SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: Today I'm going to do something that I don't think I've ever done, and nobody has given me any sympathy for this, but Jason tasked us as pastors to preach an entire book of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, giddy up and better cup.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to attempt to take you through the whole book of Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: And I think Jason's aim is for us to put ourselves in the shoes of these recipients.
SPEAKER_00: You got these letters from the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: There somewhere is a little church in the Church of Colossae, and you received this letter from an apostle, right?
SPEAKER_00: And what would your response be?
SPEAKER_00: What would be the reaction in the church?
SPEAKER_00: And that is what we try and capture with this series.
SPEAKER_00: But let me give you a little bit of uh history here.
SPEAKER_00: In the early stages of World War II, Denmark viewed Germany with an open mind.
SPEAKER_00: And they adopted this policy of neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: They thought neutrality would be mutually advantageous to both Denmark and Germany.
SPEAKER_00: However, despite a policy of neutrality, on the morning of April 9th, 1948, at 4.15 a.m., the German army crossed into neutral Denmark.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, the army felt that resistance would be futile and that surrender would be the only option.
SPEAKER_00: Two hours later, at 6 15 a.m., the Danish parliament unconditionally surrendered to Nazi Germany.
SPEAKER_00: Denmark would now face the increasing demands of Nazi Germany, especially adopting a policy on the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Would they resist or would they defend what they believed to be right?
SPEAKER_00: Or would they also this time opt for a policy of neutrality?
SPEAKER_00: If you wait until the end of this sermon, which will be much later, I will tell you how this ended for Denmark.
SPEAKER_00: But the title of my sermon for this morning is Is neutrality an option?
SPEAKER_00: Is neutrality an option for the Colossian church?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's letter to the Colossians addresses the dangers of adopting a policy of neutrality mainly because it will leave the church vulnerable to this thing called syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: A church not anchored in propositional truths will always be vulnerable to syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me give you a little background here.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's epistles to the church of Colossae was written from prison about midway through the first century, probably the year 60 to 62.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote two letters, one is lost, to three churches.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Colossians 4.13, and we're going to page back and forth today, so make sure your fingers are in the pages of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to stay in Colossians, and in 4.13 he says, For I testify for him that he, that is speaking of Epaphras, has a deep concern for you and for those who are in Laodicea and Heropolis.
SPEAKER_00: And we start picking up here the tone.
SPEAKER_00: The tone is polemic, somewhat defensive, decisively apologetic, yet very heartfelt.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, because this letter is defensive, decisively apologetic, yet artfelt, I will try to do the same.
SPEAKER_00: 4 16.
SPEAKER_00: And you, for your part, read my letter that is coming from Laodicea.
SPEAKER_00: So Laodicea received two letters.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is writing here out of a deep concern for these three sister churches and what is today known as Turkey.
SPEAKER_00: He has a twofold purpose for writing this letter.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose is twofold.
SPEAKER_00: To warn the church of an existential threat, and number two, to anchor the church in propositional truths.
SPEAKER_00: Warn the church of existential threat and anchoring the church in propositional truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's look here at the existential threat.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at the existential threat.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is warning the church here of existential threat, and we find that right in the middle of his letter.
SPEAKER_00: Usually in ancient writings, the meaty parts are in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: The most important parts are in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Colossians 2.4.
SPEAKER_00: I say this to you that no one will delude you, and some of your translations may read, deceive you.
SPEAKER_00: The is vis reads, delude you with what?
SPEAKER_00: Persuasive arguments.
SPEAKER_00: And then a few verses later in 2.8 he says, see that no one takes you captive through the philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an existential threat.
SPEAKER_00: These existential threats come through persuasive arguments and empty philosophy, or as the ESV reads there, philosophy and empty deceit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as to the actual nature of these arguments and to the actual content and precise nature of these philosophies, scholars are divided.
SPEAKER_00: A British scholar, F.
SPEAKER_00: F.
SPEAKER_00: Bruce, suggested a form of Gnosticism.
SPEAKER_00: The one is the threat could be Gnosticism.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to go into that too much.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Arnold Clinton, he's from Viola, a more recent scholar, he says it was ancient folklores, Jewish mysticism, and indigenous customs combined with local traditions that were being accommodated into the church.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what view you take, you take the Gnostic view or the kind of the local customs of the area incorporated into the church.
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
SPEAKER_00: John Kitchen says the following in his commentary about the existential threat.
SPEAKER_00: He says it was a syncretistic blend of falsehoods melded together in a uniquely spiritually toxic brew.
SPEAKER_00: And I think scholars are united.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism is what is the threat to you.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism here is a blend of falsehoods melded together into a uniquely spiritually toxic brew.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism was and is still an existential threat to the Christian church.
SPEAKER_00: A church not anchored in propositional truths will be vulnerable to syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: And that includes the Evangelical Free Church of America.
SPEAKER_00: We are not at risk.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism is a word, is probably a word you will hear very early on if you talk to missionaries, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul Krisant, syncretism is a big problem, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you a little story here about a syncretism and my first hand experience with syncretism in South Africa.
SPEAKER_00: This Baptist pastor, Solit, gospel preacher, plants a church in a village, a remote village in the northern part of South Africa.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time we went out there, maybe four or five years later, the pastor was preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The village pastor, who's now the local indigenous pastor, he's preaching a gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He's opening up the word and preaching the word.
SPEAKER_00: But then at some point, the church's finances started deep diving.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
SPEAKER_00: They called in a Sangoma.
SPEAKER_00: A Sangoma is a shaman, a witch doctor of some sorts, to get this, drive out the demon of poverty, and to appease the ancestral spirits.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: That happens.
SPEAKER_00: You see, syncretism sounds very advantageous to both parties.
SPEAKER_00: The people of culture and the people of Christ can have it both ways.
SPEAKER_00: You can hold on to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but you can also hold on to the things that you grew up with.
SPEAKER_00: And in South Africa, just about every person that grows up with animism.
SPEAKER_00: Animism.
SPEAKER_00: Here's two more things that you gotta know about syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism is never a wholesale departure from Christianity or the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: However, we are willing to let go of certain beliefs that we will believe would be here on the periphery.
SPEAKER_00: We let go of these.
SPEAKER_00: We let go of these things on the periphery and we add things.
SPEAKER_00: That is syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature, that's the coat in which syncretism comes to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Another way in which syncretism comes into the church, it's where churches typically take a position of theological neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll explain that a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: You see, where there's theological neutrality, doctrinal neutrality, that church is being opened up for syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: However, theological neutrality, even in our own time, sounds so good.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, I'm a little more open-minded to other people's views, and I just want to get along with people, right?
SPEAKER_00: That sounds good in our time.
SPEAKER_00: And we think it's a mutually advantageous position between the ideologies of culture and the teachings of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We can have both.
SPEAKER_00: And that is syncretism.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Colossian church, and even the modern church, opens itself for syncretism in this thing called tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: Tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: You see, tolerance says as long as people believe in Jesus Christ, we should be tolerant to a lot more other things.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me give you some of the ways that Paul addressed these things.
SPEAKER_00: Go to Colossians 2.18.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2.18.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the church here incorporated some of these local customs and practices.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, these things are benign, they're harmless, but they could be helpful to the church.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says there's an inherent risk involved here.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Colossians 2.18.
SPEAKER_00: He says, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and the worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reasons by a sensuous mind.
SPEAKER_00: And then he just keeps going on there.
SPEAKER_00: And he he talks about festivals and holidays, new moon feasts, abstaining from certain foods, honoring angels or patron saints.
SPEAKER_00: These things might not be outright heretical, but are they helpful?
SPEAKER_00: And do they have the potential to lead people astray?
SPEAKER_00: Could it be that we could lose focus on what is important and pay so much attention to these things that we deem important?
SPEAKER_00: Paul says the ultimate conclusion of a religion that tries to hold on to Christ Jesus and his teaching, but also be open-minded to the ideas of culture is what he calls a self-made religion.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Colossians 2.23, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Look at how these things appear to the unsuspecting.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2.23, and these are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of what?
SPEAKER_00: It looks good.
SPEAKER_00: It's smart, it's great, it's genius.
SPEAKER_00: But what is it?
SPEAKER_00: It's self-made religion.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, one thing that uh that that makes America great is you can go to a place where they make a plain coffee for you, and you can think about 28 ways in which they could make it for you, and then you walk out there with like a$6 item, which I could have made for like a buck.
SPEAKER_00: Nevertheless, you can have it your way.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says you're this have it your way type of church is appears smart, it's appears wise, but it's a self-made religion which does what?
SPEAKER_00: Diddly squat for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they would say in South Africa.
SPEAKER_00: Diddly squat, old man.
SPEAKER_00: It is of no value against fleshly indulgences.
SPEAKER_00: It can do nothing for you.
SPEAKER_00: It looks cool, makes you feel great, makes you feel happy, sounds smart, but it does nothing for you.
SPEAKER_00: So, by all appearances, these three churches in Asia Minor took on a policy of neutrality, or they were actually teetering on that point.
SPEAKER_00: And they were thinking of this: well, this let's work out something mutually advantageous to both sides, to the Christian church and to culture.
SPEAKER_00: Let's kind of meet midway.
SPEAKER_00: And that is certainly what Denmark thought they would do is if we can be neutral, it will work out good for Hitler and it will work out good for the Danes.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul disagrees.
SPEAKER_00: He does not believe that a policy of neutrality to be mutually advantageous.
SPEAKER_00: It would be advantageous to culture, but not advantageous to the Christian church.
SPEAKER_00: And I will show you from verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: I say this that no one will delude you with what?
SPEAKER_00: A persuasive argument.
SPEAKER_00: Or as the ESV has it, a plausible argument.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very convincing, a plausible argument.
SPEAKER_00: It's a well-crafted thought, it is an ideologue coming from a depraved mind.
SPEAKER_00: It is often emotionally charged, it is loaded with arguments that just feel right, and of course, it is more amicable towards other views.
SPEAKER_00: But no doubt it has the potential to lead the church down the primrose path of deception.
SPEAKER_00: See to it that no one deludes you or deceives you.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second part of this existential threat.
SPEAKER_00: Paul warns here of the dangers of the captivating power.
SPEAKER_00: There's a captivating power.
SPEAKER_00: There's an ability to hijack the thoughts, hearts, and minds of the people of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 8 in chapter 2, 2, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: See to it that no one takes you captive through what?
SPEAKER_00: Philosophy and empty deception according to the traditions of man, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Gwen.
SPEAKER_00: Glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: First, second time in a row.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek, the idea here is to give you two words to explain one thought.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that word through philosophy and empty deception.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thought in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to, if you if you want to combine it into one, it will probably read empty deceptive philosophy, or I like this one, the deceptive philosophy of vanity.
SPEAKER_00: The deceptive philosophy of vanity.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we think of philosophy as something we as a freshman do in uh in college.
SPEAKER_00: It's those classes that teach us about Aristotle, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Marcuse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, uh Sigmund Freud, and nowadays Kimberly Williams Crenshaw.
SPEAKER_00: But all these have a singular outlook.
SPEAKER_00: They all have a singular goal.
SPEAKER_00: We all think these people are geniuses with the stuff they come up, but the central principle here is man is God.
SPEAKER_00: Man is his own God, and God of heaven, the God of Bible, the Bible, invades the heaven of man.
SPEAKER_00: You see, those who rally for solutions to life that is nothing but empty promises, they say we will make heaven a place on earth.
SPEAKER_00: It is a place where the God of the Bible has no place and no authority over people, and people can be a God in themselves and to themselves.
SPEAKER_00: That is what empty philosophy is all about.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just limited to these names that I mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: It is distinctively worldly.
SPEAKER_00: It's according to what?
SPEAKER_00: The elementary principles of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And the best way I think we can describe it is that Trinity professor, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Murray Harris, who says that this deceptive philosophy of vanity is about any system of thought that devalues Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Any system of thought that devalues Christ, that is encompassed here.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what will, in the end, hijack the church.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it all begins, and it all began here with this T word, tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: Syncretism starts off with a tolerance for ideas, but then it progresses to what is called pluralism.
SPEAKER_00: Pluralism says everybody's ideas are right.
SPEAKER_00: And then we come to a point, it's like, well, what do we do with the Christians?
SPEAKER_00: Then we go back to this thing called relativism.
SPEAKER_00: Relativism.
SPEAKER_00: Relativism says nothing is really true.
SPEAKER_00: We can know nothing for certain.
SPEAKER_00: Relativism spells the death of absolute truth.
SPEAKER_00: Tolerance, in this case, sounded so open minded, but it devalues Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That will progress to pluralism, and it sounds respectful of everyone's.
SPEAKER_00: Ideas, but it devalues Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, ideas culminate into relativism.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds humble, but it devaluates and dethrones Christ simply because everything that Christ said should be taken with a grain of salt.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot say this or that for sure.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot say this or that for certain.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot make absolute statements because tolerance will breed relativism.
SPEAKER_00: And this brings me to the second part of Paul's appeal here is to anchor the church in propositional truth.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, to anchor the church in propositional truth.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't go through all the propositional truths in this book.
SPEAKER_00: The other night, actually, I had our elders met and we read through the whole of Colossians, and I can't remember if Scott was it 10 or 12 minutes?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't take really that long.
SPEAKER_00: And I say to the elders, look, it's a really short letter.
SPEAKER_00: Just tell me what you don't think is really important, and we're going to put this in kind of a jar, and we're going to just put the non-essentials.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: There was absolute silence.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Is this guy more nuts than we thought he was?
SPEAKER_00: But in any case, let me give you some examples of propositional truths here.
SPEAKER_00: He says there that Christianity is anchored in truth.
SPEAKER_00: Truth statements.
SPEAKER_00: I can prove that to you, Colossians 1, 5.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 1.5.
SPEAKER_00: The ESVC reads, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, is that true or not?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's up for debate.
SPEAKER_00: This you have heard before in the word of truth.
SPEAKER_00: That's not everyone's truth, that is not tolerant truth, that's propositional truth.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel which has come to you as a deed in the whole world, it's bearing fruit and increasing as it does also among you since the day you heard of it and understood it in the grace of God in truth.
SPEAKER_00: To anchor the church in propositional truth really goes against the grain of tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: It goes against neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: Neutrality says, just let us hold everything lightly, because we just don't know for sure if it's true.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example of what is a propositional truth claim.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a word we use it, use a lot, but the Bible makes certain claims.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians makes certain claims.
SPEAKER_00: It makes certain claims about Jesus, about the church of Jesus, and the personal work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And these are propositional truth claims.
SPEAKER_00: And if we accept those, it necessarily means we have to reject something else.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example.
SPEAKER_00: The sky is blue.
SPEAKER_00: I want some of you to say the sky is green.
SPEAKER_00: The sky is green.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, there are some dissenters here, and that is good.
SPEAKER_00: In honor and out of respect and out of humility, the sky might be blue or it might be green.
SPEAKER_00: But to say the sky is blue means I have to reject this idea that the sky is green.
SPEAKER_00: But we can't both be right, can we?
SPEAKER_00: Or we might both be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: That is relativism.
SPEAKER_00: That's what toleran breeds, is like we both could be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So the sky might be blue and the sky might be green, but who knows?
SPEAKER_00: And then we take that principle and we incorporate it into the Christian church.
SPEAKER_00: And we call it humility and tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we often don't know, but this idea of tolerance, inclusivism, pluralism, relativism is nothing new.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing is new under the sun.
SPEAKER_00: What did Pontius Pilate say to Jesus in John 18, 38?
SPEAKER_00: What is truth?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, I tell you the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, yeah, what is truth?
SPEAKER_00: What is truth?
SPEAKER_00: There's no truth.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's truth is everybody's truth.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just be a little more tolerant here, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: What tolerance breeds is eventually the syncretism of relativism where nothing is certain anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing can be said with absolute certainty.
SPEAKER_00: Especially what I call ecclesiastical tolerance.
SPEAKER_00: And it's best described by many churches' policy of neutrality, where it doesn't ever take a position on something.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you open the church's doctrinal statement, and there's like five things written there, and it looks like, well, was this like a few first graders who wrote this doctrinal statement?
SPEAKER_00: It's just so vague and just so, well, we don't want to take a position on this because nobody knows.
SPEAKER_00: Don't take a position because nobody knows?
SPEAKER_00: Who gets to decide who doesn't know?
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you some examples here.
SPEAKER_00: In Colossians 1.19.
SPEAKER_00: Go to 119.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 1.19 says, For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2.9.
SPEAKER_00: For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
SPEAKER_00: That is saying that in this body of this person named Jesus Christ who walked the earth somewhere around the year 30, uh he was 100% God and 100% man.
SPEAKER_00: And it's called the hypostatic union.
SPEAKER_00: Great word to throw around lunch.
SPEAKER_00: The hypostatic union of Jesus means that he is 100% God and 100% man.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Son of God, he's the Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: He's born of a virgin, a virgin, and he's also fully divine, eternal.
SPEAKER_00: And the response to that would be, you can't say that for sure.
SPEAKER_00: You can't say it's a complex thing.
SPEAKER_00: I try to think it right today, and I or the last few days, and I I reached out to some people who I thought were very smart and they came up with dumb answers.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they say to me, it's a no, I'm honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, I won't tell you who this was, but but they come up, they tell me it's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: This ring of mine that my wife gave to me is uh gold and wood.
SPEAKER_00: It's gold and wood.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not wood-gold or gold wood.
SPEAKER_00: It it yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_00: No, it can't be.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought of illustrations like a Coca-Cola.
SPEAKER_00: What if I take a two-liter Coke bottle, put a chalk full of coke, can I compress it to such a degree that I can put another two liters of gasoline in it?
SPEAKER_00: And then the scientist tells me you cannot compress something like water.
SPEAKER_00: Water can't be compressed.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, how is Jesus working then?
SPEAKER_00: It's a scientific impossibility.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's be more tolerant and say, maybe Jesus was 100% man and 100% God, because there are other views, and let's not hold it too tightly.
SPEAKER_00: Let's hold it lightly so that we can respect and be more tolerant to our brothers and sisters who call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be more tolerant towards those who call themselves the latter-day saints of Jesus Christ, who says that Jesus is God lowercase G.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just be more tolerant.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see that Paul is making absolute statements here?
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus is 100% God man, you've got to embrace that with faith and don't mess with it.
SPEAKER_00: And you've got to reject anything else other than that.
SPEAKER_00: Unless nobody knows anything.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe let's work out something that is more advantageous to the cause of Christ and the cause of culture.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe let's say that Jesus could potentially have two distinct natures, but we must humbly admit we don't know for sure because it is a complex topic.
SPEAKER_00: And that science will prove that something cannot be two things at one time.
SPEAKER_00: If the church starts opting for doctrinal and theological neutrality rather than propositional truths, all things suddenly come up for debate.
SPEAKER_00: All things come up for debate.
SPEAKER_00: Certain truths will be pushed into categories of we can't say for sure.
SPEAKER_00: We can't say, this is a secondary doctrine, this is not an important doctrine, this is not a selvific doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's say I've got this box in which we got to put everything in that box and say, we're not gonna take a stance on this, we're not gonna take a position on it because it's up for debate and it's uncertain.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Who determines what goes in that box?
SPEAKER_00: Who determines that?
SPEAKER_00: The church elders?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: The pastors?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: The congregation?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: No, let me tell you who decides what goes in that box?
SPEAKER_00: Culture.
SPEAKER_00: The world.
SPEAKER_00: Because he does say that these are according to the elementary principles of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you guys are so narrow-minded and so intolerant.
SPEAKER_00: Let's put some more things in this box so that we can have more support.
SPEAKER_00: So we can hold hands with more people.
SPEAKER_00: We can hold on to Jesus Christ with the left hand, and we can hold on to the world in the right hand for Jesus, and we go rally in the streets and say we love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But meanwhile, the guy on the right hand has rejected the deity of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He has rejected the eternality of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He has rejected the cosmology of Jesus Christ as the creator of the world.
SPEAKER_00: But we want to hold hands with both sides.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at something there.
SPEAKER_00: This is high Christology.
SPEAKER_00: This is like hard propositional truths.
SPEAKER_00: And let me just tell you this day that Paul, when he wrote these propositional truths, he didn't just come up with them, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was inspired and led by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Colossians 1:16 says, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a bold statement.
SPEAKER_00: You are so arrogant, Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Just so arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: Just just where's the humility?
SPEAKER_00: You should have said the word might, or possibly in there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Paul, now you're pushing the envelope.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna really alienate a lot of people here.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 of chapter 1, he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
SPEAKER_00: He is also the head of the body, the church.
SPEAKER_00: He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will become to have first place in everything.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, either we take it all or we take nothing of it.
SPEAKER_00: And if somebody says to me, first place, I am old school.
SPEAKER_00: You know, now you go, it's like, who won the race?
SPEAKER_00: Who got first praise?
SPEAKER_00: We hold it.
SPEAKER_00: No, Jesus is first place, he is first place.
SPEAKER_00: I love the use of the word here, all and everything.
SPEAKER_00: It leaves no room, wiggle room to say something else.
SPEAKER_00: If 118 says he is the head of the church, could it be that he's potentially the head of the church?
SPEAKER_00: And that is up for debate.
SPEAKER_00: If it says that he is in all authority, he is the ruler, does it mean that he's only a ruler over your heart and nothing else?
SPEAKER_00: No authority is in place unless what Jesus puts it in place because he's before all things.
SPEAKER_00: What about the cosmology here?
SPEAKER_00: He is before all things, and all things were created by him and for him, and everything holds together.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we got to be a little more open-minded towards science.
SPEAKER_00: Could be that he could have created, maybe he started, maybe he just kind of like lit the fuse here and let it go.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: But be humble.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Paul roots the church year in propositional truth, which means you've got to accept that and reject something else.
SPEAKER_00: Whether physical or spiritual, Jesus is the boss.
SPEAKER_00: He is not a servant to scientist.
SPEAKER_00: In all things of morality, he is the judged, not the accused or the defender.
SPEAKER_00: In all things pertaining to the laws of physics and the laws of morality, he is Lord of all, or he is not Lord at all.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, any propositional truth claim must and will always be rooted in the primacy and supremacy of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is either first at everything, or he is second and nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you and I wouldn't know anything properly without knowing Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot understand the why of a lot of things, dear brothers and sisters, unless you know Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I know the day that you met Jesus Christ and he opened your eyes, all of a sudden a lot of things in life started making sense, right?
SPEAKER_00: I remember as a young man, I'm in the church, been in the church for many years.
SPEAKER_00: And this friend of mine goes and he has his wisdom teeth removed.
SPEAKER_00: And I say to him, Yo, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take the ape out of you.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, What?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you see, we were like apes, like big old baboons, and this is part of the evolutionary process.
SPEAKER_00: Our jaws have become smaller.
SPEAKER_00: We live baboon-like, and now there's no place for your wisdom teeth.
SPEAKER_00: And then another friend of mine had a tonsilectomy.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's taking the fish out of you.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we were like came out of a primal pond, and we these are gills, and we gotta take it out.
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, you were herbivore.
SPEAKER_00: That was your second stomach.
SPEAKER_00: I read this stuff in books, people.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't make it up.
SPEAKER_00: And then I came to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what nonsense, how stupid.
SPEAKER_00: Empty, vain philosophy that will hijack your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Prepositional truth claims don't simply come out of the magician's hats.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Colossians 3.18, and I better finish up, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going over time here.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 3.18.
SPEAKER_00: And you go, where does Paul pull this out?
SPEAKER_00: This this is the rabbit out of the hat, right?
SPEAKER_00: He says, There, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_00: Children, obey your parents, and everything for this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And you go, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now we gotta pump the brakes.
SPEAKER_00: Now we unthinize.
SPEAKER_00: This is secondary doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: This is right here on the periphery, right?
SPEAKER_00: But dear brothers and sisters, if you start pulling and pushing at these truths, you're pulling and pushing at a very delicate but well-woven tapestry.
SPEAKER_00: And if you pull this one little string out, you might come to the point that you're pulling at the supremacy and primacy of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Because everything is in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Look what he says there.
SPEAKER_00: Wife, submit to your husband as is fitting in the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Such patriarchal bibotry! How dare you even say that?
SPEAKER_00: Let's redefine the word submission.
SPEAKER_00: And people have done it.
SPEAKER_00: People have done it since the 19 somethings, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: Let's redefine that.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Let's be more open-minded to culture.
SPEAKER_00: But can we just redefine what the word wife is and husband is?
SPEAKER_00: Is that up for grabs?
SPEAKER_00: Do we know for sure?
SPEAKER_00: Do we really know for sure what a wife is and what a husband is?
SPEAKER_00: Is it always a man and always a female?
SPEAKER_00: That's the pressure of culture.
SPEAKER_00: We can never work out a mutually neutral position that is advantageous to both sides.
SPEAKER_00: Because it will increase its demands.
SPEAKER_00: It will keep on saying to the church, let go of propositional truths and put it into this box called relativism.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Cornelius van Tils said, that professor at Westminster Seminary.
SPEAKER_00: Unless God as an absolutely self-conscious person exists, no facts have any meaning.
SPEAKER_00: This holds not only true for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but for any other fact as well.
SPEAKER_00: Either God is the boss, he is the first say and the final say, Jesus is the first and the last.
SPEAKER_00: He's either the Alpha or the Omega, He is either the beginning or the end, or He is nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus is either on the throat or He's not on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: And if we start pulling at these little threads that we think is just like peripheral, that really happened to me.
SPEAKER_00: I had this beautiful Turkish rug.
SPEAKER_00: And and at the end it started fraying.
SPEAKER_00: And I had a dog, and this dog was fascinated.
SPEAKER_00: And he would just take this one little thread, and I'm like, it's just the periphery.
SPEAKER_00: Just these little ends.
SPEAKER_00: And the one day I get there, this thing is really discombobulated.
SPEAKER_00: And I take it to this Turkish guy, and he just shakes his head.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, you should have stopped this long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: Who decides what is non-salvation issue?
SPEAKER_00: Who gets to decide what is secondary matters?
SPEAKER_00: Who decides what is majoring on the majors and minoring on the minors?
SPEAKER_00: I tell you who decides on that?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think about some application here, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Look at some real life application, Colossians 1 10.
SPEAKER_00: We as a people.
SPEAKER_00: The people of Colossae, Heropolis, Laodicea, they were given one major instruction here, verse 10 of chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to what?
SPEAKER_00: To please him in all respects.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say please him and please the people all around you.
SPEAKER_00: Please him in all respects.
SPEAKER_00: Not being people pleasers, but pleasers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The job of the church is primarily to please Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he is the head of the church.
SPEAKER_00: He is the risen Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is the master in heaven, the Lord of my soul, the king, the supreme ruler, God of all earth and heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He is the first.
SPEAKER_00: He is the first and the last, the all-encompassing Alpha and Omega in all things.
SPEAKER_00: He is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, and Him alone we please.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: But then on the other side, you're like, whoa, Anton, you're going out there with guns blazing.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to just unload it on culture.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to be just so hateful.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what Colossians 4, 5 says.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a second instruction to the church.
SPEAKER_00: Walk in wisdom towards outsiders.
SPEAKER_00: Who's the outsiders?
SPEAKER_00: The people who are not here today.
SPEAKER_00: Well, not everybody, but you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, making the best use of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Walk in wisdom towards.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: It means we are not a fighting church.
SPEAKER_00: We're not a fighting church.
SPEAKER_00: We are not a politics-driven church.
SPEAKER_00: We're not even a purpose-driven church.
SPEAKER_00: We're not even really free church.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're under the authority of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 4 5 reads in the NIV, I love it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, be wise in the way you act towards outsiders.
SPEAKER_00: Be wise.
SPEAKER_00: Don't compromise, but be wise.
SPEAKER_00: Making the most of every opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: That means we're a loyal to Jesus, a gospel preaching church.
SPEAKER_00: We serve Christ first, and then we serve our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And all along, we don't put people over truth.
SPEAKER_00: We don't put people over truth.
SPEAKER_00: The truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is our message.
SPEAKER_00: Let Him do the work in the hearts of people.
SPEAKER_00: Let Him take care of the hostilities and the and the interactions, but you be faithful to the words of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You be faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Now you want to ask me, your Anton, long story short, what happened in Denmark?
SPEAKER_00: What happened in Denmark?
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you the story of Denmark is the story of two churches.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you the story of the Lutheran Church in Denmark and on the other side, the church of Laodicea in Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_00: First, the Danish Lutheran Church between 1940 and 1943 started digging in the hills against the German demands, which kept escalating, and they put more and more pressure on the Danes to take a stance on Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what the Lutheran Church did?
SPEAKER_00: By 1943, they evacuated more than 8,000 Danish Jews to Sweden.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Lutheran Church.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, no, we're not going to be neutral on this.
SPEAKER_00: This is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Despite the pressures of culture and possibly their own extermination, they stood on propositional truth that the Jew was made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what happened to the church of Laodicea?
SPEAKER_00: Remember it was part of two letters?
SPEAKER_00: Go to Revelation 3.14.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't love this.
SPEAKER_00: I love it for the point of my illustration, but it's a sad revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 3.14.
SPEAKER_00: To the angel of the church in Laodicea.
SPEAKER_00: This is approximately 40, maybe 45 years later.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's like neutrality is not an option.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it says.
SPEAKER_00: To the angel in the church of Laodicea, the amen, the faithful, the true witness.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The beginning of the creation of God.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, those sounds like words Paul already told them back.
SPEAKER_00: And John writes it now, and he says, this I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot.
SPEAKER_00: I wish you were cold or hot.
SPEAKER_00: So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: What did the Laodicean church opt for?
SPEAKER_00: Neutrality.
SPEAKER_00: He spat that church out of his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Faith Evangelical Free Church, you have your instructions here.
SPEAKER_00: We must be a Christ-pleasing church and we must be a church that lives in wisdom with the culture around us.
SPEAKER_00: But we aim to please him, or are we gonna opt for a policy of neutrality?
SPEAKER_00: If we opt for a policy of neutrality, he will spit us out.
SPEAKER_00: And there are many churches today he already sped out.
SPEAKER_00: There is no gospel witness in them.
SPEAKER_00: The choice we have to make today.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I pray for these words that they will sink into our hearts and transform our minds and revive our souls.
SPEAKER_00: After all the precious words here that are propositional truths, and that you took our sins and you nailed it to the cross, canceling out the certificate of death that was against us.
SPEAKER_00: You died for us and you made us alive.
SPEAKER_00: You took us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer a people that are on the fence.
SPEAKER_00: We are no longer lost in the amorphous middle.
SPEAKER_00: But we are a people who have been brought from darkness to light, and may we rejoice and relish in these wonderful truths in the in not only in the book of Colossians, but also in the entire book of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.