Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

The body of Christ is before you in the web of human relationships into which each and every one of you have been woven.Wives, submit to your own husbands. What the secular world wants to pathologize, is simply the clear teaching of Scripture. A wife is commanded to submit to her husband. This carries with it two important qualifiers. First, she is to submit to her own husband and not any other man. Second, her submission is to be “in the Lord.”Husbands, love your wives. Men your bar is too low for what you consider to be love. Your wife is an end to be pursued like you would any other ambition. One simple way to know whether or not you are actively pursuing your wife is to look to see if there is bitterness or resentment in your heart towards her.Children, obey your parents. This pleases God. Generational harmony is the key to culture building and covenantal blessing (Eph. 6:2-3). You give to yourself when you obey your parents.Fathers, their obedience is actually to God and not to you. So your authority is not a dog whistle that you get to blow to impress people with your kids obedience. Parent their hearts, pointing them to Christ. And if they follow Christ, you will keep them because Christ has kept them.Employees and Bosses, your contracted labor is a service that you offer before God, a labor that his word governs. Men, you especially are prone to exempt your careers from the rule of God in order to make room for fleshly ambition.Wherever we go, we are wrapped up in layers of authority and submission. But every authority that you submit to, you submit to because God would have you do it.This is radically freeing because it means that you are actually being called to submit to one and only one – the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone is worthy of your submission.

This particular psalm begins the section of the psalter that is known as the Hallel. This section is Ps. 113 through 118. It was the custom of Jews to recite this section verbatim festival occasions of praise. The word hallel means praise, and When we are told in the New Testament that Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn after their last meal together (Matt. 26:30), this was very probably the Hallel. This is where the word hallelujah comes from—an intensive expression meaning (much more than) praise Jah.And this psalm is the threshold of this section, the entryway to the Hallel psalms.

1-4 Union with ChristRemember that the “mystery” that Paul has been unpacking for us is that the body of Christ is both the incarnate reality of the God-man Jesus Christ, and also the picture of the church with Christ as its head. But if we, the church, are Christ’s body, then that means that wherever the head has gone, he takes us with him. And so when Christ sits down on his throne in heaven, he sits there with all his body with him. As the body of Christ we share in the events of Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, ascension into heaven, and enthronement at the right hand of the Father. And if that is the case, then that is where our attention ought to be.5-11 Put to Death“Now, it being our duty to mortify, to be killing of sin whilst it is in us, we must be at work. He that is appointed to kill an enemy, if he leave striking before the other ceases living, does but half his work,” John Owen, The Mortification of Sin. If you are in this new man, with Christ as your head, then you are therefore called to a life of putting sin to death. This is the ongoing work of persevering faith. And at the root of mortifying your sin, is the question of where are your eyes.Your heart follows your eyes. Where do you put your eyes? We lift up our heart to the Lord because we lift up our eyes to the Lord. So where are your eyes? Paul calls covetousness idolatry (v. 5, cf. Eph. 5:5) because your heart follows your eyes as your prayer will follow your longing. The mortification of a sin starts with your eyes.A DilemmaBut here is the problem. I am telling you that the mortification of your sin depends on you looking to Christ and not looking at the enticements of the flesh. But the problem is that Christ, currently seated in heaven, cannot currently be seen. He inhabits what is still a future glory for us, a glory that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard . . .” (1 Cor. 2:9, cf. 1 Tim. 1:17). And, on the other hand, those things that you are not to be looking at are all quite visible.12-17 Put on LoveBut you do have Christ before you because you have the body of Christ, the church that surrounds you now. Love is what holds the body together (v. 14, cf. 2:19). Love makes visible to us what is currently removed from our senses – Christ (1 John 4:20). The difficulty is that you must remember that God defines this love, not you.

This psalm is part of a matched set, together with the previous one. Both this psalm and Ps. 111 are alphabetic psalms, with each portion beginning with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet. As a consequence, the two psalms are right around the same length, and there are frequent echoes. The theme of the former is the glory of God, and the theme of the latter is the glory of God as reflected in the life of the godly man.

Last week, Paul told the Colossians that they have Christ in them, the hope of a future glory (1:27). And because of this future glory, Paul is laboring to exhort the Colossians to live a life growing in faithfulness. But he is concerned because their long-term perseverance in the faith seems to be threatened. He hinted at that in the previous chapter (1:23). But now he gets more explicit about his concerns. He has “a great conflict” for them (v. 1). He is concerned about the people that they are talking to, who threaten to deceive them with persuasive word (v. 4) and cheat them through philosophy and empty deceit (v. 8).

This is a straightforward psalm of praise, but we have to extend our arms all the way out to carry what we are praising Him for. In order to wield this psalm rightly, we will have to beseech God to enlarge our hearts. Enlarge our hearts all the way out, so that we might learn how tiny they are. “I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart” (Psalm 119:32). This was the source of Solomon’s wisdom (1 Kings 4:29), from botany to biology to battle to business, and the apostle Paul thought in the same terms as well (2 Cor. 6: 11-13).

[powerpress]1:1-2 GreetingsColossae was an ancient Phrygian city in the southwest of modern day Turkey. It sat on the banks of the Lycus River, just upstream for Laodicea and Hierapolis.1:3-8 A fruit-bearing GospelPaul is thankful because the Gospel came to the Colossians and brought forth fruit. Real faith is a hope that bears fruit. And the Colossians had begun to live out this hope in such a way that Paul could hear about it from prison in Rome.1:9-12 The Power of a MessageNow note something about how this fruitful hope comes about. It comes from hearing and believing the Gospel. We have a promise from God, delivered to us in the Bible, that creates this kind of faith in us. This is why it behooves us to spend time unpacking this word. The more we do so, the more it creates in us this fruitful hope that Paul describes.1:13-23 Who Immanuel Is and What He Has DoneThis is a very straightforward declaration of the doctrine of the incarnation, that in Jesus, God became man. In Jesus we have Immanuel. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.He has created all things in heaven and earth, delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into his kingdom, redeemed us with his blood, forgiven our sins, reconciled all things to himself, and presented you holy, blameless, and above reproach.1:24-29 The MysteryThis Christ is the one that is in you. And he is the hope of glory. And just as the whole world waited for 4000 years for the coming of the second Adam, waiting for that mystery to be revealed, now you wait for the glory that is to come. You wait in hope for the glory that Paul just described that is still to come. You have seen the beginning, but you haven’t seen the end. Hope is what reaches out to that end while you are still sitting here. But you have Christ in you. And that is the hope of a great glory, a glory still unimaginable.

This sermon is for everyone here because everyone here is preparing to die. There is a 100% mortality rate (Heb. 9:27). But not everyone dies the same because not everyone knows Christ, and knowing Christ changes everything. The adventure of Christian life is rooted in eternity.

The Lord has been blessing our congregation in many striking ways. We have been growing in remarkable ways, and an essential part of this growth entails the inevitable growing pains. Quite a few of you just moved to our community within the last year, and it may seem to you that you have jumped into the middle of a conversation that has been going on for forty years. But some of you newcomers might be puzzled over something else. Where you came from felt like a wilderness to you, and so you would devour all kinds of things that would come out of Moscow, and then when you arrived here, you found yourself more checked out about what is going on than some of the people who have lived here for years. Life is funny.

Q. 160. What is required of those that hear the word preached?A. It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the Scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the Word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives (WLC).