Sermon Tone Analysis

In a recent study conducted by ChristianMingle.com,

Christian singles between the ages of 18 to 59 were asked, "Would you have sex before marriage?"

The response?

Sixty-three percent of the single Christian respondents indicated yes.

In response to this survey, Kenny Luck wrote:

In my 30 years of youth and adult ministry experience, this is as unfiltered, direct and honest as a question and answer can be.

In practice, [Christian young adults have become] sexual atheists.

In other words, God has nothing to say to them on that subject of any consequence or, at least, anything meaningful enough to dissuade them from following their own course of conduct.

It is the ultimate oxymoron.

A person who at once believes in a wise, sovereign and loving God who created them and all things, can also believe simultaneously he should not, cannot or will not inform their thinking or living sexually.

Amazing isn’t it.

That today with so much advancement and so much progress intellectually we still have this kind of thinking.

This is a real thing.

At one of the churches where I was an assistant pastor there was a particular young man who was very critical of much I did constantly complaining as to how things were done and whether the church and its practices were in line with the scriptures and historic protestant theology.

He was very passionate about it.

He was uncompromising abut it.

But one day the girl that he was dating scheduled a meeting with me to discuss the relational problems they were having.

It came out that they lived lives of drugs, drunkenness, and sex.

When I talked with him about this he did not believe that anything in the Bible that prohibits sex and drunkeness applied to him or anyone these days.

Sexual atheism.

It is not just with sex.

Why is it that we do this with many things.

We are very strict about things in the scriptures but very lax of the vices that we indulge?Is it that we just don’t know?

Or is it that we choose not to know.

All we gotta do is cover our eyes and the monster will just disappear?

As long as we don’t see it, its not there?

We decide to stay away from preachers who speak the truth or what is biblical so that we don’t have to see it.

Don’t have to hear it.

This is Idolatry.

This is idolatry behavior.

It is the unwillingness to rid ourselves of our Idols.

It is the unwillingness to be far from it.

It is the unwillingness to put it to death.

If we as Christians are dead to this world, why will we not put to death the world that is in us.

And we better… the judgement of the Lord is coming.

It is because of behaviors like this that the anger of the Lord is coming.

The Bible says that it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Shane is there hope for us… yes there is.

Let’s check it out.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Mortify What Is In You

The Anger of God is Coming

The first thing we will look at today is the worldliness in us that we still need to mortify, what we still need to kill.

Second, we will see how it is these things in us that is provoking the anger of God and He is coming to deal with it.

Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world entice us to keep alive the world in our hearts, it truly is the Word of God and the power of the Spirit that will cause us to see that Christ is more than anything the world is and what the world brings.

I. Mortify What Is In You

- Things we still need to kill.

A. We got a therefore here.

So we need to see our passage today in light of what we have heard already.

We are dead to this world.

We have a new life in Christ and it is hidden in Christ and will be one day revealed when Christ when he is revealed in glory.

So if we are to have a heavenly mindset, therefore, get rid of thse things that pull you away from it.

B. I love the way Dr. Moo puts this...

“But this “putting to death” of sin is not only demanded by our incorporation into Christ; it is also empowered and effected by it.

Union with Christ, because it puts us in a new relationship to sin and brings us into the sphere of the Spirit’s power, will impact the way we live.

Ultimately, then, the imperative “put to death” in this verse must be viewed as a call to respond to, and cooperate with, the transformative power that is already operative within us.”

C.

This idea is beautifully illustrated in the words of Christ when he said...

D. When we see this it is showing two things.

Number 1, it is showing the seriousness of sin.

It is so serious that it is extreme measure must be taken to rid yourself of it.

Sin must be cut off, it must be put to death.

This is how serious it is.

It is better for you to lose an eye then for you to be condemned.

But it also shows, number 2, Jesus illustrates the frivolity of it all, you will end up chopping every part of your body off because not only is in serious it is also pervasive.

If you think COVID 19 spreads, sin spreads even more than sand.

E. I’m from Hawaii… you can go to the beach, be wearing pants, a shirt and shoes… never go in the water, never sit on the beach, and never even go for a stroll and still when you shower you find sand everywhere… even in your belly button.

F. Sin comes from the heart and if you wanna rid it… cut out your heart.

Centuries past in England, if a pickpocket was caught and convicted, his right hand was cut off.

If he was caught again, his left hand suffered the same fate.

One pickpocket lost both hands and continued his occupation with his teeth!

Physical dismemberment cannot change the heart.

“Put to death,” as Paul uses it, means to discard evil practices and, here in Colossians, to get rid of the twin evils of sexual sin and covetousness.

G.

We are called to kill the porneia in us.

Where we get the word pornography.

We are to put to death all fornication and all sexual acts that are morally objectionable in us.

This includes sex outside of the marriage bed.

In greek culture just like it is today… to be one to cry out in the streets against sexual immorality is to become labeled a moral bigot who is our of touch with the times.

H.

We are called to put to death… akatharsia.

Kartharsis.

Put to death non-kartharsis.

Impurity describes any kind of moral corruption.

Moral corruption of any kind.

It is nomally used for sexual impurity, but it accounts for even more.

Dr. Kent Hugues writes, “This is wider and subtler than physical immorality, for it embraces the lurid imagination, speech, and deed of a sensual heart or filthy mind.”

I.

We are also called to put to death “pathos” where we get passions… the passions that we have for morally objectionable sexual acts.

One commentator wrote, “the shameful emotion which leads to sexual excesses.”

This is a very serious thing...

A man is walking home from work and lusting after the woman approaching him on the sidewalk.

He slows down his walk to get a longer look, and he turns around and watches as she passes.

Think with me again about the godlike posture of this man.

First, he is treating this moment as if it belongs to him.

It's as if he is sovereign and she is on the sidewalk according to his will and for his pleasure.

He's the self-appointed deity of the moment … The world has shrunk to the size of his desire, and he rules it for his pleasure.

… He will have what he will have, even if it is the only the right to stare at body parts and imagine having them for his pleasure.

But there is more.

For that moment he is stealing God's creation and taking it as his own.