No post today. Road trip to visit my baby and her baby.
Back at it tomorrow…Off to Ziklag!
Have a great Monday.
Palm Sunday
The Birdcage (skit guys)
He loves us this much! Easter’s coming…
They love us enough to allow us to make free and independent decisions, even when many of those decisions are harmful to others or to ourselves.
They love us enough to try to stand in the gap between us and Satan, even when we continually put ourselves harm’s way.
God loves us so much that he made the ultimate sacrifice, for the sake of a love that we don’t want to share with each other.
“Suffer the little children…” / 4-10-11
I stepped well out of my usual comfort zone today. Instead of serving the adults of the congregation (and other blog visitors) I helped out with the children. Actually, I don’t know how much help I was though. This means I did not hear today’s formal sermon. So…no sermon notes, unless I can get a copy from someone else.
Instead I was ministered to by 5-7 year-olds, and the Veggie Tales story of “Little Mo.” Yep, that’s the way I meant to write it. I was ministered to…
I think Christ asks us to stretch ourselves and come out of our little bubbles of safety to reach out to others every now and then. When we step out of our usual arena, our comfortable space, it is amazing what new and wonderful things we can discover about ourselves, others, and the true meaning of God’s Word and unfailing love.
Via Con Dios! [Go with God!]
Tomorrow…The Parable of the Sower.
Appeal and Reminder- I Am Second, Karen Green
A few days ago, I suggested that you consider starting the “I Am Second” challenge. If you haven’t started, pull up this clip of Karen Green and see how God can change people’s lives.
Once again, I strongly encourage you to take the challenge, listen to the testimonies, do the “thing”, and be changed. We all know someone who could use this story about overcoming. Share it. The link is over to the right, in the sidebar.
Go With God…
The New You (part 5, conclusion)
Part 5, conclusion
Text: Colossians 3:1-11
Look at the last part of verse 9 and verse 10: “…Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” I want you to notice that “you have taken off your old self” and “you have put on the new self.” We’ve talked about this before. This is not a command to keep but a truth to be claimed. It’s already been done. We are exhorted to stop doing certain things because we can stop. We are different therefore we must now act differently.
As we look inward, we realize that we are no longer what we once were. The new self has been put on and yet it is “being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” We are created in the image of God but because of our sin, that image has been tainted or ruined.
God’s purpose is to restore His image in us. We must remember that although we were formed in God’s image, that image has been deformed by sin. But through Jesus Christ, we can be transformed into God’s image once again. We must take the responsibility of renewing our minds. Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
That leads to the fourth and final aspect of breaking free from the past. We must look around and see others as Christ does. Notice verse 11: “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” The word “here” indicates that in Christ there should be no barriers of nationality, race, education, social standing, wealth, gender, religion, or power. The gospel breaks down the walls of ancient and modern prejudice.
Paul mentions four groupings that need to be dissolved in the church.
Racial distinctions. The spread of the Greek culture would have made a Greek person feel proud and privileged and therefore look down on Jews. A Jewish person would regard Gentiles as heathen and immoral, and outside of God’s grace.
The false teachers taught that circumcision was important to the spiritual life, but Paul made it clear that this act of surgery gave one no advantages in Christ.
The Greeks considered any non-Greek to be a barbarian and the Scythians were the lowest barbarians of all and were considered little better than beasts.
There has always been a huge cultural and economic gap between the slaves and those who were (are) free.
All of these human barriers belong to the “old man” and not the new one. Since Christ dwells in all believers, regardless of background or social status, we must make sure we are not allowing any division or prejudice to take root in our lives. The shame of being different must be loved away as we strive for unity within diversity. Christ is all and is in all.
Stop looking down. And stop searching for something that will never satisfy. Instead, seek Christ by looking up, and live Christ by looking out, looking in, and looking around.
This kind of dramatic change is not only possible, but it is commanded by God and prompted by the Holy Spirit. But it must all start with a choice on your part. You must choose to desire the things of God. And, you will not be able to make this choice until first you decide to divorce yourself from being fleshly-minded.
Where do we start? We can take the first step right now by asking….”God make your desires my desires. You know the desires of my heart, please line them up with yours.”
Amen…
Bonus: The World’s largest online choir
For anyone who thinks nothing good can come from the Internet…
In September of last year, Eric Whitacre invited his online fans to participate in an ambitious attempt to create the world’s largest virtual choir.
Featuring 2052 performances from singers in 58 countries, the Virtual Choir 2.0 – singing Whitacre’s “Sleep” – is the largest assembled online in history, and far surpasses Whitacre’s original goal of 900 voices.
The New You (part 4)
Part 4
Text: Colossians 3:1-11
We left off last time with Paul and Phineas and sexual immorality. Did you know that Paul talks about sexual sin more than any other sin? Why do you think that is? It is because sexual sin is different than any other sin. In 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 he says, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
In our modern world, we emphasize “safe sex,” but there is no prophylactic for the soul. It’s an old saying, but a painfully true one…Sexual sin will take you further than you want to go, stay longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.
We have been duped into thinking that sexual expression is just something we do, but it’s not. It reflects who we are. Sexual sin destroys people. And Satan knows that he can trip up almost anyone by using sex. Look at the stories of David, Samson and Solomon. There were some of the greatest servants of God, and their lives were thrown off-course by their actions and the consequences of those actions.
Paul lists the sins that we’re to put to death.
Sexual immorality, a general term that refers to any form of illicit sexual behavior.
Impurity is marked by a mind that is filled with sensually suggestive thoughts and one that can read sex into even the most wholesome of situations.
Lust seeks quick fulfillment and always wants more. Love takes work and deepens over time. Lust focuses only on the senses, but love uses the senses to cherish the other and to nourish the soul.
Evil desires: When our physical desires become evil, and are motivated by the sinful nature and executed for evil ends. And, since desires lead to deeds, we must purify our minds and hearts.
Greed is idolatry. This is the sin of always wanting more. In this context, it is applied to the greed for satisfying evil desires and for sexual immorality. The person who is never satisfied with what he has is usually envious of what others have. This leads to idolatry, when things and people end up taking the place of God.
In verse 6, Paul states that because of these things, the wrath of God is coming. We bring the judgment of God on ourselves according to the principle found in Galatians 6:7, “A man sows what he reaps” and what we see in Romans 1:24 where we read that “God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts…”
But there is balance. God’s wrath is balanced within His holiness by mercy, compassion and love. He is repulsed by sin and yet is committed to us in love. Jesus will give you grace but He also tells the truth about your sin because He is the perfect embodiment of both grace and truth. Just as He told the woman caught in adultery to “go now and leave your life of sin,” so too, He calls us to look out and stop what we’re doing so that we may follow Him completely.
Verse 7 reminds us that this kind of behavior belongs to our old life and should not be part of our present pattern of living: “You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.” We need to put the past behind us and refuse to resort to a lifestyle that no longer reflects our true identity.
In verses 8 and 9, we’re told to rid ourselves of social sins. These are the sins we like to think of as the “little ones,” the ones that don’t really hurt anybody. And we try really hard to justify them, overlook them, pass them by.
Paul doesn’t. And, just in case you thought you cruised safely through the first list, hang onto something, because Paul doesn’t let up.
He moves to an image of taking off old smelly clothes. Before we can put on the new, we must first take off the old. The verb “rid” calls for immediate, decisive resolution. Before the new garments of righteousness can be put on, the old rags of sin must be discarded. What is he referring to?
Anger, a continuous attitude of hatred that remains bottled up within.
Rage is what comes bursting out, often uncontrollably.
Malice, an attitude of ill will towards a person. It’s often a hidden hatred of the heart that takes revenge in secret.
Slander. When we destroy another person’s good reputation by lies, gossip and the spreading of rumors. We try to hide behind the excuse that what we are saying is true. And while it may be true, a much more important question is, “Is it helpful?”
Filthy language, crude talk or abrasive words filled with swearing and sexual innuendo.
Lying to one another disrupts unity by destroying trust. It tears down relationships and can lead to serious conflicts.
These behaviors have no place in our lives or in our churches. They are part of the old life we are to have left behind. We must decisively “rid” ourselves of the repulsive sins of sex and speech so that we can “put on” the attitudes and actions of Christ.
If we’re really serious about breaking free from the past, we must also look in. We do this by recognizing the truth about what has happened to us at the time of our conversion.
[ conclusion tomorrow…]
The New You (Part 3)
Part 3
Text: Colossians 3:1-11
Fourth, Christ will come again (4b). Since Jesus is coming back again, it only makes sense that we should be looking up on a continuous basis. The phrase, “when” is probably better translated, “whenever Christ appears.” This emphasizes the fact that His return is certain, but the time is indefinite. Since we don’t know the when, we must keep watching.
Fifth and final, we will appear with Him in Glory (4c). The verb, “appear” means “to make visible what is invisible.” When Christ returns, the real position of the believer, which has been hidden to the world, will be made known. When Jesus is revealed in His glory, we shall be totally transformed and according to 1st John 3:2, “…But we know that when he appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Paul is urging us to look up and to remember who we are now, who we once were, and who we will be when Christ returns.
Where are you looking today? What does your mind focus on? What gets the attention of your heart?
We must make a conscious, deliberate, and daily decision to look up and set our minds and hearts on heavenly things. Our outlook determines our outcome. Keeping our minds and hearts in the right place will often determine where we end up. This is true in our Christian walk, and it is true in our daily working lives. If you never look beyond the current circumstances of your situation, if you are mired down in and by your circumstances, and if you never prepare for a better future, how do you plan to get to that better tomorrow?
That leads us to Paul’s second piece of advice. Not only must we look up, we must also look out. We see this in verses 5-9: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other…”
Colossians 3:5, in the New Living Translation reads a little differently: “So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you.” Because we have died and been raised with Christ, we have the spiritual power to slay those desires that want to control us.
We have died to sin, but we must render sinful desires powerless. While we can’t totally eradicate our sinful nature all by ourselves, we can treat it as a morally impotent force. The new life calls for more than throwing out a few vices and beefing up our spiritual life by going to church once in a while. But, what gets renewed is our “new self,” not the earthly nature. Remember, we have died with Christ. Now we need to figure out how to live this practically. We must refuse to judge and be judged by externals, we must reject false authority, and we need to repudiate ridiculous religious rules. But that doesn’t mean that we can do whatever we want as believers.
Grace takes precedence over legalism. Paul makes it very plain in Romans 6(:1-2) that we are no longer to let sin rule over us: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” What Paul is saying is that just because we now call ourselves Christian, we don’t get a free pass on our favorite sin. We can’t act worse than we did before we claimed to be saved!
And, true to my feeling about how the Bible is one story, here’s your Old Testament story. We will look at a man named Phinehas in the book of Numbers, chapter 25. He had both moral fiber and determination. He was not afraid to deal with sin. In this story, Israel was just about to enter the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering around the desert. As you might remember, this is a journey that should have taken them 40 days, but they kept screwing up, so it took them 40 years. Anyway, you would expect them to be really pumped up and excited about finally being so close to the end of this journey. But, instead of thanking God, the men of Israel started sleeping with foreign women and worshiping false gods.
Needless to say, God’s anger burned against the Israelites and he sent a plague among the people. In the midst of God’s judgment, one guy was so arrogant that he didn’t even try to hide his sin. He marched right in front of the people with a Midianite (foreign) maiden and took her into his tent to sleep with her. Try to take in this whole scene…The people of God are weeping because of their sin and the plague that is wiping them out, and this bonehead walks right by them flaunting his sin. Doesn’t it amaze you how sexual sin can make a normally sane person do some pretty stupid things?
Well, this is where Phinehas comes in. When he saw what was going on, he jumped up, grabbed his spear, ran to the man’s tent and drove the spear through both the man and the woman as they lay together. The plague stopped immediately, but not before 24,000 people had been killed by it. God says in Numbers 25:11, “Phinehas …has turned my anger away from the Israelites; for he was as zealous as I am for my honor…” Because Phinehas was looking up, but he was also looking out.
Paul wants us to look out. But just in case we can’t remember what they are, he lists some sensual sins for us. We must slay these with the passion of Phinehas. Anytime we see these desires begin to awaken in our lives we need to grab our spear and thrust it right through them. We need to be zealous for God’s honor by putting them to death. Notice that we’re not just to put them aside. We’re not to wound them or even ask them to leave. We’re not to experiment or play around with them, rationalize them or even try to explain them away. Instead, we are to kill them. We’re to thrust our spears right through them. Sounds dramatic…That’s what I love about the Old Testament.
[more…]
The New You (Part 2)
Part 2
Text: Colossians 3:1-11
There are practical implications that should become evident to us if we surrender to supremacy of Christ. It does little good if we can declare and defend the truth but fail to demonstrate it in our lives. We make a mockery of ourselves and of Christ.
We don’t really want to be like those people described in Titus 1:16: “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him.” The pagan religions of Paul’s day taught little or nothing about personal morality. A worshipper could bow before an idol, put his offering on the altar, and go back to the same old life of sin. What a person believed had no direct relationship with how he behaved. Unfortunately that sounds like a lot of us! But, Christianity is much different.
Duty is always connected to doctrine. To try to keep this in context up until this point in Colossians Paul has been arguing that we are set free from the powers around us, and now he tells us that we have been set free for living a life above moral reproach. We have been set free from our previous life, but for a purpose. To live a better life.
God’s plan is to first make us new; then He challenges us to live as new people. In short, we don’t always have to be the way we’ve always been. We can break free from the past, if we know where to look.
This is where our text kicks in. First, he tells us to look Up! Instead of gazing at the ground, we must first look up!
We see in Colossians 3:1-4: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
This opening phrase is similar to Colossians 2:20: “Since you died with Christ…”
Since we died with Christ, we don’t have to follow the rules of a hollow and deceptive philosophy. Colossians 3:1 establishes the truth that since we’ve been raised with Christ, we have a new status and therefore a new way of life. We now have a power source for living.
Believers have died with Christ, been buried with Him, have been raised with Him, and we have been seated with Him in the heavenly places. This is our position, but we must appropriate or take these truths on a daily basis in order to break free from our past. And that is why Paul writes, “set your hearts on things above.”
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “He’s so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good.” And although I guess that’s possible, I think it’s much more likely that people today are so worldly minded that they’re no heavenly or earthly good.
If we truly set our hearts on things above, we will experience power and freedom here on earth. The word “set” means to seek something out with a desire to possess it, to take it over, to make it ours. The word is in the present tense, which means that we’re to continue to seek the things above. It’s not just a one-time decision, but is meant to be a daily activity.
Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
If our focus is on things that will ultimately rust, tarnish, break down, or burn up, our energy and emotions will be misplaced and wasted. If we seek out Christ and allow Him to become our ultimate treasure, our hearts will follow.
Knowing that “Christ is seated at the right hand of God” provides a much-needed reminder that Jesus is supreme and in control; always in control.
This phrase echoes Psalm 110:1, which is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” Jesus is exalted and sits at the right hand of the Father, which shows that His redemptive work is now complete.
The first directive is to “set our hearts on things above.” The second is to “set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” This literally translates, “Keep on thinking, as a matter of habit, on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Our feet must be on earth, but our minds must be in heaven. Thoughts can influence actions, so if we place our thoughts above and not on the earth, our behavior will reflect those things that matter to God. This requires determined and dogged effort on our part because, by nature we tend to look down, instead of looking up. But if we glue our gaze on things above, God will change our desires. And if we can change our mind, God will change our heart.
We need to put our brain in gear by concentrating on those things that are spelled out in Philippians 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- think about such things.” By seeking what Christ desires, we have the power to break our obsessions, fixations and fascinations with pleasure and the accumulation of things.
In verses 3 and 4, we are given five reasons to look up.
First, we’ve died (3a): This points back to the cross where we died in Christ. As a result of His sacrifice, we have no obligation to live like we used to live. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Because we have already died with Christ, we should have as little desire for inappropriate worldly pleasures as a dead person would have. We don’t just receive a cosmetic makeover, to make us look better on the outside. Nor do we simply add a Christian veneer that only puts a fake covering over our inner, sinful life. Our old nature is not renewed or even reformed; instead, it is put to death!
Second, our life is hidden with Christ (3b). To have our lives hidden with the One who is seated at the right hand of God gives us both security and satisfaction. The image here is of a treasure that is stored away in a secure place. Like a seed buried in the earth, our real lives are hidden from the world, only to be revealed when Christ returns. Our new life is a mystery or secret to those who don’t understand spiritual matters. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says it like this, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Third, Christ is our life (4a). In a very real sense for the believer, Christ is what life is all about. Without Him we would be dead in our sins. In John 14:6, Jesus said about himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” By realizing that Christ is our life, we can have a new attitude about anything and everything that happens to us. Does this mean that suddenly our lives will be perfect and easy? No. But it does mean that if He is truly our life, we have nothing to fear.
[more tomorrow…]