Sermon Tone Analysis

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*SERMON TYPE: EXPOSITORY                                              *Chad Williams Box 147
Expository Preaching
*Title:*     Is Christ Your Life?
* *
*Text:*     Colossians 3:1-4
 
*Sub~/Comp:     *The reality of the gospel implies obedient response to commands which render Christ as supreme in the life of the believer.
*Proposition:      *We must make Christ first place in our lives.
*Speaker’s Purpose:*      I want to challenge my listeners to make Jesus Chris first place in their lives because it is the only appropriate response to believers’ position in Christ.
*Interrogative:*      Why is it so important to make Christ first place in our lives?
*Transition:*     There are *three foundations reasons* in our passage that explain why making Christ first place in our lives is so important.
* *
* *
*INTRODUCTION*
* *
*            *I decided about a year ago that I would spend my last year at college at home with my parents.
Because our house is only about a mile from campus, it seemed that it would not only be a great opportunity to spend extra time with my parents, but also a great convenience in many ways – and indeed it was both.
However, as you know, this has been no average winter, weather-wise.
Now, when I decided to live at home, I realized that I would now have a short drive into school instead of a short walk (or run) from the guys’ dorm.
Yet, I did not initially account for winter weather and a buried vehicle affecting my morning routine.
Because of this, I found myself on more than one occasion, running out the door several minutes before first hour class, only to find my car buried in a either a heap of snow or covered in ice.
Not having adequate time to clear my windshield, I found myself scraping a hole, just big enough to see what was right ahead of me.
Obviously, this was not the safest way to get to school in the morning.
Without a clear focus or perspective, I was at best, hoping and praying to make it to my destination on time /and alive!/
How often is our focus not clearly established in life?
If we’re honest, we often don’t even realize when our focus is off, /because /it is off.
We have a very clear and established priority in life, but this often becomes clouded by all of the ideas, concerns, and pursuits of the world we live in.
Like my windshield in the morning, we sometimes fail to affectively “clear” these things away, revealing to us what is the primary focus.
The book of Colossians confronts the believer who is not rightly focused on Jesus Christ.
Paul, though not the founding pastor of the church of Colossae, had heard that these believers had some misunderstandings regarding Christ and counters false teaching with a message that dominates the entire epistle – the message we see spelled out in 1:18– that /Jesus Christ is preeminent!/
Throughout the entire book, Paul addresses two primary spheres in which we are to demonstrate the immeasurable superiority of Christ.
In the first half of the book, he explains how we must /Meditate on the Preeminence of Christ in our Minds/, while in the latter half he demonstrates how we must /Model the Preeminence of Christ in our Lives./
Yet, as he makes the shift between the two sections, we find the first few verses of chapter three as a pivotal bridge in the shift of flow.
This shift was initiated in 2:6 when Paul explains how the gospel relates to Christian living.
He says, /“As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.” /Paul is saying that the same way you were saved – by faith alone, through grace alone, offering nothing of value to God to gain His approval, but only the precious blood of Christ…is the same way you now live your life – by faith alone through grace alone!
In 3:1-4, Paul shows us what the gospel really means to us – that the message of the gospel does not stop at evangelization, but merely starts there!
He shows us that we do not just become Christians through making a decision and then go about our normal lives – but this radical belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ /changes us /forever.
Paul gives us the implications – or expectations of our salvation we have received.
In this, Paul demonstrates the true focus of believers by sharing the truth that *believers must make Christ first place in their lives.
*Friends, *Jesus Christ must be the dominating focus of our lives.*
* *
/Arg: /But really, why should we make Christ preeminent in our lives right now, while on this earth?
Can we not wait until heaven?
This world has so many things that we love, that we cling to.
Making Christ first place would mean that He would take over my life and possibly change everything; so, *why* is it so important to make Christ first place right now?
 
*Trans:*/ /Well, our passage today gives *three foundational reasons* why making Christ first place in our lives is so important for believers.
*I.
**Because it is our natural obligation.
(3:1-2)*
 
/Exp:  /As mentioned, Colossians 2:6 in many ways foreshadows 3:1-4 which becomes an appropriate segue from the doctrinal, focusing on the mindset to the practical, focusing on lifestyle.
2:6 explains how believers are to live their Christian lives the same way it all began.
In 3:1-4, Paul explains how a life committed to Christ is merely living in light of the reality of one’s position in Christ.
/ /
/Exp: “If”/ in v. 1/ /does not imply any amount of uncertainty – that is, unless you are unsaved.
Paul is talking to believers whom he already stated in 2:12 had been raised.
All throughout this epistle, particularly in chapter 2, Paul utilizes the language of death, life, dying, and being raised – all being together and joint with Jesus Christ.
·         In 2:12, Paul mentions that they have been buried with Christ in baptism.
·         He continues with this thought saying that they have, likewise, been raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
·         The following verse (v.
13) mentions how they as believers were once dead in their trespasses, but that God has sense made them alive together /with/ Him.
·         In his argument against the legalistic commands being imposed upon the church by heretical teachers, Paul proclaims in 2:20 that because they have /died/ with Christ, they do not need to subject themselves to such regulations.
/Exp: /This idea that Paul gives in 3:1 of being “raised with Christ” is reminiscent of the believer’s salvation, when he was quickened or made alive to a new way of living (Eph.
2).
This new “resurrected life” gives the believer a union with Christ which the apostle goes to great lengths to describe here in this passage.
/ /
/Ill: /We just had resurrection Sunday a week ago, three days after Good Friday, where we attended our extension ministries and gloried in the resurrection of our Savior.
We must remember, however, that Christ did not die, be buried, and rise alone – but because of our oneness in Him, we share in those actions.
/Exp: /Paul is saying that /since /or /because /you have been raised – or /co-resurrected/ up with Jesus Christ, we should naturally live a certain way.
He demonstrates that salvation is more than escaping hell fire and having a place in heaven.
Like so many authors of scripture, Paul shows how the believer cannot simply lack biblical behavior.
The genuine believer who makes Jesus Christ Lord of his life will naturally act a certain way as described in 3:1-2.
This reality of being risen with Christ, along with what is to come in v. 3, is the grounds for the command Paul is about to give.
/Exp: /Thus, Paul’s argument throughout the book finds its climax here in these verses.
After clearly displaying the preeminence of Christ throughout the first chapter and what it means regarding their relationship to Christ, Paul now explains how these realities practically affect the believer in his everyday lifestyle.
/Trans: /In doing so, the apostle gives *two commands* that should naturally flow out of the life that has been “raised with Christ.”
*A.
**Seek after the things of Christ.
(v.
1)*
 
/Exp: /We are to seek after things “above” as the text says.
The reference to these “higher” things is explained in the text to exist “where Christ is seated on the right hand of God.” Now, while the idea of Christ being on the right hand of God should be seen as an idiom referring to a position of high status, we know that Christ is literally in Heaven.
We further know from this verse that we have been “raised with Christ.”
This verse, then, implies something about the true home of believers.
/App: /As Paul put it in Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven.”
Peter expressed that as believers, we are strangers and pilgrims in a foreign land.
We must remember, friends, that in this world and on this earth, we are only travelers on a journey.
“This world is not our home…we’re but passing through.”
/Ill ~/ App: /We should be longing for our true home as you do after a long road trip or after spending several weeks in a foreign country, missing your homeland.
After traveling for days, sleeping in motel rooms, we all long for our own bed and our own pillow to sleep on.
College students so often yearn for their own home, their home church, their own family.
Yet, friends, are we longing for the things above?
Are we longing for heaven?
Do we yearn for those things of an eternal realm, those things we cannot always see or touch, yet those which have true value in the life to come?
 
*B.
**Meditate upon the things of Christ.
(v.
2)*
 
/Exp: /However, we are also commanded in v. 2 to set our affection on things above, not on the earth.
This furthers the thoughts of v. 1.
You see, not only must we be actively longing for Christ, we must also have our minds set on these things.
/Exp: /What are affections?
The word used literally means to “set your mind” on something.
It could be explained as someone’s disposition or innermost desire.
Generally speaking, these are what you think about.
In reality, however, they are what you truly are.
Proverbs 4:23 warns us to literally be a “watchman” over our hearts, for out of our hears proceed our living.
Without exception, the inward reality of our hearts always becomes outwardly visible in our lifestyle.
This is why Paul spends half of the book focusing on the Colossians’ thinking.
/App: /The entire message of Colossians centers on this idea.
The Colossians had become familiar with a philosophy that did not ignore Jesus Christ, but merely dethroned Him as supreme Lord in their minds.
However, when Christ is dethroned in our hearts – when He is no longer preeminent (though he may even be prominent), it will inevitably affect our living!
We must set our minds and hearts on the things of Christ.
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