SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and it's my great joy and privilege to be leading us through the second chapter of Paul's letter to the church at Colossae.
SPEAKER_00: It's called Colossians, and we're calling our study Christ is all in all.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad to tell you that we're focusing all of our attention on that same hope we just sang about a couple times.
SPEAKER_00: And that hope is all found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians, like Ephesians and Philippians, and Philemon, is one of what has been called the prison epistles of the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we know just a little bit about what it meant to be in prison in the first century and Roman prisons.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it meant you were just like mere house arrest, uh, still not able to do whatever you want, but under house arrest, and you had friends that could come and go and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But in other places, in other cities, in other conditions, you might be chained to a wall in a deep, dark, damp dungeon, or you might be chained to a Roman soldier, a big old smelly guy named Brutus that you just can't get away from.
SPEAKER_00: And you're you're kept from seeing people.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't even know if you're going to be alive tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: They might put you to death.
SPEAKER_00: So prison was a pretty tough thing.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul, fortunately, was a Roman citizen himself, even though he was also a Jew and trained as a Jew and as a Pharisee, but he nonetheless had that sort of dual citizenship there, and it gave him some privileges and some rights.
SPEAKER_00: Not sure exactly whether he was in his first Roman imprisonment here, as he writes Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: Some think he was at Caesarea by the sea, uh, and when he was imprisoned there, or some even fewer number of people think he might have been at Ephesus when he was writing this letter.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the case may have been, I myself tend to lean toward the Roman imprisonment.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the deal: one thing we know for sure, this was not like an artist or writer's cabin up in the Rocky Mountains.
SPEAKER_00: This was certainly not a beach house overlooking Big Sur in California.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this was tough.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here he writes, in spite of that, here he writes what I would consider to be a dense and rich uh letter to encourage as well as exhort the church in Colossae as well as in Laodicea and Hieropolis, because they would pass these letters around, is what they would do.
SPEAKER_00: And here we are ourselves studying it too.
SPEAKER_00: So as we've already read in chapter one of Colossians from last week, the Apostle Paul makes the argument that Jesus Christ himself is the answer to a lot of the big questions that we struggle with in this world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, where did everything come from?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we here?
SPEAKER_00: Is there any real meaning to life?
SPEAKER_00: What's the purpose?
SPEAKER_00: What's the goal of life?
SPEAKER_00: How do we tell what's true from what's false?
SPEAKER_00: And that chapter one, man, it was uh I compared it to a rich, dense chocolate cake uh that you could just slice a bunch of different ways and you just keep finding amazing truths about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And then lo and behold, somebody showed up at my house with a rich, dense chocolate cake.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd share it with you, but it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: So I just, yeah, it's that good.
SPEAKER_00: But here in this particular book, in this letter, again, we're filled with hope.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we're pointed to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And even as you slice up each, and we'll do this in chapter two as well.
SPEAKER_00: Even as you slice up each verse, you could camp out on each verse for an entire Bible study.
SPEAKER_00: So I find myself uh at one and the same time, I'm I'm in awe of chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we got a precious diamond here.
SPEAKER_00: Not, don't stop by with a bag of diamonds.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you can if you want to, but but um the the idea is that this is a great chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you'll sit up straight and pay good attention to it.
SPEAKER_00: Let me start with the map, though, to remind you of where we are.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is in the Mediterranean region, and as you can see, Asia Minor is there.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we call Turkey today.
SPEAKER_00: And to its uh west, immediate west, Turkey sits on the edge of the Aegean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: On the opposite side of the Aegean Sea is Greece, and you'll see Athens, Corinth, and all that is over there.
SPEAKER_00: And you move back into Asia Minor and to Turkey, and you can, as you zoom inland a little bit, you can see Colossae there toward the eastern side of the map that we have for you to see.
SPEAKER_00: Colossae was in the Lycus Valley, about 100 miles to the east of Ephesus, um, just about just a dozen or so miles from Laodicea, one of the cities that we studied when we did our study of the book of Revelation, one of the seven cities.
SPEAKER_00: And then Hieropolis will be mentioned there as well in this uh uh map, as you can see.
SPEAKER_00: I think one is on the northern side of the uh Lycus River and the other on the southern side of the Lycus River.
SPEAKER_00: But as we look at Colossians, what we'll find is that the ancient letter from the Apostle Paul could be outlined a bunch of different ways.
SPEAKER_00: You could slice it up a bunch of different ways, but this one thing, almost every Bible scholar that has that I've read on it, all the commentators, it's got high Christology.
SPEAKER_00: It's really all about Jesus from the beginning to the end.
SPEAKER_00: And so here in chapter two, we find the same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um, what we can say about all of the uh things he says about Jesus, it seems that the Apostle Paul is writing to the Colossian church uh to perhaps correct some errors that have uh mixed in or a kind of religious syncretism that has begun, where some ideas either from um uh some of the Jews who come from the Jewish tradition, and they want to inject some of uh Judaism's practices into their Christian experience, or whether we're talking about some of the Gentiles with their pagan deities, and they want to bring in some of their worship of Artemis or Diana or uh one of the other uh Greek or Roman gods.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh that might be happening.
SPEAKER_00: Humanistic secular philosophies might also be uh encroaching and sort of entering into the picture at the church in Colossae.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Apostle Paul is writing to uh uh refute those false ideas and keep people focused on the true gospel and the real gospel, the gospel of God's grace on offer to you and offer to me, not based on our performance, not based on us practicing some religious rite, not based on us figuring out some linear logic argument for God, but based on just God's grace, his amazing heart for sinners like us.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I love studying the New Testament and especially um this book of Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin with chapter two, verse one.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so he is in prison, he can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: As far as we know, he never visited there.
SPEAKER_00: As far as we know, he didn't start this church.
SPEAKER_00: We think his friend Epaphras did.
SPEAKER_00: And so his friend Epaphras, uh, while he's writing this letter, we'll see later that Epaphras is with him, and he's probably brought news of the church at Colossae to the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_00: And so asking Paul to write a word of encouragement and exhortation to them.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul writes verse two, uh, and there are three things he writes.
SPEAKER_00: He wants them to have their hearts encouraged, right at the beginning there, having been knit together in love, that's the second thing, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: You got to understand something.
SPEAKER_00: To the Gentiles, especially to the Greek culture, which permeated the entire Roman Empire, believe it or not, um, knowledge was really important.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, philosophy was really important to them.
SPEAKER_00: And so there were these mystery religions.
SPEAKER_00: There was this Gnosticism, this Gnosticism that had risen up as well and perhaps permeated this church.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really know.
SPEAKER_00: Again, he doesn't lay out for us uh in a real direct way like he does in some of the other letters, what the Colossian heresy was.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's no consensus I can point to, but a lot of the different commentators sort of lean in one direction or another.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say there's just this admixture of ideas that, you know, much like we have in our own day and time with the access to ideas from all around the world with the internet now, um, there is this just landslide and hurricane and and you know, sort of uh um you're out lost at sea in the middle of all of this Bermuda triangle of ideas, and you can't tell where true north is.
SPEAKER_00: And the apostle Paul is writing to say, true north is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: True North is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes set on true North.
SPEAKER_00: In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with persuasive arguments.
SPEAKER_00: So people were clever back then.
SPEAKER_00: There's lots of people who are clever in their own day and time, too.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, all you have to do is jump on Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And you'd think that as you read things, that some people think that snarkiness is next to godliness.
SPEAKER_00: You'd think that some people think that in what used to be 140 characters, now 280 characters on Twitter, they can do a mic drop and solve all the problems of the world or of one particular issue that's being wrestled with on Twitter that day, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And that's just not always the case.
SPEAKER_00: Simplistic answers like that to me tend to just show the uh unwillingness of the person to actually engage in meaningful dialogue.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't think that can be done necessarily just online.
SPEAKER_00: I think that people have to take the time to want to talk with one another uh as best they can in person, um, voice to voice, person to person, heart to heart, face to face.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, I don't want you to be deluded by the cleverness, the, you know, just because people are witty doesn't mean they're right.
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and so they may have persuasive speech and argument, but don't be deluded by that.
SPEAKER_00: For even though I'm absent in body, nevertheless I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So, in spite of the onslaught of all of these ideas, they were exhibiting some good discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He's rejoicing in all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And they were focused, uh, and probably Epaphras as a good leader in the church is serving them well in this way.
SPEAKER_00: And he's wanting to, the apostle Paul is wanting to encourage them in their discipline and in their stability.
SPEAKER_00: And then that stability or steadfastness of faith is a result of their discipline in their faith and staying uh true to the gospel and preaching the gospel not only to the watching world, but to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: I need that as well myself.
SPEAKER_00: And so do you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I love, again, studying books like this.
SPEAKER_00: As you therefore, verse six, have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.
SPEAKER_00: How did you receive Christ Jesus the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: By grace through faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so here we have in one verse, we have this sort of concurrence, this act, this initiative, divine initiative of God, as you've received him by grace, that's a gift of God, okay?
SPEAKER_00: He gives this opportunity, he reveals himself to you, calls you to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, respond right here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, So walk in that, all right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's just beautiful and amazing about the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just God running around turning on heart lights, it's God calling us to himself, to himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's an invitation, and he gives us the dignity and the opportunity of responding to him.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as your pastor and speaking to myself and to us as a church, I remind you, like the Apostle Paul, walk in the gospel, just as you received it by grace through faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now walk in that gospel and that faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's so important that we do that.
SPEAKER_00: Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much here in these first seven verses.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've been outside a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Um, uh, we've been, we've been doing some work in the yard, and some of you do this kind of stuff from time to time when stuff, you know, uh plants die and trees and shrubs and things like that wither.
SPEAKER_00: You got to replace them.
SPEAKER_00: And so you you you bring in a new plant and it's got a root ball, and you stick it in, you know, you prepare the dirt and the amendments and all that sort of thing, and you put that in the dirt, and so you you're rooting it.
SPEAKER_00: You got to break up that root ball a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: You're rooting it so that those roots can begin to take root, and um, and and you're wanting your plant to be healthy or your tree to be healthy.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's a great way to say that.
SPEAKER_00: Having been rooted, now being built up and established in your faith.
SPEAKER_00: You're starting to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you see that in your own walk with Christ as well.
SPEAKER_00: See, he's the one that's actually rooted us, he's the one that's called us to himself, he's the one that's even given us the faith, the trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: And he has encouraged us, the Holy Spirit has encouraged us.
SPEAKER_00: We've been built up in the faith and established in the faith.
SPEAKER_00: And now we're starting to, as we're instructed, we're starting to overflow with gratitude as we immerse ourselves, our hearts, our minds in the gospel over and over again, reminding ourselves of the beautiful truths of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What happens is it, it, it so humbles us because we know what sinners we are, and yet we see how God set his love on us and how Jesus came and died for us to pay the price for our sins, to reconcile us to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a humbling thing.
SPEAKER_00: And now you have gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens after that?
SPEAKER_00: Joy follows.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So you're you're you're you're you find yourself overflowing with gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: And even as we year after year after year, we come to a holiday called Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder what who do people thank if they don't believe in God?
SPEAKER_00: And the the experience of giving thanks is really only complete when there's someone to direct your thanksgiving to, someone really there.
SPEAKER_00: And so we say grace at our tables, and we're giving thanks to God for the food that we've cooked, the things that He's provided in this world for us to enjoy and to rejoice in.
SPEAKER_00: We give thanks to Him for all of that and completes that entire experience.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, um, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that three times there's according to, according to, according to?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Don't let yourself be swept away or taken captive according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so don't let those kinds of philosophies and those kinds of worldview um concepts and ideas sweep you away from having your heart, your mind fully devoted to Christ and the principles of the gospel according to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, for in him, and again, there's another one of those in himself, there's a bunch of them, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there were a group of people that uh uh were sort of platonic duelists that didn't think the body could in any way contain um any kind of deity, because for them the body was seen as evil.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the material world was seen as evil.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this led to all kinds of other problems.
SPEAKER_00: But isn't it interesting that the Apostle Paul would make that point very clear that God has actually become one of us?
SPEAKER_00: In him, the fullness, in Jesus, the fullness of the deity, who's fully God and fully human at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: That's that would be a mind blower to people who are trying to make this all fit in linear logic, and who might have a sort of a platonic dualistic view of the world, that the material world can never be good like that.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's blowing their, he's he's blowing their minds right here uh in saying that kind of thing about Jesus, that all the fullness of deity dwells in him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, and in him you have been made complete.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's the one that completes you, he's the one that is able to reconcile you to a holy and righteous God.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one you're longing for.
SPEAKER_00: You might be trying to pursue a bunch of other saviors.
SPEAKER_00: You might even be trying to save yourself, but you can't do that.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you'll the the idols that become objects of our affection will always turn in on us and in some way lead us to self-destruction.
SPEAKER_00: But in him, all the fullness of the deity dwells, and in him we can be made complete.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 10, he is the head over all rule and authority.
SPEAKER_00: Did you get that?
SPEAKER_00: Did you get that in an election year?
SPEAKER_00: See, some about half of you are gonna say it's all over.
SPEAKER_00: And about the other half of you are gonna say, it's complete.
SPEAKER_00: It's and you and people are just gonna either be rejoicing in or despairing over the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because I've lived on the planet long enough to know that every four years or four to eight years or whatever, a new one comes in, and the problems of the world never get solved.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we have a heart problem.
SPEAKER_00: We don't just have a political problem or an education problem.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't just have a money problem.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but they're not the center.
SPEAKER_00: They're not meant to be the solution either.
SPEAKER_00: And so here what we have is Jesus, who's actually the head over all rule and authority.
SPEAKER_00: Put your hope in him and you'll not be disappointed.
SPEAKER_00: Uh put your hope in him and you'll not be putting your hope in some false idea of where hope comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Really powerful.
SPEAKER_00: So in him, I love this, verse 11, you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons why some folks will say this is some idea of Judaism that's creeping in and mixing with the Christian gospel at Colossae, and perhaps that is the case.
SPEAKER_00: Uh some really great Bible scholars would lean in that direction.
SPEAKER_00: But the idea is to say that we actually are marked, we belong, that's what circumcision was.
SPEAKER_00: It was a mark that you belong to God, you see, and it that you weren't practicing the same practice, the same kind of things that the um uh the pagan deed, the pagan nations around were practicing.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is about in Christ, we're marked as belonging to God, having been buried with him in baptism, verse 12, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So here we get a bunch of with himself.
SPEAKER_00: We've had a bunch of in hims.
SPEAKER_00: Now we got some with himself, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Buried with him in baptism, and you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that about baptism.
SPEAKER_00: We happen to practice um immersion here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait till we can get back to doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what we'll do is we'll take somebody into the uh baptismal that we have, the baptismal um uh what do they call that thing?
SPEAKER_00: You know, that big thing where the water is.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that thing, the baptismal.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll drop them down into the water, and that's a very visible and physical symbol of what happens to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're dropping down, it's like you're you're dying and you're being buried.
SPEAKER_00: And then when you bring them up out of the water, it's like they're risen, they're risen again.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the resurrection to new life in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why baptism is so beautiful at Village Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we celebrate so much.
SPEAKER_00: It's this great uh outward expression of an inward reality, what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: And in him, with Hib rather, you've been buried with him in baptism, Paul says, in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of Debt, consisting of decrees against us, and which was hostile to us, and he's taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: When he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, I love this.
SPEAKER_00: In him, with him, through him.
SPEAKER_00: It's all about him.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, verse 16, let no one act as your judge in regarding to food or drink, or in respect to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come.
SPEAKER_00: But the substance belongs to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we can have our traditions, we can have our religious rituals.
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
SPEAKER_00: You can eat some foods and have some feasts and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's all fine.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not about those things.
SPEAKER_00: They point to something else.
SPEAKER_00: They point to something greater.
SPEAKER_00: They're a shadow.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the substance.
SPEAKER_00: He's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, let no one keep defrauding you of the prize or your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels.
SPEAKER_00: And there was evidently some angelology going on, people worshiping, you know, studying angels, fascinated, enchanted by angels.
SPEAKER_00: And that's happened in our own day and time as well.
SPEAKER_00: These angels or messengers of God get mistaken as if they are God.
SPEAKER_00: We saw that happen even in the book of Revelation, when the Apostle John, two different occasions in the book of Revelation, begins to worship the angel who's speaking to him.
SPEAKER_00: He's just so overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_00: He's just so flowing with worship.
SPEAKER_00: And he just, here's this heavenly creature that's been speaking to him, and he begins to worship him.
SPEAKER_00: And then the angel calls him out on it twice, these two times.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worship me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm another created being just like you are.
SPEAKER_00: Worship God.
SPEAKER_00: And so here in Colossae, evidently that had been happening as well.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let anyone defraud you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement.
SPEAKER_00: That is some kind of, you know, um refusing, you know, like refusing to eat certain things and worshiping angels, taking his stand on visions he's seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, for whom the entire body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with a growth which is from God, Christ, who is the head of his church.
SPEAKER_00: So he's been talking really not only about the Christians at Colossae and the church there, but also about the unbelievers that might be trying to influence them, or the folks who are in error in their teaching and are trying to influence them.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, Don't be defrauded of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let it be taken away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let someone lead you astray in their teaching, but focus in on the head, Jesus himself, and the growth which comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, if you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to the decrees such as do not handle this, do not taste this, do not touch that?
SPEAKER_00: Which all refer to things destined to perish with the using, in accordance with the commandments and the teachings of men.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, your desire to be holy isn't going to be enhanced by mere rule following.
SPEAKER_00: You need to believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You need to receive the growth that can be found only coming from God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus used that same similar kind of analogy when he said that he's the vine and we're the branches.
SPEAKER_00: And we we are, we've got to be in the vine.
SPEAKER_00: We find our life in the vine.
SPEAKER_00: It comes from him.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so what do we learn here?
SPEAKER_00: All right, let me throw up here on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: NT Wright's comment.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Everything we might want to ask about God and his purposes can and must now be answered with reference to the crucified risen Jesus, the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's repeated descriptions of such understanding as riches or treasures, invite his readers to explore it with eagerness.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
SPEAKER_00: We're invited then to explore these riches, these treasures of the gospel that we find in the person and work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And here, I think in the first seven verses, especially, I'll put this as a chalk-ful chapter, like I said, but uh I'll put a couple uh slides up on the screen here for you that uh summarize some of what we see here.
SPEAKER_00: In the first seven verses, we see the marks of a maturing church.
SPEAKER_00: One sharing encouragement based upon a firm confidence in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Paul begins with.
SPEAKER_00: He really wants them to know that he is in, he, that their hearts would be encouraged by him writing to them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the same thing as saying, I want to pour courage into you.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, but I love, don't you love people that do that?
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you love people that are just always encouraging?
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you love them enough to actually find that admirable enough.
SPEAKER_00: And as we read it here, coming from the Apostle Paul, that we might say to ourselves, well, how can I be encouraging to others?
SPEAKER_00: That's a maturing church.
SPEAKER_00: Not a church full of curmudgeons, but a church that overflows with encouragement.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, united in the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the big theme of the Apostle Paul and of Jesus Himself, who in John chapter 17, his high priestly prayer, prays three different times that his disciples, those who would follow Jesus, that they would be united or that they would be one in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's huge.
SPEAKER_00: That's really important for a maturing church.
SPEAKER_00: That even though we are different ages, come from different stages in life, different kinds of education, uh, live in different neighborhoods, um, um, have had different kinds of life experiences and perhaps even have preferences that really are different from one another.
SPEAKER_00: Somehow or another, there's this amazing thing that Christ can do that no one else can do, and that's unite what would otherwise be natural enemies.
SPEAKER_00: Unite them because of their love for Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And in the love of God in Christ, we can be one and bring him glory.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, depth of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of Christ is on display in a maturing church.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth, they're not beguiled by novel teachings that come along.
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I'm just reminded there's no new heresies.
SPEAKER_00: They're all just old heresies warmed over in a theological microwave for a couple minutes.
SPEAKER_00: That's all that's out there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the church has been around long enough, the gospel's been around long enough, the Old Testament and New Testament together, our Bible has been around long enough for us to start to see these things come in cycles and waves.
SPEAKER_00: And they're often presented as if the new idea has been discovered and it's really nothing new.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's really just an old heresy rebaked or warmed over again.
SPEAKER_00: Fifthly, just uh discipline and steadfast in their walk with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: A mature church is that way.
SPEAKER_00: Mature believers are that way.
SPEAKER_00: Discipline, that is, they're in the word.
SPEAKER_00: How is that working for you?
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like for you?
SPEAKER_00: Um, uh, is it are you reading through a one-year Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a regular quiet time?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're joining me every day for daily devotions on my uh on our YouTube channel or on my Instagram thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe you're uh reading through a daily reader that someone has uh written that points you back to the gospel over and over and over again, disciplining yourself, reminding yourself over and over, steeping your heart and your soul in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Finding our life and identity in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're all finding our life and identity somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Where are you finding your life and your identity?
SPEAKER_00: What's at the center for you?
SPEAKER_00: How do you define yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Or is identity something you've received from God as a gift?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he's given it to you and it lines up with what he says in his word, and therefore you receive it with joy and begin to walk in it.
SPEAKER_00: And you rest in your creator's love for you and design of you.
SPEAKER_00: Seventh, overflowing with gratitude to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that too is again sort of a natural result of all of these other things.
SPEAKER_00: When the indicatives become clear to us or clearer to us, um, then we start to respond naturally uh to the imperatives, not as a set of rules to follow, but because we we we love this one who has saved us.
SPEAKER_00: We we loved him because he saved us, and we're so grateful that we overflow with gratitude a life given back to him of uh loving, uh loyal holiness to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Well, some of these characteristics, as you can see, have an internal impact.
SPEAKER_00: A grateful people are often a happy people, in spite of the circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the Apostle Paul in one of the prison epistles, and he's able to write about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's not much here about him complaining about how unfair his world condition is right now.
SPEAKER_00: There's not much here about him complaining about the politics of his world or his time.
SPEAKER_00: There's not much here about him uh uh, you know, uh complaining to God about, you know, this or that and the way this and that went and how God failed him in some way.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, if anything, here, in spite of his circumstances, he's fixing his hope on the risen Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And so can we.
SPEAKER_00: In Colossians 2, what we find is that in Christ, we've been knit together in love.
SPEAKER_00: We've full assurance of understanding, we've true knowledge of God's mystery, we find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
SPEAKER_00: And as Griffith John said, this man who the turn of the 19th, or turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, was a missionary in China for 50 years.
SPEAKER_00: If you go on the internet, you can actually find a picture of him standing with James Hudson Taylor and one other missionary, the three of them.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just an awesome photograph of uh uh, you know, three guys that have just dedicated their life to the gospel in China.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, he said, I long to be filled with divine knowledge, divine wisdom, divine love, divine holiness to the utmost extent of my capacity.
SPEAKER_00: I want to feel that all the currents of my soul are interfused in one channel, deep and wide and flowing towards the heart of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's because this is all about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we walk in a living grace, verses five and six.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we've been firmly rooted, built up, and established, verse seven.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we overflow with gratitude.
SPEAKER_00: We know the one true God, verse nine.
SPEAKER_00: We are made complete in verse 10, it says.
SPEAKER_00: Um, verse 10 also says, we know the authority over all other rulers and authorities in this entire universe.
SPEAKER_00: It's Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, verses 11 and 13, we have died, we've been baptized and brought back to life.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the God who's worthy of your worship, the one that can do that?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the kind of God you want to trust and hope in?
SPEAKER_00: The one who can do that, who has already proven he can do that in the person and work of Jesus, and who one day has promised that he intends to do that for me and for you, who will trust in him and believe in him.
SPEAKER_00: And so we also finish up with we have settled our account with God in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder of wonders.
SPEAKER_00: So much of this is done by divine initiative.
SPEAKER_00: Both slides are all of the slides above that you've just seen.
SPEAKER_00: That is, God is at work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, he calls us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: We're invited to him, to come to him.
SPEAKER_00: We're invited into his throne room of grace to seek mercy in times of need, um, to overflow with thanksgiving when we've looked around and we see how much um how much grace has been flowing into our life, how how how the Lord has been so generous with us uh and in this world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to thank someone.
SPEAKER_00: Who do we thank?
SPEAKER_00: We turn to him and offer him thanks.
SPEAKER_00: And so we believe, we love, we search the scriptures, we walk in a manner worthy of his calling us.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love the emphasis in this chapter on how our life is found in him, and that with him we are uh reconciled before God and with God, and we're united together with him in his death and in his resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So the Christian faith is both personal and propositional.
SPEAKER_00: Those propositions, those indicatives, if you will, they're true.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're true, it becomes really personal for those who will put their faith and their hope and confidence in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I love the way William Barclay, the old Scottish preacher, said this.
SPEAKER_00: Just as a great tree is deep-rooted in the soil and draws its nourishment from it, so the Christian is rooted in Christ, the source of his life and strength.
SPEAKER_00: Just as the house stands fast because it is built on strong foundations, so the Christian life is resistant to any storm, because it is founded on the strength of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is alike the source of the Christian's life and the foundation of his stability.
SPEAKER_00: And then I want to close with one other quote by N.
SPEAKER_00: T.
SPEAKER_00: Wright from his uh really brilliant uh uh commentary on Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: All power structures, ancient or modern, whether political, economic, or racial, have the potential to become rivals to Christ, beckoning the followers to submit themselves to them in order to find a fuller security.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation is as blasphemous as it is unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00: Christ brooks no rivals.
SPEAKER_00: His people need no one but him.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so true.
SPEAKER_00: You see, folks, I can turn to my money, I can turn to pleasure, um, I I I I can turn to all kinds of different things in this world and try to find some kind of fulfillment in this world, or some kind of hope, or some kind of lasting joy.
SPEAKER_00: But they all will fade whenever I'm turning to things that are temporal, things that are finite.
SPEAKER_00: That's why if we want to find a joy that's almost inexpressible because it just overflows, if we want to find a hope that is inexhaustible, we need to turn to Christ, our all in all.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus is the only one who actually did come and paid it all for us that we might have life in his name.