Sermon Transcript
Colossians 3:1-15. For if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 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— 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.
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.
We’re coming in for a landing on our 6-week all-church focus. If you haven’t been here for the last 5 weeks, don’t worry, we will catch you up quickly. We have been studying how to live in a place, how to live in a culture that doesn’t really feel like home, where our beliefs and values may not be shared. By those around us, and we feel like we don’t fit. How are we supposed to live in a place like that?
Should we keep our heads down and stay quiet? Should we stand on top of rooftops and shout condemnations at everyone? Or is there something else? That’s our series. And the good news is the Bible has had a lot to say about this topic.
The Bible refers to living in a place that isn’t your home as exile, to living in a place where you feel like a little bit like a fish out of water as exile. And we started off our series seeing that really all believers, ever since humans left paradise with God at the beginning of our story, we have all been in exile. Exile. Regardless of when or where we have lived, or regardless of how favorable the culture is to us or isn’t, none of us have been truly home since we were home with God in the beginning. And our longing to be in a place where we totally fit and where we totally thrive will not happen until we at home with him again.
That was week 1. From there, we studied our identity in exile, which had 2 components: our identity in relation to God and our identity in relation to others. In relation to God, we are included, chosen, desired, favored through our faith in Christ’s redemptive work. Always. It means God has not abandoned us even when we are in in exile.
So the acceptance that we crave from others, it has already been granted to us as Christians in the eyes of God. That’s our identity with him. Our identity in relation to the world is that we are resident aliens, which means on the one hand, we don’t fit in. We are quite different. People won’t always understand us.
We’re aliens. But at the same time, we’re putting down roots here. We’re not hands-off. We don’t isolate from culture. We don’t bail on culture.
We don’t live on a compound. We engage. We link arms. We invest. We stay.
So we’re residents. We’re resident aliens. From there we talked about lamenting exile and embracing exile. We lament because we’re not home. There is a sadness we carry because this world is not as it should be.
It is good and proper to grieve what is broken. We will lament. But at the same time, we embrace where we live. We enter into what is broken. We work for the good of everyone, whether they are followers of Christ or not.
Then last week, we saw how exile can create unique opportunities to share our faith with others. And those opportunities could never exist if we lived in a place that always shared shared all of our beliefs and values. And now that you’re caught up on what we have discussed over the last 5 weeks of living in a place that isn’t home, this week to close our series we’re talking about hope in exile. Not that we haven’t talked about hope every single week during this series in some way, but hope needs its own week. One, because we can never have too much of it.
Uh, 2, Because when we are in a place where we don’t fit, when we feel like things are not as they should be, and maybe we have growing frustration and angst, when we’re in that spot, our hearts will reach for something to make us feel better. We will try to find a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s how we’re wired. We cannot live without hope. But not all lights at the end of the tunnel are as promising as they seem.
In other words, not everything that we could hope in should be hoped in. So, where to hope and where not to hope are very important questions. To help us, we’re in the book of Colossians, which is an ancient letter written to a group of Christians who at first found great freedom and joy in following Christ, but subsequently they were infiltrated by other teachings and needed a bit of a reset. So if you are someone who has perhaps been a Christian for a long time, but now you find yourself with less peace and confidence, hope than you used to, if maybe the state of the world has you tied in knots, if exile has led you to despair and anger instead of of hope, Colossians could be very helpful to you. So as we look at this passage today, we will see 2 choices of where to set our minds, meaning 2 choices of where to hope, the consequences of setting our minds one place versus the other place, and then how to set our minds in the right place.
2 choices of where to set our minds or hope, consequences of setting our minds one place versus the and then how to set it in the right place. So first, 2 choices of where to set your mind: Christ or earth, above or below. Paul says, verse 2, set your minds above, not below. Seek Christ. That’s verse 1.
Put to death what is earthly or below in you, verse 5. Paul sets a above of a binary choice. It’s Christ or the world. There is no third option or in-between. There can only be one primary hope or one primary love in your heart, and it’s either what is above or what is below.
Now, before you want to stand up and argue that, hey, we can love a lot of different things simultaneously, let me stop you. You are absolutely right. You can love and enjoy lots of different things from both above and below. You can love your family and you can love Jesus. You can love good dinner with your friends and you can at the same time love what you learn and experience at church.
You can like football and you can like Jesus. I’m going to do that this afternoon. Absolutely, we can do all of that simultaneously. So when Paul says set your mind above not below, he is not saying the only thing you can have any desire for whatsoever is Jesus. He is not saying that.
We should all love and sacrifice for our families and others. And as humans who are wired for community and connection, I pray each of us has a group of people who feel like they are our people. And I even hope you enjoy football, and I hope you cheer for the Niners this afternoon. All of that that is wonderful. So when Paul says seek above, set your mind above, he’s referring to a much deeper, more foundational type of setting your mind than simply what we enjoy or even what we love.
He’s talking about what you might call the operating system of your soul, what you believe will make or break you? What is the thing that if you had it, you think— and so this is where your mind comes into play— you think, if I had that, everything would be okay? Or to say it negatively, what is the thing that if you lost it, it would not matter what else you had, you would not be okay? So even if you had all the money in the bank, the relationships are going great, job was a perfect match for you, but you didn’t have that, so you feel totally ruined. That is what we’re talking about.
It’s whatever you must have in order for you to feel like your life has purpose and meaning, in order to feel like you have worth or significance. We all have something in that category, and often there’s only room enough for one thing in that category. Because there’s probably one thing you believe if you had that, you could deal with everything else falling apart. As long as I had that, I’d still be okay. And at the same time, you believe if I didn’t have that, no amount of any other positives that I could ever have would ever make up for it because I don’t have that.
Probably only enough room for one thing in that category, and whatever that is— and we all have something— that is what Paul’s talking about. The Bible refers to that as worship. So it could be God, it could be Christ, and Paul says so in this passage. He writes, when Christ, who is your life, appears, verse 4. Or verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your heart.
Those phrases clue you into he’s referring to what is most foundational in your being. So it’s not just what you like, not just what you enjoy, but what rules your heart, or the thing that you would call your very life. Like, this is the breath that I breathe.
It’s so deep within us, actually, that Paul even refers to it as the self, verse 9. In verse 10, which means something like we think if we lost it, more than being only sad or disappointed, we say, if I don’t have that, I don’t even know who I am. It goes down to identity, to self. I have to have this in order to be anything. That’s self-language.
Identity language. It’s much deeper than simply just what we enjoy. And Paul says there’s only 2 options for that. It could be Christ, like we already said. So we might say, you know, if I have Jesus, even if I don’t have everything else, even if I don’t have anything else, I am made.
But if I don’t have Jesus, even if I lost everything else, I’m I’m sorry, I messed that up. If I don’t have Jesus, even if I have everything else, I’m still lost. We could say that. So it could be Christ, or it might not be. And if it is something else other than Jesus, Paul correctly refers to it as covetousness or idolatry, verse 5.
That’s what covetousness and idolatry are. We talk about this a lot. Idolatry is not necessarily a desire for something bad. Instead, it’s an over-desire, but often for some— sometimes something for very, very good. You could over-desire career.
You could over-desire winning. You could over-desire grades. You could over-desire health, relationships, children, friends, a political party, the Niners, anything. Anything could become the thing that you need in order to know that everything is going to be okay. To know my life has purpose and meaning.
I have worth as a person. If I have this, I’m made. If I don’t have this, even if I have everything else, I am nothing. We all have those kinds of things. Whether we are religious or not, whether we are spiritual or not, we cannot function without setting our minds on something outside of ourselves.
This is— it’s an old movie now, but great story. Chariots of Fire documents 2 sprinters from the UK in the 1924 Olympics. One of the sprinters, Eric Liddell, was a Christian, follower of God, and at one point in the movie he says, I run to glorify God, and when I run, I feel his pleasure. The other sprinter, Harold Abrams, says, as he’s looking ahead to the race that is about to happen. Harold says, in 1 hour’s time, I will be out there again on the track.
I raise my eyes and look down that corridor 4 feet wide with 10 lonely seconds to justify my existence. But will I?
Abrams is not a particularly spiritual person like Liddell is in the movie. He’s not making a a religious comment, but he touches on something deeply insightful to how humans work. We all look to something outside of us to make us, to justify our existence as he labels it, to know we’re going to be okay, to know we’re worth something, that we matter, that our life counts. That comes from the outside. As much as some modern voices might try to say the only validation you need is from yourself, The only approval you need is your own.
You know, the only person you need to love you is yourself. That I can buy myself flowers, I can write my own name in the sand.
It’s not true, is it?
You should not clap for that, and I need to apologize to Miley Cyrus who wrote those lyrics. I apologize for both for disproving you and also for my horrible rendition of your song. It’s not true. Validation comes from the outside.
When you achieve something, if the only person who applauds you is you, or if you fail at something and the only person who tells you it’s okay is you, you, if the rest of the world is silent, it is not enough, is it? We look outside of ourselves for assurance that it’s going to be okay, that we’re okay, that we’re accepted. In other words, we look outside of ourselves for hope.
We will either set our minds above or below for that hope, but we will set it. And there are consequences for where you set your mind. In other words, looking below for hope or looking above for hope comes with strings attached. Either way, there are strings. And the consequences for setting your mind one place versus the other are above equals renewal and below equals decay.
Paul instructs, put off oneself with its practices, put on another self which is associated with different practices. In other words, if your mind is set above, you will get above results. If your mind is set below, you will get below results. You cannot get above renewal if your mind is set below. Now, on one level, I’m sure it makes sense that if setting our minds is talking about something so deep within us that it, that it is our very self, our very identity, then of course, obviously, it must form our behavior somehow, right?
We, we all realize that our concept of, of who we are connects in some way to how we see the world, to our peace, to our joy, our despair, right? What, what is most intrinsic to us will play out play itself out in our lives somehow, right? We know that. But it might not be obvious why focusing below leads to things like anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscenities, lying, like he says in verse 8. Now, all of those are practices which we would associate with decay— decay of a soul, decay of a community, decay of a civilization.
May not be obvious why those are connected, nor may it be obvious why focusing above leads to compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness, love, harmony, like he says, verses 12 to 14, all of which are behaviors associated with renewal, whether it’s renewal of an individual or a community. It may— that may not be obvious, so let’s take a minute to think about it. Let’s say your mind is set below. You’re fixated on something, even if it’s something good, but it’s an over-desire. Maybe you need an achievement in order to feel okay about yourself or your future.
You need that college, that job, that recognition in your job, and if you don’t have that, you’ll be more than disappointed. You’ll think, my life is over. It’s an over-desire. As long as that is still out ahead of you, as long as you can still believe, okay, I don’t have that right now, but I can keep working toward it, right? As long as it is still the thing you need, as long as it’s still a possibility out in your future, you could still be perfectly pleasant to those who are around you.
People might see you as driven, but they likely won’t see anger, malice, slander, lying, decay. But what happens when that achievement is threatened? Maybe you don’t even lose it, it’s just threatened, which will happen because nothing is secure all the time. And even if you hit this goal, there will be another one and another one and another one on the horizon. So what, what happens when it starts to look like everything you’ve built your life towards may not come together for you?
How are you going to act when you think your very life is gone and you’ve lost your sense of self?
Watch out.
People who feel they might lose everything can justify just about anything. They’ll start lying in order to get it or to keep the thing that they think they need to have. They will hurt others. When something is that deep of a need and now you might lose it, it’s terrible both for you and those around you. The Abrams character in Chariots of Fire, in the Chariots of Fire movie, he breaks the heart of his love interest so that he can run, focus more on running, which she should have seen coming.
Because when they first met, she was this professional singer, he was going to be an Olympic athlete. So he asked her, hey, why do you sing? And she says, I sing just because I love it. So then she turns and asks him, why do you run? Do you love running?
And he says, it’s more of an addiction, a compulsion, a weapon even. It’s how I protect myself from the world that isn’t always favorable to me.
Me. If it’s that, of course you’ll do anything to hang on to that. He has to run in order to feel accepted by the world. He’ll hurt whoever he needs to hurt in order to keep that. His mind is below.
On the other hand, what if he had set his mind above, on God’s love for him, on God’s plan for him, on what God did for him on the cross? Basically like the Liddell character in the movie. Liddell says he runs because he feels God’s pleasure when he runs. So Liddell is not running toward acceptance. He’s not chasing after acceptance when he’s running.
He’s not running in order to attain acceptance like Abrams is. He’s running from a place of already being accepted. He knows God is already pleased with him, which makes him much more able to be open-handed with everything. He’s even open-handed with winning a gold medal. He desires that, but it’s not an over-desire.
So he’s stable. The advantage of placing your hope above with Christ is that it can never be in jeopardy. If you’ve made God’s love for you, his approval, his delight in you, the thing that you must have in order to feel okay about yourself, in order to feel safe, safe in the world, then you will always be okay and safe because that never fades. It can survive any failure. It survives even when you are completely rejected by the world.
It survives even death. And if you have that kind of confidence, that kind of grounding that cannot be threatened even by death, you’ll be a much more gentle kind of person. You’ll be an honest type of person because there’s nothing that you need so badly that you would lie to get it. You’ll be a much more patient person because you already have the deepest desire of your heart fulfilled. You won’t be frantically needing anything else.
You’ll still care about things in the world. You’ll still enjoy things. And in a, in a way, in fact, you’ll actually enjoy everything even more because you won’t be freaking out about losing them all the time. You can be open-handed like Lydell was, even with your reputation, your comfort, your friends, your children, their future. You don’t need to cling so tightly to anything.
And when you’re not as worried about your needs, it frees you up to serve others. Where we set our minds, what is most core about us, what we have to have in order to have life, it comes with strings attached. Focus above, you get renewal. Focus below, you will get decay. So importantly, how do we set our minds in the right place?
Paul gives a number of instructions. It’s a long list. He starts off Verse 2, set your minds on things that are above. We already know that. That’s what we’re trying to do.
Verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you. Verse 8, put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. Verse 9, put off the old self. Verse 10, put on the new self. Verse 12, put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience.
Verse 13, forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. Verse 15, let the peace of Christ Christ rule in your hearts.
That may sound like a daunting, impossible list.
So, we’ll break it down and we’ll try to make it simple. The first thing to observe from Paul’s list is setting our minds above requires some effort. It doesn’t happen spontaneously, and it’s not something you only do once. It’s more like training. A lot of days it could feel like a grind.
And I’ll say from experience, it is not easy. It is a process from old to new. And just when you think you’ve got it, something else will happen in your life and you’ll have to work the process all over again. Because a lot of times we don’t even know that our minds are focused focused below until we lose something below, and then we notice, like, I, I’ve become unhinged. Why am I so freaking out about this?
We realize, oh, my mind wasn’t as set above as I thought it was. There’s more old self to take off. So as far as how to do it, we mentioned some of this in our life group content video today, but you’ve got to catch yourself yourself when your mind drifts to what is below, and then in that moment redirect it. The scene in Chariots of Fire when Abram’s love interest asks him why he runs and he says, it’s an addiction, it’s a compulsion, it’s how I prove myself. He doesn’t stop in the middle of that sentence and challenge where his mind has drifted.
He thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to be that obsessed with winning. But if he were a Christian, in that moment when he was asked, why do you run? He may have said, you know, if I’m honest, I run to justify my existence. But I don’t want it to be like that. It’s unhealthy to have validation from— or my validation from winning races, like, at the center of what I need.
And I know if this continues, I’m going to destroy everything else in my pursuit of that validation. So I know, you know, singer lady, that this is our first date, but would you pray for me right now? Right? Pray that whether I win or lose, you know, I feel every bit as validated because the God of the universe loves me so much that he was willing to die to be with me. I need the hope of Christ to dwell in my heart, not the hope of a gold medal.
Although it’s fine to desire a gold medal, just not the way that I’m desiring it. I need to be at a place where I am at peace whether I win or lose.
That’s how we talk to ourselves. That’s how we ask people to pray for us. We do not need to act like we have it all together. In fact, we shouldn’t act like we have it all together because we don’t. We don’t need to pretend that we have arrived at the new self operating without ever having any entanglements in the old self.
And we can admit it to anyone who we’re talking with, whether they are a Christian or not, whether it’s your first date or your oldest friend or your pastor. Just be honest. Honest about where you look for hope and where you wish you did. Confess your struggle of how hard it is to put hope in Christ. Invite others in to help and pray with you, and that’s how we make progress.
That’s how we move forward.
So, in the context of exile, because this is our series, when you feel out of place from the culture around you, when you feel isolated because of your beliefs, when you feel like you are to some extent excluded, like maybe the world is against you, or at least you feel some of those in power over you are against you, it is so easy to think, it is so easy for our minds to drift and say, if only I had control, if only my tribe had control. If only Christians controlled the laws, and the entertainment, and the academic institutions, and the corporate policy. If only Christians controlled all of that, then I would be okay. Then I would be at peace. Then I wouldn’t have to worry so much.
If those phrases come out of your mouth, you’ve got to stop yourself. Tell yourself, I don’t have to have that in order to be okay, to be at peace, for the future to be secure, to be free from worry. It has become an over-desire. If you’re not sure if it has become an over-desire or not, you can tell by how gentle you are or aren’t, how patient you are, How kind, how compassionate you are or aren’t. If you are saying things like, gentleness doesn’t matter, winning is the only thing that matters, whoo, red alert.
You have overfocused below, probably on something good, but it’s an overdesire.
And now it’s threatened. The thing you over-desire is threatened and you are spiraling.
Many of you have guessed already and correctly that one of the reasons for our series at this time, not the only reason, but one of the reasons for this topic at the beginning of 2024 is that over the next 9 months, our faith will be challenged. Because regardless of who is elected in November, half the country will believe that civilization has come to an end as we know it. And the other half of the country will breathe a sigh of relief and say, I know everything’s gonna be okay for at least 4 years. But if your hope is in Christ, you cannot be in either one of those halves of the country. Because if you react either of those ways, if you react and say the world has ended, or now I know everything is okay, either of those reactions reveal your ultimate hope is below, not above.
So whenever over the next 9 months you find yourself really worked up, and most of us probably will at some point experience a good bit of anxiety because there is a whole industry that profits off of our anger and outrage, and those guys are fantastic at their jobs. So when you find yourself all worked up, you’ve got to grab your mind and say, My ultimate hope is not a candidate or a party. You’ve got to confess to others that you feel like the world might end, that you feel like the whole future is at stake, and then you say, you’re like, hey, I feel this way and it makes me realize I am not emotionally confident that my Savior lives and reigns and holds the whole world in his hands. I’m not confident. I want to be, but I’m not.
I want to be open-handed with whoever is in power. I don’t want to cling to what is below for my life. I want to rest in him who is above.
If we all do that, if we all help each other with this great challenge that will fall into our laps whether we want it to or not, It is coming. If we help each other set our minds above, like, this can be a year— the next 9 months can be a year of significant spiritual growth, of taking off the old self, of putting on a new self. So you pray for me, I’ll pray for you, that the peace of Christ will rule our hearts. And not any other kind of peace.
Let’s pray.
Father, you are good. You are worth setting our minds on. You have given us an unshakable hope that can never be threatened by failure or rejection or even death. I pray, Lord, that you would be our hope. That we would be confident in You, Your love for us, which You proved on the cross.
We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
