Okay, we'll take a moment to begin, and I know that it's a long passage. You guys probably had lots to talk about. It's tough to get through everything, but I'm praying that since we are essentially covering it in different modes, right? You at your home, when you're looking at the passage, asking questions and making observations, then coming together you get different perspective a little bit in the sense that people are watching and paying attention to different parts of the text, and it really does help you see more things from the passage.

And I hope that this will just be another avenue of that. I can't cover everything and I wish I did, but because this is such a pivotal passage to the general thought of transformation, to the general thought of changing in the maturity of Christ. And as you guys know, I love biblical counseling, wanting to walk through biblical passages with people, and these passages that we walked through in the last couple weeks, and particularly this passage, is so pivotal to everything in terms of biblical counseling, right?

What is biblical change? How do you change? And all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna take a moment to pray, ask the Lord's blessing, and then we'll jump right in. Let's pray. God, we want to thank you for your grace. Thank you, Lord, for your sweet word. Thank you so much, God, that in your love for us, you continue to instruct us.

What's more, God, we thank you so much because we read in your word that it is clearly your will and your design that we would reflect you. Lord, God, that we would be changing from measure to measure, from statue to statue, Lord God, that we'd be changing into your likeness.

And we want to thank you so much for that, Lord. We thank you, God, that you lead us and guide us, and we pray that you grant to us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart always willing to learn. We thank you. It's in Christ's name. Amen.

Okay. So as we jump into this passage, a really quick, quick review is necessary because the verse stands with "and." Starts with "and," sorry. Starts with "and." If you recall, this is only the second half of the previous section. Now, in order to review, I want to start with verse 1 of chapter 3.

And the idea there is the whole of this entire section from verse 1 to verse 17, it is talking about the applicational push. Everything we have learned in the past is pushing us here in chapter 3 to apply, to put into practice, and therefore to actually change. The gospel that we believe is absolutely transformative, and Apostle Paul is pushing us towards that.

And the way I'm gonna put it is he's pushing us towards maturity. First and foremost, he's pushing us towards maturity in thought. Okay? In thought. Why do I say that? Because that passage in verses 1 through 4, chapter 3, verse 1 through 4, says, "Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on the things above and not on the things that are on earth." Right? And so the command is very clear that it involves your mind, that you constantly place it on the things that are about Christ, of Christ. If you recall, that's exactly what he's been doing since chapter 1.

He said, "I want you to have full knowledge, come to full wisdom, full understanding." He said, "I want you to understand who you have. You have the maker, you have the sustainer, you have all, all in all. And therefore, I want you to know you're complete. I want you to know that you've been circumcised spiritually.

I want you to know you've been baptized. I want you to know what you have in Jesus." That was chapters 1 through 3 pretty much, right? Or chapter 1 and 2. Secondly, Apostle Paul and the Lord desires us to have mature humility. The blank there is humility. Now you could put in other words summarizing this idea, but the last portion that we studied, the command for us was to put away, to lay aside and trash all the things that was ignoble.

And he says, "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." So that was verses 5 through 9, telling us that we have to have a level of humility to look inside ourselves, be introspective, and be able to identify those things that are evil.

Those desires that are corrupt, those things that are greedy, and therefore, idolatrous. I think this is sometimes a major error that we have. A major error which is this. In terms of maturity, sometimes we think maturity comes by way of skill, accomplishment. I've studied, I got my A, then I got to get a job, and da-da, I'm here, right?

Skill has nothing to do necessarily with maturity. As a matter of fact, I find it kind of humorous that in our generation, we make this mistake quite often, especially in just sports, the arena of sports. You have an athlete, he's huge, it's surprising to me, a lot of you guys probably watch some college football.

Every time I watch college football, I'm like, "That guy cannot be under 22. He looks like he's 30." I mean, the individuals are big, large, and strong, and all that kind of stuff, and some of them can do quite, I'm sorry, quite amazing stuff. And then, therefore, people go in and ask them like questions about life.

"Do you think da-da-da-da-da? Do you think we should vote for whoever and whoever?" It's like, "The guy's not a politician. He throws a basketball, right?" But we make this flawed, erred kind of assessment of what is maturity. Maybe because they're really well-known, or whatever it may be. Maturity oftentimes comes by our ability to see and identify reality as is.

To see that there are certain things within us that needs to be corrected. Now, the third one is going to be mature love, and that's what we're tackling today. Mature love. That the character traits, such as selfishness, and immorality, and greed, and all this kind of stuff, is immature because they're unloving.

And what is mature is when I can actually trust you in your love for somebody else. If I tie the two together, the mature humility and mature love, an individual who may be very skilled, knowledgeable, theologically astute, and doctrinally sound, and all that kind of stuff, he may be all that, he may be all of that, but that does not mean I am willing to place people I love in his hands.

Right? Because he has to show his ability to garner that kind of trustworthiness through the maturity of his love. If he cared and loved books, but cared nothing for people, I'm not gonna trust you with people. That's just the way it goes. Right? Now, part of the reason why I've set all this up is because, again, the major push.

We're gonna feel through these passages this challenge and exhortation for us to put on new thoughts, new attitudes, and new behaviors. And that naturally is going to, therefore, then cause us to do both automatically. Both to put off the stuff that we've been already doing, and put on the things that God wants us to put on.

And it also naturally humbles us. Because the obvious statement is, you're not as mature as you should be. Right? There's so much room to grow. There's so much more we should be striving for. Now, with that said, let's jump into the passage and make observations specifically of the various passages.

Okay? So as you take a look at this, let's read down here. And then, again, I'm gonna try to blaze through some portions of this. And then we'll see how far we can get. In this very first section, what we find is in verse 10 through 11, this is what he says, "And I've put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.

A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free man, but Christ is all and in all." Okay? So what I'm gonna say is this. Verse 10 and 11 belong together. And essentially, the command is very clear. "Put on the new self." So what you should have done is highlighted, and I'm gonna highlight in purple, the command.

I typically always highlight the commands because those are imperatives that you can meditate on and you can seek to try and apply. How do I make sure I apply this? I don't want to miss it. But what's also very interesting is he says, "Put on this new self." And the way I'm gonna say that the reason why verse 10 and 11 belong together is because it's an introduction of what this new self is.

Because as soon as we see this, we should be asking ourselves this question. And what is that question? That question simply should be, "How is this new self described in verse 10 through 11?" Okay? And what you'll find is that here, as you guys have maybe seen this before with the diagramming stuff, I blocked it off this way, and at least I indented it, not just because I love grammar, but because it shows a flow of thought.

All it's doing is this pronoun "who" is describing this new self. Right? My artistic skills are improving? That is an arrow. Okay. Alright. Who is describing the new self? And what's more, this new self is clearly being renewed. And it also gives you this idea here, this preposition "to," it also gives us a directional force.

What are you being renewed to? Okay? And you're being renewed to the knowledge, or true knowledge. Now, here it says, "According to the image of the one who created him." And all I'm gonna say really briefly is this is describing this whole process. You are being renewed to the true knowledge according to the image of the one.

You are progressively being renewed, you are progressively being changed and transformed to the image of Christ. And if you think about it, the connection is, and that's why you should let go of all the stuff that was before. The commands for us to put off immorality, impurity, and all that kind of stuff, and do not lie to each other.

And it says, "Since you have put aside the old self, and you have already put on this new self in Christ, and you are being renewed to his image." Right? So the whole idea is your past life absolutely incompatible with the progress that God is doing in you. You've heard this many times, that you are in a sanctifying process right now.

Right? God's will is that there is active, step-by-step, progressive change in you. And all the things of the past is incompatible with that plan of God. Now here, I want to make mention of this concept here, which is the true knowledge. Okay? This is the true knowledge, this is the image of the one.

And so what I'd like to quickly make mention of is this. So if we're talking about this idea that you should be putting on this new self, and there is this process of change, and you're supposed to be letting go of bad, evil practices from before, whether it be lying and all that kind of stuff, can we ask the question that if you are doing stuff that is inconsistent with Jesus, if you are doing things that you know are of greed or of evil thoughts, then can we say that your understanding of Jesus is off?

You know what I'm asking? Here is your action on one hand, I see it, you lied. Here is the intent and the content of your mind. Can we assume that your mind and your heart is off? And the answer is yes. Okay? What I mean by that is, listen, the truth that we believe absolutely matters.

It is the foundation of our change. The things that we believe about Jesus, His world, His will, all of these things matter because who He is, what He's done in the gospel, and His plans for you in the future, all those things change your behavior. What you believe and what you see absolutely change your behavior.

It does. If you are messing around, kicking a box, jumping on a box, and everyone thinks like, "Oh, you're having a grand old time," you're perfectly fine. There's nothing going on in your heart. You have no bad emotions. You're just happy. If I tell you, "Oh my goodness, my dog was in there," now all of a sudden you're guilty, you're stopped, you automatically immediately stop.

How you are thinking and what you find out will absolutely change how you behave. Now, someone might think, "Hey, isn't that just like cognitive behavioral science and psychology?" Well, here's the idea. For us as believers, the content of your mind must be full on Christ. The truth and revelations that's changing you must be this full understanding, the true knowledge of Christ.

That's what's radically changing you. Okay, so now let me kind of bring this together and share a convicting point about this. If you guys notice, I made sure to kind of highlight for you that sometimes we see certain actions, and then can we judge the heart? Can we judge the mind?

Can we judge what we're thinking? And my answer to you was yes. Can I be honest with you? Typically, typically, I am incredibly defensive of my heart. Let's say I was caught in a lie. Let's say somebody I love caught me in a lie, like my wife or my kids or my pastor or you guys, you know, like whoever is close to me come and say, "Oh my goodness, you lied about that, right?" You know what I'm gonna do?

Typically, my flesh is gonna be like, "Oh, I know I did, but I had this thingy and this happened, but my intent was to really actually preserve you and not to hurt you, and that's why I lied. So inside, it was all gold, but then what came out was dirty stuff.

I don't know how that happened." You know, like that would be typically what I would say in defense of my mind and heart. Here's a question to you. The reason why I make—the reason why I make a point of this is because what we have contained in our mind and our heart, we have to be humble about.

And the challenges that we're receiving from this passage, we have to be ready to receive with those humble hands. If you turn your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4, Apostle Paul says the exact same thing that he says here, okay? Ephesians chapter 4, verse 22 to 24. And look at what he says about the renewing of our minds.

He says this, "In reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self which is being corrupted in accordance to the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self which is in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth." So I want you to think about what he says right there.

He says, "Putting aside this former manner of life, it has all these lusts and deceits." And what needs to happen is you need to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And therefore, you're designed to all the more put on the righteousness of God. And you're doing what the Ephesians—in the book of Ephesians chapter 5—says, you're imitating and copying after God.

What I'm saying is this, there was a wise, wise pastor who once said—this wise pastor is Pastor Peter Kim, okay? A lot of the wise things that I've learned, I've learned from him. There was this one time where he said, "You know, sometimes we're so defensive of like the condition of our heart and wondering, 'Hey, am I compromised or not?

Did I do something that was compromising?'" It was really interesting. He said, "You know, most of the time it's not even a matter of if, it's how much." And I went, "Oh, man." You know, like, it's deep. All of our hearts to some degree are compromised. If you're gonna sing that like child song, which is positionally true, right?

Like, "The reason I know, He saved my soul, 'cause I dug deep down and I found pure gold." I'm not sure if I can sing that now that I'm older and I've seen my heart. Honestly, right? I dug deep down and said, "Oh, I don't want to sing it.

I don't want anybody to see this." You know, like, because there's so much that's already there. I didn't realize. What I'm saying is this. We need the humility to admit, as the challenge is being said, you need to be renewed in your mind and you're being conformed to the true knowledge of God, that even the intent and the content of our minds, there is already levels of things, filth, lust, deceit, and error that need to be corrected.

And if we have this defensiveness where we're like, "Yeah, no, my actions, I can see how that looks bad, but then inside my heart it's really gold," you're never gonna get anywhere. You're not gonna have the motive and the conviction to put on the things that God is challenging us to put on.

Why do I say this? It's because, take a look at this. This renewal, okay, so boom boom boom, right? This renewal of the new self, the true knowledge, the image of the one in this renewal has no distinction. That's weird. You should be asking the question, "Huh? Why?" Why would he start talking about this distinction?

Why does this matter? If I ask the question, what is the point here? What's the statement here? All he's saying is, "Hey guys, there is a list of various things you need to put on. These things include conditions of the heart, mentalities, attitudes, and you need to put on love, loving desire for the other people," right?

All that kind of stuff. But then he says, "All that stuff you need to put on, everybody needs to put it on." That's the point, right? Doesn't matter who you are. We all got to wear the same uniform. That's the point of that passage there. But I also again want to give a quick, quick convicting point, which is this.

If it's simply the point that all of us have to put this on, why does he name these individuals? The Greeks, the Jews, the circumcised, the uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free. You should have been asking, "Who in the world are the Scythians?" Because I don't know. We don't normally use this name.

And who are the barbarians? Because man, I'd be offended right now, right? You should be asking, "Who are these people? Why does he name them? And how does it connect to all of us need to wear the same uniform?" Because this is true. Here's a challenge to you. Whenever you study the scripture, start to meditate, and when you meditate, picture it.

I want you to picture a Greek and a Jew sitting in the same church across the table from each other, and think about how awkward that could be, right? When maybe before Christ, they would not walk in the same road. They would not walk through the same city. Think about the circumcised and uncircumcised.

It is the same distinction, but you guys have probably heard before. The circumcised considered the uncircumcised absolutely filthy dogs. And then picture barbarian Scythians, and then slaves and freemen sitting in the same church. Mmm, now we're getting somewhere. You think some of them had reasons why they would resist putting this stuff on?

If the pastor of the church said, "I want you today this morning, after we have this great worship, please turn to each other and greet each other," and there would just be awkwardness, like crazy, like, "Hey, look, snacks!" You know, like, and you start going because you don't want to have awkward greeting time.

Why? Because the guy sitting next to you used to be a slave driver, right? Used to actually own people. And I was kind of thinking, like, in our day, what would be, you know, kind of indicative and apropos to that kind of comparison? I don't know, imagine if you had a horrendous dating experience and across the table from you was your ex, and you're like, "But that's my ex, you know?

It's my ex-girlfriend. How awkward!" Now, don't start looking at each other and don't start pointing fingers, okay? Because I'm not talking about any one particular individual. I'm just asking you to imagine, do you think people had valid reasons, at least they thought in their head, why they didn't want to apply some of this stuff?

Probably. And then there's a convicting point for you and I, right? In our day and age, we live in an incredibly peaceful society where the worst enemies perhaps might be some exes, you know? But then, if a potential ex, whoever, an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend was like, "Apostle Paul, I don't know if I can put on compassion, kindness, and gentleness right now." And Apostle Paul would look at you and say, "Dude, I just told that slave." Yeah?

"I just told that slave and that master to go talk to each other." That's pretty convicting. And we need to recognize that because this letter has its actual circumstance and context of people coming together in the name of Christ and he says, "Christ is all in all. There is no distinction." That's why that's there.

Okay? So, introduction, already pretty heavy stuff. Pretty challenging stuff. That we need to put on the new self. We are progressively being renewed to the image of the One, our Lord, and that there is no distinction. That this is a command for every single one of us. And we have to have that humility to accept it.

Now, because of this portion here in verse 12, he says, "So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved." Okay? We're gonna move on to this little section. And this actually, to me, three, I guess, identifiers of who you are. Right? That's all it is. You can just put in there that these are three IDs of who you are.

Now, what's really interesting about this is that he's offering to us the rationale. If before there was perhaps a rationale as to potentially like combat why the individuals wouldn't obey those commands, he is giving us then here. If you need reason, look at this. You're chosen of God, you're holy, and you're beloved.

Now, for the sake of time, I'm just gonna identify this as this. You knowing who you are is powerful. Yes? Right? I'm not sure how many of you guys have seen those movies where it's so silly. Like, they're getting beat up by the villain. These individuals are like lost.

They don't know what they're doing. And all of a sudden, some guy has to scream at them. I'm thinking of four, okay? If you guys remember, I'm not sure if you saw the movie, it was like, "Who are you?" And he's like, "I'm the "God of thunder." And all of a sudden it's like, "Brrrr." Everybody dies.

Right? It's like, that's just how it is. Your identity is incredibly powerful. It's funny in the movies, but the reality in Jesus is incredibly powerful. Okay? Now, I'm just saying, I'm just gonna leave it at that, and I'm gonna ask you this question for your discussion. These specific identities, the chosen of God, holy and blessed, this is pretty huge.

But the question you have to ask is, how does that motivate and provide this rationale, base, and reason for me to do everything that follows? How does that empower me? Why is it so important that I know I'm chosen, that I know I'm holy because of Christ, and that I'm beloved of God?

Why? Why is that so important? Why does it matter to this process of change? That's what you need to ask. Okay? I'm gonna leave that for your discussion, because it's super important. Alright? And if some of you guys have ever had a Thor experience, share it with your group.

Encourage everybody. And the lightning came out of your eyes. No, I'm just kidding. Alright. Next section, alright? So I'm gonna draw a line here, because here is the command. So sometimes, if you remember the way I do it is, okay, that first section took me 24 minutes. Alright. The way I do it sometimes is, I just build the sections that I'm studying based on the actual command verse, right?

Especially in a section like this where you know it's applicational. Well, here, he repeats the idea, so you know he's changing gears again and saying, "Put on," and what he is doing is simply giving you the details and the specific pieces. If you are to wear the clothes of Christ, so to speak, here are all the pieces.

Now, I cannot go through every single one of these, but let's just read it first, and then let's highlight a few. Okay? First, "Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you.

So also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity." Man, we could just camp out here and just go for forever, but this is what I'm gonna do, okay? If you recall that encouragement, especially when there is a laundry list of terms, but these terms happen to be loaded terms, you know they're big, it's important for you to do word studies, right?

Word studies. And one of the things that I use, oh no, is not that, okay? It's blueletterbible.com. Now what I'm gonna show you is here, Colossians 3 verse 12 in the NASB, okay? blueletterbible.com, and it's awesome because here, look, you have these verses and it asks you, "Do you want tools?" And I'll say, "Yes, I want them tools." And look at all those tools it gives me.

It gives me Bibles, cross-references, commentaries, dictionaries, and miscellaneous. But this is why I really like it, it's because it makes it so easy. He says, "There's all the words individually broken down, of God, holy, beloved, put on a heart of compassion." So what I'll do is actually look at this and I'll try to pronounce the word, splagnon.

And then, remember how Pastor Peter talked about the Strong's numbers? You click on that guy and it gives you a bunch. It gives you the pronunciation, I can even listen to it if I want to, but then the important part is just the definition. It's probably here, it means your bowels and your intestines.

Interesting that we call it heart, right? But it gives you the definition here that the bowels are regarded as a seat of the more violent passion, such as anger and love. The Hebrews had this as a seat of tender affections. That's pretty awesome. I get to see the definitions and I get to see the lexicon of like the different ways it's used and what's more, I can see also where concordance, where else it was used.

Pretty interesting, right? If I go back, just go back to this portion right here when I was looking at it, the heart of compassion, I could actually just click heart. And what that will do is it'll give me pretty exhaustive concordance. Now I can look from Genesis all the way down.

Pretty cool tool, huh? Now, some of you guys might not have the time to go through every single word, that's fine. Just use the words that you know you just haven't studied very much. For example, if you're thinking about something like heart of compassion or I like the idea of kindness here.

Why? Because I'm thinking kindness and maybe you're maybe kind of like me. I don't have a whole big range of emotions. I'm watching sports, I'm just like, "Oh cool." They lose, I'm like, "Oh man." Some, you know, some guys are livid, they're just like, "Oh my gosh!" Right? I just don't have a huge range of emotions and I'm sitting here thinking, when I hear, "Oh be kind," I'm like, "Oh man, what if I don't know how to do that?" You know?

What if I don't know how to show that emotion of like, "Aww, are you hurting?" Like, I just don't know how. It just gets awkward, right? Maybe you're like me. Now, so you're thinking, "I don't know how to apply this." Well, sometimes learning the ideas behind it really helps.

Is kindness thought of in the Bible as, "Aww, are you hurting?" Is that kind of compassion and kindness like, "Hello!" Like everything's just super daisy and super sweet and all like joyous and all that kind of stuff. Is that the way the Bible is picturing this? Here's something really interesting.

You look up the definition and it thinks it's more on the lines of moral goodness and integrity. What? That's interesting. Here's Strong's definition, "usefulness." The way that the Bible most frequently, the definitions that come first are the more frequent uses. The way that the Bible more frequently uses the idea of kindness is knowing that your heart is good.

That if I entrust myself to you, I know you will do me good. Why? Because you're a man of integrity. Because you're kind in that way. You're useful. You're constantly seeking to be helpful, to be of their good. That your intention is not to take advantage of them. Your intention is not to tease them, make fun of them, and have a good laugh at their expense.

But no, your constant thought is, "I'm gonna try to protect you. I'm gonna be trying to be good to you. I'm gonna be integrate. I'm gonna have integrity with you." That's kind. And then I think, "Oh, okay!" Right? I can have a better picture of what kindness means. Now, I'm gonna stop it there because we don't have time to go through every single word.

My challenge for you is, if there are certain terms, like I said, you're like, "I don't know how to apply that though." Start looking at the general concepts of the Bible. However, I want to give a caveat. Do not look at a Bible dictionary. Look at 15 different, you know, they call them glosses, the entries, the definitions that you see within the entry, right?

And then be like, "Ooh, that sounds really good. I'm gonna pick that one." You can't do that, okay? You have to first get the general feel of how this is used generally through the Bible. Then reread it in your text so that you know, in context, how is this being used.

The tough part about this context is it's a laundry list of things you should do. So what should you do? Well, I have a challenge for you. Think about how the concept is being perceived. How is every one of these concepts being perceived? I'll give you a hint, just as the Lord.

You are to think about these concepts as they exist in the perfections of Christ. You are to think about these concepts as in the perfections of Christ. You should be reflecting, "How has the Lord?" Because who do you know? Who do you know who is compassionate in heart, kind, humble, gentle, patient, bearing with everybody, forgiving each other?

Like, who do you know who's all of these things to its perfection? I could name a few of you who are like outstanding in several of these areas. None of us have these to perfection. Now, what's challenging for us though, is you take a concept like patience. And the reason why I picked this is because our pastors have been talking about it.

Like, just in our past meeting, we were just like, "The Lord is so crazy patient. It's crazy." We're so astounded by how patient God is. Why? Because some of you have been Christian for a long time. You know? You have. And therefore, I'm willing to bet you have had repetitive seasons of not being sober, and being sober, and not being sober, and being sober.

And lately we've been talking a lot about drifting and stuff like that. And if you've been Christian for a certain extent, there is probably even a frustration with yourself. "Why am I so susceptible to getting lost?" Right? Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. Whatever frustration you feel about yourself, God actually has the right to feel about you.

Were he not perfectly patient with you? Were he not so understanding, sympathetic, and compassionate with you? And what's wild to me is I've been walking through the book of Romans with the high school students, and I came across this passage and it just like blew me away. I was floored.

Why? Romans chapter 9 through 11, theologically thought of as the section on what about the Jews? What's the plan of God for the Jewish people and the Gentile people? What gives? Are they all gonna die? Are they gonna be saved later on? What's gonna happen? I don't think that's the point.

It's the question. It's not the point. The question starts off, "What about the Jews?" And Apostle Paul says, "I wish I could be a curse for them. I want to save them." Right? And then they start complaining, "Well, is it our fault? Did God tell us?" And Apostle Paul's like, "You all heard!

You killed all the prophets, remember?" You know? And then it just weirdly keeps going. Like, the people ask questions like, "But you're sovereign, then how come you blame us? And how come, you know, you blame us for this and that?" And there's just this accusation and accusation. And I want to read you an interesting passage.

Amidst all the complaints of, "How come, you know, you blame us when you didn't tell us? How come it was unfair?" And yada yada yada. Romans chapter 10 verse 19 to 21, just listen to this. He says, "But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they?" So that's that question.

Like, "Israel didn't know about it?" And he says, "First, Moses says, 'I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation. By a nation without understanding, I will anger you.'" God had to bring hard affliction to get them to understand. Verse 20, "And Isaiah is very bold and says, 'I was found by those who did not seek me.

I became manifest to those who did not ask for me.'" Verse 21, "But as for Israel, he says, 'All the day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.'" God, there's an amazing picture of God being so patient with us that he's stretching out his arm all day long.

Gonna be honest, if my kid doesn't take what's in my hand in a matter of seconds, I might lose it. Yes? God's perfect patience is incredible with us. For generations upon generations of people making constant excuses and sometimes, and sometimes pointing the finger right back at him saying, "It's your fault." God has stretched out his gracious hands all day long.

That's pretty incredible if you think about it. How are we to think about these concepts we're supposed to think about in the perfections? And Apostle Paul says this, "Yet for this reason I found mercy so that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life.

Now to the eternal King Immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." Okay? Sometimes we need to do that. Where we take a certain word, we look at where the references are, and we see, "Where are these references sometimes used of God? How is the character of God manifest through these collection of terms?" Okay?

Alright. Then the last final section, and then we're done. This next section, verses 15 through 17, reads like this. "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 richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father." Okay? What I've done for you there for the sake of time is, I noticed that there is a pattern where it talks about an element of Christ, whether it be his peace, whether it be his word, whether it be his name.

Okay? His peace, his word, or his name. And all of these things are supposed to affect you deeply, either by way of ruling in your hearts, dwelling in you, or actually encompassing everything. And what that's supposed to produce is various. It's supposed to produce a one body. It's supposed to produce this kind of admonishing one another with psalms and singing.

Whoops, sorry. With psalms and spiritual songs. And what it's also produced is thankfulness. And what you'll find is that that concept of thankfulness has been repeated three times. That this should lead to a heart condition of thankfulness in your heart, and thankfulness in your heart, and thankfulness in your heart.

In thinking about all this, we can sit here and dive deep into this stuff. What does it mean to have the peace of Christ? Right? And I want you to think about that kind of stuff. If, for example, all the various terminologies up here had to do with various hard attitudes and thoughts that you're supposed to have with the other brother and sister in your community, the people around you, all that kind of stuff, and it's supposed to be a disposition of who you are, right?

How does the peace of Christ affect you in that? How does it really motivate and move you for that? Those are the kind of questions you should be asking. And what in the world does it mean to rule? How does peace govern and dictate your heart and the decisions that you make?

Those are all questions that you can talk about and you can ask. What I'm gonna say is this. Today we were talking about maturity. A sense of maturity of your mind, a sense of maturity in your heart where you're humble and willing to break down the things that you think, "Oh no, my intentions are good though," right?

Have that introspectiveness, have that conviction to lay it on the table. But also a maturity of love. And my challenge is going to be, for all of us, if you saw thanklessness when there was privilege, if you saw bitter discontentment when an individual had lots, wouldn't you sit there and think, "How immature," right?

There is a level to which the condition of your heart where it is thankful to God, not because of all these things happening, but despite the fact that your circumstances, the outside stuff is not going your way. And also, especially despite the fact that inside there might be some turmoil, there might be some conflict, and there might be some pain.

If you're able to look at the Lord and say, "God, thank you so much," I believe the Lord will look at you and say, "I think now you understand," right? Much in the way, much in the way younger children, when they live their lives and they look at their parents and they complain about how controlling their parents were, they're complaining about how involved and tigerish their parents were, only to later on realize, "Now that I try to live my own life, I just want to thank you for the hardships and the difficulties that you endured." Now again, I know that not all of us have had parents that we're looking up to as examples or models for us, but even then, if you can have that kind of source, that kind of power in your heart to look to the Lord and say, "God, thank you so much for all that you are, have done, and will do for me," I believe God will look at you and say, "Wow, you've matured a lot." Let's take a moment to pray and go before the Lord.

Our God, we want to thank you so much, again, because Lord, we realize, God, that you didn't simply just give us an escape and then leave us to be. Your heart of love drew us close. You not only delivered us, but you transferred us into your home. And then to think on top of that, God, that you would call us your children, and then on top of that, you desire to impart on us your knowledge, your heart, and then all the more your character, that you want us to reflect who you are.

Lord, what a privilege. Lord, what grace, what incredible love. Father, I pray that we recognize that your gift of righteousness to us, your gift of holiness to us, is something far beyond what we could even imagine or think or even dare ask. So God, we thank you so much that by your love you've initiated and you've granted to us so much according to your grace.

And I guess simply, Lord, I want to pray that all of us, Lord, would grow in that knowledge, and God, there would be thankfulness in our hearts. Lord, that there would be a true sense of gratitude in every season of our lives. Father, God, we confess the struggle, Lord, oftentimes when we set our minds off of you, Father, Lord, we confess, God, we get distracted, but I do pray that you would draw our eyes back to you and cause us to sing with thankfulness.

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Amen.