one and two. There was a man in the land of us.

He was blameless and upright and he feared God and he shunned evil. So there are a number of characteristics of Job's character. He was blameless. He was morally complete. He wasn't one man at home and a different man out in business.

He was the same genuine man, and he was blameless. He was also upright. This means that he was straight ahead, not diverting from the word of God, but he had his eye focused and he was upright. He feared God. His heart was inclined toward God.

He hated the idea of infidelity toward God. He loved God, he desired to be faithful to him. Says here that he shunned evil. He had a hatred of evil. I think that Job was a living picture of what we read in Psalm 101, where the psalmist says, I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.

I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. That's the kind of father we need today. We need fathers who are willing to stand up before their families and say, I will set nothing unclean before my eyes. And we need children who will rise up and be that in their families as well. So you see these amazing qualities.

He was blameless, he was upright, he feared God, he shunned evil. Though that's Job's character. So do you see the kind of man he was? As you think about fatherhood, you're talking about a complete man, a balanced man who has the breadth of character quality. And so, really, you know, godly family life begins with the government of God in a man's heart that makes him blameless and upright and fearing God and shining evil.

Then we move to Job's family. We read in verse two that he had seven sons and three daughters, ten children. I think that would qualify as a large family by the standards of any time in history. But notice it doesn't seem so unusual. Children are a blessing from the Lord, and Job's quiver was full of them.

And we know that Job had a large family, but he was still generous to the needy, and in the community. Job was not a hermit, hoarding his resources for his family. He lived a very public life, and he invited people into his family life. He loved the fatherless and had a lifestyle of hospitality. We know that.

He says, if I have kept the poor from their desire and caused the eyes of the widow to fail or eaten a morsel by myself, he said, let me be cursed. Job had a lifestyle that was bigger than his own family, and so should we. A godly father, the godly father has an outpost called his family that throws out lines of welfare and care and loving kindness out into the community. We also learn in verse four that his family lived in harmony. At least it seems that way.

All the implications here are that it was a harmonious family life that they had, where the children loved one another. You know, The devil tests every family by tempting the children to hate one another. It starts with comments when they're little. If you don't head them off, those things will mushroom and grow until they become a nightmare in your adult children's lives. It seems plain that the children were grown, they were most likely married when the calamity struck, and they were pleasantly located in their households.

They were having one another over. It really is a picture of fidelity and connection and relationship among the family members. What a lovely thing it is to observe how it was in Job's family. And you know, Job was apparently trying to root out any discord that he might find in his family. I think if Job were alive today, he would be qualified to be a New Testament church elder.

He managed his own household well. And he was blameless, the husband of one wife, having children not accused of dissipation or insubordination. Not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled. Well, that's what Paul said that elders ought to be like in Titus 1, 6 through 8. And Job was like that kind of man.

So you see, we've seen his character, we've seen his family, a large family seemingly functioning well together, And then we see his possessions. He had enormous resources. Imagine what you could do with all those resources that he had. 3, 000 camels. Job was involved with interstate commerce, I'm confident.

And he was moving stuff back and forth. He had a lot of animals. I know there are a few here of you who have. Some of you have a few animals and some of you have a lot of animals. And God has blessed you with these resources.

Job was just like that and he was involved in commerce through the resources that God had given him and he was the richest man in the in the area. He had resources to help. It's not a sin to be rich. It's a sin to envy the rich and it's a sin to misuse your riches, but it's not a sin to be rich. And Job obviously understood how to take governance over all of his possessions and use them for the glory of God.

The devil hated it, and that's why the devil wanted to kill him, because he was blessed, but when he was blessed, he used it for the benefit of God's church and to those who were around. So now we come to the defining qualities of Job's fatherhood, and I'm trying to race to this point here because this is where I really want us to camp. We've observed his character, his family life, his possessions, and now the defining qualities of Job's fatherhood. And verse 5 gives us a vision of these qualities. So it was when the days of feasting had run their course that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.

For Job said, it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, thus Job did regularly. God throws no words away. Every word is important in verse five, and it helps you understand what was happening with Job in his dealing with sin in his family. And so what we find is that Number one, he pursued his children's sanctification with regularity. This was one of the ways that Job dealt with sin.

He pursued the sanctification of his children with regularity. And of course, he wasn't making his children holy, only God can do that. But he was promoting their holiness through his actions. And Job was asking his sons to take specific action for their purification. And he was imposing upon them ceremonial acts of sanctification and purification.

And I think that what Job was doing really reflects what we read about in James chapter four, verse eight. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. That was the message that Job had for his children. That was his work of sanctification, to call them to repent of their sins and to be sanctified by God Almighty.

That's what Job was doing. And we don't know exactly what he was requiring his children to do, but whatever it was, it had to do with their sanctification. So we see that he pursued his children's sanctification with regularity. Secondly, Job offered sacrifices for each one. In verse five we read that he would arise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.

So he himself was taking specific actions. He was taking time and making provision for his understanding of his children's sins. And first thing we noticed about this was the regularity of it. There was a devotion, enough in his heart that he would do it every day. And it says he would rise early.

Early, he would start early in the day in the same way that we should begin early in the day as well, beginning with the reading of scripture and prayers, repentance, dedicating ourselves to God. This morning pattern is a good example to follow. Let me hear thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness by night. Job had that regularity in his approach to life. And there are many blessings to regularity.

It's one reason why I believe God has so ordered the world with a sunrise and a sunset and meals and Sabbath days. And there are many regular provisions that God has made for us in order to help us with our sins. And we also see in this regularity, Job is giving very personal attention to his children. Each child is different, requiring different prayers. And this individualized ministry that we see Job having is critical for fathers.

That they know that each child is different and has different sins and different propensities. Some children are so easy to, what's the word I'm looking for? That they find it so easy to deceive. They may look good on the outside, but their hearts are full of evil. They may say yes ma'am and no ma'am and be so happy on the outside that their hearts are far from God.

Fathers need to be able to see the way that each child relates to God and to be discerning about it. And so he ought to take time, like Job did, early in the morning to discern these things and to cry out to God for wisdom, to know how he would deal with the sins of his family. In 1 Samuel we read that there is a yearly sacrifice for all the family. And I think Job was doing that kind of thing. And of course we know that God has sent His Son to be our offering for sin, but here Job was very well aware of sin in his family, and he was offering sacrifices for each one, verse five.

Here's the third defining quality of Job's fatherhood regarding sin. He was aware of the potential evil in his family. He was aware that it might be that his children would fall into sin. And that's why he said, it may be that my sons have cursed God in their hearts. In their hearts.

Job was not just concerned with their outward behavior, but he was concerned with their hearts. Job was saved and he understood a heart turned toward God. And so he was aware of the sins of the heart You know job didn't have rose colored glasses regarding his children He wasn't the kind of father who believed that his children could do no wrong. Job would not, if you, if Job were here today and you saw his children sinning and you went to him, Job would not be offended, because he understood the nature of man, and that we're all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. And so Job was aware of potential evil in his family.

Now, I'd like to talk about this whole matter of dealing with sin in your family, because there are many sins that fathers need to pay attention to in their ministry to their children. And I'm going to list seven sins that fathers need to be aware of. And I'm going to camp on a couple of them, but I just want to give sort of a general sense that there are many areas that fathers have to be very vigilant in. I'm gonna give you seven areas. I'll give them to you first, and then we'll begin to work through them.

First, the sin of sloth. The sin of wasting the time, resources that God has given. The sin of sloth. Fathers must declare war against sloth. Number two, the sin of rebellion.

This has to do with dishonor and disobedience in the heart toward a parent. Number three, discontentment, despising the gifts that God has given and rejecting, His good gifts that He sovereignly given. Number four, outward conformity, the sin of outward conformity. Number five, the fear of man. Number six, worldliness.

Number seven, the sins of the tongue. So these seven sins I think are very critical to be aware of. And I would like to just talk about this first one, the sin of sloth. The sin of sloth. We happen to live in an astonishingly corrosive culture regarding the issue of sloth.

What we have right now going on in the church today is a culturally acceptable squandering of time in the younger generation. And it's a train wreck that's happening right before our eyes. And the American youth today are absolutely overcome with games and entertainment and amusement and sports. And gigantic amounts of their time are invested in games. And at the same time, what is set aside are the godly requirements for becoming a provider, for becoming a member of the church and an active builder of the Church of Jesus Christ.

And all the things regarding making the family a powerful organism in the world, and preparing for marriage, boys especially, not preparing for marriage, but spending their youth as screen addicts. This is rampant in the church today, and I believe that it's time that fathers declare war. I've declared war against this sin in my own household, and I pray that God would use this war to rescue the next generation from billions, and I mean billions with a capital B, billions of hours of wasted labor, slothfulness invested in games, amusements, entertainments. One of the NCFIC interns this Last year who is in this room today? Joseph Reming spent over two weeks of his life with us doing research on this matter And we asked him go document the time spent in the various areas of entertainment and sports and games and amusements.

Document it. Isolate the categories and tell us what it means. Show us what is really happening out there. And what he found is so astonishing. It should cause a war to be waged against amusement and entertainment.

He found that 99% of boys play video games, and That 20% of all youth who play video games are pathologically addicted to them Pathologically addicted that's a that's a huge number It's probably something on the level of 20 times the number of people in the entire homeschool movement are pathologically addicted to video games. 20% of gamers average almost six hours of usage per day. Children ages two to five spend 10 hours a week on passive entertainment through video. If you are twelve to seventeen, it jumps to 10 hours a week. At 10 hours a week, that's 480 hours, or 24 hour, 24 hour days a year on video.

That's 20 24-hour days in one year. This is the normal fare. And my understanding is the research shows that there's not much difference in the Christian community and the non-Christian community. If a child were to take the time, he plays video games 10 hours a week, we're just talking about video games now here, okay? That's the, There are many categories, from mobile phone usage to, you know, there are just dozens of opportunities for a passive entertainment today.

But we're just talking about one little thing here now. If a boy would take that 10 hours a week and get a job for $5 an hour, from age nine to 21, from age nine to 21, he'd have $20, 000 by the time he hit 21 in his pocket if he worked below minimum wage. He learned that extreme gamers spend an average of 45 hours a week playing their games. That, extreme gamers, that's 90 24 hour days in a year. 90 24 hour days in a year.

Imagine that. Glued to a screen. Among all kid gamers, about half of them are light users, five hours a week or less. And half are medium. And then there are the super heavy users who are cranking in 45 hours a week.

Think about the scale of this for a moment. There's a game called World of Warcraft, okay? It's estimated that somewhere between 1 million and 3.7 million are totally addicted to this game in America. Are there a couple million homeschoolers in America? I wonder how many of them are addicted to these games.

What we have is a culture that is addicted to sports and entertainment and amusements and games. I believe this is the sin of sloth because it distracts from godly activity. It distracts from acquiring wisdom. It distracts from works of godliness in the church. It distracts from making preparations to be a man.

Why do we not have so many, very many men today among our young men? Is because they have played away their youth. Maybe it's only one hour or two hours, three hours a day, but that translates into years over a longer span of time. The average American watches three hours and 46 minutes of television a day. We talked about video games.

Now we're gonna talk about television. Do you see there are many different ways that this happens. That's 52 days of nonstop television watching a year. That's what that translates to. 52 days.

If you're just average in America, you're going to spend 52 days, 24 hours, in front of that tube. The average American youth watches 20 hours of television per week. If a child at age nine were to get a job and spend that time, by the time he was 21, he'd have $43, 000 in his pocket, working at less than minimum wage. I'm just saying that there's a massive drain of effectiveness and dominion in the church today. There's this gigantic, socially acceptable slothfulness that we've accepted in the church.

The homeschooling movement has picked it up. I think that that's one reason why the homeschooling movement is faltering, because it continues to play its games and its sports. And if you pick up most homeschooling magazines, it's full of games. Maybe a third of the pages are dedicated to devoting thousands and thousands of children's hours to games. Now if you pick up your Bible, you don't find the disciples playing games.

You don't find Jesus Christ playing games. You don't find the great heroes of our faith playing games. They don't do it because it's sinful sloth. That's why they don't do it. The statistics are absolutely astonishing.

The average consumer spends 32.7 hours per week online. That's 65.4 days per year. And that's only half the amount of time that the average American spends in media. Accessing the internet by mobile devices is doubling every year, and the mobile internet is becoming a tremendous problem. I'm aware of a number of pastors across this nation, in the last 60 days, have stood before their congregations and said, turn your phones off, stop texting in this church, while the preaching and the communion and the prayer is going on, they're texting.

And they're not able to acquire wisdom that God has provided for them during that preaching time in their church. So we could go on and we could talk about Facebook, we could talk about music, we could talk about amusements, We could talk about sports, but let's understand this, that 60 million, 60 million children in the United States participate in organized youth sports. And the investments are absolutely astonishing. If the average boy put aside his sports and he worked from age 16 to 19 for 5 bucks an hour he'd have $35, 000 in his pocket. But no he didn't do that he spent his youth playing games.

That's what he did. The average adult spends 23.8 days per year on sports. It's a 24 hour day. It adds up pretty quickly when you take just a few hours a day on the field or somewhere else. The cost is enormous And my encouragement to fathers is this, declare war on a culture of sports and games and amusements and entertainments, because they're pretty much all the same thing.

And if somebody wants to say that sports builds character, then I would just like, I would just like to pursue that. First of all, I want everyone to understand that there have been a number of longitudinal studies that have studied this aspect, and they all come back and say the same thing, no, it doesn't build character. In fact, if you want to know what it builds, go look at the NFL, go look at the NBA. If sports builds character, then you would expect that the pinnacle expression of it would be a place of sterling character, but it's absolutely the opposite. If sports built character, then you would want to send your daughters to travel with an NBA team.

But you would never do that. You would not want your daughters even near them. Because it's a corrupting thing. Because boys, boys stay boys when they engage in this kind of activity and they don't grow up and they don't have anything to show for it. And they might strive and strive and strive because they want a college scholarship.

That's a whole other subject. But only 1% of the children even involved in organized sports ever qualify for a scholarship. So what's the point? Even if you would call that a good thing, which I would speak of that as well. How good is that?

If you do get a college scholarship, you're gonna devote 25 hours a week to your coach. Is that a good investment of time? Because that college is buying you, right? And you are going to pay by 20 to 25 hours of devotion of your God-given labor to a game. And I believe that's an unlawful use of time.

Time is precious. God has called us to redeem the time, to buy it up and use it as best we can for the glory of God. We need to think about time like Jonathan Edwards did, who said, I will seek to improve every moment of time that I can, for the glory of God. We use our time like the pagans use their time. And it's so important that in a time like this, when we live in perhaps the most saturated time in all of human history for amusements and games, entertainments, because it follows you around wherever you go, and you are only one second away from the next movie that will launch you into an hour and a half of passive entertainment just watching a screen.

Instead of becoming a man and making a home for your wife that you're gonna marry someday, or becoming the woman that God has planned for you to be. You're playing games and you're looking at images on screens that do nothing of value. And so I would just like to suggest that fathers must confront the sin of sloth and the wasteful use of this resource called time. And I pray that God would use you to rescue an entire generation from billions of hours of amusement and games. I will have to tell you this.

I know of dozens of fathers who are doing this. One of them is an intern that's going to come and join us this next August. He's almost, he's 18 years old. He's almost completely done with his house. He built it free and clear because he didn't spend his years of his youth in amusements.

His father said, son I don't want you to be a screen addict. And now he's ready to get married at age 18. In my household, I deprived our children of games and entertainment, not comprehensively, but overwhelmingly. If there was a computer in our house, we were not allowed to use it for games. We were only allowed to use it for writing letters or research or some forward going, kingdom oriented, Jesus Christ honoring dominion type of activity.

And I encourage you to do the same thing. Take everything that God has put in your hands, your phones, your computers, your cars, your houses, use them exclusively for the glory of God so that when you get to the end of your life, there aren't gigantic amounts of it just burned up as wood, hay, and stubble because you allowed slothfulness to exist in your family. And I do pray that God would rescue a generation from sloth. I believe there are a number of reasons why in our circles it is that there are more young ladies ready to be married than there are young men of the same age. One of the reasons is those boys spent their youth on the ball fields and on the internet sites and watching silly YouTube videos hour after hour when their fathers should have stood up and banished it and now they're boys because their father's allowed them to be babies and now they're gonna be now their babyhood is going to be continued on until they wake up and figure out that God has not designed them for games he's he's designed them for Dominion is there Is there a timekeeper in the house?

Ten minutes, thank you very much. So The sin of sloth should be confronted in a household. Let me talk about another sin that must be confronted as godly fathers rise up to protect their families from sin in the same way that Job did. Let's talk about the sin of rebellion, the sin of dishonor. Dishonor rises up in the hearts of all children and God places fathers there to catch it and do something with it and deal with it in a godly way.

And so we do well to remember the terrible consequences of passive fatherhood in this whole area of life. The consequences can be illustrated in a very dramatic historical moment, the Salem witch trials. It was a tragic situation in 1692 when a small group of little girls, eight young girls who were backbiting and tail-bearing, ages seven to 16, and they brought accusations against 120 people for witchcraft, and they were speaking because their hearts were polluted in anger and rebellion. Their lies fostered 19 people to be hanged or pressed to death. Two dogs were executed, or were hanged, because the children said the dogs gave them an evil eye.

And some of the godliest people in Salem were executed, and it happened because a father did not rise up and deal with sin in his family. I'll give you five forces that created this crisis, and all of them come back down to what a father does with sin in his house. The first is, fathers allowed destructive influences in their home. The Reverend Samuel Parris allowed a Caribbean slave girl named Tituba to influence his daughter and other girls in the community by having her seances in her fortune-telling activities. And these girls became the accusers.

Fathers allowed sinful influences into their homes. This can happen in many ways. Second, fathers refused to discipline their children for their unloving hearts and their behavior. When Giles Corey, a man in the community, stood up in the trial, he said, in effect, I can solve this problem in a few minutes. These children need to be spanked.

The girls accused him of witchcraft, and he was convicted and pressed to death. The fathers of these girls were not managing their households well. These fathers should have risen up and spanked their daughters and helped them to see the terrible nature of their sins. Third, fathers allowed gossip in their homes. They allowed their children to gossip and they also gossiped themselves about members in the rest of the community.

The town had been divided into factions because of a business disagreement. And all, it's interesting, all the people that were accused came from the other side of the argument. Because in this household, gossip was rampant. A father gossiped, a mother gossiped, and so did the children, and it led to the deaths of 19 people. Because a father was lawless in his own heart, and he didn't control it and his children.

Fourth, Church government was out of control. The Reverend Samuel Parris refused to use biblical procedures to confront individuals in the church, and his home life disqualified him from pastoral ministry, but he continued on. And church government was awry. Fifth, there was a judicial excess in the rejection of biblical laws regarding evidence. But what is all this about?

It's about this. Fathers who don't deal with their sins may have a terrible legacy. And if you're not dealing with sin, if you're not dealing with sins of any kind in your family, understand that there are consequences to it. And so we come to this dear brother Job who pursued his children's sanctification, he offered sacrifices for each one, he was aware of the potential evil of his family, and then even though his children had established themselves in their own households, Job remained prayerful and involved in their lives. He saw himself in the same way that we see described in Deuteronomy 6, you, your son, and your grandson, all the days of your life.

He had a ministry to his children, even after they had left the home. And so Job performed his duties toward his children continuously. So Job's spiritual leadership in his home didn't just limit itself to emergencies that popped up. It was really about all of life, and he was very vigilant to see if there was sin in the family. And so when Satan decided to attack his family, and while his children were feasting, and tragedy would strike, then God would raise up a man to speak for himself.

And I pray that you would be fathers like that, who not only would deal with the emergencies, But daily, early in the morning, you would pick up the pattern of Job and that we would be fathers like him who would seek to sanctify our children and help them with their sins. This was the secret of Job's lifestyle as a father and as a businessman and as a child of God. He understood the biblical doctrine of sin and he applied it with his dear children and his dear wife that God gave him. And I pray that God would give us boldness to deal rightly with the sins that exist in our families. Would you pray with me?

Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us wisdom and love and sound mind. Oh Lord I do pray for the sins of sloth, the sins of rebellion, for the sins of fear of man and discontentment and outward conformity and all these things that can so harm a child and that you would use us as fathers to discern these things and then to take action. In Jesus' name, Amen. We want to encourage you to come back after the lunch break but we are going to take one. There are restaurants around the area it is still a wonderful day outside so if you...