Colossians 3. Gracious Father, make known your Son to us as
we look in these scriptures, and may the word which is given
to us truly set up housekeeping in our hearts so that our thinking and our
way of life would be guided by the things of Christ. Forgive
our sins, Lord, they are many. We thank you that you are a pardoning
God and a God who delights in mercy. For if mercy was not your
delight, there would be no hope for folks like us. So Lord, fill us with a sense
of your grace and mercy. It's in Christ's name we pray,
amen. Now, we got through verse 15
last week. Paul is giving a series of exhortations,
basing them all, of course, on the doctrine that he has set
out so clearly at the beginning, this is Paul's normal method
of instruction, lay out the doctrine of the gospel, the true fundamentals
of the faith, and then begin drawing conclusions about how
we should think and consequently how we should act because of
the things we know to be true. I think I've mentioned to you
before regarding my mother, and I didn't, as a child, I didn't
pick up on this. Most of the time, as an adult,
I didn't. It was just as I reflected on how she approached the scriptures
and doctrine and such, she had a very wise concept that drove
how she approached these things, and that is simply this, that
abstract truth is essentially worthless. And there is no use
knowing anything except for the purpose of it changing the way
you think and act. And therefore, she was not one
given to getting caught up in useless theological arguments.
You know, because if it isn't going to change what we do, what's
the use talking about it? And you know, that's pretty well
true. What's the use of knowing that
salvation's by grace, by the grace of God through Christ,
if that does not move you to call upon the name of the Lord
for salvation? You see what I mean? You know,
you can argue about the doctrines of grace all you want. Arguing
about them and even understanding the individual points of doctrine
that make up the gospel is a waste of time if it doesn't move you
to call upon the name of the Lord. And the same thing applies. What's
the use of knowing about the character of our Lord and all
of these things if it does not move us not only to call upon
his name, but to love him more and in love conform ourselves
to his way more and more. We don't come to church just
to get educated. We don't read the scriptures
just to get educated. So Paul is giving these exhortations
and every one of them makes perfect sense in the light of the gospel. Now they sound like nothing other
than a bunch of religious rules that we're likely to hear in
any church if you separate it from the gospel. But once you
spell out these exhortations that Paul gives here, and you
see that they're all done within the context of God's grace and
the Lord Jesus Christ, they make perfect sense. Not only do they
make perfect sense, they will work in the heart of the believer
to make him desire to live exactly like this. You know, when we
read the exhortations in the scriptures, if we find within
ourselves a tendency to reject them, now I know our flesh is
always gonna reject them, but I mean, if we look at them and
say, well, I don't see any sense in that, there's something we ought to
be concerned about. Because these things do not arise as arbitrary
rules They arise from the very principles of the gospel that
we claim to believe. And last week, we had the exhortation
in Colossians 3.15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.
And why not? Doesn't that make sense? Seeing
that being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Seeing
that our Lord said, my peace I give or leave with you, not
as the world gives, Not the kind of peace the world gives, a different
kind. Does not make sense to let the peace of Christ rule
the way we conduct ourselves with one another in as much as
it's taught to us that Jesus Christ, by his death, took down
the middle wall of partition between the Jew and the Gentile.
What was that? It was the law. It's the law
that made a distinction between the Jew and the Gentile. And
so as the gospel goes out, both the Jew and Gentile, the Jews
and the Gentiles still stayed aggravated at each other. And
he said, why are you doing that? Why aren't you at peace with
one another seeing that the blood of Christ took down that middle
wall of partition? There is no difference between
you all anymore. See how it just makes perfect
sense then. Well, now he says here, verse 16, let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly. Now, first of all, what is the
word of Christ? It's very simply the gospel. People say, well, it's everything
Christ said. Well, that's true, but everything Christ said is
the gospel. And when it says, let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly, it does not simply mean let the
words of Christ dwell in you richly. It's a good thing to memorize
scriptures. It's a good thing to memorize the things that our
Lord said. But the word, translated word,
is the common word for word, and yet Within the Greek mind,
it meant more than simply a word. It's the same word used as a
name for the Lord Jesus when it says, in the beginning was
the word. Well, he's not a collection of anywhere from one to who knows
how many letters. By word in the Greek mind, by
word was meant a message. a thought, a truth. Therefore, when it says, let
the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, it's not just meaning
memorize the words and sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ. There
is a message in those things, a truth. And it is to dwell in
us richly. Now, I like that word that's
translated dwell. Interestingly, it is not the
normal word that would be translated to L. The normal word is a Greek
word, meno, dependent, well, meno is
how they pronounce the long E. I think it's a long E. In Greek
language, they have two E's. And one's pronounced like eh,
and the other's like ay. But one of them, meno, meno,
I'm not sure. But it technically means to remain. Just remain. And it's used to dwell. So he
dwelt in Samaria. That's where he stayed. This
word is derived from the word for house, inoikos. First part means in, and the
last part means house. And what he is saying, Let the
message of Christ set up housekeeping in you. Now, the reason he has to make
that exhortation is, is from the day we were conceived, we
set up housekeeping in our own minds. Now, you know what it's
like to set up a house, to arrange it a certain way. Every household
has its own way of doing things, and for the most part in our
culture, at least inside the house itself, it is set up by
the woman. I remember one time, and only
one time, I went in Bonnie's kitchen, she was at work, and
I said, you know, this just is not organized right. It'd be
so much easier for Bonnie if she would just do it, and I move
stuff around in the cabinets and all of that, I kind of set
up housekeeping in her kitchen. Imagine how shocked I was when
to discover she really didn't appreciate that. And she put it all back like
she had it. Now, I only point this out to say everybody in
their own minds and hearts has set up housekeeping. It's the
way we perceive things and it directs the way we do things.
And nobody likes someone else coming in their house and setting
up housekeeping. But that's exactly what Paul
is saying. Let the message of Christ enter
your mind and rearrange things and set them up as they should
be. And what's that telling us? At
present, they are not set up like they should be. Maybe all
the glasses should go in the other cabinet. Or maybe you shouldn't have that
many glasses after all. Maybe it would be better, and
you see what I'm speaking of, maybe it would be better if the
sofa was on the other side of the room. Now it's not easy to let someone
else set up housekeeping in your house. The people you dearly love, if
they come in your house, it's going to upset things. It's just
the way it is. If your parents get old and you
have to take them in, it's going to involve some rearranging,
isn't it? And that's why it's a burden
to do it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. But it's a burden
to do it. Bonnie and I were glad to take
care of my parents when they needed it, but I tell you, it
turned our house upside down. Sometimes kids have to move back
in. And you know, my mother told me, you know, once I left for
college and I came back for the Christmas break, I'd only been
gone three months, I was a different person. And for the remainder
of the time that I lived in their house, it involved some willingness
on their part for somebody else setting up housekeeping in their
house. And eventually it came to the point where it was obvious
to my father, it was involving too much rearrangement. And he
said, you got to get your own house. And that's the way it
should be, isn't it? Paul says, let the message of
Christ, and quite frankly, that's Christ himself, set up housekeeping
in you. And you step back from being
the manager of your own affairs. You step back from saying, this
is the way it must be in my mind and heart. And it said, let it dwell in
you, set up housekeeping richly. Now the word here, I don't think
it's the word normally associated with riches in terms of gold
and silver and things like that, though it's fine to use that
word. It simply means abundantly. There are a lot of people, maybe
us, who have the message of Christ,
the word of Christ in them in a very small amount. Now I'm
glad it's in there at all. I mean, you know, it's like little
faith. Our Lord said, oh ye of little
faith, why did you doubt? I remember Spurgeon said, I remember just how he put that. Little faith is not as good as
great faith, but it's a whole lot better than no faith. Little faith will save. Great faith brings peace. Great
faith brings greater expressions of the spirit or the fruit of
the spirit. And so what we do, so it's so
common, I am afraid among, and I'm talking about honest believers.
I, I realize there's a world of so-called Christianity out
there. They really don't have any faith at all. They don't have
the message of Christ. And so we're not talking about them. We're
talking about people who do know what the truth is. They believe
it and they do love the Lord Jesus Christ. But for one reason
or another, it occupies such a small part of their conscious
thinking that you couldn't say it dwells there richly. And so
the apostle says, let it dwell in you richly abundantly. Now here's the thing. Of course,
he's talking about setting up housekeeping. There's one thing
to allowing someone in your house and assigning them a room. This
is your room and you can do whatever you want to in your room. It's
another thing to give a person the run of the entire house. Now we ought to be glad that
Christ dwells, when Christ dwells at all in the household of anyone's
heart. But oh, how blessed when by the
grace of God we give him the run of the whole place. We don't have a single door shut
to him. We don't have a single box stored
away which he does not have permission to open and decide whether or
not it should remain. The message of Christ which in
other places is called the word of God, like in the book of Hebrews
chapter four. It says it is able to discern
the thoughts and intents of the heart. People say, oh, if I only
knew whether I believed. There's an easy way to find out.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. It'll poke around. It'll seem to you to be very
nosy, very intrusive, but I'm sure glad that the Lord
Jesus Christ is intrusive, aren't you? I'm glad he's invasive because
we never give him permission if he did not invade. And if
we are not humbled more and more as time goes by, we will hold
out. parts of our thinking. And though
we would probably never say it consciously, what we are doing
subconsciously is saying, not that room, Lord. No, sir. That,
you know, I'm reserving that one for me. All right, Lord,
you can go in that room, but don't open the closet. Don't
open that box. Don't read that book. To let the message of Christ
dwell in us abundantly means to say that the message of Christ,
which is in essence Christ himself, owns the house. And he may do
with it as he wills, point out whatever he wants, make whatever
changes seem good to him. And understand that that means
there may be real changes in your situation in this world
on account of it. He may put you in a much lower social
strata than you really wanted because he went poking around
in your house and found out. You've got entirely too much
of your affections set on things below rather than on things above. And so he says, you need to step
down in the world that you might step up in the things of God. He might poke around in your
theological thinking that you believe you've got squared away.
And he'll say, no, not right there. But I have publicly said
that that was wrong. Yeah, and you were publicly wrong
when you said it. Now you need to change. We don't like change. Change is an admission that up
to that point, we were wrong about that. I hope this is true of me. I
think it's true of me. I would rather suffer the embarrassment
of being corrected than to be left wrong for the rest of my
life. And we know this is true with
regard to the natural things. If I could come to you and say,
look, you're handling your money wrong. If you'll do this, you'll
double your income. Would you get mad at me if I
proved true? Or would you be glad that I told you that, showed
you you were wrong, and you changed your path and things went better
for you? We'd certainly accept that in worldly, fleshly things. How come we're so resistant to
that same kind of correcting work of the gospel of Christ
brought to us by our beloved Savior himself? who's much wiser
than any of us here. But that's what he's saying.
And he has to say that. Isn't it something that we have
to be told to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly? But
we do. Well, and then notice he says,
as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom. Now
that phrase, with all wisdom, actually comes between the words,
let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, and the words,
as you teach and admonish one another. And it's actually impossible
to know of a certainty whether he means, let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly with all wisdom, or if he means, with
all wisdom, teach and admonish one another. And when I can't
figure it out, I just use it both ways, because quite frankly,
both of them are true. Now, let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly with all wisdom. What does he mean by that? Well,
that when we are being taught the, as the word of Christ begins
to set up housekeeping in us and change our way of thinking, we do not take those things that
he is teaching us by his message. and pick out parts of it that
we wanna argue about with others. If Christ brings you his word,
he brought it to you to teach you to change you. He didn't bring it to you so
that you could go on some social network and prove to everybody
how much you know. and to go in someone else's house
and try to set up housekeeping there and rule them with all
wisdom. First of all, it's a wise thing
to let the word of Christ dwell in us abundantly. And as it's
doing so, let us make wise use of the benefit that comes by
that. And then that would bring us to wisely, or with wisdom,
teach and admonish one another. We have the duty and the responsibility
of being ministers of the grace of God to one another. That's
one of the reasons that you really can't do church right remotely. at least not nearly so easily.
It requires contact among the members. Unfortunately, and this
has gone on for centuries, the worship, even among honest believers,
as I said, there's really no reason for me to stand up and
rebuke those that are phony from the get-go or correct This is
a correction for those of us who honestly do believe and love
the Lord Jesus Christ and all that. This business of gathering
for worship is not supposed to be a spectator sport. Now I'm
on a higher platform and I'm behind a pulpit and I'm the one
whose voice you'll hear most of the time. But that's simply
because of the gifts and position that God has given me and what
I do in this congregation. It's not meant to be that there
is some kind of wall here between me and you and all you do is
come watch what I do. That's not what this is about.
We come that we might minister to one another. If God has put
you in his church, he has given you some form of grace which
is a benefit to his church. And it's not likely that you're
going to be able to exercise that to the benefit of the church
if you aren't present when the church meets. Now, I realize
there's some things that we do for the church of our Lord Jesus
that doesn't involve us meeting. But being as much as possible
at the gatherings of God's people is one of the means by which
God builds up the entire church. I remember Donnie Bell, and this
was years ago, but I don't know if he was having a special problem
with people not showing up, or just like can be common with
us preachers, we get irritated any time somebody doesn't show
up. I mean, we're just flashing, that's the way it is. But he
was saying that he was really tempted just not show up some
Wednesday evening. You'll have Wednesday evening,
him just not show up. Well, you know that people would
be all in uproar about, well, why wasn't the preacher there?
And he was just going to say, well, then why weren't you there
the week before? We are all ministers of the grace
of God. And we should all feel, and when
I say responsibility, I don't mean a burdensome one. We just
don't have another English word to describe what I'm talking
about. But we have a responsibility to one another. to meet with
one another and encourage one another and build one another
up in love. We don't come to church just
for what we can get out of it, though that's an important part
of it. We meet for worship because we are part of the body of Christ.
And as you well know, if your body begins losing parts, It
does not function as well. And notice then how he said,
this can be done. Now, you really didn't know the
song service was this important. Admonish one another, and in
Greek it says, as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual
songs. And you say, are those three different things? Sort
of. The Psalms would have been a reference probably to the Old
Testament Psalms, though the word itself indicates the plucking
of an instrument. Hymns refers to a song of praise. And then just any kind of song
that involves spiritual content. And when you and I gather and
we sing together, we are admonishing and teaching one another. That
word admonish means to put in mind. And so it's good to be here. It's good to join in with the
singing. You're adding your voice to a bit of instruction to the people
of God. And then he goes on and says, with gratitude in your hearts
to God, Now, once again, our translation, and this is necessary,
I'm not faulting the translation for this, it's put the words
in a different order than what you find in Greeks, and sometimes
that's necessary, because they don't put their words in the
same order as we do. But all translation involves a little
bit of interpretation. But if you want to hear it at
the way Paul wrote it, he said, Let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly in all wisdom as you admonish one another in psalms,
hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with gratitude in your heart
to God. The singing comes after the mention
of the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But while we verbally
and with our mouths engage in the Psalms and the hymns and
the spiritual songs, we sing in our hearts to God. When I pick hymns, or sometimes
I ask Bonnie to pick them, or when we have requests, one of
the things that should guide us is, would I want to stand
in front of God and sing this hymn to Him? Because we are. When we sing these psalms, hymns,
and spiritual songs, our Lord here is present with us. We sing
them for one another's sake, we sing them for our sake, but
we are singing and making melody in our hearts and to the Lord
with gratitude. Therefore, the content of those
hymns always ought to be such that they speak gratitude in
some form or fashion, speak a word of praise to God. We are as careful in the selection
of our hymns as we are in the content of our sermons. Remember
Henry once saying, I don't preach heresy, and I'm not going to
sing it either. You know, I've been in some churches, and you
hear the sermon, and they're spot on, and you rejoice. And
they say, all right, let's open our hymn books to hymn number
so and so. And you look at that, and you
think, well, that just denies everything he just said. Why are you singing
that? That's actually happened here
because I've chosen a hymn because I just remembered it, you know,
and maybe most of it's fine, but right in the middle of it,
there's something, we don't believe that. Remember one time back
in Ashland, and we'll finish up with this, you know, been
a great message. And it dealt with limited atonement. And the,
to close the service, a certain hymn was announced. And it was
a great hymn as the original hymn writer wrote it, but John
Wesley got a hold of it, as I understand it, and he put another stanza
on it that said, Lord, I believe we're sinners more than all the
sands upon the shore. Thou hast for all. Redemption
paid for all, a full atonement made. And I remember standing
there singing that and thinking, OK, what are we going to do now?
We just had a message and a glorious message. And some attempt and an explanation
was made, but a better explanation was, I should have read that
hymn better before I announced it. That was the best explanation.
Jesus Thy Blood and Righteousness, I think is the, and I tell you
the first part of the hymn is wonderful, but that last, and
it was added by someone else, was awful. Singing psalms, hymns,
and spiritual songs out loud and in our hearts unto the Lord
is a glorious act of worship and one of the ways in which
the word of Christ is made to dwell in us richly. All right,
you're dismissed until the regular service.