The Change Jesus Makes

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I didn’t realize until I had gotten quite a ways into preparing both messages for today that they were both going to be about change and about change in us. That’s just sort of how it worked out. And I thought, well, maybe the Lord’s trying to tell me something or trying to tell you something.

Somebody. Trying to tell somebody something. But where we are tonight in the book of Colossians deals a lot with change.

And there are few things that are more difficult in life than producing meaningful, lasting change in our lives. There’s not much you’ll find that’s more difficult than doing that. That’s why I was reading an article this week, And it said a majority of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by January 19th.

Now, they studied that. How they studied that, I don’t know. But I guess they found a lot of people who were honest and would say, or they lied and said they went to January 19th when it was really, you know, the third.

But they said, according to these studies, half of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by January the 19th. And by the beginning of February, it’s over 80%. So we tell ourselves we’re going to change.

We’re going to do better. We’re going to try harder. This is the year that we’re going to change whatever it is.

And we start out with these good intentions, but change is really hard. It just is, right? Talking to Janie about muffins this morning after church because she made blueberry muffins and just left them out there, right?

And she said, do you want any? I said, yes, but no. Because weight loss is one of the things that’s really hard to change. It’s one of those things that people struggle with and sometimes struggle with for a lifetime.

And I told her, people offer me goodies on Sunday mornings. And usually by the time we get to Sunday morning, I have misbehaved for about a day and a half. And I wake up on Sunday morning and say, it’s a new week.

It’s a new me. We’re doing things different this time. But usually by Friday, I’m going, what else can I get into that I’m not supposed to have?

It’s just hard to It’s hard to change that. And we look at things like that that deal with our external features. We deal with things like in our New Year’s resolutions, I’m going to exercise more, I’m going to eat better, I’m going to give up smoking, whatever it may be.

We deal with these external things and they’re hard enough to change, but try changing something internally. Try changing a character trait. Try changing a personality trait.

In some cases, it’s nearly impossible. There was kind of a running joke in Seminole about me having road rage. And I know y’all haven’t really seen that side of me, but you haven’t ridden with me, most of you.

And there aren’t a lot of places in Seminole to have road rage, except when my kids were going to school. And if any of you have ever dropped off or picked up kids in a school line, there’s some parents that need to go school for driving, right? And I could go from just calm and laid back to ready to throttle somebody because they didn’t stop at the stop signs, or they went the wrong way in the one way, or they turned left out of a right turn only spot, and there’s no excuse for it, all right?

And it would just frustrate me. And so people would ask, because I mentioned this a couple times, people would ask me. Do you have any road rage this week, preacher?

Mind your own business, all right? I’m trying. I’m trying to change that part of my personality.

I will say I’ve done better here, but that’s the beauty of there being no traffic in our neighborhood. I’m not already revved up when I get into town. But I tried.

I tried so hard to change that part of my personality, and it’s not easy. Change is hard, especially when we’re talking about something that’s a character trait. And the Bible teaches though that our lives can be completely turned around.

Not just changed a little bit here and there around the edges, but our lives can be completely transformed. They can be completely turned around. But what most people assume is the way to get there is for us to just try harder, do better, you know, wake up, say new year, new me, or new week, new me.

I’m going to tackle it differently. I’m really going to do my best. We assume, most people assume that that’s how the Bible teaches we can be changed, that our lives can be transformed, but that’s not what the answer is. The answer we find, among other places, in Colossians chapter 1, if you’ll turn there with me this evening, and I don’t know why, Brother Jack, my notes say Colossians 1, 1 through 34.

We’re not doing 1 through 34 tonight. There’s not even a 34 there, so it’s 1, 13, and 14. So if you’ll turn with me to Colossians 1, verse 13, and stand with me once you’ve found it.

Now this is right on the heels of what Paul wrote that we read last week about God giving us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And he begins to transition to talking about Jesus and the work that Jesus does in our lives. And that’s where he says in verse 13, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.

the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. You may be seated. It’s a very short passage tonight.

I’d like to tell you that that means it’ll be a short message, but I can’t promise that. I’ll let you know at the end if it was a short message or not. But he talks about this transformation that takes place, and he says it’s because of the work of Jesus Christ. For you and me as Christians, we don’t need to look any further than Jesus Christ for total transformation.

Now, when we’re talking about changing who we are, when we’re talking about changing the less desirable traits of our personality and our character, the goal of all of this, the goal of spiritual growth, as I’ve hit on several times throughout the book of Colossians already, the goal here is for us to be more like Jesus. We can’t just do that by resolutions. It’s Him working within us that’s going to cause that to happen.

So when we’re talking about, gee, I wish I was a more patient person. I wish I didn’t deal with this sin or this temptation. I wish that I had more of a love for other people.

I wish I. . .

Whatever it is. If we’re describing something that makes us more like Jesus, it’s something that He’s going to have to do in us. It’s not something we can do on our own.

If I just resolve that this year I’m going to be holier this year, I can’t do that on my own. That’s something He has to do in me. But on top of that, I’ll tell you, some of the lesser stuff, the stuff that’s a little easier than the inherent personality traits, you can turn to Jesus about those things too.

When I know I ought to not eat that whole pie that’s sitting on the counter. More than once, I’ve talked to Jesus about it. And it helps.

I need to not say those things. Now, I don’t curse in traffic, but I do name call a little bit. It’s wrong, but I do it.

And when I need to deal with that, I talk to Jesus about it because he needs to change it. You and I as Christians don’t have to look anywhere but Jesus for total transformation. And look at some of the things that he outlines here in these two verses that Jesus transforms. And if he transforms these things, I’m telling you, there’s nothing in your life that he can’t transform.

If he can handle these big things, then tell me what’s too hard for him to handle. Because of Jesus, it says in verse 13 that we are delivered from the power of darkness. Now it’s saying that the Father delivers us, but all of this is tied to Jesus.

When it says He has delivered us, that’s He the Father has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. It’s Jesus who died for us. It’s Jesus who provided the redemption.

It’s Jesus into whose kingdom we’re going. And he goes on after this to talk more about Jesus and what he’s done for us and who Jesus is. Some things we’ll talk about in coming weeks.

The image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. This is all about Jesus. He’s at the center of it.

So even this deliverance from the power of darkness is because of the work of Jesus Christ. And when he says power here, he’s describing something they would have understood in Greek as a jurisdiction, being under somebody’s authority. And so this tells us that we were at one point under the jurisdiction, under the authority of darkness. We were slaves to sin, essentially.

The Bible describes it that way, that we are slaves to sin. And the world that does not know God assumes that it walks in freedom because, hey, I can sin as much as I want. I can live however I want.

You Christians, you all are just, you have no freedom, you have no fun in your life. You’ve heard it. But the Bible says that being in bondage to sin is slavery.

Here’s the bottom line. We’re going to serve something. We’re wired that way.

We’re going to serve something. We’re going to worship something. We can either be slaves to sin or we can be servants of Jesus Christ. But the world thinks it’s free because it can sin, it can do whatever it wants.

It doesn’t realize that that sin it thinks is serving it. The world says sin serves me. They don’t realize they are serving sin and they are shackled to sin.

Anybody who’s ever been addicted to anything understands that that’s true. People say all the time, I can give it up whenever I want, but really, you’re enthralled by whatever that is. And it’s not as easy as saying, I’m going to give it up.

That’s what sin does. That’s what all sin does. It tries to enslave us.

But it says here that because of Jesus, we are delivered from the power of darkness. The book of Romans says we are not under sin. Sin should have no more dominion over us.

As believers, I think that’s important for us to remember. And I think it’s important for us to remind Satan of that from time to time. Because he knows it.

And now he knows that we know it too. God has said that if we belong to Jesus Christ, we are no longer in bondage to sin. We no longer are required to do what sin tells us to.

Sin is not in charge of us. And that’s a change that only comes about because of Jesus Christ. He’s the only one who could break those chains. And so it says we are delivered.

We are delivered. We are set free. We are rescued from the power of darkness because of what Jesus Christ has done.

That’s a change. We go from being slaves to sin to being servants of Jesus Christ. And then we see also in verse 13 that through Jesus we’re welcomed into the kingdom. It’s like he’s thrown open the gates of his kingdom, thrown them open wide and just welcomed us right in because it says here that he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us.

The Father has conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. So through what Jesus has done, we are welcomed into the kingdom. I like the way the King James translates this.

I believe it says we’ve been translated. We’ve been picked up from one spot and put into another. I mean, the idea there is literally that He snatched us up out of one kingdom and dropped us down right in the middle of another.

It’s not a journey we could make on our own. It’s not that I woke up one morning and thought, hmm, I’ll get in the car and drive to another kingdom today. I know we can’t really drive there, but we can’t make that journey on our own.

We can’t transition from one kingdom to the next. He had to pick us up. And He had to convey us, translate us.

He had to move us. And we are welcomed into His kingdom. I love the illustration in the story of the prodigal son.

The older I get, the more I discover the beauty of the gospel all over that story. And here’s what I realized a few years ago. With that prodigal son being us, it’s a reminder.

And he does represent us in the story. Because we’ve all been in that spot being separated from the Father through our own sin. And with that prodigal son representing us, he did not deserve to go back to his father and say, would you let me come back and be your son?

He went back to him and said, I don’t deserve to come back as your son after all that I’ve done, after the ways I’ve turned my back on you, the ways I’ve shamed you, the ways I’ve done all of this. I don’t deserve to come back as your son. I don’t even deserve to come back as your servant, but I’m asking if you would be merciful enough to let me come back and be one of your servants.

And what did the father do? He didn’t even deserve to come back as a servant, but the father took him back, not just as a servant. He welcomed him in as a son.

He said, my son who was dead is now alive again. When we’re brought into the kingdom, understand, when we’re translated out of the power of darkness and into the kingdom of his son, understand we don’t deserve to be there even as servants. We don’t even deserve to be God’s shoeshine boy in the kingdom.

And yet he welcomes us in as his sons and daughters. Because we were good? Because he saw something good in us?

No, because of what Jesus Christ did. And so we have not only this transformation of the power we’re under, but we have this transformation of where we belong from one kingdom to another that takes place only because of what Jesus Christ can do. Where we go from being foreigners and enemies of God to being fellow citizens in the kingdom and being heirs.

He talks about the inheritance of the saints that we looked at last week. Not just fellow citizens, but family members. He welcomes us in because of what Jesus Christ did.

And we see in verse 14 that in Jesus we are redeemed and we are forgiven. In whom, when He says whom, He’s talking about Jesus there. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

For years, I didn’t. . .

Redemption is one of those church words. We’ve sung about it. We kind of have an idea of what it means.

I didn’t understand what was being conveyed by the word redemption until I was sitting in a French class in college years ago. And something we were having to translate used the word rachete, re-achete. Achete is the French word for buy, to buy.

And so we were having to translate this text, and looking at it, I realized that word rachete means redeem. And it’s like it clicked in my brain that the word redeem means to buy back. I never knew that before.

But think about where we see the word redeem in our language. Usually on coupons. How much is a coupon worth?

What’s the face value of it? Usually like 1 20th of a cent. So you can get a truckload of coupons and go buy you a cup of coffee or something.

They’re not worth anything. They’re not even worth the paper they’re printed on. Until the manufacturer contracts with the grocery store and says, we’ll buy that back.

And they reimburse them. You can get 55 cents off of whatever, or $5 off of this. They said, we will buy this back.

And suddenly it has value. Something that’s worth 1 20th of a cent can add up to some massive savings. They buy it back.

And we need to be careful not to gloss over that word redeem. It means so much more than what we think it means. It means He purchased us back.

He purchased us. He bought us. The Word says we are bought with a price.

He paid for us with His own blood so that now we belong to Him. We are redeemed. We have this redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

And I was reading about this this week. The way this works with God is not the way it works with us. Because I can forgive somebody and because I’m not perfect, don’t tell my wife that, but because I’m not perfect, it comes back up.

With my kids, they’ll do something wrong. They’ll apologize and I’ll say, I forgive you. We’ve taught them don’t say it’s okay because it’s not.

I forgive you, and I find myself bringing it up the next time they do it. Well, you did this already. Wait a minute.

I said I forgave them. When God forgives, His Word says He chooses to remember our sins no more. Not that God’s forgetful.

Not that God’s gotten amnesia. God knows it happened, but He has chosen not to keep it in the forefront of His mind. He’s chosen not to hold it against us anymore.

And as I talked about on a Wednesday night recently, He says He’ll put our sins as far from us as the East is from the West. And I gave you that illustration of a globe. You can get to a point so far north on the globe, the only way you can go is south. So there are limits to how far north and how far south you can go.

But God said, I’ll put the sin as far from you as the east is from the west. Infinite. You can’t ever spin that globe all the way east. And you can’t ever spin it all the way west. God says, I’m going to put it that far away from you. He forgives us and He purchases us through the blood of Jesus.

And we come to a point where He looks at us and He no longer sees our sin. Again, God knows it’s there. This is not a trick.

But He no longer sees our sin when He looks at us. He sees the righteousness of Christ. And I’m so thankful that He does. And so in Christ, we’ve been transformed from somebody who stands before God empty-handed, covered in sin, ashamed, and owing a debt, deserving a penalty that we can never pay.

And He has transformed us into somebody who can come boldly before the throne of grace. Not because we deserve it, but because He deserves it. And we’ve been clothed in His righteousness.

We’ve been forgiven. We’ve been redeemed. Everything about where we stand with God has been completely transformed because of what Jesus Christ did.

As I said, we don’t need to look anywhere but Jesus for total transformation. If He can handle all of those things, what can He not handle? He completely changes who we are, where we’re headed, and how we relate to God.

And because of this, Jesus is worthy of glory for the change that He makes in us. I know sometimes people will say, why do you go to church? Why do you bother praying?

You read the Bible, why would you want to do that? Listen, when you understand what He’s done for you, when you really understand who you are and then who you are in Christ, folks, there is no amount of glory that He does not deserve. There’s nothing we could do that’s over the top to praise Him.

And so as we’ve been talking about spiritual growth out of Colossians 1, I would tell you tonight, just like we’ve looked at in these other messages, that we ought to rejoice in the change that He’s already made. We ought to glorify Him for the change that He’s already made. That’s what He’s doing here.

He’s writing to the people at Colossae about what Jesus Christ accomplished on their behalf. He’s bragging on Jesus. That’s what it means to glorify Him.

Brag on Him. Through your words and through your actions. One of my heroes in the faith told me shortly before one of my earliest sermons, pulled me aside and he said, whatever you do, brag on Jesus.

I can do that. I may not have the most brilliant messages in the world, but I can brag on Jesus. I’ll tell you what, rejoice in the change that He’s already made in you.

Brag on Him. Brag on Him with your words, with your actions, with your attitude. Brag on Jesus.

but also continue to look to Him for further change. Trust Him that if He’s already brought you this far, what can He not do in making you into what He wants you to be? So rather than trusting in self-help, greater effort, human philosophies, if I could just do this, if I could just figure this out, go to a bookstore.

Are there still bookstores open? Or did Amazon take care of that too? But you can go, there used to be these things called bookstores, kids, that you could go to and they just, like a library, but you could buy books.

Self-help was always one of the biggest sections. There were so many books on how you can fix this part of who you are, or fix this part of your life, or heaven forbid you try to fix other people. That’s not really self-help, but there were books on it.

Got this idea that we’ve just got to try harder and do better. Listen, trust in Jesus to change you into what He wants you to be. That doesn’t mean we can’t take steps to do better things and do right things.

It means our trust ultimately is in Him to transform us into who He wants us to be. If He can deliver us from the power of darkness, if He can welcome us into the kingdom, if He can redeem us and if He can forgive us, what can He not do? What is there in our lives that needs to change that He can’t handle?