Dr. Rodney Plunket

“o§ß e˙rru/sato hJma◊ß e˙k thvß e˙xousi÷aß touv sko/touß kai« mete÷sthsen ei˙ß th\n basilei÷an touv ui˚ouv thvß aÓga¿phß aujtouv, . . .”  This is Colossians (Col) 1:13 in Greek, the language in which the Apostle Paul wrote it.  Rendered in a way that I hope brings out the richness of this verse Paul says:  “Who (in context, God the Father) rescued/saved/delivered us from the rule/authority/
power/domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom/royal reign/rule of His beloved Son.”

Paul wants his readers to realize something.  He wants them to know that they have been brought across a great chasm thanks to the saving power of God in Christ Jesus.  Behind them, in their past, is something dark, sinister, and evil.  They have been removed from that realm and given the chance to live a new life in the Kingdom of God’s Beloved Son.

This is the final lesson in the series on the Kingdom of God.  And, since this is the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, it seems only fitting to conclude this series by thanking God for placing us in “The Kingdom of His Beloved Son.”  To be as thankful as we should be let’s look back and remember from what we were rescued.  Paul’s Book of Colossians can help us do that because he refers to the kinds of dark lives his readers once lived.

In Col 1:21 he declares that his readers “were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.”  In Col 2:13 he says that they “were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of [their] flesh.”  In Col 3:5 Paul lists the sins of “fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed”; and in v 7 says, “These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.”  In Col 3:8-9 he refers to the sins of “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language” as well as lying; and makes clear that these are sins from their past which they have not yet fully put away.

Feel the darkness.  Feel the darkness of sin.  Feel the purposelessness of a life estranged from God and hostile to God.  Feel that state of being dead in sin, so dead that you cannot conquer that sin.  It controls your life like a powerful drug to which you have become addicted.  It has killed you morally.  You have no life left with which to fight it.

That, brothers and sisters, is the darkness.  That is the horror from which we have been rescued by the love of God through the death, resurrection, and ascension of God’s Son.

I want us to see together something that I hope will cause us to FEEL the power of our deliverance.

[At this point we showed a short clip from the movie, “Schindler’s List.”]

Stern, the Jew, was saved by Schindler, the German.  Stern was taken off that dark rail car destined for a German concentration camp, a place where he would almost certainly have died.  If we had watched more of that film clip, you would have heard Stern apologize because he felt that it was his fault that he had been placed on that train.  The Jews were not to blame.  It was Nazi hatred that put them on those trains.

But sisters and brothers, the darkness outside of Christ is where we ought to live.  Our own sins placed us there.  And our power could not deliver us.  God did that; God did that by allowing the Son whom God loved to die on the cross for us.

To what have we been transferred?  Paul answers that question in the Book of Colossians as well.  In Col 1:22 Paul declares that God has reconciled believers in Christ’s “fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him.”  In Col 2:13-14 we read:

And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands.  He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.

In Col 3:2-4 Paul writes:

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

In Col 3:9b-11 He says,

. . . you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.  In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

This is the new life; this is the new life in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.  We have been made “holy and blameless and irreproachable before [God].”  “[H]e forgave us all our trespasses” and nailed them “to the cross.”  “When Christ who is [our] life is revealed, then [we] also will be revealed with him in glory.”  We have been given a “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”  And in this kingdom all the barriers between different ethnic groups and different socio-economic classes have been broken down because “Christ is all and in all” and that unites us all in Him.

May we feel the power, the wonder, and the joy of being in the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.  May we embrace that joy and be thankful.  May we embrace that joy and allow worship to flow from our hearts as well as from our lips.

Tod is going to come now and lead us in a song that expresses our praise, our worship, our thanks to God for sending Jesus.  As we sing this song focus your mind on the joy of being rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.

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