A God-Bathed World(2012May03)

Colossians M1 (Col. 3:1-11) 05 06 12 Speaker: Ken Shigematsu Title: A God-Bathed World Text: Colossians 2:13-15; 3:1-11 BIG IDEA: Since we have been raised with Christ, we can experience a life of heaven now. If you were here on Easter Sunday, you would have heard me talk about the famous children’s story by C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. This story is about how four children, Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund, are sent off during their summer vacation to live with an old professor in his large home in the countryside (SHOW PICTURE through blue section). While the four children are playing in the professor’s old mansion, they discover a wardrobe which leads them into the magical world of Narnia. But when they enter the world of Narnia, they see that there is snow and ice everywhere. It’s terribly cold. You see the people of Narnia live under the rule of the wicked white witch who causes it to always be winter in Narnia, but never Christmas. Let me give you one example of how the people of Narnia were afraid under her reign: Lucy ends up meeting a faun in Narnia called Mr. Tumnus. He invites her to have tea in his home. (SHOW A PICTURE and keep up over the blue text) Now the faun has been ordered by the white witch to report to her if he ever sees a girl from earth so that she can imprison the girl and eventually kill her and has agreed to do so. But after actually meeting Lucy, this faun changes his mind and confesses all to Lucy. He begins to cry and says, “The witch is sure to find out and she will have my tail cut off and my horns sawn off and my beard plucked out. And she’ll turn me into a stone and I shall only be a statue of a faun.” It’s icy cold in Narnia more ways than one. But as we saw at Easter, Aslan, the Great Lion and the true King of Narnia, the Christ figure who has been absent for many years is back and on the move again (SHOW PICTURE through the blue). Wherever he roams the snow begins to melt, the frozen rivers turn into waterfalls, and the flowers begin to bloom, winter turns to spring. This morning we begin a new series from Colossians 3 on what it means to live a new life under the reign of a new King, the one the great Aslan symbolizes, the Christ. This message is simply setting the stage for what is to come in the series. So how do we live if the frozen winter of our spiritual lives melts away and becomes spring? Before we turn to Colossians 3, our main text, let’s set up the context by looking at a passage in Colossians 2. If you have your Bibles, please turn to Colossians 2:13-15. 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (briefly explain words above as I read it) Paul says, to borrow again from the images of Narnia, that there was a time when we were spiritually frozen in our sins, but Christ through his death on the cross for our sins and rising again has opened the way for us to experience a spiritual sunlight that enables us to not experience a spiritual thawing out, but a new life. As we noted at Easter, in the climax of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the wicked white witch confronts Aslan, the Great Lion and Christ figure, points to one of the children Edmund (SHOW PHOTO) and says (and show through blue text). “You have a traitor here and you know that deep magic says that every traitor belongs to me. His life is mine. I have the right to kill him.” Aslan says, “Take my life in his stead. Kill me and let the boy go free.” The wicked witch using a large knife kills Aslan. The following morning Lucy and her sister Susan go to the stone table where Aslan was killed. That morning they see Aslan alive with the rising sun streaming down on him. They cry out, “Aslan!” And they embrace him. “What does this all mean?” asks Susan. It means that though the wicked witch knew the deep magic, there is a deeper magic still which she did not know. If she could have looked a little further back, she would have known that when a victim who had committed no treachery was killed, in a traitor’s stead the table would crack and death would start working backwards. Through Christ’s death and rising again death starts works backwards for us… and when we embrace Christ, we die with Christ, symbolized best in our baptism, a death to an old way of life, we are given a new, risen life with him… This is the Easter message. So if we have a risen with Christ, how do we then live? Paul, in a very important passage, in Colossians 3:1-5 calls us to live in this new reality. I’m using the New Living Translation, which is a very fine translation: 3 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ, who is your[a] life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. 5 So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. The apostle Paul here in Colossians points out that when we join our life to Christ, not only are we set free from the forces of darkness in our world symbolized in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by the wicked white witch, but we are also free to live for the one Alsan symbolizes, our true King, Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul in another important book, the Book of Romans in chapter 6, emphasizes how through the death and rising again of Christ we have been set free from sin, the reign of sinful nature, our shadow side, the part of us symbolized in the children's story as the place where wicked white witch reigns. We no longer need to be a slave to the power of sin and darkness. But, here in Colossians 3 Paul emphasizes the other side of that. That is, we now no longer live under the horrible evil master, but under the reign of Christ who has raised us to new life. As a result, Paul says: 3 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand.2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ, who is your[a] life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. Heaven as Here Paul says since you been raised to new life with Christ, set your mind on the reality of heaven. When we think of setting our mind on heaven, to use the language of Dorothy in the story The Wizard of Oz, we may think of a place somewhere over the rainbow, beyond the sky… beyond the universe. As place out there that we will inhabit in the future. But, the term “heaven” in the Bible isn’t usually used that way. Heaven can be used to describe a place that's over there that we will one day inhabit in the future, but in the Scriptures more commonly heaven simply refers to God or the realm where God reigns. (“heaven” can refer to God or the realm where God reigns). As a pastor named Rob I went to school with says, “Heaven, can refer to there, but it can also refer to here.” Bible scholar Dallas Willard in his book, The Divine Conspiracy, says heaven in many places in the Bible that can be translated “a space right around us that is inhabited by God.” Or simply “atmosphere.” Heaven as Now When we think of heaven we also think of it as an experience of the future. There is a sense in which our experience of heaven is in the future. In verse 4 Paul says, 4 And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. he is referring to something that will happen after we die, at the end of time, or after Christ returns if we are alive at that time. So there is a sense in which our being raised with Christ is something that will be complete in the future after we die. There is a sense in which our being raised with Christ as a new creation is “not yet.” But as the apostle Paul points out in verse 1, there is also a sense in which we have already been raised with Christ. He says: “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven.” Theologians describe this tension of being raised with Christ now and our being more fully raised with Christ in the future day as the tension of the “already, not yet.” But here in Colossians 3 Paul emphasizes the “already” side of this tension. We can taste and enjoy the gifts of being raised to new life with Christ right now according to the apostle Paul because in this current life--in this world--we have already been raised with Christ. Jesus also spoke about heaven as place of there, but also a place here. When Jesus talked about heaven, sometimes he spoke of it as an experience of the future, Jesus also talked about heaven as something in future and something that is now. In the Book of Revelation we read that in the future the "new Jerusalem" descends from heaven to earth, joining the two realms forever. This may be precisely why Jesus taught us to pray “God, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.” And if heaven primarily means God and the place where God reigns, then as Paul taught we can begin to experience the life of heaven not just there and then, but here and now. Eternal life, does not just start when we die. It can start now. The life of heaven isn’t just about experiencing something there, it is also about experiencing the kind of life here that can endure and survive death. Now speaking of heaven may seem really abstract and ethereal to many of you. The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4 wrote: 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4 was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. Bible scholars agree that the person that Paul is speaking about here in this text is himself. So Paul has this experience while being alive of going literally going to heaven in a sense of heaven as another realm—over there. On rare occasions it seems as though people have had a chance to glimpse this other realm where God's will is perfectly done, the kind of place where we traditionally think of as heaven – either while alive as was the case with Paul or through a so-called, "near-death experience." And I want to share just a few experiences of people who have experienced heaven in this way so that it becomes a little more tangible for those of us who have a hard time imagining it. Many of us have read descriptions of heaven in the Bible, but it may be helpful for some of us to hear some actual testimony of people who experienced heaven, to make it more real to our imagination. Someone in our community recently gave me an extraordinary book about a 3-year-old boy which caught my attention because Sakiko and I have a 3-year-old son. When Colton Burpo (PP image) was three years old his appendix burst. Although he looked deathly ill for several days, his parents were not aware of what was causing his life to drain away this little boy right before their eyes—at first they thought it might be stomach flu. When his condition was finally correctly diagnosed by a doctor, Colton went through emergency surgery. In the months that followed it became clear to Colton’s dad who is a pastor and his mom that Colton had what they call a near death experience or an experience of another realm while alive as he was being operated on. Colton actually left his body during the surgery which he, as a 3-year-old authenticated by describing exactly what his parents were doing—precise details he couldn’t have known otherwise—in another part of the hospital while he was being operated on. In the months that followed Colton would go on to describe meeting his great grandfather who had died decades before Colton was born. He had never seen a photograph of his great grandfather and he had obviously never met him in his life. He had never heard about him, nor had never seen a picture, yet later as his father dug through the attic he found some photos of his great grandfather as a younger man, Colton was able to identify the picture of him. Colton, as a 3-year-old who had not learned to read was able to describe obscure details about heaven as stated in the Bible—stuff he would not have learned about in Sunday school. I realize that some people might be skeptical of Colton’s story, but my world and world of the author have some overlap – in that we have both been pastors with three-year-old sons. And I can just imagine how difficult it would be to concoct a story that my son died, went to heaven and then described heaven accurately to third parties. If he was being interviewed by someone about heaven and he was just making it up because I encouraged him to make it up to sell about a book, he would say that heaven was filled with school buses, garbage trucks, and the Buzz Light Year was there. This would be the artist rendition of heaven. Show this image Brian created. And the headline in the paper would read: "Heaven Is a Place on Earth." At the same time I have been reading the book of Colton’s experience, I've also been reading a similar book by a man named Don Piper. Don was driving on his way home from a conference and was crossing a small two-way bridge and an oncoming semi-truck suddenly swerved into his lane and drove right over his Ford Escort, crushing him and his little car. The medical personnel arrived, ran tests on him and confirmed that he had died instantly. Because he was clearly already dead the emergency workers did not make any attempt to move his body out of his crushed car. An hour and a half after the car accident a pastor named Richard who was driving on that same road and came to the scene of the accident, stopped and asked, “What happened?” The police said, “A man died in a car accident.” The pastor felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to go and pray for the man who had died. The state police and the medical people said, “If you want to pray for him, that is fine, but he is dead.” Richard felt really foolish, but he walked over to the crushed car, lifted up the tarp, saw this body with blood having oozed out of the man’s eyes, nose and mouth. He reached for his hand and felt it was cold and that there was no pulse. He began to pray for him. For some reason he felt led to sing the old hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” As he began to sing, to his utter shock Don, the man in the car, began singing with him. His life, ninety minutes after being clinically declared dead, returned to life In this book called 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don describes what it was like to actually go to heaven and to meet his friend Mike from high school who had led him to Jesus Christ…a popular athlete who had died at 19. He also describes movingly the beautiful music of heaven, the thousands of voices and countless different kinds of music, yet somehow all coalescing into a mesmerizingly beautiful, coherent, and sublime melody. He talked about the beautiful colours of heaven and how he felt more alive and more joy and happiness than he had never known on earth. Again, if you are skeptical these may sound strange, but someone in our community here recently had an experience a little bit like these ones. Sandy, the brother of one of our respected members Betty, was a man who had for some was years had been distant from God. But over the last two months Sandy had been attending Tenth with his partner Pat. At some point in the last couple of months he had drawn close God Just a couple weeks ago he suddenly died. When Betty heard the news that he had died, she imagined how a certain member of her extended family had died a few years ago and how she might be there to greet Sandy in eternity. She then called her mother to share the sad news that Betty’s brother and her mom’s son Sandy had died. And just before Betty called, her mother had closed her eyes and had a clear vision of this person. I share the stories and I could share many more like these people that I have a connection with, and none of these stories, of course, in and of themselves prove anything, but there are so many of them and taken together they simply corroborate what the Bible and what Jesus and the Apostle Paul taught that there an actual place—it’s not simply a metaphor—but an actual place, this God-bathed reality called heaven, on the one hand, something that we will experience fully when we are joined to Christ after death, but also something that we can also begin to experience here and now this side of death. In a sense eternal life with God, full of life, joy, and peace, starts when we die, but in a sense it can start now. It is not just a life that begins at death. The Apostle Paul here in Colossians 3 points out that it is the kind of life that can we can begin to experience now and continue to experience after we die. We can live under the reign of the great, true King Jesus, symbolized in the C.S. Lewis children’s story by the great lion Aslan. It’s impossible to imagine what our heavenly life will look like, but that has never stopped many Christians from trying… like Augustine, the 4th century African bishop. He concludes his great work The City of God by imagining the state of our resurrected lives in the world to come. Augustine foresees how we will experience grace as the removal of sin in us. We will no longer be tossed to and fro by every wave of impulse. The absence of temptation will result in state of perfect peace. Augustine describes the quality of such peace saying, God will hold sway over us, and the soul will hold sway over the body. And the pure happiness that is found in God will make our obedience sweet and easy. As my friend and spiritual director Rob Des Cotes says, Peace and the absence of turmoil will be the fruit of our disinclination to anything other than the will of God. And this life of living free or freer from the sin, with greater joy and peace can start to begin now. Why? Because the Easter message tells us that we have been raised with Christ and therefore we are to set our sights on the realities of heaven. Paul says in light of the kind of people we will become, in light of the kind of people we are becoming— set our sights on the realities of heaven. In light of the day when heaven and earth are one— set our sights on the realities of heaven. And in the coming weeks, we’re going to see what that looks like, what it means to live the life of heaven on earth—in the future heaven there won’t be violence, bullying, rape, greed, exploitation, or abuse—as this pastor Rob that I went to school with says there will be redemptive art, honest business, honorable practice of law, sustainable living, tending a garden, sharing food for all… Paul urges us to live as though heaven and earth are now one because that is our future: Two points in closing application: So, how do we experience heaven? We experience heaven as the there and then by literally dying. We experience heaven as the here and now by turning to God and dying to an old way of life. If you die once, you’ll die forever. If you die twice you will live forever. And if you’ve never really fully turned to God and died to an old way of life, you can commit your life to God right now and then plan on being baptized. That is, in baptism as you go under the water you're buried with Christ and experience a kind of death and in baptism as your life is joined to Christ you rise to a new life with him. In your baptism you can experience heaven as here and now and in the life to come heaven as a there and then. A second point of application. If you’ve been already been raised with Christ to new life, because you’ve joined your life to Christ and died to old way of life, if you died with Christ and have been raised to new life through your baptism, then set your sights on the realities of heaven through worship and singing. Worship and singing can be a portal to heaven. As Paul says later in Colossians 3, “In light of the fact that you've been raised with Christ set your heart on things above”(vs. 16). Let the message of Christ dwell… through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. One of the ways we set our hearts on things above is through worship… I recently got together with a man who was a professional athlete and now works as a coach in professional sports. Not long after that, I got together with a woman who is a film actress who just returned from the premiere of her movie in the states. Both the man who works in the world of professional sports and the woman who works in the film industry are followers of Christ. They both told me independently that one of the ways that they stay focused on Christ throughout their days was by engaging in worship. I was meeting the man in a quiet coffee shop not far from here. He said, “Before you got here,” and he motioned as if he were putting on headsets, “I was listening to worship music. Each morning I spend time worshiping Christ through Scripture and music in a way that helps me stay focused on Christ instead of the statistics of the athletes I am working with.” And the actress in a separate conversation with me said that every day she takes time to worship Christ to be reminded of how much she is loved by God, and then to express her love back to God. In an email, sent me as a follow up to our in-person conversation, she writes (get permission here to share): One of the ways I worship God is through singing. And since I spend a lot of my time driving from one place to another, I found the most unconventional place to worship God is in my car. For the last year, I've just been listening to this one worship CD my friend made me. Generally, I listen to one song over and over again for days or weeks - the song could be on prayer or praise. One of the reasons I love worshipping is because it's ALL about God - His character and His love for me. It realigns my mind/heart/Spirit to the Father - who He is and what He loves. When I’m singing, I’m not worried or thinking about what I have to do or thinking about anyone else. It’s all about how much He loves me, receiving His love and responding to Him. The ironic thing is, is that when I’m pouring out my heart on how much I love Him, He’s filling my heart right back up with how much He loves me. It’s a beautiful tapestry of love, a song and dance between us, and an intimate conversation that needs no words. Worship is an outpouring of my heart, soul and spirit to the One who loves me and knows me. It goes beyond the physical realm into the spiritual realm. It’s one of the most intimate ways I connect with Him as He penetrates deep down to my soul. Someone who works in pro sports or the film industry can get so caught up in their work that they may lose God. And this may surprise you but a pastor can also get so caught up in his or her work that they lose sight of Christ. And so this is also something I seek to do each day--to worship Christ, like the man I met for coffee I use my phone and I typically listen to a worship song that was sung during Sunday service and enter into worship. As we do that we can set our hearts on things above, we can experience a God-bathed world as God in a special way inhabits the praises of people. As we worship the living God and his Son Jesus Christ we can know heaven is not just as a place out there, but a place right here. As we continue to worship now, and experience heaven, let's experience God and honor because God isn't just out there. God is here.