Kuyper fought for a national system of free schools for the entirety of his public life. He firmly believed that free schools were the best way to serve all parents, not just Christian parents because “it was best for all children to experience a unity of world view and values between school and home” (361). In 1917, his Antirevolutionary Party won a great victory. “As a culmination of these efforts, the Dutch constitution was amended to guarantee this right, and in 1920, the year Kuyper died, a new education bill was passed which put that amendment into practice” (xii). Although Kuyper made three substantial, albeit pragmatic, compromises to his ideal, he believed they were ultimately successful since compromise is always necessary when working in an imperfect political system. Nevertheless, while their own struggle culminated in a victory for free schools, Kuyper also recognized that the “struggle of the spirits” behind the struggle of the schools was far from over. 

Well-known for the doctrine of “sphere sovereignty, ” Abraham Kuyper once famously declared: “no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”[1] Kuyper is also notable for delivering the 1898 Stone Lectures at Princeton’s Theological Seminary in which he offered a profound and lasting treatment of Calvinism which remains relevant to us who are living in the postmodern era. But it is his significant work of educational reform in the Netherlands spanning nearly fifty years (1869-1917) that features in On Education.
On Education is a substantive anthology of Kuyper’s thoughts on Christian education, published as part of a twelve volume series of Kuyper’s works, produced by the Abraham Kuyper Translation Society, the Acton Institute, and Kuyper College. And it is precisely because of Kuyper’s “unique gifts, experiences, and writings” on Christianity and education that On Education is more than just a helpful resource; it is a uniquely prescient guide for everyone concerned with the education crisis plaguing twenty-first century North America (vii).
The volume is divided into four parts, tracing Kuyper’s involvement with the Netherlands’ seventy-year political battle over parents’ rights to choose schools representative of their religious convictions. Part One introduces the beginnings of the struggle: in 1868, the Society for the Common Good issued a manifesto stating what it perceived was a need to protect its gains of having achieved “the religious neutrality of the public school;” Kuyper responded that his party was not attempting to take back the Society’s perceived gains but, instead, to “make it possible for more children to receive the religious education desired by their parents” (9). This section further treats Kuyper’s grave concern about Dutch public schools “teaching the immortality of the soul,” something he contends is not “safe in the hands of the state school teachers” (22).
Part Two consists of four chapters dedicated to Kuyper’s antirevolutionary vision of sphere sovereignty which, when properly applied, would protect Christian schools from the revolutionary spirit of “false mingling,” whereby the state “sought to mix together precisely what God had separated” (53). Kuyper argued that it is only by properly distinguishing between the boundaries and bonds ordained by God that Christians can keep their schools from falling prey to the state and resist those secularists who would use the public trough to take away their freedom to preach Christ.
Part Three consists of six chapters of parliamentary addresses, journalistic articles, public speeches, and theological writings that address Kuyper’s pluralistic program for national education. At the time, the Netherlands was a nation that consisted in near equal measure of Rationalists, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics. In short, it was Kuyper’s position that, “The state may not use its supremacy to favor one part of the nation over another. All spiritual compulsion by the state is an affront to the honor of the spiritual life and, as an offense to civil liberty, is hateful and abominable” (xi).
Finally, Part Four consists of five chapters that treat Kuyper’s appeal to the public conscience, his concern for the injustice done to the poor of the nation, the political struggle, and ultimate victory—albeit a compromised victory. Kuyper sought a political policy of “principled structural pluralism”(xlii). And his Antirevolutionary Party “worked diligently to establish the right of all parents to provide their children with a quality education in accordance with their deepest convictions and values” (xii). Directed by his motto, “Free schools the norm, state schools a supplement,” (361) and by the foundational Christian principles of “freedom of conscience, equal treatment of religion under the law, and the place of schools within civil society” (365), Kuyper fought for a national system of free schools for the entirety of his public life.
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Pentecostalism grew out of the Holiness movement, and thus drank deeply from the populist movements in Methodism and Baptist and African-American circles. Charles Fox Parham (1873–1929), is usually credited with the beginnings of the movement. He was born in Muscatine, IA, and claimed a revelation of light at age 13. Parham associated with Methodism, but rejected their hierarchy, and moved toward holiness theology. He broke with Methodism in 1895 and established his own ministry, Bethel Bible College, in October 1900. He emphasized “primitive Christianity.” 

An easy error for a historian to commit is to equate or link events or movements in history that are similar, while ignoring or underplaying their differences. One example of this is when historians of worship note that modern negative reactions to contemporary pop-rock worship contain similar objections to ones leveled against the hymns of Luther, and later, Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts. Without question, there are similarities. What a lazy historian fails to notice is when the differences are greater than the similarities.
That can be said about the roots of Pentecostal worship, found in the populist religious mood that swept America in the late 1780s, through to the 19th century. Yes, there are many parallels to earlier reactions against ossified liturgical forms that sparked more colloquial and lay-driven worship (e.g., some Waldensians and Lollards, some Anabaptists, the Moravians). But there are differences to previous reformations of worship that far outweigh the similarities. When we examine those differences, we will find that the seedbed from which Pentecostalism grew in the 1900s was actually a considerable departure from prior worship reformers such as Luther, Wesley and Watts.
Nathan Hatch detects four waves of populist folk religious music in America from 1780 to 1830. The first was among Separatist Baptists in rural New England. Some of the early hymnals of these Baptists maintained continuity with the hymns of Watts and others, but a flood of hymnbooks published by Elias Smith between 1804 and 1820 contained no overlap with the accepted hymnals of the day. Original and catchy lyrics linked to popular folk tunes became the new tradition of rural New England Baptists.
The second wave of populist worship was Methodist revivalism. The Wesleys had taught the importance of the participation of all people, but had also insisted that hymns maintain dignity and reverence. But Methodism in America during the early 1800s went in a new direction. It included spontaneous song, shouting, jumping and seeking a rousing emotional response to the singing. These songs were the beginnings of the “gospel song”: simple, easily remembered lyrics, verses written in rhyming pairs with a chorus or refrain. Gospel songs were songs of testimony, marching songs of solidarity, humorous ballads, even appeals to repentance.
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Do not let the enemy win in your marriage. And do not let the enemy win in your season of preparing for marriage. Repent when you fall short. Stand up, trust the Lord, obey His Word, and repeat when you miss the mark. 

Introduction
Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the fact that there is a masculinity crisis in this world and nowhere is that felt more profoundly than in marriages. You can think about it this way: if healthy marriages are the bedrock of a community, and healthy communities unite together to form vibrant cultures, then the best way to topple a society is to attack its marriages. If you break that grand institution down, if you spoil the marriage, then you will cripple the nation. And there is no better place for Satan to begin an all out war on marriage, than to focus on the one God called to lead in the home, and that is man.
And, I want you to think about it this way, if manliness, godly masculinity, and a man’s role in the home is a targeted attack launched consistently by Satan, then what we really need to know and understand is how to fight back. And we do not fight with swords and shields…We do not fight with domination and aggression…We fight by orienting our life to what the Bible says, by doing what it tells us to do, and by refusing to be moved when the fiery arrows of Satan come! That is our warfare, brothers. To know and understand what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, to orient our lives in that Godward direction, and refuse to be moved from off that spot.
The enemy may attack and he may win a ground back in this culture. But we must be resolved that he will not win in this arena. He will not move us from our purpose as men. And there is no better passage to teach us about this than Ephesians 5:23-33, where we learn 5 ways that we must love like men!
And the first is that we must have a Shepherding kind of love. Ephesians 5:23-24 says this:
Shepherding Love (Eph. 5:23-24)

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

The first aspect of manly love is godly leadership. Men have been called to lead in their homes in the same way Christ provides love and leadership to His church. And this is not a suggestion.
Think about it like this, the Church is blessed because of the leadership of Christ. We do not moan and groan under His sovereign rule; we flourish under it. And that is the case because we are no longer wandering in the valleys of the shadow of death, we have been brought into His strong, life-giving, stabilizing love, and we are infinitely better off because of it. We joyfully follow Him out of death and enjoy the life giving benefits of His rule without a whimper of objection.
Well… In the same way, men, God has called you to diligently lead in your homes. He has called you to bring your family together under your leadership. He has commanded you to bring life into your home through your godly care. He has called you to provide the same kind of benefits Christ brings to the church, albeit in a temporal way.
Suffice it to say, your family ought to flourish, spiritually speaking, under your consistent, godly, Christ honoring, active leadership. If you are leading correctly, your family will thrive. If your family is spiritually weak, emotionally sickly, relationally at each other’s throats, experiencing interpersonal decay, chaos, in-fighting, rampant immorality, or is declining in any perceivable metric, then your leadership needs adjusting and repentance.
It is not enough to point the finger at your wife and kids like Adam. And you certainly cannot succeed as a husband and family head if you adopt Adam’s passive care. You just can’t.
You have to stand up, buck up, grow up, man up, and lead. You have to take a look at your family and ask some hard questions about yourself. Are they struggling because of my failed leadership? Are there things I need to stop doing? Things I need to start doing? So that I can be more like Jesus, a better head over this family, and so that my clan can more faithfully honor God?
These are hard questions, but the buck stops with you. You did not marry into a democracy where everything is decided after spirited debates on a senate floor. You are a God appointed King, called to rule with the love and affection of Christ, for the good and health of your family. If you fail, the family will suffer. If you repent, the family will grow.
The first aspect of loving like a man, is having the guts to lead like Jesus. To shepherd like Jesus. To have a shepherd’s love.
The second aspect of Loving like a man, is to have a Sacrificing kind of love. Look at verse 25 of this incredible passage.
Sacrificing Love (Eph 5:25)

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

Here the love that Christ has for the Church is qualified in His desire, and joy, to give Himself up for her. His love was demonstrated by His willingness to give His life for her, and her life, health, and vitality, would be impossible without His sacrifice. These are wonderful and glorious truths of the Gospel that we celebrate and say amen to each week…
But what we as men often forget about is that these things have been required of us. Paul begins with “husbands love your wives”. And just in case you are not clear on what that means, it means being like Jesus and giving yourself up for her.
This means that your leadership cannot be used to advance your own agenda. You wake up for your family, go to work for your family, provide for your family, serve your family, go to sleep protecting your family, repeat and die in honor like a man who sacrificed for His family
And not just in those ways…Think about what Jesus did. He went to the cross! He gave His life for the spiritual well-being of His bride!
That means manly love sacrifices everything to make sure the people around us are thriving spiritually. It means praying with your wife. It means leading family worship with your kids. It means making them go to church when they do not want to go. It means modeling Christ like leadership when others want to cut corners. It means pointing to Jesus in the way you discipline… It means comforting your wife and children with the Gospel. It means putting yourself second so that someone else can benefit!
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