Colossians chapter number three, please. Colossians three. It has been a number of weeks since we were in Colossians. It seems like these last few months I'll preach a message out of Colossians and then the next two or three weeks stuff happens, things happen. And we have to come back to it later. One of these days we will finish the book of Colossians. I only have a few more messages and we're finished with this epistle. But for whatever reason it's kind of stretched out a little bit over the last few weeks. but we'll just do what the Lord requires of us and praise Him for it. But we are in Colossians 3, and the last time, you may not remember, but I do, but the last time we were in Colossians, we were in verse number 15 and the first part of verse 16. And what we're looking at, beginning in verse number 15, all the way into chapter 4, at verse 6 of chapter 4, that entire passage, It is the Apostle Paul. What we have here is is just numerous pithy little phrases, instructions for the people of God. And our thought for this passage is lessons for the last days. I'm not going to go in all the detail of why I believe the book of Colossians is the epistle for the last days. We went through that multiple times. But since it is, we look at these verses from verse 15 on, we see these practical lessons. that the Apostle Paul has given us that would be mightily beneficial for the saints of God in these days. And we've broken this passage down into three categories. There are life lessons in this passage of scripture that will affect us inwardly. That's what we looked at the last time we're in this passage. Verse 15, the Bible says, let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you are called in one body and be thankful and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. So these are some life lessons that affect us inwardly. Tonight we're going to look at some life lessons that affect us upwardly. I don't know that we'll finish with this, but we'll begin tonight looking at the life lessons that affect us upwardly. In other words, our relationship with God. And then lastly, we'll conclude with life lessons that affect us outwardly and our relationships with other people. Tonight we're looking at the upward effect of these life lessons. Verse number 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Let me stop right here and say this, if your relationship with God is gonna be what it ought to be, your relationship with the Bible will be what it ought to be. Your relationship to prayer and the word of God goes hand in hand with your relationship with God. You neglect prayer, you neglect the Bible, you neglect all the opportunities that you have to pray, or you neglect the opportunities God gives you to be influenced and affected by the Word of God, it will influence your relationship with the Lord. We gotta be people of prayer. We have to be people who spend time with God. Don't neglect prayer. And according to this verse, the emphasis here is the Word of God, the Word of Christ. Let the Word, allow the Word of Christ to dwell in you richly. The Bible comes with great wealth, not necessarily monetaria. That's not that word. Let me back up and try that again. Let's use an easier word, money, money. Let's go with that. I was about to say that word again. I was like, you know, I'll probably just mess it up again. Let's just say money. But it may not involve money, but the riches that God gives are greater than a dollar sign could ever offer you. The riches of grace, the riches of mercy, the riches of peace, the riches of contentment, the riches of satisfaction, the riches of no matter what you have in this life physically, what you have inwardly, what you have in your relationship with God trumps all of that. Now we live in a society and it's even infected our churches where we put this premium on financial gain or material gain. And there's nothing wrong with having stuff. The problem is that so much stuff has us. And by the way, stuff can have you and you don't even have the stuff. There are people who don't have wealth, they don't have a lot of money, they don't have a big house, but they crave it, and they obsess with it, and they desire it, and they moan and groan because they don't have this or that. My friend, greater riches are to be found in the Word of God. And he says it's in all wisdom. The foolish decisions that we make when we neglect our relationship with the Word of God. I know you'll probably think I'm just always beating that dead horse, because at least once a week, I'm probably saying something about your relationship with the Bible. But if you don't have a relationship with the Bible, it's going to hurt and hinder your relationship with your God. Let the word of Christ dwell in you. Richly and all wisdom. Then he moves from the Word of God, but it's related to the Word of God, but he brings in music, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And here he's talking about music in the public realm. in the church setting. That's why he says teaching and admonishing. Now this is almost an exact quote to the book of Ephesians where the Apostle Paul mentions music there as well. But there he's speaking and using these same words in terms of our personal music. Here it's more public teaching and admonishing one another. The music ministry of a church is a ministry and needs to be looked upon as a ministry. If there is an area that boy, it makes my heart pant. It is it is music. I've loved music my entire life. My mama was a gospel singer, multiple gospel groups. And I had enjoyed traveling with her son when I was little. We have I have tapes in my office tapes where my mama, the group maybe had a recording of a practice. And you can hear my mom and him singing on there. But every now and you'll hear me or my brother Chris, and I'm five, six years old. And you can hear us in the background of those tapes. I mean, I grew up listening and being around music. I sit on our front porch with my mama And and she she had an old auto harp and I'd pull that auto harp out and it's easy to play. You just mash the button and and then hit the hit the strings. And I sit there with that auto harp and she'd teach me harmony, how to listen for harmony, training, training my ear to learn how to sing. I'm talking to this little boy. We have a recording of me and my grandpa. I was two years old. And to me, my grandpa. Uh, my grandpa pulled out a tape recorder and recorded me and him. He's trying to get me to preach. That's what he's trying to do. Uh, because when I was a young boy at Morning Star Baptist Church in Packlett, they said that, uh, people would gather around the nursery window and look in the nursery and the nursery worker to pull out a little stool and I'd get behind that stool and I'd hit it and clap my hands like preacher Kerrigan. I'd preach. Grandpa was trying to record me preaching. They never got me as a two-year-old. I never got my two-year-old sermon recorded. And so that never got recorded. But while he was there, he pulled out his guitar and me and him started singing I Saw the Light together. The old Hank Williams classic, you know. And so just from the beginning, music has been a part of my life. It's something special in my life. I love it. In fact, if you get in the car with me before I probably hit that pedal, I've already pulled my phone out, Bluetooth hooked in the radio, and I've got somebody singing. It's going to be the Powells, it's going to be the Lindseys, it's going to be the Morrison sisters, somebody's singing. Cathedrals, the old Gold City, somebody's going to sing in my car. And I love music. We're constantly. Uh, surrounded by music. My mama loves coming down here. She wants, she likes to see y'all, but really she likes to see the grandkids. And she told us, uh, last time she was down here, she said, she said, go on in y'all's house. It's like, it's like living in a musical because we're always singing in our house. You walk in our house, somebody is going to be singing. They're either gathering around the piano, they're singing songs, or we're sitting around the table and somebody hums up a tune. It may or may not be spiritual, I don't know. But somebody will bring up a tune and we'll all join in to sing it. We love music. I love it. It's almost, you could say, almost an obsession with me. That's why this verse is so important. Music needs to be a teaching and admonishing tool. in the house of God. Admonishing means reproving or warning or counseling and directing. We had some of that this morning in those songs, how we were admonished to seek the Lord and look to him and trust him. Songs ought to teach. Now, I'm not in a bad mood tonight, I promise you I'm not, but we are living in a day where the quality of songs being written today, there's less and less and less. And I'm not trying to be an old fogey and say, well, you know, they don't write them like that anymore. You know, I'm not trying to be that way, but they're not writing them like that anymore. They're just not. And so we're very limited today on the resources where we can get our music from. The McKameys are gone. They retired. The Inspirations, they're retired. Now there's a new group out, but they're just singing the old stuff. There's no new stuff. The Inspirations, the Primitive Quartet, they're retiring, if they hadn't retired already. And so a lot of those groups, those professional groups where the churches would glean from them are going away and a lot of the groups that are out there today have decided to blur the line between old-fashioned and contemporary. We're getting more and more limited. I talked to Miss Tammy a few months ago, we talked about this. I said, you know, there's some old 70s, 80s songs that nobody's doing anymore. Test of Time, that's a good one. I grew up on that song. A lot of people today, a lot of these young people don't know those songs. We can still reach back and get some of those songs that these young people don't know and bring them back and revive them, dust them off and do them again. What's some old songs we could do? I love, when he was on the cross, I was on his mind. That's a good old one. Nobody's doing it anymore. Let's pull that thing back out and do it again. Songs like that. But we need to be careful these days. I don't want Bethel music or Hillsong music or Elevation music. We don't want that. We don't want to go that route. I love that last song. Thank you, Miss Tammy, for that last youth choir song that was sung tonight. Sticking with the old time way. Just a reminder, Fundamental Baptist Church, just a reminder. I don't have a contemporary bone in my body. And if you do, you got a different ball than I got. I don't have one. Don't want to go that route. For one, I know where that that stuff come from. I know where it came from. It came from a mindset that we're going to take everything that the world does. And put Christianity to it. It's about it's about marketing, it's about Programming, it's about manipulation. That's what it is. And I don't want any part of that. Any part of it. I'm not saying something won't slip in every now and then, and I'm not saying I won't go to revival and end up preaching with a guy that I really ain't crazy about. That may happen every now and then, but it'll be by accident. We gotta draw some lines. And we're gonna stick, and whether you amen or not, God didn't send me to Louisiana to get contemporary. I hope you understand that. I'm not trying to flex pastoral muscles, but you voted me in. In fact, I'll say this. Brother Mike, do you remember that question I asked you in the pulpit when I met with the pulpit committee? I wish I would have seen his face that day. I looked at him, I said, do you want to be contemporary? I wish I was seeing his face. It was fun. He slid his chair back from the table, took his glasses. No, sir, we will not be content. And he gave his little spiel. And it was wonderful. But I asked that question on purpose. I wanted I wanted them to know and you to know, I have no interest in going that route. I don't want to come play games and put on shows. Don't want to manipulate the crowd. I don't want to rock concert. We're going to stick with the Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, because that's when you get taught and you get admonished songs. The music ministry is a teaching and admonishing ministry. He says Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. I've heard a lot of debates on what these mean. Some will say well the Psalms are are only the the the songs that we find in the book of Psalms And certainly those are Psalms. There's no doubt about it. Those are Psalms It's the book of Psalms. And by the way, the biggest book of the Bible is a hymn book It's a song book God puts a premium on music, the largest book in the Bible. There's 150 chapters. Technically, they're not chapters, they're songs, they're Psalms, largest book in the Bible. That's how important this is. Those are Psalms. But notice with Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, And I've heard some say, well, this is what a psalm is, and this is what a hymn is, and this is what a spiritual song is. And usually when I hear people try to get technical and define those in some clear, defined way, I come away wondering if they really knew what they were saying. I don't know that we need to try to find these deep, esoteric definitions of these words. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Notice there's no comma after the word psalms. And there's no comma after the word hymns. They're all connected. Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. There's an and there just to separate the words. Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. To me it looks like those are three ways of saying the same thing. Psalms are hymns and hymns are spiritual songs and spiritual songs are psalms. Psalms are hymns. In fact, I'm not going to make a turn there, but Mark 14, 26, this is the night before Jesus was crucified. The Bible says they sung a hymn. They sung a hymn. Now, theologians say that more than likely that hymn that they sung was Psalm 118. It was a part of the Hillel that they would sing, and this was sung prior to the Passover. So if they're singing Psalm 118, Mark 14 says, and they sung a hymn, that psalm is a hymn. And so I don't know that we're trying to find different definitions here. I think a psalm is a hymn and hymn is a spiritual song, so on and so forth. So what we need to do is make sure the psalm is theologically correct, biblically correct, because we don't want something teaching us that doesn't line up with the word of God. It needs to line up with the Bible. It needs to be theologically correct. And it needs to have the ability to admonish, to give some direction, a call to action or a call to surrender some form, I should say, of action by the individual who's hearing the song. This morning, the girls were up singing about bringing your cares and your burdens to the Lord. Whatever that may be, bring it in. That is instruction. And then people heeded that instruction. God was stirring and God was moving. He was speaking to people's heart. This is what you need to do. And in the middle of that song, receiving instruction, they moved. When you hear the song, Just As I Am, without one plea, What should you do with just as I am? That song says, O Lamb of God, I come. What should you do when you hear the song? Come to Jesus. That's the instruction of the song. Teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. That word grace there is ambiguous. It can mean singing with grace, that we're relying upon the grace of God to sing. That is true, we need God's grace to do anything. But it also carries the idea of thanksgiving, singing with grace, offering grace back to him, if you will, in thanksgiving and praise. I think both are true. We need his help to sing, and we need to sing with thanksgiving in our hearts, here it is, The Lord. To the Lord. Let me ask you, Fundamental Baptist Church, it's so easy to do, it's so easy to do. We have these wonderful hymn books. We pull out the hymn. Tonight we sang, the first song we sang was Mentioned Over the Hilltop. I don't need a hymn book for that song. Brother Mike can give the number, but I probably am not gonna pick up a hymn book. You see me holding a hymn book, more than likely means he picked a song I didn't know. If he picks a song I know, I'm probably just leaving the hymn book there. And you probably do the same thing. But in those songs where we don't need the hymn book, if we're not careful, we'll just, we'll sing them, but it's not with grace in our hearts. The last line I mentioned over the hilltop, don't think me poor, deserted or lonely. I'm not discouraged, why? I'm heaven bound. If you sing that from your heart to the Lord, it's not just words, black words on white paper, it'll mean something. And you'll engage in worship. You say, well, I'm not a very good singer. God will accept your worship. The person beside you may not, but God will. God will. So sing. You may not be on the right key, but you can still be in tune. You can be in tune with Him even if your key is a little off. He accepts your worship. My daddy, bless his heart, dear goodness, absolutely one of the worst singers I think I've ever heard. He was terrible. Daddy walked through the house. I mean, he's singing a great song. Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound. We'd all be like, Daddy, stop. Stop. And what was amazing is Daddy was singing the choir. Our choir director was very patient. Daddy was singing the choir, but we had an out. We knew. We knew when Daddy, though he's in the choir and he only sung in this one key and it was really low. And so if it's amazing, amazing grace, how sweet does that's my daddy's. That's how he sang. Just to let you know. And he would do that in the choir. But thankfully, by the time we got to the middle of the first chorus, he's already shouting and crying. He didn't quit singing. And he's entered into worship and praising the Lord. Whether you can sing or not, enter into that song with worship. When brother Mike says turn to this page and you go to that hymn, don't just mouth the words, don't just flippantly go through that song. Engage in worship, engage in the song. When the choir is up singing, get engaged. How often is it the choir singing and we're just sitting there going, or fiddling with something or messing with something. We're not engaged. The music of the church is a ministry in the church. So if you're in the music ministry, you're in the choir, you sing specials, take it serious. Be ready. Be at practice. Do your job. You're a part of the ministry of this church. And if you're not in the music ministry, they're not singing to entertain you. They're singing songs that you and I are to share in and engage in and worship God in. Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. I've got more verses to deal with the upward relationship here we have worshiping God through the music ministry. We look at verse 17, I'll finish with verse 17. And whatsoever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the father by him. The Bible says, if you're going to do it, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Why are you giving thanks to him? So let me ask you tonight here at Fundamental Baptist Church in this congregation. First of all, what do you do? What are you involved in? Do you hold a position in this church? Do you have a title? If someone says your name, they know that brother, that sister is this in this church. A lot of people want titles in these days. A lot of people won't want to be called to refer to to ask something in the church. Let me ask you this. Do you want the responsibility that comes with that? If you hold a position in this church. Whether you think it's a big deal or a little deal. There are no little deals. And what you do, whether it's in word or in deed, you're to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. If you hold a position in this church, I want to encourage you. Consider the responsibility of doing that very thing in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you sing in the choir, then do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Maybe you work in the sound booth. Maybe you're a Sunday school teacher. Maybe you're part of the cleaning crew. Whatever it may be, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks to Him. It is a privilege to do anything for the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that he would let us serve in any capacity and not be in hell, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. If all you do. And I'm not minimizing this, but if all you do and all you're capable of doing is just coming to church and sitting down. That may be how you feel about what you do, but there are a number of things you can do just in that capacity. You come to church, you're in this auditorium, join in the singing and worship God. When it's time to pray, engage in prayer and pray. Speak to God, talk to him. Give your offerings. When the offering plate is passed, Grab some tracks off the track racks on your way out and go out these doors and pass out tracks and tell somebody else about Jesus. There is no one in the local church that has nothing to do. There are some who have more to do. and more responsibilities within that congregation, but everybody has something they can be engaged in. Now, what you may be involved in may be just like a hundred other people are involved in, but it's still your position and your place to be involved in that. What you do, whatsoever you do, in the church, outside the church, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. In fact, that's that's probably a good rule of thumb of knowing whether you should do something or not. A lot of people ask the question, well, what's what's what's wrong with this? What's wrong with that? A better question might be what's right with it? What's right with this? What's right with that? And if you can't take Jesus with you. In that. then don't do that. If you can't give thanks to the Lord while you're there, then don't go there. Don't do that. Now I know that we're living in 2023 and things are crazy. We live in an insane period of time. Lester Roloff said that America is an insane asylum run by the inmates. Boy, if he only knew what we had today. My word. We do live in an insane age. And so there are churches who are put their stamp of approval on things that absolutely contradict the word of God. But I will use this as a for instance, and some churches will say, I don't see anything wrong with that. But we're with them and we're gonna see something wrong with because the word of God. But I'll give you for instance. You wouldn't believe here tonight. and go to one of the local bars and walk in there and sit at that bar and order a drink in the name of Jesus and giving thanks to him for what's about to make you drunk. You say, no, I wouldn't do that. Then you don't go. You don't do it. If you wouldn't want the Lord Jesus Christ right beside you. Walking with you in that. Place that thing, whatever. Is it a wise thing to be involved in? The Bible says whatever we do in word or deed doing in the name of Lord Jesus Christ. Giving thanks to him. You say, man, that puts a lot of restrictions on some things. Yes, but those are safe restrictions. Things that protect us. And our feebleness. And our our inclination to sin, it protects us. If you can't worship God and thank him in the middle of it, probably a good idea just to avoid it altogether. So fundamental Baptist Church, let's have that rule of thumb. Whatever we're going to do around here, let's do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Give it thanks to the Lord. Give thanks to him. If you have a position or whether you don't have a position, whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to him. These are just some life lessons. For the last days in these last days, This is how we're supposed to live in these last days. Paul's dealing with the music ministry of the church. Isn't that? You're not interested. Because it's within the music ministry of our churches. That the contemporary movement is making its way in. I'm going to be faced with this illustration a few years ago, some family members of mine and Kelly We're at a particular church and. They were making the decisions to go in the contemporary route. And they were being influenced and taught by another pastor. In fact, the pastor was one of my professors in college. He's over in Alabama. And that he he taught probably the best teaching on the Book of Acts I've ever heard in my life. He taught a class on the Book of Acts. Tremendous teaching. Well, somewhere down the line, he decided he was going to walk away from the old fashioned way and he was going to go contemporary. And he's he's come in, he's teaching our our family members, he's teaching their church on the transition that he's made in his church. And I told our family members, I said, I said, I'm going to give that brother five years. And I promise you, he will not be using the King James Bible. It's going to be gone. It was less than a year, but I'm gonna say about maybe less than six months. So Paul right here put some instructions about music. Let's keep it Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. I'm not trying to pick a fight. God got the Southern Baptist Convention through the universities, their colleges. The seminaries, I should say. That's a God. I met the devil. Sorry about that. I messed up. I messed up. The devil. Got into the Southern Baptist Convention through the seminaries. He got in the seminaries and got them to question the Bible. And when they began to question the Bible, they went the other way. They were the other way. And today, I'm not trying to be ugly or anything, there's still some good Southern Baptist churches out there, but by and large, it is a mess of a denomination. It's a train wreck. But because the devil got into the seminaries and got young preachers to question this, and that just snowballed into what they have today. But with Independent Baptist, you ain't gonna touch our Bible. You're not gonna touch the Bible. In fact, I heard one, Preacher, he said, he said, well, there's one thing about them independent Baptists. They do love their Bible. We do love our Bible. So what the devil did was he bypassed the translation. He's coming through the music. He's coming through the music. Because I'm just telling you, the best talent. Singing and instruments that you'll find in churches are independent Baptists. The best singers you can think of more than likely somehow connected to independent Baptist. It's a talented group of people. And we love our music. And if he can slip in their music. Then eventually. He'll get to the Bible. And we'll end up in the same place that the Southern Baptist Convention did. Just going a different route. So in this last day's letter, Paul says, here's what you gotta stick with. Songs that teach and admonish, Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And then whatever you do in these days, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and with thanksgiving. Don't do anything flippantly, loosely, not considering God who he is. Do everything that we do in His name, thanking Him for being so good to us. Now, we're not done with this upward relationship with God. There's more verses in this passage. We'll get to, Lord willing, next week. But tonight, let's take these and say, Lord, help us. Stick with the old-time way. Go with God. And like the youth choir is saying tonight, let's stay in. Let's stay in the Bible.