3. "Unity, insofar as it depends on you, David writes in Romans chapter one, chapter 12, insofar as it depends on you, insofar as it depends on me, work at being at peace with the people around you. In fact, Paul says elsewhere, Galatians five, he says, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and faithfulness and self-control, not other control, but to control yourself. So we wanna pray for unity." [00:29:09] (25 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)






5. "You don't have to be a religious person. There's lots of people in the room. There's lots of people watching us online. You intuitively understand there's one person in the bed that needs to get out of the bed to go check on the noise in the basement, right? God's created us, particularly as men, as providers and protectors. As one of my friends says many, many years ago, if you were to send your wife down to check the noise in the basement, you have abdicated your role as a husband and you need to turn in your man card, all right?" [00:34:39] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)










9. "May we do our part here at Graceland to pursue and foster unity, understanding that blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons and daughters of God. May we seek to make peace with those around us. May your personhood, may your ways, your character be honored in our lives and the lives of politicians locally and through the state and our national governments. They need you and we need you. We desperately need you. We cry out, may your name be reverenced in our country." [00:32:25] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)




10. "Jesus at the center of our relationships, why? Because Jesus changes everything, so here's a question, it's on the screen, what do you need to believe and do? I regularly ask this question, what do you need to believe and do? I regularly ask this question, What do you need to believe and do as you think about this sermon? Here in just a moment, we're going to take the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper, we believe, is symbolic. It points to the profound reality of the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. And all those who have believed upon Christ are changed, reconciled, made new, forgiven, clean." [01:08:09] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)

Hey, one of the things that we have the privilege to do is to pray. We believe prayer is really important. What we're about to do is really, really important. It's not just a fixture or an add-on that we try to do once a month.

There's a couple of things going on in the life of our country this week, right? And so we want to pray. Typically, we pray the third in terms of a fixture amount of time, six, seven, eight, nine minutes in terms of our service. Typically, the third Sunday, which we did a couple weeks ago. But we want to pray for our country this morning.

And if you want to, we do this regularly. So I want to invite you to come up to the steps. We think there's something about movement. So if you're in the balcony, if you're on the floor, you can go and come up. We're going to have four prayer prompts. And don't worry, this is okay. So I'll wait until somebody starts coming. Here we go. It'll be awkward.

Anybody coming up? There we go. Kathy Poe, $100 gift card. Thank you, Kathy. Kathy Poe.

And so prayer, as we describe it and define it, is like having a dinner conversation with a good, close friend. If that's a little informal to you, we describe it also as a cry for relationship and a commitment of dependence. We really believe prayer moves, so to speak, the right hand of God. And Jesus says we have not because we've asked not. So we want to be needy, asky people, and we want to ask God for big things. We want to ask God for small things all the time.

And I'm learning that God, as the psalmist says, inclines his ear to hear the prayers of his kids. And so we want to be a praying church, which means we want to be a reliant dependenter.

So here's the first prompt as we're praying for our country in various ways this morning. First is, "You are near, Lord." St. Paul writes in Philippians, "Don't be anxious about anything." Perhaps you've got a little anxiety, a little uncertainty about what's going to happen this week. He says, in the latter part of those verses,

"Be anxious, do not be anxious about anything, but in prayer, cry for relationship, commitment of dependence, with supplication and prayer with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace will be with you."

But how can we really, truly not be anxious? Think verse five, where Paul says, "The Lord is near to us." The Lord is near; he's here with us now. And so let's just pray and remind ourselves you are near to us. And I'll come back for the second prompt. Please pray.

And this is the second prayer prompt: "We trust in you." We trust in you. The Psalmist says in Psalm 118 verse eight, "It is better to take refuge in the Lord, to find stability and protection and provision in the Lord than to trust in man, to trust in woman." Men and women will let us down, but the Lord will never, ever let us down. So may our trust be in God. So let's exude and cry out, "God, we trust in you."

The third prompt is this: "We ask for unity." We read in Luke chapter one, "Nothing is impossible with the Lord." And so we want to ask for God to bring unity. Unity, insofar as it depends on you, David writes in Romans chapter 12, "Insofar as it depends on you, work at being at peace with the people around you."

In fact, Paul says elsewhere in Galatians five, he says, "The fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and faithfulness and self-control," not other control, but to control yourself. So we want to pray for unity. David writes, "How good and pleasant is it when brothers and sisters dwell in unity."

So let's just pray and ask God to give us a miraculous, supernatural unity. Tuesday, Wednesday, days, weeks, months to come. We desperately need unity. Let's pray for that.

Last prompt is from Psalm 67, and the shorthand is, "May your name be reverenced." May your name, the name of God, stands for his personhood, his character, his ways, who he is. The psalmist writes in Psalm 67, I love this verse, verse one and verse seven, "God, may you be gracious to us and bless us and make your face shine upon us."

What does it mean that God's face would shine? It means that he would be pleased with us. He would show us favor. He would esteem us. "God shall bless us. Let all the ends of the earth fear him," reverence him, to rightly worship and adore him.

We want to commit our nation into the hands of God. We want to declare that you are our refuge and that you are our strength and ever-present help in times of trouble. May your will be done in the nation and may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

So let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray. Remind us that you are near to those who trust in you, who are broken and contrite in spirit. Remind us of our sin and the desperate need of a savior who is more powerful than our past and our present and our future and our sin.

Remind us to trust in you. May we be a beacon to others, to remind them that hope in anything other than you is misplaced hope and is destined to fail and disappoint. May we do our part here at Graceland to pursue and foster unity, understanding that blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.

May we seek to make peace with those around us. May your personhood, may your ways, your character be honored in our lives and the lives of politicians locally and through the state and our national governments. They need you and we need you. We desperately need you. We cry out, may your name be reverenced in our country.

And we all said together, "Amen, amen." Thank you for leaning in, thank you for praying. It's good to do that. That has become kind of a part of who we are here at Graceland.

This might be a little awkward, but I'll start this how I started the nine o'clock service. I'm gonna get a little nap here. Pretend I'm in bed, my wife is next to me, and all of a sudden I hear a noise in the basement.

"Honey, did you hear the noise?"

"I did."

"Honey, will you go downstairs and see what it is?"

"Not a chance. You should go."

"Honey, what if it's somebody big with a weapon?"

"I don't like to be surprised. I hate the darkness. I don't care. I'm not going. You should go."

"What about if I text one of the girls for them to go check it out?"

"Go check it out yourself."

Now, all silly illustrations aside, we understand that intuitively, you don't have to be a Bible-believing Christian. You don't have to be a religious person. There's lots of people in the room. There's lots of people watching us online. You intuitively understand there's one person in the bed that needs to get out of the bed to go check on the noise in the basement, right?

God's created us, particularly as men, as providers and protectors. As one of my friends says many, many years ago, if you were to send your wife down to check the noise in the basement, you have abdicated your role as a husband and you need to turn in your man card, all right?

We understand there's distinction. And one of the things we're looking at this morning, we're looking at this truth from Colossians chapter three, verses 18 through 21, how Jesus is to be at the center of our relationships.

We'll talk about the marital relationship. We'll talk about the relationship that a dad particularly has with his kids and how kids are to obey and follow their parents. Now, you might say, "Well, Nate, I'm single right now, maybe because of choice or because circumstances that were thrust upon me or I thrust those circumstances upon somebody else. So I'm not married or I don't have kids. So this sermon is gonna be, it's not gonna be relevant. It's not gonna be engaging and meaningful to me."

No, I just want to remind us that Jesus is writing through the penmanship of Paul, through the spirit of God. He's writing about to the saints in Colossae. And he's saying, this is what it means for the preeminence, the prominence, the awesomeness of Jesus in your life and my life.

And all of life is all for Jesus. And Jesus is to be at the center of our relationships. And he's writing a letter to a group of people who comprise a church in a particular place called Colossae. And now we have the letter written down and he's writing to us.

And this is what it means to look, to live out a new life in Christ, a new humanity, a new creation, a new identity. And so we do this together. We have brothers and sisters. The family of God is comprised of people in all different seasons of life, in various identities, in various roles.

And I need you and you need me. And we do this together and we encourage and remind and challenge and refresh and edify one another about what the new life looks like in whatever relationship you find yourself in. So there's application and relevance irrespective of your role this morning, all right?

So let's stand to read Colossians chapter three, verses 18 through 21. And here's what the word of God says to us. Let's read this out loud.

"Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged."

This is God's word written down for you and for me. And we said together, "We love your word."

All right. You may be seated.

In the subheading of your text there in the Bible, if you have even on your phone or in your Bible, it might say "Rules for Christian households." And rules sounds heavy. You've heard it said that rules were made to be broken. This is no exception, not in terms of let's ignore it. It's dumb. It's out of date. It's anachronistic. It's irrelevant. So let's break it.

But in terms of there's a brokenness that has so captured and reframed much of what St. Paul talks about this in this particular message that even a lot of Christians want to, I don't know, immediately push it aside or they want to nuance it or explain it away or go hide in the corner and just hope and pray nobody asks us what we believe about what Paul says about husbands and wives. Just don't ask us.

And this passage has a word, we've already read it, that is fraught with conflict. It's a controversy because I think mostly it's attributed to misunderstanding, misapplication when it comes from a misinterpretation of the Bible.

So I want to be succinct and clear today. And a lot of what I'm going to share comes from a parallel passage in Ephesians 5 where Paul informs the saints in Ephesus about this husband, wife, and husband and wife and mom and dad dynamic.

Now, the disciplines of submission and love and obedient and not provoking your children lest they become a victim, lest they become discouraged or exasperated is a discipline. There's a great book by Malcolm Gladwell who wrote a book called Outliers. He says any habit that you engage in or practice that you want to become an expert in requires about 10,000 hours.

10,000 hours in terms of whatever hobby, whatever practice, 10,000 hours. That's a lot of hours to master a particular practice. And what we walk through here in verses 18 through 21 is actually not only is it a practice, but it's a discipline. It's not something that we certainly want to master. We never will master, but it's a discipline that we want to pursue and engage in with this understanding that this new life in Jesus, Jesus to be at the center of our relationships, and it takes discipline.

This is the new humanity. You are a new man, new woman, new boy, new girl in Christ. And it's not a sense of, "Well, I just got to grit my teeth and engage and endure this ethic that Jesus calls me to." No, he's talking about flourishing, something that's beautiful and good.

And so a Christian's understanding of life and marriage and parenting and family is one of authentic sacrifice, not feigned sacrifice, not a series of stoic forced transactions, but a genuine moving away from our own preferences and desires. It's exactly what Jesus says in the gospels repeatedly. To gain one's life, you really have to be willing to lay it down.

In walks the good news, the message, the eternity-altering, earth-changing trajectory of the message of Jesus. The message of Jesus is to shape every facet of our lives. And he's writing to the saints. What is a saint? A saint at Colossae, the saint at Graceland, a saint, a son-daughter of God, a brother or sister in Christ, a Christian is a set-apart, fully devoted follower of Christ whose allegiance has changed from themselves to King Jesus.

So a lot of what I'm gonna say isn't gonna make sense to the world, but it makes sense in the framework of God's design and his order, which includes several disciplines.

Now, Paul's life, the culture in which he was writing Colossae was a terribly brutal, savage, and unmerciful world. Power and dominance ruled the day.

But the good news of Jesus moves people away from that sinful, unmerciful, brutal, savage, power-hungry, domineering worldview to that of love and submission and humility and obedience. Pastor Tony said this years ago when he preached through this text at a church in Napa Valley, California. He said this, "Make no mistake about it, the Bible does cut."

If you've ever been in a sermon or listened to a podcast or somebody teach a lesson of the Bible and you've ever thought, "Man, that hurt. We're like, phew, that hit me in the heart. That exposed me." In fact, the writer of Hebrews says, "The word of God is living and active, and it judges and examines and assesses the thoughts and intentions of our heart."

It's been said that the Bible's not only a book that you read, but it's a book that reads you. It reads and examines our hearts and intentions.

And so in that silly little illustration, as we think about marriage and parenting, no one walks into a marriage, no one walks into a marriage, no one walks into a marriage without expectations. There's no such thing as a role-less marriage. Every man, woman walks into a marriage with a set of expectations and understandings, whether good or bad, right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy.

Every single marriage, every single family is a mixture of the good and the bad and the healthy and unhealthy. One of my friends says, "Every person is carrying a suitcase in whatever relationship you enter into." Is that not true? We all got a suitcase carrying a bunch of stuff.

It's not that we're just committed to wrongfulness and committed to bad, but we're fallible people and embracing our humanity is simply saying, "I'm weak, I've got sinful tendencies, I've got deficiencies, and I need Jesus to change my relationships."

Jesus at the center of our relationships. So I just want to encourage, don't check out. So we talk about marriage and parenting. We're a family. Last night I was at our eat-in kitchen table. My bride was right next to me. And my oldest. And then I had a friend of ours that was in our wedding 22 years ago. And she was parenting and investing in our daughter.

And I quietly in my heart said, "God, thank you for the wisdom she's dropping." There have been circumstances thrust upon her. And she's in a new season, a different season, a hard season. And yet God's using her to invest and encourage and challenge and refresh and remind my kids.

So we do this together. We need one another.

So first thing I want you to look at, we see in verse 18, is new life in Jesus looks like submission, specifically a submission of a wife to a husband, right? Not to any man, a wife to her husband, right? Submission speaks to willfulness, willingly coming under. It's a word that refers to a military language where somebody comes under the authority of someone else.

Now there are certain words in the Bible that I want to soften. In fact, as I was talking with our campus pastors a couple of weeks ago about this very passage, one of the individuals said, as he was thinking about his points, he says, "A wife's role is to support her husband." Is that not true? Of course it's true. And a husband is to support his wife.

But what they were doing in this particular discussion is they were, and we talked about it, is softening the language that the Bible uses. I mean, there's some language that is tough. Like the word "repent," even though I'm gonna talk about the very end, I mean, to repent, to change, have a change of attitude, it sounds hard, "repent."

I mean, you know, there's such a, sometimes negative connotation because people have used it over and over and over, but repentance is a good gift as we explain it. Hell is a theological reality that's tough. Weeping and gnashing of teeth, separation from God. I mean, hell is terrible.

And oftentimes in my honor, there's, I just want to, oh, I just want to soften. But the Bible uses the, God uses the language of the Bible for a purpose. And so he uses the word "submit."

Now, why is submission a problem? I'm a man. And so I submit in various ways, specifically here in Colossians, he is talking to the wives at Colossae, as he's talking to the wives at Graceland, "Wives, submit to your husbands."

Why is that an issue? There's a myriad of reasons why, but ultimately sin seeks to destroy and usurp and attack the good, beautiful design that God has created.

So let me talk about a couple truths of submission. One, submission has the idea and the reality of coming under the authority of someone else. A nation submits to its rulers, church members submit to its leaders, children submit to their parents, and a wife, the Bible says, is to submit to her husband, not in the same way that a child is to obey her or his parents.

Not because the husband is inherently better, but because without order and structure, nations, churches, families, and marriages would be in disarray and disorganization. Order is a good thing. And it doesn't mean necessarily superior in character, right? An officer may not be superior in character, but the troops under him or her submit to their authority.

So there's a proper functioning of the unit or the squadron. One woman put it like this: "I delight for you to take initiative in our family. I'm glad when you take responsibility for the things and lead with love. I don't flourish in our relationship when you're a power, I'm passive and I have to make sure the family works."

Secondly, submission is not demeaning or negative. Think about the Trinitarian characteristic of submission. Jesus submitted to who? The Father. "Not my will, but your will." Equal: God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.

Jesus, I gotta go, and I'm gonna send you the Spirit whose job is to point to Jesus, the Son of God. I mean, without submission, without the courageous submission of Jesus to the plan and the will and the design of the Father, where would we be?

We'd be in our sins. Submission is a gloriously beautiful, powerful truth and discipline. Submission doesn't determine worth. It's not right that a husband demands submission.

I've heard this; I haven't heard it a lot. I think maybe men kind of have kind of, they kind of get wind of things like this. I mean, you've heard people throw around, men throw around like, "You know, women need to submit." No, they submit to their husband; they follow their husband.

And if a man wants to tout that and talk about that, I can promise you there are problems in the home because it's not something you go out and you champion, all right?

Submission is not mindless acquiescence, right? Leading her to sin or abuse or mistreatment. Submission stops as sin enters into the picture. Submission is when a wife carefully weighs her responsibility to submit to their husband as they submit to Jesus. It's an attitude of the heart.

All right? And I sympathize with women. I, as I was thinking about this, it wasn't anxiety, but I'm thinking about people in our fellowship who've gone through difficult circumstances that have been thrust upon them.

I've thought about their husbands or ex-husbands. And, as I said in the prayer just a moment ago, like the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and you can control yourself, but you can't control the people around you.

You can't control sometimes a husband who wants to check out, who's not sacrificial, who's not tender, who's not kind, he's not spiritual, he doesn't want to be a servant. And so I understand in a room with this many people, with people watching online, undoubtedly there are scenarios and questions and hurts and hang-ups and wounds, and you've experienced what Paul says in the latter part of this passage: "Husbands, love your wives."

You've not experienced that, and I just want to tell you I'm sorry and I'm sad, and we want to, as men in the church, we want to model a sacrificial, courageous, tender-hearted, humble servant leadership.

And for many women in the room, that's not been your experience, and I hate that for you. And I want to pray that God would bring beauty to ashes, and for so many of you, that's the case.

Secondly, new life in Jesus looks like a husband loving his wife well. Now, it's fairly easy to say, "I love you," but what St. Paul is doing here is calling husbands to live out the reality. The word "love" denotes continual action, a continuous action of loving your wife.

It's not a feeling, but it's a choice. "Keep on loving" would be another way to translate or describe what Paul says there in Colossians 3:19. Sacrificial and caring.

Elsewhere in Ephesians 5, he used the word "cherish." In some translations, it means "warming." Cherish your wife. Let your actions be like that. The imagery is a mother holding her baby close and warming their child as she brings the child close to her chest.

He says in Ephesians 5, "Let your actions and your words have a caring, treasuring, warming posture. Let your demeanor be caring, be kind, be gentle, be tender-hearted, humble love, yet courageous, tender, strong, sacrificial, and protective."

A man who loves his wife—husbands, if you will love your wife in the name of the Lord, amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen and amen.

In this way, you will create an environment where your wife will flourish and blossom. I remember April 4th, 2003, the night before I got married, my father-in-law looked at me and he said this in front of a room of about 60 people at our rehearsal dinner. A lot of you know this.

He said, "Hey, if you will treat her with esteem and kindness and gentleness, she will be like a flower that blossoms and flourishes." I can't get my mind out of this. I can't get my mind out of this. I can't get my dad-in-law out of my mind. I remember that; it's like emblazoned on the forefront of my mind.

And there have been times where she has wilted because of the presence and my actions and my words, and I'm so grateful in the last several years there's been a flourishing in my wife's life. It's not completely attributed to me, but some of it is in terms of the environments that my actions are contributing towards.

Husbands, love your wives well. And he says, "Don't be harsh with them." The language there is referring to something bitter in taste. "Husbands, love your wives and don't be harsh with them."

What's he saying? Don't become bitter or harsh towards them. The imagery is saying, "I love you, honey," and then you're acting like and speaking like something that would be bitter, like vinegar.

"I love you, but your actions and your words are hard to swallow. I don't want to be around you. You say you love me, but your actions and your words and your posture are difficult; they're like vinegar."

Don't be harsh. Don't be harsh. Don't be harsh. Don't be harsh. Don't be unkind. Don't be irritable. Don't be extra, as some of you all say.

Let me give you an example. You know that song, "Every light in the house is on"? The backyard's bright as the—there we go, right? It's okay; you can listen to country; it's not a big deal.

In our house, we have a different version of the song: "Every cabinet door in the kitchen is open." And so when I go in the kitchen, a lot of times my wife has every cabinet door open, and she'll have stuff on the counter.

And so I came in—this is a couple months ago. My mom was there; my wife was making dinner. And I was like, you know, we don't have a very big kitchen, so it goes from like, I don't know, 100 square feet to like seven square feet with all the cabinet doors open.

And I was like, "I'm just gonna go love my wife well. I'm gonna shut all the cabinets." Little did she want them all open so she can see everything, you know, so she can see everything.

And I was like, "I'm gonna come clean up the stuff on the counter. I'm gonna put this trash away." And about three minutes into me lovingly loving my wife well, I went up to her and said, "Hey," and like the Spirit of God, I mean, something as simple as that, the Spirit of God is like, "You're being selfish. Your presence is a lot. Can you just chill and relax and get out of the kitchen?"

And before you go, apologize. So I said, "Hey, honey, please forgive me for being unkind in my posture and me thinking I'm serving when in reality I'm serving myself."

And she said something like, "I forgive you," and you know, "Get out of my kitchen." I don't know, like it was, but like I was not loving my wife well.

So let me give you a couple maxims for married couples, all right? And this is not just for America; this is really for any relationship.

First, individuals who know their marriage are in trouble are the ones who will fight to save it. Individuals who know their marriage is in trouble are the ones who will fight to save it. There's a care, there's a concern, there's spiritual awareness.

Nobody has arrived. We say this so much here at Graceland: nobody has arrived. Nobody gets to a point where you can say with a clear conscience, "I think I've got it all down. I think my wife is like the most blessed person in the face; like she's married to me," or "My husband, my husband's so like he has no idea what an incredible wife I am."

Like nobody gets to a point where there's not things in our inventory where we got to yield and give the Spirit of God ground to sanctify and redeem and change and change and change and change and change and improve us, all right?

Individuals who know their marriage is in trouble are the ones who really want to fight to save it. Oftentimes you look at people like, "Do they understand?" And they don't; they're not aware. They have low spiritual awareness.

Spiritual awareness—under that we talk about EQ, emotional quotient, the emotional intelligence. A lot of people have low spiritual awareness; they don't think; they don't see the danger and the signs.

Secondly, get rid of the foxes that can destroy your marriage. Lauren and I regularly talk about this. It's a reference to the Song of Solomon where the foxes come in and destroy the garden.

And oftentimes I'll talk to couples, and they'll say, "We don't know how we got here. We woke up, and man, where there's all these disciplines and patterns and these characteristics of our marriage, how do we get here?"

Well, there's a great book; he talks about like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. He talks about contempt; he talks about defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, harsh startups. He talks about all these things, and if you're not careful to get rid of the little foxes, these foxes will come in and destroy your garden.

You'll have something really small, and it will build and build and build, and then you'll have this critical mass of all this weight of all these issues and patterns and characteristics, and you'll say, "How did I get here?"

Well, it's been months and years and decades of sinful patterns, and you got to be vigilant to get rid of the little foxes. Most marriages don't just fall apart because big things that happen overnight; it's over the course of days, weeks, months, years, and decades.

And as one writer said to a person talking about changing, they're like, "Man, you can't teach an old dog new tricks." And he said, as I said many times before, "We're not teaching dogs; we're teaching people, and people can change. You can change; I can change."

You can experience the abundant life that God wants for your life.

Third, discipline—you need to have discipline in your life and all your relationships. God brings sovereignly the people in your life to help expose things in your life and vice versa. He chips away and wants you, Romans chapter 8, verse 29, he wants you to more and more be conformed to the image of Jesus.

He wants you to look more, talk more, behave more, respond more, marry more, husband more, wife more, be a spouse more, parent more like Jesus.

And it takes discipline. People will come to me and they'll say, "Hey, I'm not where I need to be. Our marriage is in trouble," or "Man, I'm just in sin; I'm struggling." And I'll just say, "Hey, well, tell me what you've done."

And I'll say, "How long has—well, it's been months or it's been years." Well, tell me what you've done. "Well, I'm coming to talk to you."

And oftentimes people look at me like kind of like this magician with some type of supernatural incantation. I'm going to wave my pastor wand and poof, it's going to be amazing. It just doesn't work that way.

It takes a lot of work to live the Christian life, to yield to Jesus and to yield to your spouse and to love and lovingly come under the authority of Christ. So it takes discipline.

Fourth and lastly, in terms of application, as we think about the marital relationship, there's a gospel appeal. Both husband and wife are privileged to enact Jesus to one another. Both husband and wife are privileged to enact the personhood, in a sense, in the role of Jesus to one another.

Jesus in his sacrificial, courageous authority, the husband, and Jesus in his sacrificial submission to the Father, the wife.

All right, third, new life in Jesus looks like children obeying their parents. So right there, most of our middle school students and high school students are in the first service, but he says, "Kids, obey your parents."

It can be also translated "listen to your parents." I mean, middle school students, high school students, young people, the Bible is incredibly relevant. Don't be fooled and persuaded by cheap imitations, and don't let people disparage and denigrate the wisdom and the meaning and the purpose and the message of the Bible.

It's easy; it's a full errand to mock and chastise the Bible. The Bible is full of wisdom; it's wisdom personified in the person of Christ. And so out of a sense of respect and love for Jesus and your parents, obey them.

Trust me, your parents have wisdom. But parents, trust me on this: kids have PhDs in hypocritical living. I mean, they are writing dissertations all day long, every day, and you give them a front-row seat to your life—the ups and downs, the successes and the failures.

And perhaps maybe a next step that you need to employ is you need to talk to your son, daughter, your kids, and ask, "Where have I been wrong?" Don't let this sermon just go one in one ear and out.

Maybe you need to talk to your kids and say, "Where have I been wrong? Confess. I agree; that's wrong. Please forgive me." And then put a plan, all of which is good and right and will do nothing but endear you to your kids.

Right? There are PhDs in hypocritical living, and hypocrisy points to a standard, and all that does is points back to the perfection and the work and the provision of Jesus.

Right? Fourth and last, new life in Jesus looks like fathers not exasperating their kids, mothers as well. The text says fathers, but certainly there's application to mothers.

And you say, "Well, I'm not a dad or mom; I'm a grandparent." The point is if you're stewarding or managing kids, you've got kids in your home, you don't want to exasperate them.

It means to provoke or to nag or to irritate. To provoke carries the idea of repeated treatment that leads to a child or a kid having deep-seated anger that manifests itself in resentment and bitterness and anger.

Fathers, dads, don't provoke your kids. The psalmist talks about gladden the heart of your servant. How can we make ourselves glad?

Well, here's why: God is a parent, so to speak, where he's kind and gracious and good and patient with us. So dads, moms as well, grandparents, to exemplify this more often than not, a child will have an inclination towards obedience if you are a good, patient, kind-hearted, gracious parent.

They'll lose heart constantly, but I pray regularly that as they lose heart, they'll be reminded and refreshed by my presence in their lives, by their mom's presence in life.

So how do we irritate our kids? We irritate and nag and provoke our kids in a lot of ways: overprotection in the physical world, helicopter parenting—don't do that.

Underprotection in the digital world, the virtual world, right? Talk about this in the podcast; you should listen to it or watch it—not because of me, but because of the content I share with you. Super helpful about how we have done such a terrible job of just overprotecting in the physical, but we give our kids access to the virtual world, and there's no rules, regulations, or oversight.

A critical, harsh spirit is one of the ways that we provoke or nag our kids. Not growing with them—you can't treat an 18-year-old the same way that you treat a seven-year-old; they're different.

You got to grow with them, having unrealistic grades, sports, emotional maturity, just growing and being more aware and responsible.

It's amazing in our house—I mentioned this in the first service; I don't know if anybody can identify, and if you do, I would appreciate you standing up, maybe just raising your hand.

It's amazing; we'll throw kids—we'll throw down dirty clothes and the stairs going down to our—and I'll walk over the clothes. I'm like, "Man, I know I was not the first stinking person to walk over those clothes, but I guess I'm the only person whose eyes are, you know, my wife and I's are, we're, our eyes are the only ones that are working."

Because they're good, like, "Oh, there's dirty clothes in the stairs; I gotta move around," or the trash.

Anybody like the trash can? Anybody putting trash and like to push it down? "I don't want to take it; you know, I don't want to take it. Look at the trash; it's like two miles away downstairs; I don't want to do that."

And I'm like, "What's going on?" And I just, sometimes, I just, like, I've lost it. You know, like, I know we've got uncertainty in the election and all these going on, but like, man, just the trash can is bringing such anxiety and anger into my soul, you know?

And like, I can be critical and harsh. Sometimes I just need to overlook it and relax.

One of the ways that we exasperate and nag our kids is by not apologizing, not owning our junk, not talking about our faults, favoritism, volatility, withholding affection, or not showing affection.

Whether we nag or provoke our kids, every human being, every man, woman, boy, or girl is unique, with unique gifts, weak points, calling, besetting sins, personality types, so on and so on.

And one of the reasons that parents oftentimes become frustrated with their children is that their children are not mere copies of their parents, and they don't have the same tendencies and hopes and aspirations and interests.

We want them to be like us, or sometimes, like, "Don't be like us," and we're trying to help correct them so that they'll be so different, and we live vicariously through our kids, and we're nagging and provoking and moving them away.

Dads, moms, grandparents, aunts, uncles, if you will encourage and love and be present with your kids, why? Because Jesus changes all of our relationships—the marriage relationship, the parenting relationship—all of life is all for Jesus.

Colossians 3:17, "Whether in word or deed, everything under the sun, all of life is meant to bring glory and renown and honor to Jesus."

And he wants to empower you to live in a way that honors him. So if you will encourage and love and praise and be present with your kids, you will help them have a healthy identity and healthy calling upon their life.

You matter so much to them; you matter so much to them. Jesus at the center of our relationships. Why? Because Jesus changes everything.

So here's a question; it's on the screen: What do you need to believe and do? I regularly ask this question: What do you need to believe and do?

I regularly ask this question: What do you need to believe and do as you think about this sermon? Here in just a moment, we're going to take the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper, we believe, is symbolic. It points to the profound reality of the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. And all those who have believed upon Christ are changed, reconciled, made new, forgiven, clean.

This is a great opportunity as we're passing out the Lord's Supper to do some inventory in your life. As we've talked about these relationships, there's not a person in the room and not a person watching online where there's not territory, as I've said before, where we need to yield and let the Spirit of God gain traction in our lives and surrender to Him.

So perhaps this is a morning where you just need to press reset. And this is a little awkward, but we had several people—you guys can go ahead and start passing out the Lord's Supper.

We had several people during the Lord's Supper. We want the steps to be able to—perhaps you need to grab your son or your daughter, maybe take the hand of your wife, take the hand of your husband.

Maybe there's a friend like, "Hey, let's just pray that we would help each other. Let Jesus be at the center of our relationships."

Maybe this is a time of confession and repentance, and you just want to recalibrate your heart. Repentance, as a friend of mine said, is the good gift of God to say, "I need to realign myself to God's design, His good, beautiful design."

All right? Pastor Ryan's going to come sing for us, and I'll come back up, and we'll take a break. We'll do the Lord's Supper together.

But just ask God, "Search me and know me. Find anything unclean in me, and help me to believe and do what you want."

All right? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, a familiar verse when we've taken the Lord's Supper each month. "For our sake he, the Father, made him, the Son of God, to be sin, who knew no sin."

He was perfect, the righteous one, so that for the purpose of in him, the Son of God, we, all those who believe and love and trust and follow after Jesus, might become the righteousness of God.

What is the righteousness of God? It's comprised of the obedience of Christ, the purity of Christ, the stainlessness of Christ, so that when you believed upon Jesus, when you repented of your sin and believed upon Christ, you were deemed and declared without stain and purity.

You are clean and forgiven, and you're declared righteous in Jesus. Jesus became—he took on our sin. What sin? A critical spirit, a lack of love, passivity, a refusal to listen to authority, a provoking and exasperating those around us.

He took on all our sins, which is understood, but not all. He understood in many, many, many ways. But one way it could be described is anything, any place, anywhere, any pursuit, any ambition, any desire that does not put Jesus first would be comprised of sin.

And Jesus took that upon himself on the cross. He says that sinners would be declared righteous. It's a legal declaration that took place. The Father sat on the bench and smacked the gavel and declared, based upon the person of Jesus, "You are not guilty."

Declared righteous. So live as those who have peace with the Father through Christ. Live as those who are new creations. Live as those who have died with Christ, but now have new life in Christ.

Live as those who have Jesus at the center of all of your relationships, whether you're single, married, a widow, a widower, a child, an adult—let your life be all for Jesus.

So let's stand as we take the Lord's Supper. The bread is symbolic of the body of Jesus. Jesus was crucified on the cross, and he said, "Break and eat in remembrance of me."

And when we drink the juice, the juice is a symbol, points to profound, awesome, eternity-changing realities. We're reminded that a life, an actual life was given.

A life willingly given in sacrifice as a substitute for me, as a substitute for you, as a substitute for us. So perhaps just quietly, I know this is a little awkward, perhaps just quietly say this: "Thank you, Jesus, for dying for me."

Let's say it together: "Thank you, Jesus, for dying for me." Drink in remembrance of Christ.

Righteous, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, holy, compassionate, loving, transcendent, amazing God. Thank you for providing for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.

And thank you for intervening and helping us and providing protection from the punishment and the penalty of sin, that all of us who have believed upon Christ are more than conquerors through him who loved us, who gave us life.

May we be reminded that Jesus, you are to be at the center of all of our relationships, and we fail and we flounder, we screw up, we're weak.

Remind us that in our weakness, it's a way in which an opportunity in which you can work through our deficiencies and our brokenness and our sin and our weakness. We desperately, desperately need you. Teach us, remind us.

There's many in the room where they know and they feel it, but there are some that don't feel it in their bones. Would you, Holy Spirit, teach us to be reliant and dependent upon Jesus.

And Jesus, may you be at the center. And all that we do, whether word or deed, may we honor you, bringing pleasure and renown to your great name.

And all God's people said, "Amen."

Hey, good to be with you. There's a couple of things I want to make mention. This Friday, we are one church, five locations.

And we don't do a lot of things on Sunday nights. We don't have a lot of stuff going through on Wednesday nights, but this is something that we do twice a year. Pastor Ryan, who's just an incredible pastor. I love him dearly. He and his team do a great job.

They're gonna lead us in a night of worship. It's live stream; you can watch it online, but I want to encourage you to come back this Friday at seven o'clock. It's gonna be a great time of worship and fellowship as we sing and pray and spend time with the Father.

Hey, remember, Tuesday, have a sense of joy. God's on the throne. Have a sense of seriousness. What we do is that we are in a period slowing down the decay that's happening in the world and have a sense of urgency.

But listen, God's on the throne. We trust in him, and he is our supreme ruler and king. Have a great week. You're loved, you're sent, be gone.