Colossians: The Three Deaths
Pastor Fletcher preaches from Colossians 3:5-11. Discussion points: Sin leads to death and destruction in our lives, God loves us sinners enough to die to pay for our sin, our sin doesn’t define us but God helps us put our sin to death.
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Scripture reader: [Colossians 3:5-11] Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.
This is the word of the Lord.
Preacher: All right, hey, how's it going? My name is Fletcher. Good morning. It's good to see you all this morning. Missed you last week. Last week I was at City on the Hill in Brighton, and there, pastor's on sabbatical for the summer, and so a lot of us are pitching in to just help out where we can in Brighton and so I, I preached a sermon that you guys have already heard before and they're a couple of weeks behind us in Colossians and so I volunteered to go and do that, but you were well served by Jared, and I'm, I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to be able to support other churches.
Just a a quick announcement before we move into the preaching of God's word this morning is that through the month of July, I'm going to be taking a step away from preaching. And that's because believe it or not, I have other responsibilities than than preaching. It's not my only, it's not my only responsibility at the church as the past as the, as the lead pastor of the church, I'm, I have a lot of other responsibilities, other things to focus on. So I will, I'll be taking a little bit of time off during that time, but for the most part, I'm going to be around and you'll be really well served.
One thing that is a, a value for us is that we believe that pastors are led by a plurality, by not pastors, that churches are led by plurality of qualified elders and. we have two other elders at our church currently. Each of them are going to be preaching in the month of July. And then we have other people who have the desire to become an elder who've been working through, some preaching development process, and so we're going to allow them to take an opportunity as well to have some reps in, in here, get an opportunity to preach.
I'm excited about what God's gonna say, but I'm also going to ask for your prayers. This year has been, one of the hardest in memory for me, and I am grateful to be in a church in in a in a family where we can be real with that. I mean, you are my family and I'm grateful to be able to take, it's a heavy responsibility preaching God's word every week. I, I love preaching God's word, but it does bear on me and I'm thankful to be able to have a little bit of time to interact with God without having to feed, without having to feed you guys at the same time, be able to just receive God's word for myself. And so if you could be praying for me over the, over the next month, I would appreciate it, but I will be back preaching in August. And so that's not your permission to, you know, skip for the next month, I suppose. you're not here for my preaching anyways necessarily, but, let's dive into our text today.
Today I wanna, I wanna start, by recapping a bit of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic work, Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you're not familiar with The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I feel like it's just like common common knowledge for what Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about. But the basic story is really a mystery, so you don't know this until the very end of the book, but Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the exact same person.
And Doctor Jekyll is this well respected doctor in London. He, is, is someone who's very temperate, he's very kind, he's well respected by everyone around him. He's educated and wealthy. yet he experiences the same internal conflicts that all of us experience from time to time, which is we all have darker desires that live within us. And so what Doctor Jekyll actually devises is some type of potion for him to take. And when he takes that potion, he actually becomes a different person. He becomes Mr. Hyde, and then he can go and commit all of his sins, all of his dark desires without guilt and without shame, and he goes and does those things.
Mr. Hyde represents all of Jekyll's sinful impulses, his selfishness, cruelty, lustful visions, and his violence, all without a conscience. Also, Doctor, Mr. Jekyll is smaller and uglier than Doctor Jekyll is. He's less fully human. And Jekyll, he believes he can control the transformations and enjoy sin safely, but over time he loses control of Mr. Hyde. He believes he can just let Mr. Hyde out when he wants and then he can reserve it. But what he actually discovers is that he's been turning into Mr. Hyde at night and going and doing evil things, committing murders and many other things. He completely loses control, and the more that Jekyll indulges Hyde, the more that Hyde takes over.
I think that each and every one of us who are Christians at least can understand this reality of having two natures that live within ourselves. I've been a Christian for 25 years, and the last thing in the world that I wanna be doing is screaming at my kids on a Wednesday night while I'm trying to cook dinner. Yet there lives within me a Mr. Hyde that will find his way through time and time again.
We're in the middle of a series on Paul's letter to the Colossians, and today we come to this important message about struggling with and fighting against sin. And so what I want you to see today is that there are three deaths in this passage. Three deaths in this passage. They're going to be our three points for today.
The first is sin leads to death. Sin leads to death. As you understand these three deaths, I really do believe that these are the three deaths that you have to understand to understand the Christian life. Point one: sin leads to death. Let me read verses 5 through 7 for you and then we're gonna break it down.
It says, put to death, therefore, what is that what what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. And these you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. What we see in this passage, it's a heavy passage, OK? When we have lists of sins, when we have the wrath of God coming, it's a heavy passage, but don't worry, we're going to dive into it. You have to deal with these passages. I don't want to just get up here and preach to you the happy passages from the scripture. And actually I believe that this passage is quite a happy passage as we dive deeper into it.
In this passage, you see two different lists of sins. I think that we have them on the screen here. So, the first list is sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. And so what we see with this first list is that this is mostly focusing on disordered desire. It's focusing on what happens inside of you, not what you're doing to other people for the most part. The second list, on the other hand, deals more with what you, what you do to other people. Anger, rage, malice, slander, obscene talk, wrath, all of these things. The second list is dealing with relational sins.
Now, if you're not a Christian and you're here today, we're so glad that you're here. You're always welcome here. We want to make our message very understandable to you as you walk through these scriptures with us. I think that if you're not a Christian, one thing you might say, one thing you might think is that I understand the second list. I understand why God might be against the things that hurt other people. I understand why God might be against anger that hurts someone or wrath or slander that's going to hurt someone. But why would God be against the first section, which is mostly just within myself for me to deal with. And more than that, why in verse six does it say on account of these, the wrath of God is coming. That's pretty serious, is it not?
And when we think about the wrath of God, I think that the wrath of God can probably best be described as spiritual death. Romans chapter 6 says that the wages of sin are death. And so the wrath of God is what we get in response to our sin, and it is what sin leads to. Sin leads to death. Why does sin deserve and lead to death? What is the big deal? And I really want to give you this recommendation that I believe that sin leads to death because God loves us and he cares for us and he does not want, even though he does not want to see us die. That sin is actually making us miserable. That is against everything that God knows is good for us.
A few years ago, I, one of my neighbors called me. I had a yellow jacket infestation on the side of my house. I've told this story before, but it's been a few years and it's a good one. So hopefully you don't remember. But I had a yellow jacket infestation on the side of my house. And, he was like, hey, you wanna get that taken care of. So I called, a local, exterminator and I almost said terminator, but, you know. He, he, he, he came back.
So the exterminator came and he was like, oh, yeah, that's a, that's a big one. Let me see what I can do. He was like, I think you have over 500 yellow jackets in this thing. So he put on his bee suit and he set up his ladder and he climbed up his ladder and he had like his, his smoker. I don't know. That's what I call it. It's a smoker. You don't make barbecue in it though. And he climbed up there and I watched him from the window. These things got angry. They were not happy that he was smoking them out of his home. And so he, he did his job. They looked really angry. He's like, oh, don't worry about them, they're gonna leave. One time out of 100, they, you know, stay, but, you know, just call me if that's a problem. And I was like, OK, sounds good.
So like an hour later, I'm sitting in my dining room and I see a, a yellow jacket flying through my dining room. And I'm like, well, that's kind of weird, so I just kill it and I move on. And it's not until several hours later, I go to put my kids to sleep, and I notice that my kids' room in the attic is absolutely full of yellow jackets. That there's just, it feels like hundreds. They're everywhere, all throughout the attic. So what do I do? I noticed that my kids' room is full. As a loving father, I just told them to figure it out and go to sleep and. No, I, I knew that the yellow jackets were actually going to harm them. And so I went to war. I actually called my downstairs neighbor, Michael, he's an elder here. He came upstairs. We each grabbed a melee weapon, which was like a children's book, and a range weapon, which is like the spray that I bought. And we went back to back and we fought the yellow jackets with our, our spray and our books, and we killed, I think the the final count was like 74 yellow jackets.
But what kind of father would I have been if I had just left my kids to their own devices to deal with these little messengers of Satan that have been left in my attic. I don't think that you could have called me a good father. My war against the yellow jackets was a manifestation of my love for my children. You see, God hates sin, because he knows that sin is poisoning our hearts. That sin is distorting our desires and is actually causing us to be less human. And causing the destruction that we see in the world. It's causing the selfish acts that we see in the world. Sin wants to draw us away from God to ultimately kill us. Sin leads to death.
And I don't think that anyone says it better than the 17th century author John Owen, when he says, be killing sin or it will be killing you. Be killing sin or it will be killing you. God loves us, so he does not just want us to stay in our sins. So he tells us to put our sin to death.
Now, if sin leads to death and God's wrath is coming against sin, then what hope is there for sinners like us? And the answer is found in the secnd death. So the first death is that sin leads to death. The second death is that Christ died for sinners. God hates sin, but I have really good news for you all. That God loves sinners. That God loves sinners.
Verse 7, check it out. It says, in these you too once walked when you were living in them. He says, you too, not they're walking out there. This is a message to the church. He's saying in these you too once walked. Now as Christians, we don't walk there anymore, but sometimes we like to visit. And he's telling us that we still have to be putting those things to death. Far, far too often, we apply these sorts of passages to people over there. And we look down our noses as if we have the moral high ground, that we're better than everyone else. But this passage is written to the church. He assumes that these are the types of things that are happening in the church, or else he wouldn't need to write it. And so he's telling us that you too were one of these, and you are still fighting against it.
Luke chapter 5. I love what Jesus has to say. Luke 5:31-32, he says, and Jesus answered them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Christianity is not a special class for morally superior people. Christianity isn't just a group of people who have their act put together, who aren't sinning, who aren't as much. Jesus is looking for the failures, the screw ups, those who need a new start. It's been said many times, but it's so true that the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.
And if that's where you find yourself this morning. The good news of the gospel will taste so much sweeter. You need to drink deeply of this good news that Christ loves sinners. If you find yourself rather resonating with the Pharisees, feeling like you have all of your act put together, that you don't need Jesus, you don't need a savior, then I would just question if you truly understand the depth of sin in your own life. No passage explains all this better than Romans 5:8. It says, but God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Human nature wants to hide our sin. We want to pretend as though we can hide from God. Like we don't have to show him our sin. But this passage says while we were still sinners, and friends, I want to encourage you that God delights in forgiving sin. He delights in forgiveness. It was for the joy set before him that Jesus bore the shame of the cross. That when we come to Christ, we're not subtracting from the glory of God. We are actually adding to the glory of God because as your sin is transferred from on you where the wrath of God is being poured out for those who are in their sin, when you trust in Christ, that guilt, that shame is transferred to Christ on the cross and the and the penalty for our sin is taken out on him. And so as you confess your sin and place it on Christ, the glory of God is not detracted from. It is added to what he has done, what he is most glorious about is actually made more glorious. He has paid a greater cost. He gets to take more joy in taking on our sin.
Now we get to the question of Romans 6. Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Thank you. We didn't even work that out. I just knew you would do it. By no means, by no means. It doesn't mean that we just heap more on him. But he is joy. If you want to know what your sin deserves, look to the cross. It is why he paid our penalty. The wrath of God satisfied. But if you also want to know how much God loves you, look to the cross. Christianity is not a story about how you victoriously defeated all your sin. Christianity is the story of a God who loved you while you were still a sinner.
And if you were the hero of your own story, having triumphed over your sin and and your background and everything, I would just challenge you that you might not be worshiping Jesus, you might just be worshiping yourself. Who is the hero of your story? Who's the one who's defeated sin? Now a sin leads to death, but Jesus defeated sin by dying for us. What do we then do? What do we then do?
And we get to our third death. We get to our third death. Therefore, put sin to death. When you come to Christ, life changes. We're not walking in the same ways anymore. Like I said, sometimes we might take a few steps, and we still have to be working to put off our sin. So how do you put sin to death? Friends, your sin. Your mistakes, your failures, that we suffer under these burdens. These are things that we don't want to be doing. As Christians, if you're a Christian here today, you don't want to be sinning. We know that. We, you know that it is making you miserable. But, but it's hard to fight against sin. And so I just wanna give you a few steps for taking your sin off.
First, you have to understand the root cause of your sin. If you really wanna get to a solution for a problem, you have to get to the cause of the problem. Yeah, you can't just stick some duct tape on it and call it a day. You actually have to get into the plumbing and find what's wrong. And I think that we get a big hint on what is actually wrong in verse 5. And it says this, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
So I want to propose that at the heart of almost all sin, if not all sin, is this idea of idolatry. This covetousness, this idolatry, and the reason why, well, one reason why that is, just look at the 10 Commandments. What is the first commandment? I am the Lord your God who delivered you out of slavery. Therefore, you shall have no other gods before me. Is a commandment against idolatry. Saying when you put other gods before me, everything else falls out of line. I think when you get to the heart of sin is what you actually are believing, is that something other than God can and will satisfy me. And so you start to practice those things.
We commit sinful behavior when we believe that there's something in the world that will give us more and joy and satisfaction than God. And so what you see sinful behaviors, those are like the flowers, but the idolatry is at the root of the problem. And so when you start to see those flowers in your life, you have to examine the roots.
I'll just give you an illustration from my own life, OK? my wife and I have been married for 15 years. We, we have, thank you. You know, I said that in Brighton the other day, no one said anything. They didn't care. I was like, usually people are happy for me, that I convinced a woman to stay with me for that long. We've, we've, we've never had a fight. Megan and I have, are both, strong personalities. We've had a few, a few disagreements in our day, and I'll say that the number one disagreement that we've had over and over again has been around money. And I think that that's for a lot of different reasons. First, we were really poor for the first like 7, 8 years of our marriage. We just did not have much money.
But for some reason, as we got more money, the fights didn't stop. Like you would think that it would just, you know, go away, but now we have enough that we can steward our life in in relative comfort. And we still argue about this. And it goes, the arguments go something like this. I grew up in relative poverty, grew up in rural Mississippi without much, and I just have it hardwired deep within me to hoard. Any other hoarders out there, at least with wealth, I am just like, I, I don't want to spend money. I just want to save it.
My wife does not have that gift. She, she, that's OK. Every, any other spenders out there, we've got a few spenders. OK, you're not alone. You're not alone. And I watch our money like a hawk. I have, you need a budget, which is my favorite budgeting app. If you'd like, a reference, I can send it your way. I'll get a little bit off of my next one. And I, I watch every cent that comes through. And sometimes the things that I bring to are just silly, you know, it's like, hey, what are we doing spending $4 on this over here that we're over our budget on that category.
And I think that what I've realized over time, as Megan and I have disagreed on things and is that when I look at it, I've always thought this is her problem. That she's got a problem with us. And maybe there's parts of that that are, that are true, but when I. But, but if it's her problem, why am I the one starting all the fights? Why am I the one coming and feeling angry, and being frustrated, and sharing about her vices with our entire church congregation. Why, why am I the one that's letting this get the best of me? Because when it comes to it. It's not just the money, but there's something deeper than that that I long for in my heart, and it's control. That if I have enough money in the bank that I feel in control. And when she spends it and we don't talk about it, I feel out of control. And so I'm willing to yell, I'm willing to, to not yell, I'm willing to be angry at least. I'm willing to be frustrated. I'm willing to hurt our relationship so that I can have more control.
Do you see how there's an idolatry at the center of my sin? Maybe you can resonate with them. No matter how many times I tell myself I'm not gonna be frustrated with my wife this week. That control idolatry, unless I deal with that, it's still gonna raise, rear its ugly head. And it's still gonna take over, and I'm still gonna be angry. And until I deal with the roots of my issue. The the flowers of sin will continue to come up in my heart. I don't know what that is for you. But I pray that you would take some introspection and time to evaluate. I've had this fight for 15 years and I think this is the first time I've confessed my idolatry for control. First, in your battle against sin, you have to understand the root of your sin. And then you have to repent.
In his 95 thesis, Martin Luther, the great reformer, he nailed 95 kind of objections to the Catholic Church on the wall of the Church of Wittenberg, and. The very first one is this, when our Lord and Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, He intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance. That this is not a one time action. All of life is repentance.
So you should not feel surprised when you have the need to repent again. This is not something you do at the beginning of your Christian lock. And never again. The confessing and turning away from your sin is a constant in the Christian life. Jesus has defeated sin once and for all, but with every act of repentance, you're taking down a rebel infiltration that is waging war against your soul. When you, when you repent, you're putting on the new self, you're taking off the old you and you're putting on the new you.
And so every act of repentance is an opportunity for you to say, that's not me anymore. I'm not that person anymore. I've been made new by Christ, and I'm going to put on the new me. And no matter how much shame I feel, oftentimes I just feel shame because I know that's not who I am anymore. But it's an opportunity for me to place it on Christ again, for him to receive more glory, and for me to be made content once again and what he has done for me.
Verse 10, and we have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. When you put on the new self, you are embracing your new way of life. You are embracing your identity in Christ. You are embracing your new way of being human, one that reflects God Himself. And I think that the problem with many Christians. Is that they actually believe that the true them or the problem with many people, that the true them is actually the dark side, the Mr. Hyde. That that's who I really am when I come down to it.
But friends, that is not who you're meant to be. But God has given you a new identity, one that can walk in the truth of who Christ is. And as you put on Christ, you find who you were actually designed and created by God to be. That he wants you to live a life that's not filled with selfishness and destruction, but is rather filled with glory and joy and who he is. And so Christian brothers and sisters, or if you aren't a Christian, we, we encourage you the same way. Run to Christ. Put on your new self. When you are in Christ, your sin never defines you. You can't allow your sin to define you. You can't say, I'm just an anxious person. I'm just an addict. I'm, I'm just a perfectionist, therefore I'm allowed to be hypercritical.
Those things don't define you anymore. But you're defined by a greater truth, which is who Christ is, that you've been risen with him to new life. I want to give you an opportunity to do that today, whether it's your first time or the 1,000th time. I'm going to lead us an opportunity to confess our sins and receive assurance of God's grace. And so, if you would, we're going to have a time to do this personally. And then we'll have a time to do it corporately, like all together we'll say a confession together, and then we're going to have a time for response where we'll receive a sacred meal, the communion meal, and there'll be some people in the back who can pray with you in the back if you would like to pray with someone today.
Whether it's the first time you're trusting in Christ or you're just coming to him again, repenting as all of life is of your sin. I encourage you that your sin is killing you. As a Christian, even it's killing you. It's time to put on the new self once again, every single day in renewed spirit. And so let's take a few moments. I'm gonna give you. And Jared will play behind us, and we'll take a moment to search our hearts and to confess any lingering sin, any ongoing sin, or any idolatry that we might have in our hearts. What fears are you carrying? Oftentimes our fears reveal our true gods. I encourage you to cry out to Christ. Give it to him. Say, I'm giving this to you now, God. He's sufficient. Though you might feel shameful. God loves Our confessions and our repentance, it takes glory from them.
If you would join me, we're gonna pray some words on the screen. These are from a common prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. You can speak these words along with me. Most merciful God, we confess that we've sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus, have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.
Hear this assurance from First John chapter one, that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We're gonna take a time now. Each week we practice the sacred meal that we call communion or the Lord's supper. And when we practice this meal it's an opportunity to confess our sins anew to God. To come to him and receive this promise that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for our sins. And that when we take these elements, we're being reminded in a physical kind of way of the sacrifice that Christ made for us, that our sin deserves wrath, but he took on the wrath for us. And so if you're a Christian here today, and you're walking with God, we encourage you to come to receive this meal. So if you would stand with me as we join our hearts in prayer.
God, we, we thank you for your grace and your truth. We thank you for this word that satisfies our hearts, that has filled us with your grace. God, we pray that you would move in our church, that anyone who is feeling the weight of their sin today, that they would come to you and that they would receive grace anew, that they would be reminded that you are sufficient even for them today. We ask all of this in Christ's name, Amen.