You may be seated.
Kiddos, you're in with us this morning,
and I just want to let you know,
children, in with us,
this first opening story
is a made-up pretend story.
Would you open up your Bibles to Colossians 3?
I'm going to be preaching on 5 through 11,
but I'm going to read 1 through 11.
It's on page 1169.
And 1170 of your pew Bibles.
Colossians 3, 1.
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 desire, 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 the 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.
May God bless the reading, hearing of his word.
This is pretend.
Imagine a young man in desperate need of a new suit.
New to him.
Broke and unwilling to ask for help,
he gets an idea.
That night, he sneaks into Green Ridge Cemetery,
just south of here,
and he digs up the corpse of a man
who's been dead for eight years,
who just happens to be a 42 regular,
36-inch waist, 30-inch inseam.
The living man removes the grave clothes
off the dead man,
puts the dead man back into the coffin,
buries him,
and then puts on the dead man's grave clothes.
Stains of death.
Smell of death.
The crusty texture of death.
That grave suit certainly is disintegrating.
Well, the next day,
that young man is walking along the harbor side
in these grave clothes.
And walking towards him
is this bright-eyed older woman
who sees this young man in these grave clothes,
and so she approaches him and asks,
young man,
why would someone alive
be wearing the grave clothes
of someone dead?
She goes on to say,
come with me.
Let's dispose of those old grave clothes.
They don't belong on you.
I'll get you a new lively suit
that you were born to wear.
What are you, a 42 regular?
Christian,
why would someone made alive
continue wearing the clothes
of someone dead?
Christian, you've been made alive in Christ.
So put off the old clothes of the grave.
And make new room for the new.
Those made new,
put off the sin of old.
Three points from this passage.
Christian, you've been made new.
Second point,
put away the old.
Third point,
make room for the new.
Why would someone made alive in Christ
continue wearing the clothes
of those dead,
separated from Christ?
It's not who you are anymore.
Let's look at this first point,
your new self.
Two weeks ago,
I preached on chapter three,
one through four.
And I made the case,
we need to have our thinking rewired.
Your identity now is in Christ.
Remember 220,
you've died with Christ.
Remember 3.1,
you've been raised with Christ.
We are now united with Christ
in his death and resurrection.
We're not who we used to be.
We have a new identity.
And we have a new aim in Christ.
We set our minds on the things above
where Christ is.
He's our aim.
He's our priority.
And we're on a new time frame.
We live in between Christ's first coming
and his second coming.
We live in the midst of the already and not yet.
Church, what time are we on?
Christ time.
And all of this informs
a Christ central way of thinking and living.
It's who we are now.
Well, in verses five and 11,
Paul continues to develop this new way
of thinking about ourselves
and about our relationship to sin.
In verses seven and eight,
he develops this thinking about ourselves
in terms of before and after.
Look at verse seven.
In these, you too once walked
when you were living in them.
The things that he's talking about,
the them that you were living in,
points back to verse five,
a list of sexual sin.
I'll come back to that in a little bit.
But he's saying,
that was your old grave clothes.
That was before.
Did you see the word once?
See the word when?
Those are time markers
pointing back before you were converted to Christ.
Before, Jesus graciously changed you.
And then in verse eight, of course,
is the but now.
You once were that
when you were living in them.
You're walking in a manner
worthy of yourself and sin,
not Christ.
Before, but now,
we put those things all away.
Because we've been made new.
So there's this development
of how we think about ourselves
in terms of the before and after.
So it's just very helpful.
There's the before mic
when I was living for sin.
And there's the after mic
where Christ is the controlling center
of my life more and more.
But there's also another
kind of line of development.
In verses nine and ten,
it's along the lines of old and new.
Verse nine,
do not lie to one another.
Why?
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.
So not just before and after,
it's old and new.
We're talking about the nature
of who you were
before and after your conversion,
the spiritual quality
of who you were
and who you are.
So when Paul talks about,
in verse nine,
the old self,
that's the way the apostle Paul
is talking about
who you were
before you were converted to Christ.
And just to spell that out
a little bit,
that's when you were separated
from God
because of your sin.
That's when you were
spiritually dead.
that's when you were
under God's wrath
justly because of the sin
that you were committing
against him.
You were walking in them.
You were living in them
because that qualitatively
is who you were.
You were spiritually dead
in those grave clothes.
Well, those just came
naturally to you.
Another way to think about it
is in terms of
chapter one,
verse 13.
We read this.
He has delivered us
from the domain of darkness
and transferred us
to the kingdom
of the beloved son.
The before you,
the old self you,
was you
when you were living
in the domain of darkness.
That's who you were.
Christ was not
the controlling,
life-giving,
treasure center
of your life.
You were.
Sin was.
And what Paul says
in verse nine
is that
that's been put off.
It's no longer
who you are.
If you've put your faith
in Jesus Christ,
that old self
is before
before.
You were once
clothed
in the old self
with its
evil practices,
but that's not
who you are anymore.
That old self
died
with Christ.
The new self,
verse 10,
is Paul's way
of describing
who you are now
having been raised
with Christ
to newness of life.
Elsewhere,
in 2 Corinthians 5,
the apostle Paul
talks about it like this.
You're a new creation.
The old
has gone.
The new
has come.
You're a new creation
in Christ.
You've been united
with Christ
to his death
and resurrection
and you've been
made new.
Dead to sin,
alive to God.
He has forgiven
all of your sins,
all of them.
That's why God's wrath
is no longer
over your head.
There is therefore
now no condemnation
for those who are
in Christ Jesus.
We no longer walk
according to the
practices of the
old self,
but we walk now
in a manner
worthy of the Lord.
He's our aim.
He has delivered us
from the domain
of darkness,
old self before,
and transferred us
into the kingdom
of the beloved son,
the kingdom
of the new selves,
the community
of the new,
and we live
for him now.
So,
here we have
your new self
united to Christ.
There's a before,
there is a old,
old self,
old man
that's no longer
died with Christ
and now you're new,
brother, sister,
in Christ.
You're new.
Christ has made you new.
By virtue of being,
you being united to him,
you're new.
Christ has made you new.
Does anybody remember
that great show
way back?
Extreme Makeover
House Edition.
Ty Pennington
and his crew.
Well,
here's what would happen.
There would be this family
and they're living
in this old,
dilapidated house
and they would be sent
to like Disney World
for a week
and Ty and his crew
would come in
and they'd rebuild the house.
They'd bring the family
back in
and they'd put them
behind this bus
and that bus,
they would say,
move that bus
and that bus would move back
and then that family
would see
a new updated house.
Do you remember
what they do?
Faint.
No way.
Joyous.
The old is gone.
The new has come.
Christian,
you're an extreme makeover.
Christ edition.
That's who you are.
The old is gone.
The new has come.
So I got a question for you.
I'm going to ask you
a question.
If you're a Christian
in the room,
I want you to answer it.
I'm going to say,
who are you?
And you're going to tell me,
I've been made new.
Who are you?
I've been made new.
Here we go.
It's who you are now.
It's your new self.
Now we move on to the next point.
Now that you've been made new,
we've been made new,
we must put away the sins of old
because it's not who you are anymore.
Why would someone living
be wearing the grave clothes
of someone who is dead?
In our passage,
in verses five and eight,
there are two sets of grave clothes
of the old man
when you live in the domain of darkness
that we cannot wear anymore
because it's not who we are.
We need to put them away.
We need to put them to death.
And the two wardrobes
are sexual sin
and sinful speech.
Let's take one at a time.
In verse five,
Paul lists out this wardrobe
of grave clothes
of sexual sin.
He lists five of them.
Sexual immorality,
where we get the word porneia.
Impurity, passion, evil desires,
and covetousness.
Now I know what you're thinking.
Covetousness?
Why is that?
What's that doing in a sin list
of sexual sin?
In Exodus chapter 20, verse 17,
it's the list,
20 is the listing of the 10 commandments.
Remember those?
The big 10?
The 10th
is a command against coveting.
And God says,
you shall not covet.
You shall not covet
your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet
your neighbor's wife.
Do you know what I'm saying?
If covetousness
is a kind of greed,
he's talking about
sexual greed.
Wanting someone sexually
that you are not allowed to have.
That's the covetousness
he's talking about here,
the apostle Paul.
It actually
sums up the whole list.
It's a sexual greed
that's forbidden by God.
Now here's what you need to know
about these sexual sins.
They're all distortions
of God's good gift
and design
of sexuality.
We can't make
the categorical mistake
of thinking that sex is bad,
sex is wrong.
It's God's good gift to us.
So just to be very clear,
the gold standard
in which God gives us
for us to enjoy
our sexuality
is in marriage.
And so in Genesis chapter 2
verses 24 and 25,
God gives Eve to Adam
and they were both naked
and not ashamed.
They became one flesh
and what that's a picture of
is the only place
that God has given
for our good
that we can enjoy
this good gift.
You know what that means?
Anything outside,
any sexual experience
pursuit outside
of these biblical gold standard
of one chromosomal man
and one chromosomal woman
exclusively committed
to each other
before life,
before God,
anything out of that
is a distortion
of God's good gift.
It's sin.
It's wrong.
Based upon what God says.
It's even idolatrous.
Do you know why
it's idolatrous?
Here's what happens.
People reject God
and yet they're still worshipers.
And so you know what they'll worship
in place of God?
Something that makes them happy.
Sexual pleasure
falls into that.
And so what happens is,
this is Romans 1,
people reject God
and they will replace him
with distorted sexual practices.
It's idolatrous
and therefore provokes
God's wrath.
So let me just be crystal clear.
Marital infidelity
when one spouse
of a marriage
is pursuing sexual relationships
outside of that marriage.
That's sin.
That's wrong.
That's grave clothes.
That's old man living.
Unmarried sexual enjoyment.
Even when it's committed partners
but you're not married
or it's friends with benefits.
These things are outside of God's good design.
They're wrong.
Pornography in all of its forms,
it's wrong.
It's outside of God's good design.
Self-sex,
homosexuality sex,
it's all outside of God's good design.
Now the world will say,
the earth will say,
these earthly desires,
those who practice them
will say something like this.
Well,
well,
they're in vogue.
They're fashionable.
It's okay.
But God's word is crystal clear.
This is sin.
This is wrong.
It's not his design.
It's not to experience his goodness
along his terms.
So what must we do?
What happens if you're in the room
and you're having an extramarital affair right now?
What happens if you're in the room
and you're looking at pornography?
What happens if you're in the room
and you're having a relationship,
you're not married but with another person
and it's sexual in nature,
what do you do?
The first three words of verse five.
Put it to death.
And what that means is this.
At the basic sense,
it's considering these sexual practices
that are not God's design
as having been put to death
with Christ at the cross.
That's old self.
It's not who you are anymore.
It's not me.
You know those medical dramas
where a critically injured patient
gets rolled into an ER?
The doctor rolls up,
assesses,
starts doing CPR,
takes out those pad things,
doesn't work.
CPR more.
And despite all this,
the doctor has done
in order to resuscitate this person,
the person dies.
Do you know what the doctor does at that point?
You've seen it.
They say something like,
I'm calling it.
Time of death,
6.43 a.m.
with a little look.
Brothers and sisters,
here's how we put things to death.
You've got sexual sin in your life.
You've got to call it.
You're dead.
When you were converted,
you were united to Christ's death
and resurrection.
And Christ's death,
scholars say,
took place on April 3rd,
33 A.D.
at 3 p.m.
You call it.
That died.
April 3rd,
33 A.D.
3 p.m.
It's not me anymore.
It died with Christ
on the cross.
We don't wear
these grave clothes
of sexual sin anymore
because it's not who we are anymore.
It's idolatrous.
And it's not loving your neighbor.
If I asked for a show of hands,
every hand would go up.
Who has experienced,
don't raise your hands.
I'll raise mine for us all.
Who in this room
has experienced
the disintegration of relationships,
the destruction of relationships
as a result of sexual sin?
everybody's hand goes up.
Whether it's something you've done
or something someone else has done
that has affected you,
we've all experienced the fallout.
it's not loving your neighbor.
That sin
died with your old self
on the cross
with Jesus Christ.
it's not who you are.
It might be common to man.
It might be fashionable
in this world at this time.
It's idolatrous in God's sight.
And you stand on that.
The second set of clothes,
grave clothes,
is raised in verse 8.
We're to put away
all anger,
wrath,
malice,
slander,
and obscene talk.
Do you know what they all have in common?
Where they're coming from.
From
your
mouth.
anger
from your mouth.
Wrath
from your mouth.
Malice
from your mouth.
Slander,
which we get the word
blasphemy
from.
It's attributing,
it's saying
something
is true of someone
when it's not.
And obscene talk,
filthy talk.
From your mouth.
Before.
This is like
your sexuality.
Before you were converted
and you were the controlling center
of your life,
then your controlling center
governed your sexuality.
And it's the same
with your speech.
Before you were converted
to Christ,
before he made you new,
because you were the controlling center,
your sin was
it governed your speech.
You spoke
out of it.
In Luke 6,
Jesus is teaching
and helping his disciples
kind of see false teachers.
And what he says
is helpful for us all,
not just for false teachers,
but to see stuff in ourselves.
And he talks about how
a tree is known
by its fruit,
that the evil treasure
that someone stores up,
it bears evil fruit,
evil speech.
The good treasure
someone stores up
in their heart,
well,
it bears the fruit of,
good fruit.
And then Jesus says,
out of the abundance
of the heart,
the mouth speaks.
Do you know why
we speak sinfully?
In anger
and in wrath
and in malice,
slander people
obscenely?
It's because
sin is still in our hearts.
We've been made new,
yet there's this
still sinful nature
that's got to be put to death
and put down.
And sometimes we go back
to the old way
of our speaking
in which we are
speaking out of self-protection.
We are speaking
to attack someone.
We are speaking,
well, you know what?
Here's another tactic.
You don't speak,
you give the silent treatment,
but it's actually
a verbal attack of a sort.
These are old ways
of speaking.
And these sins
are common to man.
Now, if you are regularly
wearing these grave clothes,
or better yet,
you are speaking
grave talk,
I want to help you
become convinced
of the sinfulness
of those things.
Read James chapter 3
verses 7 through 12.
Take a look at
Ephesians chapter 4
verses 29, 30.
In fact,
let's go there right now.
Ephesians chapter 4,
29 through 30,
we taught our kids
verse 29.
They were grown up,
we would drop that dime
like twice a week,
three times a week.
In verse 29
of Ephesians 4
says this,
let no corrupting talk
come out of your mouths,
but only such
as is good for building up,
as fits the occasion,
that it may give grace
to those who hear.
That's how we speak now
with Christ,
our treasured center,
functioning.
We're not to speak
grave talk.
It tears people down.
It's disintegrating
of relationship.
But it's verse 30
that I want you to see
in the connection
that's being made.
Verse 30,
seemingly out of nowhere,
he says,
and do not grieve
the Holy Spirit of God
by which you've been sealed
for the day of redemption.
Your speech,
your trash talk,
it grieves the Holy Spirit.
Do you know why?
Do you know what the Holy Spirit
is seeking to do
in our church?
The Holy Spirit
is seeking for us
to speak the truth
in love to one another,
to build up our church,
to unite our church.
And when we speak
grave talk,
trash talk,
it goes against
the very work
that the Holy Spirit
is seeking to do
in our midst.
it grieves
the Holy Spirit.
So what do we do?
We put this kind of talk away,
Paul says,
in verse 8.
Put it away.
It's another way
of talking about
putting it to death.
April 3rd,
80.33,
3 p.m.,
dead.
That stuff
doesn't come out
of this mouth anymore
because it's dead.
this is a mouth
made new.
This is a new self.
I'm not going there.
We put this
trash talk
in the trash can
because it's not
who we are anymore.
It grieves God
and it's unloving
to others.
For every couple
I get to marry,
I walk them through
a premarital counseling
sequence
and one of the articles
I have them read
is by Paul David Tripp.
It's called
Speaking Redemptively.
It's a thick,
dense article,
but it is so good.
Kelly has put
20 of those articles
at the connect desk
in that vestibule
to my right.
Pick one up.
It'll help you
think about
your speech more.
Why would someone
living
be wearing
the grave clothes
of someone
who's died?
we put these
things to death
and we put them
away
is another way
of talking about
repenting of your sin.
Turning from your sin.
Turning to Christ
decisively.
And when we do,
we make space
for something new.
We put off the old
and now point three,
we make room
for the new.
What we have
in verse 11,
let me read it.
Here there is not
Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian,
Scythian,
slave,
free,
but Christ is all
in all.
Do you know
what we have here?
We have a radical
new way
of relating
with one another.
Let me help you see it.
There are four pairings
of old man relating
where you would relate
to other people
according to a worldly way,
an earthly way.
Here are the pairs.
Here there is not
Greek and Jew.
It's measuring somebody up
based upon their culture,
their background,
their religious kind
of practices.
He goes on to say,
here,
there is not
Greek
or Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcision.
It's, again,
a difference
between cultures
and physical
distinctions.
Don't measure people up
like that.
That's an old way
of doing things.
The next one
is barbarian,
Scythian.
You're like,
whoa,
barbarian,
Scythian.
These are two types
of Gentiles.
And barbarians
were Gentiles
who didn't speak
Greek.
And the Scythians,
well,
they were like,
the bottom of the barrel
when it comes to Gentiles.
Has anybody heard
the expression
of white trash?
Scythians
were the white trash
of Gentiles
in the first century.
That's how they were
looked on.
So you have this,
within Gentiles,
you have this
measuring up
category.
Oh,
you're white trash.
I'm a barbarian.
And then,
of course,
there is slave and free
who's got the power.
These are old
ways
of relating,
of measuring up.
And when Paul says,
here,
he's saying,
among you,
church.
Here,
there is
none of that.
Among you,
none of that.
None of that
old,
Christ-less
way
of relating
to one another.
Every one of those
pairings
had hostility
within it.
today,
we
measure people up
in a variety of ways
by physical beauty,
by physical health,
by the appearance
of physical wealth,
of having it all together.
We measure people up
politically.
We measure people up
educationally.
We measure people up
racially.
We measure people up
according to their gender,
according to their
moral adherence.
We do this.
We default
into a measuring up
of one another.
And when it comes
into the church,
it's an old way.
These are grave clothes,
brothers and sisters.
believers.
In fact,
Paul
introduces a whole
new category
for our church
in how to relate
with one another.
It's those last words.
But Christ
is all
and in all.
You could say it like this.
Here,
Christ is all
and in all.
Christ is our
everything.
Christ defines us.
Christ unites us.
We don't do
the old stuff anymore.
We live here now.
That's how we relate
with one another.
We put out
those old clothes.
Christ
is all.
He is our everything.
He is our life.
He made us new.
Because we've been
united to him
in his death
and resurrection,
we've been made new.
So if I were to point
to different Christians
in the room,
I'd be like,
he's new.
He's in Christ.
She's in Christ.
Born again.
Regenerated.
Yep, yep, yep.
He's changed us.
And so what that means
is he defines us.
Our union with Christ
is more important
than what defines us
politically.
Our union with Christ
is more important
than what defines us,
how we come down
on social issues
or race
or gender.
What elevates us,
what defines us
are none of these
old ways
but Christ.
in the book of Ephesians,
the apostle Paul
talks about
those in Christ
as a whole new
people group.
Neither Jew,
neither Gentile,
a whole new
people group.
The blood bod
of God.
In chapter 1,
verse 18,
the apostle Paul
is talking about
how awesome
Jesus is.
1.17,
and he is before
all things
and in him
all things
hold together.
Verse 18,
and he is the head
of the body,
the church,
he's the beginning,
the firstborn
from the dead
that in everything
he might be preeminent.
In our relationships
he's preeminent.
He defines us.
And then there's
Christ in all.
He's in every one
of us.
He defines us.
He's in each of us.
And therefore,
he unites us.
Do you know,
I've used this
illustration before,
so bear with me.
Pretend with me
there are two
baby grand pianos
on the stage.
They're both in tune.
If you hit center
C in one,
you will hear
center C
resonate in the other.
Our center C
is Christ central.
And so when we
hit Christ central
as the preeminent,
uniting,
defining
person of our lives,
it resonates
with us all.
Christ is all.
He defines us.
Christ is all.
He unites us.
The thing is,
sexual sin,
sinful speech,
this old way
of measuring
one another up,
they detract
from our unity
as a church.
That's why we've got
to put them away.
That's why we've got
to put them to death.
At the beginning
of the sermon,
do you remember
what the old lady
asked the young man
wearing grave clothes?
Why would someone alive
be wearing the clothes
of someone dead?
Christian,
why would
someone made new
in Christ
continue to wear
the old grave clothes
of the old man?
You've been made new.
We put those
old grave clothes
to death.
We put them away.
They're not who you are.
They grieve God.
They're unloving.
And when we do,
we make room
for the new.
New ways of relating
and those made new
in Christ
they come
and they experience
a new way
of relating.
That's who we are.
This is Christ-centered
living.
And next week
we're going to see
how,
what we must put on
in order to live
out
being Christ's
community
with him
at the center.
Let's pray together.
Lord Jesus,
thank you so much
for who you are,
for what you've done,
what you're doing,
what you will do.
We're so grateful
that you have
taken center stage
in our lives
individually
and as a church.
God,
would you grow us
in both
our personal holiness
and in our
corporate holiness
that you would become
more and more
the controlling center,
the controlling treasure
of our lives
together,
defining us,
uniting us.
God,
we pray that you
would deliver us
from grave clothes
so that we can walk
in newness of life
together.
In Jesus' name
we pray.
Amen.