Position & Practice: Died with Christ, Raised with Christ

Position and Practice: Died with Christ, Raised with Christ - Colossians 3:1-4
(Speaker: Dan Kosin)

Through the cross of Jesus Christ, we died with Him to our old life and are raised with Him to live a new life.

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Dan: 00:05

Good morning, everyone. It's good to be here again and share with you as we continue going through living the cross shaped life. If you'll turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter three, that's where we're going to be. As you know, as I shared before, we're, we're in different passages going through this idea of living the cross shaped life. And those are great songs.

Dan: 00:33

And if you look at this, the title is Died with Christ and Raised with Christ. And so those great songs about the living one, you know, because he lives, that idea of dead men coming alive and women for that matter, dead people coming to life through what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. And that's what we're going to talk about today. These are things that happen. All of these things that we've been talking about for the past couple months or so, a month and a half, are things that happen at the moment of salvation, right?

Dan: 01:08

And so we talk about them sequentially. We're going through this, but these are things that happen in a moment in the twinkling of an eye if it were as it were. And so, I just don't want us to lose sight of these as we go through all these different positional things that we have because of the cross of Christ. So we're going to read in Colossians chapter three, starting with verse one. Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Dan: 01:43

Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Let's just take a moment and pray again if we would. Father, just we ask that your word would touch us with the truth of the... What's here, that it would not only inform our minds, but change our hearts.

Dan: 02:12

May you allow us, through your spirit to be moved to a place of obedience, to a place of trust in the truths that are coming from your word and your spirit this morning so that we would conform to the image of the one who has died and rose again for us, the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. Well, when I was in high school, I went on a train ride with my parents. We were like going across the Midwest to go see my grandparents in Wyoming.

Dan: 02:43

And I don't know all the decision making that went behind going on a train ride. I've heard that some people have that on the bucket list. I would say you could scratch that one off. But anyway, we went on a train ride. Of course, when you're in high school, that's kind of fun.

Dan: 02:56

You get in the observation deck. But anyway, we stopped at one point and, we got off the train and another track was nearby. And my brothers and I, I had two brothers, we had this great idea because we used to take pennies and put them on train tracks and they would flatten. Cool. So we're like, hey, let's do that.

Dan: 03:14

We got some pennies, put it on. The train came by, sure enough, stopped and my penny fell on the inside of the track. So I'm kind of going underneath the train. I grabbed the penny, I come out and stand up and the train moves about three feet where my neck was. And I'm like there with my mom and we're like, what just happened here?

Dan: 03:38

Boy, you see your short life kind of flash before you're like, that could

Dan: 03:45

have been disastrous, you know? But I told my mom, it's okay. I'm still alive, you know? But you know, there's probably occasions in your life where you faced maybe death or something that you looked at and said, that could have been disastrous had this happened. That was probably the closest I ever came to what I consider that, you know, near death experience.

Dan: 04:07

So for you kids, no putting little pennies on the train track. I think it's against the law now, but anyway, we used to like to do that. You know, and we're talking about death and death is not something we preach about a lot, right? Dying is not something that's very comfortable, but we all have seen it. I remember when I was young, I went to my first funeral and actually back then, you know, they would have the person there and you would come up and see them.

Dan: 04:33

And that was when you're that little creepy, right? You're like, man, that's the reality of death. And we can see that occasionally, right? We know that happens and as we get older, we recognize that those things are happening. So the idea of death is natural, although it's not something that we enjoy speaking of.

Dan: 04:53

But the idea of resurrection, we're thinking about being raised with Christ, that's a little different, right? Because from what I know of, none of us has ever seen someone raised from the dead, right? It's just not a normal experience. But this idea of death is very real. And so we're going to talk a little bit about both being dead to Christ, dead with Christ, died with Christ, and being raised with Christ.

Dan: 05:19

And we're talking about it in three different ways. So you're going

Dan: 05:23

to see, you're going to

Dan: 05:24

realize it as I go through this message, because when we think about dying with Christ, a lot of times we think about dead to sin, right? And that's very prominent throughout Scripture. But I'm not really going to talk about that. So if you come in this message, I want to preface that like, man, he didn't really talk about that. And that's because in the next two weeks, we're going to really dig into that specific aspect of our dying with Christ.

Dan: 05:46

So don't miss out. Next two weeks, it's going to talk about the idea of sin. So for me, I'm just mostly talking about our self, the dying to ourselves and what that is like. Then even after that, we're going to talk about being crucified with Christ, which is kind of that overarching thought of this topic that we're in, living out the cross shaped life, because the cross should impact our life in a lot of different ways. So today, we're going to be discussing what it means to die with Christ.

Dan: 06:16

You can see it's not really in order again. He starts out with being raised right there in verse one, but in verse three, he finally gets to the death part dying. And the reality is normally our death comes before being raised, so that's the way we're going to do it this morning. And we're going to talk about these three aspects of dying with Christ, the crucified. And we're going to dig into that again in a couple weeks more clearly.

Dan: 06:41

But I want us to understand what that means about this idea of death and the crucified life. And really the death is the key to the new life, right? We can't have new life until we actually die. And it's this idea of permanence that Paul is trying to bring out as he thinks about and talks about and writes about dying with Christ in the crucified life. John Piper wrote this, he says, Becoming a Christian means death.

Dan: 07:10

And we don't often evangelize like that, but that's what it really means. It says it means death. Stiff neck is broken, brazen forehead has been smashed, stony heart ground to smithereens and pride has been slain. And those are pretty, pretty powerful statements, right? And like I, as I said, we don't go out and evangelize all this.

Dan: 07:30

Like your, what does this say? Your brazen forehead will be smashed. It doesn't come across as, you know, that loving kind of thing, but that's the reality of dying with Christ, and we don't want to miss that in in this idea of the crucified life. And so first of all, when we think about our crucified life, crucified with Christ, we need to realize the cross really does indict us as human beings. The tense, of course, you know, you have died, right?

Dan: 08:01

That's what it says, for you have died. It means it's already happened. And Paul's writing to believers and he said, this has already happened. You have died. And of course, as I'm sure as the Colossians get this book and this is probably somewhat of a new topic, they're reading this and they're like, I don't feel dead.

Dan: 08:18

I still am breathing. Like, what does this mean to be dead? You have died. And so Paul is going to expound on that to help them understand what that means, that this idea of physical death is not really what he's speaking about, but a future hope and our participation, if you will, in Christ's death. The old self, the old sin, the former ways of life that condemn us.

Dan: 08:44

And Paul is really going to go back into a lot of different ways. Just like the last time I showed, we're going go into a lot of passions to help us unpack what Paul, because what he's talking about, because he's going to go into Romans and Ephesians and Galatians and Colossians. When you read all those books, it builds a picture of what it means to die to ourselves with Christ and to be raised again. And he begins in this passage of Romans chapter three, a familiar passage doesn't go all the way to 23, but this idea of accountability to God, right? Of what we've done and he talks about the law, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law and that was really all of us.

Dan: 09:23

We were under this law and it makes us accountable to God because of that, right? And we talked about what it means to be free from the law and the faith that we have, but it gives us, as he said in that last line, that knowledge of sin. So we have an accountability. And of course that accountability means that we couldn't just God just couldn't simply wave his hand. You remember when we showed this ledger board and we had these things on the back on the left hand side that were all the debts we owe and God couldn't simply just wave his hand and say it's going to be okay.

Dan: 09:58

Right? Something had to happen. Something significant had to happen because there was an accountability to God for our sin. And so the cross is what indicted us. And of course, we even read this this morning, this familiar passage is that the wages of sin is death.

Dan: 10:15

So there were consequences to what we had before us in our sin and the death that he died again. It's not a waving of the hand and just let me just make this go away. There was an accountability that all of us are required before God because of the death that we had because of our sin. And so we had this cross that indicts us and not only that but we have this idea of this curse. You recall that in Galatians chapter three Paul is going to write about this as it respects to the law, right?

Dan: 10:51

And he says in what five different times, he says, curse, curse, curse, curse it. And with the law came a burden that we had a curse. We don't like to use that word is kind of like, I can't believe I'm cursed. But that's the reality of what we were under the law. And Paul is trying to help us understand what that is that we were cursed because we were under the law.

Dan: 11:14

Everyone who does not abide by all of it is guilty or if you have your guilty of one small thing you're guilty of it all and therefore you are cursed. So the cross kind of tells us something that's rather uncomfortable in our indictment, right? And the reality is that even though we talk about sin and things that we actually do the real thing is that it's not about what I do. It's not outside of me. It's inside of me.

Dan: 11:44

That is my indictment, right? It's my heart. It's my heart that causes me to be cursed and be indicted for what I've done. And so the cross doesn't really flatter us. It actually exposes us and indicts us for what we've done.

Dan: 11:59

And at that cross we discover not only the seriousness of our sin because you know, there wasn't like Christ just couldn't come down and have a natural death, right? Like you just live a perfect life and then die of old age. No, the curse demanded something more radical and it wasn't a natural death, right? But we see there the seriousness of sin, but also the greatness of the grace of God and His mercy. So Jesus took the curse of the cross as He says, Christ redeemed us in verse 13 from the curse of the law having become what a curse for us for is written cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

Dan: 12:40

So fulfilling if you will the prophecy of man that cursed thing, the cross hanging on a cross and the Lord Jesus Christ took that. So the indictment tells us about my guilt and it was exposed, my old life that had to be nailed to the cross of Christ. And so not only was the cross an indictment, but it also helped me understand that I wasn't myself that could fix it. There was no self reliance. I had to die really to the self reliance that I had, all the good works that I might thought I could accomplish, all the things that I thought would be great to save me as you talk to people in the streets.

Dan: 13:21

Most people in the world think that if my good deeds outweigh the bad deeds, then there will be a home for me in heaven if there is a heaven. But that's not the reality of what the Bible says, right? That our self reliance has to be over. And so we're going to unpack this verse a lot more later, but the familiar verse in Galatians two, chapter 20 is that we have been crucified with Christ. So that curse that he took, we were there with him at the moment of salvation.

Dan: 13:51

We died with Christ and were crucified with him. And we are self reliant because it's not us, it's Christ who is bearing the cost of the curse that we had, of our debts that we owed, and Christ is there, but we died with him on the cross, crucified with Christ, but it's not us. And so we see in Colossians chapter two, just a little bit before this, right? And we saw this verse earlier that all the things that we bore, the things that made us need a savior, that God took that record of debt and nailed it to the cross of Christ. So as we died, our debt, our curse was nailed there with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dan: 14:37

So the curse is broken because of what Jesus did on the cross for you and for me. And so we die with Him. It's that identification in Christ's death, right? And so we don't really understand that, right? Because you think, I said, he's writing to these Colossians like, I don't understand.

Dan: 14:56

I'm still alive. I don't understand. Is this talking about physical death? And Paul's like, No, this is the life of yourself that is now dead. And he writes over and over again what it means to die to ourselves, to be crucified with Christ, and then we're gonna talk later about this resurrection to newness of life.

Dan: 15:17

So we see that the cross, not only does self reliance dies, not only does the cross indictment, but we see a picture that we will do over and over again here about once a quarter. And that is that idea of baptism. I was privileged enough to baptize someone about three or four weeks ago in my pool. I just we know and what an amazing experience to talk about someone who died with Christ and was raised again, right? That is the picture of baptism and guess what?

Dan: 15:51

We're doing a baptism here on the twenty fifth, twenty fourth, three weeks. And so if you haven't been baptized, you've trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and you haven't been baptized, it's a demonstration, an illustration of that connection with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death as you go beneath the waters of baptism. But that is the next picture that we see is this idea of being baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ in His death. And so baptism is an amazing thing, right? We talk about baptized like you're dying and there's that moment of sadness, right?

Dan: 16:28

When you're baptized, you're dead.

Dan: 16:30

And then we don't keep

Dan: 16:31

them down too long because most of us can't hold our breath that long. You're raised in newness of life, right? But that idea of being beneath the waters shows of that burial and that death and the permanence of it. And so we see here in Romans chapter six, this is often the verse that we use when we talk about baptism. We've been baptized into His death.

Dan: 16:53

Baptized into His death. And this idea of this Greek construction of baptized into His death is really about a new relationship that we have, a new sphere that we're attached to with the Lord Jesus Christ as we've been baptized and that uniqueness of identification with the Lord Jesus Christ in So his death really becomes the pattern of the relationship that we have with him, right? And the relationship that we have to our past, our relationship we have to our old self, the relationship that we have to the sin is that it's gone underwater and buried in baptism. And really, I think Paul unmistakably and forcefully uses his idea of burial, right? I mean, when someone dies, we put them away.

Dan: 17:45

We don't leave them out. I think there are some cultures that might do that, but the reality is we put them in the grave, right? And that permanence of death comes with burial. We put

Dan: 17:54

them in the ground and it's that's the

Dan: 17:57

end of it. It's over. It's done. Right? And so Paul uses that that imagery of baptism along with death and burial so that we can see what happens to the old way of life.

Dan: 18:10

The old cell that says we're no longer alive. So the Bible really is specific as well about it's not just like a change in behavior or like I'm a better person, right? Baptism and death in Christ doesn't you know, isn't just about a change in behavior. God, I think I've used this before, but the Lord Jesus Christ didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

Dan: 18:39

And of course, we are dead and we symbolize our deadness to ourselves when we're saved and through baptism we're raised to newness of life. So the separation really of death and burial is unmistakable in in Paul's Paul's message. This is really the why that the baptism is such a powerful symbol of the the salvation experience that we have through the Lord Jesus Christ. This idea of being completely identified with Christ, you know, F. E.

Dan: 19:14

Maxwell, he wrote a book called Born Crucified and he wrote this story about a gentleman and he was named George Wyatt back in the Civil War and just like today if we have a war you get drafted his name was picked his number was picked and they're like, hey, you're going to the front line and George had a family of six kids and a wife and so he was hesitant to go and graciously a gentleman by the name of Richard Pratt offered to go in his place and the authorities accepted it and said, all right, Richard Pratt can go in his place And interestingly enough, so he took George's number, again, took his name and went to the front lines and as often happens in war and certainly in

Dan: 19:59

the civil war, Richard Pratt passed away. He was killed in action.

Dan: 20:06

And after a bit of time, the authorities went back and said, hey, George, we pulled your number again. It's time for you to go

Dan: 20:14

to the front line. He's like, no. No. No. I died with Richard.

Dan: 20:20

He had my name. He had my number. And after investigation, they said, you're right. You died with Richard because he had your number.

Dan: 20:32

He was in your place.

Dan: 20:34

He had your name. And so they said, you don't have

Dan: 20:36

to go. And this is the picture that we have of this idea of dying with Christ that our curse, the sin, everything was buried with him. And so the old life is gone away when we died with Christ and through baptism. And this is kind of this idea of united with him in the likeness of his death, right? We're united with Christ as he was crucified for us.

Dan: 21:02

So we have this truth of identification, really, God's deliverance of us through the death

Dan: 21:09

of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dan: 21:12

This is interesting because, of course, Paul is talking about so many things that had captured the Colossian Church, right? If you look at all the things that they were dealing with philosophy, empty deceit, and human traditions, they talked about elementary principles of the world. They were talking about angel worship. So many things, circumcision was a big thing that they were talking about. And Paul wanted them to understand that all these things that you were trapped in have been buried.

Dan: 21:45

Like, get rid of those things. Get rid of the things that attach you to things that don't matter, that are apart from faith, apart from salvation. And he says, get rid of those. Those things have been buried with the Lord Jesus Christ in baptism. And he says, Knock that off.

Dan: 22:01

So baptism gives us that idea of taking the old and putting them in the ground through the picture of baptism. So not only do we have baptism, but right here after this, You have died, in verse three, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. I remember just like wrestling with that. I was talking to Roseanne, I'm like, What does that mean? I mean, what does that really mean?

Dan: 22:28

Your life is hidden with Christ in God. It seems we just... I rolled that off my tongue. You probably have too. But when you think about it, what exactly does that mean that our life is hidden?

Dan: 22:41

And it's this idea that tense is it happens, but it's a continual process. And I like to think about this idea of John first John three in his first epistle. He writes this and he's talking about how great a love the Father has given us that we be called children of God. And he's writing about this idea of children, but then he says like this interesting phrase that the world does not know us, right? The world doesn't understand this newness of life this death that we had and because it didn't know Jesus remember Jesus said I came to my own and my own did not receive me.

Dan: 23:18

Right? And so even though we might evangelize even though we might go and tell people, hey, I died and I've raised a newness of life, you know, won't hear it. In a way that life that we have is hidden. And so our spirit filled life is not like a biological existence. It's something that is really hidden.

Dan: 23:41

And so it really as John points out, it has not yet appeared what we will be like, right? There's a future of what we're going to be like and the world around us. I don't think they can fully understand what that means. When we are raised with Christ and we die with him and raised we have this location, right? This location change of the life that we have.

Dan: 24:04

It doesn't come from ourselves. It doesn't come from all the mighty things that we do. It says our life is hidden with Christ in God. So there's this concealment you recall even the Lord Jesus Christ was clearly present, often not there. When resurrected, right?

Dan: 24:21

He just kind of appeared. He appeared to the gentleman walking on the road to Emmaus and then when He broke the bread, what happened? He vanished out of their sight, right? And when He appeared to the disciples, He was there and then He was gone. You remember He came and like all of a sudden He was there at the seashore of Galilee.

Dan: 24:38

And so I think in a way our life is hidden in a sense that people can't really see what our spiritual life is like, what our true life is like, because it's hidden in a sense and belongs in an unseen eternal realm. I think it also might mean that it's like stored away for protection, you know, and we see that really in Colossians chapter three and Paul is writing about the Lord Jesus Christ and it says, In whom in Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But they're hidden, right? We get to experience that, but the world around us, that idea is hidden and unseen that Christ himself has all these things not only are they hidden with Christ but they're with in God as well. I think this gives us another idea of security, right?

Dan: 25:31

We think about these words that help us understand the security of the believer and really this is one of those passages in John chapter 10 and Jesus is talking to the disciples and he says here that I give to them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. This idea of hiddenness is an idea of security in the hand of the Lord Jesus in this case and then right after that no one's able to snatch them out of my father's hand. So we have this union of the Lord Jesus Christ, we're in his hand, and this God the Father, we're in his hand. So this idea of security is right there alongside what the Lord Jesus Christ I think is talking about, that our life is hidden with Christ in God. You know, we talk about when Christ who is your life appears that we will be like him, right?

Dan: 26:22

And so this idea of hiddenness and what is going to come is something that I think the Lord Jesus Christ is trying to say through Paul about our life is hidden with Christ in God. Idea of security of comfort of contentment and safety. So if we died thankfully as we've sung about this morning, we know that we will rise again, but it's because of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ like dead men rising again because of the resurrection of Christ. And so not only are we dead, but we're also raised to Christ. And so I'm going to look at a couple things.

Dan: 27:03

Obviously, we're alive and I think probably the Colossian church would be like, Yeah, I'm alive. I don't understand this death thing and alive thing. What does that mean? And so Paul is trying to help them to understand the next that newness of life that comes as a result of their salvation. I like this this little picture.

Dan: 27:21

I got this I don't know on the web there this idea of a plant, right? And and Scripture uses this idea of a seed, right? That has to be sown and it comes to life. First Peter one chapter 23 says, Having been born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. And he talks about this new birth and this seed that comes forth.

Dan: 27:45

And even Jesus, he talks about his own life, right? In John chapter 12, he says, unless a grain of wheat, what, falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but then it brings forth much fruit. So the Christian life again is not a modification of what we had before. It means death and resurrection brings about a newness of life. And so in probably the best place to talk about resurrection is in John for in first Corinthians chapter 15 and interestingly enough Paul uses that same word about seeds and he I think he's got four times.

Dan: 28:27

He says I sow you sow you sow you sow so this idea of a seed falling into the ground and dying and coming back up again is very much the resurrection language that that Paul I think is referring to. If you look at all the negative things that were sown to, right? We see that perishable body. We see this idea of dishonor, of weakness, natural. And we're going to unpack maybe some of these things over the next few weeks as we die to sin and the power of sin and the position of sin.

Dan: 29:00

And these are the things that Paul says, man, we're gonna die to these things. We're sowing the seed to put it in the ground. And then he says though that we're raised four different times. He's like we sow we die and then we're raised and look at all the cool things that we get as a result of being raised with Christ. This imperishable body this glory this power this spiritual body really sets this apart.

Dan: 29:29

F. B. Holey he wrote this he said the counterpoint to our identification with Christ in his death of course is our identification with him in his resurrection and the effect of the first that is the death is to disconnect us from man's world, man's religion, man's wisdom. And of course the effect of the other is to put us in touch with God's world and all that is there, right? And so, we see this idea in Ephesians chapter two, right?

Dan: 30:01

This idea that we were what? We were dead in our trespasses and sin and now we've been made alive together with Christ. Having been buried with Him in baptism, we are raised with Him. The seed is an amazing example of that. I can think of perhaps one more and that is the caterpillar.

Dan: 30:23

Perhaps when you were in high school, you went and got a caterpillar and stuck it in some terrarium and you're like, eventually this thing is going to be changed and maybe didn't really understand it. And all of a sudden it starts spinning this cocoon, right? And the reality is that I don't understand all of it, I'm not a biologist, but eventually that caterpillar like turns to like a mushy goo. Really, it's ostensibly dead. I mean, it gives up everything about who it is, their identity, everything, and that caterpillar dies.

Dan: 30:58

And then a little bit later, all of

Dan: 31:00

a sudden, something starts to poke out.

Dan: 31:04

And you know what's interesting is when it dies, it goes into a cocoon and it knits up a very beautiful cocoon. But when it comes out, it has this exoskeleton really that's called a chrysalis. And so not only do you have this idea of like being buried in this cocoon, but when it comes out, it sheds this exoskeleton, this chrysalis,

Dan: 31:24

and then comes out and it's a butterfly, right? A beautiful butterfly. And everything about that is changed, right? What does the caterpillar eat? It's an herbivore.

Dan: 31:37

It eats leaves and plants. And where does it reside? On the dirt, maybe on some plants. What does the butterfly eat? Oh, the butterfly eats nectar, right?

Dan: 31:50

Sweet things. And where does it reside? It flies around. I mean, if you had to say without any knowledge that this caterpillar and this butterfly share some sort of a understanding about who and one becomes the other. If you didn't know, you would be like, it's impossible.

Dan: 32:08

It's impossible for this to happen. But this metamorphosis, this change really helps us to understand that we die, we create, we buried, we take this cocoon of our old life. And then when we come out we shed the old self and we don't go back to what was before. We don't go back to eating leaves and running on the ground. We're able to live a new life in the Lord Jesus Christ, a raised life.

Dan: 32:35

And so we have this picture. First and second Corinthians Paul writes, he says, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a what? A new creation. The old things are passed away and the new things have come. So this idea of being dead and alive, we see it in the world around us and Paul wants us to have the reality of the life that we live with Christ.

Dan: 33:04

And of course, we see this in baptism naturally, right? We don't leave them in the water and it's not really about the water, right? We even say that when we talk about the water has no magical powers. There's nothing special when you come out, you're wet, but it's not about the water. Helps us to visualize it, right?

Dan: 33:23

And there's certainly some Old Testament ideas about being cleansed with water, but that's not the reality of anything special. It's just this idea of being buried and then raised to newness of life. And it sparks in us, through the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us, the ability to reject the old self, the endeavors that we used to have, the pride and the self reliance, and allows us to reject those and seek things that are different. A. T.

Dan: 33:54

Robertson said, The baptized life means that the Christian is seeking heaven and thinking of heaven. His feet are on the earth, but his head is with the stars and he is living like a citizen of heaven here on earth. And so we have this idea of a new look on life, right? And so this is where right at the beginning Paul writes, since you have been raised up with Christ seeking the things above. He says, keep on seeking.

Dan: 34:26

It's a... This is not an ending process. Process. We come in baptism like, all right, we're good. I'm going to be set.

Dan: 34:33

No, it's an idea of continually seeking

Dan: 34:36

the things above. I was trying to figure out what this word seeking and the natural scripture that came

Dan: 34:47

to mind was Jesus in Matthew six, and I've been actually reading through that in my quiet time going through and it's of course a lot of conviction there in Matthew chapter five through seven. And that's the same Greek word when he says seek ye first the kingdom of God. It's the same Greek word that Paul uses here on seeking the things above. And so we see this in the Lord Jesus, right? Sometimes we look at it this least I have as I was reading and I said, oh, it's talking about treasures and moth and rust and thieves and then treasures in heaven, but I got to thinking it's like, oh really really it's like you're laying up for yourselves.

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Right and later it talks about yourselves to lay up for yourselves treasures, But the reality is we can either enjoy those treasures here on Earth or we can lay them up for future use and enjoy them in the future. And what's interesting is throughout this chapter in Matthew chapter six, Jesus has been talking about this, Right? If you remember, he says, hey, when you are giving, what do you do? You give so no one knows. Right?

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And if people know, what does he say? He says, you have your reward.

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You have your reward this right in the here and now.

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And he says, when you pray, when you pray, you know, don't don't wax eloquent in the public so everyone can hear you pray. He's like, no, go quietly to your closet and pray. And if you do it in the open where everyone can hear trying to be prideful, he

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says, oh, you've had your reward. And the same thing could be said

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of of fasting. Right? He's like, oh, you know, make yourself look good. Don't look to shelve and I'm like, oh, I'm fasting. It's really a tough thing.

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No. No one needs to know but the Lord Jesus. He says, if you do these things, you have your reward. But if you lay up for yourself treasure in heaven, you do it if you will anonymously. That's where your heart is.

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Your heart is not about the act itself, but the doing the... What for the Lord. And so Matthew chapter six can kind of

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help us with seeking the things above where Christ is. C. S.

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Lewis wrote, If I find in myself a desire in which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. And you and I are made for another world even though we're locked here and oftentimes if you're like me, I seek those things that are earthly, right? Because we're bombarded with the idea of seeking after things that matter today. Seeking after things that can matter tomorrow, maybe a month, maybe a few years. But Jesus says, put those things in the future.

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Put your treasure in heaven because if your heart is there, that's where you will be.

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So seeking those things, they have their reward.

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Finally, he says that we're going to be revealed and this is that idea of that they you know, we read this verse earlier, right? If you look at the second line there, it says the world does not know us because it did not know him. Right? And it's like we're hidden our but eventually the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return and we're going to be revealed with him in glory and we will be like him and that's the end result right that we get to be like the Lord Jesus Christ when he returns and Paul is reminding them. He said to remind him over and over again.

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If you put things in heaven, if you seek the things above where Christ is, then eventually those things you'll get to see because we're going to be with him in glory. When Christ who is our life in verse four is revealed, then you will be revealed with him in glory. It's a remarkable thing that we are getting to a place where this temporal skeleton that we have, this thing that Paul is groaning about, this this things that that I do the things that I don't want to do and I don't do the things I need to do and Paul's wrestling with this and eventually he looks forward to the time as we can when we're going to be made like the Lord Jesus Christ because we're going to be revealed that life that is hidden with Christ and God will be revealed and we will be like him or we'll see him as he is and that is really a remarkable thing in our in our experience of salvation, of the death that we die with Christ, the curse that he took, and being crucified with the Lord Jesus Christ and buried with him in baptism, we see that then we can be raised to newness of life and the life that we have with him is now hidden with Christ and God, but there's a time where we'll see and know of the resurrection power that we have because we will have a glorified body and we'll be endeavoring to enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ and worship Him and praise Him forever because of the salvation that He gives us.

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Let's pray. Father, just thank you for the way that you took the curse of sin for us. Thank you that that as we as we mounted our debts because of the sin that we did and the sin that we inherited father. We needed a savior. We need one who would die not just nigh a natural death but die a death that was costly because our sin was costly.

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Thank you for that because of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, you've offered us an opportunity to be identified in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be crucified with Him and raised with Him in newness of life. Father, it's difficult at times to walk in the newness of life that you've given to us, but I ask that you would give us the grace and strength through the Holy Spirit to live out lives, that seek the things that are above, that store up for ourselves treasures that are eternal. So that when we see you, father, we'll get to enjoy those treasures throughout eternity. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.