Essentials for a Stable Life

--- Welcome to week seven of Finding Stability, which is our women's Bible study through the book of Colossians. Today we're going to cover Colossians 3, 12 through 4, 1. Before we begin reading in our text this morning, we need to walk back to the first verses of this chapter because they form a thesis statement for the entire chapter. So we want to get it fresh in our minds, remind ourselves. I'll put it on the screen, starting at verse one.

So we've broken this chapter into two parts. In part one, last week, we learned that a spiritual Christian would naturally want to remove from their lives those things that are out of agreement with the character of Christ. Things like sexual immorality, things like coveting, things like anger. In the second half, this week, part two, we're going to learn that a spiritual Christian would naturally want to include things in her life that are in agreement with the character of Christ. Things like compassion, patience, love, and forgiveness. So it's a real handy division. I appreciate how Paul has used two different metaphors in this chapter. He's talked about things that need to be dealt with, need to be removed. He said, put to death, therefore, and it's a warfare sort of a metaphor. And then he talks about things that need to be put on or put off, and that's a wardrobe sort of a metaphor. In general, in life, the warfare would appeal to the males and the wardrobes would appeal to the females. It's never 100%, but since this is a women's Bible study, I do want to focus on the wardrobe metaphor that he talks about. Have you ever gone to an event where you were not dressed properly? The one that stands out in my mind, I was in my mid-20s. There was a church event at the church that we were serving at at the time. I didn't get the memo that it was a dress event. I had a one-year-old, I had a three-year-old. We were meeting in a church auditorium or a gymnasium or something, and I had no idea that this was going to be dressy. So I waltz in in my normal mom wear and I start looking around, and you have that feeling like I'm completely underdressed. Of course, I'm in my 20s, and so my perspective is that everyone in the room is thinking about me and the fact that I'm completely underdressed, which probably wasn't true, but it's a terrible feeling to not be wearing the right thing. Then I had the same experience recently. In fact, spring break of this year, Paul and I, the first half of spring break, we hosted a Pastors and Wives retreat up in McCall. It was even spring in McCall. We were just layering with sweaters and hoodies and things like that. The second half of spring break, we go to Minnesota, fly to Minnesota to visit our parents, and we just were dressing the same way. Sweaters and hoodies. We fly into Minneapolis. We get in our hotel. We have our rental car. The next morning, we get up, and seriously, the windchill is 20 below zero. We were completely underdressed for the event. We didn't bring hats. We didn't have mittens. And then, wouldn't you know, Paul gets in the car. Somehow, he opens the car, and the key to the rental car slips down between the seat and the, you know, that abyss that exists. It goes down to China. So we have both car doors open, 20 degree windchill, 20 below zero windchill, and we're trying to find these keys, you know, and we were miserable. We were just miserable. But my church mistake caused emotional stress. The Minnesota mistake caused physical stress. The opposite of stress is often stability. This Bible study is called finding stability. If we don't dress properly in our natural lives, it's temporary. It's fleeting. We'll get over it. If we don't dress properly in our spiritual lives, then we will remain a carnal Christian, and we will carry the stress. And so, the proper wardrobe is very important to finding stability in our lives. Let's begin at verse 12, where Paul talks about what we are to put on.

We'll stop right there. This verse is a repetition of verse 10, where he said, put on the new self. It's just that this gives specific content about what the new self looks like. But first, before we talk about that, look at this little glimpse we get to see of how God looks at us, how he feels toward us. Chosen, holy, beloved. I love that insertion in there. But then we're informed about the things that are specifically in agreement with the character of Christ. Things like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience. They're all very closely related. They're all very similar. You don't usually find a person who's gonna get really high marks on humility, but be unkind. Or a person who's gonna get, like, really high marks on patience, but they just have no compassion. Usually, it's an entire package of these things. However, the different wording and the distinctions help us look at it, help us process it a little bit differently. And even in our study guide, we asked, what would you, what do you feel the Lord is pulling on you to put on, to increase in your life? There might be one of those traits that sort of rises to the surface. And we remember that this isn't, when we're talking about these things, this is how you should be. We're talking about these things and saying, this is what's available when we seek the things that are above. These are what we can put on, and we need to keep putting on, and keep putting on. And so now we move to these three really relevant virtues in the next three verses, forgiveness, love, and peace. Let's look at verse 13.

Remember how we said how, what holy people, and what nice people we would be if we didn't have to live with other people. Because we believed that it is those people who cause us to be angry, cause us to lie, things like that. But then we realized that really, it's a focus on me that causes those things in my life. But people play a part in our life. They not only tempt us to sin because we're focusing on ourselves, but people sin against us. It's a reality. People do sin against us. And when they sin against us, the word says we are to bear with them. We are to forgive them. Why are we to do that? Because it's in agreement with the character of Christ. Because we ourselves have received forgiveness from the Lord, we understand this, and now we should walk, we should put this on, and walk in agreement with his character. Bearing with others, it says when one has a complaint against another, forgiving them. Complaints can be simple, or they can be serious. It can be relatively easy to forgive someone when you have a simple complaint against them. Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot to pick you up. I just lost track of time. Would you forgive me? That's not a problem. But what happens when the complaint is serious? What happens when someone sins against you and it changes the whole course of your life? That's not as easy to forgive. And that is when we need, we need to have access to the power of the Spirit. Because forgiving is a spiritual work. Forgiveness is a spiritual work. But it is an important work. And we want to put it on in order to find stability in our lives. Now, listen, we would need a whole six-week Bible study to talk about all the ins and outs of forgiveness. But what I feel like the Lord has led me to right here is to talk about the effect it has on us when we do not forgive, when we withhold forgiveness. Let's go back to that time I was in Minnesota earlier. Let's think about being in a cold climate, okay? And you've put on all the things. Maybe you're with a group of friends and you're doing something. You're looking at Christmas lights and you've put on the coat, you've put on the hat, you've put on the gloves. But your lack of forgiveness in your life might be likened to you have nothing on your feet. and you're barefoot in this situation. And so you're walking around barefoot. You look pretty okay to everybody else. Nobody really knows you're in pain. But yet every step you take is painful because you're not dressed properly. You haven't put on this one thing. And so you have these frostbite feet that are causing you pain, and you focus on that, right? That's what you would do in that situation. And so it clouds everything else we do, and then we remain a carnal Christian until it is dealt with. Let's pause a minute and define what is forgiveness, okay? I'm gonna throw out a definition. Forgiveness is a conscious decision to release someone from the wrong they have done to us, to wipe the slate clean, to pardon, to cancel the debt, okay? What is incorrect about what our culture tells us about forgiveness? Have you ever heard someone around you say, well, you can't forgive others until you forgive yourself? That is incorrect because thinking that somehow I have to forgive myself only puts a focus back on me. This is a mind of the flesh again, and it makes me look inward. The reality is that forgiving other people is dependent on understanding the forgiveness of Christ. That's what it depends on. Doesn't depend on me, and I don't even understand that because I don't know how you can have a debt against yourself. But anyway, we need to understand and imitate God's forgiveness. Okay, what does forgiving not mean? After you have wiped the slate clean with someone, you truly have forgiven them. What does it not mean to forgive? Well, forgiving doesn't mean that you must resume a relationship and continue to let someone hurt you. You don't have to do that. That's not part of the package of forgiving, okay? You can forgive a wrong done to you while removing yourself from future pain. Forgiving doesn't mean that all of your emotional pain will disappear immediately. Just because you forgive someone doesn't mean you're all better now. Because sometimes when we're not all better, we think, I guess I haven't truly forgiven because I still hurt. I still feel that pain. Things take time. We're emotional creatures, and it just takes time for pain to be resolved. Also, forgiving doesn't mean that there's no longer a place for justice or restitution. The wrongdoer may want to or need to make things right with you or the laws of the land that they live in. So just because you have forgiven someone doesn't mean they don't have to go to prison. Just because you've forgiven someone doesn't mean that you say, no, no, no, you don't have to fix my car, it's okay. So there's still a place for justice. All it means is that emotionally, spiritually, you have wiped the slate clean. Forgiving merely expresses our identification with Christ, and it releases us to flourish spiritually. Now we have our boots on in the winter. Now we're not focused on our pain. Now we can move forward. Let's move on to love, verse 14.

I love that, in a perfect world, it binds everything together in perfect harmony. In many ways, Colossians three, I feel like is a first cousin to Romans 12. We studied Romans 12 at retreat, all of these fundamentals of our Christian faith. I just want to show you where love enters in at the beginning of those. Romans 12, nine, I'll put it on the screen.

Jesus told his disciples in multiple ways at multiple times, he told them that they were to love one another. And if you don't feel loving, see, that's okay, because it's something that we reach out from above and put on. And so if you don't feel loving, see, that sends us back, drives us back to the Lord. And so we say we need this. It's an active choice on our part. But the context here goes beyond individual choices. The wording is corporate. It says love binds everything, can we say everyone, together in harmony. Because there's all types of people in the body of Christ. And how are they all gonna be knit together? Do you remember that phrase we had? Knit together in love. That's what we had from chapter two. And so love becomes the binding agent. Let me throw out another little illustration for you. It was so hot this summer that I didn't really do any improvements in my yard, but I've had a project waiting for, well, I went and got some flagstones from my son four years ago. And they've been lined up alongside my house. So it took me until October when it was finally cool enough to do this project. And I had a little path that I wanted to do. I laid my flagstones. And this was gonna be a zero-cost project for me. So I had pea gravel on my hands. So I laid them up, I got them relatively level, and I just put pea gravel between them. But there's not much of a commitment with pea gravel. I can take it up just as easily as I put it down. If I were to want to bind those flagstones together, I would have gone to Home Depot, gotten that polymeric sand or whatever you call it, sprinkled it in, watered it down, and then they were locked in. Then they were bound together. And I was thinking about this scripture when it says that love, you know, bind everything together in perfect harmony. I thought, how often in our lives do we just like, this is a pea gravel situation. I'm not gonna invest for the long-term here. I'm just gonna kind of smooth it over. But yet, genuine love binds things together. It binds things together where they create a stable surface. Let's go on to the next verse, verse 15.

in the same way that love isn't completely individual, peace also isn't completely individual. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, plural, all of you. And so having the peace, having peace, this is different than what we might say, well, I have a peace about that. I have a peace about going to Mexico next month. This is different. This is more of a deciding, compromising situation to help us live together in the body of Christ because we don't all see things the same way. So how are we to have peace between us? Before we talk about it, I wanna show you the wording from Ephesians. Look at Ephesians chapter four, verses one through three.

Unity of the spirit in the bond of peace because we all have different backgrounds, different giftings, different experiences, which causes us to not always agree on how, if, or when something is to be done or said or taken care of. We don't always agree. But we need peace. We need the peace of the spirit. So when that happens, when we don't always agree, the word says, let the peace of Christ rule. That means to umpire or to referee, to make the call. So that's the judgment call. What will promote the most bonding of love here? What will promote a peaceful environment? What will promote unity? What will promote harmony? That is the thing that should move forward. But we have to remember, though, that letting the peace of Christ rule doesn't mean that we throw out our platform of truth that we have been working on all through collagens. There's a duet here. Did you see this? Let the peace of Christ rule. Let the word of Christ dwell. So let's look at verse 16 where it says,

The word of Christ is our platform of truth. This is what we teach, not casually, not haphazardly, but we teach it richly. We live by it richly. We let it dwell in our hearts richly. And this is how we admonish one another too, or the word we've used before is warn. Okay, it's our source of wisdom. Now, depending on what translation you like to use, it might make it sound like we're supposed to sing these things to one another. another. Like, let me show you the NASB. It says, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, as if the teaching and warning is to be done musically. That's not a bad translation either. Either one. It's like, okay, teach and admonish and sing songs and spiritual songs, and teach and admonish through songs and spiritual songs. Or hymns and spiritual songs. They're both really good. And I was thinking, it really has struck me even before we got to this passage, as we've been going through collagens, and then we come together on Sunday morning, and we're singing together, it has struck me how so many of the lyrics have related to, it really is teaching. The lyrics of the songs that we are singing to one another have been teaching us. Like, for example, just Sunday, we sang the refrain from Jesus Paid It All. Oh, praise the one who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead. We sang that over and over multiple times. And I'm thinking, that's from collagens, right? Because it's reinforcing what we've been meditating on. How about this one? Last week at the end, we emphasize the daily renewal that is available to us. Now look at these lyrics. With every breath, I long to follow Jesus, for he has said that he will bring me home. And day by day, I know he will renew me until I stand with joy before the throne. And we were singing that, and I thought, day by day, he will renew me. They got that from collagens. But it is super useful, like singing spiritual songs and hymns to one another, is a great way to reinforce the platform of truth. We do it corporately, but moms, I would say do it in your homes as well. Get music in your homes. Music doesn't ask permission. It just walks right into our heart. So verse 17,

This verse becomes sort of a landing cycle now to summarize for us what has been going on in this chapter. What we do, how we do it, and in what types of relationships we do it. So let's look at those three aspects. What we do, everything. Paul says, in word or in deed. Those are like bookend words to show the whole spectrum, like above and below. It means like everything, okay? Do everything unto the Lord in the strength of the Lord. Do only those things that are in agreement with his character. Do them as a representative of Christ. How are we to do these things? It says here, giving thanks. Now, this isn't new information to us. We know. It's intuitive. We know we are to be grateful people. We even know it's healthy to be a grateful person. When we dwell richly in the Lord, we are constantly reminding ourselves of not only the platform of truth, but those things that Jesus has accomplished for us. What's not to be grateful about? It's a constant reminder. And so thankfulness, I think, acts as sort of a glaze. Remember my flagstone project, Bound Together? Should have been bound together with sand. But you have these stones. Have you ever glazed over? Maybe you've had a stone floor or something and you put a glaze over it. Not only does it make it shine and gleam, but it protects it and it makes it so the dirt and grit just blows right off, wipes right off, washes right off. Nothing really sticks to it. And I was thinking that's what thankfulness does in our life. When we put that glaze of thankfulness over us, the problems just don't stick as much as they do without it. Something happens, we can just blow it off. It's okay. It's not that big of a deal. So the glaze of thankfulness. And then what types of relationships are we to do it? Wives, husbands, parents, children, servants, masters. Six complementary relationships are specified. Where we are knit together and being knit together. Where we see rank and authority. Where those things are important but can also be exploited. And where we might fight against the word or resist the word. So let's begin with the two most challenging ones. Husband and wives, verse 18.

Again, I don't think that this is new information to anyone in this room. We've studied through first Peter and Titus and Ephesians. But because God has always had a divine design for his creation, and because he has a kingdom of order, he has established rank. In the Old Testament when we studied that, the Levites, the priests, they all had a different rank and specific tasks that they are to do. Jesus willingly submitted himself to the Father. And in the home, wives are to rank, walk in rank, with their husbands. So the word here again that we've talked about, hupotasso, the word submit that is translated submit in ESV in the Greek is hupotasso, and it basically means to rank under. But the roles of the husband and the wife also portray something much larger than just a simple order. How many times have I said marriage is a symbol of the union of the church in Christ? It was intended to be that way from the beginning. It is to be orderly, but it's also to be symbolic. So let's go to Ephesians. I'll put the verses on the screen, taking them a little bit out of order to help us organize our minds. We'll start with verse 25.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. And then we get to the wives.

So God intended the Christian family to demonstrate Christ's relationship with his church, with his bride. This presupposes a believing home where both husband and wife are demonstrating their gospel roles. But life is often more complicated than that. And this is why we need to seek help from above. So we read this, but our help comes from above. So rank in relationships does not mean that one is superior to the other, that one is smarter than the other, that one has more value than the other. We remember from Philippians that Jesus submitted himself to God even though he was equal with God. He willingly submitted himself to the instruction and to the pleasure of his father. Rank does not mean that one blindly obeys the other. There's always room for dialogue, for discussion, for compromise. Remember, let the peace of Christ rule because the priests of Christ will bring things together in harmony. So rank in relationships is intended to promote harmony. God did not remove the sinful nature from either the husband or the wife when they were saved. And so we spend our whole lives now seeking God's help for harmony and unity. So the same thing is true here. I said, if you don't feel like you have love, well, you're supposed to reach out for it, ask, and put it on. If you don't feel like you are managing this role of rank very well, well, that's okay. You seek help from above and you ask the Lord to help you put it on in your situation, in your unique situation. So it's going to be very different. So this text doesn't cover all the difficulties, all the perplexities, or all the abuses that might exist on either side of the marriage relationship. But we have to remember the context of this chapter is that a spiritual Christian, which is what we want to be, we don't want to be a carnal Christian, we want to be a spiritual Christian, will put on the virtues that are in agreement with the Spirit of Christ to enable us to do what the Lord has asked us to do. Verse 20,

So if the sanctifying fires of marriage were not enough to purify you, then we have of the sanctifying fires of parenting to come along and finish the job for us, right? We need to put on the virtues of Christ in marriage, we need to put them on in parenting. I think it's also fairly self-evident to all of you here that children should listen to, take direction, obey their parents. And yet our culture progressively more and more is encouraging parents to be best friends to their children. But the reality is it's our job as mothers, okay, this is a women's Bible study, so as mothers to teach our children to obey. We must teach them to obey. How do we teach them to obey? We have to be learning obedience to Christ ourself. We have to be walking in obedience. We teach what we learn. And so we need to be humble, we need to be able to say, I'm sorry I raised my voice, that was wrong of me. We need to be patient. Remember that toddlers are very little people with very little focus, they lose focus, and that's just the way it is. It won't always be that way. We need to have compassion with our teenagers when their world falls apart, and we need to not criticize them and not have a yeah, been there, done that attitude, but really listen with compassion, and we need to forgive when our children say hurtful things, and most importantly, we need to learn to ask forgiveness when we were wrong, because we are. Let the peace of Christ rule. Sometimes we're wrong, and then we need to come back and ask them to forgive us. Nothing opens up the heart of a child more than when in humility, mom will come and say, I made the wrong decision there, would you forgive me? And they just say, yes, and they run up into your arms until they get older, and then they don't do that anymore. But maybe there's an area as you studied that you realize that you have been provoking and discouraging your children, and so we need to put on the character of Christ that will solve that. Let's finish this up, verse 22.

And then to adjust for maybe one of the most unfortunate chapter divisions in all of the Bible, we'll take the next verse, chapter four, verse one.

Now, it's not completely fair to modernize servants and masters and just say, oh, well, that means employees and employers. But that's not an accurate and maybe a proper thing to do, and yet the uniting of this theme and relationships, it's still talking about rank. And so for the sake of time and the volume of verses, we're just gonna go move right forward and go ahead and apply it that way anyway. In life, we rarely fall into one category. We wear multiple hats. And so you might rank under and you might rank over in different situations. I personally am a woman with some authority over others and in authority under others, and you probably are too. Okay, you may be a boss or an employee. You may be a teacher or a student. You might be a leader in one group and you might be a servant in another group. A wife under authority and a mother with authority. See, we fall into all these categories. And so with that in mind, what I wanna do is just summarize some of the bullet points that we learned in these verses here. Those with the privilege to lead are to remember to treat people justly and fairly, not to provoke people, not to discourage people, to love and not be harsh, and to promote peace and harmony. That is the task when you are, when you have people ranking under you. Now, those who are being led or are ranking under someone else are to remember to joyfully rank under as unto the Lord, as is fitting in the Lord. Have to have a sincere heart to approach our tasks heartily and to promote peace and harmony. You know that we don't live in a perfect world and these things just don't all fall into place easily or perfectly. This isn't heaven. One day we'll be in heaven. It says when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. But this isn't it. This isn't the time. Until then, I think a great summary for this whole chapter, all the things that Paul has written, all the things that the Holy Spirit has shown to us, I think a great summary is verse 17.

Father, that is our heart. You know how difficult it might be for us sometimes. Lord, to do things unto you, to swallow our pride, to deny our flesh. Lord, you know how difficult it might be to walk in rank in certain situations in our life. But Lord, we just come before you and ask you that all the things that we have learned, the things about forgiveness, things about love, the things about letting the peace of Christ rule, Lord, would you just really open up our hearts that we might put those things on and remember to move forward from this week's study and continue to reach out to you, seek the things from above in order to put those things on so that we can flourish as spiritual Christians and not get stuck as carnal Christians. Lord, you are the one that enables us to move forward and we trust you in this. In Jesus' name, amen. ---