All right, brethren, let's be
turning to Colossians chapter 3. In the beginning of this chapter,
Paul exhorts believers to put off the old man of flesh. And now he encourages believers
to put on the new man, that which is born of the seed of Christ
by the Spirit of God in us. And so Paul says here in Colossians
3 verse 12, put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and
beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
long-suffering. Now when we read these, we know
these are clearly the fruit of the Spirit. This is fruit born
in the child of God by the Spirit of God. So we know Paul is writing
this epistle not to all persons in the world, but to believers,
those who are born again by God, chosen of God, called by God,
blessed of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. They're actually called
here the elect of God. holy and beloved. Holy because God Himself has
sanctified His people. We don't sanctify ourselves,
we're sanctified by Jesus Christ. He is the sanctification of His
people, and they are loved of the Lord, and that's why He does
these gracious, blessed things for His people in Christ. Now, when one reads this passage,
that we are to mortify the deeds of the flesh in verse 5, and
we're to put off these works of the flesh described in verse
8. These works are anger, wrath,
malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Verse 9, and
lying to one another. He's telling us put these things
off, mortify these things, put these things off. Then he follows
it up by exhorting us to put on, in verse 12, put on these
things as the elect of God. As you're reading these, we must
conclude that the church of God is filled with sinners. sinners saved by the grace of
God. But they're sinners. That's who
we are in this flesh. This flesh is sinful, and the
church is full of sinners saved by the grace of God. And it shows
us, it communicates to us, just reading how Paul is writing,
along with all the other apostles, And how they speak of sin, writing
to brethren, all the epistles are written to the church of
God. We can only conclude the church is full of sinners. Full
of sinners. This flesh is still filthy, vile,
wretched. It's corrupt. It's corrupt. Turn over to Romans 8. Let's
go to Romans 8. We're going to pick up in verse
22, and in this passage here, I want to show you why our flesh
is so sinful and corrupt, even after we believe Christ. Why is this flesh so sinful,
even though I've professed Christ, even though I look to the Lord? Why is my flesh so sinful? Because
for the Lord, it's important for us not to lie to ourselves,
not to lie to one another. Religion is full of hypocrites. It's full of hypocrisy. You know
people that are sick of what they've seen in religion, and
they They turn from the truth simply because they see hypocrisy
in the professed church. But the Lord teaches us we're
to be sincere. We're not imposters. We're not
to fake it. We're not to put on a show as
though we're something else. Our sin nature is still very
much present in our flesh. Now that does not mean that we
are to live carelessly. That doesn't mean that we're
to use that for an excuse for the flesh and to live as we want. Well, I'm a sinner, there's nothing
I can do. That's not what the Lord is telling
this to us for. It's that we don't deceive ourselves
into thinking that we're something when we're nothing like Pharisees. The Pharisees convinced themselves
that their works were holy and that their works were righteousness
before the Lord. And what did they do? They despised
others. They despised others. And so
we look to our Savior. These words, these exhortations
are given to us that we look to our Savior because we are
sinners. Because we are sinners in need
of His grace. In need of His grace. And so
we seek Him, we seek the Lord to lead us in paths of righteousness
for His name's sake. for His name's sake. So let's
begin now in Romans 8, verse 22 through 28. Romans 8, verse
22 through 28. Paul says here, for we know that
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now. And not only they, but ourselves
also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit." So he's speaking
to believers here. He's speaking to believers. We
have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, grown within
ourselves, waiting for the adoption. to wit, the redemption of our
body. Why do we see sin present in
our flesh? Because we're waiting for the
redemption of our body. We have the Spirit of Christ,
we have the new man in us, but we still see sin in our members,
in our flesh, because we're waiting for the adoption or the redemption
of our body. And what the Apostle is teaching
us here, then, is that this flesh is not getting better and better. By our works and our tinkering
and our fussing and doing what we do in religion, we're not
improving this flesh. Try as hard as you may, you're
not going to improve this flesh. You're not going to purge your
flesh of sin. We don't improve it with our
sanctifying works. God sanctifies us. We're sanctified
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we rejoice in God, in the
new man, but this old man of flesh is still as corrupt as
it ever was. And that's just how it is. And so it will be that way until
the return of Christ in the resurrection when He raises these bodies up. An incorruptible body in that
day. And He tells us why it is this
way. Why He let these bodies as they
are until He returns. Why we still see sin present
in the flesh. Romans 8, 24. For we are saved
by hope. by hope, not by sight, not as
we would see ourselves. We hate our sin. We despise our
sin. We cry out to the Lord for our
sin. We don't want to see sin in our members. We don't want
to behave the way we see the outbursts in the flesh. That's
not what we want to see. We cry out to the Lord. And what
he's saying is you're not going to see it You see it by faith,
not by sight. Not by sight. We're saved by
hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth,
why doth he yet hope for? So what he's showing us here
is that presently we're walking by faith. We've heard the word
of God. We believe the word of God. We
believe Christ is all our salvation and he's promised us eternal
life and we're hoping. We have a good hope, a sure hope
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not a vain fleshly hope.
It's a hope in Christ. And so this flesh hasn't changed,
and that's why we still experience lusts in the flesh. That's why
Peter wrote, breath dearly beloved, abstain from fleshly lusts, which
war against the soul because they're yet present in the flesh.
Kicking up and rising up in our thoughts and minds and sadly
coming out of our mouths sometimes. And they're present in our thoughts.
but were exhorted to put them off. But if we hope, verse 25,
for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. With patience we wait for it,
just as Abraham patiently waited for the promised inheritance
of God. God promised him. Abraham believed
in the Lord, and God imputed righteousness, his righteousness
to him. He trusted that God was his righteousness,
and he believed God. He believed the Lord. And so
just like Abraham patiently waited for the promise, so brethren,
the children of Abraham, we believers, we that believe by faith, we
patiently wait for believing the word of God to us. Verse
26, likewise, the spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for
we know not what we should pray for as we are. but the Spirit
itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot
be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts
knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession
for the saints according to the will of God." And so we see that,
how the Lord works this in us. The Spirit groans within us.
We don't use The hope we have in Christ as a cloak for unrighteousness. And the spirit in us groans and
intercedes for us with words and cries that cannot be uttered.
the Spirit, the work of God in us. And so the Apostle here is
telling us that you and I are what we are according to the
will and purpose of God. He's purposed to work in his
children, here and now, hope. faith that looks to the Lord
and cries out to the Lord for grace and mercy and help in time
of need. He's worked that fruit of hope
in us. Just as Paul said in 1 Corinthians
13, 13, now abideth faith, hope, and love. Presently in this flesh,
there's faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these being
love. Because one day, we'll stand
before our Lord and there will be no need for faith, there will
be no need for hope, but love remaineth always in the brethren,
in the body of Christ. And so he's put you into his
body, the church, he's gathered you together in this local assembly
with all your weaknesses, with all your infirmities of the flesh,
made you as you are and put you together in this body according
to purpose for your good and the good of his people here.
It's the will and purpose of God. And that's what he tells
us down in verse 28. And we know that all things work
together for good to them that are called of God, according
to them that love God, to them that are, who are called according
to his purpose. God has done this. Our God has
done this. He's put us together with our
weaknesses and infirmities. So the Lord's teaching us that
salvation is not about putting on a show of religious airs. There's a lot of people that
put on a religious air. and do things to make you think
that they're believers, rather than walking in faith, trusting
the Lord. They focus on things that divide,
and they cut this person off, and they get annoyed with that
person, and they cut them off and put them out of their life
just so they can have some peace. And the Lord's saying, that's
not how, that's not why I've put you together. There's going
to be differences. There's going to be differences.
There's going to be, I'm going to put my people as it pleases
me, and I'll grow the church with the members that I see fit
to put in them. And he does that on purpose,
on purpose. But where there's agreement in
Christ, or I should say, so where there's agreement in Christ,
know that where we believe that the father had sent the son to
redeem a people for himself, given to Christ, and He came
and faithfully fulfilled the will of His Father in all things,
fulfilling all righteousness. And He laid down His life for
His sheep, to bless them, to save them, to give them an expected
end, a hope in the promises of God, and that He laid down His
life sacrificing Himself for the sins of His people, and He
rose again for our justification, where there is agreement on what
Christ has accomplished for His people according to the Scriptures,
then what's left? What's left for us here in this
body? Well, we see more and more clearly
that our salvation is about peace and love and fellowship in the
Lord Jesus Christ, while we patiently wait for the redemption of our
body. We trust the Lord, we're waiting
on him and we're serving one another in love, according to
the truth. And we're laboring together for
the furtherance of this gospel to go out, that the Lord's sheep
would hear it, would be called and come in and have this same
blessed hope that he's given to us. And so we do that until
he comes again. So let's go back now to Colossians. Our text is in Colossians 3,
in verse 12 there. Paul is speaking of bowels of
mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering,
and these are clearly the fruit of the spirit. That's not the
work of the flesh. The flesh doesn't do these things.
We see what the works of the flesh are. That's the malice
and the hatred and the blasphemies and and lying to one another.
But here, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, long-suffering, that's fruit of the Spirit, brethren.
And that means that we must be born again. We need the grace
of God to give us life. We need the grace of God to work
this in us, and to give us what we need, because we don't have
this in the flesh. We're not children of light by
nature, we're children of darkness and wrath until God has mercy
on us for Christ's sake. But they, the brethren, through
the patient exercise, how does the Lord do this for us? He works this in us through these
fruits of the Spirit, through afflictions, through trials,
through troubles, through difficulties, through hardships, sometimes
through arguments and things that divide other people. There's
difficulties that we go through, but God uses this to teach us. He's telling us this, not because
we can do it, but He's doing this for us to teach us that
we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ by His grace. He's growing us by grace. And
because putting on the new man, just like putting off the old
man, It quickly reveals to us our needs, just how weak and
insufficient we are in ourselves, lest we think that we can do
this by our strength, and by our will, and by our determination. No, you can't. Christ said to
his disciples, without me ye can do nothing. Nothing and so
he's going to show he's gonna strip us down and show us I can't
do this Lord But you tell me this in your word. I see it's
good. This is what I want to do I want to bear these fruit
this fruit of the Spirit Save me Lord help me help me to love
my brethren, help me to walk in faith, help me to be gracious
and kind and humble towards my brethren, not to get angry, not
to lash out, not to speak according to the flesh. And so we seek
him to bear this righteous fruit in us that we may live with our
brethren in love and peace and joy and rejoicing in the Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we may labor together unto edification
instead of trying to be right, instead of trying to see ourselves
justified for our stance, but we're looking to edify one another
instead in the body, in love, and that patience and kindness,
such as showing vows of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, long suffering. When is a sinner humble in mind? When the Lord has humbled us
and shown us what sinners we are, that we're not as great
as we think we are, that we don't know what we ought to know, that
we think too highly of ourselves. When the Lord humbles us, it's
not to destroy us, it's for our good. It's for the good of his
people and for our good. And we begin to cry out, what
is man that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man that
thou dost visitest him? Who am I, Lord, that you should
take thought of a poor dead dog sinner like me? And he humbles
us in that. He shows us what we are. Now
Paul goes on to say in Colossians 3.13, that we go on forbearing
one another, forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Well, this tells
us that not just friends without, but brethren within, we're going
to fail one another. There's going to be times when
we disappoint one another. There's going to be times when
we do or say something that's completely out of character for
a believer. We all have things where we say,
no Christian would ever do that. And then they do. And a lot of
times, when you are pointing out the fault in someone else
and say, I just can't believe that a Christian or a brother
would ever do that or say that, within weeks, you'll hear the
same thing coming out of your mouth. And by God's grace, you'll
hear it and know, well, I hope in Christ, may God have mercy
on me and save me. Because I just said, no man,
no believer would ever do that. And here I'm doing the exact
same thing. Exact same thing. When we're
in the flesh, we just justify it. We make excuses for ourselves,
all the while we're condemning another. And that we ought not
to do, because we all need grace and mercy. We all need grace
and mercy. And we all misread situations,
we have disagreements, we respond inappropriately, we try to fix
things and we end up making it worse. It's just what we see,
it's the flesh. We are corrupt and in darkness
in Adam, we've fallen in Adam. We need salvation, we need the
grace of God in Christ. He didn't send Christ to help
us to fix ourselves. He sent Christ to save us, to
deliver us completely entirely by His grace. And so when trouble
or divisive things arise, the Lord is teaching us, trust me,
trust the Lord, trust your God whom you believe, whom you confess,
trust the Lord. He put you in this body of Christ
together on purpose for His purpose. He brings you together for His
good, glorious purpose. And stay right there, as long
as it's faithful to the gospel, stay right there in that gospel
church. There's a lot that are not preaching
the gospel. There's a lot that are preaching
another gospel. But where the gospel of Christ is preached,
where our Lord is exalted, who saves his people according to
his own good pleasure, stay right there. And pray for that church. Pray for the brethren there.
Pray for your pastor there. Pray for one another. And the
Lord, He's good to His people. And
it's according to His purpose. Trust Him in His purpose. Trust
Him to work in the hearts of your brethren. You see how He
works in your own heart. Why don't we believe that He
does the same thing in the hearts of our brethren? If He turns
our heart, if He delivers us from wickedness and delivers
us from thinking ill of a brother, can He do the same for our brethren,
what He does for us? Absolutely He does. Absolutely
He does the same thing. Rather than, do that, trust the
Lord, rather than sowing discord and making things worse. So Colossians
3, 12 and 13, before we move on, he said just again, put on
therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies. Face the situation, praying to
God, Lord, help me to be merciful. Help me to remember your mercy
for me and help me to be merciful in this situation to my brethren.
Kindness, because they're sinners just like you and I are sinners.
Your brethren are sinners just like you're a sinner. Humbleness
of mind, remembering, no, you really are a sinner in need of
his grace. He's shown it to us. He's shown
each one who's cried out to him, he showed us what we are. Otherwise,
we wouldn't have cried out to him. And we've seen it, sadly,
to our shame. We see it rise up in us again
and again. And the Lord uses that to humble
us and to keep us on our knees crying out to the Lord for grace
and mercy lest we forget. Meekness. That is, don't go into
it proud and arrogant thinking that you're going to fix it.
If the Lord fixes it, it's going to be the Lord. It's going to
be Him. Long-suffering. Don't condition your forgiveness
and reconciliation with a brother on them changing or conforming
to the person you think they should be. Trust the Lord, trust
him. Seek the fruit of the spirit
and move to the actions, he says, forbearing one another, forgiving
one another. If any man have a quarrel against
any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. How did Christ
forgive you? How did Christ receive you? Did
He withhold His forgiveness and revealing Himself to your heart
until you fixed everything? Until you fixed and straightened
up yourself and became sinless and perfect? No. He did it in
spite of what we are in ourselves. When we were yet in darkness,
when we were yet enemies, Christ gave His life for His people.
He died for His people. And when we are yet in darkness,
his spirit came and sought us out when we were lost. Feeling
our way in religion and completely off, totally. Thinking we were
pleasing God and all we were doing was heaping up wrath against
ourselves by our works. Thinking they were something
when they were nothing. And it's true. You probably have
been violated. Your rights violated at times.
They probably are wrong. It happens. It happens. But trust
the Lord. Seek him to forgive for you to
have forgiveness in your heart for the offense and pray for
them as well as for yourself. And oftentimes, what I find is
when I pray for others, it's my heart that changes. I'm the
one who's turned, and my whole thought on the whole situation
has turned entirely. And I don't know what he does
for them. I believe he did something, but it's me that has helped more
than anything, because it was my attitude that was wrong. And
I was perceiving some injustice against me, and the Lord helped
me and turned my heart. Colossians 3.14, above all these
things put on charity, or love, which is the bond of perfectness. Love is the bond which ties everything
together. It crowns all. It supersedes
everything. It triumphs over bitterness,
and hatred, and anger, and wrath, and blasphemies, and every foolish
thing that we can do. Love conquers it all in Christ. in Christ. He conquers all. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life. God didn't let wrath and
injustice triumph. He did everything justly and
perfectly, but he did it for love's sake, because he loves
his people. And He gave them, He loves them
in Christ, He put them in Christ before the foundation of the
world to do this for Him. Could you imagine if God paid
us according to what our sins deserve? If God was vindictive and punished
us the way we deserve? but for Christ's sake, he poured
out, he forgave us at Christ's expense. He poured out his justice
justly on Christ that we might know the true and living God
and have fellowship with him, being reconciled to him, being
brought into the family by the adoption of Christ and partakers
of the inheritance of the saints in light with our God. Colossians 3.15, and let the
peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called
in one body, and be ye thankful. You know, this verse has everything
to do with you trusting God. Meaning, what he's saying here
is trust the Lord. Trust the Lord to do what is
right. Your God is good. He's faithful. He does all things well. Trust Him. In the division, trust
Him. In the trouble, trust Him. In
the argument, trust Him. Believe Him. You don't have to
fix it. Your God is sovereign. He knows
all things and can do all things. You know, there's been times
throughout my life I can look back and You know, you go through
various situations and I've imagined that someone is committing some
harm against me. That someone has some ill intent
toward me. And I think about it and I start
to identify little clues to feed my story that I'm building up
in my mind and saying, oh, I know what they did that for. I know
why they said that or what they were doing. And we tell ourselves
a story. And we heap all this evidence
up to it and think that we know why they're doing something,
and we're just adding fuel to the fire. But then, thankfully,
by the grace of God, I remember, wait a minute. First of all,
I'm making this thing up. I don't know this is true. And
some might, there might be some half-truths in that mixed in
and peppered in. But I've made it so much worse. And then I step back and go,
wait a minute. God is good. And even if I am being wronged,
God is good. He knows all things and He knows
how to heal and correct and turn His child. and turn them from
that, and reconcile things, God is able to do that. I don't have
to fix everything. And that's what Paul's saying
when he says, let the peace of God rule in your hearts. You don't have to fix it. You
don't have to know what the Lord is doing. Trust Him in it. And leave that burden with the
Lord. and the peace of God. Just let
the peace of God rule in your heart. You don't have to constantly
go over it and analyze it and dissect it and break it down
and put it back together the way you want to. Trust the Lord.
Let the peace of God rule in your heart and say, Lord, you
do what's right. You fix it. You do what's right
as you see fit. And when the Lord blesses me
to do that, All the time, it just dissipates. It just falls
apart. It goes away, because there's nothing there. I was
just telling myself a story, and it's soon forgotten, and
things move on. It's just the way the Lord does
it. And that's because God's called you in one body, in one
body. And whatever the outcome is,
he says, regardless of it, even if they do leave you, Regardless
of the outcome, be thankful because it's exactly the purpose of God
in it. And you don't have to keep going
over it and beating yourself up and getting angry with yourself
and calling yourself names of what an idiot you've been, excuse
my language, of how foolish you've been. You don't have to keep
beating yourself up over about it because it's exactly according
to the Lord's purpose. Confess your sin to the Lord
if you've done wrong. Confess it and trust the Lord
that it's good for his body. And that's what Paul said over
in 1 Thessalonians 5.18, I'll read it. And everything, give
thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning
you. You can give thanks. You can
break a leg and give God thanks because, yep, maybe you broke
your leg, you can't go on vacation or do the things you thought
you were going to do, but how do you know God didn't spare
you from some other thing? Or use it to humble you and to
bring you low in yourself to seek the Lord because we put
him far out of our minds so often. The Lord's done it for our good.
So when you approach everything through Christ and trust God
has a good purpose in all things, that all that remains with you
is peace. And then look at this last verse
in Colossians 3.16 is where we'll finish up. Let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with
grace in your hearts to the Lord. And you know what he's saying
there? It's now that you've left that burden with the Lord, all
there's left to do is for you to come together and worship
your God together. You can worship with brethren.
Yeah, there was a disagreement or an argument. Something happened
in the parking lot or whatever. But leave it with the Lord. Trust
the Lord that he's put together this body and come together and
worship God in peace and love and joy and rejoicing and fellowship. Amen. Let's pray. Our gracious Lord,
we thank you for your word. Lord, we see in this word such
good and profitable things. We see here, Lord, the fruit
of your spirit, which you work in your children. And Lord, we
see in this chapter just how there is sin in this flesh. We see the weakness and the infirmities
of this flesh. And Lord, we see your call. to
walk in the Spirit. Lord, we cannot do it by our
strength. We cannot do it by our flesh,
in the will of the flesh, in the works of the flesh. They're
all sin. But we see how you use these
words to stir us up, to put our hearts and minds on Christ, to
show us our need of Christ, and for you to do this work in us.
How you turn us from ourselves and turn us to the true and living
God. Lord, thank you for this word. Help us to walk in love
toward one another. Help us to lay aside arguments
or troubles or difficulties that arise. Let us quickly reconcile
with one another, praying for the good of one another. It's
in Christ's name that we pray and give thanks. Amen. All right,
brethren, we'll come back at a few minutes after 11. Actually,
we'll just go by five after 11 on this. this clock up here.