And if we'll open up with me please to the book of Colossians, starting in chapter three. Colossians 3.15. Colossians 3.15. I'll start reading you verse 12. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, for this week. 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, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Amen. Let's pray one more time, Heavenly Father. We pray that even through the preaching of your word tonight, we'd be able to put on these things Peace ruling in our hearts, ruling in our midst. The Word of Christ, may it dwell in us richly. Lord, give us a Christ-centered heart, perspective, life. We pray, Lord, that this sermon would just be effective in building that up. Or if there's somebody here tonight who's never had that built up, have it placed at all. Oh Lord, bring us to salvation and a fuller experience of you. We pray through the preaching of your word in Jesus, for Jesus sake and in his name we pray, amen. Well, tonight again, we're talking about putting on Christ. And I think I can summarize where we are here in Colossians with a little analogy. Sometimes for special occasions, some of us are honored to wear things that used to belong to our parents. if we want that, so like at a wedding, for example. And so the way this goes is since we belong to our mom and our dad and since they've made something objectively true about us by giving birth to us and raising us and since we're one with them, at least in family and in life, we're privileged to be able to put on some things. Put on maybe mom's dress or put on maybe dad's cufflinks or his tie or something. And when we put on these things, maybe we're doing it for fashion, maybe. We're also doing it to connect ourselves to them, to their legacy, connect to the goodness that they've stood for. We're doing it to honor them. Now, I didn't wear anything of my dad's in my wedding. I did wear his old leather belt for way too long. And maybe same difference, but this is something like what's going on in Colossians. for a long time now in Colossians. Colossians has been stressing all the things that Jesus has made true of you. If you're a Christian, all the oneness with Christ and how you've been raised with him and you've been hidden with him and since Jesus has made all of these things true about you, now you have the privilege and the responsibility to put on the beautiful Jesus Christ. When last week, we started to see what this means. It was too much for us to take all in one sermon. We talked about putting on Christ, putting on all of his virtues. We talked about putting on his love and his forbearance and his forgiveness. That was last week. We read some of that before we read our passage. This week, we're gonna see that putting on Jesus Christ means putting on three more things. The peace of Christ. the word of Christ, and then what I'm calling a thoroughgoing Christ-centeredness. Those three things, those will be our three points, the peace of Christ, the word of Christ, and then a thoroughgoing Christ-centeredness that we get to put on as children of God. So, as we start our first point, the first thing that we're privileged to put on, that Christ helps us put on, is the peace of Christ. So to get this point, you have to understand there are two ways to take this statement, and they're both true, so it doesn't matter either way. First, this could be talking about your internal peace, or the feeling of peace, like let the peace of Christ rule inside of your hearts. It could be taken that way. Maybe you've always taken it that way, I don't know. The idea here is that since Jesus is our peace, since he made peace between us and God, now our hearts should be filled with this peace and we should be governed by this peace, ruled by this peace. And this really is among the most amazing things that you can feel, it's a feeling, when you know God, when you have his eternal life and you're standing in it, when you know that you're completely forgiven, There's just nothing like that. It's just total, absolute peace with the most important things in the universe, eternal matters. It's peace beyond understanding. It's a peace beyond all description, although I like how Hendrickson does describe it. My commentator, he writes this. This peace is the condition of rest and contentment in the hearts of those who know that their Redeemer lives. It's the conviction that the sins of the past have been forgiven, that the present is being overruled for good, and the future cannot bring about separation between Christ and his own. That's peace. That's the feeling of peace. That's the peace that Christians know. So this verse is at least saying we're to let that peace rule. Let that peace rule in your heart. Let the presence of Jesus, let the promises of Jesus, when you have a doubt, let it blast the doubt. When you have an anxiety, let it calm your anxiety. When you have a fear, let it make you feel secure, even when things are fearful. That's what Paul says in Philippians 4.7. He writes, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So that's one way you could take that sentence. You have peace with God, now have peace on the inside, let it rule you, and live out of that, and it's wonderful. There is another way you could take this sentence that actually fits the context a little better, although it's very much connected to everything I just said, and what I just said is so true, just said that in Philippians, but it's probably better to read this verse as talking about external peace between each other. Peace between brothers. Like the peace that we are supposed to have as the body of Christ with each other. I say this because you could also translate this verse, it's an umpire word, it's a referee word, that rule word. You could translate it, let the peace of Christ umpire among your hearts, it could say. Or referee among your hearts. And the next part makes it even clearer, it's talking about relational peace, Because it says, to which indeed you were called in one body. It's talking about you being called to peace within a body of people, body of Christ. So this verse seems to be building on top of everything I just said. On top of your personal peace, you add this other layer. In God's sense of priority, how he's designed things, once you have peace with God, he would have that peace overflow into peace with each other. Once you've been brought into his family, made peace with God, now he wants you to have peace with your siblings that are also in this one body, as he says. Because if he paid the highest price to be at peace with you, how can you not be at peace with people who have given you far less cause for offense? And if you really do have peace with God, if you really have the most important peace, How can you not afford to overlook other people's sins or to forbear with people or to confront in love and make peace? So this verse is making it very clear. Jesus really wants us to be at peace with each other. It's really important to him that you are at peace with you and you with you. It's very important to him. It's one of the reasons he came. Isaiah 9 says the Messiah would be the Prince of Peace. It's one of the things he prayed for right before his death. John 17 20, that those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. It's a persistent command from God. Ephesians 4, he says, we're to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. It's interesting, verse 15 that we're looking at tonight, it says, that is what God has called you to. That's what he's called you to do. It's the purpose for which he's called you. It says he's called you to peace. And then he tells you a reason why. It's because when God called you to himself, we have a very individualistic culture, but when he called you to himself, he didn't call you as a little individual cell. like a organic cell. He called us together as a body. He called us together as one big body of Christ. We're always supposed to be one. It's how the world sees that we're Christians. It's how the world sees Christ when we love each other. So Christ would have us be filled with this peace ourselves on the inside, undoubtedly, but then he would have that peace that he gives between him and us he would have that peace become the referee between all our relationships with each other. Peace this way, peace that way, it's all of a peace. And so brothers and sisters, all this to say, by way of application, there's so many priorities, but this is to be a major priority. This is to enter in when we have a problem with somebody. This is to enter in when we start to get Upset. Peace is a major priority. It trumps our hurts. It trumps our strongly held opinions. We're all called together in one big batch. We're called for the purpose of peace. So that's the first thing we put on in this passage. First thing we're privileged to put on, this beautiful thing that we put on, or that he puts on us, rather. Second, second of these three things. Second thing we're privileged to put on tonight is the word of Christ. Which of course is the Bible, it's the scriptures, because the scriptures are both the word spoken by Christ and they're the word spoken about Christ. Paul tells us, let this word of Christ dwell in us richly. So what does it mean to let the word of Christ dwell? I think we have a sense of what that means. Let's make sure we know what it means. What does it mean to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly? Well, to have the word dwell in us is to have it living in us. It's to have it living deep inside of us, which is to say it's to always carry it around with us wherever we go. It's to have it deep down and always. It lives there, living there. And to have the Word dwell in us richly, you could say abundantly, it's to have a lot of the Word in us, living in deep all the time. It's to give it our full attention. It's to give it our full authority. It's to let it fill us and overflow out of us. That's what it means to have the Word of God dwell in us richly. It's like what Charles Spurgeon said about John Bunyan, the guy that wrote Pilgrim's Progress. He said, this man is a living Bible. If you prick him anywhere, his blood is Bibline. The Lord would have us put on his word. He'd have us be all about his word. And I'm on a Hendrickson kick this week. He also said it looks like four H's. not the organization I used to be in, 4-H's, always heeding the word, always handling the word rightly, always hiding the word in your heart, always holding it forth for others. What's next though is Paul starts suggesting three ways that we can do this. And he says this using three participles. So how do we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly? How do we do that? He says through teaching, through admonishing and through singing. So we'll take them up one by one. First, teaching. You know what teaching is. Teaching is when you help people know the Word of God better and you help people understand the Word of God better. That's teaching. But to say a little bit more about this, I want you to see that this statement is holding up teaching as something of great value. I think we can all be tempted to think about teaching and learning. Well, they're not that big a deal. What's really a big deal is just going out and doing things, but he's saying here, teaching the word of God, it's so, so important. Our church has to do it, we gotta do it well, we gotta teach, we gotta learn. One more thing about teaching, I also want you to see here, do you see how it's saying that teaching's something that everybody's gotta do? You might not have the gift of teaching, you might not be in a teaching office, it's very important for Those people to teach, but this says we're to teach one another. It's a one anothering. It's why we're called to teach our own kids. That's why we're all called to disciple. Everybody can disciple. Everybody's at a certain point with people that are at a certain point. That's why Sunday school's a team effort here. The older must teach the younger. Those who have have to share with those who don't have. Got to teach the word. So all this to say, the word dwells in us richly through teaching, both doing it and sitting under it. Teaching, teaching, teaching. That's one way the word dwells in us richly. Second, he says admonishing. Admonishing is talking about how you gently warn somebody or you gently correct somebody when they're out of step with the word. They're not following the word, tap them back in. That's admonishing. Say more about this. I want you to notice this also says this is something we have to do for one another. We all have to admonish. But even as I'm saying this, I'm realizing this might not be our strongest suit. As Christians in our cultural context, admonishment just seems so impolite, presumptuous. I'm sure admonishment's always been hard, Because humans have always had egos, but we also have this niceness culture. Someone admonishes us and we're just like, how dare you? Well, I think that's why it's so important that Paul adds in all wisdom. See those words there, in all wisdom? He's saying you all gotta admonish, can't leave that out, but you have to do it in all wisdom because whereas it's your responsibility to admonish each other when they're out of step with the Bible, not just your personal preference, but the Bible, it's also our duty to consider the person we're admonishing and the circumstances we're admonishing. We need wisdom when we do this. We need wisdom to teach. Who do we teach? When do we teach? How do we teach it? But we need wisdom to know how to admonish an individual in the way that's best for that person, the way that they'll receive it. We need wisdom to know when to admonish them, wisdom to know where we need to admonish them, when not to admonish them. Anyway, all this to say, Paul's actually saying, he's saying that when we admonish each other well from the word, the word dwells in us more richly as a body. We teach each other and when we admonish one another. And then one more, one more way that Paul highlights at least for us to let the word of God dwell in us richly, the third thing he talks about is singing. And that's kind of an odd one, isn't it? You might not expect that. Oh, let the word of God dwell in your richly. Yes, sing. Because I think when we usually think of singing, I think we usually think of expressing our heart, but this is saying that singing's important too because of how it impacts our hearts. It's not just a flowing out of the heart, it's a flowing into the heart. You actually, I think you know this from experience. Because on the one hand, singing makes it easier to learn information. You ever notice that? I mean, my kids know so much of God's word just because they've sung it. I open up for our family Bible time, like, oh, we already know that because of something at school or slugs and bugs or whatever. And they just know the scripture already. And I still have all kinds of scripture memorized because of songs I learned all through my life. And it surprises me. It pops out in counseling. It pops out evangelizing. Even now I had a song, I didn't even know who wrote it, a guy named Daryl Evans. I had it in mind when I was writing this sermon from Psalm 30, though the darkness Oh no, though the sorrow may come for the night, joy comes with the morning. It's the I'm trading my sorrow song. So on the one hand, singing is a great teaching tool for the mind. It's why I'm glad that we sing doctrinally rich things, why we sing psalms and hymns with really good words, and it's so good, it teaches us. It teaches our minds, but you know that singing is also an effective tool for teaching your heart. How many times have you sung something And as you sing it, it just, it hits your heart in a whole nother way. Music just seems to, it can punch through sorrow. It can fill you with hope. Driving down the road, the windows are open, you've got the right song at the right time, or you're standing here in worship, and you're like, yes, and amen, and it helps you rejoice out of a deeper place, and makes you more confident in his goodness. It steals your resolve. It's singing just, it touches your heart. Singing helps his word dwell in us more richly. Singing is praise. So those are the three ways, he says, that he highlights, at least, for how we can have the word of God dwell in us more richly, teaching and admonishing and singing. I have a little aside for you now, because I think some of you might be upset if I don't talk about this a little. Some of you might be wondering this reference to Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. because of its relevance to some debates over worship. Sorry to say, though, that what I have to say about this verse will probably disappoint everybody. If you think this verse is a slam dunk against your Psalms-only brothers, it's not. On the surface, it is. That's because all the words that are used to describe the Psalms, or all of these words, Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, these Greek words, they're all used to describe Psalms. in the Greek Old Testament. Psalm 67 starts out this way. Psalm 76 starts out this way, using all three words to describe what's about to be sung. On the other hand, if you think that that fact makes this a slam dunk for the Psalms-only crowd, scriptures also seem to show that there is some differentiation between these categories. I see it. I mean, Augustine pointed out in the fourth and fifth centuries that in Scripture, you not only have Old Testament Psalms, but in Scripture, in the New Testament, we likely have fragments of hymns, and in Revelation, that word for spiritual songs. It's used to talk about the songs that are sung in heaven, new songs that we're to sing. So anyway, I'm convinced from Scripture, we're on good ground singing a variety of different types of praise music. I just don't think that this verse gets us either way on its own. I thought, preaching this, I thought, well, you know what would be better to focus on because this is a difference of opinion that is okay to have with good brothers, but I thought what might be better to focus on is just to let this verse instruct how we sing in general because it teaches us, A, it says at least sing psalms. I'm glad we sing psalms. B, sing songs with good lyrical content, because they're teaching. They're for teaching. And also sing songs by the spirit, spiritual songs, songs by the spirit. And he says, sing them in a heartfelt way. It matters most how we sing. Anyway, that's just a little aside, a little extra for you, because I knew you'd be wondering. So now let's go on to our third point. Let's talk about the last thing in this passage that, just for tonight, that we could put on. And the third thing we have a privilege to put on tonight is a thoroughgoing Christ-centeredness. Verse 17 is something of a climax summary of this whole section of commands, a climactic, here's one more really good, all-encompassing thing that you should do. Because it's telling us, put Christ on over everything you do. It's a sweeping statement. And he really does mean everything. He says everything in at least three different ways here. Whatever you do, in word or deed, which is everything, do everything in the name, saying everything. I thought at this point it might be helpful if we stop to think for a second about what it means to actually do everything in the name of Jesus. Like, what does that mean? to do everything in the name of Jesus. Well, I was thinking this week about how to get this point across, and I kept thinking of the phrase, with an eye to. Maybe that doesn't ring a bell yet, but when I use it in a sentence, it will. Like sometimes, people will do things with an eye on the time, which means that whatever they're doing, they're always conscious of how much time they have. Or other people, they'll make plans for a picnic or something with an eye on the weather. which means they're making their plans very conscious of what the weather's gonna do. Well, as Christians, just borrowing this phrase, we're supposed to do everything with an eye on Christ. Everything with an eye on Christ. Like, what does Jesus think about what I'm doing? What does Jesus want me to do? How do I need Jesus to help me with this thing? We're to do everything conscious of him. That's what the fear of the Lord is. It's doing everything conscious of Him. So we do everything out of love for Him. We do everything respecting His authority, saying, I want to do what you want me to do. We do everything depending on His strength. Please help me, Lord Jesus. We do everything with the goal, the express goal, the most important goal. That I'm doing it to bring glory to His name. That's why I'm doing this. We do everything with Him. We do everything through Him. We do everything for Him. So let me just give you a really everyday example of what this looks like in practice. You could do this with anything. You could do this with how you leave church tonight, how you drive. You could do this with anything. I thought, how about laundry? Let's talk about it with laundry, something we all have to do, something that's easy. You just throw the laundry in the laundry machine. It's so easy to put it in there. It's impossible to fold and then put away. People at Acting Loudest have a bunch of kids, and they're like, oh, this is just always running. How do we do laundry in the name of Jesus Christ? And you can think about this, you can meditate on this. How do you do laundry? Well, you do it with an eye on him. You do laundry with an eye to Christ, because maybe you don't feel like doing it. But you're conscious of his authority. You say, Lord, if you're asking me to live an ordered life, and if you're asking me to love my family, well then I'll do laundry. Or maybe you have a hard time finding motivation to do it. We have a pile of laundry at our house right now that we will get to. My fault, not Hannah's. So you do it with his help and you do it by his strength. Or maybe you're doing the laundry, you're doing it, you know, I'm doing it, I'm doing this laundry because I love him. And I wanna show the world how great he is because I'm willing to take a lower place and do the laundry for my family, hear that kids? And because I wanna show the world how much I love him, how good he is by how I love my family. You could actually have that train of thought. And you see, you can do anything for the sake of his name. You actually should do everything for the sake of his name. I'll just add one more thing here, because this is wonderful. Do you know that We say doing this in the name of the Lord Jesus, that phrase. Did you know that 18 times in the Greek Old Testament, they have these words, these exact words, except they say this, in the name of the Lord your God. It says in the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament says, in the name of the Lord your God, 18 times. But here it's not in the name of the Lord your God, Here it's in the name of the Lord Jesus. You see what he's doing? That's a big statement. He's not so subtly reminding you that that Lord God, from everlasting to everlasting, saying that's Jesus. Jesus is Yahweh. Jesus is God. He's speaking to the fact also that whenever you do something in his name, in Jesus' name, You're extolling him as your Lord. You're giving him glory as your Lord and as your God. And as an added benefit, it says here, giving thanks to God the Father through him, bringing glory to the Trinity. You see what a Trinitarian passage this is. He talks about the peace of Christ being in you, but you know the peace of Christ is in you by the Spirit because it's the Spirit of Christ. He's one and the same. And then when he says you do everything in Jesus' name, he's saying you're doing everything in Jesus' name because Jesus is Yahweh, because Jesus is God. It's a thoroughly Trinitarian passage. What a thing to put on. Thoroughgoing Christ-centeredness. Colossians is so far, Colossians is like a high point for Christology. It's all about Jesus. It's all about how wonderful Jesus is. All he did in creation, all he did in redemption, all that he is to us. And here at the end of this section, we're hearing about how Christ-centered we should be in everything we do because of who he is. How appropriate. How beautiful. Summary statement. And just be all about Jesus in everything you do. Oh, and then he'll tell us next week about how we live in family, but that's for next week. So now to start wrapping up for tonight, maybe just, I want you to see one more special bonus thing that we can put on. I said three and I'll give you one more for free. It's thankfulness. And I didn't know where to put this exactly because do you see how thankfulness just winds its way through this passage? You're probably thinking, why hasn't he talked about thankfulness yet? Well, here we go. Look at it again for a second. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So if we're talking about fashion, if we're talking about putting things on, thankfulness in this passage is kind of like the color scheme. It's kind of like the style that's tying everything together. Because it goes so well with all these other pieces. It goes so well with peace. Aren't you thankful you have peace? Aren't you thankful he's called us to peace? It goes so well with having the Word of Christ dwelling inside of us. Aren't you so thankful you have a word from Him? Aren't you so thankful you get good teaching and you can sing? It goes so well with Christ-centeredness. Thankfulness goes so well with who He is, what He's done, and that we get to live every moment before His face. We get to live every moment living in a way that we are beautified by His glory. Every minute we get to do things to show how great He is, we get this privilege. It occurs to me as I read this, thankfulness here, he talks about it as a mode of being. He says, and be thankful. Mode of being, it's also an overflow of the heart. Singing with thankfulness in your heart, he says. And he says it because it's a great purpose. He says, doing everything in his name. giving thanks to our Father. It's a mode of being. It's an overflow of the heart. It's a great purpose for which you live. It's thankfulness, thankfulness, thankfulness. And it occurred to me also as we've been looking at Colossians all through, Colossians high points, we've been seeing why thankfulness should be so central to us as Christians. Because all along, all throughout Colossians, we've been seeing Our religion is a religion where God comes to undeserving people and just blesses us. And he just saves us. And our religion is a religion where our God comes to us in grace and we just respond. That's our religion. That's why we're fundamentally a thankful people. Because he just comes and shows grace and we just respond. And that is the response. It's thankfulness. Thankfulness and peace and in his word. Because you think about it, He's chosen you, and then He loved you, and then He sent His Son and united His Son to you, and His Son died for you and was punished with an eternal punishment for you, and then He gave you everything that was owed to the Son of God. To you, you get His inheritance, and now it's just your privilege, and it's your joy to dress like Him more and more. to respond in thankfulness to all these things. And so, at the end of all this, we'll just say this. So we need to put on more peace, given us peace, we put on more peace in our hearts. We let it rule our hearts, but we also let it rule our relationships. We're called to peace, resurrection, we're called to peace. And then we put on his word, we let it dwell in us richly as we teach, as we admonish, as we sing together, both as individuals, as a community, we have to let it dwell in us. And we put on a certain Christ-centeredness in everything we do, all of it to thank God through Christ. Remembering it was Christ's joy to love you and save you. Now it's our joy to put him on more and more, to look more like him, and to give him glory for it through these things. Amen.