Colossians 3: 1-10
We are in a series called “The Flow of the Spirit.” We began the Sunday before Palm Sunday. Remember Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty (empty, needy) come to me (trust me, follow me) and drink (live the life I lead you to live) and out of your belly will flow rivers of living water.” The John comments that by rivers of living water, Jesus meant the Spirit, which was to be given.
What God wants to do is have the Spirit flowing in us not just to bless us. God wants his Holy Spirit to flow through us and out
to others to bless them.
The question is how do we not quench the Spirit? How do we keep it flowing?
Paul in Colossians says that the two things, which are true of Jesus, are also true of us, his followers. Christ died. Christ is risen. We also have died with Christ. And with Christ, we are given the power to rise and live a new way of life. This is the way he says it. “So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.” (Colossians 3:1-2 Message)
So since we are living this new resurrection life, our job is to keep our eyes on the things that are important to our life with Christ. We are to look not at the things around us all the time. We are to look above to the things that Christ wants to do in our lives.
Paul goes on to tell us that we are going to be living in some new ways. We have died to the old ways, and we are living in some new ways. We have put some things to death in us. We are now alive to some new realities. Then he uses another image. Paul says it is like taking off old clothes.
Anybody here have any old clothes in your closet? Do you ever wear them to work around the house? Maybe to clean out the garage or to work in the yard or go up on the roof and blow out the gutters. Then you come back in and shower and put on clean new clothes. The old clothes are like rags compared to your good clothes. That is the image Paul uses.
So for today and the next three Sundays, borrowing an acrostic and some ideas from John Ortberg, I want us to look at taking off the RAGS.
Resentment.
Anxiety.
Greed.
Superiority.
Those are the RAGS we are exchanging for the new clothes of compassion, gentleness, humility, and trust.
Let’s look at the list of ways we can quench the Spirit that Paul talks about in Colossians 3. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.”
Before we deal with Sexual immorality, I want to comment on “the wrath of God.” God’s wrath is not God losing his temper the way we tend to do. God’s wrath is not God flying off the handle in a fit of temper. We do that sometimes when other drivers cut us off on I-4. This morning someone cut me of on highway 44 in a white Nissan Versa. Anybody here driving a white Versa? There was a flash of anger in me about how I was being disrespected and endangered. God’s wrath is not like that. God doesn’t flare up in a fit of temper and then lash out and hurt somebody.
God’s wrath is the natural working out of the consequences of the way a person is living. A sexually immoral life will lead to destruction. That is God’s wrath. Greed will eventually lead you to an empty life of loving things instead of people. That will be destructive of your life. The destruction is God’s wrath working in the life of a person who makes money and possessions idols and ends up smothered in them.
Now, look at the list in Colossians: Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed. Then Paul talks about another list of things that will quench the Spirit. He says, “ . . .you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (vv.8-10). What I want to focus on today is anger. I am calling it resentment in my title today.
I thought about the fact that Jesus deals with the same destructive attitudes and actions in “The Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5. Jesus first says that he has come not to destroy the Jewish Law, Old Testament Law, but to fulfill it. Then he gives illustrations of the way he fulfills the Law. He gives interpretations of laws beginning with the formula, “You have heard that it was said to the people of ancient times, but I say to you….” It is interesting that he deals with the same two broad concerns that Paul talks about in Colossians 3, but he brings them up in the opposite order.
Paul talks about sexual immorality first. But Jesus starts with “You have heard it was said to people of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder and whoever murders shall be liable to judgment, but I say to you, ‘Whoever is angry with a brother or sister is liable to judgment. Whoever says to his brother or sister Raca (a term of contempt like “Trash”) is liable to the council and anyone who says, ‘You fool’ is liable to the hell of fire.” The Greek word for hell there is the Greek word Gehenna that means to always burning garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. Jesus is saying that anger expressed with attacking disrespect will destroy the angry person. He says we had better get rid of our anger as quickly as possible.
"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24) Getting reconciled instead of continuing to let your anger smolder is more important in the church than giving you offering. First, Jesus says, deal with the anger. Don’t let is smolder.
Then he says that again with another image. "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” (Matthew 5:24-25) It is a way of saying again, Deal with the anger quickly. Don’t let stay in you and quench the Spirit.
Paul says the same thing this way in Ephesians 4:26-27, "In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” That is his way of saying about anger, “Don’t nurse it and rehearse it. Get it out of you heart as quickly as you can.” Anger, which builds up in you, can defile the church. It can spread its poison within the system. It is like snakebite. What kills is not the bite. It is the poison, which courses through the blood. If you can get the poison out, you can save life.
I think he is talking about getting control of resentment when the writer of Hebrews says, “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” The devil gets a foothold, not only in your life, but also in the lives of others when you allow resentment to stay in you and to grow.
So how do we get beyond anger and resentment? I want to give you three pieces of guidance that I have found helpful, as I have tried to learn how to handle my own anger.
First, you have to give up blaming your anger on other people. You have to stop saying, “She makes me angry. He makes me so made.” Other people do not make you angry. The angry thoughts and then the angry emotions are in you. One piece of evidence that the other person doesn’t cause your anger is that what stirs up your anger, doesn’t even bother someone else. Have you ever noticed that?
It is your emptiness and fear, your inner pain that is the source of your anger. Have you ever had a bad sunburn? You were burned to such an extent that your whole body was sensitive. Your were in a room full of people and somebody bumped you. It hurt really badly. You moved quickly to protect yourself. But did the person who accidentally bumped you cause your pain? No. The pain was already there. They just happened to touch you in a way that stirred up your pain.
If you tell yourself that other people make you mad, you are in effect saying, “I will stop being angry when other people stop being so stupid.” When is that likely to happen? Never. There will always be people treating you without courtesy, telling you the check is in the mail when it is not, cutting you off in traffic. You have to stop blaming other people for your anger and accept responsibility to for the fact that it is in you.
Second, You need to change your perspective on other people. Our tendency is to be understanding of our own inner motives and attribute to ourselves the best of intentions, while we see others as to blame and just downright evil.
Let me give you two images.
This one is a true story. Steven Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People writes about traveling one day on big city subway. Just across from him was a man who brought three small children onto the train with him. As they were headed out of the city, the three children began to pick at each other, the way children will. The father sat staring straight ahead not paying them any attention. It got worse. The kid’s were getting louder. Still the father was lost in a dream world of something. Then the children began to run about and were becoming a serious bother to other passengers.
Finally, Covey says, he was getting very judgmental toward this man who was allowing his kids to disturb everybody around them. He could take it no more and spoke to the man. “Sir, your children are creating a disturbance. I think you need to deal with them.”
He said the man looked up suddenly as if awakening from a dream. He said, “I am sorry. Please forgive us. We are on our way home from the hospital where their mother just died.”
Covey, of course, immediately had a change of feelings toward this man who had just lost his wife. That perspective made a huge difference in his understanding of what was going on. We need to keep in mind that there is much about others we don’t know. There is a saying, “To understand all is to forgive all.” I am not certain that is completely true, but in this context it helps us to realize that there is much we don’t yet understand about other people, and when we are tempted to judge them, we need to make an effort to look at them with the desire to understand them.
This image comes from Greg Baer the author of the book Real Love. Imagine you are sitting with a friend beside a swimming pool. You have a really good lunch spread out on the table, tall glasses of tea, the weather is perfect and you are enjoying your conversation. Suddenly someone in the pool begins to splash water in your direction. You can’t see who it is because there is a deck chair between you and the water. The splashing is getting worse until your pant legs are getting wet. You get up to go tell this idiot to stop it. But as you get close you realize that the person who is splashing you is drowning. Do you feel angry with him now? No. Instantly your feeling go from feeling irritation to feeling compassion and you want to help him.
The thing I believe is that when people are mistreating me, attacking me, lying to me, running from me, it is not about me. They are drowning emotionally. They are splashing me with their behaviors they use to protect themselves or to try to get something for themselves not because they are bad people. They are downing emotionally and just splashing about trying to keep their head above water. What you believe about other people, your perspective on their behavior will have a direct effect on your feelings about them.
I have said that in order to get rid of anger you need to stop blaming your anger on other people.
Second, you need to change your perspective on other people.
Third, and this is the most important thing you can do: You need to find ways to enable yourself to know in your head and feel in your heart God’s love for you.
John says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” I believe fear is behind a lot of anger. Therefore, I believer love can drive out fear and melt anger. We worship Jesus whose love overcame death and who rose from the grave on the third day. It is in knowing a love so strong and deep that we have hatred, fear, and anger driven out of us. May you, with all that is in you, know that you are surrounded by unconditional care. And God’s love flows to you and me through many human channels. The more deeply and fully we experience God’s love, the more we come to see that the love of our mates, our parents, our bothers and sisters and our friends are reflections of the “first” love of God.
Paul says take off the old clothes of anger and malice and resentment. Put on the new clothes of compassion, understanding, and love.
In the early days of the church, they used to ask those who were being baptized into faith in Christ to strip off their old clothes and go down into the water of baptism. When they came up from immersion they were given new clothes to wear. The new clothes were white to symbolize their changed lives, their new and pure way of learning from Jesus and letting his Spirit flow through their lives.
