“Set Your Hearts on Things Above”
Colossians 3:1-4

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost—July 31, 2022

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Our text is the first few verses of today’s Epistle Reading from the third chapter of Colossians.  St. Paul urges us, in our search for meaning and fulfillment in life, not to look to earthly things, but heavenward: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things, above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”  This is our text.

Over the past 50 years, even though the average size American family has declined, the average size American home has more than doubled, from 1,000 square feet in 1950 to over 2,300 square feet today.  The reason for this increase in our average home size can been seen very easily on popular television shows such as “Hoarders,” “Get Organized,” and “Tidying Up.” On these programs teams of professional organizers come in to help average couples like us who are totally overwhelmed by all their stuff.

Sometimes the shows are very dramatic, with the before shots of rooms stacked so high it is almost impossible to get inside.  When it is all hauled outside and arranged on the lawn in huge piles it is hard to believe it ever did fit inside.  Although we’re not quite “Hoarders,” I have to admit that our own house could stand to “Get Organized” with some “Tidying Up,” especially our big basement with all sorts of surplus stuff.

The couples on those shows go through all their things and argue and debate over what should stay and what should go.  People often claim a disputed item is something they always use and simply must keep, but then they finally have to admit it has been years since they’ve even seen it.  Clothing items are sometimes found with the tags still attached, evidence that they never were used since they were bought years ago.  The hosts of the show have a standard line they often say: The reason you got this, the reason you keep this, is to make you happy.  But, it is really ruining your life and making you unhappy, because you just can’t live anymore with all this stuff.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with acquiring and possessing the things of this world.  As St. Paul tells Timothy, “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” 

But, although material things themselves are not sinful, we can have a sinful attitude toward them. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 

Our human obsession with things goes back to the beginning, to the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve had been given Paradise itself, yet they still had an overriding obsession to acquire and possess the one thing they didn’t have, the forbidden fruit.  “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and a delight to the eyes, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”

Anyone who is a collector understands how Eve felt.  My own weakness in that area is books, and I just can’t stand having one volume missing from a matching set.  Eve already had all the other trees and fruit in the Garden in her collection, but she just had to have that one last tree, that last, forbidden fruit in her possession also, in order to make her collection complete. 

Part of the original sin was a desire to find fulfillment and satisfaction in things, by acquiring and possessing the one earthly thing Adam and Eve didn’t yet have.  But, like the modern day couples on those television shows, instead of bringing them the happiness they imagined, it really ruined their lives, and our lives too.  As St. Paul says in Romans, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” 

The hosts on those television shows often tell the couple that they have actually lost an entire room or two in their house because of their obsession with things.  In the same way, because of the first couple’s obsession with getting that one last thing, the forbidden fruit, we have all lost the best and most important room of all—the right to our room in heaven!

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  Into our world dominated by things, acquiring things and possessing things, St. Paul introduces a completely different attitude.  True fulfillment and satisfaction is not found in acquiring and possessing earthly things, but in looking heavenward: “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

The first popular organization show 20 years ago was called “Clean Sweep, and the Good News is that’s what Jesus came and did for you, a “Clean Sweep.”  Your room in heaven was completely blocked off by an insurmountable pile of your sins.  But, Jesus hauled out all your sins to Calvary and threw them all away.  As St. Paul says earlier in Colossians, “He took it away, nailing it to the cross.”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says.  “Trust in God; trust also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms. . .  I am going there to prepare a place for you.”  Jesus came and did a “Clean Sweep.”  Your place, your room is now prepared and ready for you in heaven.  “And since I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am you also may be.”

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Fulfillment and satisfaction is not found in acquiring and possessing earthly things.  As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes: “The task of gathering and storing up wealth . . .  is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”  And as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

St. Peter describes this true source of fulfillment and satisfaction: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you.”

That is your true source of fulfillment and satisfaction, what Jesus calls “treasure in heaven,” trusting in Jesus for the treasure of eternal life and heavenly glory that he has acquired and prepared for you.  “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

A recurring theme on those organizational television shows is the importance of keeping things in their proper place.  Spiritually, it is also important for you to keep “things” in their proper place, their proper priority and role in life.  That was the mistake of the rich fool in the parable who said, “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry,’” to which God replied, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

It wasn’t wrong for him to earn and possess even an abundance of things.  His mistake was not keeping things in their proper place. He put things above God.  As Jesus says, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his own soul?”

The things of this world are to be received with thanksgiving as gifts from God, as St. Paul says, “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.”  But, things have to be kept in their proper place, their proper priority and role in life.  “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. . .  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his own soul?”

You have received a treasure in heaven far greater than any treasure on earth, the treasure of eternal life and heavenly glory.  “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things, above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”