What do Christians Wear?

John Miller

Follow Series • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

Colossians 3:1–17

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Introduction/Recap

We’re in part four of a series on following Jesus, and so a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far. A couple of things that are relevant to all of us, All of Jesus’s early followers were both unbelievers and sinners. All of them. So his invitation to follow was for unbelievers and sinners, and it wasn’t until the end, after he died, that people who saw him, touched him, came to full blown faith. So, if you have questions or doubts or whatever, you’re still invited to follow him. It doesn’t matter how much you know or how little you know, and it doesn’t matter where you are in your faith, Jesus’s invitation is the same: follow.

And last we answered this question: if we’re following Jesus, where are we going? And we said the the bottom line as you read matthew mark luke and john and ask this quesiton is: Faith in God that overwhelms fear. For a lot of us this is strange because we usually think that Jesus came to lead us to heaven. And he talks about hat a little bit, but it wasn’t the brunt of his message. His message was also not be a better person. THere’s some of that, and following Jesus will make you a better person, but that wasn’t his primary message either. But the primary driving force of his message was that Jesus wants you and me to have faith in God that is so big, confidence in God that is so great, that when in the midsts of circumstances that are so terrifying that we would have such great confidence in God that we would be able to obey the thing he said most which was fear not, fear not, fear not. So, that was last week.

So today, we’re going to answer another question. And the question is this: What should Jesus followers wear? And I know you’ve been dying to know this. What should Jesus followers wear? And this is important because as you know, whenever someone follows someone or something you can tell what or who they’re following by what they wear. So, quick quiz, I’m gonna show you some pictures and you tell me who these people are following

Patriots Fan

Sports fans aren’t the only groups that let people know who they’re following by what they wear? Religious groups do this too:

Muslim - follows the prophet Muhammad

Buddhist -

Sean Corbitt - Pastafarian - Pastafarianism is part of the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which says the world was created 5,000 years ago by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,”

So, what should Jesus followers wear? If you know who someone is following by what they wear, what should Jesus followers wear?

We have a few options

There’s this (Jesus saves guy)

Now, on the far other end of the spectrum, there’s this. God hates you. Well, that just make me really want to run in your direction and be like you, right?

Now here’s something you may not believe, in the new testament, the Apostle Paul tell us what Jesus followers are supposed to wear. Now, that should make you nervous, because Paul was writing over 2,000 years ago before the invention of buttons, or zippers. But he tells us what to wear. Now the apostle paul, and you may not know this, came into the world as Saul of Tarsus, and Saul of Tarsus hated Christians. And these are his words, in the NT there’s m m l j,4 stories of jesus, then there’s the book of Acts and it’s the story of what happened after Jesus left, and here’s where we discover the apostle paul, a historical figure, and he says, in Acts chapter 26, these are his words, he was a christian hunter. He hunted Christians down to put them in jail and to see them put to death. He hated christians and was going to put christianity out of business. And while he was hunting christians he became a christian. then he started planting churches and then wrote letters to these churches to kind of help coach them along. so everything paul learned about the teachings of Jesus he learned not form jesus, bec. he wasn’t one of jesus followers when jesus was alive, he actually was a follower of the people who follower Jesus. So he knew Peter, he knew John, he knew Luke, he traveled all over the world with Luke, he knew all of these guys so he got these teachings of Jesus from the people who got the teachings from Jesus. So as he begin to flesh out the teachings of Jesus, he took what Jesus taught and made it more practical for gentile christians, like most of us who didn’t have a jewish background, and the primary teaching of Jesus that Paul leveraged over and over was something Jesus said right at the very end of his time on the planet.

And you might know this story, but at the end, Judas had already betrayed Jesus, Jesus is close to being arrested, he gathers his closest follower together, the apostles, and he tells them, he says look “I’m now about to leave, and where I’m going” now imagine you’ve been following Jesus for three years , he says I’m about to leave, and where I’m going you can’t follow.” And that was like “what, we’ve been following you, that’s the thing you’ve said over and over again, and now you’re saying we can’t follow you, where are you going, we want to go too” and they kind of get stuck on this, and then he focusses in on the main thing that he’s been getting at in all of his teaching. He says

“A new command I give you: Love one another.” To which we’d say, that’s not new, I’ve heard that my whole life, and Jesus would say “I know you’ve heard that your whole life, I’m not finished yet. And then he ups the bar: “As I have loved you, you must love one another.” In other words, if you forget everything else I say, you are to love one another, and you are to love each other, not the way you love each other, not the way you think you should love one another, but the way that I have loved you, you’re to take your que from me. And he would say maybe “Matthew, you remember that day we walked up and you were collecting taxes, and Peter was ready to throw hands, but before he could throw hands, I said Matthew, before you’ve changed a thing, before you’ve changed what you believe about me, before you’r even sure what I’m about, Matthew, would you follow me? Would you join me? Remember that Matthew? yeah. Well, I want you to love these guys like I loved you that day. Nathaniel, remember what you said that day when you first heard of me? Nathaniel’s like “yeah… kind of Jesus.” Remember, you said “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? You dissed my family, my town, my relatives. Remember that, Nathaniel? Yeah.... Remember what I said? I said Nathaniel, follow me. Remember when I preached that sermon and said eat my flesh and drink my blood and everyone got freaked out and left, and you guys were about to leave too, remember how I responded when you guys were about to abandon me? I chose not to abandon you. Yeah… we remember that. Okay, so when I say I want you to love as I’ve loved, that’s the kind of love I’m talking about. And then he said this, and this is the part that drove so much of what the Apostle Paul would teach to the churches he planted: By this, by this kind of love, everyone will know that you are my disciples, and disciple is a follower, this is where we get the word, by this kind of unusual love everyone will know you’re my disciple if you love one another. In other words, this is the mark, this is what people will see, this is how people will distinguish you, this is the thing that people will look at and see and feel and experience and go “Ohhhh, he or she must be a Jesus follower.” This is huge. This is the thing that Jesus wants to mark us as his followers. And Simon Peter responds “Simon Peter asked him” Lord, where are you going?” What? Yeah, you know that thing you said about ten minutes ago about you going somehwhere, yeah, where are you going? ANd Jesus is thinking, “okay, i’ve just given you the main thing” yeah we know, but where are you going? See, they’re just like us “yeah, yeah, yeah, love one another, love one another, but there’s this person at school that’s really getting on my nerves, like, or there’s this other thing that I’m dealign with” And again, this whole love oneanother thing we’ve heard it so many times, and Jesus is like, wait, this isn’t just a throw away, this isn’t areligous line, I’m telling you, I want this to mark you. And here’s this problem: In Christianity, and all other religions, the gravitational pull is always away from treating people well and towards some rule or ritual, or The gravitational pull of religion is toward rule keeping rather than relationship building. All religions are like this. And why? Because I am in controll of rule keeping. I would rather God love me because I’ve done this, and done this, and didn’t do this, and when I did this I always apologized, and when I did this I always asked for forgiveness, and when I did this I felt really badly about it, and when I did it again, I still felt really really bad about it, and I decided I think I’m just gonna keep doing it and feeling bad about it and ask God to forgive me, so i kind of create this religion where I can make things right with God so me and God are cool, but I can hate you. And it’s okay to hate you as long as I love God. And Jesus is like, I want to make sure this doesn’t go there. Because the gravitational pull of all religion is towards some ritual, and rituals are good, or some tradition, and tradition is good, or some sort of rule, and rules are good, all of these things that replace the priority of treating people well, and it gets so bad, and for so many people this is their story. So many people have been mistreated or looked down on or condemned or judged in the name of religion.

Some people have been mistreated in the name of Jesus. I mean, that could be some of y’all’s story. Maybe you’ve been mistreated in this church in the name of Jesus. Someone said to you “You can’t, or you can’t, or we don’t want you, or whatever,” and why not? Because the church says, or our church says, or Jesus taught, and so in essence you’ve been rejected by church people in the name of Jesus who died for you. Or, maybe you’ve been that one that’s done the mistreating. You’ve said, well jesus says this, or i think this, or i believe this, and so you’ve in the name of jesus or in the name of religion have mistreated someone else, or judged someone else, or condemned someone else. And I don’t know, I just don’t think that Jesus is fond of his follower who mistreat people who he died for. I mean, that’s just weird. And Jesus knew if I just leave these guys where it is, this is going to become one of those religions where they say “let’s just teach what Jesus taught, and let’s just try to do what Jesus did, and I don’t have to treat you nice, I just have to figure out a way or the formula to make Jesus happy with me. To which Jesus says, “let me just make things really clear,”The thing, the thing, that is going to distinguish you, the thing that is going to be a stamp on your behavior and a stamp on your lifestyle is the way you love other people, and I’m not asking you the way they deserve to be loved, I’m asking you to love them the way that I have loved you. And don’t you dare try to reduce this down to some rule-keeping tradition “well this is something I do on sunday afternoon, and i read my bible and pray,” don’t you ever try to replace the way you love people with some kind of ritual or tradition because that’s not the thing that I want to distinguish you as one of my followers.

In Christianity, it’s so easy to confuse discipline with discipleship. and again, discipleship is just a fancy word for for follow. But it’s so easy to confuse these two. As long as I have my disciplines, my prayer time, I’m going to church, I’m reading my bible, and I’m doing, and I’m not doing, and I’m so disciplined, we think that that somehow substitutes for actually following Jesus in how it relates to how we treat other people. Now, I hope you pray, I hope you keep coming to church, I hope you keep reading your bible or start reading your bible, but not so you can be more religious, not so you can keep a record of how spiritual you are, but so you can follow Jesus deeper and love others, love each other, in a deeper more authentic way. But, when you or if you focus on just doing these things, if we focus on just being religious and following rules, then the gravitational pull of that approach pulls us away from developing and maintaining relationships. Why? Because it’s much easier to check these things off of our list that it is to love people who are hard to love. Jesus said I’m not buying it, and this is the thing I want to be different about you.

Then, 22 years goes by, the Apostle Paul is now a Christian, he’s traveling all around the Mediterranean planting churches, preaching in synagogues, saying Jesus has come, he’s the messiah, and he’s done something incredible, and as he’s preaching one afternoon, the people riot, they pick him up and throw him out, and then 8 or 9 people sneak out at night and say we want to hear more about this, so he takes these people both Jewish and gentile, and then he’d start a church. And then he would get on a ship that none of us would even dream of getting on, and he goes across the mediterranean see, and he does this over and over and over, and he begins to write these letters so that he can coach or train the people in the churches he’s started, and he sees that they begin to do the very thing that all religious people do. They begin to come up with some formula or some tradition of here’s what we do and here’s what we don’t, and they begin to use their religion to mistreat people. And in so many of his letters it’s all about “okay, lets go back to the basics.” And instead of just saying love one another, he took this idea of loving one another and he made it specific, and he wrote down these things that characterize how we should love one another. So, in the book of Colossians, which is just a letter that he wrote to the church in Colossi. In this letter he actually talks about how to love, but specifically he relates it to what Jesus followers are supposed to wear.

So Colossians chapter 3:12, Therefore, as God’s chosen people, now he’s writing to Christians, Holy and dearly beloved, Clothe yourselves, there it is, he want to tell you what to wear, I want to tell you how to clothe yourself, and then he gives us very specific things, he creates this imagery that somehow Jesus followers are supposed to mentally or maybe emotionally put these things on, he says “Clothe yourselves with compassion, now, in the original greek, there are two terms that are translated into the english word compassion, you know the phrase we use in english, love somebody with all your heart, in greek culture they didn’t say love with all your heart, they literally said “love with all your bowels,” or your guts. So, this comes together and what Paul means is your supposed to clothe yourself with this sense of what all of us have experienced at some point, this sense of uhhhhh, you know, when your heart breaks, or you’re feeling something compassionate, you don’t feel it in your chest or in your head, you feel it right in your gut. He’s saying I want you to clothe yourself with a sense of compassion. And here’s why this is important: because, this is different than going up to someone and saying “why are you so annoying?” Or going up to someone else and saying “why is so and so so annoying?” Compassion is different than reaction. When someone messes up, or when someone does something that disappoints you, or does something that you might think is immature, instead of reacting in a way that just escalates the situation or whatever is going on, the initial response that we should have is compassion, that we give off the idea that we uhhhh, that we feel what other people are going through, that we feel what they’re experiencing, instead of reacting to what we see outwardly in others and in one another, we try to understand and feel from the perspective of each other. That’s compassion. That what we’re supposed to put on. Paul wants us to wear compassion.

Then he adds another, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, do you know what kindness is? kindness is loaning your strength to someone else. Someone needs something to be done for them, so you do it for them, you extend yourself, you loan your strength to them. He’s saying I want you to put on this new habit this new way of life where you loan people what they need. When you say to someone, “Oh, you’re so kind.” Why? Because they did something for you they didnt have to do, something they didn’t owe you, and they loaned you their ability or their strength or their capacity. Then he said I want you to put on humility. Now, we all say or think we know what humility is, but remember, these are all things that are in relation to other people, so humility in relationship to other people is really simple. Humility is seeing myself for as I really am in relation to other people and to God. Humility is viewing myself accurately, it’s viewing yourself accurately as you are in relationship to other people and to God. And viewing myself accurately in relation to other people is that I am nothing more than citizen of humanity just like all of you. We’re all born in this world without any control of who we’re born to or what we’re born into, and most of us have no control over that or over when we die. But there is an equality among human being in that the thing that make you special and the thing that make me special is that we are loved by God the father. Humility allows me to approach you as a peer no matter who you are or what you do or how young you are, or what you have or don’t have. There is a sense that it doesn’t matter what I’ve accomplished or haven’t accomplished but that we are peers in this world that live under the canopy of God’s love.

And what the Apostle Paul wants us to understand is that when people interact with us, he wants us to come across as people who understand that we’re special not because of what were capable of, and we’re special regardless of what we’ve accomplished or have not accomplished, because God who has invited all of us to call him heavenly father, loves you unconditionally. This is what makes us special, this is who we are, and knowing who we are in relation to God and to others is true humility.

And he goes on, gentleness. You know what gentleness is? Gentleness is the decision to respond to you in light of your strengths and weaknesses instead of responding to you out of my strength. Gentleness is deciding to come to your level of strength or weakness as we interact instead of coming to you out of my strength. It’s the difference between picking up a contact on the tip of my finger and a 10 pound dumb-bell with my hand. I’m capable of both, but I’m going to adjust my approach and my strength according to the object of my strength. What this means is that gentle people don’t come into a conversation and maintain the relationship from a position of who they are and what they’ve done and how much they know the bible or how much they’ve accomplished, or their background, they gear down to the level of the person. They aren’t condescending. It has everyting to do with communicating that my relationship with you is more important than you being impressed by me. My relationship wiht you is more important than you knowing my full capacity and my full strength. And I’m goign to adjust for your benefit.

And then he says patience. Patience is basically decidng to go the speed of another person. It’s gearing down and determing to move at someone elses speed instead of mine. This is what the apostle paul tells us to put on every morning. This is what I want you to be know for, this is what I want you to be known by. And then he summarizes with a few points he says “bear with oneanother or each other, and forgive one another, if any of you has a grievance against someone, and then he strings it back to what Jesus was saying at the very beginnings, he says “forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Not as you’ve been forgiven by someone else. Not as you want to forgive someone else. Not with a condition. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. I want you to be compassionate as God was compassionate with you. I want you to be gentle as God was gentle with you, I want you to be patient as God was patient with you. Do you know how many times you said God, I’ll never do that again, and then you did it again? Do you know hwo many times you made promises to God and broke those promises, yet each time God remained patient with you? I want you to extend and I want you to be known for extending that same kind of patience to the people around you. And then he writes,

and over all (like and overcoat or a vest) over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity, which is this fancy way of saying that this is the over all idea, this is the canapy under which all of these things hang Love is the summary word or idea of all that I want you to put on every day.

So, here’s the whole list. Now, let me just be transparent for a second, when I look at that, I think, there’s no way. There’s no way I can do all of this. By the time I’ve gotten out of bed and brushed my teeth compassion is gone, patience is definitely gone, there’s no way. And this is the kind of thing you’d expect to hear at church. You expect a message on kindness, compassion, love. But can we do this??

The thing that allows me to to lean into this and take it seriously is the guy who said it. Paul did more and accomplished more in few short years than most of us or any of us will accomplish in a lifetime. 2,000 years from now, no, 100 years from now, no one is going to know who you are or that you even existed. You might accomplish a lot. You might be the next big thing, but I guarantee you, no one will remember most of us in 100 years and no one will be quoting any of us in 100 years. But the guy who wrote this suggestion is the guy who traveled across the mediterannean world, got beat up, stoned, ship wrecked, snake bit, it goes on and on and on, and he planted churches all around the ancient world to reach gentile people like most of us, the reason we;re here today is not because of what he thought or what he wrote but because of what he did. So, the point is, it’s possible. It’s not natural, it’s not gonna happen overnight, and if Paul were with us he’d say, oh yeah, I’m with you. I have to remind myself every single morning, Paul, put on cmpassion, put on kindness, put on gentleness, put on these things because Jesus told us I want peopl to identify you as my follower not beause of what you do on sunday for an hour, but for how you treat other people.

Now the problem with a sermon like this, and maybe any sermon tbh, is that in about 30 minutes all of this has left our minds. Maybe you rememember one thing, but by tuesday morning, it’s gone. But, this is something we need to get. I mean, I need this. I need this reminder every single day, multiple times a day, so, I’ve stolen this little acronym from one of my favorite pastors, and I hope it will help us to remember these things. Now, this is really lame, so let’s get that out of the way, just go ahead and say, this is really lame. John, this is really lame. Now, have any of you ever seen a chick-flick? don’t raise your hand, but if you’ve seen a chick-flick, have you ever seen one that’s rated pg? almost none of them are rated pg, right? Just say that with me, Chick-Flick (chickflick), PG (pg). Okay, that’s it, here’s the new list

CHK FLK PG

It’s lame, But I want you to remeber this. Because none of this comes natural and we have to remind ourselves to put these things on. To put on is an active thing. We make the choice. The idea is this, if you have a quiet time in the mornign which I wish you would, or even if you’re getting ready for school or on your way to school, and think, now God today, I want to put on compassion. I don’t want to just react to everyone around me who’s getting on my nerves I want to pause and sense, and humility, I want to declare that it doesn’t matter if I’m better than some or not as good as others, because in your eyes we’re all your children, and God, I don’t want to leverage my strength I want to be gentle wiht others, and God I want to be kind, bring to my mind those opportunities I have to loan my strength to other people and be kind, and God help me to forgive, not because they deserve it but because God you’ve forgiven me and I didn’t deserve it. God, help me to be patient, to move at other peoples pace, and God teach me to be gentle, God I want to put this on. Wouldn;t this be great? CHK FLK PG. And here’s the thing: this doesn’t come natural. ANd the reason I knoew this is because at the end, Jesus said okay guys, i’m gonna tell you something new. If it was natural he would have had to tell them. He said here’s what I want you to do, I want you to love , not how people deserve to be loved but how I have loved you, and that’s not natural, that’s why this is a new command, I want this thing to distinguish you from those around you, and of course that’s not natural. That’s why Paul said clothe yourselves, it’s a command, we have to put it on. RIght before this, Paul writes about all the things that we’re supposed to have taken off: things like, llust, impurit, evil, greed, etc. And so, we’ve taken those off, but now we’re naked. We’re just naked christians walking around causing damage because we haven’t clothed ourselves. We need to put these things on everyday, and we need to filter our realities through them. We need to say, God my tendency is impatience, my tendency is to act out of my strength, my tendency is to be prideful, but God, help me to filter everything, all of my tendencies through the new clothes you’ve given me.

Because other than that, what are our options? These are our options:

and the thing about these is that they’re trying to make some kind of point. But Jesus didn’t show up to make a point, he came to make a difference. And the difference is made in our schools, the difference is made in our families, the difference is made in our church when we put on comappsion, humility, kindness, gentleness love, and all of these things, the difference is made when we love people the way our heavenly father loves us through Christ his son. But so many of us have the tradition down, we have the ritual down, the pattern, we know the rules and we can fake it really really well, but when it comes down to it, we’re undressed or partly dressed Christians, and our relationships, our encounters and interactions with each other with people outside of here are affected because we aren’t loving as Jesus loved us. So, let’s all of us, tomorrow, clothe ourselves with CHK FLK PG. And what you’ll notice is that this makes a difference. A difference will be made, a change will come as we clothe ourselves in love.