854. The Believer’s Focus

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled Seeking Things Above, which is a study of the Book of Colossians. If you would like to follow along in the study booklet, you can get one on Kindle or you can order a printed copy from the website thedailyplatform.com. Colossians chapter three, this morning we're looking today in our fourth study through this theme of seeking things above.

Here we are coming into our fourth message, fourth challenge, not quite halfway through the series. This morning we're looking in verses one through four. We actually looked at it last week as I spoke on the believer's identity in Christ. And now we're going to look at the believer's focus in Christ. In chapter three, the apostle Paul is explaining how Christians live the victorious resurrected life. And Paul is taking the time to show us the essence of true spirituality, what it looks like.

And he's already made it clear that spirituality is not found in those add-ons that we saw in the second chapter, and he mentions those like intellectualism or mysticism or legalism or asceticism. But rather, it's found in your identity in Christ, who you are in Christ, it always starts there. And then that has to be lived out through a focused, passionate pursuit of Jesus Christ. And this morning we're going to look at the two specific commands that Paul gives us here in Colossians chapter three, verses one and two.

Notice what he says. If you then be risen with Christ, and here's the first command, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Then notice the second command, set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth. So as Paul gives us this practical steps of living out the Christian life, before he even gives us the ethical commands, the things that we should and should not do, that start in verse five, he really gives us our focus. And our focus is to be a heavenward focus.

And he tells us there are two things that we're to do. Number one, the first command is that we are to seek heavenly realities. Notice he says, if you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. The word seek there means to seek after something with your whole heart.

It's a command in which we are to be actively engaged, doing this all the time. And I think we all recognize that everybody here has a passion for something. Deep in your heart, there's something you would like to do, there's something you would like to have, something you would like to be, a pursuit. It could be a person, it could be a job, it could be a house, it could be a degree, or it could be some kind of mission. For example, I find it always intriguing how a guy plans out his engagement to a girl, by the way.

And it's always been interesting to watch because I've seen it happen many times. I go through this intense process of striving for the most creative, imaginative, cool, spectacular, unique way of asking, will you marry me? My son-in-law, Ethan, is a lawyer. He's real smart. He married my daughter.

He's real smart. When he asked for her hand in marriage, when he asked her to marry him, my daughter at the time was actually spending a semester in school in Jerusalem in Israel. And my daughter had a particular friend who had rented an apartment on the sixth floor of a building in the old city of Jerusalem. And they had this magnificent patio with a spectacular view overlooking the famous Dome of the Rock.

I mean, it's unbelievable. So people would go there and they would sit and they would dine and they would feast their eyes on the beauty of this ancient city. Well, Ethan made a plan. He decided to fly to Israel, unbeknown to my daughter Rachel, and to ask her to marry him on the rooftop. Well, with the help of some friends, he devised a plan where Rachel would be invited for dinner on the rooftop apartment without her knowledge of Ethan's actually being there. Well, you can only imagine the surprise that she felt when she walked up the sixth flight of stairs, stepped out on the patio, and there he was waiting for her. And we have it all in film.

That's what makes it so cool. He drops to her knees. She's weeping and crying. He was looking for that one magic moment. I think he got it.

When he said, would you marry me? So it's interesting to me to watch that pursuit. When we look at this verse and it says to seek things above, it is the idea of an intense pursuit. So the question is, what does he mean by those things that are above?

And I think there are a number of things. First of all, I think it means that we are to seek the preeminence of Christ over our lives. Paul is speaking here of Christ who is seated at the Father's right hand, the position of preeminence, the position of authority. And Paul tells us earlier in Colossians that Christ is both the Lord of creation and he is the head of the body. He is the highest ranking human that has ever lived, and the result of that is that we should all give him first place in our lives. That in all things, Colossians 1.18, he might have the preeminence. To seek things above means to seek for Christ to be first place in every area of your life. Now, when I became a Christian at 19 years old, I knew I was saved, but I didn't really realize everything that Christ wanted. Really was a part of my sanctification. And especially the first year of my Christian life, it was just one decision after another of taking things that were mine in my thinking and giving them over to the Lord.

Giving my future to God, giving the idea of marriage to God, giving my education to God, giving my finances to God, giving my friendships to God, giving God my time, giving God my talents, giving God my treasures, everything to be given over to him. That's the idea of seeking things above, seeking his preeminence. But I think it also has the idea of not only giving him these things, but also trusting him. Trusting him with control over your circumstances. Many people are disappointed, or they're upset, or they live discontent over their circumstances.

They don't like this, they don't like that, and they want to constantly change it. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever thought, Lord, you are the one who's the Lord over my circumstances.

You are the one who brought these things into my life. Seeking the preeminence of Christ is seeking his control over things, over people, over the authority that God has placed in my life. Coming to this point where it's saying, Lord, this is your will, this is your purpose, this is a spirit of yieldedness in contrast to a spirit of resistance. I think this is particularly true if you've grown up as a Christian young person, a Christian home. That it's easy to grow up with a mentality towards God that reminds me of the old TV game show called Let's Make a Deal.

You ever heard of it? You know growing up that God is to have first place in your life. You've heard that all your life growing up. But there are also things as a human being you want to have, or you want to be, or you want to do, and the problem is you're not so sure if God wants you to do that. So instead of naturally giving those things over to God and trusting God with those things, the tendency is to make a deal with God. You like God, you want God to have first place in your life, and you also have other things that you hope that he will let you have. And it may be that God will allow you to have those things, but that's not the issue.

The problem lies in the fact if your will is still first. And the Lord is Lord. He's Lord of creation. He's head of the church. He's the highest person in all humanity. He is the King of Kings. He's the Lord of Lords. And folks, kings don't make bargains with his servants. He wants first place in all of your life.

This is a big deal, and this is where many of you are living. Does God have first place in everything? Paul's point is to seek things above means to seek his preeminence. And what is important to remember here is that this is voluntary. It's not forced. It's not coerced because it's a decision of trust because he is worthy of your trusting him with your future.

He is worthy of that. As for God, his way is best. You are entrusting what is important to you to the care of his loving lordship because he cares more about you than you care about yourself. That's a big deal, and that's what it means to seek things above. And then secondly, it means to seek not only the preeminence of Christ, but I think it means to seek the presence of Christ in your life. Earlier in chapter 2, Paul revealed that the false teachers promised spiritual fulfillment through following certain Old Testament laws and regulations.

However, the laws of the Old Testament were actually pictures that were pointing us to Christ. For example, imagine a soldier who takes a picture of his wife and his children to war. Every day he looks at these pictures. He cherishes each and every thought of his family. And then every night before he goes to sleep, he kisses the picture as a reflection of his affection for his family.

Well, the day finally comes when he returns home safely. And when he finally sees his wife and his children waiting for him at the airport, what does he do? Who does he kiss? Does he pull out the picture and start kissing the picture? Or does he run to his family and kiss them?

The answer is obvious. Once he has his family, he doesn't need a picture any longer. What he wanted all along was the presence of his family. The Old Testament is filled with pictures, or what we call types of Christ.

And God's people in the Old Testament waited in anticipation and growing affection for the day when the Messiah would come. And now that he's come, we really don't need the pictures. We don't kiss the pictures. We kiss the Son. To seek those things that are above means I seek Christ with all of my heart.

I seek his presence in my life. There's nothing more wonderful than to have the presence of the people that you love the most with you. So yesterday afternoon I got home from traveling over the weekend and walked into the house. And who were there? My children were there. My wife was there. And suddenly there was this wonderful sense of peace and relaxation.

I'm home. But you're never more at home in your life than when you have the presence of Christ in your life. You say, how do you then experience that? Well, we have the Spirit of Jesus living inside of us. We have the words of Jesus written in the Bible. So if you have the Spirit of Christ and the Word of Christ, then you have the presence of Christ.

The Bible says, search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life, but they are they which testify of me. How is it that we have the presence of Christ in our life? We open our Bibles. We get on our knees. We begin to pray and say, Lord, I need you. I need your presence in my life. And then you read the Word of God until there's a glorious sense of His presence.

I remember very clearly in college, many hours and many nights I felt alone, but I wasn't alone. And I would pull out my Bible and read a psalm or two or three or four, and then I would begin to sense the Lord's presence with me, His comforting reality. That's what it means to seek those things which are above. May I say to you this morning, you can't afford to live here without His presence in your life.

All day long going with you. And then let me say one other thing about seeking things above, and I think it also means to seek the power of Christ in your life. In chapter 1 and verse 29, Paul states that he did his ministry through Christ's power. He says, whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. Seeking things above includes the pursuit of Christ's power in your life, in your ministry.

Not just the power to overcome sin, but the power to be used in ministry to be effective. And so it is seeking that power for daily living and seeking that power for daily service. I think these are just a few ways in which we are to seek the things that are above. So he commands us seek and pursue and focus on Christ. But then there's a second command, and that's found here in verse 2.

And notice what he says. He says, set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth. The second command is to set your mind on a new affection. Now what does he mean by set your affection on things above? The word affection there actually has the idea of the way that you think that affects the way that you feel.

To set your affection on things above means to give serious consideration to something, to ponder, to let your mind dwell on it, to keep thinking about it. It's the idea of meditation. It's kind of like going to college for the first time and realizing you're going to have to adapt to a whole new way of thinking. You're going to have to make adjustments. True spirituality requires the engagement of the mind and the affection on eternal, unchanging truths.

Okay, now let me try to explain what I mean by that and I'll give you a couple of illustrations. Last week we talked about your identity in Christ. And if you say that you find your identity in Christ, and by the way, I was very encouraged last week by just some of the verbal responses to me personally about how it was so helpful to recognize your identity in Christ. If you say you find your identity, your value, your worth, your security in Christ, then how do you actually live that way?

How does this actually work? Well, first of all, you have to realize you're going to have to make some mental and emotional adjustments or changes. You're going to have to transfer the way that you think. For example, last week I said that insecurity is putting your trust in something or someone that can be taken away. If you're putting your dependence in somebody or in something that can be taken away, you're going to be naturally insecure. That could be your appearance.

You could look good today and look terrible two years from now. Your abilities. I mean, you're constantly comparing yourself to each other.

That's human nature, the kind of grades you make, how you do, your abilities. Your approval or your acceptance. Do people approve of you?

Do people accept you? Your achievements, what you accomplish. Now, all of these things, none of them wrong, of course, but all of these things will inevitably breed some kind of insecurity if you're totally trusting them for your identity and purpose.

Because none of these things are permanent. And when you begin to see that you actually are trusting those things and you begin to understand your own natural insecurity, your wrong responses, you begin to realize that those very things that you're trusting in actually have become idols. They are things that you are, from your heart, almost naturally worshipping. And so when I talk about a mental and emotional change, what I'm talking about is recognizing that what I'm trusting in is actually wrong and you have to repent of that. You have to turn from trusting in that and you have to transfer your trust to what cannot be taken away.

What is that? Your identity in Christ. Your relationship with Him. His eternal, unchanging love for you. His redemption of you. His promises to you.

You have to adjust your thinking by believing that what God has declared in His Word is not just true, but it is more than enough to give you the security that you need regardless of the way that you feel. Alright, now let me give you two illustrations. These go back to my experience my sophomore year of college and there were two very difficult experiences I went through. The first one had to do with sports and the second one had to do with a girl. The first one was sports. And I grew up playing sports. I love sports. I love sports to this day and particularly I love soccer. I just really enjoy soccer. The fact is when the Bruins are playing, I go find a place to sit in the stands where nobody is there or generally nobody wants to sit with me anyway.

But I go and I sit there because I get so engaged in the game. And last week we were playing Pensacola. I thought, you know, if Coach McCormick does not chew out our guys at the end of the first half, I'm going to walk across the field and start throwing bodies. Because we didn't play very good.

We played really good the second half and we won, thankfully. But I get engaged in it. So, you know, I just like it.

It's natural for me. But between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I broke my left ankle playing indoor soccer in a match at the College of Charleston. And I had to have two surgeries on my ankle, ligaments torn, bad break, pins put in my leg, and it completely knocked me out of my soccer season.

So what I looked to for significance in achievements was like gone. Second thing happened is that I'd been dating a girl for three years, my senior of high school, freshman year of college, and then into my sophomore year. I really thought we were going to get married. But she broke up with me. And looking back on it, I kind of laugh about it now, but it was so bad. I did not eat for one week.

That's really bad. So not only did I lose something that meant significance to me, but I experienced real rejection. And both of these things that were important to me at that moment in my life were taken away. And in the process of that pain and in the process of pursuing God, I began to realize that both of those things had become idols. It wasn't that they were wrong in themselves, but they were the things that I was looking to for significance and purpose and acceptance and satisfaction. And suddenly those things were gone.

I mean literally vanished away in a moment of time. And I remember clearly asking God to forgive me for my sin of making those things more important than Him. And I began to pursue the Lord in reading scripture and meditating on scripture and actually spending time with Christians that were influencing me. And when I began to read the Bible, I didn't read the Bible because I was disciplined. I read the Bible because I was desperate. By the way, that's the best way to read the Bible. You're desperate. You need God.

Some of you don't read your Bible because you're not very desperate yet or you're still worshipping the idols. But when you get rid of the idols in your heart and you get rid of the things that are filling your life to bring you satisfaction and security and significance and you take those things and rip them out of your life, suddenly there's an open gaping hole in your heart. You come to fill that with the Lord. That's what it means to set your affection on things above. It's to replace the old with the new.

Thomas Chalmers was a well-known Scottish theologian of the 19th century. He wrote a little piece entitled The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. The premise of his booklet is that the removal or the displacement of the love for something that is bad cannot be easily accomplished by simply exposing the bad object is empty and worthless. An effective change can only come when you set forth another object, in this case Christ, who is more worthy of one's heart affection and attachment. And he says these words, that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but a new affection, an exchange of an old affection for a new one. To set your affections on things above is a transfer of what you're trusting in or what you're looking to. That something or that some person and not that necessarily they're all bad, but if they are more important to you than God, they're an idol. And you take those idols that are in your life and you transfer that trust through repentance and then you look to Christ, set your affections on things above.

And what do you find? You find his sweet presence in your life. You find his sweet power in your life. Jonathan Edwards was considered the greatest theological mind in American history. He was a leader of the first great awakening in the United States.

And by the way, we are the great, great grandchildren of that great awakening here at Bob Jones University. And in the process of this revival that they experienced, there was a conflict among the theologians over the passions and the affections of the believers. And Edwards came from the group that believed that there should be both mind and affection. There should be the mind engaged in the Lord, but there should be passion in the life. And out of this conflict he wrote what was considered a masterpiece in the history of Christian literature. It's called a treatise on religious affections.

And here's his main point. He says true religion consists in a great measure in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul or the fervent exercises of the heart. And the essence of what Edwards is writing about is the same basic truth that Paul is saying in Colossians chapter 3. He is saying true spirituality is a passionate pursuit of the heavenly realities in your heart and mind. It is an exchanging of old affections for new ones. So as we finish this morning, let me give you a very simple spiritual exercise, something you can actually do. When negative emotions begin to rise in your heart, they come up and they're going to come up. This is an opportunity, this is a call to transfer your focus to Christ.

For example, take things like anger and fear and disappointment and frustration and irritations and worry and jealousy and pity and let those negative emotions be a call, an alarm clock. So that you turn that into prayer by casting those negative thoughts and feelings on the Lord, by confessing your sin, saying God I'm trusting in something that I'm looking to to bring satisfaction and that's why these emotions are coming up. And confess the sin of idolatry and then begin to search the scriptures and find promises in the Bible that can become mental and emotional hiding places.

A refuge for spiritual refugees in a world filled with false idols that make false promises that only God can give you. And look to those promises for your comfort, for your help, for your strength, for only then, only then will you find in Christ real satisfaction and security and significance when you exchange the old affection for a new one. Father we thank you that you have given to us your beautiful son who in him we can be satisfied and secure and find our complete significance. Forgive us Lord of our idols that we worship. Lord I pray especially for our student body that they will rid themselves of false idols and that they will from their heart cry out in desperation for your presence and your power. And we thank you that all of this is found in Jesus. May he be glorified in our lives. We thank you for this in his name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon from the study series in the book of Colossians by Dr. Steve Pettit, President of Bob Jones University. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study in Colossians here on The Daily Platform.