Worship – Colossians 3:1-17

Our reading today is from Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 to 17.

Colossians 3:1–17

If then you have 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 earth.

For 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 what is earthly in you sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.

But yet now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

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 knowledge after the image of its creator.

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all and in all.

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, as 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 priest 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, 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.

We are in the second of a two-parter in worship and seeing what is worship, what are we doing, what do we do here on a Sunday morning.

That's more what we're doing this week.

Last week we're in Psalm 95, and this week we're in Colossians 3, mainly looking at just verse 16, though the rest of it, which uh Lisa read, and actually uh some other bits from Colossians are important for us to see the context.

So I have Colossians 3 open there, and uh yeah, let's get into it.

I I'm Peter, by the way, I don't think I introduced myself.

I'm the assistant pastor here, and you are very, very uh welcome.

Now you might have noticed that Mark's not here uh by virtue of the fact he's not up here.

I think the most obvious uh reason that uh of what happened today that Mark wasn't here was that the kids didn't know what the actions were.

They're always looking at Mark to do the actions.

Um and I'm looking forward to him being back for the kids uh to do the to do the actions.

They did them well, like they did, but uh they could they maybe could have been better.

Anyhow, anyhow.

Um at the first uh the first lesson that I did, is that too harsh?

Sorry, let's get into the sermon.

I forget about that.

The first driving lesson that I had um before we even pulled out, before I even put the the car into gear, before I put the key in the ignition, uh the driving instructor he said to me these words.

He said, Driving a car is like having a gun.

It's dangerous, and you need to treat it with respect.

Now that hit me as a young man.

Uh I was driving my mother's car, so I wanted to be careful.

I didn't want to uh bash anything for her sake and her having to uh sort it out and pay for it.

I also knew something of the realities of the dangers of being in the road.

If you grew up in Ireland, and it probably happened in your country, wherever you grew up to, um the road safety ads uh are pretty graphic to say the least, and if there's certain songs that play, it just sends shivers up anybody uh who watched them when they were young.

But being in the driving seat with my hands on the wheel and hearing him say how dangerous this was, it made me take a moment.

This thing I was wielding was so powerful, and I hadn't realized the extent of that.

For most of us, we don't realize how powerful our voices are as we sing together with God's people.

It might seem like a boring thing that you do, it might even be something that you actively don't do.

You just come to hear the sermon and to chat with people.

Maybe you do sing and you love it, but you don't realize the power that's there.

Because as you sing with God's people, you are being transformed.

And God is using you.

He's using you to shape those around you into the redeemed people that he's saved.

Just before our passage, uh just before Colossians 3, Paul has these two most glorious truths in chapter 2, verses 9 and 10.

And these are that in Jesus God took humanity unto himself, and that we're united to him.

Colossians 2, 9 and 10, for in him that is Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him.

When you stop for a moment to let that sink in, it's almost overwhelming.

That the one true God, the creator of all things, became man is mind-blowing.

But then to realize that in this Jesus, in whom the whole fullness dwells bodily, we are filled.

You are filled.

You have been united to him by faith, and you have been filled in him.

And Paul goes on to describe what this means, saying that we have died with him and we've been raised with him.

Because you are united to Christ by faith, and because he rose from the dead, you have been raised to life with him.

You are alive in Christ, and you will be forever.

What a wonderful, magnificent, and glorious truth.

Let those things sink in and fill every corner of your soul.

You are united to Christ by faith, and you have been raised with him.

Praise him.

And how does this affect us?

What difference does it make?

Is it merely a nice thing to be written down in a book and just put away and kept on a shelf and maybe studied sometimes?

No.

This changes us completely.

It changes how we speak, it changes how we act, it changes how we live, it changes how we worship.

This is the reality out of which Paul writes Colossians 3 16.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

You've been filled with Christ, so let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Let Christ in.

And why should we have any confidence that the word would be in us at all?

It's because of that.

It's because you've been filled in him.

Is it because of your ability or your skill or your smarts?

No.

It's because Christ died and rose again, and by faith you are united to him, having died with him and now are raised with him.

So why wouldn't you let him in?

You've already been filled.

Let the reality that exists come to fruition.

It's like a seed and a tree.

When you plant the seed of an ash tree, you will inevitably get an ash.

When you plant the seed that comes from a birch, you will get a birch.

When you plant an acorn, you will get an oak tree, not an acorn tree, but you get the gist.

We let Christ in.

We let his word in to make its home in us because he is already in us.

Because we've already been filled.

We have confidence that his word will indeed dwell in us, that it will indeed continue to shape us and to come to fruition in us because, like the planting of a seed, you have been filled in him.

Although it's even more than that.

A seed, it only gives the potential of sprouting and becoming a tree.

You have been filled.

So let Christ in.

When you feel empty, when you feel like he isn't there, when you feel like you've been trying and trying to know him and his will, when you feel like maybe you're just not smart enough or theological enough, know for certain.

As certain as Jesus rose bodily from the grave and now lives, seated at the right hand of God, that you have been filled with him, and so let him in, let his word dwell in you richly.

And Christ actually speaks as we gather and he sings among us.

In Hebrews 2.12, Jesus says to his father, he says these words, I will tell of your name to my brothers.

In the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise.

Jesus sings the Father's praise among us.

Jesus tells of his name, he tells all those things that we saw in Psalm 95 last week, that he is our rock, he is the great God, that he is a great king above all gods, that he is the creator of the entire cosmos, that he's our Lord and Maker, He's our God, our shepherd.

In our gathering here on a Sunday morning, Jesus speaks and praises with us.

It's not something special about screen two, it's not something special about this room.

It's that he longs to do two things.

Firstly, he longs to bring glory to his father, praising him and telling everyone about him.

Like a son who's proud of his father.

And his desire is for us too.

He loves us, his brothers and sisters.

He's not ashamed of us.

So he points us to the Father and tells us about him.

He tells us something of what it's like to exist in the perfect union of the Trinity with the Father.

He tells us how his plan was always to save us.

Since before time began, he tells us that the Lord is good, that his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Jesus tells us all this when we gather.

And he sings God's praises too.

When Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago, the words of Psalm 100, which Owen read as our call to worship, they would have been on his lips many times.

He would have heard them often, as with the other Psalms.

And he still sings them today among us.

As you heard them earlier, you were hearing the voice of Jesus.

As you heard God's praises being sung by his people, Jesus was singing too.

As your heart swells with delight in knowing God more, as we sit under his word together, Jesus is proclaiming and preaching the good news among us.

We ought to listen to him and let him in.

Imagine sitting in a museum and you're looking at a beautiful and a complex painting.

You appreciate it and you find more and more details intriguing.

And then somebody comes up beside you and their arms are folded and they start talking about the painting.

At first, you don't actually know if they're talking to you, but you realize after a short while that they know you're interested in that you're listening.

And the way that they talk, it's clear they know the artist and that they love them.

Those details you found intriguing, they tell you why they're there, how the artist created them and what they mean.

The minutes turn to hours and the hours to the rest of the day until the museum closes.

That person just wants to spend their time telling others about how amazing the artist is.

That's kind of what Christ does.

Except He's not just a random fan of the artist, he's the son talking to his brothers and sisters as they gather.

Jesus ministers to us as we gather.

Listen to him.

He tells us about how amazing our Father is.

Hear him singing with joy to our God.

And what Paul is saying in Colossians 3:16, back to the passage we're looking at, is that we actually do the same thing.

Colossians 3:16

We see that we are to be teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

As we sing to God, we sing to each other.

That's our next point.

This might make you feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Maybe it's obvious to you though, but as we sing out loud in a group of people, like on a Sunday morning here, you can be heard by those around you.

And that is a good thing.

Even if you sing out a key.

That's a big part of the reason we sing together on a Sunday morning, so that others can hear.

It's not at all so they'll say how beautiful our voice is, or that you sing lovely harmonies.

It's not an audition to be up here and wherever you're singing, whether it's up here or at the back or at the side.

We all have this role to minister to one another in this way.

We sing out to teach and admonish one another as we're singing out to God with thankfulness.

Let me make this practical for us here at City.

Whether you're on a team serving or not, when you gather with us and sing, you are serving your brothers and sisters.

If you're on the welcome team, you serve us by greeting us and you welcome the visitor, helping them to find their way, helping them to feel at home.

But when you walk in here and you sing praises to God, you are still serving us.

You're teaching and admonishing us.

It's the same for those of you in hospitality.

You come in at 8:30, you get the tea and coffee and all the goodies ready for us by 10 so that we can have fellowship and again so we can feel at home and welcomed.

But when you come in here and you sing, you continue in your service to your church family as you sing praises to God.

The same is true for setup, for kids, for sound, for media, for production, even those praying and reading, doing music.

The way we serve doesn't just come down to what it says on a rota.

We serve as we sing.

For those on the music team, I want you to see that the weeks when you're not up here helping to lead, you are still teaching and admonishing those around you as you sing.

Those serving while we're singing, the sound team, the production, and of course the musicians, it can be hard to sing as you're carrying out a task.

I know it's hard to concentrate on the words while you're trying to adjust the sound or to make sure the slides move on at the right time.

And actually, everything that you're doing is helping us all to be able to sing with one voice.

But I want you to be able to sing as much as possible.

Musicians, if you struggle to sing while you're playing, then try to practice singing and playing at the same time.

See if you can sing just a little more every time you're serving.

If you play an instrument that means that you can't sing, then don't worry about it.

Like take a verse or two or a chorus that's hitting home for you that week, or one that you really want somebody else to hear the words and let sink into their souls.

And don't play that verse.

Don't play that chorus and just sing.

Sing it out.

In all this, I don't want you to feel too high a burden for what you're doing on a Sunday.

Rather, I want you to see what a privilege it is to sing as we gather.

And the high call we have to serve one another in this way.

It's it's a joy, it's a delight to be able to care for our brothers and sisters like this.

I also really, really, really do not want anybody to feel like you shouldn't come if you're not, if you don't feel like you can sing to God.

If you don't feel like you're up to it.

If if that's the case, then this is the place that you should be.

Hearing your brothers and sisters singing out, letting them encourage you in your hardship.

This is the place for those who are lost and wandering.

Let us serve you as we sing to praise God.

Let us all serve you.

And Paul has two ways here that we minister to each other as we sing.

Firstly, we teach as we sing.

When you sing about God's power and majesty, you teach those around you about him.

When you sing about his grace and his favor, you teach those around you that he is a gracious God who bends to bless us.

When you sing about his mercy and his love shown in the cross of the Lord Jesus, you are teaching those who can hear you, from the youngest to the oldest, that God indeed shows mercy to people like us.

That he loves people like us with an unrelenting love.

And the impact of you singing is important not to miss, too.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, to hear people sing of God's faithfulness on a Sunday morning when I know they've had a terrible week, when I know they're struggling, when I know life is tough for them.

It teaches me, it encourages me in my faith, it builds me up and those around them.

When love is not the first thing that jumps to mind for someone because of their interactions with others during the week, this last month, or even these last years, yet they sing of God's love enduring forever.

It helps me to know that his love does indeed last and is sure, even when it feels like love is not elsewhere.

Teach as you sing.

As you sing to God, sing to each other.

Secondly, we warn as we sing, we admonish.

Paul earlier in chapter three, in the section that Lisa read, has just outlined how we should live in response to being raised with Christ.

We are to put to death certain things from verse five.

Remember, we we died with Christ, and we're to put on other things from verse 12, being God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

And these things map well onto what Paul is saying about us teaching and admonishing.

With admonishing, we're calling the wayward back, not to walk in those sinful and destructive ways.

We do both these things, teaching and admonishing in different ways in our lives together.

But Paul is talking about how we do that as we gather and sing together.

As you sing about God's holiness, responding by seeing your own moral failures apart from Christ and confessing, seeking forgiveness.

You are warning others not to be living in unrepentant sin.

When you sing of God as King, you warn others who fail to keep Him king of their lives.

As you sing of His perfection, knowing your own shortcomings, you tell those around you that they are imperfect apart from Him.

As you sing about finding rest in Him, you warn those trying to find rest in other things.

As you sing the truth, week after week, you admonish those who stray into false teaching, thinking that there's another way, another truth.

As you sing, you're like someone helping others to stay on the right path, not to drift off to their peril.

Sing such that your brothers and sisters are called back from going astray.

And be thankful as you sing.

When you sing, let it be from a heart that's grateful to God.

This is essential as we gather.

Both the gratitude and who it's directed to.

As much as I've been talking about the horizontal nature of our singing and our ministering to each other, and that is hugely important.

It's nothing if the vertical is not there.

Similar to last week, we can sing as loud as we want, we can seemingly be the most.

Worshipful people.

But if our hearts are not right before God, trusting Him, then it's all for naught.

And so we teach and admonish one another as we sing together in our gatherings.

But it's not much good if our hearts aren't right.

It's not about performative actions, but it's about the posture and attitude of our hearts and how that overflows.

I mean, I don't think you'll actually have much effect on warning people if you aren't grateful or in teaching them.

Yes, it's to be in your heart, it's to be from a place that's not generally or easily known to anyone else looking on, but it'll be relatively clear, at least after a while, whether there is thankfulness in your heart.

People who aren't thankful to God in their heart generally don't sing with joy.

And if you try to teach and admonish without showing gratitude to God, then it'll probably come across as called legalism.

Rather, if your attitude is to come before our holy God, being grateful that he has called you, that teaches and warns those around you how they should respond.

It's also worth pointing out that we're to do this in all wisdom, Paul says.

This should reverberate out into our actions, all our interactions with each other, as well as in our gatherings here on Sundays.

We should be speaking in wise ways.

We should be approaching each other in wise ways, speaking the truth, whether teaching or admonishing, or both, teaching that in love.

Speaking in love.

Some of us need to take a moment to think if what and how we're saying is loving or not, even if it is true.

Others of us need to consider whether our lack of saying something out of love is having a detrimental effect because the truth isn't being spoken.

What I'm saying here is, and what we learn here is that we're to be wise in how we teach each other and how we warn each other.

But it is a very wise thing to sing with thankfulness to God in your heart, letting that spill out into the ears of your brothers and sisters around you.

So as you sing to God, sing to each other.

Our final main point: let the word of Christ fill everything.

Let the word of Christ fill our gathering.

Let the word of Christ fill our relationships.

Let the word of Christ fill our own heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The word is to dwell richly in us.

It's to infuse and permeate everything.

It's to make its home in and among us.

There's a saying in Irish, uh, Shannokel, Nilain Hinton, Martha Hinton, Fain, there's no hearth like your own hearth.

The hearth is the fireplace.

There's no fireplace like your own.

There's a similar phrase in English that you probably know, there's no place like home.

And that Irish phrase is like that.

Um, but there's more of a sense of this homeliness being centered around something.

The fire and the heat radiating out.

We're to let the word of Christ make its home in us.

His word is to be like that heart, that focal point around which we as a family gather.

In everything we do on a Sunday morning, we should be letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly.

In our conversations before and after, yes, but especially in how we participate in the service, how we respond to the call to worship, in how we respond to a time of confession, how we respond to the assurance of forgiveness that we receive in the gospel, how we give thanks, how we engage in prayer, in listening to God's word, in how we serve, in how we give, in how we treat the Lord's table, in how we receive the benediction, the blessing of God on us, his people at the end.

It should be like putting a teabag in water.

Have you ever put a teabag into water in a glass mug or in a glass pot?

It diffuses out from the teabag through the water to every part, it fills every corner.

That's how it should be with the word, with the gospel in our gatherings.

And I'm not just talking about the content, it's it's in our relationships too.

The gospel needs to infuse how we relate to each other.

What Paul writes for us here is for us as a body, as a people.

He writes to a church, the Colossians.

The you here is plural.

It's for the whole gathered body of believers.

All those who've been raised with Christ and who are united to each other by virtue of being united to him.

The logic works well.

We have been made one in the gospel, as Paul proclaims in Colossians, but but we saw so much in Ephesians.

So that the same gospel is what infuses our relationships.

We've been made one in the gospel.

So that same gospel is what infuses our relationships.

I was trying to come up with some helpful analogies for this.

I'm gonna give you a few because I felt like none of them worked uh quite well.

It's it's like when you take the cells of your bodies, there's fluid in and between our cells.

It's it's through this fluid that stuff gets transported within cells and between cells.

There's liquid everywhere inside us.

It's in the cells and around them and between them.

That's what the word is to be like.

Or it's like dry brining in cooking.

If you haven't just gone, ah yes, Peter, that's the perfect metaphor, then just follow me for a second.

It's very simple.

If you want to season some meat, maybe turkey at Christmas, you can dry brine.

You take your salt, you take your other seasoning, and you rub it into the meat.

You work it in.

And as you work it in, taking your time, the flavors get into the tissue and you taste the difference when it's cooked.

That's how the word of Christ is to be in and around and between us, especially as we think about Sunday mornings, how we sing truths about Christ to each other as we're teaching and admonishing during the service, as we just spoke about.

But it's also in how we help each other apply the truths beyond our weekly gathering.

And that starts straight after the service.

Letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly is not a it's not only to sing with conviction and with gusto about how God will hold us fast to the end because one, you know it's true, it's for certain, and two, you know your friend is struggling with that, and you and you want them to hear it.

How about singing with conviction, but also going to them straight after the service and saying, I was thinking about you in those lyrics.

The more that I behold him, the more he satisfies.

And you say to them, I fully believe that he will satisfy your every longing as you behold him more, as you gaze upon his beauty, as you see him as you should.

How have you beheld him this past week?

What ways could I help you behold him more this coming week?

You could say, How about on Wednesday I share with you something beautiful about God that I've been struck by?

How about we check in at community group and see if our eyes have been lifted upward as we've sought him more?

Let's pray for each other this week that we would know the height and depth, length and breadth of Christ's love for us.

This is letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly.

And that's a huge part of the motivation for us to study the sermon passage in community groups during the week.

There are benefits to studying other passages, and it doesn't have to be this way, but as we spend time together in smaller groups, two or three days after we've heard the sermon, and that we've partaken in this worship service, we spend even more time steeping in the word together.

It's what motivates our teens' ministry.

We partner with parents, who are the primary disciple makers of their children, by helping them to let the word dwell in them richly.

The teens meet up after the service with their leaders every couple of weeks to discuss this, to discuss the passage more, to see how else it applies to their lives, to share what they've learned and how it makes a difference.

This is letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly.

It's what motivates our kids' ministry too.

We are eager for them to be with us here, worshiping with us.

And we want them to be engaging with the Bible in the best way that we see fit for their age and their stage.

And everything we do over in screen six, from the lesson to the activities and the games, it reinforces the biblical truths that they're learning and how it ought to shape their lives.

We are committed to letting the word of Christ dwell richly among us, from the youngest to the oldest.

We want to almost work the word in like seasoning meat.

Let the word of Christ fill our relationships.

And we need to let the word make its home in every corner of us as individuals, too.

Let the word of Christ fill your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

When your heart is torn and you're struggling to know love, feeling like you haven't done enough to earn God's love, let the word dwell in you richly.

And remember maybe some lyrics like how free and costly was the love displayed upon the cross.

When you're struggling to know that, remember the bread and wine, remember his body broken and his blood shed for you.

Let those truths sink deep into your heart.

When your soul is battered and bruised, and you feel like you can't walk anymore, you can't move forward.

Remember Psalm 23.

Remember that he is your shepherd and sing, My soul he doth restore again.

And me to walk doth make within the paths of righteousness.

Even for his own name's sake, let this let his word restore your soul.

When your mind is all over the place and you're anxious, you may ask the questions Who holds our faith when fears arise?

Who stands above the stormy trial?

Who sends the waves that bring us nigh onto the shore of the rock of Christ?

And you'll answer, Christ is our only hope in this life and in death.

Let his word calm your anxious thoughts in the midst of the storms that rage there in your mind.

And when you feel weak, and you just cannot control the things going on around you.

When you try so hard to make changes for the better, but nothing is working.

Cast yourself entirely on him and his strength.

I will not fear when darkness falls.

His strength will help me scale these walls.

I'll see the dawn of the rising sun.

The Lord is my salvation.

Let the truths of the word dwell in you richly, in each and every part of you, in your heart, in your soul, in your mind, and in your strength.

If you've been raised with Christ, let his word dwell in you richly.

Sing to God with thankfulness and let that spill out to those around you, that the word would infuse every part of our own lives individually and as a people together.

Hear those around you singing with thankfulness to God and let that push his word deeper and deeper into you.

The vision of what our lives are to be, having been transformed by Jesus, and as we're continually made more and more to be like him, is amazing.

As we sing with him in our midst, we urge each other on towards this vision, towards this goal of becoming more and more the people he has made us to be.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing each other in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

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