Christ is All

Well, turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Colossians chapter 3, beginning at verse 17.

God willing, we'll finish this morning this short series I began earlier this month, or actually at the beginning of August.

And now in nine parts, we've gone through a particular theme in Colossians, left a lot on the table, as I told you we would.

I had a particular idea for this one -month period that I was covering this pulpit, and that was from the book of Colossians, to pick out this idea, this theme of the sufficiency of Christ, the absolute, all -encompassing sufficiency of Christ Jesus by the power of His Spirit to accomplish that for which

He was sent, that in Him all the promise of God is yes and amen, and Christ by His Spirit accomplishes and has accomplished what the

Father sent Him for. So He accomplished our redemption on the cross and by His resurrection, and He continues to accomplish the salvation and the sanctification of His people by His Spirit.

And so from this book, this short series and this wonderful book that could take a year of Sundays easily, in nine messages

I brought to you this idea, this theme from the Apostle Paul that Christ is sufficient, that Christ is enough, that all the things that the world has to offer you, the vain philosophies, the elemental spirits, the human traditions, it's all about Christ.

It's all about His gospel. Christ is sufficient to accomplish in you what God the Father wants accomplished in you.

Christ is enough. That's been the theme, and God willing we'll finish it up today with Colossians 3, verses 17 to chapter 4, verse 6, which

I'll read. If you would please stand, I will read those for you, and we will jump in. Colossians 3, we'll begin at verse 17.

... bond servants, obeying everything, those who are your earthly masters. Not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

Lord. Whatever you do, work hardly as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the

Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us, excuse me, a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which

I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Welcome wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

God bless the reading, and now the proclamation of his word. You may be seated. So what we have here in these verses that I read to you, and again we're not going to cover everything

I read, we're going to finish up today on the sufficiency of Christ, but what we have here before us is a section of scripture, a section of Paul's inspired word to us that's often called household order.

Now how many of you, if you look at your Bibles, right above verse 18 in chapter 3 there,

I think it's especially in the ESV, you're going to see something in italics. In mine it says rules for Christian households.

How many of you have something like that? Yeah, most of us do. Now that was put in there by the publishers of the

Bible, that was not original text from the inspired author. Rules for Christian households.

Now wouldn't you like to have a household that is well ordered, organized, consistent, managed, everything gets done according to Hoyle?

Wouldn't that be great to have a place like that? I'm going to tell you how to fail at that first. Let me tell you how to fail to have a house that is well ordered, that is organized, where everything just goes along smoothly because you're following the right method.

Here's how you fail at that. Follow that pre -script that you have there. Consider what

I just read to you regarding the household as rules for the household.

Make it a bunch of rules, take each verse, put a checkbox by it and a date by the checkbox and say, today

I submitted, today I loved, child, today I obeyed. Good to go, we've done it.

Rules depend upon you. Rules depend upon my consistency, my view of whether I should be doing this rule today, my mood.

How many children have the same mood day by day? One day they love and want to obey and the next day going back to how children often are.

Make this a set of rules. Put it somewhere prominent in the house like on the refrigerator. And here's a rule, here's from the verse, and here's the checkbox and here's the date and we're going to check, check, check.

We don't have here really a set of rules. You can tell by my tone of voice where I was going with this.

This is not so much a set of rules as what you have here is a reflection of what it means for the gospel of Jesus Christ and for reliance upon His thorough and complete and all encompassing sufficiency to be the rule and the tone and the tenor of a house.

It's what it is to reflect Christ in all we do, which is why I started with verse 17, which is really part of the end of the section above what we have, but it all ties together,

I believe. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the

Father through Him. That's the rule. And as you follow that rule, and I say that with those quote things, as you follow that rule, as you do everything by faith through the power of the

Spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving honor to God the Father, these things don't just magically fall in place, but they become part of how we conduct ourselves as a family.

This passage does give rules. It does give strong guidance on how to order the

Christian household and the various relationships and rules. We're going to talk about those because they're very important. What I caution you against is taking this like some take the proverb, train up a child in the way he shall go and shall not depart from it.

That's a rule. So if I do the right things, if I teach him the Bible every morning, he's going to go the right way. And how often does that not happen?

It's not a rule. It's a general observation. Well, here we have what it means to believe in God the

Father through faith in Jesus Christ and to rely upon his sufficiency and his sufficiency alone.

A message is titled, Christ is all. I took that from chapter 3, verse 11, much earlier than this. Here there is neither, there is not

Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, free, but Christ is all and in all.

Think about that verse so far above, so far before what I'm actually preaching for.

Look at it for just a moment. Think about this. Greeks were so proud to be Greeks, right?

They're the beginning of all civilization. Just ask a Greek. Jews, fiercely independent, unwilling to capitulate to the culture around them, to be a part of things.

Barbarian was anyone who had the misfortune of not being born a Greek. Just ask a

Greek about that. Scythians, the most barbaric of the barbarians.

Just ask a Greek. Slaves. Now, historians will vary in their estimates of how many

Athenians were actually slaves. Somewhere between 20 and 50 % of Athenians were slaves.

And so there's neither slave nor free, the other 80 or 50 % who are free.

Well, those lines of demarcation are obliterated in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As I tell people so often, Christ is bigger than your culture. Christ is bigger than your ethnicity, than your upbringing.

Christ, by His Spirit, is bigger than all that. So those lines of demarcation, the

Greek and the Jew and the circumcised, all that is gone in Christ Jesus as we come together in the gospel, together as we are even this morning.

So He, it's Jesus, not sinful prejudice. It's He, God's Son, not man's desire to dominate.

It's He, God who became flesh. His outlook, Jesus' outlook, is all and in all.

And remember what came just after that, which was that put on and put off message that we had a week or so ago?

Verse 12, put on, and 12 to 17 explain what it is to put off the old man, the one who glorified in keeping those boundaries, in maintaining people at arm's length, at disobeying parents, at not loving the wife as she ought to be loved, and not submitting to the husband as he ought to be submitted to.

Put off all that, said the apostle. Put off, and here's what it looks like to put it off, but put it off, get rid of it, set it aside.

It's all about Christ in whom those barriers are broken down for once and for all. Now all who stand in Christ, all who are in Christ, stand equal in God's eyes, even as we live within the rules that He ordained for us.

So as I go through this message, understand that as I go through these, it's making an equality there, and yet as the gospel comes and obliterates these lines of demarcation, and it's bigger than the cultural norms.

Remember that the gospel also doesn't set aside societal standards, insofar and as long as they don't violate the

Word of God. So in verses 3, 17 to 4, 6, we see what it looks like when the gospel travels with us from church to home, from church to work.

You see, there is an authority. There is authority. It comes by delegation from Christ, and it needs to be administered, excuse me, in imitation of Him.

For all we do, we do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, meaning according to His name, according to His works, according to who

He is, according to what the gospel presents Him to be. So when we're doing it in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, we who have authority, and we're going to talk about the different types of authority in a few moments, remember, and we need to always keep in mind, this authority is delegated to us.

It's delegated to us by the ultimate authority, which is the Lord Himself. There are those who are under that authority, and their position is there by God's design, as much as the authority that we might have in whatever position we're in, and having some authority is by God's design, but that must be lived out in a manner that honors

Him. So we can look at the overall structure that we have here, this household structure, this framework, if you will, not a set of rules, as you might understand from the introduction, but a framework, a gospel framework, something that reflects

Jesus Christ. So who's under authority? Wives, children, and slaves are addressed here.

Wives submit, children obey, and slaves obey. The tone and the tenor as well, the motivating cause for this obedience, for this submission is given to us.

Wifely submission to our husband is, quote, fitting, or proper, or appropriate.

It's not merely social convention. In our days, it's distinctly not social convention.

The word is just anathema in this world outside of these four walls. But wifely submission to her husband, why?

Because it's fitting, because it's proper. To me? To your neighbors?

No, in the Lord, fitting in the Lord. This is how God made man and woman, and the institution that binds them together, which is marriage, children's obedience to parents, which means dad and mom, pleases the

Lord. Now, of course, it pleases mom and dad when they're obeyed, but raise your eyes up and seek

Christ. Isn't that what the apostle said? Seek Christ.

Seek those things which are above. Think about Him. It pleases mom and dad, but look higher than just pleasing mom and dad.

You children out there, look higher than that. Raise your eyes than that. You may get some comfort, and you may get some ease of life as you obey your parents in this life, and it is good to obey your parents in this life right now, because your parents love you and mean you're good.

But as well as that, not exclusive of that, as well as that, do what

I preached last week for your parents to do. Raise your level of sight. Look up and look to the one who you ultimately please, which is

God. Slaves. The same word for slaves as for children is to obey, but why?

Obey so you don't get whooped. Could have been the case back then. But that's not the motive that Paul gives.

Fearing the Lord. See, even your menial labor or your academic labor, should your slavery have been that of a tutor, is done with awe, is done with reverence, is done with respect for God.

He's the motive behind all of this. It is appropriate to God. It is fitting in the

Lord. It pleases the Lord. Now fearing the Lord. You fear the master, and you obey the master.

You submit to the master. Yeah, that's all true. But God first and foremost.

See, obeying the master, in that vein, would just be rules. Would just depend upon how

I feel. Am I able to do that today? But fearing the Lord carries us through Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday, and then we come here

Sunday, get charged up again, and fearing the Lord, we're able to do that again through the week.

And those are those under authority. The wives, the children, the slaves.

Fitting in the Lord. It pleases the Lord. Fearing the Lord. What about those with the authority?

This delegated authority. With Christ Jesus, the ultimate authority, God has handed to him all authority in heaven and earth,

Jesus said, has been given to me by the Father. All authority. So anything we have, and I'm pointing mostly to we men who are fathers and husbands, anything we have, and we can consider ourselves to be men and women alike, if we're supervisors, if we're executives, any authority you have is a delegated authority.

It's something that God in his providence has given you. And needs to be administered as such.

So those who have authority to your wife, what does it say? Show love and do not embitter her.

Ephesians 5 .25, corresponding verse says to love her as Christ loved the church.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Again, it's some intellectual discussion sometimes with some people, and I can think of some particular ones, who say, well, that's agape love, right?

Well, agape love is a love of service. It's a love that serves. It's a love that does. It's a love that helps out and does what the person needs to have done.

So as long as I work and save money and take care of her and get a house and all that stuff, that's agape love, right?

And they make it devoid of all emotional content. Well, agape is a love that serves.

Pastor Owens read John 3 .16, that's agape love, for God so agape loved the world.

They did something about it. And Jesus said, I came not to be served, but to serve. So certainly service is part of that love.

But what he says, love your wives. Men, don't intellectualize it to the point that we make it devoid of that emotional content that God made our wives need or particularly cherish.

For those with authority, to your children, do not provoke them. Do not exasperate them.

What does it mean to exasperate a child? We can multiply a lot of different examples, but I think it's as simple as don't make them think this.

Don't make them think, I can't ever get it right. He'll never be happy with me. No matter what

I do, it's wrong or it needs to be criticized or corrected somehow. Don't exasperate your children.

Ephesians 6 .4 says, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, which you exemplify by not provoking them.

I think, again, what's the example we're following? Is it not Jesus Christ? And does he exasperate us?

Does he say, you're going to do things that are impossible for you to do? Well, yes, he does. It is impossible.

But it's he who makes them possible. And Jesus Christ himself said, you're going to do greater than what you saw me do.

He told his disciples that. And for the disciples to us, I don't believe that's greater qualitatively.

I don't know a single person who's ever touched blind eyes and given them sight, touched a leopard's body and made his flesh fresh again.

But quantitatively. And he makes it possible. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

It is God who works in you to will and to work for his good pleasure. So he doesn't exasperate us by saying, go and do these things on your own strength in a way that's impossible for you to do them.

No. He gives us what we need to do them. And then we have the responsibility to do them because it's he who makes it possible to do that which we cannot do.

I can go on and on with this, but you see that intersection of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.

The Bible doesn't flesh it out for us completely. But it does say God makes it possible. Jesus Christ gave us his spirit.

Now go do. To your slaves, those in authority, be just and be fair because you also have a master in heaven.

You have a master in heaven who cares deeply about justice and correspondingly despises abuse.

Now you think about how often in the Pentateuch, that's the first five books of Moses as we call it.

That's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. How often the people of Israel are told when a pilgrim or a sojourner is in your land, not paraphrasing.

This is my version of it. Is in your land, you're to treat them fairly. Why? Because you were sojourners and pilgrims in another land, meaning

Egypt. And let's add parenthetically there, you were slaves there. You know what it's like.

There should be a memory that's passed on from generation to generation. So when someone comes to you in your land, that's in the position that you were in in that land, you treat them right.

You treat them justly. You treat them fairly. And as Paul says, here's the reason, you also have a master in heaven.

And you were in that position yourself. So how do we sum that up?

Wives submit, husbands love, children obey, fathers do not provoke, slaves obey, masters be just and fair.

There's obviously more to it than that. In that world, the husband, father, and master would have been one man.

So what we have is three attitudes of submission, each one with a corresponding demeanor from the authority to whom they submit and obey.

Like the centurion told Jesus, I too am a man in authority with soldiers under me. And what did that centurion tell

Jesus where he said, I haven't seen faith like that even in Israel. He says, I'm like you,

Jesus. In this corresponding way, he wasn't putting himself on Jesus' level. He had a much more realistic view of who the

Lord was. But he said, I too am a man under authority. I tell this guy go and do this, and he goes and does this.

I tell this one go and do that, and he goes and does that. All the while administering his authority under the auspices of his master who gave him that authority.

Corresponds very nicely to us men in our families. To remember that this is an authority that we have.

That we have been given, delegated to us by one who intends and watches and cares that we administer it fairly and rightly.

Nobody gets away with anything really. Christ is all and in all. Not just rules.

These are not just rules. They're God -pleasing, God -honoring precepts by which he is honored and by which

Christ is exalted. So we can go back a minute and we can see how this releases them from the captivity to the historical context and the cultural norms that they lived under.

And we can bring them home to the 21st century. To the norms and the auspices that we live under.

Remember where we started. Christ is all and in all. And whatever you do in word and deed, verse 17, do everything in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Giving thanks to God the Father through him. So back to wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the

Lord. Doug Moo points out that as the new humanity in Christ, relationships are transformed.

But not at the cost of existing social relationships. Contra are surrounding lunacy.

Wives are female. They're women. And husbands are male.

They are men. So we have some regard for social norms.

Husband, wife, get married. That's been going on in a lot of cultures for a lot of centuries. God ordained it.

It's been going on. It's a social norm. It's a social relationship. We can have some regard for it. We've all heard how submission in the

Greek doesn't mean what it seems to mean or what it seems to mean in the ears of us in the 21st century.

As one of those things, I think I've mentioned this before, by the time we apologize for this word submission, wives, submit to your husbands, by the time we're done flushing it out, we've got nothing left to say.

All we've done is apologize because the world outside doesn't like that word. Well, I don't care. We don't in this place care.

Wives, submit to your husbands. And what does submission there mean? It means line up in the role that God gave you.

Remember, it's all about Christ. It's not about the husband so much. It's about Christ. And how we treat the husband says something about how we view

Christ. Submission is to line up and to accomplish the responsibilities of the role in which you live.

And that's important. Ephesians 5, 21, before it gets to wives, submit to your husbands, before that says we're all to be submitted to one another out of reverence for Christ.

You see how it's all about Christ. He's bigger than our attitudes. He's bigger than my desire to be independent.

He's bigger than I just won't submit to anyone. Christ is more than that.

And it's all out of reverence for Christ, fitting in the Lord, pleasing to the Lord, reverence for Christ, the man

Jesus Christ, who out of submission to the Father's will, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that one will, he died on the cross for our salvation.

It was obedience to the will of the triune God in which he, God the Son, was a full participant.

And yet did not Christ say so many times that he was here to accomplish, to submit to his Father's will? He's still the great example that we have, the paradigm that we need to look to.

Because we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It's all about Jesus who's all and in all.

So that's first. Second is submission is to discharge the duties and the social responsibilities of your position.

I said this a moment ago. And that's just what Christ did. So I'd say to our wives and to our husbands, you're our helpers fit for us.

You're our full participants with your husband in running the home. Submit yourself to that God -given role.

That's what submission really means in the New Testament. Not to be subjected, but submission.

Very similar to the Old Testament view of righteousness. Someone is righteous in the Old Testament view, in that Hebraic view, if they accomplish the duties and responsibilities of their social position.

So a king executes justice. I'm not saying perfectly, but he executes justice. He is righteous.

You could say a farmer does a good job in harvesting his crop and not taking the corners because you're not supposed to glean.

Well, that's righteousness, doing and fulfilling the duties of your position. Submit yourself to the

God -given role. It may play out differently today than it did 2 ,000 years ago, but the idea is no different.

Obedience is more in view in Ephesians 5 .22, but the word, that important word, submission, which is hupotasso in Greek, is the same word.

And this very quick thumbnail sketch, even though it's a very short analysis of it, it's true, and this is what it means.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them, do not bitter them. Alexander McLaren wrote here,

It is a joy to serve where the heart is engaged, and that is eminently true of the feminine nature.

For its full satisfaction, a woman's heart needs to look up and to serve where it loves.

In the nobler, purer, and more unselfish love, as much as in physical constitution, is laid out the foundation of the divine ideal of marriage.

Tolstoy wrote something really interesting that I think relates to this. I'm going to quote him as well.

If you haven't read Tolstoy, I suggest you start War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Monday.

It's very much worth reading. Tolstoy says, The trouble begins because men think you can handle people without love, and you cannot.

You can handle things without love. You can carve wood and hammer iron without it, but you cannot handle people in this way.

People are like bees. If you handle bees roughly, either they will get hurt or you will get hurt.

So men, we have to be firm. We have to be strong. We have to not be afraid to love. And we have to not be afraid to stop taking agape apart and turning it into merely doing.

He says, Do not be harsh with them. What is harshness? Again, very quickly, we could multiply examples, but it's what makes another person cringe, makes them afraid, makes them scared, makes them shrunken in spirit, makes them feel less than, which is just the way

God in Jesus Christ treats you. Right? Well, of course, that's not right.

That's not right at all. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the

Lord. Ephesians 6 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. And Paul next, in Ephesians, the corresponding text that we have in Colossians, he next quotes the fifth commandment.

He says, Children, obey your parents, that it may go well with you, and you may live long in the land.

That's from the Old Testament. That's from Exodus 20. Now, I wrestled with this a bit. Why does the fifth command read this way?

And Paul quoted like this. Well, for one thing, we have this household order, this reflection of the gospel that permeates the house, and that's something that pleases the

Lord. For another thing, he had it there that the sons of this world, in their obedience to their earthly fathers, might be like Jesus was towards his heavenly

Father. Okay? So, children, obey your parents, for this is right in the Lord. Obey your parents because Jesus obeyed his

Father. As Jesus obeyed his Father in everything, correspondingly, you children should obey your

Father, your parents in everything. But there's another reason for this.

I think this might be a bit more what Paul had in mind for those people then, 2 ,000 years or so ago.

In Deuteronomy 21, verse 18, it says, If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother...

Okay, there's parents. It's not just the father. There's parents. And though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother, the parents, shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of the city at the gate of the place where he lives.

And they shall say to the elders of the city, This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice.

He is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall correct him and tell him to be better and to start obeying and to do this as a rule and to look through the checklist and make sure that every day he checks off that he obeyed something.

No, that's not what it says. Paul says that it may go well with you.

Quoting the fifth command, that you live long in the land. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst and all Israel shall hear and fear. Now rebellious child, we're not going to take you outside in the parking lot and throw pebbles or stones or anything else at you.

We don't do that. But the evil in our midst needs to be cleansed.

And you who don't obey, you who don't listen to your mother and father and don't respect your father, it's an evil of which you need to repent.

It's an evil for which you need to look at Jesus Christ and say, as you obeyed your father, so I must obey mine and seek his forgiveness.

It's more than possible that so you may live long in the land means just that. So you might live long in the land by not being executed for your rebelliousness.

See, Jesus' life fulfilled this law. He obeyed his earthly parents. That's Luke 2 .52.

When God said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, that refers to his whole life up to that point, which included his obedience to Mary and Joseph, his earthly parents.

For us in the new covenant, let us do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, obeying our parents because it's pleasing to the

Lord. Kids, you will please your parents when out of love you obey them.

Out of love for them and knowing that their love for you is why they give you the disciplines that they do. You will please them by obeying them.

But again, as Jesus says, think of things above. Look at what's up.

Look where Jesus is. Ponder him. You will please your parents, yes, but what does it mean to please your parents in that way?

It pleases the Lord. And that's by far more important. And that's so much better than a checklist rule.

Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Don't make them think, as I said before,

I can't do it. I can't get anything right. And again, we ask, is this how Jesus treats you?

No. How God and Christ treats us is so different. The apostle says,

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these he will do because I am going to the

Father. Well, that's how Jesus treats us.

Do you need a rule? Do we need to turn it into a daily discipline? Okay, I'll grant that to you.

On a daily basis, remember that it's God who strengthens, it's

God who works, and it's Jesus who said, greater works than these he will do because I am going to the Father, and all who believe in me, he said, will do these works.

When we think about not exasperating our children, I read these verses from the apostle, especially from the words of Jesus himself.

I find these encouraging, not discouraging. I find that Jesus has given us impossible tasks, like for men with feet of clay, as we like to say, like myself and Pastor Conley, to proclaim

God's Word to you. Now, if God said, you just do it, and you do it on your own strength, and it better be good, nobody's going to be able to accomplish that.

It's God who works through me, and through Pastor Conley, and through all of you, and all that we do.

I find these verses very encouraging because God said, go do the impossible, huh? Because I'll make it possible.

Jesus Christ himself said, with God, nothing shall be impossible, even for you or for me to live our lives in a way that brings honor and glory and pleasure, even because it pleases the

Lord, pleasure to the divine God, Father, Son, and Spirit. Verse 22 says, bondservants, obeying everything, those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleases, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

Lord. As it says in Psalm 86, 11, unite my heart to fear your name. Bind it all together.

May my yes be yes, my no mean no. Back then they had slaves. We don't have slaves.

Slavery was widespread and accepted in the Greco -Roman world, and today, at least in the

West, most of the West, it's not only not widespread and accepted, it's illegal. And I say, praise God for that.

Thanks be to God for that. May slavery be wiped out in every corner of the globe. The Bible acknowledges that slavery existed, never condones it.

On balance, though, the Scripture does seem to make a negative view of it. When Israel was in Egypt, they were slaves, which is exactly what

God came to change. When the Philistines had the upper hand, they enslaved

Israel, exactly the situation the judges remedied. Without the freeing hand of the

Holy Spirit upon you, when by grace you were saved, by the washing and regeneration of the

Holy Spirit, you see, I put a lot of verses together for that one. Without that freeing hand of the

Holy Spirit, you and I both were slaves to sin, as it says throughout Romans 6.

Well, if you lived 2 ,000 years ago, and you had the means to own another human being, this would have been the conduct demanded of you by the gospel.

These instructions would have been rightly applied to the 19th century South in America.

And if today the laws somehow changed, and you went and bought yourself a human being, you would then be gospel -bound to this treatment of him or her.

You see, even if there's no slavery today as it existed then, these instructions cannot be ignored or marginalized.

What is important here is the attitude. Doing all things in the name of the

Father, or to the glory of the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever you do, whoever you serve, today that means employment usually, this is your attitude.

But know carefully, not so much your attitude towards your work, but towards those you work with, either as boss or a more lowly employee.

And your attitude towards them has but one true fountainhead, that's Jesus Christ. So whatever you do, verse 23, do work hardly as for the

Lord, not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the

Lord Christ. Interesting here that when it says do things hardly, hardly, behind that is the

Greek word psuches, which means soul, usually. Do things as from the soul.

Do things as from that aspect of yourself that relates to God, that soul that God gives you, that new heart that you have, hardly soulish as to the

Lord, as Joseph did for Jacob, and then for Potiphar, and then for Pharaoh, as David did for Saul before Saul chased him away, as Daniel did for Nebuchadnezzar, as Nehemiah for Cyrus, as did

Christ as for the Lord, doing all things to the glory and honor of God the

Father. The Lord will repay and reward everything.

See, the slaves are being told even without compensation, they must trust what God will ultimately do. It goes on to say, verse 25, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done and there is no partiality.

This seems to be directed to bond servants, to slaves. It says in essence, vengeance is mine, I will repay, so it really relates to all of us.

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the

Father through Him. This is the gospel -tainted ethic, motif, and flavor that accomplishes what we have here.

I said, do you want to fail at this? Just make it a set of rules. Now let's say you make it a set of rules and you obey all that set of rules that perfectly reflects what the scripture is

I just read. And let's say you were able to do that every day for the rest of your life. I would say you failed.

Because even then, even if you did it every day, you did it in your own power, in your own strength, by your own disciplines, and not by the power that God gives us by faith in Christ and His Spirit.

What shall we say to these things? John Barclay wrote, the household code is thus entirely consistent with the universalizing thrust of the letter as a whole, in which the tendrils of the

Christ event spread out, as it were, to cover the whole surface of life. I love that.

Tendrils spreading out. And whatever we do, in word or deed, we do all in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father. And we're going to respond to our wife about something.

I don't care what it is. Are we going to look on the refrigerator and see the rule we posted? Or are we going to say,

I want to give honor to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Submission?

Same question. Children, you're younger. Some of these things are a little bit hard to grasp in your mind.

But even you, even you young ones, can slow down and take that breath and say, is that going to honor

Jesus? You've been taught well enough in your homes to say yes or no to that.

The household code that we have here, consistent with this universalizing thrust of the whole letter, that we trust on Christ.

Not on philosophy, which is empty deceit. Not on man -made rules and regulations.

Not on elemental spirits. Not on anything in this world out there that tells you how to accomplish what they think is right.

Self -help books and all the like. No, it's all about Christ. It's about Christ Jesus and His honor.

It's about Jesus Christ and His cross and His imputation to us of righteousness. It's about Jesus Christ who works in and through us.

The Son of God who came to serve man. It's about Him who is sufficient to accomplish all these things in and through us.

And this is what this short series in Colossians has been all about. And I pray that you've been strengthened in this somewhat.

That you know that the Lord that we worship doesn't just give us a set of rules. He makes us able by His power, by His Spirit, to accomplish the things that He would require of us.

Our responsibility is to latch on to Him and to accomplish what He makes possible. Christ is sufficient.

Christ is all and in all. And may He continue to be glorified in this place and in your lives as you leave this place.

God willing, we'll be able to give Him the honor and the glory for it throughout. Amen? Heavenly Father, I do thank

You again for this day for having a time of worship together. And I pray, Father, that we would all look to Christ Jesus as the all -sufficient

One. And that in Him and through Him and because of Him as we follow Your ways, Father, that You've given us in Scripture, we do all for the glory of Your name in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You for the redemption and the salvation we have in Him. We thank You for Your Spirit who makes us able to accomplish

Your will. I pray, Father, that we would submit to that will and do it for the sake of Your glory.