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[0:00] Music to that song, you recognize it, right? It's a song they sing in New Year's and sometimes in bars and things like that. But we're stealing it back. putting Christian words to that. I was telling our church down south the other day that I'm hijacking back the term diversity.

[0:18] I'm hijacking that back because in the world, diversity means disunity, right? You can't have diversity and unity because someone's not going to be part of your diversity.

[0:30] And so you got to get rid of them. But in the church, unity and diversity work together, right? We are unified in Christ. We all came to know Christ the same way.

[0:41] We all were drawn by God through His providential plan, given life by the Spirit, regenerated by the Spirit and made alive in Christ. We all came to Christ the same way, but we are all diverse in the fact of how God uses us in His body, right?

[0:57] We are many members used, but we're one. So there's a unity with diversity in the church that God has designed, but that's not how the world goes. So I'm hijacking the term back, taking it back.

[1:10] Tell the world, leave our terms alone. Leave our songs alone. Well, I want us to return now to Colossians chapter 3, right?

[1:20] We're talking about dressing in the clothes of godliness. And I've purposely entitled it that way because of what Paul says here in this book, that the doctrine we know is to be worked out in our lives practically.

[1:40] In other words, God wants us to be changed. He wants us to be holy. He wants us to be sanctified.

[1:52] In fact, when you think about the Scriptures, this is why the Scriptures are always a challenge for me as I go to them, because there's always conviction when I go to the Scriptures.

[2:03] I was talking to a couple guys between things and talking about conviction, that conviction is a grace by God, right? Never think conviction is a bad thing in your life. When someone tells you a thing it's hard to hear and it's convicting you, that's a grace of God in your life, right?

[2:18] What would it be like if you had no conviction? If you didn't know what you were doing was the wrong thing or challenged by it? Well, every time you open the Word of God, there's conviction. And so this is the reality.

[2:28] The Bible wasn't given to us simply to increase our knowledge about God and religious things. And then we go away going, oh, look, I'm so smart. I know the things about God. No, it was given to us to change our lives.

[2:40] It's not the business of the church to make attempts to adapt us to Christ. The business of the church, by God's providential design, is to have us adapted to Christ.

[2:54] Right? It's not the church that makes attempts to adapt us to Christ, right? Where we're attempting to do that. No. The providential design of God is these gifted men to teach in the church and us to iron, sharpen iron, and come alongside each other is so that we would be like Christ.

[3:15] That's what saving grace is all about. I was reminded of this recently as I was thinking about our time together. Late Puritan pastor Thomas Brooks said this, quote, saving grace makes a man as willing to leave his lusts as a slave is willing to leave his galley, or a prisoner his dungeon, or a thief his irons, or a beggar his rags, unquote.

[3:45] Man, the grace of God is such that it makes us willing to leave that. Willing to leave that.

[3:55] Right? Saving grace makes us willing to change. Why? Because it's God's passion to change us. It's God's passion to make us different. And this is what Paul is getting at in our text.

[4:08] He's exhorting us, as believers, to do this because the saving grace of God in our life. Do this because God saved you.

[4:18] Do this because He changed you. Do this because you're dead to that old stuff. John MacArthur once said, the Christian walk is much like riding a bike.

[4:31] You're either moving forward or you're falling off. Right? That's true. It's true. We are either imitating God or imitating the world.

[4:43] It's God's desire that through Paul that we move forward in our Christian lives. And that means we must willfully be putting off certain things.

[4:53] We have to willfully do that so we can willfully then put on the things that we ought to be doing. So what is it then we are to put off? Well, this is what we've been talking about here in verses 5 through 11.

[5:08] Those three imperatives that we are to these commands that we are to willfully follow. These action words if you will to move forward. They're not suggestions.

[5:19] They're not good ideas. Things that we can say well, you might want to think about this if you're going to get over this thing. No. That's not how the Word of God does it.

[5:30] These are things we must do. These are things we must practice in our lives because of who we are in Christ and if we're going to be mature in Christ we must do this.

[5:41] No other way around it. Like we said last night you have to go to the gym. You can desire to lose weight but if you don't do something to lose weight you're not going to lose weight. Great desire but you've got to do it.

[5:54] So we must not go away from our time in this conference. we must not think in the coming weeks what often takes place in our lives from time to time.

[6:08] Right? We we we listen to what God commands we open the Bible we read it we come to church we hear a good message we hear somebody preach the truth to us there's even conviction in our life and then simply what happens is we never think about it again.

[6:25] The worst thing can happen is we go oh man that was so good so and so needs to hear that. No, no, no. No, no. We need to hear it.

[6:36] See what we do is sometimes we in our minds we we put all those good principles and things we've heard in this nice little book of principles and we put it on the shelf in our mind and we leave it there.

[6:48] We never practice it. We go around thinking hey yeah I'm a pretty good Christian because I I know all this stuff. Yeah, we don't do it. We don't do it.

[7:00] Right? We just leave it on the shelf so to speak of good intentions. It's interesting that James tells us not to do that.

[7:15] Right? James clearly tells us chapter 1 verse 23 for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer he's like a man who looks in his natural face in a mirror and for once he's looked at himself he's gone away he's immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.

[7:35] That's what that does. To hear it and not put it into practice that's a problem so we cannot miss the urgency we cannot miss the imperative nature of what God is calling us to do here from this text.

[7:49] If you and I are going to be changed by God if our lives are going to be different as we are called to he's not going to do as we heard last night what he has commanded us to do.

[8:01] He's not going to do that. We have to do that. Each one of us have to be diligent to put it into practice. So those three commands are here right? Persistently number one put off the garment of physical pleasure.

[8:16] We're going to get into the second one now put off the persistently put off the garment of prideful power and we'll touch on the third one is also persistently put off the garment of personal persuasion.

[8:31] And you notice even from last session and this session I purposefully have used the term persistently. Persistently.

[8:43] Right? It's deliberate. It's intentional. Why? Because we have to understand that each one of these is a continual work. You cannot just stop.

[8:55] You have to continue. Don't ever get to the point in your mind in my mind the picture of that 84 year old man rolls around. Don't ever get to the point in your life and in your mind as a Christian where you think you've arrived at full Christian maturity.

[9:15] There's no other work needed in your area of life. Don't ever think like that. This side of heaven we're never going to arrive at Christ like maturity. We're never going to get fully there.

[9:28] Glory yes. Take our last breath and step into heaven. Yeah. We don't need any more maturity. We'll still learn about God because God isn't exhaustive in his word.

[9:40] We'll know things about him. We'll see Christ as he there's always that growing always that striving even more so Satan is always seeking those whom he might trip up along the way.

[9:58] So we can't ever get lax. It's a persistent battle. In fact I'm reminded of Paul's words in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12.

[10:09] Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers and against the powers and against the world forces of the darkness against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

[10:23] And you say how does that go with this? I thought you said we have a battle. Right? It's here. I thought we're fighting against the sin nature. Well that's true.

[10:35] That's true as far as the outworking of sin goes. Right? The outworking of sin is the sin nature. We're working in this. Christ likeness more and more holy in our practice.

[10:51] But the forces behind the system of worldliness that our sinful flesh loves is the system of Satan. It's the world. It's the system of the world.

[11:02] It's the prince of the power of the air as Ephesians 2 says. Right? He's the father of lies. He's the spin doctor of temptation. So when we fight against the flesh, when we are not willing to submit ourselves to the things of the flesh, the desires of the flesh, we are ultimately fighting against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the spiritual world.

[11:27] Because they don't want us to do that. They just want us to have victory. They want to shame God's name. And the better way to shame God's name is for us as God's people to say, yeah, it really doesn't matter. So it's a persistent battle we fight because we never stop growing in Christ's likeness.

[11:47] We have to be persistent. But it's a battle nonetheless. It's a battle that we can have victory in. I said last night, sometimes we think it's impossible. Or I just can't do it.

[11:58] No, it's not impossible. Why? Because we're new in Christ. Right? We are the children of God. You once walked that way.

[12:11] that's how you carried your life. You didn't care about anything else. Sin was the way you lived. But now you're in Christ. Now that's not you.

[12:23] So we learned last time this first command, persistently put off the garment of physical pleasure. And we found out really that pleasure in all of its forms really boils down to that one issue, idolatry.

[12:36] The love and service of self. The seeking of personal pleasure is to seek self. And to seek self is to be an idolater.

[12:47] It really doesn't matter what it is. Physical, sexual, material, it doesn't matter. Any kind of self gratification, any kind of thing through which even false philosophies of the worldly thinking come into our lives and we hold them, each come from that same source.

[13:04] It's a love of me. As one friend told me one time, it's the me monster of our society. I find that ironic that we call our phones the I phone.

[13:16] The iPad and the I this and the I that and the I everything. I love it. I have it. Works well. But it's driven by I. It's me. It's all about me.

[13:28] It's all about what I want. It's self-worship at its worst. God's commanding us one and all to be persistently putting off the I of self.

[13:39] kill it. How do you kill it? Starve it. Starve it. Don't give it food. Kill it by refusing to use it. Persistently throw it aside. Submit to what is right and good and pleasing in the sight of God.

[13:53] So let's get into the second one then. Persistently put off the garment of prideful power. Prideful power. Notice what he says in verse eight. But now you also put them all aside.

[14:09] Anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech from your mouth. Stop right there. It's interesting. It's interesting because this is the second list in this text.

[14:27] The second list that we have of sins. Right? The first was immorality, impurity. Right? These things that Paul listed before and now. Here's a second list. Anger, wrath, malice.

[14:40] Verse five, it's all personal in nature. It's all about my heart. The outworking of my heart. What I'm doing. It's personal pleasure. It's inflicted on self because of the worship of self.

[14:54] But the second list is different. The second list reaches out to others. others. The second list is all about others. It reaches to the other side. It reaches out.

[15:05] It's not so much to get from others what I want, but rather to purposefully injure others. That's the idea here.

[15:16] In other words, these are acts of sin which have their basis in self-gratification, the same idolatry. So it's still idolatry here, but it's an idolatry with the purpose of bringing others down in the process.

[15:31] It's a love of self which looks at others and says, I'm going to put you down so I can be raised up. So this is the sin of desiring to have power over and above others.

[15:45] That's why I've called it that. It's in order to gain that, the person's sin is manifested in the ways that are listed here. And again, this is not an exhaustive list.

[15:58] This is not, well, this is the only thing. No, this is a list of those things that are common to us. Common to us. Because there are other lists, right?

[16:09] There are other places in Scripture where it says put this off, put this off, put this off. Several other times in the New Testament. Romans 13 verse 12, there's sins to put off. Ephesians 4 verse 22 and 25, there's things to put off.

[16:23] Hebrews 12 verse 1, there's more things to put off. James 1 verse 21, there's things you ought to put off. 1 Peter 2 verse 1, there's things you ought to put off. So it's all over the place in the New Testament.

[16:38] And each time you read those, it carries with it the idea of casting something aside. And not just casting it aside as if you go, okay, I'm not going to use that today. No, it's casting it off altogether.

[16:50] Throwing it in the trash bin and getting rid of it. In other words, completely get rid of the things from your life. Completely rid yourself of all of this.

[17:01] So the command here, put this off, put them all aside, has with that not simply the command, not a suggestion, but a command to say get rid of it once and for all.

[17:12] So these are character issues in our life. And we have to take decisive action to completely eradicate them from us.

[17:25] Get them out. And so the connotation here is that if the person who is characterized by these continual and unrepentant habits of sin in their life, mark that, continual and unrepentant, along with verse 5, continual and unrepentant, irrespective of what they profess with their mouth, I love Jesus or I'm a follower of Jesus, if there's a continual unrepentant practice of these things in their lives, they will still be sons of disobedience.

[17:57] That's their life and they don't want to repent of it. There's no reason to believe they know Christ. They may be professors of Christ but they're not possessors of Christ.

[18:11] So here is an unchanged character, that's the idea, an unwillingness to change, deceiving themselves in their salvation. This is what Paul's saying, this is who you were.

[18:22] But he lists this stuff. Is this still you? That's the idea. Is this who you still are? Is this the practice of your life? Is this the habitual practice?

[18:33] Are you willing to do anything to change that? Anything to put that off? Anything willing to starve that at all? If not, then you have to ask yourself, am I in the Lord? It's much like Paul said to the Corinthian church in 2 Corinthians 13.

[18:46] He talks about all these things. He defends his ministry in 2 Corinthians and at the end in chapter 13 verse 5 he says, test yourself, see if you're in the faith, unless you fail to test. He's not saying, well you're saved and you can lose your salvation.

[19:00] He's saying, listen, if you don't pass the test, you need to question as to whether you were ever saved. Why? Because the same person desires to God does in you.

[19:12] He doesn't leave you the same. So what does he say here for us in this passage? The first thing listed in these character qualities, the first is anger.

[19:23] Anger. It's the word orge in the original. It's anger in a state of mind. It's a state of mind kind of anger.

[19:35] In other words, it's a settled anger. It's a disposition of anger. It's similar to the kind of anger that we see in Christ one time.

[19:47] You go, ah, you're attributing sin to Christ. No, no. It's that settled anger that came out of Christ because he hates evil and anything that caused God's name to be blasphemed.

[19:57] He cast them out of the temple. Why? Because of that kind of orge. It's the same word. So this kind of anger isn't in and of itself bad. It's what it does sometimes that's bad.

[20:11] Christ was righteous in his anger. I don't know that any time in my entire life I've ever had this kind of righteous anger. I wouldn't know if it was.

[20:22] My heart's too sinful. All I know is I'm angry. Sometimes I'm angry at somebody because God's name's being blasphemed. And I hope it's righteous anger, but it can be so mixed with my flesh.

[20:41] Sinful anger. That's what Paul's talking about. Seeks only itself. Sinful anger seeks power that it can have over others.

[20:52] It's, get this, sinful anger is self-defensive. Is that the first thing that comes out of our mouth when somebody's challenging us on some issue in our life? Oh, you don't know.

[21:03] Who are you? It's the same heart. It's the same heart. Self-defensive, self-serving. It's the kind of deep-seated resentment that wants to pay back evil for evil.

[21:17] Why? So it can control. This is what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5, verse 21 and 22. He said, you have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not commit murder.

[21:33] Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. In other words, you actually go kill somebody, you're going to be held accountable for that. You've heard that, that's what he says. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.

[21:48] Everyone who says to his brother, Raka, shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. That means you're a numskull, a fool. fool. In fact, anyone who says that shall be guilty enough to go into the fires of hell.

[22:08] Why is Jesus saying that? Because it reveals something about your heart. It's a heart issue. Your heart is revealed on the outside. So that kind of anger doesn't fix itself any more than an inflated tire can add air to itself.

[22:26] It just won't do it. We have to put it off. If we cling to an attitude of anger, it's going to sink into its poisonous teeth into us when we least expect it.

[22:41] We won't put it off. You say, how do you know that? Proverbs 19, 19. Here's what it says. A hot tempered man must pay the penalty. If you rescue him, you'll have to do it again.

[22:58] Think about that. A hot tempered man, he must pay the penalty. Why? Because the penalty is a school master. The penalty teaches. If you just brush it off, guess what you're doing?

[23:12] Saying, it's okay, your heart's fine, go ahead. And you're going to have to deal with that again. He has to pay the penalty. That teaches. So the implication of that verse there in Proverbs 19, 19 is that there are natural consequences when anger is embraced.

[23:33] So before the consequences come, and they will, get rid of anger. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. It doesn't do any good. Now I preached for 18 years in New England, and of course New England was really born on the revivals in America.

[23:52] Jonathan Edwards, the staunch name in New England. And just to let you know, New England now, the six states of New England, there's only 2% by statistics that are churched.

[24:04] 2%, and most of those are Catholic. And yet Jonathan Edwards, when he was there, had an angry daughter, history tells us.

[24:15] His daughter had a heart of anger. And one day a young man fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. Jonathan Edwards was a wise father. Because the man came to him and said, Mr.

[24:26] Edwards, I want to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage. And he said, you can't have her. He said, but I love her. And he said, you can't have her.

[24:39] But she loves me, Mr. Edwards. He said, you can't have her. But why, he asked. She's a Christian, isn't she? And he said, yes, she's a Christian.

[24:54] But the grace of God can live with some people to whom no one else could ever live. You can't live with angry. You can't live with it.

[25:07] Persistently put off anger, Paul said. Get rid of it. Why? Because it will have its consequences. And they are never good.

[25:20] Secondly, he says, get rid of wrath. Wrath. It's like anger. It's like anger. But rather than a settled thing, wrath is a boiling anger.

[25:32] It's a boiling over of anger. It's an outburst of anger with a purpose. And the purpose is revenge. It's an interesting word in the original language. The word is thumos.

[25:43] You know the word thumos. That's where we get our term thermometer. Thermometer measures what? Heat, cold, temperature. It rises when the heat rises.

[25:54] That's thumos. It's the rising of heat. It's to move unpredictably with violent motion. That's the idea. I was reading that and my mind was taken back to when I was candidating in Ohio.

[26:16] Wednesday night I was there in the church and having a question and answer time in the basement of the church and the tornado sirens went off. And of course it was kind of interesting for me.

[26:27] I was a California kid. I grew up in California and never had been in a tornado. I thought this is awesome. This is great. I mean I'm in this brick building that was built in the 1900s that had survived a massive tornado that had gone through the earth.

[26:44] I thought this is cool. That's going to watch it kind of idea. And my wife's like you can't say this is cool to those kind of people. They lived through tornadoes. This violent wind.

[26:55] And she was right. But I thought about it. I thought that's what this word means. It's ripping apart of the natural and man-made structures with violent results. Not out of a settled storm but an unsettled storm.

[27:11] This violent eruption that just rips things apart. That's Thuma. That's Thuma. Wrath that's born out of this explosion, this volcanic like settled lava that's been lying below for some time comes bursting out with that atomic power and totally devastates everything around.

[27:36] That's what anger and wrath do. They destroy. Why? Because they seek control. Anger and wrath want power. They want to own.

[27:48] They want to destroy and they'll destroy others to get it. That's the idea. Put them aside. Get rid of them. Anger, wrath, and Paul says malice.

[28:00] We don't use that word in our vernacular much today. But it's a general term. It just means wickedness, moral evil. Anything that's wicked, anything that's bad, it's evil habits, but more than just evil habits in practice, evil habits in the mind.

[28:20] Paul's drawing even on what he had said earlier. This debased mind. I used to say it's just stinking thinking. Get that out of your head.

[28:31] It's like the gas tank of anger and wrath. That's what malice is. It fuels it. It's the evil thoughts that tempt us to do wrong to others.

[28:44] Somebody offends you. Somebody does something to you. The first thing that comes to your mind is malice. I want to get back at that guy. I didn't like that. I want to do something.

[28:56] Is that the first thing that comes to you? Maybe you never do it. Praise God you never carry it out. But what comes into your mind? Is the first thing when somebody attacks you get offended by that because they've attacked you?

[29:12] Guys, the Christian life shouldn't be like that. We should be as offendable as cardboard. I was telling my wife that the other day. I said, you know, the UPS guy delivered something to the house.

[29:22] He just kind of threw it in the porch. It's a cardboard box. I said, you know, I never heard the cardboard scream. Never heard it cry out that it was whining about how the guy treated it. I said, that's how we ought to be as Christians.

[29:35] Well, it doesn't matter. Go ahead. Attack me. It's all right. There's something we need to work through and challenge we need to deal with. I'm not going to have this mind of malice that looks at you and says, I'm going to get back.

[29:49] Nursing an injustice that you've done to me. Something that breeds an animosity in me against you. I'm not going to do that. You see malice in action, particularly in the Old Testament at the very beginning, right?

[30:05] Malice is what was in the hearts of Joseph's brothers that put him in the pit. They didn't like Joseph. They didn't like who he was. They didn't like what he said. And so they said, we're going to get back at you.

[30:17] We're going to get rid of you. It was malice that bred animosity in the hearts of those who were against Daniel, as we saw last night. So he was thrown in a lion's den.

[30:31] The satraps didn't want him to be the one who was raised up, and so they wanted to get rid of him. It was malice that was in the heart of Cain, so that he killed his brother Abel.

[30:42] He didn't like what Abel got. This has happened throughout the ages. It's been malice in the hearts of men that has brought the destruction to families, destruction to communities, and sadly, destruction to churches.

[31:02] churches. They come in and say, you have offended me, something didn't go my way, I want it that way, and so they destroy the place.

[31:14] I was telling Jeff this week, I usually refer to that kind of thing and people like that as spiritual terrorists. They come in, they get offended, they do something, and what do they do?

[31:26] They leave their satchel charge of lies and everything else at the door when they leave, and it blows up after they're gone. Church is hurt, there's innocent carnage, people are lying all over the place, misunderstanding, don't know what's going on because they wanted something, they didn't get it, they got offended.

[31:45] Malice. Is it any wonder that Paul urges that to be thrown off? Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Well, the spiral continues downward, anger, wrath, malice, notice the fourth, Paul says slander, get rid of slander.

[32:06] Slander is the outworking, the outworking of that desire to wound somebody else by way of some kind of evil report about them. It's power over another by way of speaking lies.

[32:21] You know what the literal word there is in the original language? Blasphemeo. Blasphemy. It's blasphemy. You are blaspheming someone else. And when it's used in relation to God, you see the word in the scriptures translated that way, blasphemy.

[32:37] But when you see it in relation to human beings, you know what it's translated like? Slander. Blasphemy is a lie about God. Blasphemy is the same as slander. Slander is a lie about someone else.

[32:49] It means the same thing. It means to abuse someone with words, to tear them apart. Why?

[33:00] Simply because you're intent on hurting them and their reputation for your own self gratification and elevation. That's what blasphemy does.

[33:13] Seeks power. Power of position over somebody else. That's why it tears others apart with words. If evil attitudes are put away, then the heated metal of that kind of anger that's forged into the tips of those poison arrows that come from the tongue, they result in hurtful speech, and defaming someone else's character, if that goes unchecked, you know what it turns into?

[33:56] The next thing Paul lists? Abusive speech. Abusive speech. You let anger and wrath and malice and slander stir in your heart, the next thing that's coming out is abusive speech.

[34:10] It's more than just hurtful words, it's filthy words. That's the idea. It's obscene words. It includes certainly derogatory comments about somebody else intended to wound them, but it includes joining those derogatory comments with derogatory stories, slandering somebody in a group of people in order to garner some kind of laughter against that person or bring dishonor upon that person.

[34:44] That's the idea. It's abusive speech. Our speech, because we are the children of God, beloved, is to be above all of that.

[34:58] Never will it be that if we don't put off and starve it to death though. Get it out of your mouth. Jesus Christ said, be careful what you say.

[35:10] Matthew 12, verse 36. Why? Because every careless word that men speak shall have to give an account for it on the day of judgment. Every careless word.

[35:23] Man, I'll tell you what, if we just thought of that one verse, memorized it in our heart and lived it, we'd walk around quiet most of the time, wouldn't we? So Paul says, persistently put off physical pleasure.

[35:38] That was our first thing from last time. persistently put off the garment of prideful power. And then thirdly, he says, put off the garment of personal persuasion.

[35:52] Personal persuasion. Verses 9 through 11. Notice, do not lie to one another. The grammar there, by the way, isn't do not lie, it's stop lying.

[36:05] The implication is you are lying, so stop it. So stop lying to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him, a renewal which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free men, but Christ is all and in all.

[36:34] Stop trying to persuade others that you're better than them, that's the idea. True Christians are truthful people.

[36:47] That just simply means there's no place for liars in the kingdom of God. You can't be lying about the true self and be true. Be honest. Be honest.

[36:58] That's where my heart is. Be honest with people. In fact, Revelation 21 verse 8 says, For the cowardly and the unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

[37:21] Liars. The believer certainly can fall into all kinds of sin. Lying certainly can be one of them. But here's the issue.

[37:33] If the life of that person is habitually a flow of untruths, if that's the habitual reality of their life, that it's untrue about them, then that person should have no reason to believe they're saved.

[37:51] They're deceiving themselves. Satan is the father of lies. And anybody who goes around living that way in that principle of lying shows themselves, according to John 8, 44, to be a child of Satan, not a child of God.

[38:09] Right? Jesus said to the Pharisees, you are of your father the devil. Why? Because they were living a lie. They said they loved God, but they didn't love him. So it was all a sham.

[38:21] It was all a lie. We live in a culture today that spews out lies at every turn. this is what we hear all the time. Our culture is in really an ethical crisis.

[38:35] Public media is full of it, full of manipulation, full of half-truths. Right? I mean, think about it. Turn on TV. If you use the right kind of toothpaste product, your teeth are going to be renewed to the whiteness virtually never seen before.

[38:50] Right? Drink a certain health drink and you too can have the desired shape and be the desired person you always wanted to be. Just drink this.

[39:02] Right? It's all manipulation. It's a desire to personally persuade others to believe untruths. That's what it is. So it's a blatant disregard for the truth.

[39:16] The disposition for lying everywhere. You know the sad thing to me? It seems as if the evangelical church today is no exception. right?

[39:30] Some in the church lie and they don't even know they're lying. It's such an ingrained reality. Why?

[39:42] Because lying includes more than just simply telling direct falsehoods. Lying includes exaggeration. right?

[39:53] Telling the picture, embellishing it bigger than what it really is in order to be seen as something you're not. Adding falsehood to that which begins true. True. I read a story some time ago.

[40:11] It was a Christian man who became widely known for his testimony. His testimony was pretty graphic, pretty big. After several years he stopped telling it.

[40:25] Somebody asked him, hey, why don't you tell your testimony anymore? He said, well, over the years I embellished the story so much I don't even know longer what's true or not. Somebody fed that with an excitement the first time and that excitement felt good and so he embellished it and got a little more excitement and it got wider and wider and wider and now he's been doing it so long he doesn't even know what is real.

[40:50] Making promises foolishly, knowing you can't keep it, that's lying. Flattery, that's lying.

[41:03] Making excuses about your actions, that's lying. Cheating on anything, that's lying. Right? They're all forms of lying and none of it should exist among followers of him who is the truth, Jesus Christ.

[41:22] Right? We are to be characterized by laying aside once and for all the old cell. Why? Because it's incompatible with the new nature. It's not who you are.

[41:35] The Bible tells us we're being continually renewed. I love that word. That word means renovated. I have for a time spent some time being a finished carpenter in my days and I renovated a whole lot of things.

[41:52] Renovation means change. You take what was old, you get rid of it, you renovate it, you do something different, something new. Well, this change, this renewal is taking place in each of us personally as Christians.

[42:06] This is what God is doing. It's being performed by God himself. God is working in us by his spirit so that we are new in our understanding and new in our being.

[42:19] All that we are is new. This is what Paul says, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to the true knowledge according to the image of the one who has created him.

[42:36] We're being renewed, renovated, renovated into Christlikeness. Put it off. Right? This is that progressive sanctification.

[42:47] We wonder how it works. This is how it works. It's God making us godly. This side of heaven. We're perfect in Christ in the glories of heaven.

[42:58] Right? We're in Christ. We're perfect in the eyes of God and yet this side of heaven he's making us practically holy. He's making us godly over time.

[43:09] it. As he comes and he renovates us and stirs up in us all those things that we know we shouldn't be doing and that conviction comes and what do we do with that?

[43:21] If we don't put it aside then we're living like the old man. So this renovation far exceeds anything the false teachers were trying to preach.

[43:33] All those who had come into the Colossian church and tried to draw them away, they couldn't fix anything. Theirs was worldly renovation. It was Christless.

[43:46] It was only available to those who would follow their legalistic rules. Do this and do that and then you'll be seen as righteous. This is why Paul says it's a renewal which there's no distinction between Greek and Jew.

[43:58] Listen, don't make those distinctions. There's no barriers. You're no better. There's no cultural distinction. There's no religious distinction. There's no social distinction. There's no racial distinction.

[44:10] There's no Jew or Greek. That's racial. There's no circumcised or uncircumcised. That's religious. There's no slave or free. That's social. There's no barbarian or Scythian.

[44:22] That's cultural. There's no differences. We all came to Christ the same way. We're all in God's family. There's a renewal happening. Christ is making us like Christ.

[44:36] Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. Our lives are to reflect the very character of God. That's the point. So if we say that we love God, then we're commanded here, particularly in verse 10, to speak the truth.

[44:55] Don't lie. Or verse 9, speak the truth. Don't lie to one another. We're truth speakers. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4.

[45:11] Right? Ephesians 4, verse 25. Therefore, lay aside all falsehoods. Speak truth, each one of you to his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Oh, and don't be angry.

[45:24] You can be angry, but don't let sin, don't sin in your anger. Don't let that go down, don't go to bed angry.

[45:35] Don't give the devil an opportunity. All of these things. In verse 31, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from you, along with malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other.

[45:51] right? This is what it is. When you and I placed our faith in Christ, we were made alive in Christ, we were removed out of the domain of Satan into the domain of Christ.

[46:04] Colossians chapter 1, we were transferred. Right? Every kind of lying is inconsistent with our new self. That's Paul's point. We are Christians, and as Christians, we are to be habitual, true speakers.

[46:21] motivation for telling the truth is that we are new in Christ. That's the motivation. Why should I do that? Because you're in Christ. You're not that anymore.

[46:34] You were that, but you're not that. So here's the reality, guys. God's making us different. He's making us godly. And so he desires to change us.

[46:48] So that's the conviction in the question. Are we persistently putting off the old garments? Are we putting those aside, once or for all? Or do we lay them in the corner, and if we feel like we go pick them back up and start doing it again?

[47:04] No, we have to persistently do it. Persistently put off the garment of physical pleasure. Persistently put off the garment of prideful power. Persistently put off the garment of personal persuasion.

[47:16] Why? Because God isn't interested in our self-made success. not interested in that. But he is very interested in our godliness. Very interested in us being mature in him.

[47:33] Well, I know you kind of been drinking from the fire hydrant this morning as we've kind of done this. And it's going to be even harder to listen after lunch. Right?

[47:44] I know you've been smelling those fumes coming out of the kitchen and I see some of you drifting. Your minds are going over there. So we'll leave it there and we'll come back to our final session after lunch.

[47:59] And I'll try my best to keep you awake. After all that meat is sitting there and your blood is rushing to your gut. Right? Terry, will you lead us in thanking God for the food as well so they can just get it?

[48:11] Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me pray guys. Heavenly Father we are so grateful that we can be like Christ. We're so grateful that your spirit indwells us.

[48:25] We're so grateful that we have been made alive in Christ and that by your spirit we can walk in obedience to you. We can put off these things.

[48:36] We don't have to allow them to be even a vestige in our heart and life. And Lord where we exercise any of it may we quickly arrest it, turn from it, put it off.

[48:50] And Lord we thank you that this group of men comes together here as a church that they are sharpening one another in these things and that you have allowed them to be here by your grace.

[49:03] Lord we thank you for those who have put together this conference and even this afternoon prepared for us to have food together. What a privilege that is. Thank you for providing for us through them.

[49:15]  May you bless us as we partake in it and bless those who have provided all to your glory. We thank you in Christ's name. Amen.