Mark 3:24-27

24  "And if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  25  "And if a  house is divided against itself, that  house  will not be able to stand.  26  "And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished!  27  "But no one can enter the strong man's  house  and plunder his property unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his  house."

I want to share with each of you what God has been teaching me in the last couple of weeks.  Let me first start out with a quote from Oswald Chamber's book, Moral Foundations (His Dedication and Our Discipline Section),

"One of the dangers of present-day teaching is that it makes us turn our eyes off Jesus Christ on to ourselves, off the Source of our salvation on to salvation itself. The effect of that is a morbid, hypersensitive life, totally unlike our Lord’s life, it has not the passion of abandon that characterised Him. The New Testament never allows for a moment the idea that continually crops up in modern spiritual teaching—"I have to remember that I am a specimen of what God can do." That is inspired by the devil, never by the Spirit of God. We are not here to be specimens of what God can do, but to have our life so hid with Christ in God that our Lord’s words will be true of us, that men beholding our good works will glorify our Father in heaven. There was no "show business" in the life of the Son of God, and there is to be no "show business" in the life of the saint. Concentrate on God, let Him engineer circumstances as He will, and wherever He places you He is binding up the broken-hearted through you, setting at liberty the captives through you, doing His mighty soul-saving work through you, as you keep rightly related to Him. Self-conscious service is killed, self-conscious devotion is gone, only one thing remains—"witnesses unto Me," Jesus Christ first, second and third."

Paul says to the Colossian Church, "3:1  If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  2  Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.  3  For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  4  When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.  5  Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.  6  For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come,  7  and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.  8  But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, [and] abusive speech from your mouth.  9  Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its [evil] practices,  10  and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him."

The verses from Mark, the Chamber's quote and the verses from Paul in Colossians all highlight several important aspects of the Christian life in harmony with one another.  Please join me for a moment as we follow these three lines of thought.  In Mark's thought there is the idea that before Satan can plunder a house, first the life of God in the house must be quenched and the Holy Spirit grieved, thus the word picture of the strong man in the gap being removed so that the house and all the life in it can be strangled.  In Chamber's line of thought the dominating theme is Jesus first, second and third, which in totality says to meditate on the personage of Jesus Christ period.  His successive thought is that the saint must have tunnel vision, or a consistent, disciplined, persistent, sanctified line of thought that always ends up with the question, does what I am about to do make Jesus Christ famous or glorify His name in trying to make Him famous in the situation?  In Paul's line of thought, Chamber's and Mark's thoughts are meshed into one theme:  are we hidden in Christ?  Hidden in Christ is often preached, taught, used in "church language" but rarely ever grasped nor intentionally meditated upon.  What does it really mean?  Well, to grasp its depth let us consider the aforementioned lines of thought.  In the Mark passage to be hidden with Christ means to lead your family in persistent integrity and with a courageous, sacrificial, warrior type heart.  What this looks like is monitoring the things that you allow to come into your house (your sanctuary) and leave your house and then be hidden with Christ.  Does my daughter need that skirt?  Does my son need that cd?  Does my house need that t.v. program or that particular internet service.  What is taking the place of church in my house?  What do we do instead of church where the body of Christ has established a time of meeting together, in essence, what's more important than meeting with God and fellowshipping with His children (our brothers and sisters)?  What is more important than praying with my wife (sleep, working out, espn, internet poker or gaming, hunting, fishing, golf..etc, hobbies?) and reading God's Word with her daily (Eph. 5 brothers--we are commanded to be in God's Word with our wives daily)?  Essentially, what is more important that my family being hidden with Christ?

In Chamber's thoughts, to be hidden with Christ simply means to be consumed with the passionate ideal of making Him famous every second of every day and in doing so to not take credit for any part of looking like Him.  We simply become invisible and the Son of God in us becomes all the world sees, thus we become "hidden".  Chambers actually echoes Paul's thought where Paul writes that being hidden is a process.  Stay with me here because we're about to drop anchor to the vast depths of this line of thought.  In Colossians 3, Paul starts with the saint being what, raised with Christ.  So, in our humanity, pre-Christ we are all that is visible to all that is around us.  All the world and everything in it observes our carnality, the expressed manifestation of what life looks like without God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  However, when we are drawn up out of our depravity (our spiritual death or life without God)  into this marvelous, phenomenal, indescribable life that we as brothers call being "born again" in Christ Jesus by His blood, we experience what is the beginning of the process of learning to be hidden in Him.  And that's just Colossians 3:1!!!!  Paul continues his thought in explaining that when we are raised in Christ (in newness of life), we are to set our minds (in Greek this word set means to search out, be wise in, to seek an advantage on behalf of something, to strive for, to seek with all one's being, to take a stand on an issue, to be mentally dominated by the thought of, to agree with, to show concern for) on the things above, which is a curious phrase because the "things" mentioned here is Christ and all the ideas that come with Him reigning supreme.  So, here's what this looks like in practical application:

A lost person who does not know Christ (is dead spiritually) is drawn by the Holy Spirit (revived out of this spiritual death), bought by the blood of Christ and adopted into the Kingdom of God over which Christ is the one and only King.  Christ, according to Paul's thought, raises us up from His death on the cross into His victorious life.  Thereafter, THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF THE LIFE OF GOD IN THE SAINT IS TO SET HIS/HER MIND OR BEING, to seek out, to striver after, search out, be wise in, to seek an advantage on behalf of, to take a stand on the issue of, to be mentally dominated by the thought of, to agree with and to show ultimate concern FOR THE MIND OF CHRIST AND HIDING BEHIND HIS BEING THAT REPLACED OURS AT THE MOMENT OF CONVERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!  BROTHERS, IF YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND SEE ANYTHING OTHER THAN CHRIST IT IS TIME TO CHANGE YOUR APPEARANCE, PERIOD!  WE MUST BE MEN THAT ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT CHRIST BEING MADE FAMOUS THAN WE ARE ABOUT OUR OWN AGENDAS OR OUR OWN PRIORITIES OR HOBBIES.  WE MUST BECOME REVIVAL IN THE MIDST OF DEPRAVITY, JUSTICE IN THE MIDST OF OPPRESSION, DIGNITY IN THE MIDST OF TREACHERY, HONOR IN THE MIDST OF AIMLESS, PURPOSELESS WORDS AND ABOVE ALL FRIENDS, WE MUST BECOME INVISIBLE