{"id":142,"date":"2007-07-21T20:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T03:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/2007\/07\/21\/pentecost-8c-july-22-2007-christ-in-you\/"},"modified":"2007-07-21T20:40:51","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T03:40:51","slug":"pentecost-8c-july-22-2007-christ-in-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Pentecost 8C: July 22, 2007 – “Christ in You”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. <\/span>The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier.<\/p>\n

<\/span>I think it would be safe to say that we\u2019re all different. <\/span>We come from different places, different status in life. <\/span>We have different jobs. <\/span>We have different likes and dislikes. <\/span>Though we share some similarities, for the most part, we\u2019re different. <\/span>However, we each share one common thread: we are all sinners living in a sinful world. <\/span>It\u2019s not something that we care to acknowledge about ourselves, but it\u2019s true nonetheless. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>We think that overall, we\u2019re pretty good, for the most part, maybe. <\/span>That\u2019s where we\u2019re wrong. <\/span>We are not good people. <\/span>We\u2019re not even close to being good people. <\/span>We can try to be good people, but we\u2019re not. <\/span>Even the apostle Paul, chief of sinners in his own eyes, is the first to tell you that you\u2019re not good. <\/span>He looked at his own life, that of the chief killer of Christians until his eyes were opened by Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road. <\/span>When the scales fell off of his eyes, he saw his sinfulness. <\/span>He knew that he was a sinner. <\/span>Everywhere that Paul went, his message was the same: that the people he visited were sinners and were in need of salvation. <\/span>The salvation which you need cannot be found in you or in the things of this world. <\/span>True salvation can only be found in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>Paul was not one to mince words. <\/span>Paul knew what he had learned from Jesus and he did not back down from that teaching. <\/span>In our text for today, Paul gives the Colossians a history lesson, a reminder from where they came and a picture of what is to come: \u201cAnd you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span>Paul reminds these Christians of the gravity of their former state. <\/span>Satan\u2019s evil power had so manipulated them that they had lived in a state of alienation from God. <\/span>This alienation had revealed itself in their hostility and hatred of the Lord; and they had suppressed the truth revealed in nature and their consciences. <\/span>Paul points out that their alienation and hatred had been especially apparent \u201cin the sphere of\u201d their lives, their evil behavior. <\/span>There was certainly nothing in them that could have contributed in any way to a change in their former relationship to the holy God.<\/p>\n

<\/span>For some reason, there are those who think that the Bible is irrelevant, that it doesn\u2019t apply to today. <\/span>It was written 2000+ years ago. <\/span>All the letters which Paul wrote to the churches applied to them and the state they were in; they don\u2019t apply to us because this is a different time, this is the 21st<\/sup> century! <\/span>All the things which Jesus spoke about sin, all of that applied to different people. <\/span>We\u2019re not like them. <\/span>We\u2019re good people. <\/span>The ironic thing is that what Paul wrote to the churches and all the things which Jesus spoke about do apply to us because, like it or not, we are not good.<\/p>\n

<\/span>There was only one time that we were good. <\/span>At the time of creation, when God made man, He declared us to be good. <\/span>All of that changed once Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. <\/span>When that happened, our status went from good to evil. <\/span>From that moment on, we became something which we had never been before: sinners.<\/p>\n

<\/span>That is something which we don\u2019t like to be reminded of. <\/span>It ruins our perception of us being good people. <\/span>But Paul knew that he wasn\u2019t a good person. <\/span>When his eyes were opened, he saw that he was sinful. <\/span>But more than that, he knew who Jesus Christ was: the very Son of God who came to be our Savior.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Before, our relationship to God had been characterized by hatred and hostility; but now, that relationship is characterized by reconciliation and atonement with God, a \u201creturn\u201d to what the relationship between God and his people was intended to be and what that relationship was in Eden. <\/span>It was worked out in the all-sufficient suffering and death of Jesus Christ. <\/span>The purpose of the Son\u2019s reconciling work was to endure all to present the Colossians and all people holy, cleansed from all sin and separated to God; \ufeffwithout blemish, as a perfect sacrifice; and \ufefffree from accusation\u201d by anyone, and especially by the arch-enemy Satan.<\/p>\n

<\/span>In other words, in God\u2019s presence, there is absolutely nothing left against us.<\/u> <\/span>The slate has been wiped clean. <\/span>Christ, who is the power holding everything together, brings it all back to God, and clears away the guilt and self-dissatisfaction in the atoning process. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>These are words which you think we might enjoy hearing. <\/span>These are words which you think would bring comfort all of us who are sinful creatures. <\/span>But these aren\u2019t words which we want to hear. <\/span>It strikes a blow to our ego. <\/span>It somehow makes us less of a person to acknowledge that we are a sinner. <\/span>Paul wasn\u2019t out to make friends or to stroke a person\u2019s ego. <\/span>He definitely is not doing that here. <\/span>His goal was to bring the church at Colossae to Christ and turn them from the \u201cbetter way,\u201d a false philosophy which denied the all-sufficiency of Christ and His work. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The purpose of Paul, of myself and Pastor Firminhac and all ministers of the Gospel, is to preach to you the Gospel, \u201cto make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.\u201d<\/em> <\/span>You are His saints, the church. <\/span>You are the beloved children of God which were dead in sin. <\/span>You are the ones for which God sent His one and only Son, to redeem and make sinless. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>The point of Paul\u2019s message is in three simple words: \u201cChrist in you.\u201d<\/em> <\/span>The same<\/em> Christ who created and redeemed all that we know (and all that we can neither see nor know), the same<\/em> Christ who rules with a supremacy we cannot begin to fathom, can also be localized in the heart of any and every believer! <\/span>The \u201criches of the glory of this mystery\u201d<\/em> is every believer\u2019s connection to the wider scope of God\u2019s creative and redemptive work. <\/span>It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news in knowing that Christ was born, lived, died, and rose again for you and for me.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The words of Paul, though they may be tough to hear, are important words. <\/span>Paul\u2019s letter to the Colossians is a reminder to all who hear it of wisdom: where we were without God\u2019s wisdom, \u201calienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.\u201d<\/em> <\/span>While we were still in that state of being, Christ died for you \u201cin order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach.\u201d<\/em> <\/span>His words are a reminder of what God\u2019s wisdom is doing for us now, \u201c[making] the word of God fully known\u201d<\/em> to us through Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection for us. <\/span>Because of the Word of God, it reminds us what God\u2019s wisdom holds out for the future: \u201cthe hope of glory\u201d<\/em> in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. <\/span>In Jesus\u2019 name, amen.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Now the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith until life everlasting, amen.<\/p>\n

Pentecost 8C<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle, which was read earlier. I think it would be safe to say that we\u2019re all different. We come from different places, different status in life. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,9016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}