In the days before smoking sections on planes, thinking of the Kosovo team on planes today, a passenger started to light a cigar when the stewardess informed him that cigar smoking was not allowed unless it was all right with the people in the immediate area. Do you object to his smoking, she asked the woman seated next to the man. The woman said, I absolutely detest cigars. The stewardess then spoke to a young man near the front of the cabin and came forward to report that he would not mind sitting next to the cigar smoker. As the cigar-smoking man walked forward to his new seat, his former seatmate, the boisterous woman, turned to the stewardess and confided, I've been married to that man for 30 years and I still can't stand his awful cigars. This is a humorous example of how closely related people often fail to relate well to one another, and a parable for what happens in God's family. You've heard the saying before, to live above with the saints we love, oh, that will be glory, but to live below with the saints we know, well, that's another story. How are you doing today in your relationships with the rest of us? How are you doing in your relationships with other believers? We all know successful relationships require a lot of work. I'm currently, for the summer, on my fourth round of premarital counseling. There's been a lot of people getting married, and I really love doing that. It's one of my favorite parts about being a pastor. But we require a lot of these couples. If you ever see anybody get married at LBC, have a little bit more respect for them, because they have to go through a lot of work to get to that point. They have to meet with the pastor multiple times. Tim and Danielle are sitting back there. They know about this. Usually it's about nine meetings that they have, and then we give them all kinds of work to do. They have to fill out a workbook that's full of scripture references and self-evaluations, and then they each have to read Bible-based books on marriage and their roles in it. And why do we do that? Why do we make them work so hard? before we will marry them was because we know that marriage is not easy. Sometimes the young couple heading towards marriage doesn't realize that fully at that point, but any of us who have been married for an extended period of time, we know that it can be a challenge. In fact, I was just talking to a fellow believer in the last couple of weeks and he said, you know Mike, they say that your marriage, it just gets easier and better the longer you've been married. This guy's been married about three times as long as I have. I'm not sure that's necessarily true, that it just gets easier and better. And he wasn't putting down his wife in any way or his marriage, he was just saying that you have to keep working to be able to maintain the relationship. And of course we know that many of these marriages fall apart and the same thing happens in church relationships. I think it kind of sneaks up on us here in the church because we would expect, we would think, well, this is church, you know, of all places, I wouldn't have to expect to deal with difficult relationships here. We would think, because the church is made up of believers, that we're going to be treated fairly, that our ideas are going to be given their due weight, that we won't get overlooked and taken for granted here. But then we are. And then we're faced with a choice. Well, what am I going to do now? And sometimes the thought that rises in our hearts is, well, there are other churches in town. Unless you're me, there's only one church that will pay me. And that's the kind of thing that happens. And so people leave with bitterness in their hearts and a story on their lips that they're quick to share with whoever wants to know about what happened. Maybe part of the problem is that we have wrong expectations. Maybe we'd do better off entering into our church relationships like we do our marriages with an expectation that problems will arise, with an expectation that we are going to be hurt as we minister with these people, but then with a commitment to deal with those problems as they arise according to the Word of God. As we look at Colossians 3 today, here is the command from the Word of God. God is going to call us to get rid of our harmful attitudes and hurtful words toward other believers to get rid of all that sort of thing so that we don't find ourselves fighting against God himself. Now, I hate to jump into the middle of a paragraph like we're doing here in Colossians 3, 8, without having some idea what's going on in the rest of the book. So, just to bring you up to speed, we've been studying Colossians in the evening services. It feels like it's been about a month since that's happened anyway. Colossians is all about Jesus. It's all about Christ. As Paul has been writing them, he is just telling them, what you need is Jesus. He is all you could want. He has everything that you could need. Fix your eyes upon Him. And then as we come to Colossians chapter 3, look there with me, Colossians 3 verses 1 and 2, this is kind of where he transitions to the practical. Here's how we live out our lives as believers. So Colossians chapter 3 verse 1, he says, Therefore, if you have 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. Well, how do we do that? How do we set our minds on things above? And Paul doesn't leave that undefined for us. He begins to spell that out for us. And if we were to go on from there, the first thing he does is he kind of tells us what that doesn't look like. Well, your eyes aren't set on things above if you're consumed with lusts and with jealousy and with greed. The first thing that he says, he says, Put to death any of that kind of thing that there is in your life believers Sexual sin and greed we need to put off and then we come to where we are verse 8 and any kind of transitions from more personal sins between us and the Lord to interpersonal things and having to talking about our relationships that we have with other believers and And there's another thing he's gonna command us not to do that starts in Colossians 3 verse 8 So look there with me again. This is what's where Cecil started reading Colossians 3 8, but now you also put them all aside anger wrath malice slander and abusive speech from your mouth The command is to get rid of these harmful thoughts and words, particularly, and we'll see this as we go through, he's talking about towards other believers. Now, we shouldn't have these attitudes towards anyone really, but particularly he's thinking about within the church here. And the word that he uses for getting rid of them is to put aside or to take off. That's a word that's used for what we would do with old dirty clothing. Today, right after the, After the church picnic, I'm heading for my yearly fishing trip this year I'm going to the boundary waters with my buddy looking over there because some of these guys know what that's like up there And we go up and we we go Canoeing and fishing for several days. Of course, it's wilderness, you know so we're being wilderness men for a while and and then we'll come back after three or four days and My wife told me one time after one of these trips, she said, Mike, when you're gone, I miss you, and I can't wait to see you again, but I can wait until you take a shower. It's just a little too much wilderness, man. When we are, you know, when you're in that situation, the best thing to do is to get rid of those old clothes, right? To strip them off, clean them, get them away, and then you can greet your family is the lesson I've learned over years of experience. And that is the idea that Paul has here when he's talking about these hurtful attitudes and actions that we have towards other believers. We just need to get those things off as if it's filthy, stinky clothing. Just get it off, put it away, don't have that kind of a thing here in our midst. And so he talks about really there's three attitudes that we need to get rid of in the verse there, in verse eight. And then after the attitudes, there are some actions that kind of flow out of those attitudes. You see the first three words, those are talking about attitudes of the heart, anger, wrath, and malice, he says. Anger refers to a kind of a growing inner anger that can build up in our hearts against other people. Wrath is a word often used for a flare up of that anger. If you find yourself quick to snap at someone, oftentimes that isn't just coming out of the blue, but there's already kind of a bitterness that's inside of you, and so any little thing, and your anger will turn into wrath. It will turn into an outburst of anger. These are the things that Paul is saying to get rid of. And then the third word that he uses there is malice. That's just a general sense of ill will towards someone else it's The kind of spirit that would that would be happy to see them not do well that would be glad to see them fail Wanting Not the best for them and Paul says well These are all attitudes that we need to get rid of we have to put them off right away because if we do not as one author wrote the heated metal of anger will be forged into the poisoned arrows of the tongue. And that's what happens, right? Because if I am holding bitterness against my brother or my sister in Christ, and I'm kind of holding something that happened against them, it's going to be very hard for me to relate to them lovingly, graciously, isn't it? what I'm thinking about them is gonna come out in the words that I say, even if I'm trying for it not to. And that's where he moves on then in verse eight. The next two words are slander and abusive speech from your mouth. Slander is just running down someone else's character. Abusive speech can cover both speech that's filthy, that's obscene, as well as speech that attacks someone else to their face. I was thinking about this this week. These things are just very common in our world. As you go out into the workplace or the school or whatever, so much of the language of the conversation that happens could be described by these last two words, slander and abusive speech. And it's really not a surprise. Paul, in verse eight, he's going to describe these things Let's see, in verse 9, read that with me. He says, do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices. He ties talking like this to the way that we used to live, to the way that unbelievers live and talk. And he says, hey, this is how we used to be before we were saved. We would speak like this. We would run down other people with our language and our speech wouldn't be clean. And we just know that that's around us all the time. Filthy language. I was thinking this week, why do we, why do people, why are we attracted to that? To using language that's dirty. I don't know, the best thought I had on this, maybe you have some other ideas you can share with me later. Best thought I have is just that it's cool. Somehow it makes me look good in some way, I feel, when I'm using language that's dirty. so many people that we know are unable to speak without that kind of a dirtiness in their language. And we Christians have to be careful, too. The Lord is calling us to clean language, to not have this kind of abusive speech. And I think that we as believers, while we avoid things that are obviously Wicked, right? Our language, we're not going to use bad words. But we can even kind of start to slant into language that's maybe not really bad, but kind of on the rougher side. And the Lord is just calling us here. He's just to keep our language clean, to keep it pure, to not have this kind of language on our lips. And then slander, putting down other people. Boy, in some circles, it's impossible to have a conversation without this. This is what people talk about when they are together. They talk about other people who aren't there and all of their flaws. And it's easy for us to do the same thing. In Christian circles, we do it more godly because we bring it up as prayer requests. true Christian love and concern for our neighbor and all of his faults. But we do the same thing where we use our speech and it's just an easy conversation piece and an interesting conversation piece when I'm talking about someone else's flaws and putting them down. Men When there's a group of husbands that are sitting around and everyone's complaining about their wives, what do you do? Do you laugh and join in? Do you add your own stories? Or do you choose to honor your wife and to keep her faults private? Ladies, it's the same deal. Of course, you have good material on your husband that could be very entertaining to be shared with lots of people, right? But the Lord is calling us to not slander, to not run down other people's character. He's calling us sometimes to bite our lips instead of going with the flow, to give honor to our spouse in that conversation or even to that fellow church member. who we know something about, or that church leader who has obvious flaws. The Lord is saying, get rid of all of these kinds of language where it's unclean or where it's putting down someone else's character. We've got to put all those things away from our lips. And what an opportunity we have to be a testimony here because in the world, people just aren't careful about that. They're not concerned about having their speech clean or about using their speech to build up other people instead of tear down. And so if you do, if you are careful to speak in words that are good and clean and to say things that are positive and not negative about other people, you'll stand out in a good way just by the way that you talk. Now there's one more sin of the lips that Paul mentions here, and it's interesting that he doesn't just include it in the list. You notice in verse 8 he lists these things that we're supposed to get rid of. So he could have just said, okay, put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, and lying from your mouth. He could have done it that way. But it almost feels like Paul wants to especially emphasize lying as something that we need to put off. And so he takes it and he puts it in its own sentence. And that's in verse 9. He says do not lie to one another And of course the the one another there refers to other believers. Don't lie to each other The question that comes up is well, why would why would I want to lie to you? Why would we be lying to each other? I? Think probably primarily it's it's to save faces and it isn't that why we lie. It's it's I'm trying to make myself look good and better than I really am, or I'm trying to keep you from seeing the bad about me, and so I lie. It reminds me of the story of Ananias and Sapphira talking about lying within the church. Early on in the book of Acts, there's a couple, I think this is Acts chapter 5 if you want to look it up at some point, but Ananias and Sapphira they had done a good thing. Actually, they had sold some of their property and they were giving a significant portion of the proceeds of that sale to the church, which was a great thing for them to be doing. The problem was that they wanted to make themselves look better than they really were. And so when they brought the money to the church, they said, here is 100% of the sale price of the land. of the property that we sold, but really it wasn't 100%. They kept some for themselves. So they had done a good thing, but they were trying to make themselves look a little better, and so they lied about it, which to me, you kind of think, well, you forgive them. At least they're giving us money, right? It's a good thing that they're doing, but the Lord took that extremely serious. What happened to Anna and Isis and Sapphira? Yeah, they were struck dead. The Lord is, Passionate about our being people of truth So Are you lying to cover up a sin in your life? Maybe? It's possible that you're lying could cover it up for a time But really when we do that if I'm lying to cover up a sin in my life I'm locking myself into that sin because as long as I can hide it and keep it to myself. I'm not going to turn away from it. The Lord is calling us to honesty. Sometimes honesty is it's it's the more difficult road but it's it's the road to freedom. It's a road to peace and joy within our congregation. Get rid of lying. He says. Okay, now, Paul has told us what we're not supposed to do. And after our passage that we're looking at today, he's gonna give us a flip side of this, and here's how we ought to act. But here in the middle, he's going to give us some rationale for it. He's going to tell us, why is it important? Why is it such a big deal how I treat these other believers? And he's going to give us two reasons that we ought to get rid of these harmful words and these hurtful attitudes that we have towards other believers. The first reason is this. He just says, hey, believers, when you received Jesus Christ, you turned your back on this kind of a behavior. Back when you received Jesus Christ, you drove a stake in the ground and said, that's enough. I'm not going to live this way anymore. Look at verses 9 and 10. He says, do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. verses 9, 10, and 11 really, Paul is looking back at the defining moments in these believers' lives. Because what took place at that moment is supposed to be shaping their lives right now. And what was this defining moment? He talks about how they turned, they put off the old self and they put on the new self. Well, that all took place when they received Jesus Christ. He's referring back to the time when they heard the gospel message and they accepted Jesus Christ. And that is the turning point that he points back to. And he says, hey, you received Jesus Christ and so it's just not fitting for us Talk this way anymore to think this way anymore about other believers Because at the moment you receive Jesus Christ There is to be a radical shift in your identity who you are changes see that in verse 9 he says since you laid aside the old self and then verse 10 you put on the new self who we are and Changed that moment that we trusted in Jesus Christ And with who I am now, it just doesn't it doesn't fit for me to be slandering the rest of you Not only who we are changes But how we live is supposed to change you see that in verse 9 you you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and then in verse 10, there's There's a little bit of a description of our lives now as believers see there in verse 10 He says you put on the new self and then he kind of describes what God is doing in us This is true personally and we're gonna see it's also true in the church in the whole But what is he doing in us now? We've put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him and the workout is doing your life now he is renewing you and this is what he's doing really for all of us believers he there's there's a process going on where he is making us into the image of the creator but it's a slow process sometimes the progressive process that's why we're not perfect that's why we have problems getting along with each other because we're not there yet but this is what god is doing in your life and he started at the moment that you So we ought to get rid of these harmful thoughts and words. One, because when you receive Jesus Christ, you turn to your back on that kind of living and talking. Also, he's going to say now that to speak against God's people is to fight against God himself. Sometime in your Christian life, you are going to be tempted to be bitter against one of your fellow believers. It's going to happen if we're together. That takes place. And probably, they will have done something to deserve it. You're not just making it up. They really have offended you. And the temptation is going to be there for you to use your words to run them down in some way. And that's why Paul is telling us to get rid of this, is because it's real in our lives as believers. But a thought to stop us, to check us, is this, well, wait a minute, before I go and start slandering this other believer, who is this that I'm about to, that I'm upset with? Well, though they've hurt me, yet it's a child of God. And so if I'm attacking them, Who am I attacking? It's not just the person it's it's the father of the child Okay now to help us see this in the text I want to show you some a little bit of a detail here in verse 10 and it starts with the The definition of this word old self and new self you see that there We've laid aside the old self and we've put on the new self I think most of the translations that you are using would say that if you have a King James It would say the old man and that's actually literally what it would say if we had the original it doesn't talk about a self It says you've put off the old man. You've put on the new man and that that probably helps us to understand What's going on here? the What Paul does here is he gives us three explanations of what God is doing in the world. And the first one is this. The new man here, it's a bigger concept than just a new self. It's referring to us as a whole. It's referring to a new humanity that God is creating, not just something that he's doing in your individual life. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2. He talks about something very similar there. and it sheds some light on Colossians for us. Ephesians chapter two, verse 15. Actually, we'll start at verse 14. Ephesians 2 14 Now what's happening here in Ephesians is that that Paul is talking about? Well, there's there used to be before Christ came they were Jews and there were Gentiles and they were separated against each other and they were divided By history and by religion and by culture but in Christ we can all be one and No matter what so jumping in there Ephesians chapter 2 verse 14 He says for he himself Jesus is our peace Who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity? Which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances so that in himself he might make the two into one new man to catch that He's making all these believers into one new man, thus establishing peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. Our verses in Colossians don't make sense unless we understand this, that the new man that we're putting on isn't just a new personality. It's not just a new self that we put on, but we are, when you trusted in Jesus Christ, you were joined into a new humanity that Jesus Christ is creating in the world. Go back to verse 10 again, Colossians chapter three, verse 10. And I think that that's what he's primarily talking about at the end of verse 10 when he says that you've put on a new self and then he says Who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him? He's talking about what Jesus Christ is doing in the church and there's a lot of words and it kind of feels like it doesn't flow Very smoothly the way that it's translated, but the idea is this Originally in the garden you have Adam and Eve being created, right? And and they were created in the image of God God is very clear like three times in the creation story It talks it says they were created in God's image Genesis 127 says God created man in his own image and the image of God he created them So here's the idea mankind of which Adam is the head is meant to be the image of God We're meant to to reflect him to be his likeness In a way, that's totally unique from the rest of creation. We are to be God's image bearers. But when Adam and Eve sinned, that image was marred. Now, to be sure, if we look around now, you see a lot of things that are noble, and you can kind of see a reflection of God in mankind. But if you were to look at the world around you, is your immediate, the world of people around you, is your immediate reaction to say, you know, wow, I just really see the character of God reflected in mankind. I mean, is that your first response when you look around? Well, no. Because we have people fighting and arguing and divorcing and killing and cursing and wallowing in self-pity or strutting in pride, losing themselves in various addictions, even this last There's examples of lives and careers that kind of showed promise, but ended up spiraling downward into just kind of a pathetic self-interest. And this is kind of the feel of mankind as you look around. It's not, you don't look at it and say, wow, I see God in mankind. You see a mankind that has failed in our original purpose of reflecting God's nature. And it's because of sin. But Jesus, this verse is saying in Colossians 3, God is doing something amazing. Here is the work that he's doing in the world. He is calling out people from mankind And making a new mankind, making a new group of people who will really do what mankind was supposed to do in the first place, reflect God's image. He's calling out for himself a people and restoring us to the image of his creator. And that is us, that's where we fit in. The great work that God is doing in the world today is calling people to himself and putting them together in one Body in one new man that can that can represent him So if you see in verse 10, this is what he's saying, well, we've put on the new self we've joined this new humanity that God is creating Being renewed according to the image of the one who created him. So originally the creators image was supposed to be seen in Adam, but that fell apart and But now, God is making a new mankind. He's making us according to His image and in the church, in God's people around the world, He is showing what mankind was supposed to do, who He really is. We're to reflect Him. Okay. Now, in this new humanity that Christ is forming, the barriers that separate people in our world aren't supposed to exist anymore. And that's where he goes in verse 11. He says, look, here's all the things that separate people in our world. But in the church, he says, in this new humanity that God is creating for himself, These things don't matter see that in verse 11 It starts off a renewal in which To make that simple he's just talking about his people The the new humanity these creating in these people there is now no distinction between Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised Barbarian Scythian slave and free man, but Christ is all and in all this is really cool in the Church of God barriers that separate us everywhere else don't matter anymore. Racial burials don't matter. He says there's no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised. This is one of the cool things to me about living in Southern California and attending this. We went to a large church for a while there, Grace Community Church. And you could look around, because it's Southern California, and you could see people of every race just sitting very close to you all worshiping the Lord together. And it was cool. You look over here and there'd be some Hispanic people and some black people and Asians and white people all sitting together worshiping the Lord. It didn't matter. None of that mattered, those racial distinctions. And it's cool to see that happening. And that was God's design for the church, was that that isn't supposed to matter anymore. If you're Jew or Greek, it doesn't matter. We're all tied together in Christ. not only racial barriers, but cultural barriers aren't supposed to separate us. His examples of that here is barbarian and Scythian. Do you see it there in the middle of verse 11? Barbarian Barbarian, it's kind of a derogatory word that the Greeks would use to describe uncivilized people. Because if you were civilized in the ancient world to a Greek, of course you would speak Greek. And if you don't speak Greek, then that shows you're not very civilized, you're not very cultured. And so they just kind of referred to everyone else out there as barbarians. And it was to make fun of them, the way they talked, because their language sounded like bar, bar, bar, bar. So they called them the barbarians. They're putting them down as a derogatory word for these people out there. And then Scythian is like the extreme barbarian. You can't get more barbaric and uncivilized and uncouth than a Scythian. This phrase Scythian referred to a group of people but it almost They were so bad that they just used them. Anytime anything was bad or gross or uncouth, they'd just say, oh, well, it's worse than a Scythian. And like, oh, I couldn't be that bad. The Scythians, let me give you a couple of. descriptions of them to get a feel for the way people talked about him and and uh... what kind of people they were it was a well josephus he was a historic story and he said this the city and delight in murdering people and a little better than wild beasts You always hear quotes like that. I mean, there was a list of them that I found. Herodotus gave us these gory details about their habits of war. Talking about the Scythians, he says, they drank the blood of the first enemy killed in battle. They made napkins of the scalps and drinking bowls of the skulls of the slain. They had the most filthy habits and never washed with water. You know, if you said that you were like a Scythian, He's almost they talked about him almost like animals in the way that they were so uncivilized And so in the ancient world To have a fellowship that included a Jew and a Greek in That'd be unthinkable because they they didn't get along well, but but Paul even includes this he says well We're all together in Christ whether you're a Jew whether you're a Greek whether you're a barbarian whether you're a Scythian We are all together in Christ if we received him and and to have a fellowship where those kinds of people would all combine Would be unthinkable in the ancient world They just be unthinkable Now, hopefully in coming to Christ, the Scythians would have repented of some of their killing ways, you know, just to keep the church safe. But Paul is saying it really doesn't matter. Any of these backgrounds, it doesn't matter for us. And the same thing is to be true in our church today. And it is. And it's neat. I think the Lord is honored. The Lord is pleased when he looks and sees people of various backgrounds all serving him together. We are in Lamars, Iowa, so we tend to be kind of similar to each other in some ways, right? I don't think, almost everybody here is Caucasian, but that's just kind of the way that it is in Lamars. But there are definitely things that in our culture separate us, where people wouldn't be getting together with each other, aren't there? But here, you come to church and you see a farmer and a salesman sitting together in a small group praying. Those guys probably wouldn't. If it wasn't for church, they wouldn't be hanging out together. You see a young lady and an old man talking to each other about the missions project that they're going to be joining in together. And you wouldn't normally see that in our culture. The Lord Here in our group and this is how he's meant it to be he's pulled together people that just wouldn't normally hang out you've got a computer geek talking to a Sports nut about what the Lord is doing in people's lives that there is that there's a bond that we have in Christ that goes that goes deeper and beyond all these other things that define us and and Paul says here's how it is because None of this matters Another distinction that he talked about there that was in their world isn't as much in ours slave and free man Doesn't matter and and just think of it in in the church And this is one of the things that was kind of shocking to people when they would come and visit churches back in that day you would have a slave who was a godly man, so he'd be a church leader and And the master might go to the same church and in the church be under the authority of the slave because the church just isn't set up by who has status outside. It's all about Christ. One of the neat stories that we have from church history is the story of Perpetua and Felicitas. Perpetual was a young woman early on in the church who was from a noble family and Felicitas was a slave girl. This was in the time when it was against the law in the Roman world to be a Christian and so they were both caught and sentenced to death for refusing to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. It happened in 202 A.D. and they were sentenced to death in the arena where you would have a stadium full of people that would gather to watch these executions. They would send the Christians out there, then they would send the wild animals out to attack the Christians. And so you have these two women, Perpetua and Felicitas. These two ladies, one a slave owner and the other a slave, came out to meet their death hand in hand. And it made a huge impression on all of the people who were there watching their deaths that see the unity that these ladies have. It doesn't matter to them that one is a slave and the other is a slave owner. What matters to them is Christ. And that is how Paul ends verse 11 here. He says, the distinctions don't matter because Christ is all and in all. You see, in the church, Christ is now all that matters and he is in all of us who believe. So, what is God doing in the world? What's his design? What great work is he undertaking? I think if you look at scripture, what is the great work that God is doing? Well, he's calling out people to himself and he's putting them together into a body. We are the great work that God is doing in the world. It's encouraging to think about it, that the church that he is building, this is God's work that he's doing. Now, Lamar's Bible Church is only one local expression of it, and the church extends across the rest of the world, and even through Christian history, we have a bond with those people. But this is what God is doing. And the thought for us, think about here, the connection that Paul is trying to make for us is, okay, the time is going to come when in our body it's going to be hard for us to get along with one another. It's going to come. But we must love one another. We can't start to be bitter towards one another and speak against one another and be divisive and and fighting and all of these things that he told us not to do. We can't because this is what God is doing in the world. And so if I start to bite and devour the people in the congregation, then I'm resisting the great work of God that he's doing in the world. I'm fighting against God instead of for him. So how are you doing today? Maybe as we looked at those verses and Paul told us to put off these things, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, maybe you realize that there already is, this is a present reality for you, that there is some bitterness in your heart toward another believer, even today. And if so, what do you do? How do you put it aside? Let me give you three places to start. One place would be this. Commit yourself to praying for that other believer every day. There is an incredible power to love that the Lord opens up to us through prayer. I've just experienced this many times in my life where Some kind of an issue with someone and then and then I just start to pray for them every day And just to see the Lord kind of change my heart There's an incredible power in that so if there's a bitterness that you have developing towards someone start praying for them another thing you can do is to Go and talk to them. Maybe go and ask their forgiveness for something you've done to them. You say, now wait a minute, the reason I'm upset with them is because they've hurt me, not because anything I've done, right? But maybe that's why they're upset with you too, right? It kind of goes both ways. So just to have the humility and say, is there some way that I've offended this person? And then just go and confess that to them. Say, that wasn't right of me to say that. Will you forgive me? Opens up the door. Just that obedience is a powerful uniting force. So pray for them. If you can think of something that you've done to hurt them, go and ask for their forgiveness. And a third point would be not to stop with verse 11. Because in verses 8 and 9, the Lord has said to us, put off these evil thoughts. Put off this bitter spirit and these evil words. Get rid of all of that. Um, but it keeps going in verse 12. Now we don't, we don't have time to go through it today, but read with me, um, the positive, what we ought to do. Here's how we ought to behave towards one another. Look at verse 12. He says, so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let's pray. God, you are doing a great work here in our midst. Sometimes I think we lose sight of the importance of this to you, that you are creating a people from every tribe and tongue and culture and language and interest, and you're putting us all together in one body to reflect you. This is what you're doing in the world right now, and we get to be right in the middle of it. Lord, we thank you for this work that you're doing in our midst. Will you continue your work of molding us grant us grace or to forgive and to bear with one another bind us together in love? Bind us together in unity, whatever we do Lord. We do it all in Jesus name He is the one that unites us and that we're here for Thank you for the opportunity that we have to be part of The church this work that you're doing in the in the world in our day and pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. I