very much, but I guess it's doing
all it has to. I keep asking. That is, the microphone
doesn't seem to be doing much. In fact, Bonnie, make sure and
check the level, because I was being told it was kind of low
over at the rest home. They had everything turned up
as loud as it would go. Okay, yeah, because we don't
want it distorting. Colossians chapter three. Father,
thank you for this morning. And I pray that as we look at
this scripture, that we will be reminded of Christ. Our hearts
will be set upon him and strengthened on that account. It's in Christ's
name we pray it. Amen. All right, beginning in
verse one, 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 also or then you also will appear with him in
glory. Now, some translations begin
the first verse with the word if, and the fact is the Greek
word can be translated either way, if or since, because all
that it means is under this condition or on this condition, and it
doesn't imply whether there's any doubt about the condition
or certainty. It just means on this condition.
Now in English, we have two words to cover conditions. We say if,
which means we don't know. We don't know whether this condition
exists or not. Or we have sense, which means
the condition exists. Just looking at the words, you
could go with either way. Now, if you put the word if,
Paul's words are a challenge. It would imply something like,
you claim to be raised with Christ. Now, if that's truly so, then
set your hearts on things above. In other words, he would be challenging
their confident claim by saying if. And sometimes that's legitimate. It's good for us to be sobered
into not taking our spiritual condition for granted. But if you use the word sense,
then it just simply becomes an exhortation based on an appeal
to a glorious privilege that's given to all of God's people. Now, I believe that Paul had
the sense of sense in mind. How's that for English? Two different
words that sound pretty much the same. And why so? Because he was not writing to
question their relationship to Christ in any way. Actually,
he was doing the opposite, because it was the Gnostics, these heretics
that had crept into the church, as heretics always do, they had
crept in the church and they had been questioning the spiritual
relationship between some of the members and Christ. They weren't necessarily saying
that they were utterly lost, but they claimed that they were
not living on as high a level as they could. And they were
not as spiritually advanced as the Gnostics themselves claimed
to be. So Paul sets before them as a
condition to be taken as granted at this
point, and it's the most glorious condition that could be thought
of. If the Gnostics wanted to make
any claim to a higher plane of existence than your common believer,
Paul just lays them low with this. Since then, you have been
raised with Christ. Now, how's the Gnostic going
to compete with that? How can you get any higher than
that? This morning I've been thinking of a hymn, We Never
Sing. I'm pressing on the upward way,
new heights I'm gaining every day. And the chorus goes, Lord,
lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven's table land,
I think, a higher place than I have found. Lord, plant my
feet on higher ground. How are you going to get any
higher than this? You've been raised with Christ. I've also been working out over
my mind how to change that hymn to teach what the scriptures
teach us. we've been raised with Christ. The resurrection of Christ was
God's testimony that Christ's work as our substitute was completely
effective. In fact, the work that Christ
engaged to do on the cross cannot be partially effective. It's
like jumping across a chasm. You may get the whole way, or
you may as well have not jumped at all. And so our Lord, in burying
our sins in his body on the tree, burying them in the presence
of God, and thereby suffering the consequences of those sins,
he either is successful at it, and completely successful, or
he's not successful at all. And so Christ being raised from
the dead is God's testimony that he had been, Christ had been
successful in his work. It is written that Christ died
unto sin once. And such was the nature of his
person and the perfection of his work that all of the sins
that he bore Oh, it says he died unto sin, okay. All the sins
unto which he died have been put away. They're gone. Because
if he had not put them away, God would not have raised him
from the dead. The Bible says the wages of sin
is death. Therefore, if once Christ had
died, If any sin remained, he would have remained dead. But
inasmuch as God called him out of the tomb, God was saying that
the sins that he bore had been put away and he was once again
judged to be a righteous man in the sight of God. If we have been raised with Christ,
if that's true, then we have no sin. And God is as pleased
with us as he was with Christ when he called Christ out of
the tomb. Now, I realize that you and I
have not been raised from the dead by experience. And that's because we've not
died. Hard to be raised when you've
not died. That is, we have not experienced death. But look down
here at verse three. For you died. Wait a minute. Not yet. Oh yeah, yet. In Christ you died and in Christ
you've been raised. You see, Paul speaks of things
from heaven's viewpoint. And I'm brought back to our Lord's
words in what is commonly called the Lord's Prayer. Your kingdom
come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And while
many people think that simply means, well, we wish people would
obey God on earth like they do in heaven. I don't think that's
what he means. And the reason I don't think
that that's what he means is they haven't always done God's
will in heaven either. After all, Satan was in heaven
when he sinned against God. But the word that's translated
done there is the word associated with birth, to be born, or to
be created. That is to make real. And I think
our Lord's words can be taken this way in that prayer, your
kingdom come, your will be realized on earth just like it's already
realized in heaven. There was a time when Jesus Christ
came into this world and died. A point in time, we don't know
exactly when it is, but there was a point in time when that
happened. And yet he's called the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. How can that be so? Before it
ever was made real on earth, it was already real in heaven. Therefore, When he says, since
you have been raised with Christ, that's absolutely so. Because
we have also died with Christ from the viewpoint of heaven.
And as we pass through time and space in this little section
we call our lives, those things which are already real in heaven
become real in our experience. Yet, Paul calls on us to think
and act as though all of those realities of heaven have already
come to pass in our experience. So we've been raised with Christ,
and we have no sin, and God is pleased with us. Now that should
change how we think. But there's even
more to this. His being raised is more than
his mere resurrection. His resurrection was just the
beginning of him being raised, because he wasn't just raised
out from the dead. He was raised, he ascended to
the right hand of God. He was glorified at the right
hand of God. In order to give us a reason
and purpose to the exhortation to set our hearts on things above,
he points us to Christ, who is at the right hand of God. Turn
back to Psalm 110, the 110th Psalm. Because while he doesn't
necessarily quote this psalm, What he claims about Christ is
in fulfillment of this Psalm. Psalm 110. The Lord, that is Jehovah, says
to my Lord, Adonai, sit at my right hand until I make your
enemies a footstool for your feet. So when Paul says, Set
your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right
hand of God. What are we told to look to to
guide us? We are told to look to Christ
as the enthroned, approved, favored Son of God and King over all
the universe And the one for whom God is working, the one for whom God is working
everything to make all of his enemies a footstool for his feet.
The Lord said, sit at my right hand. Notice this, he didn't
say, go forth conquering. He said, you sit here and I'll
make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And he goes, the
Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion. We're continuing
on in Psalm 110. You will rule in the midst of
your enemies. Think of that now. We who are raised with Christ
and seated with him in the heavenly places, as Paul describes it
in the book of Ephesians, we are living in enemy territory. I know we sing this is my father's
world, and that's true, but there's a lot of the father's enemies
living here. And that means they're our enemies. I don't mean we're
upset at them and trying to get, but they're after us. We live
among the enemies, but we look to him who's seated at the right
hand of God and who is ruling in the midst of his enemies.
Therefore, as we see things in this world going contrary to
what we think would be good for us, we have to realize that Christ
is ruling in all of that, that none of it's out of his control.
Verse three, your troops will be willing on your day of battle,
arrayed in holy majesty from the womb of the dawn, you will
receive the due of your youth. So God is promising to the Lord
Jesus Christ here in Psalm 110, that his people, his troops,
that's what's indicated, they will be willing in the day of
his battle. Now, there is a battle going
on as the Lord goes throughout the world through his preachers,
declaring his gospel and defeating his enemies in order to rescue
his people from their captivity, from their captivity to Satan,
their captivity to darkness, their captivity to the law, sin,
and death. And here God is saying you have
no need to worry that when you go forth to battle that you will
not have troops to do so. I know that it's easy for us
to get discouraged and we wonder what's going to happen to the
next generation. You know, I don't see preachers being raised up.
It doesn't matter what we see. The Lord's troops will always
be there. in sufficient number, ready for
battle to conduct whatever battle the Lord has organized. Verse four, the Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever in the
order of Melchizedek. So he's not just a king, he's
a priest. So when we look above where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God, we see our king who rules
everything and we see our priest who is after the order of Melchizedek,
which means his was a priesthood that had no beginning and has
no end. And as a priest who is seated
at the right hand of God, we know that his intercession is
guaranteed. The right hand was a place of
power and privilege. It bespeaks God's pleasure in
Christ that he's seated him in his right hand. Well, if the
one who gave himself for me is now seated at the right hand
of God, I can be certain of this, God's pleased with him and he's
pleased with me in him. The Lord is at your right hand.
He will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the
nations, heaping up the dead, and crushing the rulers of the
whole earth. He will drink from a brook beside
the way, therefore he will lift up his head." Now here it's picturing
Christ as going forth to war. And when he does so, the Lord
is at his right hand. And that he crushes, And therefore,
he crushes the kings on the day of God's wrath, judges the nation,
crushes the rulers. We are in an election cycle in
our country, and I know that a lot of people are
very worried about the outcome. And I mean that on both sides
of the political spectrum. We live in a day of such political
polarization Everybody thinks we're about to enter into, you
know, the millennium, or we're all going to go to hell in a
handbasket, depending on which party gets in power. And like
I said, that's coming from both sides. Do you know something? God's purpose does not depend
one whit on who holds the reins of power in any given nation,
not even the United States of America. And God's people, Their
welfare is not subject to who is in office. They are not where they are because
such and such is in office. Such and such is in office because
God intends to do good by his people. And that's the person
in that place to accomplish that. You say, how could it be that
someone of the X party, you just put whichever party you think
is wrong, how could someone from the X party be good for believers? Now, that's how it's gotten in
this country. We've associated politics so closely with religion. We figure that, you know, God
can do good only by one party. God used the pagan king, Nebuchadnezzar, to destroy Jerusalem and bring
Judea or Judah into captivity. And he used another pagan king
named Cyrus to send them back and send them with all the vessels
that have been stolen out of the temple and all the money
necessary to build a new one. The Lord God is not dependent
on anybody. He is literally above it all. and everything down here is in
submission to him. And it says he will drink from
a brook beside the way, therefore he will lift up his head. The
point being that so certain is his victory that as he pursues
his enemy, he can take time to stop and take a drink. He's not
in any hurry. But not only that, it points
out that his strength will never fade. He will lift up his head. And that's where Paul tells us
to look, to such a one as that. Therefore, he says, set your
hearts on things above. And why not? If that's what's
above, what else would I want my heart set on? Then he goes on and he says,
set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Now I
like this. I looked up that word translated
minds. I've seen it before, but I never looked it up to see what
its actual literal meaning is. And it comes from a Greek word
that means all your insides surrounding the heart. In other words, your
guts. Set your guts. Kind of a crude way to put it,
but set your guts on things above. Now, that's what the word literally
means, but it was used to indicate those inward thoughts, impulses,
and drives that guide our outward behavior. You've heard the phrase,
go with your gut. That's what he's talking about. Now, going with your gut's fine,
as long as your gut's right. Now, I don't know for certain
how the, I think the official word, the viscera, got related
to our passions, maybe because our emotional state of mind is often felt. within our innards. And, you
know, people therefore associated the heart. Others, you'll read
in the scriptures, if you look in the King James, it'll talk
about bowels of mercy. And we're just talking about
the feelings that we have within our innards. that go with being
emotionally moved. And here it's referring to our
viscera, our innards, our guts, as we're to set them on things
above, we're to have them moved by things above. You've heard people use the word visceral.
They might say he had a visceral hatred of something or someone. Well, what would that mean? If
nothing else, it meant this, that within his very being, there
was so much hate toward that object that all of his actions
were guided by that hatred. That's a visceral hatred. We are to be viscerally, viscerally
occupied with things above and not on earthly things. Now, I can tell you this, that's not easy. It's not at
all easy. I get up in the morning, and
as I've mentioned to you before, I drink my coffee if the weather's
good. I'm out on my back porch and I drink coffee and I got
my computer in my lap and I start reading articles and most of
them are political commentary and things like this and I start
getting cranked up. I don't know why I do that to
myself. I do it less than I used to.
I'm a little bit smarter. I have a visceral reaction to
what I read and it begins to take possession of my thought
processes and begins to make me desire certain actions, some
of which are not wholesome, are not good. They're not proper
attitudes towards people in this world. So he says, don't get
your guts all tangled up in the things of this world. There are
things in this world which are suitable for us, things that so far as this life
is concerned, we need them. We need food, clothing, shelter. We need those things. And we
are taught to pursue those things. But we are never taught to set
our minds on them, to have our life choices directed by the
pursuit of those things. Rather, we are to have our lives
directed from our inmost being, being set on things above. Now verse three, for you died
and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Now the day's
going to come when all of us will literally die. How much
do you think we're going to care about what's going on in this
world then? Not at all. I hear people say, well, you
know, my mom is up in heaven looking down on me. No, she's
not. She might be up in heaven, but she's not looking down on
you. Those who have died are not concerned
with this world at all. And that doesn't, whether they're
in heaven or in hell, they are not thinking about this world.
They are not tied in knots over this year's election or over
COVID-19 or anything else that's going on. They are not worried
about whether the bills will be paid or whether they'll have
enough to eat or clothes to wear. None of that bothers them. And
none of that should bother us. Why? We're dead. And our life
is hidden. It's hidden from the view of
the world. That's why the world doesn't
understand us. They cannot see the inner life that we have,
the gut life that we have that drives what we do. They can't
understand why we would walk away from some of the things
in this world which we could have if we would just devote
ourselves to it. It's hidden. And it's also hidden
for the sake of protection. The life that we do have, it
can't be taken away from us. The life you have here, somebody
can take it away from you. Somebody can take away your very
life. Someone can take away the things you accumulate in this
life. But no one can touch the life you have in Christ or steal
from you the tiniest blessing that's been given us in Christ.
Where then should our hearts, minds, and guts be set? On things above, not on earthly
things. Okay, you're dismissed until
the