This Is the Life: Freedom - The Indwelling Word
Colossians 3:15-17
Pastor Bob Hiller
8/29/2010
Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
1. The _______________ we have with God on account of Christ creates a ______________ of peace.
2. The Word of Christ should dwell richly in both our ______________ and our _____________.
3. Where the Word richly dwells, it forms and transforms ________________!
Scripture Readings
Proverbs 25:2-10
Colossians 3:15-17
Luke 14:1-14
Take It With You!
Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the message to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with what we are hearing.
Thank God, a seven-year old child knows what the church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd. So children pray, "I believe in one holy Christian church." Its holiness does not consist of surplices, tonsures, albs, or other ceremonies of theirs which they have invented over and above the Holy Scriptures, but it consists of the Word of God and true faith.
Martin Luther, The Smalcald Articles in The Book of Concord
This new humanity, the church, has her own unique identity and history, transcending the world's "cultures," which, rather, she re-shapes (Rom. 12:2). She must teach all nations (Mt. 28:19), not "mingle" with them and "adopt their customs" (Ps. 106:35). God's children and servants "take pleasure" in Zion's very "stones, and favor the dust thereof"- all on account of God's Temple which was but a shadow of things to come; "but the body is of Christ" (Col. 2:17). She of whom "glorious things are spoken" (Ps. 87:3) has no need of the tawdry, the frivolous, and the mawkish, ash she shows forth the praises of Him Who called her out of darkness into His wondrous light (I Pet. 2:9). Her practice is shaped and governed...not by biblicistic proof-texting, but by her orthodox, evangelical confession. Only as she is true to her own nature can the church be true to the mission of the Good Shepherd who has compassion on the multitudes (Mt. 9:36).
Kurt E. Marquart, The Church and Her Fellowship, Ministry and Governance.
