When Zerubbabel was leading the people of God to rebuild the temple after the return of the remnant from the Babylonian exile, he and they needed encouragement. The Lord spoke to the people: "Who despises the day of small things? Men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel" (Zech. 4:10).

The temple that the remnant were building was a faint shadow of the glorious temple of Solomon that had been destroyed, and some of the people were discouraged that their best efforts could accomplish relatively little. Through his rhetorical question—Who despises the day of small things?—the Lord was assuring Zerubbabel and the people that with his added blessing, their efforts to rebuild could accomplish much. Indeed, the contemporary prophet Haggai reported the Lord’s assessment of this very temple: "‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house’, says the Lord Almighty" (Hag. 2:9). This prediction was only fulfilled hundreds of years later as the Messiah himself appeared in a later version of this temple.

Modern day patriarchs will, no doubt, be tempted to discouragement as they apply themselves to their rebuilding project. Rebuilding families takes time; rebuilding churches, nations, and civilizations takes even longer. Though some fruit will be evident in the short term, most of the fruit of our labors will not be seen for a long time. It is essential that we, too, do not despise the day of small things, that we develop a long-range vision for our work.

Great projects always have small beginnings. Consider the tiny ship Mayflower with its 102 passengers, half of whom were dead after that first winter at Plymouth. Concerning them William Bradford wrote (in Of Plymouth Plantation):

Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations, or at least making some ways toward it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work. . . .

Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.

The patriarchs who founded this great nation had a long-range vision. They did what they could, satisfied that their great God could multiply their efforts in time. The fact that we are here today, dealing with the subjects we are, is living proof that the faith of the pilgrims was not misplaced. We are their heirs—and we must share their vision.

Our calling is not just to fix our families until our children are grown. We should not just be looking for Band-aids and temporary cures. We must aim for nothing less than the establishment of a Christian family dynasty. Our aim should be nothing less than the flowering of Christian civilization, the fruit (in the words of Bradford) of the continued propagation and advancement of the gospel and kingdom of Christ.

Fathers and families have always been central in God’s long-term plan to advance his kingdom. Listen to the very last sentence of Old Testament revelation, as Malachi writes of the prophet whom the Lord would send prior to the Messiah: "He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse" (4:6). To avoid God’s curse, the people of God would have to be characterized by fathers and children having their hearts turned toward each other.

Listen now to the similar words of the angel Gabriel as he announces the opening of the New Testament era to the priest Zecariah, the man who would become the father of John the Forerunner of Jesus: "And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Luke 1:17). God’s plan for John was that he would prepare a people for the Lord, a people who would respond to Jesus’ message and follow him, a people the Lord could use to advance his gospel and kingdom. And how were such a people described?—again, a heart bond between fathers and their children.

The most important moment in history is one that is characterized by men being good fathers! Why is this so critical to God’s plan? Why is this turning of a father’s heart to his children so essential to God’s purposes for history?

Clearly it is because the family is the essential building block in this world. Remember, "the home rules the nation." The home rules the world and world history. When God wants to do something big, he gets hold of families—and that means getting hold of fathers. The most effective way for the Savior to spread his kingdom was to get hold of the institution of the family, and the critical dynamic of family life is a fathers relationship with his children (the wife being viewed alongside her husband in this role).

Both passages refer to the hearts of fathers being turned to their children. We are tempted to read this expression with a subjective, sentimental slant (the fruit of the psychological perspective), as if the Lord were in these verses providing an early version of the bumper sticker that asks Dads, "Have you hugged your kids today?" God wants men to be affectionate with his children, but he wants much more. (After all, women are supposed to be affectionate, too.)

God wants men to be men, to turn their hearts to their children in peculiarly masculine ways, to turn their hearts in expressions of leadership, provision, and protection. And then as these children grow up and have families of their own they can repeat the process for the next generation. And so on. Listen to the long-range vision of Psalm 78:4-7:

We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.

The reason God turns the hearts of fathers to their children is so that his gospel and kingdom can be perpetuated and multiplied on the earth. God’s plan is for each man to become the patriarch of a Christian clan, to have generation after generation of descendants who will follow him as he follows the Lord.

To do this, men will need to take on two roles in their homes that they are neglecting today. First, they must become resident historians, reminding their families of the mighty works of God known as history, his-story. To give one relevant example: Part of the reason we are losing our nation is that we have literally forgotten as a people the biblical principles upon which our form of government is based and the providential hand of God in establishing this nation.

Second, men must become resident theologians in their homes. They must understand Bible content and doctrine and teach these to their wives and children. What would happen in most homes if women obeyed the admonition of 1 Corinthians 14:35 and actually "asked their own husbands at home" when they had theological and biblical questions? Real men read history and study doctrine. Leaders are readers. And they raise children to be the same. Home-based historians and theologians create generations of world-changers.

The Lord has graciously given me six children. If each of them has six, I will have 36 grandchildren. If each of them has six, I will have 216 great-grandchildren. If each of them has six, I will have 1,296 great-great grandchildren. Imagine, in four short generations I could be the patriarch of about 1,300 Christian families.

We must see our work to rebuild our families as laying the foundation for a long-term process of growth. We cannot hurry the good fruit the Spirit will bring. The best will come after we are gone. We must be willing to be stepping stones to others who will accomplish more, to light the first candle of thousands. As the psalmist states it: "Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed" (Ps. 112:1,2)

You can see by now how Christian civilization, the cultural fruit of the kingdom of God in history, can be rebuilt. It will not happen tomorrow, nor next decade. But if we are faithful, and we train our children to be faithful, and we pass on the vision of patriarchy to our sons and daughters, then by God’s grace our great-grandchildren may yet live in a blessed land, a land that even exceeds the godly achievements of the generations of our pilgrim and Puritan founders.

If the rebuilding of families and the civilization that rests on them is to succeed, it must be done God’s way. We must use his tools and follow his blueprints. As the people rejoiced to see the plumb line in the hand of their leader, so our generation of Christians will rejoice when they see the plumb line of Scripture in the hands of Christian family men.

Our families do not need therapy, they need righteousness; they do not need new ideas, they need wisdom. That, by the way, was the second work of John. Besides turning the fathers’ hearts to their children, he turned "the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous" (Luke 1:17).

To be a patriarch means to repent of disobedience and return to God’s Word for direction on how to be a man and lead a family. Let the plumb line judge you. Repent. Acknowledge to God and your family your failure to follow God’s plan for your home. Then commit yourself to doing it God’s way from now on. Turning to your children and developing a multi-generational vision will do no good unless you also turn to the wisdom of the righteous revealed in the Bible.

One of the marks of a deep work of God is when men and women are willing to make great sacrifices to conform their lives to God’s ways. That is what is so exciting about the home education movement. But we must move way beyond merely keeping our children out of the Canaanite schools. We must use the Bible to develop a whole new pattern of family life. That is what we are here to talk about today.

By God’s grace, we are living at a turning point in history. There is electricity in the cultural air today as everyone senses the momentous changes in which we all seem to be caught up. Nations are transformed and national borders become less important. Technology opens vast new windows of opportunity even as it complicates man's stewardship of the planet. Economies overheat and approach the exploding point as individuals find wealth both easier to gain and easier to lose. Old standards of morality collapse into the ruin of immorality. Men and women wander about searching for their identities, wondering why their families are crumbling around them.

When the need is greatest, the opportunity for God to work is also greatest. In the fullness of time God sent his Son into a lost world and into a generation of his own people who had forgotten him. But he prepared a remnant that he could use, a remnant marked by fathers taking God’s Word in hand and leading their families. Today, too, God is raising up a remnant, a people he can use to spread his kingdom once again. The need is great, but the opportunities are greater.

On the human level, everything depends on you and me. The future course of world hinges on what men do in their families. Will you submit wholly to your Master, the Lord Jesus? Will you submit to authority in your life, especially that of the local church? Will you yield your will for the welfare of your wife and children? Will you study God the Father to learn what it means to be a patriarch? Will you commit yourself to lead your family, to provide for them and protect them, not only physically but spiritually, as well? Will you accept the stark fact of your responsibility for all that happens in your home? Will you, in short, be a man?

We still need to hear and obey Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians: "Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong" (1 Cor. 16:13). Let us commit ourselves today to act like men. Not like the men of our day who are preoccupied with money, with pleasure, with human power, with selfish and merely temporal concerns. Let us act like men of God. And let us not attempt to be strong in our own strength. Rather let us remember that "I can do all things through [Christ Jesus] who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13).

Let us respond to the challenge offered in William Merrill’s great hymn:

Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things;
Give heart and soul and mind and strength
To serve the King of kings.

Will you commit yourself with me to give everything you’ve got to serve the King, and to serve him by acting like a man? Let’s commit ourselves together to return to our God, to return to his Word, to return to our wives and children, to return to patriarchy. Then the curse that we see spreading over our land may yet be removed and ours may become a generation blessed by the Lord, and one which will then become a blessing to others.