Let's turn in our Bibles today
to Colossians chapter 3. Last time we looked at the first
11 verses in this chapter. And we thought especially about
the union which exists between the Lord Jesus Christ and every
child of God. There's a union, a vital union
between the Lord Jesus Christ and every child of God. That in salvation, that is when
God saves a sinner, in regeneration, in effectual calling, when a
person is brought to trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and
Savior, that there's something that is put off and there's something
that is put on. You notice that in verse 9 and
10. We emphasized this last time. There's something that is put
off. And this is in the past tense
here. And have lied not one to another
saying that you have put off the old man with his deeds. And then in the next verse, and
have put on the new man. This is something which happens
in the new birth. That is, that a person born of
the spirit of God receives a new man or new nature, new principle. Now, when the scripture says
here that we put off the old man, I emphasize the fact that
he's put off, but he's not put out. That in every child of God,
there remains the old man, the old nature. He just no longer
reigns. He no longer rules like he did
when we were dead in trespasses and sins and walked according
to the course of the world. We were under the power of the
ruler of the world, that is Satan. All men are, unless they've been
delivered by the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only
one who has the power to deliver one who is born into this world
under the power and rule of Satan. And when he does, when we're
born of the Spirit of God, remember our Lord said, that which is
born of the flesh is flesh. That's that old nature. We brought
that with us into this world. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, and we will leave it when we leave this world. But
he also said that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. That's
that new man, that new man. Now the apostle named, we saw
this last time in those first 11 verses, he named sins associated
with the old man, such as sexual uncleanness, anger, wrath, covetousness,
which are to be put off. And they are to be put off, this
is important, They are to be put off, not in the strength
of our flesh, but they are to be put off in the power of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You see, when a person is saved,
the Holy Spirit comes to reside in us, to live in us. And He gives us that strength,
that grace, as we look to Him and trust in Him to put off those
deeds, those sins, which are associated with that old man. And then we are to put on, we
are to put on those virtues which are associated with the new man. And again, in the power of the
Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is, and those are named
in Galatians chapter five. Believers, children of God, We
are to adorn the gospel. We are. That's our responsibility
as believers, as children of God. We are to adorn the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, I'm going to go
through this remainder of this chapter in the first verse of
chapter four, and I'm going to divide my message into four divisions,
beginning with verse 12. First, I want us to consider how believers
are here addressed. Now this letter, of course, was
written to believers, to those who knew God as their Lord and
Savior. I want you to notice how believers
are here addressed in verse 12. Put on, therefore, as the elect
of God, holy, and beloved. This is the way God's children
are addressed, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved. Well, look at those three terms,
not in that order, but every child of God is beloved of God. Beloved of God. We live in a
day and in a religious society that has taught people that God
loves everyone the same. And that's a great fallacy. That's
a great lie. You know, the gospel is offensive. I don't want to be offensive
as a person. But I know the gospel, the message
that God has given unto me, it is offensive to the natural man. And when you tell a lost person,
smile, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,
there's nothing offensive about that at all. No, the children
of God are beloved of God, beloved from eternity. This is what the
scripture tells us. Yea, I have loved thee with an
everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness I have drawn
thee. Everyone that he loves with an
eternal love, he draws. That's what the scripture says.
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore Therefore,
because I have loved thee from eternity, have I drawn thee? And where does he draw us? To
whom, I should say, does he draw us? Remember the Lord Jesus Christ
himself in John 6 said, no man can come to me. That word can
has to do with ability, doesn't it? No man, no man apart from
the power of God, the sovereign grace of God, the Holy Spirit,
no man dead in trespasses and sins can come to Christ. You know, what's presented today
in so many places is here's the medicine, we go into a man who's
laid out dead, he's a corpse, dead in trespasses and sins,
and we tell him, here's the medicine, just reach over and take a swig
of it. What good is that? A dead man
can do nothing but stink. That's it. And you know that
scripture. In Psalm chapter 14, God looked
from heaven, and what did he see? He saw man, depraved man,
and that word is used there is stinking in the nostrils of God,
the lost man. No, yea, I have loved thee with
an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, and where
does he draw us? To Christ. No man can come to
me except the Father which has sent me. Draw him, and I will
raise him up at the last day. Beloved of God. He addresses
these believers, first of all, as beloved of God. When you think about God loving
you, God loving me, that should move us. That should move us. Not just old hat. No. Remember the story of the man
who started going to church and he wanted to see the preacher
one day and he went in to see the preacher and he said, preacher,
there's something that bothers me in Romans chapter nine. And the preacher said, well,
you know, there's something that bothers me in that chapter. He
said, what bothers you? He said, it bothers me when I
read Esau have I hated. And the preacher said, that doesn't
bother me. What bothers me is when I read
Jacob have I loved. When I see what the scriptures
reveal about Jacob, the crooked conniving person that he was,
that God loved him. Yes, God's love is special. Beloved
of God. Elect, that's the next term he
uses here. Elect, that means chosen of God,
and that's the result, that comes out of his love. Out of his love,
he chose his people. Election is something that is
God's work, and it's from eternity, from before the foundation of
the world. And the last word is holy. Beloved
of God, elect holy. No man is holy by birth. As we come into this world, the
scripture says that we are guilty of sin. In fact, the scripture
says that man by nature commits iniquity like drinking water. We're not holy by birth, we're
not holy by baptism, we're not holy because as a little child
our parents maybe took us up to the font in some cathedral
or some so-called church building and some man who's dressed up
like mother and wants us to call him father because he takes some
water and sprinkles it on our head and does the sign of the
cross. That makes us holy. Not really. No. We're not holy
by birth. We're not holy by baptism. We're
holy, and every child of God is. That is, we are set apart
in Christ. We're sanctified in Christ. He
is our sanctification. Scripture says, but of him, that
is, of God. Paul's speaking to believers
in the church at Corinth. Of God are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. These are wonderful truths, wonderful
truths. And Paul begins with them. He doesn't pull out the law and
say, thou shalt, thou shalt not, oh no. He begins by mentioning
the blessings that God's people enjoy, and they're all of grace. We did nothing to deserve the
love of God, to be chosen by God, to be made holy in Christ. That's God's work. The love of
Christ, Paul said, constraineth us. That's the reason believers
do what they do. That's the reason they want to
be faithful in worshiping God. Being in the house of God and
being with the people of God, that's the reason they want to
live a life that brings glory to God. It's not because they're
afraid they're going to be lost. No, you're one of his sheep. You're in his hand. You're not
going to be lost. It's because of love. The love
of Christ constrained us. All right, let's move on to my
second point. First of all, consider how believers
are addressed. Don't rush over that. But then,
secondly, consider how a church family should act one toward
another, in verses 12 and 13. Put on, therefore, as the elect
of God, holy and beloved vows of mercies. If there's one thing
that every child of God knows something about. It is mercy. It is mercy. We know anything
about God, any child of God, he knows something about mercy. Because we all freely confess
that if it were not for God's mercy, then where would I be? Where would I be today? It almost
brings Tears to my eyes to even mention this. Where would I be
today if it had not been that God is a God of mercy? Now he says put on bowels. Now
the word bowels here means the enlargement. In other words,
mercy should be, that's what a believer should be all about
is mercy. He's a mercy seeker, and he extends
mercy. He gives mercy unto others, and
we're talking about believers now. We're not talking about
believer in the world, though these things apply, but we're
talking about in the church here now, in the body of believers,
we are to put on vows of mercy, one toward another, one toward
another. How many of us learned to sing
those words? Depth of mercy, can there be? Mercy still reserved for me. Can my God, can my God, his wrath
forbear? Me, the chief of sinners, bear? Can he? Yeah, we know something
about mercy. We should have mercy, we should
be like our father who is merciful unto all, the scripture says,
all of his creation. Grace is one thing, mercy is
something else. God is merciful toward his creation. We should be like our heavenly
father. Put on the boughs of mercy. The second word is kindness. And this we're told is inward,
as tendered, showing mercy with cheerfulness. In Ephesians, it
is, be ye kind, tenderhearted, kindness. After the goodness
and kindness of God, God is kind. And his people, that's a trait
that we inherit. It's a family trait. Our father
is kind. and we are kind. And third, humbleness
of mind. That means that we're not to
think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. You know,
when you read through the letters of the Apostle Paul, this comes
out about him in many different ways, but we read that he was
not a wit behind the chiefest of the apostles. Now, he was
the last one to be made an apostle, but he had all the gifts of an
apostle, all the marks, the signs of an apostle, and he labored
more abundantly than they all, he said, yet not I, but the grace
of God. But my point is, he said he did
not come a whit behind the chiefest apostles, but how did Paul think
about himself? How did he write about himself?
Oh, I'm somebody. I'm the greatest of the, no,
not hardly. He said, I'm less than the least
of all the saints. Now that's saying something,
isn't it? All the saints? Yeah, there'd be thousands. Yeah,
there'd be millions of saints. Paul said, I'm less than the
least. But he didn't stop there. He
said, I'm the chief of sinners. Humbleness. Humbleness of mind. We should all recognize that
any sin that we see anyone else commit, we're all capable of
committing that same sin. We all were hewn out of the same
rock. We were. There was no difference
about us from others who have been saved or who are not saved. We were all the same, dead in
trespasses and sins. The fourth word is the word meekness. This we're told means we shouldn't
envy the gifts and graces, the usefulness, the happiness of
others. When we see God using someone,
We see another brother or sister having gifts that come from God,
and we shouldn't envy them, those gifts and graces, their usefulness. We should rejoice with them.
We should rejoice with them. You know, we see this in the
life of Moses. You know, the scripture in Numbers
tells us he was very meek. above all the men which were
upon the face of the earth. Moses, he saw God face to face. And yet the scripture says he
was so meek above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth. And you remember one point, Joshua,
Joshua was kind of his servant, so to speak, learning at the
feet of Moses and One day Joshua came running to Moses and said,
there's two men, there's two men in the camp that are prophesying. He was jealous. He was jealous
for Moses. They shouldn't be prophesying,
you're the prophet. Well, you remember how Moses
reacted? Would God that all the Lord's
people were prophets. That was his response. Would
God that all the men of Israel were prophets. Don't be jealous
of me. No meekness and then forth long
suffering patiently bearing the evil actions and the evil words
that others may speak or things they may do unto us, longsuffering."
Weren't you thankful this morning that God is longsuffering? Oh,
yeah. In fact, Peter said, count his
longsuffering as salvation. Yes, he's longsuffering toward
us. I believe. Longsuffering. Forbearing and forgiving one
another, We're not only to bear one another's burdens, but we
are to forbear. We are not to render evil for
evil, malice for malice. We are to forgive one another,
even as Christ. Notice what the scripture says,
even as Christ. Verse 13, forbearing one another
and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel, a complaint
against any, Even as Christ forgave you, so also do you. You see what that verse is saying?
That Christ is God. You say, how does it say that?
Only God can forgive sin. Right? Sure. The same parallel
verse is in Ephesians 4 and verse 32. even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you. But here we're told, even as
Christ forgave you. Christ, He forgives us. And how does He forgive us? Well,
first of all, He forgives us freely. You don't buy forgiveness. You
sure don't deserve forgiveness. He forgives us freely. And second,
he forgives us fully. He doesn't forgive, well, 99,
99% I'll forgive, but that, no, he
forgives us not only freely, but fully. The blood of Jesus
Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin, all sin. And he forgives us not only freely
and fully, but forgetting our sins. Sometimes that's one of
the most difficult thing to do, isn't it? Someone offends us and they asked
us for forgiveness and we forgive them, but we don't forget it. And many times we bring it back
up to them. Aren't you thankful that when
Christ forgives us, that he forgets that offense. That's one of the
wonderful promises, isn't it, of the new covenant. Their sins
and their iniquities will I remember no more. You remember, God doesn't. And you know, I've thought about
that fact that we remember our sins. God uses that. God uses that
in our lives to keep us humble before him. We're never going
to forget one of the wonderful things about glory. We're not
going to remember those things. He doesn't remember them now,
but we won't remember them in heaven. The third thing, consider
these necessary parts in a church body. Verses 14 through 17, he
said, above all, and above all these things, put on love, put
on charity. Love is a bond. You know, you
glue something together, you bond two things together. Well,
love is a bond in a church family. We're bonded together by love. by love for one another. And
I've never understood, personally, how someone could get mad at
the preacher and just walk off and never even say goodbye. I've had that happen. It's not
a pleasant experience. But you wonder how a man could
just walk off and leave his wife and children. One of my grandfathers did that. He left his wife with five children. Never heard from him again. That's
a scoundrel, isn't it? That's a scoundrel. Oh, my. Above all, put on the bonds of
love. You know, the story goes in the
Late 18th century, there was a pastor in England by the name
of John Fawcett. And he pastored a rather small
church, a small congregation somewhere outside of London.
And they could barely, barely give him enough to keep him and
his family alive. And then the opportunity came,
a larger church in London asked him to become their pastor. And
he agreed. And that church would support
him well enough to take care of him and his family. And the
day came, you know, for him to leave the small church, the congregation. They loaded all of his furniture
up on the wagon and he climbed up on the wagon and they were
going to leave and he looked down and there was his congregation weeping. And what did he do? He climbed
down off the ladder, started unloading the wagon. And he later
wrote these words, Bless me the tie that binds our hearts in
Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds
is like to that above. The second thing, peace. Peace
must rule in a church body. Every one of us, if we know Christ,
we have peace with God being justified by faith. We have peace
with God. And we have the peace of God
living in us. And in the Holy Spirit, he gives
us peace. And we should do everything that
we can as a body to maintain peace among ourselves. The third thing is thankfulness.
That's another mark of forgiving sinners. God's children are thankful. We're thankful to God, first
of all, for his mercy and grace, for him giving his son, and we
are thankful for one another. We're thankful for each other.
How would you like to be? You are a child of God today. How would you like to be living
out in some some city, some town somewhere, and there's no other
believers, no one to fellowship with. God's raised this church
up. He's brought us all here together
as a family, as a family. Oh, we ought to be thankful,
thankful for what God has done. And he's not finished with us
either. He's not finished. The fourth thing, The Word of
God. Notice the Word of God is all
important in a believer's life. 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. The Word of God is all-important.
You know, David, the psalmist, he said, David, he not only heard
the Word, he not only read the Word, But he tasted the Word, he tasted
the Word. He said, how sweet are thy words
unto my taste. In other words, he meditated,
he thought upon the Word of God. He didn't just have one chapter
to read every morning or two chapters or whatever, read through
the Bible. No, he read the Word of God and
he thought upon the Word of God. That was his food, that was the
manna, those are the green pastures, this is the green pastures. He
said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, he maketh me
to lie down in green pastures. Here's the green pastures, the
word of God. One of the men here in our church
told me recently, was talking about just feeling cold dead
spiritually and he said, the thing that helps me is reading
the word of God. Just read the word of God. Just
get in God's word and read and read and read. Think upon it,
meditate upon it. I'll say this. I've been pastoring
for quite a few years now. If a believer, a child of God,
man or woman, if that person will not read, Usually, they don't grow. They
just do not grow. And I'm not talking about just
reading the scripture. That's the most important, of
course. But reading commentaries and devotions based upon the
word of God. And our hymns, we say they should
be scriptural, shouldn't they? Let me close with this last point. Consider these three family relationships. We've got husband and wife, parents
and children, and employers and employees. Beginning with verse
18. Wife, submit yourselves unto
your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your
wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents
in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers,
provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the
flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness
of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever you do, do it
heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. knowing that of
the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for
you serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall
receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respect
of persons, masters, given to your servants, that which is
just and equal, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. So I read these words again this
past week several times, I thought about what King Solomon wrote
years ago, of making many books, there is no end. And I thought,
think of how many thousands of books have been written on the
secret of a happy marriage, or the secret of a blessed home,
and things like that. Thousands of books. And yet Paul,
He said it all. In nine verses, he said it all. It's not not knowing that is
our problem. It's not doing. Right? It's not not knowing. It's not
doing. Husbands, love your wives even
as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. Wives be
in subjection unto your husband, and parents and children, and
employer and employees, or the boss, I should say, the boss
and the workers. Well, these are just some very
practical but needful things. They were needful in Paul's day,
and they're needful in our day. Before we sing our last hymn,
I have something