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Who is the Contractor of Your Life?
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, January 15, 2006
As we begin this year, 2006, I covet for you and I covet
for me three basic commitment adventures. The first one is commitment to Jesus
Christ our Lord and our Savior. The second is a commitment to our church and
serving Christ through our church. And the third is a deeply personal
commitment for you to use the gifts God has given to you and to invest them for
the cause of Christ and to help somebody else.
The first is a basic commitment of all Christians; this is
what it means to be a Christian, to follow Him, Jesus the Lord. And the second
is a commitment to making a difference through the church and the third, that
puts its finger upon each one of us because just like our thumb prints we are
all different in giftedness but when we put them all together it really makes a
difference. Christ, church, call: the three commitments.
This morning I want to deal with the basic commitment to
our Lord Jesus Christ and I ask you to turn, please, to Colossians. Colossians
is one of the four prison letters that Paul wrote. Colossians, 2nd
chapter, 6th and 7th verses. Those four prison letters,
by the way, are four of the most oft read in all of the New Testament;
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. I begin reading with verse 6:
“So then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord continue to live,” it can
also be translated walk, “in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in
the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness.” No grouches
allowed. Verse 13 says: “When you were dead in your sins God made you alive
with Christ. He forgave all our sins.” And at the bottom of 14, verse 14: “He
took our sins away, nailing them to the cross.”
Keep your Bible open as we look at these phrases in turn.
Let me begin with the first one. As you have received Christ. In English the
word receive is a passive word. In the language of the New Testament it is a
much more active word. It is a participating word, an intentional word and
sometimes even an aggressive word. Let me give you some examples because it can
be translated, this very same word can be translated receive, it can be
translated take up, it can be translated seize. Look at some of the verses.
Jesus said, for example, take up. That’s this word. “Take up your cross and
follow me.” Again it is written in scripture in Matthew 8:17 that Jesus takes
our infirmities. And another one when Jesus, after the resurrection appeared
before them and in their grief He said peace be with you. Don’t be afraid and
then turning to them He said receive the Holy Spirit.
When Paul here to the Colossians says just as you have
received Christ salvation happens with a kind of an echo. The first part of the
echo is for us to release, to release our hunch that we can handle everything
just like it is. It is also a releasing of our sins to Him, of our future to
Him and of our giftedness to Him. It’s a receiving. “Now, says the apostle,
continue to live in Him.” The word live can also be translated walk. As a
matter of fact it’s the garden-variety word for walk but translators like to put
live. That’s fine. I love the word walk. You know when people are baptized I
ask them do you commit yourself to have a daily walk with the Lord. Do you
remember the phrase used more often a couple of years ago or 5 than today, you
need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk? If you were going to translate
that in the language of the New Testament you’d use that word, walk. And so
what Jesus is saying when He says follow me is that He will walk with us
whatever the journey is and wherever it leads He will be there.
Steven Covey, the guru of business and organizational
principles insists that one of the most important principles of life and a
business is this: begin with the end in mind. Isn’t it interesting how often
we forget that completely? But if we are Christians we need to add something to
that and that is that we need to not only begin with the end in mind but we need
to begin with the One who knows the end and has it in mind, Jesus the Lord.
There is an old saying you might want to reach out, seize and make it your own.
Here it is: if the Lord brings you to it the Lord will walk you through it.
The next phrase that Paul uses is be built up in Him.
Shirley and I were driving along, we were on our way to the coast for a few days
off and it was a ways to get there. Driving along contentedly, putting miles
between us and the responsibilities, all of a sudden we both did a double take
because you see out in a cleared field were streets, foundations, concrete slabs
and nothing else. It was a vacant place. It was planned vacancy. No, it
wasn’t planned vacancy because somebody put all of that out there with a plan in
mind. But here was a dream gone bankrupt. There was no activity and the weeds
that were supposed to be somebody’s floor, the slab, weeds had grown up. You
see in life you need a builder, a contractor, a worker who will not only start
with you but finish with you, who will not only get off of the starting blocks
but will be there at the finish line. In Hebrews Jesus is called the author and
the finisher of our faith. And Paul says in Philippians the first chapter and
the 6th verse that the Lord who has begun a good work in you will
continue with it until the day of Jesus Christ. Be built up in Him says Paul
about our Lord.
Now friends you may never have thought about it and you
often overlook it but Jesus was raised in a builder’s home. His earthly father,
Joseph, was a builder, a contractor, a carpenter. And I have to believe that
when Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and there was no room in the end and
they were directed to a stable that Joseph with an eye to materials looked
around and as true about most barns there’s always some board, some material
somewhere. And that Joseph probably seized the situation and determined to make
a comfortable place for Mary and for Jesus to be born. You see he was a builder
and you know in Luke 2 if you were to look and I won’t take the time to do it
except take my word for it, when Luke finishes the story of the shepherds and
they came to Bethlehem and then they went back to the mountainside, their home,
praising God the very next verse there’s a huge break and the next verse says
that on the 8th day they took Jesus to be consecrated at the temple.
You see the Old Testament directed that every first-born male is to be
consecrated to the Lord and certain sacrifices were to be made. If you remember
the story Anna and Simeon, two different people, two different stories, both of
them happened when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple to be consecrated.
I got a question for you, where did Mary and Joseph live during that eight
days? You say probably with relatives, could be, except why didn’t they go to
the relatives when they first arrived? They probably went to Jerusalem and they
had relatives there except that the text says they went up to Jerusalem. In my
mind’s eye here’s how it happened. After the birth of Jesus Joseph went to the
innkeeper and he said when you have a vacancy I want it because we’re going to
have to register with the Romans and we haven’t yet. We don’t know when they
registered; we know it was in that 8-day period. And I think also we really,
since we’re this close, we want to take our Son and have Him consecrated at the
temple. We’ll wait until then. And if you don’t have a vacancy would you mind
if I fashioned a little shelter made a place for us to stay until you do have a
vacancy? Joseph, I’m pointing out, sized up the situation, used whatever he had
and brought into fruition possibility. And I wonder if Jesus, growing up as a
boy in a builder’s home didn’t make those same principles work spiritually
speaking. Isn’t that what Jesus does? He takes whatever we give Him and He
begins to fit it together and to fashion and to bring things that you wouldn’t
think would ever work and they do. Jesus is the great builder.
And then Paul says that you be strengthened in the faith
that you were taught. The disciples were learners, that’s what it means. And
they clustered around Jesus like chicks around a mother hen and they listened
and they copied. Fragments of what He taught are ours because they were
gathered together, you see, notes taken of what He said. These people learned
to be strengthened by what Jesus taught them and you have that same
possibility. All you’ve got to do is pick up the gospels and read them. Not
only does Paul say be strengthened in faith but he teaches about forgiveness.
Look here again at what is written. “You were dead in your sins but God made
you alive with Christ and He forgave all of your sins. Let’s go back to the
carpenter shop. Have you ever been in one? Or a woodworker’s shop, or a
cabinetmaker’s shop? They start the day and everything is clean. The reason is
they cleaned it up the night before. But before long the sawdust is on the
floor and the shavings are on the floor. And the little bits of the end of
boards have been thrown on the floor or thrown somewhere in a pile. And by the
end of the day you have a first-degree mess and you know what happens? That
carpenter, that woodworker takes a broom, takes a cloth and that broom sweeps it
all up so that it can be put in the trash bin and the cloth to wipe off all of
the tables. It is a parable can you hear it? That’s what Jesus does with our
sins, with our guilts, with our failures. He wants us to have a clean start
every day and if only we will take to Him He will receive our sins, our
confessions, our repentance, He will receive it and put it in the trash bin.
And Paul says that on that day when this man who put wood together and made it
fit on that day they fit Him on the cross and they nailed Him there and, says
Paul, our sins were nailed there at the same time, one by one, maybe, sin by
sin, problem by problem nailed to the cross. Would you this day receive the
wonder and the miracle of forgiveness?
Paul is not quite through. He talks about the fact this is
no mere man but that in Christ the fullness of God dwells in a perfect way.
Listen to verse 9: “For in Christ all the fullness of God lives in bodily
form.” Jack Shay, the storyteller, talks about a five-year-old girl. Her name
was Sharon and on Christmas Eve she did her own version of the Christmas Story
but when she got to the end she quieted down, made sure everybody was watching
and listening and then she asked in more of a whisper than a voice, then she
said: then the baby was borned. And do you know who He was? Quiet. And then
she said: the baby was God and she jumped up and did a twirl around and ran
around the room and danced a step, ran to the sofa and put pillows all over her
head. And Jack Shay says what other response could a five year old make to that
huge declaration and suggests that some of us haven’t realized that and maybe we
need to put some pillows on top of our heads and say this one was really God.
One final word, listen to this phrase: “overflowing with
thankfulness”. It is part of the wonder of Colossians, Ephesians and
Philippians is that this man who was in prison is writing about gratitude,
thanksgiving. Look at the last verses in Colossians. The last verse, as a
matter of fact, verse 18, chapter 4, Paul says: “I Paul write this greeting in
my own hand.” In other words he’s signing it. He’s dictated it but now he’s
going to sign it. And then he says: “remember my chains”. Anybody here who
has been in chains? No, and here is one who was there was there and is writing
about being thankful. And dear friend, as we come to this time I would pray
that the Spirit of God would abound in your heart with deep thanksgiving.
Commitment to Christ, would you this time reaffirm your commitment to the Lord
Jesus?
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