What
Does New Life Look Like?
Steve W. Reeves
INTRODUCTION:
A. A
businessman owned an old, abandoned warehouse. Through years of neglect it had
fallen into disrepair. Windows were broken. Plumbing
and electrical systems were not up
to code. It had become littered with trash and had a roof
that leaked. One day he had a
prospective buyer. He told the buyer, “If you buy this building I will
have it cleaned and
repaired.” The prospect said, “Don’t bother. No matter what you do this will
still be an old
building. I am interested in the site. I’m going to tear this building down and build a
brand
new building.
B. In
any bookstore one of the largest sections is the “self-help” section. Whether
it is health
and nutrition, positive thinking, new age
spirituality or self-improvement all of them focus
on repairing damaged lives.
1.
God wants to give us a new life.
2. He wants the old self of sin to be put
to death and given a proper burial so He can
raise us up as a new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17
Paul wrote, “Therefore if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away;
behold, new things have
come.”
3. In Colossians 2:8-15 Paul wrote about
the significance of baptism.
a. He said it is in baptism that we
experience the fullness or completeness that is in
Christ (vss.8-10).
b. It is through baptism that we express
a new covenant with God (vss. 11).
c. It is in baptism that we experience
the blessings of forgiveness and spiritual victory
(vss. 13-15).
d. In the remaining verses of chapter 2
he said that Christians are no longer subject to
the old law with its feast days, rules,
regulations and ordinances. Why? Because the
old has been taken away – nailed to the cross. Christians
are raised up to a new life!
C.
What does this “new life” look like? What are its characteristics? How would
you
describe it? Let’s go to Colossians 3:1-11.
1. Paul begins this thought with a
conditional clause. “Therefore if you have been raised
up with Christ.”
2. Every man, woman and accountable young
person needs to ask, “Have I been raised
up with Christ?” Have you come to Christ in
faith? Have you been buried with Him in
baptism so God can raise you up?
a. If the answer is “no,” I hope you
will consider the importance of coming to Christ.
b. If the answer is “yes,” I want you to
notice what new life looks like.
3. In this text there are four verbs I want
you to mark in your Bible.
a. “Seek” – vs. 1, “seek those things
which are above.” (NIV uses the word, “set”).
b. “Set” – vs. 2, “set your mind on things above, not on things
on the earth.”
c. “Put to death” “mortify,” or “slay” –
vs. 5.
d. “Put them all aside” or “separate” –
vs. 8.
I. SEEK (vs.1).
A. “Therefore if you have been raised up
with Christ, keep seeking the things above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God”
(NASB).
1. What are you seeking in your life?
What are you looking for?
2. The Devil doesn’t care what you seek
as long as it is not Christ and the things above.
B. Paul has already mentioned things
Christians should not seek.
1. In 2:8 he said, “See to it that no
one takes you captive through philosophy and empty
deception, according to the
tradition of men, according to the elementary principles
of the world.”
a. Some were seeking special
enlightenment through human philosophy.
1.) There are many people today
who believe in the supremacy of human thought
and wisdom. They are humanists.
They have a creed and an agenda to
remove any reference to God from
society.
2.) In 1933 a group of Humanists
met and formulated a document known as the
“Humanist Manifesto.” Here is one
statement from that document. “Humanists
believe that traditional theism,
especially faith in the prayer-hearing God,
assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and
understand their prayers,
and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and
outmoded
faith."
b. Some were seeking to hold on to
traditions from the Old Law such as the practice
of circumcision or the keeping of
special feasts.
1.) If we are seeking to
maintain tradition more than seeking to share Christ our
priorities are flawed.
2.) Jesus spoke of those who
“teach as doctrine the commandments of men” (Mt.
1 5:9).
C. It is important to notice that the verb
“seek” is a continuous action. This is why the New
American Standard says, “keep on
seeking.”
1. We never arrive at a point in life
where we can say, “I have arrived, I don’t need to
seek any longer.”
2. Jesus commanded us to “Seek first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Mt.
6:33).
3. Earlier in Matthew 6:21 He said,
“Where your treasure is there your heart will be
also.”
D. What
are you seeking?
1. Things below? Are you a basement
person looking for trinkets and crumbs in this
life? Are you a scavenger seeking to hoard all you
can of this world’s goods and
pleasures?
2 Are you seeking things above where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God? This
is the first characteristic of the new life.
II. SET (vss.2 - 3).
A. “Set your mind on the things above, not
on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have
died and your life is hidden with Christ in God”
(vss. 2-3).
B. Jack Kinningham has taught an excellent
class on “The Heart of Man.” He
emphasizes the idea that the mind is the processor for the
heart. Everything that
comes into our heart flows through the mind in the same way a processor on
a
computer takes input and puts it into storage.
1. It is no wonder the writer of Proverbs
said, “As He thinks in his heart so is he”
(Proverbs 27:3) or “Keep your heart with all
diligence for from it springs the issues of
life” (Proverbs 4:23).
2. When we become a Christian there is a
change in our mind.
a. No longer is it filled with
“stinking thinking.”
b. It is reprogrammed to think like
Jesus (1 Peter 2:21). Let the mind of the Master
be the master of your mind.
c. This is why Paul wrote to the
Romans, “be transformed by the renewing of our
minds” (Rom.12:2).
III. SLAY (vss. 5-7)
A. “Therefore consider the members of your
earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to
idolatry. 6 For it is because of these
things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of
disobedience, 7 and in them
you also once walked,when you were living in them.”
B. One of the hardest challenges we face is
slaying the old self of sin.
1. Martin Luther said he went down to
river to drown the old man and found out he can
swim.”
2. We lived in a house where there were
two large Cottonwood trees in the front yard. I
do not have many allergies but the lint
from those trees was terrible. I had both of
the cut and the stumps removed. For years the roots to
those trees kept sprouting all
over the yard. It is a difficult thing to remove the old
life.
C. What are these desires?
1. Sexual immorality. The Bible often
uses the word, “fornication” as a broad term for all
sexual sin. The Devil knows that the human sex
drive is one of the most powerful
instincts we have. I have heard that it is second only to
self-preservation. I asked a
man in his nineties how old you have to be before you are not bothered
by sexual
temptation. He said, “I think you need to be dead at least three weeks.” You will
never regret purity. Jim Bill McInteer told about a young lady being pressured by her
friends
to be sexually active. Finally she looked at them and said,
“In a matter of minutes I could
become as you are. For the rest of your lives you will
never be as I am.” I have never had anyone
come to me regretting that they
maintained sexual purity.
2. Evil desire and greed. We want to
hold on to the things in this life that we believe will
bring satisfaction. Henry Emerson Fosdick
told of visiting Niagara Falls one cold
winter day. Floating down river was carcass of a dead
animal. A vulture came down
to feed on that carcass.Fosdick thought that as the carcass
approached the falls the
vulture would fly away but instead its feet had become frozen to the
carcass and it
was swept over the falls by the very thing on which it had been feeding. This is
true
of many of our actions.
C. Paul says it is because of these things
the wrath of God has come.
1. Do you know that there are some
things God hates? Consider Proverbs 6:16-19-
“There are six things which the Lord hates, Yes,
seven which are an abomination to
Him: 17 Haughty eyes,a lying tongue, And hands that shed
innocent blood,18 A heart
that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, 19 A
false witness who utters
lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.”
2. If you don’t believe in the wrath of
God consider what you would do to someone who
was trying to steal, injure or kill you
children. God’s wrath is real because God’s love
and concern for us is real.
III. SEPARATE (vss. 8-11).
A. “But now you also, put them
all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive
speech from your mouth. 9 Do not lie
to one another, since you laid aside the old self
with its evil
practices,10 and have put on the
new self who is being renewed to a true
knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.”
B. New life in Christ prompts us to “slay”
the desires detrimental to ourselves such as
immorality,evil and greed. It also moves us to “put
aside” actions and attitudes that are
detrimental to others.
1. Anger – losing our temper.
2.
Wrath – seeking vengeance on others.
3. Harsh tongues – malice, slander and
lies.
C. The change that occurs in the baptismal
waters does not merely affect the place you
park your car for an hour or two on Sunday. It
affects every area of life.
CONCLUSION:
A.
In December of 1967 a 53 year old grocer named Lewis Washkansky received the
first
human heart-transplant in Cape Town, South
Africa. The surgeon was Dr. Christian
Barnard. After the surgery Washkansky asked if he could see
his old heart which had
been preserved in a jar. When he saw it he said, “I’m glad I don’t have
that old heart
anymore. In spite of his new heart he died just 18 days later from double pneumonia.
B.
God wants to give you a new heart and a new life that will outlive your body.
What a
tremendous offer is made possible because of His love
and the sacrifice of His Son. Will
you accept His glorious gift today?
