Colossians 2:6-23

Pastor Josh continues through the letter to the Colossians and we look at how we can be Rooted in Christ. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

We've been kind of journeying through the book of Colossians, the letter of Paul to the Colossians together. And so we're going to continue with that this morning. In Colossians chapter 1, really, what Paul's looking at is who is Jesus. He tells us exactly who Jesus is. He tells us he's the image of the invisible God. He's the firstborn of all creation, that he is fully God and fully man, and in him God dwells fully. And then he talked a bit about his own ministry and the struggles that he faces. And he tells us really that our hope in this life is that Christ lives within us as Christians. He dwells within us. And so now as we come to chapter 2, really what Paul lays out in chapter 2 and even chapter 3, he lays out what a relationship with Jesus looks like. What life as a Christian should look like and does look like. And so really that's what we're going to look at this morning. I'm going to read it for us. And we're going to read from chapter 2, reading from verse 6 down to verse 23. It will be on the screen, although it's very small on the screen. So if you're struggling, feel free to open your Bible or to look on your phone. But it says this. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised, with a circumcision made without hands, but putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Amen. A passage seems really complicated and there's a lot in it. Paul, it's almost quite wordy. But within that, Paul lays out some truths of how our life should look as Christians. My first job when I was about 15 years of old, I got a job as a gardener, believe it or not, in a local health center. I say gardener because it makes it sound a lot fancier than it was. Really, I was just in charge of cutting the grass whenever it got a little bit too long. But I remember once they brought me some flowers and some plants, and they said, Josh, can you plant these in the garden of the health center and make sure they grow? My problem was I'd never done anything like this before. Didn't know how long it takes for a flower or a plant to grow. And so I planted it in one of the flower beds that was there. And a day or two later I came back to cut the grass again. And they hadn't really grown any. And I thought, you know what? I don't think they're getting enough sun here. And so I moved them into another flower bed. And then a couple of days later I came back to them again. I thought, they're not really grown here either. And so I moved them into another flower bed. And really the truth of what I didn't know is I wasn't giving these plants or these flowers enough time to grow roots into the soil. And so they didn't grow. And really, as Christians in this passage, what Paul is saying is that if we don't grow roots, then we won't grow as Christians either. Paul says, he begins this section that we read. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord. So what then comes after this is Paul laying out how you live your life as a Christian. He says, you have received Jesus Christ as Lord. You've made that decision, and now this is what life looks like as a Christian. And he goes on to tell us that really to grow as a Christian, we need to plant deep roots. We need to be rooted in Christ. And I think in this passage that we read, he gives us four things that we should be reminded of, four things that we should live by as Christians. The first one, it's the title of the sermon. It's we should be rooted in Christ. We should be rooted in Christ. He says there, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. In other words, what he's saying is that we need to build our life on him. We need to build our life on Jesus. We've received Jesus as our Lord, and now we continue to live with him as our Lord. He tells us to walk in him. In other words, we need to go step by step, day by day. Everything we do with him at the center of all that we do. Our relationship with Christ is the foundation of our lives. And when we are rooted in Christ, we will see growth. What are roots? There's two things that I think are true of roots, but also true of the Christian faith. Roots are invisible. Roots are invisible. No one sees the roots of a plant or a tree. No one sees them. They're buried deep beneath the surface. And when we're talking about developing roots as a Christian, we're talking about the hidden life of a Christian. The most important part. Because the hidden life is the part where you grow that relationship between you and God. We come to church and we put a brave face on on a Sunday or a Wednesday or whenever we're here. We know the right things that we're supposed to say, we know how to act, we know how to behave. But really, that's a small fragment of our Christian life. How does our hidden life look? How does our Christian life look when no one else is watching? Where are we growing our roots? What does your prayer life look like when no one else is there? It's just you and God. How are you at reading the Bible? How much time do you spend in God's presence? Just growing that relationship between you and Him, planting those roots down deep. Because that's how we become rooted in Christ. We grow those roots. We grow the hidden life of our Christian walk. We spend time with him in prayer. We spend time reading our Bibles, prayer is communication with God, is getting to know him better, it's talking to him, communicating with him. Reading the Bible is learning the character of God. It's learning who God is and how he wants us to live as Christians. We need to spend time with him in the hidden place to grow our roots deep. Grow that relationship when no one else is watching. Why? Why do we need to grow roots? Because secondly, the deeper the root, the stronger the tree. The deeper the root, the stronger the tree. We don't want to be Christians who are blown around at every theory we hear online, every argument someone comes at us with. Every time we feel disappointed in God. We want to be strong in our faith as Christians. And to do that, to grow strong as Christians, we need to develop strong roots. Roots really exist to give a plant strength and to help it to grow. To be strong in our faith and to grow in our faith. We need strong, deep roots. The foundation of our life. Our roots have to be built on Jesus. And that's what Paul says. And Jesus alone. He doesn't say be rooted in Christ and it says be rooted in Christ. Not be rooted in Christ and the money that I want to earn. That's my foundation. Not be rooted in Christ and my job. Be rooted in Christ and my football team. Be rooted in Christ and the grades I'm looking for in school or in university. But he says, be rooted in Christ. Make him and him alone your foundation. And when we build those roots deep, we will see our faith grow and grow strong. Spend time in prayer. Spend time reading your Bible. Because that's how we grow strong roots in Christ. And when we are rooted in Christ, we will see growth. The second thing Paul tells us in this chapter to the Colossians. He says, Don't let anyone capture you. He says in verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. As Christians, we constantly face the threat of false teachings, false teachings about God, false teachings about the church, false teachings about how we're supposed to live as Christians. And that can lead us away from the truth of who God is and who he wants us to be. That word that Paul uses in that passage, captive, it literally means to be carried away. False teachers sometimes carry us away from the truth of who Jesus is. Paul uses the word philosophy when discussing that. It's really just a word that Paul uses to describe these teachings of false teachers. And these were the teachings that were harming the Colossian church, the early Christians. And he tells us that these teachings are empty and they're deceptive. In other words, they're false promises. Because Paul knows the truth that is all empty apart from Jesus. You may have heard people say it, like, do this and it'll change your life. Do this and you'll be satisfied forever. Do this and you'll have a purpose. Paul knew the truth that apart from Jesus, it's all empty, it's all futile, that it's all false teachings, that it's a false promise. It promises much, but it delivers nothing. And so Paul's saying, don't be took captive by that. Don't be carried away from the truth of who God is by these false teachings. Paul said for the Colossians, there's two origins of this philosophy that he's talking about, these false teachings, neither of which of them is Christ. First of all, he says it's human tradition. And the theologian William Barclay writes in this that it was a product of the human mind, not a message of the Word of God. Does tradition of the human mind carry us away from Christ? I think sometimes we hear the word tradition and we think it's something of old. But we've all got traditions in our life. We've all got things we do on a regular basis. Have you ever used the phrase of that's how I've always done it? Or that's how we've always done it, or that's how the church has always done it? Maybe it's a lifestyle that you live and you think, I can't change that. I've always done that. Why would I change that? That's our tradition. Traditions are not just a thing of the past, but we have them now. They're built into our lives. And I'm not saying traditions on their own are wrong. But if they pull us away from Christ, Paul is saying that they're a false teaching, that we need to be wary of them because they carry us away from the truth of the gospel. And then he says the second origin is elemental spirits of the world. He says there's lies out there about the spiritual realm, that we find ourselves, people in the Colossus Church are finding themselves worshiping other spirits and trying to hear from other spirits, get in contact with them, and that was dangerous. That they've been carried away by that deception, and it's a false promise. It's an empty promise. And Paul's warning against that. Eugene Peterson, who's the author of the message paraphrase, writes on these verses. He makes his own kind of translation of them and he says this. And the empty superstitions of spirit beings. That's really a summary of the false teachings that Paul is writing about. And you see the difficulty is when false teaching attacks, it usually attacks on two fronts. First of all, it attacks who Jesus is. They try and undermine who he is. They'll say that salvation is not full in Jesus, that he's not fully God, that he didn't fully atone for our sins. Or they'll attack our identity in him. That maybe something more is needed in your life to make you whole in Christ. And this is why in verses 9 and 10, Paul writes what he writes. Because in our summary, Paul tells us that we are full in the full one. He tells us that Jesus is completely God and we are complete in him. And because of that, we cannot let anyone take us captive by these false teachings. Because false teachers will carry us away from the truth of who Jesus is by empty deception. And they don't even always do it on purpose. Sometimes they've got good intentions. But if it's not Christ's intentions, then it shouldn't be for us. It's pointless to look for spiritual fulfillment or spiritual maturity or purpose in your life in any other place than Jesus Christ. He is the fullness of God and he lives in us. We need to be rooted in Christ. Don't let anyone capture you. And thirdly, this morning, we are transformed through Christ. We are transformed through Christ. And this comes beginning in verse eleven. He says this in him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead, and you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. In this part of the letter, Paul's continuing what he said in the earlier verses. He says that we are complete in him, we are complete in Jesus. And he goes on to use two metaphors that we've just read: circumcision and baptism. And he uses them to explain and to show that we are saved totally and exclusively through the work of God, not through anything that we can do. There's no religious ritual that can make us work right with God. And in these verses, Paul picks two familiar rituals to the people of Colossae. And he's not talking about them in the physical sense, but he's talking about them in a spiritual sense. In Genesis chapter 17, God instituted circumcision as a physical sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Every male was to be circumcised as a physical sign that he was in a covenant relationship with God. He was one of God's people. The problem was that the Jewish people began mistakenly to think that the physical ritual was enough by itself. And the Bible is very clear that physical circumcision saves no one. You'll read that in the Old Testament, you'll read that in the New Testament. And Paul is not talking about the physical act, he's talking about the spiritual act. Paul is talking about in these verses the cutting away of the sinful nature in our lives. The putting away, the cutting away of the sinful nature. In verses 13, he says, You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with them, having forgiven us all our trespasses, but cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with his legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. There was a chasm between man and God, a chasm that could not be crossed because of the sin in our lives. God's a loving God, but he's also a holy God, and he cannot stand sin. And so there's a separation between man and God. And nothing, no way that they could live, no way that they could make themselves clean, no ritual that they could perform could make them right before God fully. That's why he writes in verse 13, you were dead in your trespasses. You were dead to your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh. What he means by that is by the sinful nature that you have in you. And then he goes on to say that God made alive together with him, having forgiven all your trespasses. God goes on and realizes and knows that we cannot cross that chasm by ourselves. There's nothing that we could do to make ourselves clean before God. So he sent his son Jesus Christ to live on this earth for 33 years. Perfect, spotless, sinless life. And then he went to that cross and he died in our place. He died because the Bible tells us that the punishment for sin is death. And that's the punishment we deserve for the sins in our life. The things that we do that are wrong, that miss the mark of who God wants us to be. And Jesus Christ paid that debt on that cross for us. He cancelled, Paul writes, the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, nailing it to the cross. With Jesus on that cross, our sins were nailed to it with him. And he died there on that cross in our place. And what that means for us today, the good news of that for us is that we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior. We walk into that relationship with him. God no longer sees us as dead to our trespasses, but he sees us as the goodness and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's why Paul mentions baptism in this passage. Because as we are baptized in the water, we're laid down into the water, and that's a symbolism that we are dead to our old life. We have been buried with it, and we're raised to a new life in Jesus Christ. That we get to walk as a new creation on this earth, living in the abundant life that God gives us, and we have the hope and the promise of heaven to look forward to as well. In this passage, Paul uses the metaphor of circumcision to talk about how when you've stepped into that new life with Jesus Christ, there's a transforming process that God cuts away the sinful nature that's in our lives. We are transformed by Christ. We are made into a new creation. What Paul's trying to say is parts of our old life need to go. The parts that don't honor God, the parts that aren't Christ like. We need to allow the cutting away so that He can transform us. Look at all the people in the Bible who chose to follow Jesus, they all left something behind. The woman at the well comes to Jesus. And she goes back to tell our village all about him. She leaves her water pot behind. Peter, James, and John follow Jesus to leave their nets behind. Matthew follows Jesus, he leaves his tax collector booth and his possession behind. If you have not left something because of Jesus, are you avoiding the cutting away process that he's trying to do in your life? Often God cuts away the very thing that you think is the highest form of your identity. The thing that you hold on to before you come to know Jesus. Maybe CC yourself is the life and soul of a part of a party, man. Maybe that's what God's trying to cut away and say, actually, your life is different now. Maybe there's violence and anger in your life. Maybe you do things that you know aren't Christ-like, that you hurt people in your actions. Maybe God's saying this morning that that needs to be cut away. Maybe you go out and you get drunk. Maybe God's trying to cut that away in your life. There is a cutting process, is what Paul's trying to say, to us becoming Christians. Us living our lives out as Christians. And we need to allow that cutting away. We need to allow God to transform our lives through Christ. This morning, ask God, what in my life do you want to cut away? Is it friends that aren't pushing me on to be more like Christ? Is it habits that I have that aren't Christ-like? Is it violence? Is it something I'm doing in my life that doesn't look anything like Jesus? Is it pride? Is it jealousy? Racism, sectarianism, whatever it may be, ask God, what are you wanting to cut away in my life? Because I promise you, if you're bold enough to ask him that, he'll reveal it to you. We use often in here the sculpture analogy of the man who was sculpting a horse out of a big rock, and the guy comes up to him and he says, How on earth do you go from that block of stone to a horse? And he says, I'm just chipping away everything that doesn't look like a horse. That's what God's doing in that cutting process in our lives. He's chipping away everything that doesn't look like Christ. And our hope is that we end up being as Christ-like as possible. Let him cut it away and transform your life. We are rooted in Christ. Don't let anyone capture you by their false philosophies or false teachings. And we're transformed by Christ. Lastly, this morning, we find freedom in Christ. We find freedom in Christ. This comes just towards the end of the passage. He says, Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Paul tells him to let no one judge them, let no one disqualify them from living their lives as Christians. Because the people, there was people in Colossae trying to convince other Christians that their spirituality was based on how well they observed these rituals, how well they observed these rules, how well they observed these certain codes of behavior that they were putting on them. Paul mentions in that passage special diets that they had to observe, special days or festivals that they observed. And Paul tells us this rule keeping really is just a shadow, that the real substance is found in Christ. See, the truth is that rules don't change people. Not one of them bridged a gap between their lives and who God was. You see, the truth is this that discipline void of Jesus leads to shallow change. Just because you follow all the rules, all the regulations, all the rituals, doesn't mean that your heart will change. And God is more concerned about your heart than your hand. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's some of us in this room thinking, ah, that's great, he says there's no rules. It's not the case. There's a life that Christ wants us to live and follow in his footsteps. But Jesus brings a sense of freedom to our lives from religiosity, from ritual, from legalism, and we can only find that freedom in Christ. Following rules alone won't change us. But letting Christ rule your life will. This morning. Paul talks about how our lives will look as Christians. Maybe you're sat in this room this morning and you've come to that conclusion and you've thought to yourself, do you know what? I've actually tried the stuff this world out here tells me that I should do. Do this and it'll fulfill you. Do this, it'll give you purpose. Do this, it'll give you satisfaction. And none of that has worked. It's because the only true way is found in Jesus Christ. As Paul says, He is the substance. He is the one that gives us fulfillment, satisfaction, and everlasting hope. When we step into that life as Christians, these are important truths for us to remember that he writes in Colossians chapter 2. We need to be rooted in Christ. He and He alone is our foundation. We need to grow that hidden life, that life of prayer, that life of reading our word, so that we can strengthen our walk as Christians. The deeper the root, the stronger the tree. The deeper our roots are, the stronger our faith will be. We can't let anyone capture us. That there'll be false teachers and false teachings that will carry us away from Christ. We can't find fulfillment in this life anywhere else. Jesus is fully God and we are full in him, Paul writes. We're transformed through Christ. Allow that cutting away process in your life to happen. Allow God to convict you of things in your life that aren't of him. And allow God to make you aware of it. And then lastly, we find freedom in Christ. Rules and regulations don't change this, but Jesus does. We're free from that legalism, that religiosity, and we can enter freely into that relationship with Jesus Christ. This morning, just as we end our time together, Bethany is going to come back. And we're going to actually sing two songs as we close this morning. Don't just, I would encourage you not to just sing these songs out of ritual or just because the rest of the church is singing them. But use this as a time to press into what God's trying to say into your life. Be bold enough to ask God, God, what is there in my life that doesn't look like you? What is there out of my habits in the way I live and in the places that I go that isn't Christ-like? Make me aware of that. Make me bold enough to cut out of my life so that I can become more Christ-like. I would encourage you to press into what God's trying to say to you this morning. And use this time that we have together. God wants to do a work in your life, and it is for your good. We'll stand. In fact, you can stand if you want to. If you want to stay seated and press into what God's doing, you're welcome to do that as well. But we'll sing these two songs in worship. Thank you.