Howdy, Pastor Mark Triscoll here at the Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Really excited to provide for you the series of sermons based on the Book of Colossians.

It's an amazing book of the New Testament where the Apostle Paul is writing from prison to a newly planted

church and we took a few months here at the Trinity Church to go verse by verse through

this book of the Bible. I've had the honor of preaching

and teaching perhaps a few dozen books of the Bible in my career and this is the first

time I've ever been through Colossians and I'm really excited that you can join me.

Well, as we venture into this section on how to enjoy your family in Colossians 3, 20 and 21,

the big idea is this, it's hard to have a loving safe healthy life-giving

enjoyable relationship when one person is domineering over the other and if you think

about it culturally where things were at when this book of the Bible was written,

it was a few thousand years ago in the context of something called the Roman Empire.

And in that context, the father was very domineering.

He was overbearing and dominating.

If you can even imagine this, a child was just simply

considered part of his estate, just like livestock or land.

That meant that the children had no legal right

and there was no authority above their father.

So if your dad abused you,

there's nothing you could do about it. Your dad could actually legally

kill you and nothing could be done to him and if the father found himself

just sick of his kids or in poverty needing to pay off a debt, he could take his sons and daughters and sell them into slavery.

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