Sermon Tone Analysis

CODDLING OR CONQUERING?

Here in Naples, life is pretty good, isn’t it?

In fact, in Florida, life’s pretty sweet!

No state income tax - all good in my books (pun definitely intended).

And in fact, in America, it really doesn’t get better than this anywhere in the world!

I was just thinking about this the other day.

If I drive 30 minutes into Fort Myers, I have hundreds of different lunch options I can choose from.

I can go to a variety of grocery stores to get random snacks, a plethora of clothing stores to get trendy outfits, and a number of barbershops to get a fresh cut to finish the day (this applies to me now that I get haircuts again).

All the amenities we have because of how prosperous our country has been are a great gift and a blessing.

However, because of how good we have things, it’s very easy for us to get casual about the way we live life… casual about the way we live life.

CONTEXT

I mean, just think about it for a moment.

Have any of us ever wondered where our next meal is gonna come from?

Have any of us ever feared for our safety because of widespread crime and corruption in the community?

Those are just things we don’t have a category for!

Our perspective is limited, and as a result, it can be hard for us to grasp how important some things are and how unimportant other things are.

JKJ

And again, it’s not sinful to enjoy and take advantage of the privileges we enjoy in our country.

God is the One who sovereignly has placed us here!

However, my concern is that the ease of our lives and the casualness that comes as a result of that ease, if we’re not careful, can easily bleed into our approach to the Christian life.

And if not college, then it’s chores!

I know the dishes aren’t gonna wash themselves, but I’ll get around to it when there’s time, we like to say.

But that time never seems to come, does it?

Paul had a similar, yet much greater, concern for the well-being of the Colossian church in that same arena.

And as we’ll find in over the next week or two, Paul’s concerned because he’s saying, “There is nothing casual and nothing lassies-faire about the Christian life.

This is war.”

The list goes on.

The moral of the story is this: Being casual about life is very easy and very tempting.

As we’ve already seen in Colossians, Paul’s been retraining the Colossians on how to think about God and how to live for God as a result of that retraining.

In chapter, 1, Paul reminded them of the wisdom of the true gospel, before contrasting that with the folly of any false gospel in chapter 2. Now, here in chapter 3, Paul is delivering an emphatic charge to the Colossians: “If you’ve really been raised with Christ, then go walk in Him!”

If you guys remember from a few weeks back, we saw in verses 1-2 that the believer must set their minds on the things of heaven and seek after the things of heaven.

Why? Paul tells us why in verses 3-4: because our lives are now hidden with Christ in God and when He is revealed, we will be revealed with Him in glory.

Sweet truths!

That brings us to the passage we’ll be in over the next two weeks.

Everything that Paul says here, here being verses 5-7, is to come as a result of the gospel truths from verses 1-4.

Essentially, we can understand it like this: “Believer!

You have been raised with Christ.

You will also be revealed with Him in glory.

Therefore, or because of this, go and put to death the deeds of the flesh.”

You see, Paul was well aware of the Colossians’ way of life when he wrote to them.

The Colossians may have lived in a smallish town, and their city may not have had all the glitz and glamour of the bigger cities like Ephesus or Laodicea, but it wasn’t like their quality of living was suffering by any means!

In every sense, life wasn’t that bad!

We don’t hear of any persecution going on.

We don’t hear of any class distinction.

We don’t even hear about any social or economic issues in the city.

Colossae was just your typical suburban town in Ancient Rome.

Sounds pretty much like our context, doesn’t it?

We’re gonna spend the next two weeks in this passage, but we’re gonna look it at from a few different angles.

Before we actually walk through the passage in context of the letter at large, I want to spend time fleshing out what Paul has to say in verse 5. We’ve been talking all semester about battling sin at the heart level, and this passage is as a good of a charge to and a guide on how to as any that we’ll find in Scripture.

Paul is essentially forcing the Colossians, and by extension all of us, to ask ourselves this question: “Am I coddling my sin or conquering my sin?”

How will we know what category we’re in?

Look at verse 5 and think to yourself, “Do I put to death the members of my earthly body?”Tonight,

I want us to take some time studying what it looks like to conquer sin the way God tells us to conquer sin.

So, here in , Paul presents 5 vices that must die in the Christian's life: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed.

Follow along as I read.

1) IMMORALITY MUST DIE ()

INTERPRETATION

Number 1: immorality must die… immorality must die.

Notice the beginning of verse 5:

“Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality...”

The NASB unfortunately doesn’t capture the force of Paul’s command here very well, but the ESV and the NIV communicate what Paul is saying perfectly: put to death all that is earthly in you.

The language Paul uses here is incredibly forceful.

This verb was used to communicate the idea of taking the life force out of something… Think of the idea as “causing something to cease leaving.”

It’s a really vivid verbal picture.

Understand it this way: since they were saved, the Colossians weren’t supposed to just scold their sin, or slap it on the wrist - they were to murder it.

An easy way to think of the list of sins to kill in verse 5 is like a Christian hit list.

All of these vices have to die, but they’re definitely not going down without a fight.

And what was the first sin Paul put at the top of the Colossians’ hit list?

Sexual immorality.

As we go down the looking glass of sins here on the hit list in , you’ll see that although each sin is different, they’re related in the sense that they go increasingly from external to internal.

So Paul starts with immorality as the external outworking of the internal problem of greed, which amounts to idolatry, as we’ll see by the end of our time tonight.

So with that in mind, let’s get back to immorality.

The word here, porneia, is a pretty ugly one.

This word group was used by the Gentiles in ancient Greece and ancient Rome to talk about prostitution.

The idea is that of “selling out” what has been reserved by God for marriage between one man, and one woman.

Every single kind of unlawful sexual activity is included in this word group.

What does that mean?

Anything done outside of marriage that is reserved for marriage falls in this category of porneia.

But why exactly does Paul start a list of sins on death row with immorality?

It seems like a statement of the obvious.

By default, most of us would intellectually agree that this is a pretty wicked thing.

The reason Paul puts it first is because Scripture has a lot to say about it!

IMPLICATION

Now, the Colossians at large came from a Phrygian background.

Why is that important?

Immorality was not just normal, it was a core part of religion.

The Phrygian people worshipped false gods in an ecstatic way - this stuff was incredibly mystical, incredibly demonic, and incredibly immoral.

This is the context out of which these believers in Colossae were saved!

Paul’s telling them here, “You all may have been immoral and defiled in the worship of false gods, but you must be pure and undefiled in the worship of the true God.”

But friends, we’d be foolish to think that things are much different in our day.

Many of us came from immoral backgrounds.

We may not have been frantically worshipping wooden statues, but we were frantically worshipping ourselves and each other, weren’t we?

Think back to when we were in chapter 2… What was Paul rebuking the false teacher in Colossae for?

Was it lawlessness?

Was it false worship?

No, it was legalism.

So our first thought might be, “If they were struggling with legalism, typically legalists don’t live immoral lives.

So Paul, why are you wasting time talking about immorality?” It’s because legalism and lawlessness are two extremes, but one core problem: both come as a result of self-righteousness.

The lawless “Christian” is self-righteous because he twists God’s Word to coexist with his out-of-control passions.

The legalistic “Christian” is self-righteous because he twists God’s Word to coexist with his out-of-control fears.