Take your Bible with me and let's go to Colossians chapter number three. I don't know you, but I think spring is probably one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy seeing new life come to being, the flowers coming up. We have some peonies at our house that I planted a few years ago and they come up and then they die out and you cut them back and you think, well, are they gonna come up again or not? And you watch and One day you look and there's just a little bit of life showing out of the ground. Two or three days later, they're up about six or eight inches and just growing and it's just amazing to watch and to see the flowers blooming and the roses. And to be able to build stuff out of the pollen is always a joy. To be able to do that. You know, try building a fortress out of that pollen. It works really well. It holds together good. It holds together really good. And nobody will come around. But spring is a wonderful time of the year. It's also a time when a lot of people do a lot of spring cleaning. And that's what we're talking about today. It's time to spring clean because we see things happening in the world, see things happening in our families, in our communities. We see a mindset taking place, a mentality that is happening. And as we read the scripture, We find that much of this that's going on, we're told about in scripture, but it's not condoned by the scripture. We're warned of it, as we'll see in some of these verses we look at today. But it's always a time in a believer's life for us to keep cleaning out stuff, to get rid of the stuff that doesn't belong there, the attitudes, the behavior patterns, the loves, the lack of love, and always revamping according to what the scripture teaches. As God shows us from his word, things that need to happen, then we do that and we let him be God and we let him lead us and we guide us and we let him guide us. Paul, in writing to the people at Colossae, has taken the first two chapters and just kind of set down some doctrinal issues and some things that's going on there in that local church and says, now this is what we need to do, this is how we need to think. Then he comes to chapter three and he changes his direction to focus on Christ. And we see here in the first verse, if ye then be risen with Christ, if you profess to be a Christian, if you profess to be a believer, then this is what ought to be happening in your life. so that these people at Colossae can look at their own personal lives and examine what's going on and what they're doing in relationship to what the scripture teaches. Now in this day, they didn't have a Bible like we have. So when the preacher came to town or he wrote a letter and he shared truth with them, it was precious to these people. Very important. It's even more important because Paul didn't just write, sit down one day and say, well, I think I'll write a letter to this church. No, he wrote this letter because God told him what to write. God inspired him to write this. And so what we're reading is not just a letter from some guy to a church. This is God speaking through this man to this church. And so when we read passages like we're gonna read today, it's not just man speaking, it's God speaking. And we need to hold that frame of mind. So it carries more authority, it carries more power. It carries more significance. It gives us clear, direct understanding of what God wants out of us. There are too many people that read the Bible without the mindset and the background thinking that this is God speaking here. This is God using human beings to write it down. but they wrote as God inspired them. As God's breathed upon them the words, they wrote down what God said. They didn't write down concepts, they wrote down what God said, write this word. Plenary inspiration, God breathed the words and man wrote them down. And as we think about this, it helps us to realize the significance of the heart of God. and how very real and timely the Bible is, no matter when you're reading it. You could be reading it in the 1800s, it was timely. You could be reading it in the 21st century, it's timely. It hasn't lost its impact, which is another evidence of the fact of God inspiring the Bible. But Paul says, through God's inspiring him, if you then are risen with Christ, then seek those things which are above. where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. In other words, you're going to live on the earth. You're going to operate on the earth. You're going to go to work on the earth, but all you do should have as in the background of your mind, I'm doing this for the Lord. I'm doing this as unto the Lord. And I'm doing it with the understanding that one day I'm going to go to be with the Lord. I'm not going to be here forever. But time's going to come, if God doesn't come and take me home as a group, he'll take me individually. And so Paul says, this is how we think, this is how we live. If we live that way, if we think that way, then what Paul says after that is not so hard to grasp and it's not so hard to agree with. But we live in a world today and the standard and the thoughts and the value system of our world today is absolutely contrary to what we're going to see in these verses of scripture. He says, for you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. So with the understanding that I'm going to be with the Lord forever, I'm gonna live in heaven, then I need to do some spring cleaning. And so the first thing we see in our notes is we see sins that should be non-existent in the believer. I mean, these ought not be there at all in Christians, period, no form or fashion. He says, mortify therefore your members, which are upon the earth. The word mortify is the idea of put it to death, kill it. And it's the idea of you and I taking the first step to do that. Now, how do I do that with my thinking? Okay, if God says that this is not to be in my life, then I need to think I need to get it out of my life. So I began the process of mortification, but I have to let God do it in me and through me. But he says, mortify therefore your members, which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. So we see here in our notes, point a, since the believer is risen with Christ, according to verse one, and because the believer died with Christ in verse three, the believer is to mortify the flesh, which is prone to sins of all types. We're to put it to death. We're to slay it. We're to deprive it of power. We're to destroy its strength. Meaning it's already in us, it's there, and we have a responsibility to starve it to death. To do whatever we need to do to change the pattern of our life so that these things that is listed here do not impact us. It may be changing what you watch on television. It may be changing the music you listen to. It may be the places you go. It may be the things you look at on the computer, but we begin to do what's necessary to set in place a process of killing these possible sins that lie down deep, buried, waiting just for a moment to rise up. We're to mortify them. We're to put them to death. Paul is not advocating that we kill ourselves Please understand that he's not advocating that we do that, that we kill ourselves in order that these things might go away. But what he is saying that we are to put to death those thoughts and behaviors that would lead us to ungodliness or put to death those thoughts and behaviors that would cause our old nature, which unfortunately we still have to want to rise up and take control. Now he lists these for us, these things that we're to put to death and they're not to be sins found in any believer, but every believer is capable of doing them. I get a couple of news emails. They give me current events in religion. And when I say religion, I'm talking loosely, but in religious elements. And it's amazing the things that are going on in religious circles. Many of them fall into these sin categories. Leaders, people, denominations, groups. It's amazing what's happening in people's lives that are in religious communities. Now, Paul said those things should not be happening. And had those people been doing what the Bible said, they wouldn't have had those sinful urges rise up and take control of their behavior in their life. And it wouldn't have destroyed their testimony and their ministry opportunities. Folks, you and I live in a world that's watching us as Christians. More and more people are watching us because we profess to be a Christian than ever before, because more and more people are advocating being a non-Christian. And therefore they watch us waiting for an opportunity to point out some fault in the way we talk, the way we act or the practices of our lives. So you and I have a wonderful open opportunity to demonstrate Christ's power in our lives to these people who are watching. So that instead of us becoming a category in one of these emails, we're never listed there because our life is where it ought to be for the Lord. And those people who are watching us are being impacted positively with the gospel and not negatively. Because when a believer falls into deep sin, and I'll explain a little more about that in a moment, when they fall into a deep sin in their life, they not only destroy their testimony, but they hinder the gospel being reached to those who are watching them. Because now the gospel has been tainted by that person's behavior. My father-in-law, who is with the Lord now, My wife and I, when we got married, had a real burden for his salvation. And for many years, we tried to be a witness and talk to him. And one time we sat down with him and shared the gospel with him. And he looked me in the eyes and he said, Ron, if I don't go to heaven, then some of the people in the church that I tend with my wife aren't going to go either. And he explained their lifestyles. Well, my wife and I had gone to visit them often enough that we'd gone to church with them and we knew the people they were talking about. What my father-in-law was saying to me is because of the testimony of that person that sits in that pew that claims to be a Christian and the way they live. If they go to heaven, I'll go to heaven. And that's terrible. So we saw that trying to witness. I mean, he knew the gospel. He knew how to be saved. So we began to just pray for him and love him where he was. Great man, family-oriented, good provider for his family, but he just needed Jesus. And at the age of 70 years old, the man got saved. And when he got saved, God changed his life. I mean, it wasn't a lot to change, but there's some organizations he belonged to that he said, you know, as a Christian, I can't be a part of these organizations anymore. And he dropped out. And he had a wonderful testimony for Christ the rest of his life. He's home with the Lord now, but that's what I'm talking about. People are watching you. You don't know who they are. You may never know who they are, but they're watching your life. And Paul says, mortify these things that should not be in a believer. First of all, fornication. Fornication is sexual relationship outside the bond of marriage. It was a common practice in that day among those who are unsaved and would have become a distinguishing mark of change. If one no longer participated in such behavior, Paul says, this is just common practice in the world and the community and Colossi where these people lived, it was common practice. Everybody did it. Everybody's doing it. So that makes it okay. Paul says, no, it doesn't make it. Okay. God says it's wrong. And God hasn't changed his mind about it. God has never condoned sexual relationship outside the marriage bond, never has, never will. And Paul says, as a Christian, this should never ever be a part of who you are as a believer, period. Generally, the word relates to unmarried people involved in immorality. It is used, however, at times in the scripture to speak of immoral relationships in general. whether the person is married or unmarried. But Paul says, kill that desire to have sexual relationship outside the marriage bond. The next one is uncleanness. In a moral sense, it's the idea of impurity, of lustful, shameful living. Being controlled by your fleshly appetites. We're seeing more and more of this in America. and around the world, but in America, we're seeing more and more of this, of people living according to their fleshly appetites. And their fleshly appetites send them in all kinds of directions. We have men who say they're now women. We have women who say they're now men. We have little kids who their parents are encouraging them to find themselves. Find out who they are. Listen, God already told them who they are. They're either born a male or female. But things are so radically changing in our society that the terminology's changing in applications, the terminology's changing on birth certificates, the terminology's changing when you go to visit your doctor. They're asking you questions now that you look at and say, this is a stupid question. They already know my position. They already know who I am. They already know I'm a guy. And they already know my practices in life socially. So why would they be asking me these stupid questions? Because that's the society we're living in and it's getting more and more prevalent in our day. And if you could have an opportunity to sit down with those who are going through these changes and giving themselves over to uncleanness, you would find their lives are absolutely miserable. Even when they change their identification, they still don't know who they are. And it's tragic. Romans 1.24 says, therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. Romans 6.19, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. 1 Thessalonians 4, 7, God did not call us to uncleanness, but unto holiness. Paul says, give up these types of behaviors, inordinate affections. Uncleanness, inordinate affections go real close together. It's the idea of wicked, unnatural affections. It's the idea of a battle raging in your mind. And that's where all of this stuff begins in the mind. Our minds are thought factories. We cannot control the thoughts that our minds generate. So don't even try. But we do control the thoughts that we choose to rest upon and develop. That's where the issue arises. And it's not uncommon for our minds in the society in which we live to have certain thoughts go through our mind that we know are not proper, but they're there nonetheless. They go through and then we look with, how could I even thought that? Because your mind's a thought factory. That's okay. It's not okay for you to develop that thought. It's not okay to say, hmm, let me think about that one for a while and plant yourself right there and develop that mindset. No, that's where the problem comes in. It happens in the mind. The warfare of the mind is the enemy or the old nature waging war on the believer to persuade the believer to commit the sin by fueling ungodly passions. And you don't have to look very far to see all the ungodly passions that are around us. They're there. And you and I must do something to take a defense action against those things. We are to mortify inordinate affections. Paul says in Romans 1, for this cause God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lusts, one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error, which was meat. God, many years ago, spoke about the day we're living in, and it's not changed. We're not the new ones to come on the scene with this kind of thinking, by the way. If you research history, you'll find this has been a pattern down through time, but it's a pattern in nations that no longer exist because they get to that state and they are ultimately destroyed. We're to give up and put to death evil concupiscence. or lust. The word is used 31 times for lust, concupiscence three times, and other things you have there. What it is, it's a craving, a longing, a desire for what is forbidden by God and his word. All these things we're reading about, we are to get rid of evil concupiscence. We are to kill it. As believers, these things shouldn't even be a part of our lives. And then fifth, Covetousness, which is idolatry. It's a love for things which become idolatry because the love of the things become greater than one's love for God. In other words, God is replaced by things. What's a value in your world? If God took everything in your world and left you with nothing as he did with Job, Would you say like Job did, though he slay me, yet will I serve him? I hope we would. I hope I would. I don't know. I hope I would. But what Paul is saying here is when anything is more important to me than God, it has become my idol. Now we've got to keep a balance here. Our health is important. Our family relationship is important. Going to work and doing our job is important. All those things are factors, but all those things that we do and have to have in our lives because of necessity should all be done so that God would be pleased with what we're doing. We should do our jobs so that God would be pleased. We should develop our family relationship so that God would be pleased. any extracurricular activity we may be involved in. Maybe you like to play golf, maybe you like to cook, maybe you like to go fishing, maybe you like to go camping, whatever it may be. Outdoor things, indoor things, all those should be done with the understanding that God is with me in everything I do and he's okay with what I'm doing. He's pleased with it. That way, that thing or that issue that we're in or whatever we're doing as a practice or a hobby doesn't take God's place, but we're doing it for his glory. So you're out on the golf course and you hit the golf ball right where it's supposed to go and it goes somewhere else. You look up to heaven and say, Lord, you had a plan. It wasn't mine, but I'm okay with it. I'll add the extra strokes to my scorecard. Or you throw that hook in the water to catch that fish and nothing comes up and you spent all day out on the lake expecting to bring home supper and you come home with empty hooks. It's all God's plan, all part of his plan. And you're okay with that. In other words, God is there in everything you do. He's on the throne. He's in charge. You praise him for allowing him to do those things. But with the understanding that the end result is God's. And I'm okay with it. and therefore those things do not become idolatrous. So we are to not allow our lives to have a love for things more than a love for God. For this ye know, in Ephesians 5.5, that no whoremonger, nor unclean, nor covetous, nor idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. So here's some things that Paul says, hey, you need to kill those. They shouldn't even exist in your life, period. Do they exist? Yes, they're buried very down deep. They're down there, folks, I'm gonna tell you. There's not a one of us that can say, I'll never do that, because there's been a lot of people said that and did it. But what we do is we practice a lifestyle that keeps them buried and inactive and helpless and pretty much dead. We don't feed them. Why? Secondly, verse six and seven, the reason for the mortification. Verse six. For which things, the things I just mentioned, Paul says, with such things, sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience in the which he also walked sometime when you lived in them. So the reason is God's wrath is being stirred against those sins and those practices. Read Romans chapter one. Also, as God's children, we should not invite God's severe chastening by yielding to the temptation to do these things that are unnatural to the believer. I mean, I already know the Bible says whom the Lord loves, he chases. I know that. So God still believes in whipping his kids. I know a lot of parents don't, but God does. Chastening. The idea of chastening there is dad taking off his belt, having the kid bend over and giving them a whipping. That's the idea of chastening. Now God's chastening comes in varying degrees. It can come in various sources. It can be light. It can be just a spoken word to a heart of a believer saying, you have sinned against me. And it just breaks that believer's heart and immediately confess it and make it right with God. Or it can start that way. You've sinned against me. And that believer just says, I'm going to shut that thought out. And they keep doing it. And the next thing, you know, God says, listen, if you don't straighten up, I'm going to have to take a much more severe attitude toward this. And it could be that believer will pay a long-term price. It could be a job loss. It could be a family member loss. It could be a member of their body, their own personal body lost. I mean, there are ways, there are ways that God will chasten his children. Well, if God is so loving, he wouldn't do that. If God wasn't loving, he would not stop doing it. It's because he does love us that he chastens his children. And God says, Paul, tell these people that these are sins that I despise, I hate them. And anybody who's doing them, I'm gonna deal severely with them. And so that's a reason for you and me to get these things out of our lives. Now, there have been people that have not taken that counsel. People in outstanding positions in religious circles, and they didn't take a serious thought about what God would do. Thought they could outsmart God, and then they got caught. Their lives are ruined, their families are ruined, many of them died. And it's tragic because of the lives that are negatively impacted for the gospel. And the people who trusted those individuals as leaders in Christian circles, the disappointment they faced. This happens often in churches. People will go to a church, get involved in a church. Unfortunately, they take their eyes off of the Lord and put it on people, and people disappoint them. I've said this before, I'll say it again. Don't follow me, follow God. You follow me, I'll disappoint you. I will. Not because I'm trying, but because I'm human. I'm a sinner saved by grace. That's all I am. But when we follow God and we keep our focus on Jesus, what's Paul say? If you then be risen with Christ. Not risen with the preacher or some church member were risen with Christ. We set our affections on Christ and we follow Christ. And we choose not to allow the world or other church people to dictate our relationship with Christ. But we're going to walk with the Lord and not allow events and people to change who we are in Christ. And so Paul says, listen, God doesn't like this to the point that he severely punishes it. So there's the reason Paul said, get rid of these things. Third, in verse eight and nine, sins that are found in believers and must be dealt with quickly. So there are a set of sins that Paul talks about that should not be there period at any time, under any circumstance. Now he's addressing sins that are there, but need to be addressed. In verse eight and nine. Now ye also put off all these. The word put off means to take off as one undresses. As you get ready for bed at night and you take your day clothes off and you put your night clothes on to get ready for bed, you're changing your outfit. You're changing what you've got on. You're getting rid of it. You're separating yourself from it. That's the idea here. One is to undress themselves like they're getting ready to take a bath or like they're getting ready to go to bed. Take off. What do we take off? Take off these also. Anger. Wrath. Malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that you put off the old man with his deeds. Anger. All of us have anger. It's a God given characteristic. It's something that God placed in all of us. And he says this anger is there, but it's to be controlled. Now, I can't control my anger. That's my wife. You can't control yours. But God can. God can control it. Anger is the temper that heats up towards someone that leads to sinful behavior. Anger. It's the idea of either I don't like what's happening to me or I don't like what someone's doing. It doesn't fit in with my concept or ideas. Therefore, I'm going to get mad about it. And when I get mad, I react accordingly. Paul says that's a no-no. So what we have here is we are to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, not by our emotions, not by our anger. Paul says, put off anger, put off wrath. Wrath is behavior ignited by anger. Our anger uncontrolled becomes wrath. It becomes a behavior pattern. James 1, 26, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Then malice, we have a progression here. It starts with anger, it goes to wrath, then it becomes malice. Malice is the result of anger producing wrath. It's ill will and a desire to injure the one with whom a person is angry. In other words, if I give in to my anger and let it control my thinking and my acting, it turns to wrath. So you mention a person's name and my blood pressure goes up. You mention something that person has done that I don't like, I'm apt to react verbally or take some kind of action toward that person. Not controlled by the Holy Spirit, but controlled by my anger. Therefore, my behavior pattern goes from godliness to ungodliness. It goes from glorifying God to glorifying my desire. I go to being an idolater. Say, how can that be? Because I have taken God off of the throne and put myself up there. Instead of saying, yes, this person rubs me the wrong way, or they have done evil against me. They have wronged me. I decide that I'm going to deal with it. Instead of saying, Lord, you know all about the situation. You know all about this person. Therefore, I turn them over to you. You know what they're doing. You're well aware of it. You're more aware of it than I am. You know the motive behind it. You know the end result they're trying to accomplish. But help me not to become a part of that or a victim to it. Help me, Lord, to give my anger that I'm feeling right now toward that person over to you and let you take that situation. Let you deal with that person. And I will trust you to deal with it as you see fit. I'm not going to pray the wrath of God on them. I'm not going to pray that God will strike them dead and remove them from the earth. I'm just going to pray that God's will be done because God knows what he's trying to accomplish by that person's behavior that has made me angry. But if I allow that person's behavior or that situation that happens that I can't control and it makes me angry. If I allow that to control who I am, my anger is going to turn to wrath. And if I don't address it then and let God have it while it's reaching the boiling stage, then it's ultimately going to come up to that boiling stage and it's going to become malice. I may never do something actually to that person, but I've done it in my heart. And that's just as wrong in God's sight if I had taken and done the action itself. Malice, it's a terrible thing. This ill will and desire to injure another person who has made us angry. Galatians 5.15, but if you bite and devour one another, take heed lest you be not consumed one of another. Titus 3.3, for we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lust and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. There was no one practice malice any more viciously than Saul of Tarsus. But when God saved him, he became Paul the apostle, and that malice was gone. Now, did he still battle it? I'm sure he did. God saved the man. He became a new creature in Christ, but he still had to address the old nature. And Paul often said, I am what I am by the grace of God. So we're to lay aside anger, wrath, and malice. We're next to take off blasphemy. Blasphemy is slander, detraction, speech injurious to another person's good name. It's impious and reproachful speech injurious to God's name. We often look at blasphemy and say, well, I'm not going to speak evil of God. Well, what about speaking evil of that person? The concept here of blasphemy is not just associated with God. I need to guard what I say about other people. I need to guard what I say about other people's families. I need to guard what I say about other preachers. I need to guard what I say about other churches. I need to guard what I say, period. I need to be careful that what comes out of my mouth is not injurious to a person's character or to the name of God. Because when I speak in an ungodly fashion about somebody else to somebody else, I'm also injuring the name of God by my behavior. Blasphemy. We must guard what we say. We must guard what we think. We must guard the way we live. Put off anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy. Put off filthy communication out of your mouth. This is profane and obscene talk. And again, in our world today, these things are practiced. It's not unusual to hear somebody just tearing down the character of another person. It's not unusual to have someone sharing their anger publicly with another person and what they're going to do about it. It's not unusual in our society today to hear people talking like the world and yet professing to be a believer, thinking it's okay to use the language of the world just because I've been saved. If you've been saved, it's going to change the way you talk. It's going to change your verbiage. It's going to change your vocabulary. There are words that you're going to know not to use because they do not honor God, but they definitely glorify the world and the world system. And therefore we change the way we talk as believers. We do not allow ourselves to use filthy communication. Ephesians 4 29 says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace to the hearer. Ephesians 5, 4, neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks. Blasphemy. Put away anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth, and then lie not one to another. The idea is to deliberately be dishonest with another person. You know what's coming out of your mouth is not true. You know it. but it comes out anyhow. And Paul says, this is not to be. Now again, this is God saying this. As a believer, we should not be dishonest people. To the best of our ability, we should always be honest. And when we find out that we've said something that's inaccurate, it will do us well to go back to that person and correct it. I said something to you that was not true. I have now found out that it wasn't true and I want to come and correct that. I don't want you to think that I was deliberately telling you a lie. Say preacher, that's just going to an extreme. No, it's not. No, it's not. Our world has little or no character in it today. And when a believer will go to someone else and say, you know, I told you something that wasn't true, or you caught me off guard and I said something that was not right, and I'm coming to correct that, it will carry a lot of weight in that person's mind and thinking. It will cause them to think of their relationship with the Lord if they're a Christian. It will cause them to consider, why did they do that if they're not a Christian? They may even ask you. And that'll give you a wonderful opportunity to say, I'm a Christian and God spoke to my heart about this and I needed to make it right. So Paul says, put off these things. Now what happens when we do? When we put off the list of verse eight and nine, Verse 10, you lay aside those things and have put on the new man which is renewed in the knowledge after the image of him that created him. The reason for putting off the sinful practices of the world in verse 10, number one, you've put off the old man with his deeds. You've put him off. You have deliberately taken action to get sin out of your life that no, you know, should never ever be there, period. And the deadly impact it'll have on you, your family and other people. So you're not even going to touch that. It's arsenic, spiritual arsenic, and you're not going to touch it. Then you've taken off those things that you know can make you really sick. Won't kill you, but they'll make you spiritually sick. And those around you will become spiritually sick and the end result will be a spiritual sickness. And you don't want that. So you've taken them off. You have laid aside, you've put off the old man with his deeds, according to verse eight. And secondly, you've put on the new man, which is created in the knowledge after the image of him that created him. In other words, verse one. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Christ is all in all. What we're talking about is about Jesus. It's about living like Jesus lived. It's thinking like Jesus thought. It's placing him on a pedestal where he belongs and determining that I'm by the grace of God going to follow the example that he has set for me. Living and following after Jesus Christ, it's all about him. Colossians 2 10 says and you are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. We're complete in Christ folks. You don't need to get any better than that. You can't get any gooder than that. Pardon the English. That's the best. Following Jesus is the best that you and I can do. And to do anything less is inferior. Why would we want to live an inferior Christian life? Why would we want to live a defeated Christian life? Why would we want to destroy the eternity of other people by sinful behavior? God help us that we would not be responsible for someone's going to hell because of something we did or said that could have been different. Sin is a very real issue in the life of the obedient believer. It's a real issue. It's something we think about. It's something we're always looking at. Not because we're so negative, but because we're trying to keep it out. He or she will ever be tempted by the enemy and the old nature, but greater is he that is in us than he that's in the world. Through the power of the surrender to Christ and the power of Christ, we can have the victory. Our focus should be on Christ, not on our inclination to sin. May Jesus rule your life and rule your heart. May he help you to be victorious as a believer. Now, Father, you know every heart, you know every need. You know what we are and what we are not. You know what we need to take out of our life and you know what we need to add to our life. So I ask you, Lord, to rule and reign on the throne of our lives and our hearts. May we be submissive to your word. God, the verses we looked at didn't pump us up spiritually, didn't want to shout hallelujah, but it were verses that we need to look at. They're there. You gave them. They need to be considered. And I would pray that you'd help me, Lord, that I would mortify those things that you have listed and that I would put off and not allow in my life those things that I'm not to have. I pray that I would be a follower of Jesus Christ, that I would act like him, I would walk like him, I would talk like him. And I pray, Father, that I would not bring offense to Jesus' name. I pray for the people here today. Help us, Lord. We are weak. We can't do this on our own. But with you and through you, we can do all you've called us to do. And all those sins that we are to mortify through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we can do it. And all those sins that we're told to put off through the power of the Holy Spirit and control of God in our life, we can do it. We can have the victory. And I pray if there's any believer here today without the victory, that you would give it to them. They would want it. they would take the necessary steps to have it. And God, if there's anyone here today without Jesus as their savior, that you would bring them to that place of trusting Christ before it's too late. Guide us through the day, bring us back this afternoon. May we rejoice in you and who you are, and we'll thank you in Jesus' name, amen.