Colossians 3:12-17
Today’s passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians is about love and encouragement. This is that utter love that starts with God’s view of us as holy and beloved.
Worship together is our response to that love and parishes (just like we are doing) grow when they are united in worship of the one who has set us apart and loves us.
The result of this is we are constantly encouraged in our common walk with Jesus. When we grow stronger as a people of praise and worship, we grow closer and form deeper and richer bonds with each other.
Now we use the word ‘worship’ often, but how does this growth in worship happen?
Well, worship engages us with the Word of God in the Bible. Paul writes in v.16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” This is referring to the teaching and life of Jesus, of course, that we find in the four Gospels. It is also true to say that Christ dwells in all of Scripture, so we call the whole of the bible the word of God.
So we let Scripture ‘dwell’ in us. The word ‘dwell’ implies a deep rootedness in our lives. To abide, to live in and to remain in. Just as Christ remains in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we let the word of God live in us.
Another name for where we live is our dwelling. Dwelling in Scripture is a big step in dwelling in Christ and when we do an amazing thing happens because our Father God and Jesus make their home in us.
This happens when we believe, but when we dwell in Scripture, we suddenly know it. We know that Lord God Almighty loves hanging out with us in Drayton!
In this dwelling place we recuperate and are restored and healed through the gentleness of God. So part of worship is letting the word of Christ, the bible, dwell in us richly, as Paul puts it this morning.
There is a richness in God’s word that we won’t find anywhere else. There is a fullness and a completeness to God’s word: we can turn to the Bible in any season of our life, no matter what we are going through, no matter how we are feeling – and we will receive the richness of God’s presence in our lives.
When we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, we let our worship engage both our minds and our hearts (i.e., our souls)). Paul continues “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.”
We engage our minds when we “Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom”.
The idea of a sermon, e.g., is strange. In or society there are few places where someone talks to a group of people for 12 minutes of so in an uninterrupted way in order to work through the text of a book!
All of us are learning together. I have been growing in Christ for decades, yet I never grown so quickly or been so encouraged by anyone or place more than here in Drayton parish.
A clergy collar doesn’t mean I know God any better. We worship and grow together, all of us, ever deeper into God. And I need to learn with you and from you what that looks like, and hopefully I can encourage all of you in some small way too.
But worship is not all about the mind: it should engage the whole soul as we reflect on what God has done for us, what Jesus has done for us and the forgiveness and new life that we have received through Jesus’ death on the cross.
We are moved to sing and pray and received holy communion and have our hearts warmed – all together, “with gratitude in our hearts” for what God has done for us in Christ Jesus.
And v.16 tells us all this mental and emotional worship is “to God”. We aren’t singing for one another, or to just do something pleasing amongst ourselves: God is our audience when we sing, when we worship, when we receive Communion, and he is pleased with our worship.
It doesn’t matter if we have a good singing voice or a bad singing voice. It doesn’t matter if we feel worthy or unworthy when we receive Communion. It doesn’t matter what clothes we wear to church. It doesn’t matter what people may think about us.
We only have an audience of one when we worship – and that one is God. And God is always pleased with our worship.
And Paul continues to tell us in v.17 that our worship impacts on how we live throughout the week. “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.” Our whole life, every aspect of it, becomes an act of worship.
We are to honour God with the way we live and all our behaviours, all our relationships, all our responses should aim to be an act of worship to God. When we are at work, we offer our work as an act of worship to God.
When we are cooking dinner, we offer our cooking as an act of worship to God. When we are looking after the kids, we offer our love and care as an act of worship to God.
Everything we do is an act of worship to God. Of course we will fail, and fail often, because we are fallible and weak. But it should be our aspiration to honour God in every part of our life.
And what happens when our worship grows, is that we are energised and reoriented in our thinking towards God and we seek to reflect that in how we are in the world outside these walls.
But it’s not easy to do that, of course, and we need the encouragement of one another to worship God here in church and the encouragement of one another to live for God throughout the week. And that’s why Paul puts this teaching into the context of encouraging one another.
We simply cannot live out the Christian life on our own. We need one another. We need the encouragement of one another so that we can deepen our walk with God.
So this passage from Colossians 3:16-17 is a really important one for us to hold onto because it stresses our co-dependence on one another and our need to encourage one another:
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs 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 Christian faith is a community faith. Drayton parish is the community God has given to you and to me for this period of our lives. How blessed we are!
Let’s be sure to encourage one another as we walk together with God and, with gratitude in our hearts, thank him for all that he has given us through the grace of his Son, our Lord Jesus.