One of the truly remarkable events in American church history occurred when Jonathan Edwards was voted out by about 90% of his congregation after 23 years of ministry in Northampton. During his farewell sermon, which he preached on July 1, 1750, he made mention of family life as a pivotal consideration, while reflecting on weighty matters before the church. He said,

I conclude with a few words of advice to all in general, in some particulars that are of great importance in order to the future welfare and prosperity of this church and congregation.

Maintaining of family order

One thing that greatly concerns you, as you would be a happy people, is the maintaining of family order. We have had great disputes how the church ought to be regulated, and indeed the subject of these disputes was of great importance; but the due regulation of your families is of no less, and in some respects of much greater, importance. Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. And family education and order are some of the chief of the means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful.

Let me now therefore, once more, before I finally cease to speak to this congregation, repeat and earnestly press the counsel that I have often urged on heads of families while I was their pastor, to great painfulness in teaching, warning, and directing their children; bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; beginning early, where there is yet opportunity, and maintaining a constant diligence in labors of this kind. Remember that, as you would not have all your instructions and counsels ineffectual, there must be government as well as instructions, which must be maintained with an even hand and steady resolution, as a guard to the religion and morals of the family, and the support of its good order. Take heed that it be not with any of you as it was with Eli of old, who reproved his children but restrained them not; and that, by this means, you do not bring the like curse on your families as he did on his (1Sa 2:12-34).

And let children obey their parents, yield to their instructions, and submit to their orders, as they would inherit a blessing and not a curse (1Pe 3:9). For we have reason to think, from many things in the Word of God, that nothing has a greater tendency to bring a curse on persons in this world, and on all their temporal concerns, than an undutiful, unsubmissive, disorderly behavior in children towards their parents.