Sunday Morning, January 27, 2019 AM Part 4

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we have acknowledged

Christ as our foundation. We have confessed our need for your power and your life in our midst through the

Holy Spirit. I ask,

Father, that these things that we have sung, the truth of these words would resonate in our hearts.

These are the truths of your Word you have told us, you have told us of your

Son. And you have given him to us and us to him through your

Holy Spirit. And we ask now that as we turn to your Word and as we consider together again what it is that you have called us to do, that you would help us to do it in your way, depending on the power that you have given to us to do it.

I pray, Father, for a fresh awareness in our midst of our need of the

Holy Spirit, our need to rely upon your

Spirit in all that we do. And that you would increase our faith and manifest your glory in our faithfulness.

Lord, I pray for you to do the work that we need you to do here today, the work in our hearts through your

Word. We pray all these things for the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased.

Amen. Well, we've spent some time together thinking about the designer of the church, trying to start at the best place to start.

Christ builds his church. He builds it, so he gets to direct it.

And he supplies all our needs in the process of our obedience. We've been talking about the design of the church.

We've considered the Father's purpose for us. The Father's purpose for us cannot be understood unless, first, we look at the

Father's purpose for his Son, Christ. As the Father exalts the Son, as the

Father exalts the Son incarnate by the Spirit's proclamation of Christ through our church, we are renewed into the image of God manifesting his glory.

We talked last week about the Son's proclamation. It is absolutely essential that Jesus Christ, his person and work, be proclaimed, preached, taught, spoken, written down.

Words are necessary as we personally communicate the truth of Jesus Christ to those who do not know him and to one another as we grow in Christ.

This morning, we're going to be thinking of the last two points of our purpose statement about the renewal of the

Holy Spirit and the faithfulness of the church. In seminary,

I had to read a lot of books, and most of them were no good. But I learned a lot through them, even if they were no good.

It was still a good process to go through. I remember one book in particular as we were being taught how to do

Christian education, which is, you know, do Sunday school, how to grow your church by Sunday school.

And the book was structured in such a way that you would implement all these different policies and relational structures within your church.

And chapter by chapter, you were to learn how to put this arrangement into place in your church.

And you would grow big and famous like the author in no time, because he did it.

At the end of every chapter, sort of an appendix to every chapter, the last three paragraphs all sounded exactly the same in every single chapter, and it basically went along something like this.

And remember, you must rely on the Holy Spirit to do all of this. I wasn't convinced every single chapter would have worked just fine, and indeed does work fine in all kinds of business structures in the world today, without the

Holy Spirit. The last three paragraphs he put in there because he was writing a

Christian book, but it works just fine with or without the

Holy Spirit. In other words, this is work designed by man, accomplished by man, and oh, we better say we're depending on the

Holy Spirit. That's completely different from what the task is that Christ gives to us, and when we are to proclaim

Christ to the lost and the saved alike so that the

Spirit will renew us into the image of God, saving us and sanctifying us.

Our work is entirely dependent upon the Holy Spirit. It is not something that we can do without him.

And I think we'll find in our passage today, as we think about it together, that our dependence upon the

Holy Spirit is directly related to our faithfulness as a church.

We do work in our own way, by our own power. We will not be a faithful church in what we uphold and what we say and what we do.

The only way we can be a faithful church is in our continued reliance upon the Holy Spirit, the gift whom

God has given to us through Christ. The main idea of what we've been talking about these last few weeks is this.

We must proclaim Christ from all the Scripture until his Spirit renews all God's people into his image.

So one way to sum up what we're supposed to be doing as a church, individually and together, it's this.

This is the biblical purpose of every local church. We are definitely unique and different from other churches because we're here.

We're not somewhere else. It is unique. It is distinct. But the purpose that we have is the same as every other local church, and it is this.

To proclaim Christ from all the Scripture until his Spirit renews all God's people into his image.

We've been wrapping our heads around for a little while now. This is the last week that we'll be looking at this together.

I want to talk about the renewal by the Holy Spirit first. In verse 2 of Colossians 1, we hear this.

To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our

Father. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our

Father. We're going to talk about being saints.

In verse 7, it says, you have learned this gospel.

You have learned the grace of God in truth from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf.

We're going to learn about us being the beloved together.

A loving community. And then in verse 11, Paul prays that the church will be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.

So we're also going to see how we're being empowered. When we talk about the renewal by the

Holy Spirit, our paragraph in our handout says this.

The Holy Spirit will renew all God's people into his image, which is the fullness of Christ.

We talk about the image of God, we're talking about the fullness of Christ. The Holy Spirit is Christ's gift to all

God's people. The Spirit blesses God's people first by regenerating them, that they are born again, and then by renewing them through means of the scriptures.

We are born again by the preaching of the word, and we are made holy by the preaching of the word.

The Spirit's work makes God's people alive in Christ and builds them up to the full measure of Christ.

When we're talking about the renewal of the Holy Spirit, we are precisely talking about the formation of Christ in us.

That it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And that becomes all the more obvious the longer we live and the longer we follow

Christ. It's like the relationship between John the

Baptist and Jesus Christ. I must decrease, he must increase.

And this happens through the application of the scriptures to our lives. In 1

Corinthians chapters 3 and 4, and in Colossians 3, the discussion on sanctification and holiness is the same.

It's get a view of Jesus Christ. Here he is gloriously displayed in the scriptures, and as you look at him in his word, you will look like him in the world.

That's the message of 2 Corinthians. And then in Colossians 3, it says,

And then everything else that follows in that chapter, from the prohibition, stop acting this way, to the command, start acting this way.

It's all based on the fact of Christ in his glory at the right hand of the Father. And lo and behold, the renewal that we experience is into the image of God who is

Christ. So when we talk about renewal by the Spirit, we're talking about the fact that we are being renewed in our holiness, that we are being made more holy, that we are being, also that we are increasing in our love for God and for one another, and that we are being given power to live in the way that Christ has called us to live.

It occurs to me at this point, I have failed to read the whole passage, so please everyone stand, and I'm going to read the passage.

Colossians, I've got you eager. Colossians chapter 1, verses 1 through 12. Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God and truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, and he also informed us of your love in the

Spirit. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the

Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

This is the reading of the word. You may be seated. The points

I want to make about the renewal of the Spirit are these. We are being set apart, we are being set together, and we are being set up.

The our being is a weird way of speaking, but I think it's the most accurate way of describing the

Christian life. We are in Christ and we are being all the more conformed to Christ.

We are indeed justified, declared righteous in God's sight, accepted to God, and we are in the process of living out righteousness and growing in righteousness in our lives.

And so we're using this double passive verb phrase that should never be used in any kind of paper.

We are being set apart. When we read in verse 2 and in verse 12 that we are the saints,

Paul's writing to all the rest of the saints in light. When we think about this term saints, sometimes when people think of saints, they think of dead people.

Some people tend to say, I ain't no saint, meaning I'm not required to live up to anybody else's fans of the saints.

In the Bible, that's what that word means, holy one, heart.

Let's think about, and a great example of that is in Exodus chapters 30 and 35. So if you've been doing your

Bible reading this year, you may have already come to Exodus and you may have already begun reading about the tabernacle and all the different details of the tabernacle.

In the middle of that are some interesting moments where there are things that are set apart.

There are items that are declared holy unto

God. In Exodus chapter 30 verses 27 through 29, read about some instructions.

The Lord speaking to Moses about what to do about all the different items that are going to be inside the tabernacle.

And he mentions in verse 27, the table and all its utensils, you know, spoons, ladles, whatever you need.

The lampstand and its utensils and the altar of incense, the altar of the burnt offering and all its utensils.

And the labor and its stand, you should also consecrate them. That means you're going to set them apart.

You're going to sanctify them. You're going to declare them holy, that they may be most holy and whatever touches them shall be holy.

So some utensils, there's all these utensils that they needed in the tabernacle to do all the different types of sacrifices and do the labor of the priest.

They had utensils. And you may have one kind of tool here and one kind of tool there, but they were all holy.

And that's what we have to understand about ourselves. We're set apart just like that, declared holy, set apart.

We may not be the sharpest tool in the bunch, but we're still set apart.

We are supposed to be holy unto God. Where did these tools come from?

Where did these utensils come from? Well, we learn about that in Exodus 35. In verse 5,

Moses tells the people to take from among you a contribution to the Lord. Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it to the

Lord's contribution, gold, silver, and bronze. Now, where did these nomadic, wandering, tent -dwelling, impoverished people come up with all this gold and silver and bronze?

They plundered it from Egypt. God had beat the

Egyptians down so bad that all the Israelites had to do was knock on their

Egyptian neighbor's door and say, Got anything? And the

Egyptians were so eager to get rid of the Israelites, they threw all of their gold at these

Israelites who gladly took it and went off into the wilderness. These Egyptians were polytheists.

They were pagans. They believed in many gods, gods that were disproven by the one true

God's many wonders upon their land. When the Israelites received gold and silver and bronze, they received it in the form of earrings and jewelry, and they gave it to God, and God takes what was pagan and unholy and unclean, and he sets it aside for himself and says,

This is now holy. And it is not left in its current shape, it is changed.

Verse 10, Exodus 35, Let every skillful man among you come and make all that the

Lord has commanded. That means all the different parts of the tabernacle. Verse 14 makes that clear when it lists.

The lampstand also for the light and its utensils, and the lamps and the oil for its light, and so on. The utensils were made out of the gold and the silver and the bronze that the

Israelites had taken from the Egypt. This was pagan gold, pagan silver, pagan bronze, and God said,

I'll take it, I'll reshape it, and I'll set it aside for my use as holy.

That's a good illustration of what it means to be called a saint. Someone who is dedicated to sin, dedicated to idolatry in pagan ways and wicked ways, but God says,

No, I'll take that, I'll reshape it, and I'll set it aside as holy unto my use.

That's what a saint is. A saint is not someone who has won a title because they prove themselves so worthy.

A saint is someone who has been set apart. And being set apart means that we are set apart unto

God. God claims ownership. That treasure once owned by Egypt, once in the possession of the

Israelites, was given unto God, and now God owns it. To be a saint, to be a set -apart one, means

God owns you. You are set apart unto God. That's the way my father often will evangelize.

He has someone in his office, he wants to counsel them about where they are in their faith. He says, Does God own you?

Very often the violent reaction he gets shows him that they are not indeed owned by God.

We are to be set apart unto God and we are to be set apart from common use.

If a Levite was in the tabernacle and he saw that there was a spoon or a ladle or a fire poker or something laying around in there, he could not think to himself,

Well, I need one of those at home. I'm going to take it home and use it at my house. I need a good ladle for the manna stew.

No, he could not take that home and use it. It was set apart from common use.

The opposite of holy is common. The opposite of holy is common.

And this has been set apart from common use. When you read about a saint, a holy one, it means that God owns that person.

And a saint is someone who is set apart from common use, meaning you are not to blend in to the common.

What is the common? What is the common way of this world? What is the common way of our culture?

What is the common way that people do business? What is the common way that people do church?

What is the common way that people do family? Whatever it is, you've been set apart from it.

That is not your way. You've been set apart unto God. He owns you, and you're not to be living a common, blending in kind of life.

A saint is someone owned by God, set apart unto God from common use for God's purposes.

All these utensils that were in the tabernacle were employed for holy functions. Somehow, in some way, these tools made clear the unique glory of God, set apart for God's purposes.

The utensils for the lamp stand, the utensils for the table of the bread of the presence, the utensils for the altar of incense, they were all being used in very specific ways for God's glory as he revealed the good news of Jesus Christ through the tabernacle.

They were set apart for God's purposes. So if indeed

God owns us, if indeed we have been told we are not to blend in, we have been set apart from common use, then the question comes, how attuned are you and I to God's purposes for us?

What is it that we have been set apart to do? And being put together in the local church, the scriptures tell us in more than one way, in more than one passage, that we have been set apart unto

God from the common way of living for the purpose of proclaiming Christ from all the scriptures, so that the

Holy Spirit will renew all of God's people into his image. This is the purpose that we have.

We have been set apart unto God from common use for God's purposes because precisely we have been given to the building of the temple.

The son of David will build the temple. He is building the temple. He's building us right now.

Saints are not dead statues ordaining a cathedral. Saints are the living bricks of the new

Jerusalem. It's you and I. Now we are being set apart, but we're also being set together.

Bricks aren't good by themselves. They have to be set together.

And the mortar for these bricks is love. The way that we are put together is summed up in this one word, love.

Look at verse 4, if you will. Paul gives thanks to God because of the Colossians since he heard, verse 4, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and the love which you have for all the saints.

He speaks of Epaphras as our beloved fellow bondservant. In verse 7, he says that Epaphras was eager to share with Paul and his fellow believers of the love that the

Colossians had, the love in the Holy Spirit. Not only are we being set apart by the

Holy Spirit's renewing work in our lives, we are being set together. Set together.

We are being set together as the beloved in the beloved. Notice he says in verse 7,

Paul says, you've learned this gospel from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bondservant who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf.

Now, to understand the background, Paul was raised a Jew. He was circumcised the eighth day.

He had all the Jewish credentials you could possibly have. He was a Pharisee among Pharisees.

He was the most Jewish guy you would ever hope to meet. Epaphras was named by his parents after the false goddess of Aphrodite.

You talk about two people in the same world that were as far apart as you can be in their origins, and Paul is saying of Epaphras, beloved.

He loves Epaphras. He loves Epaphras, and Epaphras loves him.

There is no good earthly reason why, except for this one reason, and that one reason is

Jesus Christ. Epaphras is beloved by Christ, and Paul is beloved by Christ.

So, they love each other. These two bricks are set together by the mortar of love.

Why we love one another matters a very great deal. If we love each other because we have similar interests, well, interests change.

If we love one another because we live close by, well, people move. Neighborhoods change.

If we love one another because we enjoy talking about certain things, well, passions change, lifestyles change.

If we love each other because we're all doing the same thing in education, or doing all the same thing in politics, whatever it is, this is not to be the center of our union.

The union we are to have together is our union in Christ. He is the beloved.

He is the one who has satisfied the father. The father says of his son, this is my son, my only begotten son, the beloved son in whom

I am well pleased. And are we in him. So, yes, the

Bible says we are to love everyone, even our enemies. Love those who hate you. But we're not to love everyone in exactly the same way.

If someone wants to treat me spitefully and wants to hate me because of who

I am and what I believe in, I'm still called to love this person, but I don't love them in the same way that I love my wife, or that I love my children, or that I love

Christ, or that I love this flock, or that I love other Christians. There's a different way in which we love, but the reason why

I would love anybody is because of one reason, that's Jesus Christ. So the way

I love the person who hates me, my reasoning for that, my understanding of how I love that person is informed by who

Jesus Christ is, his person and his work. And the way I love my wife, that's informed by who

Jesus Christ is, his person and his work. And those loves look very different and feel very different.

But perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves. Perhaps we need to define what love is. Now, this is easy to remember.

1 John 3 .16. Easy to remember. The definition for love, the idea that is so poorly defined and so misunderstood in our day, can be so easily answered by going to 1

John 3 .16. Definition's right there. We know love by this.

That's a great way to start a definitional statement. We know love by this. That he laid down his life for us.

And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. There it is.

We know love by this. He laid down his life for us. What was that? That's a sacrifice.

He did what was costly for our good. He was devoted for our good.

And what he did, he did rightly. Satisfying all the righteousness of God.

So when we think about love, this is love. It is a righteous and sacrificial devotion.

I am for you in the right way, even if it costs me. That's love.

I am for you in the right way, even if it costs me. That definition of love has been set down in the granite of history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

So we are to be for one another, to devote ourselves to one another's good in the right way, even at our own expense.

This is what we are being set together by, the renewing work of the Holy Spirit.

The more we love Christ, the more we are to love one another. We are to be the loving ones within the

Spirit. Verse 8, Epaphras informed Paul and others of the love of the

Colossians. The love, notice, in the Spirit. The love in the Spirit. Which means that our love for one another is not some kind of natural affection that we can stoke and improve through some sort of effort.

But the source of our love for one another is none other than the

Holy Spirit. It is because of the love that God has poured out into our hearts through the

Holy Spirit, Romans 5 says. It is this kind of love that we are to love one another.

The signature of Christianity, remember Jesus said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another.

The signature of Christianity is written upon the church by the

Spirit of Christ. That's how we know authentic Christianity, is when the signature of Christianity is written upon the church by the

Spirit of Christ. That signature is one of love. The kind of love that we see in 1

John 3, 16. The kind of love that is defined in the Scriptures. So we are being set apart as part of our renewal in the

Holy Spirit. We are being set together and we are also being set up. Usually that has a negative connotation.

And in some sense I guess it could be. But when you read the following, verse 11, that we are strengthened with all power, Paul is praying that we be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience.

You know, you run out of excuses. You run out of excuses.

If we are strengthened with all power, according to the glory of the might of God himself, we are robbed of every excuse we can come up with about why we don't follow through with what

Christ has told us to do. I'm being set up. Yes.

There's no excuse left. But this isn't being framed without a cause.

This is showing up to someone's house and seeing their set up.

Look at the food. Look at how everything is decorated.

Look at the abundance of fun we can have here. Look at the landscaping.

What a set up. That's what we're being, that we're being set up. Look at all that we have. We are strengthened by all strength.

This is the prayer of Paul because of the Holy Spirit that we would be strengthened with all strength, that we would be empowered by all power, by whom this would come about according to the might of his glory.

And boy, we need it. When you read the Great Commission, we are to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded us. Boy, do we need to be set up to do that task.

That's a huge task. To help us understand the relationship there,

I think it's good to remember Joseph, Genesis 41.

Joseph has been in prison, he's been in jail. First he got sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and then he got thrown into jail because of a jealous woman.

And so then he's stuck in jail and he interprets dreams for a couple of high officials who spent a little bit of time in jail.

And they get out. One of them gets out and one of them gets killed. And the one who gets out forgets all about Joseph and the wonderful thing that Joseph did by the power of God to interpret his dream.

And so Joseph is just rotting in prison. And all of a sudden, Pharaoh has a dream. He doesn't know what it means.

And Pharaoh's servant remembers, oh, there's this guy in jail who can interpret dreams. Pharaoh says, go get him.

So here's Joseph fresh out of jail. He doesn't have anything.

Even the clothes he had in jail were taken away from him because he was going to look too bad in front of Pharaoh. So he's wearing somebody else's clothes.

He's got literally not a stitch of clothing to his name. He's got nothing. He's got no resources whatsoever. And he's standing before Pharaoh and Pharaoh says,

I had this horrible dream I heard you can interpret. And Joseph says, no, I don't even have that. That's up to God.

If God wants to interpret your dream through me, then he'll have to do that. Joseph does interpret the dream.

It's going to be seven years of abundance in Egypt. They're going to have so much food.

It's like the curse was suspended for seven years. Abundance of food everywhere. They're just going to have more than they know what to do with it.

But this is going to be followed up by seven years of famine, so severe that all of the abundance of the first seven years will be completely evaporated, completely forgotten.

And unbidden Joseph then just says, okay, here's what you've got to do. You've got to start storing up food in the first seven years and store it up and store it up and store it up and be careful with the abundance so that when the times of famine come, you'll have enough.

Pharaoh says, good idea. You're in charge. This is

Joseph. He's fresh out of prison. He doesn't even have a stitch of clothing to his name. He's got nothing.

And he's given the task of making sure that the world doesn't starve. That's his job, to make sure the world doesn't starve.

But Pharaoh empowers Joseph with all power according to the glory of Pharaoh's might.

He says, here's my ring. Here's my chariot. Here's my name.

Go do whatever you need to do to make sure that this works. Only I will be greater than you. Joseph does it.

Now, the task of redeeming the world has been given to Christ.

The task of redeeming sinners like you and I from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation has been given to Christ.

And he's been given all power to do it. A name which is above every name. He's at the right hand of the

Father. So this is his task. This is what he does through his church. I will build my church.

That's what he says. This is his task. He has all authority and all power to do it. And guess what? We're his servants.

And he has given us his Holy Spirit so that we will be empowered with all power according to the glory of his might to do what he's called us to do.

What a setup. So we see that the renewal by the

Spirit that we are being renewed in holiness and in love and in power is absolutely essential for the faithfulness of the church.

The faithfulness of the church. The Father's purpose in the Son's proclamation under the

Spirit's renewal is made manifest in a faithful church. A faithful church. We must be faithful in both community and in character.

In community and character. We talked about last week that evangelism and discipleship happens personally.

This is not an impersonal, abstract, at arms distance endeavor.

It is a personal, face -to -face, with someone process.

Evangelism and discipleship. Now, that's not to say it's an individualistic effort.

Evangelism and discipleship happens personally from within a community. Christ did not say,

I'm going to build Christians. He said, I'm going to build my church. I'm going to build an ecclesia, the called out ones, a community that surrounds

Christ. So he's going to build his church to advance his kingdom.

So this must happen. This evangelism and the discipleship we are called to do, the proclamation of Christ from all the scriptures until the

Spirit renews all of God's people into his image, this is a personal task from within community. So we must be faithful as brethren in Christ and servants of Christ.

Brethren in Christ and servants of Christ. Verse 2 says, to the saints, the holy ones, and faithful brethren in Christ.

Just as we talked about, you know, what in the world does Epaphras have to do with Paul? How in the world do they love one another?

Well, yes indeed, they've both been redeemed by Christ. They are both loved by Christ. They both love

Christ. Therefore, they are beloved together. Additionally, both of them have been adopted by God.

And God says of Epaphras, my child. And he says of Paul, my child.

And they say of one another, brothers, family.

Brothers and sisters in Christ by the adoption that we have in Christ.

We have to live the truth of that gospel for the sake of each other. We must be faithful. Obedience is not only for yourself.

Obedience in a much far abundance, in a greater fashion. Your obedience is for others.

It's for others. Your faithfulness as a father is not just for you.

It's for your children. Your faithfulness as a husband is for your wife. Your faithfulness as a husband and wife is for the church.

It's for your lost family members. Your faithfulness as a mother to your children, it's not just for you.

Yes, it's for them and it's for others within the church. Our faithfulness must be thought of in terms of one another.

Are we faithfully following through with what God has called us to do for one another?

We must be faithful in community and as servants of Christ. Verse 7,

Paphras is called a beloved fellow bond servant, fellow slave who is a faithful servant of Christ.

We have been adopted so we are brothers and sisters in Christ, but we've also been purchased.

Not only have we been adopted, we've been purchased and therefore we are the slaves of Christ.

Every time you read in the scriptures, you read about bond servant or servant, most of the time it's the

Greek word for slave. Because slavery was a thing in the Old Testament and the

New Testament. Not the chattel slavery that we understand from the American history, but the kind of slavery that they knew it to be.

And it wasn't always very pretty, but we had the perfect master. To be a servant of Christ literally means to be the slave of Christ.

He's the master, he's the Lord, he's the one in charge. He has purchased us at the cost of his own blood.

And he calls us to live for him. For the sake of Christ, we must be faithful in community, because we are brethren and we are servants of Christ.

But also we must be faithful in character. Not only must we not abandon one another, we must not abandon integrity.

Notice that Paul's prayer in verse 11 is this, that when we are strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, in this renewal of the power of the

Holy Spirit, what is this for? It is for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience. The attaining of all steadfastness and patience.

Steadfastness is the Greek word which means to remain under. To remain under.

It's the idea of being under persecution, being under pressure, being under opposition, being under tribulations and under trials, but remaining, not giving up, not succumbing.

We need this kind of steadfastness with one another and personally. We cannot give up and walk away.

There's too much giving up and walking away for no good reason. There's too much compromising on the word of God and saying, well that's too hard to keep saying.

It's too hard to keep saying that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. It's too hard to keep saying that the scriptures are all true.

It's too hard to say that God created everything in six days. It's too hard to say that homosexuality is a sin.

And so we're just going to give up. We've got to remain under.

We have to remain under. Also patience. As we remain under, the steadfastness is the perfect marriage to patience because patience is the

Greek word for taking passion and keeping it very far away.

Macrothumia. Macro means a long distance. It's like farther than you're able to travel in a day.

That distance. You can't get there in a day. That distance will vary according to the times and technology.

But macro is the distance that is too long for you to get to in a single day. And thumia is the

Greek word for passion, angry tempers, fierce indignation, outbursts of rage.

By the way, in my word study of this, don't name your daughter Thuella, which is used one time in the

Bible, and it means a whirlwind, tornado. So don't name your daughter

Thuella. If you have relatives, you know what I'm talking about. Patience means

I'm going to take out this outburst of rage, this fierce indignation, the kind of like, okay, gloves are off.

I'm giving up. I'm just going to let all this fly. No, that's got to be put out of reach.

You can't even get there in a day. Slow to anger, James says.

What a perfect marriage, steadfastness, and patience. We must be faithful in our character, remaining under, and not giving up.

We've got to stick it out, and we've got to stick together in order to be useful to Christ.

We want to be a useful church to Christ. Jesus had seven churches he addressed in the beginning of a relation.

Some of them were very useful and pleasing to him, and some of them were useless. Suddenly decided to be a useful church to Christ, one about whom he says, now

I have a few things, but I'm really glad that. I want us to be there, following Christ, and be useful to Christ.

We must be faithful. Proclaiming Christ from the Scriptures by the

Spirit must continue. There remains more of Christ in the Scriptures to proclaim. There remains more conversations and letters and books and hymns and psalms and spiritual songs and lessons and sermons that will give grace to those who hear.

There remains more people who will be saved by the proclamation of Christ. There remains more heights of sanctification yet to be scaled.

There remains more advances for the kingdom of God. And until Christ returns, and may he come quickly,

Sunnyside Baptist Church must proclaim Christ from all the Scriptures until his Spirit renews all

God's people into his image. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your

Word. I pray that you would bless the truths of your Word to our hearts, that it would make a change, that it would make a real difference in the way that we think, the way that we feel, the way that we live.

Lord, I pray that you would, by the renewing power of your Spirit, keep us faithful to you, faithful in our progression and being built up into the full measure of Christ.