Okay, if you'd open your Bibles
to Colossians chapter two. Colossians chapter two. We're gonna begin this morning
with verse six. Heavenly Father, Send your spirit among us this
morning to take the things of Christ and show them to us. We
pray that you'd stir up our hearts. For Lord, it's from the heart
that a man worships, from the heart that a man believes. So do not allow us simply to
instruct our minds this morning, but may our hearts be instructed
in the truth. It's in Christ's name we pray
it, amen. Now, it says here, so then, so
then. Of course, that always refers
us back to what has been said before, just like the word therefore
does. And I think the primary thing
that he is pointing to is that in verse three he says, in whom,
that is in Christ, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. So then, just as you received
Christ Jesus as Lord, so continue to live, the word I believe is
actually to walk in him. Now, we receive the Lord. We are believers in free and
sovereign grace. We know that our salvation, the
work of salvation, did not begin when we received the Lord, but
that's when we began to experience the salvation of God. Our receiving
the Lord is the result of him choosing us, Christ dying for
us, and the Spirit of God calling us. But sometimes people get
it in their minds that God's sovereign in this whole thing.
So we don't, you know, we just simply sit here and wait and
see if something happens. Or as some primitive Baptists
might say, it doesn't matter whether you ever really believed
the gospel or received him. If you're elect, you're going
to be saved. Well, that's not true. Everyone chosen of God,
redeemed by the Son and called by the Spirit does receive Christ. And this word receive indicates
a welcome, not just to receive him like you'd receive a gift,
but receive him as you would receive someone in your house.
So just as you received Christ. There was a time when we didn't
receive Christ. Either we had not heard of him
in truth, or having heard of him in truth, we were left in
our fleshly ways, and we rejected him, just like Saul of Tarsus
had for so long. The Apostle Paul, before the
Lord converted him, rejected Christ. In the book of John it
says, he came unto his own, and his own did not receive him.
But as many as received him, to them he gave the power and
the authority to become, to be called, the sons of God. But
we don't receive Christ Jesus in just any way. And this is
maybe as an important point as any when we talk about faith
and we talk about receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. How do we
receive him? I was told that I need to receive
Christ as my personal savior. You will not find that anywhere
in the scriptures. We receive Christ Jesus as Lord. We receive him objectively as
Lord. That is, we recognize he is the
Lord, no matter what anybody else may think about him. The
truth of the matter is Jesus is the Lord. I think it was this past Wednesday
night we were talking about truth. That truth is an objective thing.
Truth is not something that comes from in us. Truth is outside
of us and we receive the truth or not. So there's no such thing
as my truth and your truth. There's just truth. Now the truth
concerning Jesus is that he is Lord. Peter preached on the day
of Pentecost and the wind up to it, the summary conclusion
is this, this Jesus whom you crucified, God has made to be
Lord. And in the book of Philippians
chapter two, Paul says that the goal to which everything is moving
is that every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is
Lord. I remember Henry used to say this
welcome mat called Jesus can't be found in the scripture. This
one that people walk all over until someday they have a little
pity on Jesus and let him do something. We received him as
he objectively is the Lord. But then, we received him subjectively. What does that mean? Well, by
our own experience, we recognized him as that. You know, he's Lord
of every man, whether a person recognizes it or not. And he
is Lord of every man, even if a person does recognize it, but
maybe doesn't like that fact. He's still Lord. but we receive
him as Lord willingly. We call him our Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know about you, but I
don't want anybody else for Lord. Have you got someone else you
want to be in charge? Is there someone else to which
you would commit the protection of your souls? And understand
that the concept of Lord carries with it authority, but it also
carries with it Responsibility. Back in the days of lords and
peasants and all that, you know, the lord, he was under the king,
but he had authority over a certain section. However, his authority
carried with it responsibilities. He was responsibility to provide
protection for the people who lived within his dominion. Now,
Christ is our lord. He is lord over all, lord over
all things. and we gladly surrender to him
and his authority as Lord because we are happy to have him as our
protector Lord. So now just as you received Christ
Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him. In other words, the life
of faith, while it may be the life of growing, is never the
life of changing direction. That is, after you've received
Christ, that's the direction you're going for the rest of
your life. We receive Christ as our Lord and only Lord, and
we never bow to anyone else when it comes to spiritual matters,
do we? God may set over us teachers,
elders, leaders of various sorts within the church, These leaders are only to be
followed as they follow Christ. That's what Paul said, follow
me as I follow Christ. And no preacher ever has the
right to bind his people, if that's the word to use. to exercise
any authority over his people apart from this, that he is exercising
what Christ, the authority that Christ exercises through his
word. But we continue to live in him,
looking only to him as Lord, looking only to him as provider,
looking to him as our savior, looking to him as our Christ,
the one anointed by God, The point here, as Paul is talking about this,
of course he's talking about this in contrast to an error
that is creeping in the church. And we've mentioned it, the error
of Gnosticism. And the error of Gnosticism says there are
others to look to, others to go through, others to take notice
of, others to pray to. And Paul said no. When you came
to Christ, you came to him alone. You came to him trusting him
alone. And don't ever change that principle. Now he says, we continue to walk
in him, to live in him, and then rooted and built up in him. Now the root is the beginning
of a plant, isn't it? You put a seed in the ground,
the first thing it does is it puts out a shoot and some roots,
but you don't see the shoot until it comes up above the ground.
But what is a shoot without roots? It's a dead piece of straw pretty
soon, isn't it? So we were rooted in Christ.
From him, we draw our sustenance. From him, we draw the water that
we need for life, for spiritual life. He's the water of life. So we're rooted in him. Another
thing that roots do besides gather various minerals from the soil
and gather water from the soil, it stabilizes a plant. It amazes me sometimes you see
these big trees and they got leaves out and then a really
big storm comes up. You know that it is exerting
a lot of pressure on that tree to tip over and it doesn't. if it's healthy. Why is that? It's the roots. You say, well,
the trunk's strong. Yeah, but you stand up a pole
on the ground and let the wind blow on it, see what happens.
It's got to have roots deep in the soil. And when a tree blows
over in a storm, you can be sure of this, it had been sick a long
time before it blew over and the roots had lost their strength. We are rooted in Christ and we're
built up, we grow up in Christ. That which is below the soil,
that which is deep within the heart, so to speak, is rooted
in Christ and nobody sees it. But that which can be seen, that
is connected to Christ the same way. We are built up in Him,
we never look to any other source for nourishment, for strength. We are strengthened in the faith
as you were taught. I like this. And this is going
on with the same concept. Strengthened in the faith as
you were taught the faith. Not strengthened in the faith
going on to another faith. We never leave the very most
basic principles of the gospel. They are our food from beginning
to end. We don't start in grace and then
veer off into works. We don't start trusting entirely
in the work of Christ alone and then veer off into ceremonies.
We begin and live the rest of our lives believing the same
gospel that we were taught. This is such an important point
that Paul said, if a man comes to you preaching any gospel other
than the one I preach to you, let him be accursed. Let him
come under the curse of God from Christ. Why? Because such a person were he
to bring another gospel into the church and lead people astray,
he's brought every one of them under a curse. So Paul says,
well, let's just let him be cursed and got out of the way first
before he brings anybody else under a curse. And then overflowing
with thankfulness. At all times and all circumstances,
the believer in Christ has something for which to give thanks. It's not always as easy, because
the things of life press on us, and we think, I just don't feel
very thankful. Well, that's because the trials
of life tend to make us focus on the trials. But the psalmist
said, praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, praise
his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your transgressions. Now, if the psalm ended right
there, it'd be a psalm worthy of remembering, wouldn't it?
If that was the only blessing you ever got, That'd be a good
enough blessing for life. That'd be a good enough blessing
for daily thanksgiving. It'd be a good enough blessing
for thanksgiving to overflow from us. When we withhold thanksgiving,
first of all, we insult God. It's like when you do something
for someone and they just take it and never say thanks to you
for doing it. And that's kind of offensive,
isn't it? Maybe you weren't doing it just to get the thanks or
anything like that, but when people don't say thank you, you
figure they must not have appreciated that, or they thought I owed
that to them. Well, anything good we get from
God, he didn't owe it to us. So we give him thanks for it. We give him thanks because as
we give him thanks, it confirms in our heart that we have received
this blessing entirely by grace. And that causes our faith to
be strengthened. So overflow with thanksgiving.
Now, verse eight, see to it that no one takes you captive through
hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition
and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. Now, if anyone comes bringing
a different message than the message of God's free and sovereign
grace in Christ Jesus, brings any other message than that,
what he's brought to you is hollow and deceptive philosophy a system of thought that depends
on human tradition and on the basic principles of the world,
that is, the basic ideas that the world operates on. And none
of it is founded on Christ. If they bring to you a message
such as was being brought into the Colossian church, that there
were other mediators between God and man besides the man Christ
Jesus? That is such a common, worldly
thought. Most of the world believes that
there's lots of ways to God. Our society is just enamored
with angels, isn't it? You can go buy little angel trinkets,
you know, and you can put an angel on your bedside and it's
going to watch over me and all that. And they pray to angels. Why? The Bible says that angels
are ministering spirits sent to minister to those who shall
be the heirs of salvation. But it says they're sent. It
doesn't say they're called for. We pray to God. He may send an
angel to do what needs to be done. He may do it another way.
But we don't call on the angel. No. We don't call on the angels. We don't call on what the world
had, the world of that day and the vain philosophy of that day
called Gnosticism, had all these various levels of spiritual powers,
principalities, authorities, and all this kind of thing they
called them. And you'd call on them. No, we don't call on them.
We call on one person. We've got one person to go to. Now, the thing is that these elementary principles of the
world, because they are of the world, that means that they are
written in our minds. They're natural to us as well.
Remember that TV series? Oh, back in the 90s, I think
it started anyway, Touched by an Angel. You know, and the stories were
nice. I mean, by that, you know, it's good to think there's somebody
out there behind the scenes trying to protect you. But it was contrary
to the scriptures. That's the way the world sees
things. We have one who rules over all the world, who rules
over not only the angels, but also all the devils. He rules
over all the people that populate this world. And he is the one
who cares for us. Everything we believe has its
focus upon Christ, is founded upon Christ, and is designed
to turn our hearts and minds to Christ for the glory of the
Father. And if it doesn't do that, it's
not from God. Now he said, see that no one
takes you captive. If you begin to believe any of
this kind of nonsense the world preaches, it brings you into
captivity. You know, this is one of the
ways in which we can kind of instinctively tell whether or
not something's the truth. Is it bringing you into bondage? Or is it bringing you into freedom?
The truth of Christ makes you free. The Lord said, you shall know
the truth and the truth shall make you free. He said, if the
Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. The elementary principles
of the world bring you into captivity. Now verse nine, for in Christ,
all the fullness of the deity lives in a bodily form. And you have been given fullness
in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. Now, there's two ways this can
be taken. Both of them are true. And so
we'll take advantage of both of them. It could be that this
fullness spoken of is that whole series of intermediaries that
the Gnostics were setting forth as the way to get to God. You
gotta go through this guy, and then he goes to that guy, and
it's kind of like a leapfrog thing till you finally make it
up to God. Powers, authorities, principality,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Then there's Christ, then there's
God. And they call this the fullness. And what this is saying, what
this could be saying, is in Christ, that entire fullness dwells. In other words, he's saying all
you need to get from where you are to where God is, is Christ.
You don't need anybody else in between you. We must have a mediator
between us and God, but we do not need a mediator between us
and Christ. We go directly to him. We dare
not try a mediator between us and Christ because Christ is
not going to listen to a mediator in our behalf. We do business
directly with him. And because Christ is that entire
fullness, that entire ladder from earth to heaven, so to speak,
we have been given fullness in Christ. In other words, everything
we need. Christ is all we need in order
to have everything we need. Having him, we need no more. This could also mean that the
entirety of what it means to be God resides in Christ, and
that's true. He is our God. We worship Him. He is the person of God to which
we direct our thoughts and prayers, our trust. It's before Him we
shall bow and call Him Lord. He is our God. And because all
the fullness of God is in Him, we have fullness. After all,
if all the fullness of God is in Him, and He is our Lord and
Savior, what more could we possibly need than that? God is our Savior. God in all of His Godness, God
in every aspect of His being, every attribute of His character.
His omniscience, His omnipresence, His all-powerfulness, His sovereign rule. Christ, who is the head over
every power and authority. Whatever power and authority
there may be, Christ rules over it. That's why we're wasting
our time if we go to any other powers and authorities. That
is, these supposed spiritual beings. He rules over them, so
why don't we just go directly to him? Now, verse 11, in him you were
also circumcised in the putting off of the flesh, not with a
circumcision done by the hands of men, but with a circumcision
done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised
with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him
from the dead. So, Paul uses the Jewish ritual
of circumcision to illustrate to us what has happened to us
by the grace of God. In the putting off of the flesh,
And what does he mean by the flesh? Everything that's natural
to us. Everything we were when we were
born. What have we done in putting
that off? Does that mean that we no longer live in these bodies?
Well, of course not, because here we are. Does it mean we're
not affected by what happens in these bodies? No, we truly
are. It affects us. Here's what it
means is, in our hearts and minds, we no longer consider the way
of things natural to this flesh to be the way things really are.
The flesh has the way it perceives things, doesn't it? The flesh
can see, hear, touch, taste, feel, smell. And the flesh thinks that's the
only information there is. But none of those senses will
tell us about God. That's why fleshly religion always
comes up short in the understanding of God. It requires spiritual
perception. So in him you are also circumcised
in the putting off of the flesh. And so he's using that old Jewish
ritual and saying, Just as in circumcision, the flesh is put
off, so we put off our flesh. We say to it, you don't rule
me anymore. You're not the one who's going
to tell me what's true anymore. You're not the Lord anymore.
You've been ousted from the seat of power. And how did this happen? It happened through being buried
with him in baptism. Now we know that in this area
they take these two verses and try to act like circumcision,
or excuse me, baptism's a replacement for circumcision, and that's
why you need to baptize infants, because they circumcised infant
boys. Well, he didn't say anything like that
at all. He just uses circumcision as an illustration since it involves
the putting off of flesh. He's using circumcision as an
illustration of putting off our natural flesh. Now, how did this
happen? Well, we were buried with him.
Now, when someone dies, what do we do? We put off their flesh.
We go and bury them. It's interesting how often in
the scriptures when it talks about burying someone, it says,
bury them out of my sight. Abraham, when his wife died,
he went and bought some property that had a cave in it. And he
says, let me buy this property with this cave so I can bury
my dead out of my sight. And now we have been buried with
Christ in baptism. Now, Christ was buried out of
sight when he died. He came back. But we take this natural aspect
of our being and we see it as having been buried out of sight
with Christ. It no longer rules. But here's the thing. We've also
been raised with Christ. through, and our translation
says through your faith, the word your is not really there,
it just says through faith in the power of God, who raised
him from the dead. Now, does that mean that we are
raised because of our faith? I don't think so. Why? Well, let's read on, verse 13.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of
your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. So evidently, this
being made alive with Christ, being raised with Christ, happened
while we were yet dead in our trespasses and sins. We didn't
have faith when we were dead in trespasses and sins. It was
that being raised with Him that gave us faith, being born again
in Him. gave us faith. So what does it
mean that we were raised with him through faith in the power
of God? Jesus Christ was raised by his
faith. You say, what do you mean? What
were his last words? Father, into your hands, I commit
my spirit. And in faith, He committed himself
to God completely. The outcome of his work on Calvary
was in God's hands. And Christ, having entrusted
himself to God, God raised him from the dead. Christ trusted the power of God.
And God raised Him from the dead, and we were raised with Him,
not because of our faith, because of His. And when we were raised
with Him, that is, when the experience of that was brought to us by
the Spirit of God, He made us alive with Christ. He forgave
our sins, just as Jesus Christ had been cleared from all the
sins that were laid upon Him. So we have been cleared of all
our sins because they were laid on him and put away. More than
this, by Christ's death, he canceled the written code with its regulations
that was against us, that stood opposed to us. He took it away,
nailing it to his cross. What's the written code? The only written code the Bible
talks about is the law. And it stood opposed to us. How
did it stand opposed to us? Because it condemned us. That's
all the law can do with sinners is condemn them. So it stood
opposed to us. Now, it was common in Roman crucifixions
to write down the crime for which the man was being crucified.
And then they put it on a board or a paper or something above
his head so that when people would see it, they'd know why
this man's being crucified. So Paul's taken that image and
he says that he canceled the written code with his regulations
that was against us and stood opposed to us. He took it away,
nailing it to his cross. Now Christ died under accusation. Christ died under condemnation. What was he being condemned for?
Everything in that written code. that you and I have done and
have broken. It's all written up there. But here's what's interesting,
you know, he said he canceled it. He canceled the written code. The written code could speak
to us, could speak about us, could accuse us and condemn us
only so long as it had not been satisfied. Christ satisfied it,
and the moment He did it, it was cancelled. The indictment is gone. That's why it says,
There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. He took it away, nailing it to
His cross, Verse 15, and having disarmed the powers and authorities,
he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by
the cross. The powers and authorities, the
devil and all his cohorts, who are called, well, Satan is called
the accuser of the brethren. We'd like to think that the devil's
major job is to try to get people to sin. It's not it. No doubt he's involved in that.
But he doesn't care whether you're sinful or righteous by human
standards anyway. He just wants you to be guilty
enough of sin that he can accuse you in the presence of God. And
he can only accuse you in the presence of God if he has a law
under which you are guilty. What did Christ do? He took that
law away, and when he took the law away, he disarmed them. They've
got nothing to fight with. They've got no accusation to
make, because where there is no law, there is no sin, the
scriptures say. And the law is gone with regard
to the believer. What the law says, it says to
them that are under the law, we're not under the law. And
if Satan comes and tries to make an accusation, it will be asked
him, under what law do you accuse him? Well, the law at Sinai. With regard to this man, that
law's gone. You got anything else? Well, no. Okay. Be gone. Case dismissed. Our enemy was disarmed when Jesus
Christ took the written code that was against us, nailed it
to the cross, paid the penalty for breaking that written code,
and now we're free. All right. You are dismissed.