Well, Colossians is a wonderful
book of scripture. It was a blessing when we first
went through it, and I've read through, I think, nearly all
of my sermon notes over this last week. And as with that gospel
declaration that we put out, when I read through them, I thought
there's not a single thing I'd want to change. I'd want to change
an awful lot about myself, but I wouldn't want to change a single
thing about the gospel that we've proclaimed. I think those verses
were very poignant to us in those early days. In verse 5 of chapter
1 it says, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven,
whereof ye heard before, and there are definite articles in
these three words and they're very strong, the word of the
truth of the gospel. So to have the hope that's laid
up for you in heaven, you have to hear the word of the truth
of the gospel. There are countless multitudes
who think they're getting to heaven on the basis of their
activities and their works. Their goodness, their goodness
that outshines the goodness of other people around them, their
religious devotion and other things. The reality is that people
get into heaven. I'll show you how people get
into heaven. How do you think you're getting into heaven? There is
a verse that we quote so often. It's in verse 22. The only possible
way of any of Adam's children ever getting to heaven is to
be presented. The Lord Jesus on that great
day exhibits his people. He stands beside them is what
that word also says. He presents his people. He presents
them as his bride. He presents them as the work
of his redeeming love, the Father's electing grace. He presents them
as the work of the blessed Holy Spirit, bringing them to faith
and repentance and bringing them to love the gospel, to love the
declaration of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. So Colossians is a
great book. We are so blessed that we began
with it. It has the best description of the gospel in verse 28 of
chapter 1. It says, we proclaim him whom
we preach. We preach him. We proclaim him. And it has the simplest and best
description of the Lord Jesus Christ that you could wish for
in verse 9 of chapter 2, for in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. In verse 11 of chapter 3, another
extraordinary description of Christ. Christ is all. That's a good enough description
of Him, isn't it? He's all in creation, He's all
in salvation, He's all in the believer's life now, and He's
all in the believer's life for all eternity. Christ is all. And His work, His work in this
world is a work where he displays his glory in his church. In chapter
2, verse 2, he speaks of this church, the church that is the
body of the Lord Jesus Christ, that their hearts might be comforted,
being knit together in love unto all riches of the full assurance
of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of
the Father and of Jesus Christ. It is to him our head, isn't
it? If you read in verse 19, in chapter
2, is a great description of the church. It is the body of
the head, he is the head, from which all the body, by joints
and bands, having nourishment ministered, and knit together,
increases with the increase of God. What a glorious description. Nourishment administered. But I wanted to spend our time,
the rest of our time together, looking at these verses, these
words in this verse here. Just in verse 10 of chapter 2,
there's a great description of the completed and the perfect
finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it says, ye are complete
in him. ye are complete in him." Not
that you might be complete in the future, not that you'd be
complete when you finish some activities and get yourself polished,
ready for heaven. The number of people I've met,
when you ask them about heaven, they say, well, I'm not ready
yet. I haven't got myself polished and cleaned up enough. And the
reason they're saying that is because they haven't heard the
gospel. The Gospel is a declaration of how the Lord Jesus Christ
gets his people into heaven by a work of God and work of sovereign
grace alone. In 2.13, these ye are people
who are dead in trespasses and sins. In verse 21 of chapter
1, if you go back there, you'll see a description of us all.
all of us, every single one of us, as a child of Adam, and you
that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked
works. We were, as Ephesians declares
this to be, we were by nature children of wrath, even as the
others. We were a people. We were a people
who had the law of God standing over us. It was the handwriting
in 214, it's the handwriting of ordinances that was against
us. We were once without Christ.
We were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants
of promise. As Ephesians 2 describes us,
having no hope. And without God in this world,
they, the ye, the ye are drawn out of that pool, aren't they?
The ye in in Colossians, the ye that he's
speaking of are the ye that is described in those verses that
we read earlier. To the saints, in verse 2, to
the saints, to the sanctified ones, to the holy ones, and faithful
brethren. And throughout the scriptures
they are described as being people who are in the Lord Jesus Christ. See, without the work of God,
men cannot see the Kingdom of God. They cannot understand the
things of God. They cannot do anything pleasing
to God. They cannot hear the Word of
God, John 8.43. They cannot receive the Spirit
and the truth of God, John 14.17. They cannot come to the Son of
God, and they cannot call on Christ the Lord, and they cannot
believe. All of the blessings come to
this ye, who were totally depraved, to have those descriptions that
we've read in Colossians and those other passages and scriptures
means that you cannot be saved by your free will, and you cannot
be saved by your works, and you cannot be saved by your worth. If you're going to be saved,
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is an act of pure and
sovereign and free grace. Salvation is not determined by
you. Salvation is not dependent upon
you. It's His work. Ye, ye are complete. This ye are the ones who have
have received all these blessings, these ones that have had this
ministration brought to them, as we read in Colossians 2.16. And he makes, he says in verse
two, he makes them saints. They're made to be saints. He
gives them grace. Grace is not earned. Grace is
not based on your merits at all. Don't you love the fact that
grace is free and grace is sovereign and grace is eternal and grace
comes to us purely on the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ and
not on anything I have done and not on anything that I am. It's
all about Him. That's why He gives thanks in
verse 3 of chapter 1. He gives thanks to these ye,
these faithful saints. We give thanks to God the Father,
God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks
because what did they do? They heard, Paul heard of your
faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have to all the
saints. Faith, love and hope are the
gifts and the springs that come from the work of God the Spirit
in his life because he sends his word and he makes his word
to be truth and he gives understanding because these people knew the
grace of God in truth and they were the recipients of a ministry
that was faithful, a ministry that was made by God and not
made by men. And we are strengthened. We are held and strengthened
by Him. The ye is a description of the
saints of God, these faithful brethren, these people that are
strengthened, in verse 11, with all might, according to His glorious
power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. The saints, the ye's, are those
who give thanks to the Father which has made us meet. The saints are the ones who are
the recipients of what I love in chapter 2, verse 2. Their
hearts are comforted by the gospel. Their hearts are comforted by
the declaration of who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Their hearts
are comforted by each other being knit together in love unto all
the riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement
of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ. It's a mystery. The Gospel is
a mystery, but it's a mystery revealed by a sovereign hand
of God upon his people. Okay. The full assurance, the
full assurance of faith, the full assurance of hope. Ye, ye
children of God, God declares his children to be saints. God
declares his children to be holy. God declares his children to
be one with the Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly united to him. And that's why the next word
in this phrase says, ah. The scriptures make it very clear,
don't they, that God's children are, they are one and they are
complete in the Lord Jesus Christ from all eternity. That's what
Romans 8, 28 is saying, and down to 30 in Ephesians 1, 3 to 6,
just a couple of books over in Ephesians. It says, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. God's children
are lacking no spiritual blessing. We might be deeply concerned
about all sorts of other blessings, but there are no spiritual blessings
ever lacking from our God. According as He has chosen us in Him before
the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love." It's the glorious work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, as we saw in Colossians 1.22, to present His people holy
and unblameable. They are declared to be holy
and unblameable, and on that great day, the Lord Jesus Christ
is going to take this bride of His that Psalm 45 says is all
glorious within, and He'll present them. present them before this
world, present them before his father, present them fit and
ready to live in the presence of a holy God forever. But the glory of the gospel,
brothers and sisters, is that when we get there, we'll realize
that we've already been there. We've always been there in the
presence of God. We've always been declared. That's
what our word says, are. We are complete in Him for as
long as we have been in Him. It's the most common description
of believers in the New Testament, that they are people who are
in Him. So as long as you've been in Him, you have been complete
in Him. When we see Him, when we see
Him, says 1 John chapter 3, when we see Him, we shall be like
Him. because we'll see him as he is. To see him as he is is to be
like him. What glorious good news the gospel
brings to fallen, frail sinners. So he doesn't say, does he, the
verse does not say. One of the phrases that we use
so often in the early days of our church is that we believe
God. God says something in his word, we believe it. We just
believe it. If God gives us the grace just
to simply believe what he says in his word, we will find ourselves
again and again having that full assurance of understanding and
that comfort that comes from us. Because he doesn't say you're
going to be complete someday when your faith is stronger,
when you grow more holy. when your love is better and
more mature, when your works are more polished and shiny and
the world acknowledges how good you are, or when you have a better
understanding, when you say, well, I can see more clearly
now. He doesn't say that. He says, ye are. There aren't
any conditions in the phrase. Just look at it. Ye are complete
in him. There are no conditions and there
are no qualifications. There's nothing that he says
you're going to be complete in me if you do these things. You
are complete in him. The Spirit of God is not challenging
us, not encouraging us and telling us how we can make ourselves
more complete. What we must do to make ourselves
complete is just stating a fact. God's Word is just stating a
fact. He is confirming and affirming
a reality. See, God creates reality by his
word. How did this universe come into
existence? God spoke a word and this universe
came into existence. God speaks a word and all of
his children are one with the Lord Jesus Christ. Reality is
what he says. Reality is not what I think.
It's not about my wisdom. One of the challenges for the
Colossian church is that they had moved away and been deceived
by people who were bringing them all sorts of philosophy and wisdom. You only have to go on YouTube
or on television and you'll see all sorts of people who are experts
in understanding, so-called understanding of religious things. Especially
around Easter time and Christmas time, they're always bringing
out shows and books and things, and they've now got a new understanding
of the things of God, and they can explain it better. It is the simplicity of the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the comfort of God's people. Ye are. You are at this present
moment. There's nothing lacking. There's
nothing deficient that you must make up. There's nothing that
we must do to complete it. We are full. and complete and
perfect in Christ. We are one with Him. It's a glorious description of
His people, isn't it? That God the Father sees all
of His Church and all of His children and the Lord Jesus Christ
as one. We are hidden. We are hidden
in Him. This is simply what faith brings
to believers. We don't have to spend very much
time looking at ourselves and we find that there is so much
that's deficient, and increasingly so. But we are right now, according
to the scriptures, all of God's children are complete in Him. This is a great word, this word
complete. It's a word that has many shades
of meaning, but generally it means fullness. If you want to
find one of the best descriptions of what that word means, in the
previous verse, go back to chapter 2 verse 9. For in him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." It's the same word. That's how complete we are. God's
children are as complete right now as the Lord Jesus is completely
the revelation of God. How much fullness of the Godhead
dwells in the Lord Jesus Christ? Is there anything lacking in
the divinity of the Lord? There's nothing lacking in Him.
Likewise, there's nothing lacking in all those that are in Him. I'll read some of the other places
where that same word is used in the rest of the New Testament. 1 John 1.14 says, The word was
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory The glory
is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John bare witness of him and cried, saying, This is he of
whom I speak. He that cometh after me is preferred
before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness have
we all received grace for grace." He's full of grace. And of His
fullness have we received grace for grace. That's how complete
we are, brothers and sisters, in the Lord Jesus Christ. In
Ephesians 1 verse 22 and 23, He has put all things under His
feet and given Him to be the head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. We are complete in Him. It means complete without limit,
complete without condition, complete without qualification of any
kind. Whatever we are in Christ, we
are completely. Whatever we have in the Lord
Jesus Christ, we have completely. We are complete. not needing
any supplements or any additions whatsoever. See, the great news
of the Gospel is that nothing can be added to faith in Christ
without making the thing that is added the object of faith. When people want to talk about
the good deeds and the other things that they've done, really
the object of their faith is what they do. People have all
sorts of objects of faith, and you'll find that they'll talk
about it all the time, and it'll be the emphasis of their conversations.
We simply want to talk about Him. You can't change or add
to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ without it being another
gospel. I didn't write these words. God
wrote these words. This is the word of the truth
of the gospel. It's God's gospel. It's a gospel
about his son. We don't add to it. We find as
we study more and more and as we've gone on in our history,
we've found again and again that the promises of God just get
fuller and more wonderful and more revealing of him and more
revealing of how much we are in need of his grace and mercy
and what abundant mercy he pours out on his people. Perfect. Perfect. Nothing added. everything that's
added, which is what happened to the early church. These false
teachers were all coming along and said, you have to add something.
You have to add a little bit of law, a little bit of wisdom,
a little bit of your supernatural deeds, a little bit of this and
a little bit of that. And the New Testament church
is written again and again, over and over again, in the midst
of all that controversy saying, Christ is all. Christ is all. and you are complete in Him. We don't need anything plus Him,
we just need Him. You're complete in Him. It is
so easy, I don't know, I can't speak for you, but it's so easy
for me to see the failings and the corruptions of my nature
and to look at them. And the reality, the wonder of
the Gospel, and I trust it's our pleasure and our joy when
Greg comes, that we'll actually be caused yet again to look away
from ourselves. There's nothing of any comfort
in looking inside of anyone. We are not meant as God's children
to be navel gazers. We are meant to just look away
to Him. We are complete. Filled up. Filled up like a glass is filled
to the top and overflowing. You can't add any more to it.
That's how complete we are in Him. Fully supplied is another
word, another way this word is used. Fully supplied. Don't you
love the way the words that Jacob used when he came back and he
was so nervous about meeting his brother Esau? And both of
them had been blessed by God and were extremely rich men with
servants and multitudes of cattle of all sorts. Esau meets him
and he says, what's all this that you've brought, this gift
that you've brought? Because Jacob was trying to pacify him.
He thought, and probably quite rightly so, that Esau was going
to kill him if he did. But he sent this present to pacify
his brother. And when they meet, Esau says,
I have enough. And Jacob turns around and says,
I have enough. Esau had enough of this world's
possession. Jacob was saying, I have everything. I have everything. I can give
you a whole bunch of my cattle. I have everything because I have
the Lord Jesus Christ. Fully supplied. Fully supplied. Everything is fully supplied.
Do we need righteousness? We are made the righteousness
of God in Him, 2 Corinthians 5.21. We have it on our church
bulletin all the time, 1 Corinthians 1.30. We have righteousness. We have justification. God has made the Lord Jesus Christ
justification for us. Do we need acceptance before
God? We are accepted, accepted before
God in the Beloved. And to be accepted of God who
is holy, you must be holy. We must be holy. And holiness
is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he described these
Colossians as. Saints means holy ones. Christ is our holiness. The holiness without which no
man shall see the Lord is the holiness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But it's ours in Him. We need forgiveness. There is
forgiveness with Him. Do we need a conscience to be
cleansed yet again? I do love that verse in Hebrews
9.14. It speaks of this blood. the blood. The blood of bulls and goats
sanctified to the purifying of the flesh. They did an external
work, but they pictured something much more significant, didn't
they? How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, It's the
most fundamental part of the Gospel, isn't it, that the offering
of the Lord Jesus Christ was an offering to God. He's not
offered to men as if he's some product to be sold. The offering
he made was an offering to God, and it was an offering on behalf
of all of his people, and God accepted it. He, through the
Eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God. Purge your
conscience from dead works. To purge your conscience is to
clean your conscience. When my conscience troubles me,
where do I go? It's so easy, isn't it, for the
child of God just to learn the fact that this is what I am,
and you know what I am. And I was completely new before
the foundation of the world, and the Lord Jesus Christ has
taken all this away before He came, and He took it away manifestly
on Calvary's tree, and all of that rubbish, and all of that
sin, and all of that evil that is what I am, He bore in His
own body on the tree. and it's gone. It's gone. God cannot be holy and cannot
be just and raise it up against me ever again. He cannot punish
his son and then punish me and still be God who is just and
holy. His name demands and His glory
demands the salvation of His people. He requires perfection
and He performs it. That's one of the wonders of
the Gospel, isn't it? What God requires, He performs in the
Lord Jesus Christ and then He gives. He gives by the Spirit's
operation in the hearts of His people. Christ is made unto us
sanctification. unto us is made unto those people. We have all of these things. We are fully supplied. We are
fully, perfectly, constantly, eternally supplied, filled up
in Him. No matter what the world brings
to us and no matter what other people might bring to us, what
God's people are according to His word. And that's why one
of the other words that is used in relation to this word complete
is satisfied. Satisfied. Are you satisfied? There's almost nothing in this
world that satisfies. In fact, God will make sure that
nothing does. He has set about the purpose
of causing this world to be a place of frustration for all of Adam's
children. They collect multi-millions and
then they can't enjoy it. God's children have a peace and
a joy and a satisfaction in Him. That's why Habakkuk said, he
looked around at his world, didn't he? He said, although the fig
tree shall not blossom, and neither shall fruit be in the vines,
and the labour of the olive shall fail, it's drought. It's a wilderness,
this world. And the fields shall yield no
meat, and the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there
shall be no herd in the stalls, yet. Yet, says the child of God,
I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength,
and he will make my feet like hinds feet, and he will make
me to walk upon the high places. Satisfied is the word of God's
children. You are complete. You are filled in him. See, nothing fills a hungry soul
except the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how much you learn,
nothing can fill our souls but Christ. No matter how much people
experience, religion is full of people who have had the most
remarkable religious experiences, and they're gone like a morning
mist. But Christ fills his people in
a way which means that the filling is an ongoing and continual filling. It's him. It's him. I keep quoting Galatians 19 and
20 because I keep loving it more and more as time goes on. It
says, I through the law am dead to the law. The law took me and
my saviour together and it extracted the ultimate punishment for the
breach of the law. It required death and it got
death. It required perfection, wholly
perfect obedience and it got it. I through the law am dead
to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life, and the life which
I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and gave himself for me. Filled. That's why our
God is called El Shaddai. It means God all-sufficient. He's all-sufficient. The Lord
is my portion. He's the portion of mine inheritance
and of my cup. my cup runneth over. Surely goodness
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and then
I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He fills the souls of His people
with fullness. And our times of emptiness are
times of His absence. Our times of despair are times
of Him being away. He does all things well. He does all things well. He said to those disciples who
followed Him, when you were with me, Lacked you anything? Were you lacking anything at
all? Was anything missing in all those years I was with you?
Did you go without food or shelter or comfort? Nothing. Nothing. You lacked nothing. And the glorious words at the
end of this phrase are, in him. In him. I can't quite recall how many
times it's used in the New Testament as a description of believers.
I think it might be 170. It's a remarkable phrase, isn't
it? What a remarkable thing that we are in God the Son, who is,
as our verse said, is the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.
In the fullness of that Godhead that dwelt bodily is all of the Church of God. For
in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in
Him dwells all of His people. You are complete. You are complete
in Him. Not in doctrine, but in Him. Not in your experiences, but
in Him. Not in your works, but in Him. Not in your devotion, but in
Him. Not in my faith, but in Him. It's always the object of
things, isn't it? We love to teach the doctrine
of the scriptures. We love to teach the truth as
it is in the Lord Jesus Christ according to the scriptures.
But the doctrine is meaningless doctrine without Him. When I
was in India there were so many people who could learn pages
and pages, they would embarrass us with their knowledge of the
five points of Calvinism. And yet it was seen so evident
from their activities and from their preaching that they could
recite all the words and pass exams on all the doctrine. And yet there was something fundamentally
missing from their lives. And I pray the Lord has redeemed
them from it, but the thing that was missing was Him. You can
learn all about Him, but it's not the same as knowing Him.
This is eternal life, that you know Him. You know God the Father
and you know Him. And to know Him is to be complete
in Him. He is the Bride. We are the Bridegroom. We are
the branches and he is the vine. We are the body, he is our head. Our union with him is so real
that God considers anything done to us as done to him. Just ask Saul on the Damascus
Road. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me?" Nothing can happen to a child of God without God being deeply
and profoundly aware of it. And God sees us, as I said earlier,
only in His Son and considers all that His Son is to be all
that I am. So He sees us as one. He just sees us as one. The remarkable
thing about God is that he has the most amazing vision. He never
sees anything amiss. He always sees perfectly, perfectly
clearly. And when he describes his people,
he describes them as they are, because that's how they are.
He creates them that way. He sustains them that way. He
supplies all their needs that way. And that's why, if we just
go back to chapter one for a minute, we can just see that these people,
this ye that were alienated and enemies in our minds by wicked
works, are now qualified. Go back to chapter one, there
are seven remarkable things that God has done for his people.
In verse 12 it says, we're giving thanks to the Father which has
made us meat. That word is to be qualified.
It actually comes from a carpentry term where you take an odd shaped
piece of wood and you fit it perfectly, as the Lord Jesus
would have done in his days of carpentry, you fit it perfectly
in. We're made qualified, we're made
meat. We're made meat. Verse 13, He
has delivered us from the power of darkness. He has translated
us into the kingdom of His dear Son. The world mightn't see Him
as dear, but God the Father sees Him as dear, and all of His children
do as well, in whom we have redemption. We have been bought with a price. God's children are bought with
the price of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
without that, there is no forgiveness of sins. In whom we have redemption,
it is the possession of God's children, this redemption, they
have it. And we go down to verse 20. And
it says, and having made peace through the blood of his cross,
he's made peace. His children are now at peace
with God. I can call God my father. Abba,
Father. I'm at peace with Him because
He's at peace with me. Having made peace, it's not something
that we do, it's something that God has done. He's made peace
through the blood of His cross by Him to reconcile, to put back
together, to join back together all things unto Himself. by Him,
I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.
And you, verse 21, that were sometime alienated and enemies
in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled."
All of the reconciliation is His work. In the body of His
flesh, and this is what I love, isn't it? We began here. In the
body of His flesh to present you. to present you holy, unblameable,
unreprovable in his sight. No wonder the gospel is declared
to be a mystery. May God the Holy Spirit take
a mystery and turn it into something that causes you to have all the
riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement
of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you again for the wonders of your word. And we thank you,
Heavenly Father, that you give the hearing ear and the seeing
eye. And you give faith to your children
to simply take you at your word and rest our eternal souls on
your word made flesh and your word revealed in your holy scriptures. Our Father, grant us the faith
to simply find ourselves believing what you say about your dear
and precious Son, and believing what he says about those who
are in him. We pray your blessing on us,
Heavenly Father, and for the weeks ahead, we pray that the
Gospel will be proclaimed with faithfulness and with boldness,
And once again, Heavenly Father, we would find ourselves delighting
in who your dear and precious Son is, as he's revealed to us. For we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.