Living the Resurrection Story Colossians 3:1-17 Hello to my resurrected family. Those that live a resurrected life in Christ and are telling a resurrection story. It s a funny thing to say, that we re living a story, but that is what I want us to think about tonight. Stories. In particular a story of resurrection life. That s our message tonight. Living the resurrection story. So let s think about our favorite stories. What s yours. Yell it out. Brilliant. Well these are some of mine. These all tell amazing stories. And when we re told an amazing story we get drawn into it. It impacts us. St Stephens Belrose Timothy McCloud Five30 Worship September 1, 2013 Stories are powerful things, but sometimes we re not aware of the stories that are being told around us, and we don t think about the story that we re telling with our own life. Which is a problem because there are some great stories to be influenced by and some pretty bad ones too. As we see in Colossians though the gospel tells a story of life in Christ being our lives. And our world hates this story whether it s Rome or Australia. Our friend from Colossae makes the competition of these stories of this world and the gospel really clear. So we re going to unpack these stories and see how to live the resurrection story. We ll look at it in two main ways. 1. Life with Christ over Death 2. Life with the Church over the Market
So let s start with the first one. The story of resurrection life with Christ over death And it's an amazing story. Colossae of 2000 years ago was a pretty good city to live in and if you re going to this church Paul is writing to chances are you re enjoying the wealth of this city, of the Roman Empire. Then the story of Christ begins to interrupt that easy going lifestyle and you see the competing stories. Lordship of Christ competes with the Lordship of Caesar. Then as we have seen with our friend from Colossae Paul in chapter 3 drops a bomb on them. And they feel it. And they feel it because of who they are in Christ by grace. This church, they have been raised with Christ. They have already died. Christ is already their life. Because of that though Paul draws them into everything that comes from it. You are saved you are in Christ and therefore put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature. It s kill it or it will kill you. Now why does he hammer down on sexual sin? Probably because it was rampant. But probably not for the reasons we think it was. Sex had become a commodity. It had been reduced to an experience that should be acquired as often as reasonably practical. Which is why it s linked in with greed. Because in their culture, everything could be traded. Everything was up for grabs, and therefore so was sex. This was a distortion of their humanity though. And it makes God angry. The words Paul uses become a bit lost on us so let me reword the list of things to put to death. Sexual Immorality Self-gratifying expressions of sexuality outside of loyal commitment Impurity The distortion of personal character that such practices entail Lust (or Passion) Uncontrollable and insatiable sexual appetite Evil Desire A desire directed only to self-gratification Paul hammers down on sexual sin not because everyone was sleeping with everyone else, although they might have been, but relationships were seen through this selfish, self-gratifying way of thinking. So Paul hammers down on sexual sin because if this church is going to enjoy the story of resurrection life in Christ they have got to rework their entire way of thinking about people and relationships. And that goes way beyond just not having sex outside of marriage. It s a way of life, it s a way of relationships, it s a way of honoring people for who God has made them to be, not just reducing them to satisfying your own passions and desires. Does this change what we see in this passage on first reading? Paul s telling a big story. Cos these things don t belong once you come to know Jesus. But once you do you have to get rid of them. Kill these things. It s like this. If your life is so bad you might turn to ice, crystal meth to escape your life. To get outside of the pain. Someone
comes along though and heals that pain and hurt, shows you love and kindness, saves you from destroying yourself. You realize you don t need to take meth anymore. But you do. Why? Cos you re addicted. What you need is someone to not just give life but kill the old life. They cannot exist together. Imagine this then, someone invites you into their house giving you life, giving you power to kill the old ways and you say thanks, but can I still occasionally use crystal meth? What are they going to do? They re going to kick you the hell out. How dumb is that? But this is exactly what we do? God s saved us we ve killed the old life but still do drugs in his house. It s insane. We need to see that ways in which we re doing it, and then put it to death. Well praise the Lord for Jesus though. Salvation comes by grace. The story of resurrection life doesn t come by us resurrecting ourselves but Him doing that. So if our lives are hidden in Christ, we already have an amazing story of victory and being raised from death. And if your life is not hidden in Christ yet, then know that having a story of resurrection life comes by knowing Christ, because He becomes your story. But just as Paul lays down the challenge to the Colossian Christians so I lay down the challenge for myself and all of us tonight. Let s put things of the earthly nature to death. Let s tell one story. A story of resurrection life with Christ. So first thing of course we talk about here is sexual sin. See how this makes God angry? We know what God has designed sex for though. Between a husband and wife. What about sexuality though because that applies to all of us whether we re having sex at the moment or not. Well when we have great relationships with brothers and sisters of the opposite sex we demonstrate what that amazing sexuality is. Girls when you have amazing relationships with guys, and you re not crushing on them but you love them so much all the same. Same with guys for girls. That s healthy sexuality. It s freedom. So for guys, do whatever it takes to get control of your sex drive. Lust and masturbation undermine relationships. Girls, don t fall into the trap of thinking a little lust is ok. Oh he s cute, is a dangerous story to be telling in your life. Don t look at looks, look at character because as your brothers, us men need you to be holding us to account on good godly character. Please, we d love you help. If we re telling a story of healthy sexuality and sexual expression in this community we re going to be set so free. It s going to be an amazing family, as it already is. And what a witness to the world full of pain, regret and never satisfied from broken sexuality. And that story of family life can be further told through ridding ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language. Here s a few things the world says about sex.
And this goes way beyond not swearing. You shouldn t by the way. Swearing is bad and abusive language. And only incredibly rarely appropriate. And I need to fix my habits on this too. This is more about ridding ourselves of participation in this violent culture. An abusive culture. We do well when it comes to refuges and asylum seekers I think. Great violence is committed against this minority in the name of border protection and financial responsibility. That s oppressive and violent. We do well to not identify with that. I think we struggle with advertising and brands though. The invasive intrusion of advertising into every part of our lives, TV, internet, facebook, where sex is used to sell almost everything and we identify with brands and symbols like iphones and shoes. I am sick of conversations about whether androids or iphones are better and what label of beer we identify with. We need to stop that. We are hidden with Christ, set our minds on things there. Not on whether you re classy or country or bogan or city or surfer or beaches or shire and how that s expressed in how you dress or don t dress, or whether you re mac or PC or prefer the belrose to the tavern. It s all crap. Get rid of it. We need to tell a story of peace not violent oppressive advertising perpetuated by corporations and brands. Since you have been raised with Christ put everything that belongs to the earthly nature to death. Tell a story of healthy sexuality, Tell a story of peace. Tell a story of Life with Christ over Death. 2. Life with the church over the market For Paul Rome s gospel was coming aggressively against this church. So now he preaches unity like nothing else to this church. With everything coming against the people of God he knows their only hope is in sticking together. So with all these problems Paul says patience with each other, love just love each other more. And just like with telling them to put things to death, he shows it is an extension of having God in their life. It s a natural progression to unify. To be united under Christ. Paul picks the main walls of society to tear down. Status, nationality, ethnicity, religion. He demolishes all of them. Drops another bomb on them. The reaction of our Colossian friend shows that really well. This is the power of Christ to unite. The blood of Christ unites all people. We talk equality these days like it s a new thing. It's not. Paul's is preaching something way ahead of his time because this is what happens when we encounter God. Paul preaches in verse 15, the peace of Christ. This directly opposes Rome and the peace they bring. They called it Pax Romana. Peace by the sword. And then Paul calls them the body of Christ. This directly opposes the body of Rome. We think the body of Christ language is new? It s not. Paul stole it from Rome. He does it deliberately to clearly show the Colossians that the story of the gospel and Christ is something that cannot make friends with this world. Jesus and Caesar
are not on good terms. The gospel subverts Rome s story. Let me illustrate the power of unity to do great things with a clip from a movie. Lord of the Rings. Elrond talks about unify or perish. That s a message to us as well. Our enemy though is not the government. They re not telling the dangerous story like Rome was. The dangerous story comes from the market for us. The market tells a story of happiness and security and meaning through having money and things. Now we all know that there s nothing wrong with enjoying a nice beer, or having nice clothes or being on facebook, but when challenged about being too much like the world around us, and just doing all the things they do, we immediately say we have to be in the world just not of it. So in other words we say there s nothing wrong with having these things, I just can t be defined by them. Ok. Fine. You re right. Fast then. Fast these things. Take a break from them from time to time. Sometimes I swear we re like addicts saying, I can give up whenever I want. Oh really. Then stop. I don t want to. I don t need to. Ok. Fast make up because it s what s on the inside that counts. Fast food because you believe that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Fast facebook because your relationships are based in deep meaningful interactions face to face. Fast music because there is value in being still before God on a regular basis. Do you understand what I m getting at? And that s not a rhetorical question. The challenge for us here as a community is to learn to challenge one another better. We are pretty tight as a community. We support and love one another really well I think. I don t think we rebuke one another very often though and Paul says in verse 16, teach and admonish one another, and admonish means rebuke. So I would encourage all of us to fast something once a month. For me, I started fasting food after lunch today. I m not going to eat again till dinner tomorrow. Just going to have juice. And I m also going to fast music for the rest of the week. What are you going to fast? And if you fast something I d encourage you to put it up on the facebook page and tell us how you go. Let s tell a story of life in the church over the market. Helping each other stand against the lies of this world that invade and permeate us can only be done through unity as a church. Which means we can t treat our church as another thing to just make us happy. It s not another commodity, or item to buy and get a new one when our old one breaks. As a community at the moment we are going through a time of transition. Many of us are waiting on something new. Waiting on a change. Some of us are not content with where things are at. This doesn t mean that things are broken though. It doesn t mean that Johnny is doing something wrong. It means there is a journey to take and we are on the verge of something new and exciting but we have to stick it out and take the journey together.
United. It means clothing ourselves with compassion kindness, humility gentleness and patience. It means putting on love. It means supporting Johnny in his role and all of us working together so this community can be exactly what Jesus wants it to be. Let s not turn our church into another self-centered thing. The world panders to that all the time. Let s instead tell a story of resurrection life with Christ and the church over a story of death and the market. Let s love one another through admonishing one another, supporting Johnny and working through the prickly times as a community in transition so God may be glorified through his people in his power bringing his kingdom. Let s tell a story of resurrection life. let s not stop. Let s keep living that life and putting the earthly nature to death. After all, all we ve got at the end of the day is God and each other. So let s tell an amazing story with Him and each other. One with Christ and the church. Let s live a story of resurrection life. Conclusion What we find when we set our hearts on things above where Christ is is a life without compromise around these things. It s so easy to just be real and compromise on the resurrection life we have in Christ. But we can tell an amazing story with him and each other in freedom, peace and without violence, sexual sin, greed and division. He has already done everything he can to bring us everything of himself. And we are already responding to that. We are already hidden in Christ. We have already died with Him and been raised. What a story. Now we have the job of continuing to put to death the earthly nature. To live out that resurrection life the way God intended. And I am so blessed to be part of a community that is already doing that. Cos we are. It s amazing. But