Sermon Tone Analysis

*Live By Spirit*

*Colossians 3:1-4*

If then you have been* raised with Christ*, seek the *things that are above*, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

*2 **Set your minds on things* that are above, *not on things that are on earth*.

*3 *For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

*4 *When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

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We need to identify with Christ in a way beyond baptism.

Baptism testifies to what Christ has done internally in a external way.

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The resurrection testifies to what God does in our life.

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It is the evidence of Gods authority over our lives

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It is the evidence of our decisions

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It is the evidence of where we set our minds

All commandments (speaking of the Ten Commandments) that are broken after the first commandment (Though shall have no other God's before me) point back to breaking the first commandment.

The points of the Commandments are to think outside of ourselves, and to place others before ourselves, and to be servants of God.

When we lie, we place ourselves in front of God, when we kill, we place ourselves in front of others and God, when we commit adultery, we think only of ourselves, when we steal we think only of ourselves, when we dishonor our parents we think only of ourselves, when we don't go to church we think only of ourselves, when we use the Lords name in vain we think only of ourselves.

Pretty soon it becomes not a matter of placing ourselves in front of God, which is the reality of our sin, but a quagmire of selfishness that blinds us to truth completely.

The Spirit leads us to all truth but our desires and passions place us in front of God’s and ultimately from his will.

When we do this we become what we all, selfish.

Selfishness mocks Gods Law and His gift of salvation.

We who live with Christ must die to ourselves.

The uncertainty of truth in our Christian walk, which is living by the Spirit, is reflected in our misunderstanding of God’s Law.

Jesus states the sum of the Law of Moses and the Prophets can be summed up.

*Matthew 22:37-40*

“*You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind*.

*38 *This is the great and first commandment.

*39 *And a second is like it: *You shall love your neighbor as yourself*.

*40 *On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Often when we seek freedom, we seek it from the point of view of selfishness.

What we are really saying is we want freedom from situations we have placed ourselves in.

Situations like bad relationships, bad family upbringing, addictions, sexual immorality, hatred, murder, and so on.

We don't realize that the core of such situations is sin.

It’s sin because we have violated the Law of God.

Because we do not understand it is sin, we don’t see it as selfishness on our part.

Therefore, the foundation of our salvation or the reason we come to Christ is not because we have realized we have violated God’s law and are sinners, and deserve Hell.

Rather, it is to save us from situations.

So in this thinking which is derived from a selfish point of view the “sinner” doesn’t understand laying down his own life, dieing to his old self, and rising up a new creation is Christ all which can only be understood from the point of view of selflessness.

Therefore, if we don’t understand the cost of discipleship, then how can we understand freedom in the Spirit?

The affect of salvation should be such that we understand that *we* cannot keep God's Law, and therefore, we can only know him by “walking in the Spirit.”

It should keep us humble before him.

Any time we break God's Law we undermine his authority, replacing ourselves above Him.

This is our nature, our selfishness, the nature of the flesh.

It stands in opposition to what God does through his spirit, through Christ in salvation.

Another way we do this is by creating Laws in the flesh to achieve a Higher Spiritual relationship with God.

This also is in violation of God's Law.

Who are we to add to God’s Law and put what we think to be truth along side of God’s perfect truth?

If we cannot uphold the standard of the Ten Commandments then why should we make more n our own and expect others and ourselves to uphold them?

If we create new regulations and laws, what in us thinks we have the strength to uphold them.

How arrogant, how faithless, how selfish to think that in some way God’s Spirit is not enough!

The fruit of law and regulation is clear.

We cannot uphold it!

Then why do we who live by spirit create more laws and regulations to uphold?

The evidence of Christ's Spirit at work in us will be the fruit of the Spirit.

The Spirit working in us leads us away from, passions, and desires of our own and back to the foundation of the Law.

That being to love God with everything we have, and everything in us, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Without a doubt it leaves us selfless, not seeking our own desires.

In fact, in ourselves we don’t seek out anything.

It is our obedience to God’s word and the Spirit that leads to the revelation of God.

Therefore, His will and ways never becomes and act of our hands, or our work.

Instead it becomes a matter of A Supreme God revealing himself to his people who are obedient before him walking in the Spirit.

It should never be to where it becomes anything of ours.

Whether it is money, or relationship, man, woman, child, or ministry it is all God’s.

We must never forget it is God's revelation to us that calls us to him.

This cannot be found in our truths that we place on each other, nor can it can it be obtained in disobedience from which every one of us stands.

It is only through obedience to Jesus Christ and the Spirit he gives us.

Through making him Lord by laying down selfishness and living selflessly.

The Spirit that raised us up from the death of our sins, is the Spirit the sustains our walk with him and presents us Holy Before him.

Colossians 2:26-23 states that the law, whether the ones we set on each other or God's law, has "no value in stopping the indulgences of the flesh."

If it is by the Spirit we are created, then it is by the Spirit we should live.

This is not by regulation and religion, but by placing our minds above through the Spirit.

We know that by placing our minds above that all things in him may be done through him by love, with joy, with thanksgiving, in patience, in kindness, with goodness and faithfulness, and with self -control.

All of these are things are found by crucifying the flesh and it’s  selfish desires, no longer looking through the eyes born in the flesh, but eyes made anew through Christ by his Spirit.

When we get past ourselves, and our own minds, and set our thoughts above we find him in Spirit where we can worship him in truth as he is.

Therefore as we ourselves are truly crucified, we ourselves are able to live not by passions or our fleshly desires, but through his Spirit.

This leads to selflessness, and sense of revelation upon our lives, which leads to call first and everything else later.

*Galations 5:25*

*25 *If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.