It's an honor to be here, and the fact that Michael would allow me to come to preach in his absence is definitely an honor, and I take this very seriously. It is hard. I'm sorry, this wasn't planned. This wasn't planned, but every time that I preach, I think about my old self. I think about the person I was before Christ saved me and it's really overwhelming to think as evil as I was and as sinful as I was that I am now standing here proclaiming God's word to a congregation. It is amazing grace. Today the title of our lesson is Off with the Old and On with the New. We're in Colossians 3, if you'd like to turn there in your Bibles, Colossians chapter 3. And for a little bit of background or introduction, Paul writes this letter from prison or house arrest. He's not in a dark dungeon, but he is under house arrest here in Rome. And he hears of a problem in the Colossian church by a man named Aprophos. Now who was Aprophos? Aprophos was a native of Colossae, the city. And on Paul's third missionary journey into this region, particularly Ephesus, we know that Paul stayed there in Ephesus for about three years and he preached and he taught. And the word says that all of that region heard him. They heard the word of the Lord. And so it's quite possible and probably the case that Epaphras happened to be there while Paul was preaching a message and was saved under Paul's ministry. And so Epaphras goes back to his city of Colossae and he establishes this church. So this church was established by someone other than Paul, which we don't talk about much or think about much. And then what happens is in the church here in Colossae, Epiphras sees a problem. There's an issue going on. There's some problems going on. And this problem, we want to label it, we have a word for it, it's called syncretism. And it is this mixture of Jewish religion and pagan culture. And you can imagine that. You have the Jews with all their rituals and all the things they do with their food regulations and the circumcision, everything that they're coming out of. And then you have a mixture of pagans who had a Greek mindset. And you know about the Greeks, how many gods they had. And you know some of these things, they were all getting mixed together. And there was a chance that they would slide back from what they had been taught, and what Epiphras had taught that. Now Epiphras realizes this, and so he's going to travel 1,300 miles, not on Delta, He's traveling 1,300 miles, sort of like Paul did, and we talked about him when he sailed to Rome, in his journey to Rome. So he travels all this way to see Paul in Rome. He tells Paul about the church, what's going on. He has some good things to say about the church. They had great faith. They had great love for one another. But he also told him about this problem. So Paul writes this. to confront false teaching and false philosophy that may would come about in the Church of Colossians. Well, what are some of the things that could be taught, these false teachings? Well, one was this harsh treatment of the body to control lust. And then there was angel worship. And then there was all the rituals and the talks and the dissension about circumcision. Does someone that come to Christ, do they need to be circumcised? So all these things were coming about. Food regulations, you can imagine. But there was this false philosophy that had a chance of taking root there. And it denied the sufficiency of Christ for salvation and for the putting away of fleshly desires. Now keep in mind, these pagans, these Greek thinking, and these people that came from the Greek culture, sexual immorality was the norm, right? This was something that happened very prevalently in that society. So there was a danger here, and so Paul writes this. There's a metaphor that we're looking at here, and it's just this metaphor of taking off and putting on, hence the title of the message. You take off clothes every day and you put them on. And he uses this as a metaphor, something that they know about. Now, years ago, I had a shed. in the backyard and it had a lot of leaks in it. It had a tin roof with a lot of screws in it. And those bushings were wearing out and I was getting a lot of leaks. So I came up with the idea, I'm gonna just coat the whole roof. And this will solve the problem is I don't have to go from screw to screw to figure out which one is leaking. So I go and I buy a five gallon can of this roofing waterproof coating. And then I got there, I put my ladder up, and Lynn will tell you, when I go into a project, sometimes I don't really plan it or think it through. I didn't read any of the safety precautions on the can. I didn't read the instructions or the directions. And you guys know how we are. And so I got this, I came up with the idea, I can't set the can on top of the roof because it's pitched, it's gonna slide off, I don't wanna build anything to set the can down. So I decided I'm gonna tie the can to my belt. And I did that and I tied the can, I opened the lid, I stirred it, I got my roller out and I tied the can to my belt and I'm up there straddling the peak of the roof. And as I'm walking, I'm pouring and then applying the roof coating. Well, in the middle of that, as you can imagine, and I didn't have the proper protection on, I had shorts and a T-shirt, this stuff started getting on me, you know, it would slosh on me and everything. And so it was sort of dark in color and then it would dry silver. You know, Michael talked last week about when he cut the grass, he looks like the Grinch. Well, I look like the Tin Man when I was done with this. I came off and it was a hot summer day and my clothes were filthy and they were really ruined. I couldn't put them in the washing machine. It would have ruined it. These were only good for the garbage can. And I sort of hesitated about putting them in there as well. But I had to strip down in the garage. But before I did that, I said, well, let me squirt this off, get this off of me. So I got a hose and I started squirting and it wasn't coming off. So I got the Dawn dishwashing detergent and I rubbed this on and it wasn't coming off. And then I went to the solvents. turpentine, gasoline, whatever. I had to get this off. I mean, it was starting to cake up and dry. And so did I just want to tell you this just to tell you a story? No, that was hard to get off. I had to soak in the tub, and I had to use all kinds of solvents to get off. And what I want to tell you this morning is when you come to Christ, and you guys know this very well, that that sin in your life, that fleshly body, and this sinful world that we live in, it rubs off on us, and it's not easily taken off. But I took those clothes off, and I threw them in the trash can, and I went in, and I soaked, and it took me longer to get it off than it did to do the project. Now, Paul writes this letter and I'm here. Why am I here in this verse? Because I read something in Colossians that God spoke to me about. And so that is why I'm sharing that this morning. But in chapter one and two, Paul gives doctrine. And so what is doctrine? Doctrine is truth. It's truth about a subject. And here his subject is Jesus. He talks about what Jesus does for them. He makes them holy and blameless and that they lack nothing with Christ. He really talks about in this chapter 1 and 2 about Jesus' true identity. And then in our chapter today, he leads from that doctrine, he leads that into duty or action. So what are we to do with the truth that we're learning? What are the Colossians to do? He gives them truth, and now he says, this is what you're to do. This is how you're to practice it. In practical Christian living, is built on the foundation of theological truth. Practical Christian living is built on the foundation of theological truth. You see, what we believe has everything to do with how we act and how we behave. It's very important. So the theme today is followers of Jesus should intentionally put to death the old man and pursue the character of Christ. And we come into verse 12. We're going to do something a little different because most translations have this verse and it is translated therefore in English. And anytime you see therefore in the scripture, ask yourself, what is it therefore? Because what it does is it's referring back to what he previously has written, and it's an introduction to what he's about to introduce. And so I want to go back briefly to see what the therefore is there for. So I want to go back and look at verses 5 through 9. So if you look in 5 through 9 with me, We see that this is a command, number one. This is not a suggestion to the Colossian believers, and it's not a suggestion to us. He commands them to put off the sins of the old man. Another word for that is mortify or kill it. We're to be set apart from sin, set apart from this world, and set apart unto God. In verse 5, he writes, Therefore treat the parts of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. And in them you also once walked. when you were living in them, but now you also rid yourselves of all of them, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you stripped off the old self with its evil practices. And here we see the battle. And all of you guys here that are Christians, that are believers, you know about the battle. I don't need to tell you about the battle. We have it every day. And Paul is calling them to kill these sins of the old man. And if we don't kill these sins, these sins will kill us. If we don't kill these sins, our light will be dimmed. See, Jesus left that tomb. He rose from the tomb on the third day. But as Christians, sometimes we want to stay in the tomb. We want to go back to our old nature. And we fight this continually. We need to leave that tomb. That tomb is death and destruction. We need to leave that tomb just like Jesus left that tomb. And only the believer has the power and the ability to mortify these sins in their life. See, God provides what we need. He doesn't leave us alone. He gives us the Holy Spirit. So He gives us the power. He gives us the resource and the ability to overcome and kill these sins in our lives. And taking off this sin isn't automatic. You don't pray to receive the Lord. You don't call out to him in faith and repentance one night, and the next morning when you wake up, yeah, are you a new creature? Yes. Have you been indwelt with the Holy Spirit? Yes. Are your sins ever before you? Are they still there? Yes, you have a very good opportunity that you're gonna start sinning again right when you wake up. They're not gone. So this doesn't happen automatically. So we have to put forth effort into getting rid of these sins, into killing these sins with all that we've been given in Christ. It is possible. So now we're going to the main text, which is in verse 12. I want you to notice something, because we blow through this really quick, because now we want to know what to put on, right? And then we're going to look at it and ask ourselves, do I do that? We sort of judge ourselves. We're here, we're to examine our hearts, we're to examine our lives, and so we're going to do that, but we don't want to miss the first part of verse 12. In verse 12a, I want you to notice how God loves us. Number one, we are chosen. He says here, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. So number one, we're chosen. Now this is really the doctrine of election and some people have problems with it. And that's understandable. I had problems with it as well. But didn't he choose Israel? to be a light to the nations. He chose, out of all the nations there were, He chose Israel. Not because they had a lot of people, but He chose them. And if you're a believer here today, He has chosen you. He selected you. Second Timothy 1, 8 and 9 says it this way. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me, his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. And then we have Ephesians 1, 3 through 5. It says, Blessed be the God of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. So we see really like sometimes we wonder why He chose us and it should really overwhelm the believer. It's not because you've got a great personality or you figured it out or you're so good-looking. It says so in the 2 Timothy verse right here. It says, according to His own purpose and grace. In Ephesians, just what we read, it says, according to the good pleasure of His will. And why does He choose us? We're to be His hands and His feet on this earth. We are to glorify Him with our lives. How is that working out in your life this morning? If you had to answer that question before the congregation and say, how are you glorifying God? In what areas are you glorifying God? So let us not violate the purpose of our calling. Are we doing that? Are we violating it? Are we just coming to church, Sunday school and Bible study and reading the word, but there's no action connected to it. We have to be that light that he's called us to be. We're called children of the light, so we need to expose the darkness. He gives us the resource. He gives us everything we need, but not only are we chosen, look in the verse here, what it says. It says we're holy. He calls us holy. Now, the first part is that doesn't mean we're perfect. We all know that from experience. We would all raise our hands that we know that. But it means we're consecrated or we're set apart. We are declared holy at conversion. But that doesn't mean that we can go and live any way that we want to. Well, really, when we understand how much God has loved us and what he has forgiven us for, we are to gladly fall under the Lord's authority. This should be something that gives us joy. This should be something that we do gladly. And so now I'm going to prove what I just said to you. I'm going to use doctrine. I'm going to use the truth to back up what I've just said. In 1 Corinthians 6, 19 through 20, listen carefully, it says, Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. So God first sets us apart. as holy, and then he gives us the resources, the Holy Spirit, to live that life out in the new man, in reality. So it's not automatic. We see that in 1 Peter 1, 15 through 16. It says, But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves, also in all your behavior, because it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy. We sang about that this morning. And then Hebrews 12, 14, pursue peace with all people and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. So we're to pursue peace and pursue holiness. So God calls us holy at conversion. And we call this justification. It happens at the moment you call upon the Lord and you repent and he saves you. At that very moment, God takes the penalty of sin off of you and off of me. That is absolutely amazing. And just knowing this should cause us to praise him for all eternity. But he does more. He does much more. This word justification, what happens when you are born again at that moment, you are declared righteous before God. Because what did Jesus do? He took on our sin and He imputed righteousness to us. He transferred His righteousness to us. So it starts at justification, our pursuing. A new life. And this is called sanctification. It's this point in time from justification to glorification. And we're a part of that. I mean, we just don't sit on our Lazy Boy after we're saved and eat Cheetos all day and watch reruns. I mean, this takes effort. But not only are we, as he calls us, Does he choose us? And we're called holy. But look what else he calls us. He calls us beloved. Now this word is a special type of love. And it's lavished on God's elect. And that may be difficult for some. I thought God loved the world, and he does. But he has a special love for his elect. And the way I could really give an example of that was if you're a husband here today and you have children, your love is unique for your wife. Husbands, it's unique. It's a special love. And then for your children, it's a special love. And I wouldn't think that you would love me like you love your wife and your children. as a brother in Christ. I don't expect that. That's just not reality. This is the type of love he has for us, his children. And understanding this truth should really spur us to obey. This should be like a springboard that kindles a desire to put on the character of Christ. 1 John 3.1 states this, see how great a love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God. And in fact, we are. 1 John 4.19, we love because he first loved us. Point number one in your bulletin is since God has lavished His love on us, we should joyfully strive to put on the character of our Savior. Remember the sins that we just went back in verse nine and we read, those fleshly worldly sins? I think four of them were of a sexual type of sin. And then we have sins of speech, things that come out of our mouth. How powerful is our mouth and how sinful it is. And then we see the sin of anger and wrath and the malice. So what is he telling the Colossians to put on? Because none of us put on, I don't think, put on clean clothes over dirty clothes. We normally get rid of those, put them in the washer or put them in a trash bag, as in my example. So we get rid of those and we take showers, I hope, and we put on new clothes. What are we to put on? What were they to put on? And notice as well, How specific he is about these sins is very important. He just didn't say, do away with the old man and your sins and put on the righteousness of Christ. He's very specific. And I think that's important when we're dealing with our sins. We need to be specific. We need to call that sin out in our life. And that way we're better adapt to facing it and targeting that sin in our particular life. Because we certainly have many. Amen. So what are we to put on? Let's read it. This is second half of 12. Let's put on compassion, hearts, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. What does this heart of compassion look like? The King James, it calls it bowels of mercy. This is a deep-seated love and compassion for someone that causes us to take action. It's not looking at the homeless man under the bridge and maybe praying for him or saying, man, he's in a bad spot right now. It causes us to take action. We have this deep love that comes from the heart. We see that in Jesus when He takes our penalty upon Himself. He had compassion on us. And then we see kindness. We all pretty much know what these words mean. Maybe we need to put them on. Right? Are you a kind person? Pretty much everyone I've ever met in here is kind. It's a wonderful thing to come into the body. We're all kind to one another. It's different in the world. But this kindness is closely related to compassion. We know in Romans 2, 4, what does it say? It says, God's kindness leads us to repentance. Then we have humility, and we all know what being humble is. Some people I've met are proud of their humility. And they call themselves, you know, worms, and they always want to, you know, put themselves down. And I understand we want to have this rightful position before God and under God, but we shouldn't be proud of our humility. It should be true humility, like that of Christ when he washed his disciples' feet. He showed what a true leader is. And he gave example of that, his humility. And then we have this meekness, gentleness, or gentleness. This is not weakness. And in the Greeks' thinking and their culture, you did not want to be meek or gentle. This was not something that they took kindly to. They looked at you as weak. We know that meekness is not weakness. It's power under control. And we know who showed us that as an example, Jesus. He had all the power in the world, but he laid down his life for his people. But then we have patience to put on. We know what patience is. We try to have patience with all people. Sometimes it runs out. Then we sin, right? But I want you to think of the patience God had toward you and me. Think about that. This is a willingness to suffer injury instead of inflicting it. And all of these that we've just spoken about has to do with the relationships. These are relational. Well, you can't do any of this by isolating yourself from the believers and the church and being a lone ranger Christian. You can't do any of this. This must be done amongst the people. And we need to work these out. We need to work at it and cultivate it. Now, there's many here in the congregation that I know of, and you plant gardens. And if you went out and planted your garden, whatever, whether you planted the little plants to start with or from seed, you went out there and you planted it all and you watered it and fertilized it, and you didn't do anything to it, you ignored it for two months. Now do you think that you're gonna go out there and have a good harvest? There's no way you're gonna have good vegetables. You know that. I mean, those fire ants are going to get into it, the deer, the rabbits, the weeds. They're going to dry out. They're going to die. You're not going to have a harvest. So think about that. Like, are you working toward putting on the new man? Are you working on putting on these characteristics that Christ had? Now I have a sheet, I didn't bring it up here, you couldn't see it anyway, but there's 70-something put-ons and put-offs. And I'll be glad to share that with you if you just stop by and let me know. I'll send it to you on email. Most of you probably already have it or have that resource. Can you imagine being baptized? You just came to the Lord, you're excited, you're baptized, you come out of the water and you dry off, you put some new clothes on, and I hand you this list of 72 put-ons and put-offs. I mean, you would choke on that. You know, so you can take that and what you do, don't be overwhelmed by it, but read it. Read what we're to put off and then put on. And there's scripture that lines up with it. And then you work on the things that you're struggling with most. You work at it. You cultivate it. It's not gonna automatically happen. And Jesus models all of these traits that we've talked about. and to be Christ-like, we are to model them as well. Point number two, let us cultivate the traits of Jesus in order to glorify him. Are you cultivating those in your life or are you just hoping that it will be automatic and that somehow God is gonna use you? And then verse 13, It says, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so you must do also. And this bearing with one another, forebearing, putting up with one another, you know, the definition here is to endure. stand up or to be tolerant of. That sounds a little harsh, right? I'm tolerating you because you get on my nerves. I'm enduring you. But it just has this idea of being being gracious and thinking of the grace that God showed to us This is a verse that I use. I think that it will cover many of the things we talk about. It's just a simple verse that I use personally in my life. And it will change the way you interact with the people that you know in the church and then outside of the church. And it's Philippians 2, 3. And it says, do nothing from selfish or empty conceit, but with humility, Consider one another as more important than yourself. Oh, if we could do that. What transformation that God would bring about within our churches and outside of the church. How often is all about me is so self-centered. I stand guilty. I raised both hands. And I would raise my feet too if I wouldn't break my neck here on stage. I'm guilty. I'm guiltier than everyone and anyone here. So we might have different preferences and careers, hobbies and opinions. But let us remember this morning that we are adopted into one family. And it's the same family. If you're a believer here today, you may not like it, but you're my brother and sister, or sister. We are brothers and sister, we are family. I'm not gonna sing that song. And then lastly, we see a most important attribute to put on. This is forgiveness. We're talking about biblical forgiveness. Look again in 13. How are we to forgive? What does it say? How are we to forgive? As the Lord forgave you. This convicted me. I've known that. But when I was reading it convicted me. So I had to teach everything else that I taught today. to get to this, right? Because it was part of the text. I praise the Lord to use it. So how did he forgive us? In Colossians 2, 14, it says that he canceled our debt. He canceled that debt by taking it away. He nailed it to the cross. And I want you to keep that in mind when we talk about forgiveness. When you talk about forgiveness, it's about counseling a debt. It's about not just saying that you're sorry, and you say, and we're gonna go over this, but you say, you know, I forgive you, and really what we mean by that is, you know, I'm not gonna key your car, or I'm not gonna hit you in the mouth. You know, in other words, I'm withholding my wrath from you, and that is what I call forgiveness. This is a worldly forgiveness. Jesus cancels our debt, and then Ephesians 1-7 says, For in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins according to the riches of His grace. He gave His life to pay our sin debt. And then we consider the teaching of Matthew 18 through 35. I'd like for you to read that when you get home. I'm going to sum it up because of time. It's Matthew 18, 23, 35. This is the parable of the unmerciful servant. And to sum that up quickly, you had a king and he had a servant. The servant owed a lot of money. His debt was due. He came to the king and the king said, your debt is due. And the servant says, I can't pay that debt. I'm unable to pay it. And he says, well, I'm going to sell everything you have and your family to pay the debt. And the servant falls on his knees. He begs for forgiveness. asks the Lord to cancel the debt. Asks his king to cancel the debt. And the king has pity on him. He has mercy on him and he cancels that debt. So he gets up and he goes home and he has servants as well. And it was time for one of his servants to pay the debt. This was a much smaller debt than he owed to the king. And he comes and He says, well, you owe the debt, and his servant tells him, well, I can't pay the debt, have mercy on him. He gets on his knees begging for pity, begging for forgiveness of the debt, and he chokes him. He's so angry with him, he chokes him and he puts him in jail. And it says, this is how my heavenly Father will treat you. Well, he says up above that, it says, the king heard about this, unmerciful servant. And he calls him in and he declares him a wicked servant. And he has him tortured in jail and says, this is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless we forgive our brother from our heart. And if we are failing to continually forgive, this proves to us that the Holy Spirit does not dwell in you. See, forgiveness is at the center of the Christian life. And you tell me, you know, the sin that has been perpetrated on me or someone has done on me is just too great to forgive. I cannot forgive it. It's too great. It's too heinous. It may have happened when you were a child and you're still living in and through that today. You just can't do it, and you're exactly right. You can't. Not in and of yourself, you cannot do it. But Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit through Christ. We have the ability to overcome that, and we must do it. We must. And here's what we do, this is a worldly type of forgiveness. We say we forgive, we forgive a person, they've sinned against us and we forgive them. And then we're in a room full of people and they walk in and what do we do? Maybe just a little rolling of the eyes. Now we would never do that if we were by ourself, but we roll the eyes to let others know of your disapproval for them. We gossip. We gossip about them, right? We get in our prayer groups. They've sinned against you. We need to pray for brother so-and-so. You know, he stole money out of my truck last night. You're gossiping. It may be true, but it's not edifying to the person. It's not building the person up. And we're probably all guilty of these things. And we need to be careful of them. And then, I hear this a lot from husbands, from wives, excuse me. No, husbands. Yeah, husbands. Tell me, my wife always brings up stuff. I mean, for 10 years ago, from 15 years ago, and husbands were guilty as well. We are all guilty of this. We bring up stuff in the past. This is not love. The scripture tells us that this is not love and this is not forgiveness. You know what we're doing when we do that? We're making the other person continue to pay. That means we haven't forgiven their debt. We're making them pay. We've not truly forgiven. Many are here today. And you've been bitter and angry for years. Because you've failed to forgive like Jesus forgave you. It could be someone that's even has passed on. You continue with that anger and that bitterness. You have this unwillingness to truly forgive, and this quite possibly could show your spiritual condition. And there's this fleshly temptation, right, to do that, to make that person pay, because we'll say we forgive you, but we really don't mean it. And certainly if someone I've come up with these scenarios that don't even make sense. But if someone slapped me in the head, right, today in the hall, one of the kids just slapped me in the head and drew blood, you know, obviously I'm not gonna be in a forgiving mood right then. Some of this takes time. I need to wipe down the blood, stop the blood from bleeding, and go home and think about this and stew for a little bit. But then I think about Christ, how he's forgiven me and hopefully by the resource that God gives us through the Holy Spirit, I'm able to forgive that person. I need to come to a place where I forgive them. Brothers and sisters, aren't you thankful that God didn't make us pay? Why do we feel that we have to make others pay? God forgave us through Christ. while we were his enemies. God forgave us through Christ while we continually rejected him. He doesn't put us on a probation period when he saves us. He doesn't say, I'm going to give you two years to see how you act. No, he saves us immediately. And then, as we read, he adopts us into his family. Only God can do this. And then we can do it as his children through the Spirit. I've noticed in some people that I have relationships with outside of this body, they're professing Christians, but they will cut someone off in a skinny minute. Not in traffic. I mean some of the most petty things that some people do to them and they're done with them. They don't speak to them. They have cut them out of their life. They won't even look at them. And this becomes a sinful habit if this is how we're handling forgiving people because we're doing it in a worldly way. Let us examine our hearts this morning. Examine your heart this morning. You can forgive because you've been given the ability. And if you've had spats with pretty much everybody that you've come into contact with, you've had friends and they're no longer friends, and then maybe even in other relationships that just never seem to work out, And it's always the other person's fault. Maybe it's time to look at the common denominator. Maybe it's time to take an examination of yourself. Put it off. Put this off. Voti Baca makes this statement. I thought it was very good. says we're making the person pay when we say we forgive them and we're withholding affection and honor and attention. Husbands, do you do that with your wife? Wives, do you do it with your husbands? I think we probably all have. And what we're doing is making them pay. We haven't biblically forgiven them. And then we have the verse that people, when we talk about forgiveness, they talk about a lot. It's Hebrews 8, 12, where God says, I will remember their sins no more. And they say, I want to forget. I want to forget all those sins that happened in my childhood that were terrible. I want to forget all the sins that I committed against God when I was younger. Because God, He forgot. God is not a man that he forgets. God chooses not to remember. And we should be thankful for that. I'm glad God doesn't forget like a man. He may forget that he saved me and you. So we see this is a process. We forgive the person initially, And then every time we think about that sin that they've done to us, we forgive them again. So it's just not a one and done deal. This is a process. And we say we want to forget about it, but I don't think we do. Because when you think of all the things that you've done against the Lord before he saved you, and even now, when you think about that, Doesn't that give the glory to God even more so than if you did forget? If we're forgetting what we did, there's a physical problem. It's called dementia, and we have other terms for it. But it's hard to forget, isn't it, when someone really wrongs you? We don't want to forget. That's the glory of it. That is the grace. That's the magnificence of our Savior. We see that from him. So from this brings really more praise and desire to live for him. And then thirdly, let us become, the third point in your bulletin, let us become living testimonies of the grace of God by forgiving others as Jesus forgave us. So as we put off this old nature and we're replacing it with this new nature, these new characteristics, we can rejoice that we will glorify God. Now what does it mean to glorify God? It means to acknowledge Him as great. We glorified God when we were singing. That's what praise does. It glorifies Him. We worship. We praise Him. We do works of service. We do good deeds. We don't do them for salvation. We do good deeds because He has saved us. We're obedient to His commands. And so that is what glorifying God is. Isaiah 47 3 tells us that He created us for, it says, for my glory. And then we have verse 14, in addition to all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. So if we practice these virtues without love, we really fall into legalism. We're just checking the boxes. But love is the foundation or the glue of all of these traits that we've talked about today. If we don't do them from love, They're empty. They're hypocritical. What are we talking about today? Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. So love is like this belt that holds all of those things close to the heart. And this is what love is. This is how love is shown by all of these things that we've talked about. We put on these attributes from the heart of love. Guess what we do here? We strengthen the unity of the church, of the body. Very important. This is how we love one another. This is how we love one another. So let us put to death the old man. in his sinful nature and put on Christ. Let us pray. Father, we come to you this morning. We thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you for convicting us, Father. We have not been obedient to what you've called us to do. So, Father, I pray that you would speak to each heart today Help us to examine our hearts, Father, and do a mighty work in our hearts, in our lives this morning. Father, if there's any unforgiveness in our life, forgiveness like you had for us, Father, bring that to the front of our mind and our attention. And we're thankful that you give us the ability to be able to forgive through your spirit. And for those here this morning, that do not know the Lord. They have never repented of their sin and called out in faith, trusting and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. I pray that, Father, you would do a mighty work in their heart, that you would convict them of their sin and they would turn to you, and that you would give them that wonderful purpose that wonderful, joyful life of serving you and loving you and loving others. And God is able to make all grace overflow to you so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. Amen. Thank you. Have a blessed day.