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Sound & Season is a daily audio devotional designed to connect the routine moments of life to the rhythms of the Church seasons.
This is Sound and Season. It's Sunday, the third week of Lent. Our passage this week comes from Paul's letter to the Colossian church chapter two, verses 11 through 15. And let us listen carefully, for this is God's word. In him also, you who are circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 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 from the dead.
Jeffrey Heine:And you, who were dead in your trespasses, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Jeffrey Heine:The promise of the gospel is that God has made you alive together with Christ. But for this to be true, for this to be news of promise, it means we needed to be made alive. In other words, it means we were dead. For this extraordinarily, exceptionally, excessively good news to be true, it means the bad news. The reports of our deaths have not been greatly exaggerated.
Jeffrey Heine:Paul says we were dead in our trespasses, in our rebellion and resistance against God and His love. And it would take another death to give us life, to forgive us all our trespasses. And this was done by nailing our sin and our death to the cross of Christ. Christ died, and you died with Him. Christ rose, and you rose with Him.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the triumph of Jesus, His victory over His grave, and your own. John Chrysostom, the church father born in Turkey in '3 '40 '7 AD, remarked on Paul's emphatic language in this passage concerning the triumph of Christ, writing, nowhere has Paul spoken so grandiloquently. In other words, Paul is using the most extravagant language he can find to speak of the triumph of Jesus and it is not enough. Words fail to convey the magnificent defeat of our sin and the eternal victory of the Son. But know this, it was enough to bring you back from the dead and make you alive again for the very first time.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, hear our prayer, and let our cry come to you. Let us pray. Lord God, who is himself our good shepherd, Thank you for your tender watch over us, for your sovereign care over our souls, for your sure and steady promise to never leave us nor forsake us. Forgive us when we are weak in faith. Give us the strength to believe in the promises you have given us, that you will always hold us, that you will never leave us, and that you will allow nothing to separate us from your love.
Jeffrey Heine:For this, we give You ceaseless praise. Oh, Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Jeffrey Heine:And now, our meditation companion from composer, Kyle Carpenter, and his Lenten instrumental suite, Tenebrae. Here is Whispered Dreams.