Sermon Tone Analysis

Colossians 2:9-17

My Sin and what Christ Did About It

 

In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.

In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

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, having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.

These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

| I |

 was an awful sinner; but Christ is a great Saviour.

Like many of you, I was raised in a Christian environment.

This does not mean that I was a Christian, it only means that I received early Christian training.

I do not disparage that heritage, but I caution anyone against presuming that being raised in a Christian home will suffice to make one a Christian.

Being raised in a Christian home will no more make one a Christian than living in a garage will make one a Mercedes Benz or than being raised in a bagel factory will make one Jewish.

If we will be saved, it will be as individuals and on the merits of Christ’s sacrificial love.

The old saying that God has no stepchildren is true; we enter Heaven as individuals.

My spouse’s faith will not save me.

My parent’s faith will not save me.

I must trust Christ.

I was Dead When Christ Found Me — Paul reminds the Colossian saints that their story begins /when [they] were dead in [their] sins and in the uncircumcision of [their] sinful nature/ [*verse thirteen*].

This is but an iteration of the affirmation found in *Ephesians 2:1-3*.

/As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath/.

This is God’s view of the situation for each of us when we were yet outside Christ.

In the same way, that is the beginning of my story.

I was dead before God.

My sins insured that I knew nothing of the Author of Life though I breathed the air He provided and walked about in this present world which His hand created.

I cared nothing for God.

I had surrendered myself to heavy drinking and embraced wicked self-serving philosophies dedicated to the injury of mankind.

During the early years of graduate studies in New York City, I began to study with a group dedicated to the destruction of liberty and the overthrow of democratic governments.

My family life was in disarray.

My hope was destroyed.

I no longer cared for life itself, and I was prepared to even kill others if they were foolish enough to get in my way.

Drinking deeply at the polluted waters of Mao, Lenin and Marx, my soul was dark and my life was contaminated beyond any hope of restoration when Jesus saved me.

I thought of that dedication to evil on an occasion some years later.

I had checked into Parkland Hospital to have my wisdom teeth surgically removed.

The man chained to the bed beside me had had his lower jaw shot away in a gun battle with the Dallas police.

He was a young Black Panther and now he was in hospital to have his jaw reconstructed.

Though his mouth was wired shut, that young man and I talked and debated throughout the night preceding my surgery as he spilled out his anger toward all whites and related his commitment to Communist principles.

I, having passed through something akin to his particular pilgrimage, responded by pointing him to the Living God who could deliver even him from the bitterness of soul that was condemning him to certain death.

Ah, not only does our sin separate us from the love of God, but it also leads us toward ever-greater degradation.

Our stained soul becomes more greatly soiled still.

Thus it was with me.

Bitter toward God and bitter toward life, I grew to care little for anything save my own evil desires.

Though the world may think well of us, as sinners there is no restraint on our desires save that thin veneer we call civilisation.

Each sin only draws the sinner further from God and deeper into his own perverted dying world.

My Violation of God’s Law Condemned Me — Paul reminds the Colossians that they had put /off the sinful nature/ and that /the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us, [has been taken] away, [having been] nailed to the cross/.

I was raised in a Christian home.

My grandfather was a pioneer preacher in south-east Kansas; my father was a deacon in the little country church where I spent my early years.

My earliest memories of home include nights as Dad read the Word of God and prayed fervently that his boys might be godly men one day.

During the summer months his blacksmith shop was filled to overflowing with plough shears to be sharpened and with sickles to be filled.

On those days I was awakened early six days of the week by his singing great hymns of the Faith as he beat out a counter rhythm to with a four-pound maul beating hot metal into shape.

All day long the breezes wafted his singing throughout the neighbourhood.

God has no stepchildren, however, and I was not saved.

Because of my heritage I was expected to be a Christian.

In various contests conducted by Youth for Christ, I won again and again.

I knew where the Books of the Bible were located and could win sword drills every time, but I was unsaved and cared little for the message those books presented.

I could quote the Ten Commandments, but I had no power to keep them.

Eventually, in my early teens I gave up all pretence of being a Christian and ceased attending church.

I would sleep in on Sunday mornings, carefully peeking one eye above the cover as my dad left for church.

Only then would I crawl out of bed.

Even in those years as a callow youth I was moving ever further away from God.

I was embittered toward the little town where I had grown to early manhood.

My mother had deserted our family, leaving my dad to raise two boys when I was but five years of age.

Small towns can be merciless in their censure of those who are different, and the situation was perhaps exaggerated in years gone by.

The smug attitudes of the most of that town served only to make me determined that I would neither remain there nor would I ever be dependent upon them.

I excelled in school and became haughty in my spirit as I scoffed at the less intelligent, though socially acceptable, children of the good burghers of that little Kansas town.

By the time I was eighteen I had violated every one of those laws which God had caused to be written by Moses.

I joined the Marine Corps to get away from myself, but even then God did not permit me to fulfil my dreams.

Some boys, intending to play a joke on me, had tampered with the brakes on the truck I was driving.

A wreck was the result of their fun, and I was left with a broken back.

For over a year I had worn a brace to keep my back straight, and now I was told after some time in the Corps that I could no longer remain in the Corps since I had begun listing to starboard.

Leaving the Corps, I experienced in rapid succession marriage, the birth of our first child and further studies leading to a Bachelor or Arts degree.

Always, however, there was the knowledge that I was in violation of God’s Law and that I could have no peace with Him.

My Feeble and Sporadic Efforts Were Unable to Secure Either Peace or Freedom — My wife would often speak with me of her lack of peace, urging me to think of church.

In the five years immediately preceding my conversion to Christ, there was but one man who spoke to me of the love of God.

A biology professor at the teacher’s college I attended witnessed to me of the grace of God, but he spoke in the week immediately before I graduated to leave for New York City.

During those years of college and university my wife and I had spoken with representatives of several religions and attended a variety of churches, but not once did we hear of Christ and His love.

Before becoming a dedicated young Marxist, I had attempted attending church.

I had gone to a Baptist Church when my first child was born, and it was cold and dead.

We attended once and never went again.

No one welcomed us.

No one spoke to us, save to direct us to sit in the empty balcony where we were left alone by ourselves, because a new-born child might disturb the congregation at worship.

In that little Kansas college town we had also attended a Methodist Church and a Nazarene Church, but in neither church were we given the message of life, and I was yet without hope.

We even invited members of a cult to come speak with us on one occasion, but we quickly dismissed their message as insufficient since it was clearly void of any promise of peace nor did the messengers have any peace themselves.

In New York we sought out a Methodist church where both my wife and I joined the choir.

Unsaved, we nonetheless sang in an attempt to please God.

There was no message of hope, but rather sermonettes for Christianettes.

One spring Sunday morning the Bishop of that district spoke and gave as fine a lecture on Marxist ideology as ever one could hear.

He urged the congregation to picket on behalf of the poor in Harlem, but he was unable to do what he urged us to do.

In utter disgust I threw off my choir robe and exited the choir loft.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife left simultaneously.

We reached the robing room at the same time and each avowed that we were finished with religion.

We had received moral lessons, but since they were not founded on the unchanging Word of God they had no validity and could not stand up to scrutiny.

We were urged to be good, but there was no definition of what “good” was, nor were we told how we might be empowered to do what was good.

We were encouraged to give money to support various causes, many leftist in design, espoused by the various churches, but we were not told how those causes glorified the Lord.

Though we had sought peace with God, there was no peace for us.

Moreover, I grew increasingly disgusted with religious frauds and embittered toward society in general since it all appear unconcerned with anything but materialism and the promotion of “self”.