Download Very often we speak of the life that is in Christ, and expect more of

“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
Very often we speak of the life that is in Christ, and expect more of death than we do
of life. We are surprised when God intervenes, since God’s intervention is so very powerful, so
very surprising. Steve Brown tells a story that makes the point profoundly. He met a man who
worked at a Florida airport. Well, a lady was shipping a very expensive dog in a kennel for
arrival in Miami. When the handlers went to get the dog, they found that the animal had
died. It was a very expensive breed. Rather than be honest about it though, and fearing a
lawsuit, they searched high and low, paid a lot of money, and found a similar animal and put
it into the kennel. When the lady went to pick up her dog she was absolutely astonished.
Fearing that the woman had seen through the whole thing, the handler said, “Lady,
why are you so surprised?”
She said, “This can’t be my dog!”
Feigning ignorance the handler said, “What do you mean?”
She said, “The dog I shipped out on this crate was dead!”
The woman came expecting death and was shocked to discover life instead. Now in
her case it was substitute life instead of the same animal raised again. The universal cry of the
church from generation to generation is rooted in an entirely different kind of reality. When
those early disciples came to tend the body in the tomb, they met an amazingly different
kind of surprise. They were so shocked that they cried out the cry that has resounded
throughout the church for just under 2000 years.
Christ has risen! (He is Risen indeed!)
Christ has risen! (He is Risen indeed!)
Christ has risen! (He is risen indeed!)
They met the Risen Lord and everything about life changed from that point forward.
The rallying cry of the church throughout time has been the same. The assumption about life
in and around the church is filled with the same presupposition. People are to meet us
expecting the same old, same old smell of death that permeates all of human existence, and
instead of death, they are to be utterly and totally surprised as they meet the life of Christ
shining through us, redeeming, buying life back and saving anyone who calls on the name of
the Lord. You can hear it as Paul writes:
Since you have been raised… This is how St. Paul begins this marvelous section of the
letter to the Colossians.
•
•
•
It doesn’t say, “Since Jesus Christ has been raised…”
It says, “Since you have been raised…”
This letter assumes that the early Christians had had an amazing experience of
the power of the resurrection, and that it flowed through their everyday life.
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“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
Paul assumed that their lives had been overtaken by the resurrection life available in
Christ the Lord, and that the existence of every believer was to be lived in an utterly
supernatural way. These assumptions are ours as well. The God we serve is alive! Our
experience of Who He is must overflow with this reality.
Why did Paul write this to the church? The answer is one that we know only too well
ourselves. The Colossians had lost some of their early fervency.
Paul assumes:
• They had experienced resurrection power in their existence, and that this had
changed the way that they thought about life forever,
• They had forgotten about its effect on them and needed to be reminded that their
existence was not merely here on earth, but in heaven, which had begun to invade
the realm of earth forever, and
• They should and could return to centering their lives on heaven and the resurrection
once they remembered this fact of existence.
Easter season is upon us for this reason. Every year the church gathers together to
celebrate the fact that we are believers now because God did a marvelous thing in the very
center of history! He entered into it as a human by choice; He took on the form of a servant,
humbled himself, suffered death and rose again from the dead. He smashed the power of
death, embarrassed evil forever by that action and turned it on its head. Paul says it well
when he says, “Death has been swallowed up by life.” And because of that it has implications
for the way we live.
The big truth of Resurrection Sunday is that:
• since we have been raised up with the Lord of glory,
• since His very Spirit has been placed inside of who we are,
• since the anchor of our existence is now found in Who He is, not in Who we are,
• SINCE ALL THIS IS SO—AND
o Christ is Risen—He is Risen Indeed!
o Christ is Risen—He is Risen Indeed!
o Christ is Risen—He is Risen Indeed!
THEN
LIVE OUT THE RISEN LIFE
OF THE RISEN CHRIST!!!
Since we find the anchor of our very existence in the fact that Jesus rose, that we
experience that resurrection in our own lives, that we have experienced being lifted above
the darkness and distress of our earthly existence and placed on the throne of God right
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“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
there in the center of Jesus being, dead to the sins of the past, and hidden in God’s radiant
glory, alive to the future which God has in store for us—since we have been raised up with
Christ, live as if that were the only reality on which the universe hangs together!
What a privilege and what a challenge. Easter confronts us with the question, “Will
you live as if Jesus lives?” Better yet, since Jesus now lives eternally, will we let the power of
the resurrection impact every decision, every thought, every word, and every thing that
enters the soul?
Today we will be looking at the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. It will be today’s
aim to compare the material from the Colossians passage and its challenges with the realities
that meet us every day. In particular, we will be looking at the command to “set our minds”
on things above. Jesus died so that we might live. And Jesus lives now that we might live with
him right now. Christ is Risen! (He is Risen indeed) 3x.
A GREAT BIG “IF”:
Trouble was that the Colossians forgot! They got so caught up in other matters that
they slipped off of the foundation that they had stood on in the first place. And that brings
with it its own perils…
Time Magazine reported a small town in rural Pennsylvania which had made the
decision to improve their town facilities. In order to save money many services were
amalgamated into one “state of the art” facility. Everything was built better than government
standard, because they were building for the future.
Several months after the completion of the building, when all the townspeople were
starting to enjoy their new facility the employees working there began to notice that not
everything was as it should be. First, several found they had difficulty closing the windows
properly. A few weeks later the difficulty increased and the doors began to be difficult to
open and close. Cracks began to appear in the basement walls. Finally doors and windows
would not close at all. Before a year was over, the building had to be condemned. What
happened? Why was the very best design in the state, a labor of love, condemned after only
a year? It took some time to find this out, but eventually the answer came out. Several miles
away a strip mine was opened up. Blasting took place every day. The result of the blasting
was that small tremors went through the earth. The tremors were so tiny that none in the
new building felt them. Yet they were just strong enough to gradually shift the new town hall
away from its solid foundation. Over the year, the unseen and unfelt effects of the
environment in which the building was located began to have an effect. All of that blasting
gradually shifted the building until came off of its foundation. It eventually lost its stability,
even though it was made of the finest materials and was of the best design.
Let’s bring the application to our lives. Are we standing on the firm foundation of
God’s action in raising Jesus from the dead, or have we slipped off? The world we live in
demands not merely that we gently get off center, but rather that we push right off of our
moorings. Sometimes slight shifts take us ever so subtly away from Christ the Lord.
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“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
Sometimes the attack is not subtle at all. The outright attack is disturbing, but it doesn’t have
as much effect on us. We can see that one coming. But it is the subtle undermining that is the
thing that we need to be careful of, the small compromise here, the gentle nudge there, and
suddenly we discover that our houses of faith are no longer fit to live in. How do we mend
this? Paul’s solution for the Colossians works for us admirably as well. We need to remind
ourselves that the anchor of our existence depends on our convictions and experiences of
Jesus’ power. Paul tells them to keep seeking the things above where Christ is. He tells them
to “set their minds” there, and not here.
THE POWER OF THE MIND-SET
Paul said, “Set your mind on things above, not on things that are on earth.” So where
has my mind been today? Have I been living “up” or “down”? It could be fairly said that the
Bible tells us to “live it up”. The things that are “up” are stories of God’s grace, mercy, peace,
acceptance, awe at the majesty of God, worship without ceasing, purity, perfection, the
completion of all that God longs to have happen and most especially, the resurrection of
Christ. The things that are up include listening to each other as we speak of how God has
been intervening in our lives.
The text indicates that we are to “set our minds”. “Set” is a term used to describe
concrete as it is about to become firm. In order for concrete to become solid it needs to
remain in one place undisturbed. Then it becomes firm and immovable. If we keep reshaping
the concrete it is no good for the sidewalk.
God’s word tells us to entrench our minds so firmly in heaven (i.e. to establish a mind-set on
glory), that it becomes the immovable pattern for our existence.
Then when difficulties of life overtake us nothing will shake us from it.
I remember two incidents in which this was the case. One goes back to a time before I
was a Christian believer. I had a vocal music teacher with a booming operatic voice. She was
standing at the entrance of the classroom. Now the class had a steel fire door. Most of the
class was in the room, but the teacher was leaning on the edge of the door with her hand on
the doorframe while she was talking with a student. No one noticed that the steel door was
closing. It shut on Mrs. Pothier’s hand. A booming operatic voice suddenly bellowed out,
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and the Holy Spirit…” As she extracted her fingers she
said, “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.” And all the
class said, “Amen.” She was a devout Anglican, and she had a mind-set, or better yet, a
“mind, set” to honor God in all circumstances. Long before the incident she had determined
that she would not swear, and she would replace the swearing with the praise of God.
“Jesus is risen, and you are risen with him, so set your mind above…” I clearly saw this
when a member of a congregation I was serving had her brand new Honda Civic sedan hit
broadside. Now this lady was a missionary’s daughter who had served with her parents in
China. All her life she had taken every opportunity to serve the Lord. Now the lady had
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“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
owned her brand new vehicle for about a month. If you have ever had an accident you know
that the new car will never quite be the same. She was also injured in the accident and if that
has happened to you, you will also know that, barring a miracle, your body won’t work the
way that it used to either. Well, the lady got a neck injury that still bothers her from time to
time, even to this very day. As soon as I heard about the accident, I called to find out how
she was doing, and wanted to see if we could set up a visit. She answered the phone and I
said something like, “I understand you had an accident in your brand new car?”
Her reply was, “Praise God, yes!”
Trying to get a better read on what she had just said, I said, “Did you just say, ‘Praise
God, I had accident’?”
“Yes, I did,” the lady replied. “The woman who hit me in the other car was a single
mom needing lots of help. Well, it turned out that she was searching for the Lord. So after
the accident, I took her to where her daughter’s music lessons were, we picked up the child
and then I led her to the Lord. She’ll be in church this coming Sunday.”
I told the lady that the Salvation Army had raised her right!
I went looking for the usual run of the mill experience of death and found life instead
in the experience of that lady. Since she had been raised, she set her mind on things above
and not on things here on earth.
“Set your mind on things above…” is the command of the passage. A word study on
this phrase reveals some interesting cross-references:
rw
1 Timothy 6:17 says, “Instruct the rich not to “set their mind” on riches, but on God
who gives us all things to enjoy…”
Philippians 2:5 says, “Have this mind in you which also was in Christ Jesus…”
Romans 8:5-7 says, “Those who are according to the flesh “set their minds” on the
things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, “set their minds” on the things
of the Spirit.”
The most interesting cross-reference is found in Matthew 16:23. This account indicates
that Jesus had given some hard teaching about how he must go to Jerusalem to die. Jesus
had given Peter tremendous encouragement about how God had spoken to him—that he
was the rock on which the church would be built, etc. Then, Peter told Jesus that he didn’t
know what he was talking about, that he surely would not die. The exact quote that follows
reveals to us something about the power of “mind-sets” to determine how we behave and
how we need to confront our thinking constantly with God’s Word.
Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for “you are not setting
your mind” on God’s interests, but on man’s…”Matt 16:23 NASB
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“Since You Have Been Raised”
David Chotka | April 16, 2017 – EASTER SUNDAY
In each case, the phrase is used to indicate a state of mind, an attitude. What have
you decided to do? What is your attitude? What have you decided to give allegiance to and
honor above all else? These are the questions raised by this text.
WANTED, DEAD AND ALIVE AGAIN:
Think of the word, “dead.” What other words come to mind again? For me the words
are usually things like, “grave,” “corpse”, “tomb”, “wake” and other words similar to it. It is
striking to follow the word “dead” through the NT. There are 128 verses which refer to this
one word. All but a handful of them have immediate reference to the resurrection of Christ
from the dead, or to the call to live ethically because Jesus rose again. The writers of the NT
could not even think of the word “dead” unless they immediately thought about how God
conquered it. Now that is a “mind, set on life.”
Paul says, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The apostle
knows that these people are already dead and have no life themselves. The only place in
which they can find life again is in Christ above. In Ephesians 2:2 we have a description of the
lives of those who do not know the Lord. They are “dead, but walking”. Go into a mall and
you will see them there. No purpose burns in their eyes. There is no life there. Life is found in
Jesus Christ. And there your life is hidden.
Let me ask you an application question. What keeps us from thinking like this? What
keeps us from realizing that we are raised with Christ instead of dead in the water in the here
and now? What keeps us from the assurance that we are hidden from view and safe? We are
dead, and that is a cause for celebration, because we are also alive in Christ.
Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) 3x. Set your mind on this and celebrate!
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