to Colossians chapter three again this evening. Just turn there and just tell you again how much I appreciate. Y'all have been very kind to us and caring and we very much appreciated. My prayer is that the Lord will bless you the way that you've been a blessing. I want to continue with some of the thoughts from Colossians 3. We won't pick up where we left off last night. We're going to skip down to verse 15-17. As you find that, I'll tell you, it's been a couple of weeks ago now, that one Wednesday morning I got up and I thought I was the first person in the house awake, but I soon realized my youngest daughter was already awake and roaming the house because I could hear her singing. I heard this sweet little voice singing, I must tell Jesus all of my troubles. She's seven years old. I don't know how many troubles a seven-year-old has. But she was sure singing. I must tell Jesus I cannot bear these burdens alone. Sometimes what's in your heart just has to come through your voice. In our text tonight, the Apostle Paul is describing that phenomenon. He's gonna show that the source of your song is not found in the size of your lungs or the quality of your vocal cords, but in the contents of your heart. Colossians 3 verses 15 through 17, It says, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you are called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Let's give him that thanks right now. Gracious and loving Father. Lord, as we open your word, we are mindful as Brother Tom has mentioned of your promise that your word will always accomplish your purpose. It will not return void. We now call on you to fulfill your promise with the expectation that you will because of your own perfect character. We ask the blessing of this message that it would accomplish your purpose, that you would give me clarity that you would also lend me an unction of the Spirit, Lord, that I would proclaim your word with passion. I ask, Lord, that you please forgive me of my many failures. For it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. To make sure we have the context here, Paul has been, in between what we read last night and what we're picking up today, he's been giving instruction to the church as a whole. We can see this by his continued use of the phrase, one another, in this section and throughout this chapter. He uses those exact words. If you look at verse 9 in Colossians 3, don't lie to one another. If you look at verse 13, forbear one another, and in verse 13, forgive one another. And in our text in verse 16, he says, teach and admonish one another. So there's this one anotherness that is being talked about in Colossians chapter 3. And in fact, even without those words, some of it has to be understood in context as being in relation to one another. For example, verse 8, don't speak ill of one another. And verses 12 and 13, you're to be patient, kind, forgiving, loving. That requires one anotherness in order to do that. You're not being patient, kind, and loving by yourself. Verse 11, he talks about the many different kinds of one another's that are there in Colossae, and essentially tells them not to discriminate against one another. He actually says at the end of verse 11, but Christ is all and in all. So Christ is in, within the church, Christ is in everyone and he is everything. We ought to have churches that are so culturally, economically, and ethnically diverse that the only real reason we could be found in the same room together is that we all love Jesus. And that diverse membership should reflect their love of Christ and kindness and patience and forbearance and forgiveness. And ultimately, the expression comes through worship of Christ, which is what Paul gets to in our text in verses 15 through 17. Actually, in these three verses, we have all three elements of worship present. We have preaching, and praise, and prayer all mentioned there. Verse 15, you come together into the assembly, says you were called into one body. And when you're called into that body, you're called with the purpose of worship. The beginning of verse 16, he says that the word of Christ dwell in you richly. The way you do that in corporate worship is through the preaching and proclamation of the word. He goes on in verse 16 to say you are to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. That is, the singing of praises. to the Lord, and then in verse 17 you find prayer in the giving thanks to God in Jesus' name, and actually you find that at the end of verse 15 as well. So these three short verses, Paul outlines for the Colossian church, four elements of Christian corporate worship. In order to worship correctly, all four of these things need to exist. You must experience the peace of God, You must know the word of God, you must sing the songs of God, and you must overflow with thanks to God. That's his description in this text as we go through it. So let's start with experiencing the peace of God. He says in verse 15, let the peace of God rule in your hearts to which also you are called in one body. Now, when we find this word peace in the New Testament, we do have to be careful with it because we have to interpret it correctly according to the context. It can mean peace with God as opposed to being at war with God. And many times that's exactly what that means, especially in those passages that talk about Jesus having reconciled us to God so that we now have peace. We were enemies, but now we have peace. The word peace, though, can also talk about a feeling or attitude of rest and security and serenity. So that if you were outside by yourself on this beautiful day and you're, let's say, out in the woods and it's quiet, you might say, oh, this is so peaceful. because that's how the word peace can be used. It actually seems like this is one of those rare places in the New Testament where this word peace is used in both contexts at the same time. Because yes, You have peace with God in your hearts because Jesus has reconciled you and he's given you peace with God. But if you have that peace of God in your heart, then you'll also have an attitude of peacefulness that exudes itself in this kind of tranquility towards others in the assembly. You know, it only makes sense that those people who were at war with God, when they found peace through the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ, will also, in addition to finding peace with God, they'll find peace with their fellow believers. Isn't that what Paul's saying there in verse 15? Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Look at this in verse 15, let the peace of God rule in your hearts to the which, in other words, to that peace you have been called in one body. He's just finished pointing out up in verse 11 as we noted that in worldly terms there are countless reasons why you would not be at peace with your brothers and sisters in Christ. For crying out loud, they're so different than you are in many ways. but those who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ are so identified with Him that there's no room for conflict because He is our everything and He is in everyone. And so we're on the same team. We have peace with one another. So Paul begins by saying, let the peace of God rule in your hearts because you've been called into a peaceful body. It's Jesus that makes that difference. When you found the peace through the grace of God, there's no room for the constant confrontations and this continual conflict that's part of your old nature. So what is it that's in your heart? Look at the end of verse 16 for a second. We'll get to this idea of singing, but when he says you sing, you sing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. The grace in your hearts in verse 16 corresponds with the peace in your hearts in verse 15. There is no reason why anyone who's been an object of God's grace can't be at peace with other believers. If you've got grace in your heart and you've got peace in your heart, you don't have room for all that other junk. So the construction of this verse is telling you to be people of peace because you have been called into a body of peace. You've been called into a peaceful body. I also love that Paul says in verse 15 that the peace of God is to rule in your hearts. Now Paul has already used this word rule in his letter to the Colossians, but it's not readily obvious in our English translations because in chapter 2 verse 18, look back at chapter 2 verse 18 for a second. He's talking about these false teachers and he says, let no man beguile you of your reward. That word beguile in chapter 2 verse 18 is the same Greek word as the word rule in chapter 3 verse 15. Let me tell you why that matters. The word rule here is an athletic word. It describes an umpire or a judge of an athletic event. So in Colossae, they had these false teachers who were invading the church and putting on their religious referee uniform and looking at the believers in the church and throwing these spiritual penalty flags anytime they felt somebody broke their rules. And so Paul says back in chapter 2 to the Colossians, don't allow them to do that. Do not let any man beguile you. Do not let them throw those penalty flags and try to disqualify you because they don't have the authority to disqualify you. The reason is, in chapter 3, it's the peace of God that is ruling in your hearts. It's the peace of God that's umpiring your life and calling the balls and strikes so that everything you do and say is filtered through that peace of God and ultimately determined to be in line with His will or missing the mark. That's the authority ruling your life. So Paul starts with corporate worship by describing this idea of peace. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts. Let this peace of God be the referee, the umpire of everything you do. Relish the peace with God that you found through Jesus Christ. And when you do that, you will be at peace with others. we have peace in our hearts, we're more likely to experience peace in the church. But if we're not experiencing peace individually, we're more likely to contribute to the discord and disharmony in the church. And ultimately, that's going to affect your worship because you have to have the peace of God ruling in your heart if you're to worship God correctly. The second thing we'll see here is that you have to know the Word of God in verse 16. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. There is a parallel passage to this in Ephesians that I just want you to look at for a moment, Ephesians chapter 5, because I want you to see one thing. In Ephesians chapter 5 verses 18 through 20, Paul gives almost an identical passage in his letter to Ephesus. But here's what he says. He says, and be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So when he writes to the church at Ephesus, he says, be filled with the spirit. But when he writes to the Colossians, he says, let the peace of God rule your hearts and be filled or let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Even though these are parallel passages to the Ephesians, he says, be filled with the spirit and the Colossians, he says, let the word of Christ dwell in you. Those two things we have to conclude then are parallel ideas and Paul's letters. There's never the possibility of experiencing the word of God and the spirit of God separately from each other. In fact, as the false teachers had come to Colossae and they were offering these deepened spiritual experience, Paul's clearly warning that they could not hope to have a deepened experience with the Spirit of God as long as they were teaching these errors that were contrary to the Word of God. The spirit and the word are inseparable. So if you aspire to spiritual fullness, the word of Christ has to dwell in you richly. I think sometimes we wanna jump to the juicy parts of this passage with the Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and we miss the primary importance of this word of Christ that Paul speaks of in verse 16. As Paul explains, you've been called into one body. In verse 15, he begins to detail how that body will operate. In verse 16, the first thing that he says is that within you, the Word of Christ is going to dwell in you richly. We cannot hope to accomplish the remainder of what Paul is saying here if we skip over this. He's gonna go on to say that the church does things like teach and correct and sing, but the church has nothing to teach except the word of Christ. You don't have any hope of correcting error in it, but by exposing it to the word of Christ. You're not going to sing acceptable praise to God if your song doesn't come from and conform to the word of Christ. If your source of authority is man-made traditions, or religious rituals, or human philosophy, you cannot teach, admonish, sing, or worship correctly. And if you go ahead and try it anyway, you're going to become the modern equivalent of these Colossian heretics that Paul is writing about. He says the word has to dwell in you richly. The word dwell is what you do in your house. You live there, you dwell there, you have a home there. Let the word of Christ dwell, let it live, let it find a home in your heart. For the word of Christ to dwell in you you must be in the word of Christ all the time. You need to hear it preached with accuracy and with authority. The church at Beverly Manor has heard a constant theme from me for several years now about the importance of preaching the word with the right context and with the conviction that it calls for. Folks, this is why. You don't need a preacher's opinion. You don't need funny anecdotes. You don't need moral stories. You need the word of God. The word of God holds a primary place in worship. You know, just in case you think your pastor is singularly crazy for insisting on biblical exposition, understand there are a few other of us crazy ones out there. We need contextually honest, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered, God-honoring preaching. And I believe that if you're depending on your own thoughts or your own rearrangement of the topics of Scripture, then really you're bordering on denying the sufficiency of Scripture as God gave it. But you also need it richly. And while I'll continue to argue that the proclamation of the word of God in worship is vital, I will also say, it's not all that you need. You cannot come to church service with a hope of a 30 minute gospel booster shot that's gonna vaccinate you for your upcoming week. That's not how the word of God is to work. a once or twice weekly dose of preaching, even if we manage to do it well that week, does not add up to the word dwelling in you richly. You need to be reading it and studying it and memorizing it for yourself. So is the word dwelling in you? Is it at home in your heart and is it comfortable there? Or is it an infrequent visitor? You ever had that awkward house guest giving you a sense of uneasiness until they go away and leave you alone again? No amens from you right now. Is that what the word of Christ is for you? Does it find a home in your heart or is it just calm and you feel uncomfortable and you wait for it to be gone so your heart can be your own home some more? because you'll find it impossible to live for God if you're not living with the word of God. In the early 1800s, there was a German composer named Robert Schumann and his wife Clara was also a composer, but more notably, she was probably the most distinguished pianist of the time. Her husband, Robert, died an untimely death and for years and years afterward, audiences would gather to listen to Clara play her husband's music. And they knew, look, there's other people who can look at those notes and they can hit the right notes and the right keys and do it in the right rhythm, but it did not have what Clara seemed to have with it. And later on, late in her life, she told the story of what her secret was. She had love letters that she'd kept from her husband, and before a performance, she would go about reading those letters that he had written to her, so that she would have the right emotional connection with the music. If you want to successfully worship God, It just might be helpful for you to get into the words of the author and finisher of your faith. Having his word dwell inside of you is the source of your singing worship for him. That's what Paul's about to describe. If the ocean depths of God's word is living in you, then it's gonna overflow in praise. But if the word is scarce in your life, it shouldn't be any shock that that praise just comes from you and trickles and drips. Because shallow doctrine cannot result in deep singing. Back in January, I heard a man named Tim Challies preach on this passage. And in the process, he took a great shot at one of my favorite targets, the prosperity gospel. And he pointed out that the depth of the word dwelling in you will match the depth of the praise that's coming out of you. And so I loved this quote. He said, name me one great hymn that has arisen from the prosperity movements. There just isn't one. The theology is not rich enough to generate a rich hymn. It is a shallow, trite, silly gospel, so it can only ever generate shallow, trite, silly songs. Folks, he's right. If the word of Christ is dwelling in you richly, it's going to come out of you richly in praise. If you don't get in tune with the word, your singing is always going to be off key. Worship of God requires you to have peace with God. It requires you to know God's word. It also requires you to sing God's songs. Verse 16, again, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Early on in Christianity, there was a lot of confusion. about what Christianity was. And as the world looked and saw what they thought was some new religion, they had a hard time figuring it out. For example, there were reports of cannibalism because people heard about the Lord's Supper and the body and blood of Christ. It was a confusing thing. So we have this fascinating letter from 112 AD. from a Roman ruler in northern Turkey named Pliny the Younger as he's writing to the Emperor Trajan in Rome. And he's talking about Christians and he's trying to describe what Christians are. And here's what his description is, or part of his description. He says, they are want on a fixed day to meet before daylight and to recite a hymn among themselves by turns to Christ as if being God. Now there's a lot more interesting stuff in that letter, but the essence of his description that here's what Christians are. They get together and they sing about their God, Jesus. It's evidence enough that the earliest churches saw singing as a vital component to God's Word. Paul actually outlines in verse 16 three different means of musical worship. He talks about psalms and psalms is the old traditional use of the Old Testament canon for musical purposes. By their very definition, by the way, psalms would have musical instruments involved because the Hebrew word psalm means to strum. If you are psalming, you are strumming. He also talks about hymns. The word hymns is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to talk about any song of praise. It seems to indicate a song of praise or worship that may have come from Scripture, but was not officially one of the Psalms in Scripture. A form of that same word, by the way, is used of Jesus singing in the church in the book of Hebrews chapter 2 verse 12. And then he says spiritual songs, and the word song there is just a very generic word, but he uses the word Spiritual is a descriptive adjective. The word spiritual indicates the Holy Spirit's influence in that song. Clearly there are songs that are not spiritual, and Paul is not saying we should sing those. You know, the exact meaning of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs has been debated throughout Christian history, but it seems evident Paul's not given to needless repetition. He uses three terms because they describe three different things, and therefore, we should at least conclude that Paul's concept of biblical worship includes a variety of musical sources and expressions. In order to show that's the case, if you would, please look back with me to Psalm 150 for a moment. I don't want to get too sidetracked trying to do an exposition in Colossians 3 and Psalm 150 at the same time, but Psalm 150 is a very instructive psalm about the praise of God. When you find it, you'll see that the very first words of the psalm are, praise ye the Lord. And the very last words of the psalm are, praise ye the Lord. It should not be any question for us what this psalm is about. It is about praising the Lord. It says in verse one, praise God in a sanctuary, praise him in the firmament of his power. So it's talking about where to praise. You praise God in the sanctuary. You praise him in corporate worship. Although, when he says the firmament of his power, that's a reference to creation. God made the earth and he set a firmament over the earth. So the description is, if you want to know where to praise God, well, if you're in creation, you're in a good place to praise God. In the second verse, he talks about why to praise God. Praise Him for His mighty acts and praise Him according to His excellent greatness. The simplest way to say it is you're to praise God for what He has done and for who He is. So where should you praise? especially in corporate worship, but anywhere that you have the opportunity, why should you praise him for who he is and praise him for what he's done? But the rest of the psalm talks about how do you praise God? Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance. Praise Him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals. Praise Him on the high-sounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. How do you praise God? Well, it seems like a variety of ways is the description there in Psalm 150. And so Psalm 150 talks about the praise of God, and it talks about several different instruments, but it ends up saying, let everything that has breath praise the Lord, or the way I take that is, if it makes noise, use it to praise the Lord. And Colossians 3.16 shows a wide variety of music is still to be used in New Testament worship. This tells us that many, if not all, modern day battles over church music are a violation of our text. Judging a fellow believer's spirituality by his or her preference in music style is throwing your own spiritual penalty flags when the peace of God is what ought to be officiated. We're expressly commanded to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that is a variety of styles of sacred music and any of those can be good and any of them give thanks to God. There are a lot of objections to that but most of the objections are unbiblical. Some will argue that any new music is bad. Of course, we don't call it new nowadays, we call it contemporary, right? Contemporary Christian music is bad. Common sense tells us all music was contemporary at some points. And if you want to see an example of that, think about Isaac Watts, who is known as the father of modern hymnody because he wrote over 500 hymns. Things like Joy to the World and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. He suffered through the arguments and complaints of people saying, we can't sing your music because it's contemporary. He died in 1748, by the way. We have no issue with his songs now. But he experienced it in his day. As a matter of fact, in his hymn, Marching to Zion, he took a shot at those people who complained at him. And he has the line and it says, let all those refuse to sing who never knew our God, but children of the heavenly king can sing their joys abroad. New songs shouldn't just be rejected because they're new. Revelation 5.9 and 14.3 tells us there'll be a new song sung in heaven. Psalm 96, 98, 144, and 149 all tell us to sing new songs. As a matter of fact, my favorite reference to this is Psalm 40, verse three, where David writes, he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Many shall see it in fear and trust in the Lord. David argues a new song will praise God and cause unbelievers to turn to him. I particularly love that Psalm 40 was written by David and the superscription of the Psalm says that it was to be delivered to the chief musician, probably a man named Asaph. Can you imagine King David sending a messenger with this new song to Asaph, the chief musician, and getting a note back later in the day saying, King David, we can't sing this song, you just wrote it yesterday. Of course not. The question of music is not a question of contemporariness. It's a question of what does it say? What's the content? Some people would argue instrumentality is the issue. Don't you use any of those new instruments? Can you praise God with contemporary musical instruments? Of course you can. If you were around in the 1920s, you would have experienced the controversy in churches was whether or not you should have one of those things in church. Because after all, the piano was associated with dance hall music. I mean, think about any old Western you've ever seen. You go into the tavern and there's a player piano there. We can't have those things in church. But we can use instruments to praise God. As a matter of fact, people who would say, we can't use these modern instruments because we need to use God's music. I wonder how they would react if someone showed up the next Sunday morning at service to sing a hymn with a psaltery, a harp, a timbrel, stringed instruments, organs, two different kinds of symbols and wanted to dance because that's what Psalm 150 describes. Others would argue that we have to know the heart of the writer and the original performer of the song. And I'm not going to suggest that we don't want to take any thought into the source of a song, but it's the content of the song we should be concerned about. Charles Spurgeon, when his church printed a new hymn book, had to defend his new hymn book by including a foreword in the book. And in the introduction, he wrote this. He said, the area of our researches has been as wide as the bounds of existing religious literature, American and British, Protestant and Romish, ancient and modern. Whatever may be thought of our taste, We have exercised it without prejudice. A good hymn has not been rejected because of the character of its author or the heresies of the church in whose hymnal it first appeared." In other words, he's simply saying, if we looked at it and it was God honoring music, we wanted it in our hymnal. The problem is today we have more people who are ready to be critical of how others sing than we have people who are willing to sing themselves. You have to ask yourself, what is in your heart? Because here to the Colossians, Paul says, sing with grace in your hearts. In the parallel passage that we read in Ephesians, he said, make melody in your hearts. And actually the words he uses there in Ephesians fascinate me because that word melody, when he says make melody in your heart, it's the word psalming. Do you remember what psalming means? Strumming. What instrument is the most important instrument in the praise of God? It's your heart. Play praises to God on your heart strings, is what Paul says to the Ephesians. You have to sing from your heart where the peace of God rules and the word of Christ dwells and the grace of God overflows. It's not our mouths, it's not our lungs, it's not our vocal cords, it's our heart that is the source of our song. So if the word of Christ is dwelling in you richly and it overflows in vocal praise to God, look, I know that some people will defend their lack of singing ironically by coming to this very passage in our text and say, look, I'm singing in my heart to the Lord. Look, that's not what Paul's saying. He's not saying it's okay to keep the song of praise in your heart. He's simply saying to make sure what's in your heart matches what's in the word. Don't be like the Old Testament Jewish people whose hearts were so far from God, but they kept on singing and playing anyway, that God tells them in Amos 5.23 to stop it. I mean, actually what God said is, take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But essentially what God's saying is, stop it. If your heart is not right, your song will not be right. So sing, but sing from the heart. One of those people who refuse to sing in church expect to spend eternity refusing to sing in God's heavenly assembly. You know, surrounded by people that Revelation 19.1 says we'll be singing hallelujah, salvation and glory and honor and power and praise unto the Lord our God. You think that you're gonna excuse your lack of singing by saying, yeah, but I'm singing in my heart. I don't think so. Look, silence cannot accomplish what Paul's describing in verse 16. He says that music teaches and it admonishes one another. The word teach means to instruct, the word admonish means to correct. And no song, no matter how beautiful it is, if it is locked away in the silent recesses of your heart and doesn't come out, it cannot teach and admonish the way Paul's describing here. You need to participate. This also means, of course, that our singing has to be theologically accurate. Since the words in our heart, the music that we play and sing is the display of our hearts towards God, so the song that we sing must reflect the truth of God's word. If you go about evaluating some song for its appropriateness in worship, it is not the rhythm or the rhyme of the song that you need to be concerned about, it's whether it matches up with Scripture. Allow me to just state it like this. You do not have any more authority to sing lies from the pew than your pastor has to preach lies from the pulpit. One more thing before we move on. You're singing to the Lord. You see that, right? The end of verse 16, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. It doesn't matter if your neighbor in the pew finds it pleasing. It matters if the Lord finds it pleasing. So sing all your praise and worship. Think about it like this. It's performed for an audience of one. It is God himself. That is the way it is now, and that's the way it will be in heaven. Your fellow believers will hear, and they might be taught, and they might be admonished, but you are singing in your heart to the Lord. You're gonna do that now. You're gonna do that for eternity. Because as a child of God saved by faith in Jesus Christ, you have a starring role in the dramatic musical of eternity. So sing. And then the fourth element of worship is you must overflow with thanks to God. Verse 17. Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Whatever you do, Now, in your mind, keep this in the context of this letter because he's been describing that within the assembly, there are many different types of individuals. There's many different characters. And so while corporate worship is going to include singing and teaching and admonishing one another, The daily life of those individuals as they leave corporate worship, as you leave here tonight and go to your homes, not all of us are going to be found doing the same things. Right? Some of us are men, some of us are women. We have different backgrounds. We have different job responsibilities. There are vast differences among the assembly. And so Paul adds here that as he's describing as an assembly, here's what you're to do. When you leave as an assembly, here's what you're to do. Whatever you do, because we'll be doing different things. Whatever you do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever your life takes you as you follow the Lord, You are to, in your words and in your deeds, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Look, we don't have time, but Paul's gonna get specific through the rest of this chapter. In verse 18, there's wives. Verse 19, there's husbands. Verse 20, there's children. Verse 21, fathers. Verse 22, servants and masters. And then what's he saying in verse 23? Whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord, and not unto men. Whatever you do, do it in the name of Jesus. Whatever you do, do it in the service of Jesus. Paul's very good at taking his sections of letters and sandwiching them between the same kind of statements, the same ideas. So he says, in verse, 17, whatsoever you do, and verse 23, whatsoever you do, we see that section there. He's also done it in our text, in case you've missed it. At the end of verse 15, be ye thankful. At the end of verse 17, give thanks to God and the Father by Him, by Jesus. So while describing the preaching and the praise and prayer that's part of worship, Paul is also very clear that it is a heart of thankfulness that is at the heart of worship. You know, what he said early on in this letter to the Colossians in chapter one, verse 12 is, give thanks unto the Father who has made us meet, who made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance with the saints of light. So you're to be thankful because the Lord has made you part of the saints of light. You're to be thankful because you have the peace of God in your heart. You're to be thankful because you've got the word dwelling in you richly that teaches you thankfulness. You're to be thankful because as you come to corporate worship, you hear your brothers and sisters in Christ singing in a way that teaches and admonishes you to be thankful to God. You're thankful in everything you do, and here's why. Because the reputation of Jesus Christ himself is at stake. Verse 17 again. Whatsoever you do in word or in deed, in everything you say and everything you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. When you become a disciple, you take up the name of Jesus Christ, and everything you do and everything you say is a character witness for your Savior himself. It isn't just that we end our prayers by saying, in Jesus' name, amen, but we also live our lives in everything we say and everything we do, in Jesus' name. So that following this, Paul's gonna say, you're a submissive wife in Jesus' name. You're a loving husband in Jesus' name. You're an obedient child in Jesus' name. You're an encouraging father. You're a hardworking servant. You're a kind-hearted master in Jesus' name. And when these vastly different people come together and worship in the peaceful body of Christ, to which you have been called, you worship through the word and you worship through song and you worship through prayer and in everything you do and in everything you say, you must lift up the name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Because you're ruled by the peace of God, and you're filled with the Word of God, and you're singing the songs of God, and you're overflowing with thanks to God. And you do it all in the name of Jesus.