Don’t Forget Your Head

We'll be in Colossians chapter three, starting in verse twelve.

We're kind of jumping in the middle of some instruction.

This is after the much of the first part of

our first half of Colossian's chapter one and two, where

he's talking about all of the things that he the

things that make the the imperatives that he gives in

chapter three that are based on the Gospel. So we'll

kind of go a little bit to and from. So

keep your finger in chapter three. I have I've consistently been,

over the course of my life, those who know me well,

slightly distractable. And what I mean is that at times

I can totally lose my train of thought and completely

be taken somewhere else. I remember having conversations with a

friend of mine a number of years ago, and in

in southern Indiana. It's Southern Indiana is a place that's

the closest to a tundra that I've ever lived in,

right where there's there's snow on the ground until there's not,

and when it starts to fall and it starts to

melt a little bit, and you can see like there's

there's the green grass, and there's the birds. And I

noticed such things. I noticed such things to the point

where I can be having a conversation with you about, say,

I don't know, grocery shopping or something going on in

your life, and then the very next moment this actually happened.

I can say, do you hear that bird? Like just

walking down the road, just walking down the hallway, very

easily distracted by birds. I actually earned a pin one

time that says easily distracted by birds. I have that

as a personality issue that I need to focus on things,

I need to to kind of get the blinders on.

So I usually sit at the front of a of

a room. That's not because I want to be the

best student. It's because I can't pay attention. It's easy.

My got my dad used to say that I would

I was so unfocused and so easily distracted that I

could I would leave. I would lose my head if

it weren't, you know, attached right here. And so that's

the title of this message today. Don't don't forget your head.

And here's part of why it's very easy. It's very easy.

I think when we come to passages like this in scripture,

and there are several of them, paul uses lots of lists.

It's easy for us to sort of take those lists

and write down, Okay, here's all the things that he

told us to do, right, that I can do. He says, like,

do these things. So I'm okay, cool, I'm gonna just

take this down and I'm gonna do these things. And

then I end up just focusing all of my attention.

And we all tend this way at some level, focusing

all of our attention on what he calls us to

do instead of the he who called us to do it. Right,

it's from him and through him and to him. Right,

he's the fountain head of all of these graces. He's

the one who calls us to do these things. Yes,

he calls us to obey in these ways, and he

calls us to do these things. In this case, he's

going to tell us all these imperatives. Put on this,

put on this, put on all of these things, and

he wants us to do that. But I think it's

easy for us to get so distracted by the doing

that we forget about the one who called us to

do these things. We can forget Jesus. You can forget Jesus.

And the Colossians had a similar problem, or at least

they were in danger of having it. They were living

in the context where there were teachers who were teaching that, yes,

Jesus is good, you need Jesus. Jesus is important, but

there are other things that you you know that after

you leave those sort of elementary doctrines, there are other greater,

deeper levels of devotion and religious achievement. Yes, it's about

faith in Jesus, but if you continue in there'll be

other visions, There'll be other things that are accounted for

beyond what was just revealed in the apostles teaching, and

their teachers were even saying things that led them to

what he calls asceticism, like a selfish self discipline and

the worship even of angels. Does it sound crazy? I

hope that sounds crazy, because it's not just them that

are danger in danger of doing this, it's us as well.

So we need to be warned rightly not to forget

Jesus and the seeking of Christian discipleship. It's not that

hard to understand how they got there, and it's not

that hard to understand how we can get there as well.

And I want to call us, so I want you

to see in this text chapter three, verse twelve to

seventeens where we'll be. I want to see in this

text that where's to do everything that we do because

of Jesus. Do everything that we're called to do because

of Jesus. The dus are unmistakably connected to what Jesus

has done and to what He's called us to do

because of him. Let's look together at the text Colossians,

chapter three, starting in verse twelve, read through verse seventeen.

I'm reading from the English Standard version. Put on then,

as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness,

and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has

a complaint against another, forgiving each other. The Lord has

forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these,

put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And 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 and you

richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing

psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your

hearts to God, and whatever you do in word or deed,

do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving

thanks to God the Father through him. It's the living

word of the living God. We'll break this roughly into

three sections. We'll look first of verse twelve to verse fourteen.

Number would do everything that we do because of Jesus.

The first thing is to put on Christ's love. Put

on Christ's love, just as being hidden in Christ, as

he says at the very top of chapter three, being

hidden in means putting to death what is earthly in you.

So it also means putting on the loving character of Christ,

putting to death the things that do not comport with

what Christ calls us to, and putting on who he is.

Paul gives eight imperativle statements here, commands that are aspects

of love. So when I say put on love, you

might look and say, well, love is just one of

the things. But if you look at what he actually

does verse fourteen, the the height of this this instruction

is and above all these put on love. So those

other things that he's talking about are are a trajector

on a trajectory towards love. So while he says compassionate

hearts kind of humility and meeting his patience. He's talking

about aspects of Christ's love. One aspect, he says, is

compassionate hearts. It's the capacity that we have as image

bearers to feel the feelds of another person at a

gut level. You know, if you've experienced somebody who you

love suffering, that there's a there's a move, there's something

that happens really deep. The New Testament word for that

is this blackma, like it's like really deep down in

your guts that you're moved by the feelings of other people. Compassion,

compassion at other's pain. Jesus him self exemplified this, and

at the Tomb of Lazarus he exemplified this when he

looked out above the crowds those who are harassed and helpless,

like sheep without a shepherd, and he had compassion on them.

And often he showed compassion towards those who were those

who were sick, towards those who were struggling, those who

were hungry, those who were in great distress. There's the

suffering of others move you at a gut level, to

the extent that we're putting on this aspect of Christ's character,

Christ's love, it will in increasing measure. Kindness is the

second one that he talks about, which, as we know,

is a fruit of the spirit of God. If the

spirit of God is at work, one of the things

that he is bringing out of you is going to

be the kindness of God. Kindness is an aspect of Christian,

of Christ's own character, but was also an aspect of

God's love and that he has reached out to us,

and it's his kindness, Paul says, that leads us to

repentance because we know what he knows, and we know

that we don't deserve the goodness that he's shown to us,

the kindness that he has shown to us, and the

extent that we understand that we our hearts are are

melted and melted not pushing back against it. Christ showed

us time and time again and how he walked with

his disciples, the honor grabbing xenophobic little Faith of the Twelve,

with kindness. It was kind to them. This is how

we also ought to walk with one another. Humility. He

speaks of humility, which is a it's a right sized

understanding of your status before God. I recognize who God

is more I understand his greatness and his goodness, the

more I understand my own status. Light of that is

not the same. I'm not grabbing for that honor right.

I am going low because that's who I am. That's

who He's made me. Jesus himself, when he was on

earth and his incarnation he said that come to me,

all you who are labor and are heavy laden, and

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,

and learn from me. For I Jesus said him, gentle

lowly in hearts, the same word, lowly in heart, and

you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke

is easy and burden is light. He says, also to

put on meekness in the character of Jesus. It looks

like the kind of gentleness that though he often did

things that terrified people, like scared them to death, he

could do things like speak to the wind and the

waves and they had to listen. He did things and

said things that set the religious leader's teeth on edge

with practically everything that he said and did. Yet there

were still little children who had to be turned away

or it's they would want to come and to be

with him. He was gentle in the kind of way

that others wanted to be near him. Children, even who

are great judges of character, wanted to be near him

because he was gentle in that way. Patience, and these

next three here, I think patience, bearing with one another,

and forgiving one another. For some reason, in my mind,

I think this is true for us. They got some

nods and for serious It's easier for us to say,

just like love one another than it is for us

to really grab hold of the fact that we're to

be patient with one another and bear with one another

and forgive one another. I don't know why loving one

another feels easier. It's not. Those other things are aspects

of what it looks like to love one another right

be patient with one another. It's not just patience in

the sense that you have the capacity to wait, but

you're actually patient when other people are not listening to you.

You're actually patient when other people are not quite as

sanctified as you wish they were. It's not just the

capacity to be able to sit and wait for a

red light to change, but rather the capacity to be

able to sit and wait with patience for a person

to change. Does that make difference bearing with one another.

If Paul hasn't already gotten into it by this point,

he is definitely meddling bearing with one another. It's easier

again for me to say I love you forever than

it is for me to just do the dishes or

take out the trash. I love you forever until it

costs me something. It also takes a lot of discipline

for you to bear with one another who says I'll

love you forever and never takes out the trash. We're

commanded to bear with one another because Jesus knows. He knows,

because he's called us to be together in community, that

we're gonna get lots of opportunities to practice this. Those

of you who are married understand that very well bear

with them and love and forgiving one another. Just as

there will be opportunities for us to bear with one another,

there will be opportunities for us to forgive one another

worship opportunities worship of the Lord. We're gonna have complaints

against one another, and he doesn't just say, like if

one feels that one has a complaint against another, He says,

if one has a complaint against another. These are probably

more often than not legitimate complaints. Another unbiased observer would say, yeah,

that's a legitimate complaint. And what he says is not

just do that he forgive one another, if one has

a complaint against another, forgiving one another just as Ah,

just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also

must forgive. And you will again be like Jesus forgiving.

Just as you have been forgiven, So you also must forgive.

And so we sort of again. The summit of this context,

the summit of this section here is and above all

these things, put on love. You know, saying love is

more important. He's saying love. What they're all pointing to.

Love is the reality to all of these specifics. There's

no higher summit of love than when Jesus of Nazareth

laid down his life for his friends, and even for

those who would reject him. In this case, those who

would initially walk away, those who the very night that

he was crucified would run away from him. He offered

a full payment of righteousness for angry, hostile, sinful enemies

like us. Again, the trajectory of these commands, the compassion, patience, kindness,

all of them is Ultimately love binds everything together in

perfect harmony. In the ESV Christ shows his world his

love in a way that we look at it and

we see unity as what results. You've been called to

one body, he says in verse fifteen. We'll get there

in just a second. How is that going? How is

that going? I want to say that I'm loving well.

If you look back, consider how you're loving those who

are closest to you, those who are most challenging to love,

even those who you are trying to love. Well, just

how is it going? Can other people look at the

way that you engage people and say that looks like Jesus,

Because that's what he's saying. Put on all these things

he's saying, put on Christ. And Jesus never calls you

to the kind of faithfulness, to faithfulness in things that

he has not been faithful himself. He never calls you

to do things he did not show you the example of.

And even in full righteousness complete, it's never disconnected from

him as the source and the standard. He doesn't just

write the rules. He's the source of the capacity that

you have to be able to keep these rules right.

This is the issue with the Colossians. They were not

holding fast to the head. They were just taking the rules.

Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch new moons,

sabbath feasts. If you look back up in chapter two,

that's what they were struggling with. They were taking the rules,

but they were missing the Jesus who gave them. Be

weird for those people who were literally called by the

name of Jesus to forget Jesus. But we can get there.

Because I don't know what it is about our own

my own heart and your heart too. I like to

know what I'm supposed to do, right. I just want

the thing that just tell me what I'm supposed to do.

It's like when you get a game that you get

at Christmas, right, there's always that little learning curve where

you're trying to figure out what the rules are, and

that I don't know about you and me. I show

my impatience by the way that I handle that. I

want to get that done in about ninety seconds. And

so if I get the kind of rule sheet that

requires me to sit there and keep the rules sheet

because I'm like, Okay, what does that card do? Okay,

what does that card do? That's just not very fun

to me. For those of you who like such complicated

Some of you are actually gaming people, and you're like, yeah,

I know exactly, because we just did this last week. Yes,

I know, we did the same thing. We get a

new game every Christmas, and I don't know why we

do that. We should just play the game we had

last Christmas because I would not have to learn all

these new rules, because what I want to do is

to get the rules stuck in my head and then

put the paper in the box and play the game.

I think what we want to do with Jesus is

to learn the rules and then stick him back in

the box and then do the things we're prone to.

That you are prone to, that I am prone to.

That the standard of love that transformed the world, however,

and to what he calls us is the love of

the actual Jesus. He's the source as well as the standard.

Have you gotten to the point in your discipleship that

you're just able to do things, just do the things

that look churchy without holding fast to Christ, who is

the fountain head of the of these graces? Have you

put your personality sort of on a trajectory of kindness

or a willingness to bear with others as just sort

of a standard of churchy behavior, rather than living with

and before others in a desperate awareness that all of

these things come from Him, Him who is the source,

Him who is the head. Is it possible that you've

turned Christian love into a sacred, sweet, unconditional positive regard

on autopilot at this point that would respond the same

with or without Jesus. The danger of clearly pursuing the

good things that Jesus taught us to do in this case,

to put on is that in our do it yourself

fallen nature, we want to forget Christ. We want to

move on from that as quick as as we can,

and just do the things, rather than hold on to

Him from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together

through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that

is from God, Paul says two verse nineteen. And so

as we're putting on this love, you absolutely must remember

that it is his love. That knowledge is going to

permeate every action that flows from a heart transformed by

His love. Do everything because of Jesus. First, put on

Christ's love. Secondly, be ruled by Christ's peace. Be ruled

by Christ's peace, any one of these verses could have

been the only verse we talk about. In verse fifteen,

he speaks. He just says, and let the peace of

Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were

called in one body, and be thankful. The peace that

Christ ultimately secured between God and man should rule the

way that we relate to each other in Christ's body.

That should be the sort of judge telling us how

we're supposed to respond in the moment, not our flesh.

Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross, Paul says,

peace between mankind and God the Father, which ultimately gives

him the right to reconcile to himself all things, including

those who call on him and faith, whether on earth

or in heaven. And that work enables Jesus to present you, you

and me, holy, blameless, and above reproach on that final day,

mature in Christ. Because of what He's done, Our sins

had earned us an insurmountable record of debt that legally

condemned us. Righteousness would have condemned us before the perfect

Holy God, and worse than that left to ourselves were

actually still, Paul says in this book, alienated and hostile

towards God, so dead in our evil deeds that we

don't even care about it. But God in Christ has

taken that made us alive. Together with him, has qualified

us to share in the inheritance of the saints in

the light, having transferred us from the domain of darkness

into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we

have redemption, the forgiveness of sins that can't but have

an impact on us. You and I, who were dead,

have been made alive. Together with Christ. He canceled the

record of insurmountable debt that shood against us with its

legal demands by nailing it to the cross, triumphing over

every single one of the enemy prosecutors in him. And

it's this piece, this peace, that he won, that should

adjudicate our interactions. It's this peace that drives us to

love and good deeds for one another. It's this peace

that reminds us of where we would be without it,

that should rule in the body of Christ. It's a

peace bought by blood that secures for us a standing

with God that we will spend an eternity thankfully, remembering

that we do not deserve the shalom of Jesus transforms

the heart of those who know it. There's there's still

a command here when he says, let the peace of

Christ rule. We've been called in one body to be

thankful for the reconciling piece that Christ is wrought and

live in a way that the piece He has bought

for us changes the way that we interact this internal reality.

What happens at an inner man level is obviously not

where it's supposed to stop, because he says, let the

peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed

you were called in one body. Right, the internal part

is supposed to have an external, an external you can

see it, something that you can see externally. Christmas is

another one of those candy holidays where some of the

good candy kind of just well, some of most of

the good candy's gone by the twenty sixth of date December,

if I'm entirely honest, But there are some pieces that

will kind of continue on and remain into the future.

And for me, I'm looking for the things that have

a slight green tinge to them, because the little little

green on the on the on the package usually means

it's like mint or something which is the best. If

I happen to open one of those things that looks

like it might have a little green tinge, it might

be a little minty, and that I open it up

and it's like dirt chocolate or something, then I just

kindly hand it to my wife because I don't want it,

and she prefers that, right, I can tell I'm supposed

to be able to tell what's on the inside by

what's on the wrapping on the outside. That's kind of

what he's talking about here, but sort of flipped. What

he's saying is that if the thing has happened on

the inside at a heart level, the peace of Christ

is ruling at a heart gut level for you, it's

going to look like unity and love and the body

to what you've been called. People will be able to

look and see the peace of Christ ruling looks like

gospel unity. It looks like gospel unity on the outside.

So Verse thirteen here is not just a warning. It's like,

as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive,

forgive or you won't be forgiven. I think we sometimes

take it that way, and it's not that that's not

necessarily true, that it is whether they're saying if you

have been forgiven, if you've been touched by the piece

of this Christ, it will impact the way that you

relate to eat other people. You have put on this

new self, he says, which is being renewed in knowledge

after the image of its creator. Your new self at

a hard and guts level, is ruled by the peace

that Christ has provided for you. That should impact, It

has to impact. That's what Christ's peace on the inside

looks like on the outside. So what would it look

like in your daily life for Christ's peace to rule

you in the way that you in your work? For instance,

how you respond at work? How could knowing that your

ultimate future is secure forever impact how you handle setbacks

that are going to come. They already came this year,

you already know that the ones that are going to

come up in this next year. How you handle difficult

people at work, those who are likely to try to

be one upsman or pollock political what about how you

get promoted or whether you get the raise. So what

we say is that if this has happened at your

heart level, then that actually goes with you wherever you go.

So that's going to have an impact on the way

that you work. It's not just a church thing. What

about the way that the way that you parent? How

might Christ's peace rule over how you interact with your kids?

How easy do you think it should be for your

anger to get to a boil or discipline? The way

that you use discipline? What sort of tactics and strategies

could you use to help motivate obedience? Do you think

that shame should enter into those things? Is that how

God relates to you? Which ones would you ask God

to help you leave out this year? What about on

the highway? Yeah, Paul's meddlin, I am too. It's the

peace of Christ that rules over how you engage with

these other image bearers on the highways of the great

state of Texas. What about the way that you text

or the things that you text, the tone and the

tenor of your communication that you use for your thumbs

over and over again? Would the peace of Christ change

the way that you write those things? Paul says later

he's going to stay in chapter four. Let your speech

always be gracious, season with salt, so that you may

know how you ought to answer each person. If the

piece of Christ is ruling over you, at a heart level.

It will also rule over your texts and your social

media posts, and your discord and the comments at the

bottom of the page. This should be especially true in

the body of Christ to which we've been called with

the peace of Christ. Rule put on the love of Christ.

And the third verse sixteen, be in dwelt by Christ's word.

He says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you

richly in a way that has an impact, a rich impact,

a multiplying impact. The Word of Christ is to dwell

so that you are thankfully living as a disciple around

others who are also holding fast to Him. The command

here is to allow the Word of Christ shorthand for

the Gospel only, the Gospel, to dwell in you in

a manner that overflows with His abundance to those around you.

How does it overflow well a couple of ways, he says.

Here are teaching one another in all wisdom, and we

have a fairly clear handle on what it means to

teach one another. It's part of the great commission, he says,

to teach them everything that I have commanded. Teach them

that you observe everything that I have commanded you. So

we teach formally and informally. But it's not just sort

of bare rules like do not handle, do not taste,

do not touch right, and it's it's certainly not to

teach a mere observance of festivals and new moons and

sabbaths to try to get to a deeper level of

Christianity merely by white knuckling it. It's teaching one another

in all wisdom about the Christ, who is the source

of all wisdom and knowledge. Paul says, he is the

one in whom we're hidden all the treasures of wisdom

and knowledge. So when he says in all wisdom, he's

saying teaching them Christ, teaching them about Jesus, teaching about

that depths of Jesus, teaching them about the beauty of

this Christ, and admonishing one another. I want to give

a shout out to all the neuthetic counselors or people

who even know what that word means. Biblical counselors used

to be called neuthetic counselors back in the day. That's

what this word is. This, This is what that word

comes from. Those who are warning one another, warning one another,

teaching one another the beauty of this section here is

that this is not primarily given to the leaders of

the church and to the shepherd elders. This is to

everyone in the body. Teaching one another, warning one another

is for everyone. This counseling, this, this warning with the

Word of God is what we should all be about

on a regular basis. The goal is the same to

present everyone mature in Christ. Whether the sense is to warn,

whether the sense is to teach. Same source is Christ,

who is the head. We're to do this in singing

psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Thankfulness in your hearts

to God. This passage was preaching couple of years ago.

Here the center so much was centered on this thankfulness idea.

It's all the way throughout thankfulness, thankfulness, thankfulness. You sing

about things that you're thankful for. I want to spend

more time on this verse just as a recovering worship leader.

But this whole, like psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,

psalms should be fairly self explanatory. If you kind of

go to the middle of your Bible, you've got some

of those. That's what that would have been. Hymns or

songs of praise songs of praise that we have an

example of that. I think actually in Chapter one, verse

fifteen to twenty, when we're talking about he Christ, who

is the image of the invisible God. That's a type

of hymn that would have been used to teach and

admonish others in the body of Christ. Spiritual songs would

be those who are compositions enabled by the Holy Spirit,

intended by Him to mature the body of Christ. Again,

the songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in

your hearts are all tied back to teaching and admonishing

one another as you seek to let the Word of

Christ dwell in you richly. Just as the mouth speaks

out of the overflow of the heart, so also does

it sing. It sings sweetly. We we sometimes make up

songs in our house, some strange songs. Actually, I don't

mean this that we listen to strain songs sometimes. That

happens homeschool is part of the deal. But I mean

that we actually create some strange songs. I have most

of our family lives in Alabama, so we're like fifteen

hours roughly to get there, and fifteen hours is a

long time to drive, you might know, And usually it's

the last hour two hours that's just the worst. By worst,

I mean I was done driving two hours in and

I can't not keep going because I'm not going to

get a hotel one hundred miles from San Antonio, but

roughly about one hundred miles from San Antonio, towards the

end of the trip with you know, after a lot

of really long time driving, there's this one ex it

that has on the right hand side of the road

there is a Love's travel stop, and on the left

hand side of the road there is a BUCkies, which,

by our estimation from the angle that we saw it

looked like a very small BUCkies. And so at the

end of a very long trip, we were all just

completely just strung way out, we were just done with

being in the car, and I started singing out of

the overflow of my heart. Why why would anyone go

to Love's when the baby BUCkies is over there? Right?

And that song is actually a staple. We can't pass that,

We can't pass that exit anymore without like that just

sort of being what we sing. And sometimes it comes

up in other random and you probably have some things

like this as well, right, it just sort of overflows

from within you. In that case, it was the frustration

and also the why would you have a loves when

there's anyway As a Texan, I don't understand why any anyway,

why would you try to compete with that? But where

did that come from? It came from the very seat

of my overtired soul. That's where it came from. My

song was a little silly in that moment because I

was on the fridge, the very the fringes of my sanity.

But what songs do you sing when you're pressed like that?

What kind of comes out? What he's saying is that

if the word is dwelling in you richly, that these

as you're teaching you admonish, and as you sort of

go about life, even at the moments when you're on

the fringes of your sanity, what's going to come out

is what's inside. It's dwelling in you richly. And what

we want to be church is it people who take

the word of God so seriously that that's what comes out,

not crazy songs about Bucky's. All of that is not

necessarily not that we want to be the kinds of

people who who take the word of God to an

extent that we dwell on it, we meditate on it.

It's what's in there, it's what's dwelling in in such

a way that it overflows spill out onto wherever we are,

whatever we're doing, and whoever we're around. Scripture so grips

us that the various taproots of Christ's unifying love have

broken through the hard calichi of our hearts and are

bearing fruit that legitimately surprises us because you look back

and you're like, I didn't used to be that way,

But Jesus, I didn't used to talk. It wasn't that

patience right five years ago when someone was talking about

what they were going through, I'd tune them out in

a heartbeat. But now something is happening to me when

other people are sharing their struggles. What's that about. Well,

that's the love of God dwelling in your heart. That's

the word of God bearing fruit in you. It's a

sign that the truth about Jesus has gotten in you.

Be thankful. Christ's peace is so enthralled us that it's

actually having an impact on the way that I talk

to others in the Body of Christ, especially when I

have a differing opinion. That's the whole point of bearing

with one another. Unity doesn't mean uniformity. It means that

we are able to disagree agreeably. Right, it's a sign

that the peace about Jesus has gotten in you. Bethinks

Christ's word will so permeate us that we are remembering

Scripture at times that we never would have thought. We

heard a sermon passor Josh says, I don't know a

year and a half ago, and all of a sudden,

in the moment when I wasn't even thinking about it,

God use it to bring it back up, and I'm

able to stand up under temptation. I'm able even to

speak the truth to somebody else in love because of

what God has already put in there. It's dwelling in

me to the extent that it overflows at a time

when I most need it. That's what he does. I

want to be an expositionally energetic people. I take this

word and it dwells so that it overflows. The more

we as the people refuse to live without abiding in Jesus,

the more we're going to experience the richness of His word,

his peace, and his love. Is there a better way

to live than that? Can you think of a better

way to live than that? As I was trying to

show you, I wanted you to see from this text again,

this is the peace of Christ, the love of Christ,

and the word of Christ. I wanted you to see

that all of this is to be done. Everything we

do is to be done for Jesus, and for it

to be done for Jesus as one who is chosen,

holy and beloved. Look at verse twelve, he says, put

on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. He says, chosen.

We didn't elect to be in this family. We didn't

pick him. Were ham picked from on high. Just as

God chose the nation of Israel out of all the

other nations on the earth to set his love on,

he has chosen us in Christ. Paul says, before the

foundation of the world, that we should be holy and

blameless before him in love. He predestined us for adoption

to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the

p of his will, to the praise his glorious grace.

How good is he to do that, to set his

love on you, to set his love on me. This

inclusion is going to be part of the song that

we sing forever because of His great grace. Praise be

to God. Chosen Holy, Paul says, were set apart. Paul

says that there's a legal aspect of this, to be sure,

when that we're cleansed from sin and able to stand

in the presence of God because of what Jesus has

done to cleanse us, there's also a set of partness

to it. Chosen set apart unto God for the purposes

that He has called you to. Peter says that you

may proclaim the excellencies of Him. That's to what we

were being called, but that's not where he stops. Chosen,

Holy and Beloved, I want to say to you, on

the authority of God's word and then the name of

Jesus Christ, you are loved, not reluctantly, not partially, not somewhat,

not in the worlds. I will show you goodwill as

long as you do the things that make me happy,

really fully known, really fully loved. It was that love

Christ's love for me, a sinner that ultimately broke me

of my fundamentalist, self made religion and drew me to

find rest in Him. And I pray that's happened for you,

and if it hasn't, we can talk. Jesus loved me,

and he loves you to the extent that he even

calls me beloved. He calls us as chosen ones, holy

and beloved in Christ, because ultimately verse seventeen, whatever you do,

he calls us to this. Whatever you do in word

or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God the Father, through him that we

would never forget the fountain head of Christ and who

these things are thankfully true. And He's called us beloved, chosen, Holy,

and even more than that, he made a seat for

us at his table