Licensed to Kill

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Don Filcek; Colossians 3:1-11 Licensed to Kill

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Each week we spend a good chunk of our time walking through God's word and hearing what he has communicated to us about himself, what he's communicated to us about us, because we can get ourselves wrong and so we need
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God to tell us who we really are. And then he also tells us in his word about the world.
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And for those of you that have been around for the past several weeks, I hope that you're getting the point that it is all about Jesus.
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Colossians is a letter that was written to a church that's obviously facing some false teachers in their midst and that false teaching was primarily centered on the
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Christian life and about Jesus. It appears that false teachers rose up in that church in Colossae and they said that starting with Jesus was fine, like that's a good place to start.
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But then they said, okay, now you started there with him, but now you can go ahead and set him aside and you've got some other things that you need to do.
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There's other hoops that you need to jump through. There's other stuff. And they purported to be the teachers, the ones who could tell you what to do and how to grow.
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And so they said, if you follow our rules, if you do things our way, then you'll be okay in the Christian life and kind of set
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Jesus aside for a moment. And Paul wasn't having any of that. I hope you see that in the book of Colossians.
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He goes over the top in communicating that Jesus is indeed sufficient for your salvation.
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He has everything that you need to be made right with the Father. And further, he is sufficient for your
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Christian walk. He is sufficient for you to grow up in godliness in him.
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And so in our text this morning, Paul addresses what I would say is the biggest barrier that each one of us face in walking with Christ each day.
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And I think I'm on good footing in guessing that I know what the biggest barrier is for you to walk with Christ each day.
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And that is namely our own sin. Our own sin.
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And in no uncertain terms, Paul issues to each one of us this morning through this text, a license to kill.
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A license to kill, to put down sin. He not only encourages us to put to death the ungodly attitudes and actions that we see cropping up in our life, but he also tells us to put them off in this text like a filthy garment.
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Like filthy clothes after a long day of work or working out in the garden or labor or out exercising.
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Put that stuff off. Put that stuff off. Stuff like evil speech and evil actions and evil attitudes.
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This is a beautiful text. It explains the role of Christ in the Christian life. And by the end of this message this morning,
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I hope you find some things in your life that you need to put to death. But I equally hope that you find the motivation to do so through Colossians.
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So let's open our Bibles to Colossians 3 verses 1 through 11. And if you need a
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Bible, you could just raise your hand. Mike's got some Bibles back here. We just want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God on their lap so you can follow along as I read, but also so you can follow along as I preach later after we worship in music.
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But Colossians 3, 1 through 11 is where we're at. And this is what God desires for each of us to hear on this
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Valentine's Sunday morning. So Colossians 3, 1 through 11. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
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Set your mind 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.
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When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
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Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
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On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.
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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have 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.
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Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
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Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning.
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Father, I rejoice just the way that that text ends with Christ being all and in all, and Father, I pray that indeed that would be the starting point, the launching point of our worship this morning.
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Father, that based on a foundation of a relationship with Jesus Christ, that we can then put to death the deeds of the body and the flesh.
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We can take off these evil words that we have a tendency to speak, the cutting remarks, the animosity that we show towards others, the self -centeredness that crowds out other things in our lives that are good.
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Father, that we would set our minds on things above, that we would seek the things that are above.
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And Father, that even our worship would be a seeking of that which is above, where Christ is seated at your right hand, that we would worship you in truth this morning, worship you as your redeemed people who do not deserve your salvation, but have received it nonetheless.
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And so Father, from that place of joy and excitement and enthusiasm, like having won the lottery, like having owed a debt that we could never pay, and having that covered for us.
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Father, I pray that our emotions would be engaged in the worship of you this morning, that it would not just be an exercise of our minds reading the words on the screen or spitting those back at you,
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Father, but that you would be moving us in our hearts with enthusiasm, drawing us in deeper into Christ.
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It's in his name that I pray. Amen. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us in worship this morning.
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Hopefully you were able to step before the throne of God, and I think there's something beautiful, I mean you can sing songs on your own, but gathering together as God's people, there's something that's awesome about that.
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So I really appreciate the work that these guys do in trying their best to step out of the way and just letting us come before God together, and so that's cool.
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Encourage you to get comfortable if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, juice over here, or more donuts while supplies last up there.
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Feel free to get up at any time during this, the remainder of our service. And if you need to get up and stretch out in the back as well,
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I recognize those aren't the most comfortable chairs, so whatever it takes. Our goal right now is to keep our focus on the
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Word of God for the next half an hour or so, and really dig in and see this. So keep your Bibles also open to Colossians 3, 1 through 11.
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That's going to be our outline. We're going to walk right through verse by verse and see what God has for us through the
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Apostle Paul, through this letter that he wrote. So Paul's message throughout Colossians is primarily for Christians.
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It's very fundamental that we get that down and understand who, whatever we're reading from Scripture was written to, so that we interpret it and understand it correctly.
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So it was written for Christians, and if you're here and you're not all in with Christ, it would still be helpful for you to listen in, but I want to warn that the message from Scripture is very different depending on your relationship with Jesus Christ.
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First and foremost, to those who are not in with Christ, Scripture is calling you to submit your life to Jesus Christ as your
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King, as your Lord, as your Savior. He is the one who died for you. He was the one who was raised again for you, and our only hope as a broken, fallen, sinful humanity is wrapped up in Jesus.
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And so that is the call consistently from Scripture. And that's why Paul begins this text in verse 1 with the phrase, if then you have been raised with Christ.
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He wants to make sure that you know he is speaking to Christians. If you have been raised with Christ, then these things.
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And this phrase in Greek, by the way, presupposes that what is said is true, so it could also equally be translated, since you have been raised with Christ, then these things.
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Because he takes for granted that the people that he's writing to, he says, I'm assuming because of all that I've heard about your love together and your unity there in Colossae, he's basically saying, yeah,
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I know that you're Christians, and since you have declared with your mouth that you have been raised with Christ, now these things.
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And notice that Paul is thinking of this in terms of past events. He is not referring to some future resurrection.
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You will be raised with Christ, but since you have been, a past life has been granted to you.
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You have been raised with Christ. He spoke like that back in chapter 2 about us dying with Christ, being buried with Christ, and rising with Christ to new life.
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When did those things occur? When you bowed your knee before Christ and invited him to be your king, lord, savior, master, your everything.
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And so that is the point when a person has died to them, died to their old self, and been raised again to new life.
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And that's imaged, Christ mentioned earlier in chapter 2, about that being imaged by baptism.
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Baptism is an imagery of that burial, that death, burial, and resurrection of a person.
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And so that is a symbol of that. It's not necessarily at your baptism that that occurs, but you're showing that.
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So when a person becomes a Christian, more is going on than what is seen on the outside of them.
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A person who humbles themselves and asks Jesus to be their king and savior by believing that his sacrifice on the cross is what they need to cover their sins.
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In that situation, the old person, an old person has died, and now a new person is raised to life in Jesus Christ.
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This is going on internally. This is going on in reality though. And there's an actual change occurring.
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The old things, Paul says in another passage to another group of Christians, that the old things have passed away and new things have come into the person's life.
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And that is what Paul is going to be talking about over the next two sermons this week and next week. In this sermon, he's going to explain some of the old things that have passed away.
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And then next week, he's going to talk about some of the new things that come that we need to put on, some things we need to take off, and some things that we need to put on because we have been made new in Jesus.
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So only after, hear me carefully, only after Paul has established that he's speaking to those who have been raised to new life with Christ, then
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Paul begins to issue some commands, begins to talk about the way that we should live, the way that we should walk.
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But only after he has established that you are in with Christ. What I think a lot of people in our culture think, and even some
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Christians, well -meaning Christians, would heap laws and rules on people who do not have a new heart, who do not have a capacity or even an understanding of why they should live a certain way.
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And so we as a church need to be very careful to deal with sin in our own hearts. But how do you deal with a lost world?
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Are we showing them and shining out to them a list of rules, a list of regulations, a list of behaviors?
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Or are we talking about Christ, who is the answer to the problems that they face, to the heart issues, and their inability to meet their own standards?
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So he starts with that point. Since you are raised with Christ.
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And then in verses one through four, we're going to see kind of a little bit of an outline. I don't alliterate very often, but you're welcome.
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Verses one through four, Paul lays out the focus of the Christian life. Verses five through eight, we see the fight of the
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Christian life. In verses nine and eleven, we see the flavor of the Christian life.
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Focus, fight, flavor. That's the three movements of this text. And in spelling out the focus, to start off with,
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Paul issues these two commands to the church in Colossae and to the church in Matawan to recast.
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He says this, seek the things that are above, command number one, and set your mind on things that are above.
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These two commands address two fundamental aspects of your life. I guarantee that these are things, whether you think about them or not, they are part and parcel of what it means to be human.
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You all have this in your life. Number one, you're looking for something. You're seeking something.
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You are constantly trying to achieve something. Part of that is the result of the fall, to be honest, that you hunger for more.
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You recognize that there's something more to be had and so you're looking for something. What are you seeking after?
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And the second is, what are you thinking about? Two primary things that he's addressing here.
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What are you setting your mind on and what are you seeking? Certainly those two questions are closely related.
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I don't know about you, but my goals in life drive a lot about what I spend time thinking about, right?
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Do you find that in your life? The things that you, whether inadvertently or accidental goals, things that you kind of have as kind of a passion or a pursuit, does that occupy your mind some?
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Yeah? Yeah, it does, right? You find yourself thinking about it. Think of it this way. If you worship stuff, you're going to find that you spend a lot of time thinking about buying stuff, reviewing stuff, shopping online for stuff, thinking about the stuff that other people have, right?
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If that's a pursuit of yours, then you're going to spend a lot of time in here about stuff.
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If you worship pleasure, as so many in our society do, then you may find your mind often turning towards sex and sexuality.
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If you worship entertainment, you will often be thinking about sports, video games, shows, movies, or whatever your particular brand of entertainment is, and it's going to occupy some of your time.
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You might even find it distracting you at times, right? Any of you ever been distracted? Okay, I won't tell your employer.
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You can raise your hand if you want, but I think I've been distracted. Oh, did I say that in front of you guys? Yeah, I get distracted sometimes.
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I get work, you know. Have you ever found yourself like online while you're working? Have you ever been there?
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Okay, now nobody's going to raise their hand, right? You know what I'm talking about, and so you can get distracted by things that are entertainment, you know, and whatever it is, and you can be checking the game, checking the sports scores, you know, following up on ESPN and reading all the articles or whatever it is that grabs your attention.
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And I want to be clear here that in this text, this is very fundamental, that none of these things in and of themselves are the problem.
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Sex, video games, movies, and shopping are not the things that Christ wants you to put to death.
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These are not the things he wants you to kill. These are not the things he wants you to put away, necessarily.
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These are are not in and of themselves evil, but he is, what he is asking of each and every one of us is to seek the things that are above.
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Make sure that that is your pursuit, the things above. He is asking each one of us to wrestle our mind to the ground, put it in a headlock, crush it into submission, and intentionally lock your heart's gaze on the things that are above.
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It takes effort, otherwise you wander in your mind, you, it takes intentional focus to seek the things that are above, to set your mind on the things that are above.
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Another more simple way of saying this is be sure that you're aligning your goals with spiritual things.
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Meditate on spiritual things. Well, what are spiritual things? Anybody kind of,
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I've said it enough here that I hope you've, it's produced a little bit of a question in your mind. What are spiritual things?
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Well, these are first and foremost, fundamentally, things that are associated with Jesus and his reign. Paul's made a strong case so far in the book of Colossians that the focus of the
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Christian life is to beware on Jesus. And he says, look up to where Jesus is.
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Seek the things that Christ offers to you and set your mind on the things that are in him.
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Things like, for example, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.
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Things like the fruit of the spirit. Things of that nature. Do you find yourself thinking about those things or do you find yourself thinking more often about the sports scores and things like that?
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And do you ever take time to focus on those things? Just as a byproduct of studying this and working through this this week, this morning
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I got up and I usually pray for about an hour on Sunday mornings. I usually just walk the hallway upstairs, get some exercise in and pray.
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And I actually did this activity where I just went through the fruit of the spirit and I just prayed over those and I just asked for God to give me more of those.
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And as I thought about joy, I thought about the different aspects of my life and places to express joy, places to express patience, places to express gentleness, kindness, faithfulness, and I just walked through those things.
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And I found that it was a good exercise in fixing my mind on the things above. In setting and not just listening to myself.
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Any of you ever find yourself guilty of listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? And it's negative listening.
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You're talking negatively in your mind instead of thinking and meditating and setting your mind on positive things.
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How many of you would admit that you've got a lot to be thankful for? We have a lot to be thankful for.
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And at the same time, how can we be such a grumbling and complaining people? I'm not just talking about you, but anybody notice that in our culture?
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Do you think that that's a fair indictment to say we're a grumbling, complaining culture? I think it is. I see it in me.
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I mean, I don't just start out there, you know, listening to others, but I see it in my own heart and I think, where does that come from?
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That comes from listening to myself versus wrestling these thoughts and fixing my gaze on the things that matter most that are true.
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So if you're in with Christ, you have died and been raised in Christ and your identity is, your identity and your destiny and life then,
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Paul says, are tied up with Jesus. In verses three and four, Paul encourages everyone here who is a
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Christian to think of your life as already hidden in heaven with Christ. We are hidden in Christ in God, the text says.
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Christ is in God and we have some significant hope and assurance that if we are saved by Christ, it is so much more than just some decision that you and I made, but a real transfer has happened that as of now is out of our hands.
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Christ has become our lives. Our destiny has been tied to Jesus and when he returns, this text says, when he returns, those who are in with Christ will then appear with him in glory.
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In glory. It can seem like Paul distracts himself for just a minute from the main focus in verse four.
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He starts talking about the return of Jesus and I thought you were talking about setting our minds on things above and where we, what we think about and what we seek after and those things and then, but remember that the whole point of this text is that the focus is to be on Jesus.
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We died in him. We were raised to new life with him. He is our life, the text says.
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We are hidden in him and our hope of glory is tied up in his return.
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When will you and I shine out with the glory with which we were made to shine? When Christ returns.
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When he shows back up and makes us whole. So don't get so distracted, don't get so caught up in the phrase things above that you miss the centrality of Jesus.
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This text truly is all about Jesus and the spiritual things that we're to focus on could easily, if misunderstood, could sidetrack us from recognizing that these are only valuable spiritual things in as much as they are in Christ.
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It is the things of Christ that Paul really ultimately wants us to focus our attention on. The only reason we seek the things that are quote -unquote above is because that is the place where our
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Lord currently reigns. If Jesus Christ reigned in London, I'm convinced that Paul would say seek the things of London because that's where his reign is.
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He wants us to seek the place where Christ is indeed in charge and fully reigning and ruling.
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Hear me carefully. Paul is not distinguishing here in the text somehow between heaven and earth, saying hate earth love heaven.
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He's saying seek and set your mind to the things of the kingdom and reign of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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Next week in verse 12 we're going to get the list of things that Paul is referring to but they're the types of things that center and swirl around the reign of Jesus Christ.
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When a life is focused on Jesus, it begins to take this form. When we set our gaze to Christ and we begin to watch him carefully as our model, our life begins to look more and more like him.
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And there's a dangerous dichotomy that people draw when they think about being heavenly minded. Some of you would refer to people or have actually referred to people or maybe you yourself at times have been referred to or use this phrase about being so heavenly minded that they are of what?
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No earthly good, right? And some of us maybe you go I've been like that or you've met people like that and you've categorized some people like that.
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And there is a reality that you can become so pious, you can become so self -righteous that you think you are too good for others.
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Some of you would love to raise your hand and say I've met somebody like that but probably not many of us would like to raise our hand and say
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I've been that person before but we may very well be guilty of that. Or you can become so heavenly focused that just simply you withdraw from the world around you and you don't engage the world around you and I think a lot of churches are guilty of that.
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I don't want to be that kind of church recast. I want us to work hard to continue to reach out to our community, to reach out to our neighbors, to reach out to our co -workers, to continue to be a light shining out the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ into the communities around us.
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I don't want to be a withdrawn church and you can imagine how a church gets that way. I want you to know that it can be kind of sometimes scary outside of the four walls of the church and if you want to admit that there have been times that it's kind of like I feel alone out there,
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I like it. It's very comfortable in here with Christian conversation, with Christian songs, with Christian messages and we can get very insular in the way that we think about things but that is not what
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God is calling us to. If you study everything that Paul has to say, taken with everything that Paul actually did, the way he lived his life,
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I do not believe he is at all encouraging us to ignore the world around us to just go become a hermit who just thinks a lot about heavenly things.
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That's not what he's talking about. Not just withdraw and meditate, just withdraw and set your mind on spiritual things but I'm convinced that the reason we are told to set our mind in heaven is so that we can spread the kingdom of God here.
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Why draw close to the place where Christ is reigning in heaven?
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So that we can spread that reign more readily here. So we know what we're spreading, we know what we're supposed to be, we know how to be salt and light because we're being like our
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Lord and Savior. Another way of thinking of this is I believe that the more you set your mind on the things above, hear me carefully, if you're taking notes this would be good to write down, the more you set your mind on the things above, the more impact you will have on the world around you.
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The more you do this right, the closer you draw to Christ, the more impact you will have on those around you.
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Now some will try to say I'm drawing close to Christ but instead they're drawing inward in themselves and so they have no impact on the world around them but the things above are things like this from verse 12 which we're going to cover next week but it is compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
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The specific spiritual things that he wants us to put on. Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
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What will that look like? We'll get there next week, we'll talk some specifics about what that might look like in your workplace, what that might look like in your community, what that might look like even in our fellowship together.
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But in our second section we now come to the fight of the
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Christian. Finish the focus, now the fight of the Christian life.
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There is certainly a war over the focus, I want to be clear about that. Paul talked about all kinds of empty philosophies and an empty deceit that would would pull us away so there's a war over the focus for sure but if you are setting your mind and setting your seeking the things that are above we're going to find that there's still something standing in our way.
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Our own sin is standing in the way. Have you ever just tried to decide, I mean just imagine making this decision,
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I'm going to be a better person. Sound like a good plan? Sound like a good thing to say? Raise your hand if you think that's a good idea to be a better person, okay?
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I'm worried about the ones that didn't raise your hand but I understand it is a lot of work, it's right there.
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But decide, yeah, decide to be a better person and try that on as a new year resolution. Just say, you know, tomorrow I'm going to be better,
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I'm going to be better than I was today or I'm going to be better next year or whatever. How long do you think that's going to last?
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How's that going to work for you? Just the statement, I'm going to be better. How are you going to improve?
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Better what? Better how? Better in what capacity? Do you have any metrics? Do you have any measurements for that?
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How are you going to figure that out? How are you going to know if you're better tomorrow? Whenever I consider anything that has to do with self -improvement or being better,
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I have a quick list of hurdles that need to be overcome, that need to be dealt with. Because each and every one of us is broken and is fighting with sin.
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If I say I want to lose weight, what's one of the first hurdles? I really like food, right?
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Anybody with me on that? Is that a big hurdle really quick? It's like there are hurdles that get in the way of us making goals and things like that.
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And so Paul tells us, are you ready for this? Paul tells us when it comes to sin, when it comes to those hurdles that you see in your life that are impeding your relationship with God, fight dirty.
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Fight dirty against the sin that you see in your life. Fight to kill the sin that you see in your life.
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In this text we receive, as the title of the message is, licenses to kill.
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Licenses to kill sin that we find growing up and entangling our lives, strangling us out.
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At the outside of this section on fighting sin, we need to first establish, this is fundamental, do you want it dead?
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You gotta establish that from the get -go. Do you want your sin dead?
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If you're seeking the things above where sin has no place, if you're setting your mind on the throne room of God and the very presence of the
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Holy One where Christ is seated, then your sin and unworthiness are gonna shine.
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You're gonna see it. You're gonna be aware of it. So a simple question for all of us to consider as we think about fighting sin, the fight of the
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Christian life. Man, this is a tricky question because it's hard for you and I to answer objectively in our own lives.
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But what is your tolerance for sin? What is your tolerance? How much are you willing to put up with it in your own heart?
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How much are you willing to put up with sin and sinful thoughts in your own mind? How much are you willing to put up with sin in your actions and behaviors?
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Hear me recast. Sin is always serious. It is always destructive.
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And scripture bears witness that sin is that which leads to death.
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Do you believe it? Until we come to a place of recognizing how putrid, how gross, how disgusting our sin and rebellion are against God, we will not have the zeal that we need to put it to death rightly.
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Until we recognize how ugly it truly is, we won't be motivated.
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We'll keep it as a pet. We'll put it in the closet and pull it out from time to time.
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We will just kind of try to kid glove it or backhand it from time to time or try to starve it out over a long time.
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You know, I'm just working on this one. Well, how long you been working on that? Working on killing something?
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How does that work? That's, are you torturing it? What are you? He says, put it to death.
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Not allowing room for it to breathe, not allowing room for it to flourish in your life.
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But those who are in Christ have been licensed to kill what is worldly in us. And worldly things, according to Paul, are not cakes, beer, playing cards, rock music, whatever host of things that you might think of when you think of worldly things.
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But worldly things are mental attitudes and behaviors like this list, an ugly list.
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Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, which is a translation of the word lust, evil desires, covetousness or greed, which amounts to idolatry, he says.
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This is indeed a long, long laundry list of crap, technically speaking.
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Sexual immorality is the generic word in Greek. It's the word pornea, which was used throughout the
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Greek world. It's a common word in Greek, not just in scripture, but it was used so much in the
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Roman and Greek world that we have a pretty good idea of the range of things that this word could be used for.
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It ultimately defines any type of sketchy sexuality. It covered prostitution, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and all kinds of abhorrent types of sexuality.
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And I'm confident that it would have covered, for example, in our era, they didn't have the internet, but it would have covered internet pornography just fine.
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This would have been a word that they would have used to apply to that. The presence of this word here implies, by the way, hear me carefully, that what
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I'm about to say is not popular. I know it's being recorded. That's great. But this word and its use in scripture, throughout scripture, implies clearly that there is a proper and acceptable sexuality.
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There is indeed a standard. There is that which is normal and good, as opposed to that which is not normal and not good.
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Is that popular in our culture? People get in trouble for saying that kind of thing?
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But it's true, and it's the most compassion that we can have to say that there is indeed a standard.
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It is important, and particularly, remember we're focused on our hearts. I want you to know that it's very easy to look at sin in someone else, see it, identify it, and judge it.
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How about in here? How about to start with your own sexual brokenness? Because everyone in this room is sexually broken.
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Every single one of us. And so start there.
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Start here in our hearts with this issue. There is indeed a standard by which our view, our thoughts about sexuality is to be measured.
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And the testimony of scripture is that normal, good, God -honoring sexuality is only to be expressed strictly within the safe boundaries of marriage between a man and a woman.
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I say that's a safe boundary because sex is probably the most powerfully motivating thing that God has granted to humanity.
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You agree with me on that? Just look at our culture, look at our society, look at look at how the bombs go off all around us.
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People risk wealth. In this materialistic culture, people risk wealth for sex.
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In this fame -driven culture, people risk fame for sex.
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People risk their reputations for sex. It's like a bomb that can only be detonated, should only be detonated, safely within the confines of a committed covenant relationship.
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If the bomb goes off anywhere else, it is destructive. Even if there has been the great call of our society, this one word, consent.
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Even where there's been consent, it is a destructive force. Do you believe it?
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Scripture says there is a right standard. Anything else from this is porneia. It is sin.
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It is to be taken out. It is not to be entertained. It is not to be kept in the closet. It is not to be given just the scraps off the table.
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It is to be starved, choked out, killed, destroyed, eradicated where you see it in your heart.
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It's to be destroyed. This text doesn't do a great job telling you how to do that.
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And I'm going to confess that I can't give you all the answers to how, but I can say this. More often than not, there's something about exposing sin to the light and bringing it to the surface that gives us help and assistance and sharing it with somebody else that you can trust and coming alongside of and helping others to overcome sin in our lives.
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That's something that God has given us as a grace to each other. One of the deceptions that I think Satan wants to pull over on all of us is that you can do it on your own.
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You can handle this. You've got it. You don't need to shame yourself by letting a friend know that you're struggling with this, but you've got it and you don't.
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It's got you. You know what I'm talking about? We need each other in this battle against our sin.
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Deal harshly with sexual immorality. Kill it where you see it in your life.
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Don't kid -glove it. Don't pander to it. Don't try to starve it out. Choke it out.
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Impurity is a more general word that often encompasses sexual immorality, but it has the notion of a stain on your soul, staining or soiling your soul.
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This word can be applied to any behavior that moves away from this very important central focus of being set aside, set apart for God's purposes, set aside for his uses.
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You might need to give an honest assessment on this one, thinking about your media intake. Consider if you don't walk away from watching some shows or some movies more dirty than when you sat down.
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Have you ever felt that? I have. I can confess to that. I've walked away feeling a little bit dirty, a little bit less like attuned with God, a little bit less like set apart for his purposes.
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If you're recognizing that, pull the plug. Kill it. Stop watching it.
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Passion is the same word for us here in the text. It's translated as lust, and it gets to the heart of sexual immorality.
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It's a little bit more specific than just the hunger for stuff in context. Some of us would, you know, for example, take pride in not acting out on sexual immorality.
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I never did this. I've never done that. I've never done this. And so, do you know what I'm talking about? Any of you ever felt that pride well up in you?
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Well, I at least haven't. At least that's not my problem. At least this isn't. And Paul says, hold on a minute.
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If you've ever had lust in your heart towards someone, just as Jesus said. And I think lust gets thrown around as kind of like a misunderstanding.
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Like it's just kind of like, well, it's a strong want for something or whatever. But we can water that word down, but it shouldn't be watered down.
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It should stay in the realm of sexuality. If you've ever entertained a mental sexual relationship with somebody that is not your spouse, you've lusted.
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That's it. Kill those thoughts. Put them to death.
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Paul doesn't, by the way, major here on the method, but he does lay a good foundation for clarity for us in these words.
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You should have no tolerance for lust in your life. Well, I'm not looking at pornography, so I'm okay.
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But what about lust? Are you killing that? Are you waging war against it? Are you watching where your eyes go and where your thoughts go?
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Evil desires is simply evil ambition or pride. Now that one sounds like it's sexual and it's not.
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It moves away a bit from sexuality and more towards the type of sin that Satan first committed by thinking that he could be like the
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Most High. God think evil ambition might be another way of translating this.
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And so on this point, let me be clear. We must kill pride. And the cross is like a sword that can and should crush pride and evil ambition in our lives.
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When we set our mind on things above, when we consider the method and the means of our salvation, how can
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I have pride when I realize how much my sin cost him? Looking at the cross helps me a lot.
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It helps me in the battle with sin and with arrogance and with pride. When I look at what he had to do to save me, that's because of me.
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That's because of how bad I am that he had to endure that. Whoa. Thinking about it in those terms helps to squelch and kill pride in us.
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Contemplating and considering the cross. And lastly, Paul hits on what I would call one of the great American sins, covetousness or greed.
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Both of those could be translated, translations of this one Greek word. And coveting is an interesting kind of word because I am convinced that what happens in America is less coveting and more greed.
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Coveting comes about when someone has something that you can't have. Well, we live in a culture where if I like what you have,
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I can go buy one too, right? So is it coveting? Well, no, I don't covet what you have.
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I just go buy it myself. But there's a component of that that is greed. Greed is simply that I want more,
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I want more, I want more, right? How many of you think that that might be more related to the problem that we have in our current society?
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I want more, I want more, I want more. But Paul identifies that greed amounts to idolatry.
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From two different angles, I believe he has probably both in mind. We worship the stuff and sometimes even we worship ourselves by accumulating things just to try to put ourselves at the center of our universe, to please ourselves.
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How many of our purchases have something to do with pleasing ourselves? Probably quite a few of them if we really were to measure that.
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So kill covetousness, kill greed where you see it in your lives. And this, by the way, is I think one of the things that we, that requires one of the most vigilant attitudes in the
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Christian life, particularly in our current society. We often are unaware of our own motivation for why we purchase what we purchase.
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Think that through. When's the last time you really sat down and thought, why am I going to buy this?
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Well, you're going to buy it, I just have to have it. I don't know, you know, and do you think through the why first?
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Don't be deceived into thinking. I think that, I think I've thought this thought before. Well, if I can afford it, it must be okay.
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If you can afford it, it must be okay. I mean, how could that be sin if you can afford it, right? Think that through.
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We can buy things out of greed and not really even be aware of it. I need that word in my life, and it would be a great thing to stop and think why before everything that we buy.
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Why are we buying it? This is a serious list, so serious, by the way, that Paul declares to us that because of these things, because of these things, the wrath of God is coming on the world because of this list of rebellious human behaviors.
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The greatness of God's wrath should motivate us, not by fear. Remember that we are hidden with Christ in God, but his wrath should move us to awe and wonder at his great mercy towards us.
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He loves us. These things deserve our Lord's wrath, and we should have no tolerance for them in our heart.
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We should have no tolerance. These things used to be your life,
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Paul says to the church in Colossae, and say it to us too. In these things we once walked, but Christ, remember, is now your life.
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You used to live, eat, sleep, and breathe these types of things. Maybe not all of them in equal measure.
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Maybe these things were not fully realized in your life because you were saved at an early age. So think about it from a different perspective then.
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Some of you were like me. I've joked around and said, you know, I wasn't, when I was saved at eight, I wasn't cooking meth on an easy -bake oven.
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I wasn't a hardened criminal. I wasn't, you know, involved in all of these evil, wicked kind of things.
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But what about my heart now? And think of it this way. Consider what your battle has been like with sin then since you've become a
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Christian, and that ought to give you some perspective on what your battle would look like and what would be said against you were it not for Christ in your life.
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Think about what he's done for you if it's been that hard since you've given your life to Christ, how much you would be in over your head without him.
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Paul's list isn't done yet. He changes his metaphor from killing sin to removing it like dirty clothes, taking it off.
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When I come home from a run, which a few times a week I go for a run, enjoy just getting out, listening to sermons, exercising.
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I get home, my wife, my wife won't hug me. My kids keep their distance, and usually, you know,
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I'll grab something to drink or whatever, I'm standing there by the kitchen, and inevitably, almost every single time,
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I get a nice, usually gentle and kind question. Generally speaking, it's almost always my daughter
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Leah, and it's a nice question. Daddy, when are you going to go take a shower?
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What's she talking about? Why is she curious about that? I stink. My clothes are filthy.
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They're sweat saturated because I've been running. Like filthy clothes,
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Paul tells us five more things that we should have no tolerance for, that should should reek to our noses, that we should want to remove and fling far from us like filthy clothes.
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The Greek word for anger here, anger is the first one, and it's used in situations where there is a settled feeling of hatred towards one another.
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This is not the flash -in -the -pan kind of explosive anger that you might think of when you read the word. It's something a little bit different.
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It's more like a grudge and less explosive. It's a reasoned thought through anger.
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It's when you've decided, think of it this way, it's like when you've decided to let the animosity grow between you and someone else.
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You've just resigned yourself to it. It is ugly, it's destructive, and it has no place in the wardrobe of someone who is seeking the things that are above.
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Put it off and discard it. If you find yourself leaning towards and a propensity towards holding grudges, throw it away.
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Throw it away, and if you need some help with that, you can come and talk with me or share that with a friend and just say, I'm struggling with this.
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Would you pray with me through this and talk with God about it and say, I see it in myself.
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Sometimes just identifying it as part of the road to recovery, is identifying, I got a problem with this.
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You might not know until you hear the word of scripture that that is a struggle and that's something you need to fling away.
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But now you've heard it, so now your feet are set on a trajectory of casting it off.
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This kind of anger is not to be in your wardrobe. Second is wrath. Now that is the explosive anger.
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That's the flash in the pan, just losing control. Some people recognize that this is a problem for them, but I've met many people, including myself, who at times have excused this as part of my personality.
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I'm just a passionate individual. I'm just, you know, I just, I'm engaging and I'm just involved and man,
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I just, you know, or you blame it on your upbringing. Was anybody besides me raised in a fairly angry, loud, boisterous household?
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Anybody willing to admit that? I was. Man, my family was and it was like out there and then it was over, okay.
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None of this sweeping anything on the rug, no skeletons in the closet, man. It was out on the table and it was a mess until we rustled through it and it was loud and it was boisterous and so that's just the way
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I was raised. Anybody imagine ever using that kind of excuse for anything? That's just the way
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I was raised. Well, that's not what Jesus says here. That's not what Paul says. That's not what scripture is telling me.
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Well, it's okay because that was the way your parents were. Throw it away.
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Cast it off. Get rid of it. However you acquire your sinful tendencies and your temptations and your sins, whether by genetics or by learning it from your parents or by learning it from others, it needs to be acknowledged as sin and removed.
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Do not justify it. Put it away. Malice. Malice is an evil disposition that desires for harm to come to others.
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This is insidious. This is grotesque. This is a shocking trait to make this list in the
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Greek language. It's significant to think that we are called to be a people of love and that malice makes the list among Christians.
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By including this one, by the way, Paul is conveying that a person can be a Christian and have some pretty significant deep issues against others.
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Malice and love. This Greek word malice and the Greek word agape are not compatible words.
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You can't love someone and have malice towards them simultaneously. That's not possible and that shows you the depth of difficulty that you might be facing as a
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Christian. Still a Christian. Still a follower of Christ, but these are things you have to cast off. These are things you have to remove from your life because they're still there.
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The anger mentioned earlier was being okay with being at odds with someone, but malice is actively entertaining harm toward them.
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Take this one off. Burn it. I have a couple of running shirts that probably need that treatment.
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Slander is trying to destroy someone else by speaking poorly of them to others.
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It's destructive behavior as well. Slander may be spreading true things or false things, but both of them with destructive motives.
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Sometimes in the name of prayer requests or, you know, whatever. Hey, did you hear so -and -so did this?
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Just so that you could pray for them. Do you know what I'm talking about? Anybody ever hear that in the church? And it's kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
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That's gossip and that's slander and what is your heart is really the main point behind that is are you trying to make yourself look better?
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Are you trying to ruin their reputation? Are you trying to destroy them? Put that off and resolve to speak ill of no one.
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That'd be a great thing to do. Just say I'm not going to pass along true information or false information about someone else that makes them look bad.
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Obscene talk. Obscene talk is like one of the, I think it was one of the justices of the
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Supreme Court said pornography is hard to define, but I know it when I see it. Obscene talk is that way. I don't know how to define it, but I know it when
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I hear it. Do you know what I mean? And so I can't really line that out clearly for you.
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Dirty jokes, potty mouth, swearing, whatever it might be. I want to just confess it and just share an illustration.
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I went through a period in my life where I had some friends and we would go mountain biking regularly and we'd hit the trails and we'd just kind of pretend to be sailors.
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No offense to any of the sailors in the room, Rob or anyone else, but we'd pretend to be sailors and here's the thing.
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They weren't offended and I wasn't offended and we were just joking around and kidding around so like what's the harm and I thought the main reason you wouldn't use coarse language was just strictly so that it didn't offend others and they weren't offended by it so I was like okay you know we'll just have at this and it was kind of funny and immature and whatever.
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But it had a corrupting influence on me just in that what I thought was just kind of fun and innocuous and innocent.
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Those times in the woods had an impact on me and I slowly came to realize that my mind was turning to colorful language when somebody cut me off in traffic where that wasn't an issue before all of a sudden the things that would be right on the tip of my tongue or even come off my tongue were like where did that come from?
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Well that came from the woods. That came from playing with sin. That came from toying around with it.
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I was becoming more obscene and so I took that off and I'm convinced that you can too.
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I know that it's something that you kind of go in and then pray for me. I'm struggling with language. I'm around certain people.
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I struggle. That's just kind of the funny thing about it. Did you hear what I just said? Around certain people
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I struggle with it. But when mom's in town how are you doing?
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Or when your pastor comes over you guys clean that stuff up right? If you can clean it up for me just shut it off.
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Just when you shut it off for me or you shut it off for mom or you shut it off for someone else or you shut it off when you come on Sunday morning how about you just leave it off and just go just go just just go ahead and leave it off right?
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Could you do that? And I recognize that that some things are more entrenched in our lives and it's really hard and you're you're working right now to not swear right?
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Like it's in you it's it's it's so natural and it's become a part of who you are and the crowd that you run with or what you do.
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Some of you I mean it really is a really hard hardship in the shop where you work or whatever and it's constant inundation with that kind of language.
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If you need some help let me know that and I'd love to walk through that with you. I'm not going to judge you but I would I'd love to love to walk through that and just say hey man here's what we could do to work through this.
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Lastly Paul tells us to be truthful. Lying is the last thing he tells us to take off because as the people of Christ we are to be people of the truth.
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And only after telling us to put all these things off Paul tells us the final motivation. Put these off because you have put off the old self with its practices and you have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge.
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The interesting thing is it's past perfect. You have put off the old self.
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You have put on the new self. That is your identity. That is who you are.
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Now live it. Now walk it. Now put these things to death and and come into your inheritance so to speak.
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What has been given to you is the ability the license to kill sin. Now get to it.
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The motivation of the Christian life is that something has been changed for you so that you can now change.
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You are new in Christ. Don't be like a person who won a new Beamer but keeps driving the
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Ford Escort. Put the Ford Escort away and drive the new Beamer. You have a new life in Christ and you're growing into it day by day, month by month, and year by year.
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And the goal of this new life is to reflect more and more your creator. This new life motivates us as individuals and it unites us as a church into the flavor of this new life which is unity.
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Unity is the flavor of the Christian life. As we grow to look more and more like Jesus the distinctions that define the world around us fade away into the kingdom glory of unity.
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In this realm of the new self there are no boundaries of ethnicity. There's no more Greek or Jew.
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Those ethnic boundaries are gone. No boundaries of religious practice between circumcision and uncircumcision.
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No ethnic boundaries. Barbarians and Greeks. No outsiders. No social status like Scythian slave or free
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Scythian was to the Greek who was xenophobic, who's a fearful of foreigners. Scythian was way out there.
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They were scary. They were terrifying to the Greeks. They were the ones who threatened the most. And so he's saying even those who you conceive of as outsiders can be brought in through Christ.
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The only connection that matters in this kingdom work that God is doing in us and through us is
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Christ who is in all, who is all, and is in all.
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And those who have put on the new self, Christ is in you. We need to consider this strong command that we see in this text to put to death and put off these practices that are worthy of the wrath of God.
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What do you need to put to death? What do you need to put off? In Christ you have died and been raised to new life.
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Your old self that walked in sin has died and now you have put on the new self that is hidden in Christ with God and is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of your creator.