Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
We have been walking through the book of Colossians together.
I hope you have been enjoying it because I know that I have.
It has been wonderful to see the example thus far that the Colossians have provided for us.
They were a truly loving group of individuals that shared the love of Christ with one another and with those around them.
This love had even caught Paul’s attention which is why he wrote of it.
They came to an understanding of the gospel.
The good news.
The fact that Jesus had died for their sin that they might have a relationship with God.
This was more than an intellectual understanding for the Colossian Christians.
The Colossian Christians had evidence in their lives of good fruit coming through them.
This fruit was increasing and growing.
The Colossian Christians displayed action within their Christian walk.
Paul prayed for this to continue in them, that they would not stop sharing the love of Jesus with everyone around them.
That they would grow in their knowledge of God and give thanks for their new inheritance in God’s kingdom.
We saw in the hymn of praise that was written the cosmic realities of Jesus.
Jesus is the physical representation of God to be seen, to be touched.
Jesus has power over all things, seen and unseen.
Christ is the head of the church.
He is our head.
He must be the one to direct our paths.
Jesus through his death and resurrection.
Made a way for a change of relationship.
Through him our relationship with God has been changed.
We have been brought from enemies of God, into a relationship of love and friendship with our just and loving creator.
All of this brings us to our passage for today.
The ideas presented in Paul’s hymn of praise, he now applies specifically to the Colossian christian’s and in turn to you and me.
In our passage today, we see the restoration of relationship through past, present, and future realities.
Read
Pray
Past Relationship V.21
Paul begins in verse 21 speaking of the Colossians past relationship with God.
Alienated.
Paul writes that the Colossians were once alienated.
This word is a verb.
There is a physical action involved.
What does it mean to be alienated?
When we look into the Greek word here a little bit it has to meaning of being estranged.
Also a bigger somewhat confusing word.
to arouse especially mutual enmity or indifference in where there had formerly been love, affection, or friendliness
to make unfriendly, hostile, or indifferent especially where attachment formerly existed
a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment
This language implies a relationship that has really gone awry.
Sin takes God’s created harmony and breaks it all apart, it takes our relationship with God and lays it in wasted behind us.
Who has had a relationship of some sort that has gone sour?
It began and grew and there was connection, there was trust, there was love, there was affection.
Then something happened and you were alienated or estranged from one another.
The relationship was broken.
This is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden.
They walked and talked with God.
They had a loving relationship with God where there was friendship, affection, trust, and love.
But Satan brought doubt into that relationship.
Through that doubt they made a decision that broke the relationship with God.
They were alienated.
God’s justice had to come in to play because they broke the rule that they had been given.
This is the story of all humankind.
This is the story of you and me.
We were, each and everyone of us alienated to God.
This verb here is in what is known as the perfect tense.
These words are important.
Perfects are very hard to translate into English because in the Greek they show us three ideas.
They show an action which has happened in the past.
The action has come to a point of culmination.
The idea also stands as a completed and ongoing result.
If we say - he caught the ball - this covers all three of those but doesn’t fully describe the perfect tense.
It is as if we were to say - He is continuing to catch the same ball for all time.
Applying this here to our text, Paul is saying you, who once were alienated.
He is speaking to the Colossians of their former relationship with God.
Without some sort of intervention, they would have continued in this hostile relationship with God.
There would have been withdrawn and separated from God, who wanted to have a loving relationship with them forever without a change.
This is the same for us today.
Without a change, without the Holy Spirit working in our hearts, bringing us to Jesus, we would continue with the ongoing result of unfriendliness and hostility to God.
Hostile in mind.
This is further described by Paul in the verse as being hostile in mind.
The word hostile here carries the meaning of God have literally been humankind’s enemy.
The human mind is so set against God that without intervention from God, it seethes with hatred.
Think of people that you know of or have heard of that seem to have a true hatred of God.
It doesn’t just stop there though either.
Evil deeds.
The hostility goes further than only the mind.
It goes to evil deeds.
The hostility of the mind is shown because of the evil deeds.
These deeds are such that are morally or socially worthless.
Chronic sinful behavior twists the mind so that it becomes even more at enmity with God, and the twisted mind hurtles us into ever greater depravity.
The depraved mind then commends evil behavior as good or natural or as an alternative lifestyle.
It produces and condones fear and suspicion of others and an urge to hurt and destroy them
The human disposition is anti-God and disposed to evil.
Paul is creating for us a contrast for the reconciliation, the change in relationship that took place in the believers lives.
It is not natural for us to choose a different action.
God is the one that takes the initiative to change our relationship with Him.
The need for the restoration of relationship is shown through the Colossians past realities.
We are no different from the Colossians.
Those who did not grow up in the church, how was your life before Christ?
Those who have grown up and been influenced by Jesus from an early age, think about small children.
When do they begin to sin?
It doesn’t take long.
The need for reconciliation is great!
The need for restoration of our relationships is shown from our past realities just as much as it was for the Colossasians.
Present Relationship V.22
There is a direct interjection here that begins verse 22 that isn’t translated in the ESV which I read.
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