The Indwelling of the Word

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. Before we get started, just to let you know we're going to be in Colossians, Chapter 3, in just a few moments when we get into the Word of God. But I do want to say it is great to see all your smiling faces out there this morning, because the last time I came to preach, it was back during the time that we were fighting COVID. And I came in on Friday morning, y'all were having a hybrid service, and so you were recording the sermons in the middle of the week, and then on Sunday, we would preach, and they would just play those recordings. And so that Friday morning when I got here to record the sermon that morning, Drew looked at me and he said to him, he said, I'm sorry to tell you this, but somebody in our church just got COVID. So he said, this is the only sermon you're preaching this week to this empty room. And so I didn't get to see all of your beautiful smiling faces

the last time I was here. And you know, I love Drew, but it's not a lot of fun just preaching to Drew only and I'm sure he wasn't like it to just hear me preach to him but I do appreciate it and I love coming down and being with y'all as often as Drew invites me because we just we love you guys and want to support you in all the ways that we can and you stole my son from me and his family well let me say this my grandchildren you know but no we're just excited that you're here and just it's exciting to see how things are changing and things are happening here and the growth of the church and it's just exciting to see and so I'm just excited to be here this morning and appreciate the opportunity to come and the kind words you had to say. Drew, you know, I love you brother, your family. I mean we worked several years together and you know you just take to you you

know one of the things that helps a church grow is the longevity of its staff. And so our church and Drew was there for, was it nine years? Yeah, he was there for nine years and our pastors have been there for 11 now, our music director's been there for nine now going on ten. And so those are very important things. So as a church you hate to lose any leader but especially those that have been there for a while because it just helps build that stability in a church and a church staff. But I'll tell you truly blessed to have Drew and his family. So Drew, thanks a lot for inviting me to come. This morning I know y'all been through this series all summer talking about the Word of God. And so we're going to talk about that this morning out of Colossians chapter 3. And let me read a few verses this morning as we get started. It's chapter 3 verses 12 through 17. Paul says, therefore as God chose people holy and

dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with each other and forgive one another if any of you has agreements against someone forgive as the Lord forgave you and over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell in you among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms hymns and songs from the Spirit singing to God with gratitude in your heart. And whatever you do, whether in word and deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. So let's pray. Father, we know that you gave us a gift of your holy word. And Father, we know that you want us to read it, you want it to impact our lives.

And so Father, we just pray that as we take this passage this morning and just try to take some truths out of it to apply to our lives, Lord, that you will use it in a mighty way to grow us spiritually, to convict us, Lord, just to draw us into that closer relationship with you. Because as this passes ends, whatever we do, we want to do it for your glory. And we just hope that your name is glorified in what happens here today. It's in your blessed and holy name we pray. Amen. I read verses 12 through 17 because I wanted to get the whole context of this verse. But the verse that we're going to focus on most of all today is verse 16, where it says, let the message of Christ dwell among you richly. And when we hear that, we think about richly, and that word kind of carries with it the meaning of plentiful, abundant, it's extravagant, it's even overflowing, you have more than

you need. And when you think about the word of God just dwelling in you and overflowing out of you, out of your heart, into those around you, that's kind of what Paul was trying to teach the teach us and teach the church here. But unfortunately for you and I when we hear the word richly a lot of times from us from a secular standpoint the first word that comes to mind is rich and we think about worldly wealth. And you know there's all of us in here at one time or another set so what if I won the lottery and won 200 million dollars what would I do with that? And when we set and think about that, there's almost like this sense of peace that comes over us thinking, man, if we had all that money, all our troubles and stuff would go away, especially if we're dealing with financial issues in our life right now, wouldn't we? And we think about all the things we could pay off or house pay off. You ask people what they would do

and they say all those things, buying things, traveling, all that. But one of the things that most of them will say first is, I get to quit my job. Just quit. You're going And so we think about that and you know oftentimes perception is not reality. So I just want to give you just a few statistics about lottery winners that I was kind of surprised to see as I read through some of these studies. You know about 70% of the winners end up broke in filing for bankruptcy. You know that 44% of the winners spend all the money they won within five years. Just give you a couple examples. One gentleman Billy Bob Harold won 32 million dollars in 1997. 20 months later he went bankrupt and committed suicide. Andrew Jack Whitaker won $315 million, took the one-time payout of about $110 million. 20 months later he was broke, divorced, and an alcoholic. And he was quoted as saying, I wished I just tore the ticket up. So it's amazing sometimes

when we think about it from a secular earthly manner of richness we think that And if only we had this, our lives would be perfect. But that's not the richness that Paul is talking about here in this passage. That's why Scripture tells us to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth. What we store up here is going to disappear. But what we store up in heaven is not. The richness Paul is talking about is one that's not materialistic, it's not worldly. This is a richness that comes from the spiritual and its eternal. And this is the great thing about it. It's not only available to a few lucky winners. It's available to everyone who wants to enjoy and take in that richness of God's Word. You just need to let God's Word dwell in you richly. And one of the things I want you to see in this passage is when Paul says you, he says among you and he's using the plural of you.

It's as if he's not just talking to us individually, but he's talking to us as a body of believers, a church. He's telling the church, as a body of believers, people should see that the Word of God is dwelling in you richly. Not just applying it to ourselves, but applying it to you and I as a body of believers as a church. Here at South Burleson, he's saying, South Burleson, let the Word of God dwell in you richly. And when he says dwell, what does he mean by dwell? Dwell means that it's It's permanent. He wants us to... I'm sorry, I'm going to do the word of Christ first. I'm getting ahead of myself here. So the word of Christ that he talks about is the message of Jesus Christ. You know, whenever Paul was writing this, they didn't have the New Testament, did they? They didn't even... they had the Old Testament words, but they didn't have the Old Testament to carry around with them,

did they? You know, aren't we so... I mean, we're just amazingly blessed today when it comes to this series that Drew is doing on the Word of God. To think about the fact that you and I today, we don't have to carry the Bible around. We used to talk about we'd have all these Bibles in our house. Nowadays we only have to talk about that. Remember the song, Dust on the Bible? Now today we don't have to say that. It's on our phones. We can read the Word of God wherever we're at. We can even set it up automatically so things will prompt us and pop up messages and devotionals for us to read. It's so easy for us to allow the Word of God just to penetrate and be brought into our lives on a daily basis. At that time, 2 Timothy says, all scripture is God-breathed and inspired by God. Basically he's talking about the gospel message. They were passing down the oral traditions, the message of Jesus Christ.

It was about His death, His resurrection, and His salvation, or our salvation. And it wasn't just about our salvation. He was reminding us that the Word of God is also there to instruct us on how to live according to God's will on a daily basis. And then when he says, let it dwell, that's when he's talking about the fact that for the word of God to dwell in us, it means that it resides permanently, that it's there and it's gonna make a difference. It's gonna penetrate deeply into our thinking and into our thought process. It's gonna permeate our minds and it's gonna have an impact on all the decisions that we make on a daily basis. Does the word of God have that impact on the decisions that you make daily. That's what Paul is talking about. That's what he's talking about as a church, as a body of believers. He wants the word of God to guide, and the Holy Spirit to guide everything that we do

as a body of believers. Now I know y'all have been doing a reading plan this summer, and it's very important to read God's word, isn't it? But you know what, you can read God's word and still not have the word of God dwelling in you richly. It's important for us to study God's word, isn't it? That's why many of you were here this morning in Bible study. You come at other times during the week when y'all have Bible studies because you want to know more about the word of God. But you can study the Bible and still not have the word of God just dwelling in you richly. It's important also that we not only read and we study, but we memorize God's word. Now I don't know about you, but I'm not really good at that. Now I know a lot of verses, and I can kind of tell you a lot of verses and paraphrase them, But I'm not great at just memorizing and just quoting a bunch of verses.

But we can do all those things and still not have the Word of God dwelling in us richly. Why is that? Because if the Word of God is truly residing in us richly, it's going to impact the way we walk, the way we talk, and the way we live. That's when the Word of God is dwelling in us permanently. When it has changed us, you know, Bible talks about the fact that we are new creation in Christ. Well, part of that is allowing God's word to change the way we look at things from a world's perspective. We don't look at it from the world's perspective, we look at it from a heavenly perspective. To be Christ-like, to follow God's word. James says, don't just be hearers of the word, but be doers also. But you need to obey and to follow. That's why Jesus says, abide in me and I will abide in you. When we're abiding in Christ, We can do great things. Listen, I think as believers, as Christians, as a church,

we can do a lot of good things just under our own power. But man, we can't imagine what we can do when we allow the Holy Spirit of God and His Word to direct every decision we make in our lives, to direct every decision that we make as a church and that we work together in unity to be able to see those things accomplished because they're of God and by God and he's doing it through us. So often we're not doing that, aren't we? We're kind of thinking about some of the things that we want to happen. There's one thing in this passage sometimes we miss, it's right in the middle of verse 16. He says, with all wisdom. So Paul's telling us that when we have the word of God dwelling in us, that out of that word of God comes this wisdom, this wisdom that we can't get here on earth. Do you know when we look around a lot of times, We see people who are, let's say, how should I say the word so we don't hurt anyone's feelings?

Because I'm in that group too. As senior citizens, is that a nice way to say it? And when you see a senior citizen, a lot of times you've heard the term, that's a wise old man. Well, a lot of times we associate wisdom with age, don't we? Because Tim's old, he must be wise. Because he's seen a lot and experienced a lot. So let's go to Tim and ask him and see what he says because he's a wise old man. But when biblical wisdom, it doesn't matter whether you're 15 or 50. It's not based on age or experience. It's based on the power of God's Word. And you could have great biblical wisdom at 15 and you could still be pretty unwise at the age Tim is. Now, if you think about it, we've seen a lot of people my age do some pretty stupid things. So it doesn't matter your age, you can still do some pretty dumb things, right? The wisdom, God's wisdom comes through His Word, and we can have that wisdom no matter

what age we are as long as we're allowing God's Word to dwell in us. And that's what Paul's telling us that in his passage he's saying, let that wisdom guide your decisions. I love what James says in James 3 17 he says, but the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure Then it's peace-loving It's considerate. It's impartial and it's sincere I just like to think about those last two that's impartial and sincere When you think about God's wisdom and we're trying to make decisions and and deal with with people in your life with those are saving those are unsaid. It is fantastic to have this wisdom that is impartial and sincere that comes from heaven, that takes out some of my biases and some of my prejudices, but it allows me to see a person as God sees that person and treat that person as he wants them to be treated and for me to act in a way that's

accordance to his word. One writer put it this way, he said, you're getting into the Word of God, but the question is, is the Word of God getting into you? That's That's the difference. So Paul tells us as a church, he gives us three things here that guides. If we've got the Word of God dwelling in us richly as a church, here's three things that are going to happen. He said, first of all, with that wisdom, he said, you're going to be teaching. You're going to be teaching others. And we teach others that's just helping others to understand the truth of God's Word. And we've all been there. And as we grow, we all continue to learn. That's why I love going to Bible studies, and I love those Bible studies being discussions, because I can learn so much from other people from what they've experienced, what God has done in their life, and how He's changed their life, not just by reading it, but hearing

about their experiences. How many of you here this morning are currently teaching, or at some point in your life, have taught at some level in church? How many of you? See, there's a lot. Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Even if you didn't raise your hand as you taught in church, you've been teaching if you're a believer because you're teaching others because of the way you believe in Christ. Your children, the people you live with, the friends you're around, they see whether or not you're living according to God's word. You know, the Bible talks about teaching as one of the spiritual gifts, doesn't it? But I want to encourage you, you don't have to have the spiritual gift of teaching to teach. And just to give you an example of that, how many of you feel like you've got the spiritual gift of evangelism or the spiritual gift of giving? Well, I could hear people say, well, I don't have that gift, so I don't need to do that.

That's not true, isn't it? Because the Bible tells us we all have the ability and we're all supposed to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he tells us we're all supposed to give. We don't need the spiritual gift of giving the gift. And it's the same with teaching. We need people who will come out and teach God's Word. And just the example that Dan gave this morning is seeing his child baptized and accrediting that too to the fact that we're a body of believers and that we're teaching our children and we're guiding them. And it's not just appearance, but it's a church that helps them understand the truth of God's Word. Romans 12 says if you're, it talks about, you know, the gifts and it says if yours is teaching then teach. But if God is calling you to teach, we need more teachers who will make that commitment to teach God's word to those who need to hear it.

And I know that many of you will be able to do that. You know, teaching is a requirement of the pastor. Drew is a pastor. Scripture says overseers, they must be able to teach. And you can think about what if you had a pastor your church it couldn't teach. But that's one of the requirements. Then it says that the pastors must teach sound doctrine. It says based on the commands and teach these things, the things that Christ is talking about. Then it says this in 2nd Timothy, it says, and the things you have heard we say in the presence of many witnesses entrust them to reliable people who also qualify to teach. So it's like passing it down to others that will teach and so that the the next generation will hear the truth of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, who was the greatest teacher of all, wasn't he? I mean, they referred to him as a rabbi, as teacher. But you know, Jesus,

there's a lot of responsibility goes with teaching in there because Jesus has some of his harshest words for the Sanhedrons and the Pharisees and the teachers at that time. If you go back and read, and we're gonna read it today, but if you look at Matthew 23, he goes through seven woes of these teachers. And one of them he talks about, You're just whitewashed. Because you're putting out this persona outside, but you're dead on the inside. You're not practicing what you teach. And that's the challenge for us to be able to practice what we teach as believers. Second, he says, not only Paul says, out of this enrichment of God's word in your life, as a church, you're going to teach one another. And then the second thing he says, you're going to admonish one another. Man, that's scary, isn't it? We're going to admonish one another. What does he mean there? We're going to warn each other.

We're going to warn each other because we love each other. We're going to warn each other by helping others understand that they are doing things and deviating from the Word of God. Now that's hard to hear, isn't it? The Word tells us kind of what we do wrong. It points out those things so others can come and tell us, hey, listen to him. You know, what you're doing, I don't think that's what God would want in your life. need to consider. So as a body of believers, we're opening ourselves not only to be one who admonishes, but also one that's accepting to the admonishment. That's what the family of God is about. You know, we always, we have this obligation. You know, a lot of people here at Christianity and they think of it in the negative way, that it's always no, no, no, no. Don't do this. No, no, no.