WEBVTT 00:00:00.620 --> 00:00:06.379 Our Scripture reading this morning from which the teaching, our sermons based is Colossians 3, 00:00:06.580 --> 00:00:12.320 verses 1 to 4. So, it's printed in your bulletin. It'll be on the screens as well if you'd like to 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:18.199 use that. There's also Bibles around on tables. If you'd like to grab a Bible, you can do that too. 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:21.080 And I'm going to ask Douglas to come and read for us. 00:00:22.960 --> 00:00:28.440 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, 00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:34.899 seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are 00:00:34.899 --> 00:00:42.799 on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:48.540 appears, then you will appear, you will also will appear with Him in glory. 00:00:49.980 --> 00:00:56.960 We're starting a new series today called Practicing the Christian Life. So, the hope is that every 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:03.780 single January for the next three years, we'll do this series, Practicing the Christian Life. I say 00:01:03.780 --> 00:01:09.540 three years because as some of you were praying, we were awaiting a visa approval so that we could 00:01:09.540 --> 00:01:14.439 stay here, and that did come in this week. So, I can say that, Lord willing, we will do this series 00:01:14.439 --> 00:01:21.120 the next three years. Can't say any more than that, but that's as long as the visa lasts. 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:28.600 Next three years, we'll do this series. What we're going to do is look at Paul's lists. Paul has at 00:01:28.600 --> 00:01:34.700 least six lists throughout his letters, and they're all about change. They're all about practicing the 00:01:34.700 --> 00:01:39.560 Christian life. They're all about what it looks like to live as a Christian. And so, each January, 00:01:39.719 --> 00:01:45.659 I hope to just work through one of these lists. This January, Colossians 3, verses 1 to 17. This is one 00:01:45.659 --> 00:01:50.640 of the most foundational of these lists. What does it look like to practice the Christian life? Paul 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:57.280 lays it out for us right here. And so, let's look at it together this month. Today, just the first four 00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:04.420 verses, what the Christian life is all about. First, he's going to show us that change, real change, 00:02:04.920 --> 00:02:11.740 always requires an if-then. And then, that there's a motivation. This is the most important thing today, 00:02:11.740 --> 00:02:17.200 that there's a motivation for real change in your life. And then, lastly, there's a Christian mindset 00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:23.960 to change that you need. So, let's look at those three things. First, the first thing he says to us 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:30.840 is that we all have an if-then that is the basis of change. Now, I know that's enigmatic. I know that's 00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:36.939 a puzzling way to say it. But if you look down at verse 1, he says, if then you've been raised with 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:42.719 Christ, seek the things that are above. Or it could be translated, if you have been raised with 00:02:42.719 --> 00:02:48.740 Jesus Christ, then seek the things that are above. And he goes on after that to say, don't seek the 00:02:48.740 --> 00:02:54.539 things that are on the earth. So, if you're a Christian, if you're a Christian, seek the things 00:02:54.539 --> 00:03:00.079 that are above, not the things on earth. Now, is Paul saying, if you're a Christian, you need to forget 00:03:00.079 --> 00:03:05.979 about the physical life. You need to, you know, forget about work, forget about eating, forget about all 00:03:05.979 --> 00:03:10.759 these things. You need to focus on the spiritual, the heavenly. Seek the things above, not the things 00:03:10.759 --> 00:03:17.459 on earth. No, he's absolutely not saying that. What is he saying? He's saying instead that if you 00:03:17.459 --> 00:03:22.699 were to back up, if you have a Bible, you can do this, back up to chapter 2, verse 20. He said something 00:03:22.699 --> 00:03:29.019 almost identical to this. If you've been raised with Christ, put away the elemental spirits of the 00:03:29.019 --> 00:03:34.919 world, the elemental things of the world. And that's Paul's way of specifically talking to the 00:03:34.919 --> 00:03:42.000 Colossians. Because in Colossae, just like everywhere else in the Greco-Roman world, the city was 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:49.159 dominated by worship of the pagan gods, of going to the temple and worshiping Zeus and Aphrodite and 00:03:49.159 --> 00:03:55.979 Artemis and all sorts of Greco or Roman gods. And he's saying, if you've become a Christian, if you've 00:03:55.979 --> 00:04:03.219 experienced repentance, then you've got to put away the elemental spirits. That's just a Greek way of 00:04:03.219 --> 00:04:10.599 talking about all the things you might worship that are on the ground, under the sun, not in the above. 00:04:11.419 --> 00:04:18.139 So when he says, seek the things above, he's saying, seek God who stands above the ground. In other words, 00:04:18.160 --> 00:04:24.459 he's saying, if you've become a Christian, you've been called to stop worshiping, to put away anything 00:04:24.459 --> 00:04:31.199 anything that you might have made into a God that is a creature. Anything on the ground, anything 00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:37.359 material, even an angel. You might have worshiped an angel. Some of the Colossians did. But he says, 00:04:37.439 --> 00:04:41.639 even them, they're creatures. And so if you've become a Christian, if you've been raised with Christ, 00:04:41.719 --> 00:04:47.939 you've been called to put away worship of anything that is underneath God's existence, because it's 00:04:47.939 --> 00:04:54.420 creaturely. Now, what does that mean? Let me say this. It means that every single person, Paul is 00:04:54.420 --> 00:05:03.199 saying, this is the presupposition of this passage, every single person has a God, an if, a conversion 00:05:03.199 --> 00:05:09.600 story, where you've been converted to worshiping something in your life, something, something under 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:17.839 the sun, something creaturely, that has led to your then. If you've converted to X, seek this. In other 00:05:17.839 --> 00:05:23.500 words, every single one of us has something we worship, a God we worship. And it determines what 00:05:23.500 --> 00:05:30.019 we think about change in this life. It determines the goal of change. It determines what we really 00:05:30.019 --> 00:05:35.099 want and how we pursue it, how we chase after it. And Paul is saying, look, first off, you just got to 00:05:35.099 --> 00:05:41.539 say, I've got that in my life. If you're not a Christian today, what I want to say is, I hope you 00:05:41.539 --> 00:05:47.519 avoid the very silly thing, which we all can do sometimes, and that's say, you know, religious 00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:53.139 people. They're converted. They talk about conversion. If you've been raised with Christ, 00:05:53.199 --> 00:05:59.399 you're converted. And I'm not converted. I'm not religious. I'm not a convert. I'm a free thinker. 00:06:00.219 --> 00:06:06.899 And Paul is saying, you can't say that. You've got to realize that you're a convert. You have an if. 00:06:08.019 --> 00:06:12.759 Whatever you're following is your if, and it leads to your then, the way you practice your life, 00:06:12.759 --> 00:06:15.800 the thing you worship most, the thing you chase after. Let me give you an example. 00:06:17.259 --> 00:06:20.899 Richard Dawkins. This is a bit of an extreme example. I'll give you a non-extreme example in 00:06:20.899 --> 00:06:26.680 just a sec. The extreme example, Richard Dawkins was being interviewed by Larry Taunton a few years 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:34.759 back, and Larry Taunton asked him, what is your ultimate goal in your career? And he says, Dawkins, 00:06:34.879 --> 00:06:40.379 the very famous atheist who wrote The God Delusion, other books like that, he said, I think my ultimate 00:06:40.379 --> 00:06:46.819 goal would be to convert people away from particular religions toward a rationalist skepticism, 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:54.019 tinged with, and then he stopped and he said, wait, no, that's too weak, he said, correcting himself. 00:06:54.920 --> 00:07:01.439 My goal is to convert people to glorify in the universe and to glorify in themselves. Yes, 00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:05.860 I would really like people to be converted away from religion to skepticism so that they could glorify 00:07:05.860 --> 00:07:11.220 the universe and glorify themselves. Now, what is he saying? He's saying, if you become a rationalist, 00:07:11.400 --> 00:07:17.800 materialist skeptic, it's not that you don't have religion. Boy, I'm glad he said this. It's not that 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:22.199 you don't have religion. It's that you've converted to glorifying the universe and glorifying your own 00:07:22.199 --> 00:07:29.040 self, things on the ground, things under the sun, things below the heavenly realm. And Colossians 3 is 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:33.520 written to Christians, but in order to really get into this, if you've been raised with Christ, you've got 00:07:33.519 --> 00:07:39.180 to see you're a convert. And the if, what is the if doing there? The if is asking you, if you've been 00:07:39.180 --> 00:07:46.439 raised with Christ, have you? Have you converted to Christ? Have you been raised with Christ? Have you 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:52.139 by faith come to Jesus? That's what the if is doing there. It's asking you, or are you simply following 00:07:52.139 --> 00:07:58.519 things that are on the ground, creaturely things? I read a Forbes article. Here's a more normal life 00:07:58.519 --> 00:08:04.019 example. I read a Forbes article, and it said this. It was talking about advertisement and branding and 00:08:04.019 --> 00:08:12.639 marketing. And it said, the author was a madman, a marketing agent, and he said, to really sell a 00:08:12.639 --> 00:08:18.899 product, you need to know people from the inside out. You're not selling them a product, you're converting 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:27.599 them to a lifestyle. The focus is not the product. The focus is conversion. Only this product can give you 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:33.820 the change, the desire from the inside out that you really are looking for. I'm not selling Apple. I'm 00:08:33.820 --> 00:08:40.000 trying to get people to see that if they convert from Android to Apple, it will be the change in their 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:45.060 life that really matters for them. And you see, the elemental spirits, we all have them. They're objects 00:08:45.060 --> 00:08:51.480 of worship. And it's whenever you say, if I have that, I will get the goal, the change in my life that 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:56.680 will make me into what I really want, to glorify myself. That's what Dawkins is selling. 00:08:56.679 --> 00:09:02.259 That's what every advertisement out here on Prince's Street is selling. And Paul is saying, 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:11.699 do you have an if that is much, much greater than the elemental spirits, the things on the ground? 00:09:12.939 --> 00:09:16.159 Do you have an if that says you've been converted to Christ? In other words, 00:09:16.939 --> 00:09:20.019 do you have faith in something greater than the things below? 00:09:20.019 --> 00:09:26.720 And boy, Dawkins is saying, I want people to be converted to what I think skepticism, 00:09:26.919 --> 00:09:31.379 because I want them to be able to glorify in the universe. Well, there is a lot of glory in the 00:09:31.379 --> 00:09:36.019 universe. Absolutely. A lot of wonder in the universe. But boy, what if I'll tell you what 00:09:36.019 --> 00:09:42.439 you can have, you can have not only glory in the universe, you can have glory in the one who made the 00:09:42.439 --> 00:09:49.519 universe. And that is far better. That's far greater. Do you have that if, have you been converted? 00:09:49.519 --> 00:09:53.000 Have you been raised with Christ? That's the first question. It's the presupposition. Now, 00:09:54.139 --> 00:10:00.919 the meat today is this. Secondly, if you're a Christian, there is a unique motivation in your 00:10:00.919 --> 00:10:07.039 life to change. What is it? That's really what Paul's focused on here. Now, this list is from 00:10:07.039 --> 00:10:14.659 verse 1 to 17, how to practice the Christian life, how to change. As I've looked through sermons that 00:10:14.659 --> 00:10:21.139 other people have done on Colossians, what's been the most common thing is that people tend to either 00:10:21.139 --> 00:10:28.240 teach verses 1 to 14 or 1 to 17 all at once. Of course, that's good. That's very doable. 00:10:28.939 --> 00:10:36.779 But at the same time, what I want to do is really slow down and say that there's so much content here, 00:10:36.839 --> 00:10:41.500 there's so much detail here about what it looks like to practice the Christian life and to have deep 00:10:41.500 --> 00:10:46.600 change in your life as a Christian that you cannot go fast with this. You've got to go really slowly, 00:10:47.100 --> 00:10:51.220 step by step. We're going to do it for four weeks because you've got to go step by step. 00:10:52.259 --> 00:10:59.700 You know, if you want to change in your life in a really meaningful way, all of you know that that 00:10:59.700 --> 00:11:07.679 is slow. If you want to get fit, boy, don't we wish that losing weight happened a lot faster than it 00:11:07.679 --> 00:11:13.639 does, right? The process. It never goes as quickly as you want it to, right? And don't we know that 00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:19.819 I wish I could just learn, I wish I could download Duolingo and learn a language this month. But if you 00:11:19.819 --> 00:11:25.959 only use Duolingo, I'm here to tell you, you will never learn a new language, okay? Sorry to Duolingo. 00:11:26.279 --> 00:11:32.899 No, it's good. But real change is deep commitment over long stretches of time. 00:11:32.899 --> 00:11:38.459 And boy, we're willing sometimes to do that with fitness. We're willing sometimes to do that 00:11:38.459 --> 00:11:43.779 with language learning. But the most important change that we need in our lives as Christians 00:11:43.779 --> 00:11:52.319 is to be conformed to the image of the sun. And are we willing to take the time to slow down, 00:11:52.819 --> 00:11:56.600 to be committed to that? The most important change we need in our lives. This is what Paul 00:11:56.600 --> 00:12:01.220 tells us we need. What's the motivation? That's what he's talking about here in these four verses, 00:12:01.220 --> 00:12:07.779 the motivation to pursue change in your life towards Christ. That's the big thing he's saying 00:12:07.779 --> 00:12:14.779 here. What is your motivation to change as a Christian? Okay, the idea here of change and the 00:12:14.779 --> 00:12:20.840 motivation for it is so different from every world religion, every philosophy, every self-help book, 00:12:21.560 --> 00:12:25.259 everything you pick up at the bookstore. It's so different. And here's what it is. He says this, 00:12:25.259 --> 00:12:31.319 verse one, if you have been raised with Christ, and then if you look down just after that at verse 00:12:31.319 --> 00:12:39.100 three, he says also, for you have died with Christ. And then if you were to look just a little bit later 00:12:39.100 --> 00:12:45.879 in this list, the 17 verses, he says, you have already put off the old self and you have already 00:12:45.879 --> 00:12:52.139 put on the new self. So if you, these are the three big statements he makes. If you have already been 00:12:52.139 --> 00:12:56.939 raised with Christ, if you've already died with Christ, if you've already put off the old self 00:12:56.939 --> 00:13:03.740 and put on the new self, all in the past tense, Paul is saying, if you are a Christian today, 00:13:04.740 --> 00:13:14.279 if you believe in Jesus, the most important thing for you to see is that God has offered you and 00:13:14.279 --> 00:13:22.459 given, past tense, given you salvation long before you ever asked for it, long before you ever sought it, 00:13:23.279 --> 00:13:29.319 that it's past tense. The work is already done. It's already been completed. You know, when were you 00:13:29.319 --> 00:13:35.459 saved? You can say today that you truly became a Christian, that you were saved whenever you came to 00:13:35.459 --> 00:13:41.600 faith in this life right now, this present life. But it's very important to see here that he's saying 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:50.580 something even bigger than that, that if you're a Christian, you were saved, you were raised with 00:13:50.580 --> 00:13:58.200 Christ, you died with Christ at the very moment in the first century, sometime from 29 to 32 AD, we're 00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:04.600 not exactly sure which year it was, that moment, the moment that Jesus Christ died in the first century, 00:14:04.840 --> 00:14:09.700 you really did die. The moment that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead in the first century, 00:14:09.700 --> 00:14:15.060 you were raised from the dead in the first century. In other words, he's saying that right now in the 00:14:15.060 --> 00:14:21.980 heavenly realm where Christ is seated on his throne next to God the Father, God the Father sees you 00:14:21.980 --> 00:14:31.740 as him. That God the Father sees you as so united to Jesus Christ that every single thing that is true 00:14:31.740 --> 00:14:39.360 of him from all of history is true of you at this very moment. Now that means that when you look into 00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:43.860 your heart and you see your sins and you see your struggles and you see the old self, as Paul will 00:14:43.860 --> 00:14:49.919 later put it, fighting against the new self, and you say, I am, I know that I am still very much a person 00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:56.080 of selfishness and greed and lust and anger and rage and impatience and I lack joy. 00:14:56.080 --> 00:15:04.580 At the very same time, you can say, you can know that in the heavenly domain, your true life is hidden 00:15:04.580 --> 00:15:10.680 there with Christ and God the Father is looking at you through the lens of Jesus Christ and saying, 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:16.540 you're an emerald, you're a diamond, you're already changed, you're already everything that you need to be. 00:15:17.660 --> 00:15:22.820 In the eyes of God the Father, you're beautiful in every way from top to bottom because you are so 00:15:22.820 --> 00:15:28.060 united to Jesus Christ even in the very moment of his death, in the very moment of his resurrection. 00:15:29.300 --> 00:15:32.720 So he's trying to get you to see something of the motivation. Let me say it like this. 00:15:33.460 --> 00:15:40.020 If you, when he says, seek the things that are above, he's saying what you've got to do now in 00:15:40.020 --> 00:15:46.580 this life is rehearse that truth to yourself. Set your mind on what is true in the above realm 00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:49.260 where Christ is seated, that you're already an emerald. 00:15:49.259 --> 00:15:55.639 And he's saying, you've got to rehearse that. You've got to let that, use your mind to let that 00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:59.960 sink down into your heart. Let me put it philosophically. If you don't like philosophy 00:15:59.960 --> 00:16:05.080 and this is nothing but jargon, then forget about it. But what he's saying, 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:10.799 what he's saying here is that the Christian does not need ontological change. You need epistemological 00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:16.399 change. You don't need a change in who you are, your identity, your being. You already have that in 00:16:16.399 --> 00:16:22.000 Christ. What you need in this life is to allow the knowledge of that to really take hold of your 00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:28.459 heart, to really take hold of your affections, to let it really grip you. Let me put it like this. 00:16:28.659 --> 00:16:34.259 I think the best little phrase that he gives us in this passage is, your life is hidden with Christ. 00:16:34.379 --> 00:16:39.259 That's another way he puts it. Your life is hidden in the heavenly domain with Christ. What does that 00:16:39.259 --> 00:16:46.580 mean? In one of my favorite TV series of all time, one of my favorite TV series of all time is the show 00:16:46.580 --> 00:16:57.580 Mad Men. And one of the characters in Mad Men is so constrained by parenthood. She has a baby and her 00:16:57.580 --> 00:17:03.220 child is a toddler and she feels so burdened by parenthood, so constrained, so depressed in the 00:17:03.220 --> 00:17:10.000 midst of all the things going on in her life. That she runs away. She leaves her little one who's 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:15.920 named Ellery, her little one, with another family member. And she runs away and she goes to this, 00:17:16.019 --> 00:17:23.299 this is the 70s, she goes to this commune. And she lives in this sort of cult commune where the story 00:17:23.299 --> 00:17:30.000 is you can be free here. Free from all relationship commitment. Free from all constraint. You can live 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:35.079 any way you want day in and day out. There's no electricity there. They're in the country. They're 00:17:35.079 --> 00:17:41.440 getting back. It's Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea of the true self is living in the wild, living free, 00:17:41.660 --> 00:17:48.519 living without any commitment. And so she seeks that. And her parents, who did not do a good job as parents 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:53.900 at all, and some of what she's going through is because she had pretty poor parents and they basically 00:17:53.900 --> 00:18:00.100 did the same thing to her by leaving her all the time for their careers. And so she's doing it. 00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:04.000 But her parents come to her, they come out to this commune and they say to her, 00:18:04.900 --> 00:18:10.880 Margaret, you've got to come home. Why? You think that you have freedom here, 00:18:11.120 --> 00:18:18.300 but the truth is your life is with Ellery, your daughter. They say, you've got to come home 00:18:18.299 --> 00:18:25.059 because while you think you're free, actually real freedom, real freedom is being at home. 00:18:25.899 --> 00:18:33.539 And home is wherever your life is and your daughter is your life. Now any parent knows that language. 00:18:34.460 --> 00:18:40.180 All of us do. Don't have to be a parent to say, you are my life. You are my life. What does Paul say? 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:45.980 He says, your life is hidden with Christ. How can he say it? Here's how he can say that. 00:18:46.940 --> 00:18:52.039 Because at Christmas, when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came into this world and became flesh, 00:18:52.279 --> 00:18:59.100 and he went to the cross, when Jesus went to hang and die on the cross in your stead for your sins, 00:18:59.140 --> 00:19:04.259 what was he saying? He was saying to you in the middle of history, before you were ever even a 00:19:04.259 --> 00:19:11.299 thought in your parents' minds, he was saying, you are my life. When Jesus went to the cross, he said, 00:19:11.460 --> 00:19:18.960 you are my life. And Paul can say that Jesus is so serious about that, that today you can say, 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:26.700 and so my life is with him. He said to me, you're my life. And so he died on the cross for me. 00:19:27.099 --> 00:19:32.740 And now you can say, my life is hidden in his life. It's wrapped up. He's home. He's home for me. 00:19:32.740 --> 00:19:39.220 And in the very last verse here, Paul says, you can't see that right now. It's literally hidden. 00:19:39.380 --> 00:19:43.319 It's invisible to you. And so that's why you're struggling. That's why we struggle. It's what's 00:19:43.319 --> 00:19:49.160 true of us is invisible. But in verse four, it says, when he appears, you will see, you'll see that 00:19:49.160 --> 00:19:54.519 glory. You'll see that that's real. You'll see that that's true, that your life really is so bound up 00:19:54.519 --> 00:20:02.140 with his, that he is your home. Because he said, you are my life. Real change. I was reading this week, 00:20:02.140 --> 00:20:12.900 a book from a Scottish minister that he wrote in 1677, Henry Scougal. He's sort of a cult classic 00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:17.140 Christian writer that not very many people know about. But I found out this week that when you do 00:20:17.140 --> 00:20:23.759 read him, everybody gets obsessed with reading him. Partly because he dies when he's 28 years old. 00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:30.080 He was a minister just outside of Aberdeen. And he wrote this letter when he was 27 years old 00:20:30.079 --> 00:20:36.899 to a friend who was really struggling. And this letter became a famous book called The Life of God 00:20:36.899 --> 00:20:42.319 and the Soul of Man. And this is the book that George Whitefield read and came to Jesus. George 00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:48.480 Whitefield was converted through reading this book. And this is what Schugel says about the Christian 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:54.559 life. He uses Colossians 3 to frame the Christian life. And this is what he writes about it. He says, 00:20:54.559 --> 00:21:01.599 when you become a Christian, you're a tree. You're a growing tree. And you're seeking to flourish. 00:21:02.399 --> 00:21:08.159 And the roots of that tree, what are the roots of your tree? He says, they are now faith. Faith 00:21:08.159 --> 00:21:15.960 in the hidden, invisible reality that your life is hid with God in Jesus Christ. Colossians 3. 00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:23.860 And then he says, and now the trunk of your tree, your growing tree, is growing in love for God and 00:21:23.860 --> 00:21:29.680 love for people. And he says, and then the two great branches of your growing tree are on the one hand, 00:21:29.840 --> 00:21:36.460 purity, putting on what? Killing sin. That's next week. Come back. And then humility is the other 00:21:36.460 --> 00:21:41.500 branch. And that's week three of our study. He's all doing this from Colossians 3. Why the motivation 00:21:41.500 --> 00:21:50.839 to change? What is it? What is it? It's not, look, you will never sustain real sanctification, 00:21:51.019 --> 00:21:56.839 real growth in your life if the reason that you want to become more like Jesus, you want to change 00:21:56.839 --> 00:22:03.279 in your life, is because of guilt. You will never change on that basis. If it's because you say, 00:22:03.420 --> 00:22:10.839 you know, I've become a Christian and the collective church community expects me to behave in a way that's 00:22:10.839 --> 00:22:15.220 becoming of a Christian. You know, I don't want to embarrass, I don't want to embarrass people. I don't 00:22:15.220 --> 00:22:19.519 want to embarrass my local church community. I don't want to embarrass my parents, my family. I want to 00:22:19.519 --> 00:22:24.819 behave right. I want to be a good, respectable Christian, a decent public person. That will never 00:22:24.819 --> 00:22:31.359 sustain change. That's not real sanctification. That's not deep change. It can never be because you 00:22:31.359 --> 00:22:35.159 want to behave in a way that's becoming. It can never be because you don't want to give your family a bad 00:22:35.160 --> 00:22:41.759 name. It can never be, it can never be personal reputation protection. You can't let it be culture. 00:22:42.840 --> 00:22:47.759 You can't let the basis of real Christian change, motivation for sanctification to be because you 00:22:47.759 --> 00:22:53.540 don't, you don't want to be seen in this culture being a person that does X, Y, or Z. It can never 00:22:53.540 --> 00:23:02.560 be that. What is it? What's the basis, the motivation for change? It is the love of Jesus Christ for you. 00:23:02.559 --> 00:23:11.940 It is that Jesus loves you so much that he came in the middle of history and says, you are my life. 00:23:13.779 --> 00:23:20.519 And so your life is wrapped up in my life. And you'll really, you really get deep motivation for 00:23:20.519 --> 00:23:27.259 change when you, when you set your mind on the things above to see that day in and day out, to seek 00:23:27.259 --> 00:23:33.599 that. And so let me close with this. Uh, the last thing, the mindset, and we'll be very brief, but the 00:23:33.599 --> 00:23:40.660 mindset, what's the command here? The command is if you see how much Jesus Christ says to you, I love 00:23:40.660 --> 00:23:49.400 you and your life is my life. Then the command now, Christian person in 2024, 2025, yes, 2025, 00:23:49.400 --> 00:23:56.420 probably do that two to three more times this month. In 2025, what, what can you do? What must 00:23:56.420 --> 00:24:03.980 you do? You've got to set your mind on that truth that is above. You've got to seek that truth. And 00:24:03.980 --> 00:24:09.240 you've got to, he's saying, you've got to use your mind to drive that truth down into your heart day in 00:24:09.240 --> 00:24:14.180 and day out. He's not talking about mere thinking. He's saying, you've got to have your affections 00:24:14.180 --> 00:24:19.460 reordered. You've got to have your heart changed and you've got to use your mind, set your mind on 00:24:19.460 --> 00:24:25.700 the things above. You've got to use your mind to get your heart to change and say, put on the character 00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:30.220 of Christ, put on what's true of you already in the heavenly realm, in this physical earthly realm 00:24:30.220 --> 00:24:36.360 today. So let me give you a couple ways to do that as we close. Uh, here's one broad example, 00:24:36.460 --> 00:24:42.279 one specific example, one broad example. You've got to wake up every day, wake up every day and say, 00:24:42.279 --> 00:24:52.779 self, your life is hidden with Christ. Self, seek the above today in all that you do in the earthly. 00:24:53.660 --> 00:25:01.539 In other words, here's a more normal person way of saying it. All of us have like 20 different 00:25:01.539 --> 00:25:07.619 spheres that we live in all the time. We're, um, we're, we are national people. We have a national 00:25:07.619 --> 00:25:13.399 life. At the most basic level, we are either citizens or immigrants in this country. Um, 00:25:14.259 --> 00:25:18.819 we have a relationship to the government. We have a political opinion. We have a view of what's going 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:24.979 on, uh, in the parliament. Uh, we have a political life. We have a national life. We have a domestic 00:25:24.979 --> 00:25:30.239 life. We have a house, a home. We're not. We have a family and children. We're married or we're single. 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:38.160 Um, we have a work life or we're seeking that life. We have employment obligations. Uh, we have a life 00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:44.759 and a relationship. Boy, this is the best one to food. We have a time management life. We have a 00:25:44.759 --> 00:25:50.900 schedule. We have a calendar. We have apps. Some of us try to think very carefully about deleting apps 00:25:50.900 --> 00:25:54.799 and adding apps and put them on, on all the right pages on our phones so that we know where everything 00:25:54.799 --> 00:26:00.180 is. Your life has so many spheres, so many dimensions. What he's saying here is you've got to wake up 00:26:00.180 --> 00:26:07.060 every day and say, self, your spiritual life is the most important thing. Not to the, not to the 00:26:07.060 --> 00:26:11.720 neglect of all that. No, but that your spiritual life, your life hidden with Christ is what gives 00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:17.779 the information, the heart for everything else. That even the way you do your schedule has got to be 00:26:17.779 --> 00:26:22.500 motivated by your spiritual life. That is the most important thing. That's the broad example. Let me 00:26:22.500 --> 00:26:30.940 give you one specific. Um, maybe I know I can say, I know because I talked to you and I know myself that 00:26:30.940 --> 00:26:39.779 some of us, some of you struggle with, uh, guilt and shame from your past or from your present ongoing 00:26:39.779 --> 00:26:46.740 sins, struggles, and you have shame. You have guilt that you feel, and that emotion of guilt sits really heavily 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:51.819 in the bottom of your heart. What does it mean to set your mind on the things above? What does it mean? 00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:59.440 Um, it means that you've got to forgive yourself. You've got to let it go. Why? Because you've got to 00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:09.400 say, self, God in heaven is standing, the Father is standing with Jesus Christ. And, uh, what's going on up 00:27:09.400 --> 00:27:13.559 there? Sometimes I think we think about it like this. The angels are looking down at us, and they're, um, 00:27:13.559 --> 00:27:20.839 seeing us struggle with this sin, that sin, that from our past that keeps coming up, keeps coming up. 00:27:20.899 --> 00:27:30.339 We keep acting into it. And the angels are saying, boy, very disappointing. Look at him, look at her. 00:27:31.039 --> 00:27:37.519 Same old story, different day. They can never get it together. They can never beat this. They can never 00:27:37.519 --> 00:27:43.319 change. They keep going back to the same old thing. And then we may think, well, but there's Jesus in the 00:27:43.319 --> 00:27:49.779 heavenly throne room at the right hand of God, and he's saying to the Father, but he's a good guy, 00:27:50.439 --> 00:27:56.439 you know? He's a pretty good, she's a pretty nice person most of the time. Let's let them off this 00:27:56.439 --> 00:28:04.960 time. That's how forgiveness works. No. No. Instead, Jesus Christ is standing in the heavenly throne room, 00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:12.940 and when you sin, every single time you sin, Jesus Christ says to the Father, as your intercessor and 00:28:12.940 --> 00:28:27.079 mediator, you demand justice, and I've paid the debt for them, and you promise injustice that you will 00:28:27.079 --> 00:28:35.539 not demand payment twice when payment has already been made. And so they have my blood. They have my 00:28:35.539 --> 00:28:45.599 life, Father. They're in me. My life is theirs, and their life is mine. And that means that if God the 00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:51.439 Father will look at Jesus Christ and say, the debt is paid, the victory is won, who are you to say, 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:59.299 but I can't forgive myself? If the cross was enough for God the Father, is the cross not enough for you 00:28:59.299 --> 00:29:04.860 to forgive somebody else, to forgive yourself? Let me close with one practice. Every week I'm going to 00:29:04.860 --> 00:29:10.680 give you one practice, one thing to actually do, and here it is. Very concrete. How do you take this 00:29:10.680 --> 00:29:19.039 up in the most concrete way? Christian meditation, that's the word the Puritans use. It's not vacating 00:29:19.039 --> 00:29:23.619 the mind of thought instead. It's preaching to yourself. It's talking to yourself. That's what 00:29:23.619 --> 00:29:29.759 he's talking about here. We sang last week the hymn, Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven. Even the title 00:29:29.759 --> 00:29:38.720 does it. Praise my soul. It's you talking to yourself. Praise my soul, the King of Heaven. The 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:44.159 Psalms do it all over the place. That's the very concrete practice. So here's how you can take that into 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:51.900 your life. When you wake up in the morning, don't touch your phone first. Put your phone on the other 00:29:51.900 --> 00:29:59.540 side of the room. Kneel down when you wake up at your bedside, on your knees if you're able, and take 00:29:59.540 --> 00:30:07.680 three to five minutes to set your mind on the things above in silence. To say first to yourself, talk to 00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:14.200 yourself first and say self. Your life is hidden with Christ. So today it's time to seek the things 00:30:14.200 --> 00:30:20.600 that are above, to be who you really are. And then let that roll into prayer for this very thing. This 00:30:20.600 --> 00:30:24.440 is not your devotional time. This is not your Bible reading time. This is not your time for praying 00:30:24.440 --> 00:30:29.860 about other people or the requests you have before the Lord. This is the three minutes you need at the 00:30:29.860 --> 00:30:35.860 beginning of the day on your knees to set your mind on the things above so that the rest of the day, 00:30:35.859 --> 00:30:40.099 your spiritual life can be the most important thing. And so you can say, 00:30:40.839 --> 00:30:49.619 I might not look like very much today. I don't look like the emerald. I know that. But my life is 00:30:49.619 --> 00:30:56.899 hidden with Christ. And when he appears, I'm so wrapped up with him that it will become visible. 00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:01.859 And I want that today in a little way. Let us pray. Father, 00:31:01.859 --> 00:31:09.679 Father, we ask that you would change us from the inside out. We pray, Lord, that you would teach 00:31:09.679 --> 00:31:19.719 us to be serious about change, but not because we want everybody to respect us, not because we want 00:31:19.719 --> 00:31:24.500 to think of you as some type of God who's saying, I got you, I'm going to get you. 00:31:24.500 --> 00:31:33.900 But instead, because the love of Jesus is so big that you, Jesus, said to us, you are my very life. 00:31:34.420 --> 00:31:40.099 May that be our motivation. May that be our heart from the inside out. Teach us, Lord, to take up this 00:31:40.099 --> 00:31:46.660 practice of setting our minds on the things of Christ, the things above, the true life. We pray that 00:31:46.660 --> 00:31:48.880 today in Jesus' name. Amen.