Set Your Mind On Things Above, Where Christ Is

Good morning, Calvary.

I have a lot on my mind and a lot in my heart.

As Roger has stated, I took last Sunday off.

Felt like permanently in some ways.

Took that Sunday off in order to finish packing a house, cleaning a house, and starting to drive south, of which we spent six hours later that day.

It did not feel like a day off.

And then we spent the next two days driving until we landed close to Clarksville on Tuesday.

And so my mind is full of, well, honestly, anxieties, concerns, worries, desires.

There are a lot of competing things in there.

And so this passage is particularly relevant to me.

The big idea that I want you to walk away with from this is that our heavenly position in Christ lifts our hearts and our minds above and beyond the space-time horizon of this present world.

Because something you're gonna see if you didn't notice it is this passage moves us from past to present to future and lifts our eyes and our hearts continually back up to Christ.

And as I said, I, as or as Roger said, I was in Maine for 10, uh almost 11 years, by vocational positions.

So I worked at a church and then somewhere else.

Self-employed at first for a solar design and install company after that, and then for the YMCA for almost five years as a membership director, which really meant a jack of all trades, me wearing 13 hats, doing anything that was necessary because it's a nonprofit that's understaffed and underpaid.

And I left that, so now I'm just a homeless vagabond.

I've got two cars we brought down, a wife, three kids, and a goldfish, and two dogs, and luggage and boxes of clothes, and everything else is stowed in a garage that we want to sell, along with the rest of the house that's attached to it.

At some point, I'll fly north and drive a U-Haul down to points presently unknown.

And that leaves my heart and my mind full of distraction and worry and competing both good and bad thoughts.

There are days, in fact, let me just be honest, every day I wake up and I think, what mistake have I made?

I at least knew what I was doing, where I was going, and I had a routine.

Now I don't have any of that.

And I mean, even this morning, I have a mindful.

I'm in a church with a bunch of people who don't know me.

I don't know.

I need to connect to you, I need to help you understand this word, it needs to be relevant, and I mean I believe it always is, but I don't want to mess that up.

Yet I also firmly believe that this will be ultimately relevant because I know that all of you are as human as I am.

Your hearts are as distracted and full of competing desires and as full of your mind also of distracted uh worry and anxiety causing stresses as mine too.

It may be that you've got a house or a job concern yourself, or finances, because those things all kind of tend to wrap up together.

It may be that you have concerns about family, your own health, or someone within it and the future ahead.

You may have concerns about the church you're in, changes.

And whether or not I had talked with Roger at all, I could just assume a church is gonna go through change.

People come and people go.

If you're being effective and alive and reaching your community, new people come in with new gifts from the Spirit and new ways of doing ministry and new visions for that, there will always be change, which always means there'll be discomfort.

And with that comes worry and anxiety.

The human temptation is to grasp for control.

And you've been hearing about that in Colossians over the last several weeks as well.

In fact, just last uh the passage before this, the end of chapter two, they were grasping after things they could control to make themselves acceptable to God, to make themselves more holy and religious, the lists of do not drink and do not eat and do not touch, these human precepts and teachings.

Trying to control the outcomes that if we're all honest, we know we can't actually control, trying ultimately to do what Adam and Eve did at the very beginning, to be God.

To say, we don't need you on that throne, uh, we'll put ours right next to it, actually.

Uh, we can buddy up and rub elbows once in a while, but we'll take care of things for now.

Um that is my constant temptation, struggle, and sin is to say, I want a shot, I want to sit on the throne.

You can you can take your rest and do the things that I have decided you should do for me.

And especially in a season like this, I have to fight that temptation of planning and looking and scheming, and then asking God to act as my genie.

This paragraph is remarkably timely.

Um, as you also, I hope, being a people tempted by anxiety and control issues, will find it extremely timely.

It will point us to where real life, real power, and real security are found.

It moves from past saying you have been raised with Christ.

It's a past with present and future effects, but it starts there in the past.

And then it moves to the present.

Your life is hidden with Christ, even now.

You can't see it.

That's what it means to be hidden, but it has real, powerful relevance.

And then there's a future move.

One day you will appear with Christ, who is your life, when he appears, and you'll appear with him in glory, a glory that he graciously shares.

And so we have sure hope to look forward to.

So this is the idea: our heavenly position in Christ, being raised with him, hidden with him, assured that we'll appear with him, that lifts our hearts to seek, it lifts our minds to be set on things above, things above the horizon of this world, both spatially to look up from the waves around us that we sang about a minute ago, and to look not just out beyond the physical, but beyond the temporal, beyond today, beyond tomorrow, beyond the next decade, beyond this age, to the age and the kingdom to come.

Beyond space and time.

Because that's our God.

You know those words, right?

He is omniscient, he knows all things.

He is omnipotent, all-powerful, he's omnipresent, all places.

One thing we don't say or think of much is he's omnitemporal as well.

He was there in the past, he's here in the present, here in the future, he's outside of time, wraps all of it up in his purposes.

He has plans for us in that age to come in eternity, a concept we really can't understand, but should give us great expectation.

And so Paul starts with this, therefore, because Christ is risen.

He assumes that for believers.

He's been writing a letter to a church of people who follow Christ.

And yet you can also translate that not since you have been raised, but if you have been raised.

We don't want to rush past that conditional.

We want to also think back to Colossians 2.20, the parallel to this, which said, if you have died with Christ, why do you live according to the elementary spirit or principles of this world?

So if you have died, if you have been raised, this is an important reflection point.

Is it true?

Is where we want to stop before we talk about any of the rest.

The rest won't be relevant if this isn't real.

If we have been raised.

Well, of course, to be raised, you have to first be lowered.

You have to die.

This is all of this, being a disciple, the follower of Christ, a Christian, it's not religious lifestyle improvement.

That's one of the things Paul has been countering all through this letter.

Something much more radical at the root, deep internally, has happened.

You have died, if this is working right.

And you have been raised.

And so the question then for us is have I been raised?

And even before that, step back, have I died with Christ?

What did that look like?

What are the signs of that?

How would you know?

If you did a little diagnostic.

Well, Paul's given us some of that right in Colossians, and the best thing is always to start right where you're at in the context of the passage you're reading.

If you read through that, the first two chapters, he's told us where they were, what they've been rescued from, and where they've been placed.

So that helps us to figure out what have we died to?

And can we see that?

What have we been raised to live for?

And can we see that?

So first you recognize he said, You've been delivered out of the domain of darkness, transferred to the Son's kingdom in chapter 1, verse 13.

Can you see that in your own life?

That there's been, you know, that domain of darkness had power over you, but you probably felt like you had some control and power there too.

But you have you died to that?

You said that's dead to me.

It's no longer mine.

I'm not living in that place, I'm not fighting for those things.

It also says we were alienated and hostile to God.

Maybe God was dead to you.

Has the idea of the death of God died?

Have you found that He is alive and real and relevant and personal?

Is the idea that you could get on with this life without Him a thing dead to you?

Have you been to the cross to see your debt canceled?

Is that debt dead to you?

And that's no small thing.

Most of us are bootstraps kind of people.

We want to pay off the debt.

If I had a house, which I hope to get at some point, local, and I invited you over for a meal, I could almost guarantee you would in turn invite me over for a meal because you would not want to be one meal in my debt.

It's just how we work.

We don't want to be one-uped.

We don't want to have someone hold anything over us.

That debt that I have before God, I want to pay off.

But I have to die to that because the reality is it's way beyond my scope and power.

Have you died to the elementary spirits and principles, the regulations, the human religiosity of trying to make ourselves right and welcome in the presence of God?

Have we said that effort, that striving, I'm dead to it?

I've got enough other things to do anyway.

I don't need that on my plate.

I'm done with it.

Someone else has done it for me.

Sin still gonna fight us, but is it no longer my king?

Is it no longer reigning over me?

Am I dead to it?

Am I outside of its power?

You might want to ask yourself, has my confidence in my own goodness died?

So that I'll look somewhere else.

Has sin lost its unquestioned right to rule me?

That's dying with Christ in some ways.

But the other side of that that he's just gotten to is if you've been raised.

So what's that look like?

Well, he says early on that we are to walk with him, to move forward, to live and act and think and breathe, and that we're getting to in this passage.

We're moving from the doctrine to the doing, from the understanding to the living that out, which is wisdom.

We're to find ourselves rooted and built up in him, which means if we're to be to say, yes, I feel like I can say, I see signs of being alive in him, do I have a new foundation I'm conscious of?

Where I am finding my stability, to use the building metaphor, or am I more rooted?

Am I finding my nourishment and my life and the outflow of fruit coming from him?

Chapter three will lead that way.

We're setting it up in verses one through four, but from five on through chapter four, verse six, it's all about the life lived out that believes Christ is all.

It is a life of compassion and kindness.

It is a life of patience, forgiveness, love, peace, gratitude, worship.

It's a life that changes the family dynamic, husbands and wives and children.

It changes the work dynamic of employees to employers, or in their day and age, slaves to masters.

Evidence of that resurrection life will be seen if you can say, yeah, there's a new allegiance in my life.

I salute a different flag, I make a different pledge.

There's a new direction.

The compass I'm following points me somewhere different than it used to.

There's a warfare going on, maybe I didn't even have before, but now I'm fighting each day against those things in that domain and its kingdom, because I belong in another one that is in animosity to it.

There's a new affection where I long for the appearing of Christ.

I love the people of Christ.

I love the word of Christ and the worship of him.

The question here isn't, are you Baptist, or even are you baptized, or are you raised in church, but has Christ become your life?

Because Paul's going to move there and say, Christ is your life.

That is a foundational need for the rest of this to make any sense and work out.

And so the question we have to ask is, is Christ my life?

If that is so, then we move forward.

He says, if you have been raised, or if you've said yes I have, then we can say, since you have been raised, seek the things that are above.

What do we seek?

He says, the things that are above.

Now, it's not clouds, stars, planets, as much as those things are grand and glorifying and can speak of the majesty of God.

It's not angels and spiritual concepts.

He roots us.

He says, What is it?

It's where Christ is.

What do we seek?

We seek Christ.

The things that are above, with him, around him, in him, through him.

It's not a vague spirituality.

It's him, his kingdom, and his reign.

Matthew 6.33 helps us to think about what this seeking looks like.

Jesus talked about this in that famous Sermon on the Mount.

He said, set a priority here.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the other things, the things of this earth that Paul's going to say not to be distracted by.

Those will be added to you, but seek first, as a matter of priority, the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

But he says also, not just the priority, but with persistence.

Just a little further on in Matthew 7.7, he says, Ask, it will be given, seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened.

He says that in counter to our anxiety.

We worry about our clothing, we worry about our food, and yet he knows we need these things.

And he, as a good father, is not going to withhold those things from us, but he's going to joyously give them to us, his beloved children.

He looks at us, how fortuitous, right?

How providential we should say.

He looks at us the way those parents look at those that were just up here.

There's nothing good they won't give to them.

There's nothing good the Father won't give to us.

We can seek, and not hopelessly, not blindly in the dark, but seek knowing with confidence help that he has already done what is necessary and will give to those who look for it.

So it's a priority.

It's something to do persistently.

It's also something to do at any price.

Because he further on in Matthew says, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who finds a great pearl.

He at once sells everything that he had to buy it.

I can empathize with that a little bit, because everything that I had, I'm trying to sell it, to achieve something else, which I hope is guided by thoughts directed above.

We had a wonderful church.

We are sad to leave them.

In fact, I won't talk about that long because it'll be hard.

They are good people.

We had a great ministry, a great community, and we lived on the ocean.

I mean, Maine's a vacation land.

You have beautiful hills and forests and such here, but you are far, far from the ocean.

It's also warm down here.

We left a climate that is much, much more my way.

There's a lot we will miss.

But I look at journals from a year ago, and the lack of sleep, and then long hours in a position that always demanded more, not just one of those, but two.

The why in some ways is so similar to a church.

There's many needs and many people, and always something that you can be doing, and if you like to fix problems, there's always more of them to work on.

Because we all bring them, and then there's mechanical stuff there too.

But I've left that why?

Because I have a wife and three daughters who, right after my priority of God, have to be my second priority.

And that is something that the Bible teaches.

And so I believe that I am seeking things that are from above, because it's his word, in letting go of some very, very good things here and looking, we don't know where yet.

We're seeking where Christ is, hopefully.

And yeah, there's a temptation, of course, to solve the problem right now and grasp onto the next thing that becomes available just to meet our budget needs, just to feel purposeful.

It's difficult.

I mean, in some ways, I'm thankful for the opportunity to preach.

I don't know what I would have done myself today.

All my hats, well, not all of them.

I've still got the father hat and the husband hat, but all the other hats, they're gone.

I'm I like hats.

Used to wearing a lot of them.

And I can identify myself by those things to my own loss instead of with Christ.

So we are to seek as a priority the kingdom, persistently, at any price, and because there's a great promise ahead.

Psalm 27, this is a good, maybe a prop posture of prayer.

You have said, seek my face, the psalmist writes.

And my heart says to you, your face, Lord, do I seek.

The heart here longs to see.

And then he knows where he gets to by the chapter 27, verse 13.

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

I seek your face, and I believe I will see it.

I will look on that face in the land of living, in the age to come, in the resurrected life.

The world is full of anxiety, as Jesus' answer is not to stop caring, but instead to seek a greater kingdom and be confident in that king that he will meet the needs of his subjects.

And then he says, if we've been raised, or since we've been raised, seek things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

And that is not just a throwaway phrase.

We're not, he doesn't just say he's seated up there so that we think, okay, up there is where we need this look.

That phrase is so important.

It's a quote from Psalm 110, which is the probably the most quoted verse in the Gospels.

It's quoted over and over as a proof of Jesus being the Messiah.

But Psalm 110 says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I've made your enemies a footstool.

And that's quoted over and over to prove that the Son of David is the Messiah because he is Lord even over David.

But more importantly for us, it is a verse about the conquering victory of the Messiah.

He'll be seated.

He'll not be standing, he'll not be fighting, he'll be seated, he'll be finished, is the idea there, on a throne, reigning.

The condemned Christ will become the reigning Christ, because before the high priest, when the priest says to him, Are you the Messiah, the Son of David?

Jesus says to him, I am, and you shall see me seated at the right hand of the majesty on high and coming in the clouds.

He says, to the one who's going to hand him over to death, that won't be the end of the story.

I will walk through that, I will be lowered, and I will be raised up, and I will be on high, ascended, and you will see me there, reigning, ruling, victorious, not just crucified.

Colossians 2 has given us this human effort at conquering sin in ourselves.

Lists, regulations.

Paul had ended saying those things might appear to be wise, but they're useless for actually dealing with our sinful indulgences.

What he's getting at is you need real power.

You need someone who actually has conquered that to take care of it because we cannot.

And we need to ask ourselves, what power does that religious performance have?

Where do we look for hope?

What can we trust?

Him seated at the right hand of God is a clue to us that that is a place where you find one who has victory.

You have one who has power, you have one who has conquered it and can conquer it in you.

I mean, we could grab all the power in this world.

Rivers dammed up, the atom split, the power of a billion sons, and you can't bring one person to life, you can't forgive one sin, you can't translocate someone into the welcoming presence of the Father.

But he has that power.

Ephesians 1 19 through 20 says what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked.

In Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.

That great power of God is evidenced in Jesus sitting at the right hand of God.

That is him in power.

Romans 8.34 says, who is to condemn?

Part of our anxiety on the religious duties, checklists side of things is that we feel condemned and we want to be accepted.

I'm not sure if it was last week or in one of the other sermons that it's on your Spotify, but Roger had pointed out that religion is obedience seeking acceptance.

The gospel is the opposite.

The offer of acceptance that it then leads to obedience.

Their religiosity was that obedience, trying to earn acceptance.

It didn't have the power.

It was them trying to overcome that feeling of condemnation.

But Romans 8, 34 says, Who is to condemn?

Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that who was raised.

Not just the end of the story.

There's power there.

He is at the right hand of God, indeed interceding for us.

Who will condemn you?

He's sitting in victory and he's speaking on your behalf.

I'm going to apply for a job.

I'm going to ask Roger to be a resume.

He's going to, I mean a reference.

He's going to speak on my behalf.

I've also got a CEO at the Y who had a great relationship.

I'm going to ask him to speak on my behalf.

But as dear friends as they were, and as positively as they speak of me, sometimes even to my own chagrin, because Roger loves to tell stories about ancient achievements of mine that are no longer relevant.

Their reference is nothing like having the Son of God at the right hand of the Father speaking as my reference.

Even maybe more important, the book of Hebrews majors on this idea of him being seated in two places.

Hebrews 8 says, We have a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, a true tent set up by the Lord, not by man.

That hits on a couple of points.

It's not a shadow, it's the substance, to use some of the words of Colossians from earlier.

It is the true tent.

It's not made by man, it's not our religiosity, it's not our checklist and do's and don'ts, it's made by God.

And he is seated because in Hebrews 10 it says he offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.

And then he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until that Psalm 110, quote again, his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.

He can sit back and he can kick up those feet.

The throne in heaven is a lazy boy in some ways.

He doesn't have to fight anymore, he's won.

He doesn't have to get up and offer a morning sacrifice and an evening sacrifice and bread on the table and the candles lit and the oil restored.

He's done it.

It's case closed, in the past, still with present and future relevance, but accomplished surely so.

He sat down because the sacrifice was finished.

He doesn't have to get up again to do anything about it.

So look up because Christ is risen.

And he's also reigning, and because of that, set your mind on things above.

So our heart first is to seek, our desire to be oriented, but our mind also is to be set on, to be intentionally and actively pushed in directions that it may have to fight to get to against all the distractions.

Both of these, seek and set, are present active imperatives.

It means it's something to do today.

It's something to do for every day that is today, which means when tomorrow becomes today, it's something to do then too.

It's active, which means you're doing something about it.

There's effort involved, and it's a command.

There is an obedience that flows out of faith in the gospel here.

Our minds, and we have to do this because our minds drift all the time.

There's so many things that clamor.

That anxiety, or for some of you, or maybe at certain seasons, it goes to another level, that fear.

It's always there.

And so many things unexpectedly.

A sound, a smell, a face, a road sign, you're just driving along not intending it, and then all of a sudden that just brings it right back to the fore like it was yesterday, or like it was today, this morning.

Lust, you might fight against that all the time, and then an image from 20 years ago that you shouldn't have looked at pops back in your head, and you think, why in the world have my neurons spent time saving that useless thing?

You, you know, money, everything you do costs money.

Every time you have to pay that out, you think about that bank account.

Whether it's going up or down, you think about whether that retirement is going up or down with every news bite that comes across your phone control.

I'm always wanting an ordered Roman numeral list and a very, very tight schedule.

And I want other people following that procedure set and that schedule.

And it's anxiety causing or it's frustration causing when it's not.

My mind can be so full of all of these things.

If I were to set it on things above.

Not angels, not clouds, not escape from ordinary life, but on the one who is above, and the way of the one who is above.

Philippians 4.8 gives us a bunch of categories that are helpful for thinking what these things might be.

Paul says, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, whatever, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Again, it's not an escape from this life, but it is to get a viewpoint of the things above, and then from above in that viewpoint to see the life that's going on here below.

He says, not on the things that are this earth, on this earth.

So our mind, as we said on things above, it doesn't mean that these things disappear or go away, aren't important, and aren't good.

Many of them are.

Doesn't mean that it's merely physical things that he's talking about either.

There are good things like food, marriage, work, family, created gifts that have come down from our Father.

They are things to celebrate and to cherish.

We're not to ignore those things.

He's already said we're not to become monks who have given up all of the good things of life, comforts and convenience to make ourselves suffer as if that will please God, some self-induced suffering.

But it is, when he says the things of earth, it's a it's the things of this fallen order, wrongly governed, wrongly prioritized, rather than the things of the heavenly kingdom's order and priority.

And this is something that you see Jesus deal with with Peter.

He says to Peter, remember that famous rebuke?

Get behind me, Satan.

What has happened to put Peter in that position to receive that rebuke?

He says, You're a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Peter's problem in the moment was he was not setting his mind on things above, but he was setting his mind on things of earth.

Jesus did nothing and said nothing but what the Father gave him.

Everything from above is what he said, did, followed.

Peter heard Jesus' plan from above and said, I've got a counterproposal, which was from earth.

And Jesus had nothing to do with it.

The challenge for us is to get that same perspective.

Philippians 3.19 strongly warns us about the end of that perspective.

He says, For those who their God is their belly, just worried about the physical, their glory is their shame.

They're looking for their own glory.

Their minds set on earthly things.

You know what their end is?

It is destruction.

That is a way of which there are only two that leads to death.

It's a way that leads you away from your creator, your father, the one who gave you life and who loves you.

And moving away into also the light of the world gives understanding and beauty.

You move away from light, you move away from love, you move away from any of that, and what are you going to find?

Less of it and more of the other.

Away from light means more darkness.

Away from love means more loneliness, isolation, depression, hatred of self and of God and of others.

You move away from life, and where do you end up?

Death.

1 John also puts it rather poignantly.

Don't love the things of the world or the world.

If anyone loves them, the love of the Father is not in them.

That's a heart diagnostic right there.

It's a check on the mind.

If those are the things that occupy us and are our highest priority, if that's what gets our persistent attention, if that's the thing that we pay any price for, that gets the highest places in our budget, if that's the thing we look for, for some kind of promise about our future, instead of the kingdom of God, then we can say, surely, the love of the Father is not in us.

Something is still wrong with our hearts.

We need a heart surgery.

If the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, the desire to eat the fruit, to become wise in ourselves, to run this show without God, that's not from the Father.

It's from the world.

Instead, Psalm 119, 36 gives us a prayer for our hearts and our minds.

Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to selfish gain.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.

Because you can't find life in any other way, anyway.

But what we're asked now occupies our minds.

Maybe some of the same things that occupy mine.

Maybe some of your own unique distractions and concerns.

In the midst of this, seek things that are above, don't be worried about things of this earth.

I do hear a critique, though, in my head.

It's an older phrase, maybe not said as much around, but maybe you've heard it, of someone.

They are so heavenly minded.

Could you finish that phrase?

They're just no earthly good.

I've heard that.

Someone, I've got a family member who I was sitting with in a truck after a funeral, and we were talking about spiritual things, and they said, I just don't, I've got so many things to worry about right in front of me today.

I can't think about those kind of things and hopes.

I just, the idea was that those things are not relevant, they're not important, they're not helpful for the here and now.

That saying, I'm so heavenly minded, or they're so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good, it's a claim that faith, the teachings of God, the doctrine laid out in the Word, the gospel itself are just irrelevant for here and now.

That's not a new critique either.

In the early church, some of the Romans accused the Christians of being traitors, betrayers, useless members of society.

The very problem that Rome was falling apart was on them.

And one of the early apologists, defenders of the church, Tertullian, fired back, you've got that backwards.

The very best citizens among you, with a little pat on his back, not because of himself, but because of Christ in him, is us.

He said, We pray for you, the rulers, despite your immorality and your persecution of us.

We refuse malice and hatred.

We love our enemies, our neighbors.

We stand by the sick in the midst of a plague and die with them when the doctors who would should have helped them have fled to the hills.

We pick up the infants exposed on the side of the road that were unwanted and left to die, and take them at great sacrifice to ourselves into our own homes, because most of them, before Christianity was the official religion of the empire, would have struggled economically to get a good job, to be welcomed.

They may have lost business because of their faith.

And now they're taking on additional responsibility.

Probably had a hard time feeding themselves, and yet they're picking up infants.

Their homes becoming an orphanage.

He says to the Romans, we are, because not ourselves, but of Christ in us, people who work harder, trade fairly, farm, travel, practice crafts, contribute to the public good.

We do all these things because we are looking at desiring and seeking things above, and that translates to little bits of the kingdom to come being lived out and experienced and present here in this counter kingdom now.

Heavenly allegiance should make Christians more faithful neighbors, not less useful ones.

And that same idea of there's just too much going on, it's too busy, there's too much to put my attention on to spend time with this.

There was a book someone gave me in my seminary days called Too Busy Not to Pray.

I think it was titled after a famous quote from Martin Luther the Reformer.

You know, a man who had nothing to do, translated the entire Bible in a year, was hiding out from persecution, trying to get the church back to the gospel and faith.

He said, I make it a practice to pray two hours every day.

But on a really busy day, I pray three hours.

Isn't that the opposite?

On a really busy day, I skip my morning devotions, I pray briefly while in the car or in the bathroom, uh, and uh, or if at all, or just trust that God is good and providential and he'll get it done whether I talk to him or not.

Because I've got too much to do.

Luther's perspective was the opposite.

He knew himself and his capability.

When I had, when he says I had so much more to do, I was beyond myself.

So rather than thinking I was gonna take more time with my weakness to try to get something done I couldn't do anyway, I'm gonna take more time and seek his strength to do the things that need to get done because I can't do it anyway.

Doing earthly good should be the outflow, not our God and not the ultimate goal, but it should be the outflow of this goal of looking to God in all things.

Our faith, our looking beyond to the things above, it should organize our present life and it should set priorities.

Hebrews 11 really shows this.

It goes through that hall of faith.

You know, those who by faith, like Abel, offered a better sacrifice, who by faith were told to leave your home and go to a place not yet defined, and Abraham went.

I have a little empathy to him right now.

He says they all died in faith, not having received the things promised, having seen them and greeted them from afar.

They were their eyes up beyond the horizon, spatially and temporally.

They were strangers and exiles on earth.

They were seeking a homeland, one that they wouldn't find here, ultimately.

If they had been thinking about the land they came from, that glorious vacation land of Maine, they had opportunity to return.

Every day, I'm like, you know what?

It's only three days' drive.

We could get back to the promised land.

As far as I'm concerned, that's Eden presently.

But he says, as it is, they desired a better country, a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God.

God is not ashamed to be called their God.

You know, we like to call God our God.

How about the reverse of that?

God calls himself your God.

He's not ashamed to do that if your longing is for him and for his appearing and for his things.

And he has prepared for those who long for that a city.

Not a shadow, not a thing made by man, but something substantive and real.

Those promises seen from afar, recognized and looked at as strangers and exiles, those who are seeking a better heavenly country, that is setting your mind on things above.

Faith organizes the present around a future that God has promised, even though it can't be seen, that is sure.

And that transitions us to that next bit.

Christ.

We've died with him, and we've been hidden with him in God.

Hidden life.

It does mean something that's not so obvious, it's hidden, but it also means security.

You think about post-depression, the crash, the banks, people would hide money.

What, in mattresses, under floorboards, in jars in the backyard.

Yeah, I still hope every once in a while I'll be digging to plant a flower and in physed find like some buried silver or something like that.

They hide it for security.

That's the idea here.

It's not visible.

In fact, looking at you from the outside, you may feel and look weak and ordinary and uncertain.

But the security isn't based on those circumstances that are visible.

The security is based on where you are spiritually, positionally in Christ.

John 10, 28 through 29, and this isn't the first time you've talked about this.

I know you've talked about it already earlier in Colossians, the security of the believer.

That those who have been saved will be saved.

God will finish the work that He has started.

He will not quit halfway along.

John 10, 28 through 29, Jesus says, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

What I want you to hear too is there's no mites in here, there's no maybes.

This is said rock solid surety.

They will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one's able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

You are doubly secure.

It's a vault within a vault.

The hand of Christ and the hand of the Father.

First Peter says, God's power guarding us through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

And then back to John 6, Jesus said, This is the will of God, the will of him who sent me.

God's will cannot be thwarted.

He will never fail to fulfill his promises.

So this is sure he says, This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he's given me but raise it up on the last day.

If you have been hid with him in Christ, then when he appears, you will appear.

That's where he's going here to the future.

Your future rests not on your grip on Christ, but his grip on you.

And you know what one of the silliest and saddest things is?

When it says nothing can snatch us out of his hand, we might think of Romans, where Paul says, you know, neither, no kind of danger or sword or angels or whatnot.

But the the one most often trying to claw me out of Christ's hand, it's me.

He's got me in his hand.

And I'm, you know what, if you would just ease up a little bit, Jesus, and let me out of here, I could get some things done for you today.

Or I could get some things done for me, maybe, to be more honest.

It's me trying to claw my way out of his hand.

Thankfully, uh, I don't work out that much.

He's a lot stronger than I am.

I'm not gonna peel those fingers back and escape.

He's got me surely in his grip.

And because he is returning, all of this looks to a future that is secure.

When he, Christ, who is your life, appears.

He moves from past, he's been raised through present, we're hid with him now to the future.

We will appear with him.

This isn't just Christ helps us in our life.

It isn't just Christ improves our life.

It isn't even just Christ gives you life.

Christ sustains you and glorifies you.

He is your life.

The good gifts that he gives us sometimes become our life.

Our career, marriage, children, reputation, church, our comforts, our conveniences, our preferences, our house, our health, our ministries.

We find our value in those and wrongly our salvation, and we idolize them.

But they can't bear that weight.

Christ and Christ alone is our life.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

John 14, 6.

No one comes to the Father but through Him.

It's that important.

Again, you have to recognize have you been raised?

First, have you died?

Is He your life?

Because that's it.

There's two ways.

And if it's not with Him, there is no other exception.

1 John 5 12 says, Whoever has the Son has life.

That's how important this is, and how sure this should be an encouraging, hope-filled, I've got an anchor.

In the midst of that song with the waves and driving cross-country and feeling like we could end up here in Louisville, we could end up in Nashville, we could end up in Boston, we could end up in India.

I mean, the map's kind of open in some ways.

It's nice to have an anchor.

That's this.

Whoever has the sun has life.

Of course, the warning is whoever does not have the sun does not have life.

They're mutually exclusive.

So we're to reflect and say, well, what is our life?

Is Christ my life?

Is Christ your life?

Do you have the Son?

If you do, this great hope is that you also will appear with him in glory.

Faith will become sight.

The warfare will end.

That sign that you're currently in his kingdom fighting darkness, one day even that sign will pass.

It'll be no more fighting.

It'll have been finished.

You will also be able to sit down next to him.

Our weak bodies will be raised, glorified, becoming something we're not even yet sure of.

1 John 3, 2 says, Beloved, we are God's children now.

That's a sure reality in the present.

And what we will be, also sure, but just not yet, has not yet appeared.

We know that when he appears, we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

The hidden will be revealed, the presence enjoyed, new reality experienced.

Philippians 3, 20 through 21 says, Our citizenship is in heaven.

From it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here's the glorious promise.

You will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.

We don't just get table scraps.

You don't just get life second class outside of town on the other side of the river.

You are welcome at the table, treated as a son or a daughter of the king, given the same inheritance reserved for that beloved son, shared graciously with us.

He does that by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.

Paul can say to Timothy, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge, if anyone knows righteousness, it's the righteous judge.

He'll award to me on that day righteousness that was not my own, not only to me, but to all who have loved his appearing.

If Christ is your life, his appearing, that's not going to be a loss.

It'll be the fulfillment of all we've hoped for.

It'll be seeing the one that we have loved and longed for.

So we should ask ourselves, do I love his appearing?

Does that seem like an interruption in my current life's plans, or does it seem like the fulfillment of those life's plans?

A heart seeking things above, a mind set on things above, will find him fulfilling the hopes of both heart and mind.

So look up, Christ is risen.

Grave didn't hold him.

We're united to him, so death won't hold you.

Look up because Christ is reigning.

The sacrifice is complete.

And look ahead because Christ is returning.

What is hidden will be revealed.

And one of the glorious things is that includes us in glory with him.

Heavenly-minded people will return to homes, marriages, children, work, neighbors, and church.

You've got some of them sitting next to you right now.

You'll go back home to spend some more time with them today and out into the work world tomorrow.

We're not going to escape this world, we shouldn't look above in order to escape.

We look above so that the risen, reigning, returning Christ teaches us to live faithfully here in it.

So seek the things that are above.

Set your mind on things that are above.

Stop trying to secure by your own power what God has already secured for you.

And if Christ is not your life, then come to Christ.

Whoever has the Son has life.

Your life is hidden with Christ in God if He is yours.

He's risen, He's reigning, He's returning.

And when He appears, you will appear with Him in glory.

Why would you why would you say no to that offer?

That offer is open today.

And the Bible strongly says, take advantage of it while today is still today because you do not know about tomorrow.

And even today, in the present, you can be sure that his past victory will securely hold you now and set aside for you glory to be enjoyed later.

And you don't have to do extra work to make sure that that happens.

He's done the work.

He's sitting down because the work is done.

He invites you to come and sit with him.

I'll pray that that's the case.

Father, I can't think of a day that this passage would not be relevant.

I pray if that has hit us that way, maybe you'd encourage us to memorize it so that it would help us set our minds on the things that are above.

And that we would walk out of here repeating to ourselves, you are resurrected, victory over death.

You reign, you sit at the right hand, you bring us into the presence of God, and you're returning.

We will not be distant from you, but we will enjoy love and relationship with you.

And that those things would lead our lives now.

That our eyes up from the waves would see you're standing there on the water.

We're not unsafe.

We are not lost, but you are unashamed.

You are pleased to be called our God.

I pray that we would be pleased to call you our God and that we would long for your appearing.

We pray that in the name of Christ.

Amen.