Life in Christ: Alive / Colossians 2:9-15 / Andrew Sercombe

We are uh in a series uh on uh Colossians.

We're about halfway through, and uh one of the things that we've been finding out as we journey through Colossians is that uh a life in Christ, that's the subtag, uh, means that we are called to give up a whole bunch of things.

We surrender a whole bunch of things, but in return we gain so much more.

We get so much more.

And this morning is a bit of a turning point.

As we've considered what it is, the call to follow Christ.

Uh this morning we kind of anchor in this middle part, which kind of grabs hold of the the tagline of our series, which is life in Christ.

To follow Jesus is to know life, it's to live with life.

And this morning is it's a simple message.

Uh, it's a it's a a very it's a message that I'm sure many of you have heard before.

Uh but it is also power.

Because at the crux of following Jesus is this invitation into new life.

We heard it this morning in the baptisms.

That as we celebrate and we watch those symbolically go under the waters in burial and come up again in new life, identifying with Jesus Christ and his life in his resurrection.

That is what we get, and that is what we're going to be celebrating and focusing on in these brief few moments we have this morning.

So we're going to dive into Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

If you've got your Bibles with you, open up to Colossians 2.

We're going to read from verse 9 and uh read uh to verse 15 this morning.

And uh this is what it says, the words will be on the screen behind me as well.

For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

He is the head over every power and authority.

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 all were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

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

He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

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

Amen.

The whole world's focus came on a northern uh a town in northern Thailand in the Chang Rai district when 13 young uh soccer players from the Wild Boars Football Club decided to go on a bit of a birthday, celebrate one of the players' uh birthdays, uh, and go for an expedition into one of the local caves.

Do you remember this story?

And they went and they went uh discovering, as I think they'd been before, but what they didn't know was that a massive monsoon rains were coming, and as they were in the cave, rains fell, the floods rose, rushed into the cave, and they had to work their way up into the cave to escape the rising waters kilometers into the cave, and there they found themselves perched in absolute darkness.

Can you imagine?

In darkness, not being able to see, expecting, I guess, to die in a watery grave.

And there they waited, and they waited and they waited.

Would anyone notice them, notice them?

Would anyone care?

And as the days went on, the news got out into the world.

For nine days the search went on.

Specialist divers, cave divers came from uh Britain and from Australia, from elsewhere to try and find these men taking perilous trips underwater and through crevices, seeking and looking for these 13 young men.

Nine days in.

After nine days, two British divers on their longest, most dangerous mission yet found these boys on drought, dry ground deep in the cave.

And in that moment, this is one of the first photos.

Can you imagine the glow of light coming up from the water below as these boys crept forward and then they see these two divers pop up?

And in that moment, as these two heads come out of the water, their lives, their hopes, everything changes.

They were expecting to die there in a cave, and now life was possible.

That wasn't the end of the story, was it?

Because this massive project, and we've got a photo there that there was this the well-known pictures as this project, this mission took place.

And then after great planning, you can see it in the film 13 Lives, which is an incredible film.

Two and a half weeks after these boys went into the cave, they came out two by two with great cheers, which echoed around the world.

These 13 young men were dead, but now they are alive.

And this is a metaphor for all of us.

We all find ourselves lost and trapped at the bottom of a cave, confronted by our own mortality, our own state in our life.

You know, we all try to avoid it, but one day we will all die.

Isn't that pleasant news?

It's the ultimate statistic.

Just want to just bring life and joy uh in this wonderful throng today.

Just want to hear to let you know that you're going to die.

We all will die.

And in our world today, death is feared.

No, we live in a Western material world where death is feared.

I've I've done many funerals, officiated many funerals, and I tell you, it's different.

It's different for those who don't believe in God and have no hope of what is next, the life to come, and those that do.

We live in a material world that seeks to uh remove or ignore what comes next, the transcendent.

We live in an imminent material world, and so everything is about the now.

We've got to get everything out now.

We've got to suck every part of life out now because this is all there is.

It's hard to have conversations about eternity.

It's hard to have conversations with people about what comes next because it is obscured.

We fear death.

You know, we live in a world that is confronted in a very humorous level by life and death.

You know, we've all got one of these, don't we?

You know, we walk around and uh we all I know in our family we are obsessed by checking the battery life.

Anybody else is kind of like, how much percent have I got left on my phone?

Anybody else?

You live with the real anxiety?

There's a there's a there's a new word or a new phrase now uh called range anxiety.

And if you own an electric vehicle, you know exactly what that is.

Anyone have an electric vehicle and live with range anxiety?

We had our staff retreat uh this week.

We're a couple of hours out of Melbourne, and uh a number of the staff have electric vehicles, and so a bunch of the conversation over the course of the couple of days was are you gonna make it back home?

What do you reckon?

We're sitting at 45%, I'm not quite sure we're gonna make it, and we're running long electric lines out to the cars so because of range anxiety, we don't want to die, our battery, we don't want our batteries to die.

We live more and more in a battery world where life and death is very present.

But actually, when it comes to our lives, a whole bunch of us live with range anxiety, fearing death.

But there's something in us that longs for life, eternal life.

Eternity has been pressed, as the writer said in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, eternity has been pressed into the human heart.

And we long to live, we long to stay young, we want to live forever.

We see it, you know.

We the people spend billions, you know, around the world on trying to stay young.

But death is inevitable, and it's not just physical death.

In fact, death is inevitable because it's relational.

In fact, at its deepest level, death comes to us in a spiritual form.

You see, we have become disconnected from our author, our creator, the sustainer of life, from God.

And so Paul here, as he writes to the church in Colossae, says that it is sin that makes us dead.

Sin makes you and me dead.

We think sin makes us bad, but it's far worse than that.

It makes us dead.

Verse 13 says, When you were dead in your sins.

Paul is hooking into a theme that runs right through scripture.

It goes right back to Genesis.

In Genesis chapter 3, we see that as a result of an Adam and Eve taking the fruit and rejecting God and saying, We want to be our own God.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

By rejecting and putting aside God's laws and God's rules and taking the fruit, they are cast out of the garden.

Verse 23 of Genesis chapter 3, we read this So the Lord God banished him, Adam, out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the what?

To the tree of life.

Eternity lost.

Life lost.

Death enters the world because of sin.

And we see throughout the Bible, both Old and New Testament, definitions of sin.

The most common in both Old and New Testament is uh the definition that speaks about missing the mark, falling short of the mark, not hitting the target like an archer with an arrow.

But there are many other uh meanings and variations of this word sin in both Old and New Testament, in both Hebrew and Greek, transgression, rebellion, iniquity, crookedness, to do wrong, to cross a boundary, to make a violation.

And the word here that Paul uses in Colossians is the word paraptoma.

It's specific.

It's a specific trespass, a fall, a lapse, a misstep, a transgression, a wrongdoing.

And this sin, as Paul writes to the church in Colossians, as he writes to us, is something that affects all of us.

It affects you and me.

He says, your whole self is ruled by the flesh.

It affects all of us, and sin affects all of us.

So John writes in 1 John 1 these words if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

In verse 10, if we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

Every one of us, every one of us is guilty of sin.

And the result, as Paul says, is death.

We are, as he says in verse 14, we are condemned.

Paul uses a legal term, he says that we have a legal indebtedness, and as a result, we are condemned.

Now, this is really hard, like it this is heavy, isn't it?

Talking about sin.

It doesn't make us feel good.

And we don't like to speak about sin in our cultural context because of that.

You know, it makes us, it's it's not good for our emotional well-being.

So the narrative goes, so we don't talk about this idea of sin.

It leads to feelings of shame and condemnation.

And perhaps you've stepped into church for the first time or the first time in a long time, and you're going, whoa, this is just full on.

And bear with me.

Hold on for a moment.

We need to understand the bad news before we get to the good news.

I was reading an article in The Guardian this week about such a response of the, you know, uh a woman called uh Jackie Bailey in the religion section of The Guardian, and she was reflecting on sin, and she had some, I think, some helpful points and reflections about sin, but she also said that you know sin is uh you know seen in negative lights.

In fact, she sees sin in a negative light, and she writes this.

She says, As a child, I was taught we are inherently unworthy of God's love.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I would intone at Sunday Mass, along with the other parishioners, I was imploring God not just to overlook my theft of that last cookie in the pantry, but for something more fundamental.

I asked him to remove the heavy weight of shame from my eight-year-old shoulders.

Shame, weight, condemnation.

Perhaps you feel like that.

Perhaps you've walked through the doors of the church, or you've walked through the doors of churches and felt judged.

Perhaps you've made the courageous step today or over the last few weeks to step back into church, but you find it really hard because you feel like there is judgment from the church.

And I want to say to you, I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry that you felt like that.

The church has not done well.

The church has carried religiosity and judgmental um judgmentalism in terrible ways in the past.

We see here, and Jackie kind of speaks to this falsity that sits in the heart of the church.

Did you pick it up?

As a child, I was taught we are inherently unworthy of God's love.

That could not be further from the truth.

We are not inherently unworthy of God's love.

And Paul says it here that God loved us so much that he came and he died for us to rescue us.

We read in other parts, we read in Romans, even whilst we were still sinners, every one of us, every one of us, come on, we're all sinners.

Even while we were still sinners, Christ came and he died for us.

You see, Paul writes here in Colossians that Jesus walked through death for you and for me.

Not when we were good, not when we ticked all the boxes, but whilst we were in our sin, whilst we were dead in our sin.

And I'm just going to repeat the story.

It's called the good news of the gospel again.

And I know we've been speaking about it.

I want to speak it again.

Why?

Because Paul does.

And we need to be reminded.

Paul says in verse 9, firstly, that God comes to earth.

Verse 9, for in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

Paul again is saying, chapter 2, just as he said in chapter 1, God stepped down from heaven to earth in human form.

God came down to rescue us, but he didn't just come down to rescue us and live a great life.

He died on a cross for our sins.

Verse 14, he has taken it, our condemnation and our legal indebtedness.

He's taken it away, nailing it to a cross.

Jesus was nailed to a cross, carrying our debt.

Our sin.

Your sin.

All nailed, pinned in Christ to a cross.

In order that we might have forgiveness.

He writes in verse 13, He forgave us all our sin.

Not just some.

Some of you might be sitting here and going, Yeah, but Andrew, you don't know what I've done.

If you knew what I'd said, what I've done, what then, then no, no, no.

What does Paul say?

All our sins.

Jesus walked through death for us.

And we need to, we need to take hold of this.

See, our our natural response is one of earning and striving.

I this is just a human response.

Whether you're a Christian, you're a Muslim, whether you're a Buddhist, whether you're an atheist here today.

We have this disposition to moralism and to religion which says I can earn it.

I don't need God.

I can work it out for myself.

This is human response that says I can do it on my own.

It's religion.

It's Jesus plus theology.

It's what what we heard last last week from Lance when he spoke.

Jesus plus something.

Jesus plus my effort.

Just Jesus plus my ideas.

Jesus plus whatever it is.

And Jesus says to us, no, no, no, you can't.

I've taken all your sin at the cross.

Jesus died for us.

Let's go back to the cave for a moment.

Perhaps you know the story of Sunan Kooman.

He was one of the divers.

He was a Navy SEAL volunteering, a Thai man.

And during the course of the rescue mission, he, in one of his trips, one of his dive trips into the cave, he ran out of oxygen and he died.

He surrendered his life in order that these 13 young men would live.

That's what Jesus has done for us.

But Jesus' death is only half the story.

See, if Jesus had only died offering us forgiveness, he can only do that if he was God, and it's in his resurrection that Jesus proves who he was, that he is divine, that he has the power to not only take on our sins, but to bring us into new life.

See, resurrection means life over death.

Now, resurrection is one of the most powerful ideas, isn't it?

It sits also, just like eternity, in our hearts.

You go and you watch movies and you can see these themes of resurrection, these themes of the down and out, the the one that can't make it kind of rise again.

There is something that is in our hearts that works in us, this desire, this hunger, this drama of resurrection.

And Paul gets into this drama as well.

He gets into the drama of the power of this resurrection story.

Verse 15, this great landing verse that we read today, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

I love this word, public spectacle.

If there's one culture in history that understood public spectacle, it was the Romans.

I mean, you just have to look to the Colosseum.

You just have to look to the gladiators to see public spectacles, seeing people go to their death.

You just have to look to the to the Roman ways of.

Execution, public execution, the cross, as the great example.

You know, they perfected the art of the crucifixion.

And they used the crucifixion not just as a sign of torture but as a banner to say, if you do this, then this is, if you do, you know, if you if you go against the Roman Empire, then this is what would do.

It was kind of this public exhibition.

And I love what Paul does here.

As he speaks about resurrection power, he takes the foolishness of the cross, this public exhibition used by the Romans, and he says, it's this public exhibition that proclaims and declares the greatness and the power of God.

That Jesus just defeated sin and death, the powers and the authorities at the public execution of Jesus at the cross.

And Jesus doesn't stay on the cross, Jesus doesn't stay dead, but he is raised to life again.

And this resurrection power is central to the Christian narrative.

It is central to the good news that we carry because the resurrection changes everything.

Firstly, the resurrection authenticates everything that Jesus did and everything that he said.

Jesus claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus claimed to be the resurrection and the life.

Secondly, it secures for us eternal life.

It secures for us hope because Jesus is risen again.

We too have the hope of being risen again one day, that we can have life beyond the grave.

But thirdly, the good news, the power of the resurrection is that we can know life and hope and power now.

We can live with power and life and hope now.

As Tom Wright says, resurrection isn't life after death, it is life after life after death.

And we are invited into life now.

We can live with hope now, even when we are walking through the dark moments.

Even when we are walking through the grave.

A young man by the name of Adil Salmon.

When he was two years old, he was rescued out of a really bad family situation, and he was adopted by some other Thai parents who happened to be Christian.

He was the only Christian in that group.

And he would go away as he was in the cave, he would retreat back, and he would, he had these two things that he would, he recited, he said hundreds and hundreds of times.

The first one was the Lord's Prayer.

And the other one was the song, How Great Is Our God.

And he would sing, he would worship, and he would pray as a young teenager.

And he says this when the panic first set in, I just felt like I had to talk to God.

He gave me a very strong belief that someone would come for us.

Even though the doubts and fears were there, this strange belief, something I've never felt before, the cave, it was the strongest thing I felt.

I couldn't see much in the cave, and I realized that's quite similar to how I can't see God in real life.

But I have to trust that he's going to show his power and his goodness in the end.

It's a photo of him a few years ago, he moved to America where he's studying.

He's now in his twenties.

Maybe you're hearing you're in the metaphorical cave.

Perhaps you are feeling like you're in darkness.

Darkness has around you, and there's no way out.

Perhaps you're walking through a battle of mind and soul.

Perhaps you are feeling lost in your shame and in the condemnation of sin.

Perhaps you feel like you are unloved by God, believing that sin has left you condemned and dead on the inside.

Perhaps you are waging a battle.

I felt like I needed to say this today that our battle is not just against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.

We are in a spiritual battle, and we have an enemy who wants to destroy you and take your life.

Peter says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour.

You have an enemy.

You have someone who wants to rip your heart out and your soul out.

And maybe you are walking through a spiritual battle right now.

And I want to say to you that there is hope.

There is always hope.

There is hope beyond the grave, but there is hope now.

There is hope for everyone in Christ, no matter what you are walking through, because the resurrection says that we have access to the power of God now.

And the path to this resurrection life, the only way to resurrection life is through death.

To follow Christ is to die to self.

To take hold of the life of Christ is to surrender our own life.

And Paul says it here in Colossians.

Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you also raised with him through your faith the working of God who raised him from the dead.

Paul points to baptism as a picture of what happens when we're raised to life in Christ.

And he says, a picture, a beautiful picture of what happens to us is the picture of baptism.

Just as we've celebrated today, five baptisms, five people who have gone through the waters, who have gone under the water, identifying with Christ in his death.

We die to ourselves.

We enter into death, we surrender our lives, but we don't stay there, praise the Lord.

We come up again into new life, we rise out of the waters, out of the burial and into new life.

See, if we're to find resurrection, then we must first die.

And that is the invitation that we must make.

As Bonhoeffer said, when Christ calls a man to die, calls a man or woman, he bids him come and die.

To come and surrender, to surrender our rights, our lives, our control, our preferences, our money, our bodies.

A death has to take place, but here's the thing.

And this is the theme throughout Colossians.

Yes, we're called to hand over something, we give something up, but we get something far greater.

And we get life.

We're set free from condemnation.

We're set free from shame.

We're set free from the things that crowd in.

We are set free from death, people, and we get new life, and we can walk in that life, that life for the future, but that life now living with hope in our hearts.

And we live in a hopeless world.

We live in a world that is longing for meaning and purpose and life.

And perhaps you are here looking for that.

And the good news is that we can know it in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, just like we heard five testimonies this morning.

We die, but we rise again in new life, and that changes everything.

We are alive, we are alive in Christ, and nothing, nothing, nothing can take that away.

And so we can walk, we can walk in the life of Jesus Christ.

And so, as Paul says in the next chapter, and I'm jumping ahead, but he says this in Colossians chapter 3, verse 3, this is the crux of our series.

Colossians 3:3

Paul says, For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

And I know a whole bunch of you have died.

I know a whole bunch of you have surrendered your life.

I know a whole bunch of you have said, Jesus, I'm making you king of my life.

Perhaps some of you here this morning haven't.

And today is a great opportunity for you to take hold of eternal life, to take hold of the true power.

Jesus, who defeated sin and death, in order that you and I can have life, life to the fullness, life for eternity.

That is the invitation.

At the end of the service, we'd love to connect with you.

We'd love to talk with you.

It's the best step that you can make.

So, how do we respond?

We respond by surrendering.

And perhaps that invitation is afresh for you an invitation to surrender again.