This is a Sunday morning worship service of the first Presbyterian Church of the Western Maryland. It's November 18th, 2001. This morning's message, delivered by Dr. Robert Norris, is entitled Preparing for Jesus Part 9. Depends this Colossians 3, 9-11. That's the morning. To pause letter to the Church of Colossus, to Colossus Instructor 3, as we read from the first verse, where the Precipall likes and says, since then, you have been raised with Christ. Set your heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earth, but for you died. And your life is now sitting with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is your life of years, then you also will appear with Him in glory. So to death therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatrous, because of grace the wrath of God is coming used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must read yourselves with all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, and fulfill language from your consciousness. Do not lie to each other since you have taken off your own self with its practices, and put on the knees of, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. Here, there is no great God you, circumcised or un-circumcised, barbarian, sitian, slave of all things, which Christ is born, and you are born. Amen. Let's pray. I have a method where God is created, and grant your grace and mercy to attend us, you pray. Grant that as we will gather before you now, your word will speak afresh to our souls, expressions and challenges, and bear us in you to behold the splendour and enjoy the glory of our God, or we would see you, even as we would love you, or we have been loved by you. In Jesus Christ that came. Amen. Christ is coming very fast. It's coming almost to us, because we turn around and suddenly, and one day we'll have a day in the weeks, and sometimes months of flood too. And as Christmas approaches, and as the advent season, but comes with climax in that Christmas day, is almost upon us. Each of us makes preparation for it in different ways, and that the preparation brings with it certain pressures. And as we make preparation for the Christmas season, so also we begin to feel some of the burdens of that season, whether it is in just giving up preparation, whether it is in enjoying all that is certain that season, the mountains, energy demands time from people who are already nearer with living. Sometimes the sense of fun and the happy occasions when families and friends get together and enjoy one another, one may less draw out of us, reserves and energies that many find themselves really quick to be able to deal with. Yet we make preparation for that season. Some of you have already finished your Christmas shopping. Some of you have yet to begin it. And either way you have made some preparation. But I mean, stay in the preparation for the season. Let's get busyness and enjoy. Amidst its glare already, the ability we have to be able to rejoice in Jesus Christ, there are times when we forget and absolve the preparations to enjoy that Christmas season, what it is that gives to us that joy, the coming of God, with us in Manuel Jesus Christ. But we know that it is the Christmas season. We know that it is dead with us, and yet we take for granted all that is involved in that. The sun is larger than it looks, which implies that for this mass of people when we look at the sun, we think of it as being as large as it is and no more than most of us don't pay any attention to the sun. We don't think about its volume and its mass and how far away from us. It is. We really think about it at all. We are not as strong enough after all and we are content. Not to know how large it is or what its composition is, we take it for granted. And for many of us Christmas is taken for granted. It's a time, a joy of celebration. We will see everything is the take place in church, at home and its families. As Christians, we know Christmas is about Jesus. We know that we love Jesus and that we have been loved by him, but for most of us, we don't take time to think about what that means. We live in such a busy world and our society is so grounded with commitment. But we don't take time to think about anything terribly seriously. We don't have that sort of time. And yet the truth is that to master any moral truth, you have to give a time to it. Otherwise, we live shallow lives and we begin to live on the surface of life. That's always been the case. And many of us find ourselves living surface lives, shallow lives. And we find ourselves living real but not terribly deep because we never devote time to thinking about it. We don't need the necessary preparation to meet Jesus at Christmas. Christmas is about becoming a God to us and we have to prepare for it. However, I remember that working through the streets of the family, which I grew up, there was a man who had billboards. And then his billboards were prepared to meet our God. And we used to look at him and think, what a strange man he was. And maybe he was a strange man. But the text wasn't so strange. The text born from the book of Amos, who sent to his generation, there is a time coming when we have to prepare to meet God. And it strikes us afresh that in the Christmas season, often times there, that we are able to do is to drop our caps of God who has come to us. We nod our heads, we give a priestly carry to the Lord and think, this is like a man Jesus. And it isn't. We can't be content to sing a quick carol to our God. When Amos spoke his words, prepared to meet by God for his society, he was writing to a people caught up equally with the business of life. It was a prosperous society. They enjoyed the security of being a great land empire and the powerful kingdom. And yet there were people who had so concentrated their attention upon things that were earthly, that they had all but forgotten God. They continued with the ritual practices. But they had forgotten him. And the fact is, he reminded Amos, he reminds us, that if we do not prepare to meet our God, we will meet him unprepared because we have come to us to remind us that he is God in our midst. He has come to us in his son to draw us to himself and make us of people. And he has reminded us that if we would know him, we must prepare ourselves to meet him. You add to that the fact that we are all of us used to taking so many shortcuts in life. We wonder what we can do to get to know God better. Someone came to my study and asked me to induce a product that would be needed for Christians to be able to have a one minute devotion in the morning because we were so busy. And then they were suggested he should leave quickly. You cannot know God in the minute today. You cannot get to know the one who has loved you with a gift of his son by devoting one quick moment to understand him. To prepare to meet God is to divert the necessary time that is drawn out of the priority of your life. Time was when people would go away on their feet and they would take with them just one passage of Scripture, one verse of Scripture made them think about that one passage, that one verse day after day, all after hour, and children had allowed that passage of God's word so to enter into their soul that they began to think it and believe it. We valid it time to think about God, not less, to be able to struggle over the whole period of our passages of his word. Oh, it was true they lived in a generation where perhaps they were not able to focus with work and into contact with the outside world and they were in our televisions that completely interacted their meditation, but they came away knowing God. And as we prepare for the Christmas season, our aim is that we shall have prepared to meet with God and as we emerge from it we will know him better. How do we do that? Apparently these verses as he writes to the Colossian church tells us of the only way in which we can know God better and in these opening verses of the third chapter he reminds us that the only way we can know God is to meditate upon him. Meditating is to pray the deep truth of God into your soul in such a way and until your soul catches fire. That's what he's talking about. That the truth of God should so catch your mind and imagination that you pray it and you pray it and you pray it until suddenly you are crushed by that cause and till your imagination your very soul is captured by God, your soul catches fire. And what he's talking about is the combination of the way in which we use the scripture and the way in which we pray. Medication is both the most of us. Our devotions are simply a question of taking a passage of scripture, reading them and then turning to the Lord in prayer and having the kettle there, the ease, a list of issues that we want to bring to God. And oftentimes our prayer is detached from that which we have just studied or read. What Paul talks about here is the way in which we know God in his world and the way in which that world begins to catch fire in your soul and you are not able to tell you can say this is my God, I have met with him. He possesses my soul, I am growing and expanding. How do you do that? Well, he tells us. It tells us very simply how it is that God's world which we must enter into our soul. Not simply, but we do it. He's not enjoying us to a new layer of new legalism by which we say, I've got to precept the more I'm going to do it no matter what, but the way in which his world enters into our soul and the way in which God meets with us, the way in which he takes possession of our life so that we become his best. That's what it means to be preparing for God that we shall be filled, that we shall, as all the things says, ascend into the presence of the Lord, that's what Christians want, that's our desire for the Christmas season, to ascend into the presence of the Lord and God give us grace once we have been there, we will want it not just for one season, but for every season of life. He tells us what that means. He says very simply, begin by fixing your thinking on spiritual truth. He says, keep seeking the things that are of us. This means you have to take hold of the central truths of God's world and just steer them into your mind in such a way that you can hold them faithfully and the way in which you think. The oldest analogy that we have to highly deal with God's word is to read, I'm not black, I don't know if you've ever seen God yet, but if you have, you will know that when you take them, you don't quickly read them so well I've dealt with that one. You point that everywhere and you think, what is the suggestion that is being made here? You don't need to quickly put information. You read it because there is a great deal of information involved. And as you come into God's world, you read it as his love letter. It is not just about lack, there is certainly a speaks of the bustness of God's love for you, but it is that you set your mind on fear and spiritual. You just steer the truths of God's word in such a way that you are able to head on to them and they guide you. That's how they become means of changing you. That's not just a question of knowing the story. You know the story of Christmas, you know what it was that happened in Bethlehem long ago. But do you ever think about it? Think about it in such a way that you are forced to purge it. They are depleted and simply see whether a pageant has taken place, or whether he feels or may die or shepherds or angels or think of him. Do you think about it? More often than not, the truth that we have fixed in our mind, we think I have known that. It was almost impossible to me when Adam and I were just about started to talk about the battle of listings in 1066. I mean, he started to talk about everything that went around it. Now, in British history, 1066 is the fixed point of our thinking. I knew everything that was involved, yes, there was a battle. There are many things that the sexes really didn't beat Harold. So, suddenly Adam started to say, well now, what was the battle about? What happened earlier? How was the strategy involved? What did it mean? And I was first to come to do with the fact that the facts that I had, I never thought about it. I didn't put things together with the story. They went apart of the way in which I was thinking. And then, too, I was able to focus on that and think about it. It was simply another fact of history that I checked off. And for many of us, the Christmas stories like that, the fact of history, we checked it off. We didn't stop and think what does this mean that God has come to us? Fix your thinking upon spiritual things as well. Keep seeking the things that are above. Learn what God is saying about the life itself. Learn the word of God. And if it's so intered to you, if you want things as sacred, simply for saying, I've heard that so many times, you aren't going to be content to talk about it in terms of doctrine, and speculation, and where's that or was there not a virgin birth? But that you will think about it in such a way that it enters into your soul. What does it mean that God came to us and is with us? That's his word. You can know that something you've checked off. More than something you have been able to recite. The Pope was on. And he says, this is where it begins. We never took him upon God's word. But if there were any of that, there in the very process of meditation, Pope was on, and he said, I think he remains on things which are above and he feels to repeat this in his first verses. And as he repeats it and offers a change within the text, he does so to indicate that there is a process by which you keep on growing. There is a growth in this sort of, so that we're not simply setting our minds upon these things. But what Paul is saying is, have a sense you're thinking about them. Be aware that with this. You begin to inquire in your heart to the things of God. You can't be content with your mind only. One thing I'd like to say, there are light leaves the affections behind it ends up in formality, but it isn't. When affections are running light, they sink into the bulb of superstition. What he is saying is, you have to incline your heart toward God as well as using your mind to deal with the truth of God. Your whole being begins to absorb their love of God revealed in Jesus Christ so that your heart begins to be faster to say, I will love Him. And what happens as Paul describes it here to these Colossians is that they live from an objective, an analytical view of the way in which God's Word is dealt with to the personal duty of God with their life. And for many Christians it never happens. And we know the truth. But those clothes do not affect the way in which we think and speak. And we're here. In this third chapter as we move to the 11th verse, you see that having set your mind upon things spiritual as your heart is inclined towards God, then and only then. Can you begin to see an effect that by the way in which you speak and the way in which you behave? Then and only then is the transformation of our life. And what Paul is speaking about is that the inclination of your heart toward God is a personal duty of their love as He is, so that knowing about Him becomes knowing Him. And in your heart you begin to adore Him as well as in your mind seek to understand what He said. And there's a sense of all built up in us. We arrest Him the Lord. Sometimes He trebles us, sometimes He humbles us. But God is doing with us, He's not out there. He is doing with other people first and foremost He is dealing with all souls. That's what praying God's presence, this is what literally taking a bloody threat with prayer begins to take over the servant of your soul, catches fire and you say, the Lord has done it to me, be it ever so, Lord. So when God comes and He's your God, when personally His Spirit is your soul. Smites your heart. It's the difference in being able to study a piece of music and another one of praying. The difference between being a diamond cutter so that you may have to keep the most precious things and cut them into perfect form and being able to look at it and say, that is beautiful. It's not just the skills, it's the ability of the heart to endure. It's the heavens born in us as we say, that is the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ. It can happen. So that is your look, the season upon the Savior. He will take your breath away. He will come just by looking at children doing little scenes of negativity which will come as you think about it, as you pray, as you feel high as your soul. There says that it involves setting aside things of this earth. He says that simple. Such a mind not on the things that are on this earth, but as a negative side to what you have to do and the discipline of meditation, and that is you have to turn aside from the busyness and the preparations and the past and all the good moments that are there. You have deliberately to say these are important, but not as important as this. You have to set a priority so that you begin to say, no only God is more important than answering the telephone, or answering red-backed stack of notes that is waiting for me. All of us are behind on life. It's in progress in the same. What is most important that I will put ahead of anything else? And Paul says, you can't be simply earth-bounding your thinking. When he writes to the Romans, he will remain present with affections on spiritual things. But when you do that, there is life and peace. And what happens is when you devote yourselves to the Lord, there is a benefit and then the benefit. Is that a transformation? If he characterizes them, once you look in them, that's what he says about these are his sins, but now you can put a solid knowledge of knowledge and anger and hunger. The transformation of life begins not by the imposition of the new law upon my soul so that I will do it. It comes, and my soul is so caught up with God that I love him who has first loved me. When I have seen that God has come to me in Jesus Christ and I have been crying for him and I want him, I love him. And out of that love, is burn a transformation. And then you see a third part of meditation, first of the day simply, Christ, who is our life, when you have moved from the place of simply pondering God's word, and inquiring your heart towards Jesus. There is a relishing of Jesus in your life. Suddenly, it only becomes real. Suddenly, the prayer that you had learned that everything you should or hear works and a blaze begins in your soul. I love for Jesus. When you get to the place where the live Jesus Christ, to whom you have looked, begins to be the delight of every day. When you actually begin to praise, to confess, to aspire to words him on the basis of a digested and meditated truth, then you have moved from learning about, to learning, and the Spirit of God quite carries you. You begin in truth to experience him. And sometimes, that's mild. Sometimes, that's overflowing, and if you experience, sometimes, your souls are dry. But as you reach a point out, as you notice it, you find, as you feel sad, that the Spirit of God begins to preach to you. That's what the relic in Jesus is all about. He begins to preach to you. There's a lot more sense as well as accident. But the Spirit begins to speak to your soul and you hear that the learning of when you have met is God. And you can't ever see Him. You can't criticize Him. You can't ignore Him because God is dealing with Him. That's what Paul calls us to hear. What happens is that the spiritual life becomes real with a sweetness, a satisfaction about living for Jesus. Then we taste by experience what the great veteran said, God is gracious and He's loved this sweet of them, why? And we know what it means. I think, sure, we have come back. For we know of us, our torque is very different than the reality of our soul. We do not know what it is for God to take hold of us and to enjoy Him. Or we torque a much better torque. And we realize that in our duality by the law, the Paul is not talking about the life regulated by law. He's talking about the life of the Spirit when we have met God and where what is poured out of us comes as a fruit of having waited upon Him. Each of you, with me, is preparing for the Christmas season and we were prepared in a very different ways. Some were prepared Christmas, some were prepared for Christmas, some were prepared for singing music and some of us were prepared for preaching service. But the preparation of God has for each of us is that we should meet Him and in what's no matter what we do, we should know Him and know that He is our God and know the transformation that occurs in knowing our God. This is no matter of the law, this is a matter of being overwhelmed. There's a truth about God and let your prayer be such that as you constantly take His word and feed upon it and think about it, this by this, you pray that until it catches hold of your soul. We were produced, advent, prayer, brochures, we were prepared, family worship times, and our Bible reading notes that were a sister if you had difficulty in reading God and his word, but that won't bring you to the Lord. It's a preparation. You pray what you are reading, you think about it. It is a remorse in your life that you have done. Spiritual path checked off is a recognition that we have met with God I have prepared to meet Him and He has met me for He has come in Christ with this desire that He shall bear for Himself of people, people who are not hearing the word and make Him in heart and we love Him with passion. That's you, that's me, that's what He wants and He says to us, prepare to meet Your God. Not yet a person through Mead but with the dear light of your soul. You embrace Him. Let's pray. Heaven and the Father will come to Your midst of busy season and people who know what business means and know that the most important thing that you would have for us this day. The first, the greatest, the simplest priority is to meet with you. Grant the Bachelors so touch our souls that we shall who have tasted of your goodness in your love. Set our hearts on things above. The Christ is seated at the right hand of God but we pray that in His name Amen.