Sunday Sermon Colossians 3:9-11
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to FCC, where we worship God in Spirit and in Truth, one verse at a time.
Praise God and thank you for that wonderful song service!
Starting next week church family, Judy will start having Grow group/Sunday school/ Bible study at 9:30am.
We will need to arrange the chairs accordingly after church today and then move them back for church after the study.
Praise the Lord for New Beginnings!
With that, let us open our Bibles up to Colossians 3.
Read Colossians 3:9-11
Read Colossians 3:9-11
Prayer
Prayer
Review
Review
I want to take a moment to look back at where we have come from.
Throughout the first tow chapters Paul gave a rich treatise of Christology:
He shared that Christ is to be preeminent in our lives.
That it is not Christ, plus secret knowledge, human philosophy, legalism, mysticism, or asceticism. That it is Jesus, plus nothing equals everything church!
The false teachers at Colossae where attempting to teach the Colossians that the secret knowledge of the gnostics, Greek philosophy, Jewish legalism, mysticism, and Essene asceticism was needed on top of Jesus for maturity and Paul set them straight and helped us to see that Christ is our all and all as we will learn today.
One thing I wanted to share was that when false teaching creeps into a church and it is not dealt with, its goal is not only to lead people away form the simplicity that is in the gospel and Jesus Christ, but to create and split or splinter with in the Body.
When a splits or splinters occur in churches, it always creates an us versus them mentality that produces destruction.
Let us not forget, that spiritual maturity and holiness is found in Jesus Christ only.
We mature by spending time in The Word, prayer, fellowship, witnessing, and by serving...
Diving into the section we are going to study today, let us remember that Paul has taught us that we died and have been raised up in the newness of life in Christ.
We were dead in our trespasses and sins church
And the same power that raised Jesus from the grave raised us up
We now have the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of us that enables us to put off the old man and his corrupt ways and put on the new.
Last week we learned that we are to put off:
But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
Paul is teaching us here that we must deal with these sinful habits.
Remember that the pathology here starts with the root cause of it all which is anger.
Anger not dealt with turns into resentment, and resentment into bitterness.
Therefore church:
“Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.
Did anyone get anger this past week? Did you give place to the devil or deal with it promptly?
Remember that the remedy for anger, for resentment, and bitterness is forgiveness church.
Remember that the remedy for anger, for resentment, and bitterness is forgiveness church.
This goes for all of us, for everything that was done to us church.
No matter how painful, no matter how deep the hurt!
God has called his people to forgive.
And my encouragement to you is to live, walk, and breathe forgiveness in your life.
Live here church! After all we are commanded over and over in the Scriptures to forgive.
Let us not forget some of Jesus’ final words:
Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots.
Jesus cried out for the forgiveness of those that crucified him.
He did not say I love you! Even though this act showed he does!
He did not say I am coming back to get you! Even though he is!
He said forgive them!
It was not just the Roman soldiers, the religious leaders, and the people that crucified Him, it was us church!
Living in forgiveness is living in freedom, after all, the truth shall make us free!
Unforgiveness is a disease that will devour you from the inside. My definition of unforgiveness is “holding on to the past in the now.” When someone walks in unforgiveness, they are holding hostage the person who hurt them and it shows in their attitude and behavior.
Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds,
Here, the apostle Paul through the power of the Holy Spirit gives us an imperative.
What is an imperative?
Again, I think it is important for us to remember that Paul let us know were we stand positionally in Christ and our identity is in HIM and not of this world, but we must work out our salvation, our sanctification practically each and everyday by putting things off...
It is clear that the there was some lying going on in the church house.
Did anyone lie this past week?
A minister noticed a group of boys standing around a small stray dog. “What are you doing, boys?” “Telling lies,” said one of the boys. “The one who tells the biggest lie gets the dog.”
The minister was shocked. “Why, when I was your age,” he said, “I never thought of telling a lie.” The boys looked at one another, a little crestfallen. Finally one of them shrugged and said, “I guess he wins the dog.”
Paul says it like this to the church at Ephesus:
Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.
If we were brutally honest, we would all admit that we have lied, that we have not been truthful about something.
And for those of you that disagree, think about a time when someone made you something and they you how it was and you answered wonderful, it was delicious!
But inside, you had other thoughts! Thoughts that did not line up with the words that came out of your mouth.
Or how abut flattery?
Flattery- excessive and insincere praise, given especially to further one's own interests.
Pastor, that sermon was really good today!
When inside your thinking it stunk!
The truth is, we all struggle form time to time to be truthful. If you’re not struggling, then you’re not truthful, because our human default mode is to bend the truth to our own advantage.
There are different kind of lies that I briefly like to share about:
There are different kind of lies that I briefly like to share about:
Half-truths- You tell the truth as far as you go, but you just don’t tell the whole truth, so that you convey a false impression.
Abraham did this when he said of Sarah, “She’s my sister.” True, she was his half-sister; but he concealed the relevant point that she was also his wife.
Similar to the half-truth is the lie of omission, which tempts us all at tax season.
You “forget” to report extra cash income you earned. Or, a cashier gives you too much change or leaves an item off your bill, but you don’t say anything to correct the situation.
Then there’s exaggeration—you stretch the truth a bit to make yourself look better or worse than you really are.
There are so-called “white lies,” little untruths that supposedly don’t hurt anyone. You could work, but you have other things to do, so you use a mild headache as an excuse to call in sick. Or, you tell your doctor that you’ve obeyed his orders when you know you didn’t.
As Christians, we easily fall into lies of hypocrisy, where we try to make others think that we are more spiritual than we really are. You say, “The other morning in my quiet time, …” making it sound as if you have a quiet time every day, when the truth is, it was the only quiet time you’ve had in weeks. Then there are silent lies, where someone says something complimentary about you that isn’t true, but you let it go by without correcting it.
Enough, so do you think that you struggle now?
The Lord is commanding us church to not lie to one another!
Lying is part of our old nature church and we see in the second half of the verse that we are to put off the old man and his deeds.
Notice it is plural.
Remember, this is not an exhaustive list church. But a base line of things that this church struggled with, in fact, I would say we all struggled with some of these.
When Paul talks about the old man, he is talking about the old Adamic nature.
One scholar said there is only two men that have every lived, Adam and Christ and we will all stand before the Lord in Adam or in Christ!
One scholar said there is only two men that have every lived, Adam and Christ and we will all stand before the Lord in Adam or in Christ!
and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
Every believer has a new man
The Lord does not take the old man and make him better!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Colossians: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary The Position of the New Man
R. C. H. Lenski writes, “The old man is not converted, he cannot be; he is not renewed, he cannot be. He can only be replaced by the new man”
Putting off the old man and putting on the new is the universal picture of changing your clothes.
This means putting off those stinky grave clothes and putting on Christ.
Note: the new man is renewed in knowledge of according to the image of Him who created Him.
that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
Paul’s point in Ephesians is that the old self is still operative and is continually being corrupted (present tense).
It is this continual reality that should prompt the believer to continually put on the new man.
Even though we are new creations, it does not mean that we do not battle with our flesh church, because we do and we will.
You can read about this in Romans 7.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.
We are continually renewed knowledge church.
The way we transform our character from the old into the new is by deep knowledge of the Word of God.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Knowledge- epignosis- knowledge that exerts influence upon the person. Not just intellectual, but experiential.
This knowledge moves from the head, to the heart, to the hands church!
Give an example of reading a book on skiing.
Give an example of reading a book on skiing.
It is deep knowledge of God’s Word that will produce a proper wardrobe for the believer.
What to take off and what to put on will become very evident to us the deeper we grow in our under- standing of the Word of God.
Those who flop around at a surface level will always continue to think and act just like their old self.
But those who get serious about growing deep in the true knowledge of God’s Word will think and act as the new self God saved them to become.
where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Now obviously, this is connected to verse 9 and 10 is that instructs us to put off the old garment of distinctions and prejudice.
And it is also connect to verse 10 where it says that we are being conformed to the image of Christ
Therefore, Paul what Paul is saying is that there is not longer to be distinctions and prejudices that mark our life anymore because this is part of the old man.
In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew!
This not only speaks of a sense of superiority in race or ethnicity church.
When the texts says Greek, it is talking about the Gentiles.
This was a bittersweet divide between Jew and Gentile that at this time had been going on for centuries.
There was great hostility and hate between these two groups.
The Jews looked down on the Gentiles because they suffered for years under the hand of the Gentiles.
They had much to be bitter about church.
Soem Rabbis would wake up each morning and pray this prayer, they would also teach it to their disciples:
I thank you Lord that I was not born a slave, a woman, of a Gentile!
Can you see the sense of superiority?
The Jew was convinced of their superiority because the were God special people.
Anti-Semitism- hostility or prejudice against the Jews. This was the Gentiles church.
These two groups hated each other.
Some Rabbis taught that God created the Gentiles for fuel for eternal hell fire.
This means they believe that they were presto-logs for hell!
This is not an exaggeration/ hyperbole church, but the attitude the Jews had toward the Gentiles.
The Jews referred to the Gentiles as dogs out of their pride church.
But the Gentiles lived up to it because like an animal, they did whatever their body desired.
The Gentiles had no self-control or restraint and did what ever they pleased.
While the Jews has self-control and were know as a holy people
Gentiles were referred to as the uncircumcision and this was a racial slur given to them by the Jews. ( Do you get feel a sense of superiority by the Jews?)
No serious Jew would ever eat with a Gentile.
If a Jew went to the market and bough something and rubbed up against a Gentile, they would consider themselves ceremonial unclean church.
When the Jews traveled from N to S or S to N in the land of Israel, they would avoid the middle section called Samaria, because this was the hub of Gentiles. They would go all the way to the Jordan river and cross over to go to Jerusalem.
The Jews did not want to come in to contact with a Gentile/ Samaritan, but they did not want the dust of Samaria on their feet church.
Soem rabbis taught to no help a Gentile woman deliver her baby because you would be bringing in another Gentile to the world.
The hostility, prejudice, and racism between the Jew and the Gentile grew to an all time high when Jesus stepped on the scene.
We see Jesus going into Samaria with the disciples being counter cultural and sitting next to a Samaritan women at a well asking for a drink.
This was her response:
Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
The Gospel penetrate the hearts of all nationalities and races church.
Jesus was the living Word in action going to the Gentiles, just as was prophesied in the OT .
But wait, I thought the Jews knew their Bibles???
Does this intensify the story of the Good Samaritan for you?
The times that we live in do not compare to the wall that was erected between the Jew and Gentile.
This is way beyond what exists in the world today.
Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.
The Gospel brought them together church and can bring all togther!
So the first distinction or prejudice we must put off is regarding race or nationality, regardless of what you have been taught!
Uncircumcision and circumcision speaks of religious prejudice.
Church, we all stand equal before God as believers.
No matter how we came to Christ, no matter how we were converted we are all equal in the eyes of our Creator.
The third distinction or prejudice was dealing with the social class called the Barbarian and Scythians.
This is dealing with social class, position, or our up bringing, or even cultural backgrounds church.
This is dealing with a person history.
Therefore, there is to be no divisions with language, education or lack of education, whether you have a PhD or a degree from the school of hard knocks we are all equal!
The Greeks called everyone who was not Greek a Barbarian.
They thought that they had the most beautiful culture and language and they looked down on anyone that was not Greek?
Have you ever looked down on anyone that was not like you?
The Greek considered all other languages to be BAR-BAR-BAR therefore we get Barbarians.
But the worse of the the Barbarians were the Scythians:
They were nomads who lived in wagons.
They offered up humans sacrifice.
In fact, when the conquered their enemies, they would scalp them and skin them alive.
Some have written that they would drink their enemies blood form their own skulls church.
They were a little rough around the edges and were changed by the power of God church.
This means drug addicts, murderers, drunks, prostitutes, thief's, the lier, cheat, con, and even the religious or those that think they are good can be changed forever by the Lord
The Gospel has no prejudice in it and it crosses all barriers for the sake of salvation!
The Gospel has no prejudice in it and it crosses all barriers for the sake of salvation!
4. The final category that there was prejudice was between the slave and free. This has to do with socio-economic class church.
We are not to come to a conclusion about a person value or their value to God based upon their class, their income level, education, career, or job.
During the time of Jesus, the Romans Empire had 5-7 million slaves church.
Slavery crossed all barriers and it was degrading church.
The Bottom , bottom line is that the Lord through Paul is telling us to deal with the prejudices in your hearts because :
We are all equal in the eyes of God and blood is the same color.
He closes with : Christ is all and is in all church!
Not only is Christ all, but he is in all and for all, are you!
Do we have prejudice against people that don’t live like us?
Dress like us?
Act like us?
Let us repent!
Prayer
Prayer
Announcements
Announcements
Are there any announcements?
Please get out a pen because I would like to share some serving opportunities:
Youth
Janitorial
IT Help Danny
Lawn care
Judy’s Bible Study starting next week at 9:30am
Benediction
Benediction
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
The Lord Bless You!
Your Mission Starts Now!