Colossians: Walking in Your Forever Belovedness

Maybe seated.

So uh we're going through the book of Colossians, and here's what we've established so far.

We've talked about how the book of Colossians is divided up, sort of how a lot of Paul's letters are.

Paul wrote all these different letters while he was traveling around.

In this letter, he's in prison.

He's writing a letter to a church, it's in another area.

He's probably in prison in Rome at this point.

He's writing a letter to a church in Colosse, which is kind of southern uh central Turkey.

And so he's writing this letter.

A lot of his letters have the same structure that we see in Colossians, and that's this.

Is the first part are all these promises from God to us, about our position, about who Jesus is for us.

Um, and he's just trying to just get it into us.

Here's who you are, trust in this, here's who you are, um, rest in it.

And then the second part of the letter is like, because of that, here are here's what this means.

Here's the application.

And so this is the last week of us talking about here's who we are.

Um, and then all of a sudden we're gonna jump into chapter three and we're gonna see him begin to switch.

He doesn't leave here's who we are, but he begins to flesh out a little more application.

Because of all of this, here's what life could look like.

And so this is another week of us just bearing and just getting it into us, Paul drilling it into us, here's who we are.

And what we've said is the first sermon in Colossians, we've said that you are not qualified as a human being, as a child of God, you're not qualified as a righteous person or approved by God based on your qualifications.

Good news, right?

Great news, because your qualifications aren't that good.

Even if you've been keeping record on yourself, you know your record is not that good.

And what we said is the record that we base our qualification on is Jesus' record.

And so that record keeping that you're doing, and that I keep picking back up that record keeping book in the morning so many times, you can let that go.

You can stop doing that because it's on Jesus' record.

And then in the second sermon, we talked about how accusation actually comes when we try to add to it.

Alright, so it's Jesus' record for us, and actually accusation and burden comes in our life when we try to add to the finished work that Jesus already did for us.

And so we try to add to it.

Okay, Jesus is enough, but really I'm gonna I'm gonna really uh I'm gonna add to it.

I'm gonna really feel today validated before God based on what I do, and I'm gonna, that's gonna be based on whatever series of rules or religious rules I form in my own head or moralistic rules, and as I live up to them, then I'll feel whether I feel acceptable or not to God.

And all of a sudden, accusation shows up in your life.

Accusation shows up when you begin to add to the finished work Jesus has done for us.

And and last week we we had this illustration.

Y'all remember this if you're around, and we said, This is you, your little your little ego in life, this little piece of Tupperware, this is you.

Um and we said, I I went to the kitchen, right?

So bear with me with my my props here.

Uh and and this is Jesus, an almond, because like I said, it was better than a fruit snack and better than a lot of other options in the kitchen.

So uh so Christ is in you, and that's sealed.

That's forever when you've placed faith in Christ.

He is in you, sealed, and and that not only that, the the great news is it's it's it's even deeper than that, and then you are in Christ, and and this is the language we get because we get this great picture of, and this isn't my lunchbox, by the way, this is my three-year-old's lunchbox.

Um, and so Christ is in us, and then we are in Christ.

We are immersed, we are we are encapsulated in Jesus.

We are covered.

And we talked about last week that it's a Christ in us life, not a Christ and us life.

And those are two very different things.

Because Christ and us puts us back to work, it's us back to adding to the finished work that Jesus did for us.

Christ in us is us continually resting and going back into the fact that Jesus is enough.

And actually, Jesus lives in us.

And we have memories and we have woundedness and we have past life, and we still have sin and we still have problems, but our righteousness is not based on and us, it's based on him in us.

Now, maybe you're like me, and you hear all that, and you nod along, you're like, man, that's good, hey, that's great.

Like, amen, taking notes, like that's great, I love that, you know, preach it, you know.

Um, but but you still kind of run to other things to make yourself feel alive, like you catch yourself doing this?

Like you like you run to something else to give yourself rest.

And those things work momentarily, don't they?

They kind of give you a buzz, right?

Like that materialism or that lust or that little just a little bit more control, a little bit more uh affirmation from that person or this person or that group, and and that's all idolatry, that buzz.

And it works for a little bit.

But what we know is we know that under the buzz, you're still there.

Right?

The insecure Russ Masterson is still under the buzz.

And so what we're talking about, it's so easy, it's so easy for me to kind of mentally say yes to everything I just said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then my heart just lagged behind.

And Paul's just been hammering away.

Jesus is enough for us, Jesus is enough for us, Jesus is enough, and we say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And then this, and then this week, it's like, okay, will you walk in it?

Will you walk in this?

Like, not only will you affirm it, but will you walk in it like day to day, hour to hour, a moment to moment.

Will you trust in it, or will you go back to putting yourself to work?

Maybe you're here, and this word gospel, this has just been a word for you that's meant sort of like maybe music.

Or maybe it's a word for you that's meant, oh yeah, that's the way you get in to the to the Christian faith.

Right?

Like there's this great little phrase that says, the gospel's not the ABCs to Christian faith, the gospel is the A to Z.

So easy to think the gospel is just the way in, and then we move on.

But no, no, no, no, the gospel is the Christian faith.

And this is what the scriptures say, that the gospel is the power to liberate us.

And I'm just going, okay, so how does the ongoing power of the gospel change me?

How does the gospel connect with my life?

How does the gospel change my internal whirlwind that goes on?

What does it mean to walk in this?

So that's what this passage is talking about.

It started in verse 6.

Uh, so then, because of everything we've just said, so then, just as you've received Christ Jesus as Lord, and that received Christ is a past perfect tense word, so it means it's done, it's finished, you don't have to keep revisiting it.

If you've received him as Lord, you've put your you're no longer your own Lord, and you've received Jesus to be your Lord and your righteousness and your forgiveness and your deliverance and your way to being acceptable to God.

It's done, it's finished.

You don't have to have the the next uh revival retreat high where you kind of go down front again and again and again and again.

It's it's it's finished.

See, you've already received all the benefits he's secured for you.

When you became a Christian, you've received all the benefits he's secured for you.

And it says this uh continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness.

So Christ has already rooted you, and as a result, he's growing you.

Right?

So you're being strengthened, and when you live faith like this, and a life like this, it's not in your own performance, it's not in your own pretending, right?

That's what we talk about a lot.

It's not in you constantly using your own effort, it's about you resting in what he did for you, and then that empowering a reaction in your life, an overflow of gratitude, right?

That's what it says, overflowing with thankfulness, that you will know how deep this rescue is that Jesus did for you.

So we're gonna spend the rest of the sermon talking about that phrase in verse 6.

Continue to live your lives in him.

And maybe you have your scriptures and it would say, walk in him.

I like that imagery, walk in him, because that's the imagery we get of just every day, just the next step, and the next step, and the next step, and the next step to walk in him.

When I was a second grade, I was in Mrs.

Jordan's class.

And in our Bethesda Elementary, we had the new school and the old school.

You know, the old school was the you know the historic part of the school, and we were up there toward the front of the school, and we had PE like everything else, we had gym like everything else.

But Mrs.

Jordan loved Mrs.

Jordan, and if we got Auntie, she would take us, if we had Auntie but we were well behaved during the day, she would take us on the front lawn and we play Red Rover for about 15 minutes and then she'd bring us back into the classroom.

You remember Red Rover?

Are we play still playing Red Rover?

Okay.

I mean, all right, so we would go out, and so let's just explain the scene here because Kevin was in my class and Brandon was in my class, and my little girlfriend Susan Elmore was in my class, and and so we would go out there, and Kevin and Brandon, they were the fastest.

And so uh Mrs.

Jordan would split the two of them up, they'd always sort of be captains, and then and then she'd just kind of divide the teams up so none of the rest of the kids would feel bad.

And so we'd divide up, and you're on Kevin's team or Brandon's team.

You'd line up hand to hand.

This was serious.

One kid one time thought it was gonna be real clever to hold forearms.

He broke his arm.

I mean, that I mean we would we were like this was serious Red Rover.

I mean, after that, there was like no holding of the forearms, just the just palms.

And so if you were on Kevin's team, you know how it works, and Brandon's team, Red Rover, Red Rover, you know, send Harrison on over and Harrison and get all pumped up, and then Harrison, you know, you get excited because your name got called, right?

And really, you actually didn't want your name called because what it meant is they viewed you as a weak, right?

And it but but you got excited because you got to run for it and say, You're running, running, running, and you're picking, you're looking, like maybe you're gonna try to hurt your friend, or or you're gonna go for the weak link or whatever.

And and so let's say you're you're busting out, you're running across the way, and you hit and they hold, right?

They hold up.

Remember that?

You feel kind of defeated for this moment and get in the end of the line, and you're holding hands, and all of a sudden you went from Kevin's team to Brandon's team, just like that, right?

I mean, just like that.

You went from one to the other.

And you know what I remember so many, you know what I remember so many times as a little skinny runt who couldn't always break through the line.

I I don't remember being that discouraged about it that long.

Like all of a sudden, you're on that other team and you're like, yeah, I hate you.

You know, come on, right?

I mean, I never remember like just looking at my neighbor going, you know, I just still feel like I'm on the other team.

Right?

I just, right?

I mean, I just I I really I can't get into this anymore.

Uh I just don't feel like it.

No, I mean, it's like, no, you're like, you're with Brandon now, or you're with Kevin now, like, you have switched teams.

Right?

I mean, you remember chapter one of Colossians?

For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.

I mean, he's called us out of darkness and given us a new identity.

A new identity.

I mean, how easy it is for us to go, but man, I just feel like I feel like I'm still on Kevin's team.

Like I feel like I'm on that other team.

And the thing about the way that Christ works, Christ in us, is like like that, he has given us a new identity.

It's like, I okay, maybe you do feel like you're still on the other team, but he but you're on the other team.

It's already been done.

It's finished.

But I have a bunch of questions about this, right?

Because all right, so I'm on this team, this family that's supposed to be supposed to be giving me freedom, right?

Like freedom for life.

And I want this, but it doesn't always feel like this.

And then you hear some people telling you, you should be more zealous and more serious about your faith, and some people, oh, you should be more relaxed and chill about it.

You know, but I just all these questions about it.

Here Paul is is Paul is just telling us, hey, just walk with Jesus.

Walk with Jesus.

Like let go of all the rules and regulations.

Get to know Jesus, walk with Jesus, get to get to know his character and his heart.

So I just have like a series of questions.

I mean, these are really simple, basic questions.

I mean, give me a break.

I only had a week to kind of form this.

Uh and the first question is just like, what is this life?

What's Paul talking about?

What kind of life is this?

And so Paul's train of thought here, what we get is verses six and seven, he's calling us to walk with Jesus.

And then we see in verses eight through fifteen, he reminds us who we are.

And then we see he gets all fired up in verses sixteen through twenty-three.

He gets all fired up about people trying to put rules on top of the freedom that the Christians are supposed to have.

Here's verses sixteen and seventeen.

I'll reread it from our reading.

So Paul's just reminded us who we are in Jesus.

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come.

The reality, however, is found in Christ.

He's saying, All the rules that used to have in the Old Testament.

Jesus.

Jesus is the rule.

He's fulfilled the rule.

He is the righteousness.

I mean, Paul just wouldn't have done well being around legalistic people.

He wouldn't have done well with a with a legalist casting a judgmental eye toward him having a beer or telling him to put the pork tenderloin down or telling him what to wear to church.

Paul would not have done well with this at all.

Paul's saying, you are free from using rules and using your performance to feel acceptable to God.

So listen, just be done with other people's judgment over you.

Isn't that great?

You don't have to use other people's judgment.

You don't have to use your own judgment.

This is the difference between walking in Him and walking in the world.

Because when you walk in the world, what do you do?

It's all about other people's judgment.

How do people view me?

What do they think of me?

And you you know, you go to the party and it's all about how people view me and how they're gonna think of me, and then you leave the party, and how did they view me, and how did they think of me, how did I perform, and that conversation, how well did I do, and did I network well?

And it's all about how did people how do people view me?

That's what walking in the world is all about.

People's judgment on me.

And walking in him is all about walking free and constantly remembering we are free from using people's judgment and using our own judgment to feel redeemed, to feel valuable.

Isn't that amazing?

To be the to have that kind of freedom as a human being.

Let's jump in at verse 9 and just kind of hang with me here as we go through these verses.

Because if you haven't been around church, this gets a little weird through these verses.

For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

So he's saying if you want to understand God, it's in Jesus.

And in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

He is the head over every power and authority.

In him, you see that throughout this passage over and over again, in him, you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands.

Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

So, circumcision.

Don't Google it, by the way.

I don't recommend that.

Um, circumcision, let's be clear, and then parents, y'all can explain this on your drive to lunch.

Um, circumcision is the removal of the foreskin of the male's penis.

Actually, there's a picture on the back of the bulletin.

If you were, I'm just kidding.

Hey, relax, settle down, okay?

We're mature people here.

All right, here's what it was.

That's actually what circumcision was.

Like we all read it in the Bible, and we're like, oh, I don't know if we're gonna talk about this.

Um that's what it was, and it was a symbol.

It was a symbol, the removal of sin.

It was a symbol of purity.

So it was it was a sign of the people of God.

Very practically speaking, it was a healthier way of life.

And so it's a pretty intense imagery, right?

I mean, this is pretty intense imagery.

And here's what it means: it means you used to try to fix yourself.

You used to try to fix yourself with external modification.

But no longer, no longer.

Christ in you comes into your heart to fix you.

Man, I just go, God, see, that's where the new identity comes.

The new identity comes of the circumcision of the heart.

That I need it, I need a new me.

I don't need new behaviors, I don't need new, I don't need a new stuff, I don't need a new workout, I need a new self, and that only comes from Christ in me.

And I think how often I'm just, you know, to put it bluntly, I mean, you you're trying to like circumcise yourself with all this external modification.

But it's Christ in us that brings the new identity.

And that we let the grace of God, the incarnate love of Christ Himself into those broken, fragile places in our hearts.

That's what verse 12 is about.

This verse 12 is unbelievable.

Listen what happens to you.

Listen what happens to you when you have placed faith in Christ, having been buried with him in baptism.

So that flesh, that heart that is so burdensome, and it's that ego is just searching for more and more and more and more and more.

It's never satisfied.

It's been buried with him.

It's rebellious to God, it's inward bent, but it's been buried with him, in which you are also raised with him.

A new identity, a new self.

You've been raised with him through your faith in the working of God.

So, what is this life of walking with him?

It's liberation from yourself.

That's what it is.

So you wake up tomorrow and you are liberated from yourself.

You're liberated from depending on yourself to form your own identity, to form your own righteousness, to earn your own forgiveness.

So what will challenge this new way of life?

Well, I mean, according to this passage, really good things.

Right?

Verse 8 says, See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

And you read that and you go, oh my gosh, these must be like horrible debaucheries and awful, awful things.

And well, they could be, but in this passage, when he expounds on it, verses 16 through 23, it's really religious rules.

Like that's the hollowness.

You want hollowness, you want deception, find a moralistic church.

It's gonna be the worst place in the world.

Because underneath all of that, it's hollow, it's empty because it's a whole bunch of pretending and performing and enslavement.

Verse 13.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

He did that.

He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us.

He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

So don't bring it back, friends, don't bring it back.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over.

Them by the cross.

So Jesus took the charge away.

Alright, so what does all this mean?

What does all this mean?

Like, how does this change your life, right?

How does it change your life tomorrow?

So let me ask this question.

What do you feel like you have to have in order to be okay?

What is it that you feel like you have to have?

Like what is it that gives you that buzz that you're okay?

Like that, oh well, if I could only get that perception or have that success or lose that next two pounds or have that achievement or that next level, that next house, or what is it you have to have in order to feel like you're okay or you're important?

See, walking in him, union with Christ, means you don't have to be a slave to that anymore.

Because he's enough.

And that can be buried with him.

Walking in Jesus is walking in the freedom of your forever belovedness, not the burden of your performance.

I'll read that again as the best thing I did all week was form that one sentence.

Walking in Jesus is walking in the freedom of your forever belovedness, not the burden of your performance.

In September, and I talked about it when we got back, we went on this cruise with Christie's family.

Um, so when we got on the cruise ship, as this big Disney cruise ship, and it was fun, and it was quite festive, and I'm not always festive, but I'm there and I'm going after it, and it's fun, and the girls are having a blast.

And so we get on and navigate the getting on, which is like you know, somewhat torturous in and of itself.

I don't know if you've been on a cruise ship.

It's like, hey, let's pay a lot of money and wait in a lot of lines.

This would be a great thing to do.

Um, and so we get there and finally we get to our rooms and we drop our bags, and then the safety drill happens, right?

If you're on a cruise, you have to as soon as you drop your bags and you have to do the safety thing.

And so you we put on our life vests.

I'm already I'm a control freak.

I don't like this.

I'm a hunking massive piece of steel uh with a bunch of people, and we're headed out to the middle of the ocean, and I don't have any ability to get my family off this thing if I choose to.

I can't.

I have no ability.

I don't like this.

I don't like this thought, right?

Like I like the thought that if something goes down, I can run over there and get my girls, get them in the car, and leave.

That's what I like.

I like that kind of thinking.

And so we're we're gathering, we're walking with every other thousand of people down the staircase, and I'm going down.

This is great.

This is what I want to do when the ship's going down.

I want to walk through an internal staircase with thousands of other people, and then I want to go sit in a theater.

Like, and that's where we go.

We go sit in the theater, this is where you'll come and you'll sit while the emergency is going down until we get to you.

And maybe you're cool, maybe like you're like, you're good, like you're in this situation, and you're like, this is great, you know, you whatever.

I trust you, I don't trust these people at all.

You trust them, you're hanging out.

I don't trust them.

I'm sitting there, my little life jacket on, and grudging my arms, and Christy doesn't even realize this until later.

I am freaking out.

Because I'm sitting in this big, massive theater inside this huge ship that's floating, that's blowing my little mind, and we're about to head out to the ocean, and we're doing a safety drill, and in the safety drill, I'm supposed to walk down an internal staircase and sit in an internal theater and wait on people I don't really trust.

And my heart just starts to I'm I'm I'm getting it's getting tighter and tight.

And I'm I'm right now it's kind of funny, but I'm I'm not kidding you.

Like I'm getting close, I'm going, this is what a panic attack is.

I'm having a panic attack on a Disney cruise.

And I just I just close, I close my eyes, and I'm just like, tell my just like breathe, breathe, breathe.

I'm telling myself like statistics, I'm like the chances of something happen, so slim.

We would have died in the car on the way here.

Like I'm I'm telling myself these things, like common sense things.

I'm just I'm just calming myself down.

I was listening to a sermon this week, and the scene just came back to me, listening to the sermon.

Because here's the deal.

I knew I was safe.

I knew I was safe, but man, did I, man, I didn't feel safe.

I knew I was safe, but man, I did not feel like I was safe.

I knew I was secure, but I did feel afraid.

And what I needed was to live out of being secure even while I was afraid.

This is what it means to walk with him while we live in the world.

That we can walk in the security of who Jesus is for us while we're afraid.

And there's always the option, right?

Like, am I gonna put my trust in this fear and this insecurity and in my failure and my woundedness, or am I gonna put my trust in his sufficiency for me, his sovereignty, his security, his goodness, his righteousness, his love?

And so we wake up, we we say, we remind ourselves over it, we preach it to ourselves over and over and over again, and we walk in it, we continue to live in it because he is sufficient, and that we can have lives that overflow with thankfulness.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, we come to you and say that we live afraid when we should be walking in such security.

We know we're safe, but we feel unsafe.

We know who we are and yet our hearts lag behind.

We know the freedom we should have, yet we turn back to religious rules.

Would you deepen our trust in you?

Would you deepen our understanding and your sufficiency and in your freedom and who you are for us?

So many of us are maybe even beginning what Christian faith is, and would you deepen us as we read the scriptures and read and study and meditate and walk?

God, would you help us as a church not to return back to law and rules and but just to go after you and to walk with you?

Jesus, would you help us tomorrow when we wake up to pause and to remember what it means to walk with you and that you want to walk with us.

Thank you that you came as we're in this Advent season and we remember that you chose.

You chose to come and to walk amongst us and to die for us.

That you might not just be around us, but that you and the Spirit of God might come into us and be our righteousness.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.