Colossians chapter two. We turned on the live stream
just in time so they could watch me spill a little bit of water
up here. Let's seek the Lord in prayer.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for this
opportunity to open the scriptures, and oh Lord, we pray we'd see
your son. And Lord, it should be plain, because he is plainly
declared in these scriptures. Honor his name. In Christ's name,
we pray it. Amen. Now, it's been two weeks
since we met for Sunday school. And last week, our entire adult
Sunday school class was out of town. So we didn't have the class. So let's remember or kind of
refresh our minds what we looked at a couple of weeks ago. In verse 15 of chapter 1, it
begins with, he's the image of the invisible God, and Paul gives
this very rich and dense descriptions of the glory of Christ. I mean,
he speaks of things that you could write books and books about.
And he's just got it all condensed down into some statements concerning
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then in verse 21 says, once
you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because
of your evil behavior. Now that's what we were by birth
and it was proven by our evil behavior, alienated, separated
from God. Now is it not interesting that
we were alienated and what does Christ cry out on the cross?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken? Why have you alienated
me? Why have you cut me off? Does
this not show us that our Lord Jesus Christ became and experienced
what we are in order that we might become what he is in his
humanity. He was cut off, he was alienated
from God because that was natural, our natural condition. But the
next verse describes what grace has done for us, but now he is
reconciled, that is he's brought us back together by Christ's
physical body through death to present you, us, holy in his
sight, without blemish and free from accusation. And so that
is what grace has done. Through the death, burial, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, we who are alienated from God
have been reconciled to him. Now the experience of that reconciliation
is coming one by one. as God calls out the individuals
that make up his chosen people. There's a hymn that speaks of
the church. It says, chosen at once, but
called by degrees, meaning one by one. We were all chosen in
a hymn before the foundation of the world. One big election,
but then he calls us one by one. And then we are reconciled. Blood
of Christ put away any wrath that God might have had toward
us. And then the preaching of that message, when it comes to
us, it melts our heart of rebellion against God and causes us to be reconciled
to him. That's why Paul says, God has
committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. For God hath
made him to be a sin offering for us. He made the one who knew
no sin to be a sin offering for us in order that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him. Now that's the message
of the ministry of reconciliation. We say be reconciled to God.
Why? Look what God has done. And then
the end, that is the end result of all
of this, It says in verse 28, we proclaim him admonishing and
teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everyone
perfect, complete, whole, without anything lacking in Christ. Now that's where all of this
from God's election of us before the world began through redemption
through the preaching of the gospel and the spirit of God
giving us new life and calling us to him, reconciling us to
him, through all the ministry that goes on like today when
we have met to open the scriptures and to be taught and to learn,
all of this is God's work for and in us to make us perfect
like Christ. Okay, that brings us to chapter
two. He says, I want you to know how much I'm struggling for you
and for those at Laodicea and for all those who have not met
me personally. Now, the apostle traveled as
much as he was able, as much as God enabled him to do, but
he couldn't be everywhere. And there were occasions when
he would be in one location and he would send others to go to
another city. and began preaching the gospel
there. And then there were also other traveling preachers besides
the Apostle Paul. Maybe somebody that heard Paul
went to Colossae and told some in Colossae what Paul had said.
But Paul himself had never been there. Now those to whom he had
never physically, personally gone, might feel as though they
were second class compared to those places like Ephesus and
Athens and some of the Thessalonica, Berea, those places. Well, Paul
took the time to go to them, but I guess you know how human
nature is. And so he's assuring them that
they mean no less to him and that they are no less on his
mind and a concern of his heart than anybody else. He says, I'm
struggling for you. Now, how was Paul struggling
for them? Well, I'm sure that it involved
prayer. He'd never met them face to face,
but he knew them through the gospel and through the reports
that had been sent to him about what was going on in Colossae.
He says, so I struggle for you. I struggle in prayer. I struggle
in my heart, concerned for your welfare. In one place, Paul talks
about his troubles and struggles and that, and he says, and besides
this, the care of all the churches. Paul had been sent to establish
churches, and not only that, that for as long as he lived,
he oversaw what went on in them. Sent the appropriate people to
take care of problems and this sort of thing. So he says, I'm
struggling for you, for those at Laodicea. He'd never been
there either. Now we remember the church at Laodicea, don't
we? From the book of Revelation. Because the Lord later accused
this church of lukewarmness. And then he says, and for all
who have not met me personally, to all those churches I've never
been to. Now he says, my purpose, purpose in my struggles, is that
they may be encouraged in heart and unified in love so that they
may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they
may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now, here we begin
to see an insight to why it was a struggle for Paul and what
things concerned him and burdened him. He knows that there are those
who call themselves Christians or call themselves disciples
of Christ who do not have the interest of Christ or the church
in mind. They are false apostles, false
preachers, false brethren, who find their way, insinuate their
way into the churches, and once they are in, once they are accepted,
they begin to introduce divisive doctrine. They are enemies of
the church, enemies of the Lord. They are in league with the devil,
though they don't know it. And they are out to destroy the
church. And Paul knows they're out there.
And he gets word of it from time to time, that troubles are starting
in the churches. In fact, when you look at the
epistles, pretty much what moved him to write an epistle to this
church or that church is the troubles he was hearing about
arising in those churches. People say, oh, we need to be
like the first century church. Well, pick which problems you
want then. They were just like us and we're just like them.
The first century church was made up of sinful people who
had been saved by the grace of God, and they struggled with
all the same things you and I struggle with, and we're struggling with
the same things they struggle with. They struggle with divisive
doctrine. Do you realize that there's really
only one divisive doctrine? It comes in many forms, many
flavors. It's kind of like ice cream. You can get a lot of different
flavors, but it's all ice cream. And there's only one divisive
doctrine in the church, and that is a denial of the truth that
Christ is all. Every troubling doctrine that
has ever come into the church has in some way or another implied
or outright stated that Christ is not enough. He is not all. Something must be added. And
here in the Church at Colossae, and we'll see evidence of this
as we go through the book, but the Church at Colossae was suffering
from these, the theologians call them proto-Gnostics. They weren't
full-fledged Gnostics yet because the era of Gnosticism had not,
you know, come to full form yet, but the
ideas, the underlying concepts of it. And so he was hearing
about these things. And so he begins to struggle
in prayer, concerned for whether these divisions will be healed,
the false teachers seen for what they are and rooted out. Now
he says, my purpose then, in these struggles, in my prayers
and all of this, is that they may be encouraged in heart. We
need encouragement, don't we? We need encouragement in heart.
We have trials, troubles, tribulations, lots of things that begin with
T-R. I guess that makes for a good sermon. Three things begin with
T-R. Trials, troubles, tribulations. Why? Well, because we live in
a world that's under a curse. Second, because we are flesh. That which we were born is still
there. That nature with which we were
born is still there. And then more so because a new nature,
a spiritual nature, has been born in us and it is in opposition
to our inborn Fleshly nature. So there's a conflict going on
all the time. We do have certain struggles
that the world does not have. You know, people say, well, I
got a problem with sin. Only believers have a problem
with sin. Unbelievers have a problem with righteousness. We have a
sin problem. Because sin in our flesh, it's
still there. Paul said, in me, that is in
my flesh, there's nothing good. In the spirit, in my inner man,
there's nothing but good because it's been created by God. And
the two fight. We need to be encouraged in heart. Now, how does that happen? What
encourages us in all of these? The book of Hebrews says, it
is good for the heart to be strengthened with grace. nothing else will
strengthen the heart of a believer. When we are brought down by whatever, lying at the root of our, or let's just say lying down
in the lowest part of our valley, is a grain, a seed, or whatever
you want to call it, of unbelief. of legalism, of thinking there's
still something yet to be done in order to make things right
with God. Now, that sounds like an oversimplification,
but it's not. That's the essential rebellion against God that resides
in our flesh, that natural way of thinking. And in this life,
no matter how much we study the scriptures, no matter how much
we preach or hear the word preached or whatever, we may grow, but
we are never going to rid ourselves of that which is natural to us.
And that legalism lays there in our conscience and it says
guilty. It says unworthy. It says lost. It says condemned. And from that
flows everything else that troubles us. From that flows our attempts
at self-righteousness and the pride that goes with it, the
contention, the dissension, the breaking of fellowship with others.
It all comes from there. He said so that they may be encouraged
in heart and then united in love. Now the only thing that will
unite the people of God in the very face of their natural divisiveness
is the fruit of the Spirit called love. Now I know that they are
united in their common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But
not everyone has the same level of maturity and faith, and none
of us are perfect in it. And that leaves space for the
flesh to come in and create trouble within an assembly. How are we
ever going to be able to deal with that? Now, you look at some
churches and their constitutions and bylaws, and
I've seen this kind of stuff, and it seems, you know, they've
got a great bit of their constitution and bylaws given over to how
to resolve a conflict. How do you bring together two
brethren in the Lord who are, have been, one's offended the
other and are on the outs with each other? And you know, if
that happens, it begins to infect the rest of the church. How do
you fix that? The simplest fix of all, love. Paul described love, he said,
love is not proud, love is not rude, love does not seek its
own. Anytime we hold a grudge against
a brother, there's pride involved, we will be treating them rudely, We will not be covering, you
know, the Bible says love covers a multitude of sins. It's obvious
we're not covering them if we're holding a grudge. If God is pleased
by an outpouring of his spirit to unite believers in love, they
simply forgive one another their offenses. And do you know how
incredibly easy that is to do? Now, the only hard part about
it is it goes against our flesh. But what's difficult about saying,
yeah, they did something wrong to me, but I'm not gonna respond
to it. I'm not gonna do wrong back to them. I'm not gonna treat
them any differently than I would have treated them if they had
never done it. Why? Paul says, forgive ye one
another's sins as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. How can
I hold a grudge against a brother if the Lord's not? I mean, they've offended him
a whole lot more than they did me. The Bible says the way of the
transgressor is hard. And who's the transgressor? But
the one who tries to exalt himself, who holds himself worthy, worthy
enough to bear grudge and offense against someone else. Sometimes
I want to, shake people and say, you're
not important enough to be offended enough to cause everybody else
to be upset about your offense. You know, we see what's going
on in the world right now with these people protesting and tearing
the place up. There may be some serious issues, but nobody's
important enough to be burning the place down. There's other
ways to handle these things. But you know, a little child,
When they get upset, things not going their way, what do they
do? They start crying and pitching a fit. And what's the purpose
of that? To make it miserable on everybody
else to the point that they'll give in and give him what he
wants. And what do we have to teach
our children? You're not important enough to make the rest of us
miserable. You're not important enough that your mere discomfort
or unhappiness over not getting exactly what you want is worthy
of us having to listen to you cry and whine. Whine about it. And you know, love makes you
stop doing that. That they may be united in love
so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding.
Now, what were these Gnostics saying? They were saying, oh,
the common believer has some understanding, but they don't
have knowledge like we do. See, the word Gnostic comes from
the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. or to know as gnosko. And these Gnostics thought that
they had been given a special inside track and connection to
God, which enabled them to know things that the common believer
did not know. So they called themselves, in
a sense, the knowers. That's why when John was dealing
with them in his epistle of 1 John, Five times, John says, we, meaning
just common everyday believers, we know such and such. We know. They say they know,
they don't know anything. We know. And so he's saying,
may they be encouraged in heart and united in love so that they
may have the full riches of complete understanding. Now, if our hearts
have been brought down through our inborn self-righteousness
and the fear and that strength-sapping judgment that it brings. And
if we are at one another's throat, so to speak, being divisive,
not forgiving and not loving, what does it do? It blinds us
to the fullness of complete understanding. You know, I realize God's ordained
everything, everything's by grace, but that doesn't mean, you know,
as Henry used to say, he'd say, there's some people believe whatever's
going, whatever will be will be, whether it ever happens or
not. And that's not the way it is. You know, what we do matters. Brother Tim James says, it doesn't
count, but it matters. And when we allow our flesh to
rule in our attitude and in our relationships with brothers and
sisters in the Lord, it affects our ability to enter into and
enjoy the things of God. We allow these disruptions to
go on and don't forgive and what happens? What we're doing is
we are wrapped up in ourselves and we're looking at ourselves,
and I guarantee you when you're looking at yourselves, you can't
see Christ. And then we would know the mystery
of God, namely Christ. Once again, this is kind of a
poking out of those Gnostics, because they said, oh, we know
the mysteries. You know, the mystery was a Greek concept.
It didn't mean, you know, we talk about a mystery and we're
thinking like a detective story or something like that. That's
not what they meant by mystery. A mystery was secret knowledge.
Secret knowledge. Or secret truth that you had
to be, you know, of a special class of people to know it. Well, there is mystery in the gospel. There is the mystery
of God. And what is it? Christ. And we're not looking for any
other mysteries. He who understands Christ, in whatever way the human
mind can understand Christ, he understands the mystery of God. This is God's secret knowledge.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. He is the Lord. He is God in
human flesh. To know Christ is to know his
gospel. It is to know who he is, what
he has done, and what that means for folks like you and me. And
he who knows that knows the mystery of God. And even in that, it's
not simply an intellectual knowledge. In fact, there may be some intellectual
error mixed in with it. In fact, not only may there be,
there is. None of us have got this perfect. But this we do
understand, is it not true? That salvation is by the grace
of God revealed in Jesus Christ? We've got that one. That's the
mystery of God. You say, how come it's a mystery?
Because you can't know it. unless you have been given a
special living connection to God through Jesus Christ. What
the Gnostics were claiming they had is what simple believers
actually do have. A special channel, as it were,
of communication with God. It's by God's Holy Spirit. And
there's only one mediator in that process, and that's Christ.
How do we know God? By knowing Christ. How do we
come to understand God? By understanding Christ. And
that's a mystery to the natural man. He thinks that it takes some
kind of vision. And I'm not talking just about
the vision that comes from the background of some in this community
who thinks you have to have some kind of special vision to know
that you've been saved. These people thought they were communicating
with angels and beings above that, you know. And they would
go up through these various mediators and, you know, I suppose kind
of sitting cross-legged on the floor and saying, hmm, stuff
like that, and empty their mind. Well, they got that part done.
It was pretty empty. Empty of truth anyway. And they thought
they were in contact with someone. Well, they were. But it wasn't
God. We know the mystery of God. And it's so simple, man can't
understand it. The mystery of God is a person.
It's Jesus Christ. And it says, in whom are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. You know, I don't understand
all the wisdom and knowledge of the gospel, but I have it
because I have Christ. It's like you have a little safe and inside are gold
coins. Well, you may not yet be able
to get those gold coins out and look at them and appreciate them
that way, but you know they're in there and you've got the box.
You got the safe, the chest, the treasure chest in which they
are held. Jesus Christ is the treasure
chest in which all of the wisdom and knowledge of God resides. You are never gonna learn anything
about God outside of Christ. People say, well, teach me about
the Holy Spirit. Well, I'm not, you know, there
are some things, the scriptures say some things about the Holy
Spirit, but the Holy Spirit did not come here to teach us about
him, himself. Christ said, he shall take from
what is mine and show it to you. So this whole business of coming
to a knowledge of God is coming to a knowledge of Christ, and
to know the wisdom of God is to know what God has done in
Christ. I enjoy philosophy. The word
philosophy means love of wisdom. But I've read enough philosophy
to know there's very little wisdom in human philosophy. Some of
it's downright silly. But even in what is called Christian
philosophy, you can begin asking some pretty deep questions about
the nature of reality and the nature of knowledge and all of
this kind of thing. And I'm not saying there's anything
wrong with it. I enjoy philosophizing. It's
natural to me. But that's not the wisdom of
God. The wisdom of God is a person,
Christ. And he says in verse four, and
we'll close with this, I tell you this so that no one may deceive
you by fine sounding arguments. And you know those who sow discord
and division by introducing new doctrine, they sound good. Now I've seen, I mean I know
I've heard some that you just can't believe anybody would believe
what they're saying. But there's some pretty clever
ones out there. Remember who it is. that animates these people. They are agents of Satan. And
he went into the Garden of Eden and he deceived our first mother.
When she had no sin, he was able to deceive her. What do you think
he can do with us? And what, what tool or instrument
do we have that we might deal with his lies? The simple truth. Everything is in Christ. And
if anybody comes bringing anything to you that is not in Christ, I want nothing to do with it.
Because if it didn't come in Christ, it didn't come from God. And if it didn't come from God,
I got a pretty good idea where it did come from. All right,
we'll pick up there next week.