Kaleo San Diego Church

INTRODUCTION

The times in which we live are difficult times to bring the Gospel to those that oppose it. We are daily confronted by pseudo-philosophies, pop-psychology, a multi-billion dollar marketing campaign which tells us to be unhappy with what we have so that we’ll be motivated to by a new and improved version of what we already bought.

Those of us that make up this culture have been lost in a wave of information which we’ll never be able to fully digest, but it’s just enough to keep us busy so that we don’t have to ask questions about our existence, purpose for our being, or consider what is truly right and what is wrong.

My favorite line in the first Matrix (which is of course the best one), is when Morpheus says to Neo: “You take the blue pill, the story ends...you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.  You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

I suppose the role of the preacher today is to call each of us to be willing to take the red pill because in our day of religious pluralism and moral relativism, we are strongly encouraged to take the blue one and believe whatever we want.

Since this is the air we breathe it is necessary at times to think about where we came from, to consider our own testimony so that when we bring a message of reconciliation to those who are in desperate need of it, we don’t become discouraged and lose sight of how deep our Father reached to pull us out of our own grave.

There was a time in western society when we Christianized people. What I mean by “Christianized” is not that we became Christians, but that we taught Christian ethics in our schools, Christian morality to our children, and even told them Christian stories at Christmas or Easter.

The culture was Christianized because it romantically followed a Christian worldview since that worldview was the dominant one.

A shift began around the 30’s and 40’s in Europe and around the 50’s and 60’s in America. That shift was a shift of worldviews (a worldview being that lens by which you interpret and understand the world around you), and in a short period of time, what was a dominant view of life and world for hundreds of years in Europe and two hundred years in America was turned upon its head.

There is an interesting story of a business guru named Peter Drucker, who came to America in the 30’s from Germany and applied to get a loan and the loan officer said that he needed a letter from a pastor before he could get a loan. Peter asked why and he was told that without that letter there would be no motivation for him to keep his word on the loan.

In the same way, Leslie Newbigin, who was a missionary to the country of India, left England in the 40’s and didn’t return until the 80’s, in that period of time he realized that England was no longer Christianized. Everything had changed in the span of 40 years and he had to bring an entirely different approach to those he was speaking to in the 80’s compared to those in the 40’s.

So it is with us today in 2005. We no longer knock on doors and evangelize because what worked 50 years ago is considered an intrusion today. We no longer drive up in a neighborhood with a school bus and ask the parents if they’ll let their kids jump on and go to church. When someone visits a church in our day, certainly not those in the age groups I see here this morning, for us to speak in an esoteric language to a people group that are not Christianized and therefore don’t speak Christianese, is not only ineffective, it’s foolish.

People no longer need Jesus to fit that missing piece in their worldview to move from being Christianized to being a Christian, our culture needs an entire shift of worldview in which what they once believed is shown to be false and a new reality needs to be constructed. A whole worldview has to be built. It takes time to do this, and it takes patience from those that are followers of Christ to bring this message.

Think about this when you consider this passage and your past. Think about how you thought, your attitude towards Christians and Jesus, and think about the deeds you were engaged in and how they were consistent with your worldview. If you thought that sexuality was defined by the individual, you lived that out. If you thought morality was based upon a persons own moral standard, you lived that out. What you believed about God had consequences to how you lived then and live now.

Every man, regardless of his worldview, is caught. As he tries to imagine an alternate way of life apart from God he is faced with the fact the world he has created in his mind, and those things that well up inside himself are not in agreement. His non-Christian assumptions don’t fit into what God has made, including what man is. Since this is the case, every man is in a place of tension. Man cannot make his own universe and then live in it.

All humans are in this place of tension because what God has made is true reality, what He has declared in His word is true truth. This tension creates two usual responses. Either the non-Christian immerses himself in his view of reality and therefore lives a fantasy which he can’t maintain, or he faces the external world, and all that he sees must be accounted for which leads most often to hopelessness because he sees that he is not able to live consistently within his own world and is not able to deal with all the real world shows him. He spends his life looking in or looking out, either inwardly in hope but within non-reality, or outwardly in despair while he accepts true reality.

In our day, the way we seek to deflect this tension is by saying we are no more than a machine, or no more than sea-slime evolved. This doesn’t solve the problem but it gives us brief relief from the tension because we can excuse away our curiosity and leave it as it is without needing an answer. Unfortunately, this again cannot be maintained for long, and back again we come to why feel torn in two.

When we come to God’s word we see the reason man is torn. It is because on one hand he was created with such dignity and with such hope for beauty since his entire being was designed to reflect God’s beauty and glory, and on the other hand man has such cruelty and ugliness in him. He is created as a being that is fueled by a worship of God, but is severed from this God and therefore is trying to find alternate ways of animating himself with purpose.

He is separated from God and is separated from man and separated from himself. Man tries to bury himself in himself and finds that he is a stranger even there. Inside himself it is easy to lie to himself, so it is safer for him to be a stranger to himself since he is the only one he has to fool.

For you and I, in love, and by the work of the Holy Spirit, we must reach down into that person and try to find where the point of tension is so that we can apply the Gospel. Each person is created in the image of God and is one of our kind and we have to remember that.

In times past, man felt real guilt because his worldview taught him that when we do things which we intrinsically know are wrong, guilt comes as a consequence to our actions. Today, man doesn’t feel a deep and profound guilt because his worldview excuses away any internal feelings of right and wrong and attempts to reclassify them in terms of preference; what I like and don’t like.

Even though in times past he new he was guilty, it rarely entered his mind, today man hardly ever considers himself to be guilty, but does acknowledge that he is lost and dead.

If you were to survey the lyrics of those writers and singers in our day, not the boy bands but the ones that actually have something interesting to say about how they view life and the world, what you would undoubtedly hear is a cry of despair as they speak in poetic ways how lost they are and how dead they feel. When we come to the bible, we see that both these things are true.

Man in revolt against the holy God who is there is guilty and is already under God’s wrath. Because he is guilty, he is separated from his true and only reference point and therefore he is dead as well. The Bible does not say that man will become lost, but that he is lost. The Bible doesn’t say that man will only become dead, but that He is dead already. He is a walking corpse that is blind and therefore has not ability to breathe life into himself or find his way apart from God.

Man today understands the horrible place of meaninglessness and despair. Man today recognizes the tension between what he wants to believe and reality. Man today recognizes that horror of being dead and yet still alive. When people in our time express that they feel dead, they are experiencing what the Word of God tells them they are.

A person may have no idea how to define their feeling of death because they don’t understand what it means to be dead spiritually, and they certainly don’t understand the solution. It is our task to that person that the present death they feel is a moral death and not just a metaphysical feeling of being lost. But we begin with the estrangement and alienation they feel, and apply the Word of God, that man in revolt is purposeless and dead and needs reconciliation.

STUDY

This is where Paul brings the Colossians to, to remind them of their past so that they can face the present and future. He takes the black cloth and lays it behind the diamond to show how beautiful God’s gift truly is.

Colossians 1:21-23

Verse 21- And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,

Alienated (estranged, cut-off, separated)

He begins by telling them they were formerly strangers to God and therefore aliens to Him, to self, and to one another.

There is nothing worse than being a estranged from God. It means to be cut off, to be a foreigner, to be separated from Him. Since He is the only one that truly knows us, and since He is true reality, to be a stranger to Him is to be alienated to all of life. Remember when you and I were strangers to God and cut off from Him? Do you remember that feeling when you realized how far you were from Him when you assumed you were so close? It’s devastating. This is what we must remember when we apply the Gospel to those we know and love.

Ephesians 2:12-13 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Hostile in mind (hateful)

He then says that they were hostile in their mind, he is saying that their attitude towards God is one of hostility or hatred. To be a stranger to God, unfamiliar with Him, and yet to be hostile towards Him by our thoughts and attitude is exactly how we once thought and felt. To not believe is sin and is to hate God. To not accept God’s offer of mercy and grace in Christ is to reject God and hate Him. We want to believe that a passive non-response is safe. That non-response is a full response. It is to say no to the only God of the universe. The One who made you and sustains your life, the One who keeps your heart beating, your mind working, and your life in His hand, is the same one that is rejected and despised. Christ who came to offer Himself as a sacrifice for us, is ridiculed and rejected.

Men by nature love darkness and reject the light. The problem of man is not ignorance or metaphysical lostness, it is a willful love self and sin and therefore is a moral problem between their sin and a Holy and perfect God.

Engaged in evil deeds

Isaiah 59:1-2 Behold, the LORD'S hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear. 2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

Verse 22- yet (but now) He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach--

God’s goal in reconciliation is to present His own as holy and pure before Him. It is the only way we can stand in the presence of a Holy and pure God.

Holy- means to be separated from sin and set apart for God. It has to do with the believer’s relationship with Him. As a result of faith in Christ, God sees Christians as holy as His Son.

Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love

2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Blameless- means without blemish. It was used in the Old Testament to speak of sacrificial animals. It is used in the New Testament to refer to Christ as the spotless Lamb of God. God then applies His perfect Son’s to us, and we then have a blameless character.

Beyond Reproach- goes beyond being blameless. It means not only that we are without blemish, but that no one can bring a charge against us. Satan, the accuser, cannot make one charge stick against those whom Christ has reconciled.

Before Him- God sees us now as we will be in heaven when we are glorified. He views us clothed with the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. The process of spiritual growth involves becoming in practice what we are in reality before God.

The evidence of our salvation is shown by the next passage.

Verse 23- if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.

Perseverance and Preservation

Philippians 2:12-13 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

John 10:26-30 "But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. 27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 "I and the Father are one."

2 Timothy 1:12 For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.

Romans 8:29-39 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 39 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED." 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

0 Comments | Login to Post Comments

• Calendar
• Agenda