It's ALL About Christ pt 3

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It continues to be a great honor and pleasure to be here today with the intended purpose of sharing in the Word of God.

We have spent the past two Sundays specifically describing the greatness of Jesus Christ. We have seen that he is the physical embodiment of God, the rightful heir of the universe, the hand of creation, the one holding all things together, the leader of the church, the fullness of God, and the great reconciler by the blood of His cross.

I’ve told you that these aspects of great our great treasure troves for our exploration into the person and work of Jesus Christ. I hope that you have taken some time in the past weeks to really dwell upon the greatness of Jesus Christ. This evening we are going to talk about the importance of worship and we will see that as we dwell upon the revealed greatness of God we are thus compelled to worship Him. Make it a point to join us for that this evening.

But this morning, I want to start from the exact antithetical position from the greatness of God.

I would like us to take just a few moments to consider the brokenness of our world.

Our world is broken. It is so full of darkness. If you don’t believe me, just look at the news! At the time I was preparing this sermon earlier this week, here were five of the top stories from the Associated Press Website:

[Tropical Storm] Fiona grows into Category 4 storm, heads towards Bermuda

Climate-fueled wildfires worsen danger for struggling fish

48 exploited pandemic to steal $250 from food program

Bombs disrupt critical Ukraine [farming] industry

Racism seen as root of water crisis in Mississippi capital

You may think that all of that seems so far a way removed from us here in Kentucky, well here were five of the six top headlines on LEX18.com:

Nicholasville Police arrest bakery owner, charged with arson.

Multi-vehicle crash highlights importance of car seats.

Mother facing charges after death of 14 month old baby in Cynthiana.

Georgetown Police: Increase in fake gold sold at gas stations.

Police: Man shot on Dale Drive in Lexington

The sixth top headline on LEX18 was telling us the weather is too hot to be fall!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know good and well that news headlines are designed to highlight the negative things going on because that generates more clicks and views for them.

My point in bringing this up isn’t to make a case that the bad outweighs the good, or anything like that. My point in bringing this up this morning is to alarm us that bad exists at all! Remember a few moments ago, I said that this opening would be the antithesis to the greatness of God. God is perfect in every single way. Our world is antithetical to that because it is broken in every single way. Around us going on right this moment there is wanton destruction, exploitation, violence, and injustice. This is entirely juxtaposed to the righteous, holy, and just God above, the great Jesus describe in the first part of Colossians 1.

In many ways we’ve become numb to the brokenness of our world, but the state of things should not sit well with us, because it has not always been this way, nor was it originally designed to be so.

At the end of the creation narrative in Genesis 1 we read

Genesis 1:31 ESV

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Things were good in the beginning! The Garden of Eden was idyllic! Man had his job to tend to the earth and he walked with the Lord in the garden!

But then man sinned against God and the ground was cursed!

Genesis 3:17–19 ESV

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Adam’s sin led to the whole earth, the ground, being cursed. Thorns and thistles, broken relationships, broken sweat, death was now the destiny.

We may return another day to give the Creation and Fall narratives the exegetical attention they deserve, but for our purposes this morning, we should all take note that the brokenness in humanity should not sit well with us because it was not a part of our original design, nor will rampant sin be apart of our eternal destiny.

We see brokenness all around us, but before we get into our study today, I want to draw our attention off the sin and brokenness that is around us and on to something closer to home.

There once was a young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging her clothes on the line to dry. She said to her husband, “That laundry is not very clean. She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Maybe she needs better laundry soap.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor hung her wash to dry, the young woman repeated her observations about the dirty laundry.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her how to get it right?”

The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”

We have no problem seeing the sin and brokenness that is around us. Today we are going to begin by seeing the sin and brokenness that is within us.

Open your Bibles to Colossians 1. Today we are going to be picking up in verse 21 and only making it through verse 23. In this series that we have entitled “Living the Christian Life.” Today’s message may end up being the most important. In just these three verses we see the gospel, that is how someone is reconciled from their brokenness and restored to a perfect God.

If you are here this morning and you know the Lord, then please understand that Paul’s original intended audience with these words were believers. It is good for you to reflect back on when you came to first understand this truth. Dwelling on the goodness of Christ to save you produces worship and revitalizing our aptitude to serve.

But if you are here today and you have never truly understood what it means to be saved, then listen up and listen closely, because today may very well be the day God opens your eyes to His goodness.

Read with me Colossians 1:21

Colossians 1:21 ESV

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,

In this verse Paul lays out very clearly what is both the temporal and the eternal state of everyone who has not been reconciled to God.

We will get to how someone is reconciled to God in a moment, but first let us lay out

The Situation.

In this verse we are given three descriptors of everyone who has not been reconciled to God.

The first of which being, alienated.

Now I think that to some extent all of us have experience in feeling alienated. If you’ve ever been the new kid at school or workplace, maybe you've moved cities or states, then you have probably felt some sort of alienation. Unless you’re Charlie Davis, and never met a stranger, it’s likely that you know that sensation that I am talking about here. Maybe during the uncertain times of Covid you found yourself isolated and disconnected to those around you.

Those are all valid feeling that we have experienced to some degree. But the alienation being discussed here in verse 21 goes much deeper than simply feeling uncomfortable in a social setting.

The Greek used here for the word rendered alienated is the perfect tense and the passive voice. This means that something happened to all men in the past to cause them to be estranged. Something has happened to divide the relationship. It is a categorical shift that occurs between two parties.

An alien is one who does not “belong.” He is a stranger and foreigner, without the rights and privileges of citizenship. Being alienated means that the status of citizen was changed to alien.

In the United States, there are four ways in which our Government strips away the rights and title of citizen from even natural born Americans:

Run for public office in a foreign country

Enter military service in a foreign country

Apply for citizenship in a foreign country with the intention of giving up U.S. citizenship

Commit an act of treason against the United States

In each of these cases the person makes it known that they prefer their citizenship elsewhere. As a sovereign nation, the US has every right to remove those who would act against it physically and politically. From that time forward, the offending individual no longer has the rights and the privileges of a US citizen. Nor should they have children, would those children be considered US citizens. The hereditary nature of citizenship is not applied if the parent’s are no longer citizens.

Now, I’m going to stop this example here because yall didn’t come here this morning for a civics lesson. I bring all of this up to remind you what happened with our great great great great great great great grandpappy Adam! Adam committed treason! He sinned and offended not just a sovereign nation, but the Sovereign, Holy, Perfect, Righteous God! From that time the whole line of Adam, all of mankind was alienated from God! Adams sin is the act that estranged His whole line from the Holy God. You might say Brad, all he did was take a bite of fruit. But do not forget that that was the one thing God had told him not to do in the garden. The reason we view it as such a small thing is because we have become so accustomed to the myriad of sin that surrounds us. We try to justify the sin of Adam because we know we have done and still do much worse! But ALL sin, ANY sin, is falling short of the glory of God. All of it is an offense to the perfectly righteous God. None of it is permitted in His presence. You say God has too lofty a standard. I say your familiarity with sin has made yours too low! Pastor Paul Washer once said, A great help over temptation is to remember that sin is more than breaking a rule. It is grieving a Person who loves us beyond measure.

The reality is, sin, the sin of Adam, the sin passed down to all of us, the sin we allow in our lives, has alienated us from God. This is the case both in the here and now and for eternity. On our own we are absolutely alienated.

But that is not all. We also see that those who are not reconciled to God are Hostile in mind.

You may think that this is a point that does not apply to you. You are a very reasonable person. You get along well with your neighbors. There is nothing hostile about you.

For something to be hostile, it has to be opposed to something else. So when we try to decipher the meaning of this phrase, we have to start from the understanding that it is talking about being hostile towards God. It is keeping the same grammatical context as the previous clause. We were talking about being alienated from God and now were are talking about being Hostile in mind towards God. That phrase “in mind” is referring to the way that we process and digest information and make decisions. The Greek here has a particular emphasis on and connotation to ethical decision making.

Earlier we read that God looked upon all that He made and called it very good. Just before that happened, God created man. Not only did He create man, but He created man in His image. What a shame it is, then, that man made in the image of God would turn around and through sin use our minds actively against God.

You may say Brad, I may not believe in God, but I am not hostile towards Him, that is if He exists. You may consider yourself indifferent at best. To that I would tell you to refer back to the previous messages in this series. We have seen many wonderful truths, but two that are pertinent to this particular discussion. We have seen right here in Colossians 1 that everything was created by Jesus and for Jesus. To deny that He is the Creator is to be hostile against the true, natural, and supernatural hierarchy of the universe!

But even if you give acknowledgment to the existence of a creator, as do the agnostics, you are still hostile in mind towards God. When you make ethical decisions with the intention of self promotion, this is at odds with the God for whom all things exist. This world isn’t about you so in amassing glory for yourself, you are taking a position that does not belong to you. It is God’s. It is Christ’s! The one for whom all things were made to glorify. Don’t take this to mean that we have to live some sort of ascetic life, never having any comforts or enjoyment, we’re gonna get to that in a few weeks so make sure you stick with us in this series. But what we are seeing here is that when we do not have a relationship with God, our lives, our ethical decision makings are ultimately self serving. This is hostile towards God because it supplants the direction things should be.

It leads into the final descriptor of the unreconciled seen here in verse 21. That being those who are not reconciled to God do evil deeds. When you are alienated from God and hostile in mind towards Him, then from that position and orientation flows nothing but evil deeds. You may think that that can’t be true. It cannot be that people do nothing but evil. If that were the case then we would be living in utter anarchy. Well to that I would say two things, first, have you turned on the news lately? It may not be anarchy, but it ain’t good. Secondly, remember to view this through the lens of being hostile in mind to God. Even the most humanitarian of deeds and most heartwarming acts of charity, are nothing when done in spite of God as oppose to response of His Grace. Y’all we are absolutely supposed to participate in Good works, but the good works that we do should shine a light unto others that they may give glory to OUR FATHER WHO IS IN HEAVEN. If the intent of your benevolence is to give you the warm fuzzies and inside and pat yourself on the back then your deeds are nothing more than selfish acts in rebellion to the God who is deserving of all the glory!

Those without Christ are alienated, hostile in mind, and doing evil deeds.

But remember what we said in the introduction, We have no problem seeing the sin and brokenness that is around us. But the intent this morning is not to look down upon our neighbors, it is to see our own our dirty windows. As we have been going through this this morning those who know the Lord should be joyfully humble for two reasons. We’re going to see two reasons for the joyfully humility of those who know the Lord.

The first of which we see right here in this verse. Look back at the first five words.

And you, who were once

Remember that Paul is writing this letter To a group of professing Christians in Colossae. We just spent 15 minutes explaining the state of those who do not know the Lord. We should be humbled through that discussion because THAT WAS US! We were once alienated, we were once hostile in mind. We were once doing nothing but evil deeds. We should not be big headed and looking down on those around us as we describe the destitute nature of their position before God because we were in the exact same place! We don’t look at the lost with pity but with empathy!

If that understanding isn’t enough to keep you humble, then the next verse in Colossians should close the case. Read verses 21 and 22 with me:

Colossians 1:21–22 ESV

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

All those who were formerly alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, are only no longer like that because Christ has reconciled them! This is

The Solution.

The solution to our situation is Jesus Christ!

The fact that we are brought into the family of God, gifted with the Holy Spirit to guide us, and entrusted with our lives as a stewardship for God’s glory, came about by absolutely nothing of our doing.

The mini series we’ve been going through for the past few weeks has been entitled It’s ALL About Christ, because that is what God’s Word shows us! It’s ALL about Him! All Creation was created for His glory. All of God is in All of Him. And All of salvation is ALL about Him.

HE has now reconciled YOU. We were utterly incapable of doing anything to negate the alienation from God caused by our sin.

Verse 21 uses the word “reconciled”. Reconciliation takes someone who is hostile towards someone else, and changes that into a friendly relationship. Unsaved man is hostile toward God and Jesus places us into a friendly relationship. In this friendly relationship we recognize the right order to creation. We give God glory for being our Creator.

But we were not capable of changing this relationship. It took Jesus Christ.

The God man. Jesus stepped out of heaven to restore the relationship between God and His people through His dearth on the cross! Remember the verse we finished on last week:

Colossians 1:20 ESV

and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Christ made peace through the blood of His cross. He reconciles His people through His body of flesh by His death. In His death, Christ was the sacrifice, paying the price owed for the sins of all those who believe in Him. Go back to verse 22

Colossians 1:22 ESV

he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

What this is displayed! Christ, The Son of God, has reconciled those who believe in Him so that they may be considered Holy before the Holy God. That they may be blameless before the Just God and above reproach before the righteous God. Christ died to do this for all believers in Him! The most popular verse in our society Says, For God so loved the World that He gave His only Begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Those do not perish before the Holy God because through Christ’s death they are now considered Holy! The blameless one took our blame! God poured out the wrath owed for everyone who would ever believe in Jesus ON JESUS! He paid the debt we could not pay. He has eternally made us right before God, not because of our worth, but because of His great love and grace!

Truly dwell upon what is shown to us here. In His grace, God sent Jesus to die for all those who believe in Him. This grace is given freely to believers, we do not earn it by any of our own merit. This grace is free, but it surely is not cheap! The Son of God had to die for you!

When we understand that our sin costs so much that the Son of God had to die to pay its costs it should cause us to mourn! To hate the sin we lived in so comfortably. Not only do we mourn the sin we once loved, but realizing this drives us to love the one who died to pay for that sin. We understand and confess that Jesus is Savior and Lord. That He has made us right before the Holy God.

And from that point, fueled by our love for God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we live out the rest of our temporal lives in obedience, growing in love and trust of the Lord. Look at our last verse for today:

Colossians 1:23 ESV

if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

When we read this verse, some at first take it to mean that the reconciliation Christ provides is conditional. It will only truly stick if we continue on in the faith. But this verse isn’t talking about our ability to by our strength press on the faith. Rather, here we see

The sign

This is the sign of the solution applied. The sign that Christ has reconciled you to the Father, is through continued faith. Here me out here. I know in the Baptist world that this might seem a little weird. You may have heard the phrase, “once saved always saved.” I am not denying the sealing power of the Holy Spirit. One pastor put it well when he wrote, “Salvation does indeed happen in a moment, and once you are saved you are always saved. The mark, however, of someone who is saved is that they maintain their confession of faith until the end of their lives. Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life”

The sign of salvation is continued faith and a posture of repentance and dependence in the Lord. This does not mean that we will not struggle with the flesh. This does not mean that sin will not wiggle its way into our lives. But it does mean that by the grace of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, that we will always be brought back to the Lord and joyfully live for Him. Through Christ we are enabled to live our lives for the glory of God. This is the pleasure of the reconciled, not the burden. Once you see that Christ is your Savior, remain steadfast and joyfully live for Him.

This whole sermon could be boiled down into the graphic that I love to show to our congregation. Our sin separates, alienates, us from God. We do evil deeds. So Christ...

Three Circles Graphic