I love that chapter of John, John chapter 13. In that chapter, Jesus, the master, the Lord of all, stooped to the place of the servant of all. And in that same chapter, he not only washed his disciples' feet, which was the office of a servant, but he gave himself to do his father's will in order to give his life a ransom for his people. And that is the service that he performed for our salvation. So in that chapter, we see the Lord Jesus Christ acting in love by service in this humility, this posture, and this work That was the work of a servant. That's why he came. He came to serve. He said in Matthew 20, verse 28, the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Now we want to look at Colossians chapter three today with the background there from John 13. At the end of that, the Lord told his disciples, as I have loved you, This is my commandment, as I have loved you, love one another. In Colossians chapter three, where we are in our study of Colossians, what we're going to see is that the Lord, the Lord Jesus, through the apostle, is instructing us. He is instructing us as his people. In John 13, he calls his disciples children. In Colossians 3, beginning at verse 18, you'll notice there are clear instructions given to different people.

In verse 18, he says, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. And then he says to husbands, husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. And then he speaks to children. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. And then to fathers. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

And then to servants. or employees, servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as man pleasers or men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And then he sums all of that up and he says, whatsoever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men.

So the theme is clearly an instruction by Christ to his people, his church. And in his instructions, he's telling us how we ought to live our lives in this world, in these different relationships we have with, these God-given relationships we have with one another. And the reason we are to live this way, excuse me just a minute, The reason we are to live this way, the basis of that instruction given by Christ is what he has already said in the previous two chapters. He summarizes it this way in chapter two.

He says in verse nine, in him, in Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Obviously, in Christ, there's nothing lacking. There's nothing that can be added. He is everything. He is God over all. And he is God in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is also man. But in verse 10, he follows that statement. He says, and you are complete in him, in Christ, because Christ is all as God. And because it pleased God the Father to make him all to his people, therefore in him and in no other, and with no additions, nothing to be added, nothing can possibly be added, you are complete, he says, you are complete in him.

So that is the basis. for what we read in Colossians chapter 3. In Colossians 3 verse 1, he says, if you then be risen with Christ, so that's a statement of fact. It's a statement of place. You're risen, you're with Christ. You were risen with him when he rose, you rose. He says, then seek those things which are above. the things that God has told us He has given to us in Christ, which is all that Christ is to His people as both God and man, the mediator.

He says in verse 3 of Colossians 3, you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. So the part of you that's dead is your sin, your guilt against the army, your crimes of sin against God. That, like a body, has been put to death in the death of Christ. Your corrupt nature has been put to death in the death of Christ.

And therefore, he says, in verse Five, mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth. And he lists those, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, covetousness, which is idolatry, and so on. So now he's telling us based on what God has said, and this is the truth because there's nothing more true There's nothing, nothing can establish the truth more than that God has said it is so. If God has said it, that's the most solid, most indisputable, axiomatic fact of it, because God has spoken. Therefore, because of who Christ is and what you are by God's doing in him, therefore put to death these things, mortify them, because your life is hid with Christ in God and your old self has been put to death. And he goes on, he says in verse 8, Now you also put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

Lie not one to another, seeing you have put off the old man with his deeds, and you have put on the new man. He says the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. That's Christ. The new man is renewed in knowledge. That means God has given us an understanding. He's given us an understanding of the truth by the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the truth revealed, which gives us an understanding. And when God gives us an understanding, that He has also given us a new man.

And we're to wear Christ. We're to put him on. Of course, we don't do that physically. There's no such thing as physically putting Jesus Christ on. But by faith, we see what is true by the declaration of God's word in the gospel, and we lay hold, we come, we look, and we lay hold upon Christ. This is the way things are. God has said so.

And though I am a sinner and nothing at all in myself, and under the wrath of God, if I were outside of Christ, yet God has said, coming to Christ, looking to him, trusting him, He is ours and we are His, and therefore put Him on in the day-to-day life that God has given us. Now, in these things that He said here, He spoke to wives, to husbands, to children, to fathers, to servants, and even to masters. In all these things, God is showing us relationships, physical relationships in our present life. And in each of those relationships, a couple of things. First of all, an attitude has to be present in us in order to function in that relationship according to God's design, according to what we are in Christ by the gospel. So the way that we come to God and see the truth, this understanding that he has given us with this new man, This truth guides the way we think about our relationships. And each of those relationships teaches us many things. If you just look at the list again, look at verse 18.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands. Now, it's common that we hate submission. It's natural for us. We don't want to do it, especially men. And it's also common that men would want to subject their wives to their will. But submission is not something you can enforce. You can get outward submission that way, but you can't get inward submission. Inward submission doesn't come by force. It doesn't come by regulations.

And so what the Lord is showing us here is that he is exhorting us to do inwardly because of what God has declared to us in the gospel. The truth of the gospel is going to persuade us so that our submission comes naturally because we are, we have put on this new man, God has given us this new attitude, this way, faith of looking at things through the lens of God's truth, the gospel.

So you can see that the first exhortation here is for wives to lovingly submit to their husbands. And there's nothing that will produce that submission but the love of the husband and the love of the wife for Christ. You see, it's love for Christ and love for the husband that causes a woman to willingly yield to her husband's authority, a God-given authority. and is given for a reason. And that's the second part of this that I want to emphasize.

Not only are these relationships given to us with this attitude that must attend those relationships, an attitude given by God, an attitude that comes by grace, that produces this submission, for example, with wives, but in each of these, there are different aspects that are required. With wives, what's required? A submissive attitude. That's humility, isn't it?

It's laying aside preferences and choices on behalf of another out of love and obedience to Christ. loving obedience, not constraining obedience, not that obedience that is attended with threatenings or promises of reward, but obedience that's based on a relationship already established by the Lord Jesus Christ through his own precious blood.

And then he goes on, husbands love your wives. Let me back up, verse 18, when he speaks of wives, he's speaking about a spiritual relationship that each person has, who is a believer, each person has to the Lord Jesus Christ. God says in Scripture that every believer is related to Christ by a union, a God-made union, a spiritual union, a union of love. It's bound, they're bound to the Lord Jesus Christ in a loving union. And because of that, Because he gave himself for us, therefore what is to flow out of that, out of faith, is a loving submission to Christ. So when he speaks of wives here, even though I'm not a wife, not in a physical sense, yet he's speaking to me as a believer, pointing me to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Submit to Christ. And then he goes to your own husband, not to another, in other words. Not to a man who's not your husband. because that would be to be unfaithful to Christ. It would show allegiance to another instead of Christ. Submission to Christ is exclusive allegiance to him in love, willingly. And then in verse 19, he says, husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Again, not all of us are husbands, but here God is exhorting us The Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle, is exhorting us on the basis of the truth of the gospel. You do as Christ has done for you.

What did he do? Well, he stooped. He stooped so low, he made himself a servant. No one has ever exhibited humility in that way. If we take the lowest place, we've never reached yet, we've never yet reached the place we deserve. But the Lord Jesus Christ is God, and as equal with God, He took on the form of a servant. He took on the nature of His people, and He, in that nature, as a servant, served His Father in love for them. and gave himself for them, an offering to God, in order to have them for himself and make himself known to them in eternal life. And this is what he's talking about here. In a spiritual sense, even though it doesn't apply to each of us, he's speaking to husbands and he's showing us that in every relationship, There's this humility, there's this grace given to us in light of who Christ is, in light of what Christ has done, in light of our relationship to Him by God's doing, then live your life. That's what he's saying.

Not in order to become saved. We never act, we never seek to obey God in order to obtain salvation. Salvation is not by our work. It's by a finished work Christ accomplished for us. Nor do we obey in order to give evidence, producing evidence for our own conscience, or bringing evidence to God that we're His. Our response to God's grace doesn't bring God nearer to us. It's the result of His grace in us that produces that fruit to God, to His glory. And so all these things are not in order to achieve something. It's because of what God has made us in Christ. It's out of thanksgiving, that thanksgiving that's produced by faith in the Lord Jesus through the gospel.

And then he comes to verse 20, he says, children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. And I wanna focus on that verse, especially the rest of the time we have together. And we'll cover these other relationships next time. Children, obey your parents in all things. This is well-pleasing to the Lord.

Now, it just so happens that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the Son of God. As son of God, he's equal with his father. He has the same eternal nature, the same perfections, the same wisdom, the same power, the same authority as his father. And yet here we see something that is unbelievably condescending, that the one who is God made himself of no reputation.

And he did this in love to his father because it was in his father's heart to bring many sons to glory by making his own son, who is equal with him, to be made lower than the angels for the suffering of death. Only by being made a man and acting in obedience to his father to take on all that his people would owe because of their sin, all that was required of them for righteousness. The Lord Jesus Christ so stooped that he made himself, he obligated himself in the place of his people to be accountable to God as they were accountable, but in his accounting, he would give a full answer to all that God required from his people as a substitute for them in their place and in their name. And so when he says, children obey your parents, the first thing we need to realize is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal son of God stooped to be the son of man and as a son of man yielded that obedience to God that was pleasing to him and it is his obedience.

That is pleasing to God for us. Please understand, again, salvation is not by what we do, and the evidence of our salvation is not something we produce by what we do. But salvation is accomplished by Christ, and what we do is in response. It's the behavior produced by God the Father, just as fathers produce the right behavior in their children through that loving discipline. All right, so children, obey your parents in all things. What does this require of children? Well, you say, well, this doesn't apply to me. I'm well past the age of being a child.

Oh, but the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to his disciples. And how did he address them in John chapter 13? Little children. So you see that even the Lord Jesus Christ, who was made lower than the angels as the Son of Man, in order to die in the place of his people and to satisfy God's justice and fulfill all righteousness, He also speaks to his disciples, to his people, as his children, little children, children of my father. And he acted for them as their father when he obeyed God as Adam disobeyed, and in his obedience all of his children were made righteous in him.

See then that this term children applies to not only little physical children like Harmony or like others who are not yet adults, but it applies also to adult children. And this is where the richness of God's grace comes to us who are adults in the comfort of it. Because if it were just speaking to little children, if you're like me, as soon as you hear children obey your parents, you just tune it out. But this is speaking not only to little children, physical children, but it's speaking to us as God's own dear children.

So what the Lord is doing here is he's giving his children instruction. He's teaching them. How does the Lord, our Father, teach his children? That's the first question I have here. How do we know that we're children of God? How do we know that God is our Father? How did we become his children? And if we are his children, what does he do? How does he instruct and teach us? How does he discipline us? How do we know we're disciplined of God the Father? So those questions will guide us as we think about this.

And the first thing I want to do is to take you to John chapter six, the gospel of John chapter six, and we're gonna see here how God the Father teaches his children and we'll also see when they become his children. John chapter 6 and verse 33, Jesus said, the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world. It's speaking about the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the bread. God the Father gave his son for the life of his people.

And in that sense, spiritually, that's like bread. God gives bread, and bread, we live upon it because that's the way God has designed our physical life. We depend upon physical food. But spiritually, we depend on a spiritual bread. And our spiritual life depends on this bread given to us.

And who gives his children food but the father? I don't, actually, I wouldn't mind helping, but it's not my job to give Brad's children food. It's not my job to give Justin and Hannah's children food, or even Ben and Faith's children. It's the parent's job to give their children food. In fact, it falls mostly on the shoulders of the father to provide for his children, to give his children. And that relationship a child has to their father A relationship of where the Father is providing for them and giving that provision to them.

That relationship is fulfilled here when Jesus said, my Father sent me as the bread of life. He says, my father giveth, I came down from heaven. The bread of God is he, the Lord Jesus, who came down from heaven and gives life to the world. And notice verse 35 of John chapter 6. Jesus said, I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall never hunger. He that believes on me shall never thirst. So spiritual food is realized by God giving his son. He says he gave his son for the life of his people.

And the way that God gave his son is he gave him not only to take our nature and be a servant, but to obey as a servant in all things, as a son. And even though he was the son of God, he was also the son of man because only as the son of man could he fulfill what God had prophesied that though through man came death, by man came the resurrection from the dead. And that couldn't happen unless Christ bore our sins and paid the debt of our crimes against God and so fulfill all that we owe to God and satisfy justice. So it is in believing him that we spiritually do what physically is like eating and drinking. Believing Christ is coming to Christ. That's what he says here. He that cometh shall never hunger. He that believeth shall never thirst. The two are synonyms.

And what does it mean to come? Well, it means to believe, but what does it mean when you come? If I remember Kevin, he used to have a dog and I used to like to watch him train his dog. He'd throw something out, the dog loved to fetch it, and he'd throw it out and he'd say, bring, which means come, bring it.

And so the Lord is saying here, come to me. In order to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to leave something and then come to him. There's that negative and that positive. Just like in Colossians 3, he says, put off these things and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith does both. When we believe on Christ, we're leaving what we formerly depended upon.

When the Lord saves you, he makes everything you knew before that to show you that it was wrong. And he shows you the truth that it's only what Christ is and has done for us that is all of our salvation, all of our life, our life is in him. And so he's saying here, by coming to Christ, he will give you life. By believing on Him, He will give you life and you will never hunger, you'll never thirst spiritually for any other because having Him, you have all things, you're complete in Him.

But now, look a little further here. He says, look at verse 44 of John 6, because this is the Father's work now. He says, now, no man, Jesus is telling us this, no man can come. And what does come mean? It means to believe on Him, to leave things formerly believed and now believe only Christ and Him crucified. We depend on Him for the cleansing of our sin and for our righteousness, for our obedience to God. We depend on Him for life.

And he says, no man can do that, except what? He says in verse 44, except the Father. which sent me, draw him." He goes on, and I will raise him up at the last day. This man, this person whom the Father draws to me, I will raise him up on the last day. He tells us when, the last day of this present world. He says in verse 45, notice, It is written in the prophets. He's pulling from the Old Testament, actually from Isaiah 54, verse 13. He says, it is written in the prophets, they shall be all taught of God. All right, the question is, how do we know we're God's children? How do we know the Lord is chasing us? How do we know God the Father loves us as his children? This is the answer.

He teaches us. Now, when God teaches us, it's not like when we teach our children. When we teach our children, we tell them, for years, for years, do the same thing, over and over, every day. And finally, it seems like when they become 35 or 40, they get it. But when God the Father teaches us, we actually learn the lesson.

His teaching produces the effect He intends. And His teaching is a discipline. When we discipline our children, we're training them to produce an effect, to actually train them to have a certain behavior. We want them to think right and behave right. This is what God the Father does. He teaches His children, every one of them, every one of them, and they all learn.

And what is the lesson he teaches them that they learn? What is the discipline he applies to them that produces the effect and the behavior? Well, he just said so, what it is. He says, no man can come to me except the father which sent me draw him. I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore. that hath heard and learned of the Father does what?

Comes to me. You see, the result of God's discipline in our life, the way we know God has chastened us, the way we know that He is teaching us, that God is our Father, this is the result. We come to Christ. We leave everything else, our dependence on whatever it is we depended on before, our knowledge, we leave that and we come to learn what God has said is the way things are. The truth of our condition, we're sinners, we're nothing at all. And what is our only hope? That Jesus Christ is my all in all. We learn that. And that lesson taught to us by God the Father produces in us the result he designs.

Look at Hebrews chapter 12. Again, we're taking this verse from Colossians 3, verse 20. Children, obey your parents. And we're seeing how it applies to each believer. And so he says in Hebrews 12, verse 5, You have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children. He quotes from the Proverbs. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. Notice verse six, very important.

For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the father chastens not? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are you bastards and not sons.

Okay, it's clear, isn't it? If God, if you are the child of God, if you are a child of God, the Father, then He's going to teach you. He's going to discipline you. And He's going to make sure you learn the lesson. And the lesson is, come to Christ. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Look to Him. Look away from everything else. Look to Him only. Have confidence in no other but Him.

Find all your confidence, all your life, all your salvation in Him. All that He is, you come to Him for. Obedience and righteousness and cleansing from sin and remission of sins and forgiveness, holiness, everything, you go to Him. Because of Him, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, of Him, of God the Father, are you in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Go to Him.

Leave all that you formerly trusted. You take no confidence in your flesh. and find everything God requires and has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ by his own blood. That's the lesson God's chastening produces. You see, the book of Hebrews is the unfolding of how Christ in his person and in his work is all that God ever delighted in. And therefore, to the Hebrew believers, who were tempted to go back to the Old Testament rituals and commandments and depend on those that came to them as a chastisement, a discipline, a severing of what they were leaning toward and a correction.

And he's saying, no, no, stop that, do this. And he produced in them that effect, that behavior, going to Christ, trusting him only. Look at verse 14. of Hebrews 12. He tells his children, follow peace. With all, the word men is in italics. He's talking about the church.

You believers, with all of the believers now, you follow peace. And where is that peace found? It's in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Firmly lay hold and follow on with every believer to grasp that peace with God is made in the propitiating blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what else? And holiness. without which no man shall see the Lord." How is that holiness? How are we made holy? How do we pursue that? Well, we follow after with all of God's people to grasp that God the Father has made Him unto us wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption by His precious blood. He has forever sanctified, made holy those God the Father by His will gave Him, by His blood.

In Hebrews 13 and chapter 12 he says this, Wherefore Jesus also that He might sanctify, make holy the people, with his own blood, he suffered without the gate. This is the chastening. This is the result of that chastening. Follow peace. Trust Christ's blood to make you holy, to make your peace with God. Otherwise, you have no way of coming to the Lord, he says, without which no man shall see the Lord. Find it all in Christ. Look away from yourself. Trust him only. You see, that's the that's the effect That's the behavior, that's the attitude. And so when we see that all of this is done, what's the result? What's the result? What is the result produced? Well, look at Romans chapter eight, because this is a glorious thing.

We lived our lives before we knew Christ under bondage. bondage because God required of us what we could never give. In fact, what he what he demanded of us was going to bring about our eternal damnation. And we were condemned guilty and had no strength, no strength to remove our sin, no strength to fulfill our own obedience. And then God revealed what Christ did in the gospel. And by the power of His own Holy Spirit, He convinced us by the Gospel, Christ is all, in all that we are to God, our life, our salvation, and all things.

In Romans chapter 8, He says this in verse 15, You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. When you're a servant, you're in bondage. You're not servants. and you didn't receive the spirit of bondage from God as the Israelites did in the wilderness when God gave the law. They were under bondage. They were slaves. They were servants to fulfill the law they could never keep and they were never able to achieve that peace of mind or or make themselves clean enough to appear before God. No way they could make themselves holy. And God's lesson to us is is that it can't be done by your flesh. He says in verse 15, you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received notice the spirit of adoption.

Whereby we cry, Abba, Father, Now, Abba, Father, is a word that's made up of two different languages, actually. But in the Aramaic language, which was the language they spoke when Jesus was on the earth, It was common to use that word. In fact, Jesus Christ himself in Mark 14, 36, he spoke to his father in the Garden of Gethsemane in prayer and he addressed his father as Abba Father. It was a term that adult children would use to speak of their father. out of a crowd of a hundred men, the son finds his father and he publicly says, Abba, father, my father, dear father. And so the two words that in the Abba part, it conveys this notion of intimacy and relationship. I mean, it's unique. You only have one father. You can't have two. You get one father, one father, one mother. And this relationship on earth is unique because there's only one father in glory. And God is the father of his people through Christ. And so because God is our father and because it is by the redeeming work of Christ, he brings us to Christ and that's his work through his spirit.

And in doing that, the way he does that is he proclaims the gospel to us of what Christ is to us and what he's done for us in our relationship to God. by making us holy, giving us His own righteousness, and making us children in relationship to God. And we see that. The Gospel is declared. The Spirit of God applies it to us, and He gives us both life and faith through that Gospel. And you know what He does in our hearts? He bears witness to the truth of Christ. so that we trust Christ, and in trusting Christ according to God's Word, the Spirit bears witness in our hearts on the Word of God.

You are the children of God, and you come to God as your Father. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ, His relationship to His Father was an eternal relationship. It was never, it never had a beginning, never has an end. And he's, as God, he has, he's equal with God. He is everything God is. But our relationship to God is by the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the eternal will of God.

And it is shown to us in our experience, the experience of our life through the spirit of God, when the gospel is declared so that in the gospel, we learn God is my father. And this is the spirit of liberty. It's not bondage. It's a spirit of intimacy. It produces in us what discipline from the Father is meant to produce, a loving respect. Abba Father is not a flippant, casual term. It means He is my Father. My dear father, he chose me in Christ and he put me among the children at the price of the son of his love. And therefore he sent the spirit of his son into my heart, crying, Abba, father.

Look at Galatians chapter four. In Galatians chapter four, this is explained. This is how. God made us his children, and this is the way we know it. Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Galatians 4. He says in verse 4, when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son. It was the fullness of time, meaning the time God had determined before and promised. Now it had come.

He sent forth his son. made of a woman, not born to Adam, but through a woman by the Spirit of God, made under the law because he had to serve as a servant and he had to stand where we were and give an account to God and fulfill all righteousness, which we could never do.

And then he says in verse five, he was made under the law in order that he might redeem them that were under the law, that means to redeem at a price, his own blood, and to set them free. A payment that resulted in liberty, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons, the putting among the children. And receiving it doesn't mean it made it happen. It means that it was the communication of that relationship to us so that we know it through the gospel. He says, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.

And because you are sons by God's adopting will, by Christ redeeming blood, therefore God has sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts which is what produces faith, crying, My Father. Because through the Lord Jesus Christ, we see He has redeemed us to God. And the Spirit of God takes the Gospel and brings us to Christ. And entrusting Christ in Him crucified, God the Father puts His stamp on His work and produces this response, this behavior in us. God is my Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of God has taken the gospel and he has applied it to us with life-giving grace and faith-giving grace. And he has caused us now to forsake everything else. and look to Christ only, to leave off every confidence and find all of our confidence in Him, to forsake wherever we were and come to Christ only, you see. That's the work of the Father.

And so when He says in Colossians 3, children, obey your parents in all things, He says, for this is well pleasing to the Lord. He's he's drawing, first of all, to our attention that the Lord Jesus Christ please God as a son. And even though he was the eternal son of God, yet he learned obedience to his father's will by suffering in obedience unto death. That's what Hebrews five, verse seven through nine teaches.

And then he goes on to show us that our relationship to our physical parents is just a canvas, a pictorial architecture view of the real thing. And the real thing is that God the Father before time chose us in Christ that we should be holy And He gave us to Christ to make us holy in His own blood. And God the Father, by Jesus Christ, therefore predestinated us unto the adoption of children to Himself. And having redeemed us, He therefore, and because we were His sons by His adopting will and Christ's redeeming blood, He sends His Spirit in the preaching of the gospel to make us. willingly as sinners forsake all.

I am a poor sinner and nothing at all but Jesus Christ is my all in all and we embrace him and we are happy and there's no hunger, there's no thirst for any other savior because Christ is all sufficient and God's word tells us this and there's nothing more true. Nothing more substantiating than that God has written it in His Word.

Children, obey your parents in all things. Little children, in this life, learn to love and respect your father and your parents. Parents, it is your God-given role to make to make your children learn to respect, lovingly respect you, and to learn of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and how through Him, God the Father has saved His people and made them His children. That is your job. That is my job as a father, as a parent, and it takes effort. It takes patience. It takes love.

It takes a dependence upon God for all grace to do in our physical lives what is true in the spiritual reality. Let's pray. Father, we pray that by your grace we would learn that Jesus Christ is our savior and we would look to him only and come to him and you would give us by him all you designed to give to your children. Bring us, Lord, we cannot produce the response in ourselves. We are sinful and unable, we're weak and helpless and you have to overcome our spiritual deadness, our blindness, our lameness, our helplessness, our sickness. And you must give us life through the redeeming blood of Christ that takes away our sin and heals us and raises us from the dead by your Spirit giving us sight, The light of God shining in our hearts, convincing us with persuading grace that Jesus Christ is everything, causing us to come, to leave everything else and to go no further and look to no other than Him. and to be therefore thankful to you. Help us, Lord, to live with this attitude based on the faith you've given us, our lives in relationship to others, to humble ourselves, to submit to you in love, seeing what you've done for us and who you are to us by your grace. In Jesus' name we pray.