Our God, we want to thank you for your precious word. Pray Lord, God, that you would cause your word to affect us deeply. Would your spirit convict us of the various sins in our lives? Would your spirit convict us of the righteous standard of our Lord and cause us, Lord, to be empowered, to put aside the things that are unpleasing to you, to put aside the things that are offensive to you, Lord, and desire all the more to reflect Christ in our lives.

We desire this, Lord, God, in our everyday, whether we're at work, home, school, whatever it may be, that God, we would truly be imitators of the Lord in all of his character. And I pray, God, that you would continue to guide us to that goal. We thank you, Lord, in Christ's name.

Amen. Okay. All right. So as you guys know, Pastor Peter and the family are leaving tonight, actually. They're going to be visiting China area and then heading out to Korea and then come back in about a week. So tonight, we'll be covering this passage. Before I forget, I do want to mention that because the collegians are on their spring break, we again need to wrap things up and reset the sanctuary after the study's over.

So when your group is done with discussion and all that kind of stuff, and you're headed off to get some snacks, please make sure just to stack away your table and your chairs. And then around 10, 15-ish, after we've had some snacks, then we'll bring the brown chairs back in.

Okay? All right. Well, because we've been giving several Bible study tips, remember that those are all various tips that should be helpful for you in your study. Last time we talked about using tools, like using the Strong's numbers to look at a specific word. Previously, we talked about identifying specific things.

Well, I just want to say for today's just super brief tip, remember that we're never going to glean everything in one shot. All right? You don't clean your teeth in one brush and say, "Done." Then you would have tons of plaque. The whole idea is through repeated process of reading and observing, you're going to glean lots of different facets of the passage.

What I recommend typically is that if you're doing not just a broad reading, because sometimes it's just good to go through the Bible in its flow, so you just do a long reading. But if you're doing a smaller portion and you're reading it methodically, it's good to read it multiple times.

And in those times of reading, I recommend definitely reading things in context. So for tonight too, let's make sure to read this from verse one down to verse nine. So I'm going to start from verse nine. It says, "Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above.

Since Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. And in them you also once walked when you were living in them, but now you also put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices." Okay? We take a moment to pause there, but you know that in context, you actually see a good flow even from verse one all the way through verse nine. Starting with verse one saying, "If you've been raised with Christ," and then with verse nine saying, "Since you have already put aside the old self and its evil practices." It's tying all this stuff together.

And if you read on, this whole section from verses one down through verse 17, you know that the main thrust of it is going to be your transformation. This application of portion is going to be your transformation in the death and resurrection of Christ, realizing you putting off the old man and putting on things that are resembling of our Lord.

Okay? Also, as the quick tip goes, remember that we want to read again to make sure that we understand and see the flow of thought. This I've mentioned before, so I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time, but whenever I read, I love these words. It's kind of weird saying I love these words, right?

Transitional words. It says, "Therefore," and then you have, you identify some of these things. I'm going to save the command for a little bit later, but later on when it says, "For," do you love prepositions? Prepositions are your friend. They tell you how the thought flows. The "for" tells you the idea of "for it is because," okay?

These contrasting words of, "But now," those are good flow words to think through. And it says, "Do not lie to one another." So typically, guess what? If I highlighted those three transition... Oops, I used purple before. If I highlighted those three transitional words, typically I can give you a three-point outline, right?

Three points of the thoughts and flow of that paragraph. What's more, the tip is make sure you're reading for observation and identification. This is where you're making sure that you're highlighting especially key commands. If you're reading Old Testament, you want to look at the verbs because the language itself is a very verbal language.

When you're looking at the New Testament, you also want to make sure you're paying special attention to the verbs. So when it tells you to consider dead, when it tells you, let's see, down later on, that you need to put them all aside, and then when it tells you, "Do not lie," you see those commandments and I can give you another three-point outline, right?

You can get the main thrust and the themes from identifying those special terms. Then the rest of it, you guys know. You should read it again to ask those questions. Why? Why is there two laundry lists? Why are the two laundry lists separated? Why does everything amount to idolatry?

Why? How come? Why is that there? Why is... And somebody asked a good question on it. Why is lying separated from that list? Does it have a place of prominence? And you ask a bunch of questions. And then you wanna make sure you read it again to give it that summary, to make sure you understand the thrust of the passage and you are able to actually give a concise understanding of what the convicting message of that passage is, right?

So typically, again, Pastor Peter repeatedly said this, so I'm not gonna spend too much more time on this, but the process of that repeated observation is going to lead you to identifying certain things that are far above what you can glean from, let's say, oh, in a morning's devotional passage from a one-page book that you're reading or something like that.

You're gonna gain a lot more. Okay. Now for us then, let's jump in. Here, starting from the "therefore," we already realized that there were many commandments before this. Okay? There were commandments that you should keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated, right? The whole mentality is that your mind, your thoughts, your heart, your desire and longing should be with Christ.

So when it comes to here, this command, the one commandment, we have to keep in mind that this is connected to all that, right? It's an outflow of all that. And so we take a look at this first commandment of considering the members of your earthly body as dead.

Okay? Let's take a moment to think about that. Because if you practice the comparing and contrasting different versions of this passage, whether you look at the NASB or, sorry, ESB or the NIV, you would immediately recognize like, hey, that command seems a little bit different, right? For example, the NIV will say, "Put to death therefore." The King James will say, "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." Okay?

And you gotta wonder like, how come? Why did it sound a little bit different? All I'm gonna say is this. It seems to me that the NASB tried to keep the contextual flow that your life dead and resurrected in Christ should cause you to consider your earthly members than dead, right?

However, in terms of that passage, it is more in tune with the original Greek to say as a more emphatic command, "Put to death therefore." In the Greek, the placement of the verbs actually matter as points of emphasis. And very clearly, it comes first. It reads, "Put to death therefore," rather than, "Therefore put to death," right?

So the whole idea that I'm saying is, there is an emphatic challenge and command for us to put to death the sins that are in our lives. We take a moment to think about this and later in verse 8, he has this very similar command just put in different terminology.

Where he says, "Put aside all these things." Put them all aside, he says. And that means for us to renounce. That means for us to cast away and shed like dirty clothing those things that are part of our earthly body. Those things that are part of our flesh. Okay?

Now let's take a moment to think about this then. We could sit and ask questions about, "Well, what does it mean our earthly body? What does it mean our members?" No it doesn't mean the members you don't like in the church. And no, it doesn't mean just your hand because your hand makes you to sin.

It is very, very clear throughout the rest of the passage, the various things you need to put aside. But let's take a moment to feel the conviction of that command when we think about this idea of put to death. We have to remember that this command in order for us to own it and receive it, we have to feel the burden of responsibility.

Right? We have to feel the burden of responsibility that the death of the old habits, the death and then you start thinking about the long, I call it the laundry list because man it's just boom, boom, boom, boom of convicting points. Are there immoralities, impurities, the passions, the evil desires, the greed, the anger, the malice, the wrath, all those things.

It's your responsibility to put to death and you have to bear that responsibility. What I'm saying is, I find that as I'm doing lots of counseling, as I find that as I hear people complaining about sometimes where their sanctification is, I find that there are lots of individuals who use euthemisms for where they are.

If let's say they find that they're in the midst of struggling with immoral, sexually explicit material on the internet, whatever it may be. Let's say maybe they're being tempted and they find that their eyes are wandering. And then rather than talking about that like, "Wow, I've got these evil, wicked desires in my heart." They talk about it like, "Oh goodness, there's a struggle." And sometimes I feel like there isn't that intense passion for Jesus anymore.

The affection is just not there. I'm not feeling that kind of fire anymore. You guys know what I'm talking about now, right? Certain times we find ourselves in moments of compromise and sin and we use really euphemistic terminology to talk about it. When you do that, you diminish that ownership.

You diminish that sense of responsibility that I have to purposely, intentionally identify the various things that I need to put to death. It doesn't happen just because. It doesn't happen because you complain God's not doing it for you. It just doesn't happen automatically. But rather the command for us is, "You need to be doing this." If you please turn your Bibles over to Romans chapter 8, there's an important cross-reference that we need to understand to feel that kind of exhortation, "You have to be active in this.

You have to be the one diligent to put to death these various things we're gonna learn about today." And the passage is Romans chapter 8, verses 12 through 14. And the passage says, "So then, brethren, we are under obligation not to the flesh to live according to the flesh.

For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit you're putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." There's an expectation that actively, with a sense of urgency, you are by the Spirit putting to death the deeds of the flesh.

It doesn't just go away. Not because you place yourself in the right context. Not because you've placed yourself around certain people and influences, but because you're actively identifying and killing those sins. Okay. So, we'll stop there and move to the next section. He says, "Put to death, or consider the members of the earthly body as dead." And then he describes it.

And so, if these were the commands of this is the put to death, these would be the targets. The sample targets of what you need to put away. That's the way I labeled it, okay? And he describes here that you need to consider dead or put to death, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

When you look at this passage, you definitely have to carefully take a look and say, "Hmm. Are there relationships between the words in this list?" Right? And what is that relationship? Why are they categorized this way? And then secondly, you've gotta ask, "Hmm. This seems really important because, man, I don't know if I categorized or identified...

If I had greed, if I identified that as idolatry, right? If I have the image right now, if I can give you that image of a bunch of individuals just bowing down to a gold piece of cow-looking, goat-looking, whatever it may be, that kind of imagery is exactly what Apostle Paul is saying that this greed, evil desire, passion, impurity, and immorality amounts to.

And you've gotta ask, "Let's make sense of that. How are these maybe desires and immoralities, how do they sum up to be idolatry?" Okay? What I'd like to say just briefly is this. What seems to me really clear, I'm gonna draw a little line here, and here in these sins, immorality, impurity, and passion, they're talking about sexual lust.

Okay? If you guys did the thing that Pastor Peter talked about, looking up the words, I'm not gonna go through every single one now for the sake of time. If you didn't get a chance to do it, go do it. Use the... I really like the website blueletterbible.com, 'cause you can do it just right down the line.

Somebody posted on our church website that Logos in terms of the base passage is available, and you can just use that program to click it. But these terms are like pornea and pathos and things like that, is talking about things that are sexual perversions, lewd acts, lustfulness. So these three terms, they are expressions of sexual sin.

And what seems to be pretty clear, however, is that these right here are pointing to the internal workings of those sexual sins. That the evil desires and the greed in your heart lead and ultimately express itself to those sexual sins. I drew you guys a little graph. Not a graph, but a chart.

I definitely believe that there is a progression, a progression of the sins that are produced. And what I'm gonna say is, a worldview or an individual's idolatrous or covetous begins to have great passions and evil desires, and that produces actions of immorality and impurity. I think that's the way I like to say it.

And the reason why I say this is because I'm gonna take a moment to think about the covetousness. Do you know what covetousness is? It's simply you believing. It's a belief system. When you believe, "I deserve more. I am owed by this country, by these people, by this God, more than what I have now.

I'm getting gypped." That mentality is the worldview that produces evil desire in you. And the next thing I wanna show you is this. Hold on. Here. Next thing I wanna show you is those desires set upon an individual, people, is going to lead to sexual immorality. When you believe that you are deserving of more, and when you believe that you are actually in place of the Lord, deserving to be served, glorified, honored, and whatever it may be, pleased by all these various different elements, you're gonna have all these kinds of expressions of sins.

And one that has particularly plagued all of mankind for as long as they've sinned is sexual immorality. When they look upon people as possessions. You know, I'm gonna say this. Generally speaking, typically speaking, whether it's a young man or an individual who is falling to sexual immorality, they are arrogant individuals who believe they're kings.

They have a King Solomon syndrome where they wish at some point or another that they could have a harem of thousands of women to serve them. They're not thinking of themselves as lowly individuals, "Oh, woe is me." No, they're thinking of themselves as kings on a throne to have women serve them.

And that's why typically when I counsel individuals, it's when they come back from work and their boss treats them unfairly, they come home and it's like, "I deserve better than that. They can't treat me this way." And then they run to using sexual immorality to feed their ego, to feed their arrogance.

There's a connection to all this. And so I wanted to show you this little chart that I drew up here. The way it should be is you and all of creation should be pleasing, serving, and loyal to God. The reason why all of that stuff amounts to idolatry when it comes to all those sexual immoralities, your greed and your evil desires is because you turn around.

God and all of creation should serve, worship, empower, and glorify you. You are the idol. You become the center of the universe. And therefore, you set yourself up as opposition to God's design. I hope that kind of helped answer those two questions. Why is there this list? And is there a progression?

And how does all of that amount to idolatry? Okay? Now when we go back to our passage then, let's go to the next section right here. If the command was put to death, this is the why. And it's kind of surprising. Because what Apostle Paul does is he says, "For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience." What's really clear here is when you ask the question, "What is the rationale?" The why that Apostle gives in this particular section, and I'm going to cut it off right here for six and seven.

The question is, "What is the rationale?" And you can even use the word "motivation." What is the motivation that Apostle Paul gives for us to actively put to death those things that are sinful? And I want to highlight two things. One is the wrath of God, and two, it's your inconsistency.

Or you can say this, because this was your former life, right? This was the once you were living. It's inconsistent with who you are now. So there were the two things that I see here, one and two. And so let's take a moment to talk about that a little bit.

The first of the why should I, and he says it's because God righteously judges by his wrath. That should immediately invoke fear in us. But here, one thing is very true, is that we very much get accustomed. We very much get accustomed to grace. I'm not sure if you guys have ever been in a class where your professor is a little bit lazy.

Have you guys ever been in one of those? And so each Friday, he's like, "Ah, you know what, you guys, this Friday we're just not going to have a quiz." Next week rolls around, he says, "Ah, you guys, this week we're not going to have a quiz." And the next thing you know, the third week, he's like, "You know what, guys, we're going to have a quiz." And everyone's like, "Oh, what?

That's not fair." Right? I mean, typically we just get naturally accustomed to grace. But the fact of the matter is that we have to keep in mind, it's not so much like, "You guys need to fear God's wrath is coming, like, right now." The way I like to say it is this, God has always been the same.

You just think he's different right now. God has always been fearsome, and God has always been merciful. Amen? It's just our common, fallen, weird, twisted thing we do in our head where we assume he's changed. He's not. As a matter of fact, scripture says, like, "God is not mocked.

You're going to reap what you sow, and God is going to give a just recompense for the things that you've done." The fact of the matter is, God is not partial. He is exacting, and his wrath is fearsome. It's that we have been given the unique, unique mercy to hear the message of grace.

Amen? But God is exactly the same as he was in the Old Testament as he is today. And therefore, we should fear. There should be a healthy, godly fear. But what's more, I think this is super important if you take a moment to think about this. Combine verse seven with the rationale.

So here you have certain terms that you start thinking, like, "For, because, since," and earlier, oh, it was verse five, uh, verse one, right? I don't have it here, so. When you start thinking about that, I love it because Apostle Paul is, like, so reasonable, you know? He works with you to help you understand!

But the thing he's talking about right here in verse seven, it says, "Look, in them you once walked when you were living in them," and then this whole command to put them all aside, he says, "Since you already laid aside the old self with evil practices," right? And you think about that for a moment.

And this command for us to put aside and put to death is exactly what already took place at the moment of salvation. When we received Jesus Christ, we already said, "I am willing to put aside my ambition, I'm willing to put aside my desires, I'm willing to put aside my self-esteem, whatever it is in my inclination to preserve me, I've already surrendered it to you." Right?

And the reason why this is so important is because we're going back to the base of the Gospel, saying, "God, I've already surrendered everything, and I've died in Christ." And so now, when somebody starts saying, "Man, I hear that challenging command to go put to death my sin, my lust," this thing that, you know, for some people, they've been struggling for years and years, and if there's anything that someone has said, like, "I just don't think I can overcome this," a lot of times, it's lust.

Well, we gotta start asking this question. Not so much like, "Oh, have you ever reconciled with Jesus?" But, man, is it really, really something where you just can't and you have no power? Or is it more on the lines of, "You've forgotten," right? "You've forgotten the power that God has given you." Is it more just simply, "Man, I really think that my flesh is so powerful, and I can't," or is it more so in your heart, you don't want to?

We gotta start asking some really deep, sometimes excruciating questions. If someone is starting to say, "I think I can't. From my experience, from my failures, from my track record, I can't. This passage is teaching us otherwise." The rationale is you already have, right? You know what this is all about.

Go back to the time when you surrendered to Christ and you laid down your personal ambitions, you've laid down your personal desires. Go back to the moments when you clearly saw the beauty of Jesus and you recognized, "This is not even a question. I choose Christ over any trash." You have to go back to that.

So here, in verse six through seven, again, I wanted to give that challenge. It is an attention to the rationale and to why of the putting to death of our earthly members. Okay? So now what we're gonna do is this last section here, and then we'll start wrapping things up together.

Okay? In this last section here, I'm gonna say this. If all of this, the target was actually idolatry... Oops, I didn't mean to put it into green because it's sin. We're gonna say red. Okay? Over here, if it was idolatry, over here, this is what I'm gonna say. It's kinda weird.

So my titles, I take some time to think about and stuff. To me, sometimes when I look back, it's a little cheesy. But what I like to call this is stubborn idolatry. And I'm gonna explain why. Okay? He says, "Put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another." Okay? So let's take a moment to think about these things. Again, you have to ask the question, what is the rationale between separating these two lines of lists? Okay? Also, is there a reason why this list is placed here, but this portion of it is placed here?

Does this have a place of prominence? Is it something important? Okay? Sometimes you're gonna find the answer, sometimes you're not. You're gonna kinda take a guess at it, okay? But amongst this column of various sins that you see here, do you see any relationship? And this is what I'm gonna say, is earlier, what we noticed with the previous section was that there were expressions of sin, immorality, impurity, passion, and it started pointing into your heart, evil desires, greed, which is the attitude that's in you producing the stuff.

Right? And then it told you, in summary, all of that at the core nucleus of why you're sinning is because you placed yourself at the throne. You're a king. Okay? Well, I think what he's doing is he's doing that kind of come to the heart and now work your way out.

'Cause if you think about it, anger, wrath, and malice is attitudes of the heart. So if I were to draw a line, I'd put it right here. In your heart, when you're angry, and anger kind of talks about that brooding. I really, really love looking at the Hebrew words for angry and stuff like that, it's so vivid.

It talks about the blowing of the nostrils like a raging bull. In the Greek, it also talks about this brooding. There's this wrath where, let's say if you go home, you start punching stuff in your pillows, that's wrathful, okay? If there's malice in your heart, that means you're intent on hurting somebody.

Okay? But then, that overflows to slander and abusive speech. Now you use a weapon. Oh, okay. It agreed with me. Concurs. Now you use a weapon, and that weapon is your mouth. You start slandering individuals, you start using abusive words, harsh words, and then you also use lies. So I have one more.

I don't know if I put it on your piece of paper, but this is the way I would draw it up, right? That there is idolatry in your heart and there's still covetousness. And then there's these evil desires, and it breeds wrath, anger, malice, slander, abusive speech, and lies.

Now why in the world, though, did I call it stubborn idolatry? Is because let me tell you something, right? When I examine my own heart, okay? When I want this so bad, and I'm not willing to surrender to this, do you know what happens? I get angry. When people are not serving me like they should, when God...

Oops, sorry about that. When God is not giving me the expectations that I had, that if he joined my life, that he would all of a sudden make it more peaceful, more lovely, and good. If my image is not what I all hoped it to be, you know what I'm getting at, right?

When you are so bent on having this, guess what happens to your heart? The root of bitterness enters. And now you will use weaponized words. Now you will use various tools to get at what you desire. And that's why I call it stubborn idolatry. When you want this so bad that you're willing to slander, that's what you're gonna see.

Then a little while ago, I was actually studying Colossians for another study. A while back, I taught Colossians for a youth group, and then I posted on the internet a case counseling scenario. What if we had a certain individual, okay? Let's call this individual Martha, right? Martha was not invited to a birthday party that a bunch of the friends were invited, and all of a sudden, she got really angry, right?

And I posed on there, what if she got so angry, she got so mad, she started to fall away from the fellowship, and then she decided, "I'm leaving. This church is horrible." What went wrong? How should we counsel her? And it was very interesting. People had lots of different responses.

So now you guys know, it's a trap, okay? When I put those questions... No, it's not a trap. It's a desire to get you thinking about this stuff, because it's a highly plausible scenario. You don't wanna get invited, all of a sudden, it's just like, "What do they think about me?" Right?

You could get very... How dare they? You know how many times I've thrown birthday parties for them? I thought we were like this, you know? And then maybe they'll go home and they'll get really upset. And then, yeah, they'll come home, they'll throw their bag. And all of a sudden, when no one's watching, their wrath comes out.

And then malice sets in. They'll say, "You know what? I'm never inviting them ever." They're gonna feel the burn. The malice sets in. And sometimes, we don't even know it, but subconsciously, we might say stuff like that. Like, "I'm gonna make them feel the burn of what they did to me." Next thing you know, they come talk to you, and you're like, "What do you want?" Whoa, right?

Your attitude comes out and your words are sharp. Sometimes you might even slander. "Oh, oh, that person, you can invest all your life into them, and they don't care." Whoa, really? Now you raised it to that person will never care about you? This kind of stuff happens sometimes. But I do think, I do think that when we come back to this idea of why lying is separated, is because that is at the heart of a lot of anger, wrath, malice, slander.

In order for you to retain your stubborn ideology, guess what you have to do? You have to hunker down, double down into your lie. You are the biggest fraud when you set yourself up as an idol. You're living the biggest lie when you think you have every right to be angry and mad at the world, at God, and how horrible everybody else is.

I'm pretty sure you have found this. If you've ever dealt with an incredibly angry, malicious individual, they have many lies they've already bought into. But that's because that stubborn, stubborn, idolatrous living of, "You should serve me, and you should serve me," you have to live in lies. And you are the biggest lie.

It's a fraud. And so Apostle Paul says, "Stop defrauding each other. Don't cheat each other." And that's a convicting thing for us, right? When we have that kind of mentality, we are literally robbing, robbing what other people are created to do. The people around you are created with all rest of creation, including you, to worship God Almighty.

And the way it should look is like this. Okay? I spent some time on this, so I wanted to make sure I showed it. That it looks like this. To place yourself as just one of the many creation of God intended to serve the Lord. When you operate in that reality, much of the rest of the expressions and much of the rest of the things that enter into your life are going to actually be in peace.

So let's take a moment to pray. And as a way of conclusion, I again wanna say, the initial challenge for us was to seek Christ. To seek the things above. That absolutely necessitates we put away the things that are incompatible with Christ, which is our idolatry. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your grace.

God, we recognize that you are so patient. As God Almighty, to see little creatures set themselves up as having little invisible thrones, it must be laughable. And God, we recognize it must be sometimes so irritating. And we understand why your word says that you stand opposed to the proud.

I pray, Father God, that you would instill in our hearts humility to recognize, God, we are created for you. And that if there's anything in our flesh, in our heart, and in our mind that desires so much to be more important than we really are, I pray, Father God, that you would give us the heart of surrender.

Lord, we wanna thank you again so much for the word that you have for us today. It's in Christ's name. Amen.