Changing Our Desires Series

Changing Our Desires

Series: Jesus ...Changes Everything (Colossians)

Brad Bailey – May 21, 2023

Intro

Let me begin asking each of us to consider this:

Do you want to be a good person? And if so… why and how?

(How do you know what good is…and how can you actually change?)

(Does good exist?)

This isn’t a matter of making any kind of judgement…but open us up to what God wants to say to us today…as we continue in our series “Jesus Changes Everything…drawing from the Biblical Book of Colossians.

It is written by the Apostle Paul… he knows the ways of the Roman Empires culture… religious culture… and he realizes that he has now faced the true source of goodness… that everything we have longed for and hoped for… has been made known.

Goodness is not reduced to our subjective whim and wishes… it is not that which is defined by a government …. Not that which even the best of religious rules can achieve.

It exists in God… and has now been embodied to in the one who has come to share that nature with us. [1]

This is what Paul began to describe in the previous text we engaged last week.

Colossians 2:6-7a, 8-10 (NLT)

6 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him.

8 Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. 9 For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. 10 So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

What does this say to us?

That the goodness we long for has come in all it’s fullness….from outside ourselves… and sharing it’s nature with us. So he warns us against the empty philosophies of the day.

We all do well to realize that we live within the philosophy of our day. Worldview…. We all think how we see things is the way they are… but in truth we see it through all the assumptions that we have been shaped by. That is our worldview. It’s like colored glasses we never knew we were wearing.

Paul gives this warning…because no one tends to realize that they are bound by such philosophies.

Today… there is common aversion to being converted…. to anything… and it comes from believing that one is independent from any system. The truth is that we all are being led by some set of assumptions passed along by others. [2a]

William Willimon, the former chaplain at Duke University, basically says,

“The dominant culture in which we live is that of expressive individualism …(people are told) that you have to determine right or wrong for yourself.’ But they’re not thinking for themselves. They’re

doing exactly what the culture tells them. In reality they are espousing the very way of knowing that has been imposed on them by their culture, and a very white, Western, individualistic one it is.” - William Willimon

He captures our cultural contradiction.

We are living amidst the height of a cultural contradiction… and it is this… our culture is trying to claim that there is no objective source of goodness… that everything is defined by the individual…and at the same time… our culture is steaming with moral outrage….which assumes there is a source of good from which to judge… a source that transcends merely an individual’s desires.

We are living between two narratives… that which declares that the only reality that matters is ultimately whatever each induvial chooses. Our true meaning and happiness lies in whatever we believe and feel as individuals.

But another narrative still whispers… that there is a source of truth and goodness that lies outside ourselves… a place we were meant to belong… a nature we long to fulfill. [2b]

Paul declares that which is truly good….truly as we were intended to be…has come… and not only has embodied that good…but then made it possible to be united with him…is such a way that his nature can begin to work in us.

As the text today says…

Colossians 3:1-11 1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.