Colossians 3:5-11 - Our Band Name Is "Hanging Out With A Dead Guy"

All right. Welcome back to Strength of the Day. And we are back together again.

I feel like I should write a song.

Together again.

Again.

Again.

Together again.

Beautiful.

Yeah, I just wrote that.

Make sure if you...

If this episode gets copyright struck, I know to blame you.

No, no, no.

I wrote that. Oh.

For you.

Thank you.

So if we go viral for that, I get the money.

Okay.

Did you hear about that guy? That Bluegrass singer?

Oh, yes. I've heard of some things.

He got 40 grand a day this last week. Interesting. Like how many of those videos...

That's an article I read.

I've got a banjo in my house.

Let's do it.

And we've got Strength for the Day is now a band. We're not going to just say our Bible stuff anymore. We're just going to sing it.

We're going to make songs about Colossians 3. And today, our song is called, There's a Dead Guy.

Hanging around.

All right.

We're getting off to go.

We're actually right on track.

We are.

We are on track, but you don't know about it yet.

So welcome to Strength for the Day.

Yes.

Bryon, what's going on?

So we are continuing our study in the Book of Colossians. You're not singing it. I don't have time for it.

Sorry. Go ahead. But we are in the Book of Colossians, and I've really, really enjoyed this study.

That's been good.

Getting to go through, and Paul and Timothy wrote this book to the people in the church or churches that were in Colossi.

And this was a city that had a lot of different isms, a lot of different belief systems that all kind of called this place home. And some of that happened because you had Judaism and some Phariseeism and some legalism.

All the isms.

That they wanted to marry the beliefs of Jesus and the Gospel with keeping the law and keeping a lot of the things that the Pharisees had added onto the law. And wanted to impose those things on Gentile believers.

You had some of the isms that said you needed Jesus and all of the other gods that we worship in our area. You need Jesus and all of the universe. And you need to worship all of those things, not just Jesus.

And you had some ones that said you need Jesus. And you also need to give up all of your possessions. And you needed to go live on a pole in the Himalayas.

I don't know if you've ever seen those people.

Actually, yes. Yeah, it registered.

Yeah, deeply ascetic beliefs and practices. And so the Colossian believers, we're just kind of going under this giant onslaught.

And Paul and Timothy are writing to them going, okay, we know you've heard all of these things from all of these different people on what you should believe.

But we're writing to encourage you to continue in the faith of Jesus and the gospel that you've heard about from your teachers that have faithfully taught you the gospel.

Well, let me let me jump in real quick, because if we're not careful, here's my thought. If we're not careful, we can actually condemn the Colossian believers.

Sure.

And be like, how can you be so stupid? Like, I mean, how could, you know, and when we can almost kind of gang up on them, be like, oh, how could you? Yeah, I would never believe that, you know?

But the fact of the matter is, like, every culture has multiple voices speaking. Now, asceticism had some truth in it. Should there be some sacrifices a Christian makes?

Yes, but not in their way. Yes. Knowledge, Gnosticism.

Should a Christian want more knowledge? Yes, but just because you have more knowledge doesn't mean you're closer to God. So the thought is, like, they had their voices that screamed to distract them away from God.

And we have ours.

Yep.

You know, now we just, we don't call it asceticism. You know, we call it sports. Now we don't call it, you know...

Sportsism. Yeah, sportsism. Yeah, now we don't call it, in the sense of maybe Gnosticism, but it's degrees and schooling and more.

Scholasticism.

Yeah, there's all these isms.

We still have the isms. But I just think it's an interesting thought. You know, I mean, I know when I look at some of those beliefs, I'm like, oh my goodness, why did I hate it?

How could you?

Yeah.

But then it's just a reminder. And so Paul's letter is relevant for now. So what has he told us already?

What have we learned?

Yeah, so he's gone through, I'm thankful for you Colossian believers. We're praying for you, we're praying specifically that God would have you increase both in your knowledge and in your practice of living out the Christian life.

He's told them at the baseline, everything in your life should be based on Jesus. Jesus is worthy of everything. He is the reason that the world exists.

He is the reason why I do everything that I do as an apostle. And so you need to be rooted and grounded in him.

And then he gave him some warnings and says, okay, don't listen to these voices that are trying to take you away from Jesus and believe in him and his righteousness in trying to set up their own righteousness or good works outside of the gospel.

And then last week, he kind of pivots it into, I've been discussing all of these big ideas and I've talked to you about legalism and asceticism and the all-surpassing worth of Christ, and now I'm gonna give you some practical pointers to your

everyday life. And so last week, he said, okay, if you are dead with Christ, or therefore, if you've been raised with Christ, seek the things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

He says, okay, now you know from an apostle, you know what you should not follow and believe and obey, now let's turn our attention to Jesus.

And last week, we ended with verse four, when Christ was our life shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. And then he's going to give them, since you are with Jesus now and when Jesus appears again, you are going to be with him.

Now you have some marching orders for your everyday life. And that's where we pick up in verse number five.

All right, so you're gonna radio me too. I'll do it. All right, go for it.

Therefore, treat the parts of your earthly body as dead to sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which is idolatry.

For it is because of these things that the wrath of God is coming upon the children of disobedience. And in them you also once walked when you were living in them.

But now you also rid yourselves of all of them, anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene speech from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you stripped off the old man with its evil practices and have put on the new man, which is being renewed or renovated to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.

A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free. But Christ is all and in all. And man, when you read that list, this is kind of the worst that comes out of us.

These things don't seem to me to be just, this is the worst possible things of humanity. These things show up in all of us.

Yeah, yeah. And if you look at a lot of them, a lot of what was listed, and I know we're not gonna dive in to every single one of them.

Sure.

We don't have the time to do that, but many of them, they are passions within our heart that play out in the life. You know, and sometimes we... Well, wait.

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Getting ahead of myself. So, I just want to say this.

The part where he talks about the beginning of verse number five... Yes... .

to deaden or to make dead, to mortify, to kill off, to remove from, it's really an awesome thing. So, I know you and I have talked about this, but for every listener out there or those watching, here's the scenario.

So, in Roman culture, if I killed somebody, so if I killed Bryon, I'm not going to, just so everybody knows, Samantha, if you're watching this, I have no vendetta against Bryon, except for that one thing. But anyway, I'm kidding.

If I killed you or if you killed me, then the murderer, their punishment, so we know they did crucifixion, they did beheading, they did all the things.

There were lots of punishments.

One of the punishments that they had was to take the one who had been murdered and to literally bind them to the murderer.

Like, if you killed me, they would strap or staple or, you know, like, sew my body on your back and then just let the decaying process start. So because of that, the dead body, this is, it's crazy. Like, I remember the first time I read this.

I was blown away. The dead body would start to decay, decomposition would take place, it would start to get maggots, it would start to get all the flies, and of course, they didn't have sanitation.

Like, I mean, it just didn't, you couldn't like go, I'm going to take a shower today with this dead body on, you know? Like, it's, like, literally, it would impact every single area of your life.

So in Paul's letter to the Romans, he said to kill the dead man. You basically like put off the dead man. Kill the dead weight.

It's the same word when, you know, in the Old English when it uses the word mortify, or what you just read right there when it says to treat the parts of your earthly body as dead. It's basically like, it's already dead. Treat it that way.

Kill it.

Pass it off.

So, here's what's interesting. We're saved, and this is Colossians, and I'll maybe throw it back to you. You can say what you want here.

He's writing to Colossians, and he's saying, like, you're in Christ now. So it's like he wrote to the Corinthians. Everything old is passed away.

Don't give an entrance into your life again. Why? Because just as a dead body strapped to you would impact everything in your life, sin impacts every area of the Christian's life.

It really does. We don't think it does, but it impacts every single area. And then he lists off a bunch of these things that are born within the heart, and he's like, put it off.

Get rid of that. Like, you have a choice. It's not strapped to you.

You can put it off. I don't know, what are your thoughts? I'm just with that in mind.

Yeah, yeah.

I think with so many of these, we downplay them. So, a couple of the ones that I see in the list, sexual immorality. Sometimes we think of gigantic levels of that.

We think maybe adultery, like that's a big one. Oh, I would never do that. But we can often be tempted to lust, or to pornography, or to viewing people as objects of desire rather than as people that Jesus loves.

And Paul tells them, this is something that will, if you do not kill it, it will kill you. There's that old quote, I don't know who it's from, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

Which I think is great from this passage, that sexual immorality is one of those things that we can't just excuse away. We can't think that it's anything other than deadly to us.

I wanna speak to that real quick.

I heard an incredible message, Pastor Skelly, at the meeting I was at last week, preached a great message out of Daniel chapter one, and talked about how when the devil is attacking a generation, you will see it in sexual sins.

If you look, and I know you're, we won't tell everybody how old you are, but I know you're in your 20s. If you look over your lifetime, like when, I mean, I can look at my life, I'm 40 years old.

I can look, and I remember when I was like five and six, like some of the sexual immorality that we see just blatant, now, back then, like you, I mean, you didn't know about it. It didn't happen.

But the last like 15 years, the last 20 years, all of that had become so rampant. And here's why, the devil knows. The devil knows what to tempt men and women with.

And it's of no coincidence that Paul says, hey, this is an area in your life you need to kill off.

Well, I think it's interesting he mentions it first. Yes. Because I know back in this Roman culture, as well as with nowadays, there's rampant, both in regular action as well as homosexuality, pedophilia, abusing servants and children.

Like all of that was incredibly commonplace. And so too with our generation.

I just saw something the other day from someone that they mentioned kind of a funny anecdote about after their honeymoon, their husband accidentally took the exit ramp to drop her off at her parents' house instead of going to their new house.

And people were shocked that this person hadn't cohabitated with their husband before marriage. And it is an odd thing today to live a life that is sexually pure because it's completely unknown in our culture today.

But for the child of God, it is something that we must do. One of the other things that I want to mention in here from verse number 5, greed or covetousness, which is idolatry.

Just this thought that I think it's just as it was in the first century, it is also idolatry today. The thought that money will save me. Money will keep me safe.

It's my antidote to everything.

Yeah, it's not.

Where instead of calling to God for, God, I need you for my safety. God, I need you for my sustenance. God, I need you for my relationships.

And it's, okay, if I have enough money, then I can be happy. If I have enough money, I can be safe. If I have enough money, name your thing.

And so that's what we devote all of our time to, getting more money. It's what we devote even our money itself to, instead of relying on God for those things. And so I think those two things really jumped out at me.

With sexual immorality and greed are very commonplace in our culture, but the child of God needs to go, okay, I'm not going to allow a covetous greed, this desire for money above all else to rule my life.

I'm not going to allow sexual immorality to rule my life because it is going to kill me. It is that old man strapped to your back.

Yeah, it's going to pour into every aspect. I looked down, I was just as you were talking, I was thinking about verse number nine, or verse number eight. When he says, put off or kill all of these things as well, it goes through a list, right?

So the list that I'm looking at, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, and then filthy communication or corrupt communication or defiled communication. Here's what's interesting, that's progressive. Anger, anger is born out of envy, greed, right?

I want more, and then I get angry at a person not doing things my way.

Sure.

I'm jealous, and you know, whatever, there's multiple ways that anger is caused, but a person gets angry, and then what do they do? Then they act out on that anger. Well, what is that?

That's the wrath, the explosion. Well, then there's the malice. What's the malice?

That's the vindictiveness. Yeah. I'm going to get even.

Then there's the blasphemy. What's the blasphemy? Well, now I'm going to speak ill of that person.

I'm going to tear them down. What's that? Well, then there's filthy communication out of your mouth, which now I'm never speaking kindness about people or to people that hurt me.

It's only filth, disgusting communication, disgusting words about people. It's just, here's what I think, Bryon, and I know we've mentioned this.

We talk about it in staff meeting and for all of our listeners or watchers, like the phrase, check your heart, really should be on a Christian's mind all the time. Like check my heart. Why?

Because some of the most egregious outward sins, almost all of them just begin as something simple in the heart.

I think of Jesus' words when he told, I think it was his disciples, it's not that that goes into a person that defiles a man, but what comes out and he lists all of these sins because all of it comes from our wicked heart that we need to ask God,

Yeah.

It's interesting because then he continues and he says, lie not one to another saying that you have put off the old man with like his actions, his deeds.

Yes.

Hey, like the idea lie not, so that's the next part of filthy communication out of your mouth. Yeah. But then the phrase seeing that you've put off the old man with his deeds, hey listen, you're new.

Yeah. Like you're new and that's verse 10.

Yeah.

So give us verse 10 and 11 and we'll wrap up today.

Yeah. And I've put on the new man which is being renewed or renovated to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created it.

A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all. Man, what hope.

Yeah.

Because I don't know about you, but when we see the list of faults and failures, we can go, well, I see me in there.

Yeah.

But then when we come to this part, that Christ has made us new, that we're not strapped to the old man. It's only when we voluntarily take it back on ourselves and live in our sin, but that's not who we are. We are not the murderer condemned.

We are, in a sense, the murderer forgiven, like Barabbas, and Jesus took our punishment.

Because of that, the image of God that we were created with in the garden, that has been marred and blurred through our sin, that we no longer look like our creator, now the image is being restored and renovated and renewed in us, that we are being

changed into the image of Christ. As a result, it doesn't matter if you were born a Jew with the law, and with all of the history, now even Greeks can know Jesus, even those that are Gentiles like us.

And the barbarian, the one who is seen as the absolute murderer.

Yep, and the worst, and even the slaves are able to be free in Christ, that it doesn't matter what you have been through Christ, you are forgiven, redeemed, made new. You have put off the old man with his evil deeds.

So now, don't live like you're trapped and condemned in your sin. You are free and forgiven, so you can live like it.

Right, yeah, and the idea of put off the old man, put on the new, it's put off the dead, and put on the living. What is that? That's Jesus.

So he's all in all. He's what you need. He's got this, you know?

Yeah. I know, put on, we're going to talk about next time, but I just love, I love what you just said. Like, it really is the concept that he's my hope.

I am in this list. We all are.

Yeah.

Someone might, you know, we might, again, we condemn others, right? We're like, oh man, I never, I don't do that. I've never done that.

I don't.

Yeah, check your heart.

Yeah. Check your heart because every one of us have been angry at some point. Every one of us have, I mean, look at all of these things.

Yes.

We all are probably guilty, but that's not our identity anymore.

Christ is it. So next time, talking about putting on Jesus, I would say for strength for the day, for this week, maybe just looking at this list and asking God, God, which of these dead men sins am I carrying around? Am I picking back up?

I'm thinking of that youth rally we just had recently and the idea that Pastor Skelly preached on Thursday night of helping kids keep their decision. We need help with that.

Absolutely.

God, help me not to make this commitment. All right, I'm done with that and then I keep picking it back up. Lord, show me the Psalm 139, search me, O God, know my heart.

See if there be any wicked dead man in me and lead me in the way. So I hope that'd be a help to everyone. I don't know, do you have any other quick thoughts?

Yeah, as we ask the Lord to try us and show us where we have faults and failures, remember that you are forgiven and redeemed and so don't feel like you need to wallow in your shame.

Have godly sorrow for it, but as Paul says, have godly sorrow that leads to repentance, that says, God, you've told me I'm sinning, I'm insane, but you've told me that I can put on the new man.

Yeah.

And so go forward.

That's a great thought. I'm glad you said that.

Go forward in that strength. You are not the old man, you are not the condemned, you are forgiven, and so ask the Lord to help you to live that life where Christ is being shown ever more clearly through your words and life and communication.

That's great. Awesome, all right, well, we will see you next time on Strength of the Day. Next episode, we will be looking at the next few verses talking about what we are supposed to put on.

So have a great day, have a great week living for Jesus and telling people about him.