First Sunday after Christmas
Text: Colossians 3:12-17
Theme: "Have You Put Him On?"
December 30 / 31, 2006
Why at the Baptismal Font?
-not about wanting to be out of the pulpit or about wanting to do it like someone else
-its about focusing on life as God’s children
-that life began when God adopted us in Baptism. He made us His children
I am also here to give proper focus for the studying of our reading from Colossians.
-The life described here is life as God’s child not the life that will make you God’s child.
-Paul is not telling us what we need to do to earn our place in God’s family. God is telling us through Paul’s pen what life in His family is to be like.
To make this clear, we need to look wider than our text. We need to look at its context.
-Verses should always be kept in context.
-always read them in their paragraph and the paragraph understood in the chapter. The chapter needs to be understood in the context of the book it is in. Finally, all of these need to be kept in harmony with the whole Bible.
-Never just snip bits out at your own discretion.
So when we look at all of Colossians, the guiding or binding thread is the all sufficiency of Christ. The All Sufficient Christ as savior is the foundation for the rest.
-He has done all that is needed to save us from our sin. His life, His death, they covered it all. His resurrection says so.
-Building on this foundation, today’s reading and the section from which it comes, is about the All Sufficient Christ giving the power for holy living.
-Here we are again, life in the family of God.
Here you "put on Christ" or rather He came and clothed you with His perfection. As we say in the Baptismal Service, placing the white garment of the napkin on the person.
Here God washes off the things of this world and promises the power to stay free of them. He gives a list of the things to be shed:
-sexual immorality, impurity, lust and evil desires
-greed, which is idolatry
-anger, rage and malice
-slander and unclean language
Our Lord promises that living in Him, He will supply the power to remove and resist these things.
Then comes our text and the Lord tells us that He will enable us to replace this filth with the things that will bless His whole family:
-compassion, kindness and gentleness
-humility, patience and forgiveness one to another.
In the power, love and grace God has given us, is the power to live in these virtues. And that power source is continually available. It is the Word of Christ.
-We need to live immersed in the written Word, the Bible. So that it gives us our world view, standard of right and truth and our guidance for living.
-We need to draw our strength, our life, from the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ.
-Be fed by His Word and be fed by Him in the Sacrament of His body and blood.
God is saying to us, through Paul, that being a Christian, being in Christ, is to reject the things of the world and the things that put self first and to rely on Christ’s all sufficient power to live humbly, caring for one another and forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven you.
He says, we need to be clothed in Christ,
-in His perfection for life everlasting and
-in His strength to live today in these virtues.
Now, that is the meaning of the text, the interpretation. While there is only one correct interpretation of any text, there are often many applications and there are two very important ones for us today.
Each of us needs to apply this to our life. Removing the things of the world and living in Christ, but remember this has a family focus.
The first application is to this congregation. Each of us needs to follow these words, keeping out the things of the world and live humbly, treating each other with gentle kindness and patience.
This was the application I had planned to expand, but then one of those miracles of timing occurred. I was thinking on this sermon while I was preparing for a premarital session later that day. The two thoughts merged and I saw how this is about the marriage relationship.
So I will follow those thoughts and leave the congregation to your thinking and another time.
I talked with this young couple about marriage creating a family, a oneness bound together by God as a place of safety and refreshment.
I asked them to read the chapter this text comes from and see it as guiding life in that family.
Holy marriage is to be a triangle with husband and wife and God at the points. With God making the marriage and giving it strength, He calls on us to leave the things and the thinking of the world outside and live His way. Think of the list of worldly things and how they are dumped on us every day. -anger and malice, how they can come home with us
-greed and pride, how they are built up by the world
-sexual immorality, how full the world is of sex before and outside of marriage; sex with anyone you please, including those of the same sex
-how these things will pollute the marriage and our very lives.
-how they strive to break up the oneness God creates in marriage
Now think of our text spoken to the married couple.
-God has made you one. You are of one flesh.
-You are united in Christ, gathered in His name with Him there in your midst.
-He is there binding you in harmony, giving you a loving place of kindness and gentleness
-You bless each other with patience, love and forgiveness.
Bound and fed by the Word of God and living humbly striving to do everything in the name of Jesus, that is in accord with His will you have a blessed union.
SDG
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