Good morning. We're going to be in Ephesians 5, starting in 21 and going through that end. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body. and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, Just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband This is the word of the Lord One of the most popular sitcoms over the last decade follows the interconnected lives of three different types of families. There is a nuclear family, a blended family, and a same-sex family. And, I mean, the title of it is Modern Family, which I don't think is progressive and pushing a particular agenda on everyone of, like, you're supposed to accept this. I think it's just kind of celebrating the reality that that's what family can look like in our culture, is kind of traditional ideas of what a family was have shifted over time, certainly in this cultural moment. So this morning as we come to the text that Deanna just read, Ephesians 5, and a couple others that we're going to look at as well, we're going through this series on sex, sexuality, and relationships. And this morning I want to talk to you about family. And specifically I want to show you how the gospel kind of re- shapes the family, it relativizes family, and it also redefines the family. So we're gonna talk a little bit about marriage and some of these roles this morning, but I also wanna share with you, even if you're single or divorced or widowed, God has a plan for you to be a part of this bigger family, and a very important part. Let me just quickly review the last couple weeks. This is week three. So two weeks ago, we looked at Genesis 1 and 2, which is God's original, perfect, and I would say simple, design for sex, sexuality, and relationships. Ideas that God created man in his image, meaning humans in his image, as male and female, ontologically equal, yet not identical or interchangeable. He gave man and woman both overlapping and unique roles and responsibilities, and neither could fulfill the cultural mandate without the other. God also created sex and sexual desire. He designed those gifts to be enjoyed within the safety of a one-flesh covenantal union between a man and a woman. We talked about how sex itself is not like this dirty, taboo, horrible thing that like, ah, Christians just avoid talking about, but instead it's sacred, designed by God, not only for pleasure and reproduction, but as we just read in Ephesians 5, was designed ultimately to portray the kind of love that Jesus, the son of God, has for his bride, the church. And again, that's straight from Genesis 1 and 2, which Jesus quotes and reaffirms in Matthew 19, and Paul reaffirms in Ephesians 5, which we just read. But last week we saw in Genesis 3, just going one more chapter into the story of humanity, that everything related to sex, sexuality, and relationships broke. The first man and woman wanted to be God, They trusted their own feelings, desires, and intuition more than they trusted God. They overstepped his design and his boundaries. They disobeyed. They chose autonomy over obedience. They chose freedom over faithfulness. And in doing so, they chose death over life. And again, the New Testament we saw last week reaffirms that it is sin to paint outside the lines of God's original design for sex. Jesus said so in Matthew 15. Paul said so in Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, Colossians 3, and 1 Thessalonians 4. And this is a gospel issue because the Bible explicitly says those who practice these things, painting outside the lines, identifying themselves by something that God said, this is not safe, this is not healthy, this is not my plan for you, it literally says they will not inherit the kingdom of God. So again, if you're like, why does God care what I do in the bedroom kind of thing, it's because it's a gospel issue. Now, I wish that we could just turn to Genesis 4 this morning and be like, what's the next part of this story now that things are broken? And just keep going. And by the way, if I were God, that's how I would have written the story. You just see Genesis 1 and 2, here's the perfect design for everything. Genesis 3, the fall, the curse, Genesis 4 and on is like, okay, what's the playbook now that things are broken? Instead, if you're familiar with the book of Genesis, it is descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, God doesn't tell you, like, this is what you should do. He simply tells us what people did do. Ironically, it was extraordinarily awkward and painful because people did everything except what God told them to do. So the story of Genesis is filled with polygamy, incest, adultery, homosexuality, rape, exploitation, barrenness, jealousy, trickery, seduction, and shame. And I know a lot of dads get a bad rap today, but most of you are smart enough not to have a childbearing competition between your two wives and their favorite handmaids. Imagine how much pain and brokenness could have been avoided if our first ancestors had simply followed the most basic instructions that God designed. Like a man leaving father and mother to hold fast to his wife, singular, and becoming one flesh, and together they raise a family that's committed to walking with God, exercising dominion over the rest of creation, seeking its good, a man leading and serving, a woman partnering with him to raise a family and plant a garden. And we have all these questions today. We're like, what exactly, because that's so vague. I mean, you have these kind of pillars, you have a foundation, you have a structure, but we're like, what exactly did that look like? The roles and responsibilities of the man versus the woman, what are the details there? What did their division of labor look like over time? And the answer is we don't really know. The Old Testament doesn't go into that kind of detail. But I think we assume both too much and too little about what the Bible actually says about roles and responsibilities. We assume too much because listening to some Christians, you get the impression that the Bible is filled with top ten lists. Top ten traits of masculinity and femininity. or top 10 vocations for a man, top 10 vocations for a woman, or top 10 household tasks for a man, top 10 household tasks for a woman, or top 10 ways to be a dad, top 10 ways to be a mom. And like you can search scripture and those kinds of lists just are not there. But I think at the same time, we assume too little because We hear today more and more that men and women, husbands and wives, are completely undifferentiated. That is, they have no designated roles, no responsibilities, no unique purposes to fulfill. Just anyone can do whatever they please. John Marcoma writes this, he says, we're caught in the cross currents of culture. One tide is saying there is no difference between the sexes and is working overtime to emasculate men and at the same time to erase the feminine side of women. The other current, which is just as strong, is pressuring us to fit into all sorts of stereotypes we don't relate to. So as a guy, he goes on and writes this. Should I be the 007, stylish, tough, smooth, womanizing kind of man? Or the NASCAR, drink a six-pack every night and work on my Chevy man? Or the Donald Trump, mogul, power suit, I have everything man? Or the, my body is a temple, bro man who spends every evening at 24 Hour Fitness looking at himself in the mirror? This is what it means to be a man? Going to Home Depot? eating red meat, driving a truck, oh yeah, and whatever happens, don't cry. And if anything, it's worse for women. The spectrum of options is even broader. Should you be the smart, educated, I have my act together, professional, with just a little bit of makeup, but not too much? Or the loyal, supportive, stay-at-home mom who packs her husband a brown bag lunch every day? Or the tan, model, thin, aloof sex goddess that men trip over? Or the all-natural, outdoorsy, no-makeup-at-all girl who spends her days off hiking and juicing Spiralina? The answer is no, not at all. The trick is to eject the stereotypes imposed on you by culture while keeping your grip on the role set in place by God. Okay, so what I want you to see this morning is between these stereotypes and extremes, too much, too little, you can actually go to scripture and see very clear but basic outlines of distinct roles and responsibilities for men and women, particularly husband and wife. And throughout scripture, we can kind of trace this arc, this pattern, this one big idea that I want to give you that's less about the differentiation of the roles, though there's some of that, and more about how we all, men and women, married and single, work together to show the world something completely different. So here's this one big idea. Men and women are designed to create a family that reflect the image, love, and purposes of Christ. And again, whether you're married or single or divorced or widowed, you as a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, are part of this family that is meant to reflect the image, love, and purposes of Christ. Now, as we come back to the text in just a moment that we read together this morning, Ephesians 5, this is called a household code. So when I use that language, a household code, and there are a number of these in the New Testament. This was Ephesians 5. There's another one in Colossians 3, Titus 2, and 1 Peter 2. And basically, to summarize the household code, they all sounded something like this, basically like, wives, submit to your husbands and respect them. Husbands, love, honor, and cherish your wives. And children, obey your parents. I know, really toxic stuff. Our culture thinks so. thinks that those three basic instructions are really toxic and unhealthy to believe, let alone try to practice. I want to note that we think just very much in terms instinctively about our culture, what marriages in a Western, first world, progressive, like post-enlightenment, post-industrial revolution, highly technological, highly connected society looks like. And it's important to note right out of the gate, that that is not the kind of culture that these household codes were first written to. Let me just share a little bit about ancient Near Eastern and then later Greco-Roman culture. Way back then, family life was almost always multi-generational. That is, you always had parents are living with their own children, But typically, there would be another generation or two or three, depending on the lifespan, but often you had three or four generations living together in these small villages, and that was just normal. People did not move away from their families and go strike it out on their own. In these small, like, agrarian farming communities, people lived together, they did life together. So when Paul's like, hey, leave father and mother, We're like, yeah, no problem. I left for college a long time ago, and I didn't go back. But in these cultures, that was actually a more difficult thing to say, I'm leaving my parents' custody and care to take responsibility for a woman and then a family, even if we're living close to each other and still doing life together. Men were married by their late teens. Girls were married in their early teens. and the vast majority of marriages were arranged. Like your parents just did this math of like, here's a good family with a good reputation, so you're gonna marry their daughter once you turn 17 and she turns 13. And it just happened. And what you may hear in that, which is a fact, is that way back then, most marriages were not for love. People did not marry for love. they married for survival. So there was very little back then as people were just working the land and raising cattle or sheep and farming and maybe being craftsmen or craftswoman, there was very little about romance. There wasn't time for that. People were trying not to die as families. Culture was very patriarchal, meaning the oldest males in families and clans and tribes had the most authority and responsibility. Most men were farmers, herdsmen, fishermen, or craftsmen. That was it. And you typically did what your parents did and what their parents did before them. You learned to trade. You worked together as bigger clans and families to make a culture. Most women fed and clothed and taught their families. This is interesting, especially by the time of the New Testament, the Greco-Roman culture, men were often unfaithful to their wives. and had almost unilateral freedom to divorce them for any reason at all and go marry someone younger. So that is the backdrop for these household codes like Ephesians 5. You have patriarchal, agrarian, multi-generational cultures. Today, like in a very egalitarian way, we may freak out, maybe even some of you freak out because Ephesians 5 starts with the word submit. And that to us can sound like a dirty word, it can sound controlling, it can sound domineering, it can sound oppressive. I was reading a number of different perspectives on these household codes, including some liberal theologians and some just secular people writing philosophically saying these were literally designed by men to control and dominate women. It was a misogynist culture. Ironically though, when God gave these commands That's not how the first man acted. He didn't say like, oh sweet, I have this authority. I'm gonna dominate Eve and subjugate Eve. In fact, he did the exact opposite. Instead of dominating, he abdicated, which is another, it's just falling off the other side of what God led a husband to do is just basically being a passive partner in a marriage and saying, I'm not gonna accept responsibility to lead, to love, to serve. I'm just gonna do kind of nothing. and the serpent in the garden does this end run around any authority or responsibility that Adam had, and he goes straight after Eve, and it's like, where's Adam abdicating this responsibility to care for and protect his family? Another irony, and I think this is important, is if we hear these words today as controlling, domineering, when these words were first written by Paul, to the church in Ephesus, the words actually had the exact opposite effect of domination or control. This was, Christianity was the most liberating, humanizing thing that women had ever experienced. So again, this theme, men and women are designed to create a family that reflects the image, love, and purposes of God. So married, unmarried, male, female. And again, let's start with this. The gospel reshapes the family. So the first radical thing in Ephesians 5.22, and again, I give you that backdrop of how families and marriages worked way back then, because the first radical thing that happens in Ephesians 5 is that Paul speaks directly to the woman. He says, wives. submit, respect your husbands. Notice he doesn't say, husbands, tell your wives that they need to get it together. And he certainly doesn't say, husbands, subjugate or command your wives. He talks directly to women. That's that ontological equality of seeing their value, their inherent dignity and worth in Christ, to just talk to them directly and say, I'm asking you to do something voluntary for Christ's sake. The word submit, again like we hear submit and it's a dirty word in our culture and it automatically assumes in our culture superiority and inferiority, but there was kind of no such automatic meaning attached in this ancient culture. Submit was simply a way to honor someone with respect and obedience. For example, the church submits to Christ. That's what this text says, because Christ is Lord and Savior. He's the head of the church, Paul says, which implies some sort of authority and responsibility to care for the church. But Christ is not domineering. He's not abusive toward his bride. So it's not fair to say that Christians read these verses and automatically assume it's fair game for husbands to be domineering, let alone abusive. This idea of inferiority and superiority just kind of makes nonsense out of the first verse that Deanna read, verse 21. Did you notice that? So, you know, when you pick up a Bible and you see these verse designations, let alone the gaps between paragraphs and these little headings, those bold headings are not inspired by God. Okay, that wasn't in Paul's original writing. And so in the flow of what Paul actually wrote, the last thing that he says before saying, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord is submit to one another. there's actually a voluntary arranging ourselves under one another, and it's not like we take turns, like now it's your turn, okay, now it's my turn, but in a healthy marriage, let alone other healthy Christian relationships within the family of God, there is a mutual submission, like clearly eliminating this idea that someone's superior, someone's inferior, Because if we're all submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord, who's the leader? Who's the one that has the superiority? Furthermore, and this is interesting, the Bible says that Jesus not only submitted to his heavenly father, it says in Luke 2, verse 51, he submitted to his earthly parents. Okay, so this is the eternal, uncreated son of God voluntarily submitting to earthly parents. Again, it's a way of showing respect and honor to someone. The next radical thing is in verse 25 and following. And this doesn't sound radical to us, but it was the command to husbands to love their wives. And again, I gave you this context of men would hear this and be like, what? Like, love my wife? let alone as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. And they would be like, I didn't get married for love. I got married to have someone bear me children and carry on my family name and keep a reputation and an inheritance intact. And that sounds really gross and crude to us. And I'm glad that today people can date and marry for love and say, I'm choosing to commit myself to you instead of just being arranged with you. But The women, as they hear, respect your husband, they'd be like, of course, that's what everyone says. The husbands love your wives is something that nobody was saying. The idea that there's a specific command that a husband would take his headship, his responsibility, and say, okay, great, I have some authority rooted in the creation story. What am I supposed to do with that authority? And Paul goes on, well, you're gonna use that authority now to serve and sacrifice for your wife. You're gonna nourish and cherish her just the way that you see Christ giving himself for the church. And this doesn't sound anything like domineering male chauvinism. And it certainly wasn't written to give men unquestioned and unlimited authority over women. Again, it gave unprecedented rights to wives and women. And it told men, you have a responsibility to give yourself away in loving and serving your family and seeking their good. And this is a gospel point because this is the pattern of Jesus. that the model that Paul keeps holding up is like, you're submitting to him as you would to Christ. Husbands, you're loving as you see Christ loving children later, chapter six. It's like, obey your parents in the Lord, because sometimes your parents are gonna be wrong, and that submission is a voluntary and humble thing, not a, I'm submitting because I think my parents are right all the time. But the pattern is Jesus, who takes his infinite authority over his bride, takes our liabilities on himself, gives himself away, like literally dies on a cross to purify and nourish and bless us forever. So men, I kinda wanna take this right to you. Can this be said of our leadership in our homes? That there isn't a whiff of woman do this, I'm in control here, I wear the pants in this family, but we do say like in the created order, I've been given a responsibility. And I embrace that responsibility to make sure that my wife knows how loved, how treasured. that she is nourished, which is a word for like feeding, which would be literal physical, like great, you put food on the table. But men, our wives don't just need like provision, our kids don't just need provision, they need our presence. There's a way of nourishing that goes beyond just like I put food on the table because I work hard, but I'm never home. It is a nourishing of their psychological needs, their emotional needs, their relational needs to have a present husband and father. So as I share this, I've just been thinking through this whole series. I don't really care that much about sounding traditional or sounding progressive or like urban or something. I care about honoring scripture and following the pattern outlined in Genesis, explained by the apostles and lived by Jesus himself. And if we allowed the gospel to reshape our families this way, do you see how it would reflect the image, love, and purposes of Christ? Because everyone's getting cared for. No one's slipping through the cracks. No one's being dominated. No one's being relegated to a lower tier of living. This is elevating and humanizing and liberating people to be all that God designed them to be. So that's how the gospel reshapes the family. Now, so the second point is the gospel relativizes family. So in traditional cultures, again, when this was written, marriage was everything. Like you were essentially a nobody. unless or until you were married. It's why widowhood was such a big deal, because if you are a widow, if God took your husband early in life and you were on your own, you kind of became a nobody again. And it's like, how do you even provide for yourself? And the church comes along as this bigger family to provide for widows in a unique way that culture had not done prior to that. But in this day, marriage meant honor, it meant survival, it meant everything. And I know our culture today, like Denver culture, does not quite value family and marriage the same way. We have like easy come, easy go kind of marriages. But I think there are people that are listening to this that you still believe deep down that marriage is pretty much everything. It's like, I need that to feel safe, to have an identity, to experience true love. You're waiting for Jerry Maguire to come along and stare deeply into your eyes and say, you complete me. And you're like, I'm just part of a person. I'm a shell until that person steps into my life and they complete me. And this is what I mean by the gospel relativizes that because you are not waiting on another person. as wonderful as hopefully a current spouse or potential spouse in your future is for you, that person is not going to complete you. And Jesus says some really shocking things about marriage that I think we should just read and understand. Because even Jesus doesn't say, yes, marriage is this unique, it's the highest and best love. And if you want to experience love on earth, you better get married because that's where it's at. So you're familiar with this in John 15, where Jesus is teaching his disciples about the vine and the branches and basically saying, you need to be connected to me. We are one organic unit, the church that he's going to flesh out through his sacrifice of himself is this like related thing. But then he shifts metaphors from this vine and he says this, he says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that, and if we stop there, culture today would maybe be like, or certainly culture back then, greater love has no one than this, then, today, we're like, then you get married, you know, like that romance and those feelings for that person and you complete me and all that. It's not what Jesus says. He says, greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. Okay. Again, we think the greatest love is romantic love. It's sexual love. It's sleeping with that person that I have told until death do us part. But Jesus, again, he's talking to his disciples. So he's talking to fishermen, herdsmen, a tax collector, and a zealot. And he's like, my desires for you is to form a new community, a new family, defined by truly sacrificial love for one another. That's the greatest demonstration of the nature of love is that people like a zealot and a tax collector who would naturally instinctively hate each other and want each other dead would say in Christ there is a new family that our love for one another is gonna look like the love of Jesus for all of us where we're laying down our rights and laying down our lives for one another. Jesus goes on, he says even more shocking things about marriage. If you're thinking this way of like, you know, marriage on earth is okay, but imagine how great marriage is gonna be when I get to heaven and my husband is like Jesus, you know, that'll be an easy husband to submit to. And in Matthew 22, Jesus says, well, there is no marriage in heaven. Did you know that? There's no marriage in heaven. I think we'll see each other and know each other and hopefully that'll be a loving relationship, but it's not married. And if you're like, well, why does marriage go away in heaven? It goes away for the same reason that the temple goes away. And the Bible says there's no temple in heaven. Why? Because the temple served a temporary earthly purpose to show us like how do sinful broken people approach a holy God and worship him and know him and enjoy him? Well, it's through the sacrifice of an innocent life. So why do you need that temporary earthly picture when you have the real thing? And Jesus is the true temple, and you're brought home to him in fellowship with him, and you're perfected, and there's nothing hindering this two-way love and acceptance. Well, in the same way, the Bible says, Jesus says, marriage isn't ultimate. It's penultimate. but it's just a temporary earthly covenant that points to the ultimate reality of God's unconditional sacrificial love for all of us. So while Jesus is elevating the sanctity, the sacredness, the joy, the beauty of marriage, he's not like, this is the ultimate thing. And if you're failing in singleness, you are failed. He doesn't say that. There's not a failure to be single in God's family. So he's relativizing marriage. And then finally I said, the gospel redefines family. So I love this story. There's a time in Jesus ministry where his mother and brothers come to him and he's in the middle of teaching his disciples, preaching, he's doing miracles, he's healing people. And if you're reading between the lines, it's almost like his mother and brothers are like, hey, we're getting annoyed with this Jesus stuff. Like you need to come back to Nazareth and kind of settle down a little bit. And they're kind of trying to control him as they had the right to do in an ancient culture. This is Matthew chapter 12. So his family's there and someone's like, hey Jesus, your mother and brother are here and they're demanding your attention. And the Bible says he gestures toward his disciples, his followers, like a bigger group of disciples. And he says, here are my mother and brothers. And then he says, for whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. And by the way, if you think that Jesus just said stuff because he had to fall in line with cultural norms, this is the same Jesus who said stuff like this. this shattered cultural norms of like, how can you show that kind of disrespect to your mom? And in Jesus' mind, it's like, I'm not showing any disrespect to her, but I'm using this opportunity to show you how the gospel, the good news. is redefining what family looks like. That the closest tie going forward will not be biology and bloodlines, but will be the fact that I'm gonna lay my life down for you and call you to love each other. And if you do the will of God and you follow me in faith, we become family because you're adopted and you receive the inheritance that I want to give you. By the way, the apostles picked up on this, that Jesus said family going forward will be less about bloodlines and shared last names and more about adoption and inheritance in Christ. They picked up on the fact that their truest identity was not Jewish or male or educated or religious or powerful or rich or any of those things, but it was simply that they were in Christ. And again, Jesus is relativizing all of these other things. He's not saying it's evil to be rich, or it's evil to have an education, or it's bad to be a guy. He's just saying that is not your highest and truest identity. Your highest and truest identity is simply that you're in me. So remember I told you about this extended, multi-generational, agrarian, patriarchal kind of family. In the Old Testament, that was the word bayith. The bayith was, and it's often translated, if you're reading the Bible, you'll see the word household, but it's talking about this big extended family. The household was, again, grandparents, parents, children, sometimes servants or slaves, but they're all doing life together. In the New Testament, in the Greek, that's same concept, but it's the word oikos. What's fascinating is if you had a Greek lexicon, which you can go in and like plug in the word oikos, and you're like, where does that show up? You start seeing this pattern that is Jesus, and especially the apostles use this word oikos, the household. They're shifting it away from bloodlines to this big family that God is bringing together. that we would never put together. I mean, just look around this room this morning, and having a brother here from India, but he's our brother. And there's a sister over there and a bunch of brothers and sisters over there. And God has brought us together as one big family in spite of all of our differences and uniquenesses, but he's done it through the blood of Jesus, okay? So what's incredible is that Jesus and the apostles are shattering this concept of oikos, And they're saying, the way you get in this oikos is grace. God did something for you. And then he invites you into his family. He adopts you into his family. This, by the way, is how Paul can tell a bunch of former Greek pagans in Ephesians chapter two. He says, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Okay, so again, he's saying we are all responsible for and capable of this kind of family. Whether you're married or single or a man or a woman, we are designed to create a family that reflects the image, the love, and the purposes of Christ. So do you think of church as family? And again, we... We do this easy come, easy go thing with church too, where we're like, we kind of go and we shop at church, you know, which is like this nauseating concept of like, I gotta figure out this church that's right for me and ministers to me and I feel fed and all that. There's a place to that. But there's also a bigger place for coming together and realizing, do I see these people as brothers and sisters? where blood is thicker than water, but the blood of Jesus is thicker than blood. God has brought us together. And I wanna be really slow about just bailing on my family. I wanna go through hard things together with you and be patient with each other and be forgiving and have a sticky love where there's an unconditional, like we've been through stuff. And it has deepened our relationship. It's deepened our affection for one another. It's deepened, I think, of people in this church that I've done the most life with, where I'm okay submitting to other people because you fundamentally realize, like, I can trust your heart, which doesn't mean I trust your heart to be perfect or to be sinless against me, but just, like, we're gonna keep doing life together. And when we butt heads, when there's a misunderstanding, when I just sin against you, I know that we're gonna have a hard conversation, but you're gonna keep loving me as family. And again, if you are single, divorced, widowed, you just haven't found that person yet. You are not lesser. You're not not part of the family, like your brothers and sisters. Like, just real practically, that means, like, married couples, don't just get together with other married couples and be like, we do our young married couple thing or we pair off or whatever. We love intentionally including single people and, like, way older people and kind of bringing back this oikos, this household of, like, there's this multi-generational thing that we can do with our gospel communities where we're listening to one another. And an older person, instead of just being cynical about like, oh, all young people today are whatever, well, they're not. And something I was just sharing with some people yesterday, they were like, wait, how does this church believe what you guys believe, and yet, like, Like you're over here washing the hands of the homeless and binding up, like literally binding up their wounds and caring for them and doing haircuts and feeding them and praying with them and laughing and crying together over hours of conversation. And it just like, because God's building a bigger family that we want to invite other people into. And I just conclude with this as I'm thinking about how the gospel is reshaping and relativizing and redefining family. I want my kids to be able to see, I know what it looks like to respect the word of God and to submit myself voluntarily, even when I disagree. I'm like, I don't like that verse. I don't like that principle. I'm really struggling with this. But I see the way that my mom respects my father. And I'm called to respect the authority of Christ in a similar way. So I can submit myself to something I don't agree with because I see a pattern of that kind of respect and love. And I know what the love of Jesus looks like because I see the way my dad loves my mom. and sacrifices his own time and gifts and energy and freedom to serve and to nourish and to sacrifice for our family. And I know something of this bigger community that Jesus is adopting because I see my local church. I see its flaws. I see its weaknesses. Again, like if you got a good family, you're not bailing on that younger brother because he's just an idiot and he needs to grow up. Like you invest in his life and you keep on loving him through all these different seasons of change and growth and hurt. And I want my kids to be able to look at the family of God and be like, of course that's what we do. Like, I'm not stupid. I'm not blind to the flaws of my family. But I see this love across difference that we have for one another. I see the gospel at work. And I want a watching world to see the image, the love and the purposes of God. manifested through the way that we all love one another as brothers and sisters.