Grace Greeley Teaching

2 Corinthians 1:8-11

It is a joy to have this holy privilege and opportunity to bring the word to you this morning. And the text that we’re going to be in today is in the 2 Corinthians. If you want to turn there, we’re going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. And I’m just going to begin reading where we covered the last time I preached, starting in verse 3, and we’re going to go all the way through verse 11.

So 2 Corinthians chapter 1, beginning in verse 3, Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction. So that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

“But whether we are afflicted, it is for your comfort in salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is working in your perseverance in the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even to live.

“Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not have confidence in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead; who rescued us from so great a peril of death, and will rescue us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet rescue us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers on our behalf, so that thanks may be given on our behalf by many persons for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many.”

 Just recapping a little bit to to get into verse 8, where we’re going to be this morning. The source of all of our comfort is our Trinitarian God, the Father of Mercies, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Holy Spirit who lives in each of us as a personal divine comforter. This eternally blessed being is the spring that just continues to produce a boundless stream of comfort to those who are in need.

In this eternal blessed God there is no end or there is no limit to his comfort. It never runs out. It is infinite. And while the Holy Spirit is the divine agent that comforts us, we who have suffered and have been, comfort, comforted, we are also to be conduits of that comfort that we have received, and we are to pipe that comfort into the hearts of others who are in need.

This is one purpose for which God gives us trials so that we will be able to comfort those who are in need as well. The result in the church that practices this. Paul gets into this in verses 6 and 7. The results of a church that practices this is fivefold and it results in a super abundance of comfort, results in salvation, the perseverance of the saints. It results in confidence of salvation and fellowship.

As the church practices this, that Paul describes here, people find real comfort in their trials; people who don’t know Christ, they are saved. As we do this, we sustain one another as one means that God uses for the perseverance of the saints. We sustain one another as we comfort one another. It creates in us a confidence that we know the Lord, when we endure trials and we don’t fall away, we prove to belong to Christ and it knits all of our hearts together in a common goal of the gospel.

That’s what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. He was trying to foster there in that church, that kind of fellowship, and that’s the kind of fellowship that we want to foster here at Grace Church. Who doesn’t want to be a part of a church like that, that has a super abundant supply of comfort to go around for any who are in need or the gospel is freely shared, freely given. People are saved and sanctified, and those who are, are persevering to the end, sustained by one another.

As Paul gets into verse 8, he begins then to explain how this personally worked out in his own life. He essentially seeks to put this very thing that he just described in verses 3 through 7 into practice and bring the Corinthians comfort by explaining one of his own trials and how he was comforted. Here, in these verses, in 8 through 11 that we’re going to talk about today, we find instructions for each of us, no matter where we are at in life, whether we are enduring a trial or not.

If you’re enduring a trial, maybe a significant one, maybe a light one, it’s an example for what you ought to do, how we can think about that and find encouragement in it and if you’re not going through a trial, we also find an exhortation from Paul as to what we ought to do as well.

Let me just read verses 8 through 11 today. These are the verses we’re going to cover. Paul says, “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction which came to us in Asia. We were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even to live. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not have confidence in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead;” the same God, “who rescued us from so great a peril of death, and will rescue us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet rescue us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers on our behalf, so that thanks may be given on our behalf by many persons for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many.”

In our passage here today, we find an example from Paul on how to put those previous verses into practice, how to draw others righteously into our trials in order that they might share in the suffering as well as in the comfort. We might say, this is how we involve others and how we get involved in others lives in order to have the kind of fellowship that Paul talked about in verse 7.

We’re going to see this in four points for this morning. First, the stress of life, the stress of life, and then the sentence of death, and then the sureness of rescue, and then finally the supplication of saints. So the stress of life. Paul immediately jumps into telling us the stress, that of a trial that he had gone through. He said, for we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction, an excessive burden beyond their strength.

 But he begins by saying, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers.” In this verse, Paul bears his heart before the congregation, reflecting on a past trial, letting them understand how seriously he and Timothy were afflicted in their souls. He says, I do not want you, we do not want you to be unaware, brothers. Paul and Timothy do not want the Corinthians to be ignorant of their affliction.

Paul knows that if the Corinthians are going to share in their suffering and also share in their comfort, they have to be brought into what’s going on. If others are going to share in our affliction and comfort, they have to know. Ignorance, it’s just a lack of knowledge. But in this economy of Christ, when we are to be conduits of God’s grace to one another, ignorance is like missing a section of pipe.

The comfort can’t make it from one heart to another. We have to know what’s going on in one another’s lives in order to bring comfort. Paul’s leading by example here in sharing his heart with the people of Corinth, to let them in on a very dark time in his life. But he knows telling people about it is essential. That is to say, we can’t read one another’s minds and hearts.

No one can really know what’s going on in your heart, where you are struggling, how you are suffering, unless you tell them. Oftentimes we sit back and we wait and we’re just hoping someone asks. This is not a burden to wait on other people to try to discern. It’s a burden for you to make people aware of. If we are going to comfort and be comforted, we have to make others aware of our affliction.

If you are the kind of person, maybe you’re more private, you’d prefer to just suffer alone through your trial. You don’t easily let anyone in on your suffering. Maybe you just think you’ll grit your teeth and you’ll get through it. That’s not allowing the Lord to use it to its fullest effect. That’s not allowing others to be brought into and participate in your suffering and do what Paul says the church is supposed to do here.

Paul wanted his trial to have the fullest benefit to the Corinthians. It was a past trial at this point. They had gone through it, and Paul wanted to make them aware of it. And there’s great humility in this. It’s very instructive for the Corinthians and it’s instructive for us. I think there’s a temptation and even a pride in our own affliction to fear man, which leads us to shrink back and suffer alone.

Paul corrected the Corinthians in the first letter that he wrote to them, because they were being influenced by Greek thought that a crucified Christ was foolishness, that a suffering savior was no savior at all, but those who were worthy of being followed, they were the conquerors, the victors, maybe men who did suffer, but they stood tall and triumphed in the end. And I think we can tend to think similarly and even be embarrassed by our own suffering. And this leads us to shrink back and keep it covered and hidden from people.

 Maybe we question ourselves, as Job’s friends did, that we’re suffering because of sin and that certainly can be the case. People do suffer from sin, but that is not what Paul’s referring to here. And often times in life trials, they’re not a result of sin. But we can often succumb to that temptation to think that or to fear that other people will think that if we tell them that we’re suffering.

We find it almost embarrassing that we have fallen into some kind of trial and affliction. We fear that other people will think we’ve fallen out of favor with God. We want to appear as if we’ve got everything together before people, because oftentimes, especially in the American church, the mark of godliness is that we are being blessed according to the American definition of blessedness, which is often materialistic.

Paul isn’t concerned here that if he tells them of his deep struggles that he’s going to be discredited in their eyes. Paul knows, on the contrary, that in the economy of Christ we’re going to suffer as Christ suffered. We have to remember that, that the normal state in the Christian life is affliction and that there are seasons that we enjoy reprieve, but they are not the norm.

And Paul’s telling the Corinthians, to have a minister, an apostle, a pastor who is enduring great affliction, that’s actually a mark of his faithfulness and the Lord’s faithful formative discipline in his life. Hebrews talks about this explicitly. In fact, just turn over there with me to Hebrews chapter 4, just briefly, Hebrews chapter 4, we so often forget as the church in Hebrews forgot when their pastor wrote to them. He just outright says you’ve forgotten this.

We need to remember these truths as well, that in the economy of Christ, formative discipline through our afflictions, it’s a sign of God’s favor, not his disfavor. Hebrews chapter 12. We’ll just begin in verse 5 where the pastor writes to them. He says, “And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE FLOGS EVERY SON WHOM HE RECIEVES.’ It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which you have all become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

I think, we, like this church, we forget that the Lord often afflicts us, because He loves us, that He wants us to form us into the image and character of Christ. I think we tend to think of trials and afflictions as something to be embarrassed of, like the Corinthians thought of the cross. Something to keep hidden in a way that you only mentioned if you absolutely have to, rather than something that we wear as a badge of faithfulness, boasting in our weakness as Paul does.

Let us remember, beloved, that it’s the illegitimate children that go on and live peaceful lives, but it’s those that the Lord loves that he brings trials, even significant deep trials into their lives, as Paul is going to talk about here. And let us follow Paul’s example and inform others of our great affliction in order that comfort might flow between the members of our church, like as conduits of God’s grace.

So whether it’s pride, fear of man, doubt, whatever it is that might hold us back, let’s push past that and invite others to comfort us. Involve others in what’s going on in our life, because if ignorance exists, hearts cannot connect. Grace cannot flow from one person to another when that conduit is broken; we have to make others aware of our need.

And I actually think just to to commend him, he was just up here in the pulpit a few minutes ago. Our pastor, I think, has done this well. He’s made public comments from the pulpit regarding the serious trial that they’re enduring and seeking prayers on all of our behalf. He has shared more details than even Paul has shared here with the Corinthians.

Look, look at what Paul says again in verse 8. If you’re still in Hebrews, go back to Corinthians verse 8. Paul says, “We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even to live.” The only circumstantial detail that Paul gives about his trial is where it happened in Asia. It’s the only circumstantial detail we have of what Paul’s referring to.

We would love to have all the details regarding what he and Timothy went through, the what, the when, the how, etcetera. But he gives us none of those details because those aren’t really the essence and the importance of what Paul wants us to know about his trial. Instead, he describes this affliction with really superlative language, describing the severe degree of the affliction and how it affected them spiritually.

I think there’s great instruction in that for us as well. We often want to get hung up on the details of the who and the what and the when and the where and the why and the how’s of people’s afflictions. We can get so easily distracted with those when what we need to know and deal with is how the person is handling it spiritually, how we need to minister to their hearts.

Paul says he doesn’t give any details other than the fact that it happened in Asia. And he says of himself and Timothy, we were burdened excessively. Excessively is actually before burdened in the Greek translation, it’s thrown to the front of the sentence for emphasis. And this word, it’s a compound word made-up of the verb, ballo, which means to throw and then the preposition, hyper, which means, it has indicates the idea of beyond something.

The word, the compound word here together refers to something exceeding an extraordinary degree. So whatever the the scale is, whatever the distance is, it’s well beyond that. If that’s not descriptive and superlative enough, Paul adds that the affliction was so excessive that he was burdened beyond strength. That word, beyond, there, it’s that same preposition of the compound word before hyper, a degree beyond the scale. Whatever the mark is, it’s beyond that.

And it modifies the word strength here, which is the word dunamis; refers to strength, might, power, capability, ability. These two words could be used to describe a ship that was so overburdened beyond its capacity that it sank. Paul doesn’t tell us, the what, the where, the when, the why. Well, he tells us, the where, but he doesn’t give us any other details.

Whatever the affliction was, it was excessive. It was beyond the mark of anything that they had previously suffered. It was beyond their strength. I think it’d be, we would be remiss if we didn’t stop to consider how bad this might be. Whatever Paul’s afflictions, for it to have been beyond him, beyond anything that they had experienced before, it had to have been really, really bad.

We must remember, as one commentator encourages us, that Paul had no small degree of strength and ability to endure. If it was beyond all the other things that Paul had endured, it was very significant. We can actually get a sense of what this might have looked like if you go over a few pages to Chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians. Paul lists a bunch of the things that he had been through, and we actually get a sense of the fact that this is what he’s referring to here is beyond all, of all of that, with the language that he used.

It’s those that the Lord loves that he brings trials, even significant deep trials into their lives.” Bret Hastings

Paul’s life was filled with great affliction, far worse than I would say, probably with certainty, this is far worse than anything any of us have ever been through. And you get the sense from the passage that we’re in that whatever he’s describing in our verses here is worse than the battery of things he mentions in Chapter 11.

 Look at verse, we’ll begin in verse 24 and then we’ll skip a section in the middle before and, and then read through 33. But Paul says, “Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes, less one.” That’s being hit with a whip or a rod; a lot of times five, five times. “Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked-a night and a day I’ve spent in the deep.

“I’ve been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the desolate places, dangers on the sea, dangers from among false brothers. I’ve been in labor and hardship, in many sleepless nights, in starvation and thirst, often hungry, in cold and without enough clothing. Apart from such external things, there’s a daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”

 And then skipped down to verse 32. He says, “In Damascus, the ethnarch under Aretas the king was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize me, and I was let down in a basket through a window in a wall, and so escaped his hands.” We don’t know what Paul’s affliction is that he refers to in chapter 1 here, whether it was a physical affliction or whether it was the concerns for all of the churches.

Whatever Paul’s referring to that happened in Asia, it was so severe that it was beyond all of these things. If you go back to chapter 1, it was so severe that Paul says, “that we despaired even to live,” This word, despaired, it’s a word that means, to be at a loss psychologically, just to be at the end of yourself. You have no idea what, what am I going to do next?

 MacArthur notes that this is a word that refers to having no passage, no way out, no exit. You can imagine ourselves on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. You’ve tried everything. You’ve plugged, tried plugging the holes. Nothing’s working. You’re at a loss for what to do next. You’ve sought every avenue to fix the problem, and you’re at the end of yourself. And you’re coming to grips with possibly your own death. You’re not sure how you’re going to make it to tomorrow. You see no escape from your desperate situation. You can’t see how you could go on in life. That’s how Paul and Timothy felt.

Whatever it was, they were just at the end of themselves. Have you ever been here, beloved? Maybe you’re there now. Maybe you’ve, you’re there and you’ve been trying to bear it on your own. Don’t do that. Let others know, so they can buoy you up. They can keep your head above the water.

Don’t let your fellow church members be ignorant of the affliction that you are enduring. No matter how serious, no matter how significant, no matter how you might fear. It makes you look before people. You can’t be helped if you don’t make them aware, because there is hope. But before Paul turns the corner to hope, he talks about the purpose of these superlative afflictions that they are enduring.

And we find that in our second point: the sentence of death in verse 9, Paul described the stress of their situation, their affliction, that they despaired even of life. And then he talks about the sentence of death driving us further, leading us further to the depths of despair, into the valley of death, as he describes this trial. Look at verse 9 again. He says, “Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves.”

 So again, before Paul turns the corner of hope, it gets even darker. If it could get worse. If he’s despairing even of life, he says we had the sentence of death within ourselves. This word for sentence of death, it refers to a legal judgment. Some take this literally to mean that a judge or a magistrate had sentenced Paul and Timothy to death. I don’t think that was the case.

Paul’s, if you read the text, he’s being very self-reflective here, not making a declaration of some judicial judgment. R.H. Lensky put it this way. He says, “They themselves and their own selves have had the sentence of death. They themselves pronounced it in their own hearts.” This is a judgment of Paul and Timothy in their own life. Whether it was a physical reality or this is just an expression of how they felt in the situation.

 Whatever it was, Paul and Timothy, they felt themselves in such a bad state that someone might as well declare them dead. In fact, you might even say Paul was declaring himself dead. We might say Paul was calling his own time of death. They had felt that they had expired. Their natural ability and strength, it was gone. Natural vigor in life was gone.

But it is here that Paul and Timothy, and if you’ve been there, you maybe have experienced this. It’s when we were at the very end of ourselves. When we have no strength left in us, no vigor left, no life left in us, we don’t have the strength to go on. When we think our time of death should be called, we realize that our heart continues to beat, that something or someone else outside of ourselves is keeping us alive.

An alien force beyond us is sustaining us. Paul recognized this. It was sustaining him when he would have otherwise perished. Paul realized he was at the end of himself, but he was still alive. God was sustaining him. Paul, we know Paul and Timothy, of course, they, they knew this already, that God was sustaining them. But he declares that it was even more evident when he was totally at the end of himself, when he had no more strength. He could not go on; he recognized that God was carrying him. God was sustaining him.

And herein we find another purpose for our trials. Not only is it as we studied previously, and not only is it so that we can comfort others, but here we find another purpose in verse 9, “So that indeed we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not have confidence in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.” This is another purpose beyond the purpose of being able to comfort others.

Our great afflictions are given to us by God, so that we would not have confidence in ourselves. We are so prone, beloved, are we not? When life is going well, we live as if we’re living on our own strength. When life is going well and none of us get up in the morning and, and think, I’ve got this, I don’t need God. None of us think that.

None of us intellectually assent to that, but we also don’t acknowledge our dire dependence on him either. Practically, we do live as if we’re living in our own strength. We do live as if we don’t need him, and therefore we have a great deal of confidence in ourselves. And the Lord is so kind to dissuade us of that notion, is he not? We might not like how he does it, but he does it to certainly shape us into the image of our savior, as he teaches us our true creaturely nature and our dependence on him.

 Paul and Timothy, they were at the end of themselves. They called their own time of death, but in their amazement, they then continued to live on the power of God. This was so that they would have no confidence even in themselves. Even the mighty Apostle Paul, he was brought to the end of himself to realize he’s nothing. His strength was nothing. That God is the sustainer of all life.

Paul recognized there was this same God who raised Christ from the dead. It was this same power that was animating his good as dead body. In the midst of this affliction. This gave Paul and Timothy confidence that they could then endure anything, because all of their trust, all of their confidence was in this God, this infinite source of power.

And even if they died under their affliction, the duress of their affliction, or if someone killed them in persecution, they knew that if God still had plans for them, he could raise them from the dead. So dear one, whatever you’re going through, if you feel like Paul and Timothy here, like somebody might as well call your time of death, you are at the end of yourself. You’re done. You don’t know how you can go on. Then, beloved, you stand in the advantageous position of being able to acutely recognize that you live on the sustaining power of God and not yourself.

Each of us are, in reality, sustained by this power every day, but we are often unaware of it. But if you’re in a trial like this, you know it’s only God’s power that sustains you. Therefore, you no longer put trust and confidence in yourself. All your confidence is in him. And while this is no doubt very, very painful, whenever it happens, it is for your good.

How much more is God magnified in our minds, as awesome and worthy of praise when we see him sustaining our very life? How much stronger our affections in worship during the depths of our trials? How much more do we adore him for sustaining us and carrying us through the valley of death? How much sweeter is our rejoicing in our thanksgiving, when he does bring us out the other side of such trials.

Trust in him, beloved, not yourself. Let all your confidence be in him and rejoice. Don’t scoff at the trial the Lord has given you. Don’t waste it, but rejoice when you get to see this up close and personal, because when you do, you get to see all of his attributes in such vivid colors; all of God’s attributes, his goodness, his kindness, his wisdom, his mercy, his grace.

All of these things are so much brighter and clearer to us when we’re going through deep, deep trials and therefore it is good, because he is glorified and magnified in our minds, so that we don’t put any confidence in ourselves, but only in the God who even has the power to raise the dead. That was one of the purposes of this affliction on Paul’s life, that he might not put confidence in himself, but in God.

And Paul begins now to move from the depths of despair. We’ve come down with him into the valley of death to then start to come out the other side where he has the declaration of deliverance and rescue. And through this he means to give hope to those insignificant afflictions, just as he was comforted and received hope. Again, Paul’s just trying to put into practice what he told them in 3 through 7 here.

 So that brings us to the third point, the sureness of rescue, the certainty of rescue. Paul says, the beginning of verse 10, “God who raises the dead, who rescues us from so great a peril of death, and will rescue us, He on whom we have set our hope.” Whatever Paul and Timothy endured, the rescue was nothing short of a resurrection miracle. It wasn’t a literal resurrection, but one commentator says so close to death were they that their deliverance was identical with raising them from the dead, raising them from the dead.

 If you were here, back when I preached through Jonah, we talked about a similar deliverance. The language of Jonah when he writes about this is so vivid. Jonah was thrown overboard at his own request. And he recounts sinking down into the sea. And it was right as his life was fading away. He was drowning. He was beginning to pass out. He was seeing his life slip away as he was underwater. And he says right at the last moment, God rescued him. His rescue was, of course, a fish. But the point is, Jonah was seconds from passing out and drowning and perishing in the depths of the sea.

And right at the last second, a fish sent by God snatches him up and rescues him from certain death. That is the kind of dramatic deliverance that Paul recounts here. Whatever the affliction was, God delivered them from their peril. And Paul doesn’t mean to recount this just for the sake of displaying God’s power, though that is one reason. But he does so because it gives him confidence.

As he recounts this, it gives him confidence and he’s hoping it gives the Corinthians confidence and hope that God will do so again in the future. Then he tells them that, he did this for us and he will do this. He rescued us from so great a peril of death and will rescue us. God does not delight in the death of his saints, but he delights to rescue them. God is a Savior by nature.

God is a God who loves to deliver his people from peril. Bible story after Bible story teaches this all throughout the Old Testament. We see this. We’re going to be back next Sunday evening, we’re going to be back in 1 Samuel, picking up where I left off when we stopped in equipping hour. We’re going to be in chapter 17. I’ve been reading this. This has been on my mind that David volunteers to fight Goliath. A little shepherd boy fights a giant and everybody thinks he’s walking into certain death. But as we know, David and all Israel were delivered that day.

God is a God of deliverance. Paul says, “He delivered us, and he will deliver us.” God’s past faithfulness to deliver us is meant to encourage our hearts when we’re in the midst of deep, deep trials. While we don’t have this certain promise that God’s going to deliver us every time, some trial may end our life, the point here though, that Paul’s trying to make is God is prone to deliver his people. He has delivered us and he will deliver us. Whatever’s going on in our life, we need to have this mentality that God will deliver us.

When we’re in the midst of a great trial and we think that we can’t go on, we can find great comfort in remembering God’s past deliverances, all the ways that he has delivered us in the past, or we can be encouraged by others recounting how they’ve been delivered. Which is exactly why Paul’s writing to them here, to bring them comfort. Whoever amongst the Corinthians are struggling in trial, Paul means to bring them comfort.

If God can deliver him from, him and Timothy from this certainly he can deliver the Corinthians out of theirs and certainly God can deliver us out of ours. It brings hope and comfort to recount how God has rescued us, how God has rescued others, and to think upon how our God loves to rescue his people. He is a savior by nature and Paul could confidently say, “He rescued us from so great a peril of death.” How can we not go on and have confidence that he will rescue us from whatever else we go through?

It is this God who has the power to raise the dead that Paul says, “It is he on whom we have set our hope.” The English usage of the word, hope, is way too weak. We use that word so flippantly. We say things like I hope it will rain tomorrow, or I hope I get this thing, or I hope my wife makes me this for dinner tomorrow, or whatever it might be. I hope I get this thing or that thing or.

The hope in Scripture, it refers to something that you have great confidence in, that it is going to come to pass. It’s not a matter of, if, but it’s just a matter of, when. It is a patient waiting, waiting with confident expectation. We can’t have confidence in ourselves and have a firm hope in God. We can’t hold confidence in two things.

So if we’re confident in ourselves, then we’re going to be standing on slippery ground and we will have no confidence in our trials and we won’t be confident in him. We have to stand on the sure footing of our sovereign God. We have to fix our eyes on him, the author and perfector of our faith, the pioneer of our faith, who has raised Christ from the dead and will rescue you from so great a peril of death.

The verb here, we have set our hope, it’s in the perfect tense, which means it’s a past action with ongoing results. And here the emphasis is on the ongoing results. We have this enduring hope, this ongoing result of continued hope, that God will rescue and he will rescue all the way to glory, whether sooner or later than we expect; God will rescue us.

One commentator talks, notes this, that even if we, “even if we get to the end, even if our trial brings us to the end of our life,” he says this, “When he then does let us die, when his work with us on earth is completed, he removes us with one final deliverance, the most blessed of all.” We can be certain that God will rescue us, even if it is that final rescue of bringing us home to be with him.

Luther says this; he says, “Finally, when our last hour has come, God will grant us a blessed end and graciously take us from this veil of tears to Himself in heaven.” This is the great hope that we have as believers. There is no greater rescue than that to be rescued from this life of sin and death. And we have this great hope regardless of what we are going through. God is a saving God. He loves to deliver his people and he will rescue us.

When God answers the prayers of many for rescue, this leads to prayers of thanksgiving that redound the glory of God.” Bret Hastings

There is always light at the end of the tunnel for the believer. It may be near, it may be distant, but there is always light and life and hope as a Christian. Don’t despair, beloved, in the midst of deep trial, as sure as Christ was raised from the dead, he will rescue us from all of our troubles. It is certain, and we can count on it. We do not know when, but we can be certain it will happen, but we aren’t there yet unless the Lord comes back right now.

Okay, we’re still here. We’re not there yet. We’re still, some of you, I know, in deep, deep trial, still awaiting God’s rescue. Paul transitions then to the means by which God delivers us and provides help in times of affliction. And that is point four: The supplication of the saints. The supplication of the saints.

Look at the end of verse 10, “And He will rescue us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers on our behalf, so that thanks may be given on our behalf by many persons for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many.” This also brings up a translation issue.

If you, I’m reading from the LSB, but if you’re reading from any other translation, every translation renders this verse very differently. And the issue comes down to whether the last of the three mentions of rescue go with the sentence in verse 10 or whether it carries over into verse 11. The ESV renders verse 10 like this, “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.” And there’s a period there starting a new sentence, “On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again.” And then there’s a period at the end of verse 10. Most translations, that one’s kind of the outlier.

Most translations rightly recognize, as does our, our LSB translation, that the last part of verse 10 needs to be a part of verse 11, for there is not a grammatically complete sentence. There needs to be a finite verb for the sentence to be complete. Later on, the verb for giving thanks, it’s a finite verb, but it’s found in the purpose clause and can’t function as the finite verb for the main clause.

So our translation here, it gets it technically right, but it’s not exactly smooth and it’s not really easy to understand. Another translation, the Common English Bible, translates it, “We have set our hope on Him that He will rescue us again, since you are helping with your prayers for us.” This translation translates that participle there at the beginning of verse 11, joining, in helping. It’s a participle, and it translates that participle as a causal participle. In other words, this would be Paul saying God will rescue us because you helped us in prayer.

That’s at least a little bit smoother and easier to understand, but I don’t think Paul is getting at causation here. Another translation, the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, translates this as, “We have put our hope in him that He will deliver us again while you join in helping us by your prayers.” This interprets that participle as a temporal participle, which means, God will rescue us at the time of your helping by your prayers.

So this would be like when in Acts, we’re actually going to read this in a few moments. The church was praying for Peter, who was in prison. And while they were praying that night, late into the night, Peter was released and showed up to the house. Is Paul saying while you’re praying, you’re going to help us by deliverance? No, this was a past event. The LSB, the translation that I’m reading from, it doesn’t make that translation decision for us. It leaves it up to the interpreter.

I think there’s a better option than that temporal or the causal, and that is to translate this participle as a participle of means. So it would read like this, if we supply the, by means of, to our translation here, this is how it would read, “And he will yet rescue us by means of you also joining and helping us through your prayers on our behalf. So that,” and then it continues on, the means by which God is going to bring deliverance is through the prayers of the saints.

There’s also that little phrase, through your prayers, which most commentators recognize that, as a dative of means, indicating the instrument. So Paul is saying that the people of Corinth, they’re a means of helping to rescue, by the instrument of their prayers. So, beloved, if Paul told the Corinthians that they were a real means to providing help in deliverance, this means that you and I are also a real means of helping others when we lift them up in prayer.

It is a temptation in our realm of theology, with our understanding of God’s sovereignty, to minimize, if not in doctrine, than in practice, to minimize, the importance of prayer as a real means of help. Just turn with me to Acts chapter 12. I think we tend to be a little bit more like these folks who prayed for Peter out of Acts 12. Just want to read this to illustrate the point.

 We do pray to God knowing he is sovereign, knowing he controls all things from before the foundation of the earth. He decreed all things. And so we often pray to him, hoping to have our will aligned to his. We’re doing it because we love him. We want to fellowship with him. We’re command to do. We do it out of a great love, but we don’t always see it as a real service to other people.

This passage in Acts 12 illustrates this point. We’ll just begin in verse 1. I think we’ve got time for this. Acts 12 beginning in verse 1, “Now about that time Herod the king laid hands on some who belonged to the church in order to harm them. And he had James the brother of John put to death with a sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.”

 So all the people who the church, they’re just assuming this is what’s going to happen to Peter as well. “Now it was during the days of Unleavened Bread. When he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him,” to force, “to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out before the people.” probably to put him to death.

“So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the Church to God. Now on the very night when Herod was about to bring him forward, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and guards in front of the door were watching over the prison. And behold, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter’s side and woke him up, saying, ‘Rise up quickly.’ And his chains fell off his hands.

“And the angel said to him, ‘Gird yourself and put on your sandals.’ And he did so. And he said to him, ‘Wrap your garments around yourself and follow me.’ And he went out and continued to follow, and he did not know what was being done by the angel was real, but he was thinking he was seeing a vision.”

 Peter didn’t even believe it was real. “And when he had and when they had passed the first and second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads into the city, which opened for them by itself; and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. When Peter came to himself,” that is he, he still had a hard time believing he was real.

“He said, ‘Now truly I know that the Lord has sent His angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting. And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. And when he knocked at the door of the gate, a servant-girl, Rhoda, came to answer. And when she recognized Peter’s voice because of her joy she did not open the gate.

“But she ran and reported that Peter was standing in the front of the gate. And they said to her, ‘You’re out of your mind!’ But she kept insisting that it was so. And they kept saying, ‘It is his angel.’ But Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the door, they saw him and were astounded. But motioning with his hand to be silent, he recounted to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison. And he said, ‘Report these things to James and the brothers.’ And then he left and went to another place.”

How often do we beloved like these folks, maybe we’re, we’re not even as diligent to praise, these folks, I don’t think. But we, even if we are praying, how often do we, don’t actually expect it to have any real effect as they didn’t. They told the young girl there, they’re, they’re no doubt praying for Peter’s release and she says, he’s here and they’re like, Nah, you’re crazy. They didn’t actually believe their prayers were going to affect the release of Peter.

This is beloved where the application comes in for those of you who maybe aren’t going through a trial. Obviously this is applicable for everyone, if you are going through a trial, but especially if you are enjoying a time of reprieve in this pattern of of life, of affliction and reprieve, then you have a responsibility to help others through prayer.

If we believe what the Bible says, then we believe that the prayers of the faithful man are effective. As James tells us in James 5:16, we hold the sovereignty of God firmly in one hand and the responsibility of man firmly in the other hand. And while we don’t comprehend, fully comprehend how God could have decreed all things before time that will come to pass and that our prayers are effective, the Bible teaches both and we have to hold both of those things.

If we believe this, then let us, as the writer of Hebrews says, take hold of our confession of our doctrine and not just say we believe it, but act on that and pray. I think we are more prone to do this for ourselves when we are in a trial, but we have to be just as diligent to do it for others as well. Hebrews 4:16 says, “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

 We’re so much more prone to approach the throne of grace when we personally need grace and mercy to continue to walk in faithfulness. But we need to understand that Paul says we have to do the same thing here for others. We are, as believers, a real means of joining and helping others through our prayers. “Therefore, let us draw near to the throne of grace with confidence.”

Not just confidence that we can draw near in Christ’s righteousness that God will listen to our prayers, but confidence that Christ really wants to deliver his people and rescue his people by means of our coming to him in prayer. The Lord will, by means of your help through prayer, supply grace to those who need it. Beloved, don’t think of prayer as the ministry you do when you can’t do anything else. It is a real means of help.

Therefore, draw near with confidence, with this confidence, and pray to our God who loves to rescue and supply grace to help in time of need. The Lord is sympathetic to our cause, which is what it describes right before verse 16 in verse 15. He is not a high priest who is not sympathetic. He’s sympathetic to our cause, he desires to rescue, he desires to give grace to sustain his saints. So let us be faithful and be the conduits that can bring that to people.

So the supplication of saints, they’re a real means to help one another, bring comfort to one another. And that brings us to the ultimate purpose here, the purpose of our prayers, the purpose of our trials. Look with me at verse 11. I’m actually still in Acts. If you need to go back to 2 Corinthians verse 11, we’ll back up to the end of verse 10 where the thought starts. “And He will yet rescue us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers on our behalf, so that thanks,” so that here’s the purpose of God’s rescue, “so that thanks may be given on our behalf by many persons for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many.”

 “He will yet rescue us.” So that for the purpose that thanks may be given by many. I have kind of some quotations that I’ve patched together just to, I think, these three quotations from a commentator by the name of Richard Pratt, David Garland, and John Calvin, just to kind of summarize this. They say Paul acknowledged the purpose behind his sufferings and deliverance, God’s glory.

When God answers the prayers of many for rescue, this leads to prayers of thanksgiving that redound the glory of God. Paul’s ultimate concern is not his rescue from danger, but that God will be honored more and more. Hence, when we mutually pray for one another and obtain our desire, that is, God answers it. The glory of God is so much more set forth inasmuch as we all acknowledge with thanksgiving God’s benefits.

That is to say, God is so much more glorified in our minds as we pray for one another, as we lift one another up in prayer, as God delivers, because he is a deliverer, all of our prayers will redound to his glory as he answers them, and then we, our hearts overflow in praise and thanks to him. I love how Paul starts this all the way back up in verse 3, declaring the blessedness of God as the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, declaring the glories of God and here he ends it with that which will magnify that reality.

That is when we fervently pray for one another and he answers those prayers. Many hearts lift up praise and thanksgiving, recognizing his great rescue. The more who pray, the more who give thanks, the more God is lifted up and glorified both privately in our own hearts and corporately, as those things, as those blessings are made known.

And again, Paul can’t but help focus, put the focus on the people in their prayers as the means of bringing this about. He says, again, thanks may be given for the gracious gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many, emphasizing our responsibility in prayer and the real means of help it is to people.

So, beloved, if you are going through a trial, maybe you feel as if someone should call your time of death, your despairing of life or maybe you’re going through a less significant trial, don’t let your fellow church members be ignorant of it. You need them, you need their help, you need their prayers, and they need you and don’t lose hope.

Remember how God has rescued you so many times in the past, how he has rescued so many others, Paul included. How he has strengthened you for all of your trials, how he has sustained you, and how he will continue to do so. Remember how he loves to rescue his people, but if he chooses to leave you in your trial a little bit longer, we have this ongoing confidence that he will one day rescue us from all trial and all peril.

So, beloved, keep your eyes fixed on him and for all of us, let us draw near to the throne of grace with confidence that we might be the means that God uses to supply our brothers and sisters who are in need with grace and strength to endure until the Lord does see fit to rescue them. Let’s pray.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, our God of all comfort, our Father of mercies, our Savior Jesus Christ, our Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We lift you up in our minds and hearts this morning. This passage has lifted you up. Paul and Timothy have lifted you up before our eyes as the magnificent, glorious, all-powerful God who can raise the dead, who loves to deliver his people, who will deliver his people. And I just pray, Lord, that we would remember that.

That you would be magnified in our mind as a God who loves to rescue his people. That you would be magnified in our minds, glorified in our hearts. That we would pour forth prayers to you and praises and thanksgiving when you answer them. And I pray that we would be all more diligent to pray for one another, that we would remember it’s a real means that You have ordained to supply grace to those who need it. I pray that we would grow in this, grow in our diligence to pray for one another as a church. Please do this in us. By the power of your spirit we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Colossians 3:15

Well, we are returning to the study of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, so you can turn to Colossians chapter 3, as today we consider a single verse, Colossians 3:15, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.”

Consideration of that single verse is going to occupy us for the next hour, and it’s also going to take us into our time of communion around the Lord’s table in the fellowship of the Lord’s Supper.

But the contextual setting of that verse, as you know, as we’ve been studying together, the contextual setting of that verse is sanctification. Sanctification, the doctrine that explains the progressive growth in practical holiness that is the lifetime occupation of every Christian believer and is also a distinguishing sign of every true Christian.

After Paul has given a positive presentation of true justification and a negative polemical critique of a false gospel that’s troubling the Colossians, Paul has started this chapter, chapter 3, by orienting the hearts and the minds of the believers in Colossae toward Heaven, toward heavenly things, toward Christ himself, who is everything to us.

So in order to keep seeking the things that are above, in order to set our minds on the things above, we have to go to war against anything that drags us back to our former sins. We have to mortify every single impulse of the old self.

We have to choke off its power and its influence, and that’s what we saw in Colossians 3:5-7. We have to put off all the associated bad behaviors of the old self as well. That’s Colossians 3:8-9. We have to shed all of that like dead skin.

And now that the old man is truly dead and gone because of Christ, we’re no longer identified with that old man. So we are aggressively stamping out every remaining vestige of the image of the old man in us. We’re erasing every trace of his sinful character. The way of the old man is the way, as we all know, the way of futility and frustration and conflict and darkness and death.

But praise be to God, right, verse 10 of chapter 3, that we have put on the new man. We’ve put on the new man, who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

Now, what used to define us, like verse 11 says, that which had cut deep grooves into our personality and what shaped our character culturally, ethnically, socially, politically, economically, whatever it is, those old categories of verse 11, they all fade to black as we all learn together as one body of Christ.

We learn a new culture. We learn a culture that is revealed to us from Heaven, that settles on us, that changes us, that shapes us, that develops us, that matures us. We are, as Colossians 3:12 says, the elect of God. We’re holy, we’re beloved.

And we find out, here, that when God chose to bring us near to himself, when he reconciled us to himself in Christ, he brought us all in. He withheld no right, no privilege. He pulled out all the stops, having given us his beloved Son, as Romans 8:32 says, “God was pleased also to freely give us all things as well.”

God made us citizens of his kingdom, with Christ as our King. God adopted us into his own family, making us younger siblings of Christ, our brother. God made us living stones in his temple with Christ himself as our great high priest.

And God brought us into the very depths of his mind, revealing his will to us. And he’s given to us all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ. And he’s given us Christ, the Word of God incarnate. He’s given us Christ as God’s living Word, as the great prophet that Moses promised, who is God’s final word, as Hebrews 1:2 says.

So as citizens of his kingdom, as children of the father, as living stones in God’s temple, as students, true disciples, privileged to sit in his classroom, sit at the feet of God’s Christ, soak up the knowledge of the truth, learn the wisdom of the eternal God, God wants us to dress the part.

Look at verse 12. “So as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and graciously forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord graciously forgave you, so also should you above all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”

One new people dressed like that are of all people most favored, most privileged, most blessed of all people. What they wear, how they behave, the excellence of their bearing, the dignity of their comportment and their demeanor, all of this truly befits their new station: to adorn the beauty of their God.

So as kingdom citizens, how are they to be governed? As sons and daughters, what family identity marks them, keeps them close? As stones in God’s temple, what is the mortar that binds them together? What knowledge compels their hearts, mind, will and emotion, what knowledge compels their hearts in unity? It’s this, verse 15, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.”

The unity comes through the ministry of our head, Christ, whose peace is to rule each individual heart for the unity of the whole body and for the sharing of the harmony of gratitude. I’ll say that again. The unity spoken of, here, comes to the ministry of our head, the Lord Jesus Christ. His peace is to rule in each individual heart for the unity of the whole body and for sharing in the harmony of gratitude.

That has been my prayer, our prayer, for Grace Church I’d say for many, many years. It’s been our prayer, and it’s what I hope the Lord will, he is producing, and I want to see him continue to produce this in our church.

So several things to understand, here. First, the expression, “the peace of Christ.” This is the only time it’s used like this in Scripture, “the peace of Christ.” So what does that mean? And then the ministry of Christ’s peace, how does that work? And then what is the resulting mentality? What is the resulting mentality?

So the first point, number one, the meaning of Christ’s peace, the meaning of Christ’s peace. In the original, Paul puts that expression, “the peace of Christ,” he puts that up at the front of the sentence, which gives it emphasis in the text. So “the peace of Christ,” let it rule your hearts, “let it rule in your hearts.” That’s how it’s expressed in the original.

“The peace of Christ,” then, is the chief and the critical component, the chief element, here, for understanding verse 15. And there are several important questions that come immediately to mind when you examine this. We understand peace, the word eirene, opposite of polemos, where you get the word polemics, from that word polemos. It’s the word for armed conflict or war.

So peace in its most objective sense is a state of civility instead of hostility. It’s stability instead of agitation and strife and discord. And when there is a cessation of hostility, when there is an end to armed conflict in warfare, that objective peace creates conditions in which subjective peace abounds, where there are feelings of peace.

So peace is tranquility instead of turmoil in this subjective sense. It’s serenity, not tumult. It’s calm instead of agitation.

And so, as I said, several questions come to mind, here. Does Paul, then, here in this expression, “the peace of Christ,” does he refer to objective peace, which is a state of peace instead of war? Or is he talking about a subjective peace, like a peaceful feeling?

And if it is a subjective sense, is it the sense of peace that Christ himself has? Or is it a sense of peace that he gives? And by the way, why not simply say, “Let peace rule in your hearts?” Why does Paul add the genitive “of Christ” to this word peace?

Okay, and speaking of that genitive, what kind of a genitive is this? I know you’re all thinking it; I’m just giving an expression to your questions. What kind of a genitive is this, anyway? Is it a descriptive genitive, that is, Christ-like peace? Is it a possessive genitive, which, the peace that Christ has, possesses?

Some commentators identify this as a genitive of source: peace that is sourced in Christ or comes from Christ. Or maybe it’s none of the above and something else entirely.

Let’s answer that last question, first, because I know it’s the burning question on your heart right now. Since of Christ modifies what is called a verbal noun, remember that from your Greek study, right, modifies a verbal noun, it’s a noun related to a verb, it can’t have any of the senses that I just mentioned to you.

So if you had those in your mind and you’re thinking, Oh, it could be A, B, C, and that’s, none of those. It’s not a descriptive genitive. It’s not a possessive genitive. It’s not a genitive of source.

Those elements may be in the concept, here, but they are not in the grammar since the genitive of Christ modifies what’s called a verbal noun, a noun that has a verb related to it. So peace, eirene, that’s related to the verb eireneuo, eireneuo, to be at peace, to live in peace, to keep the peace.

Well, since it’s, this genitive of Christ is related to this verbal noun, there are two options, here. It could be an objective genitive, or it could be a subjective genitive. We’re making decision trees, here, right?

If the peace of Christ is an objective genitive, then Christ would be the direct object of the verbal idea and the noun peace. So make peace with Christ would be what it’s saying here.

And when we try to run that, then, back through the sentence in verse 15, it would be, Let making peace with Christ rule in your hearts, which not only is confusing, but it sounds like an unbearable, intolerable form of legalism. Making peace with Christ? Try to, you try to make peace with Christ and let that rule your hearts. Man, we could never do that, right? Huh.

So we hope this other option is going to make a bit more sense and actually lighten our load. And it does. But let’s find out. If the peace of Christ is, instead, a subjective genitive, Christ then becomes the subject of the verbal idea, so Christ makes peace, or perhaps the peace that Christ gives, the peace that Christ, Christ brings.

So does that work? Let’s run it through the sentence. “Let the peace that Christ gives, the peace that Christ brings, rule in your hearts.” That’s more like it. Not only makes sense, but it actually comports very well with the theology of the Bible, the entire Bible, particularly what we see in the New Testament.

So having clarified the kind of genitive this is, we now have an objective starting point grounded in the grammar, which is a solid foundation to work from. We try to practice the historical-grammatical approach to biblical interpretation. I wanted to take you through that little exercise to show you a little bit how this works and something that really matters for your soul right here.

What kind of peace does Christ bring? It’s an objective peace, right? Peace instead of war. If we ask what kind of peace has Christ won for us, well, that’s clearly the answer. It’s an objective peace, a cessation of hostilities. No more are we at war with God. More importantly, no more is God at war with us. He’s given peace. The conflict is over. We’re reconciled, right?

What about a subjective peace, though, a mental serenity, a tranquil heart, a conscience at rest, emotions in complete control and in service to the cause of God? Does Christ bring that, too? Well, he sure does. The primacy of place has to belong to the objective peace that Christ has won for us when he died on the cross.

Paul is referring, at least initially, here, to what he taught back in Colossians 1:20, that “through Christ God made peace through the blood of his cross,” objectively. “Though you were alienated, enemies in mind and in evil deeds, he has now reconciled you in the body of his flesh through death, to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.” Objective.

And Paul tells how the subjective peace was accomplished in Colossians 2:14. He says that “God has cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us. He’s taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

So those who were once alienated, God brought near. Those who were once enemies, God now calls friends. Those who were once guilty of cosmic rebellion and, get this, siding with the devil, God conquered their sin and he conquered their hearts. He forgave them. He went further than that. He adopted them into his own family, and he did so all in the ministry of Christ.

“Therefore,” Romans 5:1, “having been justified by faith, we have peace with God,” objectively, “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We who were once helpless and ungodly, Romans 5:6; we were once vile sinners, verse 8 says; once God’s enemies, verse 10, by grace God saved us, changed our status.

He brought about a cessation of hostility. God, God is no longer at war with us. Our Creator is no longer bent on our annihilation, on our un-creation, to disintegrate us, cast us into Hell.

Now, by justification, he’s declared us righteous. He’s turned us into citizens in his kingdom, friends through Christ, members of his own family. That, beloved, is an objective peace.

You know who’s always had that peace as an abiding, unbroken, everlasting possession? Unbroken, objective peace is the sole possession of the triune God himself, right? It’s more properly understood as the blessedness of God, shared perfectly among the members of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.

Setting the Trinity aside to talk about humanity, now, among humanity, one man has possessed unbroken, objective peace with God. There was one man who was created with it, but broke it. Adam, right? He lost that peace in unbelief and transgression.

Sanctification, the doctrine that explains the progressive growth in practical holiness that is the lifetime occupation of every Christian believer.” Travis Allen

But Christ, the new and better Adam, he never departed from that peace. He always possessed it, always abided in it. There was never any conflict, not one bit of conflict between him and the father.

So Paul draws our attention to this. He uses the expression the peace of Christ. Having peace with God through the redemptive work of Christ, we can consider peace now in its subjective sense, which he also possessed. Christ also possessed that, always.

That is a consistent picture in the Gospels and one that as we together traversed the Gospel of Luke, it’s just amazing to see him with such peace, such a subjective sense of ease, even in those difficult of circumstances.

He always walked with the perfect composure, tranquility of mind, serenity of heart. He was always in perfect contentment, always at ease, at rest, stable, steadfast, even under extreme pressure, duress, under scrutiny. When he faced adversity, he was so calm, wasn’t he, and poised. He was always collected and composed, dignified. Kind of like he’s in charge of everything.

Christ has, in his disposition or personality, if we could say it that way, he’s got an evenness of emotion, doesn’t he? Perfect expressions in him of joy and laughter, but without frivolity or banality or triviality. He wasn’t a goof-off, but did he enjoy? Absolutely.

Perfect expressions of the darker emotions, too: anger without any sin; sadness and sorrow without any despair, but always in a perfect, unbroken hope in God. He had longing for things, but no covetousness. He had desire, but no anxiety about outcomes. He was always at perfect peace and rest in the Father’s providence and timing and circumstances.

So an objective sense and a subjective sense, but the objective is primary. The subjective flows out from it. Understand the meaning of Christ’s peace, more we could say about that, but we need to move on to a second point, so we can see what Paul intends for us to do with this doctrine.

Number two, the ministry of Christ’s peace, the ministry of Christ’s peace. When Paul says, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” what he’s calling us to do, what he’s bidding us to do, is to come and partake of Christ’s ministry to us.

That is to say, we are all to come under the governance of the peace of Christ, which is Christ’s ministry to us, and yet we have a crucial role to play, here, to partake of it. That’s why that’s put into a command. Paul does put this command in the third person, kind of like a, let it be or let this happen.

That doesn’t turn you into a passive recipient. You are a recipient. There is a peace that Christ ministers to you, but there’s an active part that you play.

When translated into English, let it happen, this third-person imperative makes it sound kind of like a permissive idea. We permit it to happen. Allow it. Seems kind of weak to our ears and a little bit odd when we think about the powerful Lord Jesus, letting him do stuff.

That’s not really the sense in the Greek at all. The force is more; it’s stronger. It’s more like, You must do this. So instead of the third-person imperative, Let this happen, instead of it being weak, it’s actually quite strong because Paul is, here, addressing the will.

He’s not speaking just to your mind though it’s got to come through the mind so you understand the peace of Christ and objective, subjective, the things we just talked about. But he actually wants to address the will.

He speaks directly to individual volition, and he’s putting us in this verse under obligation. He’s calling us to a habitual duty here, a continual practice that we should practice every single day. And you think, Oh boy, another command to obey.

Let me just express this to you this way. If I take any kid, let’s say under the age of 10, and I command that kid, I want you to partake of chocolate and candy and milkshakes, you’re like, Man, dude, you’re overstepping the bounds of your authority. Don’t bind my conscience to enjoying chocolate and good things and things I really like.

This is kind of like that, only what I just said was trivial and stupid. This is not that. The more you understand, the better you understand what Paul is saying here, the happier you will be in pursuing obedience to this.

It’ll be like if I just say, if you’re tired and I say, Hey, go have yourself a nap. You don’t look at me and say, Legalist! You say, Thank you. I think I will.

If I say to some, some men, hey, let’s, let’s go grill some steaks, put it on the grill, have some potatoes and some, nothing green, just red meat,” they’d get that. I don’t mean to insult women, but I don’t know what you do. It’s, it’s like saying, let’s all go shopping, you know, and go get us some nice handbag or shoes, or whatever you guys do.

It’s not a burden. It’s not a burden. And anybody commanding you to do such a thing, he’s not considered a legalist, but a great friend. That’s what Paul is here to us. That’s what the word of God is to us, is a good friend commanding us what we really want anyway, what we deeply, deeply need.

Remember the clarification we just learned about the kind of genitive this is, that, of Christ is a, is a subjective genitive. Okay, so we render the command, Let the peace that Christ gives, or maybe Let the peace that Christ brings, let that peace rule in your hearts. That’s the idea, here.

So what does he mean, then, by rule? The original sense of this verb, the verb is brabeuo, brabeuo is to be a judge or an umpire in the public games. So think about the Olympic games or the Ithsmian games or different contests and things they had back in Paul’s day. To brabeuo is to be a judge, to be an umpire in those public games.

So it’s referring to the referee in the game, or the one who blows the whistle, gives the penalties or awards the points. It’s the umpire who calls balls and strikes, who shouts Safe! or he shouts, You’re out! It’s that guy.

Ancient times, the brabeutes, this would be the judge of some Olympic events. He qualifies athletes, scores the performances, awards, prizes, bronze, silver, gold medals as we practice today. But the broader sense of the verb then, as it meant that originally, it meant really, then, to broaden out, to preside over, to rule, to direct, or even control.

So let the peace that Christ gives, let the peace that he brings preside over your hearts, rule in your hearts, direct your hearts, control your hearts. And it’s, just think about the original context as judge in the games who wants to award prizes, that’s the idea here. It’s positively directed.

Any judgment over our sin, that’s been done, right, at the cross? It’s not talking about that kind of judgment. It’s talking about a judgment and a control and a direction that’s for your good. So let’s consider this in the two senses of peace that we spoke about earlier, an objective sense of peace and a subjective sense of peace.

First, the objective peace of Christ. Let the objective peace that Christ won for you, let the peace with God that Christ secured for you, let that peace rule over your hearts. Your objective standing before God, your position as a saint bought and paid for by Christ, let that peace act as your umpire, your judge, the referee in your hearts.

So this has to do with your justification, the declaration of God that you are indeed righteous, not because you are personally righteous, but because you are counted righteous in Christ by faith alone in Christ, not according to any of your works.

This is Romans 5:1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Have peace, that’s a present-tense indicative mood. It refers to an abiding, ongoing reality. Peace with God equals fact for you who are in Christ.

In the doctrine of justification by faith, it’s entirely the work of God from start to finish. In the perfect work of Christ, who acted as your substitutionary atonement, who is your propitiatory sacrifice, he’s the one who reconciled you to God, made peace. God gives us a new nature in regeneration by his grace; we turn from unbelief to belief.

So this is a repentant faith. It is a faith that is repenting. It is a repentant faith. We believe the gospel, we trust Christ, and then God imputes our sin to Christ, and he imputes his righteousness to us and it’s on that basis he declares us righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. It’s the doctrine of justification.

So how does this work, to let the objective peace of Christ rule in your hearts. How does this work? Let me give you a little list, not exhaustive at all, but just a few examples of how this works.

We can start right with the Colossian context, what we’ve been studying, the vulnerability. We’ll start with the vulnerability that the false teachers took advantage of that that these Colossian believers, like all believers, these believers still struggle with sins. So the false teachers took advantage of their sensitive consciences and the fact that they felt guilty over sinning.

They took advantage of this saying something like this to them, See? This whole Christ thing? Not helpful. Your rituals aren’t good enough. You’ve given up on the rituals and the connection to the divine that you used to have to turn to this. Simple bread and wine. Are you kidding me?

You left the rituals that connect you with the elemental spirits of the world, and you no longer attend their feasts. You no longer honor their days by fasting and preparing yourself. Maybe that’s why you’re struggling with the sins of the flesh. Just look at you. Poor excuse you are as a representative of your religion.

So to combat their insinuations, resist those pressures to fight against those kinds of slanders and that kind of intimidation, let the objective peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let him act as the true arbiter and the judge of the comments and the accusations. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” even if, even when, we struggle with sin, even if we fall, even when we fall.

For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did. God did. He sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh. He knows where the problem is.

He did that “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, those of us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” He’s taking care of that in your justification. He’s working it out in your sanctification. It’s a progress, it’s a growth process. It takes time, but the real work’s been done.

So we battle any condemning accusations, any of these slanderous insinuations, any intimidations from other people, letting the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.

But what if those condemning thoughts come from within? That’s really troubling, isn’t it? When the accusations come from our own consciences, well, what then? Same thing. Let the objective peace of Christ rule in your hearts then, too.

Let his peace and him act as the just judge to look upon the finished work of Christ, and then declare no condemnation over you. The Apostle John put it this way, “We shall know by this that we are of the truth and shall assure our heart before him in whatever our heart condemns us.” Whatever our heart condemns us? Yeah, anything. It’s a big bucket. “For God is greater than our heart. He knows all things.”

You know what else he knows? He knows the justification he declared over you. He hasn’t forgotten that. “By this,” John says, “we have confidence before God.” Isn’t that good news?

So any assault from worldly accusers or intimidators, any assault from, let’s call this fleshly thinking, a conscience that is weak or poorly informed, all of it is combated swiftly and effectively by the rule of the objective peace of Christ.

Let’s add one more. What if the devil himself comes to attack you, insinuating against you, charging you, making a slanderous accusation against you? What if he comes, not, you know, with a, pointy horns and sharp tail and a pitchfork and dressed in his little devil suit?

But he comes in the form of pastors, comes in the form of bad religion, comes in the form of weak doctrine, comes in the form of false teachers, foolish pastors, hypocrites who are confused, who then, maybe unwittingly, but maybe intentionally, lay heavy burdens on people and load consciences with guilt.

What happens then? This very thing happened to Joshua, the great high priest who served a returning Israel under Zerubbabel. You don’t need to turn there, but jot it down and look at it later, Zechariah 3:1-5. “And then he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of Yahweh, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And Yahweh said to Satan, ‘Yahweh rebuke you, Satan. Indeed, Yahweh who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is this not a brand delivered from the fire?’ Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel.

“And he answered and spoke to those who were standing before him, saying, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And again he said to him, ‘See, I’ve made your iniquity pass away from you, and will clothe you festal robes.’ And then I said, ‘Let them put a clean turban on his head.’ And so they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments while the angel of Yahweh was standing by.”

What a picture! What a picture of the kindness of God himself to forgive us, take away the filthy garments and put festival robes upon us, in this case, a priestly robe and a turban on his head.

Whether the attacks and charges come from the world, the flesh, or the devil himself, and beloved, note this: Even when there are sins, legitimate causes for accusation, like we just heard earlier from Psalm 38, from David, the objective peace of Christ, the peace that he won for us, reconciling us to God by his grace, by faith in the finished work of Christ, we’re to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, in our minds, in our emotions, in our will.

Let his peace preside over your minds, your thoughts. Let it control your emotions. Keep your feelings in line with the truth of what really is and not what other people say it to be, even your own condemning conscience says it to be, or the devil himself.

Let his peace direct your will so that you think and speak and act in faith in any charge that comes against us whatsoever. When the peace of Christ rules, our umpire, the peace of Christ, it cries out Safe! Safe! Justified! Forgiven! Reconciled!”

In theological terms, we might put it this way, you must learn to let your justification rule in your sanctification or some might say it this way, the indicatives of salvation must have the presiding influence over the imperatives as you work out your salvation. That’s the objective peace of Christ.

There’s a subjective element or aspect of Christ’s ruling peace as well. Because from the objective reality of our peace with God, which Christ won for us, there is obviously going to be an increase in the experience of a subjective peace from God, which again, Christ himself ministers to us.

In all things related to God, that is to say, in all things, period, right? All things are all related to God. He’s the sovereign over all things, and he’s meticulously sovereign over all things.

So in all things related to God, Christ mediates. Christ communicates, ministers the peace and goodness of God to us. He ministers to us as prophet, priest, and king. Jesus told his disciples in John 14:27, he’s thinking about his forthcoming ministry as prophet, priest, and king to them, in an improved condition, looking past the cross to death, burial, resurrection, ascension, glory.

He’s thinking about that ministry. “‘Peace I leave with you,’” he says. “‘My peace I give you,’” he says. “‘Therefore let your heart not be troubled, nor let it be fearful.’” My peace is what Jesus called it. Paul, here, calls it the peace of Christ, an objective peace with God that Jesus accomplished on the cross, and a subjective peace that Christ has ministered to his people before, during, and after, and ever since.

The way of the old man is the way of futility and frustration and conflict and darkness and death.” Travis Allen

That ministry began in earnest on Resurrection evening, and as he told his disciples who were hiding behind a locked door, their hearts were troubled, they were fearful. And so they’ve locked the door, they’re hiding in the upper room. And he comes in, stands among them, poof, he’s there, and he says, “‘Peace to you.’” He reminds them, “‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you,’” says to them again, “‘Peace be to you.”’

Jesus had ministered to them as the perfect mediator before the crucifixion, after being crucified, buried, raised from the dead. And now that he’s ascended into heaven, he ministers no longer in a state of humiliation, but in glorification.

He now has a ministry, an improved ministry in an improved state. He is the perfect prophet, telling us the truth. He teaches us the meaning. He trains us to walk in that truth and disciples us by the Word and by the Spirit to grow in wisdom.

He said, “‘These things I’ve spoken to you, that in me you may have peace,’” John 16:33. “‘In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I’ve overcome the world,’” just proved it on the cross, resurrection from the dead.

In his prophetic ministry, Jesus speaks truth to bolster our faith, teaches truth to give us courage to face every trial, to endure all kinds of trouble, to withstand adversity and to win. That’s a subjective sense of peace that comes through the ministry of Christ, who’s the perfect prophet.

Christ is also the perfect priest, flawless in his righteousness, offering himself first as a substitution for us, the sacrifice of atonement that we needed to propitiate the wrath of God to reconcile us to the father. And after that he administers all the benefits of that reconciliation.

In fact, right after what he said in John 16:33, Jesus entered into his high-priestly prayer. He says in John 16:33, “‘These things I’ve spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, I’ve overcome the world.’”

And then he enters into his high-priestly prayer. Lovingly, gently, tenderly, he assures us of God’s favor. He hears our prayers as our priest, calms our fears, assures us of God’s love for us, ministers to our needs. He relieves us of our anxieties, rests us in our worries, walks with us through every trial.

As Hebrews 4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. We’ve got one who’s been tempted in all things, just as we are, yet without sin.” That’s the priest we need. Sinless one. Yeah, he experienced everything but never sinned. He can lift us up.

In his high-priestly ministry, Christ prays for us during our temptations. He praises God for our successes, and he pleads the merits of his blood when we fall. He prays that we’ll grow mature, more mature, strengthened and believing through everything.

Hebrews 2:17-18, “He was made like his brethren in all things, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he’s able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.” Beloved, he’s with you.

Christ is the perfect king. He’s the one who leads his troops from the front, not from the rear. He’s not in the rear with the gear. He’s in the front, actually fighting the battle for you. He vanquishes every enemy. He vanquished the greatest enemy, sin, death, Satan, single-handedly, really leaving us very little to do but to divide the spoils of war.

He gives us a role, clean up operations, mop-up operations. He has us stand up for him, fight battles of our own, and he equips us for that, fully dresses us in his armor, as Ephesians 6 says, full-armor-of-God passage, “Stand firm, therefore, having girded your loins with the truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation,” here it is, “of the gospel of peace.”

Steady, firm footing, because the objective peace of Christ, which gives you an agility and an alacrity and a strength on a firm foundation as you fight battles. That’s what he gives. “In addition to all, having taken up the shield of faith with which you’ll be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, also receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” And on and on it goes.

Stability in battle comes from standing strong, standing on a firm foundation, which is the objective peace that Christ won. But we move, we’re able to spring forward with alacrity, power because of that subjective sense of peace, the same piece that Christ himself lived in, walked in, operated in.

Although we’re in a war, enlisted in the king’s army, we fear no evil. We’re “anxious for nothing,” Philippians 4:6-7, because “in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, we send our requests up to God.” We send them up in prayer. “The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Probably no stress more intense than warfare, and yet through it all we could be free from all fear. We’re to let the peace of Christ rule, preside over us, control us, direct us in a subjective sense, too, because Christ, in his kingly ministry, he rules us, his people, not by the rod. He rules us by strong assurances of his peace, his love, his affection.

So we let this subjective peace of Christ rule in our hearts, too, assuring the mind, soothing and settling in the emotions, steadying the will, so we can make good decisions serving our king.

We’re to let the ministry of our great mediator, the one who communicates his peace to us in various ways, to meet every moment. Peace comes from his prophetic truth and rules our minds. Peace comes through his priestly ministrations, caring for us in our weaknesses and attending to our needs.

Peace comes to us by his kingly power, providing security, safety, infinite supply. He dresses us in his own armor, robes us in the shining, resplendent garments of his own righteous beauty, his royal magnificence. We move through life that way, with the peace of Christ ruling in our hearts.

As much as I’d love to camp here a bit longer, Paul has a further design to show us in this verse. So thirdly, the mentality of Christ’s peace. The meaning of Christ’s peace, the ministry of Christ’s peace, and now the mentality of Christ’s peace.

If I just give you the bottom line, here, this section of verse 15 is about unity and harmony, unity and harmony. Each of us, individually governed as we are by Christ’s peace, each of us receiving the ministry of Christ’s peace though we are many members, we share a corporate unity and we celebrate a true and beautiful Christian diversity. We share a corporate harmony because of a common and heartfelt gratitude.

Look at the verse again. “And the peace of Christ, let that rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body,” that part speaks to our unity, “and be thankful,” that part speaks to harmony.

The mentality of those under the governance of the peace of Christ comes from Christ himself. His life, his work, his ministry are what produce in us both unity; keeping us together as one, and also a harmony as we all share profound gratitude with each other and bolster each other in harmony.

His redeeming reconciliation work leads to our eternal gratitude. So it’s his mentality first, and then that spreads from the head through the body to us all. Let’s start with the mentality of unity, a mentality of unity.

The implied subject, there, of the passive verb, you were called, who is that who called us? It’s God, right? He is the hidden, the invisible agent there in that verb. When he called us, when God called us, he called us as members of one body, with one Lord Jesus Christ as the head of the church, Colossians 1:18 says.

We understand that this happened before the foundation of the world. It happened as a part of God’s eternal decree, that God decreed not only Christ, but decreed a people for Christ, a whole people, unified people, one people.

All of us, being born as sons of Adam, are born in sin. We’re born under the condemnation of God’s law. We therefore have to be called by God in the same exact way. All of us are alike equidistant, far from the cross, and we needed God’s grace to reach out and get us and bring us near. We need his call.

Our confession summarizes this, the London Baptist Confession. God calls each of us, causing us to be born again. It says in chapter 10, section one, that “God enlightens our minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away our heart of stone, giving us a heart of flesh, renewing our wills, and by his almighty power determining us to that which is good, and effectively drawing us to Jesus Christ, yet so as we come most freely, being made willing by His grace.”

In the next chapter we see that unity and justification, that all whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies. The next chapter says, “not by infusing righteousness into us, but by pardoning our sins, by accounting and accepting our persons as righteous, not for anything wrought in us or done by us, but for Christ’s sake alone.

“Not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to us as our righteousness, but by imputing Christ’s act of obedience under the whole law and His passive obedience in His death for our whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith we have, not of ourselves. It’s the gift of God.”

We all come the same way. We’re all in the same predicament because of our sin, under depravity, under God’s condemnation, a condemnation of his law. That means we all needed his grace in the same way. His call works on each of us effectively in the same way. He does the same things to us, justifies us by the same means, the same way, through the same Christ.

We are all alike called, justified by God, the exact same way, by the grace of God, by the works and the merit of Christ, by the power of the Spirit. We share the unity of our origin. We exist because one God called and justified us. We exist because one Spirit worked to apply the redemption of one Christ, the one Christ who reconciles us all to God.

And so we need to understand, by virtue of our origin, by virtue of what we are, our nature, everything that is us and explains us. God didn’t save us to be islands unto ourselves. He didn’t intend us to be isolated, wandering stars, each on our own individual journeys and taking our individual pathways heading to our own destinations.

From eternity, he chose us to belong together, to be together, to know one another. Better get used to one another, folks, because we’re going to be with each other for eternity. That’s a long time.

So while there is diversity in the body, there’s not to be any division in our body, but only unity, an intentional, thoughtful, informed unity. Unity in a moral sense, since we’re all partakers of Christ’s prophetic office that we know and do his will.

Unity in a political sense, not since we’re all Republicans, but since we’re all citizens of a united, heavenly kingdom. The politics of our situation, of who we are, transcends all political structures and institutions here on this earth. We’re citizens of a heavenly kingdom. We’re subjects of Christ’s kingly office.

Unity in a social sense, since we’re all members of one family. God is our Father; Christ is our brother. And unity in an ethical sense, too, because we’re all partakers of Christ’s priestly office, his priestly perfection and instruction. His moral dealing with our sin, his teaching us in righteousness, sets a moral and ethical standard for us, that we’re all unified, all the same moral, all the same ethic for us.

So we must be intentional in pursuing unity with each other because it is the will of him who called us in one body. It is our justification that presides over our sanctification, our calling and justification that causes us to share in the same spirit of gratitude, which is what ends verse 15.

So the mentality of unity leads us to the mentality of harmony. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body,” and then this, “be thankful.” Be thankful.

Nearly forty uses of the verb for giving thanks, which is eucharisteo, fifteen uses of the noun gratitude or thanksgiving, eucharistia. This is the only use of that root, eucharist, to produce an adjective, which is, here, eucharistos. It’s plural, here, so it’s eucharistoi.

But Paul is describing, here, and that’s why he uses the adjective, he’s describing a mentality. It’s a mindset. We have a mentality and a mindset of grateful people, thankful people.

In fact, every time we come into church on Sunday, we need to be looking around and pinching ourselves and saying, I can’t even believe I’m, I’m here. I can’t believe I get to do this, and I get to worship this God because of that Christ. I can’t believe I have a copy of God’s Word, and in fact this church is handing them out if I don’t have one. So cool! I get to sing these songs, pray these prayers, be with these people! What privilege is mine! This grateful, thankful mentality is to pervade the entire church. It’s to set the tone for all of our interaction with each other.

In fact, all of our disagreements and debates, even our conflicts as well as they arise occasionally, according to verse 13, they’re to be governed by the objective peace of Christ as well, a deep gratitude about our shared calling and justification, profound thankfulness of what that peace produces in a subjective peace that is aided and strengthened by the virtues of verse 12.

We’re a grateful people to be members of one body together, sharing in, growing in compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Man, to be joined together to this forbearing and forgiving group!

You think I’m going to get this kind of forbearance and forgiveness out there? You can forget it. We all feel that, chewed up, spit out, rejected, walked on. That’s why we all feel like we’ve got to stand up, posture, put our shoulders back, chin out, take our blows.

It’s not this body. It’s not this body. We’re all citizens of the same excellent kingdom, members of the same loving family, worshippers being built into the same holy temple, members of the same student body in the same classroom. We are the most privileged people on the planet. As I said at the beginning, it’s been my prayer for you, Grace Church, for many years, and shared among the elders, that we pray that God will mature us all more and more in this way.

For any of you who may be strangers to Christ’s kingdom, family, temple, classroom, please stop and consider. Think about what’s on offer here. This Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the one who created and sustains all things, who in Jesus took on flesh and then died for the sins of all those whom God is calling, who now lives to intercede for them, that Christ even now extends to you this offer.

He says in Matthew 11, “‘Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I’m gentle and humble in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.’”

To be ruled by the peace of Christ is the secret of the easy yoke and the light burden. That’s what’s on offer to you. If you don’t know him, take it from us. We can testify to you it is so worth it, because that eternal Christ who created the heavens and the earth and who sustains all things by the word of his power, he’s watching over my life every single moment of every single day. I want that for all of you, any of you who do not yet know Christ. Bow with me.

Our Father, we are so grateful for this great gospel, that you are a great Savior and a mighty God, and you sent to us the perfect Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for forgiving us of our sins, for looking upon Christ and his perfect atonement and covering us with his righteousness so that we stand before you not, not by anything that we’ve done. We couldn’t stand. We would cower were not for your grace, were not for the covering of your perfect righteousness.

We thank you for that, and we ask that you would introduce any here who don’t yet know you, don’t yet know this peace of Christ objectively or subjectively or in any way, and pray that you would introduce him to Christ even today. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Hebrews 3:14-19

All right, well, welcome everyone on this Sunday evening, capping off the Lord’s Day in the book of Hebrews. So if you have your Bibles, please turn to Hebrews in your copy of God’s Word, and tonight we’re looking at Hebrews 3:12-19, finishing up that very impactful chapter in Hebrews 3.

In Hebrews chapter 3, the pastor is really trying to get the attention of his congregation, of his church, because he is concerned about not only defection, but the influence of defection. So he’s concerned about the defection of some who want to return to a Christ-less Judaism.

So he’s obviously warning them, but he’s also concerned about the influence of those kind of defectors on the rest of the church; and so you find these warning passages throughout the book of Hebrews, and this is one of them.

To make his warning, he goes back to a biblical warning, which is David’s warning in Psalm 95, and quotes verbatim from the latter, the back half of Psalm 95 from the Septuagint translation, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which Greek-speaking Jews of the day used. And that’s what we find in Hebrews 3:7-11, is that Psalm 95:7-11 text.

He’s using that section to press the consciences of his people, to help them to think about the call to pay careful attention and to exhort one another daily lest any of them drift away in hardness of heart and because of the deceitfulness of sin.

David in Psalm 95 really has set a precedent that this pastor is following. David considers the call of the Spirit to be as continual and abiding as the person of the Spirit is. And this is how the warning section ends, starting here in chapter 3, verse 1, but going all the way through chapter 4, verses 12 and 13.

It ends with a focus on the living, active Word of God. It’s surgically sharp and piercing and penetrating, and it opens up the heart of every individual in the sight of God. And so he’s warning his people.

The warning to God’s people is a perennial warning. It’s always relevant, always pertinent. God always, basically, the message is that God always rewards faith, and God always punishes unbelief. And this is why, as in the days of Moses, so it was in the days of David. And as it is in the days of David, so it is in the days of the pastor of these Hebrew Christians in Rome.

And so it is for us today, since it is always called “today.” For us it’s called “today,” just as it was called “today” for David, for Moses, and for the Hebrew Christians in Rome.

So we saw when we looked last time, having looked at Psalm 95:7-11, which is in Hebrews 3:7-11, we looked at verses 12 and 13 last week, and that was the first of our three points, really, in an outline that covers verses 12 to 19.

But the first point is our daily duty. What is our daily duty? Our daily duty is mutual exhortation. Our daily duty is mutual exhortation. So it says in verses 12 to 13 of Hebrews 3, “See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart,” or it’s an, really, an evil heart of unbelief, an evil heart that’s sourced in unbelief.

“See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you or among you an evil heart of unbelief that falls away from the living God,” that is, that apostatizes from God. “But encourage one another, day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today’, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

So in this daily duty of mutual exhortation, we are always to pay attention, and we are always to be on the lookout for an evil heart, a heart that is sourced in unbelief. Remember we talked about the three aspects of the heart and the three aspects of the faith.

In an evil heart, the mind does not reason from faith. In an evil heart, the affections are not attuned to faith. The emotions do not respond to truth. The emotions don’t grow stronger in believing or because of believing. And that means that the will is not acting from faith, but acts in doubt and in unbelief.

So an evil heart of unbelief will inevitably, no matter what it appears like on the surface and for a time, an evil heart of unbelief inevitably will fall away from the living God. An evil heart of unbelief will apostatize from worshipping the one true God to take up some other form of idolatry.

So in Israel’s case, the idolatry was to return to Egypt and its idols. In David’s day, it would be for Israel to depart and turn to the gods of the surrounding nations, which was happening all the time. Baal worship was very popular and became even more prevalent in Israel after David went to be with the Lord.

These Hebrew Christians, the temptation and the idolatry for them would be to return to their old synagogues. Even though they’re using the Bible, even though they’re using Scripture, even though they’re following the traditions of Moses, if they depart from Christ and return to a Christ-less Judaism, it is no longer the true and living God. They’re actually departing, apostatizing, and entering into idolatry.

We today, we have professing Christians who are leaving sound churches to go to, can’t really call them churches, but they return to maybe Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy or some kind of a very weak, insipid form of Protestant teaching or evangelicalism. And they want to go to these communities to shape God and to shape Christ into their own image, do religion their own way, follow their own preferences.

People come to religious gatherings like churches for many reasons, not all of them because they really want to worship God, because they really want to deal with their sin, because they really want to worship Christ. People come to communities like this for all kinds of reasons, seeking connection or community or a sense of belonging or someone who will be kind to them and listen to them.

They have all kinds of reasons for going to these religious gatherings, but people want to connect, especially these days. We see it everywhere. People want to connect on their own terms. They want to do community in their own way and only with those whom they prefer.

And they belong to that community or that group only for as long or short a time as they want to. They don’t want to submit to God’s commands about worship. They want to do worship in their own way, be innovative. That’s everywhere.

Many people today want to treat church as a big therapy session. And if the pastor or the people around them are not healthy for them, but they put them into the category of toxic or harmful or narcissistic or whatever, they say, I need to put boundaries up and create boundaries in space and find safe spaces for me that I can take care of myself. And so they go find them in some other religious organization, sometimes called churches.

It’s the same problem though, really, essentially in every single generation, and it’s manifested in the religious forms and the circumstances of every time and every place. It’s a perennial danger. It’s always there that we are concerned for one another.

We’re concerned for everybody who comes into this building, this gathering of a local church. We’re concerned for everybody. We want to lovingly encourage and exhort one another, verse 13, “as long as it’s still called ‘today’, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

We saw last time, kind of at the end of our time, that Luther talked about us needing to widen our sense of what the deceitfulness of sin includes. He says the subtle danger of the deceitfulness of sin is that we often see our own righteousness and our own wisdom as paramount, and that’s a deceitful thing. That is very deceitful.

Luther said, “More than anything else, one’s own righteousness and wisdom deceive one and work against faith in Christ, since we love, and nothing more ardently, than our own feelings, judgment, purpose and will, especially when they seem to be good.”

So Luther identifies this aspect of sin’s deceitfulness. He says, quote, “It’s the very worst of all vices, the extreme antithesis of faith.” So that’s why we need to, in humility, but boldness, straightforwardness, lovingly, we need to encourage each other and exhort each other daily to keep believing, to keep believing from the heart, reasoning from faith, affected positively, our emotions stirred by the truth by which our will is compelled forward in faith. And we rejoice and we glory, as Luther said, in the righteousness of God alone, in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.

So that was the first point. We’re to exhort one another daily, that daily duty of exhortation. Then there’s a second point, and here’s where we’re going to move forward into the text a little bit further and we’ll have two more points.

This is our second: our daily delight, our daily delight. And if you want to put a colon there, our daily delight, colon, full salvation. Our daily delight is full salvation.

He says in verse 14, “For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.” You can hear the conditional statement there, right? “We have become partakers of Christ if,” and there’s the condition, “if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.”

Notice the word partakers. You heard that at the very beginning in chapter 3, verse 1; he called us partakers, back there. Here it’s “partakers of Christ.” Back there in verse 1, it was “partakers of a heavenly calling.” And here in verse 14 he uses a perfect tense, and he says, “We have become partakers,” perfect tense.

But here the focus in this perfect tense and the way it’s used here is not on the start of that condition, but it’s on the resultant state of being. That is to say, we should translate this with the present tense. We are partakers of Christ. There’s an emphasis on the resultant state. It’s an emphasis on a current condition. We are partakers of Christ.

Same emphasis as in verse 1 is on their current condition, their present state. Right now they are partakers of a heavenly calling and right now this pastor is saying they are partakers of Christ.

But then he gives this caveat, and the caveat comes in this conditional sentence. If you look back at verse 6, you’ll see it verse 14 and verse 6 are really parallel to one another. So the pastor in verse 6 and verse 14, he’s using the same verb, katecho, katecho, it’s in the same form, kataschomen, the same exact verb, same verb form. And then it’s also the same exact if-then conditional statement, conditional structure.

So in these verses, verse 1, verse 6, verse 14, verse 14 is drawing back from verse 1 and drawing back from verse 6 and bringing them together, here. So he’s emphasizing the current condition of the Christians in his church, the present state of his people, most of them, anyway, and he encourages them and prods them onward with what in the Greek is third-class conditional, these third-class conditional statements that are in verse 6 and verse 14.

If you look at verse 6, we’ll state these kind of in the if-then form. In verse 6, it’s, “If we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope, then we are his house.” Verse 14, “If we hold fast the beginning or the start of our assurance of our confidence, if we hold that fast firm until the end, then we are partakers of Christ.” So what he’s trying to emphasize, here, is the confirmation that we are his house, the confirmation that we are partakers of Christ. The confirmation is in continuing to hold fast.

“Hold fast” to what? Our confidence, verse 6, which is Christ, right? “The boast of our hope.” What’s that? Christ. He is our boast. We boast in nothing but Christ. And then in verse 14, “hold fast” to what? “The beginning of our assurance,” the start of our confidence. Where did that start? Christ. Once again, Christ in whom we trusted when we first became Christians.

So what is it we’re to hold fast to? Christ, Christ, Christ. We’re to hold fast to him firm until the end. That’s what the pastor is emphasizing.

He uses the subjunctive mood, here, and this particular kind of conditional statement can one at the same time convey kind of varying levels of certainty about his confidence about them from the speaker’s perspective, so it ranges from an uncertain but potential to a more certain probability.

He knows there is a mix of people in his church, and so it’s a very appropriate way for a pastor to write to an entire congregation, knowing, as all pastors know, it’s a mixed group of people, consists of, we hope as pastors, most of us being saved, most of us truly knowing the Lord, truly saved people, but others who are professing Christ, but may in time prove to be, maybe self-deceived, maybe pretenders, maybe hypocrites or worse.

The London Baptist Confession in chapter 26, section 3 says, “The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error.” And then it cites as proof for that statement Revelation 2, Revelation 3, the seven letters to the seven churches from Christ himself, where Christ writes to reprove the ungodly and in some cases the unbelieving in the midst of those churches.

Very clear from those letters that there are some unbelieving who need to repent or else face his wrath. And then Christ also in those letters speaks comfort and encouragement to his real people in those churches. He tries to console them and comfort them.

They don’t want to submit to God’s commands about worship.” Travis Allen

And this is how the pastor, following his Lord, this is how the pastor writes to his own church. It’s how all true, faithful pastors and elders should think, preach, teach, speak, lead, govern. This is how pastors, this is how leaders should think and speak. And I’ll just commend it to you, too, as whether in leadership or not, as a Christian, you need to think this way because the stakes are eternal.

By conditional statements like these in verse 6 and verse 14, for the believing, by these conditional statements, we are shepherded onward to delight. Our hearts are delighted because we’re true partakers of a heavenly calling. We’re true partakers of Christ, and we are true partakers in the fullness of our salvation.

The more we partake of the calling, the more we partake of Christ, the more we delight in him. And so we experience the fullness of our salvation the more we are sanctified, the more we grow, the more we mature. And that’s what these conditional statements are for.

I’m going to spend a little more time a little bit later, I want to make our third point, then come back to this issue of conditional statements and their usefulness. I want to explain how they work, why it is that they’re in Scripture, the usefulness of conditional statements, and how they really do cause us to rejoice. But first, let’s finish our outline just to get through these verses, through chapter 3.

We talked about our daily duty. That’s the first point, which is mutual exhortation, and it’s so we partake of a daily delight. We need to mutually encourage one another and mutually exhort one another so that we all participate and partake of a daily delight as we increase in the fullness of our salvation.

And so it is our daily drive, third point, our daily drive as we look to the future, as we look to the future and the rest in our salvation. So number three, our daily drive, which is final glorification. Final glorification.

This last portion in verses 15 through 19, chapter 3 of Hebrews, it kind of shows the importance, here, of final glorification, which God refers to, here, as “my rest,” rest. And it’s emphasized by showing the loss of that rest due to unbelief. It’s such a significant thing to lose out on, to lose out on God’s rest.

And so by seeing the significance of the loss, we’re pointed to the need to mutually encourage one another, take daily delight in our salvation, that we continue to look toward the future of this fulfillment of our hope in final glorification. That’s our daily drive.

So he returns to the point in verse 15 and repeats the Psalm 95.7 verses 8 quote, “While it is said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me.’” Notice the us-versus-them, you and them.

The pastor encourages his people to live in contrast to the “they” who provoked God in the past. He wants them to hear God’s voice, not harden their hearts. And so to emphasize that, to draw the lessons out of Psalm 95, which he’s quoted in verses 7 through 11 of Hebrews 3, to draw this out, he asks and answers three rhetorical questions.

Notice, that’s verses 16 through 18. Let me just read those. Well, let me back up. “While it is said, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked me.’ For who provoked him?” Here’s the questions. “Who provoked him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? “And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?”

Who provoked him in verse 16? Who provoked him after hearing his voice? We know the answer, right? All those who were rescued out of Egypt. Okay, so we can except Moses and maybe Aaron, even though Aaron provoked him, Joshua and Caleb, they did not provoke God. They believed, right? They believed. Moses believed.

But everyone else that came out of Egypt, that entire generation, and we have the tally in Numbers, Numbers being kind of a reference to the two censuses. The first census before they went to the Promised Land, and then they sinned and disobeyed, and God laid them all out in the wilderness. So 602-some-thousand people, men, fighting age 20 and up. So we know a million-plus, two million children of Israel, women and children included, but 602,000 men of fighting age were laid waste in the wilderness.

Another census is at the end of Numbers before they go into the Promised Land. That other census, that generation is replaced with their children. So the pastor asked, “Who provoked him after hearing his voice?” The majority.

Man, that’s kind of scary, isn’t it? When Jesus says, “‘It’s few that find me. Many are called, few are chosen’”; man, how many are the few, and a handful of those people who came out of Egypt?

So the pastor’s asking, Church, which side do you stand on? Do you stand with Moses in the minority? Do you stand with that God-appointed leader or do you reject that for yourself?

He’s also saying, and especially to these Jews, he’s saying My fellow Hebrews, my fellow Christians, don’t think you can identify corporately with the Jewish community and be safe. Don’t think you can escape the persecution that’s coming, by, maybe you’re going to escape a temporal persecution by identifying with Christians and escape the imperial persecution that’s coming and Nero and all the problems.

Maybe you feel like you can escape that, but when you try to take refuge back with your Jewish community, you think you’ll be safe there? That didn’t help all those who came out of Egypt. And don’t think you can adhere to Moses, either. That didn’t help them either.

Don’t think you can adhere to Moses and claim him as your leader because it’s Moses who pointed to Christ. If you don’t follow the one to whom Moses pointed, you’re abandoning not only Christ, but Moses, too.”

So the real issue when hearing God’s Word, are you soft in your heart? Are you responsive, or are you hard-hearted, provoking him? That’s what the pastor is asking in that question.

Verse 17, he asked a second question: “With whom was God angry?” With whom was he angry? All the sinners who died in the wilderness. All the sinners who died in the wilderness evidenced God was angry with them.

And the pastor asked them, then, Church, are you God-fearers, not wanting to anger God, but striving to please God. What kind of a heart do you have toward God? What’s your posture? What’s your heart disposition? Is it, you don’t want to anger God, but you want to please him? Again, he’s saying in verse 17, God’s justice may take time, but never ever doubt this: God’s justice against sin is certain.

The term that’s used, there, in verse 17 for corpses, kind of a harrowing term. You know, we think about a corpse. That’s even kind of more vivid, you could say, than the word dead body. But corpse, it has this kind of feeling of, like a sense of rotting.

That’s the picture he’s trying to paint, here, because the term actually kind of usually refers to like a limb or a body part that’s been kind of lopped off and is laying on the side after battle. There’s cut-off limbs and body parts strewn across a battlefield, lying lifeless on the ground.

So their corpses are kind of being portrayed not as individual bodies, but as severed limbs, as if they’re cut off from the body, which is Israel, and lopped off. The true body of Israel, which is at this point Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, that’s the body. And lopped off our 600,000-plus men lying to the side like cut-off limbs strewn about in the wilderness, like some smoldering battlefield.

This picture of lifeless limbs, it’s very similar to imagery that Jesus used in John 15:6, where he talks about fruitless branches. Remember that? He talks about these branches as being, they’re connected, but they’re superficially connected to the vine. They’re not truly vitally connected or attached to the vine.

So any branch that’s superficially connected to the vine is just taking substance and doing nothing with it. It’s just a consumer. It produces nothing. So it’s good for nothing but to be cut off, thrown away, gathered up in bunches, cast into the fire, and burned.

Why is that? Because sin provokes God’s anger. Justice then hunts down each and every victim. Because justice will have its day. It’s like a hunter patiently tracking down his prey; and this over forty years. Maybe the guys living in year 39 thought, I made it, I’m going to get in. And then he trips and falls, and that’s it for him. It’s like a hunter, not a hunter hunting game for food; this is the hunt of an executioner, like an assassin, a hit man.

So let none think he can escape his point in verse 17, whether in a wilderness as those in Numbers 14 or in David’s kingdom, those who were warned in Psalm 95. Don’t think you’re going to escape if you live in a massive city like the city of Rome, those in the congregation of the Hebrew Christians.

Don’t think you can escape by living in Northern Colorado or anywhere in the United States or in Iran or anywhere, for that matter, because God’s justice is everywhere. No matter where they are, God’s justice will find sinners.

And when I use the term sinners, I want to make clear I’m talking about those who are steeled in their sin. They are those with an evil heart sourced in unbelief. So by using the term sinners and God’s justice will hunt them down, find them, and execute, we’re not talking about believers, there. We’re talking about unbelievers. No matter where they are, God’s justice finds them.

Which says there’s a contrasting point to be made here, too, to remind us that on the other hand, God’s mercy and God’s grace, just as certain as his justice, God’s mercy and his grace, will find all of his people and will shepherd all of his believing people into his eternal rest.

Which brings us to verse 18. To whom did God curse with an oath? To whom did he say, this is really harrowing, imagine God, the eternal God, looking you in the eye and saying, no rest for you. Oh!

It’s the disobedient to whom God speaks; it’s the unbelieving. So the pastor asks, Are you obedient, church? Are you obedient, church member, or are you disobedient? Are you stubborn and stiff-necked, or are you soft, compliant, eager to obey him?

Those who are obedient by God’s grace, and it is by God’s grace that any is obedient, they enter into his rest, and the others will never enter, and God promises them that. In fact, he swears it with an oath.

All those who died outside the Promised Land who did not enter into his rest, that is the evidence that they provoked God, verse 16. That’s the evidence that they angered God, verse 17. That’s the evidence that they didn’t enter into his rest, verse 18, because none of their bodies made it there, but their corpses were strewn all across the wilderness.

So to hear his voice and yet provoke God through sin and disobedience results in death. It results in a forfeiture of rest. And the pastor wants his people to see, as he says in verse 19, “So we see that they were not able to enter.”

Interesting, using the word dynamai, there, inability. They don’t have the ability, they don’t have a regenerate nature. They’re not born again. They don’t have a new nature, so they actually can’t obey.

And yet it is a willful disobedience. It’s a willfulness that we’re not able to enter because of unbelief. Unbelief undermined them. And that is the major warning, here, which means, on the other hand, faith is the dividing line. Faith leads to eternal rest.

So we’re to see the contrasting point. This pastor wants his people to see the contrasting point. Unbelief: death. Believing: faith, which is also proven by softness, responsiveness, hearing his voice, obeying his word leads to life.

Rest is what Adam and Eve lost because they heard God and did not believe him, and they died and forfeited rest. Rest is what Israel lost because though they heard God, too, they didn’t believe him either, and they, too, died and thus forfeited rest, not entering into the Promised Land.

Rest is what these Hebrews will lose, too, if they follow the same pattern of unbelief, hearing God’s Word and yet spurning it, provoking God, angering him by their inevitable sin and their inevitable departure or apostasy from Christ.

And as we’re soon going to see, there’s a promise in chapter 4, verse 9, that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” And this is what the people of God, this is what all believers long for, is this rest into which they enter by faith, in which they remain by faith, and from which they will never depart because they long for that final glorification, that final glorification promised long ago, even as old as Genesis, that spoke of God entering into a rest on the seventh day. It’s a final Sabbath rest for the people of God.

Now, just with the time we have left, here, I want to go back to the nature of those conditional statements. We’ve made it through verse 19. Hooray, hooray! Now let’s go back. I want to talk about these conditional statements and explain them a little bit more and show you why, for the believing, for us who are believers, these conditional statements bring the utmost delight to our souls.

They’re how we experience the fullness of our salvation right here, right now. We who are justified, we who are being sanctified will one day be glorified. But our justification puts us into a state of progressive sanctification. And that progressive sanctification is spurred along by conditional statements like we find in verse 6 and verse 14.

So when we come across conditional statements, if-then: If this, then you are truly God’s people. If you obey, you’re truly God’s people. If you stay, if you hold fast, then you’re truly partakers of Christ. That’s what I mean by conditional statements.

Some people take these conditional statements in Scripture, like the one in verse 6, like the one in verse 14, some people take those as unwelcome threats, take them as coercion, as if the writer is using cheap fear tactics to scare his people into holding fast.

You ever felt that way as you read it? Oooh, if-then! What? What’s this? Works? I’ve got to maintain my salvation by works? Is that what’s going on here? We can be troubled. Some people aren’t just troubled; they go further and they are resentful. They’re resenting this. Some people believe that warnings for believers are kind of beneath God, and so they try to weaken these warnings and weaken these conditional statements, explain them away and ignore them, or outright reject the Bible’s conditional statements.

And so they construct a theology that elevates divine justification to such a high degree, higher than the Bible, but one, a degree that distorts and twists and perverts the doctrine of justification.

They want to do worship in their own way, be innovative. That’s everywhere. Travis Allen

They really prefer to preach the indicatives only of what God has done and then say, Just focus on what God has done, and if you command anybody’s conscience with an imperative statement or you provide a conditional, what you need to say in those imperative statements is, Well, no one can keep that perfectly. But praise God, Christ kept it perfectly. And therefore I don’t need to worry about not keeping it perfectly because Christ kept it perfectly.

And therefore, I can just relax and drink my whiskey and smoke my cigars and use foul language and do whatever I want to do, because I am in a state of grace, and to succumb to these commands and these imperatives and threats like a conditional statement is way beneath God.

And I don’t need to worry about those things because Christ has fulfilled it all for me, and he’s done it perfectly. I could never do it perfectly, so let’s not even bother. Let me just tell you, that’s wrong, okay? If you could hear in my scornful tone, that’s wrong.

There are others who take these conditional statements also as threats, but they have been taught in their discipleship or in their upbringing in certain churches, they’ve been taught to see God this way, as threatening, as kind of like a scolding God, like some kind of a stern and harsh father who makes frequent use of the strap and the switch to whip his children into obedience, and he has to use commands and threats and conditional statements.

So people like this, who’ve been taught this way, they heed the warning. They’re kind of like cowering in fear and kind of shrinking up as if they’re going to get smacked again. And they try even harder to hold fast. That’s how they take this. They believe their perseverance is entirely up to them.

Many from the first error I was pointing out can be found in the Calvinist camp. They’re antinomian in their thinking. Many in this camp who kind of cower before God are kind of in more of an Arminian camp, with a very weak view of God’s sovereignty, not understanding how meticulous God’s sovereignty is and how involved he is in caring for his people, and delighting to sanctify them, and promising from the very start that he will cause them to persevere to the very end.

And so they put immense pressure upon themselves, immense pressure upon their people, and their people come out really hating the law of God and really hating the God of the law. And many of them go out to just live however they want to because they can’t live under that crushing burden anymore. They demonstrate they really haven’t known God.

I could go on with other different kinds of errors how people react to conditional statements in the Bible, but let’s just talk about those who have learned and matured in their faith to the point that they do see these conditional statements for what they really are.

The mature understand what God intends by a conditional statements like these in verse 6 and verse 14. They understand what he’s doing, and they begin to recognize how godly pastors and mature Christians use these conditional statements.

And really what happens in these conditional statements is God uses these to cause us to wake up and take notice, be warned, heed the statement, and pursue sanctification. This is one way that God preserves his people, is through putting in Scripture conditional statements like these.

We need to learn to appreciate these statements deeply and not pull away from them, not react negatively, but actually consider them, be thoughtful, prayerful, study them and see the goodness of God in them, the love of God in the conditional statement to cause us, his saints, to persevere, faithful to the end, because we see, even in the warnings, we see promises. That’s what the believing does. The believing sees promises and the warnings and finds hope in the conditions.

Let me show you what I mean and give you a little list. If you like to jot little lists, here’s an opportunity. Seven points, seven ways that you can learn to appreciate the conditionals, seven ways that you can even learn to love these warnings, to persevere to the end, so you see them not as a harsh taskmaster, but you see them as the gentle hand of the fatherly discipline that shepherds his people into his kingdom by means of statements like this.

Most deeply, conditionals that warn us to persevere, that is, if we hold fast, then we are true believers. If we hold fast, we are truly partakers of Christ, something akin to that.

Conditional statements, number one, they keep teaching us the fear of the Lord, don’t they? Number one, conditional statements keep teaching us the fear of the Lord, not to trifle with God, but to heed his Word, to take him seriously, to know that he’s not playing, but he is serious. He’s kind, but he’s serious.

Paul said, “Note the kindness and the severity of the Lord.” Both things are true of him. So we need to take obedience seriously out of this foundation of the fear of the Lord. There’s just this fountain of, like Jesus in John 4 said, “a fountain of living water.” It just produces more and more satisfaction of your thirst. Okay, so fear of the Lord, number one.

After instilling the fear of the Lord in us, number two, conditional statements train us in godly character. Conditional statements train us in godly character. They discipline us in the graces of patience and endurance, as we are made strong in our weakness, as we’re made courageous in what could be our cowardice, bold amidst great opposition, as we learn to hold fast day by day in all the highs and the lows of life. So conditional statements, number two, they train us in godly character. Built off the fear of the Lord, we’re trained in godly character.

Number three, conditional statements drive us to the blessings that we want most, anyway. Strong confidence? I mean, look at verse 6, “We are his house if we hold fast our confidence, the boast of our hope.” Verse 14, “If we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.” Who doesn’t want that? What believer doesn’t want that?

So they drive us to the blessing that we want most anyway: strong confidence, a valid cause for boasting, a rejoicing and a living, never-failing hope that is productive and fruitful and transformative. Which one of us doesn’t want strong, confident boasting in God’s power because we see it at work in our lives? No Christian I know wants to eschew those things.

Add verse 14 and we get a fourth point: Conditional statements always take us back to the gospel, the beginning of our assurance. That’s what it’s talking about, the beginning of our assurance. So we always look to the perfect, completed work of Christ, the objectivity of his substitutionary atonement.

We look not to a righteousness of our own, confident in our own works, but we look to the all-surpassing beauty of the righteousness of Jesus Christ and the active and the passive obedience of Christ for us.

So according to verse 14, a fourth one, his conditional statements always take us back to the gospel. We can only fulfill the condition if we believe the gospel, if we hold fast to the gospel. So we have to wrestle every time we come to these conditional statements, have to wrestle with our faith and trust in the gospel. Do we really rest there, or are we trying to grow in our own merit?

Let me make this really personal, relational. Number five, conditional statements always put Christ before our eyes, to see him, increasingly appreciating who he is. Conditional statements always put Christ before our eyes so we know who he is, what he’s done for us, what he continues to do for us. And that’s really the book of Hebrews, to talk about Christ’s continuing ministry to us in his high-priestly ministry.

And all this so we love him more fully, so we cherish his friendship more deeply, so we appreciate all his ministries to us: his prophetic ministry, his priestly ministry, his kingly ministry to us. We love him more fully, cherish his friendship more deeply, so we can thank him more knowledgeably, more intelligently, so we can worship him more fervently, obey him more eagerly, heartily, zealously because of him, because of a relationship with him. Conditional statements put Christ before our eyes, and this is a relational, personal blessing.

So when we fear the Lord, mature in godly character, enjoy the blessings of our salvation, remember the gospel of Jesus Christ, and fix our eyes on Jesus, we find two more closely related but opposite benefits that emerge. One is negative; one is positive. I’ll cover the negative one first.

By conditional statements in Scripture, like we see in verse 6, verse 11, number six, unbelievers prove to be unbelieving. Unbelievers prove to be unbelieving. And you say, Why would we rejoice in that? Why would that be something good?

Well, unbelievers can’t fulfill the condition. They find themselves frustrated in holding fast, because what undermines their ability to hold fast is: they don’t believe. And so they have an evil heart, and their evil heart and all their sin has not been dealt with. And so their grip is loosened and weakened very quickly.

They don’t fear the Lord. They don’t learn to enjoy the blessings of a salvation that they don’t possess. They don’t remember and hold fast to a gospel that they’ve never believed and embraced. They don’t fix their eyes on a Jesus that they don’t know personally and they leave the fellowship.

And you say, How do we rejoice in that? Well, it’s most certainly a blessing for the believing, even though it’s a painful blessing and a sad blessing, something we sorrow in. But when the unbelieving stay in a church, they compromise the integrity of the church, don’t they?

They erode the unity of the church. They let sin grow and fester in the church. They degrade its purity, just as leaven leavens a loaf. Believers are affected by unbelievers who remain as false professors within a church. “They went out from us,” why? “because they were not of us to begin with.”

And it is a blessing, even though it is painful to see it happen. It’s painful. It hurts my heart and sometimes to tears every time I see it happen. But it is a blessing in the end to have an integral, unified, pure fellowship of saints.

Finally, the opposite is a very positive blessing, number seven: In conditional statements, the believing learn to spot the promises that God sets forth, spot the promises in the conditional statement. We love every warning that trains our senses to hold fast to the promises until we reach our final salvation.

This is how believers take conditional statements, not as barriers to assurance, but as contributing to a most confident assurance. We see these as inducements to pursue God’s promises to grab them, to hold them fast. For when, in verse 6, when we continue to hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope, we strengthen our assurance that we are his house, that we are the temple of the living God.

And verse 14, when we continue to hold fast the start of our assurance, the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, we grow strong in knowledge of the truth. It assures us of the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of Christ’s love for us, that we’re truly partakers of Christ.

So who would despise that? Who would not want that? Who would consider such benefits to be insignificant, unimportant gifts of these conditional statements of Scripture like we find in verse 6 and verse 14, and we’re going to find further in Hebrews? Only unbelievers resent those, with hardened hearts, only those who, let’s say they’re believers, but they’re ignorant and they don’t understand.

Well, now you have seven points that you can help believers understand why conditional statements in Scripture are so good. All true believers, we love to fear the Lord. We love to mature in godliness. We love to enjoy the blessings of the fullness of our salvation in the gospel of Christ.

We love to fix our eyes on Jesus. There’s nothing in our vision that is more beautiful to behold than Jesus Christ to any of us. We love to heed his warnings, and we love to rejoice in his good promises. That’s what these are for. And I just want to encourage you with that. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for this faithful pastor in the writer of Hebrews who exhorts his congregation and calls them to join in his exhortation. But he, even as he warns, he gives great encouragement to the believing, even as he lays down conditions. The believing take it to heart, and you shepherd us toward heaven. We see Christ is more precious to us. We see, God, your greatness in your majesty. Your power is set before us in such clarity and such glory that we don’t want to look away, ever.

And so we pray, Father, that you would use what this pastor has done for his church, that you use it to great effect in our church as well, that you encourage all of us as long as it is called today, that we would join in this ministry of a mutual exhortation one to another, as long as it is called today, lest we become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, lest we miss out on the promises. And help us to see Christ, trust in his gospel, and hold fast to him. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ecclesiastes 5:1-7

Hebrews 3:12-13

We are in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 3, verses 12 to 19. In this section, as you know from last week, this is a section that we’re in of warning as the pastor is trying to kind of get the attention of his congregation. He’s needing to alert his congregation to the danger of a drift that he is seeing in some of his folks who are leaving the Christian church to return back to the Jewish synagogues.

We’ve said this before, but I want to remind you again that the whole church, this church, the Hebrew Christian church in Rome, there, faces a social pressure and could face and will face, as we know from church history, they do face a real danger of persecution.

But there is at this point of the writing of Hebrews, there is a social pressure due to an uptick of anti-Christian sentiment in the surrounding culture in the city. And even there’s imperial intent. As we know, Nero is likely the emperor who’s on the throne, and he’s beginning to see Christians as useful to him as scapegoats for all of his devious things that he’s doing.

So the Romans, backing up and from Nero himself and maybe the imperial Senate and the emperor and all that, the Romans themselves as a people kind of viewed the rise of Christian churches from a bit of a distance, from a bit of a social, religious distance.

They kind of found it at the beginning tough to discern the difference between Christians and Jews. They saw that both Christians and Jews really came from the same source, used the same text. They both taught Moses, revered Moses. The only difference from a Roman perspective is that, the only difference that they saw basically is having different views of Jesus, this Jesus figure, this Christ figure. They saw that the Christians believe that he’s the promised Messiah, where Jews don’t. Jews would prefer to stick with Mosaic traditions.

So from a Roman perspective, looking in from the outside, they had a hard time understanding what the big fuss was about. And yet those Jews did Jewish things like fight with each other. So they just let them be.

And it was kind of characteristic of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, that they were, they had this kind of view of religions in lands that they conquered and the peoples that they conquered, they had kind of a pretty tolerant religious view toward other religions. They were very broad-minded as long as the religion, not only in Rome or in imperial lands, but also in provinces, Roman provinces, they had a view that religion, they would tolerate it.

They would let people practice their own religions as long as they didn’t usurp the supremacy of Caesar, as long as the practice of their religion didn’t slow down taxation, the flow of money, as long as religion didn’t interrupt their economic prosperity, as long as they weren’t rebellious, as long as they weren’t seditious.

So even though the Jews never really fit with the Roman social, political, religious traditions, whatever the religious factions that formed among the Jews, if they were orderly, if they basically maintained public peace, as long as nothing hindered trade, well, all is well.

But relations between Jews and Christians did not stay peaceful. As we know, as we can see in the book of Acts all the way through the New Testament, we can see relations between Christians and Jews did not stay peaceful. Though they shared a common origin and a common ancestry, shared a common text, claimed to follow the same God, there was something that did prevent Christians and Jews from maintaining peace.

I’m saying that there was something that prevented there being peace between Christians and Jews, and I just wanted to ask the question, do you know what that was and whose fault it was that there was no ecumenical peace between these two groups, why it continued to be a problem? Why did that create social disruption?

Because we have Jews in this city that don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah. We do. Because the Romans did think that this Christianity thing was just kind of a sect of Judaism, it’s just, just kind of like a, honestly like a cult, like a little bit of a faction or a cult that developed among the Jews, they’ll deal with their own issues.

From a Jewish perspective, there’s a lot of animosity about that. It’s kind of like the way we see the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses and, you know, Christian Science and all these things as a perversion and a, something that is leading a lot of people astray about what true Christianity is and the Jews thought that of the Christians.

The real issue, here, is the fact that we’re commanded to evangelize. We can’t just live in toleration. We can’t. The Christians then couldn’t. They had to obey their Lord and Savior, who told them go make disciples. Go do it. Go do it with your friends, your family. Go across land and sea to get to other nations and tell them the truth about the gospel.

So this mandate to evangelize the lost, this evangelizing family and friends and neighbors and coworkers, Christ’s mandate to preach this very exclusive gospel, the prophetic mandate to confront sin, telling people they’re wrong, tell the truth, preach righteousness, this puts us Christians at odds with the world around us. Whose fault is that? Who’s to blame for the lack of peace, and who gets the blame for the lack of peace?

The idolatrous Ahab, when he saw Elijah, he said, “Is this you, you troubler of Israel?” Remember that. I love that line. All the while, when he says that Elijah, the prophet of God, a holy man, is the troubler of Israel, well, that’s calling darkness light. That’s calling good evil and evil good, isn’t it? That’s flipping everything on its head to be able to say that and with a straight face.

He’s ignoring his own vile idolatries. He’s ignoring the idolatries of his wife. He’s ignoring all his own sins, which, you remember, Jezebel helped him cook up a plan to sanction the murder of Naboth to steal the man’s land so he could build his own vineyard on that guy’s land.

Ahab was able to control the public narrative. I mean, he got a bunch of worthless men to speak up at a dinner and basically charge Naboth and tell everybody he did some foul thing worthy of death, and they took him away and killed him. So he could control the public narrative, but God knew the truth, and so did Elijah. “I have not troubled Israel,” he said. “You and your father’s house, having forsaken the commandments of Yahweh, and you followed the Baals.”

That’s bold, isn’t it? Are we reluctant or emboldened, when we read things like that in Scripture, are we reluctant or embolden, to speak to others with that kind of moral clarity? If we’re reluctant, why do you think that is?

1 Peter says that we’re to “sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts,” meaning we set him apart as Lord and we follow his commandments, follow his directive. When we know that we’re supposed to go and speak, we go and speak because he’s Lord in our hearts, not their opinion, not how it’s going to come across, not the reaction we get or don’t get or whatever.

It’s “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,” not the public, not the opinions, not the reactions. That’s not Lord. Christ is Lord, so we “sanctify Christ is Lord in our hearts, always being ready to give an answer to those who ask about the hope within us.”

We’re to do this, though, with gentleness and respect. So we are to be gentle and respect. We are to put on the virtues of Colossians 3:12 and walk around in that. I can tell you, though, from some experience, that you can still speak in those ways, with those virtues, clothed in them, gleaming white, and still get blowback from people reacting very poorly against you and finding some way to blame you. It just happens.

Why is it, then, that we are emboldened when we read the text, but then when we get up to do the text, we somehow wilt? What’s that about? But this is really, really important, that what we read in Scripture, God wants us to actually do that stuff, not just be readers or hearers of the Word, who look into the mirror and then walk away and forget what we read and forget how emboldened we felt and strong we felt and desirous to be a man like Elijah, prophetic in our witness and strong and bold because we love people, because we want them to know the truth.

We ought to look up from the words on the page that delight our hearts and give us strength and vigor and walk out and do those things because we have the same Holy Spirit who inscribed those words. That same Holy Spirit lives within us to speak those kinds of words, too, to act those kinds of ways. We need to grow in this, don’t we? I think, I think if I had a show of hands, we could all say, I need some growth to put into practice what I find written in Scripture. We all need to grow.

Trouble was always brewing there in Rome and simmering there beneath the surface in the Jewish sectors of Rome. And every now and again, there would be another round of hostilities that would break out as Christians were just simply obeying Jesus Christ, telling the truth about him.

They were proclaiming his gospel, and Jesus said man’s greatest enemies are going to be those members of his own household that he tells the truth to. The divisions are going to come up within household of mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law and father and son and it’s going to create rifts within family relationships, and that’s really going to test loyalties.

So Jesus is the one that warned us a number of times in his ministry that this gospel that we preach, and telling the truth, and being bold in our love, and humbled in our love, it’s going to have consequences. So when the Christians did this in this church that we’re reading about, these Hebrew Christians, when they did that in their context, the Jews responded with hostility, and then they turned around to blame all the unrest on the Christians. They said, They are the ones causing trouble.

The more that unrest drew the attention of the Roman authorities, the more scrutiny’s came on the Jews, the Jewish communities, Jewish businesses. And so the Jews pressured their family and their friends that had become Christians or were attending Christian churches, You’ve got to stop that. You’re creating hostility, you’re creating problems, you’re creating difficulties for us and our communities and our businesses.

This is not good. And in fact, we think it’s actually not even biblical. We actually think you need to come back to the synagogue and really learn to appreciate the Moses that you’ve left, appreciate the traditions that you’ve abandoned, the prophets that you’re insulting by following this Christian faith.

So these Jews would plead with their families and friends. They’d cajole and coerce through emotions, anger, sorrow, fear. They’d reason with them intellectually. They’d argue with them about the superiority of Moses and the law, their history, their traditions, ceremonies, rituals.

They wanted to persuade them to leave their churches, to come back home, return to Jewish traditions, and take refuge from an increasing persecution and coming wrath in Rome. They’d experienced it before. It was going to happen again. All the signs were pointing to that.

If you think about it, these Jews were kind of preaching a kind of an anti-gospel, you could say. They were kind of evangelizing in reverse. It was a reactionary response to the Christian gospel and the Christian evangelism.

The Christian said, Listen, you’re sinning against God. You need to flee his coming wrath and take refuge in Jesus Christ. That’s the Christian gospel. The Jews responded with, You’re offending Rome, and you need to flee its coming wrath and take refuge in Moses and in the synagogue with us. We’ll ride this out together. That’s a pretty powerful, powerful gospel for people who are worldly minded.

I want to keep reminding you of what these Hebrew Christians are facing. It’s no small thing. And there are elements of what they faced in their time, in their settings, their circumstances that have parallels to our own time: family pressures, criticisms, you’re a cult, you belong to a cult, you are a cult people, all that kind of stuff. We hear all that stuff all the time.

I want you to see what they were wrestling with, so you can see that almost two millennia later, even though we live in different times and face different problems, challenges, circumstances, the fundamental challenge, it stays the same. The basic pressures we face are all the same.

The true church of Jesus Christ and all true Christians will always face social, political, cultural, religious headwinds no matter when or where we live. And that’s why this pastor, in writing to this Hebrew congregation, this Christian congregation, that’s why this pastor can use, legitimately, theologically, accurately, biblically, he can use warnings in the Bible against the unbelief of Israel to warn his own Christian congregation.

Look at the text in Hebrews 3 verse 6. Christians, he’s saying, are the true house of God, not the Christ-rejecting Jews. They’re not the true house of God. They’ve departed from the house of God. But he says Christians are the true house of God.

The true church of Jesus Christ and all true Christians will always face social, political, cultural, religious headwinds no matter when or where we live.” Travis Allen

And then he says in Hebrews 3:6, “if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope.” Don’t boast in Moses. Don’t leave your Christian confidence and assurance and go back to the synagogue. You’d be going back to a dead faith. Do not do that. We are the true house of God if we stand fast, hold this confidence and the boast of our hope.

And then he says this, which some of this we’ve covered. “Therefore,” verse 7, “just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tried me by testing me and saw my works for forty years.

“‘Therefore I was angry with this generation and said they always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.’ See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.

“But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.

“While it is said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me.’ For who provoked him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.”

Last time, we looked at verses 7 through 11, the pastor’s use of the citation from Psalm 95, which is verse 7 through 11, there. David, the author of Psalm 95, it’s anonymous in the psalter, but in Hebrews 4, verse 7, David is cited as the author. But David, the author of Psalm 95, warned the people of his own time by pointing to the destruction of the generation of Israel that had left Egypt, who saw God’s miraculous power at work and yet didn’t believe.

So the pastor, in reading this Psalm 95, he sees in Psalm 95 there’s a precedent set by David. There’s a legitimate use of warning to God’s people. The Spirit’s call is continual. Whenever you pick up your Bible and read, the Spirit is speaking to you. There’s a continual call, a continual Word that we need to interpret correctly, and we need to sometimes boil down a principle and migrate it over to our own time and place and circumstances, and let that principle have its work, have its say.

But the Word of God is living and active. The Word of God is always applicable. There’s always something to pick up and apply in the Scripture to our own time. So the Spirit’s call is continual, and that tells this pastor that the warning for God’s people is a perennial warning. It’s always applicable to warn the people of God, and the Lord’s ruling on unbelief is always the same. It never changes. His warning against unbelief is immutable.

So as in the days of Moses, as in the days of David, as in the days of the pastor, here, of these Hebrew Christians, so also for our day and our time right now. So the pastor is going to turn his attention to applying the text, here in verses 12 and following in Hebrews 3, and notice how he enlists his congregation in verses 12 to 13. “See to it, brothers, that there not be in anyone of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But you, church, encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, lest anyone of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” 

We’ll just take these two verses, 12 and 13. They divide into two points according to verse 12, verse 13, following the two main verbs. There’s one main verb in verse 12, see to it; and then another main verb in verse 13, encourage.

So first point, number one if you take notes, is, following verse 12, your daily duty to pay attention. Number one, point number one: your daily duty to pay attention, verse 12. The pastor says there, “See to it, brothers.” He’s identifying his readers, his congregation, his fellow church members as his brothers and sisters.

That is to say, he considers them to be Christians. He’s got every belief that they are genuine, not just professing Christians, but professing Christians who are genuine Christians. That’s what he believes about them.

And yet in observing the times and the culture and his own congregation, and then observing some people’s behavior, and then as he’s educated by his reading of his Bible, pastorally it gives him kind of a heavy heart. It gives him a deep concern about some people and what’s going on in their midst.

So this leads him to choose this verb at the beginning, the verb blepo. We’ve seen this before in Colossians 2:8 about watching out for worldly philosophy. This leads him to choose that verb blepo; see to it, watch out, take care, take heed. As we’ve said before, it can refer to the visual sense of sight and visual perception of physical things. But here, in this context, very clear, it’s the faculty of mental judgment that’s the issue.

So this “see to it, brothers,” is about making careful observations. Yes, going from what you see, but then processing that, thinking about that, being watchful, paying close attention. And it’s because there’s a lurking danger that they’ve got to pay attention.

So what’s the danger? He identifies it here as “an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.” The concern is about the heart once again. The concern is always the heart, isn’t it, in ministry? And my concern is about my own heart, too, about the hearts of my kids, my family, about the hearts of my church members.

The concern is always about the heart. And as we’ve said many times, I’ll repeat it again, the heart has an intellectual function, the mind, thinking. It’s got an affectional function; that is, the feelings, the emotions; it’s also got a volitional function, the will. So the heart, the mind, the emotion, the will, our inner self, our processing center, this is what we must watch carefully. This is what we must pay attention to and carefully observe.

This is nothing new to Bible readers. This is nothing new to these Hebrew Christians. This is ancient, ancient wisdom coming from, say, Proverbs 4:23, “Guard your hearts with all vigilance.” Another translation says, “Watch over your heart,” same kind of idea here, “with all diligence,” for the heart is so important, “because from it flow the springs of life.”

Now in this verse, verse 12, there is an adjective that describes the heart, and this is the heart that must be watched out for. It’s this kind of heart we need to watch out for. He says, “Pay attention and look out for an evil heart.”

Our translation, “an evil, unbelieving heart,” turns both evil and unbelieving into adjectives, but it’s really only the word evil that is the adjective, here. A slightly more accurate translation would be “an evil heart of unbelief.” That treats, unbelief as a noun, and it helps us to see what makes the heart evil.

He calls this heart evil because the source of this heart, the influence of the heart, the thinking intellectually, the feeling emotionally, the willing and the volition, it all comes from and is sourced in unbelief. That’s the problem with this heart. The mind does not believe the truth. Ultimately, what makes the heart evil? Evil is the adjective; unbelief is a noun, there.

So what makes the heart evil is that it’s sourced in unbelief. Mind, will, emotions sourced in unbelief. So the mind doesn’t believe the truth. The affections and the emotions are not governed by the truth, and the will is not bound to the truth and doesn’t submit to the truth.

And we asked the question, why is that? It’s because this heart was never believing to begin with. This heart was never converted. And so because it was never believing and never converted, this heart is always bent toward straying and self-will and unsubmissiveness and doing whatever this heart wanted according to the flesh, according to the fallen nature.

So now let’s trace this. The heart that we are to be paying attention to and watching out for is one that was never believing. It’s an unbelieving heart, which is by definition and in God’s eyes an evil heart. And the pastor ends the verse with the inevitable result, is a heart of apostasy. It’s a heart that ultimately falls away from the living God. If you fall away from the living God, what is that called?

If you turn from the living God to go to any other kind of God, what’s that called? Idolatry. It’s apostasy to idolatry. It’s a leaving the living God to go to anything that’s not the living God is a, an idol, an unliving God, a dead idol. It’s mute, it can’t speak; it’s deaf, it can’t hear; it’s blind, it can’t see. It has no mind, has no heart, has no life in itself. So he says any apostasy from this one true, exclusive Christian faith, any apostasy from the living God is a drift into idolatry, period.

Sorrowful strokes that this pastor, his writing from his pen comes from an aching heart of a man who’s watched this pattern time and time again in his ministry, just as Moses experienced, which was recorded in Numbers: Grumbling and complaining. Man, so clear, isn’t it, in Numbers?

Grumbling, complaining reveals a hard and stubborn heart. A hard and stubborn heart sins and offends God deeply. That sinful offensive heart to God is a proud self-willed, unsubmissive heart which inevitably leaves, which inevitably walks away, which inevitably apostatizes. That’s the end result. And that is proof positive of the origin of the evilness of that heart, which is unbelief. That’s where it comes from.

Simon Kistemaker, he says this about apostasy. He says, “It finds its origin, development, and impetus in unbelief. Unbelief, characterized by mistrust and unreliability, first comes to expression in disobedience, which in turn results in apostasy,” and then this, “The signs of apostasy are a hardening of the heart and an inability to repent.”

You want to see the signs of apostasy in living color, in flesh and blood, right in front of you? Find somebody who can never admit fault, who will never confess sins, who will never acknowledge guilt, who will never take ownership. They harden their heart and they will not repent and they will not change. They will not abandon their old way and put on a new. That’s a clear sign apostasy is taking an effect. If you’ve been in pastoral ministry for almost any length of time, that’s what you see. You see hard hearts refuse to repent.

So this pastor is saying, and he’s saying to the church, he’s enlisting the whole church and saying we all have a daily duty to pay attention to hearts, to watch out for an evil heart, which we know from Scripture, which you can get the sense in the experience of Christian living that the pastor goes a little bit further here in verse 13 and takes us even further outside of our comfort zones.

He says, number two, first, your daily duty to pay attention, and then second, your daily duty to give exhortation. Your daily duty to give exhortation. So he wrote, verse 12, “See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you, an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.”

That sounds like it could be in the realm of the subjective, like just a matter of, I just need to pay attention and I kind of keep that inside and my judgments inside. And this is kind of my own private life, personal business. I can do verse 12 in a subjective sense. I can do verse 12 individually, privately, just me and my own thoughts, and I’ll just pray about the matter.

But then the pastor pushes you out of the private into the public square. Verse 13, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

The daily duty to pay attention has also a corporate, public, and communal application, as well. In fact, that’s really the emphasis, here, and it provides a corrective, I think, for our time, a time that we live in, in which the private and the personal and the subjective take such priority so as to exclude and eschew and even reject outright the public and communal and objective duty that we have as Christians.

It is not okay to be a lone ranger Christian and just to do you and leave everybody else to do what they do. That is not Christianity. This is not Lone Wolf McQuade or Outlaw Josey Wales or whatever vision of manliness you have in your head from the movies or from romantic stories about some isolated island and rock of a man who just walks through life slinging guns and taking names.

That is not Christianity. Christianity is communal. It’s lived together. It’s lived in fellowship with one another. In this text, in verses 12 to 13, it’s very clear in the original that they’re joined together by what’s called a superordinate conjunction, which can have it, like an adversative, a but, like an adversative kind of a sense.

In this context, it’s not used that way. Same word, but a superordinate conjunction in this context just strengthens the sense. So here’s how it reads from verse 12. “See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart” or an evil heart of unbelief, “that falls away from the living God,” here comes this conjunction, “indeed, encourage one another day after day.”

Indeed, you must. Indeed, get after it. Encourage one another. The verb actually is parakaleo, which, here, I think a better translation, here, it means exhort one another. So “Exhort one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘today,’ lest anyone of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

Whenever you pick up your Bible and read, the Spirit is speaking to you.” Travis Allen

Remember back to the start of our study of Hebrews when we talked about the whole thing, of what kind of genre is this? Is it an epistle? Is it history? We said that this is kind of an epistolary exhortation. It’s an exhortation put into letter form.

According to Hebrews 13:22, the author identifies what he writes as “a word of exhortation,” a logos of paraklesis, which, when a paraklesis in exhortation is delivered by a pastor who is the author, it’s called a sermon. So he’s written a sermon, put it in print, made it a letter, and put it in the post and sent it to his church.

Now the pastor is here, enjoining his congregation to this sober duty of his, to the daily duty that his church has to exhort one another. Again, it’s Kistemaker who says, “In a sense, Hebrews 3:12 may be called the summary of the pastoral exhortations in the whole epistle.” It’s true. The pastor is enlisting his people. He’s calling this believing church, believing church members to join him in this sacred duty of exhortation and encouragement, sometimes even admonition.

Remember, the pastor has identified his readers as his brothers in verse 12. And so these are fellow Christians. They’re professing Christians, and the duty is to pay attention, which is, of course, practiced privately and subjectively, but more to the point it’s to practice it publicly and objectively in the context of the corporate body life, in the communal life of the church.

So he calls them brothers, in verse 12 and speaks of exhorting one another in verse 13. That is to say, brother exhorts brother. And then he uses, in verse 13 “any one of you.” He uses that term, expression, “any one of you” in both verses 12 and 13.

In verse 12, the expression is, “See to it, brothers, lest perchance,” it’s kind of a little expanded translation, there, “less perchance there will be in some one of you all an evil, unbelieving heart.” Okay, so, Be looking out for your fellow church members because you never know if someone has come into our midst who’s not truly converted, is what he’s saying.

Hard to fathom such a thing among us, brothers, but pay attention. We need to be on the lookout. We know it’s not unreasonable to assume not all have faith. Not everyone here is truly converted. Okay, so watch out for that evil heart, the one that’s sourced in unbelief. It’s going to take time to see.

In verse 13, the expression is encourage or exhort one another daily in order of that, and there’s a purpose clause, here, “in order that not anyone from you,” or no one out of your number, or from among the midst of you, so that “not any one from you should be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

Okay, so that part can happen to a Christian and non-Christian alike, right? Become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin? Whenever we commit a sin, it’s because we’ve been deceived. Whenever we commit a sin, it’s because we’ve chosen unbelief over belief. We’ve faltered and failed to believe strongly. We’ve been deceived. We think that the pleasures of the moment are going to have a payoff better than righteousness in the moment, than standing firm and not sinning. We’re always wrong about that.

The idea in verse 12 is in this community of believers whom we believe to be, you know, predominantly made-up of converted people, there’s a possibility that some may be unconverted. It’s a very real possibility. It’s not pervasive, not majority, but we also ought to be paying attention not only to everybody else but also to our own hearts.

The idea is even stronger in verse 13, though, more direct because the concern is an abiding concern, namely that anyone, anyone of our own number, believers in our midst, can succumb to sinning and then become hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. What comes to your mind when you hear that phrase, “the deceitfulness of sin”? What sins do you envision as particularly powerful in deceiving our own hearts? What is more deceptive than lusts and covetous desire, pleasures, titillating distractions?

I think it is religious pride and a religious pride in particular. It’s not just pride in self-accomplishment, ambition, money, status, fame, whatever. Religious pride is being enamored with one’s own goodness, justifying what you do as okay because you have a good end in mind.

The idea of evangelism: Well, I need to not come to church for these weeks because I’m trying to evangelize this certain person. Sounds like a really good reason, right? You’ve got a religious reason now, a religious justification for what you do.

Martin Luther says it this way, “The phrase ‘the deceitfulness of sin’ ought to be understood in a much wider sense so that the term includes,” now he’s not excluding, but he says, “so that the term includes even one’s own righteousness and wisdom, for more than anything else, one’s own righteousness and wisdom deceive one and work against faith in Christ.

“Since we love the flesh and the sensations of the flesh, and also riches and possessions, but we love nothing more ardently than our own feelings, judgment, purpose, and will,” and then listen to this, “especially when they seem to be good.”

Luther goes on to say, “Love of their own righteousness blinds them, hardens their heart.” Well, why might that be? Luther answers, “Because they think it a good thing to glory in their own righteousness and be pleased with it, though that indeed is the very worst of all vices and the extreme antithesis of faith. Faith rejoices and glories in the righteousness of God alone, that is, in Christ himself.” And thank you, Martin Luther; that’s so poignant.

There’s a deception in all sin, a deception of our heart whenever we sin, the sensations of the flesh, riches, possessions. But we tend to love nothing more ardently than our own feelings, judgment, purpose, and will, especially when they seem to be good.

We elders here in this church, or in previous churches where I’ve served as an elder, we can’t count the number of times that some proud, self-righteous person, deceived thoroughly into thinking himself or herself as righteous and the elders as unrighteous and uncompat, and fill in the blank of what they are, people fail to see in those judgments, in those comments, the redwood-sized logs protruding out of their eye sockets.

In many cases, these kinds of self-righteous complaints and criticisms and subtle little jabs and slanders against church elders, not just this church, every faithful elder I’ve talked to, every pastor I’ve talked to, exact same thing. They see it everywhere.

But they’re not often known by the elders or known to the elders until the people have one foot out the door. But how often we find that these ungodly, unrighteous sentiments are known among the members of the church who often times say nothing.

On the other hand, I’ve known in a number of cases church members who’ve gone to sinning members and confronted them in their sinning and called them to account for their slanders and their gossips and their complaints and their grumbling and their disloyalty.

At times, it didn’t stop the sinners from their sinning. They were far too self-righteous and enamored with their own goodness and good for that. But it did check them. It did stir their remorse, inform consciences, even if it generated no repentance, generated no, even confession.

This is why the pastor in Hebrews, of these Hebrew Christians, he’s enlisting his church to the duty of paying attention, to the duty of exhortation, and that they must do this duty daily, be at it all the time “while it is still called today.”

Who’s using the word today? The Holy Spirit? And the Holy Spirit is giving you not only duty, but he’s given opportunity. Who’s the author behind the human author of Hebrews? Who is it? Who enlists the church members to the daily duty of paying attention and the daily duty of exhortation? It’s the Spirit of the living God. We have to pay attention. We have to exhort one another daily. To not do so is to defy him and to disobey him.

What makes church members, what makes you, what makes us reluctant to practice the daily duties of paying attention and exhortation? What makes us reluctant? Why would we not do that? We fail to see the church for what it is; it’s a training ground, a proving ground. We don’t come here expecting stress. We come here expecting, I don’t know, good religious feelings, good conversation, smiles.

What we really need to come expecting is confrontation with the Spirit of the living God, maybe some discomfort in ways we need to change. But obviously there’s also tons of encouragement and tons of hope and joy and satisfaction.

So we have both. It’s just we tend to, I think here in America, we tend to amplify the things that make us feel good. We’re pleasure-seekers: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness; not stress, challenge, testing of my heart to see where I’m sinning.

But Matthew 18:15 is not just for pastors. It’s not just for leaders, it’s for everybody. It’s for “if your brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens, you’ve won your brother.”

Very important, though, to pursue that, and we do tend to have a hesitation in our hearts saying, “Well, maybe I don’t have all the facts. Maybe I will make my case put together. Maybe I will be mistaken, and . . .” But what prevents you from just going to ask the question at all? You know, what’s the worst that could happen? You confront your brother, and your brother says, Oh, I think you got the facts wrong on this.

You know what your heart should be like? Awesome! I’m so glad to have the facts wrong and you’re exonerated. Forgive me. I just love you, and I wanted to try and ask this question, but you’ve cleared up the whole thing. Thank you. Boom. Done. And you’ve loved your brother, and your brother’s loved you.

We just need to have more courage, I think, and kind of test one another’s forbearance and forgiveness and realize we’re not going to bite each other. We may nibble a little bit, but it’s okay.

What would it take to actually obey this command to exhort one another daily? What does this require of us? I mean, think about it. You don’t just walk up to somebody you don’t know and start exhorting, you know, encouraging, to say kind things. But even there, your encouragement will fall, will sound pretty hollow if some certain foundational basic things are not in place, first.

So what does it take to actually obey this command, put it into practice? What does it require of each one of us? Friendship. If we’re going to obey these commands, if we’re going to take this seriously, like look up from the pages and not just cheer it on, but say, Okay, let’s go. Let’s actually do this, it requires friendship. It requires us getting into one another’s lives.

See and be seen. Know and be known. We need to add one more: Love and be loved. If it’s just see and be seen, know and be known, that’s really 1984, that’s Big Brother, that’s George Orwell, that’s Orwellian. See and be seen, oh, Big Brother’s always watching; know and be known, all your stuff is known, and it’s scary unless you add a third: Love and be loved.

We want to be seen and known, so that we can give and receive love with one another. It’s so important. That’s the practice of friendship. That is what fellowship is. We’re to see and know and to love one another.

That’s what this text is requiring of us. You have to have that in place and build that all the time in order that you can meaningfully encourage one another and meaningfully exhort one another. We need to be building those relationships, investing.

And it is true, I’ll just try to caution for those one, two, or three of you out there who might be that ham-fisted sword-thrust-coming-out-of-the-mouth kind of a person, you know, like the Sons of Thunder breathing down fire on the Samaritan village, this is not that. Don’t mistake me. Don’t misunderstand me. You do need to grow in the graces, the virtues that are talked about in Colossians 3:12.

And here’s where I want to just encourage you, church. You all take up this duty and pay attention daily and exhort one another daily, encourage one another daily. Do this. And then treat your pastors, elders, more mature, seasoned Christians in your life as coaches. They’ll guide you through it.

You’re not on your own. You’re not out there on a limb. You can find help, you just need to open up and raise the issue. Sometimes you’ll find there’s really not even an issue to address. Other times you’ll find, oh, this is something we coach you in and and help you through. Let’s pray.

Father, we just ask that you would help us all to put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; that we would be a forbearing and forgiving people, forgiving whatever complaint arises; and even if sins are committed against one another, that we would see it as the, as the test and the stress that you’ve put into our life to test the clothing that we wear, and that we would find that this clothing you’ve given us is sufficient to bring us through that.

We do pray that you would help us to pay attention daily and to give our exhortation daily, to encourage and at times to admonish, but to really know each other well, to be in each other’s lives, to be friends and friendly, and to invite that kind of attention, those kinds of questions and that kind of relationship and friendship. Help us to stand out in that way, and I pray that you would grow us in our maturity in our church to be able to practice this together. For the sake of your glorious name, Father, we pray. Amen.

Colossians 3:13-14

It is a joy to return to our study of Colossians, especially as this week we get to finish what we started last week. So Colossians 3:12, we’ll start there, read, review, and carry on.

Colossians 3:12, “So as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and graciously forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord graciously forgave you, so also should you.

“Above all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity, 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 in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Leaving vice lists behind, Paul has turned a corner, refreshingly, to this positive command in verse 12 and following, which is most welcome, and he’s telling us, here, to put on virtue. We get to wear graces of God as our clothing.

We noted last time that the verses divide into two sections: verses 12 to 14, what to put on, how to walk around in it; and then verses 15 to 17, how to live. The peace of Christ rules; the word of Christ dwells; the name of the Lord Jesus accomplishes it all.

But before we get into verses 15 to 17, let’s finish verses 12 to 14 and see how perfectly and beautifully and gloriously God dresses us, we who are his elect, we who are chosen to be holy, we who are cherished as his beloved.

We started with our identity in verse 12, and our outline, our first point was, number one, God blesses and justifies his elect. “As the elect of God,” verse 12, “holy and beloved,” we are the privileged subjects of his renewal project.

God lovingly, powerfully transforms us into the image of the new man. We “grow up in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” Ephesians 4:13 puts it, “to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Elect, means that we Christians, we are the objects of God’s free choice. It’s an eternal choice that he made, selected as we are in his perfect decree. Nothing secures us more firmly than the exercise of this free will of his, a pronouncement, a declaration made in the perfection of his eternal will.

Holy, that refers to what we are now, and it refers to what we shall be. We are reconciled to him now because of what Christ has accomplished. “Having been justified by faith” means we have faith. And if we have faith, we have everything. We have received saving grace of God, and God will finish what he started. And what is that project? It’s to make us holy and blameless before him.

Beloved, that speaks of our cherished place in God’s heart. In God’s redemptive program, we are the objects of his love. His love is an eternal love. His love is a defining quality or characteristic or attribute or perfection of his. It’s a jealous love, a love that banishes any and all rivals. It’s a powerful, sanctifying love that beautifies us.

Now, God does not dress and beautify us as if we were a set of dress-up dolls, we’re just passively wearing whatever God puts on us, and he makes us beautified, and he dresses us up like a set of his playthings.

God beautifies us by involving us. We have wills, we have thoughts, we have an understanding, we have a heart that responds, or doesn’t respond, as the case may be, but it responds to him. We learn. We’re not robotic. We’re not automatons. We’re not just passive in the process. God involves us. He commands us to understand and to appreciate and to participate in his renewing work in our lives.

That brings us to, number two, that God dresses and beautifies his elect. God dresses and beautifies his elect. God intends that we should become what we, in actual fact, what we truly are. He wants us to become what we are.

Paul says in verse 12, “As the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion.” So he issues a command to our hearts that our mind would understand and apprehend it, that our hearts, our emotions would respond with joy to it, and our wills would be engaged and make choices. And the choice, here, is to follow this command and be obedient to it, to put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

All those things, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, all those things are Christ, right? Christ is those things. Christ wore those things. Christ exemplified those things. He never was not those things, not even for a second.

And we are in him. Positionally before God, we are perfect in him in all those attributes, all those virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. And so what we are positionally, we are to become practically. What God has predestined us for, what he set us apart to be, we are to become.

He has imputed his own righteousness to us. Now, in Christ, being united to Christ, he’s imputed Christ’s righteousness to us. And we are his holy people, his beloved people. And so he intends to impart that righteousness to us progressively, practically, so that we become holy as he is holy, so that we walk as his beloved children.

But it all starts, as we saw in verse 5, as we saw in verses 8 and 9, it all starts with disassociating ourselves with what we once were. That’s the mortification project of verse 5. And that is ultimately about purging ourselves in our hearts of all rival loves. That verse ends with a statement about idolatry, that covetousness is ultimately idolatry, covetousness explaining all those other sins, and covetousness itself is an expression of an idolatrous heart.

So we are to kill all rival loves, we’re to topple, turn out, demolish all idols, and then rid ourselves of all the bad behavior that’s associated with all that former idolatry, according to verses 8 and 9.

And so having denied self, the old self, having put off the old self with all of its evil practices, there’s a new set of clothes for us to put on. We’re to understand their value, we’re to learn their worth. We’re to appreciate them.

And then having understood their value, worth and appreciate them, we’re to put on these clothes, we’re to wear them around, we’re to wear them, as it were, wear them smartly.

In verse 12, as we saw last time, there are inner garments that sort of undergird everything and provide a platform for everything on the outside. So the inward attitudes of compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, they undergird the outward-facing garments, which are attitudes of gentleness and patience.

So starting with the inward attitudes, a heart of compassion refers to feelings of concern, affection for others, tender compassion toward others, mercy. We cultivate a warmth of feeling for one another, stir affection for close friendship with one another as a very clear testimony of selfless concern for others. We put ourselves aside, our comfort aside, our schedules aside, our plans aside, and we serve others, treat them as more important than ourselves.

An inner attitude, another one, is kindness. Kindness, we could say, is really patterned after Jesus Christ, who is always kind to absolutely everyone. The incarnate Son of God puts the lovingkindness of God on display, and he does so at all times with a gracious disposition, friendliness, approachableness, tenderness.

The compassion, the kindness, both of those first two virtues, they thrive in the good soul of a third attitude, which is humility. Humility. Those who think too highly of themselves, they can never really be compassionate or kind. If you think too highly of yourself, your compassion runs short with people who are not going to get you where you want to go.

Kindness has an end, but it takes humility to truly be compassionate, to truly be kind because you have to set yourself aside. It takes true humility, not the, as we said last time, not the false caricatures of humility paraded around by religious hypocrites and pretenders, but it’s a true humility, the kind of coram deo humility, coram deo meaning, before the face of God.

It’s that kind of coram deo humility that was put on display in Christ. That’s how he lived his life, always before the face of God, always thinking of God watching over him and him doing his father’s will, his father’s bidding. It gave him great joy, great pleasure to live that way. But he thought very little of himself. He thought of nothing more than the will of God and those people who were the targets of God’s love, teaching truth, understanding.

In humility, there’s no self-seeking, there’s no boasting, there’s no parading of strengths and virtues and achievements. There’s no putting oneself forward. There’s no taking the highest place, the most comfortable chair, taking the easiest, most comfortable path.

Humility is not about self. Humility is about associating with the lowly. It’s about giving yourself to humble tasks since nothing is beneath the humble. Humility is being okay with being overlooked, submitting yourself to the unfolding of God’s perfect providence, both good and bad, in your life, knowing that God always has the best in mind for his people. Humility accepts that. Humility adjusts to that.

So compassion, kindness, and humility really provide the undergirding virtues for the two outward-facing virtues that describe really our comportment, our external disposition, kind of how we handle ourselves with others and with the circumstances that we face.

So the virtue of gentleness, that term prautes or praus, I like the translation, meekness instead of gentleness, but both work. But meekness, that’s how our Lord described himself in Matthew 11:29. He very rarely spoke of himself, his inward disposition, but he says, “‘I am gentle and humble in heart.’” He said, “I’m a meek man, that’s my heart, it’s a heart of meekness.”

And he walked it, didn’t he, even when he was tested by provocations, and some provocations were quite severe. Some people that he met were very hard to love, very hard to care for, very hard to even sometimes have compassion for. But he was composed always of a general friendliness. He always accommodated his strength to cover weaknesses, to serve others.

Husbands, if your wives are there merely to serve your interests, you’re wrong. You’re sinning. Your strength is to serve your wife’s weakness, to cover over her, to care for her. And you know what she does with that kind of love, that kind of compassion shown toward her? You think she grabs more and more and just fills this consuming void within her, because you are her God? No, a Christian wife, you know what she does? She thrives in that. She responds by wanting to submit in humility and serve her husband with love.

Don’t ever be afraid to wear the virtues of the Lord Jesus Christ, to give yourself completely to be like him. Don’t look out for yourself. Look out for his interests, and his interests are to make you a meek person. Give of yourself.

Whereas gentleness or meekness refers to our manner of dealing with others, whether provoked or not, patience, patience is on display only when a provocation comes and whether that provocation comes by means of people or circumstances. Patience is exercised when there is provocation. You don’t know a patient person because he has no trouble in his life. Patience is only known when the patience is tested. Makes sense, right?

When tested by people, the Lord proved patient at all times. He never lost his patience. He never had an angry outburst. When the circumstances seemed inconvenient, he always pivoted to follow the new direction revealed in his father’s wise providence. He kept his cool always, all the time, walking at all times in the dignity of love. He was never flustered; he was always patience with all things.

Having come through those five virtues, there, stop and think about this. Isn’t it amazing that God, the God who created all things, called everything into existence from nothing, isn’t it interesting that God wants to dress us like that? Isn’t that interesting, that he wants us to wear that clothing?

In our study of verse 12, what we need to see is that we have kind of entered the divine wardrobe. We’ve walked around in it. We’ve admired the beauty of the garments that are hanging there. And we’ve come to appreciate perhaps a little bit better in our study of verse 12, come to appreciate the quality of the fabric, the vibrancy of the colors that are there, the richness of the textures, the durability. And listen, we’re not just wandering through a rich man’s wardrobe as if we’re passing by on a fancy tour through some rich man’s house in Beverly Hills.

The master of the house enters that wardrobe with you and puts his arm around you and says, “Look, these are your clothes. This is what I want you to wear. I want you to put these things on, learn to walk around in them because I love you and because my love poured out upon you. I want you now to represent me by wearing these clothes, walking around in them, getting used to them, wearing them well, wearing them smartly.”

That’s what our next point is all about. Now that we put on the clothing of the new man, it’s time to kind of stress test what we’re wearing. It’s time to prove it’s worth. It’s time to learn to walk around in it. So the third point is God, number three, God stresses and sanctifies his elect. God stresses and sanctifies his elect.

The stress test, kind of pulling and stretching and trying to test the seams and test the integrity of the garment, that stress test is not about proving whether the clothing can handle the stress because we’ve got the full written record of the life of our Lord that shows us this clothing is sound. This clothing is strong, it is perfect. And with the wearing of this clothing, it never loses its shine, its brilliance, its color, its beauty.

No, the stress test and the testing is about us. It’s about proving and improving us. It’s about maturing and perfecting us. Look at verse 13 and see if you pick up that sense. Paul says “bearing with one another.” Oh, what? What? What’s going on? “Bearing with one another and forgiving each other.” Why would we need to do that? “Bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.”

Wait a minute. Complaints in the church? May it never be, right? But there it is right in Scripture, biblical proof, as if you needed any, that complaints, yes, they do arise in true churches and yes, among true Christians. The term translated, here, as complaint is related to a verb that has to do with fault-finding. It’s a verb that has to do with blaming.

Now, Paul’s not making any comment, here, about whether the complaint is legitimate or not. That’s kind of beside the point. Paul simply says and acknowledges, here, that complaints will arise, complaints will show up. And it can, here, imply that even in cases of legitimate cause for complaint, that’s going to happen even in good churches.

Now, when a complaint is not legitimate, when it’s a slander, when it’s a false accusation, when it’s someone with hurt feelings that just responds unnecessarily with their thin skin, they get all bent out of shape, well, that creates its own kind of trial, doesn’t it? And there’s just another reason with another grievance, another potential to cause strife, which gives us an opportunity to bear with one another and overlook. But these stresses, whether the complaint is legitimate or not, these stresses test our character, and they expose our virtue or our lack of virtue.

So wearing our new set of clothes, we need to see these occasions of complaint and grievance, not as inconveniences, not something to avoid, not as indications that something’s wrong, certainly not justifications for complaining, grumbling, gossiping. We need to see these complaints, difficulties arising, and see them for what they really are. These are providentially timed tests to test our new clothing so that we can practice Christ-like virtues, and we can do so under stress and under test.

Stress is a good thing for us in a fallen world. There’s going to come a time in our glorification in the millennial kingdom and beyond, in the eternal state, where we’re going to have no stress whatsoever. We’re not going to feel any stress at all. We’re going to be perfected. And so our service to God and to Christ will come from a heart like Christ himself that never falters, never stumbles, is never anxious, never stressed, never feels that.

But in this fallen life and in this fallen world, stress has a place. It sanctifies us, and it does so in several ways. First, stress when brought to us, as it says here in verse 13, stress really does reveal whether we have put on what we’re supposed to put on.

When stress comes, and we lose our temper, we realize, wait a minute, I didn’t put on kindness. I forgot to do that. If we’re not wearing what we’re supposed to be wearing, that becomes apparent real fast since those ugly attitudes and nasty behaviors of verse 8, all that stuff shows up again.

Second, stress reveals whether we know how to wear the clothing, that is, if we put it on correctly, and then if we’re wearing it rightly, if we’re wearing it smartly, properly, effectively.

Someone who’s in the military and goes into a war zone, and they’re wearing their chest plate on their backside, that’s not going to do much good. In order for that chest plate to be effective, in order for body armor to have any effect of all, you’ve got to wear it properly in order for it to be effective.

Same thing here. We’ve got to wear these clothes rightly, properly, so that they are effective. This new and improved clothing does a little good if you don’t know what you’re doing, how to wear it well; and stress is going to reveal that to you.

Third, stress gives us experience in wearing this clothing, walking around in it, as we learn to walk wisely in it and discover the wonderful features of the virtues that we wear. As we learn how to deploy them, as we learn how to respond rightly based on whatever is coming at us, we learn how this clothing aims us toward that challenge, and we overcome it effectively, and it gives us experience and experience, then, becomes not only our instructor, but it’s the instructor of all those new soldiers coming behind us. We turn around and teach, train, educate.

Love is the defining characteristic of God’s elect, the defining virtue of the redeemed bride of Christ.” Travis Allen

Fourth, at the end of the day, stress gives us a great appreciation for the new clothing that we’ve received. It shows us just how versatile and how adaptable and how breathable and how sturdy and how tear-resistant and yet, remarkably, how this clothing never gets one stain. Not one speck of dirt can attach to it. But through every test and every trial, it just seems to grow more brilliant, more beautiful the more we wear it, the more it’s tested, the more it’s shown.

I know a lot of Christians who try to navigate through their Christian life by avoiding all stresses. They don’t know the value of stress and testing and difficulty and challenge. And so they try to stay away from people, and they try to avoid difficult conversations, and they don’t want to get in it. And oh, I’ve tried that before and that didn’t turn out so well.

And so through, I’d call it fear and cowardice, or you could also call it self-centeredness, this clothing that they wear, they may wear it if they’re in Christ, if they’re truly in Christ and they wear it, but it drapes off of them and falls loosely and doesn’t serve them at all; and the testing and the strengthening and the difficulty in the trial never causes it to shine and show forth its true color.

You know where Christ shined most? In the hour of greatest testing and trial, when he was there bowing his knee in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying for you and for me, praying that he would endure, praying that he would go through the trial. We saw him shine when he was on the cross forgiving his tormentors. We saw the brilliance and the vivid color of his clothing, though he was stripped bare.

Beloved, have a heart, be strong, don’t be cowardly and don’t be selfish, but give yourself to the stress. Give yourself to the test. This is what God made you for. His clothing will cause you to bear up under it. You just need to give it a go. So the point of the stresses, the testing we face as Christians, ultimately, it’s really to expose weaknesses, reveals our need for improvement.

It trains us in wisdom to grow in our competency by means of experience, give us a deep, abiding appreciation for the gift of these virtues, and in the end of the day, to give praise and honor and glory to God. Nobody grows if life is easy and comfortable and fun all the time. You just become soft and weak and good for nothing. Give yourself to the test. Give yourself to the stress. Face it, go through it. God will help you.

Back to verse 13, and notice the source of the stresses. Ultimately, God is the source because he’s the providential, sovereign God of all things. He’s the one who sends these things. But notice through whom he sends them, the stresses that test our new clothing. What’s the source? It’s in verse 13. It’s one another. It’s each other, it’s anyone, and it’s you.

So the source of stress to test our new clothing, it’s you and me, folks. It’s us. Yes, God is ultimately sovereign, and he sends it, but you know what? It’s you and I that are the source of the stress that we face. Your local church, then, you need to see it as the testing environment, as the proving ground, and you need to see your fellow church members as providing you with ample opportunity to practice forbearance and forgiveness.

We can tend to think of the church as a refuge, as a place of rest, and it is that, for sure, rest from a harsh and persecuting world. But the picture would be incomplete if you leave it there, if you fail to consider that the church is really a training center. It’s an incubator for new growth, and it’s a testing lab to prove us, improve us. The church is not meant to be comfortable, only, but also to press us and stress us and test us, so that we learn and grow and mature.

So cast in that light, aren’t problems just wonderful? God, in his good and wise providence, he sends us stresses in the form of the sins of other people, the disagreements, the conflicts that arise among Christians who are not yet fully sanctified. And when he sends stresses, he allows us to practice forbearance with each other and forgiveness with each other.

Our own sins, let’s admit it folks, our own pettiness, often, our own feelings getting hurt, our pride getting bruised, our sensitivities being exposed, our foolishness put on display, embarrassing us, our sins and mistakes and our follies cause stress to other people. You become the test for your brothers and your sisters in Christ, or they become the test for you.

We have each other in our weaknesses and in our errors and, yes, at times in our sinfulness, we have each other to provide the stressful situations that we need and the occasions that we need to put on hearts of compassion and kindness and humility and meekness and patience. And then, through it all, to forbear and forgive one another, knowing that the Lord forgave us.

The word, forbear, means to regard with tolerance, and so to tolerate is not in the modern, postmodern sense; it’s in the best sense of that word. It’s not the tolerance of the times we live in, refusing to speak clearly or make objective judgments about sin or righteousness.

The tolerance spoken of, here, comes from a kind heart with a desire to be forbearing, eager to overlook faults done to ourselves and to absorb whatever offenses against ourselves, just to absorb them and then crumble them in a kind heart and let them go as just so much ash burned in the fires of our fervent love for one another.

I like how the commentator Douglas Moo explained this quality. He said, “While not requiring the greatest display of Christian kindness and patience, bearing with one another is nevertheless a first and necessary step in establishing community. The demand acknowledges that every Christian fellowship is made up of all kinds of people and that we will accordingly sometimes find ourselves in close fellowship with people who are very different than we are.”

I’ll just pause and say, look around, folks. We’re very different. I mean, the fact of this local church, it’s a miracle. We would never know each other apart from God and his grace saving us, uniting us to Christ, and then providentially moving all the pieces on the chess board, so that we’re all here in Greeley, Colorado, together in this church.

Moo goes on to say, “For the sake of maintaining community, we will sometimes have to put up with people with whom we would not normally choose to associate.” Don’t take that as, in a Well, I guess I have to put up with people, though I know many of you’ve had to put up with me. It’s less about that. It really is. We need to see it more in positive terms, as in, man, what an opportunity.

When people are only around those who are just like themselves, you know how stunted they are in their life and their growth and their experience? They’re like, you need dimensional people who are very uninteresting. You want to find the person who is most interesting to be around, talk to, most gracious, most kind? Find that person who has had to rub shoulders in conversation with and in disagreement with people all over the world.

Small wonder that the local church has members made up of such diverse cultural backgrounds as we find, like in Colossians 3:11: Greeks, Jews, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free. In God’s wisdom and the amazing work of his grace, Christ is all and in all and drives all together. It is so cool. There is no institution on earth like this. They try it over at the UN. It doesn’t work.

Here in our own local church in Northern Colorado, we have people from all kinds of places, ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds. We have people here from Africa, from Asia, from Europe, both western and eastern Europe. We have people from Oceana. We have people from Latin America and the strange and mysterious ways of the foreigners from places like Canada, all kinds of people.

So we’re bound to bump up against each other from time to time and feel offended at times. We need to get out of our comfort zone so we can show care and hospitality and mercy and kindness to those whose ways and cultures and customs and languages are different from our own. We need to go out of our way, in fact, to make the stranger and the foreigner feel welcome in our presence.

How many of you knew that all those places around the world were represented here in our church? Some of you may know that. How many of you have brought those people into your home to say, tell me about where you come from. Tell me about the churches where you are. Tell me about your testimony, where you’ve been, where you’ve come from. Tell me what seems strange about our country to you. Especially in loving the household of faith, our brothers and sisters of Christ, this is our privilege, beloved, to bear with one another in love.

Moo is quick to add, here, he says, “More than forbearance is ultimately called for,” by which he means forgiving one another. And the standard, here, is the Lord’s forgiveness. We may remember Peter’s question to Jesus in Matthew 18:21, “‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’” thinking himself a magnanimous in asking that. And the Lord said, keep on going, keep on counting, keep on having a forgiving spirit. Never stop being willing, eager and ready to forgive.

You may have heard the expression, “Keep giving because you can’t out-give God.” It’s the same thing with forgiveness. Keep on forgiving because you cannot out-forgive God. And he proved that when he forgave you. The parable Jesus told at the end of Matthew 18 teaches us, doesn’t it? No one comes anywhere close to the forgiveness that God has shown to us in forgiving us of our sins.

This is what Paul would have us consider in Colossians 3:13, “Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should,” you should, ought to, moral imperative on you, “you must forgive.” If you don’t forgive, we’ve got big questions about your heart, my friend.

In the Lord’s forgiveness, we must see several things. We have to see his forgiving disposition, his ready inclination to be quick to forgive offenses and sins. We have to see his actual forgiveness of our sins portrayed most poignantly on the cross itself, as he was nailed to that cross of wood by the hands of sinners like you and me.

We need to remember, beloved, that were it not for the grace of God and were it not for his timing and where he placed us, you and I would be walking around that cross, howling at him, cursing him, scoffing him, mocking him, if we had the opportunity, using the hammer and the nails to nail him to that cross. We’re no better than those Jews and Gentiles. We are them.

His actual forgiveness of our sins on that cross, and then his continual forgiveness of our sins whenever we ask him, you know what he does when we come to him and ask him for forgiveness? He forgives us quickly and immediately and absolutely and completely. And he separates us from our sins as far as the east is from the west. You can never bring those two together.

So the forgiveness of our Lord is the model that we follow in forgiving others. Interesting, this is how in Colossians 2:6, Paul says, “Since we received Christ Jesus,” and notice the term, there, “the Lord,” “since we received Christ Jesus the Lord,” the Master, the kyrios, “so walk in him.” If he is your kyrios, if he is your Lord, if he is your Master, get to walking like he walks.

And now, here in Colossians 1:3, which is the next use of the term, Lord, kyrios, Master, you go from walk after the Lord who commands you to forgive like the Lord. If we’re going to walk like the Master, and in the Master, we’re going to forgive as he forgave us.

Now I’ve had questions on forgiveness come up all the time. We may as well raise and answer just kind of the basic ones right now. How do we forgive someone who doesn’t confess the sins and ask for our forgiveness?

Another question is, are we supposed to confront every single sin we see? Since that seems impractical, maybe what he’s saying here is just about a frame of mind. You’re just supposed to have this kind of forgiving, squishy attitude all the time and just kind of let everything go, forgive, forgive everything, and just be a doormat to everybody’s sins and offenses.

A number of questions in that kind of category of questions come up when we talk about forgiveness all the time. So let’s just address a couple of them. First, we need to make a distinction between the attitude of forgiveness and the transaction of forgiveness. Some people write it down as attitudinal forgiveness versus transactional forgiveness.

So we are to have an attitude of forgiveness at all times. And I really think that that’s what Paul is referring to in the first part of verse 13, where he says “bearing with one another.” That’s attitudinal. We’re to have a forbearing attitude at all times, a kind of a forgiving attitude that’s very willing to let petty offenses go, let minor complaints go, let personal grievances go.

Now, in greater offenses or with a characteristic habit and a pattern of sinning where trust has been broken, where offenses are hurting others, causing division in the church, and on and on, this calls for a transaction of forgiveness, okay? So to help the offending brother, to help him stop sinning, to help him to reconcile the relationship, to help her rebuild trust, to help her to be able to grow in unity and harmony in the church, a transaction of forgiveness is needed.

This is what Jesus is referring to in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private.” Notice he doesn’t say, “If your brother sins against you.” He leaves it broad. Maybe he’s not sinning against you. Maybe the sin you see is some repeated habit and pattern of sin of someone else. You’ve been watching it for quite some time; it’s not changing.

So the loving confrontation that Jesus envisions, there, and that really is filled in through the rest of the New Testament, it’s really over repeated offenses or the particularly serious grievous offenses, things that can be recorded, things that can be, take a photograph of or take a video of, or record on a recording device, such as sins listed in Colossians 3:5 or Colossians 3:8 or the other vice lists in Scripture, something that is heinous, a high-handed sin that really causes great offense and brings disrepute to the church and besmirches the name of Christ. Big deals.

So when there are notable or perhaps public examples of such things or where there is a characteristic pattern of this kind of behavior, it’s time for loving confrontation, not letting it go in a spirit of tolerance, but speaking the truth in love. We need to go and reprove our brother in private.

That’s when Jesus said, Matthew 18:15-16, “‘If he listens to you, you’ve won your brother.’” Awesome, good for you, you’ve loved well. You’ve responded to the stress, and you’ve come through it, and now your robe is glistening yet a bit more, the colors are a bit more vibrant because you put it to the test. “‘If he doesn’t listen,’” Jesus continues in Matthew 18:16, “‘take two or three others with you,’” and on it goes in Matthew 18:16-17.

In listening to you, that points to a transaction of forgiveness that has gone well. Here’s how that goes. One Christian confronts and reproves the sin of another. And when I say, another, I mean another Christian. Paul makes it very clear in 1 Corinthians 5, we’re not supposed to run around in our workplace into the world and go confront every sinner we see. He says, “What have we to do with those who are outside the church? Those who are outside the church God will judge.”

It’s those who are inside the church, that’s where we’re going to practice this loving confrontation. That’s where we’re to pursue, if we need to, this transaction of forgiveness. So one Christian confronts and reproves the sin of another Christian, calls attention to the offending behavior, cites biblical support.

The offender responds humbly, acknowledges the sin is sin, confesses it, and asks for forgiveness. And the one who is offended grants forgiveness as the Lord has done many times for him. He forgives his brother quickly, immediately, absolutely, completely. He follows the example set by the Lord and how he has forgiven us. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

I realize that there are all kinds of contingencies and considerations and different, you know, org chart and tree diagram and how these things can go. We’re not going to have the time to get into all that right now. But if any of this has gone by too fast, or if you have more questions, worry not. You’re going to have plenty of opportunities to practice this point on forgiveness.

God’s going to continue to stress you and oppress you because he loves you enough not to leave you as you are. You need growth, every single one of you. And I do. Let me add this. If God is so interested in clothing us like this, are you interested in seeing your brothers and sisters so clothed? Because you ought to be.

If you see your brother or your sister who still is dressing like a barbarian or a Scythian, you know, gaudy outfit, clashing colors, rough clothing of such poor quality, all kinds of stuff pinned to the lapel, honestly, Christian, have a care to confront that brother or that sister. Teach them how to dress. Don’t leave them in that terrible state. If in God’s grace, if in his great grace, he does everything to sanctify and purify and perfect us, well then you and I had better get to the business of joining him in that, hadn’t we?

In fact, that’s what comes next in verse 14, in our final point, number four, God embellishes and glorifies his elect. God embellishes and glorifies his elect. Maybe some of you are thinking about it, use of the word, embellishment, that has something to do with a so-called, white lie, like an embellished fish story, a tall tale that makes the original tale sound way better than it really is.

Well the word embellishment or embellish can be used that way, for sure, to refer to exaggeration. But there’s another and original and a far more positive connotation of the word, embellish, to embellish can also mean to adorn, beautify, to make even more stunning by adding particular touches to it.

Wives do this all the time to an already lovely dress or an outfit, adding that little finishing touch to make that look complete. And sometimes husbands even notice. To be fair, wives, we love what we see. We’re just not always able to explain and put into words because we’re struck with the beauty.

Every now and again, you just want to throw in a little like, let’s explain wives and husbands to each other. We all need that. But Colossians 3:14 says, “Above all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.” Embellished with love, the whole of our adornment becomes bound together with love.

There’s a bit of ambiguity on how to interpret this prepositional phrase, epi pasin, which means, in all or above all, at the start of the sentence. It could mean, in addition to all, like the adding this as one more virtue besides all these other virtues I’ve mentioned.

Humility is not about self. It’s about giving yourself to humble tasks since nothing is beneath the humble.” Travis Allen

Could be, on top or over all. It could be, like, put it on over the top of that, which continues the clothing metaphor as if love is kind of like an overcoat. It could be, over and above all, as in, superlatively essential, don’t neglect love.

Hard to make a decision on it because Paul explains the significance of love as kind of a unifying and a perfecting force. If we supply, as our LSB translation does, taking the verb, put on, from verse 12 and reproduce it here, we see love is one more virtue that we must wear as a garment. So the binding unifying quality of love, this leads to the perfection that God intends for his elect, who are holy and beloved.

The idea, though, is, if we look at verse 14 again, “above all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity,” the idea is a little different than how that translation suggests, because that translation, the LSB, renders, perfect, as an adjective that modifies the word, bond. Perfect bond and the word, perfect, is not an adjective, here; it’s a noun. So it’s the word, perfection.

That is to say that love itself is the bond of perfection. Not the perfect bond of unity, but the bond of perfection. The King James Version says, “the bond of perfectness.” It’s a noun. This is bringing us full circle from verse 12, because we who are God’s beloved are portrayed now as his beloved in verse 14, because we are adorned as we are by his love. That’s perfectness.

Love is the defining characteristic of God’s elect, the defining virtue of the redeemed bride of Christ. “‘By all this, all men will know that you are my disciples,’” John 13:35, “‘if you have love for one another.’” Love doesn’t only provide outward adornment. We need to see it’s kind of woven like a magic thread through every single virtue. It fastens the entire outfit together, joining every piece in integrity and unity and strength.

The heart of compassion, it’s generated by the love that we have for one another, creating a concern and a deepening affection. What is kindness, but the expression of God’s love? In fact, love and kindness kind of unite in his character revealed to Moses in Exodus 34:6. Remember that? “Yahweh abounds in lovingkindness.”

So the second virtue in the list of five in verse 12 finds expression, there: lovingkindness, humility. Humility comes in deference to God and love for him. We know who we are. We know what we are. And when we know how he has loved us and what his love cost, what Jesus endured for our sake, for love, we are humbled to the floor, aren’t we? Love humbles.

Gentleness, meekness, again, this in the interest of loving others. We sacrifice self. We use our strength to serve in the place of their weakness. We serve their need with our strength. With our supply we fulfill their need. It’s all driven by love. And patience? What is patience but the practice of love when facing provocation, dealing with hard circumstances, being forbearing and forgiving with difficult people.

This is what we see over in the love chapter, what may be the most well-known and most widely accepted and appreciated chapter in the entire Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. It does not brag. It’s not puffed up,” another negative expression for humility, right?

“It doesn’t act unbecomingly. It doesn’t seek its own. It’s not provoked, doesn’t take into account a wrong suffered.” In other words, it’s kind. “It does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but it does rejoice with the truth. It bears all things and believes all things and hopes all things and endures all things. And love never fails.”

And that’s why I say this virtue of love, it weaves its way and works its way through every single virtue of the Christian life, and to such a degree that it adds its own color to every one of them. It motivates and flavors and forms and shapes every single virtue and grace in our life. It becomes like that coat of many colors given by a loving father to his most cherished and beloved son. It becomes the robe that covers all, an identifying outer garment, marking us as belonging to God.

It’s no wonder, then, then, when all of us are wearing these garments and manifesting these attitudes and practicing these virtues, it’s no wonder that we are bound together in unity, such that love is the bond that leads to perfection, maturation. It increasingly glorifies Christ in us. It incrementally reveals God’s sanctifying grace in us, sets us apart as truly belonging to him.

This is why Paul tells the Ephesians in Ephesians 4:15-16, that we’re to be “speaking the truth in love.” You know, we translate that, “speaking the truth.” The word is built off of alethea, which is truth, but it’s aletheuo, which means, to truth. So live out the truth in love. Speak the truth, yes, but live it out, too, how you conduct your life. Is it conducted in love, the priorities you set, the things you do, the stuff on your calendar, the things you think that are most important?

Does your schedule reflect love for other people? Does how you spend your money reflect love for other people, not just in your own family? Well, my children are my closest disciples, so I must focus all my love on them and just shower them with gifts.

It’s good to give good gifts to your children, but maybe take your child with you as you go serve that person in need, that shut-in, that person who can’t get out. Go serve with your child. Then you’re really discipling. Then you’re really giving a gift that creates character, shows something different.

Truth-ing in love? Paul says we’re “to grow up.” Become perfect is another way of putting that, “grow up in all aspects into him who’s the head, even Christ, him from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part. It causes the growth of the body for the continuing building up of itself in love.” Start to finish: love. And so, as Greg Beale says, “When all the virtues are bound together by love, there will be a unity of all the believing members of the body of Christ.” So true.

Love is, as you know, a defining attribute of God, 1 John 4:8. And God, who is one, he in his essence is the essence of unity and perfection and integrity and strength. And so love, which binds the members of the Trinity together, defines and unifies and binds God’s elect together. Love holds us fast, animates us, moves us, fills our hearts with affection for one another and a longing for Christ.

And so it is that the righteous covering of Christ that enrobes us before God, by which God declares us righteous, our practice begins to match our position. What’s imputed to us starts to be imparted to us so that we become what we truly are. We’re positional saints, yes, but we are being practically sanctified, and we will one day be fully glorified.

So the question that remains, then: How do we put these virtues on. We who come from what’s described in Colossians 3:5-9, we came from that. We were trained by the world. We were discipled and habituated in sinful attitudes and ambitions and selfish desires and self-seeking ways. What hope do we have in putting off sin and putting on righteousness?

Well, we know that we have every hope in God, right, he who has done the greater thing, forgiving all of our sins, justifying us by faith in Christ, giving us life and immortality in the gospel instead of the condemnation and death that we deserved. Listen, if he could do the greater miracle, and he has, well, then he can take this all the way. He can save us to the uttermost, and he can glorify us, too.

But let me just show you how. You have your Bibles open to Colossians 3. Just give you a little bit of a preview of what’s yet to come. Verse 15, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.” You know, when the peace of Christ rules or calls balls and strikes in your heart, that’s you slowing down so that you can put on these virtues.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” When the word of Christ is dwelling in you richly, when it makes its home in you, when the word of Christ is flowing through your veins, it’s informing you, it’s showing you, giving you warnings about bad behavior and promises about good. You’re to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching,” and then, get this, “admonishing one another.”

That’s the hard work of going and getting out of your comfort zone and going to tell somebody that you love, hey, you’re wrong here. You’re letting your Scythian armor and little stuff hanging off of you, nasty stuff, you’re letting that show again. I know you came from Scythia. I know they were your people. You’re dead to them. Now, you’re in Christ. That’s teaching. That’s “admonishing one another in all wisdom.” We’re to do so “with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” We’re to sing “with gratefulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, you do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

How are we going to get this done? How are we going to wear the different clothing? We who’ve come from the world, we who are from all different cultures and places and have all kinds of families, some broken, some healthy, how are we to get this done? How are we to change? How are we to put off what we once were and put on what we want to be, what we are positionally in God and in Christ? How are we to do that?

It’s by the power that’s inherent in Christ himself. He will do it. It’s the peace of Christ that rules us. It’s the word of Christ that richly dwells in us. It’s by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that all will be fully accomplished in us to the praise of his glorious grace. He’s going to do it. Do you trust him in this? And if you say, Yes, does that mean you will obey him in this? Because those who trust, obey.

This is how God covers us, with the virtues and the graces of Christ. This is how he adorns his beloved in the unifying love shared between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is how he brings us to perfection. Our part? We need to get dressed. We need to get dressed every single day, help one another get dressed, to be renewed in the virtue of the new man, and walk around proudly in the rich robes of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.

Father, what great things you have done for us, things that we’re reading about and don’t fully apprehend just yet. We hear the telling of it, we’re attracted to it, we desire it, and yet the full expression of it remains future to us as we seek that time of glorification. But I pray that we would be motivated to wear what you’ve given us to wear, that we would find it our daily joy to dress well and to wear it smartly, to be effective in the clothing that you’ve given to us.

Help us to see not only our own need in that regard and our own joy, but let us affect one another. Let us serve one another even as we forbear and have to forgive, for that is a practice of putting on the virtue. Let us help one another and encourage and exhort one another day by day. We pray, Father, that you would do these good things in us, having accomplished the greatest thing, to give us eternal life in Christ. We pray that you would do this as well, that you who began a good work in us would complete it to the day of Christ Jesus, for it’s in his name we pray. Amen.

Hebrews 3:7-12

All right, so turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3, we’ve spent some time in the beginning of this chapter. We’re going to move ahead a little bit, but we’ve seen so far in Hebrews chapter 3 that the pastor who is writing this word of exhortation, he compares Jesus and Moses. It was a fascinating section. I’d love to spend more time there, but we’re going to keep moving. But after he does that comparison, contrast between Jesus and Moses and really trying to accentuate the faithfulness of both servants, but then to show the superlative faithfulness of Jesus over and against Moses, and just to see his greater glory and honor as the son over the house that Moses served within.

After he makes this comparison, the pastor then issues a warning, and that’s really what occupies the rest of the chapter, and into chapter 4 is this section on warning. So let’s read Hebrews 3 starting in verse 5, and we’ll read through this section into verse 11, most of which comes, as you’ll hear, comes from Psalm 95, the back half of Psalm 95. So starting in Hebrews 3, verse 5, “Now MOSES WAS FAITHFUL IN ALL HIS HOUSE AS A SERVANT, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken later, but Christ was faithful as a Son over His house- whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence in the boast of our hope.

“Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS, WHERE YOUR FATHERS TRIED Me BY TESTNG Me, AND SAW MY WORKS FOR FORTY YEARS. THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, “THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS”; AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST’”

 The Pastor’s chief concern is raised there in verse 6, and he’s asking, do you or do you not belong to God’s house? Are you members of his family? Are you part of his people? Do you belong to his house? And if you do, then stay in it. That’s what he’s saying to his own people. Stay put.

If you don’t belong to it, you depart to go to do what you think is easier, better, more advantageous, beneficial for yourself or whatever. And that is really the choice that this pastor’s congregation was facing. Do I want to escape not just some of the mild persecution they were receiving, but do I want to avoid it?

Am I trying to escape the persecution that may come and the things that I’m fearful over or am I going to continue to identify with God’s people, with Christ, with his church, and stay put and risk the persecution that I may face. For those who want to part from the fellowship, but can’t? Kind of like Israel of old, stuck in the desert, held fast there by God, led around by God for forty years and forced into submission, forced to follow a leader that everyone questioned and no one wanted to follow.

What do those people do? What do those people do when they must stay put and they can’t get away and they can’t go back to the city from which they came? Well, what do they do? They grumble and they complain. According to verse 8, it started with a hardened heart. It resulted in provoking God and testing God and going astray in their hearts. And when it comes down to it, they never knew God. They never knew his ways, though they had seen God’s works for forty years.

It is an absolute tragedy for them, but very instructive for the Hebrew Christian community, very instructive for this pastor’s congregation, and I would say this too, very instructive for the Colorado Christian community, or we might say the American Evangelical community, or we might say the Western religious scene.

Now, while we today may have a sense of what the pastor is referring to, this congregation of Hebrew Christians knew exactly what their pastor was driving at. They knew the fuller context for every reference and citation of Scripture, every illusion in their own history. This is what they were raised with. This is what they were weaned on is the Old Testament.

So what we just have a sense of, they thoroughly understood. And so little illusions here and there that may pass us by they got the point; they understood the context behind it. We may get a little bit fuzzy at times about the details. So we’re going to try to look up some of this history as we go through this text.

 I’m going to give you several points for tonight if you’re taking notes number one, the Spirit’s continual calling. The Spirit’s continual calling. And that is to say, the Spirit is always calling. He’s always calling to every generation, in every time, in every place. And you need to look no further than that word today; today, every day we can call today. And so every day, today, the Spirit is calling. This is his continual calling. “Therefore, just as the Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’”

I just want to move real quickly through this section and get to the next point, but let me not bypass too much here. Therefore, the word therefore is pointing back in view of Jesus superlative faithfulness, which is over and above that of Moses. Then he says, “as the Holy Spirit says,” this is really reviewing the author, this pastor’s view of the Bible.

He sees that this authority, the authority of Scripture exceeds that of the human author. So it’s not Moses who says or David who says, but he identifies the speaker as the third person of the Trinity. Interesting, his pneumatology has really filled out his understanding of of bibliology and how Scripture came together. It’s the Holy Spirit who’s speaking.

The verb here is the present tense, which means that the Spirit saying is ongoing. It’s a continuousness. So the Spirit is saying, today, on any day that anyone awakens to hear him speaking. So that’s our time too. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the appointed time.

And so the message is for everyone who hears the Spirit’s voice at any time in any place, do not waste this opportunity that’s put before you. If you are hearing the Spirit’s voice through the Scripture, don’t waste the opportunity. Don’t let this pass you by. To hear the Spirit’s voice, to hear his voice, it’s a call to those who hear.

It Harkins back to Jesus, who often called out to the crowds that followed him, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” There are thousands following Jesus sometimes. Such a crush of people. And yet he knew there was this person who had ears to hear and this person is very individual.

Let him, singular individual, that person who has ears to hear, let him hear. Hearing is a privilege out of the masses that bypass and don’t hear the word of God and don’t heed it. Many actually, you know, they get this physical sensation of sound, they can interpret the words, but because they don’t heed and follow and do, they essentially have not heard it. They’re just like deaf people. And hearing is a privilege.

And so if you hear, if you have ears to hear, you need to take full advantage to heed what you hear, to do what you hear. Your life should change. It should not stay the same. You shouldn’t go home and say, well, that was a good time at the church and just pass on with your week. Something should change. That is to say you need to heed what you hear is another way of saying, it’s a positive way of saying, don’t harden your hearts.

Don’t harden your hearts as we come through this section here in verses 8 and 9, “today, if you hear his voice,” end of verse 7, verse 8, “if you hear his voice, then do not harden your hearts.” We notice this is a conditional sentence an if-then statement, if-then sentence. So he says, “If you hear his voice, then do not harden your hearts.”

 The if statement is the protasis. The then statement is the apodosis. It’s the if and then, and I don’t want to get into the technical details about this, but this particular kind of conditional sentence is known as a third class conditional in Greek syntax. And it can depict degrees of certainty, degrees of certainty, and it’s from the speaker or the pastor, the writer, his perspective.

He’s throwing it out. They’re not exactly certain who in his congregation is going to pick it up and hear, not really sure. The subjunctive mood in the protasis, in the if statement is literally, if you should hear his voice, if you might hear his voice, he’s throwing out there, writing to the whole congregation, but knowing that there’s a mixture of people in his visible church, some who will hear and some who won’t.

So if you should hear his voice; the way he writes that or it shows, come to the pastor, is somewhat uncertain. Perhaps even, as all pastors can be a bit anxious too, about the state of his people, about the state of his church, as to whether those who are maybe drifting in his church, maybe departing from his church and going back to the synagogues. As if he wonders, will they respond well or not?

Will this exhortation, this brief word of exhortation that I’m sending them, is it going to stop them, cause them to stand up and take notice and return and stay and endure, or are they going to continue to leave? So several degrees of certainty or uncertainty here. Is it likely that they are hearing the Spirit’s voice, that they will therefore not harden their hearts? Obviously, that’s what he wants for every single member of his church.

That’s the best outcome, obviously, since true believers who hear, their hearts are soft and they’re pliable and they’re responsive, they will respond well. And that’s what he’s praying for the entire church. Perhaps, though, he’s discovering church members who have entered into what they are treating as a wide gate religion, walking on the broad road, strolling down main street, and if they did not enter through the narrow gate and they don’t stay in this narrow road kind of a church, maybe that’s going to be revealed in this time of testing, that they’re facing in Rome.

So the pastor’s question here in this conditional sentence, as if-then, leaves it kind of open, ambiguous, not knowing what responses there are going to be in his own church and among his own friends, people he’s loved, ministered to, people he’s been to the graveside with, cared for. But he knows time and truth go hand in hand, so he’s going to wait to see what he finds when he returns home; obviously, he being away when he writes this exhortation to them.

All right, so we come to the second-half, verse 8 and verse 9, and a second point. We said the first point was the Spirits continual calling. The second point is the church’s perennial warning. The church’s perennial warning. The readers of this epistle, for his readers who know the reference from Psalm 95, notice he doesn’t cite, he didn’t say, now, as it says in Psalm 95, he just writes it and they know where it is.

It’s how familiar they are with their own Scripture, but they know the reference in Psalm 95, and they know it, as he quotes from it and cites it here, is from the Greek translation, but they also would know the Hebrew original. They would have grown up with that in their synagogue.

So they read in the Greek translation, the Septuagint, but they also are familiar with the Hebrew original. They know it well enough to know that what he’s raising here, the pastor is bracketing a period of time of Israel’s most characteristic sin, which was to fail to hear and to heed God’s voice.

The bracket of time that he’s putting down there. He puts it in years. He says forty years, but we can kind of see at the beginning of that forty years and then at the end of that forty years, two incidents that are really familiar to them and parallel, and they’re alluded to in verses 8b or second-half verse 8 and into verse 9. It’s the time “when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tried Me by testing Me and they saw My works for forty years.”

 When did Israel provoke the Lord? When did they face trial in the wilderness that led to them trying God, testing God even though they saw his works for forty years? I’m might actually turn that question around and say when did they not test him and try him and provoke Him? Many, many instances of this, from the moment that they departed Egypt, right, all the way from the very beginning, all the way to the border of Canaan, they were testing God.

 There was just this constant trouble and stubborn, stiff neck, hard hearted rebellion. And the writer here isolates it to the sin of unbelief. They did not believe. Because they did not believe, they did not want to follow. They didn’t depart, because who’s going to take them back to Egypt? So they follow Moses. They follow the pillar of cloud. They clearly know Gods in this.

And so they’re kind of like caught up in this movement, in this group of people. It’s family. It’s all family. Where are they going to go? They’re stuck in it. But because of their unbelief, what they turn into is a rabble. They’re difficult people, hard to lead, always ready to rebel, always ready to overthrow Moses.

What is the point of all that? The writer to Corinth, our familiar apostle Paul, he said this, “I don’t want you to be unaware, brothers. They’re our fathers.” He’s talking about the Jewish fathers. “our fathers, they were all under the cloud.” He’s talking about the pillar of cloud, the Shekinah glory of God. “They all passed through the sea,” that’s the Red Sea, that was parted to the right and to the left; wall of water on each side. “They pass through on dry ground.

They were all baptized into Moses, in the cloud and into the sea. Not saying that they were dunked in the ocean. No, they were baptized into Moses, that is immersed in Moses. They all shared in this together. They are all sharers and partakers of what God did in bringing them out of Egypt. He goes on to say they all ate the same spiritual food. What is that? That’s the manna in the wilderness, right? They all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.

He’s saying Christ was there the entire time with his people. Where is he? In the Shekinah glory of God. He is the Angel of the Lord, Angel of Yahweh, who appears from time to time. They’re all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them. The rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were struck down in the wilderness. Interesting to see, with most of them God was not well pleased.

We can probably sight on one hand the names of the people with whom he was pleased, Joshua, Caleb, right? The rest of the millions plus children of Israel, dead. Now, I’ve always wondered this. Melinda and I talk about this sometimes when, when Jesus says that many will pass through the wide gate. Many will walk on the wide road that leads to destruction, but few go through the narrow gate.

Few are on the constricted narrow way; few there be that find it. I always wonder how few is few. Sometimes I look around and we don’t have a whole lot of friends. How few is few? I mean, is it two clans out of all the children of Israel? That’s all that made it? That’s what he’s saying, with most of them God was not well pleased, for they were struck down in the wilderness.

Now these things happened as examples for us, examples for us today. Are we listening? Are we paying attention? Just a summary statement that Paul gives there about Israel’s vast history of sinning against God, complaining, grumbling, rebelling, turning against Moses, committing idolatry.

After leaving Egypt, if you’d like to go back and follow this with me, we can trace some of their history and you can go back to Exodus chapter 14. This is right after the incident at the Red Sea, of the parting of the sea, starting in Exodus 14. And we’ll touch on a couple of these passages.

 But after leaving Egypt, you remember that God led them out and they could have gone one way, but he didn’t lead them that way. He could have led him in a way that’s just like a quick exit, escape, land bridge. But instead he leads them to the Red Sea and they are hemmed in there at the sea. They see the Egyptians bearing down and according to Exodus 14 and starting at verse 11, they freak out in their unbelief.

He, the pastor, sees that this authority, the authority of Scripture exceeds that of the human author. It’s the Holy Spirit who’s speaking.” Travis Allen

They have just seen God judge and decimate all the gods of Egypt, kill all the first born, get them out of there. And all their Egyptian neighbors loaded them up with treasure and said, just get out. Some Egyptians actually came with them, said we’re going to worship your God, not our gods. They’re dead. They didn’t do anything.

God has decimated Egypt. He’s brought them up to the brink of the Red Sea. They freak out at unbelief, seeing this Egyptian army coming in their Chariots. They complain against Moses and really against God. Look what it says in Exodus 14, verse 11, “They said to Moses, ‘Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you’ve taken us away to die in the wilderness? What is this you’ve done against us in bringing us out of Egypt?

“‘Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, “Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians”? It would have been even better for us to serve the Egyptians than for us to die in the wilderness.’” We’d rather be slaves to idolaters and do idolaters bidding than to be with God and you and potentially die in a wilderness. Where would you rather be?

Well, God parted the Red Sea. He led Israel safely through, he brought those walls of water down on the Egyptians when they tried to follow. And according to verse 31 of this chapter, the people feared the Lord at the moment anyway. They feared the Lord, they believed. But we know by continuing to read that didn’t last. Hints of what truly characterized their hearts came out right after they sang the Song of Moses about the great deliverance.

And the Lord tests them in Exodus 15, with bitter water in verses 22 to 24, turned the bitter water sweet. And then after turning the bitter water sweet, so they they’re tested again; out of their heart comes this worry and unbelief and anxiety, and ready to give it all up, God turns the bitter water sweet. And then he says to encourage them in verse 26. “There he set for them a statute and a judgment.”

“There He tested them. And He said, ‘If you will earnestly listen to the voice of Yahweh your God,” listen out for that voice, keep your ear attentive to that voice. “Today if you hear his voice,” “If you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, and you do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments, keep all His statutes, I’ll put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I Yahweh, I’m your healer.”

 I delight in healing you, turning bitter water fresh and sweet, sustaining; I delight in that beautiful promise. They found the terms of this impossible to keep, because they weren’t hearing with faith, and they continued on in their fleshly thinking. Exodus 16 says right there at the beginning, “Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, and on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt.

“And the whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the sons of Israel said to them, ‘whether we had died by the hand of Yahweh in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, and when we ate bread to the full; for you’ve brought us out in this wilderness to put this whole assembly to death with hunger.’”

 Yeah, that’s what Moses devious plan was. Oh, how could I, you know, take all these people out of Egypt, go through all that trouble, and I’m going to take them out in the wilderness; I’m going to kill them with hunger; I’m going to starve these people. That doesn’t even make sense. But sin doesn’t make sense. Sinful thinking doesn’t make sense of anything.

God knows their need for bread. He obviously knows their need for bread, and so he gives them here manna. In the rest of the chapter, though, notice that they disobey clear instructions on how to gather the manna, when to gather it, when not to gather it. They’re just always disobeying. And this brings us really to the first incident the pastor cites.

Just as we kind of go chronologically through the Old Testament texts, brings us to the first incident the pastor cites in Hebrews 3:8, which comes from Psalm 95:8. And it says in Psalm 95:8, it says there, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness.”

The language from Hebrews 3:8 does not use place names. It’s not using place names there because it’s coming from the Septuagint, which for Greek speakers, Greek readers tends to translate Hebrew place names for the Greek readers of the Bible. So doesn’t give place names, but it translates their meaning. It gives the interpretation, so they know the significance of that place name.

So notice in Hebrews 3:8, it says there, “As when they provoked me,” more literally as in the provocation. It’s actually a noun there, “as when they provoked me.” Sounds like a participle, it’s not actually what it is. In the text, it’s actually a noun, as in the provocation or as in the rebellion.

But you read it in Psalm 95:8, it gives the name Meribah. What does Meribah mean? In Hebrew, it means provocation, rebellion. Moses named the place for what happened there, provoking God, rebelling against God. Same thing if you look at Hebrews 3:8, when he says, “As in the day of trial in the wilderness.”

The Hebrew word for trial, also translated testing or tempting, it’s the name Massah. Again, Moses chose a name that memorialized what God was doing at that time. He was testing Israel. We just read that, he’s testing them. Israel failed the test and then turned and put God to the test. As the writer says, as the pastor says, your fathers tried me by testing me. He uses two synonyms there from massah, “and they saw my works for forty years,” tried me, tested me, both of those meaning massah.

 So for forty years, plenty of time that they could see God’s works, plenty of opportunity to repent and believe. God is so patient with those people. As I said, those place names, Meribah and Massah, they memorialized two significant, two parallel incidents, both of which God tests Israel, both find Israel wanting, and both of which demonstrate in the end, God’s faithfulness and mercy.

So even coming through the test, even though they failed in the test, they still learn a lesson: God’s faithful, God’s kind, he wants to show mercy. He’s going to give you grace. He’s going to take care of you and all your needs and these incidents, they’re parallel. You’ll be mindful of them and start to mention them. Both involve a lack of water. Having no water, being really, really thirsty, that could do something to you, can make you anxious. So evolving a lack of water to which Israel responds not by praying, not by trusting, not by resting themselves, being reposed in God. Instead they respond in complaining.

Both incidents, it’s followed by God graciously giving water, and he brings living water miraculously out of what had seemed to be a dead rock. But the rock is a living, isn’t it? So what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10. So if you’re in Exodus, go ahead and just flip one page over to Exodus 17 to see the first incident like this. And really, he’s bracketing the forty-year wandering in the wilderness with this first incident and then one more at the very end.

So Exodus chapter 17, first incident, “Then all the congregation of the sons of Israel journeyed by stages from the wilderness of Sin, according to the commandment of Yahweh, and they camped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people contended with Moses and said, ‘Give us water that we may drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you contend with me?’” I’m just a man like you.

 You think I can miraculously generate water? Think again. And then anticipating their next complaint, because their complaint wasn’t really against Moses, it really goes through Moses up to God. So he just calls him out on it. He says, and, “why do you test Yahweh? But the people thirsted there for water; they grumbled against Moses, and they said” again, same thing. “‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to put us and our children and our livestock to death with thirst?’” Yeah, as if that’s Moses’s purpose.

God responds to their hard heartedness with mercy instead of judgment. Isn’t that interesting? He provides for the needs. He gives them water from the rock, and then Moses marks the location, giving it a place name for posterity. Meribah, Massah. Verses 6 and 7, “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb;” God says, “‘You shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.’

“Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.” and “so he named the place Massah and Meribah because of the contending of the sons of Israel, because they tested Yahweh, saying, ‘Is Yahweh among us or not?’” From this point right here, Exodus 18 all the way through Leviticus to Numbers 10, all this whole time.

So basically, the end of Exodus all the way through Leviticus, through big chunk of Numbers, that’s 58 chapters. Only one month of time passes by, it’s a month. That month is when God brought his people to Mount Sinai, gave them his law through Moses, and he also saw and dealt with this abominable act of idolatry.

But after that, middle of Numbers 10, God gets the people up, gets them on the move again, sends them toward Canaan, before they get there and if you are turning with me, go ahead and turn to Numbers, go to chapter 20. I’ll just narrate a couple things. Before they get to the plains of Moab on the borders of the Jordan River, before they get to the border of Canaan; and the Promised land ahead of them that God has promised. Before they get there, in Numbers 11, they’re more incidents of grumbling and complaining, awful acts of ingratitude and rebellion.

Remember I read last time about Miriam wanting to usurp Moses and complaining against him? In Numbers chapter 12, we looked at that last time. They come to the borders of Canaan itself; they’re ready to enter, but once again, unbelief in their heart leads them astray. They reject good reports about the land.

They respond in fear about these super-size men living in Canaan. They refused to enter and take possession. Ten out of the twelve spies, you know, excepting Joshua and Caleb, ten out of the twelve. They affirm everything that’s in the land. God is telling the truth. This is a great place, but there’s bad guys there and we’re scared. So Numbers 14 is really a turning point. Lots of complaining, lots of rebellion.

There’s even in Numbers 16, an organized coup d’etat led by Korah and Dathan and Abiram, there’s a man named On, and a few sons of Ruben and other conspirators as well. Very significant faction forms. God made short work of that in dramatic fashion. You remember opening up the earth, swallowing them, in Numbers 16.

But the end bracket of this forty years of testing, the beginning coming there in Exodus 17, the end one comes in Numbers chapter 20. Numbers chapter 20, starting in verse 1, “And the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month; and the people stayed at Kadesh. And Miriam died there, was buried there.”

“Now there was no water for the congregation.” Familiar lesson, another opportunity; will they in this test respond faithfully, righteously, being patient and praying or will they do something else? No water for the congregation. So “They assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron.” And then, “The people thus contended with Moses and spoke, saying, ‘If only we had breathed our last when our brothers breathed their last before Yahweh! Why then have you brought,’ us to, ‘the assembly of Yahweh into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die here?’”

I can’t even tolerate my own voice like that. So sorry. “‘Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us into this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink.’ And Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly at the doorway, the tent of meeting,” and they pulled out their swords and started hacking these guys. No, that’s not what it says, but that’s how I would have written it. They didn’t do that.

They “came out from the tent of meeting, fell on their faces.” That’s humility, that’s meekness. “The glory of the Yahweh appeared to them; And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.’”

 Remember the first time, before receiving the law of Moses from Mount Sinai in Exodus 17:6, God told Moses to strike the rock right? Paul said, 1 Corinthians 10, “For all drank the same spiritual drink, and from a spiritual rock that followed them.” The rock was Christ, so why does God here forbid Moses to strike the rock a second time, but command him to speak to the rock instead?

If that rock is picturing Christ, the first strike seems to typify the cross, doesn’t it? He struck once for sins, once. A full atonement is made for those of his people who enter in through the rock, come to the rock, who trusts in the rock. Everything from then on is not striking, speaking, praying, asking, because your father knows what you need, and he sent you a high priest, a merciful high priest. He knows your needs.

 So verse 9, Numbers 20, “Moses took the rod from before Yahweh, just as He commanded him; and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, ‘Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?’” Okay, so he didn’t strap on his swords and start hacking, but a sword came out of his mouth, didn’t it?

“Moses raised high his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. But Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you didn’t believe Me,’ you two, you two guys, leaders, ‘because you didn’t believe,’ you didn’t believe, ‘to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I’ve given to them.’”

 Another incident parallel to the first, in which Israel, and this time Moses as well, failed the test. Verse 13 says, “those were the waters of Meribah because the sons of Israel contended with Yahweh, He proved himself holy among them.” Meribah rebellion against a Massah, against a trial sent from God to test faithfulness. The men failed, and in their failing they put God to the test. They provoked him. So another incident of Meribah, of provocation that memorializes Israel’s rebellion and provides for us.

The church provides for that congregation of Hebrew Christians in Hebrews 3 and 4, but also provides for us a perennial, continual, perpetual warning. So we’ve seen the spirits continual calling, and then the church’s perennial warning, and finally the Lord’s immutable ruling number three, the Lord’s immutable ruling.

Here’s his ruling, his finding, his verdict, this is Hebrews 3 verse 10, “THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS’; AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’” He’s going to talk more about, the rest, unpacking that and the verses to come.

But just a few things to see here. We think about the Lord’s immutable ruling. First of all, we need to see this is the word of the immutable Lord, Yahweh, and he says therefore I, I, he’s referring to himself, Yahweh, Yahweh who does not change, Yahweh who is immutable, he does not change. He is an unchanging God and that’s pronounced in Numbers 14:22 to 23.

If you’re not still in the Old Testament, don’t worry, I’m going to go there for you. But Numbers 14 in verse 22, this is what God says to them. I’ll back up to verse 20. Yahweh  says, this is after the people refused to go into Canaan. This is kind of at the high point, this crescendo, this climax of testing. Are they going to enter in when they’re fearful or, and trust me, or are they going to turn away? They turned away.

If you hear, if you have ears to hear, you need to take full advantage to heed what you hear, to do what you hear. Your life should change.” Travis Allen

Another testing, another failure, another provocation, another rebellion and so Yahweh said, having listened to Moses, the mediator, he says, “I’ve pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of Yahweh.” Because that’s going to happen. Are they going to be a part of that glory or not?

“‘All the earth will be filled with the glory of Yahweh. Surely all the men who’ve seen My glory and My signs which I’ve done in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, they shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it.’”

 Skipping down to verse 26, “Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I’ve heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they’re making against Me. Say to them, “as I live,” declares Yahweh, “just as you’ve spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. Your little ones, however,” your little ones, “who you said would become plunder- I’ll bring them in. so that they will know the land which you have rejected.

““But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Your sons should be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, they’ll suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses come to an end in the wilderness. According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. I, Yahweh, have spoken, surely I will do this to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall come to an end, and there they will die.””

 Man blistering. He swears on himself. He is immutable. It’s his immutable word from the immutable Lord Yahweh. Second thing to see in Hebrews 3:10 and 11, the immutable Lord has an immutable wrath towards sin. He says I was angry with this generation and we might say, because the Holy Spirit says to every generation, speaks to every generation, as long as it’s called today.

He is angry with any and every generation that’s like this. If a generation does as he describes here, they too will incur God’s immutable wrath. He doesn’t use the word thumos, referring to an angry outburst. We know this from our Colossians study, don’t we? This is the word orge.

This is the word. It refers to his abiding, unchanging disposition. We could call it an immutable disposition toward that which violates and offends his holiness. It’s a divine wrath, so it’s the word of the immutable Lord Yahweh. It’s an immutable wrath that he has towards sin.

Third, an immutable wrath comes from an immutable judgment about the immutable proclivity of unbelief, along with an immutable result. “They always go astray in their heart. They didn’t know my ways.” An unbelieving heart has an immutability to it until God stays it, stops it, regenerates it, changes it, sends it into a believing direction.

The unbelieving heart immutably strays, wanders, departs, and the end of that is straying in their heart, not knowing God’s ways, not knowing the savior of their soul, not knowing the fountain of all blessing, not knowing the fountain of living waters. They cut themselves off. They enter into judgment.

And so forth, we come to an immutable ruling, “I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.” This is an immutable verdict, the Lord’s immutable wrath, grounded in immutable judgment about the proclivity of their sin. It ends with this immutable ruling finding verdict with that in Hebrews 3.

Look at your Bibles there. Let’s read ahead in the text and see what’s coming and see how the pastor intends to apply this text to the members of his own Hebrew congregation, some of whom were on their way out, leaving to return to their old synagogues. He says this Hebrews 3:12, “See to it, brothers,” based on that Psalm, based on that warning, “see to it that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.”

 He doesn’t say, look you guys are in the church now, you guys are church members here in a Christian Church. You’re good, you’re good, you’re safe. You’re identifying with us now. You’re professing Christians, you’re good to go. Don’t ever question that. Don’t ever question your salvation.

 No, he says, watch out, “brothers, see to it there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. And encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called, ‘today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. But we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast to the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME.’

“For who provoked Him when they heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? With whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, let us fear, lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have fallen short of it.

“For indeed we have had good news proclaimed to us, just as they also; but the word that was heard did not profit those who are not united with faith among those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He said, ‘AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He’s spoken somewhere in this way concerning the seventh day; ‘AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS; and again, in this passage, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’

“Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news proclaimed to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again determines a certain day, ‘today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as it has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God also did from His.”

Therefore, therefore church, therefore you Hebrew congregation, therefore Grace Church, Greeley, “Therefore,” all churches, “let us be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall into the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes to whom we have an account to give.”

 This whole section is rich with warning, encouragement, and destruction. We need to hear beloved and God’s people need these continual reminders, lest they find within their own congregations, evil unbelieving hearts that fall away from the living God. The perennial problem of the visible church is one that we face in our day as well.

 Now just make a few closing observations, that just reflecting on this, you heard Reuben read Psalm 95 earlier. That whole first part of that is just, you just want to stay there. In Psalm 95 verses 1 through 7-ish, it’s just extolling the greatness of God. It’s talking about, we want to worship and bow down, kneel before the Lord our God, our maker, we are his people, the sheep of his pasture, the sheep of his hand.

We love that part, then we get to this warning. It just goes right into it. So “today, if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart.” Wow, a call to worship, a general call to worship, and then a warning about hearing his voice. Instructive, isn’t it instructive.

Another thing to see in this Hebrews 3 text is that returning to a Christless Judaism, which is what they were going to do, they’re going to leave the Christian Church and go back to a synagogue that did not see Christ as the Messiah. They were going to go back to Moses, go back to traditions, good biblical traditions, Bible stuff. They were Bible people.

But returning to a Christ less Judaism is on the same level as returning to an idolatrous Egypt. You see the parallel in Hebrews 3 and Psalm 95. Any religion, Jewish or otherwise, that rejects Christ, is on par with the most vile forms of paganism. So while I just say this, beloved, and I know we love the Jews, we do.

We honor the Jews for the sake of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We see the Jews as privileged, appreciate them. Romans 2 speaks about that. Romans 9 through 11 speaks about God’s future for Israel. We know that we would not have handled the privilege that they received from God any better than they did. Do we think better of ourselves? We shouldn’t.

While we see Israel as the incubator of the savior, we consider Israel as the vine into which we, even though we are wild olive shoots, we’ve been grafted in. We love and appreciate Israel. At the same time, we must not treat the current nation of Israel as holy and righteous absolve from wrongdoing.

In fact, if they were to build that millennial temple today, open it for worship tomorrow, it’d really be no different than a Pagan temple offering Pagan sacrifices to a false God. So let’s be really careful, really careful about how we think. If returning to an idolatrous Egypt is bad and returning to a Christless Judaism is on the same level, what would be the equivalent sin for us today? Returning to churches we know are sub-Christian, non-Christian, returning to bad evangelicalism; returning to bad stuff.

 Think about Protestants who returned to the Roman Catholic Church or to Eastern Orthodoxy. Gets so confusing these days with so much bad religion and evangelicalism. We don’t have the time to be nuanced about all that right now, but we really do need to consider carefully and reflect and think about the times we live in because these scriptures, they’re written for examples to us so that we’re warned today in our time.

We’re called to read, study and understand and discern the times we live in and watch ourselves. Watch ourselves. Another observation. We see that though Israel started out well, though they witnessed God’s miraculous redemption in Exodus 14, taking them out of Egypt, passing them through the sea, though they praised him for that salvation in Exodus 15, singing the Song of Moses.

They’re singing together, they’re following the worship leaders. They got the banjo out and everything. It’s not about how they started, is it? It’s about how they finished. Many evangelicals today point back to some decision that they made for Jesus, way back when, as the basis of their assurance before God.

Many evangelical parents, grandparents, they do a real disservice to their rebellious, straying children and grandchildren by holding on to some childish profession of faith that was long since abandoned. Listen, my heart weeps with your heart over those kids, grandkids. But the Bible is very clear on this point. We don’t do anybody a service by ignoring the Bible’s clarity on this. It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.

In the parable of the soils, two of the soils started out the same way as the only good soil, but they failed to make it to the end, failed to produce any fruit. You need to tell the truth about that, first to your own heart, first to correct your own sentiment, your own sensitivities, because you got to look.

Your kids, your grandkids, your family, your your neighbors, your friends. You got to look them in the eye and say, listen, I know you’re professing, but I see the way you’re acting, the way you’re living, the way you think, the way your priorities are, the way your life is going. You don’t look any different from MAGA Republicans or really moral Democrats. You got to tell the truth. You got to tell the truth while there’s still time and stop holding on to false assurances.

Fourth observation, the dividing line between those who enter God’s rest and those who don’t is belief versus unbelief, fearing God versus fearing man, obedience versus disobedience, staying faithful to the end and not remaining faithful, not being loyal. The acting academic president of our seminary when I was going to seminary, man named Dick Mayhew. Richard Mayhew, who helped author the Biblical Doctrine book along with John MacArthur. He once said something in a class I’ve never forgotten. I think it’s very profound and accurate, he said the theme of all of Scripture is the fear of God. You know, you expected him to say Christ or redemptive history or whatever; he said it’s the fear of God.

Every passage is pointing you to the fear of God. Every passage is pointing you to the fear of God. Those who fear God believe. Those who fear God believe and obey the hear and the heed. And this is why Hebrews 13:13 says, “We got to encourage one another day after day, as long as it’s called today, so that none of us is hardened by sins deceitfulness, because we may become partakers of Christ,” if and only, “if we hold fast.”

 The beginning of our assurance. What’s the beginning of our assurance? Where did our assurance start? Christ, his work on the cross, everything that he’s accomplished; his blood bought atonement for our sins. Everything that he’s done, it’s external to us. Our faith is in what God has accomplished in Christ forgiving us of all our sins and his atoning work on the cross, him being a substitute for us, we deserving the wrath.

He got it, though he took it and us standing fast in his righteousness. We trust in him and him alone. That’s the beginning of our assurance. We need to hold fast to that firm until the end. Let’s pray.

 Our Father, we thank you for what this pastor, what an insightful pastor who has written to encourage and exhort and even admonish his own congregation because he’s, he’s concerned. He’s concerned about the times that they live in. He’s concerned about the temptations and the stresses that they face. He’s concerned about the harsh society and culture around them that is trying to pressure them to cave, to give up this Christ profession, to give up this singular hope that they have.

And Father, there are, it’s a different kind of a tyranny today. It’s a soft tyranny. It’s a distraction culture. It’s a entertainment culture. It’s a frivolity and triviality culture. And so, father, we ask that you would help us to turn our hearts to Christ and Christ alone. Hold firm to the beginning of our assurance. Who is Christ? Let us hold fast to him firm until the end, and let us encourage one another day after day, as long as it is called today.

Let us be encouraging one another, strengthening each other and running together, and if possible, by your grace, leaving no man behind, because we want to come before you and hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.” We love you father and thank you for this good word from Hebrews 3, in Jesus’ name Amen.

Colossians 3:12

Well, we are working our way through Paul’s letter to the Colossians in our study of God’s Word and we are in the third chapter, Colossians 3, verse 12, and you’ll want to turn there in your Bibles, Colossians 3:12. The past two weeks that we’ve been in the study of Colossians, I would just say admittedly, I think they have been unpleasant. Unpleasant two weeks in the text as we’ve studied two vice lists and we’ve seen a catalog of ugly, ugly sins. It’s kind of like we’ve been wading through like this nasty slimy swamp and bog and being reminded of what the muck feels like, what it smelled like when we were in it, how terribly wretched our former lives were.

But in God’s mercy and by his grace, we have been marked out. Praise God, we’ve been marked out for an entirely different destiny, an eternal destiny, one that will never end. We are new creations in Christ and what testifies to the fact that we are new creations in Christ, what gives evidence to our profession, is a changed life. Our lives don’t stay the same.

We don’t continue to wander through the muck of our former life. We don’t continue to live like we used to live. We don’t even live like the common bland unbeliever out there; even just ostensibly moral lives, something has happened to us and we are very, very different people. As God is transforming us in this project of sanctification, he transforms us for the rest of our lives.

With that, look at the texts Colossians chapter 3, verse 12. I want to read those verses. Colossians 3:12 to 17. This wonderful and refreshing section of Scripture. “So as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and graciously forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord graciously forgave you, so also should you.

“Above all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 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 in you richly, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Those verses divide neatly, clearly into two sections, verses 12 to 14, which we will cover today, and then verses 15 to 17, that have these parallel phrases as you heard them, the peace of Christ, the word of Christ, the name of the Lord Jesus. We might take two weeks in that section, but for today, verses 12 to 14.

 There’s this pertinent set of commands that offset the vice lists in verse 5, verse 8, this pertinent set of commands to those of us whom God has raised up with Christ Jesus, those of us who’ve put on the new man, God does not stop with reconciling us to himself in position only; praise God for that. God renews us in Christ. He renews the mind and transforms the life.

He wants to change us and conform us into the image of him who has created this one new man, Christ. And this is how we become what we are, verses 12 to 17. This is how we are to become what we are, how we become practically what we are positionally. Our practice is beginning to and continuing to match our position, how the righteousness that has been imputed to us, reckoned to us, starts to be and it continues to be imparted to us how we grow to look more and more like Christ.

And I’ll say this, folks, this is the longing of every true Christian. This is the hard cry of every true believer, to grow more fully into the likeness of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

There’s a principle of the universe, principle of all created human beings that we become like what we worship, right? You’ve heard that before. This is an inviolable creaturely principle, and it’s because God made us religious beings. And being religious, we have to worship something; we must.

We recognize we’re creatures. We recognize we came from someone somewhere, and we are longing to worship. So God made us religious and we want to worship, and he made us so that what we gaze at, what we fix, our hope on, what we love, what we pursue, we become like that thing. This is why there’s an inevitable descent into corruption for all idolaters, which Paul alluded to at the end of verse 5. They become more and more like the corrupt idols and the sins that they worship.

Only one way out of idolatrous corruption and that is true worship. True worship from the heart of the true and living God. The worship of God, the one who is most blessed and most glorious, who lives incarnate in the beauty of Christ. That’s true worship, to pursue him, to love him, to long to know him, to be like him, to see his character transform our character.

That’s what we long for and as his righteousness covers us now before God, it is his righteousness that we long to wear as our daily clothing, to put on as our daily dress, to put on as it were, the robe or the cloak that covers us. We long to wear it practically even as we have been covered by it positionally before God.

So in this section, verses 12 to 14 several points to kind of guide us through the text because as Christians, we long to be like Christ. We long to see these virtues in this character formed in us, to change us from the inside out, so that we are people of integrity through and through.

Christ forming us from the inside, working its way to the outside, to be consistently, constantly this way; in our thoughts, our imaginations, our desires, our ambitions, in the priorities we set for our life, but also in how we speak, in every word, every syllable, in how we behave, in the things that we refuse to say and the things that we must say; in the things that we refuse to do, refuse to behave a certain way and the ways we must behave, we long for those things.

God’s commands in Christ are our deepest longing to do his will, like Christ who said it before us, to do his will is our food, it’s our drink, it’s what sustains us, nourishes us. So four points just to guide you through this text, starting with this first one, where Paul is identifying the subjects for renewal.

So let’s say this number one, God blesses and justifies his elect. God blesses and justifies his elect. He’s identifying here in verse 12 the subjects for this renewal that takes place in the new man, and he identifies them as the elect of God, holy and beloved. The elect of God, holy and beloved, if that is not you, then listen, no renewal can happen.

If that description elect holy beloved, does not define you, does not identify you, then you’ve got deeper work to do. You’ve got repentance before God to conduct. You’ve got to go to him and plead for his salvation, that he would justify you, because without justification, without being reconciled to God, none of this renewal, none of this growth is going to take place.

If this is you elect, holy and beloved, thy transformation cometh. Now, there are some Christians, because of the traditions in which they were raised, who balk at the term elect. They’re uncomfortable with it. They’ve been taught to suspect the doctrine of election as if it’s something sinister, as if it’s something to suspect and to resist.

They’ve been taught that the doctrine of divine election turns God into something of an evil manipulator who’s dictatorial and controlling, and that the doctrine of election robs humanity of its chief human attribute, according to them, which they believe is free will. Election, they say, turns people into a little more than automatons, a mere servile robots just doing according to their programming.

Obviously, those views about election distort what the Bible actually teaches about election. Many have been told lies about election. It’s been slandered, it’s been scorned, it’s been maligned and distorted and so they have a tough time seeing beyond the caricature that they’ve received to the truth of God’s Word.

Now just point out that in Colossians, this is the only explicit reference to the doctrine of election. The only explicit reference and yet there is a reference to election. So you’ve got to deal with a doctrine, because the text raises it. Who are the elect of God? If not those who have been elected, who elected them? God. So we’ve got to talk about divine election. I’m not apologetic about that. I’m just identifying there is an issue.

This is the only explicit reference to the doctrine of election in Colossians and yet everything that Paul has been writing about salvation, we need to understand, it’s assumed the doctrine of divine election. It’s been through the text from the very beginning showing that God has exercised sovereign initiative to save his people.

Those people who are saved. He’s now pursuing this program of sanctifying them, where we shed sins, mortify sins, and put on the behavior, the character, the thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s sanctification.

If you go back to the beginning of the letter, let me show you this, starting in Colossians chapter 1, verse 3. Notice there that Paul does not in his opening, does not congratulate the Colossians for their salvation, as if they’re somehow great. They made the choice. They’ve done well by their free will.

He gives thanks to God for their faith in Christ Jesus. He gives thanks to God for the evidence of true faith in them, which is love. In verses 5 and 6, also, in verses 9 and 10, Paul points to this gospel knowledge which was sovereignly revealed by God that’s bearing fruit, multiplying, causing them to walk worthy of the Lord.

It’s the knowledge that God gave that causes them to do right by God to walk worthy of the Lord. Salvation, sanctification, you have to understand, is by God’s initiative, not theirs. In Colossians 1:12 and 13, it’s God who qualifies, God who rescues, and God who transfers us from darkness to the Kingdom of his beloved Son into light. And all this he’s done by His sovereign initiative. And so he gets all the glory.

Colossians 1:15 to 20, notice it’s God in Christ who sovereignly created all things. None of the things that he created asked to be created. He’s the one that brought them into existence. He’s the one that made distinctions between things. He’s the one that gave this creature one gift and this creature another gift.

He’s the one who gave mankind to be his image, by his sovereign initiative, and he is the one, who by Christ also reconciles all things to himself, and some of that reconciliation is a pacification of those who will not bow the knee to God ever and he makes them bow, thus reconciling them to his authority, to his sovereignty.

Others of us, by his grace he reconciles us, in grace he reconciles us in his mercy. He makes us willing subjects of his Kingdom, and we bow willingly, longingly, cheerfully to our God and savior. So he is the sovereign initiator of both creation and salvation. In Colossians 1:22, God is he who reconciled you to present you. There’s a purpose clause here, to present you. It’s God’s sovereign purpose, “to present you holy and blameless and beyond reproach.” That’s his plan.

Down in Colossians 1:26 and 27, it’s God who has willed to make known to his saints, the truths that grant salvation. He willed to make it known to them, not to everyone, to them. And what he has hidden from the masses, he has revealed to his elect.

Colossians 2:6 and 7, God is the one who, firmly rooted his elect in Christ. He’s the one who, “established them in their faith.” In Colossians 2:10, it’s God who filled his elect with all the fullness of Christ. By the Holy Spirit, Colossians 2:11, and at God’s initiative, he performed this intimate spiritual surgery called circumcision. And it’s by his sovereign will and his sovereign initiative that he caused us to be born again; gave new life to us in whom there was no life.

 The doctrine of Spirit baptism comes in the next verse, Colossians 2:12, which is Spirit initiated, Spirit energized, Spirit activated, and this Spirit baptism is what undergirds all the following teaching that we’ve been going through on sanctification. It informs Colossians 2:20 and everything we’ve learned in Colossians 3:1,3:5, 8, verses 10 and 11; everything is undergirded by the fact that we have been buried with Christ and baptism unto death and raised to new life and seated with Christ at his right hand.

Baptism in Christ is everything, and God has done it. He’s sovereignly planned it, initiated it, activated it, made it happen. All this teaching assumes the doctrine of God’s sovereign election, that he chose a people for himself from before the foundation of the world. And the outworking of that sovereign choice is what we find recorded in the history of redemption in Scripture. And what Paul writes about right here and what many of us are personally experiencing in our lives right now. He’s doing a good work in us, and we have the promise of Philippians 1:6, that, he began a good work in us. He’s going to complete it, too.

In the parallel letter, if you’d like to turn over to Ephesians 1, you can see in Paul’s Ephesian epistle he writes a bit more explicitly about the doctrine of election there. But these are parallel books. Colossians and Ephesians parallel one another in their themes and their structures and their form and everything, but he’s more expansive in Ephesians than he is in Colossians. Colossians directed to a particular problem dealing with a threat to the church.

Ephesians is much more of a doctrinal treatise. And he says in Ephesians 1:3 through 6, he says, “blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Notice he doesn’t say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and blessed be all of you, because you have really done your part. I mean, God came down and offered you a gift, but you reached up, halfway you met him and now, because of your effort and your faith and your initiative and your goodness, reaching up and meeting God halfway, you’ve got everything in heaven. You’re blessed with everything.

So a little bit of blessing to God the Father who’s done his part, little bit of blessing for you, blessings on everyone. No, he doesn’t say that, blessing be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and to him alone. He who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ verse 4, “just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

The verb, chose, can also be translated: He elected us. Same verb, same verb form related to the noun eklektos over in Colossians 3:12. Here the verb is epilego, which means to pick out, to choose, to select from, to take from among a number, and to choose that for a specific purpose, which is, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

In other words, God did not look down the corridors of time, as some people try to explain. He didn’t see those who possess faith. You’re going to turn out okay and then choose them. It’s clear, he says, “he chose us in him,” when, “before the foundation of the world,” that is, before creation, before there was any category beyond God, before anything that is called not God ever was. That’s when He chose.

 So before anyone was or had done anything right or wrong, good or bad, exercising faith or rejecting faith, God chose then. The next verb in verse 5, is very explicit, “In love. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself.”

Very interesting verb there, predestined. Proorizo, translated in various ways as predetermine, foreordain, or just hear predestined. By itself, there’s a, pro, is a prefix and then the verb horizo, means to establish a boundary. You can hear in horizo, you can hear the kind of the word, horizon.

When a truly humble man, humble woman comes around, just their presence exposes those who pretend.” Travis Allen

That’s the etymology of horizon; goes back to this verb to determine by deliberate decision a limit. So determine, fix, set a point. That verb is used in Acts 17:26 to speak of God determining national boundaries. He uses it in Acts 17:31 and Hebrews 4:7, to refer to God setting appointed times, fixing, determining, predetermined plans. According to Luke 22:22 and Acts 2:23, God determines and he appoints all of it.

Add the prefix to horizo, the prefix pro, which means before, to the verb horizo, and you’ve got predetermined, determined beforehand, predestined. And by the way, this is no cold detached mechanical force of the divine will. This choice comes freely. It comes from an ad intra love that unifies the persons of the Trinity and God chooses by his own free initiative, his own sovereign will to communicate that love, ad extra, outside of himself to us.

It says here in Ephesians 1, “in love. He predestined us to adoption as sons.” What is adoption as sons, and I mean we could get into the doctrine of adoption. If you go back into the ancient world, this is the full rights and privileges of a loving family that could never be revoked.

Natural born sons, they could offend the father at to such a degree that they could be cast out of the family, disinherited and set aside even to be called not family. They can never claim the family title, family rights, family prerogatives; adoption: firm, fixed, irrevocable.

So “in love he predestined us to adoption as his children, his sons.” There’s an affection there through Jesus Christ to himself, “according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.”

 As much as I would love to park it here and unpack all these truths, adoption into God’s family: Unbelievable. How God elects us for himself with his own interests in mind, designed to draw us into the depths of his eternal love. Or the good that accrues to all of us when we sing the praises of the glory of his grace.

When that resounds from our lips, when it’s overflowing from our hearts. That’s a healthy, healthy individual, one who’s praising God, because of these things or for, as this text says, God’s freedom just in being God, his Godness, his prerogative to do whatever he wants. And by the way, whatever he wants is good for us, it’s good for all.

He does divine things in a divine way and bestows freely according to his eternal love and his infinite wisdom. This is our God. This is what he does. He exercises his initiative. Each of those thoughts coming from Ephesians 1:3 to 6, kind of merits a sermon of its own.

But we must return, if you would, to Colossians 3:12 and consider further the subjects of renewal, the elect of God, holy and beloved. Three identifying terms that are used here, elect, holy, and beloved. We are elect or chosen by God, and we’re chosen to be holy and blameless, Ephesians 1:4.

 And what God chose in his sovereign freedom is to give full expression to his love to his creatures. He directs his father leave love toward us, and by his free and uncoerced choice, he has set us apart as his precious possession, calling us with that affectionate term, beloved. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ, calling us holy, though we were once not holy, we were not holy, and yet he’s called us holy.

He’s justified us by his grace in Christ. He’s given us faith to trust him and by that faith and through that faith and by means of that faith, God has justified us, declared us righteous. God has dealt with all of our offenses, removing the the guilt of our sins, forgiving us, erasing the debt, and having dealt justly, fully, finally with our sins in punishing Christ on the cross instead of us, he’s meted out the judgement that we deserved on his own son and then granted us the reward of a righteousness that we didn’t deserve.

 He granted us a reward that only Jesus deserves, but he’s given it to us as well. What is this, that we would be caught up in it? That God would so favor us that he would condescend and when we have been so offensive to him. If you need a reminder that go back to Colossians 3:5 through 8 and look at yourself.

It’s what we once were and God hasn’t treated us according to his offenses deserve. He’s treated us according to what Christ deserves. What is that? So having identified the subjects for renewal, God goes on and through Paul, he calls us to join him, so that we participate in our own renewal. Think about that.

Just one other comment here. Would any commands be issued to those who are nothing more than automatons, robots that respond to merely programming? No, he’s involving our will. We can choose to obey and disobey, but he’s involving our will and he wants us to come to see the excellencies of his commands, the goodness of what he’s driving us to, the goodness of Christ that he’s put before us. He’s calling us forward and saying, look, don’t you want to.

Those who are truly his? They say yes, and they follow and obey, because they have the internal mechanism for obedience. It’s called a new nature. It’s called being born again. And out of that new nature we long to grow. Oh, and we do grow over time because of his grace, because of his grace working in us.

Those chosen by God’s sovereign initiative, the beloved of his electing grace, they’ve been made members of God’s family. And as beloved children, we get to wear the family crest. We get to display the family seal. His banner over us, we get to display proudly, because we belong to him. We get to dress in the distinctive garments of the people of God, wear his colors. One of those garments worn first by the head of our race, Jesus Christ.

Second point, point number two: God dresses and beautifies his elect. God dresses and beautifies his elect. Paul says again, verse 12. So as the elect of God, holy and beloved, he’s basically saying, look, go into the king’s wardrobe, take out the garments that you find there, and by the way, there are garments with your name on them, and then go put them on. Put on a heart of compassion and kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. That’s beauty, isn’t it?

You like it when people like that interact with you. You like to go and order your food from people that look like that. You like it when people like that are your banker. You like it when they’re your dentist or your doctor. You like it when they are the ones who do the tune up on your car, change your oil, do repairs. You like it when they’re your builder or the person who fixes anything in your house.

You know you like, it even more, you like that kind of a person to be married to you. If you’re a child growing up in a home, you like to have parents who look a lot like that, compassionate, kind, you know, humble, gentle, patient. You know, what’s even better, when you become a person like this and you then get to be the the source and the conduit of God’s blessing to all these other people. That’s even better. It’s even better.

Considering the context of the Colossian situation, the occasion for writing this letter, it’s no wonder that Paul speaks so strongly about the ineptitude of the false teaching to produce anything remotely close to the excellencies described here to the excellencies of Christ; strikes so vehemently against the deceptive promises of the false teacher who promised others freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption.

They offer this false, fake substitute form of sanctification that is so paltry compared to this. All the doctrines of the world, all the philosophies of men, all the systems of thought, all the methods and strategies that we could gather across the span of time and human history.

And if we could go and cherry pick and select only the best of them all from every single philosophy and culture on earth all rolled up into one. Nothing comes remotely even close to the excellence of this renewal; let alone does it have the power to do anything to your life. There’s no transformation power there. There’s no renewal.

 And you say, as you read this, you say, yeah, I know a lot of professing Christians who don’t think, feel, speak or behave like that. Well, that is sad, isn’t it? But we ought to be careful about saying these professing Christians who have no compassion or kindness or humility, meekness, patience. We need to ask the question, does God see them as true Christians?

I’ve had someone look me straight in the eye and say, yeah, I don’t. I just don’t care about people. I don’t love them. I have no compassion for others and get this, he insisted he’s a Christian, in the same breath. Some others have tried to help this man explain himself. Oh, you mean, oh, I know what you mean. You mean apart from Christ, you don’t naturally have feelings of affection, love and compassion, right? And he corrected them and said, nah, I just don’t have those feelings at all. Hmm.

You know what he’s saying? He’s saying I am not a Christian, that’s what he’s saying. Though, he refuses to admit it, his pride won’t let him admit it, and the man is crying out for discipline. He’s crying out for someone to tell him the truth. Please tell me the truth. He needs actual Christians, loving Christians, to tell him lovingly and straightforwardly, without batting an eye, without making any apology. Listen, my friend, you are not a Christian. You need to repent and believe the gospel and trust in Christ and seek forgiveness for your sins, or you will die and you will face God’s condemning judgment. I don’t want that for you, but I cannot go along with this charade. You say you’re a Christian, and yet you don’t even desire to live like this.

Christians look like this, folks. They look like Colossians 3:12 to 17, you say immediately, all at once. You say, no. But look, if you over qualify it, you turn it into no standard at all, and then anybody can claim to be a Christian.

So look, Christians at least long for that, and you see some modicum of that forming in their life, even from brand new in Christ. And you see it continuing throughout a Christian life, growing more and more as the days go by and as the decades go by.

This right here in Colossians 3:12 to 17 is far beyond what the world produces, what bland religion can produce, what philosophy, life coaching therapy can produce, which is what most evangelicalism is offered in the past five decades: Therapy, life coaching, Ted talks.

The majority of professing Christians that I meet today, they act no different than the unbelieving. They’re no different from their non church attending friends, family, neighbors. Not overtly bad people. In fact, they are moral people, make good neighbors. They got good values, strong work ethics. They say the right things. They do the good deeds. They give to charity. Strive to be better husbands, good fathers. Women want to be good wives with their husbands. Mothers want to be kind to their kids. They’re just like us, right? Just like us.

Some may seem on the surface that they are just like us, but at the core, in the heart, if we’re true Christians, listen, we’re not at all like them. We’re not. If we’re regenerate, born again, it means we’re born of God, born from above, and we possess an entirely new nature. They have an old nature. We have a new. The dividing line could not be clearer, and oh time, proves it; time works that out.

We are those unlike the world. We are those who mortify the internal sinful drives and ambitions of our former life, Colossians 3:5. We are those who strip off and shed all of that attendant bad behavior, Colossians 3:8. When we see it, we hate it, we go after it and we want to acknowledge it, confess it, seek forgiveness for it and repent. Putting off, putting on, changing. That’s what we long for.

I know a lot of professing Christians don’t long for that. True Christians do. True Christians long for it and then we just love to put on this new clothing, to put on all these garments, inner garments and outer garments, the inward attitudes of compassionate hearts and kindness, humility, and these outward facing attitudes of gentleness and patience. We love it.

 Let’s go through the list there in verse 12. First, Paul starts with what he calls here, what’s translated here is a heart of compassion. It can be translated heartfelt compassion, and it’s a heart of compassion. There are two words in the Greek and the word heart is more suitable for the western ear. It senses more likely to be interpreted accurately by us because the actual word, splagchnon is translated bowels by the King James Version, because it literally medically refers to the internal organs there.

Internal organs of compassion, the viscera of compassion; kidneys, liver, stomach, intestines of compassion is what it’s describing here. This is just how the ancient world spoke of their emotions and their feelings as being kind of felt in the gut, in the chest, in the inward parts here. And we agree with that, right? Because it is right in here. It’s in here that we feel things too, internally, viscerally.

Strong emotions, we know this, that strong emotions, when they are stuffed, when they’re ignored, they can wreak havoc in some on physical well-being. Hurts, sadnesses, sorrows that go unaddressed, biblically, righteously for a long period of time can lead to things that we’ve seen like adrenal dysfunction, hormonal dysfunction, digestive issues, sleep issues.

David spoke of it descriptively, poetically, saying my bones wasted away when I’ve refused to confess my sin, when I refused to acknowledge my sin before you, I wasted way, like it was the fever heat of summer. It’s like he’s baking in Phoenix, out on a rock, and he was withering away, had no energy, no strength. Today we call it fibromyalgia.

David says, nah, I just didn’t confess my sin. Positive sense, when we walk in this way, you know what we get? Strength, vitality, joy. We’re lifted up, buoyed up, encourage, made strong. Positively, as Christians, we’re equipped with a new nature, which is primed, ready to feel differently, to operate according to positive emotions.

In fact, we must do that because Paul puts this command in an aorist imperative. He calls for us to be putting on heartfelt compassion and when he uses the aorist imperative, he’s saying do it right away, right now, don’t waste any time. He says you must do that, which means, you can do that. That’s encouraging, isn’t it?

What must stir our bowels, what must move our feelings, as Paul is describing here is a tenderness of concern, especially to those in need. Those who face trying circumstances, those who are afflicted with trouble. Those who are hurting or sad or sorrowing or in pain. Those who themselves are afflicted with physical issues or they suffer relational issues. Maybe they’ve lost a spouse, lost a child.

Our guts, or to feel it in our guts that respond with compassion. Attitudes of deep sympathy that drive us to feelings and acts of mercy. Tangible expressions, not just platitudes, not just words, not just sentiment, but real practical action. You know what practical action you can take toward those who are grieving, suffering. And you can do it wherever you are on earth, whether you’re locked in a prison or whether you’re on a mountaintop, or whether you’re on a vacation, or whether you’re alone. You can pray.

The subjects for this renewal that takes place in the new man, and he identifies them as the elect of God, holy and beloved.” Travis Allen

Every Christian can pray for those who suffer. That prayer is driven because of a tender compassion, a heartfelt compassion coming from down here and coming up and coming out of our lips in prayer. And you know how you stir that up? Obviously, the Word of God has to dwell in you richly, but you also need to know people. You can’t expect to do it isolated from one another. Just live in your online life. Just live in your Colorado existence of, you do you, I’ll do me. We can’t do that.

We need to be in each other’s homes, lives, know each other’s strengths, weaknesses, what we’re suffering with, what we’re rejoicing in. It drives us together. If we’re going to be obedient to this, we need to come together. We need to work on growing in friendships. And you know what? This world doesn’t do very well at all? Friendship.

Friendship is at a premium in our day. And you know who ought to be showing how to do friendship well? The church, us. This first command drives us to it. You cannot have affection for tender compassion for strangers. We’re just not wired that way. We’re wired to have proximate relationships, close relationships, get into lives and feel what others feel and that feeling and that compassion generates prayer and all kinds of other practical helps ministries.

Our Father’s divine by this attribute. 2 Corinthians 1:3, He’s called the father of mercies. Same word here. He revealed himself to Moses this way in Exodus 34 verse 6, “I am Yahweh, Yahweh God, and I am compassionate and gracious, slow to anger. I’m abounding in loving kindness and truth.”

Interesting how those attributes that he self-defines in Exodus 34, actually show up in this list, which is another way of saying would be like him; as it is with the father so also with his children, which Paul says in Philippians 2:1, he identifies both of these terms that are used together in Colossians 3:12, splagchnon and oiktirmos. The two terms used together in Philippians 2:1. These are basic to being a Christian.

So if you have none of these, if you have no heart of compassion, if you have no mercy, if you have no desire for that, you know what? You’re not a Christian. But if you have even a modicum of it, if you have even a smidgen of it, just a little bump, a little blip on the screen, on the heart monitor, ah, I’ll just wax that into strength, pour fuel on it, let it fan into a flame, so that your compassion burns for one another.

Christian, put it on heartfelt compassion, affectionate mercy for others, especially for one another. When a church is characterized by this virtue, man, it is such a warm company of friendship. Caring, tender, a very clear testimony to a cold world, that has no concern for others, but is selfish, driven for their own interests, for their own success.

When we come to the second and the third attitudes in this list, they describe the Christian frame of mind in kind of general terms. And so second, the Christian is to be marked by kindness. Kindness which has to do with how we relate to others, generally with all men, but also specifically with particular people like Christians, one another, we’re to be kind.

Our God is a God of, as he said in Exodus 34, God of loving kindness. And Christ is the very incarnation of God’s kindness. He showers all people with loving kindness and tender mercy. See how Jesus treated the vulnerable, the suffering. See how Jesus put people at ease in his presence. No one felt afraid or threatened, because he had such a prickly demeanor, couldn’t be bothered, had a schedule to keep, task to do. Everyone, especially the weak, hurting, flicked, vulnerable, everyone was drawn to him; was magnetic because he was so kind hearted. Look we’re to put that on, too. We’re to put it on toward all men, but especially toward one another.

Kindness is a disposition of graciousness, friendly, affable demeanor, not grumpy, curmudgeonly, judgy, critical. Opposite is the word apotomia. Apotomia, which means severity, strictness, harshness. It’s rude, it’s abrupt. So don’t be apotomia. Let’s put that on a T-shirt, eh? Don’t be an apotomia. Be kind, tender hearted, gracious, forgiving.

Third attitude here, Christians are to put on an attitude of humility. Humility. This isn’t how you think about others, it’s how you think about yourself. Isn’t it humility? And this isn’t like an inordinately low view of oneself, always putting yourself down. Oh, I can’t do anything right. Oh, I’m not that great. Oh, I’m not, I’m not that gifted.

No, it’s an accurate biblical view of oneself. Paul wrote to the Romans, Romans 12:3, “For the grace given to me I say to each one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” Many people stop there and just try to walk around with this kind of faux humility, but they don’t keep reading. He said, No, “don’t think of yourself more highly than you ought to think; but think so as to have sound thinking,” sober judgment about all things, including yourself.

 This is not the faux humility that false religion puts on, like putting on a humble front, wearing the mask of humility, which is how Paul has used the same term when he talks about the false teachers and false teaching. That kind of humility, that kind of mask, that kind of parade and virtue signaling is just like this distorted caricature of the real thing, but it is clearly not the real thing.

It’s like today, men who dress up as drag Queens, they distort what women are really like. When homosexual men think they’re able to mimic female voices as they distort their own and talk to you and take your order and all that stuff or they prance around the room, as if women do that.

I mean, these men turn women’s looks and mannerisms and voices into these monstrous caricatures which have nothing at all to do with real femininity, no connection with actual womanhood. If you have any question about that, ask the women in the room. Does that guy dressed up like that and prancing around like that, does he represent you?

Most women are and ought to be offended by that, just as we ought to be offended at false religion that parades itself with a mask of humility and tries to put on virtues like gaudy eye makeup and extra-long lashes and looks nothing like the real thing.

We ought to be offended by that kind of religion because it’s offensive to God. It’s a stench in his nostrils. Those who are truly humble, like the apostle Paul, like the Lord Jesus Christ, their true humility manifesting an inward humility in a spiritual virtue that cannot be reproduced in the flesh. When a truly humble man, humble woman comes around, just their presence exposes those who pretend. Their kind of humility, their brand of humility that doesn’t draw attention to itself, it just rips the mask off of false humility.

Those who practice hypocrisy and try to put it on, Paul’s is saying to the Colossians, look, don’t pay any attention to those guys, those false teachers, all their disciples, all of them pretending that their doctrines produce religious virtues, look to Christ. Look to Christ and Christ alone and by the instruction of the Spirit in the Word, put that on.

Put on humility. Refuse to be self-seeking. Don’t be boastful. Don’t parade your strengths, virtues, accomplishments. You don’t need to be a walking resume of yourself. You don’t need to put yourself forward. Instead, exercise self-restraint, self-effacing, associate with the lowly. Give yourself to humble tasks, since you really consider that there is nothing beneath you.

You serve others faithfully, cheerfully, because you’ve already put on heartfelt compassion and kindness, and you love others, and so you do what unites the church in showing care. You serve where you need to serve. You serve where you’re asked. You don’t serve where you’re not asked. You just humble yourself. You submit.

 The last two words here, gentleness, meekness. Gentleness, meekness, really the same idea, same word here, and impatience. These terms kind of describe our bearing in general, our disposition, but they’re really known when they’re tested, aren’t they? They’re really known in times of provocation.

So forth, let’s talk about the attitude of gentleness and I do prefer the term meekness. I think it better captures just in our age, this sense of the adjective, praus and the noun that’s used here, which is prautēs. It’s a quality of a kind of a gentle friendliness. Meekness is like a consideration of others and accommodating your own strengths to other people’s weaknesses. And by the way, when you do that, you don’t make them feel it either.

This is the opposite of harshness, brashness, roughness, severity, arrogance, all of that being paraded around as real manly these days. Crushing opponents in debates, putting him down, making him look stupid, that’s not meekness. It’s laughable that any Christian would talk like that and, and advocate for that.

Someone going to be strong and capable, but if he cultivates a gentle demeanor in a mild manner, he’s moderate and reasonable, using his strength to serve other people. You have any questions as to what this looks like practically study your savior Jesus Christ, because you’ll see in his meekness a strength that’s under control. You’ll see true spiritual strength which is carefully cultivated, disciplined, wisely deployed, not for the aggrandizement of himself, but for the good of others, always for the good of others.

I preached a sermon a couple of years ago on this virtue in Christ called the meekness of Christ, the meekness of Christ. So if you want to, you can find it on our website. Hopefully you’ll get some benefit out of it, but it just tries to expose the meek heart of Christ and his behavior, his actions, his words. It’s something that’s so lovely to look at. And then when you look at that and it casts a light on your life, you see a lot that’s lacking.

Finally, a fifth virtue, a Christian is marked by patience. Patience, which is the opposite of the vice of anger. In Colossians 3, thumos, patience is makrothemia, so makro and then thumos, makrothumia. They sound at first like a lot of thumia, a big anger. But the actual sense of the word is to kind of portray someone who takes a long time, macro time to heat up, get angry, lose his cool, lose his self-control.

The idea in this patience is that no one needs to walk on egg shells around you. People don’t always need to be careful about not to set you off, always concerned that they’re going to somehow offend you, irritate you, bug you, because you wear the very patience of Christ when provoked by people.

Oh, and by the way, he dealt with the worst of sinners, with the worst provocations. He dealt with the jealous, the violent, the powerful, the spiteful, malicious gossips, slanders, those who tried to butter him up with flattery and then pretend friendship as a cover for their entrapment.

 He dealt with the arrogant, the disdainful, and yet always patient, always. When provoked by circumstances, our Lord considered every interruption, every detour, every unplanned encounter as the direction of his father’s wise providence. That’s how he took it. He patiently submitted to every change, followed the spirits leading, calmly, patiently. He kept cool at all times, on every occasion, in every circumstance. Can you imagine that?

I mean, I’d just like to, I’d just like to watch it. I haven’t even seen that. I only see it in Scripture. On the other hand, when I say, can you imagine it and have you seen it? You probably have and it’s just passed you by because it’s the people who lose their cool and lose their patience who get attention, the people who keep their cool and are always patient, you don’t even notice.

Probably have seen it. You can imagine it too, Beloved, because this is describing you as Christians. You may not be quite there yet, but just let me encourage you. You will, because God intends to form Christ in you. He intends to shape you into the image of his beloved son.

In fact, this is what Paul meant in Romans 13:14 when he says we’re to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, making no provision for the flesh to obey its lust and desires. We’re to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what he’s talking about. Put on these virtues, beloved. Wear his garments. Not because you’ve taken them from him, stolen them. They’re not rightfully yours. Because he’s invited you into his kingly wardrobe, the royal wardrobe and he says take your pick. This clothing belongs to you. Every one of them, beautiful. There’s one with your name on it. It’s got my crest. You wear my seal. You’re my beloved elect. Holy beloved, this is how we get to look. It’s how we get to dress, because it’s who we really are.

You can bow with me in prayer as we prepare our own hearts for communion. I’ll ask the Lord’s blessing on the elements, and I’ll wrap up our time here in the Word.

Our Father, we thank you so much for sending us the Lord Jesus Christ and for granting us life in him. We thank you for the perfections, as we as a church have had the privilege of studying through the Gospel of Luke, to follow him on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem and Jerusalem to the cross, to see him endure every circumstance and every provocation with patience and kindness and humility and gentleness.

He operated with a heart of compassion that is unparalleled. He was the very incarnated compassion of you, father. The way he is, is the way you are, and the way you are is how you intend all of us to be. Father, we thank you for doing the great work of removing our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.

Thank you for covering us in the righteousness of Christ, clothing us with his righteousness in your presence but father, we we ask that you would continue to do as you have prescribed in your word, that what we are positionally, we would also be practically, that the righteousness you have imputed to us, reckoned to us, accounted to us, that you would impart to us. Help us to be willing participants in this project of sanctification as you renew our minds and transform our lives so that we become more and more like Christ.

 Our father, we love you. What can we say but thank you. We ask that you would bless our time right now around the Lord’s table as we remember what he has done for us. We do ask, father, that you would bless the elements that are before us, the the bread and the cup. And as we think and pray through this time of meditation around the Lord’s table, that we would be very mindful of the love that you have shown to us in Christ. The love that Christ has for us, which he demonstrated by sacrificing himself for us on the cross for our sins.

We thank you, father, for joining us to Christ and baptizing us into him by your Spirit. We thank you that we are under the head of a new humanity. You have united all of your people into one body, that we might live with you and for you forever. It’s by his body that was offered for our sins, his blood shed for us, that we’ve become participants and fellow shippers around the Lord’s table.

So we thank you for uniting us to Christ in this new covenant. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for uniting us to one another in this one body. And we pray that you would feed us with the spiritual food and satiate our thirst in this spiritual drink, that you would do all of your good work in us, satisfy us completely. Make our hearts holy and content and very happy in him as we partake of this meal, the spiritual food. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Hebrews 3:1-6

Colossians 3:8-11

I want to ask you to turn your Bibles to Colossians Chapter 3. We are looking at another vice list this morning, and we’re taking another important step in sanctification. Colossians Chapter 3, the section we’re in is Colossians 3:5 through 11, and last week we saw in Colossians 3:5 what sins we need to put to death, what sins we need to mortify and then verses 6 and 7 gave several reasons why we’re eager to target those sins for termination.

This week there’s another vice list, another set of sins to strip away from our lives and put off. So having put off the old man and having put on the new man we’re to be formed into Christ’s image, we’re to be clothed in him, we’re to wear what he wears, walk as he walks, talk as he talks and this is a section that is about stripping off and shedding the old rags of the old man in order that the new man in Christ shapes us, shines forth from us, comes to characterize our lives; such that his personality, his virtue dominates our lives, our being.

And then through us, Christ glorifies God the father through his people. We are his temple, and he shines in and through us because he’s the foundation. We are the stones within his temple, all being built up to glorify and praise and honor God. That’s the plan. We’re caught up in this tremendous, encouraging plan set before the foundation of the world, as we were confessing this morning. And the decree of God is that we would be stones in this temple, that we would be those in whom Christ forms himself and his character and shapes our lives and brings glory and praise to God the father.

Well, we want to return to the text and start by reading it. So let’s go again back to verse 1 and read from verse 1 through verse 11, “Therefore, if you’ve been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you died and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.” And, “when Christ, who is our life, is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.

“Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. On account of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, lay them all aside; wrath, anger, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you put off the old man with its evil practices, and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the One who created Him- a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and freeman, but Christ is all and in all.”

If we are to keep seeking the things above and keep our minds set on things above and not on the things that are on the earth, we have to put to death sin. We have to deal severely, directly, diligently with sin. We need to put off all sinful behavior and Paul is here outlining, what it is to kill sin and what it is to shed sin, what sins there are to kill, what sins there are to shed. And he gives us two lists of vices, one in verse 5 and another in verse 8 and as we said last week, these lists are related.

The first vice list in verse 5, “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed.” Covetousness is another word for that, “and that is idolatry.” That has to do with the desires, the ambitions, the drives of an idolatrous heart. And as we said, when the idolater is frustrated in trying to fulfill his idolatrous cravings, when his covetousness and his greed does not find its satisfaction, that sinner sins all the more. And those sins that come out of the life are outlined in the vices of verse 8.

So that’s that second vice list, verse 8, “wrath, anger, malice, slander, bad speech.” We’re going to examine those in more detail today. Those sins, when they show up in a life, they never look good, do they? When they show up in public, when there’s an article written about them, when there’s a video that captures it, when a politician does it, in particular, or a celebrity, we look at those things that get passed around the Internet and we say, aha, everybody knows what those sins are.

 Now, if someone were to come in to your home with a camera and take a video of you reacting badly, poorly, doing some of these things and post it on the Internet, you wouldn’t want to go in public for a while. You may even want to, depending on the incident, you may even want to move, change zip codes. Even unbelievers recognize that that list of sins in verse 8, they can hide the stuff for a while in verse 5, but the stuff in verse 8, even unbelievers recognize that’s bad form. That’s unacceptable behavior, losing one’s temper, using foul language.

 But for unbelievers in particular, rather than doing what’s right, as God prescribes, I mean, what ought we to do when we sin in this way? We ought to humble ourselves, confess our sins, ask for forgiveness. But what do unbelievers do? Many of them, all of them, really, they try to sew fig leaves together, cover over their shame. In other words, the biblical word for that is they lie, they deceive, they try to cover up themselves.

This beloved ought never to be for the Christian. Never. Paul tells us and especially as we get to the end of this section, Paul tells us we’re no longer separate tribes. We’re not belonging to separate peoples. We’re not just a bunch of individuals. We’re not a bunch of separate families all coming together and it’s the family that has dominance over the people of God. No, we’re members, one in Christ, members of one another, joined to him. And so we desire to see and know and love the Christ who abides in each and every one of us. That’s why we come together. We want to see him more fully manifest among us, in our midst, in one another. That’s why we talk to each other the way we talk. That’s why we confront sin. That’s why we exhort toward holiness. We want to see Christ fully formed in each and every one of us, because he is the best thing about every single one of us.

Sadly, this is not the way many today think, even among professing Christians. It’s just not the way they think. There are so many who enter into churches today and they’re, they’re sitting as individuals, isolated and cut off from everybody else around them. They keep their own counsel. They hold their cards close to their vest. They don’t let anybody in. They’re guarded, not open. They’re nice, but they’re disingenuous. They’re not sincere. They’re not transparent.

There are many like that, religious, but they keep others at a distance because frankly, let’s call it what it is, they know that if they let other people near, if other people get close enough to see the shameful sins that they have not overcome in their life, that they are defined more by anger than they’d like to admit, that they harbor self-centeredness and are driven by covetousness, even if it’s a socially acceptable kind. They don’t want people to know that.

 They don’t want to let go of former identities and loyalties: Greek, Jew, wealthy, educated, connected, social elite. They’re pleasant enough people, religious people, they give to charity, they do community service, but don’t get to know them. Don’t look too closely, stay on the surface. Just, just believe the image and all will be well.

The problem is with people that put on a religious mask, the corruptions of their hearts are not mortified. They’re not only doing the people around them a disservice, they are killing themselves. The sinful attitudes that simmer beneath the surface, just waiting for the right provocation to break forth. When once that happens, instead of confessing and forsaking their sins, they deceive and avoid scrutiny and wade back into shallower waters that are more comfortable for themselves.

This is why mega churches thrive. People like that live in anonymity without anybody asking questions. They avoid scrutiny, accountability. This is why churches today are so much more like community centers and social clubs. This is the way of so much religion in America. This is what evangelicalism has become in the majority and make no mistake, beloved, this is not true biblical Christianity. It is not. It is a lie and a fraud. And we not only us have to be discerning about that, but we have to help other people be discerning about that too. We have to tell them the truth, even though we may lose friends.

So listen, beloved, the only way forward for true Christians is to shed all of that. To shed all the old ways of the old man so that the new man can emerge. We have to be cognizant of what we bring into the church from the world, and we need to shed that, if I could call it this way, shed that dead skin and then put on and wear the new robes that Christ has given to us. That’s what this text is all about.

So, first let me give you two points, number one: Shed the dead skin. I know it’s a gross picture, but write it down anyway. I want it to be burned into your brain, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Shed the dead skin. Look back at verse 8, “But now you also,” or you yourselves, “lay them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.” And then we’ll add this in verse 9, “and do not lie to one another.”

 Now before we dig into the details, the key concept in this section comes in the second part of verse 9, beginning of verse 10. And it shows us not only that we must shed the old deeds of the old man, but I want to make it clear, Paul wants to make it clear, we are able to do so. We’re not victims. We’re not weak in this process. We have a new nature. We have the Holy Spirit living in us. We have the Word of God to teach us, instruct us.

We have the example of the Lord Jesus to look at, and we have a heavenly father who is doing the work within us. We have the power of the Almighty Trinity to shed the old ways and the old life and the old skin and the old clothes and to put on the new man. End of verse 9, beginning of verse 10, he says, and this is like a statement of fact, it’s not a command here, it’s a statement of fact. “You put off the old man with its evil practices and you have put on the new man.” It’s a done deal. It’s what God did for us.

This draws back from what Paul taught in Colossians 2:11. It’s the outworking of this Colossians 2:11, new birth. This is the practical application of spiritual circumcision. He says there, “in him you were circumcised.” Remember that means to cut around, cast off. “You were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.” And once that thing, what Paul calls the body of the flesh, once that dead skin is, once that’s cut off, that thing is dead.

It’s dead skin, right? No blood flow, no vitality and the only thing to do with that dead thing is dropping in the bin that’s marked biohazard, medical waste, and then destroy that thing. Who keeps it? Who wears it? So in Colossians 3:5, when Paul tells us to mortify our earthly members, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, he’s speaking about that remaining sin as if it were a body part; different body parts that need to be cut off, circumcised, castaway, rendered lifeless, powerless, killed, dead, mortified.

And now as we come to verse 8, we’ve got a bunch of behavior that shows up on the outside. And we got to realize in verse 8 that all these behaviors, they really do come forth from the heart. They start in the heart. There’s an internal component to them, but they do become manifest at the surface in behavior that other people can see, in words that other people can hear. We can take a picture of it, take a video of it. We can record it on our devices. You can listen to it. That’s what we’re seeing in verse 8.

So 5 vices and they do kind of move from the depths of the inside and come out to the outside. Kind of think about this as a word picture of like a lava flow, you know, down in the crust of the earth, there’s boiling, burning lava and then it kind of, in some senses, it can seep up out of the earth or in other senses, like with anger, the word anger here, it explodes in some kind of a volcanic eruption or comes spewing out of the mouth like so much malice and slander and vile speech from our mouths. You got to get rid of all that. Get rid of it.

The command here, aorist imperative, it means there’s an urgency to this; take immediate action. Do it and do it now. For the Colossians, for us Americans, too, these are dominant behaviors of our age, aren’t they? Really dominant behaviors of any ungodly age common to the unbelieving. We see manifest evidence all over the Internet, all of our news feeds. We see this kind of behavior all the time.

But when we see these sins for what they are and when we see these sins showing up in our lives, when we find ourselves sounding a lot more like that crass politician or that that movie star or whatever it is, man, you want to rid yourself of them, like quick. You want to get rid of the dirty, filthy clothing; take that off, shed it. You want to strip it off like foul smelling rags that are headed for nowhere, but the trash.

So you must shed them, as I’m saying here, as dead, rotting skin that needs to be cast off far away from you, if you like. I don’t like picturing myself as a snake. I don’t like snakes. But snakes, you know, sometimes shed their skin and they leave it there and little kids come and pick it up and I say put that nasty thing down. I don’t like the skin. I don’t like the body it came from. I want the whole thing gone. I’m prejudice from Genesis chapter 3, you understand, got a theological reason for it.

 But you got to get rid of that stuff, cast it off and get it far away from you. So look at the first two verse 8, wrath and anger, wrath and anger. Some translations flip those around, anger and wrath, and that’s because these two terms, orge and thumos, they’re often used synonymously. They’re used interchangeably, but when they appear side by side like this, we distinguish them from one another.

 In fact, I was noticing that in the NAS, the new American Standard translation of the Bible, it used to be anger and wrath. Now in the LSB, they’ve kind of flipped that around, wrath and anger. I think they’re recognizing what I believe to be the accurate way of looking at these is that they are distinguished from one another.

 The first word, orge, translated in the LSB as wrath. I understand your translation may say something different, but here probably, wrath is a good translation. We’re talking about a very strong human emotion, reaction of displeasure. It’s like that burning inside of you. It’s a burning inside of you, whether it’s over someone or something. It could be person related, it could be circumstance related, but it is like here, this word, orge is like a seething boiling kind of emotion, a burning indignation. That is the idea here.

The next word, second, thumos, it can be translated as either anger or rage. Rage is a really good word, because it kind of gives you the picture, but it can refer to the negative passion or emotion, that then, not only is down in the surface, but it kind of swells up, boils up, and then it kind of explodes outward in like a flash of temper, a sharp word, a violent outburst, and even sometimes can get physical.

 Kinetic violent, the first form of unrighteous anger, that might never break out, it shows itself openly. It’s more like a cold war than a hot war. Always there, always simmering, always seething. But rather than engaging in open conflict, orge, on human beings in an unrighteous way, it’s a devious thing. It prefers a more subtle form of striking out, like the malice and the slander that come next in the list.

But if we treat these two together, both of these are really manifestations of unrighteous anger. Now, orge can be applied to God in the wrath of God. Never unrighteous, right? It’s an indignation that’s always there. This is talking about human anger, human wrath. Okay, so we’re talking about, in the human realm, in unrighteous ways, unrighteous anger.

The reasons for unrighteous anger in us are really legion. There’s so many reasons. Anger over things not going your way. Anger over people who don’t do what you want them to do. Anger over people who do what you don’t want them to do. We’re kind of fickle that way, aren’t we? Maybe it’s anger over losing some sense of control, that we feel, because we’re fearful and we’re anxious; we can’t keep everything perfect and under control.

 Maybe it’s that we have selfish ambition, arrogance, conceit. We kind of move through the world as if everybody should simply bow before us. The world should do our bidding, and when it doesn’t, watch out. Sometimes anger is more like a response to hurt, pain, personal offense, some unjust thing perceived that’s done to you or when your pride is offended, there’s anger. Sometimes it’s because we take up the offenses of others, which can be an injustice, because we really don’t know all the facts and so unrighteous anger is the result and instead of, “vengeance is mine saith the Lord,” it’s vengeance is mine saith me, myself, and I.

It’s fascinating proverb, came across years ago that brings these two words together and then kind of identifies the root of both of them. It’s Proverbs 27 verse 4. Proverbs 27 verse 4 says, “Wrath is cruel, anger is a flood. But who can stand before envy?” Interesting, isn’t it? That jealousy would be a superlative over cruel wrath and flooding anger; jealousy, envy- worse. This proverb describes the destructiveness of this negative emotion, that wrath is cruel, angry outbursts flail around without any restraint, not considering the consequences done to other people. It inflicts indiscriminate pain on other people. It’s cruel, it thinks nothing about the consequences of the herd, of the infliction of pain.

 Anger is a flood, it’s destructive. When anger spills its banks, it causes great damage. And think about a flood trail of wreckage for miles and miles. The cleanup takes years and decades, and it’s so, so costly. Think about that before you lose your temper. Worse, though, than angry outbursts, worse than the overflowing destructive floodwaters are envy and jealousy. These are subtle and yet very clear expressions of greed, and no one can stand before the ruinous power of envy because it is driven by greed and covetousness, which verse 5 says, “is akin to idolatry.”

 It is an expression of idolatry. We can illustrate by going back to that helpful imagery in James chapter 4, verse 1, where he asked the question, “what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?” In fact, we could say what are quarrels and conflicts, but manifestations of these sins in verse 8, “anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech,” that are exchanged between two or more people.

It’s exactly what James is talking about and James says these external manifestations of quarrels and conflicts come forth from an internal source. He says, “is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members.” He answers his own rhetorical questions, saying this, you lust, there’s an internal vice and you do not have, and that leads to the internal vice of anger, and then so you murder, that’s the external manifestation, the angry act.

He says you are envious, again, an internal vice, that’s greed driven, covetousness driven, idolatry driven. You’re envious and you can’t obtain, there it is, the frustration that leads to that internal vice of anger again. And so here’s the external angry act: So you fight and you quarrel. James is wise, isn’t he? Outlining this for us, so helpful. Again, the internal vices in the first list, verse 5, they all culminate in the greatest of all vices, which is covetousness. And covetousness, as we know, is a violation of the tenth commandment, “Thou should not covet” anything.

So significant, that covetousness, which Paul identifies as idolatry, Colossians 3:5 bookends the first part of the ten commandments, points back to the idolatry at the beginning of those ten commandments, “You shall put no other gods before me,” at the one end, at the other end is covetousness, which is idolatry. It’s all a piece, isn’t it?

So that’s the first two, wrath and anger. Third word in Colossians 3:8, is malice. Malice, just, man sounds evil, scary, doesn’t it? Malice. This is another attitude that flows forth from an angry and a resentful heart, because from wrath and from anger comes malice, which is a vindictive and a vicious kind of a sin. It’s the word kakia, evil, wickedness.

As one author says, “this is a sin that is bent on doing harm to others. Seething in the veins of the man or the woman who is filled with malice is bitterness, a list of offenses or even one single major offense that they just can’t get over. It’s rehearsed, it’s nursed, it’s never forgiven, never forgotten. And it festers. And that wound oozes forth, this foul, toxic, poisonous venom into the veins of the one who has malice.”

 The only escape for this person. The only anecdote to this poison is forgiveness. Forgiveness sets the person free, and it’s only a true Christian that can grant this forgiveness, because Christians have been forgiven of everything. Read the back half of Matthew 18 and you’ll see, that is the Christian who can forgive, and it’s the one who feigns forgiveness, but then does not forgive, that’s the false Christian. That’s the false professor.

For non-Christians and false Christians for social, cultural kinds of Christians, they find forgiveness really impossible to grant and to maintain, because they’ve never truly been forgiven themselves. Some of them, they’ve never really seen the need for forgiveness, because they judge themselves to be quite good, really moral, nice people. Others, they consider their own offenses minor. You just need to overlook it. I had a bad day. Come on, don’t, don’t make such a big deal of it. Don’t be such a Pharisee and judge.

Oh, but if the same things done to them, all of a sudden they pour fuel on that thing and burn it into a great great fire, bonfire flame of offence, against themselves. Listen, those who do not forgive, those who nurse grudges, those who maintain a record of wrongs, no matter how mild mannered and soft that they seem to be, listen, they are coddling a heart of anger. The heart of anger and wrath comes out in a seething form of this viciousness and it is a maliciousness and a pure evil.

Listen, you may try to let him off the hook, because you want to be gracious. Look at what Paul is saying here. Do you want to agree with Paul or do you want to be seen as kind and forbearing and just overlooking everything? You want to be more gracious than Paul is. Can you be? Paul is saying you have got to put this thing to the sword, cut it off yourself and cast it away. And you have to help others around you do the same thing. This is not good.

There’s a fourth vice in this list. In Colossians 3:8, it’s the word slander, translated slander. In Greek, it’s the word blasphemy, blasphemy. The English translators don’t put it as blasphemy because in English we reserve blasphemy as a word for slanders against God. We call them blasphemous, but it’s the same word, blasphemia. When it’s aimed at people, we call that slander. So I grant the distinction. I think it’s a good distinction to make.

We have to put to death sin. We have to deal severely, directly, diligently with sin.” Travis Allen

But when wrath and anger corrupt the emotions, the heart becomes poisoned. It turns malicious. We have malice in our hearts. We want to hurt other people, even if it’s just ever so slightly, even if it’s just to knock him down a peg or two. Let him get a little bit of what’s coming to them. And when that maliciousness pours forth from the lips or the pen or the keyboard or the text message or the post, in the form of slander, it’s corrupt cousin gossip, that is the social vehicle for slander. It’s how slander is passed back and forth.

But slander itself is an intentional smear campaign. It’s a defamation of a reputation, what we might call a character assassination and the sin is to take a false, defamatory statement and then spread it around as fact, whether the speaker or the text messenger or whoever it is knows that the statement is false or not. Perhaps they’re just negligent and not verifying the statement. Listen, that’s slander. It’s a sin before God.

Other synonyms for slander in the Bible: reviling, evil speaking, maligning, bad mouthing, all these are evidence of malice that is at work in the heart, flowing out of a bitter, poisoned heart, drawn forth from a well that dips into the furnaces of hell. And it brings forth anger and wrath to the surface and it burns people down. It destroys reputations, it burns relationships to ash and leaves a lot of pain.

Listen, as true Christians, we’d have nothing to do with that slander, nothing to do with it, nothing to do with slanderers either. We’re not to call slanderers friends; Gossipers, buddies. We’re to confront them because God hates slander. You want to know another Greek word for slander other than blasphemia? It’s the word diabolos. We translate that word in Greek New Testament into English; we translate it the devil.

The devil is a slanderer from the beginning. You want to be a friend with the devil or do you want to confront and expose his slanders and his gossip? Because man, that is an insidious sin. I’d take an outburst of anger right in front of me any day over the destruction that is caused by slander and gossip, because you don’t see that showing up for months or years. It is absolutely destructive. So, beloved, have nothing to do with those who commit the sin of blasphemia, those who practice diabolos, speaking like the devil speaks, whether in text messaging, social media, word of mouth, text message, gossip, whatever.

It is wicked and God hates it and Christians must have nothing to do with it. And by the way, don’t let it come out of your own mouth either. And if you have, verse John 1:9 applies, right? “If you confess your sins, He’s faithful, He’s righteous, He’ll forgive you of your sins and cleanse you of all unrighteousness.” What man or woman among us has not committed these sins, right? Need to understand that we’re all guilty, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We all need his Grace.

The fifth vice, translated in verse 8, as abusive speech. It’s a good translation, but we then want to ask, what is the difference between that and slander? I mean slander seems pretty abusive in speech doesn’t it? Well, the word translated abusive speech is a compound word in the Greek and it takes the word that means ugly or shameful or disgraceful. So when I say ugly, shameful, disgraceful, think of low brow, low class kind of gutter talk. Something you might hear on a job site, something you might hear in a locker room, or these days, something you might hear in a political speech.

Take that word and then join it to the word for speech. So what we’re talking about is dirty talk, filthy language, unfit for public hearing, public consumption, inappropriate among polite, genteel company. So my apologies to you truckers, but this is like cussing like a trucker, right? My apology to sailors, this is swearing like a sailor. Those sayings didn’t come from nowhere. Okay.

I realize today when I say this, I’m really swimming upstream in this, because there are those people who are called cussing pastors, and they have brought this kind of talk into the church, into pulpits, and they justify it. And they count themselves to be very wise in their use of words and so if they use a dirty word, well, you just need to trust that they’re using it in a wise way, very directed and targeted. And so you just need to trust they’ve got it under control and if you kind of mature to their level, you can cuss too.

 Some pastors like to use provocative titles for their books, like no such thing as bad words; seen that title lately. It’s all to sell more books. Do not listen to these blind guides. They want to draw you into their defilement and sadly, there are many who follow after that and they will share in their judgment. People like that, especially when they are in leadership, they lack the love to care or the wisdom to see that the discipline of the young and the immature tongue starts with taming the tongue.

 We all know James 3 says, “if you tame the tongue, you’ve got the whole body in check as well.” Start with the tongue. Start with how you talk, how you speak. This means shedding this uncouth, low class, low brow language. Folks don’t do it and we put this in the context following malice and slander. It’s really to be seen here as kind of demeaning others with foul mouthed language, calling that boss of yours, who really gets on your nerves, or that co-worker or that person, that relative or whoever it is calling them that word, watching what you say, not only how you say it, but the specific words you use.

 When you exercise that discipline, it grows you in carefulness and in discernment and that, beloved, is driven by love and that’s good. You want to be concerned that our words are like apples of gold in settings of silver, that we want to make sure our language, it persuades people, that it’s useful, that it’s given a hearing. The tongue of the wise studies how to answer, the proverb says.

 The Christian’s mouth, like all parts of his or her body, is to be used as an instrument of righteousness. It’s not to be a drain and a downspout for the sewer and sewage flowing out of us. We’re to use our mouths for dignified words that are edifying and encouraging. Our mouths are not designed by God to spew forth anger, wrath, malice, and slander. They’re certainly not to spew forth filthy language. Repent of that, beloved. Repent of it.

Heed Paul’s command in Ephesians 4:29 where he says, “let no unwholesome word,” he expands the thought beyond filthy language or abusive speech to unwholesome. The word is sapros, it means rotten, acidic, corrosive. So think about your mouth spewing forth acidic words that cut through steel. They’re corrosive. They can land on something and maybe not make a mark right away, but given time starts to erode and cut through and corrode through the metal itself.

Think about your speech, think about your speech. Paul says, “Let not that talk proceed from your mouth, but only such as is good for building up what is needed.” Think about what’s necessary for the moment and use your mouth that way. The tongue of the wise brings healing, so it will give grace to those who hear. This all calls for us to be thoughtful people, considering each word, not just letting it fly, shooting from the hip. Venting is the worst thing in the world.

Now, all these sins, when they are discovered, when they’re exposed, when they’re pointed out, can be quite embarrassing, can’t they? I mean, even, even the ungodly, they want to deny being found guilty of any of this, don’t they? Defend themselves, excuse themselves. So what do people do when they’re exposed? They lie. They lie and deceive, and lying here refers not only to saying what’s not true, it can refer to someone who is creating a false impression. It can refer to somebody who deceives others, misleads others by how they talk.

Look, people may dress up well, especially when they come to church, religious settings. They look good in church and carry themselves in polite ways and learn how to speak in smooth, gentle tones and give soft handshakes and little warm embraces and pats on the back, but try crossing them when they’re unable to get what they want. See what happens next. When something happens that they don’t want to happen, when emotions are unrestrained and feelings are prominent, look out. You will find an ugly, vindictive anger that simmers beneath the surface of their paper-thin skin.

And it is worse, beloved. It is worse in religious contexts because self-righteous pride hardens the heart and hides the sins behind a mask of hypocrisy. And when people who act like that and then try to cover it over when they’re caught in sin and when the sin’s been exposed or even, they fear that their sin might be exposed, that’s when the lying starts. Pretended friendship, showing kindness covers over a bitter, unforgiving spirit. Words of flattery that hide critical spirits and create a net for the feet, a trap.

Blame shifting, counter accusation, suspecting you of false motives and hidden agendas, because that’s what they are practicing themselves and they suspect that it’s in you too. Gossip shifts into high gear, framing a false narrative, garnering support, sympathy, casting aspersions as they leave you behind. That’s what lying looks like in the world and among false believers. That is old man behavior, beloved, old man behavior, have nothing to do with that.

Christ was not like this at all, so have nothing to do with it. This has nothing to do with the new life in Christ. Obviously, this is how the world is. This is how sinners in the world are. But tragically, we far too commonly find this behavior among professing Christians. And beloved, it is tolerated among us, tolerated among evangelicals, tolerated among God’s people, because they don’t want to be seen as not nice. You know what’s not nice: Gossip, slander, malicious talk. You know it’s not nice: Abusive speech, filthy talk, dirty jokes, that’s not nice. And you pointing it out? Loving. You’ve got to be loving.

All these vices, verse 8, “wrath, anger, malice, slander, filthy and abusive language, lying,” all these things, they characterize the world that we’re living in and typify what we know and experience of the things that are on the earth, not the things that are above. None of this is in heaven where Christ is at God’s right hand. Since that’s the case, have nothing to do with them, have nothing to do with them.

As I said earlier, all these things you must lay aside like dirty, filthy clothing. You have to strip it off like foul smelling rags. You have to shed it and cast it away like rotting dead skin. So having shed the dead skin of the old man on the other side of this, we must let the nature of the new man emerge. Or we can put it this way in a second point number two: Wear the new robe. Wear the new robe.

Wear the new robe. You’ve got to shed the dead skin of the old man, so you do. You can wear the new robe of the new man, so that that robe becomes what characterizes you. That robe is what everybody sees, and it’s not marred by any stain, any old rag sitting on top of your shoulders. The new man is a shared character. It’s resident in the virtues of Jesus Christ. It takes the same shape. It bears his resemblance.

As I said earlier, we’re no longer to be separate tribes, separate families with separate interests. We are one in Christ. We’re united in him. We’re members of each other and this is why, by the way, we’re not to lie to one another. The command, do not lie to one another. Actually, it’s different than the previous two commands, verse 5, verse 8, those two commands, this command, do not lie to one another, is in the present tense. And this is in a form of a present tense prohibition, which makes it a general precept.

 I mean, Paul in the same expression, in language and the syntax here, he could be saying, stop the practice of lying that you’re doing all the time. But remember, he’d not been to Colossae and Epaphras had come and reported about this church to him and it is a good church and we see the evidence of that all through the first chapter as he gives thanks for them. He’s not talking about the Colossians have some particular problem with lying all the time.

So this is not, stop the habit and the practice of what you’re doing right now, which it could be translated that way, but that’s not what’s happening here. This is in the form of the other way this can be taken depending on context, and the context here warrants it. This is a general precept, just period. Christians ought not to lie to one another. Do we agree? Right. Amen. Unlike the previous commands that are in the aorist tense, which assume that the Colossians do have sins on those lists that they need to kill and put off.

The prohibition against lying does not assume this, it makes no comment as to whether they are lying to each other or not. Rather, it’s just an expression. It’s a strong, forceful, negative expression here, where Paul is commanding Christians just to live by a principle; if you could say in a positive way, live by a principle of honesty. Be honest with each other, be transparent. Let people in. Be open. Don’t guard, don’t stiff arm, don’t keep people at a distance. That’s old life behavior. That’s old man behavior.

You want to draw people in. Let people in your home. Let people see your life. Why is that? Because the internal attitudes of the Christian life are so excellent, aren’t they? The external behavior of Christians is beautiful. There’s no need to hide what is plainly glorious. Who buys $1000 dress or $1000 suit and then hides it in the closet and keeps it wrapped up and never wears it out in public ever, ever, ever, ever. Don’t let anybody see it. I’m going to put on my old ragged Def Leppard T-shirt, wear that out in public, get a really nice suit back there. Who does that? Nobody does, obviously.

We wear what’s glorious and beautiful, and that’s why we need to be open with each other. If you let your eyes scan ahead in the text, starting at verse 12, look at the beautiful clothing that is to be worn by the Christian. Look at the robe, the glorious robe of new life in Christ. And maybe, maybe just this once you can, you can allow yourself to do a little window shopping in verses 12 to 15.

But the truth is this isn’t window shopping, because these are your new clothes. Look at them. They’re bought and paid for. They’re given to you by the king himself, out of his own wardrobe and at no cost to you. What we put on in verses 12 to 15 is decorated in the finest of virtues, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love and love is the perfect thread that weaves together the tightest bond of unity in that robe.

Show that to others, because it’s not glorifying yourself. It’s glorifying the dressmaker. It’s glorifying the one who tailored the suit. We start then back in verse 10 and in verse 10 we see the skill of the divine tailor and we also see the pattern that he uses for our clothes. And then in verse 11, we see the versatility of this clothing line, fitting all shapes and sizes, but outfitting every single one perfectly, beautifully, accenting the form perfectly in a lovely way.

God is the one who weaves and sews together with the strands of golden threads to create this beautiful, glorious new robe. It’s finely woven, very, very expensive. In fact, it’s invaluable. Our new clothes are made from the finest silk threads of the Spirit, and they’re woven by the experienced hand of the great weaver himself, and they’re sewn by the most skillful tailor.

So let’s talk about the pattern and the product. The pattern in verse 10, the product in verse 11, the pattern of what we all wear in verse 10, and then the product in verse 11 worn by all. First, in verse 10, God follows his pattern to perfection. He gives us a set of clothes to wear which are worn and have been fully tested by his own son, Jesus Christ. Starting in verse 9, he says, “You’ve put off the old man with its practices.” Verse 9; Then this in verse 10, “You’ve put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.”

 So what is this stuff here? Old man, new man; new man, a new man who’s being renewed. What is this all about? The old man refers to you before you were born again. So that old dead man before you were born again, that man identified in Adam of this father Adam, dominated by the sin nature, under divine condemnation, heading for eternal hell. That’s the old man, the old you. But that old man was crucified with Christ, Galatians 2:20. He no longer lives. The old man was buried with Jesus, united with him in baptism, Colossians 2:12, and he is no more.

The new man is identified with Christ, having been united to him by the Spirit in baptism. Not the physical ritual, but the spiritual reality here. Immersed in Christ, which is to say, joined to Christ in such a way that he is in you and you in him. God has imputed your sins to him, and he’s imputed his righteousness to you. So the new man is so wholly united to Christ, identified with Christ, that when he was raised, we were raised Colossians 2:12; when he arose, ascended, and took his seat at God’s right hand, Colossians 3:1.

Colossians 3:3, our life is now hidden in his. He is our very life. That’s the new man. New life, new life, principle, new shape, new form, new expressions, new character, new nature. Now, however, though we have died, been buried, been raised up with him, the old man’s gone and the new man is. Though we have ascended with him, spiritually speaking, fundamentally, positionally speaking, we remain in this world, in the unredeemed flesh, as Romans 8 talks about.

We’re tested, we’re tried, we’re proven in our faith. We’re put through suffering and affliction and turmoil and travail, all to strengthen our believing, all to purify the faith that’s in us. Burn, turn up the fires hot so that it clears away all the dross out of our lives, and so that face shines like gold from the inside out. What God has chosen for us by his good and his wise plan is to teach us to keep on shedding the old man deeds, the old man practices, to keep putting on the new man behaviors to be renewed. And all those behaviors, all that character, all that virtue is epitomized in Christ and it’s shared with all of us. Again, this is why lying is so counterproductive.

Lying to one another is an empty cul-de-sac and a total dead end, because the new man is being renewed, present tense, ongoing, continuous, passive voice, something done to us, this renewal. It’s talked about here, it comes about by the truth, not by lies, not by deception, not by falsehood, not by pretending. Truth, truth, truth, we need a truth with one another. The true knowledge of Christ, the full knowledge of Christ, the image of God is what shapes us and forms us and renews us; transforms us from the inside out.

This is why Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 13, this is why Christ gave pastors and teachers to his churches. It’s all for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith. Also this, until we all attain to the full knowledge of the Son of God, that is to a mature man and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That’s what we’re growing into. That’s what we’re being renewed to. That’s the form, the pattern.

The image is the image of, Colossians 3:10, is the image of Christ. He is himself, as Paul taught in Colossians 1:15. “He’s the image of the invisible God.” The one who created him in Colossians 3:10. That’s not Christ; Christ is uncreated. The, him, at the end of Colossians 3:10 reverts to the new man. God is the one who created this new man, and that new man is patterned after Christ himself.

 We see this in 1 Corinthians 15:49, “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly,” that’s the old man, “we will bear the image of the heavenly,” that’s the new man; the one who is patterned after Christ, the one whom God formed and created. He is himself the perfect image of God, and we are being formed by God in his image. We are those whom God foreknew, Romans 8:29 says, “And He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son so that we would be the first born among many brothers.”

 When we look around and we consider ourselves, we realize, and we really only need to look in the mirror, don’t we, to realize that a lot of renewing work still needs to be done, right? We’re not going to get there in this life. We will be transported, translated, perfectly renewed, instantly renewed, and transformed in glory, either at death or when Christ returns. But just because you’re not fully formed now, just because you’re not fully glorified now, just because this is a fight and a struggle, don’t be discouraged. Don’t let it get you down. Not one bit.

God is settling for nothing less in you, that perfect conformity to the perfect pattern of his son. He is going to form you to utter perfection and listen, the more you shed that old life, the happier you are and the more you put on the Lord Jesus Christ, the happier you are. So engage in the struggle, pursue the fight, fight the good fight. The pattern, the product is worth it.

So what is the product? Verse 11 talks about the product, what the divine tailor and weaver makes. This is what he brings forth in verse 11. This is what’s created by God after the pattern of Christ. This is the product, the new clothing and it’s so glorious, so beautiful, made of indestructible quality beyond all earthly value. And it’s of such a case that all old man distinctions, meaningless. They don’t matter anymore.

Looking at verse 11, remove the word in your reading, as you read it through, if it’s, in this way, in your translation, remove the words in italics. In my Bible it’s the word renewal or distinction between and let’s read it simply for what it says. “There is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all.” So it’s just, “there is no” and then it goes through the pairs.

There are 4 pairs of terms. Commentators aren’t in perfect alignment as to what exactly each pair of terms are supposed to convey, but the broad idea of unity in Christ, the unity of the new man in Christ, the clothing that all of us wear is exactly the same, and it identifies us as belonging to Christ and on this point, all the commentators agree. The first two pairs portray a comprehensiveness and you could say, the last pairs portray an inclusiveness. So comprehensiveness and inclusiveness.

The first two pairs, the comprehensiveness are using well recognized, widely accepted ways in the ancient world of dividing the world into two: first from a socio-cultural point of view and then from a socio-religious point of view. So for the new man in Christ there is no longer Greek and Jew. This would have been a big surprise to both cultures, because each one of them took pride in their antiquity and they considered themselves to be the most ancient of civilizations and had pride of place over all the rest of the world.

So for the Greeks, they took pride in their philosophy and in their mathematics and in their political philosophy, their social organization. Athens, you remember, is the birth place of democracy. The Spartans, legendary, famous for war fighting. They had a history, the Greeks did, all the Greeks have of, campaigning successes and failures on the battlefield, on land and on sea. Lessons learned passed down from generation to generation. Lots of money, lots of taxation. They Hellenized the world. That word means they made it Greek. Greek in language, koine Greek was the language of Paul’s day.

For the Jews, their pride went even deeper. Pride in the revealed Word of God through Moses, pride in theological purity, monotheistic excellence, the revelation of the true and living God to Moses and then to them and all through the Prophets and the Law. To the Jews belonged, as Romans 9:4 says, the adoption of sons, the glory of the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and all the promises. The Jews saw themselves, Romans 2:19, as guides to the blind, as lights to those in darkness, as correctors of the foolish, as teachers of the immature.

They had in the law of Moses the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth. We realize that the Jews were not altogether wrong about that. For from them is Christ according to the flesh, Romans 9:5, who’s God over all, blessed forever, Amen. Their fault is in taking pride in that. Their fault is in not being humble, grateful.

Paul says the clothing we wear, it’s not Greek clothing and it’s not Jewish clothing either. We’re not all to become Messianic Jews, completed Jews. We’re not to look at that as the pinnacle of all existence. We’re not to look like that, act like that. No, it’s the new clothing worn by Christ, shared by all who are in Christ and with all who are in Christ. It’s a brand-new identity, comprehensive Greek and Jew, the whole world.

The Christian’s mouth, like all parts of his or her body, is to be used as an instrument of righteousness.” Travis Allen

Another description of comprehensiveness. Circumcised and uncircumcised also divided the world into two, but religiously, in a socio-religious way. But Paul says in Ephesians 2:14, in Christ that division is gone. That dividing wall of hostility had created a religious barrier between the clean and the unclean, between the pure and the impure, the qualified, the unqualified. That barrier has been obliterated in Christ, destroyed, broken down.

 Paul goes further in the next two pairs of terms to talk about the inclusiveness, not just the comprehensiveness of this clothing that we wear, but the inclusiveness that all can wear it, even the worst of the worst and regardless of rich or poor. He goes even further to include the barbarian, the Scythian, and this would have shocked the senses for those reading Colossians for the first time. It’s kind of like, if Paul, writing to us would have included the Taliban and ISIS; kind of shocking our senses.

These non-Greek uncircumcised people, the Barbarians and the Scythians were viewed by Greek and Jew alike as utterly uncultured uncouth tribes of babbling savages is what they were. The word Barbarian, Barbaros, refers to the tribes who live in what we now call Europe. And the name was given to make fun of the way they talked. Bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, so it’s like to say, it sounded to the Greek and to the Jew.

The spoken languages sounded to the Greeks as a stammering and a stuttering and like unintelligible baby noises. So the Greeks, they’ve been conquering these people and dominating these people across Europe for centuries. They had no regard for them. They turned them into slaves. The Scythian tribes were even worse than the Barbarians, a kind of barbarian, but they were worse. They were notorious. They lived north of the Black Sea in what’s now Ukraine and southern Russia. And the Scythians were fearsome warriors. They fought on horseback with Chariots. They were expert bowman, dreaded warriors, fierce, frightening.

When they won their battles and they won some famous ones too, against hordes of Persians who vastly outnumbered the Scythians. And yet, due to their skill on horse and chariot, and due to sniper like accuracy with their bow, they defeated far larger armies than themselves, because they were fast and they were accurate. So when they defeated their enemies in battle, Scythians used to take the scalps of the dead and then attach those scalps to the scales of their armor and walk around like that, displaying the hair of those that they had killed. Pretty gruesome image.

They lined the skulls of defeated kings with gold and used them as goblets for drinking their wine. No one liked these guys, no one like the Barbarians or Scythians. And when they were taken prisoner, the Scythians and turned into slaves, they were made a mockery of in the plays of the Greeks. They hated them so much. In Christ all these old distinctions are erased. All the history is gone and forgotten. The new man no longer dresses as a stupid barbarian. He no longer wears the scalps of defeated enemies on his clothes like the savage Scythians. He dresses now in the garments of Christ, in beauty and in glory.

 Socio economic distinctions of slave and free, that neither prevents nor aids someone in wearing the garments of Christ. Those distinctions also are gone, all inclusive, no matter your class, no matter your bank account, no matter what you have or don’t have. What good news, it’s no longer a slave class in Christ. Those who are the property of other men, who are treated as subhuman, who are valuable for work and for profit alone. Remember Aristotle’s famous saying, “a slave is a living tool and a tool is an inanimate slave.”

That’s how they thought, no longer a slave class, no longer a free class either, those who are self-ruling, autonomous, wealthy. “For he who was called in the Lord while a slave,” 1 Corinthians 7:22 says, “is the Lord’s free man.” And “likewise he who was called while free is Christ’s slave.” This is not a levelling of all class, but in elevating of all of us to the very glory of Christ, who is the King of all kings and the Lord of all Lords. We could wear his clothing.

In Christ there’s no class system; there’s no have and have not. There’s no proletariat class to rise up and revolt against the Bourgeois. No more struggle, no more rich and poor, no more marked by different clothing and distinguished by finer things in life, separated from the low brow people who live on the cheap. No longer those distinctions, they do not matter.

There’s no one group looking down on the other, one considering itself higher and better, and the other envious as it looks up and resentful. None of that, for in Christ were to put on, and wear with joy and with gratitude, the splendid garments, the clothing of the King. Mary J. Harris says, “Paul’s point is that in the new humanity, just as old practices were abandoned, so too traditional distinctions are obliterated, whether they be racial, ceremonial, cultural, or social.” The reason, end of verse 11, is because “Christ is all and in all.”

 Now some, that may strike you as the sound of pantheism that God is all or panentheism that God is in all, but that is not what Paul is saying. The context here makes the point very clear. Paul is talking about putting on distinctive characteristics of Christ, about losing all former distinguishing marks which have ceased to have relevance and are totally unimportant.

 Christ is God’s anointed, his chosen one, and God has made this Christ, who is the God man, only one like him, divine nature that took on human nature; he is all, as if to say he’s really all that matters. He’s really all our focus, all our hope, all of our fixation, all of our joy. And he is not only that, but he is, in all. He’s not only just the external object of our affection, he’s the indwelling internal drive of all of our ambition, giving us joy and hope and satisfaction.

He indwells all of his people and no matter who they are, no matter where they’ve come from, no matter what they used to boast in or what they used to be ashamed of, Christ is indwelling each and everyone. So beloved we’re to abandon the past, having put off the old man, separate from our former life, from our former people, and take on all the marks of our new identity in Christ.

We’re to embrace the king, put on the new man, wear Christ’s garments, live out his character, learn his language, learn his culture, receive a new culture and abandoned our own. It’s what Ruth said to Naomi, I’m not going back to my people, I’m not. Where you go, I’ll go. Your God will be my God. I’m not taking on my old people, my old family, my old gods. I’m abandoning all that, leaving it behind. I am adhering with you to the true God, the true and living God who is Yahweh.

Want to close this morning by reading from what I think is a fitting, Psalm. But it’s Psalm 45 and it’s a tribute to really the king. It’s one of the songs Of the sons of Korah, a Maskil, and it says in the title, it’s A Song of Love. Listen to this.

“My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a skillful scribe. You are fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon your lips; Therefore God has blessed you forever.

“Gird your sword on Your thigh, O Mighty One, in Your splendor and Your majesty! And in Your majesty, ride on victoriously, For the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; Let your right hand teach You awesome things. Your arrows are sharp; The peoples fall under You; Your arrows are in the heart of the King’s enemies.

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. You’ve loved righteousness and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of joy above Your companions.” and “All your garments are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; Out of ivory palaces stringed instruments have made You glad. Kings’ daughters are among Your noble ladies; At your right hand stands the queen in gold from Ophir.

“Listen, O daughter, give attention and incline your ear; Forget your people and your father’s house;” and “Then the King will desire your beauty. Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him. The daughter of Tyre will come with a present; The rich among the people will seek your favor.

“The King’s daughter is all glorious within her chamber; Her clothing is interwoven with gold. She will be led to the King in embroidered work; The virgins, her companions who follow her. Will be brought to you. They will be led forth with gladness and rejoicing; They will enter into the King’s palace.

“In place of your fathers will be your sons; you shall set them up as princes and all the earth. I will cause Your name to be remembered from generation to every generation; Therefore the peoples will give you thanks forever and ever.”

Our Father, we thank you for such a beautiful picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is glorious. Majesty, power, might, beauty, and those who are united to Christ are also arrayed in glory and majesty and beauty. Embroidered work, stitched with the telling and the pictures of the deeds that you have done in our lives. We thank you so much for giving us such a glorious gospel, that is comprehensive to reach everyone and inclusive to include us all, no matter what our background is.

We want to shed the old behaviors, all those old sins and practices. We want to live as honest, transparent people before you, before one another. We want to bring each other close. We want to see each other’s lives, know each other well so that we can love more deeply, more fully, show brotherly affection, and serve one another in the joy of Christ. So we pray, father, that you would impress this same heart and spirit out of the text on each every one of us, and let us strive to give ourselves holy and fully to you. We love you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we want to live our lives to the praise and the glory of your grace in Him. We pray this. Amen.