Well, Colossians week 13. Suffering. Part three. It's sad when you have a letter
that you preach through and then you have many series underneath
that letter. As we continue in Colossians
throughout this year, just pray that the word of God will continue
to work in your heart in such a way that you can't get over
it. One of the greatest tragedies
of American church is that we do church, that we come to church. There's no such language in the
entire Word of God, no such example lived before men, no such divine
archive set for us to see. Nowhere does it say that we come
to church. Nowhere does it say that we do
church. It says we've been given ministry. And therefore, we perform
that ministry by the grace of God. It says we are the church
and when we assemble, the church gathers. Where is the church?
Wherever we are. The church gathers. We don't
come to it. This property would be well suited
for apartments, well suited for spec houses, well suited for
business offices. This property is only as sanctified
as the hearts that sit within it. There is no such thing as
a church anywhere in the world. ever, as long as the world has
been in existence. There has never been a church,
but rather the people whom God has saved by His sovereign grace
are the church, His body, of which He is the head. And a tragedy
takes place when we come to church and we expect to do church and
then leave church. That's why there are so many
dead Christians walking around with life in their bodies, from
their blood pumping through their veins. but are dead in their
hearts and their spirits and their souls. For the last year,
I have placed in the bulletin often, how can I make most of
the preaching I hear every week? I even went through it a few
months back and it is still there today. And I pray unless something
else needs to be inserted there, it can remain. How do we make
much of the preaching we hear every week? Is it a primer for
your day or you cannot wait to get out? to go do your own thing,
to have your own study, to isageek your own text. Is the preached
Word and the taught Word and the direction of your elders
the glue that holds your spiritual life intact as you discern, as
you test them by right reading and prayer of the Scripture?
Not by what Beth Moore says, not by what anybody else says,
but by what God says. Are you growing in the foundations
of understanding the gospel? Are you learning the new mercies
of God every day? Or do you continue on the mercies
that you grabbed when you were 20 or 10? Or maybe you've never
received them at all, but rather you just have an understanding
of some other God that you can't prove by any means of Scripture. My prayer for you, church, is
that even as I transition and have one more sermon after this
week to you as your pastor, as your teaching elder, I pray that
you would continue to be blessed by the taught word of God, for
that is one promise that we make as the elders of this church.
The preaching of this from this pulpit will always remain gospel
centered, always be reformed and always exalt Christ above
all things. If it is not, I pray, church,
that you would stand against that teaching and that you would
push it out the door because it is of the devil. Please stand
for the gospel. I pray, church, that you would
hear the Word of God. I pray that it would reach deep into
your soul and bring joy to your life. I pray that you can sing
a song like we've sung this morning out of an overabundance, an overflow
of the awesome resurrection power of the gospel. and that Christ
is your all in all, that He is your treasure, that He is the
joy of all eternity, that you would see Christ in such a way
that the whims and the strife of this life would melt away
in front of you, and that you could scoff and laugh at the
depravity of this world, not as someone who laughs in their
face, but someone who can say, I have joy in Christ. I pray that you would truly understand
what God does in His children. Not what you sit there with your
fingers and legs crossed and hope that He might do. God will
and does do miracles in the life of His children. He does give
joy. He does give power. He does give
understanding. He does give affection for holiness.
He does give affection for the brethren. And those who walk
without those things, they may not be His. For if we are able to stand,
professing faith with no power thereof, then who are we? Or
better yet, as I've always been taught, whose are we? Whose are
we? My prayer for you, church, is
that you would hear the words of God. That you would begin
to prepare your hearts for worship as you gather, each time you
gather. that your life would be ordered
not around your vacations, not around your lawns, not around
your hobbies, but your life would be ordered around the gospel,
which requires and demands that your life is ordered around the
body. There are not three arms on a
body, but two. So there is no room for third
arms. Two heads. Christ is the head
of the church, not Christ and Christ and no one. My prayer for you, church, is
that you would see. That you would see Christ as beautiful. Is that the Word of God would
be your only sustenance. Osmosis does not take place in
Christendom. You cannot sit and just absorb
God's grace without His Word. You cannot sit on what you think
you know and settle on that that is right. You must be firm. You must struggle. You must fight. Turn with me to Colossians chapter
1. Verse 24, I will read through
a few verses. And then I will, again, dealing
with verse 24 and the idea of suffering, I will show you just
briefly this morning. And I'll just go ahead and tell
you, and I'm going to read all of chapter 3 in a minute. I couldn't help myself. But in
suffering, let's look here. I rejoice in my sufferings for
your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in
Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the
church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship
from God that was given to me for you to make, listen, the
Word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations,
but now revealed to His saints To them God chose to make known
how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of
this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. I
really want to preach that message, but I want to preach that verse
today, but we'll stay with our theme. Him we proclaim, warning
everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may
present everyone mature in Christ. For this, verse 29, I toil. For this, I labor. For this,
I work. For this, I will interject the
theme here. For this, I suffer. For this,
I suffer. For what? Where do you get suffering? That's what he's talking about.
He suffers, He toils, He labors, He bleeds, literally. He hungers,
He starves, He thirsts for the sake of the elect with all of
the energy of God, Paul, that powerfully works within Him.
And I know I just changed the tense on that. For this I toil, struggling with
all His energy that He powerfully works within me. Church, suffering. And I've said this I've said
this and I've said this and I've said this, but some of us don't
hear it. I want you to hear it today. If you are a child of
God, it will be known predominantly by the mark of suffering in your
life. It will be known. It will be
proven to you as a qualifier because you are in a world that
you are not of. And you will suffer. Even if
you were in a hole in a box in the ground somewhere on an island,
you would suffer. Your flesh would fight against
the power of God within you. Your temptations would come.
Your pride would swell. Your anger would move. And the one person who found
you, once they found out you were a believer, would probably
leave you stranded there. You would suffer. You will suffer as God's children. And sometimes when we hear this
message, and this is what's always perplexed to me, we hear this
message and we go, that's not the God that I know. Then you
know a false God and His name is Satan. And if you disagree
with that, I am sorry. It is not an opinion of this
pulpit. It is the truth of God's Word.
It is that the saints of God will suffer greatly under the
hand of this world, under the hand of the flesh, and under
the hand of the enemy by the direct authorship of God Almighty
Himself. It is God putting suffering in
the life of the church. He brings it. He births it. God told the enemy to touch Job
and then empowered him to do so. He said, I will give you
permission and give you the power. Satan has no power except that
which God loans him. Otherwise, Satan is like Elohim. If he can walk and do what he
wants, when he wants, where he wants, to whom he wants, God is the author. of the suffering
of the church. It is a promise. We said two
weeks ago or three weeks ago now that we suffer for the sake
of Christ. That is the primary thing that
we see throughout the entire scripture, but predominantly
the New Testament as we see the apostles suffering. And we see
Paul and he was saved radically against his flesh, against his
will, against his mind. In Acts chapter 9, he hated the
church and God said, I will take my greatest enemy and I will
supernaturally save him by sovereign, irresistible grace and he will
become my greatest advocate. And my charge to him is that
he will renounce the way of Israel, and He will walk in the way of
Christ, and He will make known to the Gentiles the riches of
My mercy and grace. And those who thought they knew
Me for all ages have never seen My face, for I am seen fully
in Christ. And if someone cannot see Christ,
he cannot see Me. Don't tell him how much he must
suffer for My name's sake. That is the commission of Paul.
There is no two ways to God. There's one way to God. And it is through Christ alone.
It is through Christ. And church, this suffering we
will share every day. And we live in a land that is
free. We live in a place called America. And in this land, we
have the privilege without persecution from the state and militia groups,
etc. We live without fear of being
shot and killed and arrested and beaten for our faith. And
yet, we are the freest land in all lands and we are yet not
established and founded and rooted as a people holistically. It
is where suffering is greatest that the gospel grows deepest.
It is where it is illegal to be caught with a Bible that you
find the most studied thereof. I pray that God's Holy Spirit
will give you a heart to receive the message that I'm preaching.
For if you hold bitterness and frustration in your heart this
morning, I will say this again. Repent. Repent of your unbelief. Because you're wrong. You're wrong. God has ordained
it. Suffering is a gift of God. Paul suffered for the sake of
Christ. Paul suffered for the sake of the church and for the
sake of the world. And that's where I want to go
today, looking at this picture. It's a puzzle here. And it's
fit together perfectly. And it's not one we have to figure
out. It's already a beautiful picture. And suffering, what
does he say here? Suffering. And I use that because
it's what he says. I rejoice in my sufferings for
your sake. And in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in
Christ's affliction for the sake of His body. That is the church
of which I became a minister according to the stewardship
from God that was given to me for you. Why? In order that to
make the Word of God fully known. So Paul suffers so that he would
make the Word of God fully known. To all peoples. Not just to the
Jews. To all peoples. What is the pastor's
job? To make the Word of God fully
known. What are the elders job? To make
the Word of God fully known. No other job. That's it. Are we making it fully
known? Are we walking, elder brothers,
pastors, other pastors that are in the room? Are you making the
Word of God fully known? Are you spending your time doing
all sorts of things in spite of what God has commanded? And
how is the Word of God fully known? Suffering makes the Word
of God fully known. You know why there are so many
false doctrines in the world today? Because there are so many
false teachers in the world today who suffer not, not even labor
over the study of the Word, much less being persecuted for the
right preaching of the Word and standing on the foundation of
what God has commanded them to do in spite that no one agrees
with it. That's why mega-churches are
mega-growing and mega-large. You won't find a gospel-centered
church that grows at a 600% growth rate. You won't have to enter two capital
campaigns to build three buildings because you baptized 300 people
in two months when you preach the right gospel. You won't have to. Because Jesus
Himself says, "...broad is the way that leads to destruction."
Narrow is the gate that leads to righteousness." And you know
what he says? Few will find it. But I'll tell you, when you see
that gate get wide, and that gate's wide enough for a lot
of people. But at the turn of the, what do you see here? At
the turn of all the people of the world, the whole population
of the world, since the beginning of time, since God breathed life
into Adam, Why does the gate that leads
to destruction? And that's beside the grace of
God, except for the grace of God, all of us are already in
that path. Jesus says in John 3 that if
we do not believe, the wrath of God remains. We are conceived
as condemned people. Suffering makes the Word of God
fully known. See, before the time of the apostles, before
the time of Christ, the Word of God had not been fully known. God's oracles and the prophets
had spoken to the Israelites for centuries after centuries
after centuries. And we see them holding to what
they saw as the fullness of knowing God. And they looked forward
to that Messiah. However, the fullness and the
full reality of who God was and how He was to come, the very
people whom God had given His oracles for years, were blinded. Why? Because God blinded them. God blinded the Jews. That they
might not see, that they would not hear, and that they would
not believe. Has God blinded you today? Are you able to hear this message?
Or has He stopped up your ears? And they wanted signs? What is
the sign? Ironically, everything Jesus
did was answering the sign, most of them prophetically. And yet
the Word of God was not fully known except by His grace when
God ordained those apostles, specifically Paul, to preach
then not to the Jews who reject Christ, but to the Gentiles who
never had an opportunity to hear Him. And Paul was giving the full
knowledge of God's Word through the Holy Spirit of God, which
is what we have today, church, which is why I labor so hard
to get you to understand that this text is the most important
thing you will ever own. If I had to choose a Bible or
a meal, brothers and sisters, you better choose the Bible. See, we don't even live in a
culture that has that choice, do we? I packed up my Bibles. I still have my first Bible that
I received when I was five. I packed them all and I'm looking
at this box of Bibles. I've been carrying these Bibles
around for 37 years, some of them. I have the Bible that I
got when I was born. You know, it's got my name in it, my footprint
in the front. How many Bibles do we need, really?
How many people have died just to get pages? And brothers and
sisters of mine that go over to Thailand and they give Bibles
away to the Han Chinese and when they run out, They stop. They're on vacation. They get
off the boat and they get out for vacation and they see that
someone's given away a Bible and they stop and they sit there
for hours and read it. And when they run out and they
see others saying, oh, I'm sorry we've run out. Come back tomorrow. We'll get a new shipment tomorrow.
Then these people who've been reading for three or four hours
will just take their Bible and they'll just rip it in half and they'll
hand it to somebody else. They don't care that it's leather
bound and goat skin and smells so good. They want the truth. They're hungry. God is giving
people a hunger for His Word. And those who hunger for His
Word are His children. I do not believe in a carnal
Christian. I do not believe in those who just suffer the world
and say, oh, I just do what I want to do because ultimately God
will make me right. And I don't have to study the
Bible. You know, one day, maybe later, I've studied it enough.
I've been in church my whole life. That's not true. But we suffer so that the Word
of God is fully known. And the Word of God is given
by those who suffer for it and in it and through it. It is a
labor. It is a toil. It is a work, church. For even if you stand before
your children, not as a preacher or a teacher of the Word of God,
you stand before your children and you live out your faith and
you teach something that you don't hold to, what in the world
will become of you? We have to labor. We have to
work. And I don't know about you, but
most work, even desk work, is laborious. You ever worried yourself
sick? You ever contemplated and thought
to the point where you just didn't know if you were going to move
on? Paul gave the knowledge of the
glory of God, as he says in Corinthians, in the face of Jesus Christ,
through the power of God, he was able to authoritatively state
that faith only came through grace and that grace only comes
through the power given in and through the right teaching and
preaching and reading and hearing of the Word. And suffering, look
what Paul has, I've gone on a tangent here. Suffering makes the Word
of God fully known. Suffering reveals the mystery
that was hidden for ages. See, God in His fullness, the
reality of this mystery was hidden and now is fully known. In who?
Christ. It's fully known in Christ. Suffering
makes the mystery that was hidden now fully known. Christ is the
mystery. I said this week before last
that the gospel, it might have been last week, the gospel is
not a story. The Gospel has been boiled down
to just a story. The ABCs of the Gospel. The Gospel
is God Himself come as a man to take man's punishment, that
He might save a people for Himself and for His glory by His own
will, in His own way, at His own timing. And He did so through
suffering, through exposing Himself to His own judgment, that He
might suffer at the hands of sinful men. That through the
second Adam, the church might be saved. The suffering. As we take the
Lord's Table every week now for this month, it is to reflect
on what God has done in His divine plan of redemption that He suffered
for those who deserve to suffer. And that we must also suffer
as the church. Christ is the mystery. He tells
young Timothy, Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of
godliness. He, Christ, was manifested in
the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed
among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in
glory. How the mystery was made known
to me by revelation, Paul says in Ephesians, as I have written
briefly, when you read this, you can perceive my insight into
the mystery of Christ. See, this mystery was seen, we
go back to 1 John, and heard, and touched, and proclaimed. It was proclaimed. The mystery
was one of cosmic proportion. Things in which angels long to
look. And things into which the church,
sometimes, we get a little lazy. Church, don't be lazy in your
faith. Be lazy in everything else but your faith. And you
won't be lazy in anything. Don't be lazy in the Word. Suffering
is God's way to give His truth to His children, to all peoples.
Verse 27, I know this is odd in the way I'm preaching this
and teaching this. It's a little odd, but just bear with me. I've only
got two weeks. I'm trying to get it in. To them God chose
to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of
His glory of this mystery. In Malachi 1, from the rising
of the sun to its setting, my name will be great among the
nations, and in every place incense will be offered in my name, and
a pure offering. For my name will be great among
the nations, says the Lord of hosts. See, God uses and ordains
suffering so that the world may see Him, and through the suffering
of the proclamation of the Gospel, that those who are His might
come to faith. Did you hear that? is for the sake of the loss that
we suffer, for the sake of the world that we suffer, for the
sake of the church that we suffer. God was revealing Himself through
Christ alone to all the nations. We see in Revelation at the culmination
of the marriage supper of the Lamb, there's all nations. We
see the praise and worship happening in Revelation chapter 5. For
people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation before
the Lamb, worthy, worthy, worthy is the Lamb that was slain before
the foundations of the world, For He alone is worthy to receive
honor and glory and power. Is that the Jesus that you know?
I pray it is. I pray it's the Jesus
who gets you up in the morning. I pray it's the truth and the
gospel that helps you walk in this fire. I hope it's the gospel
that gives you joy of beyond expression, as Peter says. Inexpressible
joy. Because our hearts and our lives
and our love and our affection, our attitude, our focus, everything
we have, our treasure, is put on eternity, is put on Christ,
who is the Kingdom of God, who is eternal life, who is joy.
He's not the bringer of these things. He is these things. Christ
is not a means to an end. He's the end, friends. The reason
you come to church is that Christ may be made much of in your heart.
And the reason you come is that God may see Christ in us as we
sit, as we sing, as we hear, as we teach, as we pray. And
then God is only pleased when He sees Himself. And the only
way He can see Himself in us is if we're in Christ. And suffering for the Word of
God, I've tried to think about this, and this is where I want
to go. Suffering for the Word of God topically, as I've thought
through, there's probably many, many other ways. That means we proclaim the Gospel.
Paul was proclaiming the Gospel, and yes, none of us are apostles,
but we have to teach the apostles. There are no apostles today.
There may be people that do apostle-like things, but no one is an apostle
today. Apostles are over. They died
when John died. God doesn't have a continual.
Otherwise, then we could add to the Word of God. And those
of you who were at the conference this weekend, you heard Dr. Delcor
do a wonderful job about the certainty of the canon, especially
the New Testament. So as we look, we suffer for
the Word of God. That means in our proclaiming
of the Gospel, in every way we go, Matthew 28, As we are going,
we are going to suffer proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. You
know what the gospel of Jesus Christ is not? The gospel of
Jesus Christ is not sharing how cool your church is. That's not
the gospel. It has nothing to do with the
gospel. It has nothing to do with the Bible. Nothing to do with Jesus. Nothing to
do with God. Nothing to do with anything. That's the mindset where I started
out this morning. We have this idea we come to church. You don't
come to nothing. You come to a building. Before, it was a
church with a chicken farm. Praise God for it! It's a resource
that the church must use, not the church must worship. And there are congregations,
there are churches all over the bay that would love to be able to
have access to property. Because it's hard to even rent
something as a church today in California. It's hard. And I
know some churches have been around for 20 years, and they
fly from this building to this building, and just when they
think they've got a good place, something happens and the city says, no,
you've got to go from here. You have to call the toll-free number
in the morning to see where you're going to go show up for worship.
Proclaiming the gospel is going to cause suffering. We proclaim
the gospel so that the church may be saved, so that the people
of God may come to faith. Remember Jesus Christ, Paul says
to Timothy. Remember Christ, risen from the
dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for
which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the
Word of God is not bound. Therefore, listen to Paul. I
endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also
may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal
glory." That is why we suffer. You know what's ironic is most
of us agree with that message. Well, I hope you do, because
that's what the apostles teach. But some of us agree with that
message, but then by direct, I don't know, subconsciously,
We don't teach it or preach it or live it. We see someone who's
downtrodden. We see someone who's going through
all kind of turmoil in their life. And what we want to do
is we want to ease their pain. We want to say, you know what?
Come to Jesus. He'll ease your pain. He does not ease your pain.
He gives you joy in it. But if you really want to, if
you think somebody that's having problems in their marriage because
of some godlessness in a relationship, Just like Sister shared this
morning, you think getting right with God and getting on fire
for the gospel is going to make that relationship get better? Most likely not. Especially someone
who is not God, who despises the gospel. It's going to cause
severe suffering. So we suffer for the Word of
God means in our proclamation we suffer. And also we suffer
in our warnings to the church. Everywhere you look, warning,
warning, warning, warning. Exhortation, admonishment, which means warning.
Warning. Danger. Warning. Colossians was
written as a warning because there were people coming in with
false doctrines, with false teachings, with angel worship, Gnostic ideals,
all sorts of crazy theologies and doctrines, and they were
not only pursuing the Colossian Christians like the cults do,
and I tell you, my view of what a cult is has really gotten big
since I've been in California. There are a lot of cults that
use Christ in their gospel. Some of them use the ESV. And you might have breakfast
with them and think they're brothers and sisters in Christ because
they just are part of a so-called church. Be careful. So here are
these false teachers coming into Colossae, coming into the Christian
community, and not only trying to pursue them, but then ridiculing
them when they would not see their way. Standing up and saying,
oh, you're idiots, you're morons, whatever the word they had during
that time. What's wrong with you people? And imagine a culture
where you stand against the culture, you stand against the culture,
you stand against the worldview, you stand against the ideals
and philosophies of a people, and you try to go into a community
and you sit down at a restaurant and nobody serves you. And somebody comes to you, and
they say they're a brother or sister in Christ, and they come
to you for advice, and you know what you have to say, but you're
fearful of what you need to say because what you're going to
say is going to cause strife. You say it anyway. With all humility,
with all patience, with all love and the power of God, and you
know, it's still going to happen. For this is the message that
you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Here's
a warning that sticks in my heart every day. We should not be like
Cain, who was evil, and murdered his brother. And why did he murder
his brother? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's
righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates
you. See, there's a warning there. And John writes there in 1 John
3, he says, warning, brothers and sisters, the world is going
to hate you if you are in Christ. It has to. And I've said this
many times. If there aren't some people in
your life who are really starting to hate you, then maybe you're too
lazy in your faith. That's a nice way to put it. Do not be surprised if the world
hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life
because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides
in death. Remember that sermon? That sermon rings to me. It took
me a lot of hours to preach that text, to prepare for that text. Everyone who hates his brother
is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding
in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for
us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Somebody
shared with me this week about sharing Christ. And the minute
they brought Christ into the picture, just like Brother Rose
said this weekend, is shut it down. I mean, people are like,
nah. I believe in a God. I believe in holiness. I believe
in loving one another. But don't tell me Jesus is God and He's
the only way. And don't tell me God killed Him so that He could
forgive my sins. So we suffer through proclaiming.
We suffer through warning. We suffer through teaching. There's
a lot to say here, but just listen to God's Word. But we have this
treasure in jars of clay. It's in my favorite text, 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. We have this treasure in jars
of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not
to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed,
but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down,
but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus.
Why? So that the life of Jesus may
also be manifested in our bodies. We who live are always being
given over to death for Jesus' sake. I talked about that three
weeks ago. So that the life of Jesus also may be manifested
in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but
life in you. Since we have the same spirit
of faith according to what has been written, I believe and so
I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak. Knowing that
He who raised the Lord from the dead will raise us also with
Christ and bring us with you into His presence. For it is
all for your sake. So that as grace extends, we
suffer the world so that grace can be given. There's a lot of
points here, but no time. To more and more people, it may
increase thanksgiving. We suffer so that there may be
rejoicing and praise and thanksgiving. To the glory of God. Without
it, there is none. So that we do not lose heart,
Paul says. Though our outer self is wasting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day for this light
momentary affliction. It's preparing us for an eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things
that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen
are eternal. And Paul reiterates this in a single letter here.
And as you'll hear in months to come, in Colossians chapter
3, if you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that
are above. Listen to this, church. Sometimes you don't even have
to preach. You just need to hear the Word of God. My commentary
is really not needed in a lot of this stuff. If you've been
raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Where
Christ is? Seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on
things that are above, not on things that are on the earth,
for you have died. You have died, and your life
is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life,
appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death,
therefore. Do you hear this? This is teaching. This is the
proclamation. It's the suffering in order to
teach. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. Put to
death sexual immorality. Put to death impurity. Put to
death passion. Put to death evil desire. Put
to death covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these
things the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked,
church, once walked when you were living in them, but now
you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, selfishness,
slander, obscene talk from your mouth. That's what's written
there. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you put off the old
self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is
being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its Creator.
Here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised.
Where? In the church, in the body of
Christ. There is no barbarian, Scadian, slave, free, but Christ
is all in it all. Put all then. As God's chosen
one, holy and beloved, put on compassionate hearts. Put on
kindness. Put on humility. Put on meekness. Put on patience. You know what
that means? That means by the grace of God,
we who are His children, when those things come up into our
life and grab hold of our heart, we have the power of God who
raised Christ from the dead through His grace to reach down there
and take the hand off of that thing and say, get out. And when we're not strong enough
to do it, the Holy Spirit of God will. It doesn't mean we
won't respond in maliciousness, but we will respond soon and
quickly with repentance. It doesn't mean we won't respond
or have the feeling of animosity or have frustration or anger,
but soon and very soon, like within a few minutes, God will
bring us to a place that we will see that sin and we will repent
of that sin and we will restore that relationship between God
and us and between each other. Between each other. Put on patience. Bear Him with
one another. And this is hard. If one has
a complaint against another, forgive each other. As the Lord
has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. It's key to going
to the Lord's table today. And above all these, put on love
which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Let the peace
of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called
in one body and be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell
in you richly. Listen to this, church. This needs no commentary. Let the Word of Christ dwell
in you richly, teaching and admonishing, warning one another with all
wisdom, singing songs, singing hymns as unto the Lord, with
thankfulness in your heart to God. And whatever you do in word
and in deed, do it everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Practical teaching. We suffer through this teaching
right here in the same text. Wives, submit to your husbands
as is fitting to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and
do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in
everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke
your children to anger, lest they become discouraged. Slaves,
obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not
by way of service, lip service, eye service, as people pleasers,
but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you
do, work heartily. Ask for the Lord and not for
men. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance
as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he's done,
and there is no partiality. We suffer when we teach. We suffer
when we warn. We suffer when we proclaim. Friends,
we suffer as we mature. That's the reality of what the
church is here for. We are here to be the gospel visible. And
the gospel visible can't be gospel if it's not combined with suffering. And Paul says that he came to
minister, to make known the Word of God, to make known the mystery
that was hidden. Friends, I'm not talking about
the spiritual. This doesn't mean some spiritual
knowledge. It means God Himself visible
in Christ. This isn't some unknown secret of understanding. A person that has been invisible
for millennia. And now we have Him. And we can
see Christ face to face. And we see that we ought to mature.
What does it teach us about maturity? What does Paul teach us about
maturity? In 2008, I did a 10-week series on the healthy church. My brother Stephen is doing a
series on Wednesday night. Are you in week 3? Week 3. about
some of the things that a healthy church ought to see. I want to
encourage you to come to that. Seven o'clock. Grow. Continue to learn the things
that you think you know. We do. We have to learn. Continually learn and grow and
be reminded of these things. Paul says to walk in a manner
worthy of the calling to which you've been called. Speak the truth in love. Put
off the old self which belongs to the flesh to the former life
and put on the new self, which is being renewed in the Spirit
of God. Friends, God's men suffer in
this way. God's people suffer in this way to present the church
honestly, holy, through God's workings and His power. Let me
close with this, and we'll pick up here next week. Look at verse 28. Him we proclaim. We proclaim Christ. We warn. We teach so that we may present. See, you wonder where I got that.
That's where I got that. So that we may present everyone mature
in Christ. See, if we aren't growing up
in Him who is the Head, we're not growing. If we're not being renewed, and
our spirit's not being renewed, and our mind's not being renewed,
what does Paul say in Romans 12? What are we doing? I believe we do church stuff,
which is not biblical. It doesn't mean it's wrong, just
like brushing your teeth isn't biblical, but I could prove that
it's probably unbiblical to not brush your teeth. It's not necessarily
spoken there, but you are a steward of what God has given you in
your mouth. And you are the owner of what
comes out of it. And you will be held accountable
for that. You'll be held accountable for what goes in your ears. You
will be held accountable for what you see with your eyes and
what you put into your body. You will be accountable for the
thoughts of your mind. If you're a child of God, there'll
be no condemnation for you. But you will be accountable. If you're not a child of God,
there will be damnation for you. Except by the grace of God, you'll
be saved. We are to grow up and mature in Christ, which is proven
in how we deal with suffering. It's proven how we deal with
calamity that comes, with floods, with earthquakes, with things,
natural disasters. It's proven. God's power is proven. And next week I'll talk a little
bit more on this. It's proven in how we deal with conflict
in our homes, how we deal with relationship strains, how we
deal with decisions that happen in our communities and in our
churches and in our families. How we deal with things that are
out of our control. And oftentimes we see this stuff and it comes
and then the flesh rises up and festers and we fail to come to
the power of God through grace in the text and see the gospel
has control over those things. And then we fail the test. And
that's why the church is so important because then through the church
we can all be restored. We call that discipline. We can
be restored. but can be grabbed and held on
to. Hey, quit kicking. Quit swimming
upstream. Get into the river of life. Quit thirsting for that over
there and it's just poison. Drink from the living water.
Quit laboring for the food that is perishing and eat of the true
bread of life. That's what the church is for.
Together. As we suffer. We don't suffer
in our own power and in our own self-will and in our own determination. And this is the Good News Church.
What does He say there, the very last verse? For this He toils
for the maturity of Christ and the church to make great... It's
just so much. This is actually about three
weeks of stuff, if I did it properly. For this I toil, struggling,
but here's the power, here's the hope, here's the grace with
all Christ. energy, that Christ powerfully
works within me. So we can make excuses. We can
blame our moms and our dads and our upbringings and our financial
problems and our health problems. We can blame our spouses. We
can blame our pastors. We can blame our siblings. We
can blame our bosses. Are we going to blame Christ?
When the gospel doesn't prove itself, well, you just don't
understand. No, we can't blame Christ. For even in Timothy,
what does Paul say? Somebody even shared that this
morning. When we're faithless, He remains faithful. So we suffer
with the energy of God. We suffer with the power of God.
And so we suffer to labor, to grow and mature together. And so, church, I want that to
sink in. Jesus did pay it all. He did. If He didn't, He's not
a Savior. He's a circus. If Christ didn't perfectly save
you in spite of you, He's just a circus act that you're trying
to buy tickets for. But He's not. He's the perfect,
sufficient Savior. And I'll close with this in seeing
that the suffering that comes in our life helps us to truly
realize what Paul is saying here in this last verse. As Paul suffered,
Christ said, I am enough. The text basically says, My grace
is sufficient for you, in English. So, church, God's grace is sufficient
for you. That problem that you're trying to figure out, that irritation
that you're trying to overcome, that marriage that you're trying
to fix, Your weakness in your faith. All of these things. His
grace is sufficient. How do you get His grace? You
study and learn the Word of God. You meditate on the Word of God.
And He fills you up. You don't believe me. Some of
you don't believe me. I can feel that. You don't believe
me. You already have a but. The foolish man says, but I know. The wise man says, I know nothing
because God is wisdom. Come to the living water. Prepare
your hearts to worship through the Lord's table. Prepare your
hearts to take of these elements. We have an open communion. If
you're a baptized believer in good conscience, you may partake
of the elements with us. And I pray that you would truly begin
to reflect on what Christ has done, and most importantly, on
the evidence of what Christ has done through your relationship
with each other. So let's take some time to pray.
And as I pray, brothers, if you would come and prepare the table.
Lord, God, I wish we could stop time sometimes, that we might
just sit and bask and reflect on Your glory and on Your grace,
on Your perfect love that's illustrated so divinely. Father, just protect these sheep,
Lord. We, the elders, aren't protecting
them, really. We're just trying to stand in the gap and make
right judgments and teach right things and oversee rightly and
rule humbly.