7/25/21 Colossians 3:1-11 “Always Looking Up!”

7/25/21 Colossians 3:1-11 “Always Looking Up!”

7/25/21   Colossians 3:1-11      “Always Looking Up!”

It is really good to be back here today.  We were here about a year ago and we should be back again in a couple of weeks.  This has been quite a year with all the disease, crooked politics and our church abandoning Jesus Christ.  Personally, Sharon and I have both had the COVID and are doing quite well again.  I think that it is time that we all settle down again and get back to work or whatever we were doing.  I have been preaching almost non-stop in my retirement.  I have noticed that some people don’t want to hear the Word of God and other churches are very happy to hear it again.  I guess it goes to show that you cannot please everyone.  And this is ok.  When I go out and preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, I will find people who will not like me.  What I have to be so careful of in all of this is to try to remember that none of what I say and do has anything to do with me.  It is all about Jesus and Jesus Christ alone.  What I do and say as I am working in this ministry has nothing to do with me.  I am only the messenger.  And when you see that I am taking too much credit or anything else, then remind me that I am only the messenger.  It is only through Jesus Christ that I am able to do anything.  Paul, who gave all credit to Jesus, is talking to the Colossians today in a letter he wrote from prison.  The experts tell us that he had never been to this church but he had a great love for them.  He is trying to tell them of ways that they can stay anchored in Christ.  Let’s see if we can apply these to ourselves.

I would like to begin with a story from Samuel Stone.  This is a Native American story of a farmer who found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a farm chicken.  Then the eaglet hatched and was raised as a chicken.  It did all the things that chickens did like scratch for food, cluck, and when it tried to fly it would only go a few feet in the air because that is all the farther chickens are supposed to go.

Years went by and the eagle had become an old chicken.  One day he looked up in the sky and saw and great bird soaring far above.  The bird would catch the wind currents and it just seemed to float in the air.  The old eagle said to his neighbor, “What a beautiful bird!  What is it?”  “That’s an eagle – the chief of the birds,” the neighbor clucked. “But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.” So, the eagle never gave it a second thought and it died thinking it was a farm chicken.  For the most part most Christians will die just like this eagle because they have not or will not practice the things that Jesus wants us to do to make us great.  Most people will not even do enough so that they can have eternal life.

I would like you to notice three things that Paul is trying tell us today.  Paul is telling his readers to look up to Christ.  Look up!  Keep your eyes focused on things above and not on the things of this world.  The Colossians were being bombarded by people trying to teach them false doctrine.  They were being told that they had to follow some special rules like worshiping angels.  There were things happening to them that were pulling them away from Christ.

So, Paul tells them to look up to Christ.  He wants their minds set to things above and when this happens then they will be hidden in Christ.  This means that they will have the protection of Christ in their lives.  It is kind of like when the mother hen spreads out her wings to protect her chicks.  This is the protection that Jesus has to offer all people.  When things are not going very well in my life, I find nothing more comforting than resting in the arms of Jesus Christ.

There is also a huge problem in our modern society with this concept.  We do not like to look up to God when there is still something that we can do on our own.  Maybe we can spray this crop or rotate that crop to get better yields.  Maybe we can buy this or save for that so that our lives will be better.  I will be the first to tell you that your lives cannot be better ever unless you make your heart better with Christ.  We read many times in the Bible where our God is a jealous God.  This is exactly right on the money.  God does not want to be second or third or fourth in your life.  He demands that He be first.  Now maybe the thing that you want to do is the right thing to do but you will not know unless you first go and talk to Jesus.

Talk to Jesus!  Pray!  That is part of what Paul is trying to tell us today.  I have talked about this many times.  We are called to pray without ceasing.  Recently I was reading an article on prayer and I don’t remember where I saw this but it is not my original idea.  When we pray together in a setting like church or in public we usually say ‘amen.’  There is nothing wrong with this.  However, when you pray your own private prayers, you never have to say amen.  Amen means that you are done.  You are hanging up the phone.  You are turning off your email.  It is the end of the conversation.  This is ok with public prayer.  But with private prayer you have no reason to shut it off.  Why not leave the line of communication open so that you can talk to God and He to you on only a second’s notice?  Why not just keep the conversation going all the time?  You never have to hang up on Jesus.  Try this in your personal time with Jesus.  Don’t say amen.

Before I leave this section of looking up to God, I want to tell you about what I did one time when I was in seminary in Kansas City.  I had the honor of giving the sermon for chapel one day and I praise the Lord that He was with me during this whole thing.  I always like to end my sermon with a prayer and we all bow our heads and pray.  Part of the message that day was being filled with the Holy Spirit.  I told them that we were going to pray but instead of bowing their heads and looking at their shoe tops, I wanted them to look up to the Lord and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  I wanted them to stand up and raise their heads up with eyes either open or shut and raise their arms so that they were in the position to be filled.  It was a great experience.  We can try it in a few minutes.

The next thing that Paul is telling his audience is to look out for what you do.  They must have really lived in a society that was vile and evil.  Look at all the things that Paul is telling them to beware of.  Get rid of your sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed which are idolatry.  But he wasn’t done yet.  They also were told to get rid of their anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language.  They were told not to lie to each other.  I want to make one thing perfectly clear here.  This is not a list of rules for us to follow.  These are things that if you stay away from, you will have a better life.  It is your choice.  Do you want a better life or not?

I’m sure glad that we don’t have these problems today.  After all, is there sexual immorality in our country?  Maybe a better question to be asked would be, ‘Is there any morality at all left in this country?’  Immorality is running rampant and it is ruining our country and church.  It’s so bad that boys think they can be girls and girls think they can be boys.  The same thing can be said of impurity.  It is hard to find anything or anyone who is pure anymore.  The same can be said of lust, evil desires and greed.  If the dollar bill isn’t god in this country, then I don’t know what is.  As a country, we are probably far worse than anything that Paul could even imagine.  Evil is everywhere we look today.

Not only is evil everywhere, but we also want to blame everything and everyone else for this happening.  Today it is all the Democrats fault.  A couple of years ago it was all the Republicans fault.  The school system is at fault for all the delinquent kids we have.  If not them, then TV is to blame.  We blame the drug cartels for our drug addicted society.  No matter what the problem, we have to find someone to blame.  And also, no matter what the problem, we will never assume responsibility for any of it.  It will always be someone else’s fault.

Well, I have a little bad news for you today.  We are all to blame for all the things wrong with our society.  We are to blame because we didn’t insist that all children be raised by Godly standards.  It is our fault because we think that our reputations will suffer if we begin a meal in a restaurant or any other place with a prayer.  It is our fault because we don’t ask our neighbors to church.  It is our fault because we don’t start anything and everything we do with prayer.  To put it in a nutshell, we refuse to give up the ways of Satan and follow Jesus.  The next time you see this on the news, I want you to remember that it is your fault, no matter what has happened.  Start taking responsibility for the things that happen in this world by praying before all things that you do.  And don’t be afraid to pray in public because the public needs to see this happening; start being responsible by reading your Bibles in public.  Start to be responsible by asking or taking someone to church.  The only reason that I don’t do 3 or 4 packed house services every week is that no one invites anyone to come.  Let’s see if we can change that a little.

The last thing that I want to talk about today is where Paul tells his people to look around and see God.  One of the first places that Paul wants us to look at is ourselves.  When you came to Christ, you put your old selves away and you put on a new person.  There are times in my life when I look back at a time when I was a different person, before I knew Christ.  What a transformation Jesus made in my life to take me from what I had been and put me up here in front of people almost every Sunday.

This is like a story told by a London businessman named Lindsay Clegg.  He was selling a warehouse property that had been vacant for months and needed many repairs.  Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows and strewn trash all over the interior.  He showed the building to a perspective buyer and made sure the buyer knew that he would replace the broken windows, clean out the garbage and would bring in a crew to correct any structural damage.  But the perspective buyer said, “Forget about the repairs.  I want to buy this place and I am going to build something completely different on it.  I don’t want the building; I want the site.”

This is exactly what Jesus wants with us.  He wants our old buildings gone because He is going to build new ones for us.  Some of you could end up as preachers like me.  Maybe some of you can sing and will be musicians for Christ.  Many will do what they are doing now.  This is a time when you need to know or find out what your gifts and talents really are.  When you start to do the things that Christ wants you to do, you will end up feeling absolutely great about your lives and everything that you do.  I remember a few years ago, I gave a sermon to a group of preachers which can be a very daunting for many, including me.  I followed Jesus every step of the way and I had absolutely no fear when I got up in front of them.  As a matter of fact, I felt great to be there and obeying Jesus.  You can feel this way also when you follow what He says.

And finally, Paul says look around at others.  We were all made in the image of our Creator.  Every person in the world was made in His image.  There are no exceptions.  I have heard people say that there are only two races in this world.  There are Christians and non-Christians. Forget everything else you have heard about race.  If this is the case then it is our job to try to help get non-Christians over to the side of Christians.  We cannot do this unless we love everyone.  Now I have been around the block enough to know that there are plenty of people we don’t like.  But we have to try harder in these areas.

We really need to work a lot harder in loving other Christians.  We need these people and we need their gifts.  There are Christians who don’t like other Christians because of the way they talk, or the way they look, or whether or not they have riches or power.  I have heard these things myself.  You need to concentrate on what these people do well and then tell them how much you appreciate what they do.  I love how you sing.  I love how you clean the church.  I love how you tell others about Jesus or how you model His behavior to others.  These are the things that keep us going.  These are the things that you need to hear to reinforce that you are doing a good job for Christ.  This isn’t a sprint.  This is a marathon.

Paul has many things to say in these few short verses.  We have to be continually looking inward at ourselves as Satan keeps bombarding us with evil.  In today’s world it is sometimes hard to tell good from evil.  That is why we have to be continually looking up.  Jesus is our source.  Jesus is our power.  He is our Creator.  He is our everything.  The sooner you remember this the better your lives will be.  And finally, we need to be supporting each other as we try to better the world with Christ.  I just read a book where they noted that businesses are far more successful any way you look at them if they follow Biblical principles.  Think about that for a minute.  Jesus is the answer for everything.

And the really good news about all of this is that Jesus already loves you more than you will ever know.  He wants to share everything that He has with you.  He doesn’t want to hold back anything.  So, start to follow His principles in everything you do.  Everything!  Soon you will discover the wonderment of always looking up.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray by looking up.

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