Redeemed to Serve the King – Paradox Consulting

Our text in Acts 2:1-13 describes something entirely new and amazing. And yet what we read should not come as a complete surprise. We might compare the Pentecost event to having a birthday. You know that your birthday is coming and that someone who loves you has a present for you. You are not sure exactly what the present is, but they’ve told you that you will really like it, and you don’t know exactly when you will receive it. You know it is something good, and that it is coming soon.  The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is like the birthday party for the church. They have been waiting for this surprise party knowing that the Father and Jesus had a gift for them that was going to be incredible.   As we approach Luke’s description of the Pentecost event, we should do so fully aware that those who experienced it had been prepared for its arrival, even though they did not know exactly what it would be like. Remember back to Luke’s gospel and how he recorded John speaking about the Baptism that Jesus would use versus his own? Luke 3:16: John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. John contrasts his baptism with that of Jesus. John baptized with water, but Jesus would baptize with the Spirit and with fire. Jesus will reinforce these words, and it is clear that the message is that the baptism of Jesus is vastly superior to that of John, just as Jesus is vastly superior to John. Also, just a few verses after this, we see Jesus’ Baptism with the voice out of the cloud “This is my Son with whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. This is the time when our Lord was filled with power from the Holy Spirit to carry out His earthly ministry. Remember, it was immediately after His baptism that Jesus faced Satan in the wilderness and then commenced His ministry. You might be saying, “Why are we talking about the Baptism of Jesus? We’re supposed to be talking about Pentecost. What do these two things have to do with each other?” And I think that is a great question and we’ll get to it in just a few minutes.  For now, let us also remember that Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the Holy Spirit with the assurance that their prayers would be answered: Luke 11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” And remember just a few weeks ago we saw Jesus in his final instructions before his ascension. He tells His disciples that their mission is to be witnesses to His resurrection and to the good news of the gospel. They are to take the gospel to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. But he also tells them to wait in Jerusalem until they are clothed with power from on high. That’s Jesus reminding them that the Birthday present is coming and it is going to be great. Today, they are going to get that present at Pentecost. Setting the Scene for Pentecost Acts 2:1-2, “Now when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like a violent wind blowing came from heaven and filled the entire house where they were sitting.” Alright, the first question you should be asking when you come to this text is “What is Pentecost?” This was a traditional Jewish festival celebrated 7 weeks and one day after Passover. Can my math whizzes tell me what 7 weeks plus one day is? Fifty. Any guesses what Pentecost means? Fifty that’s right. This was a holy celebration for the Jews going all the way back to Exodus and Leviticus.  It was not a coincidence that Jesus’ sacrifice occurred on Passover and it is not a coincidence that the coming of the Spirit occurs at Pentecost. There is a great connection between the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost and the Old Testament Feast. But like the connection with Jesus’ baptism, I will get to it in just a few minutes. The setting Luke describes is very basic. He tells us simply that “they were all together in one place.” I think from this, we are supposed to understand that they did not bring God down by their actions; God came down upon them unexpectedly. God is not a vending machine, and he doesn’t want us to get the impression that if we simply push the same buttons that the disciples did then we can have the same experience. This was a once in an eon event, not to be repeated and it was all God’s doing. To emphasize this point, let’s look at two words in verse 2. Notice the word suddenly at the beginning of verse 2. The Spirit did not come after some agonizing effort on the part of the believers in Jerusalem; He came suddenly, surprisingly, unexpectedly. Second, Luke informs us that the Spirit came while they were “sitting.” Now why would he bother to include such a detail as this? Perhaps it was because one usually sits when he is inactive or at rest. If they were sitting, the inference may be that they were not doing anything to induce the Spirit to come. Let’s continue reading. The Spirit Arrives Acts 2:3-4 “And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” Nothing like this has ever happened before. While a few incidents are described later in the Book of Acts that remind the believers of Pentecost, only here do we read of the “sound of a violent wind” and the appearance of something like tongues of fire being distributed on those present. Only here is there a large gathering of devout Jews from various parts of the world. Only here do those looking on hear the praises of God in their own mother tongue. In an age before the wonders of the moving picture or sound systems, God is putting on a show. An auditory and a visual spectacle accompany the filling of the Spirit. This awesome sound drew people from all over the city of Jerusalem.  This isn’t in the text, but I have to wonder who could see the tongues of fire. If they stayed there all day, I think we would have some reference from those in the crowd about this. So it was probably only seen by the disciples who were present. Perhaps, this frightened them and they ran out of the place they were gathered and into the street where the crowds began to gather to find out what all the commotion was about. If you are a good reader, you might be asking yourself, “Why wind and fire? What do these phenomena symbolize?” (I thought about making an Earth, Wind, and Fire joke but after my ADD bomb, I decided not to.) I should begin by pointing out that in both Hebrew and Greek (the languages in which most of the Old and New Testaments were written) the word for “spirit” is the same as the word for “wind.” Rhema in Hebrew, Pneuma in Greek and wind is often a symbol associated with the Spirit of God. We see the Holy Spirit in Ezekiel and the Valley of Dry Bones as a breath and a wind. But the most striking reference is in Jesus’ words in John 3:5-8 as he was speaking to Nicodemus: Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” It would seem, therefore, that the sound like a violent wind signaled the descent of the Spirit in a mighty way. Luke is careful to inform us that the sound like a mighty rushing wind came from heaven. All of this is to make it very plain that what is happening has originated with God. Second, fire is frequently a symbol of God’s presence. We see it when Moses encounters the burning bush in Exodus 3. We see it again with the fire at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:18. We see it in the pillar of fire that accompanied the Israelites. And from the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we see that fire is also a means of divine judgment. If we jump back to Jesus’ baptism again, we can see that John the Baptist associated the baptism of fire with judgment. Luke 3:17, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Also, apart from divine intervention, the human tongue as described in James 3 is a destructive fire, but once the heart is renewed and the Spirit empowers the tongue, it becomes an instrument of salvation? Thus, tongues of fire seem to symbolize the tongues of the apostles, empowered by the Spirit, which speak of the glory of God, and this leads to the conversion of thousands. Speaking of the tongues of the apostles, let’s talk about the languages that they spoke. The words that they spoke were in languages unknown to the speakers, but which are the native languages of the hearers.  I have tried to mentally picture what must have taken place at Pentecost. The awesome noise (like a violent wind) attracted the crowds. They heard those who were empowered by the Spirit speaking in various foreign languages. I can imagine individuals hearing their own native tongue somewhere in the crowd, and after a search, finding the speaker. I can likewise imagine the speaker, wondering what he is saying. Since they could communicate in a common tongue (Aramaic or Greek?), they could discuss what was being said, and thus the hearer could inform the speaker about what he was saying, and even the language in which it was spoken. What a wonder that must have been for both speaker and hearer. Audience Response Acts 2:5-13, “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation

Today, we will be wrapping up Chapter 1 of Acts, which means we are a 28th of the way through the book. If that is any indication of how long we are going to be in Acts then we should finish Acts around Zoe’s 16th birthday. Not to worry though, there is plenty of gold to be mined from this mountain.  Today we’ll be looking at an interesting event in the life of the early church; the choosing of a replacement for Judas Iscariot. This is not without controversy, and we’ll discuss that, but I want to pull out 4 principles used by the disciples to help them in the decision-making process. Before we get too far, let’s ask God to help us as we study his word. Let’s pray. Decisions Introduction Decisions, we make them all the time, every day, and you can tell a lot about a person from the decisions that he makes and especially how he makes them.  Absurdist philosopher Albert Camus would go so far as to say that “Life is a sum of all our choices.” I wouldn’t quite go that far, but I think C.S. Lewis was right when he said, “Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all of your innumerable decisions, you are turning the central thing either into a heavenly creature, or into a hellish creature by simply making the decisions that you make.” When we wake up, what we will wear, the first thing we will do with our time, what to eat, what to drive, where to work, how we work, where we live, what stuff we buy, how we entertain ourselves, who we associate with, and on and on it goes. Life is a continual series of forks in the road and each decision whether small or large at the moment can have a big impact down the line. Therefore, it is very important that the framework we use to make decisions glorifies God and enables us to make wise decisions.  Let’s read our passage together and see what we can glean from these early followers of Jesus about making decisions. Acts 1:15, “In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120)” Peter Takes the Lead As the disciples were waiting in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, on one occasion a large group of them were together. The text mentions that in those days the company was about 120 people in total. There’s nothing in the text that suggests that all 120 were present here for these events. They could have been, but at the beginning of chapter two it explicitly states that they were all together in one place on the day of Pentecost. It serves to reason that if they were all together at this time then it wouldn’t have said that he stood up among “the brothers.”  Regardless of how many were there, Peter took a stand. This is not an uncommon position for him. In lists of the disciples or Apostles, he is always listed first without exception. The risen Lord Jesus himself spoke to Peter and gave him the express instructions to tend to his flock of followers. However, there are those who would claim that he went to Rome and established a church there and that leadership of that church has been handed down in an unbroken succession for nearly 2000 years.  Peter is not the Pope, the vicar of Christ. He is not the rock upon which Christ will build his church. Peter himself tells us who he is in his letters. He is an apostle, a “fellow elder,” and a “bondservant of Christ.” I could say more about the papacy but now is not the time. Let me just say that I believe many Catholics love Jesus and worship him as true believers, but they are having man-made barriers placed in their way. The Judas Issue Peter stood up here as a leader among equals and he makes the argument that a decision must be made. Let me lay out his reasoning for you. Jesus chose 12 disciples during his earthly ministry. There were others that followed him and were present for the ministry, but these 12 were handpicked by Jesus himself. The number 12 corresponds to the 12 tribes of Israel. In Matthew 19:27, Peter asked Jesus what they would receive since they had left everything to follow Jesus. He said, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” One of those thrones was vacated by the apostasy of Judas.  We get a reminder in Acts 1:18-19 of what Judas did. “Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.” He betrayed Jesus to the Pharisees and religious leaders. He could have had lots of different motives for this, but the most likely is that he was trying to force Jesus hand in much the same way that Satan tried during his 40 days of temptation by telling him to jump off the top of the temple. If Judas could force Jesus into a corner with the religious leaders maybe he would reveal who he really was and would take his rightful place on David’s throne and cast out the Roman oppressors. All of this was foretold by the Prophets. Specifically, Zechariah 11:12-13, “Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord, to the potter.” And Jesus knew all of it was happening while it was going on. This was the plan of God to have one of Jesus’ close friends betray him for 30 pieces of silver. So since God planned it that way does that mean that Judas was innocent? Wasn’t he just doing God’s will?  This is one of those foundational paradoxes of understanding God. He knows and plans everything. Nothing is a surprise to him and nothing can thwart his will. But this foreknowledge and predestination does not let man off the hook. God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom sit side by side.  Judas' decisions were not made apart from his own will. Even though God ordained that Judas would be the one of the Twelve who would betray Christ, it was not separated from the desire of Judas. Judas was no robot. Our Lord did not simply allocate to an unwilling Judas the part of the villain in the crucifixion. Quite the opposite, throughout the gospels we see Jesus extending grace and calling Judas to repentance, time and time again, with His love, His pleas, and His rebukes, yet at every point he turned it down until the point at the last supper when Satan entered him and Jesus told him that it was time to do what he had determined to do.  So although Judas's treachery fit into the plan of God, God did not design him as a treacherous man. He became a traitor to Christ by his own choice. God merely designed his treachery into the divine plan. He took Judas, wretched as he was, and fit him into His plan. Judas meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Judas is a good example of what C.S. Lewis was talking about when he said that our choices are fitting us to become either heavenly or hellish creatures. Judas made some bad decisions and it ended up hellish for him. 4 Steps to Wise Decision Making It was at this point that the decision was before the church and they had to weigh the information before them to decide whether Judas’ place should be given to another and if so, to whom. From here, we see them take 4 steps, and I think this is a good model for us to use even to this day.  Seek Biblical Counsel (16-17, 20) First, looking at the situation through the lens of the word of God, Peter saw that the events of Judas’ departure (to put it nicely) was more than simple happenstance. Peter had been processing the events of the past couple of months with Jesus personally. He got to ask him questions about why things had happened the way they did. And Jesus taught the disciples how the Hebrew Scriptures pointed to Him as their ultimate fulfillment. Armed with this knowledge and understanding, Peter recognized that Judas did what he did (as despicable as it was) to fulfill Scripture.  Acts 1:16-17; 20, “Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” 20 “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, “‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’;  and “‘Let another take his office.’” First, note the level of honor that he gives to the divine inspiration of Scripture. He doesn’t simply ascribe its writing to the human author David, but to the Holy Spirit.  Second, look at the two prophecies that he quotes.  The first one, Psalm 69:25, predicts that Judas’ place would be vacated; “may his camp” - his place – “become desolate.” And then the second prophecy, Psalm 109:8, “Let another take his office.” Let another take his episkopon in Greek. If you listen carefully to it you might hear the same root that we get Episcopal from. It means the office of judgement or oversight. It is a leadership position.  Now, you might think, this is unfair. Peter and the disciples have a decision to make that is in the most important time in history, of course the Bible is going to have something to say. They have prophecy to help interpret what is going on. But I don’t think there is any prophecy concerning whether I should take one job or another or whether I should play sports or do drama or both or neither. So, what help can the Bible provide with my everyday decisions?   While the Scripture does not specifically answe

The Ascension Clouds Don't Just Stand There... Do Something! Worshipful Obedience Expectant Joy Thankful Praise United Fellowship Devoted Prayer

Part 1: The Presentation of Proof for Preparation. Jesus Presents Himself for Proof (1:1-2) Jesus Prepares for the Kingdom (1:3) Part 2: The Promise of Power for a Purpose with a Plan. Waiting for the Promise (1:4-5) Reasons for the wait (1:6-7) To Organize priorities To Build faith To Purify motives To Increase gratitude For God’s glory Power from the Spirit (1:8a) Purpose and Plan for the Power (1:8b) Conclusion What the Spirit’s power supplies to us Deep Conviction Self-Denying Boldness Heavenly Wisdom

The church obediently continues to do and teach what Jesus began by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Welcome back. I hope everyone had a good Easter week. Last time we were together, we wrapped up our study of Colossians. Today, we are going to begin an Old Testament Survey. If you are like me, in your personal Bible reading you have finished Deuteronomy and are moving into Joshua and you might be frustrated with the slow pace and repetition of the Old Testament. You might think, we have Jesus, so why do we need the Old Testament. That’s the focus of our talk today. Why study the Old Testament? Is it merely to have a literary context for the New Testament? Let me lay out two purposes for studying the Old Testament. First, the Old Testament reveals the character of God in a way that the New Testament does not. In the New Testament, we have the benefit of great clarity, and the benefit of considering God this side of Christ. But whereas the New Testament was written in a generation, the Old Testament spans thousands of years. And as we see God’s character manifest through history in the Old Testament, there is a certain depth and richness that we take away. The difference is between a crystal-clear snapshot on the one hand (the snapshot of the New Testament), and a slightly grainy but three-hour-long movie (the Old Testament) on the other. It’s one thing to read about God’s patience in 2 Peter, for example (“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises.. but is patient with you...) (3:9). Yet it is quite another to see God’s patience with his rebellious people in the desert of Sinai. And again in the Promised Land, through the judges, and the monarchy, through exile, and even beyond. Same God. Same promises. Same rebellion. Same patience. The Old Testament offers a different lens with which to view the character of God. And as we see his character displayed across so much history, there is a depth and richness that we just can’t experience in the New Testament. That’s our first purpose for this study. Second: the Old Testament tells us about Jesus. And it does that in three ways. It is the context for the events of the New Testament. Historically, to be sure. But also thematically. From Abraham’s sacrifice on, for example, God spent 2000 years getting us ready for the idea of a substitute sacrifice on our behalf. That’s how we understand what Jesus did on the cross. The Old Testament is the source of, by one count, 295 references and 600 allusions in the New Testament that help us understand who Jesus is. The New Testament writers clearly expect a working knowledge of the Old Testament. And, more than just an aid for knowing the New Testament better, Jesus Himself says that the Old Testament teaches about Him. (Luke 24:44)  This was the Jesus who made the astonishing claim that he came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets (5:17). The Bible, in its entirety, is a book about Jesus. If I could summarize the entire Old Testament in a simple phrase, it would be “promises made.” We learn of our need for God’s promises—we are sinners, unable to save ourselves and condemned to hell by a just God. But we learn of our promise-making God, who in his mercy promises us what we could never achieve ourselves. Similarly, as we’ll see later in the course, the message of the New Testament is “promises kept.” Particularly in Jesus Christ. So what does “promises made” look like?  Today, I want to jump up to 10,000 feet so we can see the whole landscape. We’re going to run through the Old Testament from beginning to end. Not once, not twice, but three times. The first time will be just to set your bearings—introducing you to each book of the Old Testament. And then we’ll step back and run through again, this time looking at our need for God’s promises, the story of his holiness and our sin. And finally, we’ll look at the story of his promise, which ultimately carries us into the ministry of Jesus Christ. Historical Overview The Bible begins, on page 1, in Genesis 1:1, with God’s creation of the universe—from nothing. And the crown of his creation, mankind, made in his image, to reflect his character. This is chapters 1 and 2 of the Bible. The foundation is set. Things are good. Then in chapter 3, God’s first humans disobey him and the whole cosmos falls into ruin as a consequence. And God shouts, “This is why we can't have nice things!” The narrative continues with things going from bad to worse including a worldwide flood leaving only one man and his family as a remnant. But that doesn’t change anything. People are still wicked and disobedient and run from their creator. But God is patient and loving and begins a plan for redemption. In Genesis 12, God chooses one man out of Noah’s descendants out of an obscure place (not a throne) to be the first of his new people. God leads this man Abraham—and ultimately his family—to his place, the promised land of Canaan. After a series of providential twists, these people end up as slaves in Egypt, yet they also quickly reproduce to become a great nation. Moses then brings the nation out of Egypt. God gives Israel the law, and covenants with them that if they keep the law, he will be their God and they will be his special people. And he gives them the land he has promised where this special people is to live and display God’s character to the nations. But instead of displaying God’s character, moral and political confusion follows during the rule of leaders called judges. After some centuries, the people ask for and receive a king in the person of Saul, and then David follows Saul. David’s reign best represents the archetype of a kingdom in which God’s chosen man and God’s Word rule over his people in his chosen place. The kingdom arguably reaches its peak in the time of prosperity and the building of the temple by David’s son, Solomon. But David is sinful and his descendants are worse; clearly, this is not the fullness of God’s plan. The kingdom divides into two. Both parts of the now-divided nation fall into idolatry until God finally destroys the northern half through the Assyrian empire. A little over a century later, he exiles the southern half to Babylon. Several generations pass in exile, and then the people return and rebuild the temple and Jerusalem’s wall. And here Old Testament history ends, with the people reduced to a position of utter desperation and dependence on God. This is the narrative taken up by the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. You can divide them out by putting the first seventeen books in one category, the narrative from Creation to the return of the exiles from Babylon. The next section of Scripture is called the Writings: Job to Song of Songs. And the last seventeen books are the Prophets: Isaiah to Malachi. I’ll take each in turn. Narrative Books Genesis describes how the world and the first humans were made—the perfection of that unspoiled creation, how sin entered the world, and how God initiated his plan of salvation through Abraham. But despite God’s instructions to Abraham to live in the promised land, Genesis closes with these people in Egypt. Exodus finds Abraham’s descendants as slaves in Egypt, and constitutes God’s grand entry onto the stage of world history as he routes the most powerful nation on earth to bring his people back to their land as his own. Leviticus presents a digest of God’s laws given to his people in the wilderness. Specifically, as it relates to the priests or Levites this Leviticus. Holiness is the theme of Leviticus. Numbers mostly tells the story of the people journeying toward the Promised Land, their rebellion, and God’s persevering faithfulness. During this time they kept records of who and how many people were part of the people of God, thus Numbers. Deuteronomy presents the second giving of the law to the people just before Moses’s death and the entrance to the promised land. Deutero means second, Nomos means law, this Deuteronomy. Joshua describes the return and conquest of the Promised Land some 400 years after God’s people left to go into Egypt. Judges is the depressing account of life in the Promised Land: the people continually revert to lawlessness, and the times were well summed up by the phrase, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.” (Judges 21:25) Ruth is a beautiful little story set during the days of the judges, telling the origin story of King David’s Great Grandfather. 1 and 2 Samuel are about the last judge, Samuel; a “false-start” king, Saul; and the first real king, David. 1 and 2 Kings follow David’s royal descendants as they lead the people into idolatry, and eventually into annihilation for the Northern ten tribes and exile for the Southern two. 1 and 2 Chronicles tell that same story. But instead of explaining why the exile happened—the message of Kings—they point ahead to God’s final salvation. The last three books of history are about the exile and the return from exile: Ezra describes the return of the Jews from their captivity and the rebuilding of the temple Nehemiah continues the story by describing the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls, a partial fulfillment of God’s promises of restoration to his people. Esther is the last book of history: a story of God’s providential deliverance of the Jewish community during the exile. The Writings The middle books of the Old Testament are largely collections of wisdom literature, devotional poems, and ceremonial literature from the temple. Job is a story about a righteous man who is tried by God. Psalms are poetic prayers of praise, confession, and lament to God. Proverbs presents the wisdom of Solomon and others concerning practical life issues. Ecclesiastes, again probably by Solomon, recounts one man’s search for the path to happiness and meaning in this world. Song of Songs is the collection of love songs between a bridegroom and his bride. The Prophets The final collection of books in the Old Testament is the Prophets. These seventeen books present God’s commentary o

We are coming to a close here in Colossians. Paul has taken us through what happened cosmically in our salvation as well as in the hearts and lives of the believer, and we have been looking at the new behavior that should develop in a believer as they put off the old self and live new lives of virtue. These virtues spill over into Christian marriages, Christian families, and even Christian workplaces. Today, Paul is going to attempt to tie everything up in a tidy little bow by talking briefly about the importance of prayer for the mission and personal evangelism. These are two areas of the Christian life that many people struggle mightily with. It’s almost simple in comparison to obey your parents or love your wife because that is concrete and in the end there is very little to lose. However, prayer for a skeptic like me who believes in the sovereignty of God often feels a lot like I’m just mumbling to myself or I feel like the tiny ant seeking guidance from the massive human who is getting ready to stick his finger in my perfectly formed mound. On the other hand, personal evangelism is where the rubber meets the road. All of these things that we’ve talked about over the last 20+ weeks are great. But if it’s so great then are you just going to hide the good news under a basket? Of course not, we’ve got a moral obligation to get out there and tell people the amazing news that we can have a restored relationship with the God not because of things that we have done, but because of what Jesus Christ has done for us in our place. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or that the social stigmas or awkwardness goes away. But it certainly helps if we keep our hearts and mind focused on the things of the kingdom. I hope that by the time we are done today, you will sense a refreshing wind blowing through this text. Paul has a remarkably positive and happy angle on personal evangelism. I hope we can see and it and feel it before we are done. The text (Colossians 4:2–6) falls naturally into two parts: verses 2–4 are the first part, and verse 5 and 6 are the second part. The first part has to do with our indirect involvement in evangelism through prayer for God's specially called spokesmen. The second part has to do with our direct involvement in evangelism through wise conduct and seasoned speech. Let's focus first on verses 2–4—our indirect involvement in frontline missions and evangelism through prayer. PRAYER FOR THE GLOBAL MISSION OF GOD I believe that one of the reasons we feel so weak in our prayer lives is that we have tried to treat prayer like we treat Alexa or our Google Home when it is in reality more like a wartime walkie-talkie. Prayer is not designed to serve the domestic comforts of the saints. It's designed as a walkie-talkie for spiritual battlefields. It's the link between active soldiers and their command headquarters, with its unlimited firepower and air cover and strategic wisdom. I get much of this idea of war-time Christianity from John Piper. He speaks about it often and I think it is a great way of stepping outside of our 21st century western comforts. Christianity has always flourished in the fire. Knock it down and beat it back and it grows and thrives. If you imagine yourself as a soldier on the battlefield, I think it really helps to bring home the message of the gospel and how we should live as believers.   This is the picture that I think helps capture the spirit of prayer in Colossians 4:2–4. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. So carrying this wartime analogy, we picture Paul and Timothy (1:1) as well as others in Colossians like Aristarchus (4:10) and Epaphras (4:12) as a unique team of advanced tactical troops in the spiritual battle to recapture the hearts of men for God. They have made a strike at the enemy lines and met a tremendous counterforce. Paul and Aristarchus are prisoners of war. And it beginning to look as though the enemy has achieved a tactical victory. But Paul has managed to smuggle a message out of the prison camp that is calling for his fellow soldiers stationed to the rear. That's the Colossians specifically and all believers in general. In the letter, he asks them to get on their walkie-talkie, call command headquarters, and ask headquarters to fire a missile that will blast open a door in the prison wall and in the enemy's front line so that Paul and his squad can get on with their mission to release people from the power of Satan and bring them to God. So the point that we are most interested in here is this: the soldiers to the rear with the walkie-talkie of prayer are very crucial in the frontline successes of evangelism and missions. If they weren't, this text would be pointless. How to Pray: Three Aspects Of course, this analogy like all analogies is imperfect. So let's look straight at the text for a few minutes and I think we will see at least three things that tell us how to pray and three things that tell us what to pray in this context of frontline evangelism and missions support. Persistently Verse 2: "Continue steadfastly in prayer." Or: "Devote yourselves to prayer." Here’s another analogy for you. Prayer is like a muscle. Why do we go to the gym and exercise? And I’m using that word we very loosely here. We go to be more healthy and to build muscle. If we sit around all day doing nothing but playing video games, reading, and playing on computers then although there is muscle there, it will lose its strength and not be as powerful as it could be. Prayer, like a muscle, gains strength and power the more it is exercised, but when you don’t work it, the power begins to drain out of it. It is not an easy or automatic task to regularly get up early and make your protein shake and head off to the gym where you put your muscles under stress for hours. That’s not something that happens automatically or we would all look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.   In the same way, it is not easy to carve out quiet time to slip away from distractions to lay ourselves bare before the God of the universe in prayer so the communication lines can be strengthened. However, Paul is telling those in his rear guard to be steadfast, diligent. and devoted to building up that muscle of prayer. Forget leg day, don’t skip prayer day. If you want to have a crucial role in the great spiritual warfare of these days, and not just be passed over as a useless soldier, you need to keep the walkie-talkie with you all day, keep it in the on position and ask again and again for God to give you your bearings and guide you through the mine fields of temptation and make you alert to every opportunity to witness to his promised victory. Watchfully Not only do we remain steadfast, praying diligently, but we are also to pray watchfully. Verse 2 continues, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it." We don’t battle with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and our enemy knows the danger of our ability to communicate with headquarters. There is buzz in the news even today about countries like China, India, and Russia who are boasting of arms with the ability of taking down a country’s satellites. Our enemy is similar. He will try to sabotage our communications through a couple of different ways. He could jams the airwaves by filling all of the frequencies that we might use with static. Do you ever feel like the atmosphere of your lives is just cluttered with nonessentials, ever feel like your mind is abuzz with all kinds of things but none of them are the actual thing you are trying to communicate. Is it so easy to turn on music or a youtube video to drown out the silence that there is nowhere to be free of the noise. In addition to jamming the airwaves, he could just steal the transmitter or make us believe that the equipment is broken and defective. If we are deceived into believing that prayer is broken and won’t work then when it comes time to use it, we will just look over it saying there’s no use in even trying this because it is obviously broken. Finally, the enemy could attack by sabotaging the radio operator. Maybe it is through bombing and shelling all the night before so we couldn’t get any sleep, and now we are so tired we are failing on our watchman duties because our eyes are so heavy. Or maybe he tries to distract us with a giant wooden horse as a gift. Flattery, pleasures, and pride are an easy tool in our enemy’s arsenal to seek to put us out of commission. We get confused over who the enemy really is. The only way to get victory over Satan's devices is to be watchful. The reason I stress this wartime analogy of the Christian life is because I don't see a better picture to paint to keep the dire need to remain vigilant before us. We must remain alert in our spiritual lives every day. Without watchfulness we are sitting ducks for Satan's constant barrage of flaming darts. Thankfully The third answer to how we are to pray is thankfully. "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." In case the wartime analogy gives you the jitters, this word is added to help take them away. Watchfulness and vigilance might signify a lot of nail biting and perspiration and heart thumping. But this would be a big mistake. Sometimes our hearts do thump and the hands get clammy, but that is not supposed to be the normal feeling of the Christian soldier. If we remain steadfast in prayer, then what we are supposed to feel naturally is a sense that the command headquarters in heaven is in control, progress is being made on all the strategic fronts. That the battle is the Lord's. The decisive engagements of Christ and Satan in the wilderness and in Gethsemane and on the cross and at the

As always, we must set the scene. Christians are those who have been raised up with Jesus Christ. Dead to sin and alive to righteousness. We’ve seen that true Christians put their flesh to death and live lives of virtue. We’ve seen that marriages look different for believers and families look different for believers. Today, we come to a third group and see how Christian faith makes a difference in the common relationships of our day. Let’s read our verses together and we’ll get started. Colossians 3:22-4:1, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.” Teresa would tell you that I am a skeptic, sometimes even a cynic. I’ve never really been one to take someone else’s word for something. Maybe it is because I naturally do it, but I see questioning and doubting as beneficial and healthy spiritual characteristics. I see myself a lot in the character of Gideon in Judges. You know, God tells him to do something and he says that’s great. If this is really God talking then prove it by making the fleece wet while everything else is dry. Then God does it and he says, that was too easy, how about you make everything else wet and keep the fleece dry. I do that with God and I do it intellectually as well when I watch a movie or read a news story. I want to see things from other perspectives. I want to be well informed. When I bring my skepticism to this passage, I see that many teachers will just pass over the first word hoping that no one will notice and they just start talking about employee/employer relations. While there are principles which can cross the gap of time and culture, we need to deal with what is present right in front of us. I know that many people see this passage talking about slavery and the skeptic in them immediately pushes back and says this is a reason why I can’t trust the Bible. How can I trust a document that doesn’t condemn slavery as deplorable and unethical? Well, let me say that I appreciate your questions and I never want to gloss over them. Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor was a skeptic like me and she pushed against the sentimentality of Christianity, that desire to turn your faith into a comfortable blanket. Instead, she focused on the cross and believed that Christian skepticism kept us looking at the reality of what’s wrong with the world around us rather than glossing over it in the search for comfort. This is simply seeing things as they are and not how we would prefer them to be. O’Connor said that the cultivation of Christian skepticism is a sacred obligation because it keeps us asking questions. And questions keep you free, not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects of those around you. I love the idea that God welcomes questions and doubts. God has never struck anyone down for questioning his words. He is patient to show himself to them. I have questioned God and I have doubted my faith. But I have found that even when I am faithless, he is faithful. He is strong enough to stand up to my doubts. Because of this, I have come to trust God’s word more than I trust anything. So let’s ask this question, Why didn’t Paul condemn slavery here and tell the slaves to revolt? I think it’s interesting to see in 1 Corinthians 7:21 that he tells them to leave if given the opportunity. Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11, There is no slave or free… you are all one in Christ Jesus. Even Paul’s chosen title for himself was not church planter, or preacher, or apostle. But he introduced himself and others as Slaves of Christ. In the Greek world, people saw the gods as these harsh masters who they were forced to serve, but Christianity answers that by showing God not as a capricious task-master but as a loving father. We have a God who frees from slavery. Remember Exodus? That was God hearing the cries of his people in oppressive slavery and coming to deliver them with his mighty hand. We have a God who hears the slave and the free equally. We have a God who himself emptied himself and took the form of a servant so that he might free those who were captive to sin.   But, let me be as honest as I can. Nowhere in the Scriptures does the Bible universally condemn slavery. There is not one verse in all of the Bible that says, “Slavery is evil and should not be practiced.” If you start looking, you will look forever. It’s not there. Not only is there not a blanket condemnation of slavery, but human beings are considered to be property. This is found in Exodus 12:44, Exodus 21:20-21 and Leviticus 22. Slaves within Israel were used to produce offspring for their infertile owners. You’ll see that in Genesis 16, Genesis 30 and also in Genesis 35. There is definitely the presence of a system that we would call unjust and unequal. Slave owners were permitted to beat their slaves without any penalty, provided that the slave survived. That’s in the Bible, Exodus 21. Biblical legislation contains inequality in the value placed on a slave’s life compared to a free man’s life. In the spirit of skepticism and honesty, I don't want to gloss over that. All those things are in the Bible, every one of them. As we talk about slavery, it’s important that we read this with 1st-century eyes, not antebellum eyes. When we see reference to slavery in the words of Jesus, Paul, Peter, or other New Testament writers, they were referring to Greco-Roman and Jewish Slavery, not the slavery of the pre-civil war American South, and there are some major differences. For you and me, our idea of slavery is built around European colonialism. What we think of when we think of slavery is the Africans being abducted or traded for in Africa and then brought over to work the cotton fields where they were mistreated and oppressed and beaten. That is our framework for slavery. It is accurate. But historically, the British were the last ones to get involved in the slave trade. And even when they did, they knew it was shameful. At no point did slavery really take root in England. It’s always distant from them. It’s easy to enjoy the sugar for your tea and your cakes and candies when you don’t take a moment to realize that the slave trade as we know it was built on shipping Africans to the Caribbean to grow sugar. The same Brits who enjoyed the sugar in their tea colonized the new world and realized that they needed cheap labor to grow and harvest the cotton and tobacco that would bring them economic prosperity. So they began to really build up the New World with slaves. That’s our mental framework for the word slavery. The problem is that this doesn’t help us at all with how slavery was viewed in the Scriptures. So let me just give you a couple of differences between colonial slavery and what the Scriptures are speaking to when they address slaves. And I acknowledge out of the gate that the Bible is clear that one human being can own another human being. But there are some pieces that help us process this and watch the line of redemption. So let’s go. An enslaved person generally could not be identified by clothing, ethnicity or socioeconomic background, whereas in colonial America, the slaves were Africans, they were blacks. If you saw a black in South Carolina in the 1700’s, he wasn’t in business. He was a slave. Slavery was marked by an ethnic group. That is not the case in the ancient Near East. Anybody could be a slave. You’ll see that more as we work through. Also, in the ancient Near East, the education of slaves was seen as a smart business practice. So slaves were educated by their masters, most times to the point where they are smarter than and more educated than their owners. Let me give you two examples of where this plays out in the Bible itself. Joseph was a slave who ended up being second in power to Pharaoh in Egypt. Daniel was a slave who ended up second in power to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. These were slaves who were so educated and so trained and so smart in how they did things that there was an acknowledgment among their owners that, “This is an extremely gifted individual. Let’s let him rise all the way up to the top if they can.” You’re not going to see that in colonial America. There is no black man who is a congressman in the 1700’s. But in the ancient Near East, it’s not uncommon to see a slave rise to an unbelievable amount of power to be able to own land himself and even have slaves that work for him. You had the ability to save your own money, purchase yourself out from slavery and then run the business with the slaves that you had purchased, whom you are educating. Because slaves were owned by persons across a range of economic levels, they developed no conscious awareness of being a class or a group of people. So in colonial America, they are almost exclusively black men and women who were dressed similarly, began to develop their own culture, began to develop their own class and began to look around and go, “We are an oppressed people.” Like Israel in Egypt, they began to sense the heavy hand of their master as a group. That is not the case in the ancient Near East, because you could be doing very well and have a slave as your neighbor living in a house nicer than yours and not even be able to tell by how they dressed, where they lived, how they walked or how they talked that they were a slave. This is because of my last difference. In the Ancient Near East, people often sold themselves into slavery to pay a debt or to avoid po

Last week, we examined the roles that God gave to the wife and to the husband. As I pointed out last week, the ability of the husband and wife to fulfill their roles will be dependent upon their walk with the Lord. What Paul commands in Colossians 3:18-19 is dependent on what he has said in the previous seventeen verses. If we live as those who have been raised up with Christ, which includes putting to death the old man of the flesh and putting on the new practices and attitudes that are in keeping with walking with Christ, we can fulfill our roles in marriage and bring glory to God. Today, we are going to look at a related subject, the relationship between children and parents (specifically fathers as the head of the household). Let me read through Colossians 3:20-21 to lay the groundwork for this message. “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” God has placed the husband as the head of the family which means he has the responsibility of leadership. He is commanded to love His wife in the sacrificial manner that Christ loves the church and cherish her the same way he cherishes his own body. This love includes being her provider and protector. The wife has equal value before God as a representative of his image, but God has given her different gifts, abilities and responsibilities. Submission is an act of her will and not something coerced or forced. Her submission demonstrates her love and trust of God through her service to her husband. Her submission is first to God and then because of that she secondarily submits to her husband. As we come to the role of the children, I will say that it is easier for children to fulfill their role if they know the Lord and are walking with Him by the Holy Spirit, but Paul does not place that expectation upon them since even the children born to Christian parents come into the world as unsaved sinners. Until the child comes to personal faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, they cannot live as one who has been raised up with Christ, for that has not yet happened. The role given to the children is actually very simple. Paul says here, Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. In Ephesians 6:1-3 he adds to a similar statement the Old Testament command and promise that goes with it. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.” Purposes of Children Children are to obey their parents. Whenever my parents used to tell me to do something, one of my favorite questions was why. The response usually came back, because I said so, and that should have been enough. But I’ve always had a desire to know how things work, so if I can see the reasoning behind something, I have an easier time obeying. With that in mind, I want to look at a handful of purposes which form the basis for the role of children. 1) Continuation of mankind. In Genesis 1:28 God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth . . .”. Mankind is always just one generation away from extinction. 2) Continuation of the knowledge of God. Deuteronomy 6:4-7, a famous passage called the Shema commands Israel to pass their knowledge of God from one generation unto the next, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Of course we know that parents aren’t the only people who speak the truth into Children’s lives, and it is completely possible to come to know and love Jesus even if you don’t come from a Christian home, however, Christian parents have a particularly special mission field and their own children should be their priority in evangelism and disciple making. 3) to be a blessing. Psalm 127:3-5, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord; The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They shall not be ashamed, When they speak with their enemies in the gate.” Children are a blessing from God. They bring so much into our lives. Certainly there are the heartaches and tough parts of raising kids, but they also bring such joy. Their love for life, wonder at the world around them, and happiness over simple pleasures. But more importantly from the eternal perspective, they teach us a lot about trusting the Lord and walking with Him. They prod us to think less of ourselves and learn to love sacrificially. They reflect us and we see both the good and bad in ourselves which prods us on to greater holiness. Their very presence causes us to be more careful how we act, what we say and even how we think. Children are a great blessing from God to us. The Role of Children What these purposes in mind, then what is the role of children within the family? To put it simply, they are there to learn. The parents’ responsibility is to teach them and theirs is to learn. Children are not the center of the family and neither are they somewhere on the outskirts. They are part of the family. Husband and wife became a family when they were married. A family of just two people, but a family nonetheless. When your first child came along your family simply expanded to three and with each child your family circle simply got larger. Each new life added to your family is another soul for you to guide and direct into holiness. Paul has already commanded husbands to lead their wives in sanctification so that they might be holy and blameless. The same is true for their children. Their role is to learn from both their mother and father who God is, what He is like, and how to have a personal relationship with Him. Your role is to teach and their role is to learn and learning begins with obedience. Obedience Obedience is the chisel used by God to shape a child’s behavior, character and belief system. Proper obedience leads to freedom. Freedom to live out of a love for righteousness instead of fear of consequences. Children, listen up. Your first and foremost responsibility in the family is to obey your parents. God’s commandment to all children is “obey your father and mother,” and our text adds that this is to be “in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord.” Ephesians 6:1 says, “for this is right.” Children, it is right and it is pleasing to the Lord for you to obey your parents in all things. The word “obey” here literally means, “to hear under,” and so includes the idea of hearing and responding positively. Attitude as well as action is important in obedience. If you grumble or whine about what you asked to do, you are not obeying even if you do what you were told. As the Proverbs 6:20 states it; “My son, observe the commandment of your father, And do not forsake the teaching of your mother.” This is not some conspiracy against you so that your life will be miserable, but rather this is God’s commandment so that there will be order in the home and your life will be filled with blessings. Learning obedience to your parents is the first step toward learning both self-control and obedience to the Lord. Self-Control Self-control is the foundational skill for all learning. This is both mental and physical. Without mental self-control you will not be able to focus your attention to read, study, or analyze and solve problems. Every subject you will ever study takes concentration – math, history, language, art, science and understanding your Bible. The better your mental self-control, the better you will do in all your studies regardless of your IQ. Without physical self-control you will never gain the skills needed to perform any kind of job. It takes a lot of practice to learn to control your fingers so that you can color between the lines or nimbly use a keyboard to operate a computer. If you cannot control your hands you cannot drive a nail and you would be dangerous with a power saw. Even the ability to speak requires precise control of your vocal cords, tongue and lips. Clear communication requires the addition of a controlled mind otherwise what you say will not make sense. Obey God Obedience to your parents is also the place where you start to learn obedience to God Himself. It is from your parents that you learn your first lessons in consequences. Children, when you disobey your parents you have also broken God’s commandment to you and that is sin. Parents, when you let your child get away with disobedience to you, then you are training that child to sin. That means you are also in sin. Disobedience brings punishment while obedience brings blessings. A child that will not learn to obey simple instructions from a parent who is physically present will not later obey more complex commands from a God they cannot physically see and touch. It is better to learn this lesson when the consequences are at worst a spanking or removal of privileges rather than the wrath of a holy and just God. The eternal consequence of disobedience is separation from God and eternity in Hell. Obviously, the statement here to obey them in “all things” is not without qualification. As with all authority there is a hierarchy that starts with God and then descends from there. For children, as with all people, God is to be obeyed first and above anyone else. After God, children are to obey their parents next, and then any other sources of authority as is fitting to the particular situation – government officials, teachers, coaches, etc. P

“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” Have you ever seen a kid taking aim at a wasp’s nest with a squirt gun? Then you have seen a pastor try to tackle a passage about wives submitting to their husbands. I joke, but this is the uncomfortable part of addressing the whole counsel of God’s word as we march through a book of the Bible. Many a pastor would see this sermon coming and strategically plan a vacation so he could hand off the wives submit to your husbands sermon to an associate pastor. I’ll be honest, I might have done that if I had the option. We live in a culture in which this thinking is not popular. In fact, it almost gets branded as hate speech. So we’re going to navigate this carefully and I’m just glad that I’m not writing this material out of my own head. As always, it is my goal to be the mailman. When the mailman delivers a hefty bill, you don't get mad at the mailman, because he didn't create the mail and he didn't even edit the mail. He just delivers the mail. That’s what I’m here to do today. I just want to deliver the mail and I really hope it is something you desire and have been looking forward to and not a painful message. Before I go anywhere else, I want to remind you of what John said in 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” God gives us commands because he loves us and even commands that are hard are good for us. As I wrestled with my emotions, this week, I came to realize that I was experiencing this apprehension because these commands have been massively distorted and have been used by some to try to put God’s approval on all manner of sin including abuse. I hope it will be clear by the end of this that those are distortions of God’s plan and that His true plan is for your good and his glory. Let’s pray and then we’ll get started: “Lord, I pray that you would keep me true to your word. Help me be a faithful mailman and guard my lips that I would not say anything on this controversial issue that isn’t purely guided by your word. My desire is to show that your commands are given out of love and are not given to put a heavy burden around anyone’s neck. Help us to see that you’re our ultimate authority which we embrace in love. Amen.” New Character Lives in Christ-Centered Marriage For the past couple of weeks we’ve been here in Ephesians 3 discussing how to live out this new life that we have in Christ. We recognized the new life as a reorienting of our minds and hearts towards the kingdom of God, we killed our old man, the flesh, who was dealt the death blow at the cross, and last week we discussed how this new creation leads to a new identity, new community, and new character. This section will flow from that as we see that this new community will be made up of fallen people that don’t have a clue how to appropriately behave around one another. As Paul tells us that we should be compassionate, kind, humble, meek, and patient, those attributes need a place to live. And it should be clear from the context coming before and after that Paul is not talking to society at large. He’s talking to believers and he’s telling them why they should be different and how. So Paul will address them in a form that would have been familiar but I think will surprise them with some new information and paradigms because of the work of Jesus. This is the beginning of a section through 4:1 that we’ll be covering for three weeks could be titled Household Code. This is something that would have been completely understandable to the Greco-Roman world in which Paul was writing. You can find these Household Codes going way back to Aristotle in the 4th century BC as well as Cato, Xenophon, Seneca, Philo, and Josephus. Some have taken that to mean that Paul is just copying what was normal from the time, however we’re going to see over these 3 weeks that what Paul shares to all six groups outlined in this section is contrary to what the prevailing winds of the day were and that it is still contrary to popular thinking. In those days, the writer would have usually just spoken to the men, and there wouldn’t have been a word spoken to the slaves or children or wives. Men were superior in every way and slaves, children and wives were viewed as no more than property to do with as you please. Paul says, “It’s great that you break things down into these categories, but beyond the categories I pretty much disagree with everything you said.” Instead of just carrying on what had been taught by non-Christians or even Jews before him, Paul is even going to question man as the ultimate authority and he’s going to tie this household code in with the overarching theme of Colossians which is Christ’s Superiority. I think we’re going to see Paul making the argument that Jesus is the head of the marriage, and the family, and the workplace. Not the man. We’ll get to those other two in the next two weeks, but right now, I want to go straight to the source and see how we got here. So let’s turn to Genesis 1. A Beautiful Beginning And while you’re turning there let me speak for just a moment to the singles in this room. I want to encourage you to resist the temptation to shut off your ears or your mind because you are not in a marriage. You may want to get married someday and I hope that this might sit in the back of your mind as you think about fulfilling these roles. Even if you take Paul’s advice and don’t get married then remember that this is written by Paul who didn’t get married. He was able to understand and speak to other Christians in the church about their situation and proper roles as reflected in the person and work of Jesus. Either you will need this to be you one day or you will need to be able to provide guidance to other believers around you. Alright Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”” So from the beginning we see that man and woman are created equally in dignity value and worth. Both are created in the image of God. And both are given the mandate to carry out. And yet they are distinct, they are different. In Genesis 2 we get to zoom in on this creation and look at the particulars of it. Genesis 2:15-25, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” There was a time before woman was created and God spoke the law to Adam and he has him name the animals. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” This is the first thing that’s not good. It was not good because it was not complete. Man needed a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. Adam figures out that there is no other creature that looks like him or talks like him. No one was a helper fit for him, God needed to whip up something special for that. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. God presents woman to man as a gift. This is how men should see their wives as a gift from the Lord. Now notice that God didn’t give the man buddies to hang out with. He needed a helper not a bro. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Eve was created from Adam which should show that equality and mutuality which we have. Adam rejoices in his wife and God creates the basic family unit. Husband and wife. And it is very good. And we know that it is his plan to establish some plans for the future because he says that man shall leave his father and mother. Did Adam have a father and mother? No, so this is for future generations. Man is to hold fast to his wife. This is marriage. Man holding fast to his wife, the two becoming one flesh, naked and not ashamed. I wanted to start here, because if we just start with wives submit to your husbands without seeing that from the beginning, God has had a good and perfect plan for men and women to exist in a marriage relationship, equal in dignity but distinct in their roles then the temptation is to see submission as some kind of a condemnation of the woman’s value. But instead, here we are in the perfection of the garden before sin entered the world and there is already this distinction. A Fallen Relationship So Genesis 2 is a healthy and beautiful place to be because there is no sin. However, it won’t take long for us to mess up the original plan.

Teresa and I are terrible gardeners. When you buy a plant from the store and bring it home, you are expecting to have it grow and produce whatever fruit it is intended to produce. A rosebush should produce roses, a tomato plant should grow tomatoes, etc. What they should not do is wither up and die in the pot. But that is what seems like happens to most plants that we touch. Fortunately, I have parents that could turn a desert into an oasis. They pull twigs off of other plants and make them grow. It is some kind of magic that I have not learned. Similarly, we as Christians are a new Creation, we are planted in Christ and we should bear fruit. Jesus is our gardener and through Paul he has shown us what our fruit should look like and he has given us the tools that we need to cultivate this fruit in our lives. So today as we look at Colossians 3:11-17, we are going to see how we should live now that we are free of the Old Man that we learned how to take care of last week. Paul is going to lay out these new clothes that we should Put on in Christ and then he is going to close out by giving us 5 ways to continue to cultivate this new growth so the Old Man doesn’t creep back in and make us wither in our pots. New Creation (11-12) Let’s look at the first few verses together, Colossians 3:11-12a, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…” The first word, Here, gives us a question that we have to ask before we can move forward. Where is here? Does Paul mean in Florida? In America? In Colossae? In Israel? In the First Century? What about the 21st?  No. We can understand it if we just look at verse 10. It says that we have put on the new self. We took off those old filthy rags and we’ve put on a new self that is being renewed everyday into the image of the one who made it. Whose image is this? Jesus. This is just a visual picture that Paul is using to show one of his favorite ways to describe being a Christian. In Christ. New Community As believers, we have a new address. We are in Christ. So Paul says, Here (In Christ) there is no more division. The thing that separates us is sin and all of its power was taken away at the cross. We died to it there. The only power it has now is the power that you give it. Sadly, even the best of us has to struggle with not giving the flesh any power on a daily basis but instead choosing to live in the reality of our new creation in Christ. Do you imagine that you are going to struggle with sin in heaven? Of course not right? We’ll be too busy playing our cloud harps and grooming our new wings. Just kidding. But most people imagine that things will be different in heaven. In that picture of Heaven that John gives us in Revelation 21:1-4 this is how he describes it, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” What a beautiful picture of God making all things new. Finally and perfectly new. God himself will dwell with us and there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. He will wipe the tears from our eyes as our comfort and rest. There is a little statement in there that has thrown some literal interpreters for a loop. John says, “The sea was no more.” What does he mean by this? No fishing in heaven? No long walks on the beach? No splashing in the water? No. Remember where John is when he is writing Revelation. According to Tertullian, the Romans dropped John in a vat of boiling hot oil and nothing happened to him. He said that everyone watching at the Coliseum in Rome got saved that day and it freaked out the emperor so much that he had him exiled to the Isle of Patmos to die in isolation. So for John, the sea means separation from all of his loved ones. From the churches that he loves and is writing to. He says, that in this new heaven and new earth there won’t be any separation. Whenever the Bible talks about death, it is talking about separation as well. That will be the big difference in heaven. We will be fully and completely separated from our old sin natures and we will be surrounded and permeated with God. Paul gives us a glimpse of this here and now when he says, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” In Christ, we get to experience the beginning of this great heavenly kingdom here on Earth. Just look at the walls that are torn down in Christ. Racial, religious, societal, cultural, ritual differences are lost in Christ. I’ve heard some teach that this means that we will all become some difference holy race when we get to heaven. I don’t see that anywhere in the Bible though. In fact, we see just the opposite, Revelation 7:9, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands...” This is not a sea of newly vanilla people, there is beauty in their diversity but they have an even more beautiful unity in the fact that they wear white robes. They wear the holiness of Christ which covers them all and permeates them all. I was really tempted to just camp out here and spend a whole week talking about how Jesus should do away with separation and how we as believers should be the most inclusive people on the planet. But I’ll let you do that study on your own for now. Paul is saying that because we are new creations in Christ, we should have unity in Christ despite all of the worldly things which might separate us. Jesus is our all in all. We come together in Jesus shaped communities and the next verses are showing us what they should look like. New Identity Moving on, Paul says, “Put on then…” and he’s about to get into the description of this new wardrobe and the fruit that we should be yielding, but he takes just a moment to make sure you understand where these new digs come from. If I looked hard enough, I could probably go outside right now and find a caterpillar. Now you tell me, if I take that caterpillar and tape some beautiful wings on its back, what is it? It’s still a caterpillar right? It has not gone through the metamorphosis in which it is changed into a butterfly. And no amount of my poking and prodding and dressing it up will bring about that metamorphosis. That is God’s doing. If you are a child of the king today, you have gone through an amazing metamorphosis just like that butterfly. But if you have not received Jesus then you are still a caterpillar and no amount of working and fretting and poking and prodding and playing dress up is going to change you. That is God’s doing. Paul eloquently and elegantly describes your new identity in Christ, and if you want to memorize any part of today’s passage make it this. The steps that we will look at in a few minutes mean nothing if this isn’t true. So learn this statement. Hear Jesus speaking it over you, and believe it as true for you. “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…” Let’s look at it a little closer. God’s Chosen First word is “God’s.” That is a possessive. You are a people of God’s own possession. We see that statement all through the book of Deuteronomy (7:6, 14:2, 26:18) referring to the people of Israel. But then in Titus 2:14, and 1 Peter 2:9 we see that in Christ we have become God’s people. And this isn’t because we are so great and wonderful. The second word communicates that. We are chosen. Now when we choose things we pick differently than God does. Imagine if we were playing dodgeball and we needed to pick teams, someone would be first and someone would be last and it would be based upon who we think could help us win. But God is not concerned with winning because he is almighty and no one can stand against him. There is no question in God’s mind of this. The factor in God’s consideration is his glory. Are people going to love and praise him at the end of the game. Therefore, when God picks teams he picks the weakest links among us so that when he wins there can be no question that the team didn’t win, God did. This would be horrible and arrogant behavior to teach your kids, but it is completely appropriate in God because it is all true and he can back it all up. Let’s see this when God says that he is going to make Israel a people for his own possession in Deuteronomy 7:6-8, “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers...” Paul says the same thing to believers in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human bein

Happy Daylight Saving Day! For much of the country this is the unofficial introduction to Spring, but here in Florida, Spring has exploded all around us. There is new life popping up everywhere. We’ve already had to mow a couple of times. The funny thing about Fall and Winter in Florida is that it can be so mild that those old dead leaves cling onto the tree all the way through winter and it isn’t until those new leaves begin to pop out that it finally forces the dead leaves to let go of their grip and fall to the ground. That’s not unlike the Spring of our new life in Christ. Our old dead nature clings on tightly until the new growth in Christ pushes it aside to make way. Colossians 3:1-4, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.“ You died with Christ and you were raised with Christ. So now Christ is your life. Paul said the same thing in Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself for me.” And with Christ as our life, we have hope not only for today but into the future knowing that when Christ appears, we who died with him and were raised with him will also reign with him. This is such a reassuring verse as we head into these practical steps of how to live the Christian life, because our struggle and work will not be completed until we see him face to face. So here in these verses we have the beginning of our connection with Christ, being united with him in death. And the final culmination of our union with him being finally and perfectly made like him in glory. Teresa has this habit of getting a new book and reading the last couple of pages when she is only a few chapters into the story. It drives me nuts. But that’s what Paul is doing here. He’s turning to the end of history and showing us how the story ends. And in the middle of a difficult time dealing with suffering and the struggle of living as a Christian in a fallen world this can bring so much peace. “Set your mind on things that are above.” Christ is our life and we live in him and when all is said and done we will be glorified with him. So how do we live in light of this truth? We saw last week that we are supposed to have new passions about the things of the Kingdom of God and that those new passions will be revealed through renewed thoughts about the things of the kingdom. This week, Paul is going to take that root idea of Christ being our life and flesh it out in some practical ways and he is going to show us how to get away with murder. Today, we’re going to kill our old man and destroy the evidence in Christ. Motive: Self-Defense First things first, with any good murder, we need a motive. As we’ve discussed before, we’re very close with our sin. We cling to it and continue in it. Why? Because we love it and it gives us pleasure. However, this feeling is not mutual. Sin does not love us, our flesh is abusive and seeks to destroy us. Consider this an intervention. You are in an abusive relationship with your sin. He keeps slapping you around and beating you up but you make excuses for him and lie to yourself thinking that things will get better. Sin is an abusive husband and a dangerous friend. Consider the fact that your sin not only aims to destroy you forever, but he insults and dishonors your Father and killed your best friend, Jesus. I’ll tell you right now, if we are ever going to be rid of our sin, we have to stop making friends with it! And we must develop a deep hatred for it and disgust toward it. In your self-interest, you need to arm yourself and be prepared to defend yourself. We can see this way back in Genesis. When God was speaking to Cain, he was speaking to all fallen mankind, he said, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” If we jump forward to 1 Peter 5:8, we see our sin equated with our adversary and Peter warns, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” This means that we can’t get complacent about sin. This is a war! We must fight it daily. Romans 8:12-13, is my favorite, it says, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” We are not debtors to the flesh! We don’t owe that old man anything! And if we continue to live with him, we will die. Therefore, we are commanded to constantly kill the sin that remains in our lives. Verse 5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” This is not optional. There are no pacifists in the war against sin. It is kill or be killed out here. Either sin dies or we die. And we will never be done with this command as long as we live. We go on killing sin as it attacks us day in and day out. We do not settle with sin. We fight and we kill. John Owen said it masterfully in his little book The Mortification of Sin. “Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.” This reminds me of the Israelites as they entered the promised land under Joshua’s command after 40 years of wandering in the desert. God told them to enter into the land and take it. Drive out all of their enemies and do not settle with them. Don’t let them remain with you! But what did they do? God gave them that first victory in Jericho and then they started to mingle with the people and they enjoyed their spoils and pleasures and eventually they just settled in to the pleasures of sin rather than pressing forward to the promises of God. Our sin has been marked by God as a sacrifice. He’s telling us to go and claim the land that is already ours. Jesus already did the dirty work. Sin is as good as dead. Jesus took care of the final victory at the cross. Our flesh is a wounded enemy. Paul is just telling us to finish the job. The old man is bleeding out in front of us. Let’s put him out of his misery. Kill Your Sin Paul doesn’t belabor this command and he doesn’t give us any instructions on how to carry out the task here in Colossians. He simply says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” and then he goes on to describe some of those earthly things. We need to look at some of Paul’s other writings to get the murder weapon. What do we kill? But first, I want to make one quick point about the object of our violence. Whose sin are we supposed to kill? Are we putting to death what is earthly in our brother or sister? Are we killing the sins of our wife or our husband? Are we waging war against the flesh of our neighbor? No. This is a personal and radical war. We are called to do violence against ourselves. Jesus talked about this in two different places in the book of Matthew in Chapter 5 and in Chapter 18. He says to his listeners that in their struggle with sin, if your hand or foot or eye causes you to sin, what should you do? Cut it off or pluck it out! Why? Because it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame or blind than to be thrown into the eternal fire whole. Now before anyone starts to sharpen their knife to commit bodily harm, this is figurative language. The point that Jesus is making is that sin is serious business and we must take serious and radical action to rid ourselves of sin. There is violence in the Christian life, but it is violence towards our old way of life. How do we kill our sin? So what is our weapon in this war against sin? Let’s look one more time at that verse in Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” So the method of putting to death the deeds of the body is by the Spirit. This is one of those paradoxes. We are commanded to do it, but it’s not us that does it. If you go into this battle in your own strength then you will fail. This can only be done by the Spirit. Now the Spirit is not a tool or a weapon. He is God. Put to death the deeds of the body by means of God, the Spirit. The Spirit is the decisive killer. That’s the paradox: you do it; but you do it in such a way that it is He who does it. That is the difference between a moral self-help program and the Christian life. How do we do this? How do we engaging the Spirit to do what is commanded of us in the word? Well, it helps me if I think of this as a war against sin. In this war, what is something that all soldiers should be equipped with? We don’t just run into battle in our underwear right? No, we need armor. Can anyone tell me where to find the armor of God in the Bible? Ephesians 6. All of the pieces are important as we are commanded to put on the whole armor of God, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, gospel of peace shoes, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. But there is only one offensive weapon with which we can strike a final blow to sin, that is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the… Word of God. So we are called to kill our sin by the Holy Spirit with the Word of God. The practical question remains, how? I see the key verse for this in Galatians where the believers were being tempted into legalism by some false teachers and Paul had to remind them how they first believed and how the Christian life is done. Galatians 3:3-5, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Victory over sin in this life is a Spirit-produced miracle. So Paul is asking: How does the Holy Spirit flow with this miracle-working power in our li

Remember, last week we saw from the end of Colossians 2 that Paul urged us to live in the light of our current reality in Christ. We focused on the first half of the thought, that since we died with Christ, we died to the world’s way of trying to get to God. Legalism and human philosophy and teaching might look wise, but they do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh. He has spent 2 chapters laying the theological framework for Christian life. But this week, Paul is really going to begin to focus on the “so then what” of Christian life and we’re going to get some direct commands rather than just inferred positives and spiritual realities. As Paul begins chapter three, he lays the foundation for how to live a successful and fruitful life that is pleasing to the Lord. Follow along as I read Colossians 3:1-2, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” These verses lay the foundation for successful Christian living by pointing out the consequences of new life with Christ. Because of that, we seek what is above and think about what is above. And in the coming weeks, we will see how this teaching will serve as the foundation for the specific instructions that Paul will give on setting aside your old life (3:3-11), living according to Christian virtues (3:12-17), and having proper social relationships (3:18-4:1). Before I dive into the text, I want us to look at it from 10,000 feet and see the big idea, and it is the same big idea that has permeated the book to this point. That is the idea of being “In Christ.” As we move into the practical application part of the book this is so important because it can be so easy for people to read for example, “Set your mind on things that are above” and think now I have the equation for a rich spiritual life with God. I just have to think about good things and then good things will happen to me and I will magically end up in heaven. But none of this happens without chapters 1-2 where we are presented with our identity firmly rooted in Christ. Raised with Christ If we look at the beginning of Paul’s line of thinking, from last week he begins in verse 20 by saying “Since you have been raised with Christ” now, here in Colossians 3:1 he’s going to finish the thought by saying “since you have been raised with Christ.” He’s pulling back to that same phrase used in Colossians 2:12. “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Notice the means of being raised with Christ, faith, that’s going to be important in just a minute. But first, just like last week, some of your translations like the ESV might say, “if then” instead of “since.” There is no issue here. We use this phrasing in English, it is just a bit more wordy and outdated. However, it is closer literally to the Greek. The meaning, however, is the same. This is not a question. It is a fact. As a Christian, you have been raised with Christ. Now, if we look for other uses of the phrase “raised with Christ,” we should immediately go to the sister section of this thought in Romans. You see Paul was really a one trick pony. All of his letters say the same things basically. He just repeats them in different ways for different contexts. So, it helps to see how he told the Romans this same idea. We see it in Romans 6:4-11: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, sin should not reign in your bodies because you died to sin and you have new life in Christ. Being raised with Christ is the spiritual reality behind the idea of new life or being born again. This is the promise in Ezekiel 36:26, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” As Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 2:17, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” If you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are something other than what you used to be. Your spirit has been regenerated so that you are now alive to God and you walk in newness of life. Your conversion from spiritual death to spiritual life is no less radical than if you were attending a funeral of an old man and suddenly the lid to the coffin was pushed open and the same man jumped out of that coffin as a young man full of new life and vigor. Because we are raised up with Christ to walk in newness of life, then there are subsequent changes to our purpose in life and the way we think. Seek Above Here in Colossians is the only place this phrase, “Seek the things that are above” is used. But we can still break it down into its parts. Seek First, what does he mean by seek? Well, this is a command, a present active imperative. It is a simple command, if I got a group of little children together, and told them that we were going to play hide and seek, they would not need much explanation. They might not hide very well because they don’t realize that just because they can’t see you doesn’t mean you can’t see them. But the seek part would come as second nature to them. We instinctively seek. Humans are seekers and let me let you in on a little secret, everyone in this room and everyone you have ever met is always seeking one thing. Happiness. We even put it in our Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right to be equated with life and liberty. Notice that they didn’t say life, liberty, and happiness. It is the pursuit of happiness. Blaise Pascal said it this way, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” So, there is no question, we don’t need to define “seek”, it is the motive of every action of every man. To seek happiness. It is synonymous with desire. The question is not, are you going to seek happiness, the question is what is happiness and where will you direct your search? At this point, there are some out there who would say that happiness is like the pot of gold at the end of the leprechaun’s rainbow. That you shouldn’t seek it because it is just an illusion, a mirage. A carrot that is dangled in front of us to keep us striving. Christians know this feeling. Solomon labored to discover in Ecclesiastes, that if you seek happiness in this life only that it is like chasing after the wind. It is vanity. So, is there such a thing as happiness? I think so. Many translators take issue with the word happiness because the Old Norse word where we get the prefix hap means luck. That’s why we have other words like haphazard, hapless, happenstance, and mishap. So, even if we don’t find that particular word in the New Testament, I think that happiness, contentment, pleasure, satisfaction, cheerfulness, joy, gladness, delight, well-being, exuberance, exhilaration, ecstasy, jubilee, rapture, bliss, or whatever word you choose to get across that meaning is all over the Bible. I think it might take a backhoe to dig out from under all the thoughts that this world has about what happiness is and how to get at it. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to do all of that today even though I would love to. I would recommend to you Randy Alcorn’s wonderful book, Happiness. In it he notes more than 2,700 passages where happy and the myriad of terms related to it, and synonymous with it, are used. His conclusion is that God does not want us to deny pleasure as some sort of ascetic, and he doesn’t want us to give up on the pursuit and just sit on a log waiting for eternal happiness in heaven. Instead, God wants us to be happy in him and to seek ever deepening depths of happiness in him. I will take you to Jesus’ happiness manifesto to show you this quickly. You might know this happiness manifesto by its more common but much more confusing name the Beatitudes. Matthew 5:3-10: Blessed (Happy) are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I think it is easy to see from this list that Jesus does not believe that happiness is tied to circumstances, and it is not an emotion. The idea instead is that of being a partaker of God or experienc

The false teachers in Colossae had a system of rules which they imposed on their followers. They said, “If you keep these rules, you will have victory over fleshly desires.” They took some of the Old Testament regulations concerning ceremonial cleanliness and diet and added to them, much as the Pharisees had done. Paul admits (Col. 2:23) that these rules had “the appearance of wisdom,” but, he adds, they “are of no value against fleshly indulgence.” Rather, Paul is going to argue today that methods of managing sin don’t produce godliness because they deny our reality in Christ. We live in a very self-indulgent, get what you want when you want it, society and no one seems to care how much it affects other people or even how it affects us. This is not just a Christian thing, listen to this quote from a New York Times article by Judith Warner, “We read about dopamine fiends sitting enslaved to their screens, their brains hooked on the bursts of pleasure they receive from the ding of each new e-mail message or the arousing flash of a tweet. We see reports of young children so unable to control their behavior that they’re being expelled from preschool. And teenagers who, after years spent gorging on instant gratification (too-easy presents from eager-to-please parents, the thrill of the fast-changing screen), are restless, demanding, easily bored and said to be suffering from a plague of insatiability. Mental-health professionals report seeing increasing numbers of kids who are all out of sync: they can’t sustain attention, regulate their rage, moderate their pain, tolerate normal types of sensory input. Some of this is biological; a problem of faulty brain wiring. But many of the problems — in both children and adults — according to Peter C. Whybrow, director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California in Los Angeles, come from living in a culture of excess.” Regardless of where you are on the spectrum of electronics addiction, I think we all need to just admit to ourselves and each other right now that we are far too self indulgent. In the Bible, self-indulgence is described in 1st Peter 2 as feeding “the passions of the flesh,” indulging in any pleasure that is harmful to our souls. It is the opposite of that final forgotten fruit of the spirit, self-control. Self-indulgence is so spiritually toxic because it is rooted in idolatry. It’s something we turn to instead of God for happiness. It dulls our spiritual tastes and curbs our spiritual appetites. It’s hard to have a hunger for anything when we are constantly shoveling entertainment into ourselves like we are at an all you can eat buffet. If we don’t take it seriously, it can turn our hearts away from God. Self-indulgence comes in all shapes and sizes. We can all name obvious sins like sexual immorality, drunkenness, or theft. But perhaps the more dangerous indulgences are the ones that seem to be respectable. You know, the ones where the actions themselves aren’t sinful but behind the action lies wicked heart motives. For instance, Perhaps those good things that we do and feel good about ourselves for doing it is secretly indulging in pride and the pursuit of self-glory. Maybe it is just too much of a good thing, also known as greed or gluttony. Maybe I’m doing a good thing, but I have forsaken or forgotten a larger commitment that I should be doing, that is negligence. Jesus addressed these sins when he saw them springing up in the Pharisees. In Matthew 23:23, He said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” I’m talking about self-indulgence because that is where Paul has gotten in this letter to the Colossians. He has in normal Pauline fashion laid the groundwork and established everything with rich theological arguments in the first two chapters. The main point is that Christ is enough. He is all you need. There is no need to indulge the flesh when Christ is your all in all. Let’s look at our text then we will dive into it. Read Colossians 2:20-23, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” I think that Paul is moving from the theological arguments into more practical information. This is the reason why we go through books of the Bible. I don’t want to step into Paul making a statement about how a Christian should live and just preach it as though if you just follow these rules you will be all set. That’s precisely the opposite of what he is saying in this text. Paul’s main point in this text that we are going to expound upon is: “if you want to fight self-indulgence and the flesh, you must live from the reality of who you are in Christ.” Don’t Feed the Flesh Back to self-indulgence. It is a very difficult sin for us to fight for the simple fact that we don’t want to. When we are in the process of indulging in whatever that bit of excess is, it doesn’t feel like an enemy. It feels like a reward that makes us happy, it feels like a rush of dopamine that comes when we succumb to a craving that has been gnawing at us. But after we have binged on what could have been a good thing, it hangs like a heavy yoke around our souls. That’s why the writer of Hebrews admonished his readers in Hebrews 12:1 to “lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely”. Jesus doesn’t want us to live with this weight of defeat. He wants us to live in the freedom he purchased for us. He wants us to lay it aside. It’s a matter of obedience — and joy! Paul starts with what not to do, then in chapter 3 he will give more practical details about what to do, but we are going to hang out here at the end of chapter 2 despite my temptation to just jump right over into chapter 3 but I might share a couple of things from Chapter 3. But we will dive into it in depth next week. I was tempted because we just talked about legalism and ritual and mysticism and asceticism last week and at first glance, it looks like Paul is just rehashing the same arguments, but I think this paragraph (Remember, none of these verse numbers or paragraphs are original) is the first half of the thought of the paragraph the begins chapter 3. So I couldn’t cover it last week without getting too much information all at once. Behavioral Modification Doesn’t Work Forever In Colossians 2:20, Paul points out that we died to the “elementary principles of the world.” This is the same phrase Paul used back in verse 8. The phrase “elementary principles” means “first things in a series” or “rudimentary” things such as the letters of the alphabet are the elementary principles of written language. Paul specifically states here that he is referring to the rudimentary things of the world. He uses the same phrase in Galatians 4:3 stating, “So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.” Paul is speaking about foundational religious practices, and perhaps in particular, the ceremonial aspects that are part of the means by which the religion is instilled into its adherents. The idea that he is trying to get across is that behavioral modification is not a pathway to holiness or freedom from self-indulgence. Think about raising kids. We train them first in behavior, then later on we add in understanding. We usually teach children how to do things before we teach them why we do them. The problem comes if we never learn the why. If we never have understanding about why we are supposed to do things then we are left as children doing things out of ritual and in ignorance. And Paul is saying that such ignorance can never bring us to maturity. When Moses took the Hebrews into the desert out of captivity in Egypt, he was on a long babysitting assignment. The people were little children in the faith. They needed structure and a tutor. Moses had a rich personal relationship with God, but the people weren’t ready for that. They could barely wait to get a golden calf and start worshipping something because they had binged on worship of thousands of gods in Egypt. There was a god for everything under the sun, including the sun. The law served as the tutor that would help to show the children the way even before they had the capacity to see the whole picture. The law isn’t bad or wrong, in fact we should and do continue to observe the law, but we do it from a different heart once we understand the meaning behind it. That is what makes the difference. For example, I learned as a child that stealing is wrong. I remember being very young, hardly tall enough to see over the conveyor belt at the grocery store. But they still put all of that good stuff right there at eye level for me. I remember seeing something I wanted and picking it up and taking it out of the store. My mom found out I had it when we got to the car, s

Today, we are going to examine some of the specific warnings that Paul gives to the Colossians at the end of chapter 2. It is from these specific warnings that we know what three types of false doctrine were being taught there – ritualism, asceticism, and mysticism. If those words confuse you now, don’t worry. We’ll see how they are all alive and well today and we’ll look at how each of them pales in comparison to our glorious Savior. Let’s look at our passage from Colossians 2:16-23. We’re going to focus on the first half this week, and we’ll wrap up chapter 2 and move into Chapter 3 next week. Read Colossians 2:16-23 There have always been two great errors that have occurred in the church which are at opposite extremes from each other. And it all comes down to our catechism Question 7 that I posted on Friday. That question is “What does the law of God require?” The answer is “Personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience; that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbor as ourselves. What God forbids should never be done and what God commands should always be done.” However, there are two errors that the church has traditionally fallen into on either side of this question. One is legalism and the other is licentiousness. One places all sorts of restrictions on conduct while the other removes those restrictions. Legalism focuses on keeping the law as a means to godliness while licentiousness rejects the law with the belief that we have moved beyond basic things like rules. Instead we have freedom or license. Both claim to be the expression of true spirituality, but the reality is that both are poor substitutes for true spirituality that often lead to blatant sin. For the sake of time, we’ll have to leave our discussion of licentiousness for another day, because today we are going to be focusing on the other side of the spectrum. Legalism Christians probably have tolerated no sin more than the sin of legalism. In fact, many Christians would probably be surprised to hear legalism labeled as sin. Legalists are often viewed as being a bit overzealous or perhaps as super-spiritual. But they aren’t thought of as sinning in the same sense as adulterers, thieves, liars, etc. They would argue that legalism promotes holiness. Yet, Paul is teaching here in our text that legalism is an evil that must be opposed by those who have been saved by grace. Most of the letter to the Galatians is an attack on legalism and he offers some strong words against it in many of his other letters. In 1 Timothy 4:1-3, he went so far as to state that those who forbade marriage and advocated abstaining from certain foods were promoting the doctrines of demons. So clearly, Paul was no fan of legalism. In Colossians, Paul is going to break his criticism of legalism into three major categories that were posing a threat to the Colossians. As we’ve said before, Paul doesn’t know these believers any more than he knows you or I. However, he knows the culture that they live in and he can tell them that false teachers of various types are out to pervert the gospel by which they have been saved. The same is true today. Paul begins by warning the Colossians with the command in verse 16, “Let no one pass judgment on you” in regard to certain matters; and then in verse 18, “Let no one disqualify you.” Both commands are saying the same thing: We must strongly reject legalism in all its forms and cling instead to Christ. What is Legalism? At its heart it’s an attitude of pride. The legalist prides himself for keeping certain standards and judges others who do not keep to those standards. The legalist thinks that he is made acceptable to God, either for salvation or spirituality, by his conformity to certain rules that he picks and chooses. Invariably, those rules are not things like loving the Lord with all your heart or loving your neighbor as yourself. Rather, the legalist picks rules that he is able to keep. Ones that appeal to his personal preferences, then they conveniently neglect or ignore the other things. The legalist often focuses on external conformity while neglecting the heart righteousness God requires. With this definition, we can see that Legalism is much more common than you might think. It is a pervasive sin that stretches through all branches of Christianity. We set up our own rules that are of importance to us because of our ideals or theology, we take pride in those things that make us different and set us apart, and we look down our noses and condemn those who would seek to question our practices or traditions. We’ll see today that all three of the perversions of the gospel that we will explore are just modified versions of Legalism. Let’s explore how this works in our passage. The “Therefore” at the beginning of verse 16 connects our text to the previous paragraph and brings everything full circle to Christ. Paul is telling these new believers, under attack from these false teachers, “The law is merely a shadow which points to the reality of the absolute holiness of God which is on display in Christ. He fulfilled the whole law in every way. Therefore, we don’t grow as Christians by keeping laws, but by keeping Christ.” External religion leads to pride, but holding fast to Christ as the head leads to growth. Ritualism is a shadow. Pursue the substance in Jesus. The first distortion that we see is ritualism. These false teachers had set themselves up as judges to proclaim that anyone who didn’t follow their rules was not spiritual. These rules were rituals pulled from some of the Old Testament dietary regulations as well as certain Jewish festivals. Paul says, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” The problem that Paul has isn’t with the Old Testament Law. But these false teachers could have been going beyond the law as the Pharisees did. Maybe they took something meant for one group and made it mandatory for all. Or maybe they were putting so much emphasis on the observance of the festivals and celebrations, and sabbaths that they missed the point of them. The real problem is that they have lost focus. All of these good things that God put forward in his law were never meant to be elevated to be the focus. Instead, they were meant to point forward to Jesus Christ. Paul calls them a “shadow of what is to come,” but then adds, “but the substance belongs to Christ.” When I hear "shadow of what is to come," I think of a movie trailer. Its whole purpose is to get you excited for the film that is soon to come. Once the film is released, the trailer is still around, but you would never point someone to the trailer except to encourage them to see the actual film. All of the Old Testament rituals and feasts were meant to prepare the people for the coming of the promised one. Jesus is that promised Messiah! All of the ritual should point to him as the goal. Let’s take the Sabbath as an example. Some Christians argue that Sunday (a few argue for Saturday) is now the Christian Sabbath, which we must keep in some manner. Some argue that we sin if we think or speak about anything secular or worldly on Sunday. Thus if you’re chatting with someone at church and mention the football game, you’ve sinned! And you sinned even more if you watched the game on the Sabbath! Advocates of the Christian Sabbath usually go further than that, adding many prohibited activities which they say violate the Sabbath: You can’t stop by the grocery store on the way home from church to pick up a gallon of milk. You can’t eat out in a restaurant on Sunday, because it requires others to work. On and on it goes! However, I rarely see people announcing that Sunday or Saturday is the Sabbath so they are going to sign up for a 6 day work week to be more obedient. If we are required to observe Sunday as a Christian Sabbath, then Paul certainly was confusing these mostly Gentile new believers by not clarifying that in this text. The New Testament commands us not to forsake assembling with other believers, and it indicates that the early church gathered on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day. That implies that it is not my day, but is Monday any less the Lord’s day than Sunday? Hebrews 4 makes it clear that Sunday isn’t God’s Sabbath rest, Jesus is. We enter into his rest. Beyond that, it is for our good to cease from our normal activities once a week so that we can rest and join with the Lord’s people for worship and instruction. As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” These false teachers were caught up with the shadow, but they were ignoring the reality! They were into all sorts of rules, but they weren’t into Christ. It would be like admiring some famous person, but when you met him, instead of looking at him, you fell down on the sidewalk and said, “Oh, look at this shadow!” That’s what these false teachers were doing. They were so caught up with the ceremonial aspects of the law that they missed the One to whom those ceremonies and laws pointed! They were hugging His shadow, but missing Christ Himself! So let’s seek the substance of Christ rather than the shadow of ritual. Asceticism boasts in humility. Submit to Jesus. Next, Paul turns his sights to those that “insist on asceticism” (ESV). This is a confusing translation in ESV because the ESV translators took the greek word that is translated “humility” in every other context in the New Testament and changed it to this big fancy word, Asceticism in the two phrases in Colossians 2. I think that the other translations do a good job at communicating Paul’s idea. NASB says “delighting in self-abasement.” and both the New King James and NIV say “delight in [false] humility.” The context makes it clear that the humility being described here is not the same as the humility that is praised throughout the rest of the Scriptures. True humility comes from

If I told you that I was going to go over to the cemetery and preach to the dead bodies there, you’d rightly think, that I had lost my mind. But, that’s spiritually what we’re doing whenever we speak to the lost about the Savior. Outside of Christ, people aren’t just spiritually misguided or weak or ignorant. They’re dead! They don’t just need to be persuaded to believe in Jesus. They need the Holy Spirit to convict them of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8-11) and they need God to make them alive from the dead. So, as someone once said, “before someone can be found, they have to first get lost.” If they do not see that they are hopelessly dead in their sins, they will not see their need for new life. If they think that they’re doing okay spiritually, they may welcome a little guidance or assistance with their problems. But they won’t see their desperate need for new life. So although lost people do not realize it, they have three crucial needs: (1) They are spiritually dead, alienated from God, so they need new life. (2) They are under God’s just condemnation because of their sin, so they need forgiveness. (3) They are living under Satan’s power, in his domain of darkness, so they need deliverance and victory over the forces of evil. In our text, Paul reminds the Colossians of these three great needs that God supplies in Christ. Don’t forget our context, Paul is continuing to show his readers the superiority of Christ over everything else. This is a continuation of our thoughts from last week where we saw that Jesus is better than any rules-based religion. Empty religion is powerless to save, but Christ is all-powerful. Today we’re going to see: “In the risen Christ we have new life, forgiveness of sins, and victory over the darkness.” New Life Our focus in Colossians 2:13-15 rests on the truth that Paul has just mentioned in verse 12: Let me remind you… Baptism is a picture of our salvation. When Christ died we died with him, and when He raised Him from the dead, we too were raised. Because of God’s gracious saving work, we are identified with Jesus in His death and resurrection. Colossians 2:12-13a: “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him...” There are three truths to grasp here: 1.We are spiritually dead apart from Christ. Paul could have used less severe language than this if he had wanted to. He could have said, “When you were apart from Christ, He brought you near.” That’s certainly true! He could have said, “When you were alienated from Christ, He reconciled you to Himself.” That’s also true. But here (also, Eph. 2:1) Paul uses the word “dead” to describe our condition before we met Christ. Before Adam and Eve sinned, God told them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die (Genesis 2:17). Death in the Bible always means separation, not cessation. So when Adam and Eve sinned, they were instantly separated from God. Their bodies became subject to the process of illness and aging that ultimately resulted in physical death. When a person dies physically, his soul is separated from his body. To be spiritually dead means to be separated from the living God, the author and giver of all life. If we die physically while we are still spiritually dead, we will be eternally separated from God, under His wrath, which would be the most horrible existence imaginable. Death is an ugly thing and we should not minimize the horror of that word. A dead body is foul and corrupt. If the Jews touched a dead body, they were ceremonially defiled (Leviticus 21:1-4). We embalm dead bodies and try to make them look as lifelike as possible, but the truth is, there is nothing pleasant about a dead body. Paul says here that we were spiritually dead, because of two causes (or in two spheres): transgressions, which refers to sins we have committed; and the uncircumcision of our flesh, which refers to the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. When Adam sinned, his sin was imputed to the entire human race (Romans 5:12-21). That second phrase especially reminded the Gentile Colossians that before they met Christ, they “were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). So apart from Christ, we had two serious problems: we were spiritually dead because of our sins, and because of our sin nature which we got at birth. We are sinners by nature and choice. Perhaps you think it’s unfair that Adam’s sin affected the entire human race. My reply is, first, a word of caution: It’s never right to accuse the Almighty God of unfairness! Second, do you think you would have done better than Adam in obeying God? If so, you have too high an estimate of your own moral ability! I’m not going to waste time with that argument, but I will link to a good resource in my notes. These two aspects of sin, our actual sins that stem from our sin nature, mean that we had a very serious problem. Adding good deeds to our sinful nature cannot solve that problem. You can put a tuxedo on a pig, but that pig will go right back to wallowing in the mud because it has a pig nature. You can dress a sinner in good deeds, but unless you change his heart, he will still go back to sinning. This is showing the foolishness of trusting in good deeds for salvation. It’s like putting perfume on a corpse. All the good deeds in the world cannot eradicate the charges against us in God’s holy courtroom. They have no power to raise a dead sinner to spiritual life. We need resurrection. 2. Christ’s resurrection is the basis for our resurrection. In Colossians 2:13, Paul attributes our new life totally to God: “God made you alive together with Him.” Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan pastor, said, “There are but two men standing before God: Adam and Christ. And these two men have all other men hanging from their belts.” Either you’re spiritually dead in Adam; or, because God made you alive, you’re in Christ. There are no other categories. And, if you’re in Christ, it’s God’s doing, since … 3. Only God can raise the dead. Becoming a Christian isn’t a matter of deciding to turn over a new leaf. It isn’t a self-improvement project or a resolution to try harder. No amount of persuasion can talk a spiritual corpse into spiritual life, because dead sinners cannot understand God’s truth (1 Cor. 2:14; John 8:43). They do not have spiritual ears to hear. No amount of efforts on the part of the corpse will bring about his own resurrection, because corpses aren’t able to do anything. God must impart new life to a dead sinner by His power. Some people use this truth as an excuse to not evangelize or share the gospel. Their argument is if only God can raise a sinner from death to life then my efforts to tell them about the love and grace of Jesus are pointless. It would be like preaching to the headstones at the cemetery. However, what they miss is the teaching that God is the one that gives life, but he does it through the hearing of the word. "He chose to give us birth through the word of truth." James 1:18 and 1 Peter 1:23 “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” That doesn’t mean that there is anything special in our voices or teaching ability, but that God uses his living word to impart life to dead sinners in the same way that the Living Word called Lazarus from the grave. There is an obvious difference between something lifeless and someone who is living, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCFQYGQDbPM That’s funny, but there is a big difference between life and death. And we know that is not a chasm that is easily bridged. So when something dead comes to life it is shocking and frightening and supernatural. Spiritually, there’s a huge difference between dead religion and new life in the risen Savior. If you have new life in Christ, God made you alive from the dead, so that you responded by saying, “Yes, Lord, I believe in You; I receive You as my Savior and Lord” Sadly, there are a lot of good, religious people walking around as spiritual corpses. We need life from God! You may ask, “How can I know if I have spiritual life?” Well, how do you know if you’re alive physically this morning? I’m not sure about some of you, but most of you seem to have some signs of life! Your heart is beating, you’re breathing, you’re warm to the touch, you have an appetite. Spiritually, there are some signs as well. You have a heart for the things of God which used to bore you. You love Jesus because He died for your sins. You have a hunger for God’s Word. You struggle against sins that previously didn’t concern you. You’re growing in the things of God. And, you experience the forgiveness of your sins. Forgiveness of Sin Colossians 2:13-14: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Now Paul already said in Colossians 1:14 that in Christ we have the forgiveness of our sins. So why is he repeating it here?” The answer is, because it’s so wonderful that we need to hear it over and over again! Don’t ever get over the amazing truth that in Christ, you have forgiveness of all your transgressions! Note two things: 1.To save us, God had to deal with the penalty for our sins in line with His righteousness and justice. God couldn’t just sweep our sins under the rug. The penalty had to be paid. If God did not demand the full penalty for our sins, He would not be righteous and just. If

Colossians 2:8-12 “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” When a counterfeiter wants to pass off fake money, he doesn’t use Monopoly money. Rather, he tries to make the bills look as genuine as possible. When you click on that phishing website and enter your personal information, they don’t tell you that they are going to open bank accounts in your name and ruin your credit. They attempt to look like a legitimate site and fool you into giving you information because it looks like something familiar to you. However, reality sets in when you take that counterfeit bill to the bank. The teller holds it up to the light, doesn’t see the authenticating mark, and says, “Your $100 bill is worthless! You are the victim of a counterfeiter!” Or when you notice some strange activity in your bank account and you realize that you made a mistake and you were fooled and now your identity has been stolen. Even more serious is when someone is deceived by a counterfeit Christ. The victim doesn’t just lose a hundred dollars or their online identity. They lose their eternal life and spiritual identity! Satan is the master spiritual counterfeiter! He doesn’t try to pawn off religious Monopoly money. He makes his schemes look as much like the original as possible. He speaks about Jesus Christ. He uses the Bible and Christian terminology. Satan’s supposedly “Christian” religions promote good works and family values. They advocate “Christian” morality. But invariably, they present a human way of salvation that denies the deity and substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. The undiscerning think that this religion will get them into heaven, but it leads them to hell. This was the exact sort of thing Paul was combatting in Colossae. If the Colossian heresy had been totally non-Christian, it would not have been so difficult to detect and resist. But it was a blend of Christian terms with Judaic and Greek thought. Remember, the church at this time did not even have a complete Bible. They devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching, and that teaching was based on two things, the revelation of God and his eternal plan through the Hebrew Scriptures and the memories and teachings of Jesus illuminated by the Holy Spirit. Everything was being written down for future generations, and the writings of Paul and the other Apostles were being widely circulated throughout the churches. When the authority of Scripture is denied, then it makes it easy for all kinds of sideways thinking to sneak its way into the church. These early churches were very susceptible to Christian-sounding ideas. As many are today because they don’t have any real knowledge of Scripture on which to base their opinions of these teachings. If someone stands up on a stage in a building with a cross on the roof and starts talking, that doesn’t mean that whatever comes out of their mouth is truth. In our text, Paul warns against being taken captive by these destructive heresies. Paul’s instruction here is needed just as badly today as it was when he wrote because the enemy is still in the counterfeit religion business. Paul is drawing a contrast between religion that claims to be “Christian” and the living Christ. The basic idea that Paul is trying to get across and that I want to unpack is that, “Union with the living Christ is superior to empty religion.” Remember, the overarching theme of Colossians is the “Christ is Sufficient and Superior in all things.”   Paul gets pretty heavy into some difficult stuff in this passage, but we are going to plow through with the Holy Spirit’s help and I’m going to encourage you all to do more study on your own. As always, don’t trust anything I say. Be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who studied the scriptures to make sure the things that they were taught were true. First, Religion apart from the living Christ is empty and dangerous. Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” New Testament scholar J. B. Lightfoot gave a paraphrase which I think is helpful. “Be on your guard; do not suffer yourselves to fall prey to certain persons who would lead you captive by a hollow and deceitful system, which they call philosophy. They substitute the traditions of men for the truth of God. They enforce an elementary discipline of mundane ordinances fit only for children. Theirs is not the Gospel of Christ.” Verse 8 is the only occurrence of the word “philosophy” in the New Testament. Paul was probably taking the false teachers’ term for their teaching and saying, “It sounds impressive and it promises a lot; but it’s a deceptive empty shell. If you’re not careful, they’ll carry you away as captives to it.” General Philosophy is not what Paul has in mind here. He is specifically warning against those philosophies that are empty and deceptive. There are those that have taken this verse and used it to support the idea that all philosophy is bad, and to some degree, I understand that. In our increasingly secular society, what is being presented in the average college introductory philosophy class on a secular college campus is “according to human traditions and the elemental principles of the world” and nothing is according to Christ. If that is all there is to philosophy, then I would agree it is bad. However, that is not what Paul has in mind here. The term philosophy is a compound word that is literally translated “love of wisdom.” However, that simple translation is now outdated. When anyone refers to Philosophy today, they are talking about an academic discipline in “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence” or the “theory or attitude that guides one’s behavior.” However, at that time philosophy was used in reference to theories about God, the world and the meaning of human life. It included not only the ideas among the pagan Greek philosophers but also the ideas within the Jewish schools of thought. When Paul says that it is “according to human tradition.” He’s saying that it originates with man, not with God. It draws people in, like Satan deceived Eve, by questioning what God has said. There are plenty of people out there who, like Eve, are prideful enough to think they can determine what is spiritually true or false! Let’s not be like them. Paul also describes this false, human, religious philosophy as being “according to the elementary spirits of the world.” Paul uses the same word in verse 20, as well as in Galatians 4:3 & 9. There is so much debate over this one word στοιχεῖα (stoicheia) that is translated or interpreted elementary principles, elementary spirits, or rudimentary things. We get this word 4 times in the New Testament and it’s used in lots of different ways outside the Bible. The Greek phrase used here could refer to several concepts: the basic religious teachings of Jews and Gentiles; the material parts of the universe (such as water, earth, and fire); or spiritual powers (such as evil spirits or demonic entities). Whenever I see a bunch of smart people arguing about what something means and none of it is heresy, then I like to say that it is all of the above. The big idea is that Paul makes it clear that these teachings or building blocks or powers or whatever are negative influences. We especially see this in the other place Paul uses this in Galatians where he tells them that when they were children they were enslaved to these stoicheia and they should turn back to these “weak and worthless” stoicheia to which they were once enslaved. Some of the meaning gets lost in translation, but I think that Paul is referring to an approach to God by keeping certain rules. He’s kind of winking at the false teachers and using some sarcasm. He’s saying that their “wisdom” is nothing more than a nursery rhyme like the ABC’s. Paul is saying that their so-called “philosophy” is like going back to spiritual kindergarten. I grant that demonic powers are often behind such human-based philosophies. But rather than primarily referring to evil spirits, I think Paul is referring to religion that seeks to approach God through keeping rules. In Galatia, the false teachers emphasized the ritual of circumcision, along with other Jewish ceremonial laws, such as observing days, months, seasons, and years (Gal. 4:10), as necessary for salvation. In Colossae, the false teachers also may have emphasized circumcision (Colossians 2:11). They also emphasized certain food and drink, along with keeping religious festivals and Sabbath days (Colossians 2:16, 21). But it all detracted from the person and work of Christ and it provided a basis for people who kept these man-made rules to glory in the flesh. As Paul goes on to say (Colossians 2:23), such rules-based approaches may appear to be the right way to live, but they fail because they cannot deal with sin in the human heart. Only Christ and the new birth can change the heart. In our day the rules may have changed but the enemy still uses this legalistic, flesh-exalting, approach to lure people away from the gospel. It usually elevates minor points of doctrine into major issues, or it emphasizes man-made rules as more important than the two great commandments, loving God and loving one another. In every case, it appeals to hum

Last week we looked at Paul’s desire and struggle on behalf of the Colossians. He had not met them in person, yet he had a great concern for their spiritual welfare. So he labored on their behalf both in prayer and in writing his letter to them. We talked about the path to Christian maturity and part of it is becoming more concerned about others and less concerned about yourself (Philippians 2:3-4). Too often, we are caught up in our own little world and lose the proper perspective. There is great joy and blessing in being aware of what God is doing in other places and being able to intercede for others though they may be far away. With that in mind, I’ve begun posting a profile of a frontier people group each week. The Hausa people were this week. They are roughly 70 million Muslims in sub-saharan Africa who are probably best known for producing Boko Haram. They are hostile to the message of the gospel and captive to Islam. There are a fraction of Christians among their community, but most are ostracized and persecuted if they go public with their faith. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit would soften their hearts and for the Christians around them that they would live lives that reflect the love and hope of the gospel. We also need to pray for the upcoming election in Nigeria that it would be harsh towards the corruption but open to advance of the gospel. In our hyperconnected world, we are as close to everyone on the planet as Paul was to the Colossians. If we are serious about what we believe and we want to see Jesus come again to finally redeem all things then we need to be praying that the gospel penetrates into these unreached people groups.   We saw this as the heart of Paul who had seen the gospel come to the Colossians through is ministry in nearby Ephesus and he had heard good report from Epaphras and he’s now taking full responsibility to “present every man complete in Christ.” This spiritual maturity is the lifelong pursuit of every believer because that goal will not be fully accomplished until we are transformed and receive our glorified bodies. Until that happens, God continues His work in us to conform us to the image of His Son (Philippians 1:6; Romans 8:29) and a major way in which that occurs is the interaction we have with other members of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16). Paul’s goal was to be used by God for that purpose.  Paul wrote in Colossians 2:4-5, “I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. [5] For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” The false teachers in Colossae presented a clear and present danger. The church there had not fallen or stumbled yet, and Paul wanted to ensure that they would not do so. He sought to encourage their hearts with the truth of Jesus which would bring about unity based in love, and he wanted them to have full understanding and knowledge of Christ. Because, if the Colossians were fully convinced of the sufficiency of Christ, they would not be lead astray by the false logic and persuasive speech of the false teachers. Today, I want to continue on with verses 6 and 7 as Paul lays out the practical means of resisting the deceptions that we will face. Our protection will be in the superiority of walking in Christ. “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, [7] rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” Receiving Christ Paul begins with a reminder of what had already happened in their lives as the basis for his command for them to walk in Christ. They had received Christ in the past and therefore they should walk in Him in the present. To receive something is to accept or take delivery of something that has been given or presented to you. Like you receive a present on your birthday or like you receive instructions from your parents or boss on what to do. From the comments Paul makes earlier in Colossians 1, we know that the Colossians had been taught about Jesus by Epaphras and that they had responded favorably to the gospel. Their lives were marked by a practical demonstration of their faith because of their love for one another and all the saints. Here, Paul is making no question that they had received Jesus, but the particular way that Paul refers to Jesus is important. In Greek it is the Christ, Jesus the Lord. Remember that the term Christ is simply the Greek word for Messiah, the anointed one, the promised one of Israel. They had been instructed about Jesus by Paul through Epaphras and had come to believe that He is the promised Messiah who is the Lord. Jesus being Messiah and Lord are very significant in Paul’s effort to counter some of the heresies that were occurring in Colossae as it relates to Jesus’ deity. As Messiah, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies extending all the way back to Genesis and then the promises given to Moses and the prophets that followed over the centuries. Jesus is the seed of the woman that would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15 cf. Galatians 4:4). He fulfills all the genealogical requirements as the descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah (Genesis 12:3; 17:19; 49:10; Luke 3:34). He is the greater prophet spoken of by Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:20). He is the greater son of David that will inherit David’s throne (2 Samuel 7; Luke 1:32) who was born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Luke 2:4-7) by a virgin (Isaiah 7:14; Luke 1:26-31) at the right time (Daniel 9:25; Luke 2:1, Galatians 4:4). He was preceded by a forerunner to prepare His way – John the Baptist (Isaiah 40:3-5; Malachi 3:1; 4:5; Luke 3:3-6; 7:24). He spoke in parables as was prophesied (Psalm 78:2-4; Matthew 13:34-35). Jesus bound up the brokenhearted, healed the sick, cleansed lepers, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and even raised the dead to life (Isaiah 29:18; 35:5-6; Matthew 11:5). He entered Jerusalem in triumph (Zechariah 9:9; Mark 11:7-11), but was rejected by His own people (Isaiah 53:1, 3; John 1:11; Luke 23:18). He was betrayed by a close friend (Psalm 41:9; Luke 22:47-48) for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12; Matthew 26:15). He was accused by false witnesses (Psalm 35:11; Mark 14:57-58), yet He was silent before them (Isaiah 53:7; Mark 15:4). He was hated without reason (Psalm 35:19; John 15:24-25), spat on and struck (Isaiah 50:6; Matthew 26:67) and then crucified with thieves (Isaiah 53:12; Mark 15:27-28). He was pierced through His hands and feet (Zechariah 12:10; John 20:27) and His enemies faced Him with insults and mockery (Psalm 22:7-8; 69:9; Romans 15:3; Luke 23:35), yet He prayed for them (Psalm 109:4; Luke 23:34). He was forsaken by God (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46) as the substitutionary sacrifice for sin (Isaiah 53:5; Romans 5:6-8). The soldiers gambled for His clothes (Psalm 22:17-18; Matthew 27:35) and pierced His side (Zechariah 12:10; John 19:34), but none of his bones were broken (Psalm 34:20; John 19:32). Jesus was buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57-60), but was resurrected from the dead (Psalm 16:10; 49:15; Mark 16:6-7) and has ascended to God’s right hand (Psalm 68:18; Mark 16:19). The identification of Jesus as the Christ, the promised Messiah, is not just a title but it is a proclamation of an allegiance to him as the Son of God (Psalm 2:7; Matthew 3:17) and therefore the Lord. And Lord is not used here as a title of respect such as calling someone “sir,” but the designation of His position as master because He is God. Paul’s designation of Jesus as the Christ, the promised Messiah, and Lord destroy all the arguments of the false teachers in trying to make Jesus something other than or less than God Himself in human flesh. The command that Paul gives at the end of the verse for them to walk in Christ is based upon the assumption that they have received Him, and the identity of whom they received is just as important as receiving Him. But what about receiving Christ? What exactly does that mean? As I have already stated, the idea of receiving is to accept or take delivery of something that has been given or delivered to you. In the case of Jesus, it encompasses the idea of believing that he is who He claims to be and accepting what He has done on our behalf including adoption into God’s family. John 1:12-13 states it this way, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, [13] who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Receiving Him and believing Him are equated in this passage. The vast majority of people will not accept Jesus according to His claims as the word that was in the beginning with God and was God that created all things and became flesh (John 1:1-3, 14). They will not recognize Him as the life and the light shining in the darkness because they turn away from the light to the darkness (John 1:4-5, 11, 3:19-20). If you want to receive Jesus, then you must turn to the light and believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God (John 3:18). However, to turn to the light, you must turn away from the darkness of sin. That is repentance, a change of mind resulting in a change of direction. You must believe Jesus’ claims about Himself and hold fast to His promises. Both of these elements are important. You must have the right Jesus and you must trust His promises. The wrong Jesus, one that is someone other than the Jesus of Scriptures, cannot save you from your sins. The Jesus of the various cults is someone different from the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the false teachers at Colossae was less than divine and not sufficient to fully redeem man from sin and reconcile him to God. You must also trust His promises. To say you believe that Jesus is who He claims to be and then not trust His promi

Last week we examined the ministry of proclamation and saw that its purpose is Christian maturity. Today, Paul is going to talk about how he struggled for that purpose and he’s going to give us a couple of clues that we’re on the right track and lay the foundation for a caution that we will look at in more detail in the weeks to come. Let’s read our passage for today then we will dive in. Colossians 1:28-2:5 - “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. [29] For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. [1] For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, [2] that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, [3] in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. [4] I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. [5] For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.” Paul Struggles for Christian Maturity The Apostle Paul understood that his purpose in life was not about himself. He lived for Christ (Galatians 2:20), and his desire was to be used by Christ in the lives of other people both near and far away. Paul’s desire was to present every man complete in Christ. Even though he wasn’t present at Jesus’ ascension, he took the final words of Jesus on Earth very seriously. To make disciples and teach everything that Jesus commanded us. We talked about this last week. He wants to see believers fully-grown in Christ. Complete, perfect, and mature. This is still the goal that he is talking about. Notice the words at the beginning verse 29, “For this I toil.” This refers back to the desire to “present everyone mature in Christ,” and he picks it up again in verse 5 when he says that he is “rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of you faith in Christ.” That is a good summation of Christian maturity. Good order and firmness of faith. Unfortunately, this is not a goal that we see very often in today’s American evangelical culture. Christianity has become weak and anemic hardly able to influence the people that sit through services for 2 hours every weekend much less affecting society. This goal of becoming mature is central to the reason for our salvation. Ephesians 1:4 states, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” We saw earlier in our study of Colossians 1:22 that Jesus “reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and above reproach.” Holy and blameless are just particular character qualities of being complete and mature. This same word for complete is used by Jesus in calling His followers to “be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Paul doesn’t just want to share the good news then walk away. He is striving and working diligently to present to God believers who are mature in their faith. In Ephesians 4:13 we see Paul link the purpose of the various gifts and ministries within the church to maturity. He says, “building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” This should not just be a goal for Paul or for those who would call themselves the Christian elite. This is the natural course for all believers, that they would move from the elemental principles and basic doctrines onto maturity as Hebrews 6:1 says. This is not easy though. Unlike a baby that naturally grows and physically becomes an adult whether it wants to or not, growing up in the faith takes effort. It is hard. Paul encourages believers in Philippians 2:12-13 to, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Paul’s working to produce mature Christians is not easy work, and our goal in ministry is to present ourselves to God along with all of the church as a holy and blameless bride is not easy work. Paul describes this as a labor, the toilsome kind that makes you grow weary. It is also something for which he had to struggle or fight, strive, and contend. This greek word is where we get the word agony or agonize. Paul was laboring in agony to get the church to maturity in Christ. Sounds pretty hard right? The Strength for the Struggle But notice where the strength and the energy comes from in Colossians 1:29, They are according to God’s “energy that he powerfully works within” Paul. When I say this, don’t imagine that Paul is just sitting on the sidelines and that God is doing all the work. Paul is doing his part and is diligent in his efforts to the point that he would is physically, mentally and even emotionally tired. But God kept giving energy. God energized his energy. The same is true for us. It is God that sustains us and accomplishes His will through us. This truth should give us confidence to face tasks that otherwise would overwhelm and terrify us. I can hear Jesus say, “take heart, I’m going to ask you to do hard thing, terrifying difficult things, but I’m with you and I’m going to give you the strength in those moments and the courage in those moments and the words in those moments. I’m going to work through you to do my good and perfect will.” That should get you excited to do impossibly hard things through God. We must work hard as we rely on His power working in us. Note the paradox and balance of that verse: Paul labors and strives, but he does it according to God’s power, which works mightily in him. 1 Peter 4:11 says it this way, “Let him who serves, serve in the strength that God supplies. So that in everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” People tend to go to either extreme. Some kick back, and say, “Let go and let God.” They don’t get too worked up about reaching others for Christ or discipling younger believers in the faith. They won’t commit to doing the work of ministry. To put it nicely, they’re “laid back.” To be more blunt, they’re just lazy when it comes to working for the Lord. On the other hand, you have people who burn out because they’re laboring and striving, but not according to God’s power working in and through them. It’s almost a badge of honor to be able to say, “I suffered from burnout!” But often these people work so hard because they’re trying to earn God’s favor, rather than working hard through His grace and power. I have to be quick to make a distinction between working as a believer and working to become a believer. We’re not talking about working to earn your salvation. Salvation has been accomplished by Jesus at the cross. we don’t work for it. But maturity in Christ is something that we will strive the rest of our lives for. The work of salvation is all of Christ and none of me, but the daily practice of sanctification is "all of Christ and all of me." The Scope of the Struggle It was important for them to understand that though they had not met in person, their spiritual welfare was of great concern to Paul. Notice that Paul specifically states three groups to which he is expressing this desire, “for you” refers to those in Colossae. Laodicea was a city about 10 miles down the Lycos valley from Colossae. “All who have not seen me face to face” refers to everyone else in the region including those at Hierapolis, another near by city Paul mentions in Colossians 4:13. This is one of the marks of Paul’s maturity and his understanding of life. Paul was so dedicated to the cause of Jesus Christ that it transcended his own narrow segment and grasped the importance of the whole. It would have been easy for Paul to have just focused on what opportunities came to him while he was awaiting his trial before Caesar. In Philippians, Paul makes it clear that though he was in jail he was having a very effective ministry to the Praetorian guard and even to some in Caesar’s household. Also in 2 Corinthians 11:28, Paul mentions the daily pressure that was upon him because of his concern for all the churches. It would have been understandable for him to just focus on the many churches he had already planted. Yet, we find here that Paul is intensely concerned for churches that were in places he had never been. Paul understood the oneness that all believers share, and so he was compelled to respond to any opportunity given to him in rejoicing over what the Lord was doing in the lives of other believes in other places, and also help them as he could that they might grow spiritually, stand firm against false doctrine and withstand the attacks of adversaries. I hope that we can in some way imitate Paul’s heart by thinking about and praying for believers around the world. Praying that they would be strengthened in the face of persecution, that they would stay close to the word of God and would trust in the multitude of promises laid before us. In verses 2-4, Paul reiterates his goal and shares two clues of the goal and one caution. Paul’s Goal We already know that Paul’s goal is Christian maturity, but he re-phrases it in the beginning of verse 2 when he says that he’s struggling so “that their hearts may be encouraged.” We tend to use the heart as a metaphor for our emotions, but that was not true in the Greek world. The emotions came from the stomach in those days. We see that in Philippians 3:19 when Paul is talking about the enemies of the Cross, he says, “their e

We ended last week by seeing that the light at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining on the cloud of suffering is the mystery of Christ in you the Hope of Glory. I don’t feel like we had adequate time to explore that concept so we’re going to start today in that last verse from last week then go through what should be the end of the chapter. Let’s jump right in because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Colossians 1:27 - “To them [The saints] God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The Mystery of Christ in You Let’s stop right there. What is Paul talking about a mystery? This doesn’t sound like much of a mystery to us today. First off, there are two kinds of mystery ones that remain hidden and ones that are solved. Imagine picking up a mystery novel and it being the first category. We’d get frustrated right? We don’t like mysteries that have no answer or conclusion. This is not the kind of mystery that Paul is talking about. He’s saying that the mystery has been revealed. Let’s see if we can’t see the mystery a little bit better is we put ourselves in their shoes. Way back in Genesis a couple of generations after the flood, God comes to a man named Abram, and He tells Abram that He’s going to reconcile all things, that He’s going to bless all nations on the Earth by creating a people out of Abraham. He says, “I’m going to create a people out of you, and through this line of people, I’m going to bless all nations on Earth.” And if you’re familiar with the Old Testament at all, you know that Abram becomes Abraham and we can just start working our way through the scripture into Egypt and into Israel becoming too big in Egypt. Egypt gets concerned and makes all the Israelites slaves and is pretty cruel and harsh to the Israelites. God comes to Moses and says, “I’ve heard the cries of My people. You’re going to deliver them. When God calls you listen. So, he accepts the gig and he leads them out of Egypt into the wilderness. He doesn’t lead them into the Promised Land, because they’re disobedient, but towards the Promised Land. There, God gives them the Law and says, “Look, you’re probably going to break the Law. So when you break the Law, here’s the sacrificial system.” Because sin requires blood atonement. Then He gives them the sacrificial system and then gives them prophets to remind them of all of this over and over again. While they are in the wilderness, they have this moving Tabernacle, this moving presence of God. They are continually taught that the God of Israel is the God of everyone and that one day the glory of that God is going to cover the Earth like the waters cover the sea. That there’s coming a day where this is not just an Israelite thing, but this is a world, a global thing. And so this message continues but it’s very much a mystery of how this is all going to work. Because they’ve got a moving tabernacle, or a temple. Is everybody in the world going to have to come to the temple? Or, maybe they will do a tour and loan the presence of God to the U.S. for two months, then down to Mexico for two months, then the presence of God gets shipped over to Africa for a few months, etc. I mean is that how this thing to work? That seems like a very limited way to experience the majesty of God and it doesn’t seem like it’s covering the whole of creation. So it’s a mystery until Christ comes, lives out the fullness of the law, goes to the cross, dies, is resurrected, sends the Holy Spirit and seals men and women with the promise. That’s why the text says the mystery has been solved, here it is “Christ in you the Hope of Glory.” Did you catch that? We become, as believers in Christ, the temple and the dwelling place of the Living God. No more tabernacle. No more holy of holies. We have Immanuel, God with us, and in us. Even in the book of Acts, they didn’t quite fully understand the mystery. Remember at Pentecost when Peter stands up and he preaches the gospel, and 3,000 people are saved? They’re still all Jews. This is still strictly a Jewish thing. It’s not until Acts 10 that you see the conversion of the first Gentile. Remember, Peter goes to Cornelius’ house because of a vision, and Cornelius is Roman. He is not a Jew. He is God fearing, which means he liked the Old Testament, but didn’t want to be circumcised and wanted to keep eating bacon. And so Peter begins to unpack the gospel, and he speaks in tongues and then becomes a believer. And then Peter’s like, “Oh no, a Gentile just got saved.” Then in Acts 15, The church gets together to discuss whether or not it’s okay for God to do that. They ask, “Can God save the Gentiles?” And Peter’s like, “He just did. He saved them. I was there.” So they argue for a little bit and then it catches fire and Paul begins his missionary journeys and then here you and I are. This is the God of the universe doing exactly what He said He was going to do in Genesis 12. And although it was a mystery to the generations before we were sealed with the Holy Spirit and the promise, it’s not a mystery to us. The mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory, the dwelling place of God. There’s nothing sacred with this building. This is a double-wide mobile home. We don’t come here and expect to have a supernatural power that’s not available in other places. It’s not a sacred space. The sacred space is now in us. We’ve been sealed with the promise. This is the mystery solved, Christ in us, the hope of glory. We are the tabernacle and the dwelling place of God. We are. He dwells with us. We have a personal relationship with Him. We don’t offer sacrifices to an altar. That’s not what we do anymore. He dwells in us and this is what Paul’s talking about. The mystery has been revealed. The solution has been found. When Paul talks about the mystery of Christ in you the hope of Glory he is saying that the long-awaited plot twist has been revealed. You know how much I love movies. This would be like Paul saying spoiler alert in our modern language. So with the root of the message being this new hope that God doesn’t dwell in temples made by human hands. Let’s now continue in this passage. Colossians 1:28-29, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” In this text, we see the central theme of Christian Ministry. It is right there in the first 3 words. And we are going to see today the Messengers of the ministry, the Message of the ministry, the Means of the ministry, and the Mission of the ministry. The Messengers of Christian Ministry We’re going to look at the message of the ministry, but before we get into that, we should see who is carrying the message. If I don’t say something early on you might zone out thinking that this sounds like preacher or pastor work and you’d be missing out. There is a tendency in our society to hand off the work of Christian Ministry to full-time or bi-vocational Christian workers. As if there are JV and Varsity Christians. Paul is talking to all believers here. He’s not just having a meeting with Epaphras and sending him back to do ministry at the Church of Colossae. Instead, he says, “We Proclaim Christ,” and this is not just a job for pastors or full-time Christian workers, but for all of God’s people. This is one of the foundational realities of this church. While there is a place for trained men who devote themselves to preach God’s Word (1 Tim. 5:17). It’s also true that every believer is a priest with a ministry to fulfill, and Christ should be at the center of all ministry because He is what every person needs. So the first thing to understand is that proclaiming Christ is a job for all of God’s people. You have opportunities and venues to proclaim Him to people who would never come to hear me preach, who may never step into a church, and who couldn’t care less about seeking out the truth on their own. The Message of Christian Ministry It should come as no surprise that Jesus is the message of all true Christian ministry. But does that mean that we just need to stand on a street corner and say his name? Of course not. Does it mean that every proclamation must rehearse the events of the passion week? That gets a little harder? It begs the question, what should we proclaim about Christ. Providentially, John Piper, just this week, wrote a great post over at Desiring God that got to the heart of this. The central question of his article was whether or not we should make a “beeline to the cross” in our preaching. What he meant by that is that some preachers will need to deal with a text so they will superficially handle some of the basic features of the text then they will figure out some way to segue into a generic message about the atoning death of Jesus. While that doesn’t sound bad at first (I mean what’s wrong with another presentation of the glory of the gospel?), he argues that there is harm in this: “Therefore, the primary reason for rejecting preaching that makes “a beeline to the cross” (as we have described it) is that it diminishes the glory of the cross. It thinks it is doing just the opposite. It thinks the cross is more magnified by bringing the sermon to a crescendo every week with a celebration of substitutionary atonement. That is not the way to make much of the glories of the cross. By all means, make sure that the congregation knows the details of the greatest event in the history of the world — the death and resurrection of Jesus. But then spend most of your time preaching the glorious achievements of the cross, which fill the pages of Scripture. And what we have seen is that every beneficial thing in the Bible — every blessing, every gift, every promise, every gracious warning, every helpful glimpse of God’s glory in every sermon —