WWUTT 076 As God's Chosen Ones (Colossians 3:12-17)

Christian, anything that is commanded of you in the Bible, understand that Jesus did it first.

So, if you are commanded to be compassionate, you are to be compassionate because Jesus was compassionate toward you.

If you're commanded to be kind and humble, it's because God displayed his kindness toward you and Christ was humble to the point of death on a cross so that you might have salvation.

So, in obedience to the commands of Scripture, you share in the life of Christ when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. New format to the program starting today. All of these episodes are going to be 20 minutes long.

For 75 episodes, they've been exactly 28 minutes long. I'm cutting it down by eight minutes.

Why is that? Timing, mostly, the amount of time it takes me to do this. I could do twice as many programs with eight less minutes of talk than I could do in a 28 -minute program.

It's less amount of time that I have to edit and put the program together, less amount of time it takes it to upload.

That's just the logistics of this. What I'm going to do is cut out the Q &A portion that we were doing in the last third of the program.

A lot of those questions that I've been answering have been accumulated over the span of about a year and a half anyway.

We're not getting more questions, even though I was doing a Q &A. I've been fighting for material to throw into the end of the program.

It just made sense to go ahead and eliminate that last section. The what videos will still make an appearance on occasion.

They might not be as regular a thing, but we're just going to do 20 minutes of straight Bible teaching and maybe even attract some new listeners who won't be as intimidated by the 20 -minute limit as opposed to when it was 28 minutes.

Plus, I like to encourage you to listen to other teachers, not just me. Al Mohler's The Briefing, probably the one podcast that I've recommended the most often.

News and Events from a Christian Worldview. Todd Friel's Wretched, can't leave that one out. You've got

Grace to You by John MacArthur, which is a Daily Deal. Desiring God, John Piper.

Are they still doing like a daily seven or eight minute thing where it's like ask, ask Pastor John or something like that?

Anyway, there's some good stuff out there. What a great age that we live in right now to be able to have so much good

Bible teaching available to us. And there's some bad stuff out there, too. But you've chosen us because you want good

Bible teaching, right? I'm still going to be faithful to provide that to you. 20 minutes every day,

Monday through Friday. So we're back in Colossians chapter three today, primarily looking at verses 12 through 17.

If you want to open your Bible and join with me there, remember that our theme as we've been studying through Colossians is knowing

Christ as preeminent. He is above all things. We are fully satisfied in our

Savior. And John Piper, since that's somebody I just mentioned, as he has said, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

So we're learning more about our Savior Christ as we read the book of Colossians, one of the most

Christ centric books in the New Testament, making us better worshipers of God, but also finding ourselves more satisfied, more knowledgeable of this

Savior whom we worship. Before opening up this passage in Colossians today, let's come to the

Lord in prayer. Our wonderful God, we thank you again for this opportunity to be able to open your word and understand your truth, which we do by your spirit.

It is only those who are in the spirit that can understand the things of God. Those who are in the flesh cannot please

God. We can't even obey your commands if we don't have the spirit of God living within us.

So give us your spirit, give us the ability to understand these things, have them written on our hearts and even exercise this in a way that is pleasing to you.

We can't do that in and of ourselves. It is only by the spirit of God working through us, helping us to understand the things of God, the mind of God, which we read in the

Bible and we pray and ask for your provision through this text today in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Colossians 3, starting in verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the

Lord has forgiven you. So you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whether and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the

Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So going back to verse 12, put on then.

All right. So this is obviously following the instructions that have been given in verses one through eleven.

We have been raised with Christ. We are to seek the things that are above where Christ is.

We are to put to death what is earthly in us. There must be no sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry.

We must do away with anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from our mouths.

We must be renewed in knowledge after the image of our creator Christ, who is all and in all.

So with these things in mind, we are to put on as God's chosen ones.

Yes, fellow believer, you have been chosen for salvation. First Peter two.

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation.

If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

You show in confirmation that you have been chosen in Christ when you obey the things that he has commanded you to do.

So here in Colossians 3, 12, in light of these things, again, that we mentioned that we summarize from verses one through 11, put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

You are holy because Christ has made you holy. You are beloved because God knew you and placed his affection on you from before the foundation of the world as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

Put on compassionate hearts, show the compassion that God showed you in while you were yet a sinner,

Christ died for you at the right time. Christ died for the ungodly, though we were sheep that had gone astray,

God placed upon him the iniquity of us all. That is the compassion that God has shown to us through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. We have salvation through Christ. So in light of this compassion that we've been shown before we were born, right, and this compassion that we're shown every single day in the truth that is given to us in 1

John 1, 9, that God is faithful to forgive us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we confess our sins to him.

That's every day in Lamentations 3, as mercies are new every morning, we are shown this compassion every day.

So because God has shown this compassion to us, you show that you are Christ, that you belong to him when you reflect that compassion toward everyone else.

Now, two groups of people that we show this compassion to believers and unbelievers, we should absolutely be showing this compassion in the body of Christ, especially there so that we become a testimony of being the body of Christ.

There are people who are outsiders looking from the outside in at us at the ways that we are treating one another.

Do they see in our churches people displaying compassionate hearts? Do they actually see a people that are unified in Christ with the same compassion that we claim that he has shown to sinners?

Because if we're constantly bickering and fighting with one another, then we are not displaying that we have been shown compassion.

We don't walk the talk, essentially, and our words will fall flat on the ears of those who have observed us and have not seen compassion displayed.

So we we show compassion to one another in the body of Christ, not just because it's a testimony to unbelievers, but because that is what

Christ expects of his body, that we display compassion toward one another. In Matthew, chapter 25, where Jesus says that what you've done to the least of these brothers of mine, you've done also to me, the least of these that he is talking about there are not any and all unbelievers.

He's specifically talking about those who are members of the body of Christ. Brothers, whenever we see in the

New Testament a reference to neighbor, that's everybody. Love your neighbor, everyone. Because as Jesus is quoting

Leviticus 19, 18 in the context there, it's talking about not just the people of Israel, but also the sojourner who sojourns among you.

Foreigners who come and dwell with you. They're also your neighbor. So love your neighbor as yourself as you tend to show love to yourself.

Show it instead to your neighbor. If you remember back to our study in Philippians, where Paul says in Philippians, chapter two, each one should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Consider others more than you consider yourself. So this is the way that we love one another with these compassionate hearts.

So every time that we see a reference to neighbor, that's everybody. When we see a reference to brother or sister in the scriptures, that's specifically talking about those who are fellow members of the body of Christ.

They are brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. So know the distinction. There's a difference in the commands to love a brother than there is in the commands to love a neighbor.

We still should show compassion to everybody. But you'll notice a specificity in those commands as you read them in the

New Testament. So we show compassionate hearts to fellow members of the body of Christ. And we also show compassion to those who are outside the body of Christ, as Paul said in Galatians 6, 10.

So then as we have the opportunity, let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

So we show attention and need to our brothers and sisters first. And then as we have the opportunity, we show that kindness and compassion to even those who are outside the body of Christ.

But we display the compassion of God that he had toward us, though we were sinners when we display that compassion even to unbelievers.

And we do not be discriminatory in any way in the ways that we take the gospel. We don't look at this group of people and say, well, that's a group of people

I think should hear the gospel because I want them to be brothers and sisters in Christ with me. Or we look at this group over here and say,

I don't think that I want to share the gospel with them. I don't really like them so much. There is no partiality.

There should be no prejudice, no bigotry when it comes to us taking the gospel to the world. Any and every ear should be listening to the declaration of the good news of Jesus Christ who came to save sinners with his death upon the cross.

That is the compassion that he has shown to everyone. Now, as I said before, you have been chosen for this salvation and not everyone has been chosen.

But you don't get to know who the elect are. We don't know the elect. God knows who the elect are.

We have been called by God to go and preach his gospel without discrimination. We don't know who the elect are.

God knows that it has just been for us to go and preach the gospel. So let us do that without shame, without prejudice, with compassion in our hearts for the lost.

Put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts showing authentically that we have been changed in Christ Jesus.

Kindness. OK, same thing there, because God has shown us kindness because he shows us kindness every day.

It's the second quality of love that we see listed in First Corinthians 13, the love chapter of the

Bible, right? Love is patient. Love is kind. Before love can be anything, it must first be patient.

And before love can be anything else after that, it must be kind. We must show kindness to one another.

Humility. Again, this goes back to the statement. Consider others needs even ahead of your own.

Now, to be humble. This is a quote from C .S. Lewis. To be humble doesn't mean to think less of yourself.

It means to think of yourself less. That's true humility. Now, contrast this with something that Paul has said before about the elemental spirits of the world.

Going back to Colossians 2, verse 20. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why is if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?

Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. According to human precepts and teachings, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self -made religion and asceticism and severity to the body.

But they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. So asceticism and severity to the body is this made up religion.

It's this self it's this self -made humility. It's like it's showing a sense of humility on the outside.

We'll see if I beat my body on the outside. If you see me doing that, cutting myself or denying myself certain things, then that will appear to you as being humility.

But it's not. It's not humility. It's a false sense of humility, because when you are focused on the self in whatever way that is, whether it is a lavishing things upon yourself or denying things, denying something to yourself, the focus is still on you.

It's still yourself. It's still selfish, even though it might appear selfless. It is still a selfish religion.

It is a self -made religion instead of holding fast to Christ in whom we have been given all things with with humility.

We come to Christ with humility. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you, as it says in James 4.

10. So with humility, we display the same humility that Christ showed us that he displayed in his earthly mission.

And I have to come back to Philippians chapter two, the hymn of Christ, because this is the ultimate display of humility.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.

There's our ultimate display of humility there in the person of Jesus Christ. We also put on meekness because Christ showed himself to be meek.

Now, don't confuse meekness with weakness. They sound the same, but they don't mean the same.

Meekness simply means that whatever we do, we are doing it, not pursuing our own interests.

We do not pursue our own interests. It is always to the benefit of someone else and to the glory of God.

That is true meekness. And when Jesus speaks in the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

We will be given the whole earth if we are displaying the same meekness that Christ displayed.

And finally, patience. Again, that's also the quality of love that we see given in first Corinthians 13, that we be patient with one another.

And before love can be anything else, it must first be patient. Don't be rash.

Don't jump to conclusions. You don't have all the facts. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

God was patient with you. He is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but all come to repentance.

And so you must desire the same in your brothers and sisters in Christ and especially in the lost.

God, as we wrap up what it is that we have read here, getting only as far as verse 12, but such great and mindful instructions that have been given to us as your chosen ones, remind us of what it means to be holy and remind us that we're beloved, that God loves us, that you placed your affection on us before we were even born.

Remind us what it means to have a compassionate heart, to be kind, humble, meek and patient, not wanting anything for ourselves, but to glorify

God and to consider others needs ahead of our own. Put this attitude in our mind and in our hearts as we desire to be more like Christ, completely satisfied in our

Savior. In his name we pray. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching, and we thank you for including us in your

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