Good morning. We're going to
open with a very familiar tune this morning. It's a new month,
so I thought we'd sing it. Number 21 in the Spiral Gospel
Hymns hymn book, The Covenant, Ordered and Sure. Let's all stand
together. 21. God the Father and the Son and
the Spirit, three in one, made a covenant. of ages past, made
a covenant sure and fast. God, my Father, chose His own
in the person of His Son, and ordained that I should be one
with Him eternally. God the Son agreed to come in
the flesh to bring me home. He would keep God's holy law. ? And retrieve me from the fall
? Christ in love so willingly ? Stood as my great surety ?
For my price he offered blood ? To appease the wrath of God
? God the spirit heavenly dove ? ? Promised to come down in
love ? ? Bringing life and peace and grace ? ? To the chosen purchased
race ? ? He seeks the lost, heals the lame ? and he brings us to
the Lamb. By his mighty sovereign call,
God's elect are gathered all. This poor sinner is secure, ?
For God's covenant will endure ? ? It is sealed by God's own
word ? ? By his spirit and his blood ? ? Blessed, holy covenant
God ? I am yours by ties of blood, ties of grace and ties of love. Hold me to my God above. Please be seated. Good morning. We're going to be Continuing
our look at Colossians chapter 3 this morning, if you'd like
to turn with me there in your Bibles, Colossians chapter 3. Let's ask the Lord's blessings. our glorious and merciful heavenly
father. We find great hope in knowing
that we can call you our father and come into thy holy presence
at the throne of grace, where the Lord Jesus Christ has shed
his precious blood for the covering of all of our sins. We ask, Father, that you'd be
pleased this hour to send your Holy Spirit in power, that you
would bless your word, that you would use it to cause us to find
our hope in Christ, that you would reveal him in our hearts,
Lord, that we would find all our salvation in his glorious
person and in his accomplished work of redemption, we would
find our hope and our peace, our joy and all our happiness
in him. Lord, we thank you for the promise
that where two or three are gathered together in thy name, there you
are in the midst of them. So Lord, we ask that you would
forgive us for being so thoughtless and forgetful of that glorious
truth and that you would cause us now to hear and to believe all that
you have spoken. We ask it in Christ's name and
for his sake. Amen. Let us be reminded, first of
all, that Colossians chapter 3 and 4 are in the context of
Colossians chapter 1 and 2. And if we find ourselves attempting
to put into practice the things that the Lord has admonished
us in the latter part of this epistle, just as it is true in
all the epistles, The first part of the epistles is a glorious
declaration of the accomplished work of Christ. And then the
Lord turns in the latter part of these epistles in saying,
in light of that, in light of who Christ is, in light of what
Christ has accomplished, for our redemption. This is what
we are and this is what we need to be and be reminded of. So,
if we look at these verses outside of that context, we will find
ourselves under the law. We'll find ourselves trying to
do something in the power of our flesh that cannot be done. So, Last Sunday, we looked at the
first eight verses of this chapter, and we were reminded that Christ
is all. He is all in our redemption. His blood is everything in purchasing
our souls to God. He's all in our redemption. He's
all in our wisdom. There is no wisdom outside of
Christ. All the understanding and all the knowledge that we
have of God and of salvation and of ourselves is in Christ. Christ is all. He's all in our
sanctification. All of our holiness before God.
All of our acceptance before him. is in Christ. He has sanctified us and set
us apart and made us holy in Himself before God. He's all in our righteousness. We have no righteousness outside
of Him. To stand right before God The entire law of God being
satisfied is all found in Christ. Christ is all. You see that in
verse 11. Verse 11 is sort of summarizing
the first 10 verses of this chapter where there is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free, but Christ is all and in all. Now, we could take the latter
part of that verse and apply it to so many things. Christ
is in all of Scripture, in the volume of the book. It is written
of me. We could apply that to providence,
all the circumstances of time and life in this world. He has ordained and purposed
them. And he is working all things
together for good. Christ is in all of providence. He is in all of scripture. We could apply that to the gospel.
Christ is in all the gospel. He's in election, chosen in Christ
before the foundation of the world. He is, as we've already
said, in redemption. He's in regeneration. Christ is all in that. It is
the Spirit of God that points us to Christ and births us in
Christ. And all those things will be
true. But I want us to consider this morning the context of what
the Lord is saying about Christ being in all. He's talking about in all believers. He's talking about Christ being
in you as your hope of glory. That's the context of what's
being spoken of here. And it's the unity of the body. That's what the Lord is admonishing
us toward. The unity of the body of Christ. Behold, David said, how good
and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. So the Lord is telling us how
to act and how to treat one another in light of the fact that Christ
is in all. He's in each and every one who
by God's grace has been brought into the knowledge of Christ.
He's in all. Turn with me, if you will, to
Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four. Here again, the Lord is turning our attention to the
results of the gospel. And he says in verse four, I,
therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk
worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called. With all lowliness
and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love,
endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of
peace, For there is one body, one spirit, even as you were
called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and father of us all, which is above all and through
all and in you all. It's important for us to remember
Christ is in me. Christ is in you. This is the,
This is the power of God that enables us
to love one another, is it not? In spite of whatever other differences
or offenses might come, Christ is in you. And I cannot consider this subject
without being reminded myself of my responsibility as your
pastor and as a preacher of the gospel that God has placed on
my shoulders. Look at, you're in Ephesians.
Look down just a little bit further in chapter four at verse 11. And God gave some apostles and
some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God
unto a perfect man, unto the measure and stature of the fullness
of Christ." So the preacher, pastor, evangelist, teacher's
responsibility is to remind the body of Christ
who they are in Christ, who they are in Christ. Let's go back
with me to our text. Christ in all, in all. He's talking about all the people
of God, all the elect of God, all the... Well, I can't say
all the elect of God because there are obviously still some
that are elect that have not yet been called. But nevertheless,
for those who are called by God's grace, here's the blessing. Christ is in you. What's the
difference between Christ being revealed in you? Paul said, it
pleased God, who separated me from a mother's womb, to reveal
Christ in me. What is the difference between
Christ being revealed in you and Christ being revealed to
you? Well, something's in you, it
affects every part of you, doesn't it? If you ingest and subsequently
digest anything, it becomes part of every part of you. It affects
every cell in your body, does it not? So, Christ in you affects
your affections, it affects your will, it affects your understanding,
it affects everything about you. Christ in you. And Christ revealed just to you without
being in you might just affect your knowledge. And here's the
problem with that. Knowledge puffeth up. You can
have some knowledge of doctrine and truth without having Christ. And yet I would even question
whether or not that knowledge is real knowledge. I would say
that you can parrot things about the gospel that you really have
no knowledge of. Christ is in you, that's the
only time you have real knowledge of Him. This is life eternal
that we might know Him. So here's the context of our
text, brethren. Begin reading with me at verse
eight. But now, you also put off all these, anger, wrath,
malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Put these
things off. The analogy here is to take off
the old clothes, put on the new clothes. These were part of your
old life. This was before Christ was in
you. These things can still be seen in our flesh, but in light
of Christ being in you, we're being told to put these things
off and keep putting them off. This is in the present tense,
which just simply means you keep doing it. These things are going to rear
their ugly heads in our hearts, and the Lord's telling us, remember,
remember who you are, and remember who your brethren are in Christ,
and Christ in them. Verse nine, lie not to one another,
seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds. Why would the Lord have to tell
us these things if these weren't potential problems? They are,
aren't they? They sure are. And so the Lord's
encouraging us to remember who we are and who our brethren are
in Christ. And have put on the new man,
which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created
him. So Christ is in all that have
been created in the image of God in Christ. That's, you say, well,
weren't all men created in the image of God? No, Adam was created
in the image of God. And that image was destroyed
when Adam sinned. And you and I come into this
world as the sons and daughters of Adam. And the image of God
has been marred so that we cannot call it the
image of God. The image of God has to be given to us in Christ,
in the new birth. And so, that's what the Lord's
telling us. Your brethren, those who have
been placed in Christ, have the very image of God imprinted in
them. And so do you. In light of that, remember these
things. Where there is neither Greek
nor Jew, I was thinking about in Acts
chapter 2, or is it chapter 4, right after Pentecost, after
they put all things together in common, And they began to
try living in this commune where they shared everything with one
another. And the first thing that happened
was there was a dispute between the Greeks and the Jews over
the distribution of the food. And the Greeks went to the apostles
and they pulled the race card right away. They said, you are
showing favoritism towards those Jewish women because they're
Jews and we're Gentiles and we're Greeks. And, you know, I mean,
that was from the get-go. That was from the very beginning.
This is conflict. And has it ceased? No. No. So the Lord's reminding us. Some of you have come from this
particular background. Some of you have come from another.
Some of you came from a religious background. Some of you came
from an irreligious background. Some of you came from this culture.
Others of you came from another culture. It doesn't matter. Christ
is in all. Christ is in all. Your heritage or your past religious
experiences are irrelevant. They're not just insignificant,
they're irrelevant because Christ is in all. Circumcision or uncircumcision. Barbarian. This word is used
in the Bible to describe those who who didn't speak the Greek
language. They were in the far reaches
of civilization. They had not, you know, Alexander
the Great had brought culture to all of the land around the
Mediterranean, and that was the Hellenization of the world. And yet there were people who
lived outside of that culture that were very rough and crude. And the gospel's now going out
to them, and they're becoming part of the church. And the cultured
Hellenized people who understood the Greek language and understood
the Greek culture were having to fellowship together in the
church with these barbarians who spoke a crude language and
lived a rough life. And then the Scythians were worse
than that. The Scythians were the rudest
and crudest of all men. They were the ones that were
the furthest removed from any semblance of culture whatsoever.
And some of them were being saved and being made part of the church.
And so the Lord's saying, Greek, Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, it doesn't matter. Christ is in all. Christ Jesus the Lord is in them. It doesn't matter their culture,
their language. This is the motivation. This is the power of God in us
that enables us to love one another, to forgive one another, to be
kind and compassionate toward one another. You know, sometimes
we have a We have a tendency to glamorize the good old days,
don't we? I hear sometimes myself and others
in my generation glamorizing the good old days as they compared
to what some of the young people are doing today and I think,
you forgot the 60s? Did you forget the anarchy and
the rebellion and the lifestyle of the 60s and early 70s? I mean, do you forget that? I
lived in Southern California in those years. But we do, don't we? We glamorize
the good old days as if things were better back then than they
are now. People do that with churches.
I think, well, you know, maybe they don't have that problem
in that church that we have in our church. And then you go and
you find out, you know, this is an issue everywhere we go.
This is why the Lord has given us... Why is so much Scripture
given to this subject of unity and Christ being in you and the
need to love and forgive one another? Why is this so important? Because it's so real! I mean,
it started with the apostles when they were in the very presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're arguing over who's going
to be on his right hand and on his left hand when he comes into
this kingdom. In the very presence of the Lord,
they did that. Jealousy, strife, envy. And as we've often seen, strife
and vainglory always go together, don't they? They always go together. They go together in your home,
they go together on your job, they go together in the church.
Strife always comes as a result of vain glory. And man in his
very best state is altogether vanity. You know, remember how
vain and empty we are, particularly when we feel offended because
we haven't gotten the attention and the glory and the credit
that we think we deserve. And so that's the cause of it,
isn't it? That was the cause among the
disciples. As I've already mentioned, that was the cause in the very
early days of the church when the Greek women pulled the race
card against the Hebrew women over the distribution of food. It was the problem in the church
at Corinth Let me just read 1st and 2nd Corinthians. These were
believers who had Christ in them who were getting drunk at the
Lord's table. And they were fighting over who's
gonna get to the table first. And they were taking one another
to court, suing each other. And then they were. puffing out
their chest and bragging over whose gifts were more valuable
than another's gifts, competing with one another over their own
spiritual gifts. Yes, that was taking place in
the early church. And we said, well, the early
church, you know, they were, they had it right and they were under
persecution and they just loved one. No, they didn't. No, they
didn't. They struggled with these things.
But those who had Christ in them did not abandon the church as
a result of it. They were taught by the Spirit
of God and they bowed to the Word of God. Peter, you say, well, Peter in
his early days was very immature. Well, this was years later when
Peter went to Antioch and He was eating with the Gentiles
and fellowshipping with the Gentiles and they rejoicing in the gospel
together. And then some Jews came up from Jerusalem to Antioch. And Peter got up out the table
of the Gentiles, went over and sat with the Jews and acted like
he didn't know those people over there. Paul had to rebuke him openly. And then there was no small dispute
between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark. John Mark had abandoned
the Apostle Paul on his missionary journey. And Paul said, I don't
trust that guy anymore. And it created a rift between
Paul and Barnabas over another believer that had Christ in him. The end of the story, Paul said,
when he was imprisoned in Rome, send John Mark, he's profitable
to me. The Lord had brought them all, all the way around. But
it didn't. It didn't remove. See, this is
what the Lord is saying. Christ is in all. Remember that. Don't forget that. So many admonitions in Scripture
to unity and forgiveness. Why? Because as sinners, we're
proud, we're selfish, we're arrogant, we're vain, we're sinful. Believers aren't above that.
Believers aren't above resentment and selfishness and slanting a story to their own
benefit. to the slander of another. That's
what the Lord is saying. Put these things off. Put these
things off for Christ is in all. The miracle of grace has been
done in another where there is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, bond or free. Now you know who
the bond were, those were the slaves. So now you have in one
assembly, I mean, it's hard for us to even conceive of this,
isn't it? But you have slave owners with
their slaves in the church. And the slaves are, you know,
they're just under the command and the authority of their slave
owner, their property. That's what they are, their property.
And the Lord's saying there's no difference. There's no difference
between the slave owner and the slave. There's no difference
between the Scythian and the Jew or the Greek. Christ is in
all. Look at verse 12. put on therefore as the elect
of God. Christ is not in everybody, every
person who attends church. That's not our place to figure
that out. We got a person, professors to
believe the gospel. We have to assume Christ is in
them. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved
bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering,
forbearing one another. Yeah, that word forbearing means
put up with each other. That's what it means. Put up
with each other. We're trying to change each other
and, you know, concentrate on yourself. That's what the Lord's telling
us. We're in this forever. We're
in this forever. Forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, Are there quarrels among believers?
Of course there are. Why am I giving you examples
from Scripture? In every one of the epistles,
in every church, Paul has to address this issue. God has to
address it. Why? Because it happens in every...
Why? Because we're a bunch of sinners
being brought together. Christ is in all. Just remember
that. Christ is in all. as Christ has forgiven you. Their
forgiveness is the result of being forgiven, isn't it? Being tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven
you. Having a hard time forgiving
somebody? Look at what God's done in forgiving
you. Forgiveness will come as a result
of that. So also do ye, do ye, do these
things. And above all these things, put
on charity, which is the bond of perfectness And let the peace of God rule
in your heart, to which also you are called in one body, and
be thankful." Be thankful. You see, the Lord is admonishing
us, isn't He? In light of who the Lord Jesus
Christ is and what He's done, all the laws and the prophets
hang on this one thing, love. Love. And love is of God, and
everyone that loveth is born of God, and he that loveth not
knoweth not God, for God is love. God is love. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians
chapter 13. Verse one, though I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, have not
love, I am become as sounding brass or as tinkling cymbal. You know, I like to, I like to
think of this word charity standing out a little different from the
word love in that Charity is love expressed, is it not? Charity
is love expressed. And what he's saying in verse
one is, though I'm the most eloquent speaker, if I have not charity,
I'm a sounding brass, tinkling cymbal, noise, that's all. And though I have the gift of
prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though
I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not
charity, I'm nothing. Oh, we can boast in the superiority
of our knowledge, can't we? Knowledge does puffeth up. And
we live in a society that has increased in knowledge and become
fools in their heart toward God. And though I bestow all my goods
to feed the poor, though I have a sacrificial lifestyle
and an open hand and I give everything away that I have, and I lay my
body down to be burned, I'm a martyr. Men, I mean, we see it today,
and it's happened in what's been called historically Christianity. We see it with suicide bombers
today. They're becoming martyrs for
the cause, thinking that somehow that's going to... You see, if
I have all this knowledge, and though I even become a martyr
for the cause, and I know nothing of the love of God in my heart,
the love of Christ in me, expressed through me, then I'm nothing. Well, what does this charity
look like? What's it look like? Well, look at verse four, charity
suffereth long. Charity doesn't walk out when
it's offended. Charity doesn't abandon. Its brother, charity, remains. Works it out. It's kind. Gives deference to the other. Envieth not. Vaunteth not itself. It's not rash and harsh and vain
in its glory. That's not charity. It's not puffed up. It's humble. Doth not behave itself unseemly.
Seeketh not her own. Is not easily provoked. You know, some people are just
angry. And we all know what anger is,
and we can be provoked, but charity is not easily provoked. Thinketh
no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. It's not glad when something
bad happens to somebody that's done something to you. Beareth all things, It believeth
all things, it hopeth all things. It endureth all things. Charity
never fails. Never fails. Oh, brethren. Christ in all. If Christ is in you, and Christ
is in me, and by God's grace, we'll work these things out,
won't we? We'll work them out. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for the miracle of the new birth, revealing Christ in us. Lord, forgive us for our sin and remind us how
we ought to treat one another in light of Christ being in all. in His name we pray.