Scott Brown explains in this video that when the Gospel is central to preaching, families are positively impacted. Lives are changed by Scripture when individuals and families embrace their God-given roles. Pastors need to highlight Scripture instead of their own illustrations or words. Scripture is powerful and faith comes by hearing the Word of God preached.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV) - "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Oh, it's such a blessing to be here to speak about things that are so dear to our hearts. Boy, what a beautiful facility. I'm so grateful for this church that has allowed us to meet here. We're so grateful for that. So I just want to begin this time together by just declaring that there really is a reformation that's going on in the land today.

And over particularly the last decade, there's been an uprising of families and churches. And these families are helping to create churches. They're joyful, they're vibrant, they are presenting their communities a picture of life. They are characterized by intergenerational and family integrated gatherings where the churches include the children and the singles and the fatherless and the broken and the whole and everybody in between, and they're solidly devoted to the word of God. In these churches, what has happened is that there's really been a revival of the centrality of the gospel, of the expository preaching of the word of God, line by line, book by book, in order to bring the people of God into a place of trusting God alone I pray that the legacy of our time together would be something so simple and that is that our hearts trust in God.

We trust in His word. We can rest our whole weight on a single word of scripture. I pray that's what happens to us, that we have a humility that says, not my will, but thine be done. But that we have a heart that says, I delight to do thy will. I pray that's what happens as we're here together in this conference.

Now I'd like to speak in some detail about this awakening that I'm seeing taking place and I'm confident that the reason that there are so many people in this meeting hall right now is because this awakening has happened in your life and it is such a blessing to see it. Awakenings often follow a season of idolatry and sinfulness and people wake up they see the difference they feel the pain they recognize something is so wrong and they say Oh Lord help us and they look to his word and They recognize their sinfulness and they repent Awakenings are often just fueled by something really simple, desperation. And when parents realize that their children are dishonoring them, that their children are acting and thinking like pagans, and that their churches are corrupt, and they're really, they don't seem to be a picture of the beauty of the kingdom of heaven, but there's something really different. There's a worldliness about them. People see that and they cry out to God and they see their spiritual bankruptcy and they have a desire for holiness and they recognize that God does judge those that disobey and they recognize that probably the wrath of God is even on them as they see the results of their own unfaithfulness.

Much of that unfaithfulness they just fell into because they were just following the streams that they were born into. This is what happens in times of awakening. Now I want to give you a number of signs of awakening that I'm confident are happening right here in this room and I know that they're happening all over the world because there is an awakening that's in motion today and I'm so grateful for it and to be able to see it. Here's one sign of awakening, the modern home educational movement. There is an educational transformation that's going on all over the world today and what happened in America and I think it happened on a smaller scale here, just because there are not as many people here.

It was that about 30 years ago, it seemed like overnight, simultaneously, all over the United States, a switch got turned in women's hearts. And they said, and this happened to my own wife, even before we had children. And they said, over my dead body am I going to let my children be educated by pagans. That's what they did. And the husband said this, uh-huh, okay, that's fine.

That's what they did. And then about 15 years ago, another switch turned in the hearts of men. And men said, you know, I think I'm supposed to be a family shepherd. I think God's calling me to be the spiritual leader of my house. And then he thought, hey, I'm actually the head of my house.

What am I doing? I'm a knucklehead. I need to change my life. And so there are these transformations that take place, but this one expression of this Reformation is an educational transformation, which really is a discipleship transformation. And it comes from the heart that says, I delight to do thy will.

That's where it comes from. Here's another sign. There's a revival of biblical fatherhood. Now there are hundreds of thousands of men who are living a completely different life as fathers than their own fathers did. They've broken the pattern, they've renewed an interest out of the wellspring of Scripture in conducting family worship, in actually reading Scripture to their children.

And what these men have done is they've tried with all their heart to try to make God the center of their family and they're struggling to do it. I don't know a man who feels like he's got it going exactly like he wants it to. I'm not, But these men's hearts have turned toward their children. And in that turning, God has revived in them a desire to bring forth spiritual food for their families. Here's an illustration of this.

About 12 years ago, I was speaking at a conference. There were 700 men in the room. I asked men to raise their hands if anybody ever had their father, ever, ever, ever read scripture to them. Okay? These were Christian men.

Maybe 6, maybe 12, I don't know how many men raised their hand, but in this ocean of men, almost not a single man had ever had a father read the Bible to them. Let me ask you, I know there are a number of children, how many of you in this room have ever had your father read the Bible to you, ever? Remarkable. That's a sign of a reformation. That's a sign of the work of the Holy Spirit.

That's a sign of a radical transformation. The Bible says that when the Gospel comes, the mountains will be laid low, the valleys will come up, the crooked roads will be made straight, and the bumpy roads will be made smooth. There are these cataclysmic geophysical changes that happen when God gets a hold of someone's heart. One of those cataclysmic revolutions, earthquakes that takes place in a family is when a man takes his Bible and he opens it up. And that's happening, that's a sign of a revival.

What you just saw here is a sign of a divine dissension of the Holy Spirit on his people. That men would do something so simple, yet so powerful. A third sign of revival is this, large families. High fertility rates are on the rise among these people with families having many children and thousands of men having vasectomy reversals as a result of it because they realized that God said, be fruitful and multiply. It was as simple as that.

It wasn't that all that complex. The Bible really has only one message. Be fruitful and multiply. I have more children. That's it.

Men said, I want to do that. Men said, I delight to do thy will. Here's another sign. Rejection of feminism. Daughters in thousands of families that I am aware of, particularly in America, are understanding and being reformed by the biblical vision of womanhood.

While the traditional feminist career track is being overthrown and it's being contradicted by these daughters. And there are daughters everywhere. They want to be keepers at home. They want to be mothers. They want to train themselves to be helpers of their husbands.

They're readying themselves for that work of dominion, to take it with their husbands. That's a sign of a revolution. If you're a daughter like that, something snapped in your heart. You didn't make it happen. God did that.

And He did it to preserve a people. He did it to give mothers a place where they would spend the best years of their life pouring into their children and edifying them there. Where did it come from? It came from a desire in the heart that said, I delight to do thy will. That's where it came from.

Here's another one. Modest dress. Women are developing a new awareness of the importance of biblical modesty and the implications of the gospel in their apparel. Now, we've, you know, I've been a Christian since I was in my early teens. I don't think I ever heard a message on the biblical doctrine of clothing and how women ought to present, what the Bible says about how women ought to present themselves in their clothing.

I never heard, how many of you ever heard a message about that? Hardly ever. But there is a generation of daughters who are saying, I want my apparel to glorify God, not just myself. I want my apparel to communicate the goodness of purity and the beauty of it rather than to flaunt it if you've got it. They've changed.

Something happened. And it happened because there was something in the heart that said, I delight to do thy will. Here's another early manhood. In Titus chapter 2 verses 6 through 8 there's this statement, exhort the young men to be sober minded in all things, showing yourself a pattern of good works and why so that so that you'll correct the stupid and foolish boys in the generation that's what Titus chapter 2 verses 6 through 8 says now numerous men are early becoming providers and they're not wasting their youth you know I've met a number of them in this country. And you know who they are.

But they're rising up and they're acting like men and they're acting like men early. They're ready for marriage early, they have businesses early. I'll never forget it. About 10 years ago, I was at a conference, I was meeting all these young men that were there and I couldn't believe what I saw and I called up my wife from the conference center. I went off to the car I said, Deborah, I can't believe, you can't believe this.

I have never met so many 14 year olds with business cards in my whole life. It's men that are not wasting their youth playing video games and hanging out and destroying their productivity and their virility on passive entertainment. That's a sign of a revival. That's a sign of a work of the Spirit of God. And it's happening right here in this room.

And you're experiencing it. Here's another sign. The dating culture is being rejected. This culturally popular pattern that's been ruling and reigning for a few generations just produces one many divorce after another. It trains people to sort of fall in and out of love somehow rather than have a covenantal relationship that's based on purity and principle and dominion.

And so what you have is you have these boys and girls who are saying, I don't want a bunch of random relationships. I want a relationship for my life. And I'm not going to try to win the hearts of girls. I'm not going to try to fall in love ten times to figure out who the right one is. They're saying, I'm going to wait.

I'm going to trust God. They're actually, they're trusting their fathers and their mothers. And their fathers are saying, young men, you can't talk to my daughter about serious romantic matters without talking to me. I'm the gatekeeper, you do not touch my daughter's heart. That's a sign of a revival when a man says, I'm the head of this household and I'm going to lead this family to green pastures and quiet waters.

That's a sign of manhood And it's a sign of a revival. And it's a result of a heart that says, I delight to do thy will. It's a sign of humility. It's a sign of submission. It's a sign of the beauty of the Lord resting upon a man.

Here's another sign, adoption. So many families are being built out of a sincere desire to obey the scriptural principles about ministry to the fatherless. And there are so many multiracial families, there are so many families that are being built by adoption. It arises out of a heart of love by saying, I want to take care of the fatherless. It's a beautiful thing.

And the sacrifices and the joys that come from it are just the result of a heart that says, I delight to do thy will, as the Lord Jesus Christ said to his Father. And then finally, new churches are being planted that have rejected many of the unbiblical patterns of church life. One of the unbiblical patterns of church life that we talked about that we think is very critical for the development of proper discipleship of the next generation is to reject this whole matter of age-segregated discipleship and creating youth cultures in your church that only corrupt youth people rather than promote them into godliness. But it's more than that. It has to do with God being the center of the church.

It has to do with the Lord Jesus Christ as the very centerpiece of everything in church life, where the Bible is the only word of truth, where there's a sense of sound doctrine, where there's a sense of the biblical order for church life and family life, where the jurisdiction of the church and the authority of the church and the government of the church, the eldership and the deacons and the functionality of the church is being recovered. At the same time, the family is being recovered in the same way. Its own strength in jurisdiction and roles and responsibilities are being brought back. And it's a beautiful thing to see when the church and the family are operating in a complementary manner. That's a revival.

Those are signs of a revival. And they come from that one simple impulse of the heart that only God can give, I delight to do thy will. You know, if you don't have that impulse in the heart, pray that God would give it to you. If you don't have it, you may not be a Christian, but pray that God would give us a progressive, increasing, building, rising desire that says, I delight to do thy will. And I pray that is the legacy of our time together.

God has given us many hours together. We're going to enjoy all kinds of experiences and passages of Scripture and presentations and I pray that this would be the greatest thing that would come from our time. I delight to do thy will. Now I'd like to introduce the speakers and the people that are here. We have Kevin Swanson here.

It's so great to have Kevin, my buddy. We've been traveling around tag-teaming and having a great time. And his daughter Rebecca is back. There's Rebecca. Could you raise your hand, Rebecca?

There she is. You'll see at the book table right there. And my daughter Claudia is right there at the back. You'll see her at the book table as well. My son David is, I don't know where he is, he's here somewhere.

You'll meet him and my son-in-law Taylor is there in the sound booth. He's standing up there and then Anthony Quarter. Where's Anthony? We have Anthony Quarter here. We've been going back and forth in these conferences.

You're gonna end up with something from Anthony Quarter. That'll be a real blessing to your family. Every time I hear him, I write down a new sound bite that I need to somehow, you know, savor and rejoice in. And he has with him his daughters, Rebecca and Esther. So there they are sitting right back with him.

So that's the team. We're traveling around and it's such a joy. Thank you so much Compton family for coming up here with us and helping us to keep things organized as well. So I would like to talk about this matter of building a God-centered family. There are so many facets to it and one of the things that we're very convicted that we must communicate, and that is the necessity of the harmony between the two separate jurisdictions of the church and the family.

God has established three governments to order His world, the church, the family, and the state. And they all provide a particular function. They are all holy institutions. They are ordained by God, by the sovereign God who created the heavens and the earth. And He means that we would understand how they should operate to get them working right.

That's what we should be doing as Christians. And that the biblical order of family life is critical for the blessing of the church. It is from the family that the church receives its members. So if a family is malfunctioning, a church is going to be malfunctioning. If you don't have children who honor their parents, they're going to grow up and go to a church and they're not going to honor their elders.

And they're not going to love their brethren because they've never learned how to do it in their family life. These jurisdictions are so critical to have in order. And it's time to rise up and deal with the problems that exist in these separate jurisdictions. The church has often participated in the problem by usurping the role of the family, by not doing the job it ought to do to prepare and encourage and facilitate family shepherds. There are a number of things that have happened in this morass of family and church life that we have today.

There's a minimizing of biblical authority and practices afoot today. Everyone's doing what's right in their own eyes. They don't think that they can look to scripture alone to understand how they ought to conduct their family life and their church life. And we're here to say scripture alone is sufficient and the authority of God is critical and it really is the heart of the heart that says I delight to do thy will. And repentance and reform are really required in the day.

Now I want to give you in really rapid form almost like a machine gun I want to give you 12 assumptions that will underlie everything we're going to say here. I'm trying to lay foundations for our time together here. The first assumption is this, scripture is sufficient. We are affirming that God has revealed Himself in 66 books of the Old and New Testaments and they are completely adequate in both content and clarity for everything pertaining to life and godliness, that scripture is sufficient. Secondly, the second assumption is that it was God who created and ordered the family.

He is the one who knows how to make it run right. He's the only one that knows. You don't know, your father didn't know, your culture definitely doesn't know, but God knows and He's revealed it in His Word. The third assumption is that Satan is a deceiver. He really is out there seeking whom he might devour.

And he is the father of lies, he's the deceiver of the brethren, and he's constantly using the trickery of men. He's been doing that from the very beginning and he's doing it in families. And he's tricking fathers, he's tricking mothers, he's tricking children into a lifeless and bankrupt and dishonorable and actually destruction-track kind of a life. The fourth assumption is this, Jesus Christ is head of the church and Jesus Christ is the head of the family. We affirm that Jesus Christ, having purchased with his own blood his people, he's instructed how the church ought to operate.

Assumption number five, the church is composed not just of individuals, it is composed of individuals. It is composed of individuals who have trusted in Jesus Christ and are redeemed. But the church also is composed of families Because a whole family walks into your church, not just individuals. And so it's right for shepherds to recognize that the church is a place where families come, where there's a father and a mother and their children and those all have roles and responsibilities and churches should support and encourage and equip them to do their duty. Assumption number six, the church and family mission is generational.

That God has designed the church and the family to put people on the earth for many generations, not just for one generation. We're not here just to feed ourselves, we're here to prepare a next generation and actually to die for the next generation. That's what Jesus Christ did. He died for the saints of all generations and the church and the family mission is generational. Number seven, the church and family method is relationships.

We're here to proclaim that relationships are the key to discipleship in the family and in the church. We're not here to advocate a programmatic view of ministry. Well there are programs that are valuable. The primary function of discipleship in Scripture is life on life. Walk along, talk along.

You walk with your son and your daughter when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. It is relational discipleship. And we've ended up embracing a view of discipleship that really is according to a Greek model of discipleship, which says let's just pour information inside of people's brains. Let's strap people to their desks and give them more and more and more information. Actually the Bible has a different way of going about it.

The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that a father should proclaim it to his children. The eighth assumption is this, the biblical pattern of church life reflects an age-integrated pattern of discipleship. Here's what we're going to say, and I'll detail this in greater levels of clarity later on, but the only observable, explicit, operable pattern that you see in the Bible for discipleship in the church is an age-integrated pattern. It's the only thing you see. Nothing else exists like it.

And we're here to proclaim that that's right. It's that we should follow the way that the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul did it. Number nine, that families may be divided by the Gospel. We're not ignoring the fact that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ does divide families. There are the converted and the unconverted in families.

And that while the gospel is a blessing to families it also divides families. I'm confident many of you have experienced this, but the gospel is more important than your family. We don't want to be like Eli who honored his sons and didn't honor God. Number 10, the church is eternal while the family is temporal. These families that God has given us and even this church that God has given us, it is temporal, it exists here in the world.

Now the church does extend in eternity with the whole family gathering together, but the family is actually a type of something greater in heaven, and in heaven your family will disappear and you will experience a family life that is even greater than you were ever able to experience here. So create the biblical vision of family life here and heaven will be even more of a joy to you. Number 11, the church and the family are complementary in their role and in their function. And what we mean by that is that the church and the family work together. And the church needs the family and the family needs the church.

There's so many who've checked out of church, that's wrong. We're here to appeal to you to go back to churches if you're not going to churches. We know that there are many difficulties with that. We'd love to talk to you about that. But God has established His church in the world.

And even an inadequate church can be a blessing to a family because it's a tool for sanctification. And it helps children understand how to love people that are different than them. And that's a blessing. And then number 12, God requires examination. That God asks us to examine everything carefully and to hold fast that which is good in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21.

That this should be a time of examination. We should be searching our hearts, asking ourselves how we're doing in these matters. Now those are the assumptions upon which we're building all of what we'll be saying during this conference. And you'll hear these principles running through the various speeches that are being given. Now, I want to leave you here this morning with six foundation stones for a God-centered family.

And I'd like to give them to you one by one at first, and then we'll take them in sequence. First of all, the first foundation stone are the mercies of God. The second, the sovereignty of God. The third, the fear of God. The fourth, the word of God.

The fifth, the love of God. And the sixth, the centrality of God in the family. Now the first foundation stone for a God-centered family is the mercies of God. I pray that today you will remember God's mercy. Whenever you discuss a matter of life and godliness that is so close to everything you are, like the family, you have to recognize, if you're a Christian, that you must see it under the shadow of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we have to remember three things when we consider the mercy of God. First of all, it is God's mercy that He has given us commands for family life. There are things that are right and there are things that are wrong that we're doing in our family life. We have to recognize we're either obeying or disobeying God in these matters. And secondly, we are all by nature sinners, we are all a broken people, we are all being sanctified by the Lord.

He has us on a track, a progressive track of sanctification, and we fall short in doing His will. And that's why when we speak of matters that we fall short in so much, I can't think of areas that men and women fall so short in is areas of fatherhood, areas of motherhood, areas of childhood. We fall short in so many ways. And we need to recognize that we stand before a Father of mercies, that He knows our frame. And we have to recognize God is merciful towards sinners and He progressively awakens us by His own power and this means that we come to Him as a father and as a father of mercies.

And that we see everything that we fall short on in our family life under the shadow of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's a reality. None of us are really perfectly aware of all the ways we fall short anyway. We're not. There is no way you can confess all your sins.

You don't know them. There are too many of them. They're too inbred. You just can't get to the bottom of them. But you can have a heart that says, oh Lord, I delight to do thy will.

So the first foundation stone is the mercies of God, and I pray that you'll see everything we say in that light. The second is the sovereignty of God. If you open up your Bibles to Psalm 127, you'll see this beautiful vision of trustful family life. And here what you find in this psalm is that God has established a representative in the home, and he's called a watchman. He's like a steward.

He's a father in the house and he's laboring but he's not he's not allowed to labor in any old way he wants. And what we have here in this Psalm is a picture of family life where God is in control. And first you see his sovereignty, his control in the building of the house. It starts out, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain, saying that we're so dependent upon God to build our houses. We ought to not look necessarily to another family, but we ought to look to God and say, oh Lord, build my house.

And this really proclaims the sovereignty of God in family life. And then secondly, protecting the city. He says, unless the Lord guards the city, they labor in vain. Now all of us live in cities, all of us live in corrupt cities, All of us live in cities where the governments have lost their minds. All of us live in places where there are various dangers.

But here in this psalm it says, unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays away conveying. You know what that means? God is big enough to protect your family in the city you live in. God is sovereign over that. No one should fear.

We ought to do what the writer of Proverbs says, we ought to see danger and take action, but we should not fear because God is sovereign. And then thirdly, He's sovereign over earning a living. God is proclaiming His sovereignty over economic life. And these three areas are really the greatest concerns for men. The building of a house, the safe existence in a city, and the making of a living.

That's what Psalm 127 is all about and how a family can be happy in the midst of that. And the greatest concern of this Psalm is that God is sovereign and it's not your own efforts, It's God, it's God alone. And so I'm just appealing to the fact that God is in control. I hope you know that, I hope you know that in your heart. And that any improvement of your family life is completely dependent upon God.

Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain. The sovereignty of God is the second foundation stone for a God-centered family. And I pray that we have families who so trust God they raise up a generation that understands what it means to trust God. A fearless generation. You know when my daughters, you know, came time to get married, I only have one unmarried daughter, she's here with me, Claudia, but my other daughters, when young men started coming to me, my greatest concern for them was their view of God.

I didn't want my daughters to marry some hand-wringing kind of a guy who's always worried about the next thing that was going to happen. I wanted to marry a man who had a big God, not a little one, that he was so concerned about everything in his life, but one who trusted God. The third foundation stone for a God-centered family is the fear of God. Now if you go to the next Psalm, Psalm 128, you'll see that it's the fear of the Lord that creates the happiness of a family. We're going to talk about the fear of the Lord a lot today, but here Psalm 128 is just an extension of Psalm 127 and it carries the theme and it continues to present more details about happy family life.

The first principle in 127 is unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain, God is sovereign, he's in control. And then the next principle here in 128 is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of happiness in a home. And one of the things I love about these psalms, these are the psalms of ascents, and Hebrew families as they were making their way to the temple would sing these songs on their way and you can just picture these families you know of six seven four or five however many ten twelve children going along you know the roadway making their way to the temple skipping along and I can just picture the little boy, you know, wanting to jump into the puddle like every little boy wants to do. But they're singing this song. They're singing this song, proclaiming the beauty of the fear of the Lord.

And what you see in this family is that there are a number of results. Result number one, happiness. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. That means that a man's station in life does not determine his supernatural blessing. It means that the poorest family can be the richest in spirit out of the fear of the Lord.

It's the most important thing. Riches come and go, but the fear of the Lord keeps on paying and paying and paying. The second result of the fear of the Lord is in verse 2. The enjoyment of the fruit of your hands. If you want to have a happy family life, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of it.

And it says there, when you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you. This is a picture of a whole family just doing the most simple thing that a family ever does, sitting down and eating. You know, your families are going to sit down and eat together today. Enjoy it. Make this such a time of enjoyment.

Let it be the fear of the Lord, you know, fueling the happiness of your family as it is here in this passage. The third is the blessings of a fruitful wife in the center of your home. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house. Here the psalmist raises the issue of the beauty of femininity and industry in the home And he uses this really attractive imagery to describe a wife, likening her to a fruitful vine that just keeps on producing, you know, succulent and beautiful grapes to eat. This is a result of the fear of the Lord.

Whenever you see an unhappy family, here's what you got. No fear of the Lord. Happy families, fear of the Lord. You can always tell. The fourth blessing.

The children are like all the plants around the table in verse three. This is where the fun begins. I have the privilege right now of being a grandfather. My children are all raised, but now I've got nine grandchildren under the age of five. And so I have all these hilarious cartoon characters running around my house.

It's so much fun. I just can't wait to get home. My grandchildren are actually my exercise equipment right now. I put them on my back, I do push-ups, I get my curls done. That's the deal.

It's just a fantastic time. Your children, like all the plants around your table. The fifth blessing from the fear of the Lord is thus in verse 4 and 5, Behold thus a man shall be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you out of Zion and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life." This has to do with just the blessings of God in the city. The blessings of God in Jerusalem, your Jerusalem.

This is a result of the fear of the Lord. And then finally in verse 6, there are these blessings that flow out across the generations for grandparents as they see their children's children. Yes, may you see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel. Now, this psalm argues that the fear of the Lord changes everything in a family's life.

And you have to ask yourself, do I fear the Lord? Does my heart fear the Lord? Do I delight to do the will of God? If you do not delight to do the will of God, you should question whether you've been saved. Many people have prayed a prayer and had an emotional experience, but their lives never changed and Those people were never converted.

Nobody ever was converted by praying a prayer You're purp- you you you are converted because in your heart you have turned to the Lord Jesus, you've repented of your sins, and you've believed in the gospel, you've embraced the righteousness of Jesus Christ, you recognize that you are hopeless in your own sins, you recognize that only He can save you, that none of your righteousness ever could, and that He took the punishment for all of your sins. And as a result of your believing in the Gospel, and turning from your idols, your life changed. There's so many people whose lives have never changed. Those are people who have now been converted. You know, in a lot of ways one of the worst things that can happen to you in the Christian community is if you change.

If you change, people will say, oh you're being so legalistic. Actually, God wants to change people's lives and take them further. And so you have to ask, do I fear the Lord in my heart? If you don't, and it is in your heart to cry out to God, cry out to God and be saved. Believe in the gospel.

Fear the Lord and shun evil. It'll be refreshment to your body and health to your bones. You will experience the springs of life that well up to eternal life. This third foundation stone, the fear of the Lord determines everything. And then the fourth foundation stone, the Word of God.

Building a God-centered family, really it always starts with God. And our only comfort in this life really is that God is the ruler, he's the creator, he's the designer, and he leads his people according to his own design, and that's revealed in his word in the 66 books of the New and the Old Testament. We know from scripture that every word of God is pure, that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. It is God that is the beginning of all reformation of family life. Now I've preached the Word of God all over the world.

I've opened my Bible to speak about various matters of life in Eastern Europe, in South America, in Mexico, in Africa, all over the place. Here's what I found. The family's broken the same way everywhere. Australia is not unique. You're not unique.

You're not special. You're really not. You're just like every broken person all across the world. And the reason is you're a law breaker. And God has provided his ways, his laws, his principles, his statutes, his patterns, in order to correct the cultures of the world.

You can open up your Bible in any culture of the world and that word of truth will correct that culture. It's actually designed to change the culture, to cleanse the well, to bring the beauty of the Lord back in where things have been burned up. But it begins with God and that is that our traditions get displaced with the traditions of God that we know are true. So the fourth foundation stone is the Word of God. The fifth foundation stone is the love of God.

God has been so kind to give a pattern in heaven for family life. And what he has done is he has made himself a family. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the family that exists in heaven. And the Father has a son in the same way that you are a father and you have a son or a daughter and the father has the son and the son has a father and the father loves the son and the son delights to do the will of the Father.

And the Father has authority over the Son, and the Son delights to obey the Father, and He says, I only do what I see my Father doing. I only say what I hear my Father saying. This is a picture of love and authority in a family. It begins in heaven. The Holy Spirit glorifies the Son and glorifies the Father.

The Father draws saints into this fellowship of love. Jesus said no one comes to the Father unless he's drawn in. And God has designed his family in heaven to be a redemptive family. And what happens is that He's created His family for a purpose, to bring many sons to glory, to bring sons and daughters into that family life. That's why when you're baptized in Matthew chapter 28, you're baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus isn't throwing away words. You're being baptized into the name, like into it, as if I was able to take someone into me. And when you become a child of God, you come and you are part of a new family. The family of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is desiring to draw sinners into this relationship of love so that they would have something that they never could have in this world on their own.

A relationship with God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is bringing many sons to glory and He uses a family to do that. Now, when God created the world, what was the first thing He did? He created a family. And after he created that family, what did he tell that family to do?

Make more families, be fruitful and multiply. God is a family man. God is creating family life, and it begins in heaven. And it's a family of love, it's a family of compassion, It's a family of submission. This is why marriages are often so troubled, is because they don't understand the doctrine of God.

A wife doesn't understand the beauty of submission, of saying, I delight to do thy will. I only say what I hear my Father saying. And a husband doesn't understand what what compassion and mercy and drawing and proper use of authority is. He doesn't know that so his family's broken. But what God has done is he has established your family as a redemptive community just like the redemptive community of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of your family is to bring many sons to glory, is to bring the truth of God into your family life, to center your whole family on God, to make Jesus Christ the heart and soul of your family, to trust in the work and the power of the Holy Spirit and to live the life of submission to the Son. A pattern in your life after Him. So whenever we talk about family life, we have to talk about it in view of its larger story, this great redemptive family in heaven that's bringing many sons to glory, to bring sons and daughters in to love, through repentance of their sins, through bowing to the authority of their Father in heaven. The purpose of your family is to be a tool of redemption in the hands of God. So, when you think about your family life, you can't just think about yourself.

You've got to think about this family in heaven and how your family ought to be like it and that your family has a divine appointment to bring many sons and daughters to glory. What a wonderful vision of family life. What a wonderful thing it is that God has done. You know, nobody gets to choose their family. I've never met a son who got to choose his father.

I never met a father who got to choose his daughter or his son. It's the way God made it. He brings people together according to His divine power, His sovereign wisdom. And everybody in here is in a family because God did it. And it's a sacred thing.

Don't take it lightly that you have the Father that you have. Well, he might have weaknesses. I'm sure he does. Nobody ever had a perfect father. But he made you to be in this family because he loves you, because he desires to draw you, because he desires to teach you.

That's true of every family. What happens in redemptive history is that the relationship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit has now been brought down to earth. First of all, the Word became flesh, then He sent His Spirit, but God has established families to operate in that way so that this ministry of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is created in the world so that many sons would be brought to glory. That there would be this little redemptive community where the truth is upheld, where God is feared, where God is delighted in, and the people say, I delight to do thy will. That's the spirit of humility.

That's the spirit of all healing. That's the spirit of taking all the broken people in this world and bringing them under the wonderful hand of God to heal and to save. God is so kind to do this and He's chosen us to participate in His redemptive work. So you've always got to see your family in light of this larger redemptive story of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are bringing many sons into glory, and you are being baptized into the name, this wonderful name, of submission and compassion and authority and love and kindness and mercy. The fifth foundation stone is the love of God.

The sixth foundation stone is the centrality of God in the family. How do you make God the center of your family life? Well we've been talking about it quite a bit, but when I was a young father, one of the things that occurred to me was that family life was so broken in my generation. I really wasn't sure how to extract the wisdom from my own generation. So I went back to a bygone era.

I went back to an era where the doctrine of the family was better understood. And it so happens that after the Protestant Reformation, there were men who were capitalizing on this principle that Scripture is sufficient, sola scriptura. And they went back to the Bible and they began to say, here's what a family should look like. And there was a family reformation that took place in the Puritan era. And I went back to Matthew Henry.

Matthew Henry was a father during the Puritan era, and I was in a friend's house many years ago, and he handed me a book that I've reprinted called Building a God-Centered Family, and it was the best guide for family life I'd ever read, and still have ever read. I think it's the best thing. I have it, It's out there in the book table. There might not be very many of them left But it's a short book and explains how to build spiritual life in your family But sometimes you have to go back to a bygone era, but here's what was happening in that bygone era They realized that family shepherding was simple That it included the just opening the Word of God and praying together. That it was consistent.

That they did it in the morning and the evening. That it required leadership. These were the things that were so clear in the Philip and Matthew Henry family. Philip Henry was Matthew Henry's father. How many of you have ever heard of the Matthew Henry commentaries of the Bible?

So many of you have. Well, it's one of the greatest commentaries that has ever been written. George Whitefield read the whole commentary set on his knees twice. Charles Spurgeon read it over and over again. I read it in preparation for all of my preaching.

It's so wonderful. Here's what happened with Matthew Henry. He grew up in a home where his father conducted family worship, and I mean they say without fail he never missed it. And he required his children to take notes in their Bibles of his communicating the Word of God. So all the Henry children exited family life with a commentary of the Bible written in their own hand.

How about that? So Matthew Henry went and turned around and he did the same thing. And then when he died, the family wanted to publish his commentary set, but there were some gaps in the commentary sets, some in Revelation and some in some other places. So they brought the family together and they took the children's notes and pieced together the gaps in the commentary. That commentary set, I think it's so beautifully written, it's so compassionate, it's so tender, but yet it's so clear and accurate and exegetically right on the other hand.

But I think it's a mix of that because it arose out of the fruitful soil of family worship. Because there, you know, Matthew Henry was speaking these things to his children and then he preached them to his church and his the whole family was gathered together when he preached by the way. Because in that era church life was age-integrated. But what you find is this great commentary set arose out of the soil of a father who turned his heart toward God, a father who had desired to bring the Word of God into his house. And now we have this legacy that keeps on ministering to people.

But it came out of family worship. Here's my question. What good thing will come out of your family worship? Here's some advice. Make it as consistent as you possibly can.

Make it every day like the Henrys and you will see more fruit being born. Well, this is all to speak of how to build a God-centered family. First of all, the mercies of God. Second, the sovereignty of God. Third, the fear of God.

Fourth, the Word of God. Fifth, the love of God. And sixth, the centrality of God in the family. So there you have it, how to build a God-centered family. Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you for your kindness and communicating to creatures like us, sinful creatures like us. Oh Lord, that you would pour your Spirit out upon us, that you would teach us your ways. I pray that in this room you would so give us a heart that says, I delight to do Thy will. Oh Lord, give it to us. I pray that you would use that to transform a nation.

Amen.