Sermon Tone Analysis

Biblical Elements of Corporate Worship

Colossians 3:16-17

The Christian life is not about externals, but it is about the heart.

It’s about a mindset that puts the eternal first, things above, and puts to death sinful actions and desires and putting on the internal characteristics that make one a reflection of Jesus Christ.

Compassion, love, peace and all these things mentioned in the verses leading up to today’s text come from the heart.

You can’t externalize them.

So when we get together, we want to worship God from the heart.

He wants our heart, but is there a certain pattern that should be followed in a church service, what we call corporate worship?

Verses 16-17 is one of the rare occasions that Bible describes the corporate worship of a church.

Paul instructs the people how to worship and describes what is to be in public gatherings to worship.

Paul give three elements of corporate worship in these verses: information, instruction, and emotion.

*Information* \\ “/Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly/.”

This is a command.

It is in the imperative tense.

It is not optional, but necessary to be an obedient Christian.

So let me stop right here and ask you.

Based upon this one command, are you an obedient Christian?

“/Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly/.”

It has the force of heaven’s authority around it and behind it.

This is the word of God revealing Jesus Christ.

The Bible is God’s revelation of Jesus Christ and should govern every thought, word, and deed.

Why is this so crucial?

Why is it so crucial to have the “Word of Christ” dwelling richly in us?

Well Colossians says something about why this is crucial.

Colossians 1:19 says, “/In him all the fullness// of God was pleased to dwell/;” In Christ , not in a set of principles, not in a set of truths, but in a person.

Col. 2:3 says, “/In (Christ) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge/.”

No wonder Paul says in Colossians 1:28, /“(It is) Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we// may present everyone //mature in Christ/.”

That’s why Paul asked them in Colossians 4:3 to pray, “/that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds: 4 That I may make it manifest (or clear), how I ought to speak/.”

His desire was to make Christ clear.

That is far different than making a set of principles or standards of morality clear.

We make much of the Word of Christ, because the Word makes much of Christ.

\\ \\ The word makes much of Christ and as we see Christ in the word, we begin to know how much we need him.

So we err when we treat the word as nothing more than a collection of principles or morality stories.

A preacher once said it like this.

“When we moralize the Bible we ultimately trivialize the congregation’s view of God and Christ, and we consequently trivialize their living so that it is not ultimately about a God-focused, Christ-centered, Word-saturated life.”

So the word of Christ is not calling us to some kind of morality; it calls us to repent of our sin and believe on the Word.

It calls us to submit to Him as King; to serve through Him.

It calls us to forsake father and mother, brother and sister and to love Him above all else.

It calls us to take up an instrument of death…our own cross as it were and follow Him.

It calls us to go into all the world and make disciples of Him.

That is why the word of Christ must dwell in us abundantly.

\\ \\ Look at verse 16 again.

It says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in */you/*.”

“You” is plural, so the church is in view here.

The word "dwell" means "to be at home."

Let the word of Christ be at home in you.

Home is comfortable, right?

Home is where you like to be.

Home is home and let the word of God and the word of Christ not be any stranger to you, but let it be home.

In other words, let it be settling there and living there, and the word “richly” is best translated "abundantly."

I mean, you are jammed full of it.

When I lived in Tennessee, the volunteer state, some people would have t-shirts that said, “I bleed orange.”

What God is saying is that if they cut you anywhere you will bleed Bible verses.

\\ \\ You can't be content with spiritual snacks.

You've got to feed on it.

So the word of Christ is to dwell in you abundantly.

How is it going to do that?

Well, first of all you've got to read it, then you've got to study it, then you've got to live it.

When you're all done you'll have it richly.

You're going to have to get into the wealth of it.

You know, it's a beautiful thought here, because 3:16 of Colossians is a direct parallel to Ephesians 5:18, and in Ephesians 5:18 it says, "And be not drunk with wine where it is in excess, but be filled with the Spirit."

Then you have the same response: teaching, admonishing, singing, making a melody in your heart to the Lord; it's all the same response.

You have exactly the same response in Ephesians to being filled with the Spirit that you have here in being dominated by the word.

Do you know what the conclusion is?

There's a very simple conclusion.

Do you know what it means to be filled With the Spirit?

What does it mean?

Let the word of Christ dominate you.

You see, the word of Christ in your heart and in your mind is the handle by which the Holy Spirit turns your will.

It's the same thing.

*Instruction* \\ Notice the next phrase, “in wisdom.”

The comma break in the text is unfortunate, because wisdom is actually modifying teaching and admonishing.

Teaching has to do with the orderly expelling of information.

In Ephesians 4:11 teaching is closely associated with the role of a pastor and Paul says that teaching is a spiritual gift.

Here the church members teach each other in the ways of God.

The word is just a part of you.

It saturates you.

Now this kind of commitment he can't resist throwing in, He says, "if you'll just let the word of Christ dwell, do you know what the result is going to be?"

In all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, do you know what's going to be the response?

You're going to go out and with all wisdom you're going to teach (that's positive) and you're going to admonish (that's negative).

Positive is saying, "Do this and do this."

Admonishing is saying, "Don't do this.

Don't do that.

It's not right."

And as the word of Christ dwells in you richly, then you can go out and* *teach people.

You can go out and you can admonish them.

It means to warn them that if they continue in that behavior, God will chasten them.

So you have the positive teaching and the negative warning.

That's going to come as a result of the dwelling of the word of Christ richly in your heart.

\\ \\ When the word of God dwells richly in your heart you are going to go about ministering to others.

You are going to use your spiritual giftedness and you know what the end result is? Joy!

You see God wants His word to dwell in you richly, not so you become walking Bible encyclopedia, but so that it flows out of you.

That is where the emotion comes from.

This joy will cause singing.

Emotion

*The passionate expression of truth.**

\\ *This is illustrated by the word “singing.”

It is to be expected such singing would be a natural expression of gratitude to God; inspiration and thankfulness go hand in hand.

It is an expression of truth.

Listen to something that Martin Luther said, “Music aids in the enlivening of the Word, so that it may intensify the Biblical text through melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic means.