Colossians 3:1-11

Well, today I want to introduce Sarah to you. Sarah has been here at Whitewater for less than a year, but she's kind of jumped in feet first, ready to go all in. She's been serving in the back. You might see her in the sound booth back there. And if you accidentally think that there are two of her, it's because she has a twin sister who is Elizabeth Graybeal, who's on staff here, also serves on the tech team.

So. So, Sarah, thanks for being here. Welcome, Sarah, this morning. Thank you. Would you stand and Sarah's going to read our scripture for today from Colossians.

All right. Josh has a lot of good things to say about this chapter. I just celebrated my 33rd spiritual birthday on June 24, and this passage always convicts me. So let's read Colossians 3:1, 11 together. Since then, you have been raised with Christ.

Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now 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, whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. But you used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourself of all such things as these.

Anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge, in the image of the Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free. But Christ is all and is in all.

Thank you. Please have a seat.

Well, for the last few weeks, we've been studying through the book of Colossians. And at its core, Colossians is all about the supremacy of Christ, who Christ is and then what that means for us, those of us who have placed ourselves in Christ and Christ is in us, those of us who have surrendered to Christ as our Lord and Savior. Colossians is a letter, a rhetor. It's a rhetor written. It's a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a small group of young churches that have been established in the 30 years after Jesus resurrection.

And in chapters one and two, Paul establishes that Christ is supreme over all Creation. He is the visible image of the invisible God. And everything was created by him and through him and for him. That he is constantly, even now, in this very moment, holding all things together. That he is the head of the church.

And through his blood, through his sacrifice on the cross, we have access to reconciliation with God, because every power, dominion is under his feet. Everything is under his feet. Paul then describes the new reality for those of us who have surrendered our lives to Jesus. We have died to our old selves. This is symbolized in baptism as death and burial.

And resurrected through his blood, we've been raised to life, made alive in Jesus. We are in Christ, we said. Christ is in us. And we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. And now through him, we can be one with God the Father, just like Jesus prayed for in John 17.

This, all of this is our hope of glory. Now Paul urges us to allow God to keep us rooted and built up in Jesus. He's doing that work, strengthening us in faith as we were taught. And then we choose it is our work to overflow with thankfulness. And we talked about that last week.

And in all of this, he warns us, do not be taken captive by hollow philosophies, human traditions or religious effort, because the finished work of Christ on the cross, his glory, blood plus our faith, is enough. Period. Then we pick up in verse one of chapter three, he says, since then you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at that right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

Since then, Paul says, Paul's saying that since everything he's dropped on us in chapters one and two is dropped true, set your hearts on things above this word. Interestingly, this word set is the same word that Jesus uses in Matthew 6:33 when he says, seek first the kingdom. Set and seek, same word, seek first the kingdom. It is an active present verb. We've been learning about these active present verbs.

That means we do it. It's active and it's present. It's never finished. We're. We are constantly setting and constantly seeking.

It's a command to do this without ceasing. And we're aiming at something. We're setting and seeking towards something. What is that something? Well, things above is what Paul calls it.

The kingdom is what Jesus calls it. And then he adds something else to this. He says, set your minds on things above. Set your hearts and set your minds. And this echoes what Jesus says is the most important thing that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

Our heart is the very center of who we are. It's the center of our desire. It's the place from which everything we do, all motivation comes from that. Our minds are our intellect, our contemplation, our reason, our thought, our wisdom, our understanding, our mind and heart. Everything that drives us and everything we think, Paul says, are to be set on heavenly things or the kingdom, or all the ways, commands and wisdom of God.

And then Paul clarifies further what he is talking about by telling us what he's not talking about talking about. He says we should do this seeking of heavenly things, setting our hearts and minds in direct opposition to setting our hearts and minds on earthly things. What does he mean by earthly things? Well, he tells us in verse five, and let's note, this is not an exhaustive list. It's a list of all kinds of things like this.

He says in order to set our hearts on or seek heavenly things, we have to deal ruthlessly with our sin. He says put to death. Therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Stuff like sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

You used to walk in these ways in the life you once. Now this phrase put to death comes from a single Greek word, nekrao, which turns out means put to death. It means kill it, make it dead, cut it off from life. And then there's some kind of really odd language around here. That opening sentence in verse five literally means put to death, therefore the members which are upon the earth.

That's confusing. What does he mean by members? What exactly is that? That word literally means limbs, like body parts, arms and legs. Paul is saying don't let any part of your physical body be an instrument for sin.

Every habit, every desire, every behavior, the limbs, the arms and legs of your old earthly self, the parts of you that practice sin and that take you and carry you into evil places, cut them off, kill them, sever them from your body. This is literally take an axe to your arm. Again, Paul is echoing Jesus language which is equally violent. It's in Matthew 18. Starting in verse 8, Jesus says this.

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, you cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. See, Paul and Jesus are saying they're using extreme hyperbole here to show us how ruthlessly we should be dealing with sin in our lives.

There's only one way to deal with sin. Kill it. Kill it. Don't coddle it. Don't compartmentalize it.

Don't negotiate with it. Kill it. And this verb form for that word, kill it. To put to death is 1 sharp T decisive blow. Kill it.

It's direct. It's a command. Whatever it seems like it will cost you. They say even if it feels like you're gouging out your eye or cutting off your leg, kill it.

Now, if I'm super transparent with you, this is not my default position for how to deal with sin in my life. It has not been throughout my life. My default position, far too much of my life and far too often has been to manage my sin rather than kill it. Anybody else. There are only four of us.

The rest of you are liars.

I will justify it. I will rename it. I'll put boundaries around it and I'll call it growth. I'll say things like, I'm working on it, when really I'm tolerating it. I'm letting it live in my basement and I'm feeding it quietly, hoping no one else will notice.

Hoping it doesn't grow too big, that it begins to be unmanageable. Maybe for us it looks like justifying what we watch because we say we can handle it, even though it stirs up things in us that shouldn't be entertained. Maybe it looks like keeping that text conversation going with that person who isn't your spouse because it's harmless, even though we know we are walking a dangerous line. Maybe it's having one drink too many because it's the weekend and we worked really hard. Or spending money we don't have because we deserve it.

And before we know it, we have made a pet out of the very thing Christ died to set us free from. Paul and Jesus both say, don't manage it. Kill it. Kill it. Even if it costs you comfort, even if it costs you relationships, even if it costs you something you think you can't live without.

And don't miss this. The pain of killing sin is always less than the destruction of keeping it. The pain of killing sin is always less than the destruction of keeping it. Because sin never stays small. It always grows up.

It always grows up on September 30, 2003, a guy named Antoine Yates showed up at an emergency room in Harlem, New York. He had severe bites on his arm and leg and he claimed that his dog bit him. But everyone at the hospital was super suspicious because the bite marks on his arm and leg were, were way bigger than a dog. Turns out Yates was actually attacked and bitten by his 425 pound tiger that he was illegally keeping in his apartment. And he didn't want the authorities to know about it.

I'm not making this up. You can look this up. The report said that for five years, Yates left the apartment only once a day for an hour to go get food for himself and for this tiger. Because the tiger required more than 20 pounds of chicken livers and bones to keep it alive. I have so many questions for Antoine Yates.

Yates says he bought the tiger when the tiger was eight weeks old. Now eight week old tigers are cute. They are cute, man. They are cuddly, they're novel, they're exciting, they're manageable. He could keep it in a small cage, he could feed it a little bit of milk and a little bit of meat and that's all it took.

But over time, Yeats, I'm sure, convinced himself every day that he could manage. He probably didn't even really notice the gradual increase of the time and focus and resources that it took on the tiger. And sure enough, this cuddly tiger became exactly what it was always going to become. A giant, powerful killing machine, A meat eating predator.

Here is the crazy thing. All he could think about when he got out of the hospital was that he wanted his tiger back. Here's what he said. He said, I'm walking around, I'm still alive, I haven't lost a limb. He.

You couldn't even tell I got bit by a tiger unless I told you and showed you the mark. Church. I've been around long enough to know that this room is full of people who are feeding manageable baby tigers. And it's time that we listen to Paul. It's time we listen to Jesus and assassinate it.

To kill it, deal ruthlessly with it, to sever this sin from our lives using Paul's language. We ought to have a room full of self amputees walking in here every week now before you check out, before you lose heart because you think that kind of living is impossible. You've tried that kind of living. There's more to this. There's more to this.

And when we understand what he's saying, actually I'm Telling you church, this can transform our relationship with God. It can transform our relationship with sin. So hang with me. Because Paul continues, he gives us another list of things to get rid of. He said, if those sounded like bigger things, how about some smaller things I can tell you to get rid of?

But now you must also rid yourselves. That verb is our doing of all such things as these. Anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self again. Taking off our old self.

This is our work. It's our verb with its practices and have put on the new self again. Our work. We take off the old self. We put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge of its Creator.

Don't miss this. Being renewed is not our work. It is God's work. And it is not something that he does to and for us once. It's something he is doing over and over and over and over and over.

The blood of Christ is doing this for us over and over. It's our job to decisively choose to cut off and kill this sin in our lives, to put off our old selves, to put on our new selves. And Paul says, God's job is to renew us over and over and over and over and over. If we can get our heads around how this works, I'm telling you, it will change the way we think God thinks of us, and it will change the way that we interact with him, and it will change the way that we look at this battle of sin in our life. Because if you're anything like me, then you have struggled your whole Christian life with this dang question every time you look in the mirror.

If I have put off my old self, if I have put on Christ, what? Why do I keep stepping in that stupid trap again? Why do I keep sinning? Why do I keep falling in that same hole that I know exactly where it is?

And thank God Paul was honest with us about his own struggle, because he doesn't just say kill it. In Romans 7:18, he says this. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing.

Can I get an amen now? If I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it. It's sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. Although I want to do good, evil's right.

There with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law. But I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind, making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

I know you have looked in that mirror and thought to yourself, what a wretched person I am. Who will rescue me from this body? Every morning Paul wakes up and there is a new baby tiger in his guest room. And so many mornings, even though he knows he should kill it, instead he scratches it behind the ears. And once again he becomes hypnotized by its purring.

And before he knows it, he wakes up in the emergency room again. And right at the peak of his feeling hopeless. There's one more verse. There's one more verse. Verse 25.

Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus, Jesus Christ our Lord. That's what he says to that scumbag in the mirror. Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. God is the one who actively delivers us. He is the one who does this over and over and over and over and over and over.

This is how this works. And Lamentations 3:23 tells us that God's mercies are new every morning. Why would we need new mercies every morning? Church? Why would we need them?

Why would God provide something to us if we didn't need it? He's providing us new morning, new mercies every morning. Because every morning comes with new baby tigers. And every morning we will need new strength to decisively choose to kill them. And when we don't choose to kill them for a day or for a week, or for long enough that they send us back to the emergency room again, still every morning.

His mercy is new. Praise God. This new mercy comes every morning not because we're losers. It's not because he is constantly standing in disappointment over us. It comes every morning because God knows that as long as we're in this physical body, on this physical earth, we.

We are constantly in need of renewal. And through the Holy Spirit's work of reconciliation, of sanctification in our lives, through our ongoing willingness to kill this sin in our lives, to deal ruthlessly with it, we should wake up less mornings with a baby tiger in our guest room. And we should have fewer days wake up, we get enamored and hypnotized by its purring. And we should have less and less visits to the ER until one day, gosh, One day, God will so graciously allow us to breathe our last breath. And it will be gone.

It will be gone forever. We get to be rid of sin and death forever. And in the meantime, we get to confidently wake up every morning knowing that there is new mercy for today. And all this begins with us saying yes to what God is offering us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything we've talked about today is ultimately what baptism is all about.

It's this initial act of decisively dying to ourselves by choosing him as our Savior, starting this long process of waking up every morning to new mercies and a new call to die to ourselves again and again. One of the things I wanted to do today, I said last week, is not just celebrate those who will step into the Baptistry for the first time, but also to stir up all of us in affection for our salvation, whether we've been at this for a few days or a few decades or a whole lifetime. And so right now, I'm just going to ask everybody to kind of take a moment to participate in something, as I mentioned, a particular amount of time that you've been baptized and following Christ, I'm just going to ask you to stand. If you've been baptized and walking with Jesus Christ for less than a year, would you stand? If you've been following Jesus for less than a year?

All right, we got a few here in the room. Praise God for that. Stay standing. Stay standing. We're going to join you.

How about if you have been following Jesus for one to three years, if this is fresh for you in the last one to three years, would you stand? Would you stand?

Awesome.

How about for five years? For five years? In the last five years. Praise God.

How about in the last 10 years? In the last 10 years, would you stand?

I love that we've got every demographic and age across the room here. How about in the last 20 years? In the last 20 years, if you've been following Jesus inside of the last 20 years, how about the last 50 years? Inside of the last 50 years or more. 50 or more years, would you stand?

How about if you're getting baptized today? Let's stand. Let's stand and celebrate with you.

Now, if you're still seated, if you're still seated because you're not walking with Jesus yet and you're not ready yet today. That's okay. That's okay. You are still welcome here. We are so glad you're here.

You are still deeply love, but we want to remind you that the invitation is open. Today, it's open all the time. And today can be that day, or today can be the beginning of a conversation, or maybe you're not ready yet, but we're praying for you and we're with you. And so would you stand now with us? And we're going to read this profession of faith.

This is a traditional profession of faith that we declare and proclaim as we come to Jesus. And I'm just going to ask us to read this together.

I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and I choose him as my Lord and Savior. I put that word choose in there on purpose because that word choose is for the first time and it's for the second time, and it's for the thousandth time. It's a choosing that we can do every morning. It's a choosing that we can do a hundred times a day, every 30 seconds, if that's what it takes. Let's say this again together.

I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and I choose him as my Lord and Savior. One more time, let me hear you. I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and I choose him as my Lord and Savior. We're gonna sing together over these next few minutes. We're gonna celebrate together.

And if you are getting baptized today, or you want to get baptized today, you can just come right up here. Our hosts are there. They'll welcome you. They'll take you to the back and get everything taken care of for you there. So let's sing in worship.