Amen. You may be seated. Thank you. Glad you're with us this morning. For those of you who are our guests, my name is Brian.
I'm the lead pastor here, and we have been studying a series called The Story. And we're in our final week of that. And I'm going to invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Colossians, if you would. You can turn to Colossians chapter 3 in your Bibles, and we're going to spend some time. Thinking about the final piece of orienting our lives, and we've walked through talking about creation and how creation.
It gives us insight into the kind of people we are, the fall and how it shows us the disorientation that has emerged in our lives and warns us against following that pattern that we saw in Genesis 3. And then we looked at redemption and that great act of Christ that cancels our debt. And we're going to. pick up and step into the next chapter. Uh I'll read to you the intervening verses in a moment.
But I want to think about this idea of recreation with you, and I elected not to go to the end of the story, so to speak, to talk about it, because I think that's actually part of the problem. Is that when we talk about creation, we talk about fall, we talk about redemption, and we talk about recreation, we think the story is bookended by creation and recreation, which is true. The problem emerges that the way that we conceive of the final bookend is a kind of thing at the end of the shelf, and we don't understand that that bookend is actually large. And that bookend is not just something that we're waiting for, but is something that we're already walking into now.
So when you read the scriptures and you see the phrase the last days, we're in them now. And I come from a tradition that if it has an error in its view of the future eschatology, one of its weaknesses is it has what I would call an under-realized eschatology. That is, it doesn't have enough to say about what their One day means for here.
Now in the present. And there's a lot that scripture talks about to that end. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to go to the text that we're going to go to in Colossians for you. We've been talking, we started this series talking about genre. And we did that because we want to make sure that as we think about the story, we're cementing it along this pattern, and we're anchoring ourselves to the right kind of genre.
And I use the term with you, tragic comedy, which comes out of actually a little post-Greek playwriting, but into a first, second century B.C. Roman playwriting. Yeah. And it's this idea of a story that does have its tragic components but ends up ending in comedy. There might even be a better Phrase that I want to introduce you to, and it comes from J.R.R.
Tolkien. He coined a phrase that he used in a work he wrote on fairy tales as he talked about the nature of a fairy tale. And I want to show you something up here in a moment of what he said in a letter that he wrote about this phrase. The phrase is, you catastrophe. EU catastrophe.
Now the prefix EU, if you think of somebody who gives a eulogy, right? They're saying a good Lagos. A good word about someone. That's what a eulogy is, right?
So to say a you catastrophe sounds oxymoronic and paradoxical. To say it's a good catastrophe. A good catastrophe. What he meant by it is: it's a colossal, sudden, immediate turn of events. That's for the good.
but that is all decisive. In a sense. And I want you to see how he talks about it and how he describes it. In a letter that he wrote, he says, I coined. The word eucatastrophe, the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears, which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce.
And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth. Your whole nature chained in material cause and effect. The chain of death feels a sudden relief, as if a major limb out of joint is suddenly snapped back. It perceives, if the story has literary truth on the second plane, that this is indeed how things really do work in the great world for which our nature is made. And I concluded.
By saying that the resurrection was the greatest EU catastrophe possible. In the greatest fairy story, and produces that essential emotion, Christian joy. Which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places. Where joy and sorrow are at one reconciled as selfishness and altruism are lost in love. It's so beautiful.
So gorgeous. This idea of a you catastrophe, a sudden vision of the truth, and I love how he says it in that first slide: this sudden vision of the truth that takes you out of the world of material causes where you're living day-to-day, head down, thinking this is all there is, this is all there is, this is all there is, this is all there is. And if you don't step out into a larger story, you're going to miss what God is doing in the present, and you're going to miss how the future gets pulled back into it to help you orient yourself properly. And that's what we want to talk about. That's what we want to think about when we jump in to Colossians 3.
But to do that, I need you to go to Colossians 2 first.
So look with me in verse 16 because we left off in 15. Last time as we look through 8 through 15, and I mentioned to you that the Colossians were up against a heresy that was a merger of Judaism and Gnosticism of people there around Colossi in Phrygia, modern-day Turkey, and they are being sort of pressed against by a teaching that at one and the same time wanted to bind them to lawful things, but to bind them to the end that they could now go beyond their bodies and achieve a kind of unique knowledge, enlightenment that would take them up into a new spiritual plane. And remember, last week we talked about how we have heresies like this all about us. Ones that tell us we have to work for something to get something from God. We have the impulse to garner as much as we can some kind of secret, hidden knowledge, the latest, greatest technique that'll be a life enhancement that'll take us above the world.
The mundane, germane, ordinary, trivial, and difficult circumstances of our lives. And these are the things that the Colossians are kind of warring against within the church. And in light of that, he says, picking up in verse 16, after just telling them, Christ has done everything for you. You don't need anything more than Christ to be right with God. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you, verse 16, in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
Don't let them make up religious laws and traditions that you have to do this, that, or the other thing somehow to have a righteousness with God. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you. Insisting on asceticism. Stripping away things, living in an austere way that somehow you can, by your austere nature of depriving yourself, obtain some higher spiritual plane, and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head, talking about Christ, from whom the whole body, the church, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ, You died to the elemental spirits of the world. And if you weren't here last week, that's referring back up to verse 8, where they're trying to deceive them by the elemental spirits of the world. By the zeitgeist of the day, but by potentially demonic powers. Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to its regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to the things that all perished as they are used according to human precepts and teaching.
Stop for a second. He's saying, Why do you listen to these people that tell you you're going to be righteous by what you don't touch? Why do you listen to these people who tell you you're going to be righteous by what you don't eat? Why do you listen to these people that tell you you're going to be righteous by things you don't participate in in that way of just normal everyday earthly dynamics? Don't listen to that.
You're not earning a righteousness with Christ. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom. In promoting self-made religion, they look and go, Well, your life will be better if you don't drink coffee. It looks like that's wisdom. Right?
Your life will be better if you don't do this. Your life will be better if you don't do this. Your life will be better if you eat this and don't eat this. Your life will be better if you go here and not there. And he's saying that that looks good.
And it puts all the onus on your back because you better be a really great person if you want a self-made religion. and asceticism. And severity of the body. But they're of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Guess what they don't do?
They don't change what's in here. Right. They don't change what's in here. You can see a million signs that say stay off the grass and don't touch the wet paint. But inside you, what do you want to do?
Mm. Mm-hmm. You want to do whatever he wants to do. There's something and they're not going to restrain it. The only way That things get restrained is when the internal orientation shifts.
And changes, and then you actually start doing something new. Why? Because listen close, you're always gonna do what you want to do. Always. The only way you're going to change it is to change your want her.
That's it. You can restrain for a season. But no one's will. is infinite. And the Way the world works, you will yield, and then you'll feel bankrupt, and then you'll feel like a failure, and you'll feel like you can never keep up.
Do you know why? Because you can't. Because you can't. In a game you were playing for so long that somehow you could. The house of cards has come crumbling down.
Hmm.
Well, this is why we reorient ourselves. This is why we get back. And you're here and you're a Christian, and you go, Yeah, I know, that's why I'm a Christian. Careful, because. I know lots of Christians, and guess what?
I'm one of them who sometimes gets down in the material world and forgets. Why do I feel so much weight? Why do I feel so much tension? Why do I feel like I'm living by law under a cognitive theology, a confessional theology of grace? And so it's a reminder in this way that we probably need a regular kind of recalibration.
There's a couple ways we can walk through the text. And so you know, we're going to go through verse 17.
Now, we're not going to do a detailed kind of exegesis. We just can't. There's too much. And by design, I want to kind of give a flyover. More time is going to be spent on this first part than the last part.
The last five, six verses we're going to kind of zip through fairly quickly. But we could look at this text, I think, in two ways. One is the first portion of it seems to be zeroed into your individual life, and the last portion seems to be a little more focused on our life together as a church.
So we could look at it in terms of personal and corporate, and you'll see that distinction as we go. But maybe a little more complex way, but I think a more helpful way, is for us to think about it in terms of our identity. that then roots are action, because that seems to be, to me, what Paul is after here. And he does this by a series of statements in the text.
So what I want to do is we're just going to read all the way down through verse 17 together. And then we'll come back and we're going to walk through these five observations and then we'll talk about action and a few quick observations about action.
So let's start in verse 1. If then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died. And your life is hidden with Christ, in God.
When Christ. who is your life appears. then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what's earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God's coming, in these you two once walked, when you were living in them.
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've 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 then 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 thankfulness 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. Five observations about your identity that forms the basis for you being able to look and see: wait a minute, something has happened to me, there's been a you catastrophe.
in that way. Here's the first one. The first truth is that your identity is afforded to you. Here's what that means. You don't find yourself.
You don't find I'm just I just I'm in a journey. I'm trying to find myself. I'm trying to find myself. I'm trying to discover. Who I am.
Right? The Bible teaches us that you don't find yourself. What did the fall? Teach us. Adam sins.
Eve sins and what is their first impulse. Remember? to hide. Died. What happens in terms of our identity is that it's a game, in a sense, of hide and seek.
We're the ones in the closet behind the clothes. Trying not to breathe real loud. And God Searches. And he pulls the clothes apart and says, There you are. There you are.
He finds you. Look at your text. If then you have been raised with Christ, it doesn't say if you've raised yourself with Jesus. It's a passive in the Greek. It has happened to you.
You're the object of the verb. He did it. He has come to you and he has afforded you a rescue. You are hidden. It's going to say With him.
Look at verse 3. The first thing we identify real clearly, your identity is afforded to you. Secondly, If then you've been raised with Christ. Seek things that are above. We'll come back to that, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are. For. You have died. And as a result, Your life is hidden With Christ. in God.
Now have you ever played the opposite? of hide and seek as a family. We've done we do have done this when the kids were growing up as a family. In fact, it can be kind of freaky. I think it's called sardines, I think.
Isn't that what it's called? Yeah. So where you go out And uh somebody hides. And then everybody's looking for them and then the person that finds them then hides with them. Right, and then the next person that finds hides with them, and the next person hides with them until there's one left seeking, and they feel like they are like Kirk Cameron on left behind all of a sudden.
And the rapture has occurred in their house, and they're kind of walking around, it's real quiet and eerie now. This Is kind of the flip notion of hide and seek. It's the idea that I, in a world that is after me, In a world that is trying to identify me. In a world that is just hunting me down ideologically, internally, emotionally, where I feel like I'm in this box just getting beat up. I get to go find Christ, or he finds me, and invites me behind the clothes.
and says, you can hide with me. You can hide with me. I can find my identity with the risen. Resurrected. Christ.
Now what does that mean? What does that mean that I would find my identity with the risen? Resurrected Christ. I want to read to you something from A guy named Christopher Watkin, who wrote, it's really quite a magisterial book. Uh called Biblical Critical Theory came out last year.
And he says this. The resurrection is the cornerstone. of a global Christian ethos. That is, it's the core, the resurrection is the cornerstone of a Christian way of living rightly in the world. A way of comporting ourselves.
toward ourselves? the world and other people. It can perhaps be characterized as a being towards life, he says. for which sure hope of eternal communion with Christ in a redeemed and transformed world is the subtext behind and the fundamental reality haunting every word. Every thought And every Action.
In in Greek. In verse 3, when it says, you've died and your life is hidden. with Christ In God, it's a passive idea again. You are hidden in Him because of His work. Christ has identified you, and now that resurrection, his death, you've been raised.
This gives you a kind of orientation toward yourself, toward the world, toward all things that now you get to recalibrate your life according to. That is to say, you begin to look at life through the ethos of Jesus. You begin to look at life through the kind of life that is Christ's, because he literally is your life. You now don't live to or from yourself, but you live to or from always filtered through Him.
So I was thinking about this and I thought, that sounds great, but what does that actually practically mean?
So I wanted to give you an example. We could go in much different directions if we wanted to, into ethical decisions that we make, into relational pathways that we have with others, right? But I wanted to give you a practical thought. And Perhaps a way you could do this in terms of maybe even burden-bearing in your daily life. What would it mean for you to live your life?
As though your life is completely saturated in Christ as you bear the burdens of a fallen world. And I thought, maybe what you could think of is just considering a handful of the short prayers. that are actually in your Bible prayed to Jesus. And you could consider the occasion of those prayers and how they might inform you to actually pray that way spontaneously throughout your day as you're dealing with burdens.
So just listen to a couple. In Luke 18, 38. We read and he cried out Right? This is a blind beggar. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
Do you find yourself in your daily life in need of mercy? Have you ever found yourself so emotionally drenched, saturated, weighed down? By a fallen world, by the circumstances of your life that you're not even sure what to do. Jesus Have mercy on me. I have in times in my life repeated it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Jesus, have mercy on me. What is that doing? That's helping me reorient my life to the fact that as weighty as this moment feels, I can consciously, in a small way, begin the subtle reorientation to press out beyond the material around me into a reorientation of a story that while I'm created in his image and though I am fallen, he came and redeemed me and he longs to recreate me. Jesus, have mercy on me. Subtly reorienting in the weight of a fallen world.
Matthew 15:25, but she came. And knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me. It's a Canaanite woman who knows she doesn't have a right to speak. to appeal. to this Jewish rabbi.
But But Her passion For the weight of her demon-possessed child leads her to say, help. Anybody in your life your heart is just ripped apart for? Anybody in your life you're just broken over? Anybody in your life that you feel like you're helpless because you can't actually change them? And you feel that.
You go throughout your day and you laugh at jokes. You go throughout your day and you smile at the workplace, but the truth is. Just a little bit underneath the surface, if it got spiked in just the right way, is a burden that is like a fire that could well up in you. Huh? I mean, am I alone in that?
No. Help me. Help me. Orienting your life. in saying, I can't.
Ah, but you can. Mark 9, 23 through 24. And Jesus said to him, If you can, this is when a man is asking. for his demon-possessed child to be delivered. I know you can.
Or if you can. And Jesus says, if you can? All things are possible for one who believes. And immediately the father of the child cried out and said, You know this. I believe.
Help my own belief. You ever feel like you're ready to say help? But You aren't even sure he's listening? You want to say, have mercy on me. Ah!
But Y you you feel like you're just talking to a wall. Help my own beliefs. John 20, 28. Thomas answered him. My Lord And my God.
My Lord and my God. I love that because that's just after the resurrection. Thomas is there, he's doubting right, and Jesus condescends to his doubts, shows him. the marks on his hand inside. And Thomas says, My lord, And my God, it's a confession.
Of the reorientation of life to who is sovereign, who is God, who I'm to submit to. Listen, throughout your day, When you're tempted to lose sight of the sovereignty of God, state what Thomas stated. My Lord and my God. When you are tempted to not believe. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
When you are tempted to let the burden of someone you love so overtake you, Lord, help. When you are under it yourself and feel like you're going to fall apart, Lord, have mercy on me. To live. With Christ as your life. is to invite Christ into every single word, thought, and action and to let him saturate all of it, the sorrows, the joys, the burdens, and the blessings.
For you have died. And yet you've been raised. with him your life is presently right now with Christ. With Christ. That's what it means for you to have been raised with Him.
It means you have resurrection. Life. It doesn't always mean out of that that now you go. You're just so happy all the time because you got resurrection life. It means that sometimes In the tragic weight of it all.
You go wait a minute. There was a you catastrophe There was an ultimate amazing good turn That allows me to say that doesn't get to say. Because I have resurrection life. You get the ultimate reorientation. Verse 4.
When Christ, who is your life, appears? When you go, wait a minute, it feels like I'm talking, nobody's talking back. When that changes and he shows up. Then you also will appear with him in glory. Your life will ultimately and eternally be with Christ.
So that's one of the reasons why you get to pull from the future into the present because the future is real. Keep in mind, when Tolkien uses that phrase and he talks about it as a fairy tale, he's speaking as a literary phrase. Man. He does not think that resurrection is a fairy tale. He's using that as a genre to say it's so amazing, it's so remarkable, it's fairy tale-ish.
And you get to take from the reality of the future, pull it back.
So I can live now because I know that one day I'll see him. I'll see him. And he who is my life comes, and now he envelops everything. We read in 1 Thessalonians 4, 17, then we who are alive and who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we'll always be with the Lord. There are always I mean that always will get you through a few days, friend.
that always will push you through. Difficulty that always can reconcile an awful lot of dust on the bookshelf when you've got that as the bookend. Always. With the Lord. I want you to skip down.
To verse 9. We'll come back. But he says do not. Lie to one another, seeing that you've put off the old self with its practices. Verse 10 is of concern to me, and have put on the new self.
which is being renewed. Which is being renewed. That is a, in Greek, it's called a present. Passive. It's continually happening.
It keeps, you keep getting renewed, but you're not the renewer.
Okay. It's been afforded to you. It's been afforded to you by who? By God, your present renewal. More and more in the image of God is from God.
He's doing a work in you. Have put on the new stuff which is being renewed in what? in knowledge. Remember, these Colossians in their church. Are being pressed in on a heresy that's saying you can come to a place of higher knowledge.
And what Paul is telling them is You don't need higher knowledge. This isn't some plane that you get taken up to because you are ascetic, because you do the right things and you walk in the right traditions. You undergo circumcision. You obey the Sabbath. You got the new moon festivals nailed down and you're doing all the right things.
And now you're taken up to spirituality 2.0. He said, that's not how this works. No, no. God comes and does something in your life. God finds you behind the clothes.
God says, what are you doing hiding? And he brings the light. To renew you. In the knowledge. after the image of its Creator.
Eternal life only defined, right? John 17:3 is the only text in your Bible that tells you this is eternal life that we may know you. The one true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. To have eternal life is to know. Not in some cognitive way, but in a existential.
In an interactive relational way, the way that you know your spouse. To enter into a qualitative relationship with God in Christ. Your life is hidden with Christ and God, and God now is renewing you. Listen, Romans 8, 29, in a golden chain of what God has provided for us, he says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to what end? To give you your little slip that allows you to pass in through the pearly gates.
No, no. to be conformed to the image of his Son. He Reach to you so you could look like him. He reached to you so you could take on his life. He reached to you so that when you're praying, have mercy on me, help me, Lord, help my unbelief, my Lord, and my God.
Every day you're walking through life, conscious of his presence, and lo and behold, what happens reflexively is your character starts to look more and more and more and more and more like him. And it's not because you're all that or I'm all that, it's because he's the one who finds us and works and moves and shapes and draws and equips and stirs. Conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. We we we get this opportunity. to enter into the family of God.
And to be conformed and shaped by that familial dynamic. The things that the fall screwed up, we get to pull the vehicle of our lives into the body shop, friend. And and sometimes, yeah. I mean, if the sheep metal on the car could say, ouch, it might scream when it's getting buffed. I mean when it's getting hammered.
When it's getting coated. When it has the heat applied to shape it and refine it and form it. Sure. But God is at work conforming you. It is his work through the circumstances of your life.
Now, you're going to miss it, though. If you aren't orienting yourself properly. Finally, let's look through verse 11 and then on to 12. in terms of identity. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.
In other words, this isn't some kind of thing that traffics along class. Along ethnic lines. This isn't about societal status. At all. Instead, there's something he's doing.
Irrespective. of where you come from, what you bring to the table. Verse. 12 put on then, and I just want you to see this phrase: as God's chosen ones. Holy and beloved.
That's how you're described. That's us. Your position is secure. as part of his people. Because of his choice.
It's it's not because of of what I've done. It's because of him.
Now that's significant. On a lot of levels, and we'll talk more about this when we get into Ephesians, which will be our new study. But For now, I just want you to just see a continuity. That's all I want you to see. I don't think you have any problem referring to Israel as God's children.
chosen people. Like the we use that phrase all the time.
Okay. What he's showing us is there's a continuity that exists here. Uh l let me just throw up a f a little scripture up here for you. 1 Chronicles 16:13. O offspring of Israel, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen one.
Psalm 105:6. O offspring of Abraham, his servant, children of Jacob, his chosen ones. Psalm 105, 43.
So he brought his people out with joy, his chosen ones with singing. And watch 1 Peter 2, 10, beginning of that verse, about Y'all. About the church, about us. Once you were not a people. But now.
You're God's people. Right? Now you're God's people.
Now he's brought you in.
Now he's found you.
Now you're hidden with Christ and God.
Now, he, this is where the source of your identity is, okay?
So Get in your minds that the identity that you have in Christ Is what allows you then to do. Anything in this life. Anything of victory, anything that accords with the glory of God, anything that makes a kind of kingdom impact, it comes in and through the life of Christ that is in union with you.
Now.
So that means that it changes every single thing you do. And so what he does is he spends time. Talking about what you ought to do. All right.
So I call this three categories of action for being dressed to kill. You ever see somebody like they're dressed to kill? Like they're they're showing out. Used to be dressed to the nines, right, was the idea.
Now, why do I use that phrase? Because he's gonna use a clothing. Motif. to talk about how You ought. to act in your life the kind of attributes, the kind of relationships, the kind of ethic that you ought to have in your life as somebody who Listen the language.
Is In Christ. And you'll notice That the ought was based in an And that's the only way you get an ought. The only way you know what you should do... Is From observing and experiencing and being a particular kind of person.
So once you step out and you attempt to leave any identity with Christ behind and pilot it solo by the forces of your will or some other lights of your culture, you're going to come up bankrupt. You won't be able to actualize the kind of life that is articulated here. And what is that life?
Well, go back. Two and as I said, we're going to go a little quicker through this back section. Go back to verse 1. If you've then been raised with Christ, if he did this, if he rose you with him in his resurrection, what should you do? You get an imperative.
You get two of them. First, at the end of verse 1, seek. The things that are above Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Seek the things that are. Above.
Act. In your daily life, with the conscious awareness of the presence of Christ over you, notice, seated at the right hand of God. Why does he say that? Do you remember when Paul is persecuting the church and then in Acts 9. He goes along and he has the heavens open and a light shine and the voice of Christ comes and he hears the voice of Christ.
And he has an utterly you catastrophic moment. His entire life turns in that very moment, such that later on, when he is in front of officials and bearing testimony to his ministry in defending what he's doing, he goes back and says, you got to know what happened to me there. You need to know, because what happened to him? Is that he Saw And heard. In that moment.
The risen Christ Who lives in glory, reigning over his church, part the heavens, and say, This is what I want you to do. What's Jesus doing now? The same thing he did then. Raining Over his church. He's seated at the right hand of the Father, and he's calling the shots for his church.
My job. Your job is to seek what are the marching orders. What does he want? Set your minds, a second imperative.
Okay. on things that are above. And both these, by the way, they're what are called present active impairments. It means just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep seeking, keep seeking, keep seeking, keep setting your mind. On things above, not on things that are on the earth.
Stop there. Here's what that doesn't mean. It doesn't mean, well, I guess I better not play golf. That's too earthly. I guess I better not watch college football.
That's just I mean it's earthly. Yes, I better. I mean, here are these ladies out here talking about having a tea party. What are we doing? We're on the Titanic all headed for hell and we're drinking tea.
I mean Is that? Like we're we're now where there's no enjoyment of any Temporal fruits, whatsoever, because the Bible says don't set your mind on earthly things. Is that what he means? No. How do you know?
Go to verse 5. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. And then he's going to list the things that are earthly. The reference in verse 3 needs to be interpreted in the light of what he's saying in verse 5, that's more explicit. You interpret the unclear by the clear.
He doesn't mean everyday things associated with life on this spinning globe. What he means is those things that look like the system of the world. Don't. Think about those things. Don't dwell on those things.
Don't saturate your mind with the things of the flesh. Because what then, when you have an idle mind, will you think about the things of the flesh?
So, don't dwell on those things. Instead, set your mind someplace else.
So, the first thing he says here is orient. Get yourself right.
So that you're seeking and you're setting your mind in the right place, namely things that accord with the life that is Christ's. And not yours. in that way. And then you can see, I mean, you just look down, right? Verse 5.
Put to death. Verse 12, put on. You know where this is going. The second action point is you put to death or you you you put off. is the idea.
It's a taking off of things. What is it that you're to Put off. And I'll just put the outline up here for you and just put these three things up. That's what he's going to tell us. Verses 5 through 9.
Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, namely. He lists five vices, but they're all geared around tainted desire. It's not wrong to desire, it's part of being a human person to desire. The issue is the direction or the bent that it goes. And so he lists them, and they're really kind of governed by the first: sexual immorality.
Tainted desire, pornea. Things that are of a sexual ilk outside of the confines of marriage. Impurity. The word for being unclean. Passion is the word we get.
Pathos, it's a reference to the baser urges in this way of desire. Evil desires. Evil desires and covetousness.
Some versions say greed. Which is idolatry. In other words, Thinking How something can be your ultimate satisfaction. Think of it this way: what is an idol? What is an idol?
And here would be a definition of an idol: an idol is a deified passion. An idol is when something so controls you that is not oriented to Christ that you are actually giving it a type of god-like status.
Now the trouble with that is that we're good at talking ourselves down from reality and we make statements like, yeah, well, sometimes I have bad desires, but they're not really idols. And yet we orient our lives around them, yet we. Reframe our agendas around them, yet we let them sit in the middle of our relationships and so forth. that would be called a deified passion. You're acting like it's a controlling element in your life, a God-like element in your life.
And now you're bowing to that. And he says, that's what covetousness does. You want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want, you want. And you don't have.
So you're frustrated. You're living in the space of that discontentment. You have a tainted desire. He says, put that stuff to death. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.
In these you two once walked, when you were living in them, but now. You must put them all away and then he gives another list of five. Only this time he deals with temperamental. desires. The one sort of this sexual component, this baser urge, you're desiring things you don't have, you want to possess them.
Here he says, anger. Wrath. Malice, slander, and obscene talk. From your mouth. They all seem to be around this idea of temperament, filthy language, this wrath.
It's like this, like if you ever saw the movie Mystery Men, like Mr. Furious. You just You're easily triggered in your anger. I just have a bad temper. No, don't don't make it out like it's a personality trait.
It's it's not your personality. It's your character. And there's a big difference between your personality and your character. And by the way, there's actually good news in that, because you can change your character. But it's not a neutral I'm just somebody who's a little More intense.
That's what I am. I'm intense. Nah, you're kinda just a jerk. I mean, you kind of are just a jerk. And you get angry at people And you're trying to act like it's just intensity.
No. Temperamental. Desire. He says, put that to death. How could you do that?
By trying real, real hard to not get angry.
So my friend Joe here says something to me, and darn it, I'm just gonna, okay. You okay, Brad? I'm okay. I just need a little space. Just gotta wind down a little bit and stuff.
Are you sure? Because you seem like you're. I'm not mad. I just. Just give me my space.
Yeah. Listen. Before you go, that okay, I need to do some solid deep breathing here and I need to walk away and all that kind of stuff, here's what you need to do. You need to Come to the relationship and say, My life is in Christ. You need to be in that.
in the context of this relationship.
So that words that would elicit a kind of response are already textured. Because your heart is already tethered. to a new story. Thank you. In Christ.
Don't lie to one another. Deception. Seeing that you've put off the old selfless practice, I find it interesting. This kind of sits out there by itself. Yeah, I think there's a reason for this.
Good luck having an intimate relationship with somebody you can't trust. It's like the one thing. That shuts it all down. Right? In a relationship, can't you handle another person's sin?
Well, yeah, I think, I hope you can. If you can't, you won't belong for relationships. But here's the thing. When somebody lies Oh no.
Now you don't know where to go. It's a different texture. It's certainly not unforgivable. It certainly can be worked through. But it leaves you in a space of shakenness that make it very, very difficult to go anywhere with another person when there is deception of any kind.
Because you never know what's real now in this thing. And so he says, make sure you put that away, because that'll wreck it all. If you feel like you got to look over your shoulder in a relationship, that ain't much of a relationship. Don't Lie. Without the truth, there's nowhere.
To go.
So he says, put these things to death, and then skip down to verse 12. Put on then.
So you got to get dressed to kill. Dressed to kill what? To kill your flesh. You put these things away, put them to death, kill them. And then what do you put on?
Oh, you don't leave the space empty. You put on, he says, as God's chosen ones. Holy and beloved. That is to say, as God's chosen ones, set apart and loved by Him, what do you put on? And what I'm going to show you, I'll put it up here on the screen, but you got like two cycles of this put on.
12 through 14, 15 through 17. 12 through 14 is you're going to see, it's going to show you a set of attributes that you put on. Then it's going to show you one another's that you do in light of those attributes. And then it's got a little addendum at the end, a little word that follows, a little added piece that kind of wraps it up. Then you see the same cycle happen in verse 15 through 17.
You see these attributes, you see one another's in light of them, and then you see a little added word. Right? I'm going to leave that up on the screen for you as we kind of just walk through this in closing. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate. Hearts.
Um The literal way is by Owls of compassion, but you don't want to talk like that today. You don't want to say, I was, I just, why did you do that for me? Because my bowels moved me to do that for you.
Well, I guess you wouldn't go like this, you might go like half of your kidney or something, like you complete me, and the other person shows you the other part of the kidney. Bowels of compassion. Yeah. In the deep. From down below.
From the inner guts of life. It's this metaphor, right? That now you put on an authentic, driven. Sense in which compassion, let's say it this way, you're willing to come alongside and suffer with that person because you recognize their pitiful, helpless condition and you want to be the agent of mercy for them. Put on compassionate.
hearts. Kindness It's sometimes translated as goodness. It's often used of God. in his goodness It is used in Romans 2:4 that it is the kindness of God that brings you to repentance. Been sinned against?
Been sinned against? Upset at somebody? Frustrated by somebody? Remember That it was God's kindness that brought you to repentance. Perhaps you could be kind to that person and see what God might do.
Rather than lording over them, rather than Heisman passive-aggressive, rather than, you know, you can't keep doing that stuff to me. Perhaps you could let kindness lead. And see what comes out of that. Humility. Seeing yourself rightly.
Meekness. My favorite verses about this is the same word used in prouse. It's often used translated as gentleness. But this is James 3.13. Who's wise in understanding among you?
By his good conduct, let him show his works in the Meekness of wisdom. I love that. Want to act right? Act in the meekness, the gentleness of wisdom. Rarely wise to go in like a bull in a china closet into your relationships.
And patience. Long suffering. Put those five things on, he says, right? And then he has these one another. You do them as you bear with one another.
Think of it in terms of tolerance. Right? Tolerance. But bear with one another, even maybe more than tolerance. You willingly receive someone, you appreciate.
and gladly put up. With the things that might rub you wrong Right? It's easy to fall. I've fallen prey to this recently, even, where you can easily get annoyed in dynamics instead of saying, wait a minute. How do I just live in the gladness of difference?
That's not moral. Just the gladness of difference. Bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. Which sounds great until I read the next line.
As the Lord has forgiven you.
So, you also must forgive. The first part sounds wonderful. The last part. Lifts the chin-up bar higher, it feels like. In some ways.
See, what my job in forgiveness is to go into my forgiveness first.
So I'm supposed to forgive, but as I do, I'm supposed to walk in to say, How has God in Christ forgiven me? Nty Wright writes, it is highly presumptuous to refuse to forgive one whom Christ himself has already forgiven.
So your believing spouse sins against you. And you're struggling to forgive them. Right? Has Christ forgiven them? And now are you behind the curve?
See, you have to think through what it would be like for you to be like Christ if Christ. Christ were you. That's true because your life is now hidden. with him.
So you're actually supposed to act like He's the one leading. And then you get this addendum at the end. Verse 14, and above all these put on love which binds everything. Together in perfect harmony. Operate in another's best interest.
As you go about your actions, let the word of Christ, second cycle, I'm sorry, second cycle verse 15, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. This is not saying, by the way, and there's other verses in the Bible that talk about this, but this is not about, I'm anxious, so I want the peace of Christ.
So if you quote this verse to deal with someone's anxiety, you're probably not using the verse in its intent. It's not what the verse is highlighting. The verse is highlighting. a peace that exists between you and another. Because the two of you have peace with God because of Christ.
It's about a kind of Thing that Christ has given you, so you're not allowed to live at discord. with another because his peace is wrapping it all up.
Now here's what that means in practicality. Have you been offended by someone and then you took the moral high ground and made them work their way back? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If you knew but you I know you're trying, but you don't understand what you done did to me.
And now you're making them work. You're outside this verse. The peace of Christ. You're not supposed to hold tension in a way that exacerbates the issue and makes it bigger than it is when Christ has reconciled you both so that you could be reconciled to one another. Peace.
He says. Let it rule in your hearts. To which indeed you are called in one body, and be thankful. There's all the emphasis about us relationally here. The word of Christ, he says, and be thankful.
So thankfulness is a huge part. It's gratitude. Let the word of Christ dwell in you ritually. Like, spend your time with him so that what comes out is what he says. This is part of what it means to have your life in Christ.
He's the one pervading your speech. and the one another is teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanksfulness in your hearts to God. And then the addendum: whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through me. Him.
You live in relationship with one another. You act in relationship with one another out of your secured identity in Christ, in His story. He has created you in his image. You have fallen. I have fallen.
We have to guard against rehearsing that in our lives as the evil one tempts us. We have been redeemed in Christ. He has canceled the debt that once stood against us. He has disarmed the powers that lord over us. And now we get to walk from that position into a completely recreated life where he now is our life and our life is hidden in him.
And we are constantly at his behest and through his spirit being renewed, conformed into his image. image. Don't get lost down here, friend. This whole series has been about the reorientation of you to the you catastrophe, the good. Utter turning.
That in a moment's time, Christ. Through his cross and resurrection, granted you and me so that we could live our life in that sense towards and through his life. And we get that. And you get that. This week, Pray those prayers.
Turn your hearts to him. Think how you can be saturated by Him in every interaction and every moment for His glory. Father, I pray your blessing upon us. Help us to be recreated as it were.
Okay. To be walking in ultimately, one day we will see you and we will be like you, for we'll see you as you are, the scripture tells us, Lord Jesus. But not yet.
So help us pull from that. Into the already of the moment that here already we might be able to live obedient to you because you have rescued us. In Jesus' name. I mean
