Sing of His Love!

One of our members, Bob, is in McGaffey's Ville Ville Sunday night and a very sharp lady asked a good question as we were talking about seeking Christ's righteousness and avoiding legalism. She asked, I'm summarizing, I don't know word for word, but it basically was asking the question, how do we obey Christ without becoming self-righteous? How do we obey? How do we seek to do what we're supposed to do without that becoming legalistic? How do we say we're supposed to do this because Christ commanded it without becoming a legalist? It was it's holding those two things in tension. How do we obey without thinking our obedience actually causes righteousness? It's a very perceptive question because it's holding intention, grace and obedience, his love and his law. The simple answer is we obey not to be self righteous. We obey because he has made us righteous. We obey knowing that everything we have depends upon him. We had to be forgiven for how bad we were. And we have to depend upon him for obedience to worship and glorify him in any way. Everything we have, everything we do depends upon Christ. We have to constantly remember that we are nothing without Him, but sinners offensive to God. We need Christ. We need Christ for forgiveness. We need Christ in His strength and His energy and His love and His grace to even obey. Our message this morning is from Colossians 3 as we continue to walk through this epistle of Paul. And our message this morning is this. We are called to give thanks to the father by obeying the word of Christ. We are called to give thanks to the father by obeying the word of Christ. We're looking at Colossians chapter three, verses 16 to 17. If you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles, I believe, at the end of each pew. Ask your neighbor and you can take that home with you if you like. 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. As we continue to walk through the epistle to the Colossians, Paul wanted to start by exalting Christ. He is the creator of all things. Everything depends upon him because he is God. There is no higher or greater authority. There is no higher or greater power upon which we can depend. Further, he is the head of the church. He is the chief authority. He is the one who has laid down his life for the church. He is the one who has ransomed the church. He is the one who has called out and forgiven and loved the body. He is our authority. We need no one else. And then Paul begins to apply that exalted Christ. Do not trust your own works. Do not trust asceticism. Do not trust those who were deceived in their own pride, thinking they accomplished something for righteousness. Trust Christ alone. But then there's also the Christian ethic. There's a Christian new life. We are delivered out of the darkness so that we no longer live in it. We no longer walk in it. We're delivered to be new creatures. We're delivered for a new life. And that life we find in the light, as the light reveals our sin, our light reveals the way to Christ, the light shows us how to obey. We seek the things above. We're to put off sin, we're to put on Christ's righteousness. We are to trust him and depend upon him to be obedient. Now, I'm going to to cheat a little this morning and I'm going to go back three words and be thankful. I ended with that last week, but I want to go back and look at that command primarily because I see it as essential as what we're going to talk about in verses 16 and 17. The command be thankful is continued throughout the next two callings. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teaching and admonishing and singing with thankfulness. Do everything you do in word and deed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to the father. So it's the central theme here is thankfulness. We need to be thankful. This is a clear call. We need to see every blessing from the great father of light and thank him for what he does. We need to have as what I would call a gospel lens. I see you better with my glasses on. I have lenses. I see the world better. I understand God better. I see this life better when I have gospel lenses. I need to understand and learn how to view all of life through gospel lenses. It helps me to see better, to live according to God's good work. Gospel lenses aren't my natural It changes my natural eyesight. The gospel lenses always make me thankful and my natural dispossession is actually quite a pessimist. I am a cynic by nature. My natural tongue is sarcasm and cynicism, but I don't think that's helpful. I don't want to hang on to that. Because I believe when I have gospel lenses, when I have the gospel that's transformed my heart, I can only speak of hope. I can only speak with thankfulness. I have to get rid of the negativity and the cynicism and the criticism, and I have to seek to exalt Christ. See, a negative person isn't believing in the hope and the goodness and the power of God. A negative person is never seeking God's promises and seeing them as more powerful than our current, fallen, difficult, and problematic state. We need gospel lenses. We need to learn how to view this world, our life, God's world, as God has declared. See, there's no such thing as raw data. There's no such thing as a bare fact. Everything is interpreted. Every event in life is interpreted. And we either interpret it according to our sinful nature, and we get negative, We interpret according to God's word. And we're able to see that even the worst circumstances God is able to use for his good. We are able to see that there is always hope. One of the chief things I hope we walked away from our Genesis study was that God's able to use evil for good. Moses ended Genesis with that as the primary theme. taking them sovereignly into Egypt, where they're going to be slaves. We're going to move to Exodus after Colossians, and we're going to see how that theme continues. God is able to use every evil for his glory and our good. That's what gospel lenses teaches us. When we have gospel lenses, we never get a blessing and say, yeah, I deserve that. We have got to lose. We never have a difficult day and say, I don't deserve this or I don't know how I can overcome this. No, we see God as the one who is able to do all that we need. The one who is able to keep his promise. Above all, the people of God have to be thankful. They have to be hopeful because we know God is able. If we're not thankful. I believe we're probably not trusting God. I think we can measure our trust in God by how thankful we are. If we trust God, we know that he is able to do good with all things. Are we thankful today if we're not thankful, why is it because we're too focused on the things of this world rather than God? Is it because our expectations are built upon what this world tells us to expect or expectations built upon what God tells us to expect? Is it because we're worried about the things in this world? Is it because we're trusting or are we trusting God? We need thankful hearts and those thankful hearts come from a trusting heart. We're able to trust God. So the command be thankful will drive and somewhat determine where we're going to be going with the rest of our text today. So the first point was be thankful. Secondly, learn thankfully. You're going to see a pattern there. Learn thankfully. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." This is our second point. Verse 16, learn thankfully. This parallels verse 15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Let the word of Christ dwell in your hearts. Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. The peace of Christ is letting his dominion over sin bring peace to us. Here he's bringing it to the word of Christ, the message of Christ. Let it abide. Let it make its dwelling. We also want to see, secondly, as we look at what this means to have the word of Christ dwell in us richly. Like I said before, the first part of Colossians is all about how Christ is our fullness. He is our all in all. He is all we need. By saying we need to let him abide in us, it's basically saying Christ is our fullness. Be filled with him. Christ is our fullness. Be filled with him. Christ is all we need. Let him take over everything. It's the theological and then the application. Third, flip over to Ephesians. Ephesians was written, we assume as best as we can tell, at the same time as Colossians. And there's a parallel verse with one unique difference. Chapter 5, verse 18, if you just flip over a couple of pages, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians is how the order goes. Starting in verse 18, and do not get drunk with one, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. And then listen to how he continues with filling out that command, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing and making melody of the Lord with all your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's very similar to our Colossians passage. But the word of Christ dwelling originally teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and with thankfulness in your heart. There's I believe these are parallel faults with Paul. As we can see that being filled with the Spirit is, I think, parallel with being filled with the Word of God. To let the Word of God abide in you is the same or very similar to being filled with the Spirit. Well, I think that's significant is that often, as we can say, I don't like doctrine. I prefer spiritual. I prefer to be spiritual. It's a false dichotomy. You can only be spiritual if you actually study, meditate and know the words the Spirit has inspired. This is Christ's word. Yes, it was written by the hands of Moses and Paul and Peter and Judah, many others. This is Christ's word. He sent the Spirit to inspire these words. If we want to be filled with the Spirit, the chief way to do that is to know the Word of God. The old adage doctrine divides is unhelpful and sometimes doctrine necessarily needs to divide. But we don't claim doctrine over spirituality. You can't be spiritual unless you are meditating and knowing the words the Spirit has inspired. So what is this? The word of Christ, the word of Christ. I believe this is actually parallel to what Paul calls the law of Christ in Galatians 6 to. It is his message, it is what Christ has declared. As we can already see in Colossians, the message is to put off sin and to put on holy living, to put on the garments of the soul of humility and peace and the like, put off vice and put on virtue. To let the word of Christ or the message of Christ reside in us, it means we have to forsake our own opinions, our own simple deserves. We must see sin as it really is. And see sin as God sees it. And hate it as God hates it. We must see that Christ is truly more powerful. When Christ commissioned the disciples, he said, go make disciples, teaching them all I have taught you. Christ has given us a law. If He is going to be our Lord, we have to follow the law. If we want to have His love, we must understand He has a law. It's not a law to make us righteous. It's a law to glorify Him and to worship Him and to thank Him by giving Him our lives, by obeying Him. Christian, He has died for us and He has instructed us. The Word of Christ needs to abide in us. It's not a Christian this morning. Here's the message I want you to hear. Here's the word of Christ I want you to hear. You are like a sheep going astray. You've lost your way and while you don't realize how dangerous your actions are, how dangerous your life is, your life is offensive to God. Your life is doomed for destruction, not just in this world, but the next, because God will judge your sin. We all were sheep going astray. And the Great Shepherd said, I'm going to go get my sheep. I'm going to go seek them out. I'm even going to go lay down my life for them. We were like sheep going astray. We were offensive to God. The wrath of God was going to fall upon us until the Great Shepherd came. And He died on the cross so that the wrath of God would no longer be poured out upon us. When we believe in him, it was poured out upon him. He took our place. If if a sheep's wool represents its sin, this is my own metaphor, not one from Scripture. The shepherd would he wrapped himself in your wool? He wrapped himself in your sin so that when God looked upon him, even though he wasn't a sinner, God saw him as a sinner and poured out his wrath completely. making peace between you and God, because your sin has received the wrath. Christ took that upon himself. If you believe in him, the wrath of God is no longer on you. If you believe in him, you're forgiven. If you believe in him, you have peace. I pray that God was calling someone today. I pray that you would talk to me afterwards. If you're a Christian, We're to let the word of Christ dwell in us. Well, it's not the same exact word, this is similar, I think, to the idea of the word of Christ coming down in John one. The word of Christ making his abode, the word of Christ taking on flesh, it's a it's a indwelling. He's an abiding, he he takes his residency up in our hearts. Now, when we moved into our new home. The first thing we did where we took off, we took down the curtains, we ripped up the carpet. The curtains were just simply offensive. So we took them down. We were moving into the house. The old owner, they moved out. They left the curtains. We're going to take them down. We ripped up the carpet because they had a dog and it was just gross. So we ripped up the carpet. And we put a new floor down, we replaced the curtains. See, when Christ comes and he abides in our hearts, there's things that are offensive in those hearts. There's things that are gross in our hearts. And when Christ takes up a residency, when Christ comes in, he seeks to remove those things. Are we letting the word of Christ The message that we are forgiven, the message that we are new children, the message that we are now to live a holy life to glorify him. Are we letting Christ and his message and his word and his law take down what is offensive? To remove what is gross. I want to continue the illustration of a house. Have we stored those things away in a room that's locked? We let Christ have free reign as if he were a house sitter. But you can't go in this room. That's my room. Now, the word of Christ must dwell in us richly, abundantly, fully and completely. If he's our Savior, he must be our Lord and he must be Lord of all or Lord of none. We must stop protecting our sin from Christ and see that Christ is protecting us from our sin. The wisdom of Christ, the word of Christ, the message, it puts things back in order. He puts things in a proper place, he prioritizes things, he cleans things. We should want this. But we have to see our sin as Christ sees it, we must see it as gross and offensive so that we throw it out. We must see his rule as wise and good and want to bring it in. James one says something very similar the word of God as well you are in plant and plant the word of God in. Most of us have already planted our tomatoes. And if I'm wrong please correct me but I believe this is how you're supposed to plant a tomato. Ron Slaughter you're the authority. If you want to plant a good tomato you take the leaves off of the lowest level and then you plant it deeper and that lets the roots get deeper. The illustration is wrong. The illustration still stands. The idea there is you have to take something off in order to let the root grow deeper. You have to rip off something so that the roots can get deeper, so that the fruit is stronger. That's how we need to see the word of God. We need to be able to, we have to remove something in order to let the word of God grow deeper. We can't let sin reside and hope that his word is going to go deeper. Repentance and removal is necessary. A third point. We need to be. We need to teach. Thankfully when you teach. Thankfully this is the next portion of verse 16 teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Now here the key word is the one another. We must let the word of Christ indwell us individually and as a corporate body. The word of God must indwell us. It must abide in us. It must make its abode here. It must have free reign. And then we must teach and admonish one another with that word. This is very similar to what Paul's already said in Colossians 128. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone. With all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. To the point of teaching. Point of admonishing. Isn't so other people just learn. No, so that they grow. So they grow more dependent upon Christ and his love that grow more dependent upon Christ and his grace that grow more dependent upon Christ and his wisdom. They grow less dependent on their own foolishness. As a body, we are called to teach and admonish one another. We make a covenant with one another. We're going to teach one another in love. We're going to warn and rebuke one another when we see each other nearing sin. But to make sure that we're teaching what Christ taught. We make sure we are declaring what Christ has declared. We need to warn one another, not from what we think are our own opinions, but from what God declares. We make sure that when we are admonishing another, we're doing it out of love. If you are going to hear an admonition, if you're going to hear a warning, well, you ask yourself this question. Do I trust this person? Do I trust what they're saying is true from God's word, and I trust that it is good and right for me to hear. Is what they're warning me of true from God's Word and is it a true warning in my own life? If you don't trust that person, you need to ask somebody else you do trust if that warning was correct. The key to giving a good warning is be praying for that brother or sister. To seek to love them and present them mature in Christ with that admonition. To teach and warn one another, we must be filled with Christ. I was raised on a very small scale, kind of a hobby farm. In the winter, the hoses, we couldn't water the sheep. The barn was, well, it felt like 500 yards. I think it was probably close to 100. We'll say 100. Well, the hose couldn't go out that far because it was frozen in the winter. So we had to fill up buckets and carry them. And there was always a dilemma. Do you try to fill up one bucket and risk getting wet, or do you make two trips? You know, it took it took at least two trips if you didn't fill the buckets up because you fill the buckets up if they're full, they splashed on you and it's cold outside and you're wet. And that's just not a pleasant experience. Loving one another, teaching one another with with with Christ's word and in matching with Christ's word in order to do that well, we have to be full of Christ. And just like those buckets when they're full of water, they splash. So if we're filled with Christ, if Christ is abiding in us fully, they're so full that when we're moving and walking and talking with another, the water splashes out, Christ splashes out. We should be so full of Christ, we should desire to be so full of Christ that when we're talking with another, it just is natural to talk about Christ. It should be like the bucket. You can't carry a full water bucket without it splashing. You can't be a spirit-filled, word-abiding Christian without it splashing. So I ask you, Christian, do others experience Christ in you? Do you easily talk about Christ and his gospel? We need to be teaching and admonishing one another. This is a teaching and admonishing. I'm warning you of your sin and I'm telling you to love Christ. I pray that's what you hear regularly in the preaching I hear. I pray that's what you regularly hear in your Sunday school and on Wednesday nights. We also want to make sure we're developing discipleship intimately. That's why we have small groups and home groups. If you want a relationship where you can talk about the sermon with somebody else, please come talk to me or one of the deacons. We are wanting to restart and reinvigorate many of the home groups. Please let us know if you're interested. The number one thing I would say that we need to do is be present. We need to be present and engaged in the teaching of God's Word. Sing thankfully. Sing faithfully. This is our fourth point. Verse 16. I'm going to go back. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts. Seriously, singing is actually on the list there with teaching and admonishing. It's a way of encouraging and caring and loving one another. It's a way that the being filled with Christ, being full of Christ's Word, it's a way that that expresses itself. That's what we need to realize here, or something I just want to make sure is clear. Worship is not singing. Singing is a part of worship. We didn't just finish the time of praise and worship, we're still in it. We're worshiping. Singing sometimes has been called praise and worship, and I understand that's an easy thing to call praise and worship because we're singing it. But the prayers were praising. The scripture reading was praising. Hearing is praising. Speaking is praising. When we leave, I pray that we will continue to worship because we're going to fellowship. We're going to worship with the Lord's Supper. As we look at this, we need to realize that worship is all of our life, but let's focus in on the singing portion. I once read a book, and it was otherwise a really good book on just church and what church is and how to be a good Christian member of a church. And the only problem with the book was that he said the Psalms, well that refers to the Old Testament Psalms, that's right. The hymns, that refers to the good old hymns. And the spiritual songs, well, those were songs that have to be, you know, maybe some new, but mostly they couldn't be too new. Well, this was just it baffled me because this was a scholarly author and the error there is it's an anachronism. An anachronism is where you put a category we have today on something that was, you know, that preceded it. It's like saying Paul was a Calvinist. Calvin lived in the 1500s. Paul couldn't have been a Calvinist because Calvinism didn't actually exist. You could say Calvin was a Paulinist, but that's historically accurate. We have to remember, Paul didn't sing A Mighty Fortress or Amazing Grace. He may have sung songs like them, but these are later hymns and songs. We have to remember that the hymns that we look back and we say those are the glorious old hymns, They were new at one point. Many of them were not well received. Many of them were put the tunes of bar tunes. They took songs of scripture and took the tunes that were common to the folk and they put them together. We just have to remember that there's a historical perspective there. Just because it's a good old hymn doesn't mean it was what Paul sang. So, what is this? What are these words mean? Psalms, hymns, and songs. Well, a psalm in its Greek use here, generically, would just be any song sung with a stringed instrument. It's a praise to God with a stringed instrument. The piano also is a new invention. Before they had stringed instruments. That's what David played. In the New Testament, I think it refers specifically to the Old Testament Psalms. Which, as we read from Psalm 33, there was a string instrument, there was a calling for a stringed instrument. It's interesting if you look at Hebrew, and I don't encourage you to do so, but it would be interesting if you did. The Masorites, they're a certain Hebrew sect, and they put all of Hebrew Scripture, not just the Psalms, all of Hebrew Scripture to music. So that all the words are sung. I was speaking to a Hebrew man with a real faithful Jew, and he understood that I memorized scripture just by kind of memorizing it. I said, that's insane. I said, we sing it. That's how I memorize it. There's notes. If you ever look at Hebrew, those little notes underneath it, those are full notes and half keys. And I don't know what I'm talking about with music here, but they're breathing marks. So it tells you instead of saying power, you say par in Hebrew. A hymn. That's simply just a song that praises God. And then a spiritual song. Well, song there is just the most generic catch-all word we have for music, but it's a spiritual song. As we gather, we must gather seeking some diversity in our music. Our focus shouldn't be on the kinds of music we're playing, it should be on the one we're singing to. I hope, and my goal is that everything we do is about the congregation, the choir, singing to God. You're never the audience. You're the worshipper. When we're singing, we're not being sung to. We're worshipping. Even when someone's singing here, as Andrea did a couple of weeks ago, I pray that you are just letting her words lead you in prayer to God. We're never the audience. We're never here to be entertained. We're here to seek God and to sing to him together. OK, we're talking about singing. What if I don't feel like singing? I could hear someone ask that question. I have not felt like singing at times. This doesn't mean you don't feel like singing a certain song. You just don't feel like singing. You don't have joy. You're burned out. You're having a difficult time. You're in the midst of of trials. How could I possibly sing? Glory to God. Well, I oftentimes. Just pray. I sit there and I let other people's words singing lift me up. And then I always end up singing. So if you're having a hard time singing one day, if you have a hard time because you just can't praise God when you walk into the building. Listen and let the words lift you up. Or just go right at it and start singing anyway. It's interesting that the feelings that keep us from the disciplines are often best treated by the disciplines themselves. Seeing as a spiritual discipline. A lack of joy is a feeling a a feeling distress, a feeling in despair that feeling will keep you from the discipline of singing and the very thing you need is the discipline of singing. You can't let the disease keep you from the cure. That's why we need this concept of duty of discipline doing something even when we don't feel natural that we want to do it. What if I don't like a particular song. Well my first answer and remember my name my native tongue is sarcasm. You can listen to your favorite music at home. We have gathered. We have gathered to celebrate our diversity, to sing together. I want us to come in wanting to focus on the one God who has saved us, singing all kinds of songs. I want us to be praising and worshiping, encouraging other brothers and sisters. As I said before, if you don't like a song, you don't have to sing it. But I want you to at least be thankful that another brother or sister sings it with gusto and with great joy. One of those dangerous things a church can have is a service that's contemporary and traditional. It's dividing the body of our music. I think that's actually creating the whole problem Paul's trying to fix and address in the Epistle to the Corinthians, so that some will say, I'm a Steve Green, but I am a Keith Green. I am of old hymns. I'm of Getty hymns. I'm a Bill Gaither. I'm a Bob Coughlin. These are not helpful. Again, my native tongue is sarcasm, and sometimes God uses that. How do we combat this? Music is personal to us all. Seriously, music is personal to us all. We all have our preferences in music, and we have to realize other people have preferences in music. We want to show them grace and love. We want to be unified, not over our preferences in music, but for what God says and what those musical words are declaring. So we combat this is to look up while we're singing. To look up to the one we're seeing up to to desire to praise him in as many ways as possible, because the praise in heaven is going to be diverse because there's all the tongues and all the nations and all the cultures. But it's going to be focused on the one God. Our last point, which is our last verse. Live thankfully. Live, thankfully, verse 17, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. What you do and what you say. Everything about us is supposed to be done in the name of the Lord. We are commanded, we're admonished, we're warned not to take the name of the Lord in vain. You're a Christian. You're a little Christ. The name of the Lord is upon you. So whatever you do in word or deed is supposed to be honoring to him. The name of Christ is written on you. So whatever we do in word or deed needs to be honoring to him or else we are taking his name in vain. It's not just the words we say when we take the Lord's name in vain. It's all of our life. His name is upon us. So every word and deed Needs to reflect him. If he's represented us on the cross, then we need to reflect him. It's important, I want to reemphasize the scope here is the entirety of life. This says Jesus summarized all the commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, love your neighbor. Likewise, everything you do with every fiber of your being. With all your heart, your soul and your mind, with everything about you, you're supposed to love God. You're supposed to be seeking to glorify and worship him. You're supposed to be wanting to exalt him. With everything. As we're talking about worship, worship is not something we began at the call to worship. What is going to change that? It's a call to congregational worship. You came here, I hope, already worshiping. We've just gathered here to worship corporately, to unite our voice together, to encourage one another so that when you leave, you leave worshiping. So you came out of the world where worshiping is sometimes difficult because the world wants to keep you from worshiping. The world wants to tempt you into sin so that you stop worshiping. We come here to worship together, to be rejuvenated, to be refreshed so that we persevere in our worship when we leave. So every part of life, every moment is an opportunity for worship. Our moments are precious. Every minute we have is sacred and should be devoted to God. We only have so much time. We never get it back. The question is, how faithfully are we with our time? How faithfully are we with our gifts and our resources and our time and energy? Every part of life is an arena for worship. Every decision we make. I remember my wife was reading through a rare, the rare jewel of Christian contentment, and one of the most challenging, the book is just challenging, but one of the most challenging parts of the book was that when we are in heaven and we receive our glorified bodies, but we're not able to sit anymore. We're kind of free to worship all the time without the taint of sin, and I so look forward to that day. But Jeremiah Burroughs, he points out that that's really one of the most unique things about this life. You only have so you have an eternity to praise him without sin. You only have so many years to praise him fighting sin. You now have a choice. To worship and glorify sin. or to worship and glorify Christ. You only have so many years you actually get to do that until Christ comes back, perfects you, takes away your sin, and the fight is no longer there. Are you just going to wait until you no longer can fight? I believe now is the time to truly enjoy fighting against sin. And we purchase the things that we find value in. We purchase things according to their worth. I want a kayak. And I look at the prices of kayaks and I think, that's not worth floating on water. They're expensive. I have a certain value of what that would be and then I look at the prices and until I find one that has the value low enough, I'm not going to buy one. That's how we do all our purchasing. We say, I want this, but I'm not willing to pay that for it. We have a worth and a value we place on everything. Do we place a worth and a value on God? Is he worthy of this much time and energy? Is he worthy of this much joy and discipline? What is God worth in your time? Do you tithe God with your time? Or do you give God all of your time? Is he worth your investment? Do you truly believe the more you invest in God, the more he will be glorified and the more you will be blessed, not with material things, but with the joy of Christ and the peace of Christ? We're to do and say everything. For the glory and honor of Christ. This means that when we're here as a body, everything we do is committed to glorifying the head as a body. Are you able to truly invest in the body? Knowing that what we're committed to is the head. If you don't feel that you can invest in the body, knowing that we're committed to the head, please tell us how we are not being obedient. That is our love, that is our goal, that is our desire. You really have to ask yourself first, are my opinions of what the body should be doing truly based in Christ's own word? The last thing we'll look at here is the last phrase, giving thanks to the Father through the Son. This is a great Trinitarian passage. We're going to continue to study the Trinity on Wednesday night after the conference. But here we see giving thanks to the Father through the Son. Well, the Son is the one that was sent by the Father to save us. Now, we're to live through the Son for the Father. He came down as the perfect high priest to make the perfect sacrifice for us, to forgive us, to die for us. Now he's a perfect high priest who mediates for us, who gives us the strength and energy to obey his law. We're supposed to live from him and through him. If we want to truly thank the Father for delivering us from the reign of darkness and delivering us from the kingdom of his Son, we have to thank him through loving the Son who has first loved us. and obeying the son and his message. Let's go to the Lord and pray. Father, we thank you because your son. Was sent to die for us. Your son has met our every real need. Your son has loved us and cared for us. He has protected us. He has entrusted us into your hand and we are secure. and assured by what He has done for us. We thank You, Lord, for Your Spirit that illuminates us. I pray that You would illuminate our sin, that You would illuminate the power of the Gospel so that we are always thankful. I pray that You would help us to thank You through the Son by the power of Your Spirit. Help us, Lord, to see sin as it is. As offensive and gross. Help us, Lord, to let Your Word have dominion in our own hearts. Help your help us with your spirit to give us the strength and discipline and energy to fight against that sin, constantly removing it so that your word can plant deeper. May that just have the overflowing of a body that's committed to this. That. That overflows with Christ. It overflows with a blessing to one another and love. in teaching one another the gospel and admonishing one another in our sin. Father, we lift these things up to you. We trust that you will continue to do a good work here. In your holy name we pray. Amen.