Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. Better is a dry morsel with quietness than a house full of feasting with strife. And in chapter 15, 17, Better is a dinner with herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred. And this concludes our reading of God's word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you have been so kind to us, to reveal so much to us. And Lord, today we have before us two Proverbs which speak to us about the blessing of peace and unity, particularly within the context of the home. And Father, we pray that we would be led and we would be taught as to how we may attain as well as maintain that peace and unity. And Father, we pray that you would bless us in the capacity that your grace would be given to us, that we may have this blessing. And Father, that we can show forth this blessing as the true and righteous manifestation of having Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit within our hearts. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. In 2012, Kansas State University released a study entitled, Examining the Relationship Between Financial Issues and Divorce. And the research concluded that a couple who argues, they argue about money, a married couple that is, when they argue about money, that those couples are at the greatest risk for divorce. It doesn't matter how much they make, what their income level is, how much debt they have, what their net worth is. Arguments about money are by far, according to this study, the top predictor of divorce. Now what this study confirms is something that you probably already knew. Couples who cannot agree on how to manage their money have a stressful relationship. And even those marriages that don't end in divorce, if the couple fights over finances, these tensions manifest themselves in a host of other areas within their relationship. The home environment is unpleasant. There's trust issues that arise within the context of the marriage. Under these conditions, it's not uncommon for a spouse to begin hiding money, or lying about how the money was spent, or even going to the efforts of creating a secret bank account, or a secret credit card that the other spouse doesn't know about. And our sermon text from Proverbs 17.1 has a lot to say about this type of home. What it's telling us is that truth and peace and unity within the home ought to be the highest priority, even higher than financial prosperity. Now our text is telling us that the family which is content to live at a lower luxury benchmark, but in order to obtain a higher peace benchmark has made a wise choice. Solomon says, better is a dry morsel with quietness than a house full of feasting with strife. And it's pretty much the same thing he wrote in Proverbs 15, 17. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred. And notice here that Solomon is not vilifying wealth and prosperity. Solomon's not saying that every rich person's family is full of strife and hatred. What he's saying is that it's better to live in peace than it is to live in strife. It's better to live in peace than it is in strife. And if a family needs to deprioritize economic pursuits in order to attain that peace, well then that's a wise decision. A peaceful home. A loving home with meager provisions is far superior to a contentious home with feasting and luxury. And so this has to do with priorities. And we might even conclude that this has to do with pitting financial concerns against concerns of peace, which is how I presented this in the opening. But truly speaking of much more than that, This isn't about finances and peace. This is about peace and priorities. Peace and every other concern that can possibly enter into the home. Peace within the home, therefore, is raised up to the highest priority. And where many people have finances at that priority, Solomon, his wisdom, uses the finances to show that even peace is more, peace is even more desirable than financial prosperity. And therefore, we're gonna focus our attention today on what God's word says about establishing a proper home, a home in which peaceful unity prevails. Psalm 127 gives us a starting point for understanding the foundation of a peaceful and a unified home. Verse one reads, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain who builds it. And the only foundation, therefore, for a peaceful home is the triune God. It's the family which is structured according to the righteous standards of God that will enjoy peace. And the way that you will know those righteous standards is through studying the Bible. It's in the Bible that God reveals those standards to you. But pursuing a peaceful home requires a lot more than just knowing what the Word of God says. We need to be doers of the Word, not just hearers of the Word. And this means that you, as well as every member who's within your family, needs to be living in submission to God. Everyone, everybody needs to be willing to do what God requires of them, whether that fits within their personal agenda or not. So that's what submission is, right? Submission is putting aside one's own will and desire in order to live in accordance with somebody else's will and desire. This might be the hardest part of attaining peace within the home. Because we all have strong desires. We all have inclinations to do the things that God tells us not to do. or to not do the things God tells us that we ought to do. And these are sins of commission and sins of omission, both of which disallow peaceful unity within the context of the home. Both of which bring us outside of being submissive to God. God is an authority. And that's not a real popular word today. Authority is not a word that goes over very well in these days because to speak of authority automatically conjures up ideas of heavy handedness and oppressive behavior. And certainly there's something to that. Many people have had experiences with oppressive authorities, but you don't have to look too far in this world to find those who misuse their authority, who lord it over for personal gain or private ambitions. But there's a larger reason why people are averse to authority. And the larger reason, which most people are not candid enough to admit, even to themselves, is that authority gets in the way of them doing what they want to do. Authority gets in the way of them doing what they want to do. If a person wants to do X, Y, Z, But there's an authoritative figure that's telling them, do not do X, Y, Z. It's easy to become disgruntled with that authority or to begin to become frustrated with that authority. But when the authority is God, we need to acknowledge that he is always a just and benevolent authority, always. He has always been and always will be a just and benevolent authority. which means he will never be abusive with his authority, his laws are always just, his laws are always righteous, yet his laws are restrictive. in the sense that they define what sin is and then establish boundaries between righteousness and sinfulness. And God's authoritative law, therefore, functions like a road barrier that's stretched across the road with a sign on it. And that sign says, turn around, do not proceed past this point. The person who is living in submission to God is going to come up to that road barrier, read that sign, and then turn around in obedience to what God says. But the person who is unwilling to submit to God's authority will ignore the sign. He'll go around the barrier, or he'll climb over the barrier, or he'll gather some friends around and they'll create a road that makes it really easy to go around the barrier because their intention is to come back and forth around that barrier multiple times during their life. They want the convenience of doing so. But failure to live in submission to God will always lead to conflict and friction within a family, always. The Book of Proverbs speaks of sin as, in just one of the ways it speaks of sin, is that of sowing seeds of discord. And that's a metaphor, of course, an illustration to show how sin grows, like weeds in a field grow. Sin grows and it grows larger and larger and causes greater and greater division and conflict within the context of a family. And if there's going to be peace and unity within the family, then those seeds of discord need to be eliminated. Every person within the family must submit to the righteousness and the authority, the benevolent authority of God by living in accordance with His revealed will, not our own will, His will. And God has revealed many aspects of His will to us. But the aspect of His will that I wanna spend a little bit of time on this morning is the biblical structure of the family. If a family is going to enjoy peaceful unity, then that family needs to structure their home in such a way that it is in accordance with the revealed will of God. And this has implications for every family member. The husband, let's start with the husband. The husband must be a leader in his home. Genesis 2.24 says that the man must leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And the fact that he is to leave, Leave his parents means that he must be a man who's able to be a responsible provider. He's no longer dependent. He cannot be dependent upon his parents to provide for him. Instead, he must be mature and responsible enough to provide spiritual leadership within his home, emotional leadership within his home, financial leadership within his home. He must be able to protect his wife, to nurture his wife, and to live with her in an understanding manner. The husband must be able to exercise authority without being a tyrant, but at the same time without being a wimp. He must not be heavy handed, but then he must also not be a pushover. And therefore the husband must understand the proper use of authority, the proper limitations of the authority, the proper application of authority. The husband must be wise in these matters. And this understanding will only come by means of the Holy Spirit indwelling the man and leading him into that truth. And so the implication here is that the only man who can truly act as a biblical husband is a man who has received the saving grace of Jesus and therefore is able to walk in the spirit and not walk in the flesh. And then, only then, can a husband really love his wife in a way that Christ loved the church. Only then can a husband love his wife by giving himself to her, imitating the way that Jesus gave himself to his bride, the church, as it says in Ephesians 5, 26. That's the biblical role of a husband. It's the role of a sacrificial leadership. And the family which has a husband who is sacrificially leading is a family that is well on their way to the type of peaceful unity that Solomon is writing about here in our sermon text. But there's more to the biblical structure of a family than just the husband's role. The wife has a role as well. Ephesians 5.22 and following describes that role. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything. To be submissive to her husband does not mean that the wife cannot express her thoughts or her concerns or her ideas with her husband. Quite the contrary. The wife should express herself to her husband. She should. And that's the role that she was designed for. When we go back to Genesis 2, we look in verse 18, it describes the wife as a, quote unquote, helper comparable to her husband. That's what it says. she was created to be a helper comparable to her husband. And that word comparable indicates that there's a special connection between Adam and Eve, and that's true, or I should say what's true for Adam and Eve is not unique just to them. It wasn't an isolated incident, but rather it's true for all marriages. Adam and Eve serve as the archetypical marriage. And the Bible puts them forth in that manner. So when we're reading from Genesis 1, Genesis 2, reading the creation account, Adam was created first, we know that. And then he was created from the dust of the ground, the Lord gathered the dust together, fashioned it into a human body, and then breathed into Adam the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul, a living being. And Genesis 2.15 says that then God took Adam and he put him in a garden and gave him the task of tending it, keeping it. And then in Genesis 2.19, God brings all the animals to Adam and he gives Adam another task, the task of naming the animals. Many people read this and they think that, well, Adam's task was simply to give animals labels by which they can be referenced in speech. Something like, oh, that's an elephant, this is a tiger, and over there is a dog. But the task of naming the animals was really more than that. In naming the animals, Adam was reflecting upon the design and the function of each animal. He was considering the specific nature of the animal, and then he was naming that animal accordingly from what he had observed. And this becomes clear in Genesis 2.20, which describes how the naming process eventually brought Adam to realization that there was no helper, and here's those words again, comparable to him. So he looked around, he saw the role and function of all the animals, recognizing how each one functioned, how each one was intended, was designed to work. But as he completed this process, he came to the realization that all these animals have a complementary helper. But he noticed that he himself didn't. He had nobody to assist him in his role that God had assigned him to. And so after naming all the animals, he was there alone. And while it's true that the entire animal kingdom was in submission to Adam, he had been given dominion over the animals, and therefore you might be able to make the argument, well every animal there was Adam's helper, right? I mean he could get on a horse, he could ride it, that would be help as far as it goes to his transportation needs. But none of the animals was a helper comparable to him, as it says in Genesis 2.20. And that was not good, according to God. God pronounced that it was not good for Adam to be alone. And so God completed his creation by making the woman out of Adam's rib. And her function and her design was to compliment Adam, to help him in exercising dominion over the earth. That's what she was created to do. And this is why Adam gave her, Eve, a name as well. The naming process wasn't quite over. When Adam awoke from having been put to sleep by God, he looked at the woman that God brought and presented to him, and he recognized that she was a being that God had created to be his helper, Adam's helper. a being which was, quote, comparable to him, end quote. And so he gave her an appropriate name, one that was suitable for her design and function. He called her Woman, because it says she was taken out of man. And so the role of a man's wife is to help him. She's to help her husband fulfill his unique calling in life, which includes, but it's not limited to, all the things that I described earlier about a husband's responsibilities within the home. She's to help him. The husband who does not recognize his wife as a helper, or who does not utilize his wife as a helper, is a man who's acting foolishly. Why do I say this? Because that man is foolishly positioning himself where Adam was before Eve was created, which God said was not good. That man is foolishly positioning himself in a place that's not good. A wife is a good gift from God. She's the support mechanism that God built into the marriage. She was designed to provide encouragement and respect and love and honor to her husband, which is what helps him achieve his calling, amongst other things. And it's what helps him to lead the people of his home. As he leads them in sacrificial service, she helps him, being submissive to him and to God. If the peaceful unity that Solomon is writing about in Proverbs 17 one is going to be attained, then the husband and the wife must both understand these biblical roles. He must lead his family and she must assist him while remaining submissive to him. First Corinthians 11 three puts it this way, but I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of every woman is man. That succinctly defines this relationship. If there are children within the home, then this adds additional roles to the biblical family. Children are to honor their parents, which means that they need to love their parents, they need to respect their parents, they need to be kind to their parents, to pray for their parents, to receive instruction from their parents, and to be obedient to their parents. Parents, on the other hand, are to raise their children in the training and admonition of the Lord. God requires that parents diligently teach their children the word of God. Deuteronomy 6, verses 7 and 9 describes how parents are to create an atmosphere within the context of the family, which is infused with the precepts of God. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And so the family that trusts God and lives in submission to God is going to be structured according to the biblical role of husband and wife and parents and children. That's the house which is going to enjoy peaceful unity because that's the house that the Lord has built, to use the words of Psalm 127. But realize that there are threats in this world, threats which have the power to destroy the peaceful unity of a family. And these threats don't always present themselves as threats because that's the nature of our adversary. Satan is deceptive. He's a liar. He's an enemy of God, which makes him an enemy of God's people, and he seeks to subvert everything in this world that is righteous, including the family, particularly the family. The devil has specifically targeted the family with his lies and deception because the family is the basic building block of a righteous society. If the families are strong and healthy, then the society will be strong and healthy. If the families are weakened and disintegrating, then the society will be weakened and disintegrating. Right now, we live in a society that is weakened and disintegrating, which reflects the weakened and disintegrating families that comprise our society. And the various social issues that we've seen over the past couple generations have taken their toll on the family, to be sure. But of course, this is by design, is it not? This is by design. All these issues that have been so cleverly calculated to dismantle the family have been designed to do specifically that. Divorce, feminism, abortion, the sexual revolution, homosexuality, the blurring of genders, These are all IKBMs. You familiar with ICBMs? Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles? Well, the attacks from the kingdom of Satan that enter into the kingdom of God are IKBMs, Inter-Kingdom Ballistic Missiles. divorce, feminism, abortion, the sexual revolution, homosexuality, the burning of genders. These are IKBMs launched from the silos of hell that are specifically targeted at the biblical family. Satan's evil empire is attempting to detonate these spiritual warheads into every area of the family. And the church is the only institution that has the power to stop these attacks. We have a Star Wars defense system capable of intercepting these missiles before they enter into our atmosphere. That defense system is the law of God. It's a fully developed system that's been time tested and proven, capable of deterring and intercepting all the attacks of our enemy. Yet here's the grievous part. The church has received and acted upon false intelligence. We've been told that the law of God is no longer valid. Therefore, the church has been dismantling our defense system. The antinomianists have dismantled the law of God, piece by piece, until virtually nothing of it is left. And so it's no wonder that these IKBMs have been hitting the family, and it's no wonder that we've witnessed so much destruction and devastation to the family. What the church needs to do is a little bit of self-identification of our own. We need to identify ourselves as people who uphold the law of God and who submit to the law of God as the standard of righteousness. Psalm 119 needs to be our battle song. Open my eyes that I may see the wondrous things from your law. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart. You have commanded us to keep your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep your statutes, then I would not be ashamed when I look into all your commandments. How can a man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word. I will speak of your testimonies also before kings. I will not be ashamed, and I will delight myself in your commandments, which I love. Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. This is my comfort and my affliction, for your word has given me life. As I'm identifying the threats to the biblical family, I'm gonna narrow my focus now to three errors, three specific errors that commonly disrupt peaceful unity within the family, even within conservative Christian homes. I'm going to focus on a common air of the husband, a common air of the wife, and then a common air of children. And this is not to say that these are the only airs that threaten peaceful unity within the home. It's just that these are common airs within the home. And therefore, it behooves us to be reminded of these airs. The first air has to do with harshness. A husband must be a man who shows forth love and kindness towards his wife. If he's harsh with her, then that's going to destroy peaceful unity within the family. Therefore, it's important for husbands that they're able to recognize when they're harsh and repent of that harshness. But that's not always easy to do because harshness can be expressed in two ways, one of which is very subtle. The first form of harshness, the obvious expression of it, is speaking and behaving in sharp and strident ways. It's being quick to show your irritation. It's criticizing and complaining without tempering your speech with love. We can call this active harshness. And that's the easy one to see. That's pretty obvious. But then there's the passive form of harshness. And this is the man who ignores his wife. This is the man who neglects to lead his family or is passive in the home. It's the man who may not have said a single word that can be construed as harsh, yet he's still being harsh. He's being harsh in the same way that a famine is harsh. He's being harsh in the same way that a drought is harsh. Or he's being harsh in the same way that solitary confinement is harsh. The harshness is not in what he's giving to his wife, it's in what he's not giving to his wife. He's not loving her in the manner in which she's supposed to be loved. He's not laying down his life for her on a daily basis. He's not providing for her, her spiritual needs, her emotional needs, her need for companionship and leadership. The man who's passively harsh is not living with his wife in an understanding manner. He has no compassion upon her as a weaker vessel. First Peter 3.7 addresses this form of passive harshness and warns the man that his prayers will be hindered if he acts this way towards his wife. Now that's serious, right? That's a serious sin of harshness. God says, I will not hear your prayers if you're being harsh with your wife. So if a harsh husband's prayers are hindered, if God has turned his ear away from that man, how much peace and unity can he expect within his home? We've all met women who are married to harsh men. Some have been married to actively harsh men, some are married to passively harsh men, but their challenge is the same. The woman who is married to the harsh man is challenged in her submission to her husband who's being harsh. And it's been my experience that the women who have been married to harsh men for 20 or 30 years, an elongated period of time, they turn out in one of two ways. Some of them become harsh just like their husband. They become bitter and angry. They don't submit to their husbands because they don't respect their husbands. They've learned how to express their frustration with their husband in ways that show their disrespect and tear him down, particularly in front of other people. And this in turn reinforces the husband's harshness because now he has been disrespected. And so a vicious cycle is created, a vicious cycle of harshness, which means there's no joy, there's no peace, there's no unity at the home. And that's wrong. That's the wrong way for the wife to respond to harshness. Then there are the other women. These are wives who respond righteously. And these are the ones who have refrained from repaying evil with evil. They've learned to seek God for His strength. And they've read 1 Peter 3 and therefore they understand that their dignity is in Christ Jesus and they submit to their husbands even though He doesn't obey the word. They hope and pray that they can win their husbands without speaking a single word. as he observes her chaste conduct, which is accompanied by a proper fear of God. And the second group of women are perhaps the most godly Christians I've ever met. if there's anything good that's come out of their husband's harshness, it's that she's been refined in the furnace of affliction and the dross of harshness and bitterness and malice have been purged away from her. And the years of living under the cruelty of her husband have sanctified her to be a humble and truthful and gentle and loving woman. Such women are often the prayer warriors of a church. They're the people who know the value of communication with God because they've been relying upon it for so many years. And although they don't have peace in their own homes, they have peace in their own heart. That's God's grace to them. They will have a huge number of jewels in their crown when they get to heaven. Active and passive harshness have detrimental effects upon children as well. And there's a reason why Ephesians 6.4, as well as Colossians 3.21, warn against provoking children to wrath, lest they become discouraged, Paul writes, to the Colossians. And the parent who fails to temper discipline with love destroys the peaceful unity of the home. For example, the parent who's constantly nagging at his or her child provokes that child to wrath. The exact thing that we're told not to do. Why? Because nagging is not discipline tempered with love. Nagging is not discipline which is tempered with love. Nagging is ongoing criticism that has no corrective discipline attached to it. And the parent who fails to discipline is a parent who is passively harsh with his or her children because the parent is not bringing forth the discipline that God would command, but rather just nagging. It's a passive harshness. just as a parent who abusively disciplines is being actively harsh with his or her children. And this harshness is what provokes children to wrath, which is what God tells parents exactly not to do. Hebrews 12, nine informs us that children actually respect the parent who disciplines with love, even though the discipline is painful at the time in which it's administered. But of course there's a responsibility on the child's part too. Children have a responsibility to obey their parents and this is the part of what it means to be in submission to God. When God says in Colossians 3.20, children obey your parents in all things for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Then the child who desires to be in submission to God will desire to be in submission to his or her parents. This type of submission produces a peaceful unity within the home. The child who resists his parents. Making all forms of accusations against what he or she believes they're intending to do with their corrective discipline is an obstinate child who not only is rebelling against his parents, but he's rebelling against God. Most importantly, he or she is rebelling against God. If peaceful unity is going to be obtained and maintained within the family, everybody must be living in submission to God. Husband, wife, children, everyone. And when any of the family members stops living in submission to God, seeds of discord are sown. And if these seeds are allowed to grow, then strife and bitterness will destroy the peaceful unity of the family. I think we're beginning to see now how difficult it is to maintain a peaceful family. After all, We all sin, don't we? We all sin. And we can all be harsh with one another. Every family is pushed and pulled and stretched by sin from within. And no father or wife or child is able to live in complete submission to God of our own accord. It's one thing, therefore, for me to stand up here and say to you, just make sure everybody's living in submission to God. Just make sure everybody in your family is living in submission to God, and then your family will enjoy peaceful unity. But that's not a sustainable model for any one of us, because we all sin, and we all have to deal with sin. So how is peaceful unity maintained when one or more members of the family are failing to live in submission to God? Well, the answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Earlier I mentioned that the law of God is our defense system against the attacks of the enemy, and that's true. That's exactly true. God's law is the perfect standard of righteousness, and so whenever we're tempted to sin, or whenever our adversary tries to deceive us with some deviation of the biblical family, We should look at the law of God and we should learn from it and see in it what God says about that particular matter. This is what Jesus did when he was tempted in the wilderness. Whenever Satan came and placed the temptation before Jesus, he responded back, for it is written, and then he went on to describe what God's law says about this specific temptation that he was confronted with. Well, that works fine and dandy. so long as you're faithful and true to God's law. But what happens when you're not? What happens when you fail to do what God's righteous law says you ought to do? God's law doesn't have the power to restore you. It only has the power to condemn you. And that's why the gospel is so necessary for a peaceful home. When Christians live together within the context of a family, sin will occur. But if the gospel is being lived out within that home, then there's hope for repentance, for forgiveness, and for restoration to take place. That's what will maintain the peaceful unity of a home. Jesus said in John 14, 27, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give you. The peace that Solomon is writing about in our sermon text is not the so-called peace that the world gives, that comes from the world and its ideas, but the peace which comes through Jesus. A few verses later, at the beginning of John 15, Jesus speaks metaphorically about himself being the vine and you and I, us, being the branches. And he says that we need to abide in him, which means we need to live connected to him. The vine produces nourishment to the branches, which in turn allows the branches to produce fruit. Now if a branch is disconnected from the vine, then that branch will wither and die because it's not able to receive the nourishment from the vine. The people within our homes, therefore, need to be connected to the vine. Each person will always be receiving that nurturing grace from Jesus in order to produce the fruit of peaceful unity. But that connection to the vine is only accomplished through the gospel. It's the justifying grace of God which comes to those who hear the gospel and believe. And it's the sanctifying grace of God which permits that person to be nurtured from the vine so that fruit is produced, the fruit of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And therefore the husband or wife or child who fails to live in submission to God's righteous law can be restored to peaceful fellowship with God and consequently be restored to peaceful fellowship with his or her family through the gospel. And this restoration takes the form of repentance by those who have sinned and forgiveness by those who have been sinned against. Do you hear that? That's the essence of the gospel. The gospel is based upon repentance and forgiveness. And if the gospel is gonna be lived out in our life, if it's gonna serve to function as a restorative mechanism for restoring peace and unity in the home, then we have to know that those who have sinned must repent, and those who have been sinned against must forgive upon repentance. And when God's people will humble themselves in repentance of their sins, and God's people will be willing to forgive those who come in repentance, then peace will be restored. This is not the pseudo peace which the world gives. This is the true peace that comes from Jesus Christ and him alone. Any formula of peace that does not include the gospel is a false peace. Any formula of peace that does not include repentance prior to forgiveness is a false peace. Remember Psalm 127? Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain to build it. Unless the relationships within the home are built upon the gospel, then those who build them labor in vain. You cannot attain as well as maintain peace without the gospel. that the law of God defines the biblical family, it sets the standard of righteousness that we ought to strive for, but no amount of striving will get us there without the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the connection to our Savior which provides the grace necessary for reconciliation with God as well as man. And that connection is established by faith. faith which humbles us to repent of our sins, faith which drives us to take refuge in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for the covering of those sins, and faith which causes us to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. So we should be in prayer as families, as individuals, as fathers, as a church, that the Lord would be gracious to us to give us this faith so that Husbands may provide righteous leadership within their home, that wives may respectfully submit to their husbands and help them with their calling, and that children will honor their parents and receive their instruction with obedience. This is the biblical family, and this is where peaceful unity, the real peaceful unity that Christ delivers will be experienced. So praise be to God. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we live upon an earth which is riddled with sin, our own sin, sin from our family members, and it doesn't help that We have sin from the world and sin from Satan as well. And so, Father, we have a lot of experience with sin and we will continue to as long as we're on this earth. And Lord, we pray that your grace would be all sufficient to keep us connected to the vine, the vine of Jesus Christ. And so, Father, first and foremost, we pray for the salvation of each person. within our families, for our children, for the parents, for grandparents, for aunts and uncles. Father, we pray that you would extend your justifying grace to each one of us in order that we may be established within the vine, connected, that we may be branches that are then able to bear fruit. And Father, we pray as well for your sanctifying grace that you would continue to nurture and develop each branch that is connected to the vine in order that it may produce fruit, righteous fruit. And Father, we pray that that righteous fruit would begin with repentance and that we would be ready and willing to be reconciled with those that we have sinned against. And Father, that us who have been sinned against would be ready and quick and ready to forgive. And Father, we pray that this peaceful unity that Solomon is describing would characterize each family here in this church. That we would be a city on a hill that cannot be ignored, that is seen from afar. That people would look upon us, look upon our families, they would see something different. They would understand that we have a true peace and joy and happiness that the world cannot provide. And Father that this would be a testimony, even as the wife chaste and good conduct of the testimony to her husband, Father I pray that our chaste and righteous conduct within the affairs of this world would be a testimony to the lost and dying of this world. That this would give us opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and that we can be the salt and light that you have called us to be. So Father, we need your grace. We need your grace. We need you to increase our faith. And so we pray that these things would be true for each one of us here today as we submit in obedience to all that you have commanded, that you have shown us through your son, Jesus Christ. And it is in his name that we offer up this prayer. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material here within, unless otherwise noted, copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.