Thank you, Alex. And good morning church. And good morning to those of you who are in the great room downstairs.

Glad to see all of you here today. And my name is Michael. I'm the lead pastor here at Christ the King church and excited for the baptisms. We've got two coming up later. Alex already mentioned that, but we'll do that at the end of our service. I wanted to give you a quick update from just the, all the stuff related to the building that we're, we've been talking about.

Last Sunday we did a member meeting and there were two votes. One of the votes was to appoint seven deacons. So very glad for that. We're going to, very glad to have very qualified and strong, godly men who can serve the church in various capacities. We will appoint them on the 24th.

So that is two, two weeks from today. Is that right? Something like that. Three, three weeks from today, pastor math, three weeks from today, November 24th, we will appoint them. And then the members also voted to move forward with the purchase of a new building. So, this is this is great news, but we also want to just set the right expectations because once you enter into this phase, there are just a lot of unknowns that can come about.

So let me just give you a couple of details. First thing we're going to do this week, there is already an attorney that is that has the information needed to draft up a purchase contract. And so, with that should be done, hopefully to, ready to sign by all parties this week, Lord willing, with no trouble.

After we sign the purchase contract, what happens then is we enter into a due diligence period and the due diligence period is for thorough building inspections to find out anything and everything we can about this building top to bottom, inside and out to know what any problems that need to be, we need to be aware of and need to be addressed.

Some of y'all know Gex Williams. I saw him a second ago. I think he's running the cameras, but Gex Williams, the younger and James Stephan are both involved in that. This is their field, their areas of expertise. So, they are the right guys to be helping with those things. So that is what they are doing.

And the, this due diligence period lasts for 60 days. So that gives us two months to, to find out everything we can. And if we find out anything about this building that we're like Hey, this is something I know we don't like it. Or for any other reason, we can walk away without any penalty. So, we have the option if we don't like what's, like what's going on, then we can walk away with no problem.

Once that due diligence is complete, we'll have another 30 days to go to closing. And then once we go to closing, that's when it's final, they hand you the keys and that's our new church building. If everything goes well. So, the timeline is longer than I originally thought. So, it's a, we're thinking maybe 30 to 60 days.

Now it's going to be more like 60 to 90 days, most likely. And these, there's a lot of things that's outside of our control that's determining that. So probably sometime February would be a good, healthy, realistic expectation for when we If all goes according to plan, when we could acquire the building and patience is good, right?

Patience is our friend. The timeline gives us more, there's a couple of things that will happen during that, that longer time. That's good for us. One is there's the million dollar down payment that's due at closing. This works to our advantage because we can, we'll have that much time to complete the fundraising.

And it gives us more time to get this building on the market. So that, we're looking to sell this building that will help, apply to the cost of the other place. Speaking of fundraising, I've got a, an update on the capital campaign. This is where we currently are. Can you see that?

Okay. So, we've had 852, 322 pledged, which leaves 147, 687 remaining. To hit that 1 million goal. So now that we're, now that we've done the pledge part that we're in the next phase, which is pledge fulfillment and just ordinary fundraising. So, if you've made a pledge and you've yet to fulfill it one easy way to do it is to go to the website here, ctkcincy.com/NKY. And that takes you directly to our giving web or giving portal that you can make a donation there. Or if you want to write a check and just put Northern Kentucky building in the memo, you can drop it in the silver boxes. It'll all get to the same place. I think that's yep. So that's it.

So, this will continue, and I'll keep giving you regular updates over the next, few weeks and a couple months as. As this plays out and as always, any questions that you have, concerns, whatever please don't hesitate to reach out to me or who, if you know somebody else that'd be better to answer the question, just let me know.

And we're happy to answer those questions. Okay. Let's dive into Colossians chapter three. We're doing a series through the book of Colossians over the last, like last week and this week, we're talking about mortifying sin, mortifying various sins. Colossians And then the text that we looked at last week, Paul reminded them to the context to get to where we are.

Paul reminded them that they have died with Christ, we were raised with Christ, and now Christ is your life. So, you've died with Christ, you were raised with Christ, and now Christ is your life. Therefore, you're called to walk with Christ. To put on Christ, as we'll look at today. And you do that by putting off the old way of sin, put off the old and old self and you put on the new way of Christ.

That's what we're going to look at today. And this week we're going to apply that big idea to a different set of sins than last week. So, let's read through the text. I'll start with chapter three, and we'll pick it up right where we left off last week. So, in Colossians three chapter or chapter three, verse eight, and we'll read to verse 17.

But now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath. Malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free.

But Christ is all and in all put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So, you also must forgive and above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thanksgiving in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This is God's word. Okay. Last week, the big focus was on sexual sin and this week we're going to focus on a different group or different list of sins, and these are more manifestations of anger or manifestations of sinful speech. We're going to drill down a lot on verses 8 through 10 because there's a lot here.

It's another sin list, and these deal with a lot of relational sins and the way that we interact with one another within the body of Christ. So, I'll have another look at these. Verse 8. But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Let's go through these different sins and we'll just give a quick little definition and explanation of a few here. The first one here is anger. Greek word for that is orge, orge. And the Bible dictionary says it's the most striking manifestation of this kind of anger is impulsive action. It's the kind of anger that makes you impulsive and stupid.

Whenever you're angry, you do dumb things because it just you're this, there's the anger tempts you to be impulsive and just to do things because you're hot about it. And so, you might say and do things in the moment that cause harm. And there's a particular nuance to this particular, this word for anger, and it's oriented towards revenge.

It's a kind of anger. It's I want payback. I want to get back at the person who did something wrong to me. And so, you're going to lash out or do something that is harmful. That's orge. Wrath, this word, all of the, there's so much overlap in these words. There's a kind of hitting a same idea from different angles.

The Greek word for this is thymus. Thymos. It's also translatable as fury or rage, and it's got this connotation of a violent force of nature, like great wind or great rushing water. So, it's this kind of overwhelming stream of emotion. Malice is the next one. The Greek word for that is kakia.

And that refers to evil or wickedness or a hateful feeling. It is this desire to cause or intend harm on someone. Slander, that word, the Greek is blasphemia. And so, if you, probably sounds familiar because it's a, the cognate in English is blasphemy or to blaspheme someone. Now whatever it's directed towards God, it is we would just say it's blasphemy.

It's got its own word. But the same Greek word can be applied to other people to were. What is, what we would say blasphemy towards God, the same Greek word just towards other people, but we don't translate it blasphemy towards other people. We would translate it slander or something like that. But it's to revile someone or to defame them.

It is to damage their reputation often through something incorrect or you're spreading misinformation or a lie or deceit about someone with a, with an attempt to soil the reputation. The next one, obscene talk. This one's hard to say. I ask prologia. I ask prologia. And it's, so there's a couple of different connotations of this.

And you see this, if some of you may have different translations of the Bible in the ESV, which is what I'm using here. He, it's translated obscene talk, and that has a sense of vulgar speech or dirty talk. And it might have a sexual sort of connotation to it. But the New American Standard Bible has a different translation that I'm at least intrigued by.

And New American Standard translates it abusive speech. So, it's that's more in the category of the angry speech. So, it seems to fit thematically with the ones previous in this list. Here in verse nine, we have the word lie. That's pseudomai, pseudomai. And Bible dictionary says for this, it's to communicate with what is false with the evident purpose of misleading.

So, there's two, two components to this sort of lie. It's saying something false. So, it's something that's not true. It's inaccurate, but you're doing it with the intent to deceive. There is some, there's some purpose behind the incorrect information. It's not I gave you direction somewhere and I've, I told you to turn at the wrong place because I was mistaken.

No that's not a lie that there's no, that's not a moral thing. This was a human mistake. There's a moral weight here and that is I'm intending to deceive. So, this sin list includes various sins of attitude and sins of speech that at the head of these is anger. And anger is the driving force behind them.

And then it works its way out and different things that people say, different kinds of communication that are harmful. And so, I want to camp out on this concept for a bit because there is a, there's a bit of a low-grade controversy in the Christian world over the last several years about how should Christians speak?

What's appropriate Christian speech and what's out of bounds and just to give you an example of what I'm getting at, a flashpoint is that in this controversy names like Doug Wilson, some, Doug Wilson, and there's a wide range of opinions on the things that he says. In my opinion, he's a godly Christian man who's saying hard things, but not everybody feels that way about him.

Some people love Wilson, and they agree with everything he says just because they love him. There are other people that they have Wilson derangement syndrome. It's like everything he says is wrong and nothing he says is right. And it's just automatically discounted because of who he is.

And then there's this category of people who would say, I, I appreciate and agree with a lot of what he says, but I don't like how he says it. Those sort of reactions to one guy is this is in the evangelical world and the way that we think about speech and what is appropriate and how Christians should talk.

Now, we want to assume from the outset that all sincere Christians want to honor God with their words and their attitudes. So, we want to like, Sincere Christians, that's what we want. We want to be God honoring. We want to speak the truth in love, but we would also say all sincere Christians want to avoid sinful speech if they're truly God honoring Christian man or woman, they want to avoid sinful speech, and the disagreement is about what constitutes the sinful part?

How do you know when you've crossed that line? Into sinful speech. So, the word that that I'm thinking of here is this obscene talk. There's a, Paul is saying, avoid this stuff, avoid this kind of behavior. And obscene talk will be something Paul said, don't do that. And then here's another one: Do not lie. Here's another thing. Don't do that. So, there's prohibitions, there's guardrails and limits about what is a good and appropriate for Christians to say. However, lying is. The flip side is commended all through scripture. We are truth telling people. We want to honor God by speaking the truth. So, the challenge here then is how do we determine what is good or bad?

What is obscene talk to avoid it? And what standards should we use to determine whether or not it's appropriate? The Bible doesn't have a list and an appendix in the back of forbidden words. You're good as long as you don't say any of these words. And here's just a list of them. And the Bible itself uses words that you might say, you wouldn't say that at Thanksgiving dinner.

Some of the words and some of the things it talks about. And so, the Bible itself says things that we might find objectionable or make us uncomfortable. So, what do we do with that? The thing is that we've got these interests that are, that can be held in tension with one another and wisdom is what is needed to determine what's appropriate.

So, there's two angles and I want to just work through two angles of this and both of these angles have something commendable and praiseworthy and good about them and both angles have a temptation that we want to avoid, and I want to work through that and apply it for a few minutes here. First angle is this one.

There is a need for and a value of bold, plain-spoken truth. That's the do not lie part rather speak the truth. The other angle is the need for wisdom and restraint that there is some, there's some guardrails about what is acceptable for Christians to say even when speaking true things. So, we'll, let's start with the first one here.

The first one is we should value plain spoken truth. We should value plain spoken truth. Verse nine, do not lie to one another. And that is various versions of that command are all through the scriptures. Don't lie. And then on the contrary to that is speak the truth where to be truth telling people. We uphold truth.

Christianity is truth. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life truth is at the very heart of what we believe and uphold as Christians. So, let's say the very best version of this. You would have bold, lion hearted, prophetic, courageous voices that would cut through the noise of our society and the lies and deceit, and they have a clear message that, that really just, that brings clarity to a situation.

That's fairly, that, that is what would say is we want that. We value that. And it would be very easy to demonstrate that is good from scripture. Let's say the worst version of this. The worst version of this is being jerks for Jesus. It is just being nasty, being mean. Even though you're saying things that are true, there are ways to say things that are true that are clearly violation of these things.

It's like you could say true things with anger. You can say true things with wrath and malice and slander, even though technically the thing that you're communicating is accurate. That's the worst version of it. So, there's these jerks for Jesus have this could be a temptation to sinfully provoke other people to anger.

And they do it, for their own purpose for entertainment or to stroke their ego or to, there's some kind of thrill that they get out of just, kicking the hornet's nest. Now, from my point of view, knowing us, knowing who we are as a church, knowing the things that we value.

Of the two temptations, this one probably is a stronger temptation that we want to pay attention to. And that's because we value in our little corner of the Christian world, we value boldness and courage and truth telling and confronting evil and sin and wickedness and not being ashamed to say the hard thing publicly, boldly declaring it.

That's part of the ethos that we have as a church. And that is good and right that we do that. And so, then the temptation could be to disregard the Bible's commands about taming the tongue. That's To say just because it's true, I got to say it. And the fact that it's true, that removes all limitations.

And I just, I could just say whatever I want, disregard anything and everything about the effect that it has. That can be a temptation and that's something that we need to look out for, that we're not speaking the truth with anger and wrath and malice and slander and obscenity and saying things that are just, that are reckless.

James chapter three, if you're, if you want to read more about this, read James chapter three and you'll see just how he speaks about the power of the tongue, death and life are in the power of the tongue. Through the things you say, you can set the world on fire. And so, James has very strong warnings about the power of the tongue.

Jesus says, you will give account for every careless word. So, these things are really important that we were not just careless, but that when we speak, there is a particular motive or speaking the truth in love. And so, for people that value boldness and courage, we want to make sure that we're doing so in a way that honors Christ.

And that is truly speaking the truth in love. We're doing it because we love God. We love people. We love the truth. We love his word. And we're speaking something that is true and necessary, even if it makes people angry, because it is important. It's true. The simple version of that is, if somebody corrects them and says, hey, you're acting out of line, then they'll dismiss anything they have to say.

You're being a coward. You're, you just, you don't care about truth. You're silencing me because you're a liberal and just dismiss what they have to say. And I've seen this, we say, and you've probably seen it too. So, for us, it's just a, it's a thing we need to be aware of that valuing truth and needs to be done in a way that honors God.

Now let's look at the other side of this, the other thing from this angle, we want to say we should value speaking with godly wisdom and restraint. So, the Bible commands speaking the truth in love. Now we, I read over these earlier and we'll go through them again here in a few minutes. But if you'll just notice there's depending on how you count them, about 10 virtues listed in Colossians 2:12-17, compassion, kindness, humility, Meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love, peace, and thankfulness.

That's what he's commending. Put those things on. Wear those. Let those things be the clothing spiritually that you wear. So, the best version of this, that restraint side, is to be a Christian who speaks truth boldly and plainly, but does so with wisdom and restraint, guided by Christian virtue and love.

The worst version of this is to not speak because you're afraid and to not speak because you have this self-righteous tone policing that you mask as a virtue. And really, you're afraid. Really you don't like conflict. Really you don't like people being upset and conflict stresses you out. And the person saying the necessary, important, true thing, that's stirring up the conflict.

You want to blame that guy. Or blame that girl. Because that's the person saying the thing that is the flashpoint of controversy. And so, we tone police the one who's saying the thing. And that's often what I think happens to Doug Wilson. I'm not defending everything the man says. But I'm saying, often times when people, when there's some controversy that erupts about something he says, I think often it's of this variety.

For It says something that is a hard work that confronts and challenges. And so, people get upset about it. So that's, that, that is like a pharisaical attitude because people will appoint themselves as the gatekeepers of virtue and they're imposing this universal law of niceness on everyone.

And often you'll notice is that it's the ways that, that what the ways that people are criticized for what they say. It is criticized on the basis of something that is very vague and subjective. That's not very Christ that doesn't honor the Lord. How do you know?

What determines what is Christ and what determines? Is it, can you come up with something a little bit more real and not just, I think that's icky? If that's icky is the best we can come up with then maybe you should think twice about, condemning something someone else says.

So, we have these two competing not in that they're things to hold intention. Good way to say it. They're hold, held intention. The Bible upholds virtuous speech, which is bold, plain-spoken truth and using godly wisdom and how you speak it. And the Bible condemns worldly speech, and worldly speech is characterized by the things I mentioned here, anger, wrath, malice, and slander.

And we don't want to let truth telling become the excuse for careless speech, or for being cruel, nor do we want to let our desire to uphold godly speech to lead us into self-censoring, or to silencing other people, because it makes us more comfortable. So, I've got two application points one for each of these two groups.

Depending on which, which one you might tend more towards. I want to address both and give you an application an application for each. So, consider this. And if there's an area of repentance, bring it before the Lord and repent and, grow in this. First application point, if you're more of the bold truth teller kind of person, if that's who you are, then remember what the scripture says in James three, there's power in the tongue.

And there's power in the things you say. And words can do a lot of damage. Not everybody is called to be a prophet. There's some people that have a particular gift and an ability that to say the hard thing and they can speak in a certain way, can do it with a certain audience. And God raises up profits for that thing, that purpose.

And there are some that might want to mimic that when they're, they don't really know how to do it well and they do it in such ways that do a lot of harm, and they do it because they think it's fun. There's a sinful worldly fleshly provocation that just likes to, to fight. That's re, that's a real thing.

So, there's some diagnostic questions that you can ask yourself, just be before the Lord. Are you speaking in a way that honors God? Can you say, this is God honoring? Or are you using truth telling as an excuse to indulge in your flesh? Is your truth telling characterized? Is it angry? Is it wrathful?

Is it malicious? Is it slanderous? Is it obscene or is it abusive? Is it deceitful? Any of those things present? Check your heart. And don't hear me on this. It's don't hear me wrong. It's we value speaking the hard thing. We value saying the difficult thing. Courage, boldness, speaking the truth, and love, but chastened by scripture.

What scripture says, there are some things that are going to be out of bounds for us as Christians. And we can't just say, because it's true, I get to say anything and everything regardless of the consequences. So don't justify malice and slander and wrath and the way you speak to speak with cruelty and just be like they're just mad because they're liberals.

And I can say it because, just because they're mad it must mean I'm over the target maybe, or maybe you're just a jerk and you're indulging your flesh and it's bearing fruit bearing bad rotten fruit by the harm it's causing. So, the thing that just to remember. Is that not every true thing has to be said.

There's, there are some true things that you might just choose to show a little restraint and have wisdom. So be wise with your words, pick your moments. Read the room and no, maybe I don't need to say this right now. Maybe this isn't going to be helpful. Words are combustible. They can set things on fire, and we will give account for every careless word.

So that's my application. Word of exhortation to the truth teller type. Now let me talk about the other type of people, which are more of the, if you're more of the tone police kind of person where you're concerned about the tone of other people, if you're the kind of person that, that gets upset.

And what other people say, because they're not speaking in a Christ like way, you've got to, you've got to have some standard that you measure by. And the standard has to be something other than your feelings. There has to be, if you just say that's not Christ you need to be prepared to demonstrate what that means.

Because people didn't like Jesus's tone either. People didn't like what Jesus said. They hated a lot of his teaching. He drove away mass, massive crowds of people whenever he would read as a John chapter five, when he talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, people freaked out when he said that Jesus caused a lot of conflict.

He said things that created conflict. So, you just, if you say it's not Christ, like you got to make sure it did Christ himself do the thing that you say isn't Christ and if so, then maybe you need to recalibrate your definition of what Christ like is. Christlike can't be, I feel icky about it, or it caused conflict, or somebody didn't like it, or it made me upset or angry, or it made my friends upset or angry.

That can't be the standard. The standard of rightness or wrongness of somebody's words is not how you feel. And I suspect that many people in this camp that are more oriented this way, There's, they simply get stressed out by conflict and they're peacemongers. They have this idea of peace, and they will it's very ironic, but they will go to war in order to, to make sure that they can keep the peace.

And so, they're very aggressive and angry. And some of the, some of these people can be very nice and sweet, but when they're tone policing, what do you see in the way they tone police? They tone police in an angry, wrathful, malicious, slanderous, obscene way. You ever seen that? Look at some of the things, if you're familiar with some of the online controversies about Doug Wilson and things he said, or similar people, notice the way they talk about him.

And they, all of these negative characteristics are present in the way they criticize the guy that they say is not speaking in a Christ like way. So, we have to have the self-awareness, it's what am, what is my standard? And very often, I think people will, would find if they were truly honest with themselves, that their standard is they just don't like it.

It makes them uncomfortable. And discomfort is not the standard that we judge by. We judge by God's word. That is our standard. If you are upset at somebody else's words, Consider, maybe they are saying true and necessary things that need to be said. It's true. It's necessary. It needs to be said. And they're paying a price for saying something very hard.

They're trying to obey God. And they have not only the opposition coming from the people who are directly in the crosshairs of their message, but they're also catching fire, catching friendly fire from fellow Christians who just, they don't like it, and they think it's uncomfortable. And so now they're getting it from all angles.

They may be speaking words that are true and need to be heard. And they, those words are they scare you, or maybe they embarrass you, but because they're speaking as a Christian, there's some association that people might make that you want to impress, and they don't want you to be associated with that Christian saying embarrassing things.

It's I don't know John the Baptist. He's not neat. I don't know who that guy is. He's weird. He's a weird guy. I'm not like that guy. And you want to distance yourself from that prophetic person, like pay attention to that. Pay attention to your embarrassment reflex. And so, my suggestion, a couple of things here if that's a temptation for, if you get upset about things people say, instead of just getting worked up and angry and flustered, just tell yourself, you know what, that's not the way I would say it, but it needed to be said.

So, I'm okay with it. And just move on. If you think that person's way out of line where they say it, it's don't just jump automatically to the conclusion that that's ungodly. That's wicked. That's not Christlike. It might be that your own discomfort is determining the rightness or wrongness of it.

And you'd be better off just to say, you know what? That's not the way I would say it, but that's fine. It needed to be said and I'm okay with it. You can even be thankful for the fact that there are people out there, there are people I'm thankful for. And I'm like I wouldn't say that, but I'm glad somebody is saying it.

I'm glad somebody is taking the heat on a very controversial, difficult issue. And we can be thankful for those people knowing that we're not all called to speak the exact same way. All right. Now let's. Let's look at the flip side of all of this. All these are things that you like, put off these bad things.

Now let's look at the flip side and see what we are called to put on. Verse 11, here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, I don't know if it's Scythian or Scythian, I don't know if the C is silent, but some of you people may know, slave free, but Christ is all and in all.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts. Kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God, and whatever you do, in word and deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Let's look at some of these words here. What does it look like when you put on Christ? I'll highlight some definitions of these words. Word compassion. Compassion it means sympathetic or merciful. Couldn't mean that show pity, even show compassion for somebody who is suffering. But the big idea here is that it's a good acknowledgement of human frailty.

Compassion means that we all need grace. Everybody's being sanctified. We're all, nobody's perfect. And so, there's a need for us to recognize. Hey, this person is struggling, this person is trying and just compassion can give you the sort of disposition and attitude towards people that have a different set of temptations and a different set of strengths than you do.

And that is very needed in short supply in the body of Christ. The next one is kindness. The Greek word there is Christotis. And when used of people. It can mean worthy or decent or honest or upright. Kindness is a moral quality. There's actual moral content with the word kindness, but it is often confused with niceness and niceness has no moral content.

Niceness is a social convention, and they can become easily confused with one another. So, if you're primarily interested in making people feel good and making people like you, then you'll learn to be nice to them. Because niceness gets you a certain kind of reaction. They'll like you and they'll feel good if you're nice to them.

But if you're primarily interested in truly loving people, and doing what's best for them, then you'll learn to be kind. And that's different than nice. Because kindness does not always feel good, and kindness does not always mean the person likes you. So, you're doing good for a person, you're being kind to a person, and the goodness or kindness of what you do for them is not determined by how they feel about that thing you did or about you for doing it.

Do you see the difference? One is determined by how the other person feels or responds, the other is determined by the act itself that is defined according to something more objective. But they look the same, but only kindness is a virtue because kindness is undergirded by Christian love. So, what you're doing is genuinely for the good of the other person.

Humility. Here's another one. Here's a hard one to say. Tapenophrosene. Tapenophrosene. That's the Greek word for humility, and that, it means lowly or not thinking too highly of yourself. It manifests in a believer's life as showing concern for the welfare of others, like being more others centered. It's you're not you're not believing your own hype as much, but you have an accurate self-assessment.

It doesn't mean you think more lowly of yourself than you should. That's not good either, but it's an accurate self-assessment according to a righteous standard of who God, how God sees you. You could say it's seeing yourself the way God sees you. Now that's going to be a humble way to see yourself.

Meekness is the next one, and it's protest is the word. And meekness rhymes with weakness, but they're not the same. But we think it's the same because they rhyme. But meekness is not the same as weakness. So, my Bible dictionary says this, here's a quote. Meekness is mild and gentle friendliness. The Greeks value this virtue highly so long as there is compensating strength.

Don't miss that part. Mild and gentle friendliness and the Greeks value this virtue highly so long as there is compensating strength. Thus, rulers should be gentle with their own people and stern with others and laws should be severe, but judges should show leniency. So maybe a simple way to think of this is meekness is strength under control.

It is strength that is restrained properly to where you know it's there. You know that aggression could be there, that strength is there, but it is governed by higher principles and so it's under control. That's meekness. Patience, macrothermia is the Greek word for that. And that's a quality of endurance.

So, it's a long obedience over time. Patience has a time component to it because it's not just doing something, but it's doing something over a duration. That's patience. And then the next two are related bearing with one another. So, we might call it forbearance, but and neck who my is the Greek word for that.

And it is a gracious attitude towards other people over time. So, bearing with one another is I'm not going to be gracious with you right now in this moment. But I want to show you grace and have a gracious disposition towards you over a period of time through your ups and downs, your highs and your lows.

The next one is forgiving one another where there is charisma and that is a gracious attitude towards others in their sins, especially if it's a sin against you. So, somebody's sinned against you. They've wounded you. They've hurt you. They've done something wrong. It is forgiving. Is a posture of forgiveness because the basis of forgiveness that we extend to one another is extended because of the forgiveness that Christ has extended to us.

The parable of where one guy forgave a tiny debt, but he had already been forgiven by his master, this insane amount of debt. That's what this idea is here. It's like we forgive on the basis of what we have been forgiven, which means we can never out forgive God. That's like we can never forgive more than God has.

So, there's always just this infinite reservoir of spiritual resources that enable us to forgive one another. Three more. Love. If you haven't noticed, I'm just going through my list here. Love, now love is the preeminent virtue, and we could do a whole sermon series on love. But the definition here of love is, it is the unselfish commitment to the highest good of another person.

That is true love. And you've heard me harp on this for years, like love is not the way you feel. It's not an emotion. There's real moral weight to it. And it is, I want what is best for you. So, the way a parent loves a child when the child is doing something dumb, the child doesn't like the feeling when the child is corrected, that the parent does what is good for the child, not just what makes the child feel that certain way.

And often parents will fail to love their child because they can't stand the feeling of their child being unhappy with them. Love does what's best for the other person, regardless of how they feel about it. Now, there is a feeling component, I wouldn't dismiss that. And a lot of times that is the motivation because you feel so strongly this affection for another person, those feelings can prompt you to do what's best for them, because you truly love them.

But the feeling is not what is the decisive factor. When I say it's a preeminent virtue 1 Paul says, so now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. Two more quickly. Peace, Greek word is arene, and that is tranquility. So, it's at least in this text I want you to notice the peace of Christ, let it rule in your hearts.

So, the peace is not necessarily the absence of conflict, interpersonal peace, because you might have interpersonal conflict, but the peace in this sense is the peace of Christ rules in your heart, meaning that there's an inner contentment. And inner peace with God because of your resting in the truth of who he is and what he has done for you.

So, there's a contentment of tranquility. That's a fruit of the Christian faith. And the last one, finally be thankful. Greek word there is Eucaristus. And if you're some, I sound familiar some traditions, they call Lord's supper, the Eucharist. And it just, it's a means thankful Thanksgiving.

It's like a, it's a blessing, that sort of thing. And it it's, it means what it says. It means having gratitude for a gift received that you didn't deserve. So, we've had vices over the last two weeks. Last week we saw sexual vices, sexual immorality. This week we've seen different kinds of vices about inner attitudes towards people driven by anger, often manifest in our words.

And in either of those cases, we want to put those to death, mortify them, repent of them. And then the flip side of that is we put on something. Now, what we put on; we're putting on something you've already received. You're putting on the most expensive kind of clothing you could wear, which is you're putting on Christ himself.

We, we have received him, but we put him on meaning that we express who Christ is in our daily life. And that is, as we've been looking here, it is these sorts of characteristics. Properly defined, but these are the virtues that we put on and we wear them. It's the way we treat one another and that promotes health and unity and just flourishing within the body of Christ.

And it should not need to be pointed out, but it's a good to be reminded of Jesus embodied all the virtues we're talking about here. Jesus embodied them perfectly. Jesus was all of these things, compassion, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, peace, and thankfulness. Those are. Jesus lived that way, that's who he was, and then his righteousness is imputed to us, we receive it by faith.

So, we are now counted, as far as God sees us, he sees us through Christ, because we are in Christ, and then we put on Christ. So, God sees us, he sees Christ in us. And so that's why we can say, and Paul can say, we put on Christ. We put him on by faith in his death, faith in his resurrection. By that we are justified of our sin, we're purified, we're washed clean of our sin, we're united to Christ, we are in Christ.

And then having been cleansed from sin, we put on Christ, and we walk the life. We live the life of Christ. We act as though we are the living embodiment in some way of who Jesus is in our daily lives. So, we live out the righteousness that we have positionally been given. And obviously Jesus, wasn't a coward.

Was he? Jesus was the most bold truth teller there ever was. And he always, he was the guy that did. All the things we talked about before. He was unashamed, bold, and always spoke the truth. He confronted sin and evil and wickedness. And he, there was conflict that was created around his ministry because of what he said, and he was despised and rejected by men.

Therefore, all the virtues that I just described to you are compatible with this truth. The boldness and the plain-spoken truth that Jesus is seen to exhibit in the Gospels. So those, that sort of boldness and truth time, there's a way to do it that is perfectly compatible with Christ likeness, that is compatible with Christian virtue, which is what we're called to do.

So, we are not commanded to put on niceness, we're commanded to put on Christ likeness as described in the scriptures here. So, I'll just conclude this morning with a brief exhortation from these verses here. As we come to the table. We are coming to what is called the Eucharist. So, as we come to the table, just remember, as we wrap up the sermon, that the word of Christ, let this word of teaching and admonishment dwell within you, receive it thankfully, and may the Lord by his spirit apply wisdom in your life as a result of it.

And then we'll sing the remaining psalms and hymns. Sing the songs. Amen. Sing the hymns. One of the ways we put on Christ, and we embody the virtues is like we sing them. And even the songs that we choose as a church are done to intentionally promote these sorts of things. So, sing these songs with that attitude of you're putting on Christ in the way that we sing.

Have genuine thanksgiving in your hearts for Christ. Have thanksgiving for the table as we come to it. And as you go about your week, whatever you do it with thanks, giving, doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how we put on Christ. Okay. Let's pray. And then we'll take the Lord's Supper and move to baptisms in a moment.

Our Father, we give you thanks. We worship you for sending your son, the Lord Jesus Christ to die in our place, to, to live the life of perfection and holiness. And that you showed us how to live and you give us the stories written down in your word of how to live. And Jesus is our example to follow.

Thank you for all of these things, Lord. Lord, I pray that as we've looked at various sins and vices and various virtues to embody, Lord, I pray that that you will show us whatever areas that we need to repent, wherever we need to receive forgiveness from you and help us to grow, Lord. Help us to be more like Jesus in every way, properly defined by your word.

Help us to do that, Father. And now as we come to the table, and we take the bread and the cup. I pray for you to just give us a sweet fellowship with you that we will that we will truly feast on Christ as we come to the table and we will do so with glad hearts, with thanksgiving, and we will sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs rejoicing in what you've done.

And I thank you Lord for the picture of the gospel that is represented in baptism. As we get to celebrate that in a moment. Lord, I pray for your name to be glorified and lifted up and that you will stir our hearts to rejoice in the celebration of baptism. In a few moments, we pray all of these things in the name of the father and son and Holy spirit. Amen.