"Set Your Mind on Things Above" (Col. 3:1-4)

Transcript:

Well, open with me tonight as we hear the sermon text from Colossians chapter three. And we will be looking particularly at verses one through four, although we are going to read a little bit beyond that. But for now, we'll just look at the first four verses. If you're using a pew Bible, this is a page 1169. 1169 here.

Now, the word of the Lord from Colossians 3, verses 1 through 4. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated, at the right hand of God, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him. Glory.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated. Let's go to our Lord in prayer, asking for his help as we study this passage from His Word. Pray with me. Gracious Father, we thank youk for your Word. And we thank youk for the promises and the instruction about not only the things that are unseen, but how to relate to those things.

We are called to set our mind on the things above where Christ is seated. And we would not know anything about your Son or anything about where he is and what he is going to do when he returns, unless you told us about those things in your Word. But you make all of these plain. You speak to us, you instruct us, you strengthen our faith. And we pray that tonight you would indeed, by your spirit, set our minds on the things above where Christ is seated.

Father, this Lord's day, we pray that you would set aside in our hearts and minds the cravings and the reliances that we have upon the things of this earth, and that we would repent where necessary of wrong desires toward the wrong things. But we pray, Father, that you would lift us up to Christ, our head, who is seated in heaven. By your spirit we pray, give us hope, hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear. All that is contained in the good news of Christ's gospel. It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen. This morning we studied Jesus teaching and his warning about riches. But one of the things that he particularly focused on is the relationship between our eyes and our hearts. And sometimes when the Scriptures talk about our eyes, they talk about our physical eyes and what we are actually gazing upon at any particular moment. But beyond that, metaphorically speaking, there are the eyes of our heart.

Paul's prays that the eyes of our hearts would be opened. We have eyes to see things by faith. The Scriptures talk about how Paul writes to the Galatians, who says, before your eyes, Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Well, Christ was not crucified in Galatia. He was crucified outside of Jerusalem.

He means the eyes of faith. So we can set our eyes physically, or the eyes of our imagination, the eyes of our hearts on good things, on the things above, on Christ and him crucified, or on the things of this earth. And what the Scriptures are constantly doing is for us to ask us to audit our hearts and particularly audit our eyes. Remember, we talked about, be careful, little eyes, what you see. And so how are our eyes connected to the faith that we have in Jesus especially?

And this is the practical question that's raised by this passage. How can our eyes gaze upon someone whom we cannot see because he is bodily so far away from us in heaven? How do we set our eyes on Him? How do we focus on Him? What does this actually mean?

And so tonight our sermon is really focusing on one aspect of the catechism questions for tonight. Again, it's that third paragraph of Heidelberg Catechism 49, where the catechism teaches. Third, he sends his Spirit to us on earth as a corresponding pledge. By the Spirit's power, we seek not earthly things, but the things above, where Christ is sitting at right hand. And so our theme tonight is set your mind on Christ above.

Set your mind on Christ above. We're going to set our mind on him by the eyes of faith, the eyes of the mind. And there'll be three parts to this. And these three parts of these passages are explicitly connecting aspects of Christ's glorification, his exaltation and glorification to what we are going through. And we are beginning in Christ, where Christ has gone, we are following after him, and we will be following after him all the way into glory.

So first, that we are raised with Christ. We are raised up with Christ in part now and in the future, in totality. Second, ascended with Christ. Christ is already in heaven, and we will one day be with Him. But we are ascended even now to some extent with Christ, and then third, glorified with Christ.

This will not be completed until Christ returns. But even now we have begun in our hearts to be glorified with Christ. So let's look at these three sections in these four verses, and looking a little bit beyond them, but we'll start with verse one, the fact that we were raised with Christ. So Paul writes, if then you have been raised with Christ and We're just dipping into this, just dropping into this. So I want to be really clear.

If we had been studying the previous chapter, we would have seen that Paul says very clearly that we have been raised with Christ. If you want to look up the page just a little bit, look at chapter two, verse 12, that we having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him, who raised Christ from the dead. So as Christ was raised from the dead, we have already been raised with him. Now, not entirely. We still must die in this life.

And one day we will be fully resurrected as Christ has. But the idea is that in the inner man, in our souls, in the spiritual part of who we are, that has already been raised up with Christ. And what Paul is saying in our passage is that if, then you have been raised with Christ, and again, that's not a hypothetical possibility. That's the foundation of what he is exhorting us toward. He might as well be saying, since therefore you have been raised with Christ.

He's saying, we need to live in a manner that is compatible with people who have been raised up with Christ. So since we have been raised with Christ, we might say, here is how we are to live. We are to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, who is already seated at the right hand of God. Again, there is a distinction between the resurrection that we have already experienced spiritually and the final future resurrection of the bodies, which is the hope of Christianity. Every time you go to a funeral, you are putting your hope in.

One day the bodies of the people who have been in the Lord will be raised up with them. And yet, as Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 4:16, which we looked at recently, though our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day as the body is dying and decaying. We who have been raised up inwardly are already being renewed in Christ day by day. And therefore we are to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Now, tonight, as we look at this passage, I want to give you a couple of different concepts. Take these as far as they go. All illustrations and metaphors break down when we're talking about the relationship between us and Christ. But I want us to capture this and really think about what this might mean. And the first thing that I want to say is we think about the new life that we have in Christ has been raised up.

I want us to think about the fact that we are in something of a long distance relationship with Christ right now. He, his body is in heaven and we have communion with him spiritually, but yet he is absent from us, bodily speaking, he is not present in our midst. Now I am something of an expert, an authority on long distance relationships because my wife and I were long distance for two and a half years. We were engaged for one of those years while she was trying to wrap up school here in Chicago at Moody, and I was down in Alabama in seminary. And if you saw me during that time, in many ways you would look at me and I would look like just a normal single guy in the seminary.

I went to class, I went to work, I did my homework, I did some things with friends. But to borrow a line and adjust it a little bit from Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in seminary must be in want of a wife. I was. All of the other single guys in seminary were in desire, desiring a wife. And so all around me, if you saw the other single guys, they were pairing off, they'd be dating, some of them were engaged, and you'd see their fiance, some of them were married, and they were all with their significant others.

But you'd never see me on dates, at least on the very rare occasion when Allison would come into town for a very short time. And so it looked like I was completely single, completely on my own. But if you talked with me, you would hear that my life, especially during that engagement period, was bound up with a woman that you wouldn't really see. She was a huge reality in my life at the time. And we were talking frequently on the phone doing wedding planning.

And if you talk to me, I might tell you about a recent conversation or the next time that I get to see her, or the next scheduled phone call. Some of you are old enough to remember free nights and weekends on cell phones. You had to wait until 9:00 o'clock to get on the phone so you didn't burn up those precious minutes. My then fiance, now wife was absent, but my life was with her. And so I sought after her, even though she was bodily absent, as we were preparing for a life that we would then live together.

And I think that helps to illustrate something of what Paul is talking about. We have a real relationship with Christ now, but it is something of a long distance relationship with Christ. And oh, how the heart longs, longs to be with the person with whom you were in a long distance relationship, whether a fiance, but especially with Christ. How much we long to be with Jesus. And the question that Paul is raising is, does that longing to be bodily with Jesus brought back together with Jesus at His return?

Does the resurrection of Christ, where we have been raised up to one extent with him, so that we have this relationship now, even as we are waiting the fuller relationship in the future, does this make a practical difference in your life? Have you been raised up with Christ? Is your life bound up with Christ even though he is absent? Or if someone was looking at your life, would you just look like a normal worldling who just did the things of this world, went to work, went home, did your fun activities and recreations and that was about it? Or if someone talked to you even though they couldn't necessarily see it outwardly, would you be talking to them about your long distance Savior?

Let me tell you about Jesus. Let me tell you about what I read from him in the Word today. Let me tell you about what he's been doing in my life. Let me tell you how he raised me up from death and sin. Yes, we must do the normal things of life, working, cooking, cleaning, spending time with friends.

But is our lives bound up with Christ? We talked about that in terms of money this morning. Yes, you must use money. Yes, you must save money. Yes, you must deal wisely with your money.

But is money your servant or your master? Is it part of your life or is your life bound up with it? We're not to be bound up with money, we're to be bound up with Christ. And so the key test is to say, just as it was this morning and also in our passage tonight, where is your mind? And so this brings us to the second section, ascended with Christ, that already we are ascended, we are already with Christ in some sense.

In verse 2 Paul writes, Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Now again bodily, we still must remain here, even though we would rather be with Christ in glory, we must be here. And yet we are called to set our minds one aspect of ourselves with Christ in the heavenly places. That language for set your mind is the same word that you might be familiar with from Philippians 2, verse 5, where Paul says, have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And then it goes into that great hymn, who being being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he humbled himself, and it goes on and on and on.

We're called to have the mind of Christ in terms of humility in Philippians 2, verse 5. But here Paul says we are called to have minds that are set in heaven. Our lives are already there, not because we live there yet, but because our minds are bound up in the things of heaven and not on the things that are on earth. So what are the things that are on earth? Well, Paul answers that in verses 5 through 11.

So this is where I want to peek ahead. Mark wanted to make sure that we talked about it, and so I do want to get to that tonight. Colossians 3, 5, 11. Paul writes this. Put to death, therefore what is earthly, or what is of the earth 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 two. You 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 or the old man with its practices and have put on the new self, that is Christ, 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. So what Paul is describing when he talks about the things of earth is he is not saying that we cannot participate in things while we are on the earth. We do live normal lives in many ways. We are called to work with our hands, to live quiet lives, to mind our own business, to work hard, to care for our families. Those things are good and right for us to be do.

But what Paul is saying, do not be the kind of person whose mind is devoted to the things of this earth. Do not be the kind of person whose eyes are constantly wandering through this earth, latching to the things of this earth, craving the things of this earth so that your life is lived entirely for gaining more and more of the pleasures and power of the things of this world. Why? Because this is not our home. Because our lives are bound up with Christ and therefore we need to live like it.

We need to have minds that are set in heaven, seeking the things that are above, not the stuff of heaven. Again, I talked this morning. Not the cement and pavement of heaven, gold and things like that, but to see Christ. That's where Christ is seated, in the heavenly places, coming under Christ's reign as king. So a couple of questions as we think this through.

First of all, a diagnostic question. Where is your mind? We talked about this this morning a little bit but let's kind of revisit some of these things. Take a moment, think about when your mind wanders. Maybe it's been wandering a little bit right now up to this point.

Let's bring it back. When your mind wanders, where does it go? Where are the eyes of your mind searching for something that fascinates you, that captivates you, that has your heart? What are the things that attract you? What are the things that repulse you?

What do you long for and desire? On the other hand, what do you fear? What are you afraid of happening? What are the things that thrill you or what depresses or leads you into despair? When you start to think through those questions, you start to get a sense of what's important to you, where your mind is, what has a hold of your heart.

But again, the question we talked about this morning is how do we change our desires? How do we change the inclinations of our heart, what we want? Those seem to just pop up in us. How can we be seeking after? How do we seek to change the things that our hearts just naturally seek after?

Well, here's the second question that gets a little bit more practical in terms of what we are to do instead. Where do you set your mind? It's a question of attention. Again, this morning we talked about the fact that the I is the lamp of the body where your eyes are fixed. That's going to affect your whole soul.

If your eyes are fixed on the dark things of this earth, you will be filled with darkness. But if the eyes of your heart are fixed on the light of the glory of Christ, he will fill your soul. I've mentioned this before, I think, but I want to pass along to you one practical tip. I don't pass this on as a law, But I pass this on as something that has been very helpful for me in my spiritual walk. I have read the Bible for many years.

I've been on the McShane Bible reading plan for about 25 years, I think, and reading through the Bible, I've read through it many, many years. I've become so familiar. I've been transformed by Bible reading. But over the last year, one of the things that has been transformative to take that to another level is that as I am reading, I will try to find a passage that sort of stands out to me or something that seems like it really should have an impact on where I am in life, on whatever's going on. And I actually write that out.

You can do that with your handwriting or I type it out into some software where I'm kind of keeping some journaling. And I have found that typing it out makes the words all the more real to me. To take the time to give the attention of not just passively letting the words wash over me, but actually writing those words out. It forces me to see and to hear and to then produce every single word. And so sometimes there's a particular few verses that stand out, and I'll be typing it out, and as I'm typing it out, suddenly I see a phrase there that I even.

You know, that passage really stood out to me. It wasn't that I was ignoring it, I thought it was interesting. But there's a phrase in there that somehow I had just not seen it until I had actually typed it out, until I'd actually take the time to write it out. It's a question of attention. What has your eyes?

What has your heart? What has your attention? And I want to ask, is it the scriptures of the Word of God? Is it the promises of things unseen that are bound up in Christ who is seated in the heavenly places? Or is it all the stuff of this world that is constantly bombarding us for our attention?

Where is your mind? Where are your eyes? Where is your heart? Where is your life? And it's this question of life that we get to in the third section, glorified with Christ, to talk about the way in which we will be glorified with him, where we have been partially glorified now and where we will be glorified with him.

So the third section, glorified with Christ in verses three through four, in verse three, we read, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Now what does he mean by this? Well, it certainly doesn't mean that we have actually died in the sense of someone who dies. You have a funeral for them and they are buried. That day will come for all of us if the Lord does not return first.

But what Paul means is that we have died to a particular manner of living, that we have died to living for the things of earth, for the things of this world. We have died to the life of a normal worldling, someone who is obsessed with the stuff of this world so that our life is no longer here. Even though we live our lives here, our life is not really here. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. So think about what this means.

We're here in one sense. We live out our lives, we live out our days. We have all of our relationships here. We do our tasks here. But this is not our life.

This is not our home. Our life is with Christ in God. And so verse four we read, when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. We are waiting for the day when Jesus will return. And with him he is bringing the eternal resurrection life.

And when he brings that with him, we will be finally and fully glorified with him forever. So what's he doing now? Well, Christ in heaven is preparing for us this life. He is preparing for us a new home. John 14, verses 2 through 3 in my father's house are many rooms.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Christ is not talking simply about a construction project. It's not that he's coming in behind schedule or that things are over budget and he has to sort of reconfigure things. That's not what he's talking about. He's using imagery to tell us about the life that we will have in Christ that He will bring when he appears with Him. And so again, earlier I gave you a concept of a long distance relationship.

I want to give you another concept, another illustration. It's something I wrote about in this month's First Focus.

The acceptance letter for me to accept this call to service pastor was read just a little over a month ago, May 3rd. It was read in this church essentially last Sunday a year ago, on April 27, 2025. And so I've been thinking a lot about this last year. I didn't get here until July, really, but these last couple of months were very personally transformative in my life as there was a transitional time in April and May and June as we were preparing to come here. And I have been thinking some, and for whatever reason this time of year I'm having a lot of memories about this, about some of the strong, gut wrenching memories of standing in my old house after it had been entirely cleared out, entirely packed up, entirely shipped.

Ahead of us was heading to the new life that we were going to have here. We loved that house. We love the life that we had in that house. We weren't there for actually very long, but a lot had happened in that home. But after the contents of the home were boxed up and shipped, we all as a family went over and walked through it one last time.

And it was a little haunting because we could see all the Places where we did a lot of things as a family. We could see the place where the dogs would sleep, and we could see the place where we would play different games. And we could think back to some of the celebrations and family gatherings that we had in this place or another. And we could see where our beds had been that we had slept in every night. And there was this strong nostalgic pull back to that old life.

But you can't stay. That was for a time. That was for a season. There was a lot of love and joy in that place. Place at that time.

But our life stood ahead of us. Our life was in a new place. Now, I'm not comparing Omaha with the earthly things that we read about in this passage. And here is the new Jerusalem. I'm not saying that it's wonderful.

We love it here. My point is, though, that our life was in one place, and there was such a strong tendency because the connections and the memories to want to stay in that place. And yet we're called to this new life in Christ. And we don't fully know what that's going to be. We don't know fully what that's going to look like, but we have this great promise that Christ will be there.

That's why we left Omaha to come here, because Christ called us here. Because Christ the captain, had a new life for us here with you. And we are so blessed and so grateful for that. But it's a picture, I think, of the life that we all have here is only for a time. It is only for a season.

Even this will end. No matter how many years we are given. One day we are called to a new life in Christ that He has been preparing for us, that he will bring with us. And when he appears, we will enter into this fullness of life for all eternity with Him. Which means that as good as this life is, certain aspects of it, as much joy as we have, as much as we're bound up in the relationships here, as much as you enjoy your work and your home, as much as you enjoy your recreational things that you do, as much as you enjoy the.

The things that we do in life, there is something better coming. Christ, who is your life, will appear. And when he appears, then you also will appear. And you will be transformed. You will be glorified with him for all of eternity.

So stop seeking, stop setting your mind on the things of this earth. They are so temporary. They are here today, but they are gone tomorrow. You've got to start living your new life. Your life is bound up with your long distance bridegroom who is in heaven waiting for you and you have been betrothed to him as a pure spotless bride so live like it.

Set your mind on the things above lets pray Heavenly Father what a joy that Christ is indeed seated in the heavenly places. We need him to be there, we need him to plead for us the merits of his blood, we need him to intercede to ever live to intercede for his people because we so constantly and desperately need his prayers. And Father as we look to the life that is bound up Christ, we pray that as much as our hearts are drawn away by the things of this earth that we would not remain here, we would not stay here because the life that we have in you is such a good and rich blessing for all of eternity of infinite joy. And we pray that we would start laying hold of that now, that our minds would be set on that now. And we pray all of this in Christ's name and for his glory.

Amen.