Colossians 3:5–11 | Where Christ Is All and in All

Amen.

Well, we continue today in our study of the book of Colossians, Paul's letter to the church at Colossae.

And we are in chapter 3, verses 5 through 11.

If you were with us last week for Jonathan Susie's sermon, my good friend.

I hope you got to meet the Susis and their adorable little girls.

And we're very glad to have them with us last week.

And if you listen to his sermon, you know that the Apostle Paul has said this.

He's told us that we have died and been given new life in Christ.

And if we've been raised with Christ, our life is now hidden with Christ in God.

And when he appears, we will appear with him in glory.

And therefore, we should set our minds on the things above and not on earthly things.

What God has done in Christ forms the basis for what we as God's people are called to do.

Christianity is not a system of moral improvement where we pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps to earn God's favor.

It's the opposite.

God accepts us in Christ, justifies us by faith alone, and then and only then says, now live out who you actually are in union with my Son.

What he has done for us is the basis for what we are called to do.

John Calvin captured this reality in his vast tome, the institutes of the Christian religion.

He says, This, we are not our own.

Let not our reason then nor our will determine our plans and designs.

We are not our own.

Let us not then set as our end the seeking of what may be expedient for us according to the flesh.

We are not our own.

Let us then, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours.

On the contrary, we are God's.

To Him, therefore, let us live and die.

So we do not turn away from earthly things and seek godly things to become God's children.

We turn away from earthly things and seek godly things because we are God's children.

I want to establish that at the beginning as a baseline because this is a passage that's full of imperatives.

It's full of commands.

For our kids who just started school last week or are starting school this week, depending on the school, you will be given a lot of commands in the next few months.

Teachers will say, do your homework.

Eyes are on your own paper, which means don't look at anybody else's, right?

Please go to the bathroom before class, not during class.

Please sharpen your pencils before class, not during class.

Pick that up off the floor, right?

Please line up in rows if you're little kids.

Hopefully the older kids don't have to do that.

But if you're a little kid, please line up in rows, we're going to the lunchroom, right?

If you're kindergartner, put on your shoes, take off your shoes, you know, whatever it is.

Open your juice box.

Or I guess teachers have to open their juice box, whatever.

But they're going to give you a lot of commands, a lot of things that you have to do.

Hopefully, the previous grades that you've been in have prepared you to do the things that you have to do this year.

We don't generally go from two plus two to calculus in one year, right?

There's this process that we are in.

It's a little different for us as Christians.

It's not the process that has prepared us, it is what Christ has done for us that we have received passively that has prepared us for the life that He's calling us to live.

We start in verse 5, and Paul tells us there, he says, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you.

I mean, it's like the Apostle Paul to go straight for the jugular, isn't it?

Put to death, therefore, right?

Put it to death, kill it what is earthly in you.

The King James Version, how many King James fans are there out there?

You have a King James, you love the King James.

I love the King James.

I grew up with the King James.

We still, uh there's certain passages that just sound more right to me in the King James.

King James uses that great word there for put to death.

The word is mortify.

Mortify, therefore, what is earthly in you.

Paul doesn't say here, try to manage your sin.

He doesn't say negotiate a gentle truth with your flesh.

He doesn't say, let's begin a process where you're going to wean yourself off of your sin.

He says, kill it, put it to death.

He uses this language of execution, drag it to the cross, put it to death.

Before we can put sin to death, though, we really have to be asking ourselves this fundamental question: why do we commit these sins in the first place?

I think it's helpful for us to understand why we're acting out in this way.

Why are our hearts so easily entangled by the very things that God forbids?

And we're going to get into the list in a second.

Two lists, actually.

This is the kind of passage that when pastors preach it, you look out and everybody's like, this.

You know, you look like you're in grade school or something, because there's this long list of things that nobody wants to talk about, and nobody wants to acknowledge that maybe we're tempted to do.

Some pretty awful things.

Look at the list Paul provides here: sexual immorality.

You preach a whole sermon just on that, or a whole series of sermons just on that.

Probably will at some point if the scripture calls for it.

Impurity.

Passion.

You have to understand what these words mean.

It doesn't mean don't be passionate about something.

Some of you are passionate about your gardens.

He's not saying don't do that.

I think we understand the meaning of that there.

In the context that it's in, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire.

Evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

All of it, Paul says, is a form of idolatry, idol worship, worshiping something other than God.

But there's a progression here.

He starts this list with visible outward behaviors, sexual immorality and impurity, and then sort of digs beneath the surface into the internal posture of the heart, our thoughts and our feelings, passion, and evil desire.

In other words, we're not let off the hook just because we're not running around out there with someone we shouldn't be running around with.

Paul says there's more than that.

There's what's going on underneath the surface as well.

And that too is sin, and that too needs to be mortified, needs to be put to death if you're going to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Because you're a follower of Jesus Christ.

And then he goes even deeper into the spiritual corruption that drives this whole operation of sin, covetousness, which is idolatry.

We want things that are not ours to want.

Right?

The lust, the flesh, and the pride of life, all sins fit into one of those three categories.

To be something we're not supposed to be, to claim something that is not ours to claim.

To want something that is not ours to want.

See, sin is never merely just a behavior.

It is always, always theological in nature.

Sin is theological in nature.

We commit sins because in our fallen nature we believe a lie about God.

Different sins show different lies that we believe about God, or we wouldn't commit those sins in the first place.

We might believe that God is holding out on us, that peace or pleasure or worth can be secured outside his holy will, that he doesn't know best or he doesn't want what's best for us, and so we have to find it on our own.

That's what idolatry is.

That's where idolatry comes from.

And from idolatry, covetousness, these sins are born.

But all sin is fundamentally theologically.

And in this case, in the case of idolatry, we have made ourselves the God of our own lives.

We've said we know better for us than God does.

Jesus exposes this dynamic in Matthew 15, 19.

He says, For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

And way back in the prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah chapter 2, God gives us this diagnostic description of human sin.

Jeremiah 2 · chapter mention

He says, For my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Now we got a couple of plumbers in our midst here.

You can ask them about broken cisterns.

I bought a house one time and it was an abandoned house, and we were going to fix it up.

And the guy I bought it from was Russian, just happened to be Russian, so I'm going to do my worst Russian accent here.

He owned a hotel up the road.

He owned this house, he said he was going to use it to house his workers in.

And he said, no, you can buy it.

It'd be great.

It'd be great.

Great house.

It's a great house, right?

And I said, I see that it doesn't have, it's not connected to the sewer system, the town sewer system, it doesn't have a septic system, just has a cesspool.

And I don't know much about those.

Oh, it's fine, it's fine, it'd be fine.

It'll be fine.

Cesspool's great.

It's no problem at all, right?

Then I brought in the city officials and they said, no, it ain't fine.

It's not fine.

It's a hole in the ground, okay?

It's not fine.

You gotta connect to the city system there.

This is what we do.

We forsake Christ and the path that He has for us, and we hew out cisterns for ourselves.

Right?

This isn't talking about sewer systems, it's talking about wells, but nonetheless, we hew out these cisterns for ourselves and they don't work.

They're broken.

They don't hold any water.

It's not fine.

See, what Paul's exposing here is the why behind a person falling into sexual morality or illicit passion.

They're drinking from a broken cistern.

They're seeking the ultimate validation or comfort or thrill that only God was meant to supply.

Why does someone give way to covetousness?

Because they've persuaded themselves that money or possessions or status will finally make them secure, something only God can provide.

Only He can provide security that goes beyond financial ruin or divorce or cancer or even death.

But we watched a movie about David, the biblical David, on Friday night.

Some of us were wearing pajamas.

I was not, but some of the little ones were wearing their pajamas.

It was a great time.

We watched the David movie Friday night.

This was the cry of David in Psalm 4.

Listen to this lament.

He says, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness, you've given me relief when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.

O men, how long shall my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

And then he says, Selah, which means pause and reflect.

And so in that pause, I would ask you, do you ever feel like that?

Weird prayer, isn't it?

He offers this prayer to God and he starts by talking to the man around him?

Starts by talking to the society around them and saying, How long will my honor be turned into shame?

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

He's disappointed in his community.

It's part of his prayer.

He's expressing that to God.

I'm disappointed in the people around me.

Then he says this, he says, but know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself.

The Lord hears when I call to him.

Be angry.

Now he's talking to himself, be angry and do not sin.

Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent.

In other words, I know that you have set apart the godly for himself.

I know, God, that you have set me apart for yourself.

I know that you hear when I call to you.

And then he goes on, he says, Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many you say who will show us some good.

Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

What is David doing here?

David is writing out this lament.

He's journaling to God in his quiet devotional time.

In the silence and solitude.

And he's working through this process.

He's struggling with this process.

What's he going to do with these circumstances around him that are disappointing him?

And there's always an alternative.

You can sin in reaction to what you find going on around you.

Or you can turn to God.

David decides in that moment to turn to God.

He reminds himself of the truths, the promises that God has made, the consistency of God's presence, that God is with him, and he turns again to God.

Over and over, David goes through this process.

Over and over, we go through this process.

Covetousness is idolatry because it takes a created thing and elevates it to the place of a functional savior, whatever that thing is or person is.

It says if I have this, this relationship, this body, some of you pump an iron, that's kind of your religion.

This level of income, this approval, then my life will have meaning.

If I have that, then my life will have meaning.

John Owen, the great Puritan theologian, wrote a book called The Mortification of Sin.

It's a tome.

I'm telling you, it's it's tough.

You go home and read the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin and John Owen's Mortification of Sin, you're going to need a nap.

It's a lot.

But he wrote this, he said, Do you mortify, do you make it your daily work?

Be always at it whilst you live, cease not a day from this work, be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

Isn't that true?

Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

The book of Hebrews says, in your struggle against sin, have you resisted yet to the point of shedding your own blood?

Now I'm not recommending that you shed your own blood.

Please talk to someone about that.

But you understand the gravity of it.

Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

In your struggle against sin, be willing to do whatever it takes to not let that sin take control of your life.

This is part of the work of the Christian.

We are to be killing sin in our lives.

We're to be putting it away, putting it aside, putting it to death.

The alternative is, and James describes it in the book of James in chapter one, the alternative is this: each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

There's this progression.

And so if we don't have this progression of killing sin, of dealing with the underlying spiritual motivation, the wrong theology about who God is and what He's called us to be, and we don't deal with the thoughts and the emotions that are born out of that, then eventually we'll have to deal with the sins, the behaviors that destroy our lives.

If we're not part of that process, then this is the process.

James 1 is the process.

We'll be tempted.

Desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin brings death.

So John Owen says, mortify sin.

Paul says, put it to death.

Paul reminds us in verse 6 of the divine reality.

On account of these, it says in verse 6, the wrath of God is coming.

And this is not an emotional outburst, this isn't a spontaneous thing from God.

The wages of sin are what?

Death.

But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul writes it again in Romans chapter 1, verse 18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And Paul looks at the Colossian believers and he addresses us today in verse 7.

He says, In these you two once walked when you were living in them.

But that's past tense.

That was your former citizenship.

If you are in Christ, you have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

We looked at that way back in Colossians 1.

That's not you anymore.

Why would we march back into captivity and darkness when we've been freed and given a place in God's kingdom?

We shouldn't.

We won't.

But that's what we're doing when we make sin our habit, when we turn away from God.

We're choosing captivity, slavery, and death.

But Paul says that besetting sin is not your life.

Christ is your life.

Right?

You remember an elf, what's the line, and the guy in the toy store?

And he goes, Work is your, what does he say?

Work is your favorite thing?

Anybody, any elf fans remember?

Make work your thing, right?

Christ is your life.

That's not your life.

That sin is not your life.

Christ is your life.

And that's why Jesus' message over and over again was repent.

We think of that as being this kind of thunderous thing, this um kind of theological thing, kind of the Jesus as judge kind of thing.

But I would see it differently.

I think it's an intimate thing.

He's saying, turn back, turn around, I'm right here, right?

That call to repentance is not just a thing from Jesus the King.

It's a thing from Jesus our Lord and our friend.

Turn around, come to me again.

That's the invitation.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

The song gets it exactly right.

So how do we do this?

How do we put it away?

How do we kill sin, turn away from it, and turn back to Jesus?

How do we live in such a way that Jesus is always in view, so we don't want to do those things anymore?

Well, we can't do it alone.

The Christian life is not meant to be a solitary one.

We are not monks.

We do not go to the desert and sit on pillars.

That's not our practice.

It's not what we believe is right as Protestants.

We are in community together.

That's why we have local churches.

God has declared that if we're going to follow him, we have to follow him together in community and the right kind of community.

The local church should be patient and kind and honest and encouraging.

Is that how we are?

We should evaluate that on a regular basis.

We should evaluate ourselves on a regular basis.

Is that how I am?

Because that's what people need.

In verses 8 and 9, Paul allows us to do that.

He shifts his metaphor from execution, mortifying sin, killing it, to the daily act of shedding filthy garments.

Some of you work jobs and you come in all muddy and gross.

And some wise woman who lives in your house says, Don't wear that into the den.

Don't sit on that couch, right?

Take those shoes off, right?

That's kind of the image we get here.

In verses eight and nine, Paul says, Now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another.

So verses five through seven expose the idols of sensual appetite.

Verses eight and nine expose the idols that would destroy our corporate fellowship together.

They cause our community to be corrupted.

Sins of the tongue and of the temper.

Well, again, we have to ask the question why do we indulge in anger and malice and slander and lies?

Again, we have to look at the motivation of the heart.

Anger and wrath explode when our personal idols are threatened, when someone insults our pride, when someone crosses our preferences.

And we've all got them.

Someone upsets our plans.

We work hard on these plans, and now someone's come along and changed them.

Right?

This happens in families, it happens in churches.

It's probably happened to you.

We strike back with malice and slander to protect our fragile ego and our sense of security.

And it doesn't always look like slander, like I go, you would not believe Jacob.

Jacob is a bad, bad guy, right?

Nobody's gonna believe that in the first place.

But anyway, it doesn't work that way, does it?

It's just like, well, some people thought we needed a bunch of software to run the church, right?

He's good at that stuff, right?

It wasn't Jacob's idea, but we have a lot of stuff, right?

We got a lot of QR codes and all that.

But I'm just telling you how this happens.

We don't slander directly, you know.

I could pick on somebody else, not Kurt, because I pick on Kurt too much, right?

But I can just pick somebody else out, and we don't say that person's name directly.

We just say some people, or they think, right?

Or that's the way the young people think, or that's the way the old people think, or that's the way the men think, or that's the way the women think.

We all fit in multiple categories, you know.

That's the way people with size 13 shoes think, you know how they are, big feet.

They think they just can run everything, right?

Stomping around in their big feet, you know.

That's how slander works in the church.

We don't come out directly, usually, and say the name.

We just eviscerate whole categories of people because our pride is wounded, or it's not the way we're used to doing things, or we're starting to feel insecure because things are changing on us.

In today's world, we feel constantly under threat.

You do and I do.

I read the news, and one thing that I read in the news is that I'm not making enough money.

Why?

Because there are celebrities who just spent$50 million on their second home in Miami.

Right?

You read these newspapers?

You can pick up any newspaper that's going to have celebrity stuff in there, and you and I are not making enough money.

We must be doing something wrong.

We're not taking adequate care of our family because we have not developed our own health line of organic food, clothing, and linens.

They have.

They're able to make movies and music and own companies and testify before Congress, and they still have had time to develop their own line of organic bedsheets so their children can only sleep on the best.

We haven't done that.

I haven't done that.

I don't even own organic bedsheets.

I'm not even sure where to buy them.

I'm a bad parent, right?

Constantly under threat.

If you're paying any attention to what's going on out there.

You might be constantly under threat just from driving down 44, right?

Somebody ran me off the road about ran me off the road today, man.

A week ago.

Was it a week ago?

A week ago, I'm pulling out of our street, and this college-age girl, I'm not passing judgment on college age.

We love college age girls, they're great.

She just happened to be.

She comes around the corner, she's not paying attention, she's plowed right into me.

Turns out she's a neighbor.

What do you do about that?

I wasn't gonna yell at her.

I wasn't gonna say, it's your fault you owe me money.

I got I want to get along with my neighbor, right?

So we just went, ah, you know.

We kind of are under threat a lot of times, you know?

Always afraid to go to the doctor.

Never know what they're gonna find.

They're gonna find something.

Always afraid to take the car to the shop.

If you don't do your own work, they're always gonna find 10 things, right?

We recommend that you replace your whole engine, your tires, and pretty much everything else, too.

Within the next month or so.

You'll be fine for a couple of weeks and then it'll start to fall apart.

You don't want to bring it back, right?

What's that gonna set me back?

Oh, I don't know,$7,500.

You weren't planning on that.

Right?

As David lamented, how long will honor be turned into shame?

I thought I was doing everything right, I thought I was living the right kind of life.

And then some of you, it's not small stuff like that, it's huge stuff.

Some of you have said, I thought I was being a good husband or good wife, and then I find out that my spouses was someone else.

Right?

That's the heartbreaking stuff.

I thought I was living right, I thought I was eating right, and now the doctor tells me I have cancer.

There's real threats, not just perceived ones.

And they're heartbreaking.

And how will we react to those?

Will we sin or will we turn once again to Christ?

Will we push away from community or will we ruin the community that we're in by being bitter and angry and suspicious?

We lie to one another because we fear human judgment or broken relationships more than we believe God's truth.

We're fearful and we're hurt, and we simply don't trust God to fix it on his own terms.

But remember Psalm 4.

Remember what David said in Psalm 4.

Know that he has set apart the godly for himself.

He hears you.

He hears you every single time that you pray, that you pour your heart out to God, he hears you.

He has set you apart for himself.

So the world may make you angry, your mistakes may make you angry, the sins of others, but do not sin.

There is a better way, God says.

Ponder in your own hearts.

On your beds, in a private place, Psalm 4 says, in quiet moments, ponder these things.

Be silent, listen to his word, take it to heart.

Offer right sacrifices, David said.

Which are what?

He writes about it in Psalm 51.

What are right sacrifices before the Lord?

He said, You will not delight in sacrifices, or I would give it.

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

What is the sacrifice that God requires of you?

A broken heart.

How many of you can manage that?

I can manage that.

My heart is broken on many, many levels.

We must come to him broken.

He likes to fix a broken thing.

Some of you love to fix broken things.

That's kind of his specialty.

Broken world, broken people.

And so we say, as David did, it's this simple.

We just say, have mercy on me, O God.

According to your steadfast love and abundant mercy, blot out my sins.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.

You remember this from Psalm 51?

Cleanse me from my sin.

Create in me a clean heart.

Renew a right spirit within me.

We come broken and we ask Him to forgive and fix us.

But if we don't do that, our fears and insecurities manifest themselves as sin.

They go from the inside to the outside.

They go from internal battles to external behaviors, and it's complicated.

People are complicated.

And it looks different for everybody.

But if we don't turn to Christ, then we will sin.

Sin will be our reaction to our broken heart, to what we're dealing with around us.

It is alarming how quickly we in Bible-believing churches condemn the sensual sins of verse 5 while treating the relational sins of verse 8 with indulgence.

We would be mortified if we found out that someone was involved in immorality.

But we casually tolerate gossip and bitter tempers and deceitful speech.

And we shouldn't.

Now, Paul doesn't say, put to death people who do that.

That's not our way.

We're not to put to death people who sin, we're to put to death our own sin.

When people are caught up in sin, what are we supposed to do?

We're supposed to rescue them.

How do we rescue them?

We point them to Christ.

So when you have people around you who are bitter, our reaction is not to go, well, I'm glad I'm not that way.

I am righteous.

I don't react that way.

I just turn to Jesus all the time.

That's not the way we're supposed to react.

We're supposed to go to that person and to say, I fear that what you're doing is going to destroy you.

Can I remind you that you are set apart for God?

That he has set you apart for himself?

Can I remind you that he is present and with you and keeps all of his promises?

And then all of his promises are made.

Yes, in Jesus Christ.

That's what they need from us.

That's what real community, right community, does.

Verse 9 provides the gospel grounding for that.

He says, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Now, this is the work of the Holy Spirit, who indwells every believer, the Holy Spirit of God living in you.

And so that dig down deep theology that undergirds your life should be under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

God's original design in Genesis 1.27, when humanity was fashioned in the image of God, sin shattered that image, leaving us morally bankrupt and spiritually dead.

But in redemption, God doesn't just patch up the old nature, he creates a new self.

He saves us and sanctifies us at the same time.

And that's why Paul can write in 2 Corinthians, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is what?

He is a new creation.

The old is passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Well, this brings us to one more question.

How do our appetites actually change?

How do we break ourselves of the habits of grumbling or lying or putting others down or criticizing or cursing or using our mouths for destruction instead of good?

How do we keep our eyes, stop our eyes from lusting or coveting jealousy, begin to see people as Jesus does?

How do we do that?

How do we stop hungering for the toxic stuff of the world and begin longing for the holiness of God?

Well, you can't overcome sin just by sheer willpower alone.

I'm not going to do it anymore.

I'm just not going to do that thing anymore.

That doesn't work.

It's bound for failure.

Law can't cure what only grace can transform.

One more heavy book here.

Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers wrote a famous sermon titled The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.

It's available, it's free out there.

All these are free, all three of those.

And in that he demonstrated this truth.

He says, this the heart cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world by any demonstration of its vanity.

The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new affection.

In other words, you can't just take all that nasty stuff out and not replace it with anything.

That's what Chalmers meant.

If he was writing today, he would just say that.

Right?

Human heart is never truly empty.

There's always motivations and desires.

You can't just sweep out a bad one by force of law or force of will.

You have to replace it with something superior.

Something supreme.

Something soul satisfying, right?

Ezekiel says, this is what God has done for us in us.

Ezekiel 36, God says, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

When God saves us, he doesn't just give us a list of things we can't enjoy, he gives us a new appetite.

He changes our taste buds.

And that's why we can read in Psalm 37, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart, because the desire of our heart is to delight in the Lord.

So, real quick, as we close here, let me just give you some practical habits to do this, to starve sin and to cling to Christ.

Practical stuff, five of them.

Alright?

First one, sing the gospel to yourself daily.

Now I could have said preach the gospel to yourself or say the gospel to yourself daily before you check your phone, before you look at the news, emails, whatever, preach the gospel to yourself.

But I said sing it to yourself because songs stick with us, don't they?

And it might be a good idea if in the morning you listened to truth and learned that truth by rope.

Whether you're memorizing scripture or memorizing the words of a song that comes from scripture, when you start your day anchored in justification in Christ, you don't spend the day trying to validate yourself with other things.

Because your identity is already settled for the day in Christ.

And do it every day.

Do it when you get up in the morning.

You eat every day, you sleep every day, do this every day.

Number two, starve sin immediately.

Sin relies on momentum.

A passing temptation becomes a thought, a thought becomes an affection, an affection becomes an action, an action becomes a habit.

And so Jesus said in Matthew 5, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

Don't tear out your eye this week without discussing it with someone first, okay?

But the point is, is that we starve sin.

So if there's a specific app on your phone that's feeding your lust or your covetousness, delete it.

Delete it.

If there's a website that you read or a book that you read that is making you sin, get rid of it.

If it's a television show or a social media post that fuels your anger or your bitterness or your gossip, block it.

Starve it right away.

Immediately.

Number three, saturate your mind with scripture meditatively.

Learn the word of God.

Our new self, it says in verse 10, is being renewed in knowledge.

You can't fight spiritual lies with emotional feelings.

You have to fight lies with truth.

So when you read Scripture, don't just read it as a duty to check off a list.

Read it to see Christ in it.

Memorize it.

Memorize cross-references that target your specific struggles.

Ponder it.

Pray over it.

Meditate on it.

Number four, cultivate honest local church accountability.

Paul says, he's writing these things to a community.

He says, do not lie to one another.

If you're talking with the church as a whole, sin thrives in secrecy and darkness, but it dies when dragged into the light of Christian fellowship.

I'm so excited about community groups.

I'm so excited about it.

I know some of you aren't excited about it, you've never done it.

Some of you are really nervous about it.

I'm so excited about it because it's going to give us time every week to talk about the Bible together in more time than we get in Sunday school.

Sunday school's awesome.

It's just not as much time.

And we're going to be able to talk about what we've already studied, so I don't have to just teach the lesson to you like a talking head, da-da-da-da-da for 45 minutes or something.

We'll have already studied it on Sunday, and so then we can just talk about how it applies to our lives.

And I think a lot of this is going to occur.

We're going to have accountability with one another.

But I would say here, find a trusted brother or sister in your local church or your spouse or in your family.

Give them permission to ask you hard questions about your thoughts and your speech and your marriage and your affections.

And do that for each other.

It's a great thing to do for each other to have that level of accountability.

Five, last one, embrace mission.

Embrace mission.

When you see the glory of Christ, you know what looks pursuing?

Not sin.

What looks pursuing is seeing Christ glorified.

When you see the glory of Christ, you just want to see Christ glorified more and more and more.

The prophet Isaiah experienced this.

You remember the story in Isaiah 6?

And Isaiah saw the holiness of God and he said, Woe unto me, I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

He was a prince who had everything.

He gave it up to become a prophet who had nothing.

But he had God, and God was his everything, and he wanted everyone to see his glory.

And so when God said, Who will we send?

Who will go for us?

Isaiah said, What?

Here am I, send me.

See, we're not just a people.

We are a people with a mission.

We long to see Jesus glorified in our lives, and we long to see Jesus glorified in everybody's life.

We want to know him and we want everyone else to know him.

This is an ambition worthy of your appetite.

And so if you want to eradicate sin in your life, if you want to kill sin in your life, turn your heart toward mission.

Because when you're out there talking to people about Jesus, it's very hard to then go live a life that is counter to the things that please him.

When you are representing Jesus publicly and you have declared yourself as being for Jesus, to people who have never encountered Jesus before, the Holy Spirit will convict you of your sin and hold you accountable for that.

Become an evangelist.

Become a missionary.

Don't revel in darkness.

Rescue people from darkness.

And I guarantee you it'll help cure what ails you.

Well, last verse here and last thing I have to say, and I'm sorry so long this morning.

I really, really am.

But this last piece in verse 11, it says, Here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all and in all.

We could preach a whole sermon on how Christ breaks down walls and barriers between peoples.

But I won't go into that this morning.

I'll simply say this: that the world wants you to be polarized against one another.

The world wants us to fight with one another.

There's a lot of money to be made and power to be made by getting people to go head to head.

And we see it in politics and we see it in religion and we see it in war around the world.

And that's not our calling.

Our calling is to say, here, we don't have all that stuff.

We honor the tradition that you came from.

We honor your background.

We want to eat that food that you grew up eating.

It's great, by the way.

We love that stuff.

We want you to teach us about the things that you learned growing up wherever you grew up.

Right?

If you're a woman, we value you as a woman.

If you're a man, we value you as a man.

If you've got a lot of education, we'll lean on that.

If you don't have a lot of education in book learning, but you know how to do a bunch of other stuff, we'll lean on that.

We're all different.

Those divisions, that diversity is wonderful.

The division's not so much.

We are all unified under the headship of Christ.

Here, Christ is all and in all.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to say that about our church?

Here at Calvary, Christ is all and in all.

That's what he does.

We're all one.

Sinners saved by grace in need of a Savior.

And we have one.

And his name is Jesus.

And he's all you need.

That's our message to the world.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would help us to put to death in our lives not just the sins listed here, but all of it.

That our desire would not be for those things.

That our desire would be for you.

That we would not seek satisfaction in lesser things.

That we would seek and find you.

And we seek you with all of our heart.

And find there the satisfaction that we've been looking for.

The security that we've been looking for.

The hope that we've been looking for.

The joy that we've been looking for, found only in Christ Jesus.

And God, I pray that as we turn aside from sin, as we examine our own hearts and repent of sin and turn aside from it, that we would turn to you.

That our turning away from sin would be the start of something new between you and us.

That we would run toward you even more than we do today.

That a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, ten years from now, we would be running harder, faster toward Jesus.

And we would be taking as many with us as we can.