Colossians 1 — Colossians 3-4

0:01 Well, now that you're all wound up, I need you to settle down, please. I'm about to hear the word of God. Well, there is a picture of my beautiful family up in Canada. And just going to give everybody an explanation because some of you have been asking, am I a teacher now because I took Teachers College last year. I'm not a teacher yet because I have to get hired.

0:31 And in my country, the market is very glutted right now for teachers. So, there could be a one to five year wait. But the great thing that we know is that in God's timing that door will open up. In the meantime, thankfully, my elders are happy to have me continue in full time work at our assembly. So that's what I'm still doing.

0:58 I find out this September, if I am hired on to the substitute teacher list, that is how it works right now with government regulations. You have to be a substitute teacher for a year and then you can start applying for a real job. So, that's where we're at. I'll let you know as things unfold. I was happy to have Jacob Ming at my home last month when he was there with the Cross Canada Cruisers.

1:30 He was a delight to have fellowship with and it was an extreme delight to see his maturity, his boldness, to speak his faith. We went to a skate park together and we went door to door together and we went downtown using surveys together. But what I really was impressed with was when he preached at our kids meeting, he used his paint board. I thought he had good skill with that board. I thought he had command of the children and he had a very loud voice, he could be heard.

2:11 I was just impressed. Jacob Ming is becoming a young man. And he's single ladies, he's single. No laughter out there. Okay, that's fine.

2:51 Wives, husbands, children, fathers, and then it speaks of employees and employers or bond servants and masters as they were called back in the day. But I've entitled this portion Christ's preeminence in every relationship. Because as you know, in Colossians chapter one, it says in verse 18 that in all things he may have the preeminence. And that's what we want for our savior. We want him to have the first place in our churches, the first place in our homes and the first place in our hearts, each one of us.

3:41 Let's read that portion together. Colossians three verse 18. Wives, submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. Children, obey your parents in all things for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

4:10 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God. And whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance for you serve the Lord Christ. But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done and there is no partiality. Masters, give your bond servants what is just and fair knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

5:03 This portion here has a chapter break at chapter four but it seems to go together. So, maybe that chapter four should start at verse two. We have here four categories of people in the family: wives, husbands, children, fathers. Not exactly sure why mothers are not given a word of instruction there but if you have a good idea of why they're not mentioned, let me know because I can't figure it out. And then we have this portion on bond servants and masters.

5:41 The beginnings of Christianity began when slavery was the way of the world. So, it talks about how slaves are to conduct themselves. I'm going to be applying it today when we get down to that part of the passage as employees and how we are to relate to our bosses. I propose to spend about ten minutes on each category. How do you really deal with each of these subjects?

6:10 I'll talk about wives for ten minutes, husbands for ten minutes, children for ten minutes, fathers for ten minutes, and then I'll run out of time. But what I'll probably do is borrow a few minutes from one of those sections. I don't know which one yet. Husbands. Husbands.

6:27 Yeah, of course. Good point. Good point. We need to focus on where we need help. Yeah, good.

7:04 And this is really God's plan for our marriages. The world, no doubt, thinks it's a silly plan, thinks it's wrong, thinks it's unfair. But God has his way and it is always different than the world's way that is under the lies and sitting in the lap of the evil one who is against God. So, it doesn't surprise me that our bible would say something different for families than what our culture does. But if we would follow God's plan for our marriages, I think they would run smoother than the marriages of the world.

7:43 Not that they would be without problems, we do confess that we are sinners and we need help. But I think the blueprint for our marriage is God's wisdom and we would be very wise to submit to it. Marriage is like a car. If you can think of it that way, when you say, yes, I will marry you to some fellow who proposes to you, you're saying, yes, I'll get into the car with you. And life begins and the thing about a car is that they don't look like this.

8:17 They don't have two steering wheels. We wouldn't get very far if they did. So, that when you're married, there is one steering wheel in the household. God has made it that way to prevent us from having argument after argument. I think when it comes to submission, the reason why the Lord has asked wives to be submissive to their husbands is to allow somebody to have the final say when we do disagree.

8:56 My wife and I disagree quite often. She's American. I'm Canadian. We disagree about which country is the best. We disagree about how to raise the kids.

9:07 We disagree about money. We disagree about many things. But you know what? We still love each other. We still get along.

9:15 But what do you do when it comes to decision making? You know, when I want to turn this way and she wants to turn that way. How is it going to work? Well, of course, we talk. Submission is not silence.

9:30 You just sit there while I lead this family. That's idiocy. We talk with one another. My wife rides shotgun in this marriage. I consult her about where we're going.

9:43 I hear her advice. But I have to make those calls. I have to decide if I'm going to work at this place or that place. What's good for this marriage? How are we going to raise these kids?

9:58 How are we going to school these kids? Where are we going to spend this money? And so on and so forth. You know, the decisions are endless. Sometimes we have to put the brakes on things and sometimes we have to go with things that we feel God is leading for our families.

10:18 Now, if you think we have the privilege of leading and you guys have the penalty of submitting, I don't think that's the right way to think of it at all. The Lord has given us the privilege of doing both. Submission is something our Lord Jesus participated in when he submitted to his own parents, when he submitted to the heavenly Father for the plan of salvation. He set the bar for us on this submission thing. But he also set the bar for us on headship and leadership.

10:51 And so, we as husbands are driving this marriage and we are the ones who are required to do it the right way. If we take that leadership and we lord it over our families, we abuse it, we mistreat them and the role we've been given, the Lord is the one who will deal with us when it comes to the judgment seat of Christ. Like a man who's driving a car, it's not going to be the one who's riding passenger who gets the ticket, it's going to be the driver. So, the Lord is watching. And remember, he calls himself the defender of the fatherless, the defender of the widow.

11:36 He looks after the needy and the weak. If we dare abuse our roles, we are taking a we are walking on dangerous ground. We are inviting the Lord to be displeased with our lives. So, I think that's the balance between these two things. It may seem to the world that it's not fair that a man leads his family, but it's a privilege and it's a responsibility that has far reaching ramifications.

12:04 I think that should make put the fear of God in all of us husbands to be careful how we lead. Well, let's move on to these translations. Submit to your own husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Be subject to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. If you want to know more about this word fitting, you can compare it to Ephesians chapter five verse four.

12:30 It is used in that verse as well. Ephesians five verse four. It is proper to for a wife to be in subject to her husband, it seems to be saying. This is the way God has made it to be. And if you even think logically, when you get two people becoming one, it makes sense that there would be somebody leading so that when these two disagree, they can come to an agreement and move on or sorry, not come to an agreement, come to a decision and move on.

13:06 I don't know if I should say this because I might not be invited back again, but I will for the sake of the word of God getting through. I personally believe in celebrating Halloween. My wife does not, just to give you an example, she does not. But over the years, she has happily submitted to that decision that I have made for our children because of X, Y and Z and I'm not going to get into it, why I think it is fine for our family to participate in that. But I want to say something about submission.

13:43 Submission is not, like I say, agreeing necessarily with your husband or maybe the elders of your church. Submitting is going with their decisions because they are in a position of authority. And submitting also, I believe, has to do with our attitudes. You know, if you submit to your husband and then give him the cold shoulder or nag him or the evil eye for the next three weeks, well, he's probably going to end up submitting to you and back up on the decision that he made because life is so miserable in the home. So, that ain't submission.

14:20 Submission is being happily led by your elders of your church or by the husband of your home even when you disagree. He's going to answer to the Lord for what he has chosen for the family. Rest in that. And you can always pray that the Lord would lead your husband in another way if you feel he is so wrong. Don't think of it as submitting to your husband.

14:49 I understand it might be wonderful to submit to a godly man who has a servant heart and who loves you. But what about if you don't have a husband like that? You have a cruel husband, a heartless man. You have someone who is not very easy to live with or to submit to. What do you do in those situations?

15:13 Well, don't think of this submitting to your husband. Think of it as submitting to the Lord's plan for your marriage. You are submitting to the Lord when you submit to your husband. You are trusting that he will work out things. You're not taking it into your own hands.

15:30 You're placing it at his feet. And the word of God has more to say on this subject In first Peter three chapter one, sorry, chapter three verse one, it says, if your husbands don't obey the word, wives can win them over by the lives that they live. So, trusting God, this is his plan. It will work out in this lifetime or in the next. He sees all that we do for him in obedience to his word.

16:20 So, I'll just walk you through them. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them. So, that kind of changed it a little bit. The top one looks like it's their fault. The next one looks like it's our fault, right?

16:37 They've made me bitter or I'm being bitter. I'm being cruel. I'm being sour to them. But they made me that way. So, I don't know how to take both these translations.

16:48 Love your wives and do not be bitter towards them. That one's very similar. And then NIV changed it a bit more. Love your wives and do not be harsh with them. So, taking that word bitter and moving it a little further.

17:04 These words are kind of difficult to translate because there are nuances involved in them and that's why you have a little discrepancy on the translations. It doesn't bother me. I just try to obey them all. I don't want to be bitter towards my wife, harsh towards my wife or embittered by my wife. Don't want to be resentful.

17:26 Don't want to hold grudges, Those types of things. Think of it this way. We are to let's deal with the first part that we are to love our wives. In another portion of scripture, it tells us how to love our wives. In Ephesians chapter five, to love them as Christ loved the church.

17:51 He laid down his life. We are to lay down our time. We are to lay down our expense, our interest, the things we invest in our families and in our wives. Let's think of some things that men do love to do. Oh, fishing.

18:08 We put a lot of time and expense and interest in that. The car, time, expense and interest in that, and the golf. So, men naturally kind of gravitate towards these things. All I'm saying is let's remember these things do not compare with the love we are to have for our wives. We are to invest more time in them, more expense and more interest.

18:36 Not saying you have to take her out to a fancy dinner every night, But she has to know she's valued. And these three things speak value to a woman. Although, I'm still learning how to communicate that I love my wife with these things. But you know you send a card at the right moment, that will tell her that you are thinking of her. Do not forget those anniversaries, bare minimum, obviously.

19:06 But love goes much further in that love is a verb, not just a feeling. What we do for our families. Some men think I provide for my family, isn't that enough? No. That is the bare minimum.

19:25 Providing is the bare minimum that a man can do for his family. There is something way more precious than providing for your family, is spending time with them. You ask any child, I don't even think they know we provide for them. My sons just think the money comes from anywhere. But they know that I wrestle with them.

19:45 They know that I spend time with their mother. I take her out on dates. They always want us to go on dates. Is that date night, daddy? We get a babysitter.

19:54 We can play Wii all night. Go on a date with mom. So, they like those date nights. Providing, obviously, we need a place to live. We need food to eat.

20:06 But let's not get confused and think that that is what biblical headship is. Biblical headship is spending time with our families, investing in our families, and leading our families in spiritual things into the truths of God and the principles of his word. This song touches my heart. I'd sing it for you, but that might be a problem. So, I'll just read it to you.

20:37 I'll show them I'm willing to fight. I'll show my family. I'll give them the best of my life, so we can call this our home. Lead me because I can't do this alone. Father, lead me because I can't do this alone.

20:56 This is a great song that reminds us that we can only lead our families when God provides us with the motivation, with the instruction, and with the support to be the leaders that we need to be, to be the lovers of our wives that we need to be, to give Christ that preeminent place in our homes. If we do not love our wives, he does not have the preeminence. We are not putting his word first and the things that are important to him first. Well, let's move on to children. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

22:06 How do I do that as I get to be an adult? Well, I think scripture is clear that marriage is one way that childhood ends. It says that for this reason, for marriage, in Genesis two twenty four, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. So, that is where I believe obedience to parents does come to an end. You are now the head of a new home and wives are in submission not to their fathers anymore but to their husbands.

22:46 Marriage is a clear cut line. But some people aren't married until later in life. So, then what happens? Well, is it whenever your parents tell you? Some people think that's how long you need to obey.

23:02 Whatever your parents decide on this scripture. And that may be true. I'm not coming down with a hard answer here. I'm trying to probe into a question that really isn't exactly clear in scripture. Let me say one more thing about obedience to parents ending at marriage.

23:22 Another reason why we'd have to end is because when you have marriage happen, now you have two fathers, you have two sets of parents. So, you'd really be in obedience to your in laws and your natural parents and how we're going to find agreement there. That's why God wants you to begin your own home where you lead and you make your own decisions. Now, honoring your parents is something entirely different. We always honor our parents.

23:53 That is crystal clear in scripture. There is no reason not to honor them. It doesn't have to do with maybe they disagree with how you parent your kids, how you raise your kids, maybe they disagree with the schooling way that you school your kids. You have to answer to God for your home, so you cannot let them make your decisions anymore. Unless you agree with them, of course, go with it.

24:20 But if you disagree, you have the prerogative to lead your home. Now, when you're not married, when does that childhood end? Whenever your parents tell you, that's some people's view. Here's something to think about. In the old testament, at 20 years old, you started paying taxes.

24:39 It seems God started saying, okay, 20 year olds are different than 20 year olds, than 20. Same thing with going to war. Only those men 20 years and older were allowed to be soldiers in wars. So, there's a bit of a guideline. God does seem to treat 20 year olds as adults, younger than 20, still as children.

25:07 I give that to you. It is difficult to know like if you're living at home and you're 22, you can't say, ah, I don't have to obey you. Mr. Johnson said. No, I'm not saying that.

25:19 If you're living at home, your parents say, hey, you're under this roof. You follow my rules. Maybe that's the setup and that should be respected. After all, you are living at their house, right? Right.

25:34 Amen. Preach it, Shane. All right. You thought I lost them for a bit, didn't you? I brought it back.

25:59 It's a tradition I want to get into. Once a year, reading a book on fatherhood, I read a book called Raising Modern Day Nights by Focus on the Family. It's a very good book. The concept is, you know, communicating a vision of manhood for your sons. This one wasn't really about daughters, just about sons.

26:22 Communicating a vision of manhood, verbally instructing them, setting the example for them and actually celebrating. This was the really cool part. Celebrating those milestones with them, whether it's age 16, whether it's when they finish high school, marriage, those milestones. My friend, Scotty, who's a... He got saved when he was in grade seven.

26:52 Now, he's 22. He's in a non Christian home. It's very difficult for him to walk with the Lord. He doesn't have any support. But he said something interesting the other day.

27:03 He said, you know what I realized? He says, my father's got a playbook of manhood that he wants me to live by. He said, but the problem is I've never seen it and I don't know what's in it. He said, so I just keep messing up in his eyes and I can't measure up in his eyes. And I thought, I can preach that.

27:25 As fathers, let's not have an invisible playbook that we expect our sons to live up to by virtue of knowing it because we know it or you think they're supposed to know it just because they hear the Bible just like you do. Let's be deliberate in explaining these things to our children. Because we're told in scripture very little that we need to not provoke our children to anger. Another translation thing here. So, let's just walk through it.

28:00 Here it says in New King James, do not provoke your children. They leave off the to anger part. Notice that in King James, to anger is in italics. That means they added it. That's what I love about King James.

28:15 They did add it to give us the gist of what's being said, but they put it in italics so that you know that they added it. Some translations give you the gist and add something, but they don't tell you they added it. That's kind of misleading in my books. So, King James says, Do not provoke your children. Why the discrepancy?

28:42 I think King James might be right on this one because if you go over to Ephesians six:four, it says the exact same verse. It says, Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. And it's not in italics. So, what the King James translators did was they looked at what Ephesians said and they brought it over to Colossians because they seem to be parallel passages. This is a very general statement.

29:16 There are lots of things we can do to provoke our children to anger, to bitterness, to resentment is the words we usually use today in our psychological infused world where this is now a big area of education. Provoke not. If you're looking for another verse to compare that word provoke to, two Corinthians nine:two uses that word. Provoke, do not stir them up. Do not frustrate them.

29:53 Do not deliberately anger them or irritate them. Obviously, there's many times that we butt heads with our children. I get that. Sometimes they disagree with us. I get that.

30:06 But how are we doing this so that they end up being discouraged or as the NASB says, lose heart? We don't want that. I think one of the literal translations says they become dispirited. They have no zeal. You've doused their flame is the idea.

30:30 I think fathers can do that by, again, having that playbook and having those standards so high, never encouraging, always nitpicking. I went to a wedding once. The father of the groom got up to give a speech. He almost floored me. You know what he said?

30:54 He didn't say, I'm so proud of you, my son. It's the best day of your life. This was a Christian man, a godly man in my opinion. The guy get married. His father gets up and says, keep trying.

31:07 One day you'll be like your uncle after whom you were named. I'm like, are you kidding me? At your son's marriage, at the wedding speech, this is what you do? You give him, keep trying? You've got to get better?

31:25 Anyways, that's the spirit of what I think this verse trying to help us with. As fathers, we have to understand that we have a very large voice in our children's life. So loud that sometimes they can't get us out of their head. So, we better be putting good words in that head of theirs. If we must correct and instruct and say and point out the faults, let us say praises more.

31:58 Let us encourage them more. Let us be proud of them more than we point out the faults. Another way, of course, to provoke your children to anger is to be the invisible father. The one who's never there. Or when he is there, he's not talking to you.

32:20 Unfortunately, that's the type of father I grew up with. When he came home from work, especially if he was mad, just go down to the basement till the end of the night. He'd fall asleep in front of the TV. Then he'd wake up and go to his room at whatever hour in the morning, barely talk to me. That provokes children to anger as well, to make them lose heart.

32:46 You see, this is what we got to realize. There's the NIV on this one. This is what we need to realize is that Proverbs seventeen:six is true. If you don't know that one as a father, you should know it. It's a very important verse.

33:09 It says, that the glory of children are their fathers. The glory of children are their fathers. We are everything in their eyes, at least for the first decade and a half of their lives. And that first decade and a half is very important in setting a foundation in a child's life. I love this little plaque, A son's first hero, a daughter's first love.

33:47 Again, this is such a broad topic. I encourage parents to read those books on parenting, to go to those conferences on parenting, to learn all we can so as to prevent less damage to our children. If we do nothing, if we learn nothing, if we just raise our kids the way we were brought up, I think we're going to pass on those things that we were damaged by. We have to unlearn a lot of things. And we have to learn the principles from the word of God.

34:24 Talk to others who are successful parents. Or you like the way their kids turned out? Talk to them. Learn all you can from them. Shelly and I just enjoyed six months of biweekly studies at our chapel.

34:43 Praise the Lord that our elders put on a parenting seminar for the whole chapel and 12 families were involved. 12 of us for six months examined and shared with each other stories of parenting and shared wisdom and looked at many videos by Focus on the Family and Gary Smalley and many other skilled people in this subject. It's not one to be taken lightly. So much hangs in the balance. Here is Japanese proverb.

35:25 There are three things that cause destruction. Yes, four that wreak havoc upon the earth. Lightning bolts, earthquakes, tsunamis, fathers. Think of the experience that somebody went through or observed in their society in order to write that. And Japan is a very patriarchal society.

35:55 Suicide rate is very high because people don't feel they measure up. Let us remember that we are heroes in our kids' eyes. They're watching us and they're listening to what we say. Even if we think they're not, they are. You remember this writer, Kafka.

36:19 He made a living on writing stories about his bitterness and resentment towards his father. His strained relationship between him and his father. Almost every dismal story that you read of his is about this strained relationship. And in this particular one, if you've not read it, it kind of probably looks strange to you. It's about a guy named Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning, a gigantic insect.

36:48 And he can't get out of his room and he can't go to work. The story unfolds. His family, his sister and his mom and dad all living in one apartment banging on the door, trying to get him to go to work. They don't know he's an insect. He won't come out.

37:04 And the idea is that Gregor felt like an insect because of the pressures of society and the way his father had made him feel. And so, this writer just made this guy an insect in the story. But I think the principle is true. We can feel unworthy and unvalued in our parents' eyes like a bug. At one point in the story, the father throws an apple at this fellow when he comes out of his room because he comes out of the room, he's a giant bug.

37:40 He chucks this apple at him. It gets lodged underneath his shell. And what it says is that apple never came out. It's stuck there and it just rotted and rotted and caused him great pain. I never forgot that apple because I don't want to ever throw a word at my sons or my daughter that sticks in them and rots in them for life.

38:10 Just as this apple did to this man who felt he was a bug in his father's eyes. Again, let that be a warning to us that the power we hold as our kids' heroes to not provoke them to anger, to not discourage them or make them lose heart. It looks like I have a few minutes left for this part about slaves and their masters. It's very interesting that Christianity did not call for a revolution of slaves to overthrow their masters. Obviously, slavery is unjust.

39:22 It's about submission in difficult situations. Notice how these slaves were to be, obey in all things, not with eye service only, which basically means not when just when your boss is looking or there at work that day, but with sincerity of heart, fearing God. You know what the common denominator is of all these things? The preeminence of Christ. Look at verse 18 again.

39:50 Wives submit to your husbands and then it's related to the Lord, as is fitting in the Lord. Children, obey your parents in all things. Why? For this is well pleasing to the Lord. Now, bond servants are to do their service fearing God as unto the Lord, heartily to the Lord.

40:11 It's all related back to the Lord. Same with masters in verse four. Knowing that you have a master in heaven. So, when we serve or when we lead our families or function in our families, we're to have one eye on the people in front of us and one eye on the God beyond. Because we're serving him as we serve them.

40:39 In every command, it's almost connected each time. It isn't for the husbands and fathers, but we know from Ephesians that it's related there as well. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. By the way, if slaves did rebel, I'm not sure if that would be go so well anyways. Remember in history when Spartacus rebelled, Crassus retaliated by crucifying 6,000 slaves and put them on display on the Appian Way, the main road in Roman times.

41:16 So, maybe God knew it's just best to wait till society is ready to let go of slavery than to force Christians to demand their freedom to get killed in the process. Much better to live a godly life as a slave and perhaps save those who are oppressing you, which happened quite a few times as I understand it through church history. Rebellion is not God's answer. Colossians three twenty three to 25 is God's answer. Realizing that whatever situation you are in, you can serve God right there.

41:55 If it's an oppressive situation, you can still serve God. He will reward you. He will give you, as it says there in verse 24, the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ you are serving, not your boss at work who you find extremely unpleasant. It is Christ you're serving.

42:23 Same thing for owners or bosses. Realize that you have a master in heaven who you want to treat you fairly, so you must treat those that you are over in fairness as well. Well, I definitely am glad to get to the end here but I can't finish without this. You have to know this fellow if you don't already. Does anybody know what this picture is?

43:10 There's an animal it looks like in the middle. Here's what it looks like. And it says, Alexamenos worships God. They found this on a wall in Rome from 180. They know from the plaster that it's from 180.

43:33 So, A, this tells you that Christianity had spread to Rome by 180. It was spread to this person who was some type of servant in a stall, it seems like, by the way he's dressed. Doesn't look very kingly to me. And people who in those stalls were probably working or cleaning out the stables. And look what he's doing.

43:59 He's worshipping his God. For some reason in the first century or so, they ridiculed Judaism, the Old Testament, and Christianity as worshiping a donkey religion or donkey, they would always make it to be religion with a donkey head on it. So, that is probably Christ on a cross in mockery, mocking this man of Zamenos. Why were they mocking him? Because they knew what he stood for.

44:31 How many times had this guy maybe gone to meeting after work? Or how many times did this guy pleaded with his coworkers or his boss to find what he'd found in Christ? This man was faithful. Faithful enough to be ridiculed on a wall that somebody felt they had just had to mock him by putting this in here. I want to be as faithful as this man.

44:58 I want to meet this man in heaven and tell him how much he inspired me, even though he probably thought no one was looking. How did he know that there'd be something called a laptop eighteen hundred years later that showed his picture to people he'd never met in his whole life. God can take your life and inspire others no matter what situation you are in, whether you feel you are being treated like a slave at your workplace or whatever home life you might have. Here's another picture color in a bit more. Alexamenos worships his God.

46:01 We thank you, Lord, for your instruction for our lives, for our families, for our jobs. Thank you that you have not left us without your wisdom. Well, you have shown us the way that we may please you and honor you with our lives. Help us, Father, to be faithful in whatever situation we find ourselves in. We thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ, who was faithful to you, committed himself on the cross to the injustice he suffered because he was dying for the unjust.

46:44 We thank you for his example. Help us, Lord, to be like you. In your precious name we pray, amen.