We Are United in Christ

We're continuing our study in Colossians, so you can go ahead and turn in your copy of the scriptures there. If you don't have a Bible, there's actually Bibles at the end of the pews, and we'll be on page 639 if you're using one of the pew Bibles. We'll be looking at Colossians 3, beginning in verse 13. I want to remind us of our theme for Colossians. We haven't said it in a while. We took a break with Easter there. All I need is Christ. I need to want nothing else. All I need is Christ. I need to want nothing else. We're declaring the truth. What we need is Christ. That is all we need. That is a true statement. The difficult part of that is that we want so many other things. We need to discipline our affections and our desires, our behaviors and our attitudes to want nothing else. To be satisfied in Him alone. This is a confession that I hope that each one of us will adopt individually. And I pray that this will be the flavor, the atmosphere of the body. That we would all be committed to this, united as a body under Christ. All of us together saying, I need nothing else. I want. I need to want nothing else. We need nothing but Christ. See, the unity of the body was one of the greatest passions of Christ. We see this in His pastoral prayer in John 17. This is not the Lord's prayer as we call it. That is His model prayer for us typically. This is a great high priestly prayer. This is His last, great, longest recorded prayer where He sets out and says to the Father, I am leaving. This is what my people need. And this is how He ends that prayer. I do not ask for these alone, speaking of the disciples, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that's us, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me. Father, I devout that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you love me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name. I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." Christ focuses his attention on the unity of the body. And it's interesting here that Christ's number one evangelistic program is the church. It's us being united under his headship. This should be the most unique gathering of individuals that the world ever sees because it's not our social status. It's not our race. It's not our language. It's not our tongue that gathers together. It's our love for Christ. We are united uniquely. But the call must be first to be united to Christ. Paul is going to focus on our unity because his heart is that of his master. It's that we would be one, together, as one body under the headship of Christ. Again, we'll be looking at Colossians 3. Our message this morning is this. We are called to put on a new unity because of our new identity. If you haven't been with us, you can look at verse 5, the first step of sanctification is to put to death sin. You've got to replace sin. You've got to put on righteousness. You put away sin. You put it off. You change clothes, the garments of your soul, as one theologian said. You put off sin and you put on kindness and patience, meekness and humility. And here he takes it a step further. Because of our new identity in Christ, you not just change your character, you change the way you relate to others who are in Christ. You forgive one another. You love one another. You seek peace with one another. You become thankful for one another. You can look at the outline of our sermon in the back of the bulletin. These are our four main points. We are to forgive. We are to love. We are to have peace. We are to be thankful. And the focus here that we will see is that it's on the unity of the body doing these things. So first, we are called to be united in forgiveness. We are called to be united in forgiveness. Verse 13. I'm sorry. Let me begin by reading the passage in its context and then I'll begin in verse 13. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. So let's begin in verse 13. We are called to be united in forgiveness, bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. So Paul's given us the three identities, holy, beloved, chosen. That's our new identity in Christ, and now we must live out that identity. Our practice must demonstrate that new position. So he says we're called to compassionate hearts. We're called to kindness. We're called to humility, meekness. And this really is just flowing out of the new calling. But the new emphasis here is that it's a calling not just for who we are to be, but how we're to relate to one another. Bearing with one another. All the other virtues are about us and the outcome is how we relate to one another. This one particularly is focused on how we relate to one another. bearing with one another. Really, this is in some way saying what we would say today, put up with one another. It's implying that it's not easy. Because we're all sinners. Relating to one another is not easy. It's saying, bear with one another. See, joining a church is like joining a family. It's like marrying into your in-laws. You're adding yourself to a new family that has all different experiences, all different traditions. So, when you're sitting at the dining room table, it takes you a long time to figure out what they're talking about. They have all the same people they talk about. They have all the same experiences they talk about. And you're just trying to figure out what are they talking about. This is why it's also like a family. You're there with that new family because of a mutual love for one person. See, we're a family. because of our mutual love, but it's not just a wife or a husband. We're all here as a family because of our mutual love for the greatest person, God Himself. We're all here united, all different experiences, all different ages, all different traditions, but we're united because of our one commitment to Christ. Because God has loved us and called us together, we now love one another. As we continue the verse, it's not just putting up with one another. It's not just kind of bearing the load of having to relate to so many different people. It's not just bearing with one another. It's forgiving each other. If one has a complaint against another, forgive each other. A crucial part of our life together is the acknowledgement of sin. We're all sinners. That's why we have to bear one another. We have to be upfront and clear that we are all sinners. And because we are all sinners, we must be quick with forgiveness. We must acknowledge sin and forgive sin. So what does it mean to forgive? Well, if we want to understand forgiveness, we need to first look to God. God is a great forgiver. That is why we are together. And that's why we forgive. God forgives by no longer counting our sin against us. God is a holy and just God and He must punish every sin and every sinner. And as we are sinners, God must judge our sin. He cannot avoid punishing our sin and be just and holy and upright and righteous. So, what God the Father has done is He has sinned His Son. to become like us in every way, except for sin, so that He could punish His Son for our sin, so that we no longer have to suffer that punishment. See, the Son came to take upon a human nature, like us in every way, but He was without sin, so that He would be punished, and we could be free. He forgives us by no longer counting our sin against us, but counting it to His own Son. And the Son, out of His love for us, submits Himself even to the point of death. Even death on the cross. The beauty of this is we have to see that God doesn't count our sin against us. Whereas He should be counted completely guilty. His wrath should be counted against us. But instead, He counts it to His Son and He counts us righteous. He considers us washed white as snow. He considers our record innocent when we are truly and absolutely guilty. He says, with absolute authority, with absolute confidence, your sins are forgiven and they are no longer counted against you. Now how does this translate over to our forgiveness? Well first we must realize we're not God. We don't get to speak and have absolute authority over righteousness. We do not get to count who gets to be forgiven. We can't take ourselves so seriously to think that every sin against us is as serious as God sinning against God. So, we need to make sure that we're not thinking of ourselves as a sovereign over judgment and righteousness. Secondly, we need to remember that as Christians, and we're really talking about this, non-Christians will talk about forgiveness as it relates to you. But Christians, we're talking about how we relate to one another. As we think about our relationship with one another, our unity with another, in Christ, Christ has declared us all forgiven. If we're holding grudges against one another, we're holding sin against someone that Christ has died for. We need to make sure we're always thinking about each other in light of the gospel. See, when someone sins against us, our natural tendency is revenge. Maybe I'm projecting too much. When someone harms us, our natural tendency is to say, I'm going to get you back, or I'm going to hold that against you. That's what we do as selfish sinners who have anger, malice, and envy. This is sin. As God's children who have received great mercy, as Matthew already read about from Matthew 18, we must be quick to show great mercy and forgiveness. As we think about forgiving others, we must remember the great amount of forgiveness we have received. We can think of Jesus. Those disciples that Jesus was praying for there in John 17, those are the disciples that would abandon Him. Those are the disciples that would leave Him in His greatest time of need, that would not continue to stay up with Him in prayer. They would reject Him and deny Him. Peter, even three times. Yet still, He forgave them. Even more so on the cross, Jesus says, forgive them, Father, the very men that nailed him to the cross. That's great forgiveness, friends. That is powerful forgiveness. So, if you think about forgiving others, we must remember the great amount of forgiveness we receive because we have sinned against God greatly. We've sinned against God greater than any human being could ever sin against us. We rebelled against Him, kicked against Him, rejected Him. Every time we choose to sin, we are rejecting God, and we need forgiveness for that. He forgives us for every denial and for every rejection. If we're going to forgive as Christ forgives, we must keep Christ's forgiveness at the forefront of our minds. As Jesus said, we must forgive 70 times 7, because it's an infinite number. Because that's how much we have been forgiven. What this means, what this means for us, we're no longer allowed to let our anger and wrath boil against those who sin against us. We're no longer allowed to let that fester and grow and dig deep roots of bitterness into our soul. So there's only one way to truly forgive. There's only one way to truly avoid bitterness and anger and wrath against each other. What we must do is not focus on the one who sinned against us, we must focus on the one we've sinned against. If your focus is only on the one who sinned against you, you're going to keep thinking and meditating upon the one who sinned against you and let the roots of bitterness grow deep. What we have to do is think about the one who has forgiven us. Let our minds and our hearts be shaped by His great love, by His great forgiveness. We must regularly think about how great our sin is and how great our forgiveness is. And then let that translate over to how we forgive others. If your brother sins against you, you're supposed to go to them. That's an interesting command from Jesus. If you have been sinned against, you're supposed to go to them. I think the reason why that is is because sin, at its most basic definition, is one of its most dangerous elements. It's self-deception. Sin is self-deceiving. We don't realize how often we sin. We justify and rationalize our sin. That's why Jesus says, if someone sins against you, you go to them and pursue reconciliation. As sinners, we regularly sin against one another and we regularly ignore it. So how are we supposed to forgive? Because I want to sympathize. We talked about this in Sunday School already. Forgiveness is difficult. Especially someone who truly wrongs you and regularly wrongs you. How are you supposed to forgive? Because forgiving others is difficult. There's only one way. It's by contemplating the Gospel. There's only one way that you can truly forgive others, and that is by not focusing on the sin against you. It's by focusing on the gospel that forgives you. How quick are you to forgive? Does it take weeks, maybe months? I think how quick we are to forgive has a direct correlation with how much time we spend meditating on our forgiveness. So let me ask that question. How much time do you spend meditating on the forgiveness you've received? I don't think it's helpful to have a long list of your own sin, but we need to have a great understanding of the depth of our sin so that we can have a better appreciation for the power of God's forgiveness, for the abundance of His mercy. How much time do you spend thinking about God's forgiveness of your sin? That has a direct correlation with how quick You are to forgive others. See, our ground of forgiveness, as we've already been speaking of, Paul grounds the command to forgive one another with, well, the greatest argument. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. This is the same thing Jesus taught in Matthew 18. How can you receive such a great forgiveness for 20,000 years of wages and then go out and choke the one who owes you 100 days of wages? How could you receive such great mercy and then go exercise such petty wrath? Ephesians 4.32, Paul says something very similar. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. really the ground for this, the basis for this command to forgive one another, we can go back to Colossians 2.13, "...and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive to gather with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this He set aside, nailing to the cross." That's the great forgiveness. Our sins are no longer counted against us. Now, as Christ has taken on our sin, He has counted to Himself. He has not counted against us. We must then apply that same forgiveness, not counting others' sin against them. Not continually holding grudges. And how do you accept apologies? How do you accept apologies? You look for the opportunities to show quick forgiveness. If you think about how quickly you give forgiveness, here's just a basic rule that I think Matthew 18 is teaching. You can judge your ability to know the mercy of God with your ability to show mercy. You can judge your ability to know the mercy of God with your ability to show mercy. To truly be forgiven means you say, I forgive you. Our culture is full of false apologies. Our culture doesn't really admit sin. We say there's misunderstandings. I misspoke. I didn't say anything wrong. I misspoke. Or the best is, I'm sorry for what I said hurt your feelings. That's not an apology. That's saying there's something wrong with you. That's not an apology. The only thing worse than that kind of half-hearted fake apology is whenever you actually humble yourself, make a real apology, and you don't get forgiveness. Apologizing falsely or apologizing half-heartedly, that hurts because you've been hurt by that person and they're not making a real apology. But what about the situation where you actually humble yourself? You put yourself in their mercy. And they don't say, I forgive you. In fact, oftentimes what they'll say is the opposite of forgiveness. They will take the opportunity to give one last heave-ho of guilt. Yeah, you did do me wrong. Thanks for acknowledging that. Christian, have you ever done that? When someone humbles himself before you and the response isn't, brother, sister, I forgive you. The response is, yeah, you were wrong. crushing. Christians, we need to meditate upon the forgiveness we receive so that we do not give crushing blows to one another like that. We must be quick with forgiveness. And that only comes by being deeply committed to knowing and appreciating the great forgiveness we have received from God. Jesus taught us to pray. Again, this relationship is vital to all of Scripture. Forgive us our debts as we forgive one another. Now, we need to make sure we're not saying you can be more forgiven if you forgive more people. It's not a workspace righteousness. There is no way to receive more grace and more forgiveness by forgiving others. No, what's focused here is the fact that our ability to forgive demonstrates an ability to know the forgiveness of God. I really appreciate what I found Piper commenting on that prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive one another. Piper says this, forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors. This does not mean that we are lost if the old unforgiving spirit raises its head just once. It means no one who cherishes a grudge against someone dare approach God in search of mercy. No one who cherishes a grudge against someone dare approach God in search of mercy. God treats us in accordance with the beliefs of our heart. If we believe it is good and beautiful to harbor resentments and tabulate wrongs done against us, then God will recognize that our plea for forgiveness is sheer hypocrisy. For we will be asking Him to do what we believe to be bad. is a dreadful thing to try to make God your patsy by asking Him to act in a way that you, as your actions show, esteem very lowly. What a great challenge. Do we go to God in prayer asking for forgiveness when we're not willing to forgive? It's an abuse of God. It's using God as your puppet rather than saying, God, you are my Lord and Master. You are the King of forgiveness. Please! Show me how great your forgiveness is so that I can forgive others. Christians, are you equipped to forgive? You can judge your ability to know the mercy of God with your ability to show mercy. When was the last time you apologized to someone? Do we all think we're sinners? If we're really sinners, have we sinned against anybody in the last year in a way worthy of asking an apology? Do we just say we're sinners or do we actually believe we're sinners and try to find and seek out to know our sin and take an account of it? To take responsibility for it so we can have reconciliation? When was the last time you asked for forgiveness? When was the last time you had to approach a brother seeking to forgive him? Non-Christian. Are you overwhelmed and burdened with bitterness? Christians not self-help. I don't have a list of 10 steps that will keep you from being bitter. No, we're all sinners. We have all broken from God. We have all strayed from His way and that's why we all have sinned against one another. That's why we hurt one another. We have refused and rejected God's love and His law and that's why we all have the burden of bitterness. There's not a 10-step self-help program. Now Christianity says this, we are guilty and we're responsible for our sin. We are the ones that cause all the chaos We're the ones that cause all the pain. We, as a human race, hurt one another because we have all rejected God. That's the first thing we have to recognize, that the guilt lies with us. Yes, you can be pointing to someone and say, no, you don't understand what they did to me. I understand. But we've all been sinning against one another. We're all at odds with one another because we're all at odds with God. We have to all confess and acknowledge that without God there is no hope and there is no peace, there is no reconciliation. The beauty of the Gospel is that God pursues us while we're rejected. God pursues us while we're in bitterness, while we're hating one another, while we even hate Him, God pursues us. If you want peace, You must first seek to have peace between you and God, and then your relationships will begin to be made right. If you want freedom from bitterness, you must first look to the cross and find freedom from your sin. Our second point, our second call, we are called to be united in love. We are called to be united in love. Verse 14, and above all these, put on love. which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Now, love is actually now being added to that list of callings. We have the chosen. We're chosen. We're holy. We're beloved. That's our new identity. And then we're called, because of that new identity, to be kind, compassionate, humble, meek, patient. And now love is another calling. It's another virtue. It's another garment of the soul. But love is unique. It's above all those other characteristics. It's above all those other virtues. It is the chief virtue among all the virtues. It's the chief garment among all the garments. For someone like Sean Agnew, it's a utilitarian piece of the garment. It's like a belt. It holds everything together. If you're like Asher, it's like the bow tie. It brings the garment together. It really brings the wardrobe all in. Yes. I asked him to wear a bow tie. If you're fashionable, it's the thing that brings all the parts together. Here, it's the one garment that makes all the other garments work. It's the one virtue and characteristic that makes all the rest of them function properly. Prioritizing love is seen throughout Scripture. 1 Corinthians 13, kind of the love chapter. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned but not have love, I gain nothing. There's faith after love and the chief of which is love. Love is the greatest. It's the greatest garment of the soul. Now, let me first get into what does it mean that which binds everything together in perfect harmony? There's really two interpretations. One is that it's the one that binds all the other virtues together. The other one is that it binds the unity of the church together. Because this is an interesting way of writing here in that Paul kind of sticks another garment in the midst of two passages on unity. Well, I think the first way we should see it is that it is the garment that binds all the others together. So, it's love that makes meekness and patience and humility true Christian virtues. It's the chief garment because without it, all the other virtues aren't real virtues. They're just behaviors. Without love, humility is just self-deprecation. Without a love for God and a love for others that seeks to exalt them, humility is just saying, I'm nothing. Whereas really, love says, no, you're greater than I am. So we need to make sure love is the guiding and directing principle of these other virtues. Because without love, they just become morals. I said once that I'm not called to preach morality. I'll modify that a bit from the kickback I got. I'm not called to preach mere morality. I'm not here to transform the manners and the morals of the world. Because I think that's impossible unless you have the Gospel first. You see, all these other attributes, all these other actions, all these other behaviors and attitudes, they're meaningless unless they have love as their driving force. A love from God that is focused on the Gospel. A love for God that makes us want to be truly kind. humble, and meek. See, love is the most important because it's focused on our drive. Our desire is to find who we are. Our desire is to find what we do, and how we do it, and why we do it. Our desire is to find everything else about us. See, a love for sin leads to vice. A love for sin leads to all those things we're supposed to put off. A love for sin leads to just selfishness and ultimately anarchy. But a love for God. A love for God leads to meekness and patience and wisdom. So, we're called to put on love. How do you put on love? How do you change your desires? How do you change what you love? Well, first you can change what you think about. It can change what you think about. Again, how much time are you spending contemplating God's forgiveness? How much time are you thinking about the cross, the great manifestation of God's love for us? We don't naturally love God. God created us for His love. God created us to enjoy His love. But it's not the natural inclination of the heart born in sin. No, it's something we have to focus on. We must discipline our desires. We must put on love by actively pursuing the upward calling of making our hearts focus on the Son, who is at the right hand of the Father, who has died for us, who has risen again, and will come again. Now, this call to love, it does fall curiously between these passages on unity. I believe the love of God is what unifies us. It's forgiving one another because God has forgiven us, and that is a great demonstration of His love. I believe love is actually in the back of Paul's mind as he's writing Colossians 2.19, "...hold fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God." The power that makes us grow, the power that helps us move together, is His love. Christ as our head is the great conductor. We, as members of the symphony, we need to move at the direction of our head. And the melody is love. If one of us starts pursuing something other than Christ and His love, we play out a tune. It causes disruption. It causes a song that's supposed to be sweet to God and praise and to the world in harmony. It causes it to sound bad. That's why arguments within the church That's why I think Satan has intentionally attacked the unity of churches. Because that is a great evangelistic opportunity. We must all seek to obey the head who leads us in the song of love. This is why I love the song, Come Thou Found. Tune my heart. We must ask God to be tuning our hearts to hear His song of love so we can play the song of love. Our third calling. We are called to be united in peace. This is verse 15. Most of verse 15. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body. Peace here is the equivalent of the Hebrew word shalom. We were created to have peace. We were created to have peace with God, to be in a right relationship with Him. We were called to have peace with this world, to properly manage, to properly exercise dominion. We were called to have peace with one another, to be in harmony, not to hate, kill. We were called to have peace with ourselves, to not have an internal strife that comes from sin. God's creation was peaceful. Well, it's not anymore. What happened? Well, we happened. He created us and then we rejected Him. We brought the chaos. We brought the anarchy. We brought the fight against God. Now we simply have a social contract that says these are allowable and unallowable sins. We have acceptable sins and unacceptable sins. And that list of acceptable sins appears to be growing all the time. God created us for peace and he is seeking to bring us back to peace and it is only in Christ that we have peace. Peace means that we are in a right relationship with God and one another and this world and ourselves. Here the focus is on one another. Now it says let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. The heart is the center of ideas and desires. The heart is the center of everything that we are. It's the center of the most important decisions and desires. And for the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts, this is very much like umpire language. It determines what's right and wrong. It gives direction and guidance. It says, no, that is not wise, this is wise. To have the peace of Christ rule in our hearts is to let the peace of Christ determine what we do, what we say, how we say it, and how we live. Last week in our Sunday School class, one of the men, he pointed out that it feels like a contradiction. What the Bible says and what the world expects. Yeah, that's right. Because the world is fighting against God's rule, which is represented here. This is God's right way and the world wants to fight against it. It hates it. It always has. It always will. The world, not speaking of the natural earth, but the world has the power of all people still opposed to God. So we're called to step out of the domain of darkness. We're called out of it. So then the peace of Christ can rule our hearts, telling us what is wrong and telling us what is right. Again, the beauty of the Christian church is that it's supposed to be peaceful. There's supposed to be harmony here. We're called to be one body. Do people experience peace when they walk into Jefferson Park? Is there a unique peace here that you do not find anywhere else? That's what we're called to. Think there is a unique piece. I think there's a unique love and a forgiveness And I'm very appreciative for all the brothers and sisters who are committed to the head to make that family atmosphere real But we must stay committed to it. We cannot think we've achieved anything Here's the main way you can destroy the peace of Christ in your heart in this body Be committed to your own interest Don't be committed to the interest of the head, which is God's glory, forgiveness, unity, love. Be committed to your own interest. Find something that's unique that you want that isn't clearly prescribed in Scripture. And be committed to that. That is how you break peace. Sorry I'm so negative. I'm motivated by negativity, just so you know. Let me put the bar up. Let me motivate you. Here's how to achieve peace. Submit your life to Christ. Make that your confession. All I need is Christ. I need to want nothing else. I need Christ alone for true peace and happiness. I need Christ alone. I need to continue to discipline my life to be committed to Him. The peace of Christ must be our unity. Otherwise, we're going to get separated by our own interest. Finally, as we close, we are called to be united in thankfulness. Paul just gives the simple command, and be thankful. This is a word we've seen throughout Colossians thus far. A call to be thankful. When we stop being thankful for Christ, That's also when we stop being united. When we stop growing in a thankfulness for Christ and what He's done, that's when we stop forgiving. That's when we stop loving. That's when we stop pursuing peace and unity. When we stop being thankful, it means we believe the lie. And the lie typically says, you deserve better. Maybe that means you think you deserve more recognition. More power, more authority, more of something. That's the lie that keeps us, typically, from being thankful. Thinking that we deserve more or we deserve better. Well, we need to constantly be reminded of our sin to know what we truly deserve so that we are always thankful. We need to be thankful first and foremost for God. To Him for His great love and His great gospel. We need to be thankful for the fellowship we have in Christ. We need to learn to be thankful for our differences. And that takes wisdom. That means the peace of Christ rules in our hearts. We need to be thankful for the great diversity we have in this body under the one Headship of Christ. If you're constantly looking over and thinking, if only they did this like me, something not in Scripture, I could relate to them better. Friend, if it's not prescribed in Scripture, don't divide or try to distinguish in the body that way. No, we are called to be thankful for our differences. Celebrate the real diversity by celebrating what we have in common, and that is Christ. Are you thankful for what God is doing here at Jefferson Park? Members of Jefferson Park, are you thankful? Do you thank God for His grace and His leading and His guiding? If you can't look around and find someone to be thankful for, you need to start praying for what you think God needs to be doing so you can be thankful when He does it. Are you thankful for what God has done in you? Can you truly look and say, I have been transformed, I have been changed, I have a peace, I have forgiveness, I have love. Can you look back and say, I am thankful? Can you be thankful that you've been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred in the kingdom of the Son? Can you be thankful for the great forgiveness, love, and peace that Christ has blessed you with? Only when we are truly committed to being thankful for what God has done can we be thankful for one another. And that is the only way we will truly be an evangelical church. We shouldn't be trying to go out there until we can say non-Christians can come in here and experience the gospel, not only in what they hear, but what they say. Let's go to the Lord and pray. Lord, as we will be closing soon our worship of you formally in this sanctuary, I pray that we will not be a lot of clanging cymbals. I pray that we would pursue one another with words of encouragement, words of repentance, words of forgiveness. I pray that we would truly be brothers and sisters to one another, out of a heart, out of a love for you and a love for one another. Lord, I thank you for the way you have blessed Jefferson Park with a unity that can only come from the power of your Spirit. I thank you, Lord, for the way you've blessed us with a love for one another that can only come from a great love from Christ. I pray that we would not take this for granted. I pray that we would not think this needs continual work. Help us, Lord, to be unified. Help us, Lord, to be able to preach the gospel to one another by repenting and forgiving. What a great way to experience the gospel that you've given to us by experiencing forgiveness among one another. May we learn to experience that with great joy. In your holy name we pray, amen.