Set your minds on things that are above not on things that are on earth For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen. Please be seated. So Bob and Earl are the two biggest Baseball fans in all of America, probably in all the world And they knew all the players and all the stats they watched all the games and they even made a pact with each other That if one of them should die the first ones to die would come back and let the other know Whether or not there's baseball in heaven Well, you guessed it one One summer night after watching his team pick up big win Bob passes away and is sleep a happy man and Few nights later Earl woke up to the sound of Bob's voice from beyond
Bob is that you Earl said of course it's me Earl was shocked. This is unbelievable So tell me is there baseball in heaven?
Well, I have good news and I have bad news Well, tell me to pick news first Well, the good news is yes, there's baseball in heaven Well, Earl's excited. You said well, that's beautiful. That's amazing. What could possibly be in the bad news? You're pitching tomorrow night That was by request by the way So for Bob and Earl the good idea of heaven their idea of heaven is an eternity of baseball Now it's not quite the same as setting your minds on things above but it's close, right? others like the rich man are busy building heaven on earth with the things of the earth and By their own strength and the problem with that is that according to Paul earthly ways are Ultimately, idolatrous and in fact all three of our passages this morning are About idolatry So this so this is going to be I don't know how to make this like Like fun, so this is going to be a customer, but we'll get through it and there's grace at the end so hold on buckle up You know, it's easier to think that idolatry is something from the past We think about the golden calf you might think about if you've read Isaiah Isaiah Carving idols out of wood right they have eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear and lips that don't see But my favorite story about idols in the Old Testament is the Philistine God Dagon Now this is back when Israel is you know, they're They're on a decline and they're out fighting with everybody at some point the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant And they place it in the temple of Dagon and every morning they get up and the idol of Dagon Who's this fish by the way has fallen off of this pest pedestal and it's laying on its face before the Ark It's a great story. They they end up. They're so afraid the Philistines are so afraid of the power of God in the Ark of the Covenant They finally send it back
The thing is idolatry today Is different we don't have typically physical idols like calves or fish But it's just as destructive See instead of these idols Paul uses a term to describe idolatry as Behaviors that quite frankly are more traditionally termed as sin Now we don't like to use the word sin a whole lot in our society today In fact, we live in a society that's quite permissive and Simple this you can't say certain things are right and wrong anymore. It's just you know somebody else's way of life or somebody else's this or that Sin is pretty much out of fashion And if you think about it, it's a vastly different world today than it was 20 years ago let alone 40 50 100 years ago But Paul warns the Colossians to be mindful to be careful and to shun certain sinful Behaviors that ultimately are idolatry sin if you're like me have all You need to be careful with these things because there's Christians we you know We deal with the reality that we are in Christ and Christ and is us, but even though we have been redeemed We still have to struggle with the muck of sin in our lives now one day in glory. We're gonna be Past all of that we're gonna be made free of that struggle, but in the meantime, we need a savior to help us through our own innate Brokenness now, thankfully in the midst of quite frankly some difficult passages that were presented with this morning We find a God that loves us fiercely And he not only does not give up on us in the midst of our muck and our failure But he does the work necessary to redeem us and save us So I'm gonna ask you this morning to grab your script for insert because we're gonna look at all three of our main Passages and there's some key phrases in here that I want you to see first of all Hosea Hosea to me is a fascinating book It is towards the end of the existence of Israel Israel's about to be taken away into captivity by By Assyria and it's because of their idolatry and yet God is still calling to them But their hearts have gone so far that God has to use some pretty flowery and inflammatory language to get their attention He's confronting them of their unfaithfulness and to do that He goes to Hosea and he tells him I want you to go marry a prostitute As she goes out and he finds Gomer They start having children and the first one is called Jesueryl And Jesueryl means I will scatter and he announces to Israel that I am done with you I'm going to scatter you to the wind you will exist no more The next child Is low low ruhama Meaning no pity and God announces to Israel. I will no longer have pity on you For your unfaithfulness and then finally a third child is born And it's called low on me and it means not my people and he declares to the people Israel You are no longer my people and I am not your God Literally I am not your I am anymore You think God has a problem with idolatry in the gospel
instead of seeing abundance As God's blessing the rich man sees it as his grain and his goods Now we might not immediately understand what's wrong with that because in a commerce world It makes sense if you produce something you can store it you can sell it you can trade it You can do whatever you want with it But in Jesus' time Everybody lives off the land grain was life And nations were typically one famine away from utter ruin This man Have way more than he needed to survive And in his case it was inherently greedy Not to use it for the care of others his grain his goods and his soul Did not belong to him but to God And then in Colossians Paul commands the Colossians to get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, abuse of language They're to put to get to put to death the things that are earthly, fornication, impurity, passion, evils, iris, gris And in case that's not clear enough he then says God's wrath is going to be visited upon them who practice these things
Are we squirming yet? A little bit What's interesting about the Colossians' passion the passage is this It's the words in that little parentheses in The reading today Which is idolatry Because what Paul is saying is that all of these things not just greed but all sin is idolatry which Circles us right back around to Hosea But the broader picture of the Colossians passage is this There are two ways to live We either set our minds on the things that are above Or the things that are below like the rich man Now does this mean and some people interpret it this way? Does this mean that we're just supposed to like become monks and go live on a commune in the middle of Montana And we're supposed to like become Benedictine and just avoid everybody as much as I would like to move to Montana Because I hear it's pretty No That's not what it's about Setting our minds on the thing above is living in the reality that we belong to Christ And we no longer belong to the world The world lives for self Anger wrap now a slander an abusive language these are all inherently self-centered self-righteous and idolatrous Paul says we have died It is the Indicative nature of who we are We have died to these things do you feel that you feel dead yet Uh About this time well Okay, so yesterday after the car show I was feeling pretty pretty worn out pretty dead That's not what he's talking about He's talking about being bound with Christ in his crucifixion And thereby be hidden In Christ we've been crucified we've been raised with him and when he returns we return that's the gospel
And it's there when he returns when we finally finally no longer have to deal with the monk a sin in our lives And yet today until that time we have to heed these words Setting our minds on things above is allowing our lives to be governed by the systems of heaven And not the ways of the earth Paul tells us to put to death the things that are already dead in Christ And that's why we can and should live without things like anger wrap now a slander an abusive language not because we're earning our way with Christ But because that's the world's way and it's not our way Because we live in Christ It's why Christ prays for unity in his church because the world's way is everyone Looking out for themselves hence the rich man the rich man did exactly the right thing According to the world But that's the world's economy and not God's economy We want to carve out our little niches the things that we want to control We want to take our resources and build silos around them so nobody else can come near We do this in the church We carve out our territories We get angry when people step over the line This is the world's way and not Christ's way Because we've inquisified and raised with Christ we represent Christ to the world and we represent Christ to each other And I wonder how much anger, malice, slander and abusive language we would have among ourselves as Christians If we treated each other as if we were speaking for Christ
There's enough Things going on even in our own family that we need to take stock in And we need to understand among us That we are hidden in Christ And there's a new way for us to act and love and respond to each other
If we are in Christ we're part of a new order That's not going to change We are made secure in Christ Scripture still confronts in us this morning This question how much longer are we going to walk in the world's way Set your minds on Christ The world's way is idolatry And quite frankly God has a huge problem with his children being wrapped up in idolatry Okay, now as everybody like down here like you want to crawl under your pews for Okay, there's hope there's grace in all of this This is the better part of the sermon, right? So Let me say hello to you. Where's that one of the kids? Okay Um There is there is hope There is a gospel message in our passages this morning First of all Let's finish the story of Hosea because Hosea's wife Gomer ultimately leads And goes back to prostitution But you know what God calls Hosea to do in fact it's worse than that because she goes back and she becomes owned And Hosea has to go and buy her back and it's exactly what God tells him to do go redeem Gomer Later in chapter two he reverses the kids names instead of scattering them to the wind he tells them I will sow you like seeds that will be planted and bring forth fruit He will have pity Hello, Rahama and he will say to low on me you are my people and they will say you are my god He will restore them
And then as we read our passage our Hosea passage this morning we see a god in this heart broken He's a father who has taught His child how to walk only to have that child walk away
He led them with love but they refuse to return but then he says then he says How can I give you up? How can I give you up for him which is to say Israel How can I destroy you like Adma and Zilboine these were two cities That were destroyed with Sodom and Gamora And he says my compassion grows warm and tender and I will not Execute my fierce anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim Because see like Gomer He would redeem his people through Christ In Colossians were hidden with Christ in God and we're being renewed in the knowledge according to the image of his creator Where and we are adopted into a new system and a new family one that's not self self-centered and one that's not Consuming each other but one is predicated on love It's one that's governed by sacrifice and renewal renewal. It's one that is completely opposite of the rich man It's one that's centered on giving and receiving love for each other We need love We can't find it through the world's way We have to be in Christ This system is the one that guarantees that we will be with him in eternity I haven't been around certain people Like the maybe at work maybe out of the mall the grocery store some you're out around people that don't know Lord Just fill out of the out of place I mean, do you feel out of place sometimes? Or maybe you've watched the news this weekend's news is awful It is awful have you ever watched the news and wonder what in the world is going on The world operates on a system that's fundamentally Different it is a different set of principles then we are supposed to operate on We are supposed to be different If you feel like you stand out in the world for being a Christian that That difference is a testimony of hope to the world It's a testimony of hope to those who are perishing because they don't see anything else But their self-centeredness We have an opportunity to show them self-sacrifice and love When we live in godly loving ways among our own family here In this room It serves as a strong testimony to the world It they will know we are Christians by our love that's not a that's not a campfire song. I mean it's campfire song But it's truth it's fundamental truth it's true Because that's what it means to live as those seeking the things of Christ Setting your minds above We have died with Christ Death sounds pretty counterintuitive
But it's the only way to find true life And I encourage each and every one of us To set our minds on the thing On the things above And to walk in love just as Christ has loved us And gave himself for us