Colossians 3:22-4:1 Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God; And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.

​We're in Colossians again this morning, dear saints, picking up where we've left off. I'd like to turn your attention to chapter three, the latter portion, verses 22 through 25. This is the last series of verses of this section. It's important that you do understand before we read that this last section extends down to the first verse of the next chapter, Colossians chapter three. And so that we have all that we need in view, I would like to invite you to please stand for the reading of God's Word as we read aloud Colossians chapter 3 verse 22 through 25 down to Colossians chapter 4 verse 1. Please follow along as I read aloud. Hear the word of the Lord.

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men. knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respecter of persons. Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in heaven. Amen. Please remain standing for prayer as we seek his face once more.

Oh, our God and our Lord, our sovereign, our master. Lord, we come to you this morning as servants, slaves, those who have bought and purchased at a high price in the blood of the Savior, indwelt by the Spirit, and are not our own. Have your way with us this morning, O God. Lord, turn our hearts.

Lord, like the rivers, whichsoever way you will. Open our minds to see where there is darkness. Lord, call forth light out of darkness. And grant us understanding, I pray, that we may walk in the light of your counsel. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. Precious and sobering text that we read for our scripture reading earlier in the service.

The Lord said, speaking to Pilate, a judge with great authority in Rome and over the Jews who were under their subjugation. As Pilate asks, What have you done, recognizing that he's not a Jew, but Christ speaks saying, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from hence. It's not from here.

So though we live in a world that is lying in the wicked one, We live in a world that is full of great many tribulations, pains and difficulties. We take cheer, why? Because Christ has overcome the world. And although we are in the world for a little while, we live as those who are not of the world. In the purchasing, in the washing, in the cleansing, in the redeeming, in the transforming, Christ has and is making all things new. And we who are now His saints, His sanctums, His holy ones, we will bear in mind that we are looking for another city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and that this world is not our home. We take that not just as a right and a worshipful introduction, but we carry the whole weight and the spirit of that triumphant reality that belongs to us in Christ as saints.

Into this next and final portion, Lord willing, of this text in Colossians 3, where we are currently in the household code, where we take all the great triumphs of Christ His triumph over the enemy, His triumph upon the cross, His triumph over sin, His triumph over death, His triumph over the world that is, His triumph over the world that was, His triumph over the world that will be, His triumph over all things seen, His triumph over things unseen. For the Father has subjugated and put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, giving Him a name above every name, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. put every name and title and power and principality firmly beneath the feet of His crown rights. And this includes everything that we know, everything that we do, how we live as husbands, as wives, as fathers, as mothers, as children, and yes, today as we look as servants and as masters, All of our life is to be a thank offering unto God, all of it. He purchased it, he bought it all, he gets all the crown rights to every square inch.

Whatsoever we do, then therefore we do it not in the name of our personal achievements or comfort or our goals, dreams, and ambitions, but we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our labors and what we do Ask yourself, are we working and serving others, including our employers, simply in the name of the rat race, trying to get ahead? Whether it's in competition with others, keeping up with the Joneses, or simply so that we can have a more respectable, prideful, ego-stroking position in the world. The same rat race that everyone else is slogging and dragging through. or are we doing it in the name of Christ? Once again, the question put before is the same as all the ones that went before.

Whose cause are you advancing and whose name are you doing what you're doing? In the creation of a new humanity, in the second Adam, in Christ, all our relationships are transformed, now being lived out underneath the conquering lordship and the banner. of the conquesting, triumphing Christ.

And as we continue in the Household Code of Colossians 3, where we've already addressed these positions of wives, husbands, children, and parents, I want you to remember something that we said at the onset of when we began this portion, particularly dealing with wives. There was something that it was necessary and important that you remembered before we got into all of this, which was the fact that every single person everywhere, regardless of status, must learn at some point to submit to authority somewhere at some time in their life, because God has ordered the world with structure. And authority. in marriage, in family, in church, in government, in the workplace, whether it's in marriage as husband and wife, whether it's in the family as parents unto children, whether it's in government as citizens, whether it's in the church as unto the elders and one another, whether it's as servants and masters in the workplace. and all the relationships that authority finds itself in. All of us are called to a place where we will have to know as a Christian in this world to imperfect people what it means to submit, and what it means to obey, and what it means to follow and take orders, and what it means to do and to do with the right heart, the right attitude, and the right motive. And that takes us into our text today. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh.

Now, as we understand and remember the context of the Book of Colossians and the issues that are going on there, you don't need to remember too broadly or too far that really all the churches are existing in a time frame in the ancient Roman world where slavery was very common and even global reality, but especially so in the context of the Roman Empire.

And the word here, servants, literally is slave. In the ancient world, slavery was very different. We hear that word and we think from the racial slavery of the 19th century America and that we remember the horrific evils that painted that particular time. But in ancient Rome, there was much difference. Households, normal households often included servants and slaves, and not a few.

Anywhere between, at the lower end, one third of the entire empire up to as much as nearly half of the population were slaves. And it wasn't race-based. It involved many different nationalities. And many people entered into it for many different reasons, including fiduciary reasons, settling debts, results of the conquest of war, many different things.

And so among your slaves and servants in the nation, there would be included within them many very skilled and even sometimes well-known artificers and skilled occupations. You could be living in a town or in an area where the preeminent blacksmith or the metal worker or the horse trainer, et cetera, lived and did his labor as one that carried the status of a slave. It was a common and integral part of society's caste-like divisions, where you'd see the Romans as opposed to the barbarian, or the Jew as opposed to the Gentile, or the slave as opposed to the free, or the male as opposed to the female. We see that in this world that the gospel is infiltrating and coming in Many Christians at this time who were believing upon the gospel of Christ, many of them, we could even say just reading the book of James alone as well as other letters, many of them were in this caste. They were slaves. Many of them were of the poor of society. Not many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called, Paul said in 1 Corinthians. We see that they were the poor, and James argues, don't the rich afflict you?

And so on and so forth. And so it was very common for the saints that were sitting in on these Lord's Day gatherings and homes where these letters are being read aloud to find themselves in a situation where the instructions of the apostolic authority by the power of the Holy Spirit is reaching them in an ordained place and in an ordained time where they are under direct immediate supervision and authority of someone else. And so the question is, well, what then do I do? Am I a slave of Christ or am I a slave of my master? And in one sense, the answer is yes. But in a great and deeper sense, the ultimate answer to all questions, regardless of whether you're a bondman or a freedman, is Christ.

And so the gospel enters into the Roman Empire. The gospel enters around the coast of the Mediterranean. The gospel not only enters into Jerusalem and to the surrounding coast, but it penetrates all the way up into Europe, into the regions of Philippi, all the way up into Italy and into the Praetorian Guard, even Caesar's household. It enters into Africa in the Book of Acts through that Ethiopian eunuch, The gospel goes and where it goes, we find the gospel does not immediately abolish and radically change all the social structures of the society in which it enters.

But rather, what the gospel does is the gospel transforms how we live within them. The gospel tells us that in Christ, not necessarily in this world, not in its caste systems, not in its places of employment, not in the rank and authority structures, not necessarily in the military, but in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither bond nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So although the world that has all of its structure, all of its ranks, all of its civilian, government, citizen, employer, employee distinctions, yet our primary identity as Christians is now sons and daughters of the Most High God.

We are Christian first. And we live out this new self, not in opposition to, but in subjection in every single kind of role the Lord has sovereignly placed us in. Just like that of a husband. Husband, you've been placed there. Don't escape. Do it with all your might as unto the Lord. Wife, the Lord placed you there. Do it as unto the Lord with all your might. Dear child, the Lord placed you there. Do it as unto the Lord with all your might. Are you a military man? Are you a civilian? Are you in a place of government? Are you in the lowest places? Grew up like I did in the single wide trailer on food stamps with nothing? Do it with all your might, the Lord placed you there. Do it as unto the Lord.

The big idea of the message is this, and of this text. Whatever your position is, whether you are under a great amount of authority on one end, or you are in and possessing a great amount of authority on the other end. Do everything from the heart as unto the Lord Christ. Do it with a spirit and an atmosphere of Christ identification and submission, not for mere human approval. but because Christ Jesus is, by the Father's appointment, the ultimate master, the ultimate rewarder, and the ultimate judge, the man by whom he will judge the nations, even Pontius Pilate. So verse 22, servants, obey in all things your masters, according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. This is the command, firstly, to those who are under authority, to servants, bondservants, slaves, employees.

You are commanded, according to the word of Almighty God, who is sovereign over heaven and earth and all that therein is, to submit to those over you whom he has appointed according to the flesh. The earthly authorities that have been placed over you are placed there for a reason and you are to submit to them.

Whether as it says in Romans chapter 13, to render honor unto whom honor is due, tribute unto whom tribute, custom unto whom custom. Whether you have a job description that is 10 miles long or you could fit it all on a note card and you've got great lateral. Whatsoever you do, do everything that you do with an attitude of obedience. Obey in all things your masters according to the flesh.

Now, notice it says, according to the flesh, it speaks of those authorities that are in this world, that are of its systems, that are of its organization, of its ranks and of its structures. And again, this does apply today to many different aspects of life, as we've said before, employees, soldiers, citizens, church members. The big caveat that you keep in view, the same as it was with husbands and wives and children, is that these are those authorities that are according to the flesh, not according, as it were, to the spirit. meaning they cannot command you contrary to what you have been so clearly commanded to in the Word regarding the spiritual matters and affairs of this life.

Your employer, his authority for how you organize your family worship at home ends before it gets there. This is according to the flesh. If I could think of the closest modern parallel, if you will, for one who is living life under the real, constant, felt authority of another, I liken it unto military service. At least in the American context, it is the very weakest, closest place to slavery, I think, that we can imagine in this context.

And I say that because it's well known that the moment you sign over all 5,642 some odd pages of that paperwork, They own you, they own your blood type, they own your name, they own your rank, they own your identity, they own where you live. The saying was, if you needed a wife, the Navy would issue you one.

Everything you show up to boot camp with gets put in a box and shipped away, and you only have, even down to the toothbrush bristle, what is put in your hand by the authorities of those put over you. They tell you where you go and where you can't go.

They tell you when to sleep, when you cannot sleep, when you can wake up, when you need to be marching. It doesn't matter if you haven't slept in two days. If they say march, you march. How far? That is all that you need to be mindful of. And when you go, you're told to go. And if it hurts, tough.

You know, if they need to, if your conscience is one kind of way and they need to load you up full of a whole bunch of vaccines in your left shoulder and your right shoulder, they'll march you through a line, give you every single one they think you need. And when your arms are sore, they'll make you do pushups. You have no rights. You are government owned property.

And to sweeten the deal, they give you some pay. But what happens when you get a little further along and all of a sudden you have a wife, you have children, and you're gone for months on end, and all of a sudden you want to give your time more to them? Do you just go home? Say, no, I think I'm done. No, you've got a contract. And if you just don't show up, and you're absent without leave, then all of a sudden, the consequences of the full might of the US government can find you and justly condemn you.

Yet even in that place, the Lord is saving his people and making slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ right underneath the most stringent forms of authority structures our society knows anything about. Go right into the midst of our prisons, where if there's only one place I could think of where it's a bit farther, it would be there. Many things are similar, but you don't even get pay. You just stay because you owe a debt to society. And whether it's time to eat or time to sleep or lay down or go to the yard or lights out or whatever, you are property of the state at that point. And you are simply commanded to do as you're told. And even there, the spirit of our Lord invades beyond concrete walls and barbed razor wire fences and converts unholy sinful souls there and makes slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord is reaching into tribes all around the world, some who have a great degree of authority over them, some that have very little. And the spirit of our God is claiming every elect soul of his precious people that the blood of Jesus Christ has been shed to purchase to make them his own in every context around the globe. And sometimes it is a young child in a Muslim society and they have to withstand parents and say, no, I'm gonna follow Christ even as they come under threat of life. Sometimes it's in places of great power in government while all of a sudden they can no longer receive that money. that they've been getting paid off to vote a certain way and to talk a certain way and to claim and to proclaim and to vote a certain way and all of a sudden now they must stand as men and women with integrity as slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see that the Lord will find men and women in any context in any place and he will make them his own.

Servants who are made slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ then have a difficult task to do because they may and must continue to discharge their current duties that they have been assigned by the providence of God in such a manner as to submit to the authorities that are over them, to do what they are called upon and summoned to do with all their might, but now not for whatever motive they were doing it before, not for whatever reason they found themselves in the midst of doing it before, not just for good behavior so that they can shorten their sentence, not just for the eval so that they can get a better promotion path, Not just so that they can be esteemed by their colleagues and so on, but rather they do it ultimately for the honor and the glory and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it affects all the why of what they do. And that they are convinced now that they should obey their master's commands in all things which are consistent with their duty to God, their heavenly master. And one of the key aspects in how they discharge that and carry that out is it says here, servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service.

Scripture is very specific here. Not as men pleasers. It's to be done in singleness of heart. It's to be done fearing God. And what does that mean? What does all that mean? doing it with the right heart, doing it with the right motive, not with eye service, not men-pleasing.

First off, when it says not eye-pleasing, what's amazing is the word pleasing is that servant-slave word again. So literally, not with eye slavery. Actual slavery, not mere eye slavery, is the idea. You are to carry out your servanthood, you are to carry out your service, not merely for the eye, of the authority structure that you're submitting to. You're not to do it simply so that you appear to them to be a good servant, but that from the heart you actually are. You're not doing what you do merely so that you can be seen of men and receive a reward directly from them.

But that you do what you do because you know your father sees everything. You do what you do because you know the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth, beholding the good and the evil. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are perfect towards Him. You do it as those who whether you are seen or not seen, whether it's public or whether it's private.

The integrity and the reason why you do what you do does not change. and that you're not ultimately doing it so that you can receive the praise and the applause and the awards and the benefits of men. But you do it because you know your master has purchased you. You've been bought with a price and he's worthy for you to do everything with excellence unto him. Because as we said here, pleasing is good. To please those who are in authority over you, to please your boss, this is good. but to do it as mere eye service is not good.

And the difference between the two being an eye and a heart. We're called to singleness of heart, literal sincerity, where we are kept out, walled out from even the opportunity of being duplicitous. As it says in the Beatitudes, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. What does it mean to do something with purity of heart? It means to do it with purity of motive. A single intention, not a mixture of intentions. Not two intentioned, as in duplicitous.

Doubling up on your reasons, doubling up on your motive. One, yeah, it's good, I should do this, but my other reason that's mixed in is I know that if I do this thing, it will benefit me. And I sure like being benefited. So I'm gonna do what benefits me, I'm gonna do it regardless of how I feel in the moment, and I'm gonna put a smile on even when my eyebrow's twitching, because I want them to see how happy I am. And I want them to think, wow, look at that great worker.

While inside you are bubbling over and seething with rebellion, bitterness, aggravation, annoyance, and a hard-hearted attitude that's ultimately directed, whether you realize it or not, not so much against them in their mere leadership style, but against the Christ who put them over you.

We just read from John, didn't we? In our next reading, our Lord Jesus will speak to Pilate because Pilate will get quite frustrated that this Jesus of Nazareth does not seem to understand what great power and authority Pontius Pilate his has to either set the Christ free or crucify him. Then saith Pilate unto him, speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Hear the words of your master, dear saints. Jesus answered, thou couldst have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above. Therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

Behind every authority, you will find the sovereign, all-authority work of the living God. Behind every authority structure in this world, when you get to the backbone and the bottom of it, you will see that there is one who has declared the end from the beginning. who does all things according to His power, His will, His purpose. He works all things after the counsel of His own will. And no one can say unto Him, what have you done? Everything belongs ultimately to Him.

And everything is for your good, even your sanctification. And so you may feel the sting of it. You may feel the annoyance of it. You may feel the fill in the blank of it. But one of the chief places that your mind needs to begin to be renewed is that Christ, our living God, is not marginally or only technically sovereign, but rather He is actually, truly, fully, completely, totally sovereign over every aspect of your life, whatever appears grand or minuscule to you. The heart of the kings is in the hand of the Lord, and like the rivers, he turns them whichever way he will.

Right, if people have good favor towards you, it's not just because you're so great and winsome. Have you ever given it your all to someone, and they looked at you and went, and just looked the other way? Have you ever just sort of been about your normal trajectory and method of not really putting the effort in and someone looked at you and said, that's amazing, thank you for what you do. And you just left scratching your head. The favor you find in the eyes of other people.

You need to understand, yes, you're responsible for your actions. Yes, if you want to be friendly, you need to. If you want to have friends, you need to show yourself friendly, right? You're going to give an account for all that you do. But in terms of God's sovereignty, even the favor we find in the eyes of other people towards us comes from the hand of God. Do you believe that?

What do you have that you have not received? And if you've received it, then why do you boast? No authority could be given to Pontius Pilate were it not given to him from above. No authority could be given to your boss over you except that it was given to him from above.

So when you serve them, you're serving Christ. Assuming that you're serving them from the right heart and the right motives. Don't aim, don't design, don't work in such a way as to touch your employer's eye with grand displays of your obedience as a way to veil your heart towards your disagreement. Keep in mind, you do what you do because you want to be rewarded a certain way and you don't want to be punished a certain way, right? Okay. Take it to heart.

The Lord is not merely the author and finisher of your faith. He is the rewarder and the punisher of your service. He is the great grand architect, and he will dispense where the eye of your employer cannot see. You want to do good? You want to do good in the manner of which our Lord preached on the Sermon of the Mount? Do it when your left hand doesn't know what your right hand's doing. Do it in such a way so that your father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly.

The question is, why do you do what you do and for whom are you doing it for? Who do you want to see? That's a good question to ask yourself, practically speaking, when you're in the midst of your labors. Who do I want to see this? Paul says in Galatians 1, verse 10, for do I now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ."

And what is Paul speaking to there? The Galatians have taken great offense at his preaching of the gospel and of his withstanding their legalism and their Judaistic retreat. And so he's telling them the truth. Am I now your enemy because I tell you the truth? And there is huge amount of pressure on Paul to retreat and to step back.

And Paul is saying, who am I going to be a slave of man or am I going to be a slave of God? It's like Peter standing before the chief priest. Is it is it right to serve man or to serve God? You be the judge. Where is the heart of that? In the life of you as a Christian, as a saint, do you know that conviction? Do you know it? In 1 Thessalonians 2, 4-5, But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak of covetousness God is witness.

What are flattering words? Flattering words are words that you use to sound a certain way to the person that you want to gain an advantage of while you are concealing your actual motive. Duplicitous speech, manipulative speech, cloaked speech. It is like in Jude, those who have persons in admiration for advantage.

We must not ultimately make it our aim to please man, but to please God in all that we do, in the way we speak and the way we labor. Now, with that being said, look here, 1 Corinthians 10, 31 through 33. Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God. Now listen to the Apostle Paul, verse 33.

Even as I please all men in all things. Paul says, I please all men in all things. Not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved. And so Paul is saying, not as pleasing men in 1 Thessalonians. He says, if I yet pleased men in Galatians 1.10, you shouldn't be the servant of Christ.

And then in 1 Corinthians 10.33, he says, even as I please men in all things. So just for clarification, put before your mind, to please or not to please?

That is the question. What's the difference? The answer is simply this. why you do what you do. It cannot be because you're seeking your own advantage. That cannot be the reason. It cannot be you're doing what you're doing because you're seeking your own advantage. To do it for that reason is diametrically opposite of what Paul is summoning us to hear, which is to do it not with the grand aim of pleasing ourselves, ultimately, but in the fear of the Lord, pleasing the Lord.

There are two reasons, as motivation given in this text, for where to be working, not merely from the externals, from the flesh and from eye service, but we're literally working, as it were, from the soul. We're working from the heart. We're working from the spirit of the matter. as for the Lord, because we know, as it says in verse 24, we will receive the reward of the inheritance. As it says in verse 24, it is the Lord whom you serve.

And that when you're doing what you're doing, you're doing it ultimately with that grand reward structure in view and with that authority in view. God himself, because we know, he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done and there's no respecter of persons. Well, before who? Before God. The employers of this world, they do have respecters of persons. They do.

I have known and felt the difficulty of that, not only in the military. I remember getting so used to military structure and framework and rules being bigger than a person. Protocols, standard operating procedures, didn't matter what your rank were. You could take your legs out from underneath. If you disregard it, then all of a sudden I went to the civilian sector.

I'm working at a commercial shipbuilding group. Someone's doing something wrong that they're not supposed to be doing. I'm a safety officer. I call them out. I go to deal with it. Well, that guy calls his boss. His boss calls his boss, who's friends with my boss, who comes and pulls me into an office, and I get royally negatively affected for doing what I thought was the right thing.

So then I didn't do it the next time. And I got in trouble again. Because I didn't do what I was obviously supposed to do, which I thought I knew to do last time, but that didn't work out. It's so easy, too easy. My dear brothers and sisters, I'm not calling you to theory. It's too easy to find yourself in a conflicting situation where people do prefer people, and you feel outside that preference.

And all of a sudden, you allow bitterness to come to your heart and you change the reason why you do what you do. Listen, if there was anyone, anyone who had the right to know the sting of unfair treatment, false accusation, wrong, impure, unholy quality of judgment, condemned and rejected by a kangaroo court.

It is our Lord Jesus Christ. And he submitted absolutely to the authority of his father in every place. And when he could have mightily defended himself, not only verbally before Pontius Pilate, not only verbally before the Sanhedrin and before the chief priest, before Annas and Caiaphas and even Herod, but powerfully. He could have called 12 legions of angels and his father would have delivered him speedily. When he could have defended himself, he chose rather, as his prayer in the garden was, Father, not my will, but thy will be done.

That the cup should not pass from him, but he should drink of what his father gave him. The cup my father has given me, will I not drink it? That's what your Lord says. Now let me ask you a question. The cup that your father's given you in your difficult work situation, will you not drink it? It's not there by accident. It's appointed.

Whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men. See, that means laboring in all things with the right attitude, the right spirit, the right heart, the right motive, and it doesn't stop there. When it says do, do, that's action, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men, what it brings into view is not just doing it at the onset with the right motive and right attitude, but follow through that brings about the best and right result. action. Do all things, Christians, with excellence in your places of work. Do everything that you do with excellence.

How you frame together cabinets matters before God as it matters before God how I spend my time studying for a sermon. You hear me? How the minister spends his time in the service of God is greatly important before the Lord. You need to understand how you spend your time in your area of labor and the discharge of your responsibility is of great importance unto the Lord, for He's called you and commanded you to do that as unto the Lord. When you're cutting down a tree and you're dropping branches, With everything in your being, make sure the branches don't hit the fence or the structures that you're trying to cut it down around. When you're doing accounting and it's gonna take an extra 30 minutes of brain work to hunt that last cent, rather than just stroke a few stray spots of ink to make it look right, you chase that one cent. When you're in a place of your work and your labor, when you're driving, when you're having meetings, when you're, if you're organizing the meeting, or if you're on the receiving end of another meeting that you don't necessarily want to be in, it could have been an email.

Do it as unto the Lord. Listen, the Lord has given us all such wildly different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, and so on, especially as the saints. Let us lovingly forbear with one another. and know that in the context of the church we get the opportunity to figure out what this looks like to yield and to serve. And in the workplace and in the world before the watching eyes of a wandering world, wandering out there with a starless sky on the pitch black of a storm-tossed ocean with no shoreline to guide them at all, a wayfaring man with no celestial help that they can discern, the Lord has sent you forth to be a lighthouse. and to be a sign by which they may find safe passage into the harbor of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you cannot dispense with or distinguish your work ethic from your verbal proclamation of the gospel.

Whatsoever you do, do it with excellence. Do it as unto the Lord. Do it not ultimately as unto the men. Christian labor should be diligent labor. Christian labor should not be idle. It shouldn't be slothful. It shouldn't be flippant. It should be zealous.

Because what this truth tells us in these verses is that our work is elevated. All of our work is elevated from the mundane or the merely difficult and it's raised into the atmosphere of worship. All that we do is raised into the context of worship. Do you not remember when the Holy Spirit came upon the gifted artificers in the Old Testament so that they could work with their hands and lay out the trim and the seams and the bolts and all the intricate inlay work of gold and silver and bronze and brass of the tabernacle? Can you labor with your hands late into the night to the glory of God?

Absolutely. Knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ. But he that hath done wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respecter of persons. Remember, beloved, your true master is in the heavens. and your future reward is there too.

It's not just the promotion or the ease of having a good work environment. Now, granted, in many cases, you come to your work with a good work ethic, you come there, you show up on time when other people can't figure out how to do that exactly. You give yourself to an attitude and a willingness to serve that's ultimately Christ-oriented. In the Lord's kindness, very often, there are a great many work-related benefits that go with that. When your employer sees that they can trust you with a job that they can't trust the other three, four, five, seven guys.

But that's not why you do it. Your ultimate motivation is Christ. Not earthly promotion, earthly praise, or earthly advantage. Christ is the rewarder of your faithful service. He's the impartial judge who will get down beneath the mere veneer and to the heart of the matter and judge rightly. You must contrast that with men-pleasing. If your drive is self-promotion, hidden selfishness, or just you want to appear better than others, you are a slave to men rather than to Christ.

You remember when Joseph was enslaved in Potiphar's house? How did his attitude of service greatly advantage him in Potiphar's house? It greatly advantaged him. What began very likely from what we could assume was a little very quickly, even at a young age, grew and grew and grew until it could be said that there was nothing Potiphar had that was not under the care and oversight and discharge of Joseph. Joseph, in terms of a slave, was about as free as a slave could be. Joseph was the chief over Pharaoh's prison house. He enjoyed a great degree of privilege and rank. And here is Joseph overseeing and stewarding all the goodness of it.

All he would have had to do to maintain that place of distinguishment and honor is to please not only his master, but this one more thing, to please his mistress. But what was the problem? In order to please his mistress, he would have had to sin against Potiphar, and most importantly of all, to sin against the Lord God. And when there were no eyes there to see his secret betrayal, The conscience of Joseph was so stirred by the work of the Spirit that he fled from that scene. And it cost him two years in prison, and his feet were hurt in the fetters of iron.

But whose eye saw? The Lord, the Lord God, who had prepared for Joseph something better than oversight of Potiphar's house. but second in command of Egypt, and the means by which the covenant people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, would persevere, and by which the seed promised to Abraham would come to be a blessing to the nations. We can rightfully praise God today that Joseph was faithful, for out of that one faithfulness comes a promise kept by God to the nations that the Messiah would come.

How about that? Why do you do what you do? There's gonna be times where to please your employer is going to be very advantageous, and then all of a sudden, after years of faithful advancements, you will all of a sudden have to look them directly in the eye and say, no, I absolutely will not under any circumstances. I will run from pay and position now. And they may say, then go.

And you will go home without the foggiest clue where your next paycheck's coming from, where your next meal's coming from, but your conscience will be right before God. And He will take care of you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. God is your employer ultimately. Serve Him with diligence, serve Him with excellence, but serve Him ultimately. Seek Him first. Remember Joseph.

Masters, you have a fearful, terrifying place. I will say this, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you have a master in heaven. All the ground is level at the foot of the cross, as many have been right to say. You are exceedingly sinful. Your employees are exceedingly sinful. You both have a great need of God's far exceeding and abundant grace to redeem and to forgive and to make new. The Lord, the true master of heaven and earth has put you in a very, very temporary position and a stewardship that you will have to give in an account.

And you need to remember authority is never absolute among the ranks of men. Your authority has a limit and it ends not only in scope, but in duration. Not only in what you can speak to, but how long you can speak to it for. You need to remember, if you're a Christian and you're a business owner, you wield a great degree of authority, or you're a high ranking officer in the military, you have a master too. You too are under authority. The Lord Jesus Christ who has been given, not some, but all authority in heaven and in earth.

Treat those under you, this text says, with justice. Treat them with fairness. Treat them with equality. Treat them with dignity that belongs to image bearers of God, even if they're not Christian. Treat them according to the standard that the Word of God demands you are to love your neighbor. Hold them accountable to their job.

Don't be lax and create an atmosphere where you reward laziness and you reward slothfulness and you reward those things that are not just and not honoring to the Lord. Have a structure in place which is true and which is right and which is righteous and which is just. But hold everyone to that standard equally. For God is not a respecter of persons.

The gospel levels the ground. Both servant and master serve the same heavenly master and both will answer to him. Ephesians 6-9, and you masters do the same things unto them, forbearing, threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven, neither is their respective persons with him. And this is in the broader context of mutual submission evident in Ephesians 5-21, in particular as it deals with the brethren and with the saints.

Listen, let me say this. Dear saints, if you work for a Christian employer, if you work for a Christian leader, Doubly so. Because they're a brother. Labor with all your might because they're a brother and you know that Christ dwells in them and you love them. Don't use the fact that they're Christian as an excuse to skirt the rules and think you're going to be able to get some sort of privilege that the others won't get in the employer because your brother should just automatically look the other way when you do not do your job with excellence. And employers. Love those that are under your charge, that are saints doubly, because you know the Lord is using you in a precious place to be the means by which they can put food on the table for their family and for their children and love them.

Don't change the standard. Don't take the fact that they're a brother as a way that they can just assume your motives when you have a bad attitude and you get the threatening. Well, their brother, they have to forgive me. No, forbear threatening. That's a brother in Christ from whom the Lamb of God shed His blood and died.

So lead them with that in view. Interesting note before we close. Why is there so much press at this last section? We had fathers, husbands, wives first, husbands, then children, right, fathers, and then all these verses on servant and master. That's an interesting observation.

Obviously the scope at which this kind of servanthood existed in the ancient world, but it's also probable because Paul will later mention Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother in chapter 4 verse 9. And so a church that, especially when you read the book of Philemon, which is given to a master-slave issue, we see how Paul upholds the standards of mutual responsibility in the context, but also brings in the New Testament Christian spirit of how to live in those contexts and those duties and responsibilities. We see that in every sphere of life, every sphere of life, work, home, church, society, service, servanthood, slave, master, all, government. The gospel calls us to a new way of living.

Sincere, wholehearted service to Christ. Regardless of your position, you need to constantly be on the alert and check your motives. Are you working for the smile and the advantage of your earthly boss and employer? Or can you honestly say you're doing it ultimately for the reward that Christ will bring on the day of His judgment and appearing?

Avoid eye service. Avoid mere superficial eye slavery. Avoid flattery, dear saints. None of this should belong to you. Avoid the manipulative people-pleasing. It has no place in our lives. Instead, fear God. Serve God with singleness of heart and do all things heartily, zealously, excellently as unto Him.

Whether you are free right now in the eyes of the world or you're under a heavy amount of authority, you need to remember, regardless of your station, you are a slave of Jesus Christ first. For he that is called in the Lord being a servant is the Lord's freeman. Likewise also, he that is called being free is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price. Be not ye the servants of men. Discharge your duties in this temporary fleeting world as one whose true inheritance and true judge is in heaven, the true rewarder and the punisher of all services.

Because when he comes, he's gonna test all things by fire, beloved. Some are gonna be found out to be gold, silver, and precious stones, and they'll endure the testing. Some will be found out to be hay, wood, and stubble, and they will perish. And there'll be no bringing it with you. you will suffer loss.

Labor, and if you want to carry more with you, ensure that your motive for why you do what you do and the manner in which you do it and the result that you're aiming for is Christ honoring start to finish. And the Lord will honor those who honor him.

This gospel transforms your workplaces. This gospel transforms all your relationships. This gospel will cloak and beautify and set forth your witness in all spheres of life. The gospel triumphs in this present evil age not by instantaneously overturning every structure around us. Rather, it triumphs by making our identity and motives thoroughly Christian within us, that they may see Christ within us, that we may proclaim the gospel in the highways and in the byways, in the halls of Congress, in the Oval Office.

We may proclaim them on the battlefield fronts and in the foxholes. We can proclaim them the airplanes overhead and in the submarines below. We could proclaim them in the carpenter shops and in the mechanics garages. We could proclaim it in the barber shops. We could proclaim it in the supermarket stores. We can proclaim it when we bag groceries or when we are a general manager over multiple stations.

We proclaim the gospel in our living rooms to our children as we wash the dishes. We proclaim the gospel to our relatives when we sit around the table at a Thanksgiving dinner. We proclaim the gospel in in every sphere, in every venue, in every aspect of this life, we take to the streets of need be and we herald it from the stoplights. We tell the gospel everywhere because we have been commanded to go. And you need to remember that your workplaces are not off limits, they are a means and a channel by which this gospel, this knowledge, this faith overcomes the world.

Let us pray. Oh Father, A slave in the ancient world would never have received an inheritance from their masters, but the slaves of Christ do. Lord, help us to see and to live this new creation, New Testament, Holy Spirit, Christ-centered life, and have you be the focus of all that we do in our family and in our workplace. And in our dealings with one another, let us remember that the blood of Jesus Christ has broken down the wall of partition. We are all one. And there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

In his holy name we pray, amen. Our benediction. Please stand. I'll ask you to stand this time for our benediction. 1 Thessalonians 3, 12 and 13. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men. even as we do toward you, to the end, that he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. Amen. Lord bless you, dear saints. Go in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

​Good morning again, precious saints. The master has created heaven and earth and all that therein is, and he has fearfully and wonderfully woven each and every one of us as children in our mother's womb together, gave us life, appointed us a season in which to live and an extent by which it will be lived out. Therefore, the Master also commands, do not forbid the children to come to Him. He made them, they belong to Him, and may the Lord grant us, each and every one of us, ears to hear what the Master is saying today. Amen?

We are in Colossians chapter 3. If you will pick up and find where we left off last Lord's Day, dealing with husbands. We are in the section here in verse 20 and 21, but for our context and for reading, we will read once again the larger surrounding context, verses 18 through 25 of Colossians 3. When you have found your place there, I will invite you to please stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God. Colossians chapter 3 verses 18 through 25, hear the word of the Lord.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there is no respecter, no respect of persons.

Amen. Please remain standing for prayer as we seek his face once again. Oh our Lord and our God, we do thank you. Lord, that you have not left us in this life without guidance and without direction. Thank you firstly for our Savior, our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, thank you for the life that we have in him. Help us to live in it and to walk it out to your glory in every age and in every station of life that you have appointed us to. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated.

Again, we're currently in the household code section of the epistle. practical portion of the book of Colossians which outflows from that which came before, where we are commanded as Christians to do all for Christ. We are to have a spirit, not just a series of wooden laws that we check off in this life that we live, church attendance, do this thing, give a tithe, carry out this duty. But rather we are to think, we are to speak, we are to live, we are to act, we are to have an attitude and outlook given over to this reality in which we live and move and have our being. That whatsoever we do, we do it all to the glory of and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. From the highest aspects of the responsibilities of our life, the most crucial defining moments of the choices we make that define our trajectory down to what appears to us to be the most meager and lowly drudgeries of life, the duties, the dishwashing, the putting the socks into the laundry bin, to how you speak to your children, everything is to be done. this light and in this context has become Christians who are walking worthy of the gospel to which they've been called. And so we are to be a people who always bear in mind in everything we do if we were to do that and do it right and do it well we are to remember The Master, remember the Lord Jesus Christ, the life He lived, His sterling, perfect character, the manner in which He spoke, the manner in which He refused to speak, the way that He taught, the commands that He gave us, the directions that He gave us, the lessons that He called us to learn.

And we are to keep in mind His reputation before the world, lest we be numbered among those of whom it is written, The name of the Lord is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. May it not be named once among us as become saints. Let us be a people who, if necessary, bear about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the life also of Christ might be manifest in our mortal body. Let the world see Christ in us. Let us be, as the Master commanded us, salt and light.

And there's no age denomination on those commands. Isn't that something? Look here, in this remaining section of the chapter where we're concluding with these duties, I want you to notice that children are being directly addressed in the Assembly of the Saints where this letter is to be read. I want you to take note of the fact that it is a basic, it is a foundational, you could say fundamental reality.

So much so is the obedience of children in any society that God enshrined the necessity and the importance of it in His Ten Commandments. Children are commanded to honor their father and mother. And so we could say, perhaps to some degree, even more than self-willed wives and rebellious wives can be a mark of unruly pagan society, in some ways, even the tyranny of misused authority, if you read Romans 1, and you see what it looks like when the Lord hands a nation over to judgment, the disobedience of children, in particular, is a sign of cultural disintegration.

Paul's gospel, New Testament, new covenant remedy for that disintegration is a restoration of the children to their proper place in the home. And along with it comes the full battery and weight of biblical text and scriptures that align with that, not only diagnosis, but with that remedy. Children are addressed directly.

Don't miss that, because what does that mean when we say, and look at our main text here, Colossians chapter three, verse 20 through 21. Children, obey your parents in all things. Here's what that means. Children, look at Pastor Austin for just a moment.

The Lord says you are old enough to understand and you are responsible for the things you know And when God says do something, He wants you to do it. And when God says do something, not only does He want you to do it, but He says He'll help you do it. But if you don't do it, what is that? It's sin. But the Lord knows, because He made you, and He's given you this responsibility, and even if you should see Him very soon, and not when you grow old and have much gray hair, like some of us here, or no hair at all, you will still have to give an account for every time you did not obey mommy, and you did not obey daddy, and you did not obey the Lord in your home. And Paul, by the Holy Spirit says, you know what is right, and the Lord God himself expects you to do it.

So that when the sermon's being preached, it's not just for mom. When the sermon is being preached, it's not just for dad. It's not just for your older brothers and sisters, it's for you too. And that's good news because the Lord sees you and he hasn't forgotten you. He's given you commands by which to live. And he intends to give you aid in which to do it.

Young children, this is what is being called out to you here in this text. Children, young and older, teenagers who think anything that goes to children doesn't necessarily apply to you. It's not an age-specific word, by the way, you need to know that. The word child, as it's used here, simply means offspring. So the question is this, are you in the order of your home, the dad? Are you the mom? No. Are you the offspring of your parents living under their roof? Yes? Well, good, this is for you.

Now that we have gotten rid of that first hurdle, let's see what few more we can kick over along the way. Dear children, you are called to happily, happy, without complaining, obey the words and the voice of your parents in all things, not just the things you like. And you are to honor them from your heart. as you submit even to their discipline, knowing that the Lord put you there for this season for your good and for your instruction. Now, parents, you're already aware, I believe, of the second portion of that text that we read, verse 21. And I speak to parents, but fathers particularly.

We'll see some of that. There is a summons to you to wisdom. wisdom for you to regard and practice in the discharge of your parental duties that you do well to take heed of. Otherwise, there will be great woe and anxiety and tears in your home. And worst of all, it'll be at your hands.

Scripture emphasizes here in these texts that the obedience of a child is not simply just about doing what you're told and that's it. But as we're gonna lean into some of these verses and these words, we won't be able to cover everything that deals with every aspect of childhood and obedience and parenting and parent raising and disciplining. My goal is to just be as close to this one text and give us as much as we can this morning. But scripture emphasizes that the obedience of a child is about teaching their young heart to regard and to honor and to esteem God-designed authority. that they might be preserved from the culture-destroying powers of rebellion within them and around them. And so again, before we dive off into the concept of obedience, we need to remember one of our main themes in Colossians, that Christ is supreme over creation. As we said of the Lord, Psalm 139, verses 13 through 14.

For thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. Dear children, you're not here by accident, regardless of what the culture tells you. You were made by God, you are here for a purpose, and you belong to him. And you were made in such a way that scripture says you were fearfully and wonderfully made and you are like a piece of pottery that has been made by the master potter God himself. And just like a pot or a jar or a vase, any kind of vessel has a job to do, you have a job to do that the potter made you for.

Psalm 127 verse 3 through 5 says, Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." And what does this verse tell us? This verse tells us that children are not a nuisance, children are not a burden as such, but children are a great blessing of God Himself.

They require great stewardship, great care, great attention. They are very needy. That's God's design. But they are a great blessing, a great blessing and a gift. And even in this text says a reward from God himself. So that is the context of how we as saints view children. They're a gift. God made them. They belong in the assembly.

They're summoned to understand and hear, which means we have the responsibility to teach and to preach to them and to hold them accountable for what they know as precious gifts that must be stewarded, that belong ultimately to God, knowing our stewardship, as we will look at, is not permanent, but it is for a season. And we must give an account for our time with them.

He who is supreme over creation and has given us these precious gifts also warns us in Scripture, just as man has fallen from his highest state walking with God in the cool of the day, just as woman has fallen to seed by the subtlety of the serpent and brings forth children in much sorrow. So we see now in Scripture that these precious gifts that come to us do not come to us righteous They do not come to us thinking, acting, speaking, behaving wholly.

They come to us full of the same sin that cast the whole of the human race into the darkness we find ourselves in today. Psalm 51, verse five, David writes, behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. We see that the original sin of Adam is at work, propagating Adam's nature into every child that comes into the world.

And almost as if a poetic sigh of creation, every child that comes healthfully into the world does so how? Crying. Proverbs 22, 15. Scripture says, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Here we see the natural sin nature that is in every last one of our precious little babies, boys and girls, is a sin nature that must be proactively restrained. It must be proactively restrained. You will never need to teach your child how to lie or steal or take. You're gonna need to teach your child truth, obedience, and how to give sacrificially.

That's the responsibility that falls upon the parent. Now this is serious. This is serious. We will have to bounce between a certain gentle sweetness as we speak at the level that children can understand, Parents, this is serious. And I will also need to give you the degree of seriousness that Scripture raises the importance and the necessity of this restraint. In national Israel, there was a law upon the land. So serious was this necessity to the preserving of the people of God that it was written in Deuteronomy 21, verses 18 through 21. Listen.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, meaning they've done their due diligence, will not hearken unto them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice.

He is a glutton and a drunkard." This tells us they've reached a stage in life where they have exhausted the rod, they have exhausted their teaching, they have exhausted instruction. As this child is grown into the latter end of childhood and into maturity, he has grown into an outward ostentatious rebellion. He is known among the people as a glutton and a drunkard.

And before he begins to enter into society, here is this final gate that shuts him up forever. Verse 21, and all the men of his city shall stone him with stones. that he die. So shall thou put evil away from you and all Israel shall hear and fear. This is the Word of God. Now imagine for a moment, I don't need to stretch your imagination, these wicked days in which we live in the cultural unraveling of our society, how many teenagers have you found in the news who are guilty of crimes so heinous even a backward secular court is forced to deal with them and try them as adults? Let not a wrong kind of syrupy sentimentality blur your eyes to the severity and the danger of what sin does to a nation and to a society. Listen, this is serious. Leviticus 20 verse nine, for everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He hath cursed his father or his mother, his blood shall be upon him.

Now I want you to imagine for just a moment if there was a righteousness in the land where there were godly fathers that stood up and they taught their sons and daughters righteousness and godliness and they ruled their homes with love and equity and justice and fairness and truth and holiness.

And with the gentleness of submissive mothers and quiet mothers who taught their daughters and their children the nurture, the love, the gentleness, the peacefulness that goes with all of that. And in the face of all that rebellion, a child backwards and forwards willfully all the years of their childhood, dig their heels in obstinately and then demand that they be turned loose upon the nation. What mercy is it of God? to restrain the madness of a slew of immature, loveless, angry, rebellious, dishonoring young men and women, to restrain them from entering into polluting and changing society to fit their unsanctified and unrestrained lusts and murderous hearts. It's a goodness of God to do that. We need to see, though, that the Lord in the church is reaching into. This important season of life, this incredibly important season of life, of teaching, of restraint, of of corralling and making and humbling and nurturing and raising them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, loving, comforting all that goes with godly and holy parenting. And he aims to restore not just the importance and the seriousness of childhood, but to restore the heart and the spirit of childlikeness to childhood.

And here we're reminded of the master's tender sympathies to the children in Mark 10, verse 13 through 14. And they brought young children to him that he should touch them to heal them and help them. And His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased and said unto them, Suffer, or allow the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.

For of such is the kingdom of God. Now here were these strong-headed disciples who thought they knew something about categories and groups, and they had made, as they often make in their three years of teaching, a bad calculation and a bad judgment, and they're corrected by the wise teacher, the master. And he tells them here that heaven was made for those such as these childlike, believing, trusting, following, who look unto their parents, whose eye is upon them, that lead them and who trust them and who follow after them with a kind of childlike simplicity. Heaven was made for those such as these. Don't forbid the children. Bring them to me, the master says. And so it is, dear children.

You may come to Christ Not, you don't have to go through the pastor, you don't have to go through mom and dad. Christ, Jesus himself, looks to you and says, come to me. And he allows no man or woman to forbid you to come to him. The governments of this world If they say you can't have a Bible, you can't talk about Jesus, you can't give out gospel tracts, you can't tell your friends about Jesus or that you go to church and the government says you can't do that. No, children, the Lord Jesus said you may still come to Him. Though you may grow up in a home where, Lord forbid, You're under the sound of my voice now, but something devastating and terrible happens in a year from now, two years from now, all of a sudden the Lord's authority is not welcome in your home. Listen, he still says you may still come to him.

He has commanded that you will not be forbidden and he has made provision. He has made a way for you to reach him in his word by his spirit. And with that, The Lord desiring to restore childlikeness to the season of life, we now come to this prescription, children, that you are responsible for. In verse 20, children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord.

And the word obey literally means to hear under. literally to listen very intently, to give and pay attention, and to get yourself underneath the sound of your parents' words, underneath their command, underneath their authority, to be obedient to them, to literally come underneath the sound of their words. So when your parent tells you to do something and they give you a command, think about that word.

Have they spoken? then you can't ignore them. If your parent speaks, you cannot pretend like you didn't hear them when you know you heard them. You must be aware that they spoke and you must put your mind and your heart and your actions and your words underneath the words that they have spoken. Those words are higher than what you want to do.

Does that make sense? And I want you to know that you will do this for your parents if you love them. Now, in a word that has had so much cultural baggage around it, we don't like the word obey very much as a modern American, modern Westerner. But you need to know the word obey carries with it, regardless of what the culture thinks, in the Lord's economy, it carries with it a great weight because obedience in scripture is right next to love.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, if you love me, if you love me, keep my commandments. In John 14, 23, Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man loved me, he will keep my words, and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. 1 John 5, 3, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. They're not grievous. And this opens up an idea of thought.

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will obey him even when it appears to be difficult. Why? Because you love him. If you love him, you'll obey him. And when you obey someone because you love them, your obedience is not upset and sulking and mad and sad and why you do it because you genuinely love and you care about the person to which you obey. If Christ is your Lord and you love him, you'll obey him from a happy heart. And so the word here goes beyond just obey. But like it says in the Ten Commandments, it takes us to the idea of honor.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord God giveth thee. Obey and honor. Obey and honor, dear children. These two words, obey and honor, are God's will for your life right now. To obey and to honor. Obey, you do what is right, but there's more to it. You must have an attitude and a heart of honor that goes with it.

This is God's will for the parent-child relationship. Not only that obedience would be done in the strictest sense, but that their heart would be being trained how to honor, because very often it will not come naturally. This is what the Lord designed it to be, not mere outward action of obedience, but inward reverence. We are all called to honor our parents. That means to respect them. That means we are called to have a sense of reverence for them, literally, to see them as having a kind of preciousness, and they're valuable to us. They're unique. We don't have anyone else quite like them. And they're precious, it's precious.

This is the first command of the second table of the law, where the first table deals with your relationship to God, and the second table deals with your relationship to man. The first table of the law, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and your strength. The second is like unto it, second table of the law, to love your neighbor as yourself. Well, who's your first neighbor, dear children? That's listed in the very first commandment on the second table. Commandment number five, honor your who? father and mother. These are your closest neighbors. This is a fulfillment of the law that you're going to take with you to the rest of mankind. It begins with how you think and feel and respond to your parents.

Now the command was originally given, obviously, to the promise that they would prosper in the land, the children of promise and the land of promise. But here, this is quoted directly in the New Testament, as we see in Ephesians chapter six, verses two through three. And look how Paul quotes it. He says, honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And so there is a blessing here for us, dear children, now.

And it may not necessarily merely be having years of long life. It may be, though, that it will mean a full life. A life that has a fullness to it, a complete measure to it that otherwise it could not have if lived out in rebellion. We need to realize that the family unit is the building block of society. That's why it's gonna affect all the other relationships as we'll see in a second.

Parents, you cannot neglect to shepherd the heart attitude of your children. There is a blessing tied to it that your children will miss out on if you do not take it serious to heart to inculcate within them, teach them, and not only to restrain them in the negative, but to proactively teach them in the positive what it means to have respect and honor and love and obedience in this way. Mere external obedience, mere just doing the thing you said is not a fulfillment of the spirit of the law. That's what I want to get at here today. So I want to say this before I turn to children more thoroughly again, parents. Actually, I want to speak to the children, dear children.

If you have godly parents, if you have a mom and a dad that fears God and obeys His word and teaches you to obey it. Loves you enough to discipline you and teach you. You have one of the rarest and greatest treasures and inheritances in the world that children can have. There may be some children that have more money and more toys than you and your parents. They may have a bigger house and more land than you do. But if you have godly parents, if you have parents that fear the Lord and they're trying to teach you and fill your mind with heavenly things and holy things, you have a great and a rare inheritance that will bless you for eternity. And I would encourage you to love them and to regard that blessing that God has given you and to be a good steward of it.

This definition of honor brings weightiness, deep respect. It's going to include childhood obedience. It's going to extend in that reverence even to parents in their old age. This is the first commandment with a promise and so there is a blessing upon the life that comes with it. This is a foundation block for society, and it places the highlight to the family structure and authority as being essential for any stable community in the earth at any time. And so, parents, you have the heavy duty of teaching your children how to honor you in accordance with God's laws.

I have often regularly recommended this book as a great help, just as an aside, a practical tool. We give it away, or we sell it, or something in the back there, Shepherding a Child's Heart. It's full of great practical insights, simply just taking the scripture and applying it. And so if you are scribbling furiously, dear parent, and you want just a good helpful resource, I would encourage you to grab hold of that. But here's really the core I just wanna grab from that that's present in the text we've already read. Look at the title of it, Shepherding a Child's Heart. Not just forcing an outward changed behavior. You're doing something unseen inside the child that you're aiming after that goes beyond just the externals.

You need to know that, because you need to know true obedience, true honor, is from the heart. And if you're going to just teach your children how to go through the motions of what they're told to do, and it's fine if they do it with a grumbling spirit or a sour attitude, all you're gonna end up doing is teaching them how to be Pharisees. And you'll fill your church with Pharisees. Brother Votie Bauckham, while he was alive, made an excellent point on this. He taught that whenever we teach our children to obey, we need to teach them the wholeness of what that means. Not just some mere, you know, external legal sense. Not just, we could even say it this way, mere external legalistic obedience. which just creates those Pharisees, but rather a heart obedience that captures these three areas in particular. One, when you give them a command, when you give them direction, when you tell them to do something, one, the most basic and easy to understand of all, they do it, right? That's pretty straightforward.

They're obeying it, so they do it. They actually obey the command. Two, they do it right away. Delayed obedience, is disobedience. And three, they do it with the right attitude. They do it with a cheerful heart, not just with a murmuring spirit. If one of these three legs of that stool is not there, then it falls. It's not obedience, and it doesn't hold up. Let me make the case here briefly, logically. I may have a child who very quickly responds to me. I tell them to do something, go take out the trash, I may say. And they respond with a cheerful attitude. Yes, dad, I'll get right to it.

And yet, as they march out with great speed away from whatever it was they were doing, they never actually get around to doing what I told them to do. It's all flash, it's all show. And there's no proper execution, obedience, never happened. Okay, well let's say two.

I may have a child who I told them to do this, and they did it correctly. Go and do this, yes, I will, I will, yes, sir. And then they go and they do something else, and they do something else, and they do something else, and then they make a great delay to prioritize what I asked them to do first. And somewhere along the way, I may even catch them in that cycle going, where are you? I was like, oh, dad, I'm gonna do it, just I had a few other things I needed to get to first.

Well, that's not obedience. Still, that's not reverence. They have still, watch this, here's the underlying heart, they have still set their will above yours and they're still in rebellion. Lastly, as we've already been indicating by Phariseeism, they may do it thoroughly. They may do it quickly, without delay. But they may do it with the ugliest attitude. They may do it without any gladness at all that they have a parent like you to guide and direct them. They may do it as though they deep down believe in their heart that they don't and should not have to do that. And they are still rebels at heart. And here's the greatest danger.

If you reward that kind of obedience, if you reward that, If you say, thank you for doing that good job as some sort of like peace offering to them while they're cutting eyes at you, you will produce Pharisees in your home. Self-righteous, self-pitying, oh, look at how obedient I am and they don't seem to see how unhappy I am with this arrangement. Proud children who do not believe from their heart that this order and design is of God and it's right.

When scripture is clearly indicating to us even as it says in Ephesians, children obey your parents and the Lord. For this is right. For this is right. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Dear children, remember when we were talking about the wives and it said that they were to regard or submit to or obey their husbands, their own husbands in all things?

Okay, dear children, in this season of life, you're not called to strictly obey and honor in this way every adult in your life. Your parents will line out and guide out for you those authorities that they want you to take heed of and those who you don't. And it's up to your parents to wisely distinguish who you can follow and who you cannot. But you need to know here the command is specific for parents. Obey your parents in everything. The way your best friends, mom and dad parent them is none of your business.

I say that with love. The way Susie and Johnny's dad allow them to go to bed at a certain time or a different time or go over here or don't go over there, those are not the parents God has called you to submit to. The parents God has called you to submit to are the ones He wisely and lovingly put you under.

This is important groundwork. Because children, you need to understand you're accepting this truth. You're going to carry with it for the rest of your life. You're going to carry this with you. There are many godly helps in the fight of parentage that the Lord has put alongside. Some of us have a great blessing of having godly grandparents, aunts, uncles, maybe other very close Christian brothers and sisters in the church. But parents, I'm gonna say something to you.

I need you to take this counsel and to heed it. You need to be very wise and safeguard and keep in a unique place that you don't share with others, parental authority. You need to safeguard that because the Lord gave it to you. And no matter how much you try to mercenary that out, the fifth commandment doesn't change.

There is a unique place of honor. The Lord God sovereignly chose to put the parents. Does that make sense? It says, honor your father and mother. This is the God-ordained special relationship that exists within this context of the family unit. And when present, it's not shared outside of that parental authority. Scripture gives mom and dad this unique role and they shouldn't just hand it over to somebody else to figure it out.

It falls on your lap and at your feet. for the rest of your children's lives. All their relationships with the rest of humanity will flow out of this, how this question is answered. Did they ever learn to truly, from their heart, reverence and honor their parents when they were children? Because if not, they have been set up for failure. because that will give rise to every other relationship. It will evidence itself in every other relationship they have for the rest of their lives, including their coming to and their understanding of God himself.

This is key. The Lord, speak to you fathers for just a second, as this text does give unique emphasis to you. You bear the name, the title, of the heavenly father from which every lesser father on earth derives the office of his name. Okay? You represent him. You represent God's interests in your home. And you need to realize your children will initially relate to their heavenly father and his laws, and perhaps for a lot longer than initially, by how they related to their earthly father and their earthly father's rules.

If the father's rules were always flexible, if they were always sort of a matter of opinion, and when it felt like it's time to enforce, maybe it's not, even though there's no functional or objective difference between the two. If they are grown up and they have a hard time seeing the rigid line of black and white, right and wrong, and that aspect of God's law, then when they come to God, who is black and white, right or wrong, yes or no, then they will begin to see God as hard and as someone that they are justified in feeling bitter against. because they never saw the clear strength of a command, the constancy, the consistency of it, the unflexibility of it. They never saw it mixed with love and unyielding care and concern for their soul that was based on principle more than just temporary preference. This isn't the place to teach your children something other than God's ways.

They're to enter into it with obedient cheerfulness. Because, let me ask this question, isn't that going to be the sum of the Christian life? Isn't the life of a born again child of God, of any age, a true child of God, who is walking with God, that they are lovingly striving to obey Him out of grateful, thankful hearts, and they don't consider His commands to be grievous? Isn't that the life we're going to live for the rest of our sainthood? And the most basic element that will belong to them for the rest of their life, that you impart into their life, besides the knowledge of the gospel, is that they have been adequately prepared by their parents for that kind of life to be lived out. that they understand, that they have something whereby to relate to.

So then we go to the text, and when the Lord Jesus Christ speaks in saying, if you earthly fathers know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more does your Father in heaven know to give good gifts to those who ask Him, or to give the Spirit unto those who ask it of Him? There's a constant comparison. Hebrews 12, if your fathers disciplined you according to their pleasure, how much more will you be disciplined by the Father in heaven and live? There is a compare-contrast between an earthly father and a heavenly father throughout the New Testament.

You are going to set their understanding of where the basics and the beginnings of that foundation and their thinking begin. You need to realize your children are going to relate to you to a certain degree on how you're going to then leverage that and use that later in their childhood to point into how they're going to relate to God. And if you give them a bad foundation, they're not going to have a sufficient natural New Testament ladder to point the way the teachings in Scripture are given. If anything, you'll be a stumbling block. Obey. Obey. If they don't, it's going to affect their matters of employment.

Can you imagine, I mean, you've seen the self-willed teenager there bagging groceries. Who is this man to tell me what to do? I don't even obey my father that way. Who does he think he is? What's kind of awful is that teenager might be a little right. If he didn't respect his own father enough to do what he said with the right attitude, what makes you think he's gonna obey some boss making $20 an hour who doesn't care about him? They were never held to the standard parental obedience as a young person, so they don't see the value in it now.

It's going to come up in the marriage. Listen to me, it will come up in the marriage. Because a marriage is all about what? It's about living together, mutually respecting the other, loving the other more than yourself. And if as a child you were never made to see your parents literally as superior to you and their will as superior to your own and their rule and that rightful place of it, then you will never see anyone ever as being more important than you. You never will. And when it comes time to give, to be the giving, sacrificial person in a marital relationship, that child will always still be a child, just married. And they will remain selfish and they will remain in a place where they are not able to get outside of themselves and their own wants and their own felt needs in order to appeal to someone whose will may be different than theirs.

This will affect every area of their lives. in the home and outside the home. Obey is an act of submission, and it is right. When we look at this society, we see a symptom of our godless culture, something that our Christian heritage would have given us, and many of us have gone without. I myself being a first-generation Christian and not having all the benefits of these things, I could tell you much about the sorrow and the agony that comes with learning God's will, God's ways later in life in these areas. Everything needs to be grounded. Parents, everything you do needs to be grounded inflexibly in the Word of the Living God. There needs to be a reality that you understand the authority that you have is borrowed. It's real, but it's borrowed. And it's only granted for a season. To accomplish a purpose. And that season will not come again. You get one shot.

And during that time, We use our authority to do this ultimately. We teach our children to serve others for the overall good of the home and the family unit, and everyone else will benefit by that, love neighbor, and ultimately to obey the Lord, love God. We are to lay out the truth of the Lord's commandments before them because you must realize it's ultimately not your commandments explicitly that they're obeying at the root, it's God's. We need to be a people who, when we chasten our children, we look at them and say, young lady, we do not lie.

We do not bear false witness in this home. And we will deal with that every time. Young man, we do not steal. We do not take what is not ours in this home. The Lord has said. Children, we do not take the Lord's name in vain in this house. Regardless of what everyone else does, what you may have heard, In this house, the Lord Jesus Christ will be honored and His name will be had in respect here. For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We do not covet things that do not belong to us. Now give it back and apologize. We do not hurt or mistreat or harm others. The Lord gave you those hands to serve, not to hit. I'll do unto others as you would have done unto you, and love your neighbor as yourself." Do you see? Do you see what the parent's doing? These aren't arbitrary things.

It is God's law at the end of the day that we as parents need to remember that they have broken. It's ultimately Him that they've sinned against and you need to discipline them in such a way that you are constantly reminding them that they will have to give an account to someone else besides you. They're going to have to give an account to God. And either we are preparing them to give an account to Him ultimately or we are misrepresenting the authority He's given us because it comes from Him.

That's why a parent cannot command a child to disobey God. His authority is borrowed, and it stops when you go outside of God's will for the life of your child. As Peter told the chief priests, who had a lot of authority, because remember, of the chief priests and Pharisees, the Lord says, you know, they sit in the seat of Moses, do what they say, just don't do what they do. But whenever they told them that they couldn't preach in the name of Christ, Peter said, we must obey God rather than men.

Daniel and the three obeyed the law of his Lord as a child despite the Babylonian rules. Though they were called, keep in mind, all the prophets, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the others said, submit yourselves to Babylon if you want to survive. Well, they're in Babylon and they're commanded to bow down and to subserve themselves to laws that were against God. And what happened?

They obeyed God rather than men. And even when their life come under threat, our God's able to deliver us from this fiery furnace. But if not, we're still not going to bow down to your statue. And the Lord honored and blessed them. A child is always so free to obey the Lord. We hear stories all the time of young people who've come to Christ in the Middle East who've been persecuted by their own family and for denouncing Islam and been threatened with death at young ages, whose lives become in danger for doing so. They rightly stood in obedience to the Lord.

Parents, we need to remember we have a job to do. We have a job to do. Don't lose sight of this. And we have been given enough authority to get the job done. One day we will turn them over for life to God and we will give an account of the time of our stewardship over them. We will give an account of the authority we were given for that time. What did you do with it? What did you do as parents with the authority you were given and the time that you had it? Because a day will come when that authority will not be there anymore.

But, according to the wisdom of the Proverbs, if we have so labored and parented in such a way by the help of the Holy Spirit, can't do this in and of ourselves. If we have been enabled to teach them to obey and honor their parents, when they were young, that when they are old, they will not depart from it. And we may get to enjoy the fruit of their appreciation, their being still sensitive to our counsel and our advice and our well-being, even when we age greatly. And the time comes for them to requit their parents and to take care of them in old age. This isn't a guarantee in every instance, but it is a principle of wisdom. This is a general truth. Because the respect was taught, we may then continue to have a godly influence in their lives, even as they grow and mature, if it was instilled there with love during the time when we were able to make much of it.

Dear children, if your parents give you direction in anything, if they give you a command, if they tell you to do something, do not think badly of them. Do not think wrong about them. Do not be offended. Don't be upset. Unless you know they're telling you to outright disobey the Lord, you have no grounds to disobey.

If your parent is giving you direction, they are doing the right thing according to God. So obey them. Now you've got your parents telling you to obey them. Now you've got Pastor Austin telling you to obey them. And now, you know, God's told you to obey them. You're outnumbered. Obey them. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. If they are telling you what to do, they're doing the right thing by using their authority because that's what they were commanded to do. They're being disobedient if they don't tell you what to do. Do you see?

Proverbs 1, 8-9, My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck. Proverbs four, one through four. Hear ye children the instruction of a father, and attend to no understanding, for I give you good doctrine. Forsake ye not my law, for I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, let thine heart retain my words, keep my commandments, and live. There's a blessing. There's a blessing in obedience to this.

And with our little bit of time remaining, Fathers, one more time, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged. Do not provoke your children to anger. It's repeated essentially in Ephesians 6, 4. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now this applies to parents in general.

But there is upon the head of the home a particular emphasis in stewardship where the Lord has given you a place to ensure with your authority that this discipline is being carried out. It is taking place, but take heed that you do it in the right spirit. Make sure it's getting done. It's gonna fall in your lap and at your feet if it's not getting done, but make sure it's being done in the right spirit. And I'll just give a few thoughts.

As we've said, God commands children to obey their parents, but we never said parents were a law unto themselves. If you want to make your children bitter with you, then try to get them to obey unbiblical commands. Set them up with a contradictory example in your own life of hypocrisy and an exact opposite of what you're commanding and telling them to do. We're talking in the principles of righteousness.

There's gonna be places where you and your wife can have time together and go places that the children can't go. Guess what? Mom and dad can stay up later than you. That's okay. They can have a special meal together that you don't get to partake of. That's okay. They can take special time together. That's okay. That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about them telling you to obey God while they disobey in front of you. That's the hypocrisy we're talking about. Fathers, if you do and live something different than what you're commanding them, the ramifications of that are not just gonna disappear and go away. But rather than go through all the different ways we could possibly stumble our children or exasperate them, I've left here just a few practical helps that I hope will help some parents. And I share these not as, again, some great gray-headed sage. Some of you have more children in here than I do. and in a more advanced stage of life. But I say these as a man who's been helped by these things myself.

One, more is caught than taught. You can say a lot of wonderful things, but in the end, they will just live the way you live. They will compromise where you compromise. They will make excuses where you make excuses. And they will justify it where you justify it, and they will take it further than you.

Because you taught them the principle. Two, from an early age, teach them to give you their eyes. Early on, teach them to give you their eyes. My family will tell you, when we go out and about or we're in a store or in a parking lot or somewhere, I teach my children to keep an eye on mom and dad.

Look at us, when we turn, you turn. When we go, you go. And if I don't trust that that child's gonna do that, if they're three and bobbing around, they have to hold onto my belt loop. And the moment I don't feel that tug, we're gonna have words. Listen, teach your children to look you in the eyes when they speak. and you need to look them in their eyes when you speak to them. Not only is there a real intimacy in that, there's a real intimacy in that, and if you don't do that with them young, they'll struggle in communication and marriage later, but you need to set yourself as the object of their attention at that age.

Why? Because our Heavenly Father gave us that example. Look unto me. all ye, the ends of the earth, right? And so the Lord Jesus Christ, looking unto him, the author and the finisher of our faith, right? It's like, life is kind of like riding a motorcycle. You're gonna go whatever direction you're looking. How's that for pastoral advice? You need to be the eyesight of your children. And then when the time comes and you've taught them to give you their eyes, as they get a little older, they start, they get into the season of why. Why? Why? Why? Don't shut it down. Answer their questions.

God ordained that season so you could fill their mind with the answers to why. If you don't give it to them, they're going to try and get it from their friends and a companion of fools will be destroyed. When they get into the season of why, now there's some regulation and shepherding that needs to happen there, but don't, don't lose that season. The Lord appointed it. Their mind is starving, they're hungry, they want to know why, and God gives them a lot of why's in the Bible.

So teach them, teach them. Because if you have taught them to give you their eyes, when they were young, and now they're looking to you for all their answers. And then you steward that season well, and you give them as many biblical answers as you can, four, five, six, seven, eight, hundred times. And then there comes a point where it's inculcated in them, and now they're stronger and they can bear a burden, and then they give you their hands. And you say, come and do like I do. Come alongside, work with me. Shape their thoughts and then turn that thinking into action alongside of you.

Don't miss that. Three, let your yeses be yes and your noes be no. Listen, as we've said, pointing to, there'll be times when our children have wonderful questions and we wanna capitalize on it, but it's not necessarily the right time. You can tell them, hey, that's a great question. We will answer it when we get home, okay? Now what have you done by saying that? We will answer it, and you gave a specific time, when we get home. So what needs to happen when you get home? You need to answer it.

Let your yeses be yes and your noes be no. If you don't do that, and you need to do it, even if it's sacrificial, if you don't do that, you're going to cause them to lose confidence in you. If you say you're going to do something, do it. If something comes up, and that happens in life, we're not sovereign. We're not omniscient. Things will change. There will be difficulties, but you need to learn how to go to your children, explain to them why something has changed, and give them a comparable solution, either at a different time or in a different way, so that you don't lose their trust.

Be consistent. Don't say one thing and then go back on it and let your yes be no and your no yes. Don't do that. Don't keep changing the rules on them. Be consistent. Establish the boundaries early and stick to them. Don't let the rules change based on your emotions in the moment. You will make them miserable because they don't know when it's eggshells and when it's fine.

I'm gonna give credit here. Years ago, before Christ Evangel merged into FBC Baghdad, I was pastoring, and I got this advice from Frank Maxson. He said, learn to tolerate less. I don't know if he remembers that. Learn to tolerate less. And I have come to find that to be, that is gray-headed sage wisdom.

Why? Because you need to remember, no good thing dwells in your flesh or your children's flesh. If you're already given to weaknesses and failures and sins that you need to repent of and go back on, and do repent and go back and ask for forgiveness if you've sinned against your child, you must. You must.

You can't have a different standard. But whatever your standard is, your children will ultimately take up whatever the lowest standard is that you tolerate in them. If you tolerate backtalk, if you tolerate them going around you and mom and popping you, if you tolerate disrespect, I promise you, it will not just magically go away on its own. You are commanded by God to restrain it. If you don't, they're gonna continue to trend in that direction.

So rather than allow for a bunch of things because you think you're so gentle, learn to tolerate less. And what you find is you'll maintain a greater parental control early on, and it won't fester and turn into something more difficult later. And that ends up for a better experience for everybody.

Five, when you discipline, don't do it in the middle of everybody else. Do not yell at your children in a public setting. Please don't yell at your children. Discipline them. Instruct them. Let the sting be in the rod on their bottom, not in your hate and wrath and vitriol of your words. When you discipline, protect their dignity. Public discipline is a shame to them that will make them resent you. Protect their dignity. Take them aside. Hide them away the way oftentimes your father does with you, doesn't he? Now, there are times if a sin is committed openly, needs open repentance, right?

You need to learn equity and that what you're doing is commensurate to the action. Six, this needs, I think, no further explanation, make sure your laws are the same as God's laws. Double check all your laws, make sure that your laws are the same as God's laws and your laws are not contradictory to God's laws. And then seven, learn the vital skill of self-control. Address issues sooner. This ties in to tolerate less. Address issues sooner rather than just explode once you've hit your 10th infraction and you're now annoyed beyond self-control.

You will not gain control of your children that way. It may look temporary for a little bit, but all you're doing is teaching them to do what you do. You cannot gain control of your children through your lack of self-control. Does that make sense? For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Discipline is a rescue mission.

Do you love them? Then go rescue them from the sin that's destroying them. Do you love them? Then go rescue them from the sin that's taking them out of the blessings of God. Do you love them? Do you love their future? You love the future of their marriage, the future of their work ethic, the future of their relationship toward God? Then go rescue them. Don't tolerate the sin that eats at them, go rescue them. And do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, our parenting, look at your parenting.

Can you go to God's word and open up the scriptures and start pulling verses out for why you do what you do? Why you discipline, why you don't discipline, your method of discipline, how often you discipline, what you teach them, what you allow them to do. Can you actually go to God's word and build that out? Is your parenting done more in the name of modern secularism? Can you honestly say it's being done in the name of the Lord Jesus in accordance with his word? Because I'll end with this quote from Matthew Henry.

If you will not chasten your children's hearts when they are young, they will chasten yours when they are old. So take heed, dear children, obey your parents. Parents, fathers, Do it in the right spirit and the right attitude. You got a short time to get this right.

Don't waste it. Let's pray. Precious Father in heaven, our Lord and God, we do praise you and thank you, Lord, this day for your holy word. We thank you that you've not left us without instruction. Lord, help us to take heed. Help us to be doers of your word and not hearers only. Help us to not be doers only, but Lord, to do it from the right heart.

Lord, to honor, to reverence, to respect, to genuinely care. Lord, as those who do not see your commands as grievous, Lord, I pray that you would help every single family of Mount Zion Bible Church. Lord, may the presence of your spirit be found in every Home, may the hearth of family worship burn hot with the reading and the teaching of your word and the singing together as families. Lord, may the parents take to heart the importance of their responsibility to shepherd the hearts of their children, and may the children take to heart the seriousness of this issue of obedience and honor. and may you receive all the glory and the honor of healthy homes and godly families. In Christ Jesus' name we do pray, amen.

​All of you precious saints. You sing a good hymn by a Presbyterian like Robert Murray McShane, and then the good ones just wander in, don't they? Oh, it is so good to see the saints, the brotherhood. It's so good to see the redeemed, the blood bought of Christ. When the day of judgment comes, when this world is being wrapped up ina a very real and present and visible way, we see the Lord of glory.

And there are those in the midst of crying out for the rocks to crush them and to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb. And there is a real terror that's gripping the world when even Angels are looking on in awestruck wonder and demons are trembling. Powers unseen are falling. Nations being subjugated. What's it going to be worth to you to look up as the king comes forth in splendor to know he loves his saints?

The love of Christ will be our great confidence on that day. Colossians chapter three, you'll find your place in our text, verse 18 through 25. We will read together, please stand for the reading of God's word. Colossians chapter three, verse 18 through 25. Hear the word of the Lord.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men. knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that hath done wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respecter of persons. Amen. Please remain standing for prayer.

Oh, our God, our Lord, and our Father, our great King, Lord, you've given us your word. And you've given us a code, a rule, a command, a life, the power to walk in it, and an expectation of judgment. So Lord, thank you for your word that we would know by what we come to the judgment to hear. And help us to receive it with joy and with grace, not as a thing that is crevious, but it's that which is a token even of your love to us that we may be cleansed and sanctified and pure and walk in the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb. May our lives reflect not only our Lord's forgiveness, but his power to overcome sin. In Christ's name, amen.

You may be seated. We are currently in the household code section of the epistle. And when we look at wives and husbands and children and fathers and servants and all ranks and tiers and echelons of society represented within the church, we are reminded all of this flows out from the triumphs of Christ flowing out to the nations, to the world, and particularly to His people. And He who has triumphed over sin judicially is triumphing over sin in our lives practically. And that is good news.

We are living lives that are all for Christ. We are given not just mere wooden laws, but we are given a spirit in which Christians are to think, a spirit in which Christians are to act, an attitude, an outlook, as you remember that word, an atmosphere to our mind state and to our affections and our heart. And it gives context to everything such that whatsoever we do, we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As a royal priesthood, nothing common. Everything of our lives, as Paul conceives of it, is to be done as a continual thank offering to God. That worship doesn't end at the end of the Lord's day, but it is a life lived in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. A heart that is always making melody unto him, singing his praises through joyful acts of obedience and submission to the crown rights of King Jesus.

We are to be a people who think, speak, act in the name of Christ. always bearing in mind in what we do day to day, his character, his will for us, his example that he leaves behind, his word, and his reputation before the watching world. And it is so very important that as we turn aside into these commands that are given us here, these imperatives, We need to take note and to ensure that our marriages, our roles as husbands and wives, men and women, are being done in the name of Christ, not in the name of the age in which we live and those cultural sensitivities that attach themselves to it. Let it be said, the fashions of this world are quickly passing away, not our standards for wives and husbands. Let that be attached to God's word, which endures forever and ever. and while the fashions of this world quickly pass away, let that which we are growing in be of eternal significance.

Amen? So with that, we look at this remaining section of chapter three, where it comes to these exhortations that are particular to the various roles in the Lord, the Spirit of God, Through the Apostle Paul lays forth wives first in their submission. We looked at that last week, and now this week we have come, and I know, husbands, you have been waiting with abated breath, expectant, exuberant joy that you might know God's will for your life.

And wait no more. The time has come. May the Lord apply his word with great joy to your fervor to obey him in all things. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. You're being addressed today, you servant leaders. you family shepherds, you spiritual heads of your home that ultimately belongs to Christ and you've been giving it a little while to steward for a season until you should present the fruit of your stewardship at the judgment. When all the world is called to give an account, you will particularly be presented in such a way as to account not only for yourself alone, but for your family and for your wives, first of all. Keep that in the forefront of your mind going forward, because when that day comes, when the questions are asked, when the rolls are open, when your deeds follow after you into eternity, can you say you're prepared to give an account for the things that will be uncovered and revealed and asked on that day? and as your mind and the way you're doing things today actively shaped and being shaped by God's word and God's mind for what a family is, what a husband is. Husbands, I will say it just simply looking at this verse, husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Husbands, you are called by God Almighty to sacrificially lay down your life your comforts and the demand upon your prerogatives to unconditionally love someone else more than yourself. Namely, as the Lord has decreed it, your own wife, singular.

And to not allow yourself to become overly harsh or embittered against her. but to grow in an atmosphere and an attitude of gentleness and compassion and sympathy. Scripture emphasizes that the biblical love of a husband for his wife is not about mere emotional sentimentality. It's not merely some material gift giving on important days of the year. Nor is it even on the other side a willingness to enter into a kind of simple, sinful compromise just to keep the peace in the home, a kind of happy wife, happy life.

But rather, this biblical love is about great spiritual strength. unconditionally protecting, providing for, spiritually nurturing, considering, thoughtful of, and becoming a stable pillar for your bride in such a sacrificial way that it ultimately points to the gospel as you seek her good.

And before we dive off into all the more particular concepts of this love, just as we did for the wives, remember, turn back and remember the context of Christ being supreme over all creation and the fact that he made you. He made us male and female and he particularly ordained you before the foundation of the world that you should be a man and you should take up the office which is given you irrespective of what you think your particular strengths and weaknesses are or are not. He designed, dictated, and decreed your biblical place as a male and as a husband in your family, and with it, all the responsibilities that come with that calling. Christ being supreme over creation, We see that the Lord looked upon man when he had finished it, fashioned it, in the garden, perfect in a sense, without flaw, without any hint or taint of sin at all, as Adam was fashioned in original righteousness.

God looks upon the originally righteous and sinless Adam and finds, if you could say it this way, some fault with him. some inadequacy with him. When everything is good, even very good, to the sixth day, there is one thing the Lord looks at and says, it's not good.

What is it? The Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmeet for him. How does that help your sense of fiery spirited independence? It has its place, but not here. Look at this, God says it's not good, that man should be alone. And if you've ever followed a man around long enough and looked at the way he does things when he's left to his own mind and his own preferences and his own devices to do everything, you may have some great strengths in some areas, but you will see a great gulf of just something missing in many others. a great blindness to certain things, a great skimming over, that's not important, so there's a wake of important things left behind him.

We see the living God fashions for Adam exactly what by God's design was needed for Adam, that which would be bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, that which would come forth from him. As Matthew Henry pointed out, not from his feet that he would stand upon her, not from his head that she would rule over him, but from his side, that which would be beside him and nearest to his heart. Adam, beloved, in the garden before sin entered into the world. It says they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Adam delighted in his wife. Adam found joy in his wife. Adam found delight in her.

And the disfigurement of the fall comes in and works havoc, ruin, disfigurement, and death. And here the fall sinned. Sin ruined, marred. image of God shows its face. We looked, if you remember last time, at the particular sorrow that belonged to the women, and the particular sorrow and childbearing, and in the particular sinfulness that is in her, in her wrongful desires even. Genesis chapter three, verse 17 through 19, it speaks to man's sorrow.

And it says, and unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife. and as eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying thou shalt not eat of it cursed is the ground for thy sake in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground. For out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Adam would be made to labor, to sweat, to toil, to hurt. Adam would be in a place to labor for the good of his home through pain. Adam, with every reaching forth onto the ground, every cut of the briar and thorn, would have to deny himself at the next grasp, at the next shovel full, at the next planting, at the next restraining, at the next aspect of manual labor. In all of his doings, he would have to labor in sorrow. He would even eat his bread in sorrow. It would not be for his own particular enjoyment. but that gathering together of sustenance would be as a necessary responsibility of provision that God placed upon him.

And he is reminded here, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou shalt not eat of it. Remember last time, Eve was deceived. Adam was not deceived. Adam had of the two heard the word of the Lord directly when the Lord gave Adam express commandment to not eat of it. For the day in which you eat of it, you shall surely die. Eve had it on reference from Adam.

And here, as he looks on to the subtlety of the serpent deceiving his wife, he never interjects. He never stops the interaction. He never questions the serpent which is in the midst of questioning God. And when his wife partakes, he doesn't stop her.

Adam, at that point, failed as a protector. Adam had a responsibility to protect her, not just to tend the garden, but to tend all aspects of the garden, and to tend for Enki, that which was most precious in the midst of his garden, his own bride. And he didn't tend it at all. He didn't safeguard her, he didn't protect her, he didn't interpose himself between the deception that was before her and the destruction that that deception would work in her, but rather, He, weakly, foolishly, disobedient to God, hearkened unto the voice of his wife.

The order was upset and upside down. Adam knew better, and in his hearkening, Adam failed and cast the whole of the human race into the darkness of sin and death. The responsibility lies squarely upon Adam's shoulders as federal representative of man. And his sin is the greater. It is in this terrifying backdrop. Of sin entering into the world in depth through sin that sin is passed upon all mankind and we see the nation still to this day rocking to and fro is a drunkard in insanity.

The thoughts of men only evil continually. The heart deceitful and desperately wicked of all things. The mindset, the framework of men, the interests, the concerns bent against God. And at the heart and root of it all, husband that failed to take up his responsibility to obey God, protect his wife, and attend what was given to him, and to steward it to God's glory.

So what do we have in the new creation? For Christ is supreme over creation, but he's also supreme over the new creation. What do we have? A renewed and a restored image that follows after the pattern of the second Adam, the true and better Adam, who does interpose himself for his wife, who does come forth to protect her, who does intercede, who does come in and bear the responsibility upon his own shoulders for her good, though it cost him greatly, though he suffers, though he eats, in sorrow, though he sweats great drops of blood in agony in Gethsemane's garden, though he through much pain does so and enters into the force of the curse himself, yet still through it all in far more difficult context than Adam could ever dream of, he interposes himself and demonstrates a love this world knew not.

And that Christ turns aside to every husband of every home that will dare call upon his name, and reveals unto them a great mystery, that the husband and the wife is going to be a picture of Christ in the church. Not a picture of Adam and Eve in the first garden, but it's gonna be a picture of God's design recovered, God's design regenerate, healed, made new, bought and paid for in blood and sacrifice and love. And a pattern will be left behind for the husband to enter into.

As the Lord will say to them in Ephesians 5, 25, husbands love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. This pattern, supreme, high, lofty, glorious, terrifying. that our example is not the best husband you've ever been mentored by among the ranks of men, but rather your example is none other than the God-man, Christ Jesus himself, and the example he sets behind. So with this, let us turn aside, beloved, and let's inquire of the Savior's love more particularly. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Love. Love.

It's agapeo, a verb form of agape, a very, very common word in Scripture, very common Greek word, but with a much bigger Christian application. The word itself, if just left to all the ways it appears, can have a wide range here. Strong's definition literally just simply says, the definition, to love. There you go, we're done. Definition done. No. In some places, beloved. Beloved.

But more particularly, it is to love in a way that is full of goodwill is the idea. not only full of good will or good intention, a beneficent care and concern, but an exhibition of it, a displaying of it, making it visible, putting it into practice, doing it, and with the preference for, literally, a well-wishing for, a regard for the welfare of whatever it is placed upon. It's the exact opposite of indifference or carelessness or not thinking about it. But it is a thoughtfulness that regards, is concerned for, has goodwill for, and even prefers it above the other options.

This word appears 142 times in the New Testament. The noun agape occurs another 117 times in the New Testament. Compare that to submission, which occurs all of 38 times, a hupotasso in the New Testament. Your New Testament is screaming that at the core and the root and the heart of Christianity itself is the summons to love. And of all the different ways this particular word's used across your New Testament, it's used really in one of two ways.

One, dealing with a person, a particular person. And one, dealing with a thing, a particular thing. Of the persons, it just carries that. To welcome, it's an embrace. To entertain, but not in the sense of the way we think of entertainment today. Husbands, I think you will understand this well enough. When you've got 10 things going on, and you're trying to deal with all of those 10 things, and someone tries to come and get your attention in the middle of it, you're gonna decide whether you're gonna entertain that person or not in that moment, right? In that sense, it is a readiness and a willingness to entertain the needs of that person, or to entertain what is being said. Literally, to be fond of, to love dearly, and of things, just simply to be well-pleased, to be contented with the thing.

It's a common Greek word, but when you begin to reach around just the simple meaning of the word and you get at the theology of the word and the way it's used and described and taught, particularly in Christ and the New Testament, you end up with a much bigger, weightier, heavier, heavenly definition. Just to say it in short for simplicity's sake, this theological love, this Christian love, is the self-sacrificing, unconditional, and covenant, covenantal, faithful love of God. It's not merely, as we said, an emotion, but it's a deliberate action of the will from the heart aimed at the highest good of the other regardless of what may be considered their worthiness of it. It is a kind of love that is, as we see in the Scripture, patient and kind and selfless and is perfectly displayed in Christ's sacrificial death.

We see that love in scripture, in the New Testament for saints, even our love of neighbor is viewed, as it says in James 2, as the royal law, according to the scripture. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. If you do this, you do well. Love is the fulfillment of the whole law. The whole law can be summed up namely in this one word, love.

Love is sacrificial, just a few key points of it to just flesh it out a little more. Again, it's not a mere whimsical, fleeting feeling. It's not something that you feel in that moment. We become very much confused in our society of conflating infatuation with something with this deep, concrete, rooted word of love. And whereas infatuation can ebb and flow, it can grow, it can diminish, it's something that is just very feelings-based and feelings-oriented in the moment. It's very superficial. It's just as superficial as, you know, when the flavor of something passes the palate of your tongue, you go, okay, that's nice, and then you kind of move on, and you like it, and you want to keep up those things that you like in this superficial sense.

Rather here, rather than being a feeling, this love is rooted in a far deeper conscientiousness, a far deeper resoluteness, a choice. It's an act of the will, a willful choice to act for the well-being of another, even often at great personal cost, exemplified by Christ in his sacrificial teaching. It is unconditional in its nature. It is not earned or based on emotions, but it is freely given. freely given, not earned, not meritorious, but placed upon the other as an act of volition, voluntarily upon the person exercising it. It has observable characteristics. It is, as we said, it is patient, it is kind, it doesn't envy, it doesn't brag, it's not proud, it doesn't boast, it's not selfish, it keeps no record of wrongs, but rather it is that which is delighting in other focused looking, examining, learning, receiving, thanking, enjoying in all that is coming from the object of your love. your godly affection, or your affection in general in this way, it takes action.

It says in James 2, 15 through 16, if a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you say to them, depart in peace, be ye warm and filled, notwithstanding you give them not those things which are needful for the body, what doth it profit? What good is that as words? We are in a society and a culture drowning in high-sounding marketing words. I don't know if you've ever heard the statement, I'm fond of it, sorry, I can't hear what you're saying over the noise of your actions.

You'll know tree bites fruit. Love bears fruit, love is fruitful. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, it's divine in its origin. This love only originates in this theological sense in God, of whom the scripture says God is love. It's displayed through His mercy and grace. and with particularity upon the great apple of his eye, the object of his love, the bride of Christ, his covenant-redeemed people.

Now, just for contrast, you need to know When we looked at the wife's submission last week, we acknowledged that it is a controversial piece of Scripture in the day and age in which we live. course it is, we're on the back end of three waves of feminism and then transgenderism, which, oh by the way, transgenderism is the end result, the logical conclusion of feminism, by the way.

Because what's feminism say? There's no difference between men and women, anything a man can do, a woman can do. Okay, we'll follow that to its logical conclusion. Men can have babies, they can give birth, they can have wombs, they can wear whatever pertaineth to a woman, and carry on as though they were a woman, and you got to call them woman.

Well, that's disgustingly insulting to the glory and the beauty of God's design. It's blasphemous and heretical, but where did that transgenderism thought begin in feminism? It's the logical result. You don't get to decide where on that water slide you get off.

Now, as controversial as this is today, When we looked at that verse, it was not very controversial for a wife to be in submission to her husband. If anything, it probably appeared the writers of the scripture were going quite soft on the matter. If there was anything that was countercultural and shocking, in this text. It was the demand, it was the inexcusable, you can't worm your way out of it, no excuse, command to love your wife. Not only for the husband to love his wife, but to love her uniquely and sacrificially. You have to realize how counter-cultural that was in the pagan land in which the scriptures were written. in a day and age in which, as history shows, husband leadership authority was really authority only.

It was tyranny. It was aggressive. It was arbitrary. It was capricious. Even among the Jews, they put away their wives at will for whatever. Burnt the chicken? Sorry, I'm gonna go get a wife that can cook chicken better. It was capricious. It was heartless. And the Lord even rebuked them.

Among the Romans, you need to realize just how incredibly self-centered that society was on the male side of things. To be called to love sacrificially would have been very unusual in a society that based the value of a woman purely on her utility, period.

A woman's value was directly tied to her usefulness in bearing children, overseeing household affairs, spinning wool, or whatever else. If you couldn't do that, you were viewed as worthless or perhaps even disruptive to the good flow of society. A problem, an annoyance. Roman women in particular were viewed as property. Many societies viewed women merely as property.

They could be bought, sold, exchanged, traded out. 700 of them, there was no particularity. Their value was measured by the profit of their marriage alliances that were brought into the family through negotiations and political agreements. That's why kings would marry wives of different nations to create peace treaties and allies.

And what does the scripture do? The Scripture loudly and boldly and aggressively cuts across all that filth. And it's still cutting across all that filth. Look at Islam. Look at the nations that they haven't changed in 2,000 years, treating image bearers of God like property. and the Word of God 2,000 years ago.

Before that, when the Scriptures are being written, but in particular here in the revelation of Christ, it's brought to an even greater degree of clarity that the wife was a precious stewardship of God to be loved, provided for, protected, sacrificed for, and highly regarded.

That was counter-cultural in the time the scriptures were written. You cannot go to the scripture and believe the lie of the narrative of the liberal theological agenda today. Rather, you need to see that when the scripture was written, there was no regard for the culture in which it was written. The only regard was for the mind of God.

The scripture does not care whether it is first century Rome and husbands get away with being tyrannical, or it's 21st century America and wives get away with being unsubmissive. Scripture does not care. Scripture commands the men to love sacrificially, commands the women to be in submission to God's order. And it is a place in which God's design is being put before the world to behold. It has nothing to do with culture and society. But you men need to realize the radical summons that this is upon you.

You need to see how God sees and views the delicate flower that God has given you to steward and to water and to feed and to cherish and to nurture and to literally stare at and dote upon. The Lord has handpicked I actually say this all the time, I was doing a little internal debate just there. But my wife's from New Mexico, and I'm a Florida boy, Cajun, and when the Lord brought her to me, I said, look, the Lord handpicked me a desert flower and brought her to me. Brothers, the Lord has handpicked a flower for you.

Out from the garden of his precious redeemed daughters. and he's given it to you for a little while, for a little while, to steward, to shepherd, to teach, to guard, to cover, to shelter, to find companionship with and to provide it to, to love, not to stomp on or handle roughly. And God's redeemed design, redeemed order, redeemed purpose, biblical heaven-sent wisdom, here, just these New Testament verses regarding a husband's love and duty to his wife.

As we saw here in Colossians 3.19, husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Perhaps the most insightful and loaded, loaded with context and help is Ephesians 5, 25 through 29.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.

Brethren, is the love of Christ anything but sanctifying for his people? Is your love genuinely sanctifying for your wife? I don't mean that you just run her so ragged that she's gotta constantly be praying for patience. But I mean that your love has a way of winning her to the truths of God and obedience to the word. Is your love sacrificial? Is your love sympathetic?

Is it nourishing and cherishing? Are you bringing her into deeper waters in the Scripture, washing her with the water of the Word? Are you leading her in godliness? Are you leading her in holiness? Are you going out before her in such a way that you can take the choice gems of Scripture and feed her and nourish her soul? Are you studied enough in the Word to even know how to begin to do that?

Do you love her as you love your own body? You're thirsty, you're tired, okay. Is your wife thirsty, is she tired? How often does that enter into your mind when you're hurting or you're in pain? How often when you consider grabbing something you have need of for yourself, does your mind automatically run to, okay, let me see if I can get something for her too.

I really had to learn this. My grandmother told me as a child one time, she said, son, they say men have one-track minds, but you're literally the only man I've ever met that actually has a one-track mind. I said, thank you, Nana. I grew up, got married, and I was like, I have a one-track mind.

See, when we begin to look at Christ and His thoughtfulness, even look at His prayers, the model prayer that He leaves for us, all throughout the model prayer, and we touched on it recently, where it said, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But look when He transitioned, when He begins to ask of the Lord and to supplicate, give me? Give us this day our daily bread. All throughout, it's in the plural.

And the Lord sets this forth really, I believe, as a mindset for the saints in general, an other-mindedness, not just our own needs, not just our own self. We're called to this in Philippians chapter two, not to just be concerned or care for the things of ourself only, but let each other esteem other better than themselves. Look, not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. And there's no place that that is put into exercise more particular other-mindedness, other-thoughtfulness more than in the marriage union. Other-thoughtfulness for your bride. Loving your wife as you would your own body.

Verse Peter 3, 7, likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered. That's an astounding statement. The bridegroom of the church who gave his life for his bride seems when it comes to a husband coming to him with a heart swollen up with bitterness and anger for his wife and unforgiveness for his wife, doesn't seem to be very sympathetic with that particular sin. Your prayers are hindered. Husband, you're called to dwell with your wife according to knowledge, and that takes time. but you are to give yourself to the time.

You must purposefully, intentionally give yourself to learning what you are not going to naturally know automatically. But that will come with time spent together, questions being asked, going back, circling back around after a miscommunication and trying to really understand what was going on in the other person. So, not just so that you can win the argument, but that whenever you circle back around again in the future, You can communicate better. Or if you totally were having a one-track mind and you were blind entirely to something that had happened, now you know. And you make a point to not be blind in that area again, but to be conscientious and sympathetic and thoughtful as the Lord enables you and brings it to mind.

And you're to give honor unto your wife as unto the weaker vessel. Listen, I said last week to the women that there is no man on earth whose voice and words you are to regard and to take heed to more than your husbands. And we gave this word, you are to have deference, you are to defer to your husband. Well, here, men, I want you to know, husbands, there's no woman on earth. whose voice and words you are to regard and have more sympathy and willingness to entertain more than your wife. And rather than deference, I'm gonna put the word here, preference.

You need to have a preference for your wife and you need to care for what her preferences are to the degree that it's within biblical reason for you to be able to provide. Conscientiously, thoughtfully. The practical applications here throughout are incredibly important, because as you begin to understand what your sheltering strength is provided for, and the honor you give your wife is unto the weaker vessel, and you consider the place of love in all the scriptures, which cannot be overstated, I mean, you're commanded to love your enemies. You're commanded to love your enemies. Do good to those who despitefully use you. Bless those who curse you. Look at the love Stephen had in imitation of his Lord Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

I mean, if that's the floor, if that's as low as you can go of being unloving, that you're allowed, which is how you regard your enemies, well then where does your wife rank compared to your enemies? You're commanded to love your neighbor as yourself. Who's your chief neighbor? The only person you can and share a bed with, that's a close neighbor, maybe some of your offspring. You are to love your family as a whole. You're to provide for your whole household, men.

Scripture makes that clear. But if any provide not for his own and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. The burden of provision and the sweating by the brow and eating your bread in affliction lies upon your shoulders for love's sake. But of all the people you provide for, it is especially for your bride and for your wife. She is to be the immediate and first recipient of your provision.

And as I want to park here for just a moment and open up a little bit, that provision, yes, includes food, clothing, and shelter, but it's way more. That scripture has summoned you and called you to provide. And I want to list just a few of those here.

The obvious, yes, first, materially, you are to provide. You are to provide materially for your home. The burden of finding shelter, of finding food, the burden of providing a healthy situation, a safe situation for your family, as you're enabled, rests primarily upon your shoulders. You're ultimately accountable for your living situations. That's it. On the next point, not only are you bearing underneath the burden of that responsibility, you are bearing up underneath the responsibility of spiritually providing for your home.

You have been summoned and called to be a prophet and a priest to your little flock. God has given that more to you in your home than even to your pastor. You are to be the shepherd of your little flock, the prophet declaring the Word of the Lord to his people in your home, the priest interceding on their behalf in the days and in the nights. you are to spiritually provide and you being the spiritual head and providing the spiritual leadership must not only put your physical home in a physical safe place as you are enabled, but you must put your home in a spiritually safe place as you are enabled. Put your home in a spiritually safe situation.

Put your home in a biblically sound church where the Word is taught, where the preaching is faithful, where the means of grace are faithfully attended to, where you are held accountable and responsible to obey God's Word, and where you have eldership and a body of believers to submit to as you look to your wife to submit to you.

And don't be surprised when your lack of submission teaches her the same. You are to know the Word. You are to eat the Word. You are to grow in the Word. You are to obey the Word. You must understand the Word. You must have its wisdom to be able to apply to the circumstances and situations in your home if you will lead your home as a prophet and as a priest. You can't wash your wife with the water of the Word if you don't know the Word to wash her with. You can't lovingly lead her into the choice places of scripture that deal with her soul if you don't know where your own soul is nourished at. You can't lead your wife where you yourself have not yet been.

This is huge, husbands. Don't be derelict, don't shirk off, don't say, I'm not a scholar, I'm not a pastor, I don't know this. You don't understand, you were called by God to be a husband. the same God who called the elders to be elders, the same God who called wives to be wives. He put standards on each of those husbands. You have been placed in a unique sphere of responsibility and authority that you are accountable for. And if you will be submissive to your role, you will learn that word so that you can lead your home to the glory of God. Know the Word. Eat the Word. Apply the Word in your home. Make its principles the statutes and the guiding rule of life in your living room and in your kitchen and in your bedrooms and wherever your family goes.

And being the priest of your home, you have a responsibility to pray for your family often before the throne of grace and take all their needs, all their sorrows, all their confusion to the only one who can help their souls, the Lord of glory. And teach them how to pray and to seek the Lord's face themselves. So okay, I'm the prophet and priest of my home. I'm the provider. I like it when you say prophet and priest and king. Am I the king of my home? Sure.

What does a good king do? He provides stability to his kingdom. A wicked king will make use of his subjects for his own carnal appetite and he will destroy his kingdom. A good king will take great heed, great care, many reports coming up the chain of command, much awareness of what's going on, and he will exercise his leadership for the good, and the health, and the life, and the posterity, and the future of his kingdom.

And he'll protect it, and he'll fight for it. It'll be like David who goes out in the battle with his men. Husbands, you are to be a stabilizing force in the home. You are to be a strong pillar of unwavering principle in your home. You are to be the one endued by the Holy Spirit through the Word with a kind of bravery and a strength to do what's right when everything else in your home is a chaotic storm of fear and confusion and uncertainty.

I'm not saying we're always gonna have the right answers. We're not omniscient. We're not called to omniscience. There's gonna be times where we have to make a decision and we have to stick to it and we have to hold to it come what may. There may be an apology we need to give on the opposite end of the thing on the other side and we need to be willing to give it. But in the midst of, there is a place where if you just constantly vacillate, and you jump, and you don't know, and you go back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and whenever the instability of the situations, the instability of life, the instability of emotions, even within the home, fluctuate, and you're just caught in that torrent, you can't be the pillar.

You know what's interesting? In the Old Testament, God provided a very amazing and unusual provision for the, believe it or not, the help and the aid of the wives. In the law, if a covenant was struck between your family and another or with a business or whatever else, It had to absolutely be honored. There were no conditions in which that covenant could be severed without the curses of the covenant coming to bear. There's one particular exception. The wife had been out in the market and she had bound up a covenant and the husband had found out about that covenant.

He realized either she's been taken advantage of, she's been beguiled, she's been swindled, She's been, maybe in a moment of weakness or lack of clarity, tied herself and the family to something that is not good, not healthy. The Lord actually put a provision in the Old Testament, the old covenant law, that he had the right to break that covenant clean, safe, when he found out about it. And the Lord did that as a safeguard and a safekeeping for the stability of the home, so that decisions ultimately would not finally rest on the emotion of the moment.

Decisions, husbands, that are made merely in the emotion of the moment, rather than a wise, principled, biblical ground, are gonna fall on your shoulders, and you're gonna give an account for that. And here is where there are places where you're gonna have to give your wife honor as unto a weaker vessel and be sympathetic and be tender even when you know it's not good for her, it's not good for the home, it's not good for the children, it's not biblical, it's not in line with God's word, it puts the home in a dangerous situation financially or spiritually or otherwise and you see it clearly and conviction rests upon your heart and you can see it and you've got a scripture to stand upon, you better stand. Though it hurts and you feel like you're going to eat your bread in sorrow and affliction, stand and be willing to suffer the consequences of your decision. That's the cost. That's the cost of being the leader. You don't get to blame somebody else. And I would say what some cling to as the most joyful part of the work, the kingliness, I say is probably the greatest sorrowful part of the work because it's the hardest. You don't get to blame anybody else.

Lastly, you not only provide materially and you provide spiritually and you provide stability, But don't forget the point of marriage. One of the points of marriage is actually not just about procreation. There's been some movements as of late that have made marriage simply a practical outworking of be fruitful and multiply, and that marriage is simply about procreation. That's not the case. When you look at Genesis and you see what was provided, marriage is also about companionship, companionship. It's not good for a man to be alone.

The Lord designed the wife to need the husband. The Lord designed the husband to need the wife, even in the everyday struggles of life, not just in childbearing and childrearing. He designed us with, as it says in 1 Corinthians 7, in more than one place, The wife having authority over the husband's body. The husband having authority over the wife's body.

They're seeking how they may please one another. There is a mutual duty to one another of companionship. Don't forget that. There is a mutual duty, conjugal duties, time spent talking. There are times when your wife needs to talk and our man brains are looking for ways to fix everything so we stop her on Part A.1, we've already got a solution. There's no reason to drag this out. Honey, I'll take care of this. Tell you what, you go make a sandwich and I'll fix all this right now. When what she's looking for is someone to talk to.

Think of it this way, if you came home Long day at work, worked hard. And your wife says, oh, I was on the phone for three hours today with one of the other brothers from the church. You said, what? What were you talking about? Oh, just anything and everything. Talked about the weather, talked about his favorite colors, my favorite colors, flowers. Are you good with that? No? Good. You ought not to be. That's your bride. That's your body, that's your mind, that's your interest, that's your love.

And just like you can't go out and look with desire upon another woman, all that must be satisfied, and there are many beautiful verses on that in scripture, with the wife of your youth. And it's to be a blessed and a holy and a sweet thing. You need to realize your wife doesn't have anyone else to deeply commune with like that in talking. And when she wants to unburden and she wants to ask, obviously there is a place if it tends towards a sinful cynicism or criticalness over things, lovingly shepherd, lovingly guide, bring it back to the safe context of a kind of communication that is biblical and scriptural, but let her get it out. Let her talk, let her commune, let her believe that you care.

Listen. This is pretty crazy what I'm about to say, I know. You have a responsibility to dwell with your wife according to knowledge, right? Sometimes if you just, men, and I mean this in the holy, reverent way, if you just shut up and listen, you may learn about that knowledge you're commanded to go get. It may just come to you if you'll just listen thoughtfully. Put your cell phone down.

Put the 10,000 pressing needs of the world, some things you can't put off, we understand that. But if you're more consistent with doubling back with your wife and finishing up those conversations, I have found she is more amiable when you get into situations that you cannot break away from because she knows you care and you're going to double back and check on her. But if you just make a habit of shutting her down, shutting her down, shutting her down, I'm busy, I'm busy.

Well, it's going to grow really, really cold. and you're gonna do a lot of damage. I have known both young wives and young husbands that began very, very bubbly, happy, enjoying the partner of their youth, and something ends up happening, and bitterness gets into that equation, and a lot of damage is done for a long time before finally they figure out how much of their own enemy they are, And by the time that happens, their year's done the line and so much damage has been done. And as the Proverbs says, I'll tell you what the Proverbs does not say, the Proverbs does not say, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me. Scripture says these hurtful words will go down into the soul. And you may carry hurtful words the rest of your life, threatening things that you wish you could take back and now you can't. and to go and to just go back to that joyful bubbly, okay, now we understand, let's go back to that. That's really, really, really, really hard. Not impossible without grace, but it's hard. Don't give yourself to venting or aggression or bitterness. I'm telling you this, young married people, don't give yourself to that early on. It's better for you just to stop talking pray and then re-engage rather than say something you're gonna hate yourself for two, 10, 12 years from now that you can't take back.

The Lord designed the marriage for a sweet companionship, conjugal duties to one another, including just being there for one another and listening. Matthew Henry says, speaking of husbands, they must love them with tender and faithful affection, as Christ loved the church and as their own bodies and even as themselves, with a love peculiar to that nearest relation and the greatest comfort and blessing of life.

True strength You get a bunch of teenagers around some weights and they're gonna get into a competition faster than you can blink. But young man, I'll tell you true strength is found in biblical masculinity. The biblical ability to control yourself, to say no to yourself, to subdue yourself, and to place your concern, more importantly, upon the other object.

The love of Christ. If Christ is the perfect man, and he is, Christ is the perfect man. There's no man stronger than Christ. No man ever bore the burden of heaven and hell and life and death, your sin and God's wrath all on his shoulders at one time. Beside Christ. Christ took the literal burden of the world unto him. Christ is the strongest man. Samson must bow the knee before his awesome, omnipotent strength.

There's no man more masculine, no man more manly than the man, the man of men, Christ Jesus. When we look at his strength, we see it demonstrated in his love. and his love is sacrificial. For listen to this and consider this strength and his strong love in light of a familiar verse, Romans 5, 6 through 8, for when we were yet without strength, when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. What's that say? Who had the strength in that equation? He did. I didn't, he did.

It says, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. Yes, it's scarce. It's rare among the children of men. For only the most rare and righteous among us to lay down a life to save a fellow Conrad to save a fellow brother or a fellow friend. For peradventure, a good man, some would even dare to die. Like I said, we pin some of the highest medals in our military in our nation upon the chest of men that are willing to lay down their life for the sacrifice of those whom they love.

That's strength, isn't it? When everyone else runs away to dive on the grenade, to tuck it into your chest, and the only thought you have is that those men go back to their wives and their children, that's strength. To say no to every impulse to save your life, to say no. That's strength. To deny yourself at that level, that is strength. But behold, there's strength infinitely superior to that. Christ didn't bury one grenade into his chest to protect those that considered themselves his friend. He took the full weight of the wrath of almighty God upon himself to die for his enemies who had no strength, to be their strength for them.

That's love. That's what God demonstrated. God commended his love towards us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Now with that, husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. How does that ring in your ears?

This love is a purifying love. Make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of the water of the word. Present her without spot, without wrinkle, without stain. Is your love really sanctifying? Nurturing, is it nurturing, is it cherishing, just as the Lord does the church? Is it truly unconditional? Listen, husbands love your wives and be not bitter against them. Unconditional love. Christ-like love.

The Christ dies for those who cry out for his crucifixion. Sometimes the right answer in a situation When you've exhausted everything that you know to do, you've reasoned, you believe you're standing on truth, sometimes the right answer is to go find the nearest cross and go die on it in love. And stand firm and set your face like Flint in gentleness and in humility. Bitterness is a root that defiles many.

Don't let it into your marriage. Don't. Don't let it. Fight it with everything in your being. Listen. I will tell you this. Enjoying the wife of your youth is never merely expressed in the scriptures as just a privilege or a benefit. It's actually commanded.

What that means is, is when you're most upset, you're most hurt, you feel most disrespected, the least trusted, the least cared about, at that moment, that's where you're gonna find out how much Christ's commands matter to you. There, look through the sea of emotions, look to the suffering Savior upon that tree, and remember these words. for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross. Dear saints, when you look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, what was the joy that was set before Him? What was the joy? Bleeding, was that joyful?

No. The shame, the stripped of his clothes, they parted his garments from among them. Was that the joy he was looking forward to? No. Was it the beatings, the lashings, the stripes? Was it the betrayal of his closest friend? Was it being left alone by his own 12? Was it being crushed of his own father? Was that joyful? No, what was the joy?

It was the joy of the purchase, the redemption of his bride, that when this work was finished, the father would so bless it, and his bride would be his, and she would be beautified, and cleansed, and washed, and made his forever. Listen, there is a joy that you have to look beyond the moment to see.

And it's the joy of knowing if the Lord blesses your labors in dying here at this moment, it may lead your wife into a greater degree of sanctification, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month, it might be five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years from now. But you're looking at how beautiful she is in that holiness 10 years from now, and the smile of your Father in heaven, and the knowing that when you intercede for Christ, he's gonna take sympathy upon you there because Christ knows. what it means to suffer for his bride and to love her unconditionally. And he will so beautify you and honor you and give you strength in it to do it when you look to him in it. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. You're commanded, live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity. Rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

When you get time, read Proverbs 5, 18 through 19 together. Read Song of Solomon together. You're commanded to enjoy one another in the sacred, holy covenant of marriage. Don't let bitterness come in. Talk, listen, love. Walk worthy of the gospel you've been called to. Don't wait for her to submit first before you love her. You want to revenge all disobedience? Do it when your obedience is fulfilled. Love bravely. Face danger. Fight the good fight of faith. Be strong.

Love is ultimately not about how qualified or unqualified you think your wife is in the moment to receive it. That's your wife. That is the God-ordained hand-picked flower that he's given you to steward, to water, to shelter, to protect, to admire, to dote upon, to enjoy. God is restoring his image to fallen man and his saints and particularly conforming you to the likeness of Christ in your marriage, which is a reflection of Christ in the church. That's what you're illustrating. Don't ever lose sight of that. Marriage is not firstly about your happiness. It's about Christ's honor and glory. Christ went on a rescue mission and he laid down his life for his imperfect bride. Husbands, you're on mission.

Father in heaven, Lord, I pray that you'd give us all grace to win our wives with love and affection and patience, not with bitterness and anger and frustration and hateful words. Lord, sanctify our hearts and minds, our mouths, our attitudes. Lord, grant us as husbands eyes to see Christ, to see him bearing the wounds of our redemption and give us strength to follow in his footsteps. In Christ's name we do pray, amen. Once more, Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Go in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, dear saints. Lord bless.

​The cough is mostly gone. We'll see how we do today. Good morning again, dear saints. I'd like to invite you to open with me into the next section of our progress through the book of Colossians. We're in Colossians chapter 3. We'll be taking up verse 18. We'll read all the way down to verse 25. Colossians chapter 3. verse 18 through 25. You found your place if you would please stand for the reading of the Word of God. Colossians chapter 3 verse 18 through 25, hear the word of the Lord.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong, shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there is no respecter of persons.

Amen. Please remain standing for prayer. Precious Father in heaven, our Lord and God, Lord, we do come now to this choice portion of your holy word, the ancient scriptures long since written down that have come from your heart and mind. And I pray that you give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying, Lord, and that you would cut through all that has become too familiar to us in the culture, Lord, and that you would change our mind and heart, and Lord, that we would see heaven's pattern for the family, for the world, for our life, and that we with Gladness of heart would know we do not serve this present evil age, we serve the Lord Christ. In Christ's name we pray, amen. You may be seated. Praise God for the gospel. that sinners can be saved is a wonder we ought never to get over.

See, Apostle Paul's ministry speaks so continuously to all through the book of Acts, even in his writings all throughout Galatians, elsewhere, even in his final letters to Timothy. What's amazing is when you follow the life of the Apostle Paul, no matter how many churches, By the grace of the Holy Spirit he was enabled to plant. No matter how many men he was enabled to train and to raise up and descend into the Lord's harvest. No matter how much experience he gained or how old he got until the day he could say Paul the aged. He never got over being saved. He was telling kings, he was telling the Praetorian Guard, he was telling the churches, he was reminding those who knew his story best, young Timothy, to the very end.

Everything Paul did, he did out of an abundant outflow of the reality that Christ saved his undeserving soul. And what brings us all together, young and old, men and women, but that Christ saves sinners. And praise God, not only does He save us, but He doesn't leave us the way He found us. But He not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but He saves us from its reigning power with a promise that He will save us one day, even from its very presence altogether.

We come into this new section and it is gonna be very important that you remember freshly where we left off last week. The title of that sermon was All for Christ. And if you could just sum up a few key points that we are gonna immediately import into this next section as we deal with the families, as we deal with the homes, as we deal with biblical manhood and womanhood in various aspects of lives and husbands and children and authority in general altogether. Keep in mind, what did we just cover in verse 17?

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Paul has set before us by the Spirit the reality that we who are of the redeemed, we who are of the outflowing current and fruit of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ who died to save his people, we have been called to walk worthy of the gospel to which we've been called. We have been called to walk worthy of the God who called us.

We have been called into an attitude, into a mindset, and into a spirit with which we as Christians, we as saints, sanctums, are to think, speak, and act daily, hourly, moment by moment. That there is to be with us an overarching attitude and outlook and atmosphere to our heart and mind and thought process. That everything is in the context. Every part of life is in the context. That whatsoever we do, we do all. in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There's no part of our life that's not touched or that's now just considered common or arbitrary or insignificant, but it's all brought into the jurisdiction of the domain of the king who gave his life to ransom us. Paul conceives of our whole life as a thank offering, and therefore, all of life is to be an ongoing act of worship. Not just a few hours out of the week, but every hour He gives you to breathe. It's all His. and how you spend it, and how you take that breath in, and what you choose to say with that breath, how you take the beating of your heart, and the strength in your muscles, and you exercise your body, and you move yourself forward, and you take action, and you do work, however it is, in the home or outside the home, it is all to be categorized as a king and priest unto God, as an act of worship.

And that comes right into our marriages, right into our roles as men and women, that we are doing these things in the name of Christ, and in so doing it in the name of Christ, we are always bearing in mind His character in the way we do what we do, His mind about these things, His commands to us, and His reputation before a watching world. And at the end of the day, we must ask ourselves, are we truly doing these things in the name of Christ, or are we doing it in the name of modern secularism? Whose cause are we advancing by the way we choose to live our lives? The remaining section of this chapter, of chapter three, moving on from verse 17 and to the rest, It concludes with exhortations to very real and felt practical realities and duties of the life you and I live.

Matthew Henry says, he notes, he finds it interesting because if you remember, it was not very long ago in Colossians, we were soaring into the stratosphere of heaven's air. We were taking in the glories of Christ. We were considering angelic realities over which Christ was supreme and highly exalted over. And don't think it's strange that we go from such high and lofty and glorious realities and we come down into the most mundane aspects of how you speak and talk in your home.

Matthew Henry says, the epistles which are most taken up in displaying the glory of divine grace and magnifying the Lord Jesus. are the most particular and distinct in pressing the duties of our several relations. We must never separate the privileges and the duties of the gospel religion. Amen? See, because what have we said thus far?

We've said Christ is supreme over creation. He's supreme over the new creation. He's supreme over the church and over the kingdom. He's supreme over everything that is, everything that has been, everything that ever will be. Jesus Christ is supreme over the things visible. He's supreme over the things invisible. Jesus Christ is supreme over our ability to give thanks unto the Father, as we looked at last week. Jesus Christ is supreme over all.

And that being the case, we must remember that He is supreme over the creation of a new humanity fashioned after His image. And that new creation, that new work, that new thing Christ has done It comes and it touches and it transforms every element of our social relationships. as they are now consciously being lived out underneath the awesome lordship and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Being a wife in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a husband in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a son in relation to your parents in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Going to your employer not in the name of a company but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Every element of life. All of it, it's him, it's his, it belongs to him. And you do what you do as his priest, ultimately and firstly. And everything takes shape out from there. And it's with that in view that we come and we settle on this first verse, verse 18. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Now at this point, wives, you're gonna have your own sermon. Husbands, you're gonna have your own sermon. Children, you're gonna have your own sermon. I think this is a right use of time.

But you should know something about my conviction and approach when we come to the scripture. When I deal with a positive command or a positive affirmation in the text, I will spend the duration of the sermon not apologizing for what it says. or by somehow having a sermon for wives and spending the entire sermon telling husbands what they ought to be in order for wives to submit. Nor am I gonna take the sermon for their husbands and spend the entire sermon talking about wives, here's what you ought to do if you want your husband to love you. That's not how it's laid out in the text. So without apology, I do say, as I said to my wife, honey, this is one of those sermons that'll get you kicked out of a church. to which she responded, then make it count.

So this one's for you, my love. Not at you, but with you. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands. Does your heart say amen, sisters, when you hear that? What's your reaction? Is it ooh? Or do you go, yes, praise. Wives, this is the breathed out word of almighty God who made you. You're thinking about judgment, right? You're thinking about the coming of the Lord Jesus, powers, angelic, demonic beings being thrust down, the saints being exalted, that one, that Christ, the one who's coming in with flaming fire and power, that one. He's looking at you and he's saying, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.

How do you take that? As it is fit in the Lord. Precious wives, tender, delicate flowers, and fellow heirs of the grace of God, the Lord Jesus and his supremacy in the book of Colossians has sought fit that we should begin with you this morning. Praise God. Amen.

Wives, according to this text, you are graciously called. to a voluntary, willful, choosing, active, purposeful, decided submission to put yourself under the authority and the direction of something or someone else other than yourself. Namely, as the Lord has decreed it, your own husband.

Now, Scripture emphasizes that biblical submission for wives is not about inferiority. It is not about some sort of patriarchal, maintained cultural suppression and oppression, or just merely a kind of mere tool that has blind obedience to just any man. But rather, this is a good, holy, and heavenly decree of a good king that is about order. It's about right and wrong. It's about function and design within the marriage covenant. And it ultimately points way beyond you and way beyond your husband, beyond your personality, beyond his, beyond your strengths and his weaknesses and vice versa. It points to the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. Before we dive off into the concepts of submission, I want us to remember one of our main points, again, in Colossians.

Christ is supreme over creation. If you want to set the backdrop in its proper colors, you must go all the way to the beginning when God made the heavens and the earth and there was no sin and there was no destruction, there was no pain, there was no war, there was no bitterness, there was no fighting, there was no slander, there was no famine, there was no cancer, there was no death, but everything, as God said, was very good. Genesis 1, 27, so God created man in his own image, the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." We see that of all the things that the Lord made in creation, the light, the dark, the seas, the dry ground, the herb yielding seed after its kind, the creatures after their kind, the creeping things, the beasts of the field, the days, the morning and the evening, all of this, there is something uniquely importantly, carefully, and intimately designed, man and woman, and designed in none other than the image of God Himself who made it. Nothing, no other part of creation, it boasts that. Not of the cherubim, the highest angelic beings, it says, of man. They're made in His image.

As the Lord makes man, and we find in Genesis 2.18, And the Lord God said, it's not good that man should be alone. Fact, it is not good that man should be alone. Husbands, we'll deal more with you later. Lord, in his infinite wisdom, in his infinite kindness, in his infinite goodness, in the superiority of his perfect divine intellect and omniscience, says, I will make him and help meet for him.

Genesis 2 verse 20 through 25, and Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and every beast of the field. It's a remarkable thing to behold if you thought Noah's Ark and two of every animal from all over the world coming to load itself on the Ark. Imagine before there was any loss of life of any kind in any way all the animal kingdom without names is being paraded by God himself before Adam one by one and there he is obviously not in English but going that's That looks like an elephant. That's an elephant. The Lord says, so it is. That's an elephant. What about this? Long neck spots. The word giraffe comes to mind. That's a giraffe.

And on and on he goes through not just the large majestic animals, but to the creeping things, to the foul of the air, I want you to think for a moment, there's something of the brilliance of God's design already in display in the capacity that He's given Adam. I can't figure out how to name my sermons half the time, and I have to probe one of the more spiritual men than myself. What did I just preach? What should we call that sermon before it goes out? And here's Adam naming a whole animal kingdom just by the grace and the wisdom God gave him. And in this, he's exercising authority over the animal kingdom. And as we see, that that was by design. They were to subdue the world in this way.

But interestingly, there's a purpose here that goes back to verse 18, for it says, for Adam there was not found a helpmate for him. Meaning that there was a secondary function in what's taking place here, that as the animals are receiving names, something more than just the nomenclature of the ancient animal world is being accomplished. But the Lord is in the midst of a teaching moment for Adam, and it is becoming very clear, none of these things is like me. And as many times as he saw a male elephant go by, and then a female elephant go by, a male giraffe go by, and then a female giraffe go by, at some point there would be, to whatever degree we don't know, Scripture doesn't give us the deep detail on this point, but there is no suitable helpmate like that for Adam. Adam's without whatever this constantly reoccurring counterpart mechanism God seems to have put into his creation. There's nothing there for him. What do you think about the elephant? No thank you. What do you think about the giraffe? No thank you. None of those match, and this is by God's wise design. For the Lord is preparing to do something wonderful and beautiful. The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept. That kept him out of a lot of trouble when looking for a wife.

And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman. Out of Esh came Eshah and brought her unto the man. Remarkable moment here. From the dust of the earth, God made Adam. From the rib of Adam, God made Eve. And woman was brought forth from the man for the man.

And as Adam looks upon woman, as he awakes from sleep, it's like the first surgery, perfect. He awakes and what he sees is not an elephant, it's not a giraffe, it's not anything of the animal kingdom. He sees something so stunning, so wonderful, so beautiful. All he's left to say is this. is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man." And he names her. And he's quite taken up with and delighted with this new thing the Lord has done. And here, before the fall, before the fall, the most ancient of institutions is established by God himself.

Verse 24, therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. And scripture gives us the data and accounts that they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. The two perfectly vulnerable and exposed to one another, no longer two different flesh, but one flesh brought near without any sin, without any shame, without any wrongdoing. Perfect and good.

And to this day, if you will receive it and understand it, Though the world has been cast in the great darkness of the fall, and we are surrounded by the ruin and the pain and the death of it all around us, and the world is lying in the wicked one, if you will receive it and understand it, marriage is one of the very few things we got to keep and take with us from the garden. And so later, husbands, when you're commanded to enjoy the wife of your youth, remember From this lofty, beautiful picture, we find disfigurement from the fall. The fall, sin entered into the world. The image marred and corrupted and twisted and perverted. So much of it is ruined.

And we see in Genesis chapter 3 after the serpent had deceived Eve and Eve partake of the fruit and she offered to her husband and the husband consented unto this and participated in it and at that point hearkened unto the voice of his wife and sinned in rebellion against God. The whole of the human race is cast into the deathly mire of sin and death. And the word of our Lord haunts and overrules and terrorizes justly and rightfully after the manner in which He promised, the day you eat of it you shall surely die. And man spiritually died on that day. Men and women spiritually died there.

And there is A word that comes forth at this moment as we particularly look at the woman for a moment in Genesis chapter 3 verse 16. And the Lord speaks as the curse begins to fall upon the serpent and upon the woman and upon the man. Just look for a moment at the curse that comes forth. It says unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Now keep in mind the great overwhelming aspect besides pain and sorrow.

And every time a child is brought forth into this world, it is most commonly signaled with the cries of the child and of the mother, as though a reminder of every son of Adam and Eve brought into the world. This is a world of tears and pain because of the effects of sin against a good and a holy God. But here, Adam has already named his wife. He's already in this place exercised authority.

What should stand out to you as the statement beyond the sorrow is that thy desire shall be to thy husband. And something about the desire of the woman is in view here, but it is juxtaposed about the fact that his rule is over her or still over her in the sense of verses that speak to this natural order, but also a desire that is not good.

Remember when Cain was warned of the Lord that sin was crouching at the door and its desire was for him. Sin didn't desire anything good for Cain. Sin desired to master Cain. And it's in that same construction. The desire here is not, oh, I just want to love and to be near my husband and just to smell his breath and get as close as I can all the time, but rather a desire that the enemy uses in a sin-stricken world full of sorrow to be in control and to lead. And yet, he is still called to rule. This becomes the setup and the backdrop of the whole of the human race.

Adam was first formed, then Eve. Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Eve's sin was in that she was deceived. She was genuinely deceived by the subtlety of the serpent. But according to Scripture, Adam's sin honestly was greater here. He was not deceived. He knew, but he hearkened unto the voice of his wife. And in Adam, we all died.

Here, the disfigurement of the fall has disfigured so much of the precious image that was made by the Lord. And as you look upon creation and you look upon its sorrows and you look upon its woes, you look upon its pains, you look upon broken homes, you look upon men and women whose attitudes are not conformed to Christ nor the design of the maker of heaven and earth. We see all manner of wickedness, unfaithfulness, adultery, bitterness, murder, hatred, strife, variance. And then we turn from the fact that God is supreme over creation. We turn from the fact that in mercy, Adam and Eve were not immediately both destroyed in that garden, but a Savior is promised. We see the effects of the fall.

We see so much of the history of Israel and God inevitably. calling up Abraham and then the promises to the patriarchs and then the twelve tribes and here comes David and all these promises and then inevitably Israel and the chastening and Babylon and back to the land and still looking and then finally Messiah and in him we see Christ supreme over the new covenant in the new creation and in what was originally designed in the garden. There is, by grace, a designed recovery of the original image, not just in the individuals that are redeemed, but in the covenant of marriage as they are brought together. As it says in Ephesians 5, 23 through 29, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the wife is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

So there you go. The backdrop of this verse. is that we had something, something was lost, it was perverted, it was twisted. With it comes in sorrow, pain, and death. And now we have Christ and something's being recovered. And that needs to be your mindset. God made that which was very good, sin entered in, and now there is death and all manner of the outflowing death of ongoing sin.

And now Christ is, by grace, recovering something in the image of man and woman. And it is being recovered particularly in these verses in marriage. And that recovery is beautified, typified, restored, carried out, actively participated in on the wife's part by way of this submission that she is called into in the scriptures.

This word, I don't always stop to give the exact Greek word, but I think it's helpful this time. The word submit there, hupotasso, whenever you get the prefix hupo, it usually means under. Tasso has a lot to do with the idea of arrangement or order. And so it's an old, when put together, it becomes, it was an old Greek military term actually, meaning to arrange like the divisions or the vanguard of soldiers and troops into a kind of military fashion of like you would put a squad underneath a squad leader or you would put a platoon underneath a platoon commander. So you were fashioning an order under the command of a leader. And then when that term comes to be used in the non-military sense, it deals very often in the original Greek as something that is done on the part of the one submitting. The submission act is done by the soldier in this part, not the commander.

This is a voluntary, willful, act of one who is cooperating, assuming responsibility, giving voluntarily to this attitude, and carrying, willing to carry, choosing to carry the burden that is assigned. The definition here literally means to subordinate, to obey, to be under obedience, to subdue self unto, or to be subject unto, or to be put in subjection, and subjection of self into. There's not a special other more culturally sensitive definition than that. That's what it means.

The word occurs 32 times in your New Testament. 30, excuse me, incorrect, 38. 38 times in your New Testament this word occurs. Of those 38 times, Paul uses it 23 times. Now take into account the kind of array in which the word is used because you'll see it is used in this as its biblical usage appears, you see it within the individual context in which the word appears, because context is what ultimately determines meaning.

You see it exactly as it's expressed, to arrange under, to subordinate. You see it to subject or to be put into subjection. You see it in places where it means to subject oneself or to literally obey. You see it in other places, it's being used to submit to one's control. or to yield to one's admonition or advice or words.

In each of these cases, this deals with way more than just wives, way more than just women in general. As a matter of fact, when you begin to chase down all those different occurrences of this word in the New Testament and close words like unto it, you will see very clearly that in the Christian life, every one of us is called to submit to someone somewhere at some time. No one, no one gets to be without accountability or responsibility to this command to submit and to subject oneself and to heed and to yield.

You see in Hebrews 12, nine and James 4, seven and many other places, obviously all saints are subject unto God, right? Is there a true saint that is not subject unto God? We're all to be subject to His laws, as it says all throughout. The church submits to Christ, right? Don't we as the church submit to our bridegroom, the Christ, the King, over the kingdom?

Ephesians 5, 24. Many places, the words used, all humans. Even if you're not a Christian, you're commanded to submit to governing authorities. Romans 13, Titus 3, 1 Peter 2. Christians, all Christians, you are to submit to your Christian leaders. In Hebrews 13, 17, it says, obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls and so on. Slaves, you're commanded to submit to your masters. Immediate application. Employees, you are commanded to submit to the lawful authorities of your employers and your bosses.

Titus 2, 1 Peter chapter 2, commanded by God. You are under subjection to the authority that God ordained for you and over you in your workplace. He said, well, I chose to work while I was at. Yes, and insofar as you have chosen to work there under the sovereignty of God, He has hand-selected that leader for you to obey insofar as they don't command you to sin.

Younger men are called to honor, reverence, even obey, 1 Peter 5, older men. Children, you are commanded to obey and to subject yourself to your parents. I can even go so far as to say, even when we grow as offspring, we're still commanded even to honor them. And what better picture, if I could choose all the verses that speak of children submitting to their parents, I'm gonna pick an appearance of this hupotasso word of a child submitting to his parents. Here you go. Luke chapter two, verses 51. And He, who's He? It's the young Christ child at 12 years of age. And He, our Lord Jesus, went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them. Wow.

The Lord of Glory, honoring His own order and His own design, subjected Himself, as the Son, not only to His Father in heaven, subjected Himself, came not to do His own will, but the will of His Father who sent Him. That which He speaks, He did not receive of Himself, but of His Father who gave it to Him. He did only that which He saw His Father doing. Subjection, but look at this. Perfect Christ, Lord of glory, submitting to imperfect parents, imperfect men and women who don't fully understand even His mission or His calling yet, subjecting Himself to them.

We have no excuse. So, take it to heart. This is not, do not lie to yourself, don't let other people lie to you. This is not a wife-only issue. It's not something that's particular to one person. We all must submit. We all have places we are called to submit. And it's by God's design.

The submission here being the particular duty of wives in this regard to their husbands. You should really view that as equally from God as the duty to submit to the magistrates of government, to the the different expressions of this as it is applied elsewhere, it doesn't take on special or new meaning because we're talking about wives now. This is a redeemed design, this is a redeemed purpose, this is a biblical definition, this is biblical wisdom on display in action. When God says, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord, the submission there is, in English, submission. You could say obey in various places. Now just to go over a few texts of Scripture so that you hear the symphony in the New Testament.

Obviously, Colossians 3, which we've just read here about wives, submit unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Ephesians 5, verse 22 through 24, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Titus chapter 2 verse 4 through 5. Speaking of the Titus 2 women, the older women that teach the younger women what it is that they're missing or that they don't know or that they don't have experience in to put into practice. Here's what is the substance of the Titus 2 teaching ministry. That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed. That's what's at stake, that the word of God be not blasphemed. Now note this, in each of these you will notice perhaps the emphasis of my voice.

Are wives or women in general called to be in subjection to all men or all husbands in general? Absolutely not. This is something to the marriage covenant. It is particular as particular as love can be. Here we see it's not submission to the world of men. There is an agreeableness in scripture to the order of nature and the reason of things, but particularly here we are dealing with this manner of submission. And what that means is there's no man on earth whose voice and words and counsel you are summoned to regard and to esteem and to reverence more than that of your husband. Because that unique summons to submission belongs to him in Scripture alone in the covenant relationship of marriage, husband and wife. where these two are a picture of Christ in the church, and they're signifying something that is truly beautiful. I saved this one other verse, this other appearance here, perhaps, A, because it's the strongest, because it deals with the inevitable, well, what if they're not a great husband, right? There's lots of those. No, that's not some boogeyman under the bed and it's, non-existent. There are many husbands who are failing at being a husband, just as there are many wives that are failing at being a wife.

But here in this text, God summons you to consider something and displays a kind of beauty that perhaps you have not deeply thought about. In 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 1 through 6, listen to this. Like wives, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word." Okay? You're a wife, you're trying to submit to your own husband, and you look at that man and you go, he is not obedient to the word. How am I going to follow after this situation and this man? Well, it says, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation or the behavior or the life or the character of the wives.

While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear, whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plating the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart. Let Christ in you be seen, even by your unbelieving or backwards or disobedient husband. Let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit.

Now, why does Scripture go so far as to tell us exactly the behavior and the attitude and the volume of the character and the attitude of the wife? because all of that's in view in God's restoration of the design. The ornament, literally that which sparkles and bejewels the reality to which it testifies to when we're called to adorn the doctrine of God in all things. Wife, how do you adorn the gospel in your life? It's with the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit which is in the sight of God a great price.

See, if your faith is more precious than gold that is tried in the fire, listen, your meek and quiet spirit in the sight of God is of great price also. For after this manner in the old time, the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands, even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters are ye, as long as ye do well and are not afraid with any amazement. Now before you run and go down on one knee and say my liege every time your husband runs into the room, You need to keep in mind the heart attitude of what's being accomplished here. Lord, in the ancient vernacular, would carry as a reverential term like unto the way, sir, yes sir, would today.

And what is being summoned here is not so much a copy this litany, but rather look at the adorning that's taking place in Sarah. Now when you look at the Old Testament, Sarah was particularly noted in scripture as being a very beautiful woman. and even for her great age. She was a very beautiful woman and God doesn't hide that data from us. But what's amazing in the New Testament when God accentuates and clarifies and brings out her beauty, God doesn't denote her physical appearance but her spiritual internal appearance as one who was in a place of obeying Abraham and whose daughters you are as well, as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement.

Now, here's a question, because we could look back and think on Sarah and go, yeah, she didn't do that perfectly all the time. Wasn't there a Hagar situation there? Yeah, wasn't there a laughter situation there? Weren't there a few places where we saw Sarah as something other than the typeset, right, of the example for women to follow? And what you need to look at as, okay, yes, some of those places did occur, but look at the overarching trajectory of her life.

Do we even wanna get into Abraham's lives with Abimelech? And she's, okay, went along with it, not once, but twice. And even after all that had taken place with Hagar and everything else, here is Sarah, following her husband, she does not leave him. And any of this stripped away from the land of the Ur of the Chaldees, stripped away from the family, even Haran, going up and down and all throughout, Sarah was with him and we see a reverence to him that plays out as a very, ooh, caught it.

Sorry, very normal practice in her life and scripture remembers her in that way. Now, if you think it's hard to follow your husband, Imagine waking up Monday morning after this sermon, and your husband says, I think we're going to Iraq. And I think I'm just gonna sell everything that we own, and we're gonna do some missionary work, and we're gonna stay out there until the Lord makes it clear what we need to be doing. Even if it takes years and years and years, let's go. Now, if you struggle with the fear of going to Iraq, but if I submit to him, what's that gonna look like if he does something that I'm really, I don't agree with? Well, just imagine that for a minute. Imagine going and leaving behind everything you know, your entire family, going out into the land of Canaan and wandering around, not for one or two years, but for decades, under a promise that God spoke to him, and that inevitably, you in your great, great, great age will have a child. And nothing about it seems practical or realistic to you. But his conscience is bound. He's chasing after what he believes is the word of the Lord. And there you go in tow.

And you've got a couple ideas and maybe eventually the Hagar idea comes up and then that becomes regretful later on. But can you imagine the fear that would be associated if you were in Sarah's place to say, yes, I'm going. Yes, I'm staying. Yes, I'm with you. even after years and years and years.

Dear sisters, the Lord of all the examples He could have put forth in Scripture for you to say, don't be amazed, don't be afraid. He gives you Sarah as an example to look at as one who is demonstrating a supernatural heavenly beauty of a design element that God designed from the beginning. we see not only did the Christ child, the Lord Jesus as a child, honor the authority of his parents and submit it unto them, but take note of the fact that even when Mary was the chosen vessel of God's particular fulfillment of all the prophets, all the law and all the prophets to bring forth the Christ, And Mary was an honored vessel. She was a chosen vessel. She was a special vessel of God's particular blessing and glory.

And what do we see in the young, toddling life of the Messiah in the flesh as the family is going from one place to the next and out to Egypt and back from Egypt for the consensus, not here to Bethlehem, but now we're gonna go to Nazareth and so on. Who is the angel of the Lord appearing to to guide the family and the Christ? Meaning even when God brings the flesh himself into the world. He still honors the leadership of the design he made in the home through Joseph.

Do you ever really think about that? That's remarkable. Here, there is a beauty, there is an ornament, there is a power, there is a glory, there is a true beauty that is found in this heart attitude. of meekness and quietness, willing to put oneself under the authority or directing of another.

This is that place which you're called to when we talk about a spirit in which Christians are to think and act, that whatsoever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there's to be an atmosphere about your mind in particular and that Paul is conceiving of all of your life by the Spirit as being a thank offering, that all of your life is to be lived in response to amazing, redeeming grace, that all of your life is to be an act of ongoing worship, which is your reasonable service, it is found particularly in your subjection to your husband, to your own husband, who stands in your life as your nearest relation to which God has called you to live with, to dwell with, and to spend the rest of your days with until you die. And this is fit in the Lord.

Now, much of the scriptures are constantly under attack today, and it's one of the reasons why I just want to be objectively clear on what the scripture actually says. Because there are a lot who will take every line of every verse, they'll change head to mean something else, they'll take even this end portion here, as it is fit in the Lord, to mean, yeah, you only have to do it if you believe it's fit in the Lord to do it. That's not what it says. It's not a clause that limits how far the submission of the wife can go, but it's an explanation of why it's necessary. Why do you submit yourself unto your husband?

Because it's fit in the Lord for you to do so. That's his design. That's his call. That's his decision. That's his command. That's his judgment. That is his rule. That's him. Your husband did not decide that you were supposed to submit to him. The Lord Jesus Christ, God did. That's his command.

And even your husband does not have the authority to say, no, I'm scared you lead. Not allowed. The husband has zero permission to say, you know what? I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm just gonna sit back and you take the lead on everything and whatever you do is fine with me, I'm done.

Now this isn't to say a man can't say, hey, in this particular area, you and me are unified here and I just want you to be able to oversee this particular area, like the Proverbs 31 woman who is industrious and can even buy and sell and trade in her husband's name and in her husband's estate and be greatly used for the economy of the home and such. But there's no place for the husband to retreat away from his ultimate responsibility for everything that happens in his home. He can't forfeit it because he's scared. He can't forfeit it because he's never been trained. He can't forfeit it because it's not his command in the first place.

It was God's command. And in this, dear saints, we are all to walk worthy of the gospel and our marriages are to be a powerful witness for Christ. Let me very quickly just run through a few defensive yeah, but what ifs. One. Doesn't Ephesians 5, verse 21, before he gets into the marriage, say that we are to submit ourselves to one another in the fear of God? Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God? So aren't we just supposed to be mutually submitting to one another? Isn't that what that means? He says, well, A, it does say that, but no, if that's what you think it means, that's not what it means. Paul's moving from the general to the specific because the very next verse after that begins to talk about submission in the home in Ephesians 5. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands.

And so, as you look, you see generally, as we've already said, all of us are called to submit. All of us are called to be under authority. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone has the same equal authority over each other as everybody else. As we will see later, that's not mutual submission, that's anarchy.

Because, I tell you what, you get a whole bunch of people with strong opinions and say, you all need to submit to one another equally. No one submits to anyone. Why? Because one person and a second person disagree. You need to do this. No, you need to do this. You need to submit to what I say. No, you need to submit to what I say. Who's submitting? Nobody. That creates anarchy. And that's not God's design. So not only is the church to have everything done decently and in order, the Lord has ordered all of life. And this is part of his order.

There is a New Testament spirit of equity. There is a realization the husband needs to deal with you not as anything other than a sister in Christ and a fellow heir of the grace of life. It's a man who is gonna give an account for every word that he says and everything that he does to you forever. There is to be a mutually seeking how to please one another. There is a reality to which there is authority over one another's body in the conjugal marital sense. There is a place to where both are called to humility and mutual conscientiousness and sacrifice.

But the order that is here displayed of what Ephesians 5 talks about, if you read the whole chapter, is explicitly clear. We're all called to submit. Here's where you do it. Yes, in the spirit of equity, but this is real actual submission. This is real order.

And again, the absurdity of universal application. If you take Ephesians 5, 21 to say, submit yourselves to another in fear of God, that that means your husband needs to submit to you in the authority sense, then you also need to be willing to say, you as parents need to submit to your children. The governments of the world need to submit to you, the kings, they need to do what you want. When the police officer pulls you over, give him a ticket. A little absurd. Some of you would like to do it. It's a little absurd. But what's the end result? Chaos, anarchy, and disorder. And a whole lot of empowered flesh that doesn't want to submit to anyone.

What if you say, well, and we've already touched on this in 1 Peter 3, but what if he's not living what he should, or if he's not loving me properly first? He's the leader, he needs to love me first, and then I'll submit, right? There's a major problem with that way of thinking.

Firstly, firstly, your husband may not command you to sin. You may not break Christ's explicit commands as a Christian in favor of your husband's commands when those two things contradict. And I have seen wives who were otherwise very rebellious against their husbands. The moment the husband told her, you know, it's actually fine if you wanna go out and get drunk and go out and do this and do this for the weekend, you have my authority. And all of a sudden, she's all about submitting to her husband. But what is she doing? She's not submitting to Christ. The husband has no authority to command his wife to sin, and that means two different things.

One, his authority stops, and he can't summon you to disobey Christ. And on the other side, that means even if you want Him to give you permission to do that thing you know that Scripture says you're not allowed to do, you still can't. It's neither an acceptable hindrance nor an acceptable permission slip. But here's what you need to know. His obedience is not what qualifies your obedience.

1 Peter 3 directly addresses and contradicts that way of thinking because you have one that's not even obedient to the Scriptures and Scripture commands subjection and submission, meek, gentle, and quiet spirit. And if anything, you have even more of a clear context going right to Sarah as someone who is submitting without any fear, without any amazement. Another thing you need to realize, a major problem with that way of thinking is you don't know yourself as well as you ought. When you start thinking that way, you need to remember, A, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, and you've forgotten what happened at the fall.

What does your heart want to do? Rule over him. So, if your desire is to rule over your husband, and he's doing something not the way you would do it, not the way you like, that doesn't match your opinion, what's an easy out? I disagree, that's wrong, and you're not doing things right anyway. As a matter of fact, I think you're a little bit of a hypocrite, and I'm gonna tell you why.

And then so now, control begins to be wrestled to the more righteous wife because the husband is not living up to her standards and expectations. Well, now who's head of the home? The wife's emotions. The wife gets to decide whether the husband is qualified to head or not. The wife gets to decide whether the husband appointed as the authority in the home or not.

And what she has seized from him, she's actually seized from God and taken under herself. While he may not summon her to sin, even in a husband that has much to work on, much to grow in, is still placed in a place of responsibility that he will give an account for, and you're not helping him by taking his authority under yourself and using his disobedience as a reason to now justify your disobedience. If you're trusting yourself to decide what commands you determine you're qualified to submit to or not, then your heart is the ultimate authority, not God, not his word. You're trusting yourself to be wise enough, good enough, that if your husband is loving enough and meets your needs enough and makes you happy enough, none of those you'll find in Scripture.

Our obedience is never predicated on someone else's obedience first. We revenge all disobedience when our obedience is fulfilled. And last but one more but, don't you notice that, well no, actually, We find that the wife's duty to submission is listed out here first. As we will see later, husbands, none of your obedience is predicated on her either. You are both called to obey first. Whichever one doesn't is the first to disobey, and that's it. That's it. Submission, He's not ultimately about how qualified or unqualified your husband is. That husband that, for the most part, you picked.

But about, your submission is about God restoring the image of God to fallen men and particularly conforming you into the likeness of Jesus Christ. Your marriage is to be a picture and to illustrate Christ and the church, and just as it would be untoward for Christ to go around submitting to the authority of his local church, which is basically what Rome practices, we see in the scripture the church submits to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as her head. Christ submitted to imperfect parents. He went down with them and was subject unto them.

The Lord who loves you and knows you is not calling you to do anything that he did not demonstrate and do first. The question is, will you do all in the name of the Lord Jesus? Will you think, will you speak, and you act in the name of Christ and bear in mind his character, his will, his command, and his reputation before a watching, critical-eyed world? marriages as roles of men and women? Are we doing them in the name of modern secularism or are we advancing the cause of Christ?

Dear sisters, wives, you will provide a very powerful and real example to your children on what it looks like to submit to authority and how to submit to authority with the right attitude and right spirit. Do not expect your children to submit to you if you give them an example of being unsubmissive to the authority over you, and they see it. More is caught than taught. You can teach them one thing and adorn it with something else, and they will imitate you more than they listen to you. If you won't hearken to your husband, don't expect your children to hearken to you, or him for that matter.

It's amazing, just in ministry I've found women who are able to dominate their husband in a relationship inevitably despise the man that they're able to dominate. And the thinking of the man is, if I just shut down, quiet down, and give her what she wants, she'll be happy. He's in for a roller coaster of pain, not him only, but she is too, because the both of them, you hear me, will be utterly and completely miserable. How can a man protect you from the evils of this world when he can't even protect his own authority from you? If you can dominate him, is he really the safe place you're gonna run into?

Why is it that women who think they want their husbands to do what they want are actually very blind to the fact, no, you don't want that. You don't want your husband to simply be a response of, John, how high? Do this. Okay, I'm gonna do it. We are not talking about a non-sacrificial husband. We're not talking about a husband that does not have a conscientiousness of how to please you. A husband is called to live with you according to knowledge. We'll get more into that next week.

But there is a lie in the mind of the modern feminist today. All you need to do is go look at the statistics and the absolute insane metrics of the anger, the divorce, the misery, the suicide, the depression, the mental illness. There has never been a generation of mental illness among our women like the numbers that are just out there today. They have absolutely, as a society, collectively got together, convinced ourselves of an alternate reality, and lost our minds. Women given to rebellion, actually, you follow them around long enough, they do lose their mind.

Why? Because they often cannot cope with reality because they're learning to interpret the world primarily through their emotions rather than the Word of God. And that has a short shelf life. If you don't deal with reality, if you don't deal with the scripture as it's written, if you don't deal with God's commands, if you don't deal with truth, you will eventually get so used to relying on the way you feel in the moment to justify what you think ought to happen or should have happened or would have happened.

And if you're not careful, you will spiral down into the black of satanic deceptions You'll follow after Eve, who was deceived by the subtlety of the serpent. You'll take something for yourself that wasn't meant for you, and what you thought would raise you higher, you'll realize too late you've been bamboozled. It'll plummet you into sorrow once again. Your Savior is recovering you, not only from the penalty of sin, but from its reigning power.

I pray that you would know the joy the joy of a heart free to submit to Christ, submit to his authority, and to know the joy that comes with having a clear conscience before God and your family, and to be able to walk into the liberty of the grace of the New Testament life, and in the beauty of a meek and a gentle and a quiet spirit.

And you will find how much more influence you will actually be able to exercise in your home. Because I'll give you a hint, a soft word will break a bone. And when men are used to fighting all day long with other men, and you just do what other men do, so it's just business as usual, you will realize the force God has given you to look your husband in the eye and say, you know, I love you. You know I'm gonna do what you believe is right before God and his word.

I wanna help you however I can. but if there's a place where I could express a difference, I would like to. And watch a godly man's heart break. I had a man that I counseled years ago say, the first time his wife, you know, cried, rather than just fought him, it broke him. He said, I've been in the military, I was used to fighting, I wasn't ready for that. We're not talking about a manipulative crying to get what you want, right? Teenage girls do that a lot, don't they?

We'd be sanctified out of that. But we're talking about a genuine heart of love for God, for your husband, an attitude of submission that is meek and gentle and lowly and humble, and you will find the Lord will beautify your life and your marriage wonderfully. Now, do you do that? Do you do these things because? You want like an ATM to put the card in and get the good receipt out? No. It is a Proverbs-like wisdom benefit of reality. For you, you need to say, come what may, whether I get to enjoy all the benefits of that this side of eternity or not, Christ is Lord now, and I will submit to my Lord now.

Amen? May God give you, precious sisters and fellow heirs of the grace of life, the power to do what the world cannot do, and to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Precious Father in heaven, O Lord, you called your Son, and he hearkened unto you, He did not turn his ear, he was not rebellious. He did and said what you called him to do and say in the flesh.

Lord, we have our type, we have our pattern. Lord, all of us are called to submit somewhere. All of us are called to obey. All of us are called into the Christian reality. of order and to order ourselves underneath whatever authority you've placed in our lives.

Help us, Lord, to be examples of submission ourselves so that we can give others a good example. Lord, help us not to expect anyone to take our word seriously if we don't heed the authority of those you put over us. Lord, help us to see our sin causes more misery and everything we aim or attempt to gain in this world and in this life through disobedience will only multiply our sorrow more. Lord, help us to see your ways are right, your ways are good.

We have been redeemed, and you're restoring the image of Christ in the church, in the marriage union of man and wife. And may it be clear, and may it be so, in all the true churches of the Lord Jesus. I pray all the marriages in the homes in Mount Sinai Bible Church, we take heed to your words, Lord, and by the power of your Holy Spirit, enabled more and more to walk in them by beginning firstly to think rightly about them in Christ Jesus name we pray amen now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Lord bless you, dear saints. Go in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But please, once you've found your place in Colossians 3, verses 12-17, I will invite you to go ahead and please stand for the reading of God's word. Colossians 3, verse 12-17, hear the word of the living God. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another.

If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts to the which also you are called in one body. And be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Amen. Please remain standing for prayer as we seek his face once more. Oh, our great Lord and God, in the name of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, grant, I pray, that your Spirit would illuminate our mind to the understanding of this word, that you would grant us wisdom as to its meaning, and power as to its application. Help us to know it, to understand it, and to live in it. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. Remember where we left off last as we came through and looked at verses 15, 16, and 17.

We saw that the rule of peace is to be the umpire, is to be the referee, is to be the judgment call that is overlooking every thought, action, word, and deed of the entirety of our lives. that there is to be this moment by moment deciding or judging within ourselves what is ultimately goal worthy or praise worthy in every action and activity and situation that we find ourselves in and that we take up.

And that the goal ultimately is the peace of Christ. the peace of Christ reigning over the troubled waters within, such that he commands peace be still and we have an inner peace, and such that by our obedience and by our experiencing that peace, we being peacemakers work to bring about peace in our circumstances and in our conversations and in our life lived amongst the saints and the world around us with others. We are as a people mutually called to unity as one body, all bearing about that goal and that aim, and cooperating with one another, and shouldering up one another, bearing one another's burdens, fulfilling the law of Christ, that we may jointly and corporately aim to be ruled and governed by the rule of peace in Christ. And that the proper resulting attitude that rule of peace in our hearts, as we saw at the end of verse 15, is that we would be a thankful people. A people not given to grumbling and murmuring, complaining, backbiting, and slander, but a people given to that more gracious and spirit-led positive outlook which brings us to a conscious state of thanksgiving again and again. And it begins to color our world, not as those who are always looking for the negative aspect of what's missing in our framework and then dwelling on it to the point that it jettisons us into conduct and attitudes and speech that is not glorifying to God, but it's actually murmuring against His sovereignty, but rather we're to be a people whose world is colored by thanksgiving, because in light of what Christ has done, in light of the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, in light of His reigning supremacy over all things, we find the reality of the positive of the fact that we are still drawing breath, that He is still shedding abroad His kindness upon us, that Christ has been the means by which God would show us mercy, not just now, but forevermore.

And that when we even look at the saints, the fruit that we do see in them is a result of God's kindness to them and to us, that they can bear that fruit. So we give thanks to God for them, even going all the way back to the beginning of the letter. If you remember in Paul's thanksgiving at the onset of the book of Colossians, he was giving thanks to the Father for the fruit he saw in the saints. There is to be a world that is bejeweled with the constant refracting radiance of a hundred thousand mercies and blessings that we as the Saints can see, regardless if the unbeliever can't.

And it should change the way we live and we think and we see things. All of this brings us to this grand statement at the end of this section, verse 17. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. It was recently, just a couple weeks ago, we heard, some of us reminded, some of us heard probably for the first time, the name C.T. Studd, the missionary who gave up his famous cricket career and sort of like Eric Little, pursued the Lord in this marvelous way and ended up laboring in China underneath Hudson Taylor in the China Inland Missions.

And that statement, only one life, he wrote, which will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last. There's actually eight stanzas, or verses, if you will, to that poem. I'll just take verse number two of it here, and just think. Only one life, yes, only one. Soon will its fleeting hours be done. Then, in that day, my Lord to meet, and stand before his judgment seat. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.

When you look at the sum total of your life, the way you live and think, and you look at the choices you make and why you make the choices you make, the decisions, the words, the speech, your attitude, Is it done with this grand reality and view that everything is quickly passing away all around you? And it's not passing slowly. Scripture says it's passing quickly.

But the life of a man, the glory of a man, it's like the flower of a field. It may be beautiful, but it is short-lived. And it's not long before, about the time you've even found that beautiful flower in full bloom, you circle back around a day or two later to show your friend, and the wilting has already begun. Such it is, it seems, when we are, by God's kindness, brought into, some of us, whatever it is we may consider to be the prime of our life. Some of us live to quite a ripe age before we get anywhere near what we think that looks like. But no sooner have we entered into it that we are made very cognizant that this won't last long. This won't last long. Only one life will soon be passed, and only what's done for Christ will last.

Is your life a life that you can say whatever you're doing right now, whether in word or deed, that everything you're doing, you're doing in the name of the Lord Jesus? Is that why you're doing it? Is that by whom you're doing it? Is that in whose strength you're doing it? Is it true?

You need to know verse 17 is, as one man put, an interpretive summary of all that we just read, verses 12 through 16, at the beginning of this sermon. All those verses, everything dealing with putting on this new man, putting on these Christ-like bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, putting off all these old things, putting on the new, letting this peace rule in our hearts. You could say verse 17 is a grand summing up of all that these verses were building out.

We could say for Paul's formula, if you will then, for Christian unity following this cascading section into the verse we now arrive at, you could say the formula for Christian unity starts with the peace of Christ arbitrating over all our actions and thoughts. then it continues with the word of Christ dwelling in each one of us. The word of the Lord Jesus Christ, the word of God dwelling in us powerfully. And then his formula concludes with the name of Christ supplying the reason and the motive for every element of life. that Christ himself, doing things in his name, is our great motivation. Doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Now when you look at this verse, if this is a grand summing up, if this is a great summary statement that we've come into, keep in mind, look at what it's actually saying. You could almost ask yourself, what is the Christian life? Because a grandness is coming into view here, something that does seem to grab hold of the far-reaching sphere of everything that touches the Christian life.

There's a principle here that colors everything. What is it actually saying? What I want you to notice is that Paul is offering not so much a set of rules. Paul is not granting us this set of wooden laws. But rather, Paul is setting forth an attitude, or what we may call a spirit. A spirit in which Christians are to think and speak and act in everything.

I can't begin to tell you the importance of that. When you talk about the life that we lived and all the things that we do, when we talk about why we do what we do, We must be careful lest we devolve down into mere do's and don'ts. This has been a big thrust for the whole letter of Colossians, and that makes this verse 17 doubly applicable for the summing up of this section as well as the heart of a large aspect of this letter. True worship has always been about the spirit of the thing.

You know who grabbed hold of that reality and knew it and wrote about it in the Old Testament and had to be brought very low in his own sin sickness, very low in the humiliation of his rebellion and transgressions against God, very low in the stupor of the blinding power of sin before he could lay hold of it and recognize it and sing a psalm about it? none other than King David himself. Psalm 51 is known as the great psalm of repentance of King David. I grabbed just a few verses out of it. Look at Psalm 51 verse 10. Look what David, by the Spirit, is made to sing.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Verse 12, restore unto me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Verse 15 through 17, O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise, for thou desirest not sacrifice, else I would give it. Thou delightest not in burnt offering, sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Dear Saints, true worship.

We just touched last time regarding the hymns and the Psalms hymns and spiritual songs where the melody is being made firstly and chiefly where? In the heart. As we were reminded in John chapter four, verse 23 through 24, it says, Christ speaking, but the hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him.

God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The whole immaterial, invisible reality of why you do what you do, the secret atmosphere of your mind state is in view before the Father at all times. And you can't worship Him even with your most perfect doctrine and your perfect practice, your perfect dotting every I and crossing every T. If the atmosphere and the air of your heart is not heavenly and thankful and rejoicing in the knowledge of the grand truth of who Jesus Christ is, you can go through, like a Roman Catholic, 100,000 motions to the day you die. and die an alien unfamiliar with the intimacy of knowing and communing with Christ. And all you will hear on that day with all your fair show of religion is, depart from me, you worker of iniquity, I never knew you.

True worship. Of course, that spirit, if that's the air, if that's the atmosphere of your mind state and your heart, of course, it's gonna breed obedience to actual commands. Of course, it's going to bring about, if you have an overall attitude of submission to Christ, then his laws are not grievous. That attitude of submission to Christ will produce obedience to Christ's commands, but obedience to Christ's commands doesn't begin with mere and outward rule keeping, it doesn't.

And sometimes the atmosphere of our heart devolves into that low base, ritualistic sacramentalism, and God hates it. There's a way to offer sacrifices we see in the Old Testament where the Lord abhors it, where He can't even stand the feast days anymore. He can't stand it. He's looking for true worshipers to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now note this, this attitude, this atmosphere, this outlook, this spirit is given to us as something that's not to be attended to merely for two hours on Sunday morning. It is meant to invade and saturate your life.

Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you do, do all Scripture says the net of God is cast wide. You have been caught within it and there's nothing about your life that is not captured and brought in to the glorious reality of the miracle of the new birth and his plans for you in eternity. Everything that you are, everything that you think, everything that you feel, everything that you know, it's all being brought into glorious subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ that you may be free from that old man. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and rinse and repeat till you die, and then eternity, and then forever.

Paul, when he thinks and when he writes and when he speaks by the Spirit, he views our whole life as a thank offering. is a thanksgiving offering laid upon the altar in response to the amazing grace that is ours in Christ. This is what he's urging us to in Romans chapter 12, verse one, to present not a few minutes of your time, please, if you could look over this way and just give dutiful attention to a few religious things. No, he says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is your reasonable service. This is your spiritual worship. Paul clearly acknowledged the importance of the in-gathering of the saints, of the Lord's Day, public worship, but he never believed that worship stopped when the Lord's Day ended.

Christ gets all your days and all your hours and all your minutes. He gets all your thoughts. He gets all your goals. He gets all your dreams. He gets all your ambitions. He gets all your worth and all you could ever think about. He gets it all. The King gets it all. If He left you with it, it would burn with you in hell forever. But He saved you, and He ransomed you, and He's taken you unto Himself, so He gets it all. You were bought with a price. You're not your own.

But to the saint, this is really good news. We were in the midst of a tragic scene of self-murder when the Lamb rescued us from ourselves. And therefore we have no hesitation as it relates to the spirit within us, the principle of life within us, the Holy Spirit's indwelling in that real, true, deep part of us. We long, we desire to do everything all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Who else would we do it for? We filled up the sum of our iniquity in our life before he came. We've served sin long enough, haven't we? We've served ourselves and our appetites and our lusts long enough, haven't we? Why would we lay another oblation and offering before that wicked idol of self one more time? Let's give it all to Christ. Let's give it all to Him. He's worthy. And we'll sing it for eternity. Worthy is the Lamb to receive all honor, all glory, all praise. How much of it? All of it. All of it. This is the song of the saints.

It's important that we understand the significance of doing it in His name. You know, this has really been something of a theme. Paul has been just worshipfully building up to this and authoritatively establishing it in doctrine by the Spirit as it's being breathed out.

Consider just the chapter before in Colossians 2, verse 6, Paul said, and this is a great sum of the Christian life in the statement as well, Colossians 2, 6, as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. What's the proper response to receiving Christ? Walking out every last step of the rest of your life until you see Him face to face in Him, and then you walk in Him manifestly from there. For even the angelic host to see, and the brethren to see when we shine with the radiance of His glory, conformed into His image. What's the Christian life? It's walking in Christ, it's following the name of God withersoever He goes. Paul's saying that the natural consequence of receiving Christ is walking in Him. So you can't walk in Him if you haven't received Him by faith. There's no power.

Colossians 1, verses 9 through 12. Going back, we spoke of Paul's prayer at the beginning. Well, we'll look closely at it. What was it that he was praying from the beginning of this epistle that the Spirit is now sealing, as it were, at this point? In Colossians 1, verses 9 through 12. If you haven't gone back and read that prayer 14 times by now, I'd encourage you to do it. Paul is praying by the Spirit for the Church of Colossae, and by extension, he's praying for you and he's praying for me.

He says, "...for this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

Beautiful. Remember, we cannot lose sight of the theme in Colossians that it's in the power of knowing Him. It's in the power of knowing Him. Knowing Him. Knowing Him and the power of His resurrection, Paul says in Philippians 3. That we have the power to walk in and walk out the Christian life. He's the source of it all. He's the wellspring. The triumphs of His grace overwhelm our sins, not our best efforts independent of Him. And so we see, and I want you to have a sense of that power in what's being said.

This is not the first time in Scripture we are told to think about doing something in the name of the Lord, or trusting in the name of the Lord, or having within view the importance and the significance of that which is in the name of the Lord. I mean, doesn't Scripture say in Psalm 20, verse seven, gloriously so, and this is something we, we return to very often when we're tempted to lean and retreat back into the arm of the flesh and to trust in what we can do. This is a verse that is combat ready to fight back against our carnal temptations to trust in the flesh.

For it says, some trust in chariots and some in horses. But we will remember the name of the Lord our God. There are those Egypt is going to trust in its horses. Babylon is going to trust in its chariots. You're going to have a Syria that's going to look to the numbers of its army surrounding the walls of Jerusalem. You're going to have the Philistines that look to what they think they can do in the flesh to Israel. over and over again.

The nations all round about are constantly trusting in what they can make, what they can practically build, what they can do. The horses they can multiply, the tanks they can multiply, the chariots they can multiply. But what is unique of the people of God? Let them do what they will, let them trust in what they want to trust in, let them boast and brag about whatever it is they want to brag about that they think is going to get them over the hurdle.

As for us, As for me and my house, we're gonna trust, we're gonna remember the name of the Lord our God. We're gonna serve Him. This has been the cry of God's people for as long as they've known Him. And here in that statement, we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Oh, this isn't just poetry. It's a holy threat to the enemy.

Bring your horses. Pharaoh, go ahead. Get your best and brightest. Go get your most formidable army you can find. We've got a pillar of fire. Go ahead. All right, come on. Let's go, Assyrians, Sennacherib. You're threatening us? You're gonna write a letter with all these demands? Okay, I'm gonna go take it to the temple and hand it to Jehovah. He has an angel who'll be meeting you outside the camp shortly. Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, you're going to threaten us with destruction and fire. That's fine. Our Lord's gonna meet us in the furnace.

Go ahead. Though the heathen rage, the Lord speaks and the earth melts. Go ahead. Bring all your maximum firepower. We're gonna trust in the name of the Lord our God. We've got the better end of this deal. We have the mighty maker of heaven and earth.

So you can bring all the twigs and sticks you like. will have the God who raised up the cedars of Lebanon and turn them into furniture at his decrees." Micah chapter 4 verse 5, for all people, this is Micah by the grace of the Spirit looking to that grand day, that reality when Faith is so absorbed and taken up that grand city of which we speak. It says, for all people will walk everyone in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. So whether it's Psalm 20 verse 7, Micah chapter 4 verse 5, or so many other scriptures in the Old Testament, there is a grand statement of power when we say we're going to trust in the name of the Lord our God.

That's where our trust is going to be. That's where we're going to get our motivation to do what we do. That's what we're going to remember. That's where we're going to put our mind on. That is where we're going to interest and exhaust ourselves in while you're busy putting together your machinery.

So to import that statement, in the name of, into the New Testament, and then put on it the title, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, is to summon the realities of God as creator, God as the Holy One of Israel, God as the destroyer of enemy armies, God who is the captain of angelic armies, God who's sovereign over all, and to show that mighty identity in the person and in the face of the Lord Jesus, who has been made head over all things to the church.

Paul summons this language in 1 Corinthians 5. If you remember, the necessity of church discipline is taking place. You have a egregious sin taking place within the church. And Paul has called them to repent, not to merely tolerate it and celebrate the fact that they're tolerating it, but to put it out. And Paul says this. and you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I verily, Paul says, as absent in the body but present in the spirit, have judged already as though I were present concerning him that hath done this deed.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. when you are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a one unto Satan, for the destruction of his flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Paul invokes the name of the Lord at this place and brings to bear the authority and the power. that name. That that which is done and accomplished in the church truly, that which is effectually accomplished, even in church discipline is accomplished, not even in the power of our flesh there, but in the name of the Lord Jesus. That it is Christ that makes even this discipline effectual, and makes Paul's judgment effectual, and makes the the destruction of this man's effectual, and praise God, and we even get to see it in 2nd Corinthians, the redemption of this man's soul, effectual.

It's in the name. And here we are told, in the light of that name, in the authority of that name, in the power of that name, in the greatness and the grandness of that name, in the all-sufficient boasting of that name, you and I, dear saints, need to do everything in this life by that name. We need to live in and through and by that name. Not in your name, not in my name, not in the name of our companies, not in the name of our businesses, not in the name of our fill in the blank, our greatest ambitions, our greatest desires in this world, not in the name of our favorite political party, but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do all. Dear Saint, you need to think, you need to speak, you need to act in the name of Christ.

And bear, always bear in mind, and the only way you're gonna do that is by always bearing in mind, his character, his will for you, his commands, and a concern for his reputation in the world. Do you hear that? What more tragic statement can be made about anyone who calls on the name of the Lord except that it could horrifically, scarily, possibly be said that the name of the Lord is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you? When the whole reason, as far as you're concerned, if you're a regenerate, that you're still alive and you're born again is to bring glory to that name. That the cry of your heart is, not just in world missions, but in your attitude about home and domestic duties.

May the Lamb of God receive the rewards of His suffering, that that Lamb that was slain should receive the joyful benefit of your glad submission to Him in everything that you do. One commentator summarizes here, Everything ought to be done to the glory of God in Christ, and this should be the scope of all our actions.

The supremacy of Christ that we read about and that we looked at in Colossians chapter one in the Christ hymn, verses 15 through 20, all the glory of that that we saw in his supremacy over creation, the new creation, the church, the world that is, the world that is to come. When we look at the supremacy of Jesus Christ, here is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where you have a practical ability and opportunity to actually apply it to your life. The supremacy of Christ to be applied in the way you think. Think in the name of Christ. The supremacy of Christ applied in the way that you talk when you speak in the name of Christ. The supremacy of Christ applied in your actions and in your conduct, that you act in the name of Christ.

Listen, you know what kinds of thoughts come to your mind when you're alone? You know what kinds of thoughts come to your mind, not just when you're hearing a sermon, but when you're on the road and you're driving? You know what kinds of things you fill your ears with when you get home, when you sit down on the sofa and you need time to decompress. You know where you turn to and where your favorite influences are. You know those things that shape your, what I might call your hidden character that other people don't always get to see, but God sees.

And what the Lord is calling you to do here is a wonderful privilege. It's a great joy. He's summoning you into the holy priesthood of the believers. He's calling you to put on the white robes of the priesthood and to minister in the holy place of His presence at all times, everywhere you go.

Nothing you do is trivial anymore. Nothing you do and say and think is small stuff anymore. You've been elevated to the high rank of the Son of God. The sons of God. You've been elevated to the high rank of kings and priests unto the Most High God. The days of you thinking in terms of just small and big are gone.

It's all His. Everything you do now is in the service of the King. You wear the uniform. of his conquering lordship. And you're an ambassador and an emissary to a world that's quickly passing away, and you have a very little bit of time to be busy about your duties before the king marches upon this world and you see him face to face. It's a high privilege. It's a great joy. It's the right. It's the right of the saints.

I mean, do you realize that? I mean, whenever the, remember when the demoniac that was possessed, the Lord Jesus came and rebuked and came and they cried out for mercy and even acknowledged who he was, thou son of David, and spoke even to his deity there, the son of God. And what did Christ do? He silenced him. But to you and me, he says, go. And we get to proclaim this to the ends of the world, to the nations.

There is a glory and a dignity to take the trumpet of the resurrection, the trumpet of the gospel, and to shout out loud and long and herald the coming king. And the Lord did not grant that to the demoniac. He did not grant it to the kingdom of darkness. It's not their right. It's not their privilege.

Give the war horn to my bride. Give the war horn to my people. Give it to my priesthood, my holy city. Let them be lifted up. Let the nations observe. Let Christ, his very spirit be in them. Go and proclaim it to the nations. This is the right of the redeemed. This is the glory of the saints. Make him known, beloved. Everything you do is heavenly if you'll receive it on faith.

The only way you're going to be able to do this actively, practically, the only way you're going to be able to take what we're saying here, what the Word is saying here, and practically put your foot into the footprint of the slain lamb in whose way you follow, is if you are actively, purposefully, consciously looking unto Him actually. Not just phraseologically. Sometimes we get so used to hearing things in the pulpit, we take simple truths and we turn it into monikers, and then we forget that the power is really in what's being said. We're not saying, look unto him, and what does that mean?

Well, it just means sort of be a good Christian, remember that we worship Christ, and that's it, and you move on. There is a real reality into which your eyes need to be tied upon Christ in the text of His Word. There is a reality in which your eyes need to be tied upon Christ in recognizing your immediate real situational need of Him in your practical everyday elements of life. You need Christ to wash the dishes as a Christian.

Otherwise you'll wash them with a bad attitude and those dishes will be more clean than your heart. And what service is that when the hands that come and intend to do the cleaning are more dirty than the thing they go to touch? I heard a commentator say that's what, that was the lie that Uzzah believed when he reached out to steady the ark. When it fell, he made the mistake of thinking his hand was cleaner than the dirt.

We need the grace of God to lead our families. We need the grace of God to raise our children with the right attitude and the right heart and the right spirit. We need the grace of God to even know how to think about each other as fellow saints and Christians in the same church. You can't do that if you're not looking at the slaughtered lamb of God dying for that saint. Unless you know deeply what his prayers were, and the things we just read this morning in John chapter 15, the high priestly prayer, the unity of the church.

Can you really honestly say that those words are near enough to your heart that even if you can't necessarily quote them verbatim, you can move through that prayer and know the heart and spirit of what Christ was wanting of His Father to be seen in you and the men and women around you?

Is that actually shaping your thinking right now at all? Can you reference scripture that way? Is it familiar enough to you that it actually changes the way you live and you think? If not, how can you say, prove to me you're looking to Christ? If I come and I ask you about your marriage, can you go to the scriptures and say, here's how I built my marriage?

And the way that you discipline your children and the way you decide what kind of discipline works and what kind of discipline doesn't work. Can you run to the scripture and pull out verses to justify why you do what you do? The way you work at your job, the hours you put in, the things that you're saving up for, the expenditures that you're planning. Can you run to God's word on stewardship and explain to anybody why you're doing what you're doing?

If you're not careful, you will name the name of Christ verbally with your mouth and you'll build your life on secular humanism. You'll do it. You'll do it. Don't think you won't. It's like second nature, you won't even think about it. Why? Because no good thing dwells in this flesh. And your heart will deceive you. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things. Who can know it? Yes, you can justify to yourself why you do what you do, but you can't justify it to God's Word if you really know it. That Word needs to dwell in you richly. That Word needs to dwell in you with power. You need to have understanding.

There's no shortcut around that. There's no shortcut. Where's the practical reality that you know enough about Christ, His character? Can you think of the times He engaged with contrary personalities in the Word? And I'm not just talking about your one favorite instance. It's like, yeah, I remember He flipped a table. What else did He do? He flipped a table. You go through your life flipping every table, and you're gonna find out real quick you don't know the first thing about Christ's character.

There was a perfect, wide, intelligent, wise, divine wisdom to the multiplied interactions and complex situation the Lord Jesus Christ was divinely placed in, the way he responded, in what he said, and again, take note, to what he did not say. in every circumstance.

Have you really studied out those and found a pattern that you can replicate in how you talk and how you carry yourself before the world? When you go to the scriptures and you see the New Testament epistles that speak massively about bitterness and speak massively about malice and speak about lust and speak about fornication and uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, covetousness, idolatry, When it speaks about anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication. When it speaks, as we've said here, about bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing, charity, peace. I mean, if all we did was take the entire New Testament, and every time a character element or a way of thinking shows up, if we just read it back to back to back to back to back to back, how much can you honestly say those realities are what you are practically putting into practice in your life and aiming to do it more and more? And that's where you can say, I'm aiming to meditate and to bear in mind the character of Christ, the character of the Spirit, bearing the fruits of the Spirit in my life.

Or are those things very far away because when it comes time to do work, you push that out of your mind and focus on the mere practical aspects of what you're doing. And though you have Christianity in the 80% of your life, you work, you labor, you pick up a hammer like an atheist.

You need to bear in mind his will for you. Bear in mind what he said. He says, if you love me, obey my commandments. He says, why do you call me Lord? And yet you do not do what I tell you. You need to bear in mind the grand privilege of bearing that holy name before an ungodly and unholy world. You will bear it forever. Carry it with dignity.

Look, stand upon the top of Mount Horeb, look at the people who are departing from its presence, look out upon the wasteland And there out there in the midst of it, you'll see a nation clothed in white and a priesthood bearing up the Ark of the Presence upon their shoulders.

And you'll look on with wonder and with curiosity as God has picked a people for himself. He's gonna dwell with them, go with them, go before him, put his name upon them. And all the other nations are gonna look on with wonder. All the other nations are gonna look on with fear. They will, they will when the King comes. Now I'm telling you, when you look out there, what do you see? Do you see yourself out there with that golden stave upon your shoulder?

Because that's what you've been called to in the New Testament Christian life, to bear up the testimony of the Lord Jesus to the nations. Think in the name, speak in the name, act in the name. You must bear in mind his character, bear in mind his will for you, bear in mind his reputation before the world. This is what was in view when the hymn writer wrote, take my life and let it be consecrated. Lord to thee, take my moments and my days, let them flow in ceaseless praise. For as verse 17 ends, Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. It says, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Giving thanks. giving thanks, what does that presuppose in our atmosphere and in our spirit?

It's presupposing that we have the very reigning presence of Christ with us, that our knowledge of him, the fact we can know him, our knowledge of his ways, the fact that his spirit is still teaching us more than what we know, the fact that we do have this inner rule of peace that is working within us, and these other benefits that he brings to us, the spirit illuminating the text to our mind, growing in understanding, growing in our hunger for him, the unity that we may enjoy even as the people of God. We recognize that none of this has come to us by our own merit nor power. We recognize it has been granted, it has been given. What do you have that you have not received and you've received it and why do you boast?

All of this has been given to us completely by God's grace and therefore in light of it all, we are a thanksgiving type of people. thankful to God the Father. Even, now watch this, this is where I could say that interpretive summary of verses 12 down through 16, you're really going to see the divine wisdom in the setup here. Because what it's saying, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him, you need to be made aware if you haven't picked up on it already, that even the thanksgiving we are actively giving to God the Father is given through Christ. We thank the Father by Him.

Do you realize you can't even thank God without Him? You can't thank God rightly without Him. You can't be brought to thanksgiving without Him. Your thanks are not acceptable without Him. that not only is Christ supreme over nations and worlds and galaxies and regeneration and the Spirit and the world to come, He's supreme over my ability to give thanks. He's supreme over my thanksgiving.

I thank God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what we've been moving toward in this section all along. You can't thank God rightly without laying hold of the name of Christ. The prayer here is that you will be found giving thanks to the Father in and in and because of Jesus Christ.

As Paul prayed at that opening prayer we looked at, giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in life. Jesus Christ made it appropriate for us to be called sons and daughters of the Most High God. Jesus Christ cleansed us of our iniquity, forgave us so that it would be appropriate to give us the power to be changed rather than killed for the wages of sin is death. Christ purchased our new life and a legal right to even have it And so let us, let us sing, take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.

May our worship, in summary, beloved, not come to a stop when the Lord's Day ends, but may the Lord's Day be a great help and a boon to the praise and worship we give throughout the week. The greatest acts of worship, look at Abraham. The first time worship occurs in the scripture was not in a gathering service specifically, but rather it was when Abraham was taking his son up into the mountain to offer him. That's the first time the word worship appears in scripture. So as you enjoy 10,000 good things your father's given you in this life, may you live a life of worship.

May you live a life of laying it all down on the altar for his name. And may you have the thanksgiving that comes from Christ's peace ruling in your hearts. May all that you do be to the glory of God in Christ. May that be the scope of all your actions.

Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, families, churches, marriages, roles of men, roles of women. and all that you do, are you doing them in the name of Christ or are you doing it in the name of modern secularism? Whose cause are you advancing when you're alone by yourself and when you're with others?

We're gonna take this principle and we are going to go one verse next, Lord willing, next week, directly into wives and husbands and children and fathers. This is as practical as it gets. And you can't be godly wives, you can't be godly husbands, you can't be godly children, you can't be godly parents, unless you understand verse 17 and you take it in to the rest of the text of all that comes next, that Jesus Christ is supreme in all these arenas and areas of your life. And the only reason you're allowed to be a husband and to be a wife and to be a child and to be a father, to be a parent, and not dead in hell.

As a Christian, it's because He has resaved you and redeemed you for higher purposes, and He's called you into these stations as priests unto the Most High God. And I pray that you will remember that, and I will remember that. And we will know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. And we will be empowered by His love for us, knowing we love only because He loved us first.

And we will turn our gaze, even in the midst of the real day-to-day practical labors we have to do. And there is, I mean, even C.T. Studd himself said, missionary work is not glamorous, it's drudgery. It's drudgery day in and day out. It's not all just mission reports.

It's pain, it's loss, it's hunger, it's difficulty, it's uphill, it's laboring in solitude with no fanfare and no high fives, it's a lot of pain. He said a lot of these students come out of seminary, they hit the field, and you have to just get them to unlearn everything the first couple years because they're so full of themselves. They need pain to be sanctified.

Listen, the Christian life does have a lot of drudgery and a lot of practical difficulty in it, but this gospel is such, it's meant to empower you particularly in those places. So I'll close with verse seven of his poem. Oh, let my love in fervor burn, and from the world now let me turn, living for Thee and Thee alone, bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne. Only one life, it will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. Let us pray. Oh, our God in heaven, we praise you. We thank you for the incredible, unspeakable gift that is your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his life.

We thank you for his faithfulness. We thank you for his character. We thank you for his commands. We thank you for his mighty example. Lord God, we thank you for his promises and his faithfulness. Lord, we thank you for his life and we thank you for his death. We thank you for his stripes.

We thank you for his afflictions, for it's by these we are made whole. We thank you, Lord, for his sufferings, because he suffered in our place. We thank you, Lord, for his crucifixion, for he died for us. We thank you, Lord, for his death, because by it we are set free. We thank you, Lord, for his mighty resurrection over the grave, for in his triumph we triumph. We thank you, Lord, for his glorious ascension, for he's now been given all authority in heaven and earth, and in him we have power. Lord, we thank you that he ever lives to make intercession for his saints, Lord, for we now have a faithful advocate and high priest. Lord, we thank you for Christ. Give us more of him. Help us to see him. Help us to meditate on him, to dwell on him, to think of him, and Lord, to obey him. And may this be all our Christianity.

In Christ Jesus' name we do pray, amen. Well, dear saints, as it says in Jude 16, or excuse me, Jude 24, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

James 3:17 (KJV)
17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. ​

A Gospelized mind, is a mind that is having its own thought patterns evangelized and conformed to the Gospel of God. Its perceptions and perspectives are redeemed unto the knowledge of Christ and His ways. Such a mind not only thinks righteously more and more, but more and more thinks mercifully, thinks redemptively, and thinks restoratively. It seeks to discover and mirror the mind of Calvary in its own decisions and judgements. Even a hard man has learned to forgive another once he has learned of Christ's forgiveness of him. Even a man full of vengeance can show mercy after he has come to know the mercy of God in Christ. When the pure, peaceable, gentle, meek, and merciful Christ sets up His Reign upon the heart of a man, that man's former ways, and former manners are more and more brought under the government of Heaven's way, which are not common or known to the ways of this world. The world shouts crucify Him!
​

James 3:17 (KJV)
17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. ​

​1. Those who are under our care and our responsibility, whether our children or students, or those who look to us for spiritually leadership… wisdom dictates an attitude of gentleness, not injustice, not promoting or allowing for sin, but a righteous gentleness, that is first pure and then peaceable and gentle, to the extent that we yield our rights, in the hopes that the grace we extend may recover them from the snare of their error. May our first response be towards grace, may our first response be to desire to pick them up, may our first response be hopeful loving instruction and reeducation, like a mother or father, pointing them the right way. There may well come a time for discipline and strong rebuke, The first act may be grievous enough to require immediate discipline, but the Lord sees the heart, and Godly wisdom dictates that as much as it lies in you, regardless of your pain, extend the mercy and grace first where ever possible.
​2. Those to whom we are called to render honor and to consider as better than themselves, especially those in God-ordained roles of leadership, let us learn to be easily entreated, and easily won over by the truth. Wisdom dictates that we should forsake all stubborn rebellion, all unwillingness to cooperate, all emotional belligerence that prevents us from being EASILY prevailed upon, EASILY won over, and EASILY, persuaded to comply with reason. Can they get through to you? How often are trusted mentors able to get through to you in a way where you would actually comply? "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry…" -1 Sam 15:23a

James 3:17 (KJV)
17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 

    Wisdom which comes from above, in its essential nature, is pure, it is clean, it is perfect. And of course, it must be, for it is the emanating fullness, in principle, of what God is in Truth. Because such wisdom must be sourced from the eternal Mind, the Pure and Holy One Himself, all that naturally radiates from that pure source will be consistent in it's nature with the source from which it came. Heavenly wisdom is true, and pure and right, Why? because God Himself is Truth, and Purity, and Righteousness. Like the sun rays that beam across space and bring the light and heat with it, we know that the ray only brings to us what it originally had from the sun, the source itself. To see and to measure the rays is essentially to see and measure the sun itself. Wisdom from above comes to us this way also, not as a product of human ingenuity and force, but as a divine gift and endowment by grace from above that illuminates us and the world around us. When we see man here below in the realms of clay, and dust, and sin, we must acknowledge that "no good thing dwells in this flesh", our minds are darkened by sin, and blinded in spiritual death. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man...". Man naturally lives in moral and spiritual confusion, rebellion, and ignorance. Unless Christ is reigning from within the heart of a subdued man, having regenerated him, converting the soul, renewing the man's mind after the Word of God, and redirecting and informing his perspectives and desires, there can be no purity about his understanding, his directions, his choices, his motives, nor his thoughts in the context of God's will. The will of God, becomes an inward living and implanted Word, which must be continually received from scripture with humility, so that, by grace, the visible light of obedience to higher wisdom may now radiate from that chosen vessel. This is to our great benefit in this world. When we willingly and knowingly, however, replace and confuse the will of God as revealed in scripture with the wisdom of men, with the proverbs of an unsaved world, and with the mantras of an ungodly society, then, like intruding clouds that litter the sky, something of this world interposes itself between the light of heaven and the way we see things here. How can we see clearly? We won't, and we can't, until the strength of the sun outshines them and burns up the morning fog of our thought life. Blessed are we, having the mind of God, who endeavor, by faith, to continually renew our minds after The Word of God, in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, by the supernatural illumination of The Holy Spirit, so that we might "prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."