This afternoon I would have you turn once again in your Bibles to the book of Colossians chapter 3, verses 12 to 17 once again, the latter part of those verses. We have been studying the subject of giving thanks to God, and we want to know whether we are truly thankful. We want to know that God knows that we are truly thankful, and we want to understand that better. And so let's bow together for prayer so that we will understand it in the way that the Lord intends. Our Father, we give you thanks that we can be here this afternoon in the courts of the Lord, in the house of you, our God. We are thankful that we can come here and delight ourselves in you receive of the abundance of your house, the fullness of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Your grace, Lord Jesus, is more precious than gold. And we ask that we would be satisfied with your loving kindness here this afternoon, that we would be truly a thankful people in our heart, that we would be able to learn together and grow together in terms of what it means to have your word dwelling richly in our hearts, and for you to see that we are a truly thankful people, and that you might bless us abundantly even more in spiritual things. We thank you for this time around your word, and we pray for your great presence and power to be working in our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. Colossians chapter 3, I'll read these verses again, verses 12 to 17. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you also were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 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." Now we've been seeing from our sermon this morning that there are definite connections between our becoming obedient in all areas of our life with our being thankful to God. If we are thankful to God for His having given us grace to bring us our salvation through our having believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then as the elect of God, we will seek to put on all the graces that He gives to us. We will be those who definitely and deliberately put on tender mercies and kindness, and we will be humble. We will not be self-assertive and impatient. We will be those who are thoughtful. We will bear with one another and forgive one another, even as Christ has forgiven us. We will put on love, which is called here the bond of perfection, in verse 14. And we will let the peace of God rule in our hearts. We come to know over time that we will either let this peace rule in our hearts, or we will be agitated by sins of various sorts in our heart. And the Christian need not let this happen. If he or she is thankful, it is the means whereby they can be satisfied and they can be satisfied with Christ and rest satisfied with Christ. You see, a Christian clothes themselves with Christ's grace and they wait upon Him in faith for every good thing. And then they can begin to look outside of themselves to see how they might help others to understand this dynamic, life-changing truth. They truly have the strength to help others around them. Now, you need to know that your faith in having everything necessary to sustain your heart does not rest upon what other people around you are doing. It does not rest upon whether they are treating you right or whether they are treating you wrong. You have a strength of grace residing in your heart, and it does not come, I'm saying, from what other people do or what other people say. Yours is the strength and encouragement of Christ's presence within you. Your faith and the good things that Christ can do for you are enough to spiritually keep you alive. His grace is enough to keep you moving forward in obedience if you are thankful to God. But even though this is true, this does not mean that you do not need to keep taking precautions to deal with the discouragements that might come to you when others around you are disappointing your hopes. Your thankfulness, I'm trying to say to you, and this text is trying to say to you, must be ongoing. And this is what we want to look at this afternoon. So let us continue on now to look at the other two ways that God will know if we are a truly thankful people. I said to you in the first sermon that the first way that God will know if you are truly thankful is when you clothe yourself with the graces of His Spirit. And the second way is when you will let the peace of God rule in your heart. And now the third way is that God will know if you are truly thankful if you let his word richly dwell in your heart. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell richly dwelling you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." Now Paul is exhorting all believers to a duty which they should perform, and they should perform it out of a thankful heart each and every day in relation to him. He is saying that in cultivating your own acts of devotion to God by having Christ's Word dwelling in your heart richly, that you will also be taking into account other believers in the body of Christ." In other words, your devotion is not a purely selfish one. Your devotion will lead you not only to a deeper devotion of God himself, but it will lead you to a greater love for the brethren around you to take notice of their needs, spiritual and physical. It's out of a thankful heart that you should let the word of Christ, the word concerning Christ, dwell in you richly. It is when you let the word concerning your Savior and your Lord dwell in you richly in all wisdom that then you will begin to have the opportunity and the ability to build up and to strengthen other believers. To let this word of Christ dwell richly in you is to think upon Christ's words and his example. And we have those recorded for us in the Gospels. You think deeply about the way that he lived his life when he walked here upon the earth. And you will find that by faith, Christ will be living and speaking to you in your soul. He speaks to you through his word each and every day, if you will only avail yourself of it. This meditation upon the Word, this storing of the Word in your heart, will help you over time to draw closer to other believers so that you can begin to admonish them in the good and right way. As you do this, you'll find that by the Holy Spirit's power and working that you're going to begin to lovingly build up other Christian people around you. You're going to build up other believers in their faith. To admonish means to instruct, or to encourage, to warn, or to reprove. And in the context of the particular verse that we are studying, verse 16, it is most likely that Paul means the first two of these definitions of admonition without excluding the others. He's primarily speaking of instruction and encouragement. Now it's interesting how the Apostle Paul tells the believers in Colossae to admonish one another. He tells them to admonish one another in their public worship, in the Psalms and the hymns and the spiritual songs that they sing. Now I don't know if you realize that that is what we are doing when we are singing here in the public worship of God, that we are admonishing one another. We are trying to instruct and teach one another concerning doctrine, the good doctrine of the Bible. We're singing it. We're trying to meditate upon the word while we sing it, so the truth of it comes to our heart and then upon our lips, and then it is sung together so that it actually edifies each other. The words of the song we just sang, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform, He really does. And people really do scan his work in vain because they don't realize how much he is active and at work in upholding them and keeping them in life moment by moment. Not everyone is called to be a preacher, but all Christians can teach and admonish one another in this way that we're speaking of without ever having the gift of teaching. They are to sing the songs of Zion with grace working in their hearts. This is very interesting indeed. I believe that this means that it is a very important thing, the kind of music that a church promotes. Does the kind of music that is played and the singing that is taking place not only bring glory and praise to God, but is it instructing and encouraging all the believers in the sense of promoting spiritual truth, the spiritual truth of Christ and the Scriptures. That is, between believers, this truth is being promoted. I don't believe that this verse is only referring to our singing in the public worship. It's also referring to our being able to sing and communicate instruction to others in our families And in our friendships with one another, let me ask you if you sing in your home. Do you sing the songs of Zion? Do you sing the hymns and spiritual songs that we sing here Sunday? Do you sing the Psalms sometimes? Oh, I can remember I memorized some of the Psalms and used to sing them to my children in the morning and at night, usually at night. But I got to know them and I got to memorize them so that I could walk around singing them and making melody in my heart to God because God's word was richly dwelling there. You see, that's not only pleasing to God, I'm saying, with the private meditations and songs in your heart, but you're also letting these songs overflow into your interaction with your family members and friends. Are you instructing? Are you admonishing? other believers by the songs of your life? Are you instructing the people who you are regularly with on any given day of your life as to what the song of your life really is? Your song is Christ. The verse says that you do this by the music that you sing in your heart. Is the music that you sing to others and with others the kind of music that you can instruct and teach them with? Is Christ your song? You see, this is a matter of practical godliness. This is not just a matter of personal preferences. It's a matter of practical godliness. A good hymn book is a friend to practical godliness. But the good hymn book is also the way to promote spiritual growth in others. If the truth is richly dwelling in your heart, this means that it is not only important that you should meditate upon the word of God day and night, as it says in Psalm 1, verse 2, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. In order to have the word concerning Christ richly dwell in your heart, you must reflect upon it. You must ponder it. You must pray over it and sing it. And even as you have consciously brought the truth of Christ into your heart, you must learn to sing it out. And Christ must become the song of your life. The song should be speaking to you in your heart. And you should want to speak it out to others. The way that you do this is that you should attempt to commit verses of the Bible and the hymns that you sing to memory. Oh, yes, you should. Sometime on a Monday morning, instead of flipping on the radio, pick up your hymn book and sing the song that you sang in church the day before. Take a verse and memorize it, and then go off to work. Come back next morning, get up, take the hymn book, pick it up, memorize another verse. And after a while, you're gonna have these hymns or psalms in your heart. And oh, how good it'll be. If you have young children, how good it is to be able to sing to them. But if you're older, how good it is to sing and make melody with your heart unto the Lord and to other people if you have the opportunity. A good hymn book is a friend to godliness. Now, in doing all this that I'm saying to you, you may have to be repeating these things over and over to yourself. But that's OK. How often have we taken a worldly song, and we listen to it multiple times, and we get to know it so good? Some of these songs that I used to sing by the Beatles years ago to myself, I know them all by heart. I can still sing them off with all the nuances of how the singer sang them. But is that necessary? Is that good? Where does that lead me? Does that have anything everlasting in import in my life? If I can remember all the songs of all the Beatles from 1965 to 75, what difference does it make? Who alone will be impressed with that? Myself? Certainly not God. And other people might sort of scratch their head and go, boy, he was really devoted. See, but that's not the point of what I'm trying to say here this afternoon. You see, when you're doing these things, truth finds a place to reside in your heart after a while. And your mind and your heart are also thinking about who you could share this truth with and who would benefit from it. And your friends begin to ask you, why are you singing all these Christian songs? Well, it's because I love the Lord. And I love his salvation. You see, the word of God richly dwells in you when you give the word concerning Christ the highest place in your thoughts, not someplace in the closet of your mind. You consciously meet with your Lord in the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the bedroom of your heart house. And you have his word richly dwelling there, ready at hand, for it's being thought of and considered in relation to everything you do and say. Are you thankful to God that he has saved you and given you grace? And are you thankful that the Holy Spirit is helping you on to live the Christian life? Then bring the Word of Christ, the precious, powerful, beautiful, convicting, cleansing, encouraging Word of God into your conscious consideration and meditation every day. Don't fill your heart continually with worldly songs. worldly messages. Fill it with the word concerning Christ. And when Christ's words richly dwell within you, you're going to be thankful for how God is working in your life and in your relationships with other believers around you. And that thankfulness will motivate you to think more about what you can practically do for your Lord to serve Him. Do you see that? There's a connection here. It has this good effect that your heart and your mind will become a storehouse for others. You will grow wise in your experience of the truth and you will be able to teach and help others into the truth of how they should live because you have stored it up in your own mind and heart. You can do this by your words of admonition and you can do this by your songs. You will be able to do it out of love for them as persons and out of your love for Christ and his truth. I want to plead with you here this afternoon that you would learn this way of glorifying God by singing with grace in your heart. Not only here in church, but also singing the hymns of Zion in your family devotions and in your personal devotion to God during the day. Are you doing this? Dear Christian, this is really where the action's at. This is no secondary matter. This is where the primary concern of God is, because it's out of your devotion that all your obedience flows. Fill your mind and your heart with the good word of God. Teach others of the precious and powerful grace of God at work in your soul through what you sing to the Lord. This is how the Lord and others will know that you are a thankful person. And then, fourthly, God will know that you're indeed a truly thankful person if you will give thanks in whatever you do in word or deed. Verse 17, you notice what it says here, in whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Now giving thanks is here shown to be the right and appropriate thing to do in whatever situation. you are in. Giving thanks brings glory to God because it declares back to Him in prayer how good He has been to you in the way that He has led you and how much He has assisted you. Do you thank Him for the way that He leads you? In all the situations that you find yourself in, in whatever you are doing and whatever you are saying, your focus ought to be twofold. You ought to be doing whatever you are doing in the name of the Lord Jesus, and you ought to be giving thanks that He is the one who gives you the grace to do or say anything rightly. Oh wow, is that good. What a powerful verse this is. You see, Jesus is the one who gives us the grace to do or say anything right, anything of lasting value, anything that is glorifying to him and edifying and helpful to other people. Ephesians 4.20, it's worded in this way, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So every Christian ought to be giving thanks in everything and for everything that they are experiencing, as well as being thankful continually in the attitude of their mind. And this can only happen when you are consciously thinking about the name of the Lord Jesus, who is your helper in everything. Listen to the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1.12, And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a persecutor, and an insolent man, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord Jesus was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." And see, it's not in you. It's not in me. It's in Christ Jesus. We are receivers, dear Christian, of His grace, of the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ask yourself this afternoon if you see all the good things that you do and say and do for Christ, do you see this as depending entirely upon the grace which comes from Him? Do you see that the Lord Jesus is the one who enables you, as Paul said here? The Apostle Paul saw this, and he gave thanks that God enabled him. It is in the name of the Lord Jesus that we frame all of our prayers. We often end our prayers with the phrase, in Jesus' name. And this is right, because all that you pray for, and all that you ask for, in all of your requests must come through Jesus to the Father, and it must all be in line with His word and His will. Our verse 17 in our text says to us that whatever we do in word or deed should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. This tells us that to speak our words and to do our deeds to the glory of God both require Christ's help, and it requires that we then pray. I wonder if you see that. This should lead you to the conscious desire and prayer on your part that what you are doing and saying would be pleasing to Christ. Sometimes you just need to stop and you say to yourself, Lord, I want to please you in whatever I say to this person. If it's something important, I want this to be something that conveys Your truth to them, and it's done by Your Spirit to them, so they understand that this is not just me. That whatever things I say or do, that they would honor You, Lord, and bring glory to You. And if I learn this duty of giving thanks in whatever I say and do, then it's going to help me. It's going to help me to live righteously in the sight of God and men. It will keep me humble. and it will keep me hopeful." And people who are thankful to God in this way, they do become more holy people over time. Unbelieving people who have known the way of truth and yet did not act upon it are described for us in this way in Romans 1, verse 21. Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful. But they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. And this is what I pray will never happen to any one of us. The knowledge of God, and the knowledge of His Word, and the knowledge of what Christ has done for us, and what His Spirit is doing for us who believe, That ought to lead us to be thankful, thankful in everything and for everything so that God would be glorified in us and that God would be glorified by us. And we need to apply this to ourselves in closing by simply asking this question, am I thankful? Am I thankful? And if I am thankful, then I need to ask this further question. Do I thank the Father every day for giving me His dear and only Son? And this then will be followed with a prayer, this prayer, then Lord, let me serve you in every word that I speak and in every good deed that I do. Let's pray together. Father, we do ask that we would be come, if we are not now, a more thankful people, that as we look at all that you do for us by your grace, that as we remember all that Christ has suffered to bring us the blessings of sanctification, will we remember to be thankful? O Lord, we pray that we would. And out of that thankful heart, that then we would look outside of ourselves to see how we might help others, to see how our attitudes might be better. to see how our love might improve, to see that we might be able to forgive those who have hurt us, and to see where we might be an encouragement and a strength to those who are downcast. Help us, dear Lord, to be a thankful people, to be a joyful people, to be a cheerful people. And out of the abundance of the grace that you have given to us, then to learn to do your will and to love doing it in every particular For we do ask it and pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, let's close by singing hymn number 10. O come, my soul, bless thou the Lord, thy maker, and all within me. Bless his holy name. Hymn number 10. And let's stand together. O come, my soul, bless Thou the Lord, Thy Maker, and all within me bless His holy name. Bless Thou the Lord, forget not all His mercies, His pardoning grace and saving love proclaim. Bless Him forevermore, Bless him, his servants, that in his will rely. Good is the Lord, and full of kind compassion, Most slow to anger, plenteous in love. Rich is His grace to all that meekly seek Him, Endless as the heavens above. Bless him forever, wondrous in mind. Bless him, his servants, that in his swift delight. His love is like a father's to his children, Tender and kind to all who fear his name. For well he knows our weakness and our pretty, Knows that we are dust he knows our frame Bless him forever one dress in mind Bless Him, His servants, that in His will delight. We fade and die like flowers that grow in beauty, Like tender grass that soon will disappear. But evermore The love of God is changeless, still shown to those who look to Him in fear. Bless Him forever, while dressing mine. Bless Him, His servants, that it is with delight. High in the heavens His throne is fixed, there ever is rest. kingdom rules, o'er all from pole to pole. Bless ye the Lord through all his wide dominion, bless his most holy name, O thou my soul. Bless them forever, wondrous in my Blessing and glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. You are dismissed. The book studies will begin in about five minutes. Thank you.