Sermon Transcript
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Sun, Dec 31, 2023 10AM• 51:42SUMMARY KEYWORDSChrist, talking, Ephesians, remember, god, Paul, people, Colossians, church, love, Jesus, pizza, phone, sin, high sounding nonsense, friends, good, funny, letter, peace
Good morning. Welcome. If you're new here among us, my name is Gene I serve here at C3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story about a pastor. And a barber pastor went to get his hair cut in kind of a bad part of town wasn't always a bad part of town started out nice when the barber opened the barber shop, but went downhill, a lot of violence, drugs, stuff like that. And so the barber, being an unbeliever, decided to kind of poke the pastor a little he said, you know, if there really is a good and loving God, why does He allow all this crime and violence to occur? Why don't you just fix it? Just then there's an obviously inebriated, disheveled guy walking down the street, he trips falls down, and just decided that's the place he's going to stay. He's just going to nap right there. Oh, yeah. He's got scraggly hairs, beards all messed up. And so they're looking out the window at this guy. And the pastor uses this opportunity. He says, Have you seen that guy before to the barber? Or was Yeah, does it all the time? That's his spot? Well, if you're such a good Barber, why haven't you fixed them up? Or got defensive? Well, my doors been open this whole time. You never came in and gave me a chance to fix them up? Faster said exactly. Most people are where they are because they've rejected God. Now, while the pastor's response wasn't a full treatment on why God allows suffering or answering that question completely, it is the pastor's experience that most people are where they are, because they've closed the door on God. Like, wow, no joke. No, no. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? All right. We're continuing after the Christmas holiday, we're continuing in our series, the rest of the story, we left off at Ephesians. So the topic there was unity, your part in the unity, you know, he I thought it was great, you guys didn't. So we're following Paul through the book of Acts. And so we arrived at Ephesus. And so we looked at Ephesians. These are letters written back to these places later by, in this case, Paul. So they're regional letters, I told you give you a window. And I said, we'd be looking at other letters to that region, and you're going to see some kind of activity. So today we find ourselves Colossians. And so I'm going to give you a map. So you can kind of visualize this, this is like Turkey, Asia Minor, according to the Bible, and you could see Colossae that right there. You also can see Ephesus and Laodicea, that we talked about, we're going to talk about it a little bit. And if you're a Bible nerd, you notice that the seven churches of Revelation are there, too. So there these are areas, Asia Minor, it was called then. So Colossians Paul has not been there. But it has a lot in common with Ephesians. Like he was at Ephesus, he hasn't been to this particular city a lot in common. There's, you're going to hear about a guy named a path for us. He's the guy who probably started the church in this area, we're assuming that that's true. The same mailman? The deliverer of the letter is in his tickets. It's fun to say, tickets, right? Tickets, right? Okay. You can try, like, here's somebody up there. But now he's going to be with an SMS. Another fun name to say, and he'll appear later in another regional letter, it's actually about him. Finally, human. So these are like the names are dealing with about 1/3 of Ephesians is in Colossians, by my rough count, so there's similar verses, we talked about that. They're like these regional letters Ephesians, maybe the emphasis is left out in some of the early manuscripts so that it can be sent around and we're going to see that that said, here. Now, the problem here isn't so much the Unity or at least that's being addressed. That's not in here, we're going to see the appearance of one problem. false teachings. Again, this is a big common thing, false teaching so very much unlike today's church, like everybody tries to play nice Paul wasn't worried about that. Just calling people out for what it is. It seems that there's a mix here, it's a little bit hard to explain. It's not so much the false teachings about like the law or the first heresy the third church you got to follow the Gentiles have to follow the law of Moses. It's mixed in and it says a lot of weird things like worship of angels and these different things, probably some what's called Gnosticism and other beliefs coming into play here into the church mixing with the Judaism we're going to see the Sabbath mentioned here too. If it had a subject why there so if it was an email has subject line, I would give it this one, your new life In Christ, your new life in Christ. Now, a key feature about that new life is that you have to die to the old life. So that's going to be talked about here, too. So this could be old religious practices like he's talking about there, or just bad habits, bad behavior in general. Now, there are no chapter breaks in the original. It's just one continuous flow, and you're going to see a couple awkward chapter breaks. But if I had to divide this letter, it'd be like chapters one and two, all about Jesus, what he has done for you chapter three, and four, your response to that now, what are you going to do about it? Just like that, too. What are you going to do about it? So it comes out like I've been here for over a decade, it just New York accent comes out, I can't help it. All right. So let's jump, jump right in Colossians one, one. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother, Timothy, we are writing to God's holy people in the city of Colossi who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our father give you grace and peace. So you see that similar greeting from Paul sets the tone, grace, and peace, so he's trying to remind grace and peace. Now we have a co author here, unlike Ephesians, We have Timothy appears. And he appears in other letters, we've seen that before. Most recently, I think Second Corinthians is probably the last one we saw where he appeared. So now like Ephesians, but not as lengthy he's going to go through some prayers, right. So he's going to give thanks to God, for the good news here. And it brings us right immediately to kind of a key verse Colossians, one, six, this same good news that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing the lives just as it changed your lives. From the day you first heard and understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. So the grace of God, by the grace of God, our lives are changed. He's going to mention a path for us. He's praying for them, always thanking the Father, for he's rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. Again, this old versus new type of theme here. Now, I love these, you got a poem about Jesus in here. So Philippians two is my favorite collection of verses here, things that they would say it's a little poem, kind of like a creed, they would say, and just to kind of help them remember, and this is one of them. And it's beautiful. There's a lot of richness here, I could just do the whole message here on this for about two or three hours now. Oh, go that look. Colossians 115. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God, he existed before anything was created, and his supreme or firstborn over all creation, for thrill him, God created everything in the heavenly realms, and on earth, He made the things we can see and the things we can see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through Him, and for him, he existed before anything else. And he holds all Creation together. Christ is also the head of the Church, which is His body, he is the beginning supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he's first in everything, for God, in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through Him. God reconciled everything to himself, he made peace with everything and in heaven on earth by means of Christ's blood.
That is who Jesus says, I was talking about this in the past a little bit. Sounds a lot like John one, right in the beginning was the Word the Word was with God, the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, all things were created through Him and apart from Him, nothing that was created has been created, right. So it gives us an idea of who Jesus is. He is the firstborn. He's before everything, He is God. So amazing, amazing poem worth going back, marking in your Bibles and reading it every day. Colossians 121. So here's how it is, it's going to window into how it pertains to you. Colossians 121 This includes you, who were once far away from God, you are his enemies separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions yet now. He has reconciled you to Himself to the death of Christ and his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence and you are holy and blameless, as you stand before him without a single fall back. You must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world and I, Paul have been appointed as God's servant, to proclaim it again. You were now you are. So Paul will talk a little bit about his work for the church. We've seen this theme like suffering with Christ joining Christ in his sufferings, it comes up a lot. We saw it in Second Corinthians Philippians. And he says, I'm glad when I suffer for you in my body for in participating in the sufferings of Christ, that continue for his body, the church, we talked about the church being the body of Christ, they're going Ephesians as well. Colossians two, one, I want you to know how much I have agonized for you and for the Church at Laodicea. And for many other believers who have never met me Personally, I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ Himself in him. Like hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, I am telling you this so that no one will deceive you with well crafted arguments. For though I'm far away from you, my heart is with you. And I rejoice that you were living as you should, and that your faith in Christ is strong. So a bunch of things packed in here. Remember how Paul had anxiety over the church? Right? So in Second Corinthians 11, this marine nervous anxiety, the mysterious plan, and Ephesians comes up again, this is Christ, who saw that in First Corinthians Ephesians. Can you remember those hucksters and their well crafted arguments? Alright, so this is kind of coming up again, here. Watch out for those guys. It sounds good. So he continues, we'll jump have little bit Colossians two, eight, don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ plus all the fullness of God in a human body. There it is, again. So you're also complete through your union with Christ who is the head over every role and authority. So let's false teachers again, coming up. Often, as we talked about in the past high sounding nonsense, like a lot of it's really what gobbly gook, right? You ever hear something so Whoa, right? It's confused yet to be like inebriated. like, Whoa, that sounds amazing. But when you kind of lay it out, it doesn't make any sense, right? It's complicated, because it doesn't mean anything. No one can figure it out man yet, because it's nonsense, high sounding nonsense. When you came to Christ, you're circumcised he talks about this, not by physical procedure. But Christ performed the circumcision, cutting away your sinful nature. So remember that concept. We also talked about having a circumcised heart very important. So the false teachers, they're always going to appeal to that sinful nature. So you want to make sure it's cut away, because Colossians 212. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him, you were raised to a new life, because you trusted the mighty power of God who raised Christ from the dead. So this is what baptism symbolizes right? You dying, so your old life so he was that theme, and you're coming up a new creation in Christ. Again, you were dead because of your sins because of your sinful nature. It wasn't yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ for you forgave all our sins, He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Dead, your sin is dead. So now talks about certain foods and holy days and that came up in the past we've seen this we've seen this Romans 14, First Corinthians eight through 10. Like this idea of not dividing. The church should not divide over things that aren't gospel back in the day, meet sacrifice to idols, although it came down from Jesus, his brother James and the church acts 15. Paul still says like a the Gentiles should abstain from that Paul still says whatever, you know, it's not gospel, right. Don't let the church divide over here. Paul says, Don't let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink for an hour for not celebrating certain holy days. And then it comes up Sabbath. So we talked about that Roman, Romans 14, right. But still today, what are some people divide over? Hold denominations, like you got to keep the Sabbath, and Paul's probably rolling over in his grave. Right. So he says the people who insist on these things their sinful minds, have made them proud. And they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body, for he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments. And it grows as God nourishes it. So you see this concept here, Christ is holding this body together, stay together a little bit of a drip of the unity here. What's cool about Colossians is you get a whole bunch of different concepts that Paul brings up in other letters, condensed right into this really succinct thing here. So the secondary doctrine, this denominational divide, people who divide over these things, their sinful minds, have made them proud. They're like Pharisees, right? They think, Well, I'm really good on this side of things, and you need to be really good on them too. And they got what all this stuff in the closet. So you should not have pride in denominational divides. It's not something to be proud about. Christ holds the whole body together. So this is all what he has done for us. Now. We see that turn Colossians three one, since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at the place of honor it God's right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you, that was amazing timing. For you died to this life and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is your life is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all its glory. So put to death the sinful earnestly things lurking within you have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust and evil desires. Don't be greedy for a greedy person isn't idolatry. worshipping the things in this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still a part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander and dirty language lie to each other. For you have stripped off your old sinful nature and this wicked deeds, put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life. It doesn't matter if you're a Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free Christ is all that matters. And he lives in all of us a lot there. But a couple things. Remember, this has come up Galatians, three other places, right. So there's no socio economic divide here in a true church, right? There's no racial divide none of that. Right. So that's just breaking down different people groups who were hostile. So this enrollments in Ephesians, right, the Jews and Gentiles are hostile, he broke down that wall of hostility, right? So there's no whatever you identify it, we're just all one in Christ. New nature versus old nature. Just see that new life New Life look. So Paul's being very, very redundant. Put that to death. You used to be that way you have died to this life and your real life is hidden in Christ, what should we be focused on? Right? things of heaven, right, not the things of this earth. So Colossians 312 since God has chose you to be the holy people he loves you must clothe yourselves with tender hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ's rule in your hearts. For us members of one body were called live in peace will always be thankful. Let the message about Christ and all its riches, fill your lives, teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives things, psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do, or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father. So when you put this with the previous scriptures together, it's a lot of like Galatians five, isn't it like that? You know, rotten fruit of the flesh or the sin of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, love the same things are there and Galatians love joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. And so we see that patience and their love, above all love, right? So what's that, like Romans 13, all in here, packed right in there. Let peace rule your hearts right big. Again, grace and peace, forgive others, grace, and peace all in here. We get to the thing. It sounds like Second Corinthians five ambassadors of Christ. That's what he's saying you are right, ambassadors of Christ. So now I'm going to do this very quickly, because we discussed this in length. In Ephesians, he gives instructions for Christian households, and you're going to notice or what you should notice is that it instructs both groups, wives, and husbands so the husbands just like delete that part. They're like, wives
and husbands, right, so there's your part in this whole thing. So it's like that for these people. There's the wives - submit to your husbands, then Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. Children always obey your parents. Fathers do not aggravate your children or become discouraged. Now slaves in today's context, remember, I told you slaves, not about racism back then is more about commerce is a totally different kind of thing. So we can think of it today like employees, right? Like serve your master serve your boss, like he's Christ, like he's Jesus. Like that's he supposed to do? Why? Go back? We're ambassadors for Christ. That's why right? So these little things, forgive them, right? So he's making all these little worldly things unimportant. Let's think about heaven. Right? So no chapter breaks in the original. So it's kind of funny. You go into Chapter Four in its masters, right? So it starts right there. Or employers like be kind right? So you both serve Jesus, and encouragement with prayer. And what he says here is Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and thankful heart. Pray for us to that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. So there's that mysterious plan again, Colossians four, five and what both live wisely among those who are not believers make the most out of every opportunity, Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you'll have the right response for everyone. So we win people over by seeing them as opportunities, not obstacles, right so what is Paul saying? Forgive them and then he goes right into this which is interesting, isn't it? Right you your witness is more important than anything on this earth right? So Jesus let him have given your coat to if he wants your shirt. Alright, so attraction, not promotion with grace and peace, big theme here when we're looking at the whole picture. So he's going to mention some people from that region. He gives some like closing stuff. Take a guess. comes back again, with an SMS, we're going to look at them in Philemon. Or at least an SMS or a starkest interesting. Mark Barnabas his cousins remember that sharp disagreement that caused Paul and Barnabas to separate. It was over mark. Paul didn't want to take him. Barnabas did. But now look at this, Paul's writing about him. Right? So welcome Mark. He's the author of the gospel of Mark Epaphras, who started the church, Luke, the author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts. He's a doctor, the beloved doctor, and he mentions demons. We're talking about demons. He's doing okay here, but later, I guess. He says, after you've read this letter, pass it on to the church at Laodicea. So they can read it too. And you should read the letter I wrote to them. So remember, Ephesians, something that that is this letter to Laodicea, that letter to Laodicea he's talking about because again, it has that little blank there we take it this could write in later to see it. So a theory not definite, Paul, his own greeting and his own handwriting Scribe is probably writing this for him because they can write really, really small and save paper. He says, Remember my chains? Again, he's in prison here. May God's grace be with you. Again, full circle, grace and peace. And that is what Colossians is all about. You can breathe. Alright, get a get a drink of water, maybe some more coffee. So careful with the coffee. central theme here in Colossians is the concept of dying to your old life, right? The new life, the new nature versus the old life Colossians, three, three, For you died to this life and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. So as we begin a new year, or we're about to begin a new year, right, we see an appropriate theme as many we'll be making resolutions. So we're just kind of landed here, which is great. It's appropriate. So we looked at the concept of like God opening a door for us, right? Giving us these opportunities. Indeed, we're going to see many open doors through this new year, some open the good things, some open to bad things. So I key to meeting these resolution goals that we have isn't just going through a good open door. It's closing the bad ones. If we're dying to the old life doesn't work out so well. If you just go through the good one, but you have all these bad open doors. Alright, so the question is that we all need to reflect on Have you died to your own life? Have you really died? Us? Scripture is dictating here died to our old lives. Are we closing the door on the old things, and going through the right ones? Now, God has had the door open for us our whole lives. But the moment we're made aware of it, that is the moment which we choose to accept or reject Him. But this becomes difficult, right? If we have these doors open to some of these old temptations like old exes that people have. And it's kind of like, like MVC we don't have. So it's so funny. Like, as I get older, I'm like, Oh, you don't have those anymore? Like door to door salesmen? Do they still have those? I don't know. But it's kind of like that someone comes to your house, and they're trying to sell you something. Right? Now, if you're not interested at all, what are you going to do? No, you know, slam the door and not even answer right? See up? Nope. That's not good. Right? But it's kind of like you leave the door open a little bit. And you say, Nah, did that open door is a navy. Right? So if it's Satan trying to sell you something, you leave it open, so he can make the sale. And he's pretty convincing. That's why we leave doors open a little bit, right? Because we're a bit interested. Want to hear a little bit more. So let's get a little bit practical, right? So a lot of these things will start in our own homes. Or maybe Satan has sold you something and you got it in the house. Right? They're still lurking around. So practical things like everybody starts off the new year like, right, what are you going to do? Like most people, I'm going to eat and drink less, right? So whereas the young people, what am I talking about soda, right? So drink less? So we start with the dietary stuff, right? So maybe, you know, we actually like listen to the doctor this year, we decide, okay, we're going to listen to him because I keep going back and he's like, right, you know, like, Are you lying about how much you're drinking or eating or whatever? And he's like, Uh huh. Right, because you gained 10 pounds since last time I saw you. So maybe it's getting so quiet in here. So I'm just definitely stepping on a lot of toes. But anyway. It's okay. It's okay. We're all working progress, right. So, we all have our things I'll tell you about mine. So, you know, but maybe you have these things around like you know, you Gotta get him out of the house. But you keep him around. So my wife has been covering, we've gone through this and everything, but you know, it's like you have your stash, right? So you have like the presenting stuff. So, you know, maybe you have your alcohol where it used to be. It's not there. I cleaned it out. I'm not going to drink. But yeah, there's a stash somewhere. Right? There's in case of emergency break glass staff, right. And you are going to look for every excuse to have an emergency, aren't you? Right, so Okay, I got to throw myself under the bus now because that wasn't my issue on October. So for me, right. If you know me, I'm a foodie. I like my food. And so one of the reasons it's complicated because I like good food. The other one is, it should take a lot of time, but it's I can't get to it too fast. So it's a reason I'm not allowed to go to the grocery store. That's actually a true thing. That's like very rare because why I come home with a cart full of like awesome cereal, and pizza frozen pizza like and maybe they have White Castle, you know, the frozen anyone from the North? Remember White Castle. So anyway, so frozen, it's not the same, but I do it anyway. Right? So I come back with all this junk. And that's what happens. Right? So I get it out of the house. I don't have that stuff in the house. Right? Because I'm going to look for an excuse. But let's say I have the frozen pizza in emergency pizza. You see that commercial? I was like, Oh, that's a thing. Emergency pizza. I was like, that sounds like a great idea. But here's the problem. My pizza takes like a long time because I'm not going to get into it. I could get very excited about the pizza. But it's like a three day Don't you have to let the doors for 30 days. So I got a plan out. There's no emergency pizza. But let's say I go to the grocery store and say, All right, well, I got to have emergency pizza. So I'm going to buy some frozen pizza. Put them in there. Right Trader Joe's pretty good. It's acceptable. passable in an emergency, but not for regular pizza. Don't call it regular pizza anyway. So let's say that that's in the freezer. And I have that I know I shouldn't have in house now. My wife meal preps for me. Right? But if I have that pizza in there, I'm going to look for an excuse to go to it. You can be sure I'm going to look for interviews. So she meal preps to keep me out of stupid decisions. Right? So just outside of our closet, there's like all kinds of stupid decisions that I could make. So she's like, he's a walk away from all that stuff. So she preps all my meals gets everything ready. Right? And there's this bread she likes me to eat used to be Ezekiel bread, but that's like gravel. So there's like a slightly better bread, but it's not like, you know, like, like a poppy seed hard roll like a Kaiser roll that you could just get in the deli corner store deli in New York. And you pick them up, summer buttered. And they're so anyway, they don't have those here. Weird, right? So don't start another business Jean anyway.
So they're not like those, right? They're not really good. Like, I can't make like a roast beef sandwich. Mayo, right? Salt, pepper,
all that good stuff. No, it's like, you know, it's okay. It's okay. So I eat it. And it's just eating for work. It's not enjoyment eating. But here's the thing, let's say and sometimes this happens, my wife doesn't prep it, or she leaves the bread in the freezer, because you know, you buy like two loaves, it makes it last longer. So we do, it's in the freezer, right? And so I go up to frozen. That's it. No sandwiches, I'm going to eat the frozen pizza. And that's the logic that anyone catch the hole in that logic. They're both in the freezer people, right? But I'm going to look for an excuse to go for this. So what do you got to do? Get it out of the house, I'm not going to say get the pizza out of the house. Because that's just not a recommendation I can give to anyone. But get it out of the house, right? Because you're going to go to it. So whether it'd be alcohol, whether it be pizza, no, right? I scream. So things like nothing's pointed unless you're my friend. Right? You get it out, like just don't have it there. Right? Get it out of the house. So those are the that's what we have to do with these things we're struggling with now. It's kind of funny, because it just a little tiny little segue. Like one person may have a problem with something and the other person doesn't, right. And that's going to be an excuse. A lot of people will use that for the next well, you know, I wouldn't be doing that if you didn't have it in the house. But keep in the house, right? So that's what people do. Look, do what I did get your own mini fridge, put it in the garage, and then lock it was like a bike chain. So it looks like a pirate treasure or something like that. Anyway, work around it. Okay, so stop looking for excuses, right? Don't use your spouse as an excuse. It doesn't work out. Well. There may be things the house right. So a lot of these things are on our phones. Right? So that's a real thing, too. You can order emergency pizza. So you need to get you need to get the app off your phone. Right. Don't make it so easy to go there. Because apparently they come I don't know. They come in like, what? Like five minutes. Like it's so fast. It's like EMS, like they're not going to like why are you here this fast? Like, are they just ready? Anyway, that's why you don't order that kind of pizza. All right. So remember, frozen pizza is emergency pizza. It's not real pizza. We got to get that straight, though. Maybe it's on the phone. Right? So there are bad things on the phone. Right? And you know, I'm going there, right, so I'll just rip off the band aid. Maybe there are things you shouldn't be looking at on your phone. Right and then what do you do same as the alcohol and all that other stuff. You got a spot in the back of the freezer spot somewhere else? Right. So you know, I think I'm not going to just leave the Navy. Right? We're going to leave the door open just a little bit. Right. So what are we going to do? We're not gonna put it on the home screen. While it's not where it is anyway, because you don't want people to find it right? So you're going to put it like a few screens back or I'll just leave it in the app drawer. Whoo hoo, they make an app that's like a safe and I can put all the secret stuff that people don't want to see in there. No, that's leaving the door open a little bit. So you can go there. Right? We need to get them off the phone. There are some people we may need to boot off the phone. Alright, so toxic people, right? If you're in a marriage, maybe there are some old people in your phone that you need. And I'll tell you something, really finding the accountability companion thing is so funny because my wife out there like women, if you if you want a good accountability companion, she's the best. She's also a much better listener than me. She does not talk as much as I do. So she's a great listener. But anyway, so women you need someone to talk to good just introduce yourself. Her name is Heather. She's right there. Now she has done this. She has actually done this. Right. So somebody was going back? You know, just talking to all our exes right? You know, it's just bad relationships bad relationship bad or keeping her from good ones. Even when she's weird. The good ones talking to the bad ones. Somebody took her phone and literally deleted all the excess from her phone. She likes it like she can see like yeah, anyway. So if you need that kind of cleaning and your phone just right there free of charge. She will do it for you ladies. Okay, guys. Don't bother me with that. So anyway, guys, like series like y'all heard a pastor a long time ago. This was a thing he had someone who was struggling with porn. It's a real thing. And so he found a way to like make it so that the guy he could see whatever the guy did on his computer. Weird, right? So but anyway, there's got to be things like that for your phone. Like practical stuff. Right? So this happened you're starting with like, Pastor training, right? So you have to be able to give your mentor your phone anytime, right? So you know, but why do I have it locked? I don't have anything to hide. So at my home, the phones they're unlocked, or we know all our own pass codes, right? Little funny thing you could do switch phones with someone for the day. It's just fun because answering someone else's calls is awesome. Because basically you just say whatever you want, right? So right, so just go ahead and ruin my life. We'll trade phones and then deal with what you don't want to trade phones with me. But anyway. Can you ask yourself that question? Could you trade phones with someone? Could you trade phones with your spouse for the day? Would that work? If not, you're not living in the light. As it says in Ephesians remember that? We're not supposed to have secrets. We're supposed to live in the light and even what did it say? You know those deeds in the darkness expose them. Alright, so build up some accountability if you really want to change if you really want to make these goals this year. Get some accountability partners, right? Get a friend here like Confed we're supposed to do that right James? I confess your sins to one another and then like, here's my phone for a day work clean it out. Like I got some stuff just clean it up. Right maybe you don't have to trade in phones, but check. Check each other's phones like have like a set time we're like let's switch phones and there you go. You know, you're going to do that. We may have distractions or like easy go to is on the phone or they're like, like, there's games on there like so for me and my profession. I like when I when I'm doing nothing when I'm not working. I just like to do mindless things, right? Because my mind. I'm working with my brain. So it's tiring, right. So I watch like we like binge watch Netflix series, things like that. You know, it's just like, doesn't take a lot of thinking we got to Sherlock and we're like, oh, this is actually interesting. Ever watch that. It's pretty cool. Anyway. So just find something to do, right. But what happens on our phones is he's mindless activities become addictive. Right? So we're just scrolling, scrolling. It's just like you can get stuck in that mindlessness. for way too long, like it's a game or something you're doing right? And then you become lazier, it becomes so much easier to do this. Then there's all this stuff I should be getting done. So you may want to have to kind of erase that from your phone and move it social media this is probably one of the biggest ones you get stuck in for just a whole lotteries and mindless egg. Did they get you with everything? Because it's all there? This is it. This is every sin and social media. No, not that also I have social media but it's greatly restricted. Right? But here's the What about social media? Well, you're going to scroll what probably see some things you shouldn't be looking at them that leads to something else. And that leads into here we go. Alright, so that's a gateway into all that stuff, right? entices us just a little bit. Mindlessly scrolling. Got agitations right politics is on there. The comment section, right? Oh my gosh, you're made comment on something and then how much of your life did you waste going back and checking the comments? Like oh, I wonder what they said. Oh, I wonder what is it? Like every three seconds like ding ding and there's nothing about life then we'll have cuz you get angry, right? You can get all wound up over nothing for some troll advice and like 10 year old kid, you know what I mean? But they got you the written space in your head. Right? Why? Why did you get yourself involved with that in the first place? It's agitating, right? So get it off the phone. So just I'll throw myself under the bus again, in sometimes these things in you. Were not God, right. So but we try to play God once in a while. So, you know, but for me, I was just trying to do a little evangelism. So I noticed, hey, I'm going to put two things together that I like, right? So I'm going to put food and pastoring together. And so I noticed they're like these Naples food groups, right. And so I started going in there, and I'd review these places and post like a food sermon, and try to make it really funny, right. And so I didn't really realize how many people I would tick off because people hate Jesus. So, you know, that's the place for food for them. You know what I mean? So like, all these people from all over the world talking about pizza, they don't know what they're talking about. And so that was agitating me, I'm reading this stuff and like, oh, like, but then they're, like, you know, like railing against my food stuff. And I'm checking it and I got to babysit the comments. In a certain point, I was like, Okay, have I reached the amount of people I wanted to reach here? Was this actually an intrusion? Like, we can do that as Christians, like with our picketing? You know, we're not invited. You know, we go and we're like, ah, you know, Jesus. So was this wrong? I don't know. But I've reached out to people, they know who I am. I did it for a few months. I'm done. Like, done, done. I'm out. Like, I'm not doing this anymore. There's not productive. There's the end, right? So see the anger, all this other stuff, the anxiety of like, looking at these things gone. Done. And then we did it with our Facebook page. They're like, why are we posting in here? And it's just all these boomers complaining about stuff. Right? So we don't want to see this on Facebook. That was you didn't laugh because you're boomers. wrong crowd. Youth Group used to well, anyway. So but you're complaining? You're complaining all the time. That's why all the kids left. They went to tick tock and Instagram. So I'm on Instagram, right? Probably annoying people on there. And all the kids that came that's why they need tick tock, now go on tick tock, then you need something else, right. So I have it, but it's with high degree of accountability. Like my daughter makes my posts for me, right? I don't spend all day in there. I follow him no one but Jesus. So it's funny, I even unfollow my wife, which was just interesting. But anyway, that's on you if you want to do that.
But sometimes we just throw myself under the bus, I had to close the door on that enough. Like this is wasting my time. And I can't get to these other goals. It's also bringing up sin in me, right? Anger. Sin, that's a sin. Right? So no good. Friends, this is this is a hard one, I'll tell you just again, throwing myself under the bus. I came from a very volatile type of industry, it was very toxic, right? So not only was it the fitness industry, it's okay. But you know, is the martial arts industry, right. And so, a locker room talk, it's all about what beat other people up my pride and it just agitated all those things, you got to be a little angry if you want to fight, you know, so just agitated. And but I had friends from this industry. And we used to party a lot and do a lot of really crazy things. And at a certain point, I was like, I can't do this anymore. So I had to get new friends. Again, this is kind of like the having stuff in your house. When you have enough sobriety and something you know, you may be able to have it around, you can control yourself. And I couldn't. I was like, No, I'm engaging and all the bad things that they're engaging in, I have to just say goodbye for a while, it was tough. Because these people were my best friends. I called them brothers was like a godfather. And my daughter, like family had to say, I can't do it. And you can't do this here. So we got to spend some time apart. That was really rough. That was my whole world. But it's a volatile environment. Right. And here's the thing. And here's the thing to like when you so I wanted to go into, into it. I got to pick on this again, but I wanted to go into just a better life and a new industry a different thing, right. And so I had to go guys over there for a while. I don't know, when we're going to talk again. It's like this when you if you're in a crowd of friends, students, this is just behavior, like we were fine with the diet stuff. But like, you know, and Karen, notice, as I mentioned this, like, all the critics, like never seem to have their stuff together. You'll notice that like all the critics, like when everyone ever criticizes you about So, like everyone's an expert in something that they're obviously not an expert in. Like, okay, so this is funny, right? So when you start getting healthy, start to get healthy, and your friends don't want to get healthy. You ever have to help them like, like, I just got to eat healthy now. Right? I just, I want to try to lose some weight. Like that seems to be and if your friends don't, like the first thing they become are medical and fitness professionals. That's what they become first, right? So like, they all know everything about the fitness industry and what you do. Oh, so what do you Oh, well, that's you're going to get hurt doing that. Right? We're like the diet. And this is the funniest thing like, well, you can't eat too much of that and you really should be eating more of this. And like, meanwhile, they're like eating Doritos in my cereal like, you know, it's like and here's the elephant pun intended in the room. You don't look like you know what you're talking about? Or like, are you crazy are just lazy because you know this stuff anyway, either way, God told me not to listen to you. Because you're either crazy or lazy giving me all this advice. Once you get haters, that's the other thing. They're not your friends, if they're going to bring you down or encourage you to behave badly. You just you may need to get some new friends or put them in timeout for a little while. Right? They're jealous. Why? Remember the light, your good thing is exposing their bad thing. That's what's happening. Not to say a thing. Your good thing is exposing their bad thing. I'm going to give you a window into First Peter, First Peter four, three, you've had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy their morality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties and their terrible worship of idols. Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild destructive things they do. So they slandered you. But remember that they will have to face God who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead? Set your sights on heaven. Right? I just want to be good before God. What you're doing is on you. You have to answer to him. We all do. Well, that's it. We'll do it one more place. The workplace. Maybe it's a toxic environment. Right? Is it leading you to sin? Is it making you angry? Right. Pride, selfish ambition. Selfish ambition is a sin of the flesh and Galatians. Five. Should we have that? Bible says no, no, we should not bad cultures. Right? So that's my old workplace, right? The partying, the negativity, all this other stuff. Maybe they have an office party? Or it's like, oh, it's happy hour and Friday and you feel pressured to go and then what do you do? You blow everything you've worked for all week, right? So maybe you need to reconsider that culture. You might have to change the culture there. Or if you can't change it there change the culture in that area of your life. Maybe there's temptations at the workplace. This happens. All right, maybe there's someone there you get in a little friendly with maybe a little flirtatious with, it's getting real quiet. Maybe that's happening, right? Maybe you're commiserating about your spouse with someone of the opposite sex. That's not good. So I, I talked about one of the only programs that I spells I don't like program church and things like that. It just, that's all we really need. But The Five Love Languages is really good. If you're in a relationship, I really recommend doing that. You know, even friendships and stuff like that. It's really good. But I got an opportunity many years ago to meet the author, Gary Chapman, really nice guy. I didn't even know he was going to speak. We're just talking. We're in a church and I think it's something he speaks. Oh, he's the author of The Five Love Languages. He said something funny talking about David language when I want to share it with you. A lot of it he actually centered a lot of this like keeping marriages together. He said, if you're in a workplace and there's someone in your workplace that gives you the tingles. Gives you the tingles, quit your job. Okay, so I guess that resonated with you were tingles, like the Bible. Jesus says lust guy, you could just say lust. Anyway, if someone gives you the tingles, that was my effort and breaking that up with a joke. We're getting very serious. Quit your job. Now, here's an area where the devil uses fear. And if you haven't heard me speak before, there's good and bad fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and insight. Right? So fear is important. The wise fear it says in Proverbs. All right, so here's why it's fear. Like you should be cautious about some things right? So have some good Jesus says like, don't fear the LORD, right? I'll tell you who to fear if you're God, right? So Luke 12. So, but there's bad fear. And the devil uses this. Right? So the delegate to speak to you on this one, he's going to, he's going to tell lies that feed that bad fear. He's going to feed it all day long. So what is he going to say? Oh, no, how long it took to get this job. Oh, took so long to get this job. You're going to be poor. What are you going to do? You know how you're going to provide for your family because the Lord's not going to do that. Because your God, right your God. You know, he didn't tell you like none of those things have anything to do with faith? You're here phrase leap of faith take the leap of faith. I did that even before I believed in God, I'm thinking, why can't Christians do that? I the best thing I ever did, I quit my job and started a business. I mean, you know, led to my money addiction. But you know what I did? Well, like I'm going from monetarily speaking, I took the leap of faith, and I did really well. Was it hard in the beginning? Yes. But it paid off. Right? So practically speaking, the White can look at Christians. And I'm like, I did that when I had no faith. Like, but the devil does that right? Like, oh, no, it took too long to get this job. Or here's a good one. What about your career? Is our identity in our career or Christ? If we're calling ourselves Christians? What's it in? Everything compared to Jesus should be unimportant? Would you sing? were you telling the truth? Jesus, you're enough with nothing I have everything. friend has the Lord if you want to see not provided for you. Right? Come on. Really. Here's the thing you got to always remember, if a workplace environment is toxic, if it is leading you into sin, it's not from God. And that sin includes pride and selfish ambition, all the sins of the flesh that are listed so clearly here. It's not from God, remember? The devil can bless you, too. Right? What did he do? The temptations of Christ, right? I'll give you all you can just worship me. Jump off. Don't forget it. This is blessing you why he wants to divert Jesus from the mission. So he'll do anything he can to divert you from the mission. But maybe you have a higher calling. We need to consider that not let our fear in that case take over. We need to be free from that. It's not from God. So here's the point. God has a door open for us. And yes, it begins by closing some of the old ones, maybe starting new friendships and new jobs, new relationships, we should examine our triggers. But what's dragging us down, they'll start to cut ties with some of those things, in a loving and forgiving way with grace. By the way, I talked my old friends now I can handle that now. Right? I can be around them and their foul mouths. Not say too many bad words, right. But I don't engage with the things they engage with. And we're friends. And actually, it's a kind of a bridge to Jesus. They're like, Oh, our lives are a mess. And here's kind of isn't all right. Now, maybe that was a good move. It can work out right. So do it in love. Don't burn a bridge, don't do that. Just do it in all in love. Right. But on open doors. So if you're, you know, not New Year minister, you're plugged in, you can be a good witness to what I'm saying now and kind of the fruit that you see in your life, once you participate actively in a church. You can kind of see that you can speak into that. But if you haven't got plugged in here, you've been coming, right? If you're new here, there's an invitation we are the body of Christ. We're biblically commanded to meet as a body of Christ, right? So when you're apart from the body of Christ, you're not a part of the body of Christ. It's a very important feature of Christianity. And so you're not supposed to do life alone. The devil wants you doing life alone. Supposed to be with others and accountability, right living in the light together, then you can be free of all that shame. The regret like the hamster wheel is sin. Are you done? Are you done? You just want to live a life of joy, love peace pages. It's very free. So I talked a lot about what we do. Here is a church if you want to get to know more about it and be told how eat together after the service, or I know lunch plans. I get it here in Naples. Take a minute, introduce yourself to me, you're going to be told how you can connect with us and get plugged in with what we're doing here. But we don't want you to do in life alone. If you're just passing through, welcome. If you don't have a home church, I encourage you to find a Bible believing church right where the people are walking the walk. They're not trying to be rich and famous off of what they're doing. You can meet the pastor if you don't know the pastor, he's not your pastor. Right? Very, very important. I'd like to get to know you. You want to meet the old fashioned way. Come and see me. We want to show you the love. Let me pray for you. Laura, thank you for this time and thank you for this church, everyone who came in today to hear your word. Those who are faithful to that. Thank you, Lord, for opening their hearts to do that. I just pray that you open the more open the eyes of their hearts, like they can see your love For them they can fully realize of deep and how wide it is incomprehensible so that they'll be filled with this love and this level carry them out as vehicles, their grace and mercy your love so they can share your gospel with more and more people. Ask these things in Jesus name Amen
Good morning. Welcome. If you're new here among us, my name is Gene I serve here at C3 church as your pastor. And I heard a story about a pastor. And a barber pastor went to get his hair cut in kind of a bad part of town wasn't always a bad part of town started out nice when the barber opened the barber shop, but went downhill, a lot of violence, drugs, stuff like that. And so the barber, being an unbeliever, decided to kind of poke the pastor a little he said, you know, if there really is a good and loving God, why does He allow all this crime and violence to occur? Why don't you just fix it? Just then there's an obviously inebriated, disheveled guy walking down the street, he trips falls down, and just decided that's the place he's going to stay. He's just going to nap right there. Oh, yeah. He's got scraggly hairs, beards all messed up. And so they're looking out the window at this guy. And the pastor uses this opportunity. He says, Have you seen that guy before to the barber? Or was Yeah, does it all the time? That's his spot? Well, if you're such a good Barber, why haven't you fixed them up? Or got defensive? Well, my doors been open this whole time. You never came in and gave me a chance to fix them up? Faster said exactly. Most people are where they are because they've rejected God. Now, while the pastor's response wasn't a full treatment on why God allows suffering or answering that question completely, it is the pastor's experience that most people are where they are, because they've closed the door on God. Like, wow, no joke. No, no. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? All right. We're continuing after the Christmas holiday, we're continuing in our series, the rest of the story, we left off at Ephesians. So the topic there was unity, your part in the unity, you know, he I thought it was great, you guys didn't. So we're following Paul through the book of Acts. And so we arrived at Ephesus. And so we looked at Ephesians. These are letters written back to these places later by, in this case, Paul. So they're regional letters, I told you give you a window. And I said, we'd be looking at other letters to that region, and you're going to see some kind of activity. So today we find ourselves Colossians. And so I'm going to give you a map. So you can kind of visualize this, this is like Turkey, Asia Minor, according to the Bible, and you could see Colossae that right there. You also can see Ephesus and Laodicea, that we talked about, we're going to talk about it a little bit. And if you're a Bible nerd, you notice that the seven churches of Revelation are there, too. So there these are areas, Asia Minor, it was called then. So Colossians Paul has not been there. But it has a lot in common with Ephesians. Like he was at Ephesus, he hasn't been to this particular city a lot in common. There's, you're going to hear about a guy named a path for us. He's the guy who probably started the church in this area, we're assuming that that's true. The same mailman? The deliverer of the letter is in his tickets. It's fun to say, tickets, right? Tickets, right? Okay. You can try, like, here's somebody up there. But now he's going to be with an SMS. Another fun name to say, and he'll appear later in another regional letter, it's actually about him. Finally, human. So these are like the names are dealing with about 1/3 of Ephesians is in Colossians, by my rough count, so there's similar verses, we talked about that. They're like these regional letters Ephesians, maybe the emphasis is left out in some of the early manuscripts so that it can be sent around and we're going to see that that said, here. Now, the problem here isn't so much the Unity or at least that's being addressed. That's not in here, we're going to see the appearance of one problem. false teachings. Again, this is a big common thing, false teaching so very much unlike today's church, like everybody tries to play nice Paul wasn't worried about that. Just calling people out for what it is. It seems that there's a mix here, it's a little bit hard to explain. It's not so much the false teachings about like the law or the first heresy the third church you got to follow the Gentiles have to follow the law of Moses. It's mixed in and it says a lot of weird things like worship of angels and these different things, probably some what's called Gnosticism and other beliefs coming into play here into the church mixing with the Judaism we're going to see the Sabbath mentioned here too. If it had a subject why there so if it was an email has subject line, I would give it this one, your new life In Christ, your new life in Christ. Now, a key feature about that new life is that you have to die to the old life. So that's going to be talked about here, too. So this could be old religious practices like he's talking about there, or just bad habits, bad behavior in general. Now, there are no chapter breaks in the original. It's just one continuous flow, and you're going to see a couple awkward chapter breaks. But if I had to divide this letter, it'd be like chapters one and two, all about Jesus, what he has done for you chapter three, and four, your response to that now, what are you going to do about it? Just like that, too. What are you going to do about it? So it comes out like I've been here for over a decade, it just New York accent comes out, I can't help it. All right. So let's jump, jump right in Colossians one, one. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother, Timothy, we are writing to God's holy people in the city of Colossi who are faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. May God our father give you grace and peace. So you see that similar greeting from Paul sets the tone, grace, and peace, so he's trying to remind grace and peace. Now we have a co author here, unlike Ephesians, We have Timothy appears. And he appears in other letters, we've seen that before. Most recently, I think Second Corinthians is probably the last one we saw where he appeared. So now like Ephesians, but not as lengthy he's going to go through some prayers, right. So he's going to give thanks to God, for the good news here. And it brings us right immediately to kind of a key verse Colossians, one, six, this same good news that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing the lives just as it changed your lives. From the day you first heard and understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. So the grace of God, by the grace of God, our lives are changed. He's going to mention a path for us. He's praying for them, always thanking the Father, for he's rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his dear son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins. Again, this old versus new type of theme here. Now, I love these, you got a poem about Jesus in here. So Philippians two is my favorite collection of verses here, things that they would say it's a little poem, kind of like a creed, they would say, and just to kind of help them remember, and this is one of them. And it's beautiful. There's a lot of richness here, I could just do the whole message here on this for about two or three hours now. Oh, go that look. Colossians 115. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God, he existed before anything was created, and his supreme or firstborn over all creation, for thrill him, God created everything in the heavenly realms, and on earth, He made the things we can see and the things we can see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through Him, and for him, he existed before anything else. And he holds all Creation together. Christ is also the head of the Church, which is His body, he is the beginning supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he's first in everything, for God, in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through Him. God reconciled everything to himself, he made peace with everything and in heaven on earth by means of Christ's blood.
That is who Jesus says, I was talking about this in the past a little bit. Sounds a lot like John one, right in the beginning was the Word the Word was with God, the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, all things were created through Him and apart from Him, nothing that was created has been created, right. So it gives us an idea of who Jesus is. He is the firstborn. He's before everything, He is God. So amazing, amazing poem worth going back, marking in your Bibles and reading it every day. Colossians 121. So here's how it is, it's going to window into how it pertains to you. Colossians 121 This includes you, who were once far away from God, you are his enemies separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions yet now. He has reconciled you to Himself to the death of Christ and his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence and you are holy and blameless, as you stand before him without a single fall back. You must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don't drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the good news. The good news has been preached all over the world and I, Paul have been appointed as God's servant, to proclaim it again. You were now you are. So Paul will talk a little bit about his work for the church. We've seen this theme like suffering with Christ joining Christ in his sufferings, it comes up a lot. We saw it in Second Corinthians Philippians. And he says, I'm glad when I suffer for you in my body for in participating in the sufferings of Christ, that continue for his body, the church, we talked about the church being the body of Christ, they're going Ephesians as well. Colossians two, one, I want you to know how much I have agonized for you and for the Church at Laodicea. And for many other believers who have never met me Personally, I want them to be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love. I want them to have complete confidence that they understand God's mysterious plan, which is Christ Himself in him. Like hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, I am telling you this so that no one will deceive you with well crafted arguments. For though I'm far away from you, my heart is with you. And I rejoice that you were living as you should, and that your faith in Christ is strong. So a bunch of things packed in here. Remember how Paul had anxiety over the church? Right? So in Second Corinthians 11, this marine nervous anxiety, the mysterious plan, and Ephesians comes up again, this is Christ, who saw that in First Corinthians Ephesians. Can you remember those hucksters and their well crafted arguments? Alright, so this is kind of coming up again, here. Watch out for those guys. It sounds good. So he continues, we'll jump have little bit Colossians two, eight, don't let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. For in Christ plus all the fullness of God in a human body. There it is, again. So you're also complete through your union with Christ who is the head over every role and authority. So let's false teachers again, coming up. Often, as we talked about in the past high sounding nonsense, like a lot of it's really what gobbly gook, right? You ever hear something so Whoa, right? It's confused yet to be like inebriated. like, Whoa, that sounds amazing. But when you kind of lay it out, it doesn't make any sense, right? It's complicated, because it doesn't mean anything. No one can figure it out man yet, because it's nonsense, high sounding nonsense. When you came to Christ, you're circumcised he talks about this, not by physical procedure. But Christ performed the circumcision, cutting away your sinful nature. So remember that concept. We also talked about having a circumcised heart very important. So the false teachers, they're always going to appeal to that sinful nature. So you want to make sure it's cut away, because Colossians 212. For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him, you were raised to a new life, because you trusted the mighty power of God who raised Christ from the dead. So this is what baptism symbolizes right? You dying, so your old life so he was that theme, and you're coming up a new creation in Christ. Again, you were dead because of your sins because of your sinful nature. It wasn't yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ for you forgave all our sins, He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Dead, your sin is dead. So now talks about certain foods and holy days and that came up in the past we've seen this we've seen this Romans 14, First Corinthians eight through 10. Like this idea of not dividing. The church should not divide over things that aren't gospel back in the day, meet sacrifice to idols, although it came down from Jesus, his brother James and the church acts 15. Paul still says like a the Gentiles should abstain from that Paul still says whatever, you know, it's not gospel, right. Don't let the church divide over here. Paul says, Don't let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink for an hour for not celebrating certain holy days. And then it comes up Sabbath. So we talked about that Roman, Romans 14, right. But still today, what are some people divide over? Hold denominations, like you got to keep the Sabbath, and Paul's probably rolling over in his grave. Right. So he says the people who insist on these things their sinful minds, have made them proud. And they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body, for he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments. And it grows as God nourishes it. So you see this concept here, Christ is holding this body together, stay together a little bit of a drip of the unity here. What's cool about Colossians is you get a whole bunch of different concepts that Paul brings up in other letters, condensed right into this really succinct thing here. So the secondary doctrine, this denominational divide, people who divide over these things, their sinful minds, have made them proud. They're like Pharisees, right? They think, Well, I'm really good on this side of things, and you need to be really good on them too. And they got what all this stuff in the closet. So you should not have pride in denominational divides. It's not something to be proud about. Christ holds the whole body together. So this is all what he has done for us. Now. We see that turn Colossians three one, since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at the place of honor it God's right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you, that was amazing timing. For you died to this life and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is your life is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all its glory. So put to death the sinful earnestly things lurking within you have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust and evil desires. Don't be greedy for a greedy person isn't idolatry. worshipping the things in this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still a part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander and dirty language lie to each other. For you have stripped off your old sinful nature and this wicked deeds, put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life. It doesn't matter if you're a Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free Christ is all that matters. And he lives in all of us a lot there. But a couple things. Remember, this has come up Galatians, three other places, right. So there's no socio economic divide here in a true church, right? There's no racial divide none of that. Right. So that's just breaking down different people groups who were hostile. So this enrollments in Ephesians, right, the Jews and Gentiles are hostile, he broke down that wall of hostility, right? So there's no whatever you identify it, we're just all one in Christ. New nature versus old nature. Just see that new life New Life look. So Paul's being very, very redundant. Put that to death. You used to be that way you have died to this life and your real life is hidden in Christ, what should we be focused on? Right? things of heaven, right, not the things of this earth. So Colossians 312 since God has chose you to be the holy people he loves you must clothe yourselves with tender hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ's rule in your hearts. For us members of one body were called live in peace will always be thankful. Let the message about Christ and all its riches, fill your lives, teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives things, psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do, or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father. So when you put this with the previous scriptures together, it's a lot of like Galatians five, isn't it like that? You know, rotten fruit of the flesh or the sin of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, love the same things are there and Galatians love joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. And so we see that patience and their love, above all love, right? So what's that, like Romans 13, all in here, packed right in there. Let peace rule your hearts right big. Again, grace and peace, forgive others, grace, and peace all in here. We get to the thing. It sounds like Second Corinthians five ambassadors of Christ. That's what he's saying you are right, ambassadors of Christ. So now I'm going to do this very quickly, because we discussed this in length. In Ephesians, he gives instructions for Christian households, and you're going to notice or what you should notice is that it instructs both groups, wives, and husbands so the husbands just like delete that part. They're like, wives
and husbands, right, so there's your part in this whole thing. So it's like that for these people. There's the wives - submit to your husbands, then Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. Children always obey your parents. Fathers do not aggravate your children or become discouraged. Now slaves in today's context, remember, I told you slaves, not about racism back then is more about commerce is a totally different kind of thing. So we can think of it today like employees, right? Like serve your master serve your boss, like he's Christ, like he's Jesus. Like that's he supposed to do? Why? Go back? We're ambassadors for Christ. That's why right? So these little things, forgive them, right? So he's making all these little worldly things unimportant. Let's think about heaven. Right? So no chapter breaks in the original. So it's kind of funny. You go into Chapter Four in its masters, right? So it starts right there. Or employers like be kind right? So you both serve Jesus, and encouragement with prayer. And what he says here is Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and thankful heart. Pray for us to that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. So there's that mysterious plan again, Colossians four, five and what both live wisely among those who are not believers make the most out of every opportunity, Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you'll have the right response for everyone. So we win people over by seeing them as opportunities, not obstacles, right so what is Paul saying? Forgive them and then he goes right into this which is interesting, isn't it? Right you your witness is more important than anything on this earth right? So Jesus let him have given your coat to if he wants your shirt. Alright, so attraction, not promotion with grace and peace, big theme here when we're looking at the whole picture. So he's going to mention some people from that region. He gives some like closing stuff. Take a guess. comes back again, with an SMS, we're going to look at them in Philemon. Or at least an SMS or a starkest interesting. Mark Barnabas his cousins remember that sharp disagreement that caused Paul and Barnabas to separate. It was over mark. Paul didn't want to take him. Barnabas did. But now look at this, Paul's writing about him. Right? So welcome Mark. He's the author of the gospel of Mark Epaphras, who started the church, Luke, the author of the Gospel of Luke and Acts. He's a doctor, the beloved doctor, and he mentions demons. We're talking about demons. He's doing okay here, but later, I guess. He says, after you've read this letter, pass it on to the church at Laodicea. So they can read it too. And you should read the letter I wrote to them. So remember, Ephesians, something that that is this letter to Laodicea, that letter to Laodicea he's talking about because again, it has that little blank there we take it this could write in later to see it. So a theory not definite, Paul, his own greeting and his own handwriting Scribe is probably writing this for him because they can write really, really small and save paper. He says, Remember my chains? Again, he's in prison here. May God's grace be with you. Again, full circle, grace and peace. And that is what Colossians is all about. You can breathe. Alright, get a get a drink of water, maybe some more coffee. So careful with the coffee. central theme here in Colossians is the concept of dying to your old life, right? The new life, the new nature versus the old life Colossians, three, three, For you died to this life and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. So as we begin a new year, or we're about to begin a new year, right, we see an appropriate theme as many we'll be making resolutions. So we're just kind of landed here, which is great. It's appropriate. So we looked at the concept of like God opening a door for us, right? Giving us these opportunities. Indeed, we're going to see many open doors through this new year, some open the good things, some open to bad things. So I key to meeting these resolution goals that we have isn't just going through a good open door. It's closing the bad ones. If we're dying to the old life doesn't work out so well. If you just go through the good one, but you have all these bad open doors. Alright, so the question is that we all need to reflect on Have you died to your own life? Have you really died? Us? Scripture is dictating here died to our old lives. Are we closing the door on the old things, and going through the right ones? Now, God has had the door open for us our whole lives. But the moment we're made aware of it, that is the moment which we choose to accept or reject Him. But this becomes difficult, right? If we have these doors open to some of these old temptations like old exes that people have. And it's kind of like, like MVC we don't have. So it's so funny. Like, as I get older, I'm like, Oh, you don't have those anymore? Like door to door salesmen? Do they still have those? I don't know. But it's kind of like that someone comes to your house, and they're trying to sell you something. Right? Now, if you're not interested at all, what are you going to do? No, you know, slam the door and not even answer right? See up? Nope. That's not good. Right? But it's kind of like you leave the door open a little bit. And you say, Nah, did that open door is a navy. Right? So if it's Satan trying to sell you something, you leave it open, so he can make the sale. And he's pretty convincing. That's why we leave doors open a little bit, right? Because we're a bit interested. Want to hear a little bit more. So let's get a little bit practical, right? So a lot of these things will start in our own homes. Or maybe Satan has sold you something and you got it in the house. Right? They're still lurking around. So practical things like everybody starts off the new year like, right, what are you going to do? Like most people, I'm going to eat and drink less, right? So whereas the young people, what am I talking about soda, right? So drink less? So we start with the dietary stuff, right? So maybe, you know, we actually like listen to the doctor this year, we decide, okay, we're going to listen to him because I keep going back and he's like, right, you know, like, Are you lying about how much you're drinking or eating or whatever? And he's like, Uh huh. Right, because you gained 10 pounds since last time I saw you. So maybe it's getting so quiet in here. So I'm just definitely stepping on a lot of toes. But anyway. It's okay. It's okay. We're all working progress, right. So, we all have our things I'll tell you about mine. So, you know, but maybe you have these things around like you know, you Gotta get him out of the house. But you keep him around. So my wife has been covering, we've gone through this and everything, but you know, it's like you have your stash, right? So you have like the presenting stuff. So, you know, maybe you have your alcohol where it used to be. It's not there. I cleaned it out. I'm not going to drink. But yeah, there's a stash somewhere. Right? There's in case of emergency break glass staff, right. And you are going to look for every excuse to have an emergency, aren't you? Right, so Okay, I got to throw myself under the bus now because that wasn't my issue on October. So for me, right. If you know me, I'm a foodie. I like my food. And so one of the reasons it's complicated because I like good food. The other one is, it should take a lot of time, but it's I can't get to it too fast. So it's a reason I'm not allowed to go to the grocery store. That's actually a true thing. That's like very rare because why I come home with a cart full of like awesome cereal, and pizza frozen pizza like and maybe they have White Castle, you know, the frozen anyone from the North? Remember White Castle. So anyway, so frozen, it's not the same, but I do it anyway. Right? So I come back with all this junk. And that's what happens. Right? So I get it out of the house. I don't have that stuff in the house. Right? Because I'm going to look for an excuse. But let's say I have the frozen pizza in emergency pizza. You see that commercial? I was like, Oh, that's a thing. Emergency pizza. I was like, that sounds like a great idea. But here's the problem. My pizza takes like a long time because I'm not going to get into it. I could get very excited about the pizza. But it's like a three day Don't you have to let the doors for 30 days. So I got a plan out. There's no emergency pizza. But let's say I go to the grocery store and say, All right, well, I got to have emergency pizza. So I'm going to buy some frozen pizza. Put them in there. Right Trader Joe's pretty good. It's acceptable. passable in an emergency, but not for regular pizza. Don't call it regular pizza anyway. So let's say that that's in the freezer. And I have that I know I shouldn't have in house now. My wife meal preps for me. Right? But if I have that pizza in there, I'm going to look for an excuse to go to it. You can be sure I'm going to look for interviews. So she meal preps to keep me out of stupid decisions. Right? So just outside of our closet, there's like all kinds of stupid decisions that I could make. So she's like, he's a walk away from all that stuff. So she preps all my meals gets everything ready. Right? And there's this bread she likes me to eat used to be Ezekiel bread, but that's like gravel. So there's like a slightly better bread, but it's not like, you know, like, like a poppy seed hard roll like a Kaiser roll that you could just get in the deli corner store deli in New York. And you pick them up, summer buttered. And they're so anyway, they don't have those here. Weird, right? So don't start another business Jean anyway.
So they're not like those, right? They're not really good. Like, I can't make like a roast beef sandwich. Mayo, right? Salt, pepper,
all that good stuff. No, it's like, you know, it's okay. It's okay. So I eat it. And it's just eating for work. It's not enjoyment eating. But here's the thing, let's say and sometimes this happens, my wife doesn't prep it, or she leaves the bread in the freezer, because you know, you buy like two loaves, it makes it last longer. So we do, it's in the freezer, right? And so I go up to frozen. That's it. No sandwiches, I'm going to eat the frozen pizza. And that's the logic that anyone catch the hole in that logic. They're both in the freezer people, right? But I'm going to look for an excuse to go for this. So what do you got to do? Get it out of the house, I'm not going to say get the pizza out of the house. Because that's just not a recommendation I can give to anyone. But get it out of the house, right? Because you're going to go to it. So whether it'd be alcohol, whether it be pizza, no, right? I scream. So things like nothing's pointed unless you're my friend. Right? You get it out, like just don't have it there. Right? Get it out of the house. So those are the that's what we have to do with these things we're struggling with now. It's kind of funny, because it just a little tiny little segue. Like one person may have a problem with something and the other person doesn't, right. And that's going to be an excuse. A lot of people will use that for the next well, you know, I wouldn't be doing that if you didn't have it in the house. But keep in the house, right? So that's what people do. Look, do what I did get your own mini fridge, put it in the garage, and then lock it was like a bike chain. So it looks like a pirate treasure or something like that. Anyway, work around it. Okay, so stop looking for excuses, right? Don't use your spouse as an excuse. It doesn't work out. Well. There may be things the house right. So a lot of these things are on our phones. Right? So that's a real thing, too. You can order emergency pizza. So you need to get you need to get the app off your phone. Right. Don't make it so easy to go there. Because apparently they come I don't know. They come in like, what? Like five minutes. Like it's so fast. It's like EMS, like they're not going to like why are you here this fast? Like, are they just ready? Anyway, that's why you don't order that kind of pizza. All right. So remember, frozen pizza is emergency pizza. It's not real pizza. We got to get that straight, though. Maybe it's on the phone. Right? So there are bad things on the phone. Right? And you know, I'm going there, right, so I'll just rip off the band aid. Maybe there are things you shouldn't be looking at on your phone. Right and then what do you do same as the alcohol and all that other stuff. You got a spot in the back of the freezer spot somewhere else? Right. So you know, I think I'm not going to just leave the Navy. Right? We're going to leave the door open just a little bit. Right. So what are we going to do? We're not gonna put it on the home screen. While it's not where it is anyway, because you don't want people to find it right? So you're going to put it like a few screens back or I'll just leave it in the app drawer. Whoo hoo, they make an app that's like a safe and I can put all the secret stuff that people don't want to see in there. No, that's leaving the door open a little bit. So you can go there. Right? We need to get them off the phone. There are some people we may need to boot off the phone. Alright, so toxic people, right? If you're in a marriage, maybe there are some old people in your phone that you need. And I'll tell you something, really finding the accountability companion thing is so funny because my wife out there like women, if you if you want a good accountability companion, she's the best. She's also a much better listener than me. She does not talk as much as I do. So she's a great listener. But anyway, so women you need someone to talk to good just introduce yourself. Her name is Heather. She's right there. Now she has done this. She has actually done this. Right. So somebody was going back? You know, just talking to all our exes right? You know, it's just bad relationships bad relationship bad or keeping her from good ones. Even when she's weird. The good ones talking to the bad ones. Somebody took her phone and literally deleted all the excess from her phone. She likes it like she can see like yeah, anyway. So if you need that kind of cleaning and your phone just right there free of charge. She will do it for you ladies. Okay, guys. Don't bother me with that. So anyway, guys, like series like y'all heard a pastor a long time ago. This was a thing he had someone who was struggling with porn. It's a real thing. And so he found a way to like make it so that the guy he could see whatever the guy did on his computer. Weird, right? So but anyway, there's got to be things like that for your phone. Like practical stuff. Right? So this happened you're starting with like, Pastor training, right? So you have to be able to give your mentor your phone anytime, right? So you know, but why do I have it locked? I don't have anything to hide. So at my home, the phones they're unlocked, or we know all our own pass codes, right? Little funny thing you could do switch phones with someone for the day. It's just fun because answering someone else's calls is awesome. Because basically you just say whatever you want, right? So right, so just go ahead and ruin my life. We'll trade phones and then deal with what you don't want to trade phones with me. But anyway. Can you ask yourself that question? Could you trade phones with someone? Could you trade phones with your spouse for the day? Would that work? If not, you're not living in the light. As it says in Ephesians remember that? We're not supposed to have secrets. We're supposed to live in the light and even what did it say? You know those deeds in the darkness expose them. Alright, so build up some accountability if you really want to change if you really want to make these goals this year. Get some accountability partners, right? Get a friend here like Confed we're supposed to do that right James? I confess your sins to one another and then like, here's my phone for a day work clean it out. Like I got some stuff just clean it up. Right maybe you don't have to trade in phones, but check. Check each other's phones like have like a set time we're like let's switch phones and there you go. You know, you're going to do that. We may have distractions or like easy go to is on the phone or they're like, like, there's games on there like so for me and my profession. I like when I when I'm doing nothing when I'm not working. I just like to do mindless things, right? Because my mind. I'm working with my brain. So it's tiring, right. So I watch like we like binge watch Netflix series, things like that. You know, it's just like, doesn't take a lot of thinking we got to Sherlock and we're like, oh, this is actually interesting. Ever watch that. It's pretty cool. Anyway. So just find something to do, right. But what happens on our phones is he's mindless activities become addictive. Right? So we're just scrolling, scrolling. It's just like you can get stuck in that mindlessness. for way too long, like it's a game or something you're doing right? And then you become lazier, it becomes so much easier to do this. Then there's all this stuff I should be getting done. So you may want to have to kind of erase that from your phone and move it social media this is probably one of the biggest ones you get stuck in for just a whole lotteries and mindless egg. Did they get you with everything? Because it's all there? This is it. This is every sin and social media. No, not that also I have social media but it's greatly restricted. Right? But here's the What about social media? Well, you're going to scroll what probably see some things you shouldn't be looking at them that leads to something else. And that leads into here we go. Alright, so that's a gateway into all that stuff, right? entices us just a little bit. Mindlessly scrolling. Got agitations right politics is on there. The comment section, right? Oh my gosh, you're made comment on something and then how much of your life did you waste going back and checking the comments? Like oh, I wonder what they said. Oh, I wonder what is it? Like every three seconds like ding ding and there's nothing about life then we'll have cuz you get angry, right? You can get all wound up over nothing for some troll advice and like 10 year old kid, you know what I mean? But they got you the written space in your head. Right? Why? Why did you get yourself involved with that in the first place? It's agitating, right? So get it off the phone. So just I'll throw myself under the bus again, in sometimes these things in you. Were not God, right. So but we try to play God once in a while. So, you know, but for me, I was just trying to do a little evangelism. So I noticed, hey, I'm going to put two things together that I like, right? So I'm going to put food and pastoring together. And so I noticed they're like these Naples food groups, right. And so I started going in there, and I'd review these places and post like a food sermon, and try to make it really funny, right. And so I didn't really realize how many people I would tick off because people hate Jesus. So, you know, that's the place for food for them. You know what I mean? So like, all these people from all over the world talking about pizza, they don't know what they're talking about. And so that was agitating me, I'm reading this stuff and like, oh, like, but then they're, like, you know, like railing against my food stuff. And I'm checking it and I got to babysit the comments. In a certain point, I was like, Okay, have I reached the amount of people I wanted to reach here? Was this actually an intrusion? Like, we can do that as Christians, like with our picketing? You know, we're not invited. You know, we go and we're like, ah, you know, Jesus. So was this wrong? I don't know. But I've reached out to people, they know who I am. I did it for a few months. I'm done. Like, done, done. I'm out. Like, I'm not doing this anymore. There's not productive. There's the end, right? So see the anger, all this other stuff, the anxiety of like, looking at these things gone. Done. And then we did it with our Facebook page. They're like, why are we posting in here? And it's just all these boomers complaining about stuff. Right? So we don't want to see this on Facebook. That was you didn't laugh because you're boomers. wrong crowd. Youth Group used to well, anyway. So but you're complaining? You're complaining all the time. That's why all the kids left. They went to tick tock and Instagram. So I'm on Instagram, right? Probably annoying people on there. And all the kids that came that's why they need tick tock, now go on tick tock, then you need something else, right. So I have it, but it's with high degree of accountability. Like my daughter makes my posts for me, right? I don't spend all day in there. I follow him no one but Jesus. So it's funny, I even unfollow my wife, which was just interesting. But anyway, that's on you if you want to do that.
But sometimes we just throw myself under the bus, I had to close the door on that enough. Like this is wasting my time. And I can't get to these other goals. It's also bringing up sin in me, right? Anger. Sin, that's a sin. Right? So no good. Friends, this is this is a hard one, I'll tell you just again, throwing myself under the bus. I came from a very volatile type of industry, it was very toxic, right? So not only was it the fitness industry, it's okay. But you know, is the martial arts industry, right. And so, a locker room talk, it's all about what beat other people up my pride and it just agitated all those things, you got to be a little angry if you want to fight, you know, so just agitated. And but I had friends from this industry. And we used to party a lot and do a lot of really crazy things. And at a certain point, I was like, I can't do this anymore. So I had to get new friends. Again, this is kind of like the having stuff in your house. When you have enough sobriety and something you know, you may be able to have it around, you can control yourself. And I couldn't. I was like, No, I'm engaging and all the bad things that they're engaging in, I have to just say goodbye for a while, it was tough. Because these people were my best friends. I called them brothers was like a godfather. And my daughter, like family had to say, I can't do it. And you can't do this here. So we got to spend some time apart. That was really rough. That was my whole world. But it's a volatile environment. Right. And here's the thing. And here's the thing to like when you so I wanted to go into, into it. I got to pick on this again, but I wanted to go into just a better life and a new industry a different thing, right. And so I had to go guys over there for a while. I don't know, when we're going to talk again. It's like this when you if you're in a crowd of friends, students, this is just behavior, like we were fine with the diet stuff. But like, you know, and Karen, notice, as I mentioned this, like, all the critics, like never seem to have their stuff together. You'll notice that like all the critics, like when everyone ever criticizes you about So, like everyone's an expert in something that they're obviously not an expert in. Like, okay, so this is funny, right? So when you start getting healthy, start to get healthy, and your friends don't want to get healthy. You ever have to help them like, like, I just got to eat healthy now. Right? I just, I want to try to lose some weight. Like that seems to be and if your friends don't, like the first thing they become are medical and fitness professionals. That's what they become first, right? So like, they all know everything about the fitness industry and what you do. Oh, so what do you Oh, well, that's you're going to get hurt doing that. Right? We're like the diet. And this is the funniest thing like, well, you can't eat too much of that and you really should be eating more of this. And like, meanwhile, they're like eating Doritos in my cereal like, you know, it's like and here's the elephant pun intended in the room. You don't look like you know what you're talking about? Or like, are you crazy are just lazy because you know this stuff anyway, either way, God told me not to listen to you. Because you're either crazy or lazy giving me all this advice. Once you get haters, that's the other thing. They're not your friends, if they're going to bring you down or encourage you to behave badly. You just you may need to get some new friends or put them in timeout for a little while. Right? They're jealous. Why? Remember the light, your good thing is exposing their bad thing. That's what's happening. Not to say a thing. Your good thing is exposing their bad thing. I'm going to give you a window into First Peter, First Peter four, three, you've had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy their morality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties and their terrible worship of idols. Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild destructive things they do. So they slandered you. But remember that they will have to face God who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead? Set your sights on heaven. Right? I just want to be good before God. What you're doing is on you. You have to answer to him. We all do. Well, that's it. We'll do it one more place. The workplace. Maybe it's a toxic environment. Right? Is it leading you to sin? Is it making you angry? Right. Pride, selfish ambition. Selfish ambition is a sin of the flesh and Galatians. Five. Should we have that? Bible says no, no, we should not bad cultures. Right? So that's my old workplace, right? The partying, the negativity, all this other stuff. Maybe they have an office party? Or it's like, oh, it's happy hour and Friday and you feel pressured to go and then what do you do? You blow everything you've worked for all week, right? So maybe you need to reconsider that culture. You might have to change the culture there. Or if you can't change it there change the culture in that area of your life. Maybe there's temptations at the workplace. This happens. All right, maybe there's someone there you get in a little friendly with maybe a little flirtatious with, it's getting real quiet. Maybe that's happening, right? Maybe you're commiserating about your spouse with someone of the opposite sex. That's not good. So I, I talked about one of the only programs that I spells I don't like program church and things like that. It just, that's all we really need. But The Five Love Languages is really good. If you're in a relationship, I really recommend doing that. You know, even friendships and stuff like that. It's really good. But I got an opportunity many years ago to meet the author, Gary Chapman, really nice guy. I didn't even know he was going to speak. We're just talking. We're in a church and I think it's something he speaks. Oh, he's the author of The Five Love Languages. He said something funny talking about David language when I want to share it with you. A lot of it he actually centered a lot of this like keeping marriages together. He said, if you're in a workplace and there's someone in your workplace that gives you the tingles. Gives you the tingles, quit your job. Okay, so I guess that resonated with you were tingles, like the Bible. Jesus says lust guy, you could just say lust. Anyway, if someone gives you the tingles, that was my effort and breaking that up with a joke. We're getting very serious. Quit your job. Now, here's an area where the devil uses fear. And if you haven't heard me speak before, there's good and bad fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and insight. Right? So fear is important. The wise fear it says in Proverbs. All right, so here's why it's fear. Like you should be cautious about some things right? So have some good Jesus says like, don't fear the LORD, right? I'll tell you who to fear if you're God, right? So Luke 12. So, but there's bad fear. And the devil uses this. Right? So the delegate to speak to you on this one, he's going to, he's going to tell lies that feed that bad fear. He's going to feed it all day long. So what is he going to say? Oh, no, how long it took to get this job. Oh, took so long to get this job. You're going to be poor. What are you going to do? You know how you're going to provide for your family because the Lord's not going to do that. Because your God, right your God. You know, he didn't tell you like none of those things have anything to do with faith? You're here phrase leap of faith take the leap of faith. I did that even before I believed in God, I'm thinking, why can't Christians do that? I the best thing I ever did, I quit my job and started a business. I mean, you know, led to my money addiction. But you know what I did? Well, like I'm going from monetarily speaking, I took the leap of faith, and I did really well. Was it hard in the beginning? Yes. But it paid off. Right? So practically speaking, the White can look at Christians. And I'm like, I did that when I had no faith. Like, but the devil does that right? Like, oh, no, it took too long to get this job. Or here's a good one. What about your career? Is our identity in our career or Christ? If we're calling ourselves Christians? What's it in? Everything compared to Jesus should be unimportant? Would you sing? were you telling the truth? Jesus, you're enough with nothing I have everything. friend has the Lord if you want to see not provided for you. Right? Come on. Really. Here's the thing you got to always remember, if a workplace environment is toxic, if it is leading you into sin, it's not from God. And that sin includes pride and selfish ambition, all the sins of the flesh that are listed so clearly here. It's not from God, remember? The devil can bless you, too. Right? What did he do? The temptations of Christ, right? I'll give you all you can just worship me. Jump off. Don't forget it. This is blessing you why he wants to divert Jesus from the mission. So he'll do anything he can to divert you from the mission. But maybe you have a higher calling. We need to consider that not let our fear in that case take over. We need to be free from that. It's not from God. So here's the point. God has a door open for us. And yes, it begins by closing some of the old ones, maybe starting new friendships and new jobs, new relationships, we should examine our triggers. But what's dragging us down, they'll start to cut ties with some of those things, in a loving and forgiving way with grace. By the way, I talked my old friends now I can handle that now. Right? I can be around them and their foul mouths. Not say too many bad words, right. But I don't engage with the things they engage with. And we're friends. And actually, it's a kind of a bridge to Jesus. They're like, Oh, our lives are a mess. And here's kind of isn't all right. Now, maybe that was a good move. It can work out right. So do it in love. Don't burn a bridge, don't do that. Just do it in all in love. Right. But on open doors. So if you're, you know, not New Year minister, you're plugged in, you can be a good witness to what I'm saying now and kind of the fruit that you see in your life, once you participate actively in a church. You can kind of see that you can speak into that. But if you haven't got plugged in here, you've been coming, right? If you're new here, there's an invitation we are the body of Christ. We're biblically commanded to meet as a body of Christ, right? So when you're apart from the body of Christ, you're not a part of the body of Christ. It's a very important feature of Christianity. And so you're not supposed to do life alone. The devil wants you doing life alone. Supposed to be with others and accountability, right living in the light together, then you can be free of all that shame. The regret like the hamster wheel is sin. Are you done? Are you done? You just want to live a life of joy, love peace pages. It's very free. So I talked a lot about what we do. Here is a church if you want to get to know more about it and be told how eat together after the service, or I know lunch plans. I get it here in Naples. Take a minute, introduce yourself to me, you're going to be told how you can connect with us and get plugged in with what we're doing here. But we don't want you to do in life alone. If you're just passing through, welcome. If you don't have a home church, I encourage you to find a Bible believing church right where the people are walking the walk. They're not trying to be rich and famous off of what they're doing. You can meet the pastor if you don't know the pastor, he's not your pastor. Right? Very, very important. I'd like to get to know you. You want to meet the old fashioned way. Come and see me. We want to show you the love. Let me pray for you. Laura, thank you for this time and thank you for this church, everyone who came in today to hear your word. Those who are faithful to that. Thank you, Lord, for opening their hearts to do that. I just pray that you open the more open the eyes of their hearts, like they can see your love For them they can fully realize of deep and how wide it is incomprehensible so that they'll be filled with this love and this level carry them out as vehicles, their grace and mercy your love so they can share your gospel with more and more people. Ask these things in Jesus name Amen