In Sunday’s sermon, “The Christian’s New Clothes,” Ryan preached from Colossians 3:10-16 where Paul tells us what believers are to “put on” (3:12). The language of “put on” and “put off” calls to mind the imagery of clothing. Christians are to wear the new clothes of new life in Christ. These new clothes are “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (3:12) As we put these things on, we do so, “bearing with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other” (3:13). Above all, we are to “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (3:14).

Those new clothes have a lot to do with relationships. In fact, those new clothes have everything to do with relationships.

As those who are God’s “chosen ones, holy and beloved,” we are to love one another. And that love is not a matter of mere good thoughts or good intentions towards people. Christian love, which is the capstone of Paul’s list, is defined by this list. It is patient. It is kind. It forgives.

Growing in this love is our glorious occupation as believers.

As you depend upon God’s Spirit for the grace to do so, here are some resources for your help and encouragement:

Books:

• The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict, Ken Sande
• War of Words: Getting to the Heart of Your Communication Struggles, Paul Tripp
• Love in Hard Places, D.A. Carson
• To Love Mercy: Becoming a Person of Compassion, Acceptance, and Forgiveness, Sam Storms
• Love Walked Among Us: Learning To Love Like Jesus, Paul Miller

Sermons:

• “Fighting for Reconciliation,” Ryan Kelly
• “Fighting Conflict at the Root,” Ryan Kelly
• “Conflict, Confrontation, and Peacemaking,” Ryan Kelly

In Sunday’s message, “Dying to Live,” Ryan preached from Colossians 3:5-11 to show us how gospel realities work to transform very specific sins. After Paul exhorts us to “put to death therefore what is earthly in [us]” (3:5), he tells us what that kinds of things he has in mind: “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness…anger, wrath, malice, sander, and obscene talk” (3:5-8).

During the course of his sermon, Ryan quoted from John Owen’s work, The Mortification of Sin, which was originally a series of sermons delivered to Oxford students in 1656. These sermons were an exposition of Paul’s words in Romans 8:13, when he gave a similar exhortation. There, Paul wrote, “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Owen’s famous warning from this set of sermons is as memorable as it is serious: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”

What follows are some helpful notes compiled by Ryan from Owen’s work, some of which he read on Sunday:

The Need for Mortification

1. Sin is always active
2. We ought to make it our daily work
3. Only the Holy Spirit is sufficient for this work
4. Our life, health, and comfort depends much on this work

The Meaning of Mortification

1. What Mortification is Not: It is not the total and final the eradication of sin: It is not improvement. It is not mere avoidance. It is not occasional conquests.
2. What Mortification is: It is the habitual, ongoing weakening of sin. It is the constant warfare against sin. It consists of frequent successes.

General Principles for Mortifying Sin

1. You must set your faith on Christ
2. You must rely on the Holy Spirit
3. You must be truly converted
4. You must intend universal, not partial, obedience

The Means of Mortification (how)

1. Consider the dangerous consequences of the sin
2. Get a clear sense of the guilt, danger, and evil of that sin
3. Load your conscience with the guilt of that sin
4. Get a constant longing for deliverance from that sin
5. Consider whether that temptation is exacerbated by your temperament
6. Consider the advantages of preventing that sin
7. Rise mightily against the first step toward that sin
8. Meditate on your self-abasement and vileness in light of the majesty of God
9. Listen to what God says to your soul; do not speak peace until God does

The Basis for Mortification (the “general direction for mortification”)

1. Setting faith firmly on the cross-work of Christ
2. Putting full dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit

In their book, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, Justin Taylor and Kelly Kapic have edited three of Owen’s works on the subject of sin and temptation, updating Owen’s Old English where necessary.

In Sunday’s message, Malachi, Ron Giese expounded the book of Malachi, which serves as a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. Malachi speaks about a messenger to come named Elijah, whom God says “will prepare the way before me” (3:1; 4:5). Speaking about John the Baptist, Jesus said, “if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:14). In fulfillment of God’s promise through the book of Malachi, John boldly and humbly announced Jesus’ coming: “he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry” … “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Matthew 2:11; John 1:29).

Though we are not the promised messenger of the book of Malachi, we are “ambassadors for Christ,” witnessing to His glory in our time (2 Corinthians 5:20). Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we announce the same good news that John carried to the hearers of his day, albeit on this side of the resurrection of Christ.

To help equip the body for faithful ambassadorship in the world, DSC offers an Ambassador Training series each year. Traditionally, DSC’s Ambassador Training has been offered as a single course. Starting this Spring, it is offered in three parts. The first session, which begins this Sunday, March 6, focuses on the ambassador’s character. The subsequent classes, offered this Summer and next Fall, will focus on the ambassador’s knowledge and  wisdom. Here’s a brief description of the new format:

Ambassador 1 (Fall) – Knowledege: An Accurately Informed Mind.
An Ambassador (Messenger, Herald) has to know what to proclaim. He or she needs to know who and what it is that he represents. If we are to represent God, we must know Him as He is. This also means knowing the message of the sovereign, which is the gospel. What is the gospel and what isn’t the gospel?

Ambassador 2 (Winter) – Wisdom: A Discerning and Artful Approach.
An Ambassador (messenger, herald) has to know something about the delivery of the message. What is wisdom? What is it for? What is an unhealthy substitute for wisdom in our Christian culture? How can we wisely engage our friends and family and neighbors in conversation about our God and His message?

Ambassador 3 (Spring) – Character: A Faithful and Attractive Manner.
For the priests in Malachi, God’s messengers of the Old Testament – their message was being discredited because of their character. The character of God’s messenger is a big part of the book of Malachi.

The following three books will be recommended and referenced throughout the series and are available at the Resource Center beginning this Sunday:

• The Heart of Evangelism, Jerram Barrs
• The Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Spreading the Gospel, J. Mack Stiles
• Humility: True Greatness, C.J. Mahaney

As you may recall, in the opening of his sermon, Ron read the following quotation from Dorothy Sayers concerning England in 1949:

It is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ…Theologically this country is at present in a state of utter chaos established in the name of religious toleration and rapidly degenerating into flight from reason and the death of hope.

— Creed or Chaos? Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster

It is important to know the times in which we live. But we are of little effect in our ambassadorship if we neglect to know our God and His gospel. With God’s help, this three part Ambassador Training series will help us know both God and our times.

For more information about the Ambassador Training series or to sign up for the Spring session, email the Local Missions Team at local@desertspringschurch.org or contact the church office.

In Sunday’s sermon, “Seek Things Above,” Ryan preached from Colossians 3:1-4, where Paul exhorts us to “seek things that are above, where Christ is, not on things that are on earth.”

Ryan quoted a helpful section from Jeremiah Burroughs’, A Treatise of Earthly-Mindedness (1649), where Burroughs expands on Paul’s words in Colossians 3:

Earthly-Mindedness =

1. When men look upon earthly things as the greatest things.
2. When their choicest thoughts are busied with earthly things.
3. When their hearts cleave to the earth.
4. When their hearts are filled with distracted cares about the world.
5. When the greatest endeavors of their lives are about earthly things.
6. When they seek any earthly thing for itself, and not in subordination to some higher and godly good.
7. When they are earthly in spiritual things.
8. When they conceive of the most heavenly truth in an earthly way.

A Treatise of Earthly-Mindedness is available for purchase here and download here. If you would like to explore this theme more, consider buying Jason Stellman’s recent book, Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet.

In Sunday’s sermon, “Self-Made Religion,” Ryan preached from Colossians 2:18-23 to warn us against the danger of self-made religion. Self-made religion, to be sure, comes in many different forms. One of those forms, which is as subtle as it is dangerous, is legalism. Paul wrote to the church, “…why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations …according to human precepts and teachings?”

In his article “Legalism and its Antidotes,” Dominic Smart expands on the danger of legalism:

Legalism is primarily a God-ward thing. It’s a way of making and keeping yourself acceptable to God. From this flows the legalism that is directed towards one another. It’s a way of scoring sanctity points in our fellowships, and exerting what one postmodernist called a “truth regime” – it’s about pride, power and control. It simultaneously glorifies man and “unsecures” man. Thus, its true opposites are grace and faith.

Yet it is so plausible. The need for order, structures and boundaries feeds our quest for control. Our very ability to keep some rules feeds our pride and gives us the impression that our relationship with God is somehow founded upon this ability.

…It often arises out of a good motive: to be holy. We don’t want sin to rule over us, we don’t want to grieve God or to stray from his path. And it is a narrow path compared to the one that leads to destruction. So in order to avoid big sins we add rules to God’s word – hedging sinful territory around with codes that are intended to keep us from it. It is the well-intentioned, keen and committed who are most prone to it. The half-hearted Christian couldn’t really care enough to veer towards legalism (though he or she makes up for it with many other errors). It was the scribes, following good Ezra, who developed “the traditions of men” which people preferred to the word of God: a preference that Jesus blasted in Mark 7.

But all this focuses the mind on self. It takes the mind and heart away from Christ, the Proper Man. It takes our faith away from His sufficiency and misplaces it upon ours. We live to achieve his approval; we forget that we are already alive and accepted in Christ. Ever so plausibly, we are sold a different gospel: one that isn’t really a gospel at all. And the desire not to sin in some big way can be little more than a mask to hide our lack of faith in Jesus, “who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption”. (1Cor 1:30). Holiness is not a matter of living on eggshells with a God who is reserving judgement on us and might turn us away at any moment.

It really is a deadly false thing, this warped alternative, this lie, this all-pervasive and hideous distortion of Christian living.

Smart goes on to unfold the following eight ways in which legalism is a distortion of the Biblical gospel:

1. Legalism cannot deal with sin
2. Legalism cannot bring us closer to God
3. Legalism sends us in entirely the wrong directions as we progress through life
4. Legalism is narrow-minded and sinfully boring
5. Legalism encourages, even protects hypocrisy
6. Legalism ends up trivializing life with God.
7. Legalism produces a false gospel
8. Legalism robs God

We recommend the entire article, where Smart expands on each of these points and follows them up with eight antidotes to the poison of legalism.