"Uncovering the Ugliness Within: A Journey to Spiritual Renewal"

Music.

This morning, we are going to open up our Bibles, and if you have your Bibles

with you, I'd encourage you to always bring your Bible with you.

We're going to be looking at the ugliness of our lives, but we've been looking

at the ugliness of our words and the ugliness within our minds and our thoughts

and the ugliness of our motives and our actions.

And this morning, we're going to try to get rid of the ugliness,

and I've got three points for you, and it's really easy, and I think you'll

remember them. They're so easy.

My kids have been saying them as I've been talking about it this week.

And we just want you to lay it all down before the Lord Jesus.

Colossians 3, verses 8 through 17 says this.

Colossians 3:8–17

But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior,

slander, dirty language.

Don't lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and

all its wicked deeds. Say stripped.

Oh, come on. Stripped.

We've stripped off our old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.

Put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him.

That's what we're all about. We want to know him better every day,

and we want to become more and more and more like him.

Verse 11, in this new life, it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or a Gentile,

circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave or free.

Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves

with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you.

Remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Above all, clothe yourself with love which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts.

For as members of one body, you are called to live in peace and always be thankful.

Let the message about Christ in all its richness fill your lives.

Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks through him to God the Father.

Here we have this incredible passage written by the Apostle Paul to the Christians in Colossae.

And they were facing challenges from false teachings and philosophies that questioned

the supremacy and the sufficiency of Christ.

Is Jesus all that he claimed to be? Is he really God?

Is he really the truly God and truly man?

And the problem was that people were coming to Christ and they were struggling

and they were unsure as to what this new life in Christ was supposed to look like.

And I think a lot of us, we have that same struggle today, don't we?

We come to Christ and we wonder what is supposed to be new and what is supposed

to be old and how do we get rid of the old and how do we put on the new and

what's the process for that?

And Paul's writing to guide the believers here in saying, if you're going to

have a Christ-centered life, before you begin to put on the new,

you've got to take off the old.

And so we're going to look at these three statements today. And the first one

is this in your notes. Get naked.

Get naked. I know some of you are going to remember this.

Get naked. You have to get naked if you're going to get clean and if you're going to get dressed.

The first thing you have to do is get naked.

Colossians 3 verses 8 through 9 says this, But now is the time. Say now.

Colossians 3:8–9

Now. Now. Today. Right now is the time to get rid of your anger,

your rage, your malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language.

Don't lie to each other for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked

deeds before we came to christ we were dressed in ugly filthy rags in fact here's

how paul explained it in ephesians 2 verses 1 through 3 he says and you were

Ephesians 2:1–3

dead in your trespasses and sin it's not that we just were messed up.

No, we were dead in our trespasses and sin, in which we previously walked according

to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air.

Remember, we talked about the two kingdoms a few, maybe a month ago, two months ago.

According to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the

disobedient, we too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires,

carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts.

And we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.

Paul says we were dressed in fleshly desires. And when we came to Christ,

Paul says that we must spiritually get naked.

Verse 9, he said, by stripping off your old sinful nature and all your wicked deeds.

Here's the problem when we come to Christ sometimes. We think that we can just

throw on the new over the top, right? But that's not the order.

You can't just throw on the new. That's not how it works.

When I was in college at Liberty University, I had a Bible teacher named Professor Fink, Dr. Fink.

And he used to tell us stories about this dog that he had.

And he lived on a farm and a ranch, and they had cows, and they had horses,

and I think pigs and sheep.

And every time the dog would get out, for some reason, he was infatuated and

he loved to go to the horse manure and dive into it and roll around in it.

He loved rolling around in horse biscuits.

And I know it sounds crude and rude and nasty.

It is. He'd search for the warmest, freshest, steamiest one and just dive in

every time and roll around in it.

I know it's gross, it's disgusting, but that's a picture of what we were before we came to Christ.

We were dead, we were disgusting, and we were filthy.

Now, Isaiah describes our situation before Christ like this in Isaiah 64,

verses five through seven.

He said, but we are not godly. We are constant sinners and have been all our lives.

Therefore, your wrath is heavy on us.

How can such as we be saved? How can we be saved? Because I'm so filthy.

I'm so dirty. I'm so full of myself.

He takes that dirtiness and grossness a little bit further.

He says, we were all infected and impure with sin.

When we put on our prize robes of righteousness, we still find that we are but filthy rags.

See, it doesn't matter how much good you do or how many righteous activities you do.

You cannot put on, I mean, you can try. You can put on your best of the best

of the best and wear it around with a top hat even.

But if you don't take care of the rest, it's not going to matter.

And I'm not pointing Danny out.

He took his top hat off. I love it. Before we try to put on righteousness, the point here is this,

that we have to get rid of the ugly sin in our lives, and the only way to do

that is to get naked spiritually and strip off the sins that we were dressed in.

You have to shed your old self, and you have to remove the sinful behaviors and attitudes.

Verse 8 says we get rid of the anger. We take off the rage, the malicious behavior,

the slander, and the dirty language. Put to death the sinful,

earthly things lurking within you, verse 5 says.

Have nothing to do with sexual immorality. Say nothing, nothing.

Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires.

Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world.

We have to strip down all of these ugly, sinful attitudes, these sinful behaviors

of our lives, and we have to get rid of them.

You have to get naked before God.

I was talking just recently with someone about their sin, and they said,

I don't want to talk about it. It's embarrassing.

It is embarrassing. Sin can be embarrassing when it comes out.

It's a natural consequence.

But before you can deal with it, you have to be honest about it.

And we have to come forward, and we have to admit it, right?

We have to admit it. We have to be vulnerable with people and especially with

God, and we have to say, I am a sinner.

I need to be clean, number two.

You got to get naked first, and then number two, you get clean.

You don't get clean while you're still wearing your poopy clothes, just to put it frankly.

You got to get naked first, and then you get clean.

You've got to be clean. But how do we do that? Well, in order to get clean,

you must purify yourself through repentance and forgiveness,

allowing God to cleanse your heart and mind.

You've got to purify yourself. You've got to get clean before God through repentance and forgiveness.

Most of us, if you grew up in the church, you know 1 John 1, 9.

But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our

sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness or unrighteousness.

What does that mean? Confess our sins to God.

Here's what it is. Confession is the act of bringing our sins before God.

So it's bringing, we have to bring them to God.

It's acknowledging their seriousness because sin has a price, doesn't it?

It's ugly, it's awful, and sin causes separation from God.

So it's bringing our sins, it's acknowledging their seriousness,

and then sincerely, and these are equally important, repenting and turning from them.

Now, we repent and we confess and we seek forgiveness, but if we continually

do that and we don't repent and we don't turn from them, we're like that dog.

We get them all cleaned up and we scrub them down and we get them dried and

then we open the door and he dives for the poo again.

But that's exactly what we do if we don't turn from that behavior.

You've got to turn from that. You can't just repent. You've got to turn from it.

And then we have to put to death the remaining parts of our old life.

Verse 5 says, put to death the sinful earthly things lurking within you.

Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires.

Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolatry.

Worshiping the things of this world. Because of these, the anger of God is coming.

And here's the difference. You used to do these things when your life was still part of the world.

If you've really come to God, you don't do those things anymore.

We get naked before God, and then we get clean through confession and repentance.

And then number three, you have to get dressed.

You get dressed. You have to clothe yourselves with virtues that reflect Christ.

That's how we get dressed spiritually.

Colossians 3, 10 through 11. So put on your new nature, right? We got naked before God.

We got clean. We dealt with our sin. We confessed it. We've turned from it.

We're not going to participate it anymore.

And then he says, put on. Now you can put on your new nature and be renewed

as you learn to know your creator and become like him.

In this new life, it doesn't matter who you are. And he lists Jew,

Gentile, circumcised, uncircumcised.

It doesn't matter who you are.

We can all come to Christ. The invitation is for all.

It's open to all. And he lives in us if we have a relationship with him.

And Paul gives us two distinct imperatives, two instructions here in these verses.

He says, put on the new nature.

You got to put it on. But then he also says, become renewed, become renewed.

And here's the list of things that we're supposed to put on, found in verse 12 and 13.

Since God chose you, what did he choose us to be?

His holy people, that's who you were chosen to be for him, whom he loves,

you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility,

gentleness, and patience.

Make allowance for each other's faults. How good are we at that?

That's really hard, isn't it? When your sister wears your sweatshirt for six

days and you get mad and angry, it's hard to make allowance for someone's faults.

But you do because you're a Christian and says, forgive anyone who offends you.

And then remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

There's times, honestly, where you are not going to feel like forgiving someone else.

There are times I struggle with forgiving people.

God, you don't know what... Oh, yes, you do. You do know what happened.

You do know what they've done. So why do I forgive?

We're able to forgive because we live with the sense and the realization that

we have been forgiven of so much.

I know the filth of my sin.

I know the wickedness. I know the infections that I carried with me spiritually when I came to Christ.

I know it was an incredible sacrifice. And because of that sacrifice,

I am going to forgive other people.

Here's one. How about forgiving other people when they don't even ask to be forgiven?

That's a true test of your character and how much you love Jesus.

He says, put on tenderhearted mercy.

Kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness.

We're putting all of those things on.

We've gotten naked before God. We've gotten clean before him.

And these are the Christ-like characteristics that we're going to put on,

that we're going to be dressed with.

And these are things that we can do.

We can put those things on. Paul says, after you have put on all these things,

after you're cleaned up and you're dressed in the beauty and the character of

Christ, He says, on top of all these things, as if that wasn't enough,

here's the coat that you put on over everything.

Above all, clothe yourselves with, say it with me, love.

Clothe yourselves with love, which binds all us together in perfect harmony.

We've got to get naked. We've got to get clean. We've got to put on the virtue

and characteristics of Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit.

And then we've got to clothe ourselves with love, which binds us together.

It's the coat that goes over everything we do.

When you speak to someone, it should be with love. When you seek forgiveness,

it's with humility and love.

When you serve people, it's out of love. Why did we go to the nursing home this week?

Was it to make generations popular and famous? No.

It was because we wanted them to feel the love of Jesus, right?

It is the love of God in us and within us that compels us to do everything that

we do. Why do so many people give so much time and serve here at Generations Church?

It's out of their love for God and for people.

Love is the coat that covers everything we do, everything we say,

everything we think. We put love over everything.

And scripture says, if you have everything in the world, but you have no love, you're nothing.

As we wrap things up this morning, I want to go back to verses 10 and 11.

I said that there are two things that we have to do as we get dressed.

We put on the new nature, but also we become renewed.

What does that mean? Verses 10 says, put on your new nature,

and the second part is, be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him.

I love these verses because it says, as we get to know Jesus more and more.

He begins to renew us. The more we know him, the more we become like him.

But here's the thing about getting clean and looking more and more like Jesus.

That renewal part, renewal is an ongoing process.

Renewal is an ongoing process. It's not going to happen all at once.

And here's how it happens. Renewal happens as we spend time with the Lord, as we pray,

as we immerse ourselves in the word of God, and as we allow ourselves to be

accountable to a community of believers.

It takes prayer, it takes the word of God, and it takes accountability from believers.

Colossians 3, 16 says, Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach,

as you admonage or encourage one another with all wisdom through psalms,

hymns, songs in the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

See, it takes a family. It takes community to grow in Christ.

And spiritual growth rarely happens apart from community.

That's how God created us. He longs to be in relationship with you and me,

and he longs for us to be in community together.

That's why connection groups are so important. That's why rooted is so important.

Because you will not grow like you could grow if you were part of a group.

And I'm going to challenge you from now.

Music.

Sign up at the Welcome Center. Go tell them I want to be part of Rooted.

Because it will change your life. I'm not just trying to add something to your life.

I'm trying to help you be renewed. I'm trying to help you grow in character.

Grow in the qualities of Christ. I'm helping you put on.

But you have to be willing. I can't get dressed for you.

I can't get naked for you. I can't get clean for you. I have to do that myself, don't I?

We try to get our kids to take baths as much as possible.

I can encourage them. I guess I could force them.

Music.

But no, you've got to get naked before God today.

And I want us to bow our heads and close our eyes. and I want us just to do

business with God because I know that there's some things that we're battling with,

that we're struggling with, that we need to get naked before God and we need to be honest,

and there's sins that you need to confess,

and there's attitudes that you need to confess.

Music.

I know some of you have an incredible heart and you have a desire to do what's right,

put feet to your faith this morning,

prayer team is up here and I'll hop down and I'll be here down on the floor.

And if you need prayer, I would love to pray with you.

Don't be embarrassed. We are family and we want to lift each other up.

Music.

And then after we have a moment of prayer time, there's going to be a video,

and then the worship team will come and close things out.

It's time to be real with God. And if there's something that you need to get

real about, just take some moment right now to pray.

Get naked, get clean, and get dressed.

You've been listening to the generations church podcast if you'd like more information

about generations church feel free to get in touch with us at info at generation

church dot us or head over to our website www.generationsearch.us thanks for listening.

Music.