Colossians 3:14-15

The book of Colossians chapter 3, I want to read verses 12 through 15. Colossians chapter 3, verses 12 through 15. Our focus this morning is going to be on verses 14 and 15. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, for bearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called. in one body and be ye thankful. God bless to us, His sacred and hope this morning. In planting beans, one of the old adages was put three beans in a whole. Children would be told one for the worm, one for the crow, and one to live and grow. Children need a special means, such as the repetition of a rhyme, to help them remember what’s important. Spiritually, you will find certain truths continuously being repeated in Scripture for the benefit, the memory, if you would, of the children of God. You can expect the worm of human forgetfulness to eat up the message at times. You can expect Satan, that evil bird, to snatch the message away from you. But the third repetition of the message, is so that it will take root downward and bring up fruit outwardly from the ground. In verse 13, Paul has raised the issue of quarreling among the people of God. If any man have a quarrel against any, sadly it’s perplexing to find at times a large amount of quarreling and fault-finding in the Church of Christ. People are often murmuring and grumbling and fighting on all sides. And it greatly reduces the effectiveness of the Church of Christ. Well, the great physician of souls provides a prescription for this dreaded illness in our text. There’s not anything new. It’s not anything different, but a repetition of some basic principles of Christian. conduct that’s found in many passages of scripture. In many of Paul’s letters, you will find these kinds of language. You would be greatly benefited to always keep this in mind. You are first and foremost to act in love. You are to pursue peace, and you are to express thankfulness. Let me begin by saying this. You are first and foremost to act in love, as he says in verse 4th. and above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Now, you should realize that love is a most necessary grace, above all things, he says. Christ speaks of loving your neighbor as yourself, which flows, really, from the spring of God loving you. God has given us the spirit of love. the Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 7 without brotherly love everything you do is spoiled it will only be done in in a way of show or pretense it becomes hypocritical although I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity I’m nothing I’m nothing. Love adds a glory, a lustre, beauty to all the other graces. So when we talk about graces and gifts, the greatest of these is charity. Now once again, Paul uses, it seems, here, a figurative expression to put on charity, and the idea of is putting on an outer garment that covers all the rest. From the text, we could read it this way, it might be read this way. Upon all these things put on charity. All the other graces he’s mentioned, we could call them the inner garment. And he says, now, on top of that, put over top of all that, the garment of all that, the garment of love, the outer garment. Sort of a covering for all the rest. Remember, Jesus said that love was one of the distinguishing traits of his disciples. By this, shall all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another, as he says in John 1335. Now, if we really get down to what is love, we’re basically dealing with doing your neighbor good, spiritually, or in an earthly sense or both. Lord taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that you should try to help those that you find in need. and the Samaritan had never met this poor man who got beat up and robbed and left for dead on the road, but finding him in such a pitiful state, he reached out in love and helped him. Now, if this is true regarding someone who is unknown to us, someone that we’ve never met before, how much more so should it be to one in your own spiritual family that you would show love to them? Little children love one another is John’s message to us in his epistle. Sadly, professing Christians often seem to look upon this command as something they could take or leave. But the Bible says we are to love one another. And if you can arbitrarily apply the command, whether you practice love or forbear at your own pleasure, you are far from what Christ has told you to do. We think about the love. that was shown to the Apostle Paul, how that Aquila and Priscilla laid down their necks for him. I mean, they were willing to risk their life for him. We see how that the Galatians, he said, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. You know, people loved one another in the early church. So you should realize love is a most necessary grace. Now, notice all of them. You cannot have unity among the people of God without the grace of love. He calls it the bond of perfection here. Love is the bond of unity which knits together. It binds the people of God, the church. It cements us together, so to speak. The church, while run asunder by a lack of love, is unfit to discharge Christ commands. you know, scattered members are not working together for the good of the church. A house divided, Jesus said, cannot stand. And the church is supposed to be the house of God. It should be united in love. So powerful is this grace of love that it makes all the other graces and gifts of the members subservient to the idea of doing good unto others. So it’s, it’s not just a matter of me putting on a show, look who I am, look what I can do. It’s a matter of how can I help my brother or sister in Christ with the gifts or with the graces that God has given me. Jesus warn him, because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. And so we begin to see when members are not personally addressing sin in their life, love grows cold, not only toward God, but also toward our fellow believers in Christ, and that leads to a dysfunctional church. As long as there’s a spirit of love among the members of the church, they can overcome any defect that may be found within them or any difficulty that comes along. So you cannot have unity among the people of God without the grace of love. It’s the bond of perfection. Let me make a couple observations briefly here. examine all your actions to see if they flow from love. If love is to be the outer garment for all these other graces, then when we exercise these graces, it ought to be with love involved in them. Much which passes itself off as charity could be vain work because the motivation is wrong. No matter how many virtues you seem to have, you are not closed. as becomes a son of God without love. It’s the outer garment. You’ve got to have it on too. My other thought is this. The reason why they previously mentioned virtues, the mercy, the humility, the meekness, the long-suffering, and so forth, appear to be absent, maybe because the present virtue, the parent virtue that we’re talking about, love is absent. And so we don’t have the outer garment, maybe that’s why we don’t have the inner garment either. And so you’re first and foremost to act in love. That seems like a very basic teaching, and yet we have to be reminded of it because we constantly find it in scripture. Secondly, you are to pursue peace. Now, notice verse 15, the first part of it, and let the God of peace rule in your hearts to which you are called in one body. Now, I have to start with saying this. You must reject any false peace. The peace he’s talking about here is the peace of God. That’s what he wants to rule in your hearts. It’s not just any kind of peace which should interest you. You know, peace at any cost, compromise everything in order to have peace. That’s not what he’s talking about. Some have a piece of tolerance where you tolerate sin and you don’t put up any resistance to it. And therefore there’s no waves created. Remember the church at Corinth? They had a man living in incest and they didn’t say anything to them. Nothing was, you know, no rebuke, no dealing with… So as far as they were, because everything was just perfect. It was hunky-dory. It was great. They never dealt with the sin. That’s not the kind of peace. that’s not the peace of God. Others are satisfied with a piece of compromise. Remember Aaron in the Old Testament, knowing the evil of idol worship, knowing the true God is invisible, not to be represented by some kind of image, still out of fear for the people, when they came and said, give us a God. He makes them an idol. He does it as a compromise, fearing the people. The piece of which Paul speaks is the peace of God, the peace God approves off. There’s no dispensing of divine truth here and holiness. This is a piece which results from sin being removed from the camp. There are a lot of people who proclaim peace, peace, and they’re a lot of people who proclaim peace, and they’re want peace, but there is no peace. There’s no peace because you’ve tolerated sin or you’ve compromised. It’s a base sort of peace that’s soft on sin, timorous to confront, unwilling to apply the word of God. A sort of peace which even if you somehow rather accomplish if unruins you in the end. So you must reject false peace. It’s the peace of God that we want. Now you are to pursue peace with all men. The peace of God is to rule in your hearts, he says. Remember the scripture command in Romans chapter 12 and verse 18? If it be possible, as much as lieth within you, live peaceably with all men. Now, peace may be said to reign in your heart when it is the governing principle. When it is your great desire to live peaceably with everyone. So much so that you may control the circumstances, peace rules you. As long as it’s up to us, whatever we can do to promote peace, we should do. Sadly, sometimes you feel like David, I’m for peace, but they’re for war. And you can’t always bring about peace. But peace rules when it restrains the volatile passions of wrath and anger and revenge and revenge and so forth. Man by nature is sort of like a wild beast. He’s a man eater. He’s ready to devire any prey. Now how can this wild beast be taught to lie down peaceably with the lamb? How can the lion be taught to eat straw like an ox? Well, it will never happen until you leave off being a lion. You have to have a change of nature. And it clearly is not going to happen without God making the change. You know, we don’t have suitable teeth for eating straw and a proper stomach for digesting grass until God changes us and gives us an ox-like nature. Spiritually, we’re talking about, of course, the new nature and the spiritual birth. Peace will never ruin your heart unless God regenerates you. And then you will not have the hostility at all times that most have toward others. The one thing Jesus said that indicates you are a child of God is that you are a peacemaker. Isn’t that one of the things he said in the sermon of the Mount? His people are peacemakers. So you are to pursue peace with all men. Now you are called to peace as part of Christ’s church, to which also you are called in one body, he says. God has not only called you to peace with himself, but he’s also called you to peace with your fellow believers in the body of Christ. Let us follow after peace one with another, Romans 1419. Just as it would be unnatural for your bodily members to fight with one another, fight against one another. So it should be with regarding the Church of Christ with its members. Do you remember when Abraham and Lot left Egypt, they came out, and the Bible says they were very rich in cattle. So they went down to Egypt, and when they came out of Egypt, they had all these herds and flocks and so forth, and they had all this cattle. And so when they went back to the land of Canaan, the Bible says, where they were staying, the land was not able to sustain this large number of flocks. and herds that they had. And there arose strife between the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot, which the Canaanites and the Parasites, still living in the land, took notice off. So Abraham meets with Lot, and what does he say to Lot? He says, let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen, for we be brethren, he says. So Abraham proposed that they separate, and he says, look, you just pick something like, wherever you want to go, I’ll go the other way. You pick somewhere you want to go. I’ll let you pick first. You settle there, and I’ll settle over here. He didn’t want to quarrel with Lot because they were both believers. They were brothers in Christ. It would not be a good testimony before the heathen around them for them to be quarreling. This is the way God’s people should think. They should never want to see a schism then in Christ’s body. So you’re called to peace as part of Christ’s church. Let me make a few observations. Those who disturb the peace of the church are unmindful of their calling and despisers of the body of Christ, which is supposed to be a peaceful union. Those who are the cause and the leaders of factions and dissensions in the church should not flatter themselves because remember what the scripture says, the Lord hates those who sow discord among the brother. Ultimately, those who violate the peace of the church end up doing themselves of the greatest harm because they’re part of the members of the church. So you are to pursue peace. The third thing, he says here, is you are to express thankfulness. In the last part of verse 15, and be ye thankful. Now, obviously, you ought to be thankful to God. We have to learn to bless God’s name for everything and not be quarreling with God. Sometimes we’re prone to do that. It’s very difficult, I think, for us at times, to say what Job said. Shall we receive good at the hands of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. It’s hard to blesses. God and thank him for our miseries. We’re more inclined to thank him for the mercies that we receive, but he’s also showing his goodness and grace to us in the miseries that come. And we’re to be thankful in all things. Thank God for all the spiritual benefits that you have in Christ, the salvation of your soul, all the good things that Christ has purchased, the grace, and gifts and so forth for you. The many healthy days that he has given you on this earth, the many material and useful things that we have in this life that he’s given us, we take, we shouldn’t take for granted our, you know, having a house and having a car and having food on the table and things of this nature. And that he has not dealt with us after our sins, but has forgiven us. Sadly, we may often find ourselves murmuring complaining against God. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, we’re not always content when dark providence comes into our life. We’re not always happy with the circumstances. Like Kane, you may think you have a heavier load than you’re able to bear and complain about it. But be thankful that your burden isn’t any heavier than it is at the moment and that God doesn’t test you beyond. what you and I are able to bear according to his promise. So you’re to be thankful to God. You’re to be thankful to others. Too many people receive all kinds of Christian kindness without a word of appreciation for it. You can look upon the spontaneous kindness of your brother and as what you rightly deserve. But it’s an unholy spirit, I think, which scarcely has the courtesy to say thank you. Children ought to be thankful. that they were raised by godly parents and shouldn’t resent it. They should appreciate that fact. Husbands ought to be thankful for their wives for those hundreds of unseen ministries of love that they provide. Wives ought to be thankful to their husbands for all their labors and anxieties and caring for the family. Christians ought to be thankful for a sound church where the Word of God is faithfully taught. any service or kindness done for you by a fellow member ought to listen then a hearty thanks from us. Be thankful. It’s such a simple command. It seems to be hard to practice. It seems hard for people to be thankful. You remember the people of Kyla in the Old Testament. They seem to appreciate the fact that David delivered them. from the Philistines. And yet, they refused to show any reciprocal kindness when David needed their help. When Saul came after David, when he asked the Lord, should I hide here in the city, he says no, they’ll turn you over. And so that’s not showing much thankfulness or kindness for being delivered from the enemy as they were. Let me make couple of observations. The best proof of your gratitude to God is to obey His will. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you are thankful to God for all that He’s done for you, the best thing you can do in response is to be someone who is diligent about keeping the commandments of God. The quickest way to be cut off from divine benefits is to be ungrateful for what you’ve already received. God prospers you and blesses you and you never give him any thanks for it. Don’t expect that to continue. God expects you to reciprocate when you receive benefits from fellow believers. Willingness, you should have a willingness to do the same thing toward others. You know, Paul talks about one, the churches, let’s say the Gentile Church is providing for the needs of the Jerusalem Church in their time of need. And then later on, you know, in your time, of need someone will be helping you out. In other words, there should be some type of reciprocal situation that comes up. And that’s the way it ought to be with the people of God. We have to be thankful when we receive help, and we should be willing and grateful enough to say, hey, when someone else needs help in some other area, I need to help them and show love to them in this capacity. And be thankful for what I’ve received and therefore reciprocate. Well, it’ll practice planting beans, putting three beans in the hole, one for the worm, one for the crow, one to live and grow. Maybe a little quaint saying, but it’s helpful to remember. Spiritually, God often repeats the same message over and over again so that you may may remember these basic truths. Here are the three Christian conduct virtues. You are first and foremost to act in love. You are to pursue peace and you are to express thankfulness. Let us close with a word of prayer.