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It was New Year's Day two thousand and sixteen and Matthew South Carolina police officer Quincy Smith was on duty. This was the first time this year that he would be on patrol and for a long while, it would be the last time he would be on patrol. He received a call about an attempted burglary that had happened.
call. Come in the 911 and, and a description was given. And when he got on the scene to his surprise, standing literally behind the building was a guy who matched the description of the suspect. And he was standing there talking on the cell phone. Now, officer smith didn't think much of this. He just figured it was somebody you'd have a little too much celebration.
So he goes and he gets out of his police car and he rolls up on this guy and he's talking with his cell phone in one hand and he has his other hand in his coat pocket. Officer Smith asked him to remove his hand from his pocket and he won't. He asked him again. He asked him again. And the fourth time the man finally turns in anger.
and removes his hand from his coat. And in his hand is a 38 caliber. He opens fire on Officer Smith. Four shots rang out. All four of them hit him. There's video of him making it back to the car and talking to dispatch him sitting there thinking that he was not going to make it. Well, the last things he said before he passed out was Tell my family I love them
most time. A situation like that ends in tragedy. But in this case, it did not be taking a little over a year and a half. But Officer Smith would fully recover from his injuries and nobody would have blamed him if he got out of law enforcement business. But he didn't hop out. He hopped back in. He went right back on patrol as soon as he could.
And there's a reason why this story did not end in tragedy. Because that morning, before he answered that call, Officer Smith had went, and he had put on something that was very critical. This right here, is a bulletproof vest. My son come running in the office and said, Daddy, are you one of those secret spy people?
I If you don't know, this is Jeremy's rig, because God made Jeremy be the type of guy to run towards danger, not away from it. I told my wife, I said, I got a bulletproof vest coming. She said, you order it on Amazon?
No, they don't have 5X bulletproof vests, I bet.
But what he put on that morning saved his life. Two of the four shots went center mass. And these things don't work like in the movies, of course, they'll stop the bullet, but when you get hit, there's still thousands of pounds of force that hits you right in the chest. But what he put on saved his life.
And when you think about being a Christian, in a spiritual sense, what we decide to put on decides our eternity, doesn't it? I didn't realize until this lesson, but how much the Bible talks about You think about putting on. You think about Galatians chapter three, verse, starting in verse 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under the guardian, for in Christ Jesus, you're all sons of God through faith, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have what, have put on Christ.
I can't imagine being a police officer and going in the line of danger and not putting on all the protection that I could. And yet so many people in this day and time want to go and live their lives like eternity does not matter. And they don't care anything about putting on Christ. Putting on the only form of protection that can save their souls from eternity separated from their God in hell.
Now, that's a lesson in and of itself, but that's not the lesson that I had planned this morning. If you need to know more about putting on Christ we can sit down and we can study that after this. But this morning I want to go to the book of Colossians. You got your Bibles, go with me to the book of Colossians because There's some very interesting things here.
Paul uses the word put a great number of times And the things that we're going to see him talk about here are going to help us now This morning's sermon is a little bit different. I usually have multiple poets and and Go through the thing. There's just one point today, but I've got to explain some things to get to the point.
So if you're wondering when, when's he gonna get to the point? I'll tell you what I'm gonna get to the point. Okay, but we gotta set the framework. Okay. In Colossians chapter three, we're gonna get in verse five. Put to death. Therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.
On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. You see, Paul tells them, if you're going to put on Christ, you're going to have to put off some other things, aren't you? You're going to have to put away these evil things. I mean, in reality, that's what repentance is.
Repentance is, I'm going to change my desires for what I want. I used to want all these worldly things. I used to want these things that that fed me and my fleshly lusts. But now I want God. And it's not that you're ever going to be not tempted again. Of course you're going to be tempted. You're probably going to be tempted more after you become a Christian than you were before.
But you see, now you've got to put those things to death continually, don't you? Now you get, you get tempted by that thing. And you say, Man, I remember when and I really would like to do that. But I know where that leads. I know that's gonna lead me away from God. There's a part of me. Yes, it was still want to do that.
But out the other part of me wants God more. And maybe you even slip up. Maybe you even maybe even succumb to that temptation. But the moment that you do it, you realize You have a guilty conscience, don't you? You realize this is wrong. I know that it's wrong. And you confess those sins. First John chapter one, right?
You confess those sins and he is willing and faithful just to keep on cleansing us of those sins. If you're going to put on Christ, you've got to put off some things. But now let's go a little further here. Verses eight through 11. But now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, And I've seen talk from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off your old self and its practices, and you put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of the Creator. Here there is, uh, here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, sednictant, slave, free, but Christ is all and all and all.
You see here, he gives another list in verse eight. These are things you must put them away, but he just gave us a list. What's the difference in this list than the other list? This list is more important to us because anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk. All these things have to do with what's going on inside a bus.
Why are you angry? Why do you have wrath? Why do you have malice in your heart? Why do you slander other people? Why does a lot of mean things come out of your mouth? Why? Because inside of you, there's this battle raging in there. You want this scene and you want this and you want this and it's never enough.
And the more that it's never enough, the more this turmoil builds up inside of you. You see before we can even try to think about changing our actions on the outside, We have to work on what, who we are on the inside, put off the old self, put on the new self, right? It makes a lot of sense. Let's go a little bit further forward.
First, 12 to 14 put on the end is God's chosen ones. Holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. And what has a complaint against another forgiving each other? as the Lord has forgiven you. So also you must forgive. And above all these things, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
You notice here, he says we've got to put on it's God's chosen ones. And the first two things he says there, he kind of puts, you know, something between two parentheses, which, if you remember from your grammar class, when you have something between two parentheses, You can take it out of the sentence and the sentence still makes sense.
It's adding more detail. It's explaining more about what was just said. If we're gonna be God's chosen ones, we've got to be what? Holy and beloved. Holy and beloved. How do you be holy and beloved? Well, you've got to be gonna have a compassionate heart, kindness, humility, humility, meekness, patience. Bearing with one another, forgiving one another.
And you got to do all that. Why? Because love, you understand that it's not just enough to stop the bad stuff. A lot of times people think repentance is, well, I'm going to stop the bad stuff. No, if you just stop the bad stuff and don't replace it with anything, what's going to happen? You're gonna go back to the bad stuff.
There's nothing there to replace it. There's nothing new to take over. You're still gonna have that same hole inside. If you stop the bad stuff, you have to pour something else good into that hole, that longing and that feeling of something missing. You gotta pour love into that. It's got to change how you treat other people.
And this morning I want you to, I want you to verse eight to stand out in your mind, right? That list, anger, malice, all those, all those things. Why do we need to put on love? Why do we need to keep doing these things? Because if we don't, we'll wind up back at verse 8. We'll wind up back at anger and malice and rage and hatred.
Now, do you think it's possible? Do you think it's possible for a Christian, after they have come to Christ and they've been trying to live faithfully, and they've been trying to walk in the light as he is in the light, do you think it's possible for them? Maybe to let things start to build up and wind up back at anger and malice and rage, hatred and all those things.
Yeah. Yeah, it can. I know it can because I've lived it a lot of ways today. This sermon, this sermon, you get to sit through it. But this sermon was for me first. This sermon was me trying to learn how to overcome verse eight. Because it's easy enough. I mean, who doesn't have the next thing in their life that's just right?
Who doesn't have the next thing that just aggravates the fool out of you? And you just, you finally get to the point where all you do and all you can see and all you can feel is what? That anger, malice, rage. If we don't, if we're not careful, we'll wind up back there. So you say, okay, Doug, well, I need to put off this.
They put on that. That's great. But how do you do that? Well, that was a question that I was searching for and I don't claim to have all the answers. I don't have all the answers, but scriptures has scripture has the answers and the next versus Paul is going to give us something that we can use to fight this spiritual battle that goes on inside of us.
And I think it's something, I know I miss it a lot of times, I should be better at practicing it than I am, I've been much more intentional the past 3, 4, 5 days about trying to be this way, but it's something that you can fight against, going back to verse 8, going back to the anger and the hatred and all those things, look at verse 15 through 17 with me, we're almost about ready to get to the point.
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 dwelling you richly teaching and admonishing one another and all wisdom singing in songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God, the father through him.
You notice, you notice something in each one of those verses that he added thankfulness, gratefulness. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Why do you got to let it rule in your hearts? Because there's plenty of other things that want to rule in your heart, isn't it? You got to, you got to put that there.
You got to, you got to put it in its place. You got to say, okay, I'm gonna choose peace. I'm gonna let it rule in my heart. How do you let it rule in your heart? Be thankful You gotta be thankful on the inside Verse 16 what let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom singing psalms and hymns personal with thankfulness in your hearts to God when we sing You know far too often.
We're fine to just come here. We're just gonna go through We're just gonna sing We're supposed to sing with thankfulness in our hearts to God. We should have thankfulness in our hearts when we worship God. Why? Because God loves us. God created us. God sent his son to die on the cross for us. Gratefulness should come out in our worship.
But it's not just something we think about on the inside. It's not just something that should happen during worship. What? Verse 17. Whatever you do, wherever you are, wherever you go, what? In word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do it for him. Do it by his authority. Doing the way that be pleasing to him.
What? Giving thanks to God the father through him. Whatever it is that we are doing, we should incorporate thankfulness into it. Thankfulness is an atom bomb. to fight against the things that want to drag us kicking and screaming back to verse eight, back to anger and hatred and malice and wrath.
Gratefulness is a tool that we can use to fight the spiritual battle that rages inside each and every one of us. I won't tell you that it works, but how to illustrate this. You've been sitting here wondering now for an hour or more. What's he doing? You know, it's gotta be the weirdest sermon ever. You got body armor.
a tea kettle. Like, you know, what is it? Preacher lost his mind, right? Well, I want to show you, I want to show you how you battle all the stuff and the stress that goes on in your life. All the things I'm gonna call it negativity, things that make you want to become negative. How do you battle those things?
Well, gratefulness. Now, if you want to get closer, there's all these open seats up here. If you want to see I wish I had a little camera to put it up on the thing so you could see it better, but you're welcome to come down here. Uh, or if you don't want to come down here, you can just take my word for it.
Okay. So yeah, come on kiddos. So here we have an electric tea kettle and it's got three cups of water in it. Let's just say, for the sakes of argument, that this tea kettle represents your life. Okay? You got some stuff on the inside, there's stuff on the outside. Now, there are things in our lives that happen to us that want to make us negative.
And, you know, it could be lots of different stuff. Maybe there's an unexpected bill comes. You know? that, you know, I had 1000 saved up and I was gonna do something with it. And here comes the bill right now. Maybe it's somebody says something to us and hurts our feelings. Maybe it's I don't know, picky poison.
Maybe I'm tempted to see him one more time. You see, when you pour sugar in water, one of the things that happens is that it dissolves in the water, right? It just you can pour it in and pour it in and it'll dissolve and it'll dissolve and it'll dissolve up to a point. You notice the water's starting to get a little cloudy.
Because as we go through life, more and more things pile on top of us. And if you let them, they're going to keep piling. And they're going to keep piling. I didn't know it was going to take too much. I put too much water in here.
But eventually You start to see there's a pile of sugar now at the bottom of the tea kettle. The water can't take any more. It can no longer dilute the amount of sugar that's here. So what happens? A pile starts at the bottom. And I tried this the other day, if I keep spooning, literally the pile will come plumb up out of the water.
And you can pour enough sugar in here that the water looks like it goes away. So what do we do? What do we do when stuff starts to pile up? Uh, well, we'll think, well I need to pour more water in, right? I need to go, I need to do some more stuff. I need to get busy. I need to work some overtime. I need to, I need to buy a bass boat.
I need to, you know, we need to put some more stuff in our lives. And if you shake it up, it starts to go away, doesn't it? You've added more water to your life. So you can dissolve some more negativity. Okay. Network for a while. Until what? Until it doesn't. Because even though you want to try to fill your life up more and more and more, what happens to the sugar?
Keeps coming. Keeps coming. Keeps coming. Before you know it, there's a pile of sugar. It's back. I try to outrun it. Maybe I try to pour some more water in. Eventually it flows up the top, right? You just can't, you can't run anymore. You've seen people that just, or maybe you've had this experience in your life where you just absolutely get to the point where you run a wheel off.
I just can't keep all the balls in the air any longer. It might be for a lot of reasons, but maybe it's because you're letting all the negativity pile up on you. So what do you do? Well, you know, this pile of sugar. Everybody's got a pile of sugar. Everyone of you this morning could tell me five things.
It's that annoys you that there's a problem waiting on you when you get back to the house or this is broke or that's broke or that bills do or I mean, this person made me mad. I mean, just it's endless. What do you do? Well, good thing. This is a tea kettle, right? Because one of the things that you can add to your life, one of the things you can add to your life is praise.
And when you start to add praise to your life, it's like putting heat in the water. Now, I didn't really realize this until I started doing the research for this lesson. But as you heat water, its ability to absorb sugar increases. And it's not a linear increase. It's not a linear increase. What I mean by linear is it's rolling now.
It's not like you go up one degree and it could take one more percent. It's not linear. The more you hate the water, the amount of sugar that it can dissolve goes up exponentially. You add 100 degrees to this water, which I'm about to try to do. It will take It'll take way more. If I increase the temperature of the water ten times, it'll take way more than ten times the amount of sugar.
The sugar will dissolve. It'll go away. You won't see it in the bottom any longer. Why? Because we're adding praise to it now. Here's the thing. Is the sugar gone? No. The sugar's still in the water.
But it's not piled up in the bottom of it.
You ever met that person, they're just so happy and so positive, they just make you want to kind of throw up when you meet them, just like
Yeah, you come in with that new hat, I thought, do they give you that when you cross the Texas line, like, welcome to Texas, here's your hat
Do those positive people have less problems than anybody else? No Their sugar, their negativity has been dissolved Why? Because they choose the positive And I tell you what, when you try this, it's gonna feel, it's gonna feel weird at first. You don't feel like this. You know, sometimes you say you gotta fake it till you make it, but you're always gonna have sugar.
You're always gonna have the negativity. But what happens when you start to choose to focus on positive things? You don't have very much time to focus on negative, do you? The other day I was kind of down and out and I called a good friend of mine. I hadn't talked to him in a while. And before I got done, I wound up.
I looked when I hung up the phone. I talked to him for two hours. I was gonna talk to him for five minutes and get off phone two hours. What would I have been better to be doing for those two hours? Talking to my talking to one of my best friends for focusing on my problems, focusing on this big old pile of sugar.
That water is clear now. It looks kind of frosty just because of the teacher difference on the outside of the jar. And I'm not gonna touch it. Wipe it off because it's hot. But The power of sugar is gone. It's still in there, but you can't see it. Why? Because when you choose gratefulness, you can fight against that when you choose gratefulness, when you choose things and we all know we've got stuff and you know, it's like, yeah, I know.
But but when's the last time you said it? When's the last time you said out loud? I'm thankful for my house. I'm thankful for the bed I sleep in. I'm thankful for my spouse. When's the last time you said I'm thankful for calling up a friend. So you know what? I'm thankful. You're my friend. When's the last time you stopped and focused on that?
There's always more sugar. I guess I should have brought a tea bag and we just had to afterwards. Right. I mean, I'm almost there. That's another sermon. That'd be next week. Sermon when life gives you lemons.
You could choose negativity. Or you could choose positivity. What you gonna choose? It's really, really easy to choose the negative. And here in a minute, we're gonna offer an invitation song. And if you want me to sit out, I will. But this whole entire sermon is basically me. Me responded to my own invitation because I've had to.
I've had to work really hard the past few days to choose to be thankful, but it makes a difference. It makes a difference. You can pour in praise. Or you can pour in more negativity.
Come sing an invitation song for us