Our Incredible Salvation - 8

In this, our last episode of Season 4, we look at some of the most powerful verses  on our incredible salvation in the book of Colossians.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome once again back to Jeff's Bible Track. We're in the home stretch of season four on the topic of our incredible salvation. This is episode eight of this season. It's also our final episode on this season. And our final book that we're going to cover on this topic is Paul's Letter to the Colossians, which contains some powerful nuggets of truth on this incredible salvation of ours. Let's begin with chapter one. As Paul often does, he begins with some encouraging words for the Colossian Church, beginning in verse 3. He says, Every time we pray for you, our hearts overflow with thanksgiving to Father God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For we have heard of your devoted lives of faith in Christ Jesus and your tender love toward all his holy believers. Wow, what a legacy this church has. And then verse five says, Your faith and love rise within you as you access all the treasures of your inheritance stored up in the heavenly realm. For the revelation of the true gospel is as real today as the day you first heard of our glorious hope, now that you have believed in the truth of the gospel. Well, what are these treasures of our inheritance stored up in the heavenly realm? Well, as you know, I've done a lot of reading on the near-death experiences phenomenon, and some of those people have seen in heaven warehouses full of treasures just waiting for someone to take hold of them. But I think the answer is in the word revelation in the next sentence. I think the treasures are revelation, revelation knowledge, shall we say, that comes through prayer and pursuit of God. It comes through studying the Word of God. Revelation knowledge is seen as an illumination of the scriptures that goes beyond mere intellectual understanding. The Holy Spirit is the one who reveals God's truth and imparts revelation knowledge. After forty-nine years of walking with Jesus, I'm still finding new treasures in the Word of God. It's so exciting. Verse six continues on the truth of the gospel. This is, and I quote, this is the wonderful message that is being spread everywhere, powerfully changing hearts throughout the earth, just like it has changed you. Every believer of this good news bears the fruit of eternal life as they experience the reality of God's grace. My focus here on this verse is the phrase bearing the fruit of eternal life. This is what God is looking for in our lives. Someone once said that there are three types of fruit in the Bible. Let's call them the three C's. First is the fruit of conversions. These are souls that we win to the Lord. Then there's the fruit of character, or the fruit of the Spirit, listed in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, those being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The third C is the fruit of conversation, or the fruit of lips. This comes from Hebrews thirteen, fifteen. So we no longer offer up a steady stream of blood sacrifices, but through Jesus we will offer up to God a steady stream of praise sacrifices. These are quote and quote unquote the lambs we offer from our lips that celebrate his name. So the three seas of fruit conversions, character, and conversation. Dropping down to verse nine, it reads Since we first heard about you, we've kept you always in our prayers, that you would receive the perfect knowledge of God's pleasure over your lives, making you reservoirs of every kind of wisdom and spiritual understanding. Now the key word here is reservoirs. Reservoirs are places where water is stored, and when needed, gates are opened and the water becomes a flowing river. Kinda makes me think of John seven, thirty seven and thirty eight. Then on the most important day of the feast, the last day, Jesus stood and shouted out to the crowds, All you thirsty ones, come to me. Come to me and drink. Believe in me so that rivers of living water will burst out from within you, flowing from your innermost being, just like the scripture says. Most Bibles I've read over the years don't give or suggest the scripture the scriptures that Jesus is referring to here, but the Passion translation does. So you might want to write these down. Isaiah forty four three, Isaiah fifty five fifty five and verse one, Isaiah fifty eight eleven, Ezekiel forty seven one, Revelation twenty two one, and I'll throw in one of my own, the whole chapter of Isaiah twelve, a fabulous scripture on the wells of salvation. The passion finishes the footnote with this sentence A drink becomes a river. I love that. The reservoir provides the water that flows out of our innermost being. You can't give what you don't have, right? We need to receive living water from him first, praying in the Spirit, spending time with him, absorbing the Word of God, which we store in a reservoir in our spirit, which then flows out to him in worship and to others through wisdom and spiritual understanding. Let's look at verse 11. This one will blow your mind. And we pray that you would be energized with all his explosive power from the realm of his magnificent glory, filling you with great hope. Now you would think that with the quote unquote explosive element brought out in the Passion Translation, that this would be the Greek word dunamis, from which we get the word dynamite. But the word used here is actually Kratos K-R-A-T-O-S, which is translated as vigor, dominion, might, power, and strength. So in my mind it still warrants being translated explosive. It's kind of funny, but I have a Bible group that I lead, and when we saw this verse in the Passion, for a while after that, we'd say to each other, have an explosive day. Listen, this power is otherworldly. It's from heaven. The result of it, according to the Apostle Paul, is great hope. Verse 12 says, Your heart can soar as a bird soars. That's a parenthesis. With joyful gratitude when you think of how God made you worthy to receive the glorious inheritance freely given to us by living in the light. Now people struggle with being worthy of God and his kingdom. They might often say, I'm not worthy of this salvation. Well, God bypassed all of that and just went ahead and made us worthy. Thank you, Jesus. The next verse, verse thirteen, is a famous verse. It reads, He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom realm of his beloved Son. He has rescued us as a lifeguard, rescues us when we're flailing about in the water. I've talked to a lot of people who have a story just like that. And I have one of my own. I still remember laying face up at the bottom of a pond and looking up at my brother as he reached down and pulled me out of the water. It's almost like God wants us to be able to visualize the rescue he has provided. And that rescue is from the tyrannical rule of darkness, it says. It refers to a tyrant, one who uses power oppressively or unjustly. And that's exactly how the enemy treated us before we belonged to Jesus. That word translated means to change or transform. Think of a translator who changes or transforms a text from one language to another, where it looks completely different. Except in our case, the change is from one kingdom to another, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom realm of our God. We're talking about radical change and transformation here, which becomes more and more evident the longer we walk with Jesus. Verse 14, for in the Son all our sins are cancelled, and we have the release of redemption through his very blood. Man, you talk about a cancel culture. This phrase, the release of redemption. You remember we talked about this word redemption? It means set free based on a payment being made. And from today's headlines, think of a computer hacker who holds hostage a company and all their files until the hacker receives a payment, and then the files are, hopefully, set free. That's what our redemption through the blood of Jesus is like. Skipping down to verses 19 and 20, they read like this for God is satisfied to have all his fullness dwelling in Christ, and by the blood of his cross, everything in heaven and earth is brought back to himself, back to its original intent, restored to innocence again. Now in chapter two, we'll get into how this happened. It's a fascinating study. Verses 21 to 23 are some of the most amazing verses in this chapter, maybe even in the whole word of God. Here's verses 21 and 22. Even though you were once distant from him, living in the shadows of your evil thoughts and actions, he reconnected you back to himself. He released his supernatural peace to you through the sacrifice of his own body as the sin payment on your behalf, so that you would dwell in his presence. And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless, and restored. There was a separation that took place then, and now we can be reconnected to him through the blood of Christ and our acceptance of his sacrifice on our behalf. Paul says he released his supernatural peace. The peace being talked about here is supernatural in its nature, of course. It is imparted by our supernatural God. You can experience natural peace sitting on the banks of a placid mountain lake, but still have inner turmoil instead of inner peace. The more I study inner peace, the more I begin to see it as an invisible substance. Come with me to Matthew 10, verses 11 and 12. Jesus was sending out the twelve disciples with a set of instructions. And verse 11, he says, Whatever village or town you enter, search for an honorable man who will let you into his home until you leave for the next town. Once you enter a house, speak to the family there and say, God's blessing of peace be upon this house. And if those living there welcome you, let your peace come upon the house. But if you are rejected, that blessing of peace will come back upon you. Do you see how this supernatural peace is like a substance that can be excuse me released to a person or group of people through a faith declaration, but can also be taken back? Hmm. Things that make you go, hmm. That brings us to the last sentence of verse 23. One of the most incredible statements in the Bible, yet one of the most unbelievable to many believers. And that is the way that God sees you. Here's the sentence again. And now there is nothing between you and Father God, for he sees you as holy, flawless and restored. How many of you could raise your hand and actually say that you view yourself that way? Holy, flawless and restored. If you feel comfortable doing this, close your eyes and imagine something with me. Imagine a blank piece of paper. Someone's hand appears and draws a line horizontally across the middle of the paper, but not a straight line. Imagine it like an arch or canopy. And beneath that canopy the hand writes three words sins, faults, and failures. Above the canopy, the hand also writes three words holy, flawless, and restored. The canopy represents the blood of Jesus over our lives. And beneath the canopy where we live is where we tend to focus only on our sins, faults, and failures. Above the canopy, where God lives, is where he looks down through the canopy and seeing only that we are wholly set apart to him, flawless, which clearly means without any flaws, and restored or reconnected to him, as we saw in verse 21. I'm sure you would agree with me that seeing ourselves the way God sees us is one of the hardest things in the Christian life to do. We need to understand that Paul didn't write verse 23 so we'd go around telling everybody how flawless we are. But he wrote it so we'd humble ourselves before Almighty God and offer him thanks and worship for the incredible work of salvation he has done within us. And further, verse 23 should result in that inner peace we talked about earlier, a peace that affirms that we are at peace with God, and that a deeper relationship with Him is possible, attainable, and in progress. Moving down to verse twenty seven, living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory. This mystery of Christ embedded within us becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it. That word floods means to overflow in or cover with a flood, fill to overflowing, to cover or fill as of as if with a flood, to overwhelm with an abundance of something, and in this case that something is the expectation of glory. The glory of God refers to the magnificence, worth, and beauty of God's divine perfections and attributes, as well as the visible manifestation of His presence and character. It encompasses God's holiness, power, love, wisdom, and other attributes, and it is often associated with a bright, radiant light. Glorifying God means recognizing and reflecting his glory through our actions, attitudes, and words. It just seems to me that the expectation of glory is to be on the lookout for an explosion of God's greatness and presence all around us and in us. It is in this expectation of God's glory where this heavenly treasure chest of hope flies open and we gain access to all the treasure of heaven. Well, if you thought chapter one was good, chapter two gets better. Let's put in at verse three. For our spiritual wealth is in him, like hidden treasure waiting to be discovered. Heaven's wisdom and endless riches of revelation knowledge. These are the treasures that are in the treasure chest. They are the nuggets that we find in the Word of God as we go searching in it daily. It's hidden treasure. And God watches us with delight as we go in search of it, kind of like the way parents love to follow their kids around on an Easter egg hunt, delighting in watching our children discover hidden treasure within the eggs. Revelation knowledge occurs when we're reading along in passages we've read for years, when suddenly something in the text reaches out and grabs us, saying, Hey, stop here and linger for a bit, meditating on what new meaning may be hiding here. Going down to verse 7, Paul says, Your spiritual roots go deeply into his life as you are continually infused with. With strength, encouraged in every way, for you are established in the faith you have absorbed and enriched by your devotion to him. The idea of spiritual roots going deeply into his life reminds me of John 15, wherein Jesus says, I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those roots are deep, and we go deep with him. Excuse me. The faith that we are established in is different than having faith for something. It's talking of their new life in Christ, the Colossians, something they have absorbed, which means to suck up or drink in or soak up, means to swallow up the identity or individuality of, to incorporate. It means to involve the full attention of, to engross or engage wholly, as W-H-O-L-L-Y, holy. It means to occupy or fill. All of these angles of absorbing the faith just make me think of a great sucking sound in which revelation knowledge is being taken into our spirit. Verse 10. Our own completeness is now found in him. We are completely filled with God as Christ's fullness overflows within us. He is the head of every kingdom and authority in the universe. Completely filled with God. That presence is of the Holy Spirit in us. It's a complete filling of all of God. He said, the head of every kingdom and authority in the universe. After Jesus rose from the dead, it says in Matthew 28, 18, that Jesus came close to them, the disciples, and said, All authority of the universe has been given to me. I'm telling you, it's great to be connected to someone like that, especially since he has chosen to share some of his authority with us. Verse 11. Through our union with him, we have experienced circumcision of heart. All of the guilt and power of sin has been cut away and is now extinct because of what Christ the Anointed One has accomplished for us. So our salvation equals circumcision of the heart, which you see mentioned in various places in the Word of God, even in the Old Testament. Guilt and the power of sin has been cut away. This is why it's a fruitless activity to dwell on our sins, faults, and failures. You remember the diagram I described? Because while our sins, faults, and failures still appear in the highlight reel of our minds, they aren't written down in heaven anymore. Those things are now extinct. That means no longer in existence. It means having ended or died out. Do not let the enemy come to you and whisper those things in our ear. Remember what Jesus said, get behind me, Satan, you do not have in mind the things of God, but only the things of man, the things of man being our old sins, faults, and failures. Verse fourteen. Excuse me, struggling today with congestion here. He canceled out every legal violation we had on our record, and the old arrest warrant that stood to indict us. He erased it all. Our sins, our stained soul, he deleted it all, and they cannot be retrieved. Everything we once were in Adam has been placed onto his cross and nailed permanently there as a public display of cancellation. Wow. I told you this chapter was better than chapter one. You know, some religions want to make you feel guilty for every sin you've ever committed. Well, the truths of Christianity, the truth of Christianity is that it expunges our record. Nothing can be held against us anymore. Some of the things we did before getting saved make us wince, but they make Jesus smile because he's removed them from our record. Verse 15. This verse is extremely powerful. Here's how it reads Then Jesus made a public spectacle of all the powers and principalities of darkness, stripping away from them every weapon and all their spiritual authority and power to accuse us. And by the power of the cross, Jesus led them around as prisoners in a procession of triumph. He was not their prisoner, they were his. Most commentators say that all this occurred between the cross and the throng. One person said it this way. The powers of darkness don't have the power they had before the cross. They are just able to harass and distract. Listen, there is no reason to ascribe any more power to them than that. Well, I simply cannot think of a better place to end this study than this triumph in verse 15. I have thoroughly and thoroughly enjoyed this study. In every episode I have been tremendously excited by the truths taught by Paul in these verses. I hope you have been blessed as well. So keep an eye out for our next season coming soon. Until then, God bless you.