In this audio message, Scott Brown discusses the life of the Mather family. Specifically, he explains that there were three generations of Mathers and each were devoted to the church -- in fact, their lives revolved around the church. There are five lessons that we can learn from their lives.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (NKJV) - "And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Fatherhood. This message is entitled, The Multigenerational Vision of the Mather Family by Scott Brown. It's helpful to tie into the thinking of other people for our own mentoring. We've looked at the family life of Matthew Henry. We've looked at the family life of Jonathan Edwards.

We looked at this exemplary family building pastor, Richard Baxter. Now we're going to turn to the Mather family, the multi-generational vision of the Mather family and how three generations cried out for the rising generation. George Washington said that the Mathers were the true founding fathers of America. There are many that don't, they're not even aware of the presence of this family in American history, that they were towering scholars. They were a fusion of intellect, spirituality, and duty.

They thought. They preached. They applied. They sought what was acceptable to the Lord. And they desired in their communities that God had placed them in to bring the glory of God.

They were preeminently devoted to the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This was their platform. This was their life. Their entire existence was centered around the church, so should ours. There are people who claim to be Christians who the church is sort of a by life, It's a secondary life.

This is not right. The Church should be all of life. And all of our existence as family should really revolve around the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not secondary. It is so critical.

We see this in the Mathers, how everything that they did came out of this church life and went right back into it. It's absolutely a beautiful picture of how life should work. All three generations of the Mathers believed that every ounce of human energy, human mind, human duty should be directed to the will of God. They believe that let everything have breath, Praise the Lord. They believe that whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.

This was the brilliance of this family and they successfully passed this way of thinking and living down from one generation to the next. We're going to speak of three generations of Mathers. We'll speak of Richard Mather, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather. And then after that I'm going to give five lessons to learn and apply. And then after that I'm going to give you a deathbed perspective from Cotton Mather.

This three generation dynasty, if you want to call it that, of spiritual power in America was really the application of scripture. What you see here in Richard Mather, the grandfather, Increase Mather, the father, and Cotton Mather, the grandson. You see you, your son, and your grandson all the days of your life pictured in this multi-generational vision here. This is what I'm just going to call the 100-year plan. God has imposed by nature those who would have sons and daughters a 100-year plan.

You, your son, and your grandson all the days of your life. It's at least that. You could argue that it's longer than that. We can be inspired by the Recubites, who had a 300-year plan that we see played out in scripture. They remained faithful to their father, Jonadab, 300 years after he spoke.

And they were called on the carpet by the prophet Jeremiah and he said to them, he commanded them, he said, drink wine and they said we're not drinking wine. Our father, Joan Adab, 300 years ago told us not and we're not drinking wine for anybody and that was this 300 year legacy that just kept rolling on in the family. What a blessing it is that one generation succeeds another and carries on the faith of the previous. The problem in New England that the Mathers faced was the degeneration that was taking place there of the founders' vision. The Mathers looked back to the original church that was founded in America and the church that gave birth to it in England, and they saw that things were being lost rapidly there.

And they took Judges 2 10, which says, when all that generation had been gathered to their fathers. Another generation arose after them that did not know the Lord nor the work that he had done in Israel. They saw that as a double meaning. They applied it to what happened in those days, but they said, no, it has foretold, it has explained exactly what's happening to us now. There's a rising generation that does not know the Lord and the Mathers were doing business upon this problem that they were encountering.

William Bradford, who was one of the founders of the Plymouth Colony, one of the original pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, he feared that this would happen and he wrote a poem about it. I'll read it to you. In 1654 Bradford writes, when I think on what I have often read, how when the elders and Joshua were dead, who had seen the great works and them could tell what God had done and wrought in Israel, yet they did soon forget and turn aside, and in his truth and ways did not abide, but in the next age did degenerate. I wish this may not be New England's fate." And yes, it was New England's fate. So we find this three generation powerhouse beginning with Richard Mather.

Richard Mather is the grandfather of Cotton Mather, the father of Increase Mather. They came to New England in 1635. He came to protect his family and himself and to establish the true church. He was a non-conformist and he came here for the same reason so many Puritan pastors came here, to establish a free and true church in contrast to the Church of England. And after coming from England, He served as a pastor for 34 years.

He only had one working eye, and yet he continued to read and preach. One of the most amazing things happened in his boyhood, and this happens in many boyhoods, this happens in many families, where a strategic decision of a father changes everything. There are particular decisions that fathers make that are so critical. Well here was a decision that took place in England. Richard Mather's father Thomas was lured by a group of Catholic merchants who saw that Richard was bright and they wanted to educate him.

And so they came to Thomas and said, Thomas, we will educate your son. It will cost you nothing. And Thomas Mather said, that's very attractive. This will cut my costs, and my son will get an exemplary education. He was convinced by those around him that this was the wrong thing to do.

And instead of decreasing his expenses, he decided to increase expenses and educate Richard Mather with his own money. And he was saved from these Catholic merchants. These kinds of decisions for education and all kinds of things are so critical. They are very pivotal because everything that we do casts us in a direction. And there is this very strategic decision of Thomas Mather that veered the course of Richard in the right direction.

What a blessing it was. So he engaged in a life of preaching. That's what he did. How did the Puritans believe that culture was transformed through the teaching of the Word of God in the home and the preaching of the Word in the church? That's the formula.

That is the formula, isn't it? That's what we're going to do for the rest of our lives. We're going to encourage this, and we're going to do that in the church. And he, like all the other Puritans, did basically four things in their preaching. They brought the text, then they brought the doctrine, then they brought the propositions, and then they brought the uses, the duty, the how-to, the application, or however you want to call it.

They all did the same thing and that's what we're going to do until God takes our breath away. The church here for Richard Mather was central. And to show Christ's Church in the midst of a decaying culture was their desire. And the church had been harmed by Romish philosophy and decadent culture, just like our age today. It hasn't changed really very much.

Then he had a son, and he named him Increase Mather. Increase, what a great name, huh? Would you dare to name your son Increase? Well, Richard did, and Increase Mather followed in the footsteps of his father, and he was a pastor. He was the pastor of Old North Church for 25 years.

These men labored long in their places of ministry. As a pastor in Old North Church, Increase Mather was highly focused on reading the history of Israel, and he saw in the history of Israel, the history of New England, the spiritual cataclysms that took place, the idolatry that rose up. He saw Israel as the prototype of New England. They say that when he would preach, he would always go back to the prophets and bring forth what the prophets were saying in that day because it was relevant for his day there in Boston. Israel and its apostasy was gripping his heart and he was constantly making allusions to the prophets in their words.

He said this, oh children, beware of degenerating from the godliness of our ancestors. Ah, New England, we fear, we fear there is a pace fulfilling on thee that word. There arose a generation after them that knew not the Lord. And so he warned that this vine, this noble, beautiful vine that was planted and sprung up was lovely, was now dying. And that's what this group was involved with.

They were stricken with a sense of what was happening and they began to preach with all of their might. He called New England to save New England from a set of degenerate grandchildren. That's how they saw the world. Increase Mather preached a sermon called A Discourse Concerning the Danger of Apostasy. And the Mathers coined a term, a generation, the rising generation.

They used the term all the time. And they really set that idea in the minds of those who lived in New England. And this double meaning, there was a generation, was so clear to them and they preached it and they believed that the problem was that fathers had not taken responsibility to teach their children. Is that relevant enough for us? I really do believe that this has caused so much apostasy in the church.

In many ways, you look out and you see the secularization of the church, you see the amazing fact that the behavior of the people in our evangelical churches is indistinguishable from those who reject God. What has happened? This has happened. Why are we talking about the Mathers? Because the Mathers would teach us about what's happening here in our own generation here.

It's so important to listen to them. Increase, Mather was concerned about this all the days of his life. Toward the end of his life, He gathered a group of ministers to preach on successive Thursdays sermons on early piety and it was an urgent call for fathers to teach their children and to bring them to early piety. These sermons are recorded in this book. Increase Mather writes the introduction to it and says some of the most amazing things that you think they're talking about the 21st century.

In the introduction increase writes this, I complain that there is a grievous decay of piety in the land and a leaving of the first love and that beauty of holiness are not to be seen in our churches as they once were. How discouraging that must have been to see the beauty of holiness in the church and then to see it gone. He says, "...there once were a fruitful vine growing and it's too rare a spectacle. Yea, too many are given to change and leave that order of the gospel, who set up and uphold which was the very design of these colonies." He says, "...nothing will contribute so much to avert the evil tokens at which they who dwell in the wilderness as a revival of piety, even of early piety, in the rising generation. And how would that happen?

That would happen by fathers rising up to teach their children. The sermons concentrated on the all or nothing call of the gospel and the call for holiness in every area of life. It was a call out of Babylon, is what it was. One of the lectures on Proverbs 23, 26, my son, give me your heart, by Mr. Prince said this, you must give up yourselves and you must have entirely Him in your early days.

You must give up your bodies and all its parts and members, especially the tongue to God. You must give up all your senses to Him. Think of all the things you spend your senses on, all the things you let your eyes and your ears rest upon. He says you must give all your senses to him, your strength, your vigor, your health, and your beauty. You must likewise give up your spirit, temper, and all your various appetites and passions to him." This was the kind of preaching these men were doing to this rising generation.

Benjamin Wadsworth, preaching from Psalm 34-11, said this from the text, "'Come, you children, hearken unto me. I will teach you to fear the Lord. He writes, my people are destroyed by lack of knowledge. Prize your Bible as the best of all books. Prize it above gold, above much fine gold.

Esteem it sweeter than honey or of the honeycomb. How much time is misspent, thrown away, lost in reading playbooks or filthy profane writings? But seriously and diligently Read and study the Holy Bible as one of the means to make us wise to salvation and make us holy in time and happy in eternity. Wow! This was the kind of preaching that was going on here in the last days of increased Mather's life as he was appealing to the rising generation, leaving his son cotton back behind him, knowing that he would die someday soon as he was 84 years old when these sermons were preached, one young minister of 26 years of age at these preaching meetings said this, I feel a trembling anxiety for the youth of the present generation.

Do you have a heart for the youth of this generation? If you don't, something is wrong. And honestly, it would be wrong of us just to stop with our own families. It would be right to start there and do well there, but it is not enough because there is a rising generation of youth who do not know the Lord and how will they know it? They will know it when godly fathers bring them into their households and teach them and care for them.

We need to pray for a rising youth ministry in this nation. That's not according to the pattern of this entertainment-driven madness that's destroying our youth. It needs to be different. It needs to be founded on maturity and a completely different pattern. And of course it must be engaged fundamentally in the home.

What is biblical youth ministry? It's a father teaching his children. There are children who have no fathers. And yes, we should look with responsibility out there in this world. We should not just disciple our families, though we should.

The problem is that there are so many that shift away from their families and lose that, what God has given them primarily and that has caused such a cataclysm in the church. So increased mather passes from the scene and cotton mather picks up. Cotton Mather was a godly young man from a very early age. Think about this. He had hunger enough in his youth, we're talking about when he was six, seven, eight years old, to have a commitment in his soul to read 15 chapters of the Bible today.

Five in the morning, five at noon, and five at night. That's what he did. And by the time he was 14 he had spent whole days in fasting and prayer. How many of you are around 14? Have you ever done that?

Ask the Lord to give you a greater passion. He would spend as a 14 year old an entire day of prayer and fasting. This is a heart for God. Of course only God can give someone passion like this and we should pray that God would give the rising generation an unusual passion that would be different. He had joined his father as a young man in pastoral leadership at Old North Church.

At 16 he founded a society for young men and it was then that he preached his first sermon at age 16. What a blessing that is to have young men preaching. He was a stutterer, though. How about that? And he stuttered for many years.

He thought it would disqualify him, and his father said, no, son, no, it does not disqualify. Continue on. He was encouraged by his father. And I think he was 21 years old when he was installed as the pastor of Old North Church that had 1, 500 people come in to hear the preaching on Sunday. His stuttering was of greater concern to himself than it was to those who would listen to him.

He had, as his father did, as his grandfather did, a concern for what? The rising generation. That was their call to arms, the rising generation. He also understood the demise of New England. He said the devil goes raging, warring, roaring about the world.

And listen to this, he says, and young men are those whom he is most concerned for the catching and spoiling of. Did you get that? What is the target of the devil? It's a young man. Why are young men tempted?

Why do young men have it in their hearts with rising rebellion? It's because the devil wants their souls. The devil is attacking them and sending all of his energies toward them. And Cotton Mather understood that. And he said, it's the devil who is most concerned for spoiling these young men.

Well, if you can spoil one young, you've got many years of spoilage ahead. So Cotton was also watching the vision fall apart, and he would not shrink back from testifying to the grace of God. He had sadness in his life after 16 years of marriage in which you find this tender devotion toward a wife. His wife dies after 16 years of marriage and his very sweet daughter of Zion, that he speaks so beautifully, passes into eternity. It absolutely broke his heart.

He lost most of his children. He had nine children. Only four lived past the age of five and I believe many of them died after that. He had precious nicknames for his children, Nibby and Nanny and my dear Katie and he was a father with the Puritan heart for children which was a great and mighty precious tender heart. It really was.

As you can see when they write about their children and they write about their wives something happens. They use these funny words and they speak so sweetly about it. They speak as sweetly about their children as they do the Lord Jesus. It's really amazing. On his 56th birthday, Cotton preached on Ecclesiastes 9 10, Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

This could have been very well his life verse. You know my father has a life verse. I know what it is, but I think This is what people say would be Cotton Mather's life verse. Whatever God gives you to do, do it with all your might. You know when I read that I thought of how many things I do so poorly?

Yet this was the kind of excellence that was in the soul of Cotton Mather for the ministry and all that he was doing. He spoke of many problems rising up in New England, whole classes of them. Let me just give you a window into one of them. He was so concerned about business. He was speaking to his businessmen, and here's what he says.

For men to put off adulterated and counterfeited wares, in other words, not building their stuff with excellence. He's talking to the businessmen in his community saying, we have lost a sense of quality of what we build. Then he says this, and for men to work up their wares deceitfully, in other words, have deceitful things happening in the background, in the building of the wares. And when the fish is not, the tar has undue mixtures, and it's dirt and stone instead of turpentine, and there are thick layers of salt instead of other things that should be there. He's talking about lack of integrity that he crept into business practices in New England.

The cheese is not made as tis a firm to be. Sounds like that fake cheese of today to me. Liquor is not for quantity or quality such as was agreed for. The wood is not the dimensions that are promised to the purchaser. And perhaps there was a trespass in the place of cutting it.

In other words, it might have been the woodcutters that cut it wrong and lied about the size of it and then delivered it. The hay does not hold the weight by abundance. I've experienced that. The lumber has a false number on it or the bundles are not as good within as they are without. It's an abomination.

Cotton Mather was raging against the evils of society, in the church, in the home, and in the shop. And he desired holiness. He was preaching for these things and these passionate appeals for correction. They were calling for a course correction in the church. That's what they were doing.

You know, that's what we're doing too. We're calling for a course correction in the church regarding family life. Something has gone wrong and so as Cotton Mather and Increase and Richard began to see the drift, we need to also be people who understand the times. And they had forgotten the founding generation, they had forgotten what the church could be like as it was at the beginning and there were these Jeremiah ads these election sermons these sermons on holiness that were preached Samuel Danforth preaches a brief recognition of New England's errand into the wilderness Benjamin Thompson his sermon New England's crisis increase matters the day of trouble is near another sermon titled by increase matter the renewal of Covenant The Great Duty Incumbent on Decaying and Distressed Churches, Samuel Torrey, exhortation under Reformation. These kinds of sermons were being preached because there was a class of preachers during that time who also were stricken with this same message in their souls and they began to preach.

And the use of a sermon called a Jeramied, J-E-R-E-M-I-A-D, Jeramied. And it was an urgent, passionate call for repentance, like the prophet Jeremiah would have given, was the idea. And they would take their texts from Jeremiah and Isaiah and they would call back the church to her earlier days of holiness and call for zeal in that return. And it was a call for an encourse correction. Cotton Mather said this, he said, what?

What shall the grandchildren of Moses turn idolaters? And shall the children of Samuel become the children of Belial? Shall we forget the hope of our fathers? They're very graves of those blessed men. Every post, every stone upon their graves is a witness against us if we do.

Can you imagine being in a room listening to this kind of preaching and this kind of appeal? Cotton Mather published many of the founder's biographies in his great work, Magnolia. It was an ecclesiastical history of New England. And when he wrote it, his father praised his son and said that what he was doing was an act of obedience to scripture because he was honoring his fathers. Cotton Mather wrote biographies of the great reformers and the great fathers of the church.

And Increase said that it was an application of the fifth commandment to honor your father and honor the fathers that came before you." He said, it was a special act of obedience to the fifth commandment to endeavor the preservation of the names and honor them who had been fathers in Israel. Well, it was the Mather family. It was Richard, Increase and Cotton Mather who drove the development of Puritan generational language. They were the ones that really formed it and This idea of the rising generation became a watchword for all that were there. This is what was happening with these three.

It was a call to the rising generation. Why would we want to talk about something like this in a conference like this? Because we think we need to do the same thing today with all of our hearts and we should be willing to risk everything to secure the salvation of the next generation and to have a course correction that returns to biblical practices because we've adopted so many that are not biblical. And what's the evidence of it? The evidence of it is right now in our churches, 80% to 90% of the next generation never returns to church after their freshman year in college.

And people come to us and they say, We think you're overreacting. And we want to say, how do you overreact to that? To do what we're doing is an overreaction to that? I don't think it is at all. It is a course correction.

In everything we do, there's an overreacting in some way. But let's not just sit there and do nothing and let it go on. A course correction is necessary. We've abandoned simple commands of Scripture in the church and in the home And I fear, I fear for church leaders who can't admit that, who can't just look at the data and look at the scripture and ask why and have enough courage to do something about it. So three generations of Mathers crying out for the rising generation.

That's point one. Point two, five lessons to learn from and apply. First, we have in front of us a family that was dedicated to the rising generation. How are they dedicated to it? Through their own family life, vigorous, intellectual family life, commercial family life, spiritual family life.

They paid attention to their family life and they were involved in the church at the same time. That was their formula. That's biblical youth ministry right there. Preaching in the church and biblical discipleship methodology is what the Mathers focused in on. And then secondly, a family which had a clear vision of life.

Fathers were clear. The fathers understood why they were alive. They understood why God had given them energy and they desired to spend that energy on one thing, the kingdom of God and all of it. Like I said before, All of their energy was directed into the church and out from the church. That was the center of the world for them.

Thirdly, family who knew the times. And they responded in practical, private, and public ways. They knew the times. It's not enough to know the Bible. It's also necessary that we know the times and we respond in practical ways to the times that we live in.

We can't have our heads in the sand, we can't live as if there is no world that we live in, but we have to live as members of this world. It's wrong for our families to be so secluded that they're not touched by or that we're not involved in the world. We cannot be hiding out in our little family enclave that is so contrary to the gospel and it certainly is contrary to this pattern of life that we see in this great generation of Mathers. Fourthly, we see a family dedicated to the prosperity of the church. We see a family dedicated to the prosperity of the church.

My great fear for those who have been convicted by the Lord regarding their family life that they have neglected the church, that they've exalted their families over the church. This is a great sin. But to neglect the church is to neglect the bride of Christ. Now why would we neglect what God has called the bride of Christ? We say well she's not very beautiful anymore.

Well God doesn't think she's ugly. He sent his son to die for her. She's a beautiful bride to him with all of her spots and wrinkles. And so we should get in line with God regarding the church and not neglect the church and not hate the church but to love the church the way that the Lord Jesus loved the church and gave his blood for her. But this was a family dedicated to the prosperity of the church.

Fifthly, it was a family of fathers who cried out for their sons. It's a family of fathers who cried out for their own sons and also the sons that had been born in their land. Now there are 300 million people in this land that we live in right now and our crying out should be twofold. Should be crying out for the sons and daughters of our own and then all those others who are not our own. This is a family of fathers who cried out for their sons.

The father-son, the father-child relationship is a very tender one. It's founded in heaven. In Scripture there are many fathers who cried out for their sons and the principle here is that the fathers need to cry out for the sons that are coming up. We see many examples in Scripture of this. We see Job crying out daily for his children in Job chapter 1, verses 4 through 5.

His sons would go and feast in their houses, each on their appointed day. And he would invite them. And he would cry out for them. He would offer sacrifices for them. He'd rise early in the morning and cry out for them.

And he was vigilant, and he was conscious about their vulnerability. And he cried out for his sons. Abraham cries out for Sarah's lack of a child, and grieving that he has no heir, that he has no son. He's crying out for a son that he doesn't even have. Abraham and Isaac, on the altar of sacrifice, Abraham cries out for his son.

Abraham cries out for help in finding a wife for Isaac. Isaac cries out about Rebecca's barrenness and the sons and daughters that he so longed for. Jacob cries out at the loss of Joseph and David cries out for Absalom. He says deal gently for the sake of my son Absalom. And then when tragedy struck he says Absalom, Absalom, my son Absalom.

Solomon cries out for his son through the entire book of Proverbs and the man with the demon possessed son cries out in Mark 9 because the demon sees him and throws him down and he foams at the mouth and he gnashes his teeth and he becomes rigid and the Lord speaks to him and he says, Lord, I believe, help me in my belief. And he's relieved, but it was a father crying out for his son that was so important in the healing of that boy, how critical it is that we cry out and we don't forget prayer and fasting and crying out for our sons in the ways that we see here among this generation of fathers. And so are we crying out? Are we praying? Are we fasting?

Or are we just running through this busy life forgetting the spiritual nature of this world that we live in. It's not enough to just cry out for your sons and daughters, but we must walk beside them and know them and help them and work with them through life. So these are some practical responses to this generation who cried out for their sons. There's a deathbed perspective that I want to bring to us here. Just before Cotton Mather died, His son Samuel comes to him on his deathbed and he says, Father, Father, what sentence or what word would you have me think about constantly?

Can you imagine that? Here's this old, he's in his late 60s, he's dying, he's wasting away and his son says, Father, give me something I can think about constantly. Do You see the heart of the son resident, just like the father, just like the grandfather, just like the great grandfather. Here we have a son going to his father saying, father, bless me. Give me a word that I might think about constantly.

I don't think sons can say that unless you spend time with them. And he answered, he said, "'Fructuosus, ' which means in Latin fruitful, fruitful." And he quoted what Jesus said to his disciples in John 15, 8. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples. And here we come back to the worldview of the Puritan who desires to find what is acceptable to the Lord, to bear fruit in all things, to take action to do something about what you know in your soul and what you've read in Holy Scripture. This deathbed perspective I think should be helpful to us, should inspire us.

I hope that daughters and sons listening to this would go to their own fathers while they're still alive and say, Father, what word would you have me dwell on constantly? And I hope that we as fathers would have the right answer because we have nurtured our own souls and we're not empty. We began with a Puritan prayer and we're going to end with that same prayer. This prayer speaks of so much of the worldview of the Puritans. It speaks of the purpose of the family.

It prays for the duty of the family. It prays for so many things that are critical in family life. And here's the prayer again. Let those that are united to me in tender ties be precious in thy sight and devoted to thy glory. Sanctify and prosper my domestic devotion, instruction, discipline, example that my house may be a nursery for heaven.

My church, a garden of the Lord. Enriched with trees of righteousness of thy planting, for thy glory, Let not those of my family who are amiable, moral, attractive fall short of heaven at last. Grant that the promising appearances of a tender conscience, soft heart, the alarms and delights of thy word be not finely blotted out, but bring forth judgment unto victory in all whom I love." I don't know how to better sum up the heart and soul of the Puritan view of the church and home than that and may this prayer be answered among us and thousands beyond us. Let's pray. And now Lord you have set us to this labor for which we're so grateful to be engaged in.

We pray that you would come mightily and give us millions of disciples who love you with all of their hearts for this rising generation, I pray for a rescue. Fathers, rising up to rescue their very own children and those in the community, not neglecting the youth that are lost in this world, but that you would help us to be a great blessing to the rising generation through the beautiful life in the church and through the lovely activities of the home, which are both as up to the gates of the world. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. You