My name is Randy Winton and I'm one of the pastors at Garden Valley Chapel. The topic is the importance of family discipleship. Before you leave, let me tell you about the table here. These aren't for sale. These are my books. My wife said, make sure that they all know that. So none of these are to be taken. And this is this is a smidgen of our library. I'm going to talk about libraries in a minute because I think building a library in our home is massively important to the well-being of our of our families. But I've created a bookmark and it's got every one of the books on here. And there are different categories for parents, for young men, for young ladies and for husbands. I didn't bring anything for wives. They can go to a women's seminar to figure that one out. But please take one of these if you want. You can put it in a book that you're reading at home. Just good resources. And you can look at these today, too, if you'd like. That's fine. I want to give you a one-minute synopsis of who I am because I think it will give some background to why I'm speaking on the issue that we're talking about this morning. I have four children. One of them is right here, Cody. He is 20 years old. He's my oldest. I have an 18-year-old, Jessie, who is home sick. We think bronchitis is something coming up. Then we have two little girls that we have adopted. Heidi Joy is four and Anna Christine is six years old. We adopted them through the county of Shasta County. We lived up in Redding. We adopted them several years ago. For 16 years I was a pastor. I left the ministry on a good note. I didn't get kicked out. I didn't embezzle money. I didn't have an affair. We left the ministry. It was a sad leaving of our church, but I did that because I wanted to spend the most amount of time I could with my son. My sons and I started a landscape construction company up in Redding. We did that for five years. We had a very successful business. Then the Lord gave me multiple sclerosis. The doctor told me, my neurologist said, I couldn't do hot weather or physical labor. Well, Redding today is supposed to be like 110. Being a landscape contractor is very physical, so I couldn't do that. We were a part-time bluegrass gospel band. So we did that full time and for the last two and a half years we've lived in a motorhome traveling the country. We are praising God because two days ago my motorhome sold. Which means we are never touring the country again in a motorhome. That's all that means in our lives and my sons and I and my wife and daughters do the dance of joy in our house. But that matters to the whole story of what we're going to talk about today. And we'll see that in a minute. I want to talk about three different men here for a second. The first person I want to talk about is a gentleman named David Farragut. Anybody ever heard of him? David Farragut? At 12 years old, he became the captain of a ship at 12 years old. During the war of 1812, he was given the assignment to bring a ship captured by the USS Essex safely to port at 12 years old. How many men in here have a 12 year old at home? Or somewhere close to that, 11, 12, 13 years old? Don't raise your hand on this question. This is a rhetorical, or not a rhetorical question, but a, what's that question? What's it called when you ask a question and you don't want to answer it? Is it rhetorical? This is why I bring my son because he helps me figure what I'm supposed to say. But how many of your 12 year olds could safely captain a ship? And we're not talking. My son owns a 13 foot sailboat, which is for sale. You can talk to me about that afterwards. But we're not talking a 13 foot sailboat. We're talking a ship, a ship of war. That was the kind of young man that David Farragut was raised to be. Jonathan Edwards. Familiar with him? Great reformer. I want to contrast Jonathan Edwards and Max Jukes. There is a book written by Jonathan Edwards' wife. called Marriage to a Difficult Man. And I saw that, my wife and I, I can relate to Pastor Briggs a lot. My wife and I were having a disagreement and then on the computer screen later on that day I see this title, Married to a Difficult Man. I have no idea, it's from Sarah Edwards writing about her husband. And it's not a book of tearing down Jonathan Edwards. It actually is one of the most encouraging books about Jonathan Edwards ever written. But I saw that title and went, I can't believe my wife is getting a book already, thinking I'm so difficult. But let me contrast these two men and talk about the legacies that they have left. This is a brief history of Max Jukes. Has anybody ever heard this contrast story before? Okay, well here's Max Jukes. Max Jukes was an atheist. and he lived in New York during the 19th century. Of Max Duke's 560 known descendants. You ready for this? 7 were murderers, 60 became thieves, 67 reported having a disease, 100 were alcoholics, 50% of the women in the family became prostitutes, 300 died prematurely. There's the legacy of Max Jukes. And here's the legacy of Jonathan Edwards. 300 of his descendants were preachers, 295 were college graduates, 100 were missionaries, 100 were lawyers, 80 held public office, including one vice president of the United States, Aaron Burr, 13 U.S. senators, one state governor, three big city mayors, 75 military officers, 65 college professors, including 13 college presidents, and 56 physicians, including one dean of the medical school. There's the legacy that Jonathan Edwards left, versus the legacy that Max Hughes left. Two contrasting legacies. And I'm going to argue this morning, that the legacy that we all have right now that we are leaving will matter years from now. It absolutely will matter years from now. And it starts with us and it moves right to the very next generation in our home, our children. And it also runs parallel in that relationship we have with our wives. How many men in here are married? The relationship with our wife absolutely matters in the discipleship of our family. It absolutely matters. We're all familiar with the Great Commission in Matthew. I want to talk about a Great Commission in our home. We have a Great Commission with the descendants of our home, the generations to come. We have four children. Now, I did some math yesterday, and I am not a math guru. However, my son is the math expert. And we did some calculating on a calculator yesterday to figure the numbers out. In five generations from now, if everybody has just four children, so my sons get married, have four children, so on and so on and so on and so on. In five generations, If we, if I leave, my wife and I leave a godly legacy, much like what we read about Jonathan Edwards. Do you know how many faithful followers there will be in five generations? Anyone want to take a guess? 3,125 followers of Christ. That is part of the Great Commission. And here's a great number. in ten generations. Now, five generations was 3,000. Ten generations. You ready for this? This number will blow you away. 9,765,925 followers for Christ. You let the atheists take over the world their way, I'll take over the world my way. And that will be by leaving a godly legacy to the next generation. Now I say all that to set up the idea of the fact that we must leave a legacy, but it starts with the discipleship in our home. It must start with the discipleship in our home. We have a call, dads and husbands, to lead in our home. It is not the job of our wives to do this. It is our job. That is not to say that our wives don't have and play a phenomenal role in the home of discipling our children. But we have a role to disciple our children as well. Matter of fact, we're going to see in scripture the absolute command for us as fathers to disciple our children. And we're also going to see the absolute command we have to disciple our wives in the Word of God. To create an atmosphere or a culture in our home of discipleship, I think it must start with a vision. We must have a vision. This is what Psalm 22, verses 30 and 31 says. If posterity shall serve Him, it will be recommended of the Lord to the next generation. They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, and He has done this. We have something to say to the next generation. I have something to impart to my sons and my daughters. But the things that I impart to them aren't for my own benefit and my own fulfillment. It's for them, and my children's children, and my children's children's children, and so on and so forth. It's for them. The greatest thing I can do is go as far as I can with my walk with the Lord, but to put my sons and my daughters on my shoulders, and say, you go that much further. But it happens when we disciple them. And there are many things we will do to disciple our children, as we will see. There's a friend of ours that lives in San Antonio, Texas, and his father says this, if you don't know where you are going, any old train will get you there. I don't know if he coined that phrase or not, but he's the one that I've heard say it. If we don't know where we're going, any old train will get us there. We must be men of vision, and it must start in our home. I believe that in order to have a strong church, we must have strong families. It's not vice versa. We don't create strong families by having strong churches. If we want to affect the gospel of Christ, I think it needs to start in the home, and it will massively infiltrate and affect the church. The church will explode when we have families that love the Lord. This is what Charles Spurgeon says, a philosopher, this is in regards to vision, a philosopher has remarked that if a man knew that he had 30 years of life before him, it would be an unwise thing, it would not be, excuse me, it would not be an unwise thing to spend 20 of those in mapping out a plan of living and putting himself under rule For he would do more with the ten well-arranged years than he would with the whole thirty if he spent them at random. There is much truth in that saying, a man will do little by firing off his gun if he has not learned to take aim. That was Charles Spurgeon who said that. Can you imagine knowing you have 30 years of life and you're going to spend 20 of them planning for 10 of those years? But generally men, we haphazardly just do things. We wait for the next thing to hit and then we react to it. I don't want us to have a home of reaction. I want us to have a home where we have a purpose and a vision of where we're going. And everyone in the family knows that vision. Everyone in that family is reminded of that vision constantly. Now why did I tell you that we traveled the country for two and a half years in a motorhome? It was for this reason. It is real easy when you're playing every other night a concert, when you're absolutely exhausted, when you're driving 10 hour days only to set up for another concert, play it, be totally up, go to bed around 11 or 12 o'clock and get up at 6 in the morning, have family worship and get in the motorhome and drive again. Real easy to lose focus of what you're doing. And there were many times I had to look at my family, gather them with sleep balls in our eyes, we're all sipping on what we think is coffee, we hope. The motorhome is small, it was 29 feet, class C, with six people. It's just loads of fun. And I don't know where we are at any given day, I just hope we're on the right track and that the GPS is telling us where to go. And I have to look at my family and say, let us remember what we are doing. Let's remember who we are. Let's remember what God has called us to. And that doesn't happen only because you live in a motorhome. It needs to happen every single day in our home. Now, I have the privilege of being home all the time. And I have many men around the country that have said, well, you have it easy because you're at home with them. Well, we have to take the misnomer away. First of all, I'm not spending 24 hours with my sons by my side and my daughters by my side and my wife next to me. That doesn't happen that way. When we're driving the motorhome, I'm in the cab of the motorhome driving and everyone else is doing stuff in the back of the motorhome. We're not having, you know, let's all gather around the steering wheel and sing songs together as we drive down Interstate 80 in Nevada. where, by the way, you can see your dog run away for four days. That's not what we do. There's a gentleman in our church that goes to work every day to Roseville, up in the Dubai area where we live. Every morning, as he spends time reading, early in the morning, like 5.30 in the morning, he has a grease board smaller than this in his home. And he writes down things for his family to think about, scriptures to read. He is discipling his children and his wife, and he works 50, 60 hours away from home. So I don't buy the idea that it can only happen, Randy, because you're with them all the time. I'm not with them all the time. Although the only privacy in the motorhome is the bathroom. So we must know where we're going. We must have a vision. We must articulate that vision to our families. And I think that to have a vision, well, first of all, it must start with the Lord. We must have that relationship. We must be the kind of man that Pastor Briggs was speaking about. this morning, and last night, if you were privileged to hear him last night as well. We must be those kind of men. We're going to talk about forgiveness in a moment, but I think it's one of the keys to winning the hearts of our children. It's not only forgiving them, but asking them to forgive us. It is key. It is paramount to what we do, isn't it? This is what I want to do. I want to move to the idea that we see a legacy. We see it's important. We can see the contrasting difference between guys like Jonathan Edwards and the other legacy of thieves and robbers and prostitution. We also see that we have to have a vision in our home. But we have to understand that it starts with us. We cannot look to our wives for the vision. We cannot look to our children and say, what do we do today? I'm not talking about the mundane details of the day, who does laundry, who waters the animals and waters the lawn. I'm not talking about stuff like that, though that's part of it. I'm talking about having a vision in our home. This is where we're going, family. This is where we are headed. And this is how we're getting there. I have figured it out. That doesn't mean there aren't bumps along the way and that we don't make mistakes. But it means that we purposely have a plan of where we're going. And what that means is this. If I have sons in the home, what am I raising them to be? Good children? No. Godly men. We must get the notion out of our head that our job as parents is to raise godly children. It is not our job. Biblically, it isn't our role. Our biblical role is to raise godly men and godly women. That's our role when it comes to being fathers. Because they're not going to stay children. When our sons turned 12 years old, we decided that we would have kind of the Christian bar mitzvah, if you will, and I made men out of them. I took them out to dinner at Cattleman's. We got steaks and big mug root beers and we got to eat. I mean, we ate everything. And then we ran like four miles when we were done. No, we didn't do that. We couldn't. We couldn't run. We went to a park and I plugged in a tape by R.C. Sproul Jr. on manhood. I've now changed that, by the way, and you need to get this. You can get it right off GraceTU website. John MacArthur has the very best message on biblical manhood I have ever heard, and I've heard many of them. And it's called being a man of fortitude. And you must get it. And you must listen to it time and time again, and you must listen to it with your sons. And if your sons are four, that's the perfect time to start. If they're three, that's the perfect time to start. You don't have to wait for them to be 12 or 15 years old to figure this out. They must start from the moment they come out of the womb, I'm going to teach my sons to be men. And as soon as our daughters come out of the womb, or in our case, come to us via adoption, I want to teach them to be godly, virtuous women that love the Lord. But get that message from John MacArthur, Man of Fortune. It is the best. My sons and I have listened to it several times on the road. And it is worth every single time I listen to it. It's about an hour and a half long. And it's worth it. So if we're a man that have a vision, we're men that understand the legacy we leave, there are things we must do. And for us as men, Here is one of the most important things, and I alluded to it a minute ago, and that is we must be readers. We must be readers. This is what C.S. Lewis says. You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. That's what C.S. Lewis said. You can never get a cup of tea big enough and a book long enough to suit me. I wish I was that kind of a reader. I wish that I was a voracious reader, that I longed every moment that I had, any quiet moment, that what I wanted to do was pick a book up. That's what I wish my life was like. But it's not always. This is what Spurgeon says. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own. Only Spurgeon can get away with those things. Probably because he's dead. No, he said those things when he was alive. Here's some books that I have read. E.M. Bounds on prayer. I went through this with another man. up in Reading. We met once a week in the morning with coffee at his office. And by the way, if you're going to meet with men, don't meet them at a restaurant. It's really a lame place to meet. There's no privacy, and you have a waitress that is, with good intentions, bugging you most of the time. More coffee, more coffee. Just meet someplace else. And if you like coffee, get coffee. Don't get church coffee, by the way. It's a universal bad thing, church coffee. We've decided even at our church that church is where coffee goes to die. And that's. Here's a great book, I'm going to highlight just a few of these. It's called The Family Worship Books by Terry Johnson. I told you I have a six and a four year old girl, girls. We're on question 33 of the shorter catechism, Westminster catechism. And I want to tell you at four and six, my daughters memorized all of the questions to this point and answers. Do they know how to apply all of them at four and six? No. But the goal right now is to get them to hide it in their heart. And then to hopefully apply it one day. This is a great book. It also gives some great ideas on how to have family worship. A lot of people call it devotions. I don't care really what you call it. But there must be something. And I should have said this at the beginning. I am not setting myself up that we have figured this out. My wife and I have talked constantly about how we fail at trying to be parents, at trying to be husbands and wives. We don't succeed all the time. But by God's grace, I do have a vision in my home. By God's grace, I am working it out on a daily basis to try to implement that in our home. We have family worship twice. We have it in the morning. We've gone through morning and evening by Spurgeon. We've read those and then we talk about it. It's a time where we talk more theology in our home, more doctrine. We focus it mostly on my sons, who at 20 and 18 now mostly talk doctrine and theology to me and I listen. In the morning, We do it mostly focused on the girls. I do this with them. We're memorizing a verse about every other week. We try to memorize one on the A, Bs, Cs. A verse that starts with A and one that starts with B. Just fun things. We sing a lot of the hymns. I am a firm believer that we should not let the hymns die. And there are enough really bad choruses out there in the world, there are some great hymns of our faith, that we can't let the next generation and the next generation after that forget. And we must sing them. So we sing them. And we're fortunate, we're a bluegrass family, so we sing all the time for a living. So it sounds like bluegrass music in our home. One of the best books I've ever written, or written, I wish I had written this. Let me reverse that on the tape. Bodie Bauckham wouldn't appreciate that. Familiar with Bodie Bauckham? Family Driven Faith. Anybody ever read this? This is a must read. You must read this book. It's really simple. And by the way, every book I recommend, they're really simple reads. I love that. I love picking up books that are about this thick. They're perfect for me because I can read them in about six months. I can read them a little faster than that. I read this for my relationship with my wife. The Exemplary Husband by Stuart Scott. It was forwarded by John MacArthur. It's a great, great, great book. He's written a little pamphlet called The Pride of Humility. Another great book. I just want to highlight two others real quick. One is, this is a book that we've started, we've tried to plow through it, and it's hard to read, but it's worth it, by William Bradford. Anybody familiar with William Bradford? The Pilgrims? Okay, we need to become better readers in here. William Bradford wrote The Plymouth Plantation. If you've gone through public school, you've probably heard a lie about the pilgrims. This is the truth. It was written by the man that was there. It's worth reading. Read this and you'll celebrate Thanksgiving differently. You really will. And then this one, Thoughts for Young Men by J.C. Ryle, one of my favorite authors. This is a great book if you are a dad to read with your sons. If you're a grandfather, read it with your grandchildren. It is irreplaceable and it can be read over and over and over again. We must be men that read. We must be men that read so that we know the thoughts of other men. There are great men that have gone before us. There are great men that have gone before us. You read anything... I haven't read anything by Spurgeon that I haven't loved. Just read his autobiography. And if you're not a great reader, at least get it on tape. We drive a lot, so it's easy for us to listen to books on tape. But being a reader. And then this, this is the second thing that we must be. We must be a student of the Word. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. If you have a Bible and you want to turn there, you can. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is a very familiar passage. Most of us may even know it. But it says this, all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work. That's why we study the Word, so that we are equipped. We talk about all kinds of theology and doctrine in our home. And I will tell you this, that theology and doctrine absolutely matters in our lives. Good theology and good doctrine matters in our lives. The old saying, and I've heard this time and time again, what has nothing to do with my salvation, I don't want to know anything about it. That's a cop out, first of all. That's the wimpiest excuse, lamest excuse I've ever heard. We must know doctrine. We must know the doctrine of sanctification. We must know the doctrine of holiness, God's holiness, of forgiveness. We must understand, as Pastor Briggs was speaking about, the church. And guess what? We must impart that to the next generation. I don't want my sons to grow up and go, I have no idea what sanctification is, because if it doesn't have anything to do with my salvation, I don't really care. Well, what we heard in there this morning was good theology and good doctrine about the gospel. We must speak that way that you just heard in there. We must speak that way to our children. We must do that. We must. Now I'm going to move to the last part. I'm going to have a question and answer time if you have any at the end. Not that I'm a fount of wisdom, but I can tell you what I've learned in 20 years of being a dad and 23 years of being a husband, which is about this much. Some of you are older than I am, I'm 47. 48, am I 48? Yeah, I'd like to be 47 actually, I'm 44. This is again why I brought my son, he keeps me on track. We're going to move into the hardest part of discipling. And that's actually implementing it into our family, to both our children and our wives. And I'm going to say some things that may disturb you. I love Paul Washer and he has been quoted to say, I've been invited many places once. So Phil, if you need to, you can just say, and I'll just keep going. I don't think I'm going to say things that will offend you, but I am going to say some tough things that I have grappled with. These are tough things. Some of them. We must create a culture in our home. We live in a crooked and depraved generation, Paul says, but we must create a culture in our home that is different from the world. but it must not stay there. We must disciple our family, train our children, so that the culture that is in the home can infiltrate the world for the Gospel of Christ. So we must start with our children. Deuteronomy 6, verses 4-9. Many of us are familiar with that passage. It's the Shema. But our job, if you neglect this, You have sinned, but you are forgiven if we ask. But we must do this. We don't have a choice. This isn't an option. This isn't if you feel like it. This is a direct command from God that when your children rise up, when they walk alongside the road, when they lie down, you teach them the Word of God. Sons and daughters, I want you to know what the Word says about everything. I want you to know the law of God. I want you to know the grace and mercy of Christ. I want you to know the epistles. I want you to know what the great ending will be like. I want you to know revelation. I want you to know these things. I'm going to test you on these things. I'm going to quiz you on these things. We're going to speak about these things all the time. I had the privilege, as a landscape contractor, having my sons by my side. We homeschooled them. They were by my side. You know what we talked about in the car? Theology, doctrine, when they were 12 years old. I wanted them to know the doctrine of sanctification. This is what sanctification is. This is what it means. The doctrines of grace. I want you to understand the doctrines of grace. I want you to know Calvinism, the theology of Calvinism. I also want you to know what Arminianism is. And the lie of that. And you can talk to me about that afterwards if you choose to. But I want you to know the differences. I want you to know the heresies in the church. People that are espousing the wrong things. I want you to know the truth of God's Word. I want you to have wisdom. And my sons, more than anything else, I want your heart. Because if I have your heart, then I have you. And sons, I want you to have my heart. Because if you have my heart, you have me. And we will radically and marvelously be used by God. Sometimes in real small ways, sometimes in great ways. But all for the glory of God. We must disciple our children. Now let me say this about discipling them. My daughters are four and six years old. And here's where it gets a little tougher. One of the things that I'm teaching them is to be women of virtue. A lot of times, and I've heard this, I was a youth pastor for 12 years, and I heard this from dads time and time again, if my daughter just does not get pregnant and gets about a B average, I will feel like I'm a successful dad. That's the lowest bar you could create for your daughter. The lowest bar. Frankly, I could care less if my daughters get A's, B's, C's, or D's. Somewhere I do. But what I care about more than anything is they love their God. And that they will obey Him. And this, that they will fear God more than they fear man. Because we live in a generation where even Christians walk around and they fear man more than they fear God. And that is not what we are to teach our children. That is not what we are to teach them. And so one of the things that I teach my daughters at four and six is this. Modesty. I want you to be modest. And modesty in the Christian church has been thrown out the window. It has been thrown out the window. There's a pamphlet here and it's on this this card that you can take. It's called Christian Modesty. The public undressing of America. I think it's massively important. You know, if a police officer shows up and he's dressed like a police officer, he's got his uniform on. What do you expect him to act like? A police officer. Fireman shows up to take care of the fire. He's dressed in his fire uniform. You expect him to act like a fireman. If our daughters are dressed like harlots, what do you expect them to act like? I preached this one time in my church that I was in in Reading, and I said this to the husbands, and I got more dirty looks from the wives. I said, husbands, I'm frankly tired of seeing more of your wife than I want to. And I mean that. If we're going to teach our daughters that you can dress and look and act like the world, don't expect anything other than that from them. I was a high school pastor. I was on the high school campuses up in Redding. I saw these young men just all over their girlfriends. I came over, I was a wrestling coach and wrestled in high school in my freshman year at college at Sac State. I came up to this young man and I said, I want you to know something. I'm a wrestling coach and I'm going to take you out if you don't take your hands off that girl because she was in my youth group. I said, if her father knew you were this way, he'd probably kill you. Now, if the principal knew I stood there on campus, I'd probably got kicked off. The dad came up to me. Four days later on Sunday night service, and I went, oh no, here it comes. He goes, I want to talk to you. I went, oh, I'm going to die. He shook my hand in tears and said, thank you. That's the greatest thing. My daughter has sung your praises for the last three days. And he said, I wish more than anything else that I had thought of that before you did. I want my daughters at four and six to understand modesty. I want them to understand that. I want them to know what it's like when you show your cleavage to men what they think. And they think wrongly of you, daughter, and I don't want them to think that way of you. I don't want them to think that way of your mother. Scripture says that that woman is mine, speaking of my wife. She's mine. She is hands-off to everybody else. And I do not want my wife showing more than she should show to anybody else. So guess what I do? I have instructed my wife on what I believe modesty is, and then she has been given all the liberty within that. And no, my wife does not wear denim dresses, jumpsuits, and Birkenstocks, and braider hair, and it's down to this long. My wife wears very contemporary looking clothes. My wife's a knockout. Says me. But she can be modest. And we want our daughters to be modest. And frankly, our sons need to be modest. If your son wears his pants down to here and his underwear hangs out, you need to take that boy out to the woodshed. And you need to tell him to be a man. Because I'll tell you right now, when I was a landscape contractor, I would have never hired them. Because I don't need some gang-looking guy coming and scaring all my clients. Most of my clients were 85 years old. I didn't need them locking the door. The landscaper is here. Get the guns. We'll just wait. I don't want them to do that. So I think it's wrong that we allow our children to dress immodestly. I think it's wrong. And I think it's wrong as husbands when we allow our wives to dress immodestly. Well, that didn't get the reaction I thought it would get, so I am happy, so I will just move right on. Ephesians 5, 26. If we're going to disciple our children, we must also be willing to disciple our wives. Ephesians 5, 26 says that we are washing over our wives with the Word of God. It is our job as husbands to teach our wives the Word of God. That doesn't mean they don't come to church and sit in the worship service and hear it. It doesn't mean that older women don't teach younger women. Absolutely, those things happen. But it is our job as well. And we must take that job seriously. If we're going to create a culture in our home where we are discipling our children and our wives, we must do that. We must disciple them. I want to open up the Word, honey. And we're going to read it together. And then I'm going to tell you what it says. That doesn't mean my wife doesn't have opinions, doesn't have comments, doesn't have questions, doesn't mean I don't have questions. It doesn't mean there are times I don't say, I don't know. But that's not the point. The point isn't to be a PhD in theology. The point is that I open up the word and I say, oh, it says this. And therefore, that's who we will be in our home. Why? It says that you're to be this. Therefore, that's what you should be. Let's pray to that end. Oh, honey, it says I'm to be this. Let's pray to that end. But we must disciple our wives. We must. I talked about family worship. I alluded to this book. But teaching our family the Word of God, it's more than just opening up the Word. It's allowing our children to see us at 6 in the morning or 5 in the morning, like that other man I was talking about at our church. When they wake up and they see us out, wherever we are, wherever we find ourselves, with the Word of God open, or we're in prayer, and we're soaking in the Word, and we're asking God to teach us from His Word, we're delighting in His promises. And that happens throughout the day, and our children and our wives see us delight in the Word of God. When they see us, when something happens, we say, but the Word of God says. Therefore, that's what we do. There is already a standard for us. We don't have to make this up. We don't have to find some ethereal thought out there. We just know what the Word of God says, and we adhere to it, and that's part of the vision that we create in our home, that we bring our family around the Word of God, and we say, this is what matters the most. Nothing else matters. This is it. This is our standard. It speaks to everything. It speaks to everything. In 1 Timothy 2.9, it speaks of modesty. In Ephesians 5.26, it says that we wash our wives over with the Word of God. In Deuteronomy 6, it says that we are to teach our children. So you see, the Word of God does speak to these things we're talking about this morning. We must be willing to give direction in our home. I wish, more than anything else, that I had a man in my life that had older children, married off sons, that have gone before me so that I could go to them and say, please, tell me how to do it. I'm forging on my own here. There isn't this plethora of men out there. I don't know them. They're out there, I'm sure, but I don't know where they are. I have met some, but clear across the country in our travels. I wish they were here. I want to know what to do. How do I launch my sons into the things that they're going to do for the glory of God? Now, we have figured some of it out, but you can ask my son afterwards. Most of it is a hit and miss. Most of it is like, well, we're guessing here. We hope this is right. We're going off examples of things we've read. So we have gone to the library and say, what have other men done? What did other men do? How did they do it? How did David Farragut, at 12 years old, He tapped in a ship. I wonder what it was like in his home for 12 years. I wonder what his home was like. I wonder if his dad looked at him and said, hey, it's Saturday, sleep in. Guess what? The new Wii game is out and we're going to go spend the night at the electronics store's parking lot with a tent. Won't that be really adventurous? And then we're going to buy it so we can bring it home and play it. And so when you're 23 years old, you're still not married, and you're playing Wii, and you wonder why you're not attractive to any girl? Because you're a perpetual adolescence. Let me tell you this about if you're a young man in here, and you're not married. How many are in here? Not married young men? Okay. Let me tell you something. Girls want godly, studly men that have never heard of we. I'm totally telling you the truth. They could care less what your high score is, or how great your adventure to the Rubicon was. They could care less about that. Now there may be some, but they're not worth it. There are girls out here, and your dad should be teaching you this, there are girls out there that are worthy of being married. They love their God. They will be your helpmate forever. And they want to see you act like a man. We're going to talk about that in a minute, what a man looks like. And part of it is going to the Rubicon and conquering it. Part of it is that. But part of it is, as Pastor Dave speaks about often at our church, about the Word of God oozing out of our pores and out of the things that we talk about. Let me say this without trying to embarrass my son. But there is no greater turn on to my wife than when I speak the Word of God. And when I speak of godly things. And when I ask her how her day is, and I care. That's discipling my wife. That's caring for her. When I sit down with my sons and say, tell me what God is doing. When I look at my daughters and I pick them up and I say, this is what God thinks, Anna. And my Anna is autistic, which means she's smarter than the rest of us. She just doesn't know how to apply it all. I spoke about getting and keeping our children's hearts. We must be willing to ask them to forgive us. You know what time I'm supposed to be done? Now. Just don't say now. Okay, good. I'll be done before that. We must be willing to give them our heart, and it starts by asking them to forgive us. When we wrong them, I must look at them and say, would you please forgive me? And you can ask my son. He will tell you I have done that. And you can ask my son, there have been times my heart has been hardened and stubborn and I haven't done it readily. You can ask him that too. So you see, I don't stand up here as the perfect man. I stand up here as a man like you. I'm trying to work it out. I'm trying to figure it out. Some things I've figured out. Some things we're implementing in our home. And there are things I still want to implement in my home. And I get to start over again with a four and a two-year-old, or a six and a four-year-old. I don't do age as well today, do I? Let me talk about our sons and our daughters as we close here. And I wrote this down as an extra as Pastor Briggs was speaking. There isn't a man in here that should not have a filter on his computer. It is dangerous. I've counseled too many men who have stumbled in this area. I have one on my iPhone. I'm not promoting one over another, but I do have one on my iPhone. It's a third party. If you think that iPhones can't accept one, they can. It's called K9 Browser. It's slower than Safari, and it's a hassle to work with, and it's a drag, but guess what? I've never seen something on here that I shouldn't see. Never. My computers have them at home too. And my sons do. I won't allow otherwise. I won't go to places that don't have filters and use their computers. I just won't. I don't need to. That's a little extra bonus. Making men out of our sons. We need to teach our men to conquer things. Our young men, they must conquer things. They must. When was the last time you conquered anything? And I'm not talking about climbing Mount Everest. Although, you could. That would be a great thing to say you've conquered. But what about a sin in your life that you were able to conquer by the grace of God? Those are the things we must teach our sons to do. Conquer things, sons. I want you to strap a backpack on. I want you to climb a mountain. I want you to ascend down the other side and I want you to live on the land for four weeks. Something like that. We must conquer something. But we must teach ourselves to do that. We have feminized our men today in society. If you go into Starbucks and you look at the pictures on the wall of the men, they are neutral now. They don't look like men anymore. They look like men, women, women, men thing. I don't really know. I don't get it. It's wrong. It is wrong. And we have bought it hook, line, and sinker and we don't care anymore. We must care. We must care so much. Not that we go protest Starbucks. I could care less if you do that. But we must go home. And we must bring manhood to our sons. And say, you must be a man. We've talked in our home what happens when a bad guy shows up in our home. If a bad guy comes in our home, there are three men that that guy deals with. But there are three men that he deals with. Now I'm not putting up a front that we're superheroes. We're not. But we have it in our mind that there are three ladies in our home that must be protected. That's the kind of men we must be. But we also must be the kind of men that are tender-hearted to our children, to our wives, to our next-door neighbors, to the people in our church. We must be the first people that weep with those who weep. We must be the first ones that forgive in our home. If you're not doing it, don't expect your family to. Because they're following our lead. I made a statement last week in... I preached last Sunday at our church. And I made a comment that there isn't a Christian woman on this planet that does not want to be led. She may think she's a feminist, but she's not. She really wants to be led. And she wants to be led by a godly man. We must teach our sons to cast vision. We must teach our sons to manage money well. If you're in debt, get out of debt. Scripture says that debt is a curse and children are a blessing. Why don't you jettison the curse and have more blessings? And if you can't have them via your wife, talk to Phil and I. You can adopt children. We must teach our sons to work hard, to be faithful workers, to work with their hands. You know what? When my sons were a little older, instead of giving them games and toys for Christmas and birthdays, I gave them tools. I wanted them to create their own tool chests. So that when they got married one day, they were able to save their home money by doing tasks on their own. That's part of discipling our children. And the great thing was, I bought them really good tools, and when mine broke, I used theirs. I think I owe my son about $200 in tools. We must teach our sons to suffer hardship. So the best way to do it is to buy a 29 foot motor home and drive around the country for two and a half years. We must prepare our daughters. I'm going to move to daughters and then be done. We must prepare our daughters for marriage. Titus 2 speaks to that. We must teach them to love their wives or to love their husbands. And I know the older women do this. At least put them in front of older women and guess who they have in their home? A mom. They must learn to be managers of their home. They must learn to speak well of their husbands and their children. Can you imagine being the husband of the Proverbs 31 woman and you sit at the gate with honor because of your wife? And wouldn't you want that to be imparted to your daughters? We must teach our daughters to forgive like we teach our sons. We must teach them to have mercy. And lastly, this. I think it is vitally important that in the process of discipling our homes, that more than anything else, as I alluded to at the beginning, it starts with our own hearts. It says, I love my God. And I will now translate that to my children and to my wife. And they will know of my God because of the things I speak about. That the words of my mouth, that the meditation of my heart would be pleasing to my God, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen? Well, I don't know if there's two minutes left or not. Five more minutes. Are there any questions about things you've heard or any questions you have? If you don't, that's fine, too. You can come and look at these books. Please don't take them because my wife will be mad and she'll hunt you down. Yeah. One question. Only one question. Universal, somewhat tongue in cheek advice or nearly universal is marrying up. And then, when you do, I wonder if you would speak a little bit about being a leader of a woman who is more capable, or who seems more capable in intellect and household management. understanding the scriptures and all of these things and spiritual maturity in some ways. How many men married up? Do you know what he means by that? How many of you men that are married didn't raise your hand? We want to get a picture of you and send that to your wife. Your husband said if you married down. My wife is more capable of doing the pastoral role than I am in many respects. But my wife understands two things. One, it is my job, not hers. And two, that she has her own will. Now, in respect to marrying a more intellectual woman that's more astute maybe in the scriptures and manages the house and household, you know, a lot of those things you want her to do. I want my wife to be capable of managing our home. She is a stay-at-home mom. I want her to be capable of that. I've given her that jurisdiction. That is your jurisdiction. You run it. I gleaned from my wife's understanding of scripture, part of this message, I ran by my wife. I mean, I ran all of it by her. I said, I'm thinking this, I'm thinking this, what do you think? She goes, well here's a quote, have you thought about it? Oh yeah, I remember that quote, I read that. Oh here's this, and I was asking her, who said? And I said, now what do you think of this scripture? Does it tie in? So my wife is brilliant when it comes to that stuff. So, maybe the term marrying up isn't the best term, but marrying a wife that's capable in so many things is only going to be an ask up to you. Now, I will speak about the wife for a second. She must understand her parameters and her role. That's where the leadership comes. And it doesn't come by dictating to her. It comes by gently carefully, and as John MacArthur says, like a surgeon with a scalpel, precision, working with your wife, encouraging your wife, praying for your wife, that she would be the godly woman that God has called her to be. My wife was 19 when we married. I was 24. She's learned a lot of things in 22 years. She's matured in a lot of areas. I hope I have in many areas too. I don't know if that totally answers your question. Does that help at all? Somebody else have a... You were talking about how you speak theology for a while. I find it easier, that's not a good thing, I find it easier to just go talk intellectually about theology, but not have my wife support me, you know? Not that I'm an old friend, it's easier to discuss rather than actually apply that and talk about how does that go to affect our faith and so on and so forth, you know? Does that make sense? I guess to say anything about how we can help achieve our life's purpose as opposed to just keeping it on that surface level, discussing God and yet lowering it. I think maybe some of the older men here have a good input on that as well. I think part of, and one of the keys to winning your wife's heart, regardless if it's theology or whatever, is having mercy, patience, and kindness towards her. When my wife feels a certain way about something, and I look at it logically, let's say, and go, it's just black and white, oh no, but it's this, and oh, this, and she can get worked up at times. I can either look at her and go, oh, you just need to back off and knock it off. That's ridiculous. Well, what would that do? That does not grab my wife's heart and pull it in. She wants to take that Glock that we own in the home and go, yeah, well, why not? So what I need to do is I need to have a lot of compassion, understanding, patience with her. And not look at her and beat her down for what she thinks, or anything that I tell her and she doesn't like. It's to say, and it's not psychologically based, where I go, let's figure this out. Why are you thinking this? What was your childhood like? It's not that at all. It's looking at them saying, Are you not understanding what I'm saying? How can I be more clear to help you understand? How can I help you understand that theology does matter in our lives? But it's going to happen when the theology matters in your life. When the doctrine matters in your life. And when you apply it, that will matter to her. She will then desire that of you. Scripture says in Genesis 3 that the wife will desire to rule over you. Her desire will want to be the rule over you. But that's the battle of the sea of the serpent, the sea of the woman. There's always going to be that battle. It's our job not to say, oh yeah, well I'm just going to flip it like a wrestling move. It's I'm going to slowly, patiently, and gently work with you so you understand whatever the topic is or the issue is we're dealing with. I don't know if that helps. Has any other men got a better answer than that? OK. You're like, no, we are touching out with a 10 foot pole. Listening to exactly what you have to listen and you have to care. Yeah. Not just listen like, oh, yeah, sure. I hear what you're saying. You have to care about what they're saying. You don't agree with it. I mean, I've been married 24 years. Yeah. Yeah. He's one of them. So he's anything else? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. You can get it. Well, you can Google it, of course. Just put Jonathan Edwards and Max. He'll he'll he'll come up. But it's in Sarah Edwards book. Married marriage to a difficult man from Sarah Edwards about Jonathan Edwards. That's where that's where we originally got it. OK. My son said it's time. So I'll take one last question. If not, please come and look at these books. And here's I want to highlight this, too, because you're leaving. This is called the art of self-discipline. If you have no self-discipline in your life, take this entire talk and throw it out. Because it takes self-discipline. John MacArthur's message on this is great. It's phenomenal. It's a two CD, two or three CD, I think it's a two CD series. It's worth listening to. Are you familiar to listening to John MacArthur? Have you got on his website? I kind of figured it would be in the search here. Wonderful resources. Wonderful resources. And then lastly this. Here's a doctrine. It's a great thing. It's called Amazing Grace. It's about the history and theology of Calvinism. You want to go through this with your family. We're going to possibly go through it on our Sunday evening service maybe in a couple months from now. It's a great DVD series. It's got great men on it. Small, Nettles, Dr. George Grant, D. James Kennedy, men like that. Thank you for hearing me and respecting my opinions. At least you're keeping them to yourself. I appreciate that. Come and look at this stuff if you like and grab one of these. This is all of these resources. It's in a bookmark. You can put it in a book that you're going to start reading as soon as you get home. Thanks.