Made Alive In Christ

Introduction

Well, thank you so much for coming tonight and appreciate your presence. We’re going to be studying in the third chapter of the book of Colossians. We’ve already spent some time trying to get some of the we couldn’t begin to get all of it. There’s no possible way. We’ve just kind of skimmed across the top. Maybe it’s caused you to have an appetite to want to study a little bit more. But we’re going to look this evening at the third chapter where the application. You know, if you notice these letters that Paul wrote, many times what they do is they’ll spend two or three chapters talking about the applic the principles of our salvation and doctrinal facts about what has happened to give us this great salvation, and then there’s some response to that.

And so there’s some kind of application that needs to be met. Something needs to be done. It’s like somebody said that if you learn something and don’t have some application, it’s like kissing your cousin. There’s no benefit to it, you know. You’ve got to have some kind of a way, some kind of a uh where this what where’s this rubber meet the road? And that’s what we’re going to begin to look at tonight. So, and based upon all that we’ve seen about what God has done, who our King is, how wonderful, how powerful, how marvelous, and the majestic beauty and power of the Son of God who’s revealed us who God is, who made everything, what should we do in response? How should we respond? What should happen?

Since all this is the case about what God has done for us. The apostle says in Colossians the third chapter, beginning in verse one. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Sent your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. Here’s a picture now of what has happened to a group of people who, as we’ve already mentioned in Colossians 3 and verse 11, that Christ is all and in all. If Christ is in, if Christ is everything to your life, if he’s what your life is about, and he is in everything in your life, what you think, what you do, how you act, the way you treat people, how you worship God, everything you do.

If he is all of that, then I’ll tell you you have figured out what life’s about. And so, how should that be applied? How can we see Christianity? How can we explain what that should do to us? What should be the response? The writer says to us, if you then be risen with him, and of course that’s a reference reference back to verse 20, where we were dead with Christ and we were buried with him, the water grave of baptism, and now we’ve been raised up to be made alive. Now we’re alive. I’m going to tell you, we are alive in Christ, and we are dead without him. Nobody can be a if we were studying the book of Ephesians, we’d see that the church, the book of Colossians, shows that everything is in Christ.

1. Seek Those Things Which Are Above

If we studied Ephesians, we see that it’s all in this church. The body of Christ, the purchased church body of God’s people who give God glory in this body, and everything about that saved body of people, you must be a part of that church. Well, here you’ve got to be in Christ. He’s got to be in you. And so he says, since we’re in Christ, since we’ve been raised up with him, been made alive, he says, seek those things which are above where Christ sites on the right hand of God. So he’s telling us the first thing we’ve got to do, and we’ve got to see, he’s going to say, set our affections on things above. We’re talking about our mind, first of all. We’re talking about our head, the way we think about things.

Have you ever noticed when somebody is interested in something and they seek that, they have ambition toward it? There was a lady in Madison who’s in a wheelchair for years, and uh her husband went off and left her. She had two daughters, she didn’t have any, she could barely pay her bills, and uh and she couldn’t get around very well. She had to crawl into her clothes every morning. She was depressed quite often. But she had a picture on the back of her bedroom door of Hawaii. And we used to have to go there because Regal Mortis will sit up in your legs if you don’t keep them exercised as you get older. And so we used to have to do that for her because she couldn’t do it.

And I said, Jen, what are you doing with that big picture of Hawaii on the back door there? She said, I’m going to Hawaii one of these days. I’ve got my mindset, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to Hawaii. You know what happened? After about ten years of us doing that, she got married to this young man. And you know where they went on their honeymoon? They went to Hawaii. And so, but you see, her mind was set there. Have you thought about the power of the mind? When you can get it set and locked on something and keep it on that. This this word set, I believe, it means the idea of being uh, well, let’s see, where is that word in my Bible?

It means to be continuously occupied. Uh, to set above uh to it to uh endeavor and to desire. Now think about that. I I read about a man one time who walked out from a factory where he worked, was walking out on the road, and a tornado was coming, and everybody got out on the ground, and this old boy was standing up, and the tornado was going by, and he was looking up in the air and going like that, and after it went by, I said, You crazy nut, did you know you can get hurt in a tornado standing up? He said, Oh, yeah, I’ve been I’m from uh Nebraska. I’ve seen many a storm of uh a dust bowl, and that’s not new to me.

They said, Well, what were you doing? Stand up, looking up in a tornado. He said, I was trying to see where my check went to. It was in my pocket, it blew out, and I was he went. I was trying to seek my check. Well, he was putting his life in danger because his mind was set. His mind was set and seeking something. And when people do that, I uh I remember my boys watching the cartoon years ago, reminds me of the way a lot of Christians are. Well, we don’t, we don’t seem to really get on track and get after this because we’re not constantly endeavoring to be thinking about the throne room of Christ. To get your mind off of this crazy world you live in and take it up above and go into the throne room of Christ and park your mind there.

If you get your mind up there, and then everything goes crazy. Well, it doesn’t matter to you, you see. Because your mind is not on the things down here, and these things can’t control you, they can’t move you, they can’t bother you because your mind is set and seeking something above that. And so this this cartoon was a cowboy who’s supposed to ride off the end of the cartoon off into the sunset like cowboys do. This old cowboy rolled off a little way on the screen, and he looked this way and that way, and then he rolled off that way, and then he came back in a few minutes, he rides back up, and so a dust starts coming up, he goes this way and up, and a big dust bowl goes up.

He can’t see whatever happened, old boy. He wasn’t going anywhere. You see, you’ve got to say, I’m going down this road, I’m going to heaven, and I don’t care what gets in the way, you better get out of my way. Here I come. Because my mind is set, and I am seeking those things which are above. And when people do that, it’s amazing to me how much power is in the life and the mind of somebody like that. Uh, somebody years ago gave my oldest son John, when he was a little fellow, gave him a magnifying glass, and he had learned they showed him how if you take a magnifying glass and you and you focus the sun rays to a point that you can start a fire.

Well, I was sitting in the office, and I knew they gave it to me. I better check on that old boy. He’s kin to me. And so I looked out the window, and he had piled up some leaves in the front yard and had a fire going in the front yard. Here he was about four years old, had him a fire out there. So I got up and beat on the ground and said, God, God, no.

He put that in his pocket. And so I thought, okay, buddy. So I went back to studying. Well, about half hour went by and thought, you know, that boy’s kin to me. I’d better check on him again. I look out the window this time. He’s got that magnifying glass focused on my car, and smoke is coming off the edge of my car. I had to take that away from him. But he learned something. When you get set and you take all the energy and all the rays of your life and you bring them to a focal point, you’ve got power. Your mind is powerful. And when you get your mind made up, I’m going to heaven. My mind’s already there. I’m waiting on my old body to follow it.

But that’s where my mind is, you see. Here’s a picture of somebody as he’s become a Christian. He doesn’t let his mind, like Peter said in 1 Peter 1 verse 15, that we need to roll up the sleeves of our mind. Don’t let your mind blow like a sheet on a clothesline in the wind. Roll the sleeves of your mind up. Get your mind set and seek those things which are above. So become constantly endeavoring and desiring and thinking about and constantly preoccupied with the fact that my mind is where Christ is seated on the throne of God. And when I see all kind of mess around me, I just keep thinking about that. I don’t let my mind. Now notice what the next verse says.

2. Set Your Affections on Things Above

Not only should we seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God, but He says, seek uh set your affections or your mind or your heart on things above and not on things on the earth. Now, why does the Bible tell us that? Have you thought about, you know, Ecclesiastes shows in the first chapter? That you can’t number all the problems of life. You can’t solve all the problems of life. If we were to try to count all the problems of life, we couldn’t do it, and we can’t solve all the problems of life. So you know what you need to learn about all the problems of life? Don’t set your mind on all the problems. Don’t think about life.

Don’t worry about life. Don’t worry about the mess that’s in the world. Don’t try to unravel the world. You can’t do it. What you do is you set your mind. And I’m trying to think this word, I can’t remember exactly. Uh it means to dominate. The word set is the word to dominate. It’s the idea, it’s kind of the concept of like a I told about my wife one Sunday. She went uh uh off to the store to do something. My boys were there in the house, and that we had a basketball room in our kitchen. And the boys were in there playing basketball, and I was sitting at the table uh studying my for my sermon for Sunday, and every once in a while the ball hit me on the head.

I’d go back and study. They had a radio going on in the kitchen with a basketball game on, and a television going in the other room with a basketball game in there, and I was sitting in the middle of all that racket, and my wife had put something in the oven, and I thought she had set the alarm clock or the the watch on the whatever you call that thing on the on the stove. I thought she had set that uh timer on there. And so while I was sitting there studying, the timer went off, and so I thought, oh, I’ll take care of my wife today. She forgot about that and set the timer. She went off that, and it will burn up, so I’m going to just jump up and turn the oven off for her, and she’ll be so glad when she comes home.

So I turned the oven off, and I sat back down and I went to study. And so she came in a little while. She said, We’re going to need supper in a little while. She’ll be done any minute. I said, Oh, baby, you forgot. I turned that off for you. You left. She said, What? You turn. She said, I didn’t. She said, the boys are playing with that timer. Now you’ve messed up. We got raw supper, and we’re not going to eat. But you see, what was going on is those boys had sent that timer. It was set for a certain amount of time. And all the racket going on, all the noise and all the basketball playing and sounds and carrying on. Well, I was sitting there trying to think that clock was set on one thing, and that’s all the clock was doing was ticking away until the time came.

Set your mind on things above. Because if you set them on what’s down here, it will drive you crazy. You’ll be in the nut house with somebody for long. And you might take some folks with you while you’re going. And so we’ve got to see that we’ve got to start off because of what God has done. We’ve got to get, we’ve got to aim a little bit. Set your sights a little higher. Get your aim, aim, lift your aim and look a little bit higher than where you’re looking. Look at what can be done and what can happen if you’ll just raise your view. He says the reason why we should do it in verse 3. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

3. Your Life Is Hid With Christ in God

Now think about that. Your life is hid with Christ in God. You know, I like that statement in the book of Matthew, the 13th chapter, at the end of that chapter where the apostle told when the Lord comes again, and there’s going to be this great harvest coming, and the saints are going to shine bright as the sun. And you know, some people say, Well, you’re getting pretty close to always a glare going off your head. But let me tell you, we people don’t know who we are today generally. We live in a world people don’t value us, they don’t know who we are. And really, in so many ways, we’re not, I mean, there’s no, have you ever seen pictures of supposed to have been Jesus walking around with a halo, walking over everywhere we went with a halo over his head?

Nobody has a halo over their head. The only way I can demonstrate that I am God’s child is my attitude in life. How I behave, the way I talk, the way I treat people, what I do. And so here’s a picture of, even though I do that, it may be I’m not going to be. I tell folks all the time, there’s three states of what seems to be my salvation. It’s when I’m justified. That’s when God forgives me of my sin. When I’m sanctified, that’s when I become part of the church and I’m separated from the world. But I’m not glorified yet. I’m going to be glorified one day. I’m not glorified yet. Just hang around and you’ll see. Well, just ask my wife, she’ll tell you that.

But you need to see that what we’re doing today is our life is hidden with Christ and God. We’re trying to let Christ be seen. We’re not trying to magnify ourselves and make a big name for ourselves and become somebody big and important. We’re trying to get people to see Jesus. I’m trying to hide behind Jesus. I’m trying to think, wonder what Jesus would do. How would he act? Wonder what he might think about it, what he might say in the situation. I try to think about that. And the only way I can find the answer is if I’ve got these things written in my heart and in my mind. And so the apostle says, if we’ll understand what’s happened, is the reason why we should set our mind on things above and seek what is uh above us is because we’re dead and our life is hidden with Christ in God.

We’re living behind Christ. He says in verse 4, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. Now notice, today, somebody says, you know, there’s going to be a there’s going to be a final exam one day, the judgment day is going to be a final exam. Let me tell you, you’re taking the final exam today. The judgment day is just going to be the verdict. Did you did you live in such a way? Were you were you dead with Christ and raised up and living in him so people will see every day? You see, the test is today. The final exam conclusion is going to be told on the judgment day, but it’s just going to reveal what went on in time.

That’s what’s going to happen. All’s going to happen is whether people see in the judgment day, see whether you are the kind of person who Christ, when you were alive, Christ, his life, we shall appear with him, and then shall we uh we appear with him in glory. So we’re going to be glorified. But it’s only going to be because we have lived in this world as people have been raised up with him and seated with him, as Ephesians 2 says in the heavenly places. And so here we are right now. And so, you know, sometimes I tell people, can you all see me right now seated? I’m usually standing up. And I said, You’re crazy, you’re standing up. No, I’ll tell you, I’m seeing with Christ.

4. Mortify Your Members Which Are Upon the Earth

And you’re seen with Christ. We’re all seed with Christ in this heavenly arena, you see. This spiritual arena, and Christ is seated with us together in this spiritual arena today. And so he says that in verse 5, notice, since we understand that about it, and we know that we’re trying to hold Christ up and be hidden by living a life in Christ, he says, mortify, that means put to death. Mortify, therefore, your members, uh, which are upon the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affections, evil concupiscence, covetousness, which is idolatry. And in other words, when he begins to list these things, he’s showing us a picture of somebody who has put these things to death. Then, you know, when you talk about death, have you ever thought about somebody saying, you know, my marriage is dead?

Have you ever thought about that? Uh, somebody said, our friendship is dead. You know what I mean? We mean that’s over. That’s finished. That’s that’s gone. That’s the end of that. It’s finished. Well, let me tell you what should be finished. First of all, what should be finished? Is we have determined we’re finished with becoming immoral, immorally sexually. I I read one time about an old boy’s wife, saw him looking at some woman, and she said, What do you what are you doing looking at her? You’re married to me. He said, Well, just because I’ve been on one horse don’t mean he can’t watch the rest of the race. Hogwash. You can’t watch the rest of the race. You’ve got to get your mindset. In 1 Thessalonians 4, the Bible tells us that we’re we’re supposed to be sanctified.

And it’s the will of God that we be sanctified and we not commit fornication. It should not be named, it shouldn’t be numbered among us. I told this story to some people yesterday that my grandmother taught me years ago. I must have been 12 or 13. I was beginning to notice girls. I’d always noticed boys up until that point when I got to be the age, some reason all of a sudden girls. I started noticing girls and started taking a bath and doing things like that, you know. And a girl was going down the street, and my grandmother saw me watching her, and she noticed I wasn’t looking at the way her hair was combed, I was looking at something else about the girl. So my grandmother knew I wasn’t thinking what I should think about.

So she said, let me tell you, I want to teach you a great lesson. I don’t ever want you to forget. She said, Come in here in the house. I’m going to make you lunch and put it on a table. And she said, You go out in the garden and you look in that garden and you pick up the dirt and you look around you, you pick you a tomato, and eat a tomato, and go around there and pick you some green beans, eat some of those green beans that are hot from the sun and cut and bust the tomato uh watermelon, eat the heart out of one of the watermelon, and just see all the wonderful blessings in the garden. She said, You enjoy that.

But she said, then when you get finished, you pick up a handful of dirt and come in the house. I said, Why, Grandma? She said, Do what I told you. I knew to do that, so I did. I come in the house with that dirt, and she said, Now, that dirt is a blessing in the garden. When you take that dirt out of the garden where God put it and put it on the kitchen table, it becomes dirt. And she said, That’s the way sex is. She said, You wait till you get married. You don’t get involved. Now, I’m gonna tell you, I’ve done, I used to tell people I’ve committed just about every sin in the world. And uh, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve never been with one woman.

And I waited to get married to be with her because my grandmother taught me. And so she took, she said, now scan that dirt over your plate. Well, I said, I’m not gonna do it, grandma. She said, You do. Well, I scanned it. I tried to miss the plate as much as I could, and some of the dirt got on my potato salad and on my blowing sandwich. And so I sat down there, she said, Now you eat that, and every time you take a bite of grit, you remember, if you get sexually inactive before marriage, you will be eating grit and you remember it the rest of your life, and it will bother you as long as you live. You don’t want that. God don’t want you to be that way.

And so I sat down there and ate that, and sure enough, it’d like to kill beating that old dirty grit on my stuff. But you know what? I went to Germany and I go with my friends, and before my wife came, we would go on the weekends to the big cities. There were these big uh houses of ill repute. And my friend said, Come on, girl, it’s gone. I said, No, I’m not going in there. They said, Oh, come on. I said, No, I said, Why not? I said, I’ve already eaten grit one time, I’m never gonna eat it ever again. They said, What? I said, I’m not going to do it. It’s okay, sit on the curb, wait there till we come back. That’s what I did.

I went to Crete. 18 solid blocks, legal, uh on the island of uh Island of Crete. And they said, Come on. I said, No, I’ve already eaten grit. I’m not ever going to eat it again. They said, What? I said, Go on. But you see, my grandmother got that in my mind as a young boy. And I determined. And I talk to people all the time who have struggles in their marriage and life because they didn’t do what God said. Young people, listen to me. Keep yourself for the day of your wedding. Give yourself holy and purely to somebody when you get married, and you’ll find out what the Song of Solomon teaches. You will eat out of a garden that it will produce all the joy.

As long as you live, you’ll be happy, and you will not hunger for anything else. And you won’t have any memory of what you did. Young people, please think about that. You old people, too. Used to think it was young people. It’s old folks acting crazy now, eh? But now can you see what the Bible says? When we want to be the kind of people God wants us to be, the picture of Christianity is the thing that heads all the catalogs in the New Testament of sin, fornication always start. It’s a term of any kind of unlawful, illegal, uh, unlawful sexual activity of any kind. That’s what it is, any kind. It’s got to be in marriage, and that’s all there is to it. And then he says, uncleanness, and this is the word for moral uncleanness.

And it would be the idea, I think, if I’m not mistaken, I’m not certain about it, but I think this word comes from the word push. And it’s the things you think about. It’s hard to imagine what you think about sometimes. It’s a picture of something rotten and decaying and dying. Uh and a soul that is uh as festered up and that makes you sick to look at. You can put that stuff in your mind. You can get pus in your head and think about it. He said, Let me tell you, if you’ve been raised up with Christ and your mind is set above, and you’re seeking what’s above, don’t put that in your head. And then he says to us, uh, inordinate affections or passions.

So here’s here’s physical passion that people have. Sometimes they just have these uh physical desires, physical things they want to do. Passion desires, physical things. He says, Don’t do those things. Don’t be that kind of person. And then evil concupiscence, which is evil desires, moral desires of that sort. He says, Don’t, don’t, don’t think things, don’t put those kinds of things. Watch what you watch. Make a covenant with your eyes, as Job said, and don’t look on a woman to lust after. Make up your mind. You know what you do with your mind, your eyes, the body of your soul, and if you let darkness in there, I tell you, darkness will fill you up. What you look at will affect you. Make up your mind.

My boys never young at home. We had a television, one of them cajugo buttons that you change the channels with. And when uh when a commercial would come on and he was showing ladies’ undergarments or something else, we would all make it, we made a covenant. When something comes on like that, everybody look at each other. That way we know nobody’s cheating. And then a dad would punch the button, we’d go to another channel seat. And we keep going to old dad found something and didn’t have that. But we were trying to keep that stuff out of our mind. Don’t let it get. If you fool with it in your mind, it’s going to get to you. You you can’t, you can’t. Sin is like a slave master.

It’s like an addiction. I don’t care if it’s pornography or drugs or alcohol, whatever you want to talk about. It’s like an addiction. And once you start dabbling at it, you might say, Well, I could just drink me one beer every day for lunch and it won’t bother me. Just think you can and try it out. You’ll find out what everybody else did. They thought they could do it too. Think you could just look a little bit. Just take a peek, young people, just think, oh, I can I can look at this a little bit. Let me tell you. You will destroy your life and yourself. Destroy your mind. And you’ll go crazy if you’re not careful. That’s what sin does. The old devil’s a slave master.

He won’t, and he won’t know if he can get you when you’re young. It’s a lot easier. Because it’s hard to get an old man, you see. And so he knows when you’re young, if he can destroy you before you get old, he’ll be successful. So you make up your mind. I’m going to do the will of God. Not because, as 1 Thessalonians 4 says, don’t do it because you might get age or might get some veneral disease or get pregnant. Do it because it’s the will of God. That’s the reason to do it. And when young people say, I’m going to do it because God wants me to be this way. You’ll find out that’s what living is. You’ll find out you’re a wire. Don’t let some old boy tell you, if you love me, you’ll do what I want.

You tell him he’s crazy. He don’t love you at all. He loves himself. I tell you, I played sports. And I heard all the boys in the locker room, and I’m going to tell you, young girls, don’t think they’re not going to the locker room and bragging about what they did with you. You might think it’s just something pride between you and him. They get in there and brag. And when I was in school, they always kidding me because they I told them I was not going to do those things, and so they kidding me and called me virgin all the time. I was a quarterback. And I had a pretty good bullet pass. And when some old boy would call me virgin and ride me a little bit, he would go out for a pass.

And before he was getting to where I was going to throw the ball, I’d throw about five yards before we got there and hit him in the back of the head and just about knock him out. So he quit calling me that, you see. But I’m going to want you to know I was not ashamed. I was not afraid. My grandmother had taught me the value of that. See, here’s just a kind of thinking that causes people to be sexually immoral and to think ungodly, evil things. And then what about covetousness, which is idolatry? Uh, you know, people are all the time looking at what somebody else has got and thinking if I had that, I’d be happy. Chances are, if you knew what they’re doing with it, they’d give it to you, you know.

Sometimes somebody’s got something you think you want it. And he said, I wish I had that car. Well, you will know how much it costs them to get it fixed and keep it running. Or maybe I wish I had that old boy’s wife. Well, you better talk to him a little bit. He might say, Well, I’d be glad to let you have her. I’m gonna tell you, you better just realize whatever you put before God is like idolatry. Don’t let anything in the world take precedence in your mind where you chase after and bow down and serve something other than God. I don’t care whether it’s money, a job, a house, a car, a person, or anything. Don’t let anything do that to you. And then notice what else he says in verse 6 for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience.

Notice God’s wrath, good people, God’s anger is coming on all the children. Now don’t think, well, I’m gonna pull off, I’m gonna get away with it. No, you’re not. The wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience. So it’s gonna come. So don’t send in the bill and say, Well, I’m going to church, but I’m not gonna do what’s right. I don’t care how my mom or dad makes me come, I’ll just come and say you can do that, but let me tell you, you may get to be 42, 45 years old, and it may bother you because you did that. So don’t do it. Save yourself a lot of heartache and a lot of trouble. Do what’s right as you go along. Be the right kind of person.

And then notice he says to us, not only do we need to understand that responsibility, but listen to what’s said in verse verse 8. I’m sorry, verse 7. In which he also walked sometime when you live in it. Now notice to walk in sin is to live in sin. A walk is a course of life. Let me let me see if I can explain this to you. A man came to Master Preach. I had several preachers come to my house on Tuesday morning, and we would study the Bible together during the day. And we’d get out in the backyard and play basketball at lunchtime. Then we’d take a walk downtown, six miles downtown and back up. And so one day this one old boy came in on a pair of white jeans and white tennis shoes, and we’d had a big festival in Madison.

A lot of art and craft people there, a lot of traffic in town. We were walking downtown. I was talking about the Bible. We were walking, and he was trying to hear me. We were walking in the concrete uh waterway on the edge of the uh roadway, and he was trying to listen to it. He couldn’t hear me too good. And so one time he went to step around on the side to hear me, and he didn’t notice there was a mossy hole of water there, and he stepped down in that old mess. He went down about that far with his white pants and his new uh tennis shoe, white tennis shoes on. He’d come up out of there and oh, look what I’ve he said.

I’m going back to the house, I’ve made a mess. I said, No, you’re not. He’d always struggled with trying to just keep doing what he should do. He would do well for others and get discouraged and slow down and get well. I said, I’m going to teach you a lesson you had you need to learn. I said, keep walking with me on the road. I said, Come on, I’m going to show you something today you need to learn. So we walked, we went on down the road, and people were coming by their car, and they would see him, and quack he was walking along, making noise, and people knew him, and somebody blow the horn and make noise. He said, I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I said, You ought to be ashamed and embarrassed.

You did something silly back there. But I said, You stepped off the road. I said, You weren’t walking in the mud. You were walking on the road, but you stepped off and you got back on. I said, Now keep on coming. So we went downtown and we got a beautiful fountain downtown Madison. And every year when we have this festival, young people think it’s funny to pour a box of bleach soap powders in that fountain. And so it bubbles up and suns up and soap suds runs all over the place down there. I said, Larry, go up there to that fountain and set on the side of it and put your foot down in there and wash yourself off in the fountain. It’s a cleansing fountain.

And he washed it off. I said, Now, do you see what you did, old buddy? I said, you think when you commit some sin that God’s done with you and you can’t go to heaven, you think you’re going to be perfect on here. I said, You’re not going to be perfect, but said you’ve got to fight it. But I said, you weren’t walking in the mud. You just stepped off the road one time. I said, you got back on. I said, that’s the way you walk with God. Everybody steps off the road somewhere. Sometimes just because you don’t do what you ought to do. Or you have the wrong attitude. You step off the road, and what do you do? You get back on the road.

And the Lord says, You keep coming, you keep having that attitude, and I’ll cleanse you. I’ll take care of you. But if you just get off walking the mud, don’t think, oh God, no, he’s not going to do that. You’re going to have to confess you’ve done wrong. You’re going to have to admit you made a mistake. You sinned against God. And God says, Listen, I don’t care what you do. If you have the attitude to turn, I’ll take you back. I’m so glad that’s the way God is. And so here’s a picture of people who have learned. The way you used to walk was the way you used to live. But see, now we’re walking on the highway, and that’s how we have fellowship with God as long as we walk in the light.

5. Put Off All These; Put On the New Man

And we keep coming back and stepping in the light. When we do that, the blood of Christ will cleanse us if we confess our sins and do what God says. See, you see, we can keep on going. So don’t stop when you get off and step in the mud. Get out of the mud. Get back on the road. Get cleaned up. Get going, you see. That’s the way you do it. And so the writer says to us in verse 8. He says, Now ye also put off all these. Now notice here’s the principles about what we’re talking about, applied now. Put off all this anger, wrath, malice. You know, these first two words, anger here is the ideal of a person who’s violent, and this word uh wrath is somebody who boils over.

Somebody I’d like this. Somebody said, the people that are hot tempered. Have you ever noticed people like that? People have a short fuse. They’re like people who sneeze. Have you ever seen somebody sneeze? And when they see the and they’ll hold it in about blow their eyeballs out of their head. They keep it inside. And they’re about to blow up, but they’re they just soft. And they just they just aggravate it and pick it at people and they’re holding it back and they just hold it in there. And so they do that. Some people just try to hold it on. But you know what some other people do? Sneeze all over, make a mess out of everything. They sneeze all over everybody. You need to learn to get control of yourself.

And put a lid on this word thermos. The ideal of getting control. I tell people I remember that because it sounds like thermos. Because my my wife years ago, I used to ride a bicycle to harvester and cross five or six railroad tracks, throw my bicycle on a train and jump off and get on the next train on a flat car and go across there to go to Harvard and go to work. And she always put a thermos in my armor jacket. And when I’d get to work, I’d take the lid off, and that old hot coffee stayed right. Didn’t spew on anybody, it didn’t get on anybody. I had a lid on a thermos. You see? Put your lid on. Wouldn’t you? Don’t spew out all over everybody?

Keep it under control. Don’t just blow up because things don’t go the way you want. So put all that off. And uh and put off malice, ill will. It’s amazing how people get ill will. I was preaching one time, I read about an old boy got mad at one of his neighbors and they were Christians and they didn’t talk for a long time. Because one old boy bought a hay rope and he forgot to give it back. And so for 20 years, those boys were mad, and one day he said, What are you so mad about? I said, You’ve got my hay rope. He said, Oh, I forgot. I preached that sermon, and one of the members had brought, I had an electric paint sprayer, and this one of the members had brought his paint spray ten years or so ago.

I forgot it even had it. I didn’t even know. But he thought I’d preached that sermon to remind him. He went out and bought me a new paint sprayer brought it Sunday night to him again. I said, I promise I would never have done that. But he said, Well, whether you did or not, I knew I did wrong. He said, I broke it and I was ashamed of myself. Well, you know what? We need to learn to be the kind of people that we’re we’re not going to have ill will. You can’t do that. Jesus said, Listen, if you’ve got all against your brother, and you’re sitting in here watching God, you know what? You need to leave your gift here and go out behind the doors out there and straighten it out and then come back in here, would you?

Don’t say, well, oh, I’m mad at you, and I’m not going to get over it, but I’m going to go to heaven. We’re going to. You think God, you know, I tell you, if God lets two people go to heaven like that, I can tell you what I know about God. You’re going to live in a duplex in eternity, and they’re going to live upstairs, you’re going to live downstairs. You’re going to get along. You might as well get over it and get with it. Here’s a picture of having no ill will among the people of God. We don’t need that kind of stuff. And then he says, What about blasphemy or slander? You know, sometimes speaking against somebody and slander, if we say something, it may be true, but it ought not to be told.

You don’t have to tell everything. You just tell something because you want to hurt somebody. It may be, if you’re just slandering somebody because you want to hurt them, that’s wrong. Don’t do that. You don’t tell everything you know and hurt somebody because they’ve made some mistake and you know about it, done something wrong. So blasphemy or slander and then filthy communication, naturally we ought to know that that’s not the proper thing to do. Let’s not use abusive language and things that would be that way. It shouldn’t come out of our mouth. And he said, then lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. And so, should we be people who would lie? We’re members of a body together.

We’re members of one another. Why would we lie to each other? Why can’t we be honest about things? Tell the truth. And you know, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned about churches where I’ve been in a lot of places. Uh I’ll I’ll preach and talk about some of my sins and what I’ve done, and how people need to confess that and make it right. I’ve had people after the meeting come to me and say, Listen, we’re struggling with drugs or struggling with something, but we would never tell the church. Because if we told one person, they would gossip and slander about us, and we would never be accepted. Isn’t that a shame to think people are afraid to tell what we’ve done because we’re going to slander and destroy their reputation rather than praying for them and helping them and keeping uh uh love covers a multitude of sins.

Telp people when they’re weak. When people stumble, do something to help them and take care of them and encourage them, help them to get up. Don’t do something to destroy them and take them down. And let’s not lie about each other or lie to each other. And then verse 10 says, and have put on the new man. Now listen to this, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. And here’s a picture of somebody putting on this new man. It’s like putting on new garments. You put Christ on, you see. And you wear Christ and what he was. And I tell people, can you imagine what you would think of me if I went out somewhere and got to working and got all sweaty and all muddy and all wet and all dirty and come in the house and put clean clothes on over my old muddy, sweaty, nasty clothes?

You know what that would do? That would muddy up and nasty up my new clean clothes. You know what you want to do for you? Put your clean clothes on? You want to be washed. You want to be clean. You want to find an answer to a good conscience tonight? Peter said, you can find it. You can find a good conscience toward God. 1 Peter 3 21. Baptism. You can go down in the watery grave. I tell you, you won’t. If you understand it, you cannot imagine the thrill that’s in the mind of a person who understands what that’s all about. If you know God’s going to cleanse your record, forgive you of everything you’ve done, take you in as a child, and not only has he given his son for you when you didn’t care about him, but what more is he going to do now?

You think he’s going to give up on you now? If he let his son die when you were his enemy and when you were without strength, what do you think he’s going to do for you now? Let me tell you, God’s not going to let you down. God’s not going to quit on you. He’s begun to work, he’s not going to quit. So you just get in here and you take off those old garments in baptism. And you put on this new man, which is, notice again, renewed in knowledge. You keep learning every day. After the image of him. Who are you trying to be like? Don’t try to be like old Gary Sandusky. You try to be like Jesus. You look at him. You be what he was.

6. Neither Greek Nor Jew: No Distinctions

You make up your mind that you’re going to be renewed in that way. Now notice then in verse 13, where there is neither Greek nor Jew. Now notice here were two religious distinctions. And you see in the book of Acts, that created all kind of trouble in the church. You ever thought about that? You know, uh, where I live, there’s all kinds of different sorts of people that come. I like to tell this one story about a man, his name was Zeke, and he came and he was an old farmer, and he was like myself when I grew up. He he didn’t bathe regularly, and so he didn’t he didn’t use deodorant. And so he came to the building and he sat in the building and he was just a humble fellow, and uh he he smelled.

And so people said, go let that man sit in there, a stinking old man sitting there and smell the place up one. Why don’t somebody do? Well, he heard somebody say that. And he said, You know, Gary, I don’t think I’ll come to church. I said, No, Zeke, I said, don’t pay attention to that. He said, Well, I want you to come up to my house on Tuesday and come up there and visit with me at about 6 o’clock. I said, Okay. Well, I got on my motorcycle and rode up there, and uh, while I was going down the road, I noticed we were getting to have a meeting. Somebody had taken some cardboard and took a shoe, one of these black shoe polish used to be with that thing you daubed down in there and take it out.

It looked like they’d take one of those things and written on cardboard, gospel meeting in Madison, Indiana, and told the place and the time. And he’d put these cardboard signs all over the place up there. I was going down the road psalm when I turned going, and I went to his place, and there was an old trailer sitting out there that he lived in, and an old farmhouse sitting in front next to that one, and the floor was gone out of it, and he had run a extension cord over there and dropped the light bulb down in that old old house and put bales of hay around the wall and had all his neighbors in there. And I said, Zeke, what’s going on? He said, Come on, we’re waiting on you to preach to us.

I said, I thought you just want me to visit. I didn’t even bring a Bible. He said, What? A preacher without a sword? Somebody get the man a sword quick. And they brought me a Bible. And the first night I preached in that building, in that house. Zeke’s oldest son obeyed the gospel. And when he came forward, Zeke said, I’ve got a pond out here on the back of my place. He said, Now we’re going to go out there. I said, Well, I got I’m sorry. I drove in a big old van that night. And I said, Well, I got my van, we’ll all get in there and go out to the pond. And Zeke said, I’m too excited. I’m going to run in front of the van.

I’m going to run right out there and show you where to go. So we went down into that van and baptized that old boy. And Zeke said, You know, Gary, I think I’m going to go to church somewhere else. I said, Zeke, don’t you dare go somewhere else. He said, But people there are bothered by my ignorance and my smell and the way I am. I said, Well, I’m going to tell you what. They may be bothered. You are wearing your priestly robes. You’re a priest of God. You’re a servant of the most high God. And if they won’t accept you, I’ll tell you, I don’t want them to accept me. You realize every person that comes in here, no matter how different they are from you, we are all priest of God.

And so there’s no Jew, there’s no Greek, no country boy, no city boy, no boy from the south, no boy from the north. We’re all, there’s none of that, there’s no distinction, good people. None to be found among us. He says, There’s neither Jew nor Greek. Circumcision or uncircumcision. Barbarian or Synthian. Here were people who spoke Baba. I’ve been in countries and people were talking. I think it’s like a whole bunch of Baba. I don’t know what in the world they’re saying is like a bunch of Baba to me. And Syntians, people who were way off in the distance, who people thought were savage type people. And there’s no bond, no free. You might think, well, some people are slaves, some people are high people. No, there’s none of that.

Conclusion

No distinctions. But he says, but Christ is all. And in all. I’ll tell you something about the journey to heaven. You know, I learned this lesson years ago. That uh destination is much more important than mode of travel. If you go to heaven, let me tell you, it will be a bumpy, difficult way. And what you need to understand about that is no matter what you have to go through, it will be worth it. I I I learned this one time. I left uh Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. I set my stopwatch. I thought, how long is it going to take me to get on? How many hours am I going to be awake till I get home? And so I set my stopwatch. And I got on a train in uh in Victoria Falls, and when you go down across the country, in the middle of the country, there’s a mountain ridge in the middle, and so the train uh drivers supposed to speed up about an hour before the mountain means so the train would go over.

Well, this old boy went to sleep. It took us uh 13 hours to go up there. We were going back to the old boy went to sleep, so we had to back up and go two hours, so it took us two more hours to go back down there on the train to get out down there to Bulawayah. And we got to Bulloway, and then I got I left the airport, went off to this place where I was staying. I got in an ox cart with some people and got my loop suitcases and went down to catch a taxi cab, went in the taxi cab, got to the airport. I flew to the airport there, flew over to Brussels, Belgium, stayed there for a while. Then I flew over up into Chicago and sat there for a while, been down to Indianapolis.

Fifty-six hours later, I got home. I thought, you know what? If somebody would have said to me, listen, preacher, we’re going to put you on France Air. We’re going to fly up at a mock two up in the outer limits of the sky. You’re going to eat a steak dinner and watch a movie, and we’re going to get you home in two hours. But when we get to Madison, Indiana, we’re not going to land. We’re going to just fly around over the over Madison, let you look down at where you want to go and let you keep looking until we run out of fuel. And then we’re going to crash and burn. Now, which way you want to go home? You want to go in the roads coach?

That’s what they call the train over there because you should go sleep and broaches and get in your mouth. So you want to ride the roads coach and go but get home? Or do you want some easy way? You want some easy journey where you can get it. Just do what you want. Don’t suffer. Don’t put yourself out. Don’t let anybody hurt your feelings. Just get you an easy ride. But you won’t make it home. You see, destination is much more important than the mode of travel. It’s going to be a rough road. Get up on the highway. And do whatever it takes. Let Christ be all. And let Christ be in all you do and all you think. If you’re not needing to obey the gospel, why don’t you come to Jesus?

He wants to save you. Why don’t you come let him do that tonight? I’ll stand sing the song. Welcome to you.

What shall it be? What shall it be? What shall it shall be?