Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Shakespeare died on his fifty second birthday and left what is considered the most famous will in existence.

Among his last wishes were instructions to chisel this hex on his tombstone.

"Bless be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones."

The intention was to threaten grave robbers, but it also prevented his friends from ever moving him, and the result is, the bones of this man, whom many consider the greatest writer of all time, lies not in the famous Poet's Corner of Westminister Abbey, the resting place of many a lesser poet, but in there original plot of Holy Trinity Church.

Here is an interesting example of how a dead person can still control the living.

He was getting his will done even after he was dead.

The beautiful Ines de Castro was murdered in her royal apartment in 1355.

Several years later she became the Queen of Portugal.

Pedro I so loved Ines that when he became king in had her body exhumed and dressed in royal robes and securely tied to a lavished throne.

A mere skeleton of her former self, she held a scepter and was bowed to by the clergy, nobility, and the commoner.

Some mighty unusual experiences can happen to dead people because they have power and influence even after they are dead.

The apostle Paul goes so far as to say that all Christians have an after death power, and an after death experience of royalty, and reigning with Christ even before they die physically and enter heaven.

There is an after death experience even before we die, for Paul writing to the living Christians of Colosse says in 3:3, "For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

This is indeed a mystery and a paradox, but in some sense the Christian has already passed away.

Paul said, "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.

Old things are passed away, and behold all things are become new."

In Christ we have died.

The body dies with the head.

Baptism is a symbol of that death and resurrection to the new life.

The Christian is one of wonders of the world, for he has already died and gone to heaven, and yet he is alive on earth making an impact of greater or lesser degree.

The degree to which we recognize where our real life is, is the degree to which we have an impact on this life.

If we see that our real life is the life now hidden with God, we set our affections on things above.

That is where our life is.

Our citizenship is in heaven.

Our Lord and our eternal home are all there.

The second coming is exciting because Paul says that is when our hidden life will become visible.

When Christ appears the life of all believers will appear with Him in glory.

When the head becomes manifest the whole body will be manifest, and not only will we see Christ, but we will see our own hidden life.

The Christian is sort of a dual personality with a hidden life in heaven, and a visible life on earth.

Paul is telling us that it is possible to be so unheavenly minded you are no earthly good.

That is a switch from the usual idea of being so heavenly minded you are no earthly good.

His whole point here is that Christians can fail to be heavenly minded, and fail to set their affections on things above, and instead, set them on earthly things.

When they do this, they began to slip back into their old life of immorality and idolatry.

Why do Christians do the terrible things they do?

Christians do every sin man is capable of doing.

Why?

Because they do not focus on their real life and ultimate goal, but on the earthly, and that which will pass away.

The Christian that does not get in touch with his hidden heavenly life, but lives only for the flesh, will be a worldly and carnal Christian.

Only the Christian who is really heavenly minded, and who knows where his real values are, can live the truly Christian life on this earth.

In other words, only the Christian who is really dead can really live.

The deader you are to this world, and the more alive you are to heavens values, the more you will live even now.

Being heavenly minded does not rob you of life, but fills you with life.

This may sound very mystical and impractical, but the fact is, nothing is more practical as a foundation for living a successful Christian life.

Every time a Christian fails to be a Christian in his or her thinking or acting, it is because they take their mind off the hidden life of heaven, and focus it on the earthly things, and thus become earthly rather than heavenly minded.

On the other hand, when we pray, "Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we will have the mind that becomes a channel of the heavenly life to flow into time and give us victorious Christian living.

You can do the earth no greater good than to be heavenly minded with your affections set on things above.

Your life is hid with Christ in God.

Your life is the treasure.

Christ is the treasurer.

God is the treasury.

Here is the basis for true self-esteem .

This goes way beyond the self-esteem on the earthly level.

The Christian has a self he has never met yet.

The self that is hidden with God.

You talk about self exaltation.

This is the top of the line level of self-esteem-a life that is of such worth and value that God keeps it hidden in heaven where nothing can touch it or corrupt it.

Shakespeare was right when he wrote-,"It is but a base, ignoble mind that mounts no higher than a bird can soar."

But the Christian mind is to soar beyond the eagles height, beyond the mountain heights, beyond the staggering heights of astronomy into the very presence of God where his life is hidden.

Jane Pasco wrote-

Father!

Forgive the heart that clings

Thus trembling to the things of time,

And bid my soul, on angel's wings

Ascend into a purer clime.

No one can ever accuse Paul of pointing the Christian in any other way but up.

In verse 1 he says set your hearts on things above, and in verse 2 he says set your minds on things above.

The Christian in both emotion and in intellect is to focus on the upward, or heavenly life.

Heavenly hearts and heads is the Christian goal.

He not only pointed this way, he pressed on this way in his own life, and in Phil.

3:14 he writes, "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called my heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Heavenward is the same Greek word Paul uses in our text for setting your heart and mind on things above.

The same word is used when Jesus looked up and prayed to His father in heaven.

Jesus used it again in John 8:23 when he said to the Pharisees, "You are from below, I am from above."

The point is, the heart and mind of the follower of Christ is to be focused upward.

The very words up and down have strong psychological meaning.

When you are up and on top of the world you are having a taste of heaven on earth, and you are happy.

But when you are down and beneath the circumstances, you are in dumps, and do not see or feel the light and joy of the heavenly.

Down is negative and up is positive.

The fall of man takes him down, but the resurrection in Christ takes him up.

The whole gospel can be conveyed by these two directions.

Heaven and hell are these two directions.

Even the secular goal of the drug addict is to get a high, for to be up is there equivalent of setting the affections on things above.

It is the secular substitute for being heavenly minded, and like secular substitutes, it deceives and really takes one down.

The Christian is to get his or her high by being heavenly minded and hearted, and by ever focusing on the upward way.

Prov.

15:24, "The path of life leads upward for the wise."

Annie Johnson Flint wrote, "My Resolution" that goes like this-

I won't look back; God knows the fruitless efforts,

The wasted hours, the sinning, the regrets:

I leave them all with Him who blots the record,

And mercifully forgives, and then forgets.

I won't look forward; God sees all the future,

The road that, short or long, will lead me home,

And He will face with me it's every trial,

And bear with me the burdens that may come.

But I'll look up--into the FACE of JESUS,

For there my weary heart can rest, my fears are stilled;

And there is joy and love and light for darkness,