Colossians 3 - Raised up to Look up to Lift up

Malcam reminds us that we have been raised up with Christ to look up at heavenly things so that one day we will be lifted up in glory. 
                   
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Transcript

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Well, two senior citizen men were pushing their little carts around Walmart when they collided into each other. First man said to the second man, Sorry about that. I was looking for my wife, and I guess I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Second senior citizen man said, Well, that's okay. What a coincidence. I'm looking for my wife too, and I can't find her. I'm getting a little desperate trying to find her. First man asked, Well, maybe I can help you find her. What does she look like? The second senior citizen said, Well, my wife's only 27 years old. She's tall, red hair, blue eyes, long legs, and she's wearing short shorts. What's your wife look like? To which the first man replied, I can't remember. Let's go look for yours. We can kind of wonder whether or not that man really could remember or not. But have you ever been looking for something and then actually forgot what you were looking for? You know, have you have you ever walked into a room to get something? And you couldn't remember why you went in that room to get it? Some of you younger people are going, never happened. Why would that ever happen? Some of us older people, we've done that. Have you ever been sent to the store by your wife to get some things and you got there and you couldn't remember what you're supposed to pick up? Or sometimes you pick up the wrong thing and bring it home. You know, sometimes we forget what our goal and our objectives are. Sometimes we forget what we're supposed to be doing. Sometimes we simply need a reminder. Get back on the right path, get back to doing what God has called you to do. And when I look at this passage from Colossians chapter 3, the first four verses, that's what I see Paul trying to tell his readers in Colossae. I want you to get refocused. I want you to remind you that what we have been is we've been raised up to look up so we can lift up. And today I want to focus in on these four verses here, these reminder verses, which remind us of our task, our job, and our goal that Christ has given to us as Christians. But first let's begin with prayer. Lord, I do thank you for your love and I thank you for your blessing. And I ask, Lord, that as we look at these four verses and look at some other passages, help us to really trust in you, to remember what we have been called to do. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. As I begin today, I'm going to start by reading these four verses from Colossians chapter three, starting in verse one. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. I've entitled today's sermon basically combining my three main points together. Basically, we are raised up to look up, to lift up. So point number one here is that we have been raised up. We are raised up. Paul puts it this way, verse one. If then you have been raised up with Christ, well, what even made him think that they had been raised up with Christ? When did this happen? Well, if you remember to last week's sermon from Colossians chapter 2, 8 through 15, the third point I made there was the purpose of baptism. And you might recall how that Paul taught in those verses that this raising was done in baptism. Earlier in this letter, back in chapter 2, what we call chapter 2, Paul wrote verse 12, that we were buried with Christ in baptism. We were also raised up with Christ. In the book of Romans, Romans 6, Paul taught the very same fact that we were buried with Christ in baptism. We are raised up with him, united with him in his resurrection. If you want more on this, go back to the media that we have, those podcasts or YouTube, and go back and listen to that sermon again. And we I dwelt on that quite a while last week. I don't want to dwell long on it. But I do want to point out that Paul believed that every one of the Christians in Colossae had been raised up with Christ in baptism. Why did he assume that? Why is it when he wrote to the church in Corinth and he wrote to the Christians there, he said that they were all baptized? Why did he assume every Christian had been baptized? Why is it when he was traveling through Ephesus in the book of Acts that he found some disciples there and he was absolutely amazed that they didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit, and he assumed that they had been baptized, and so he says, Well, into what then were you baptized? Why is it all through the scriptures that's assumed by each writer of the Word of God that every Christian has been baptized? That becomes quite a question in today's world, because there's many people who will claim that they are a Christian, yet they have never been baptized. I think it's interesting that Jesus Christ himself taught us this need to be born again, born of water and the Spirit, and he himself traveled roughly 70 miles so he could go submit to being baptized, immersed by John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus himself then taught his disciples, I want you to go out into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Peter preached the first sermon, Acts chapter 2, telling the crowds, repent and let each one of you be baptized. Be immersed in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive to get the Holy Spirit, born of water and the Spirit. No wonder here then that Paul writes in Colossians chapter 3, verse 1, he builds upon the idea, if you have been raised up with Christ in baptism. Think about that. How worthless would the statements following we be in Colossians chapter 3 if the Christians in Colossae had responded, well, we've never been raised up with Christ. We've never been baptized. He starts out with the assumption, if you have been, then this is what you need to do. He assumed it because they were Christians. And if you're a Christian, you've probably been baptized. You had to have been. And that's what Paul teaches in the scriptures. The whole rest of the sermon is based on this one simple premise. Have you been raised up with Christ in baptism? And if you haven't, what's holding you back from obeying Christ today? If you have been raised up with Christ, this is such an important starting place for this passage that it's done in baptism and it's done through faith in the working of God. Again, I'm looking back to Colossians chapter 2, verse 12, where Paul made these statements and now I'm building upon them. God is the one who does all the work in baptism. We don't do the work. I mean, when they say that preachers have the easiest job in the world, you're probably right. We get to sit in our office and study, and we get to preach the exact same message week after week, just using different words, but still telling you you need to be saved through Jesus Christ. And even though I've lost some weight in the last year and a half, two years, it's not very easy to lose weight as a preacher. It's a lot easier to gain weight as a preacher. It's not a very active job. You sit down and you sit at your desk and study. You go visit someone, you sit down and you talk with them, and you get offered food pretty much everywhere you go. They want you to have something to eat. But as easy as my job might be, being baptized, I believe, is an even easier job. Because think about it. When you look at that simple plan of salvation as found in the Word of God that we print every week in our bulletins, being baptized is the only part that doesn't require any work on our part. It's all done by other people. For instance, every week, my job requires me to study more of the Word of God, to learn more of the Word of God, to know more about the Word of God. So I spend hours every week studying and learning. Or you might call it hearing, if you will. Hear the Word of God. That's part of the work that I do as a preacher. My job also requires me to believe that message, to get into that message and check it out, to make sure it's true, to make certain that it is right, that it is truthful, something I can believe so that I can teach it to other people that they can believe. So my work requires me to not just hear the word of God, but to believe the word of God. My job also requires me to write sermons and lessons, and if I make a mistake, I correct it. You know, that's kind of like repenting. Make a correction. You don't just leave that error in there. I have by accidentally left a mistake in my manuscript, got ready to preach and look at it and go, like, oh, that is not the word I should be saying. Bad type error. You know, you gotta correct those things so you don't accidentally say them and don't do the wrong thing. So we have to repent. That's part of my work to repent, to correct things. And so the most part of my job that you see is that when I go and I confess what I've learned. I talk about Jesus, I talk about the Word of God, I teach these lessons. That's my work to confess to everyone what I believe from the Word of God after studying the Word of God and after I've repented and made sure I corrected everything, and then I am to confess that and let you know. That's my work. That's my job. Also, not only do I hear and believe and repent and confess, but also part of my work is to live a godly life. It wouldn't do you any good to have a preacher up here who would talk to you about the word of God and then go back there and start living like the devil and speaking all kinds of evil words. Part of my work is to live a godly life. So that's step, if you look in your bulletins, that's step one, two, three, four, and six. The one part I didn't mention was step five, being baptized, because that's not really work. Being baptized just allows someone else to let them lower our body into the water and raise it back up. And the work of forgiving our sins is all done by God. The work of making us his children, part of his family, is all done by God. The work of shedding the blood for the forgiveness of our sins, that was done by Jesus. God does all the work. All we have to do is let somebody else do it to us, lower us in the water and come back up. It's kind of like if you ever had the job of digging ditches. This last week I had to dig a bunch of holes for putting in fence posts. Can you imagine getting that, being hired to do that job? And all you had to do was go out there and just stand. Didn't have to have a shovel, didn't have to have a pick, didn't have to have anything. And you got paid for digging holes by not doing anything. Don, he works in a mine. Do you get paid to just stand there or do you get paid to drill holes and blow things up and dig it all out? You know, that's what he's got to do. You don't just stand there the whole time. You don't even just get to watch. You got to work. But somebody just standing there and having everybody else do the work, that's not work. And Christ did all the work for us on Calvary. Christ did the work of canceling out our certificate of debt and raising us up as new creatures. So don't ever object to baptism as a work that we do, because it's not a work we do. Everything's done by somebody else, either by God, by Christ, or by whoever is lowering you in the water and raising you back up. In baptism, we've been raised up with Christ through faith and the working of God. It's not our works, it's God's works. And all of us who have been raised up with Christ, if you've been raised up, Paul then goes on and says, what we need to be doing. We are to look up. Keep looking, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Keep seeking the things above. I mean, that's what our poster back there is about looking up, seeking the things above. Keep seeking them. It's a continual seeking, not just a one-time look up and then go do some other things. It's keep seeking righteousness, keep seeking holiness, keep seeking ways to please the Lord God. Several years back I read a story about a little boy who had lost his contact lenses. These are back when the contact lenses were really expensive. He'd been out in the in the in the yard playing basketball in the driveway. His contact lens came out. He looked around for it, came in and said, Mom, I can't, my contact lens fell out in the driveway. I can't find it. She went out there and she searched and she came back in here and she found it and said, I found it. Let's wash it up and get it back in your eye. And he's going, like, how is it you could find it, but I couldn't find it? She goes, You were looking for a contact lens. I was looking for $150. What keeps someone seeking is the value. And people don't spend much time if they've dropped a penny. But if you go outside and you drop your $100 bill and the wind takes it, you're chasing it. Even if you don't normally run, you're chasing it, aren't you? Because it's a hundred dollar bill. And do we see the value of spiritual things? The things in heaven. Is heaven worth everything to us? I hope so. Jesus told a parable about a man who found a treasure in a certain plot of land. He went out and sold everything he had to purchase that land so he could get that treasure because he saw it so valuable. And he told that parable to teach us about the value of heaven. That's why I had Kieran learn the song. I've got heaven on my mind. Because it was so appropriate for this. It's appropriate for when we get into Thessalonians also. And the Lord willing, we'll be singing it then too. But it's one of these things. Do we see the value of heaven? Do we see the value of eternal life with Christ Jesus? Are we willing to give up everything for Christ? Or are we going to hold on to some of our sins? Have we limited our involvement with God so that he only gets two to four hours of our week? Because we want to have the rest of it for our own fun? Have we failed to understand what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6, verse 21, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also? It took a lot of years before somebody pointed it out to me. It says, Jesus said, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be. He didn't say, For where your heart is, there your treasure will be. It says, where do you put your treasure? That's where your heart will be. You know, it's one of those things. How do you prove that you really do love and care for something? If I claim to love God first and foremost, and I love my wife second afterwards, and I go out and I spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for entertainment for myself, and then I take her out to a place and say, make sure you order for stuff that's less than five bucks. Is she gonna believe that she's important to me, more important than myself? No, she's not. Is God convinced that I love him more than I love myself? If I give God 20 bucks, but I go out and spend hundreds of dollars for myself? Well, I gotta get my own entertainment, I gotta get my satellite, my cable, my movies, eating out, I gotta go to the movie theaters, I gotta go do this, I gotta. But we don't have any money for God. And God's going, like, yeah, I know where your treasure is. I know where your heart is. Show God you're continually seeking the things above where He is, looking up. Verse 2 continues on, Paul saying, Set your mind on the things above. Set your mind on the things above. Set it. In junior high, uh, I had a, I got to work for one of the ladies in our church where I was growing up. She had a ceramic shop, Wanda's ceramics. And she taught me how to pour ceramics. I'd never done it before. You got these little molds, plaster Paris molds, you rubber band them together, and then you pour the mixture, the clay mixture inside of it, and you leave it set, and you keep making sure it's filled up, filled up, filled up, until finally it has a certain thickness set up on it, and then you dump out the excess, then you let it sit there until it dries a little bit, take the rubber bands off, pull it out, because it's now set up, you can unmold it, set it out to dry, where then it's carved and shaped and everything else and worked and then fired. But set up meant it had to be formed, it had to be solidified. Other people, maybe you're cooked, maybe you've made jello, and you have to put it in the refrigerator to let it set up. Or maybe you've poured concrete. You pour the concrete, you work it, and then you have to let it set up. Or if you do tile, you spread the thin set, and gotta let it set up. We have a lot of things that help us understand what setting up means. The scripture says we need to set up our minds on the things above. Make them set firmly, unmoving, like concrete, like solid, all the way there. We can't be running back and forth all the time. We need to make heaven our goal now and forever and always. We can't be like what Paul had said when he wrote to the Christians in Ephesus chapter 4, verse 14. Don't be tossed here and there by every wave and carried about by every wind of doctrine. You need to be set up. We need to be one-minded, set on our mind upon the things above where Christ is. And there is no way we can successfully live for Christ if we are uncertain about our goal. There is no way that we can be living pleasing to Christ if we don't know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is the most important thing. We cannot successfully resist temptations if we are wavering between two goals, wanting to satisfy our fleshly lust or wanting to spend eternity in heaven. You've got to make a choice and set your mind on that. So we who have been baptized into Christ and thus have been raised up, have been called to look up, to keep our minds set on the things above, so that one day we are to lift up. We're to lift up. Paul continued on, for you have died back when you were baptized and raised up, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory, because Christ will one day be revealed in glory. Jesus promised this to his apostles. He let them know that if he leaves, he comes back again. The New Testament is filled with scriptures proclaiming the return of Jesus. In fact, if the Lord wills, when we finish this book of Colossians, we get to go into 1 and 2 Thessalonians, which some of the commentaries I have say has the most highest percentage of verses in it of any books of the Bible talking about the return of Christ. He's going to come back again. There is no doubt in the scriptures that Christ one day is going to come back again and be revealed with all of his glory. We may not know the day nor the hour, but we do know he will come. And we will get to see him in all this splendor and glory, and all with all the angels surrounding him, and every knee in heaven and on earth is going to bow down, every tongue is going to confess Jesus as Lord and glory. And I'm just looking at this and I think about it wow all the time. When we sing songs like How Great Is Our God, How Great Thou Art, I Can Only Imagine. Those kinds of songs make me start thinking about what it's going to be like when Christ comes back again. And my mind will just swell with glory, my excitement does. But can you imagine what it's going to be like when every being gives praise to Jesus and gives him honor forever and ever in heaven? I mean, last week, what did we have? A fifth Sunday fellowship here? This room was pretty much packed full with people in here. There were hardly any empty chairs left, and we had people from four different churches at least, and they were singing praises to God, and it was fun. It was glorious. It was great to see the excitement in here. And the recent times we've had praise in the park down there, where it's like 900 people in there, where they had another praise service down there. And they've had all these different things. And every time I get in there, I go, like, man, this is like a slice of heaven. What an event. There is no doubt that when Christ returns and we start singing glory to him for all eternity, that will be the event of eternity. Not just of the decade or the century, but of eternity. When Jesus comes in all of his glory, and I just go, wow. But what's humbling and amazing to me is when Jesus points out, when he is revealed in all of his glory, the scriptures also point out that we too will be revealed with him in glory. You, me, we will be revealed with him in glory. This amazes me because I know me. I may not know you very well, but I know me. I know the things I've done in my past. I know the struggles I've had with my tongue. I know the struggles I've had with lust. I know the struggles I've had with my eyes. I know the struggles I've had with my pride. I know that the blood of Jesus has had to cover and wash away my sins in my life. I know there's still struggles to resist temptations. So who am I to be revealed with the glorious Son of God in glory? The blood of Jesus. Because the scriptures tell me I am the perfect bright. Of Christ. There is no spot, no wrinkle, or any such thing in me. Rather, I am holy and pure and blameless due to what Christ has done for me. Ephesians chapter 5. The scriptures tell me there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans chapter 8, verse 1. The scriptures tell me I'm a pure virgin. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 2. They tell me I am without blame in holiness. 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 13, chapter 5, verse 23. You can read scripture after scripture after scripture that talks about because of the blood of Christ, we are pure and spotless. Despite the horrible and sinful things I've done, I have been washed, I have been sanctified, I have been justified by the blood of Jesus, and thus in him, when he comes to be revealed in glory, we get to be revealed in glory too. We're going to be seen as a perfect bride of Christ, a guest of honor with Jesus Christ the groom in the great wedding feast. And all of this is because we have been raised up with Christ. If you have been raised up with Christ, raised up as something easy to do. Being baptized is where God does this work for us through our faith. Wow. Is it worth it? I believe it. Why would anyone reject so great a salvation that's made available by God? We were raised up so we could look up, so that one day we will be lifted up, revealed with Christ in his glory. And literally we will be literally lifted up to be with him in heaven. And I look forward to the day when Christ returns to take us home, to be with him in heaven forevermore. I hold fast to the comfort that Jesus gave in the words of John chapter 14, starting in verse 1. Do not let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. For I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you also may be. I hold fast to that promise. That Jesus is coming again. He's going to take us to be home with him for all eternity. I can't imagine what it's going to be like to defy the laws of gravity and just lift up. I can't imagine what that's going to be like. And will I be just as scared of heights then as I am now? Or will I just be looking up and not worried about how high I'm coming up off the ground? I look forward to it. Are you looking forward to it? Are you ready for it? Paul started this whole section, chapter 3, with the word, if. If you have been raised up with Christ. If. Short little conditional word. If you want the glorious blessings of being revealed with Christ and his glory and be lifted up, then we got to start by being raised up with Christ. Which he described back in chapter 2, verse 12 as happening in baptism. Not a work we do, but where we allow God to raise us up with Christ through faith in the working of God. Have you done it? Have you been buried with Him in baptism? So you can rise up. Let's make sure we're raised up to look up, to someday lift up. Let's pray. Lord, I do thank you for this passage and I ask, Lord, that you would help each one of us be ready. That we have been raised up with you through the waters of baptism, rising up to be able to look up to you so that one day when Christ comes back, we will be lifted up. Thank you, Lord, for the great hope that we have found in Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.