Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Jake is a self-described conservative Republican who works in politics for a living.

He’s White and serves as a deacon at his church.

Although his church is racially diverse, he assumed that his Black brothers and sisters were politically conservative like him because they were committed Christians.

“I didn’t really think about it,” he said.

“They love the Lord,” he thought, “they must be conservative.”

On one occasion, he posted an image of President Barak Obama on Facebook with the Bill of Rights under the President’s feet.

He said, “I remember at the time thinking maybe I shouldn’t post it, but that was more of a passing thought.

Yeah, it’s fine.

Everybody would understand this.”

Well how many of you can figure that everybody didn’t understand?

That night, in response to his post, a Black woman from the church posted on her Facebook page, “I can’t believe somebody gets a pass on being a racist bigot because they’re an officer in our church.”

She didn’t name any names, but it wasn’t hard to figure out who she was talking about.

He never saw the post, but about three people texted him to say, “I think she’s talking about you.”

Then he said, “I thought maybe she is.”

He wondered, “how come three people immediately thought of me when she posted this?

That was a little disconcerting.”

What would he do in response to this?

What would you do in response to this? Would you get angry about being called a racist bigot in public?

Social media is a world of public shaming.

What would you do?

Would you get defensive and respond to her on social media to give her a piece of your mind; tell her why she’s wrong about you?

Jake’s first instinct was to have a conversation with her.

Not a FB conversation but a face-to-face conversation.

This was the case even though he asked himself, “What in the world could I have said or done that would’ve communicated that?”

He couldn’t imagine a scenario where the label “racist bigot” would fit him, yet there it was.

He called her on the phone and said, “Let me ask you this.

You posted something on your FB page last night.

I never saw it, but can I ask, was that about me?”

She said, “Absolutely it was.

I don’t know how you figured out it was you, but yes.”

They talked for an hour, and he said let’s go to lunch next week.

When they met for lunch he said, “for the first time in my life, I just let her talk and I listened.

She said things about some of my posts and my views that I had no idea that my views could be interpreted that way.

It was the first time I stepped out of myself, saw myself from her perspective.

I thought, man maybe she’s not alone.

Maybe there’s a whole church of people that think somehow I’m racist or bigoted because I’m a conservative and support Republican policies.”

It was a turning point in his thinking.

It was the first time he invited someone to be honest with him about how they felt about him.

He began to have conversations with others in the church, asking them what they thought of his views.

He started bumping into more and more people at his church who supported President Obama.

The more that he saw people in his church whom he loved and respected first because he knew they loved Jesus, and found out that they had different political perspective than he did, his whole political language began to change.

He said, “I’m still a conservative.

I still believe in conservative principles for the most part, but man, there’s a humility with which I hold my political views that I never did before.

Because, I’m like, if [my brother] loves Jesus, is a man of faith and he loves Obama, man, I must be missing something.”

Jake, and that’s not his real name, is one of the people I interviewed for my dissertation on identity formation in diverse churches.

Here’s why I tell you his story.

In the first four verses of we hear the apostle Paul say to the Colossians, “Since therefore you were raised with Christ…you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

The deal is that in Christ we die.

We don’t die physically; we die to the power and grip of sin and wickedness over our hearts.

Paul said to the Colossians in 2:14 that in Jesus Christ God cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing to the cross.

Therefore, 2:20, with Christ we died to the elemental spirits of the world.

But what’s glorious is that when you become a Christian, you don’t die to die.

You die live!

You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, he is going to tell them what this dying to live looks like in practice.

that in Jesus Christ God cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing to the cross.

Therefore, 2:20, with Christ we died to the elemental spirits of the world.

But what’s glorious is that when you become a Christian, you don’t die to die.

You die live!

You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, he is going to tell them what this dying to live looks like in practice.

He says, “Therefore, put to death what is earthly in you…You must put them all away…Here, in the church, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave free, Black, White, but Christ is all and in all.”

What Jake pursued, and the way he pursued is an example of the kind of justifiable homicide that Paul is talking about in our text.

We’re going to spend our time talking about dying this morning.

What we are talking about this morning is justifiable homicide for the benefit of living like Christ is all and in all.

If we’ve died with Christ, then there’s some stuff we’ve got to kill.

We’ll work through this message with two R’s, Reality, and Relationships.

Reality

Here’s the reality that Paul presses upon the Colossians.

Y’all are in a fight.

He’s done all this talking to them about how they’ve died, they’ve died, they’ve died.

But that doesn’t mean that they’re now assured of life as they want it to be.

Put to death whatever in you is worldly, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, inordinate craving, evil and greed, which is idolatry.

The reality is that you’re in a fight because of the other reality that being a Christian doesn’t mean you no longer have a problem with sin.

That phrase, “what is earthly in you,” or, “what is worldly in you,” means that there are parts of us as Christians that still look like we don’t belong to Christ.

Here’s a simple reminder for you.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean I now have my act together.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean I no longer sin.

Being a Christian means that I’ve trusted in the finished work of his crucifixion and resurrection to new life on my behalf.

Therefore, sin, evil, ungodliness is no longer my authority.

Jesus Christ is my authority.

Paul put it this way in chapter 1:13-14, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

So, as citizens of the kingdom of light, the light shines on the things in us that are still dark so that they can be killed.

Please hear me.

Paul is not naïve enough to think that these Colossian Christians aren’t fighting against being consumed with themselves.

Look at his list, sexual immorality (porneia), impurity, lust, inordinate craving, evil, greed.

He’s not finished.

In v. 8 he says, “Now you must lay aside all things like wrath, rage, wickedness, slander, obscene speech from your mouth.”

What is the common denominator in these things?

The common denominator is that they are the manifestation of a thriving self-consumption.

We lust because we want to please ourselves.

We are greedy and we covet because we are the center of our world.

We face sexual temptation because we want more than anything to have our appetites satisfied.

When he says that you’ve got to commit justifiable homicide on these things, he’s saying you’ve got to kill your disordered obsession with yourself.

Let’s be clear.

This is no joke.

It’s not a laughing matter to be ignored when God shines a light on our sin, especially if we say that we already follow Jesus.