Episode Transcript
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Well, if you are able to, please remain standing and let's hear God's
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word from Colossians, Paul's letter to
the Colossians, chapter three, verses twelve
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through seventeen, Colossians three, twelve
through seventeen, and Paul talks about how
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we are to act, how are
we to how we are to behave in
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the household of God. He talks
about who we are and how we are
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to treat one another. This one
another aspect is very important in this passage.
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Paul's not just addressing our individual lives, but our lives together as a
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community, as a church. So
let's hear this passage this morning and I
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want you to focus particularly on the
word thankful. Kids, listen for that
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word thankful, or thankfulness or Thanksgiving. All right, Colossians twelve through seventeen.
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Put on, then, as God's
chosen ones, holy and beloved,
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compassionate hearts, kindness, humility,
meekness and patience, bearing with one another
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and, if one has a complaint
against another, forgiving each other. As
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the Lord has forgiven you, so
you also must forgive. And above all
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these, put on love, which
binds everything together. They're in perfect harmony,
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and let the peace of Christ rule
in your hearts, to which indeed
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you were called, in one body, and be thankful. Let the word
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of Christ dwell richly in you,
or richly, teaching and admonishing one another
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in all wisdom, singing psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in
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your hearts to God. And whatever
you do in word or deed, do
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everything in the name of the Lord
Jesus, giving thanks to God, the
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father. Through him, may God
bless his word to us. Please be
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seated. As I said, from
this passage, I want to draw your
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attention, to have us all focus
together on God's command to us to be
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thankful. It appears in the last
several verses, in fact in each of
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them, in fifteen, in fifteen
and sixteen, and in seventeen. I'm
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fifteen, the last part of that
verse as and be thankful, and then
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sixteen and seventeen. Explain what that
looks like. Explain what that looks like.
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So in Verse Sixteen we have these
words with thankfulness in your heart to
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God, and then in verse seventeen
it says whatever you do in word or
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deed, do everything in the name
of the Lord Jesus. Giving thanks to
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God, the father, through him. So these various ways in which we
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are of to be found together as
a church on one of them is love.
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We are to love one another.
We are bound together in perfect harmony
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through love. We are to let
peace rule in our hearts. We read,
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or reread or we heard read peace, that to which we were called
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together as one body. So the
peace is a together kind of peace forgiving
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one another. The love is a
love that binds us together. And the
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same is true for thankfulness. When
it says let the word of Christ dwell
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in you richly, it's a plural
you. It's Paul's addressing us as a
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people, chosen ones, holy,
beloved, as a church, as a
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community. Together we are to be
thankful. So the thankfulness that is here
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is definitely demonstrated in our lives.
Are should be demonstrated in our lives in
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an individual way. But it's also
important, and Paul has particularly in mind,
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our corporate thankfulness. So while each
of us are to be thankful to
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the father through the son, we
never do that alone. You can put
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it this way. Christians are not
just to be thankful people, but we
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are to be a thankful people.
We are to stir one another up in
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the Lord. Well, that's a
nice thing, isn't it? If you
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think about it. Have you ever
belonged to a church? Hopefully you do
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now. Have you ever belonged to
a church where the body was a thankful
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body? Have you ever sat around
a dinner table that was thankful? Hopefully
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you just did. We read a
proverb in the middle of the week at
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the weekly pot luck. That said, let's see if I can remember.
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This is off the top of my
head. A meal better is a dinner
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or a meal with herbs that has
love, then one with a fattened ox
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and hatred with it. Right,
better to have just a little bit of
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food, just a few herbs,
right, and to have lave around the
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table, to have hearts filled with
peace and with thankfulness, then to have
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a giant meal, sumptuous and well
yams with the marshmallows, of course,
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to have things that good and yet
have people fighting and greedy and snarling at
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one another. Being thankful together is
a wonderful thing. But how do we
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do it? If we want to
be at church that comes around the table
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of the Lord that is thankful,
how do we become that kind of people.
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How do we become a kind of
people that God would characterize as thankful?
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How can we have a reputation for
being thankful? Well, God gives
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the answer to this question in these
verses. Any what he says is this,
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let the word of Christ, that
let the word of Christ dwell richly
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in you. I wonder if that's
the first thing you thought of when you
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are answering these questions. I was
asking in your mind. When I ask
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how do we become a thankful people? Do you answer? Well, of
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course we let the word of Christ
dwell richly in us. My guess is
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not. It's because we often don't
think about the word of Christ this way.
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We don't think about the scriptures this
way, even those of us who
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hold them in high esteem, even
those of us who think that they're important,
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God's own word and authoritative word,
they're often relegated to sort of a
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certain part of our lives that do
certain things in certain ways. But the
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word of Christ here is not coming
to us, as a visitor, Paul
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says, it is to dwell among
us like a person who lives in our
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house. And when that happens,
when the word of Christ Christ dwells in
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US are dwells richly in our church. Wonderful things begin to happen, including
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thankfulness. I'll think about thankfulness and
I think you'll understand why this is the
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case. The nature of thankfulness is
such a thing that it never exists on
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its own. Thankfulness is not an
attitude that exists by itself. What do
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I mean? When you're thankful,
you're always thankful for something. Right,
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it's always in connection with something else. You're never just thankful on on its
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own. That's why it's it's not
good enough to simply wag a finger at
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someone to say be thankful. That's
like taking a seed packet and shaking and
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saying grow. I said row right. It just doesn't work that way.
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Seeds don't grow that way. Thankfulness
doesn't work that way. It doesn't grow
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that way. It has to be
planted into the soil of scripture. It
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has to be planted into the word
of Christ. When that happens and the
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spirit waters, thankfulness does indeed grow. So let's think about the word of
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Christ, then. What is it
that we are thinking about? What is
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it that produces this thankfulness? Well, the word of Christ is the message
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of God's mission to send his anointed
son, the Christ, into the world
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to save people from sin, to
save people from death, to save people
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from judgment. It's not just a
message of a mission planned, but it's
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also a message of a mission accomplished. The word of Christ is God's gracious
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gift to an undeserving world. Now, thankfulness wouldn't make much sense if you
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didn't owe anything to God or if
he hadn't given anything to you. But
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we do owe a lot to God
and God has given us something, and
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so that means that there is all
kinds of room for thankfulness. If the
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Christian message is new to you,
I can explain it in this way.
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Consider a time in your life where
you have been given something you didn't deserve.
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Maybe a second chance, maybe a
second chance on a job after a
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bad performance review, or maybe a
second chance on a marriage, or maybe
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an inheritance from someone you had dishonored
or a friendship from someone you were mean
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to. It's one thing to receive
a gift and be thankful for it,
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but it's a double thankfulness. It's
an overflowing thankfulness that a bounds when you've
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been given the opposite of what you
deserve particularly well, and only in the
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case when you don't deserve a good
thing. God's grace to us in Christ
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dislike this, only it's bigger and
richer and deeper in every way. Why?
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Well, because we never deserved less
from any other person and no one
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has ever given more to us than
God has. There's no one that we've
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sinned against or been mean to,
or failed to perform our duties, any
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one as much as God. When
God, when we approach the all holy
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God, who is perfectly good in
every way, perfectly beautiful and wonderful,
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and we come to him who knows
all things and knows our hearts, knows
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our minds and every aspect of our
lives, everything we've said, everything that
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we've done, we find ourselves standing
before a judge, deserving not just a
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little bit of good, the all
of God's wrath. That's why Paul says
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that the wages of sin it's death. When we sin in our lives,
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it's no small thing, when our
hearts are twisted and corrupt, when we
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approach a meal that is supposed to
be filled with Thanksgiving and instead we're filled
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with pride and covetousness and all kinds
of other things. We begin to see,
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when we really look in the mirror, how sinful we really are.
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But when we have that perspective of
our sins and we're really honest with ourselves,
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but then we see the Great Gift
of God's grace and he says I
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forgive all your sins. You don't
have to pay for them, and more
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than that, I will raise you
up, even as I've raised my son
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from the dead, and you will
dwell with him forever and ever, without
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sin and enjoy and in pleasure.
We never deserved less from anyone and no
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one has ever given us more.
This is, in a nutshell, the
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word of Christ. Do you see
why it would produce thankfulness? If your
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job, if your boss gave you
a second chance on your job, would
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you say yeah, I know,
of course not. Of course you wouldn't.
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You would say thank you, I
really appreciate this. I won't fail
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you. If your spouse gives you
a second chance on your marriage, you
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don't say well, thanks, of
course, and you've done your fair share
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of wrong too. No, you
fall down at their knees and you say
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thank you, thank you for what
you've done, thank you for loving me
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when I didn't deserve it. When
God gives us not just an extended period
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on our job or a few more
years is together with him, but he
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gives us eternal life, joy in
the Lord, sinlessness, peace and all
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the blessings of Heaven, we have
a lot of room for thankfulness. Some
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New Testament commentators have called Colossians the
most Christological book in the Bible, and
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the reason they say that is not
because the other books of the Bible don't
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point to Christ, but Colossians is
so overtly so, on the face of
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it, talking about Jesus in such
explicit ways, about who he is and
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what he's done, that they call
it this sometimes is a way to describe
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how much of the word of Christ
is in here, specifically talking about Jesus
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in this way. So when Paul
says at the end of this book and
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and kind of the Pivo, a
pivotal turning point in the book, he
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started summing up his argument and putting
an exclamation point on the whole thing and
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he says let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly, he has at
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least first in mind the things that
he's just written in chapters one and chapters
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two and the rest of chapter three. He means, of course, all
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of scripture, but Colossians is a
great place to start. Is what I'm
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saying, and I want you to
consider just some of these things, just
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here and just this one book,
in just these three chapters which Paul has
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mentioned. In Chapter One, he
talked about the hope laid up for us
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in heaven. He talked about the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is growing
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and bearing grid of fruit in all
the world. He wrote about how God
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has delivered us up from the domain
of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom
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of his beloved son, a mighty
rescue effort. He talked about the redemption
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that we have in Christ through the
forgiveness of sins. He tells us that
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Jesus is the Christ, he is
the Supreme Creator and Ruler over Heaven and
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earth, and in all of this
power, he canceled the record of our
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debt became victorious over Satan through it, and all this for people who were,
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quote, hostile in mind and doing
evil deeds. God didn't save the
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good people, he saved the sinners. He saved us, and he did
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so for the purpose of presenting us
before God, Holly and blameless. That's
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all in chapter one, and there's
more than we could have said. Chapter
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two has yet more treasures of the
word of Christ. Paul says that we
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are knit together in love to reach
all the riches of full assurance, of
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understanding and the knowledge of God,
which is Christ. Let me read that
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backwards. What is Christ answer?
Being knit together in love to reach all
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the riches of full assurance, of
understanding and the knowledge of God. Christ
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is the one in whom, quote, all the hidden treasures of wisdom and
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knowledge are found. Jesus is the
one who it quote, in whom the
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fullness of Deity dwells. bodily,
we were buried with him in baptism and
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raised by faith, we who were
hostile, as I said earlier, doing
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evil deeds, but also, as
he says in chapter two, dead in
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our trestpasses and in the uncircumcisions of
our flesh. In that state, God
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made us alive, together with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses,
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canceling the record of death that stood
against us with its legal demands.
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Do you see why Paul says let
the word of Christ dwell and you richly.
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When we consider these things, and
just this from these couple of chapters,
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not to mention all of the Bible
and, of course, the work
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of God in our particular lives,
you can see why we should be a
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thankful people. The word of Christ
is the Great Gift of God for Our
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Eternal Nal Salvation, both body and
soul, and when this message is truly
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among us, dwelling in us,
it springs forth in thankfulness. Remember what
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I said about the visitor and the
one who lives with you. When a
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visitor comes, they might have their
own schedule right they had a rental car,
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they're going to go see some other
people. Maybe you'll have a meal
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together. You know you show some
hospitality, but you know they're only there
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for a portion of your life.
But when somebody comes and lives in your
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house, it has an effect on
everything that you do, your schedule,
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your meals, your priorities, your
money. And that's to be true of
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the word of Christ. It's not
merely present with us, but Jesus,
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through his word and by his spirit, is to dwell richly in us.
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If we sideline, down, played
or de emphasize the word of Christ,
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then what do you think is going
to happen to faith and thankfulness? Little
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shrivel and die. So what Paul
is saying here is that if we want
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to be a thankful people, not
to mention a peaceful people, in a
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loving people, the Gospel must be
at the center of us as a church,
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the foundation of who we are and
what we do. Not Our ambitions,
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not our preferences, not even our
love for our neighbor, not even
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our thankfulness to God can be at
the center of who we are. It
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must be Jesus. The core of
who we are must be found in him.
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And why is that? What's because
only he is truly good and truly
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perfect in every way. We might
find thankfulness for a friend WHO's given us
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a second chance at a friendship,
let's say, but it doesn't mean we're
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never going to have an argument with
them again. It doesn't mean that friend
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might hurt us. We can be
thankful for a House that we've received or
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a job that we've had a second
chance on, but these things go away.
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Only Jesus doesn't go away. Only
Jesus, only through Jesus, do
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we have the steadfast love of God
which endures forever. When that kind of
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foundation, the very godhead himself coming
to us in the person of the son
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and by the power of the spirit. When that is our core, when
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that is in whom we are found
and what we know, then thankfulness will
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not die. You can even be
a job and have all your things taken
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away, have all kind of trials
and struggles and still be thankful to know
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that you belong to God and he
has promised himself to you. We might
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say that when the word of Christ
dwells richly in it, in us,
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we dwell richly in it and in
him. I want to conclude just saying
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in a few practical things. Practically, what does this look like in the
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church? How do we let the
word of Christ dwell richly in us?
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Will Paul gives us three things and
I'll just touch on them briefly. They
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each deserve probably their own sermon.
But he talks about teaching, admonishing and
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singing. He says, and be
thankful. Let the word of quiet Christ
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dwell richly in you, or dwell
in you richly teaching and admonishing one another
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in all wisdom. Those are the
first two. Teaching and admonishing one another
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in all wisdom. If you have
to breathe air in your house and there's
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a let's say, and you have
an air purifier that purifies that air and
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pushes it throughout the house, these
things are kind of what that purifier is.
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There the system which moves the air, we might say. Teaching and
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moonishing and singing with thankfulness and wisdom. These are the ways in which we
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come to know the word of Christ, the first two in particular. Teaching
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has a particular meaning of giving instruction. Simple enough, right. You teach
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something, you give instruction and something
in monishing has a sense of teaching,
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but with an aim to correct.
So we might say that between one another,
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if we want the word of Christ
to dwell richly in us, then
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we must show the path to one
another and also help keep one another on
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it. Teaching and monishing, instructing. This is the way, and correcting
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when we get off of it.
Now, of course, within the Church,
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God has given particular people to do
and be ordained even to this kind
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of work. Pastors and elders are
called to teach, are called to admonish,
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they are called to lead the way
and be models of this and examples
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of this and and even a judicate
things when necessary, to correct doctrine when
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there are troubles. But just because
there are particular officers in the church,
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it doesn't mean we all all have
some obligation to do this. When Paul
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says to let the word of Christ
dwell in you richly, he's talking to
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the whole Colossian Church. Is talking
to us at all as well. That
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means that we need to take time
to learn, learn to know the word
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of Christ, to show people the
Path and help them stay on. It's
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not an easy thing, might even
be a little sort of heartbeating, terrifying
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thing in your heart. Notice what
he says, though. He says teaching
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one another in all wisdom right.
It doesn't mean just throwing open your Bible
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and starting to yell at people.
That's not wisdom. It means knowing the
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content, knowing the modes of instruction. What does it mean to speak the
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truth and love? What does it
mean to bear with weakness, to give
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people time and patience, to correct
with gentleness? As I said, these
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things take more time to explain,
but the point is is that there are
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these things that God has given to
us. How will we know the word
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of Christ unless it's taught to us. We don't get it by looking up
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at the stars, as beautiful as
they are. We have to hear the
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word of God and when we stray
from the path, we need the teaching
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that corrects and brings us back.
We shouldn't be afraid of these things,
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we should embrace them, because this
is how the word of Christ dwells richly
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in us and it is how we
become a thankful, loving, peaceful people.
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Well, when we come to know
the word of Christ, it has
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this way of getting into not only
our minds but our hearts. And so
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Paul adds something that I think many
people today would never think to say when
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sort of expositing Christian doctrine, and
that is, in letting the word of
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Christ well richly in us, to
be a thankful people, we should sing,
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he says. We should sing psalms
and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness
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in our hearts to God. There's
much that we could say about this,
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but let me say just a couple
things. First of all, notice that
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Paul is that's remember that singing has
an effect in our emotions. It changes
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US and expresses our emotions Christianity is
not just a religion of the mind,
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it is a religion of our hearts. It is a feeling of our hearts.
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Is the piety that is inside of
us. Would we come to know
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the word of Christ? We express
it. Singing has a way of functioning
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both in sort of getting it in
and getting it out. It helps us
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feel it more deeply, know it
more deeply remember it, but it also
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has a way of helping us express
it in ways that are maybe hard otherwise.
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The second thing to you I want
you to notice is the way Paul
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is concluding here. He concludes,
we might say, with a bang.
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So sometimes Paul speaks in a way
that is meant to give very careful divisions
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two things. So, for example, in verse twelve he says we are
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to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patients, and
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in a longer way he says forgiveness. Each of these are sort of their
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own distinct category and we can think
about each of those. How do we
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put on kindness? How do we
put on meekness? But there's other ways
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in which Paul speaks and where he's
not intending to make distinct classifications. But
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instead he's giving to us sort of
a great summary of a whole, or
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rather he's piling up synonyms. So, for example, if I say to
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you I want to build a chicken
coop, is something I've been working on
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at home. I want to build
a chicken coop and it's going to be
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big, it's going to be huge, it's going to be tremendous. Right,
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I don't want you to Parse each
of one of those out right.
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I'm just sort of amplifying how big
this thing is going to be, right,
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I'm not saying what's going to be. In some ways big and in
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some ways tremendous, in some ways
huge. Paul uses the same kind of
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rhetoricals and technique. In believe it's
Verse Fifteen of Chapter Two. Right,
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he in Christ and going to the
Cross. He disarmed the rulers and authority
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peace. He put them to open
shame. He talks about this another places
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in chapter one. He talks about
rulers and authorities and powers. He is
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in Verse Sixteen, for by him
all things were created in heaven and earth,
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whether visible and invisible or invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
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authorities, you hear him building and
building and building. He wants Christ to
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supreme over it all and where everything. And he's doing a similar thing when
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he comes to the end of this, all this exhortation, right before he
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moves into some household rules and then
finishes his letter off. He's been talking
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about Jesus, talking about Jesus,
Chapter One, Chapter two, singing about
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Jesus even and then he gets to
chapter three and he says let the word
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of Christ dwell in you richly,
singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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When he says these things, Paul
uses every single Greek word there is for
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a kind of song except one,
a dirge. He does and of course
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he doesn't. He doesn't use the
word dirge because it doesn't think here,
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but he get takes all of the
others, every single Greek word that is
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available to him. He's essentially saying
sing, sing, sing, be a
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thankful singing people. That's why we
sing a lot of covenant, that's why
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we have him sings and that's why
when we get together you find us singing,
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because the word of God, if
it's going to dwell richly in us,
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it should be read and it should
be Sung. And when it is,
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we find that our hearts are stirred
and notice how it's together when we
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do our singing, and I encourage
you to sing on your own, please
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do, but we sing together and
there's something powerful about that, something wonderful
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about that. When we come together, it's a similar thing when we pray
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together, these corporate prayers. We
find our JOWL, our voices joined together.
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In knowing Jesus, in having him, in dwell among us, in
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praising him together and repenting together,
we are the body of Christ and because
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what of Jesus, because of what
Jesus has done, we can be a
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very thankful people. So let's pray
and ask that God would help us with
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these things, to help us to
know him, that he would live among
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us, live in us and do
so richly and by his spirit, and
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that in return we might give him
thanks and praise and he would be glorified
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by it. So let's do that
now. Let us pray together.
