Welcome to Day 2489 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Day 2489 – Spot-On Advice From a Seasoned Mentor – Daily Wisdom - Colossians 3:1-14

Putnam Church Message – 10/20/2024 Jesus Christ, Our Life – Spot-On Advice From a Seasoned Mentor - Colossians 3:1-14 Last week, we continued in the letter of Colossians and learned we can live forgiven and forever free. The overarching theme of Paul’s letter to the Colossians is that Jesus Christ is sufficient as our Lord, our Life, and our Leader. In chapters 1 and 2, Paul developed the principle that Jesus Christ is sufficient as our Lord. In the second major section (3:1–4:1), Paul emphasizes the sufficiency of Christ as our Life. Today’s passage is Colossians 3:1-14 on page 1834 of your Pew Bibles. We will gain spiritual insight from our seasoned mentor, Paul. I am reading from the NLT. ¹ Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. ² Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. ³ For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ And when Christ, who is your^[a] life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. ⁵ So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. ⁶ Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.^[b] 7 You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. ⁸ But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. ⁹ Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. ¹⁰ Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. ¹¹ In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile,^[c] circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized,^[d] slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us. ¹² Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. ¹³ Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. ¹⁴ Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. True or false? Experience is the best teacher. Many of us have heard this statement throughout our lives. It sounds right, doesn’t it? But it’s false. The truth is similar, but with an essential qualification added: Guided experience is the best teacher. Another saying that we hear a lot is that practice makes perfect. My oldest sister, an accomplished violinist, once had a teacher who stated that only perfect practice makes perfect. Think about it. The experience of cooking without prior knowledge will likely result in a meal nobody wants to eat. But if you have a seasoned chef coaching you, you’ll be cooking gourmet meals in no time. Likewise, the experience of trying to drive a car without training will probably result in an accident. But behind-the-wheel lessons from an experienced driver will help you get safely from point A to point B. This is also true in relation to the whole of our lives. When we are young, our parents and teachers guide us, challenge us, correct us, and stretch us. They help us overcome our weaknesses and enhance our strengths. Through their guidance, we grow and mature into more specific areas of interest and giftedness. These wise mentors equip us to live skillfully and experience life fully. In the first century, the apostle Paul was a qualified, experienced mentor with reliable, wise advice. His counsel was trustworthy. His warnings were constructive. His instructions were insightful. Those who attended to his teaching would grow under his guided experience. Colossians 3:1–14 provides a perfect example of Paul’s inspired leadership regarding how to live out the new life in Christ. He tells us what to think about as we seek to live life to the fullest (3:1–4).| He instructs us on what distractions we need to eliminate (3:5–9). |Then, knowing that we all form bad habits through the years, he shows us what we need to gain a fresh start (3:10–11).| Finally, he wraps up by outlining a list of essential virtues that we’re to “put on” as part of the new life (3:12–14). | These are the words of a master mentor. We do well to heed them. —3:1–4— Picture Paul as your personal spiritual trainer, standing before you, saying, “Okay, I want to get into your head, because everything we do begins there. It’s the center of our thoughts, our emotions, and our will. Let’s start with properly exercising the mind.” So in Colossians 3:1, Paul urges those who have been “raised to new life with Christ” to direct their minds upward, “set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.” If we’re associated with Christ’s death and resurrection, we’re also associated with His victorious ascension to the right hand of God. We’re spiritually united with Him, and our thoughts and attitudes should be constantly drawn upward, not downward (3:2). And if we’re associated with Him in His death, resurrection, and ascension (3:3), our minds should also anticipate the next stage in the work of Christ—His return (3:4). However, Paul isn’t suggesting we live each day in a superspiritual, out-of-touch la-la land, ignoring our lives on earth and paying attention only to the things to come. Next time the world gets us down, or we’re in a lousy mood>and can’t seem to escape it, we need to check our spiritual eyesight. What is our focus? Are we looking backward, downward, and inward—fixated on things below, obsessing over things on this horizontal plane, and surrendering to the world’s values and loves? Or are we setting our sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ, who is your life (3:4),>sits victorious, ready to return from heaven and rescue us from this wicked world? A worldly focus will drag us deeper into the mire, but an upward focus on Christ’s>values and loves will lift us out of it. —3:5–9— If we hire a physical fitness trainer to whip us into shape, we can be sure they will insist that we eliminate things that slow our progress, set us back, or work against positive results. We’ll undoubtedly be told to cut down on sweets, trim the fat, and avoid high-sugar drinks. It’s no different in our spiritual training. In Colossians 3:5–9, our spiritual mentor Paul gives us a handful of things we need to lay aside as we pursue a life that reflects the “things of heaven.” These sinful attitudes and actions will be the cause of God’s wrath coming upon this world (3:6), so they have no place in the lives of believers destined for eternity with Him. They are—and should continue to be—things of our past, things we once practiced but have abandoned for the sake of conformity to Christ. We can categorize these attitudes and actions into three groups. (Bulletin Insert) First, Paul tells us to eliminate sensuality (3:5). This group of behaviors includes four practices that we are to consider our bodies to be “dead to”: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. The term immorality is a translation of the Greek word porneia. Porneia is a general term for sexual immorality of any kind, including premarital and extramarital sexual relations, prostitution, and homosexuality. “Impurity” refers to anything unclean, unwholesome, and corrupting. This includes anything that pollutes our minds—especially inappropriate or suggestive images. Moving to the interior, “lust” and “evil desires” have to do with dwelling on immoral or impure things—coddling unwholesome desires, obsessing over illicit cravings, and longing for things that are forbidden to Christians. These sensual thoughts and behaviors are disastrous to a healthy Christian life. We can’t even tinker or toy with these things. We can’t dabble in these things and hope to remain untainted. There’s only one stance a Christian should take with sensual things: So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. (3:5). You may have heard the saying, “He’s dead to me,” (shark tank), referring to a complete and total break in a relationship with someone. Paul urges believers to make this kind of break with sensual things. Second, Paul tells us to eliminate materialism (3:5). This includes greed and idolatry. The first relates to inner motivation and the second to outer manifestation. Greed is the driving desire to have more … and more … and MORE—a desire that can never be satisfied. If you let greed get a foothold, it won’t be long before you worship and serve the things you thought would satisfy you. Richard Foster pulls no punches when he writes, “Compulsive extravagance is a modern mania. The contemporary lust for ‘more, more, more’ is clearly psychotic; it has completely lost touch with reality.” That’s the world in which we live. Enough is never enough. A promotion is never high enough. A salary is never large enough. Things are never plentiful enough. So, we end up worshiping those things that utterly fail to bring us lasting contentment or pleasure. We are a very spoiled people—and very deceived. The more we have, the more we want. We need to get rid of such out-of-control materialism. Third, Paul tells us to eliminate negative emotionalism (3:8–9). Which includes anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. In short, we need to set aside uncontrolled negative emotions. This involves the sudden, angry outbursts in which we lose our cool and say things that shouldn’t be said |and the long, quiet, stewing, seething, lingering bitterness that devours us from within. Christians seeking to live a new life in Christ must stop the habits of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Isn’t it interesting that Paul writes these things to Christians? It’s easy for us to think that we who have accepted Christ as Savior, who have the Spirit living within us, will be free from negative emotionalism. But some of the harshest, angriest, and most insulting letters and online articles have come from fellow Christians. The ugliest words ever said come from so-called brothers and sisters in Christ. Our spiritual life coach, the apostle Paul, says, Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. (3:8–9). These things should be in our past, not in our present—and certainly not in our future! —3:10–11— In 3:5–9, Paul listed the vices we should lay aside as we seek to live the abundant Christian life. Before providing in 3:12-14 the opposite list of virtues we ought to put on, he supplies two transitional verses explaining the source of these new character traits. Our old life without Christ came to an end when we “stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.” (3:9); now our new life in Christ has begun as we “ Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” (3:10). This new life in Christ begins not with self-reformation or our turning over a new leaf. It isn’t a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of reform. The new birth is not something we can cause to happen ourselves. Rather, as the apostle John says, the new birth comes from the Holy Spirit (John 3:3–8). Similarly, Peter says, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Pet. 1:3). God the Father showed mercy, |Christ made the provision, |and the Holy Spirit makes it happen. The new nature we have received through the new birth makes it possible for us to be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.  (Col. 3:10). Each of us who is a believer has been placed into an eternal relationship with God. Each has begun the journey of becoming like Him. Every Christian, regardless of racial, ethnic, national, or cultural background, is transformed into the likeness of Christ in the same way—by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (3:11). Jesus Christ is sufficient as our Life. —3:12–14— The radical transformation in our relationship with God that begins when we are born again calls for a radical change in our external actions. Using an image of changing clothes, Paul weaves together the threads of a new garment of righteousness to match our identity: Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves (3:12). Held together with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony (3:14), Paul’s sampling of virtues constitutes a complete reversal of the three categories of wicked practices described in 3:5–9 that characterized our lives without Christ. Instead of sensuality, materialism, and negative emotionalism, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. (3:12–14). Of course, Paul could have added many more qualities to this list. (Galatians 5:22-23) His purpose isn’t to give an exhaustive checklist, but rather to provide a general pattern of the Spirit-enabled, Christ-honoring lives we should live as the children of God. What a magnificent pattern for our new garment of righteousness! What a grand blend of the qualities we all need in our extreme makeover from wicked, hell-bound sinners to righteous, heaven-bound saints! And when these virtues begin to characterize our new lives in Christ, everybody benefits. God uses each of us to touch the lives of others, to encourage them in their relationships with the Lord. We must think of ourselves as recipients of God’s renovating work and as spiritual mentors for others on the same journey. Application: COLOSSIANS 3:1–14 Continue Your Wardrobe Change   Despite our differences, one thing we all share in common is the struggle against our old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.  (3:9). However, each of us faces unique weaknesses and temptations as we progress toward living lives according to the “new nature” created by the Spirit after the likeness of Christ (3:10). Let’s take a few moments to think critically about where we are in this spiritual wardrobe change. (Show the two coats – one dirty and one clean) The following chart contrasts the vices of the old life we are to take off with the virtues of the new life we are to put on. Read through each list and honestly mark any vices or virtues that characterize your daily life. Don’t highlight traits you only occasionally see in your life, but mark those that have become habits—good or bad. Take off your old, filthy, stinking clothes. Put on your new, fresh clothes. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed/idolatry, anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, dirty language, lies. Tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, forgiveness.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. For each vice that needs to be discarded, find at least one virtue that would counter it or cancel it out. For example, if you struggle with the vice of anger, you could cultivate the virtues of kindness and patience. Finally, consider other specific ways to put the wicked deeds of the old self to death and clothe yourself with the righteous deeds of the new self. Remember, though, that you can’t do this on your own. Experience isn’t the best teacher; guided experience is. You need the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, the clear example of Jesus Christ, and the constant forgiveness that comes from God. You also need the strength from team members—fellow believers on the same journey—and coaches—wise, trusted teachers, counselors, or mentors to help you along the way. Let’s continue our wardrobe change by removing our old, filthy, stinking clothes and putting on our new, fresh clothes. Next week, we will continue our series in the letter to the Colossians. The second section is...