YouTube video sermon

Colossians 2:1-15

Let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Colossians 2. We’re continuing with our third and final sermon in this little series that I’m calling Passages from Paul.

The week before Palm Sunday we looked at Paul’s famous line from Philippians 3:10 where he says that he “wants to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.” Last week, on Easter, we looked at the six (6) gifts that are ours as a result of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection as outlined in 1 Corinthians 15. And today, I want us to be reminded of how important it is that those facts, those realities, those truths about the cross of Christ, His death, and His glorious resurrection remain firm in our hearts and minds.

So, hopefully you’ve located Colossians 2. Now, I know that the bulletin says we’re going to read verses 6-15, but we’re actually going to read verses 1-15. It’s never good to start reading a verse that begins with a “therefore,” because what you’re about to read is all based upon what came before. So, in order to give us a little more context, we’re going to back up just a little.

1 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.

6 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.

8 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. 9 For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 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, 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. 13 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, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him.

“Father, we’re about to study Your Word together. We pray that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher – that all of us, with eyes turned towards Christ and with hearts open to receive Your truth, may find in Your Word, today, ‘a lamp for our feet and a light for our path’ (Psalm 119:105). For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.”

Last week I received a message from my dear friend (and yours), Johnny Walker. A bit of a disclaimer; for those of you that don’t know, I’m referring to a real man and not the Scotch Whiskey. John usually sits up here to my left (your right) with his wife Patty. John sent me a message containing an excerpt from the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born American writer, professor, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, and hoped that I might be able to use it sometime in a sermon. I told John that I was familiar with the story and the book. Mid-week, I found myself reading another story in another book by Elie Wiesel titled Souls on Fire.

In Souls on Fire, he tells a remarkable tale of a man named Isaac, son of Yechel, who lived in Krakau. Seems that Isaac was a poor man whose family seldom ate their fill, and one night in a vivid dream, he saw the distant city of Prague. He saw a river flowing through the city, and under a particular bridge he saw a buried treasure. He woke up the next morning, but the dream was just as vivid. In fact, that
night and the next night – for two weeks – Isaac had the same dream.

Finally, he decided to walk all the way to Prague to see for himself if the dream might be real. After several days he arrived, and although he’d never been there, he recognized the bridge from his dreams. He went under the bridge and began searching for the treasure, when suddenly he was grabbed from the back of his neck by a soldier who dragged him away to prison.

The soldier sat him down and said, “All right, Jew, what were you doing under that bridge?” No knowing what else to say, Isaac decided to tell the truth, and told him about the dream. Immediately, the soldier burst into mocking laughter, “You stupid Jew, don’t you know that you can’t believe what you see in your dreams? Why, for the last two weeks I myself have had a dream every night that far away in the city of Krakau, in the house of some Jew by the name of Isaac, son of Yechel, there is a treasure buried beneath the sink in his house. Wouldn’t it be crazy for me to go all the way to Krakau in search for some guy that doesn’t exist? I could waste a lifetime looking for treasure that wasn’t there.”

With uproarious laughter, the soldier stood him up, opened the door, and gave him a good kick, and let him go. Naturally, Isaac walked back to his home in Krakau where he looked beneath the sink in his own kitchen, and found the treasure buried there.

A good story, indeed, but the truth applies to us as well. Our treasure is in Jesus Christ. He resides in us through the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to look anywhere else. Jesus is sufficient. We don’t need some additional spiritual experience or some new-found enlightened understanding. We don’t need any other treasure. It’s already ours.

So, how does Paul teach this and correct this? That’s what I want us to notice this morning, because there are many people (many so-called Christians) who are leaving the reservation when it comes to the gospel. What the Colossian Church was facing is exactly what the 21st century Church is facing, and I want you to be “rooted and built up in [Christ] and established in the faith” as Paul puts it in verse 6.

Loved ones, hear me this morning, every day I sound more and more like my parents and grandparents (like some of you) – lamenting the good ole days and seeing and hearing nothing but bad on the theological horizon. Pastors and believers of all walks of life are entertaining skepticism and questioning their faith in a process known as “deconstruction” to such degrees that they end up denying their faith and embracing atheism. Progressive Christianity is growing. Churches and denominations are leaving orthodoxy for heresy in the name of loving their neighbor and cultural accommodation.

Again, don’t misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting that we not love our neighbors. No, clearly the Bible instructs us to do this. The issue at stake is how are we to love our neighbor. When it comes to sin and salvation and sanctification – our daily walk and growth in the Lord – what’s the best way to love our neighbor? That’s the question. Not should we. Yes, we should. But how best do we do that, in light of what the Scriptures teach?

Listen to me; the Colossian threat isn’t limited to the pages of your Bibles and the 1st century. No, it’s real today, and like Paul, I want to encourage us and strengthen us in our faith. So, what do we do? Three things:

Avoid Captivity

“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.” Unlike Isaac in Elie’s fictional story, make sure no one sneaks up behind you and grabs on around the shoulders and puts a bag over your head and runs off with you. Don’t let the hollow philosophy that’s marked by emptiness and deception trap you. “Well, pastor, that’s easy enough to say, but exactly how do I do that?” Notice the phrase at the end of verse 8, “… and not according to Christ.”

So, here’s what you do. You read your Bible. You study your Bible. You pray to the Lord. You attend corporate worship where you sing songs to God, where you offer praise to Jesus, where you hear a minister expound upon the Word of God, and you run all of that stuff through the filter of Jesus Christ. What do I mean by that? Well, I mentioned it last week. You make sure that the emphasis and the focus of your faith (and your faith community) is the person and work of Jesus. Is Jesus championed as fully God and fully man? Is His death on the cross seen as satisfying God’s wrath towards sin and the sinner? At the end of the day, are you placing your faith and trust in the completed work of Jesus upon the cross for your sins? Do you see Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as your only hope to be made right with God and to live with Him eternally?

Or are there significant points along the way where you’re encouraged to embrace behaviors and beliefs that run counter to the Bible? Is Jesus more man and less God? Is Jesus merely one among many ways to encounter God? Is sin something to be taken seriously? Is it something that we need to recognize and confess daily, because when we see ourselves next to the holiness of Almighty God, we join Isaiah in saying, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5)! Or do we not really concern ourselves with sin? Do the voices of influence in our lives say to us, “Did God really say…” (Genesis 3:1)? Is our faith community more interested in redefining sin, justifying sin, accommodating sin?

This is what I mean by running everything through the filter of Jesus Christ. Any teaching that doesn’t seek to exalt Christ as God is empty and worthless. See to it that no one takes you captive.

Affirm Christ’s Deity

Following right on the heels of guarding against deception and being taken captive by hollow reason, Paul stresses the importance of believing that Jesus was God. Some of you have asked me recently why it is that we’ve been reading the Apostle’s Creed as part of our weekly worship? It’s a fair question, and my response has essentially been a non-response: “Oh, we’ll read it from time-to-time but it won’t be a fixed and rigid part of our worship.” Part of my reason for including it is precisely to remind us of the truths about Christ that have helped to keep orthodox faith in place.

The battles that were fought in the early centuries were battles that were fought over one iota. Iota is the 9th letter in the Greek alphabet. It’s derived from the Hebrew and Phoenician yodh. We translate that Greek/Hebrew letter with the English letters ‘i’ and ‘j’. There’s an English idiom, a phrase of speech that goes like this: “That doesn’t bother me; not one iota” meaning “not the slightest bit.”

And one of the battles that raged in the 4th century after Christ was over this little Greek letter. There were two Greek words that were being used to describe Jesus in the church: homoousios and homoiousios. The words are spelled exactly the same except the Greek letter iota is placed in the middle of the second word: homoousios and homoiousios. That one little Greek letter made all the difference in the meaning.

See, homoousios (without the iota) means of the “same substance/essence.” But homoiousios (with the iota) means of a “similar substance/essence.” And the question before the church in 345 A.D. was: Which of these words correctly described Jesus and His relationship with God the Father? Is He of the “same substance/essence” of the Father, or a “similar substance/essence” of the Father? And you say, “Come on, is it really that big of a deal?” Well, let me ask you. Who do you want dying on the cross for your sins? Someone who’s exactly like God the Father, perfect and holy in every conceivable way, or someone who’s mostly like God? The Scripture is pretty clear that only a perfect Lamb would satisfy the Father’s demands for sin. Friends, our eternal destinies hang on these matters.

Acknowledge Jesus’ Victory

There’s no need to look anywhere else. “[Jesus] is the head of all rule and authority” (v. 10). You were circumcised. Your baptism speaks of this. He’s not speaking about Old Testament circumcision. He makes that clear in verse 11 – it’s a circumcision not made with human hands. He’s referring to the circumcision of the heart that only Jesus can do. He’s referring to putting off the old you and putting on the new you in Christ. When Paul talks about baptism in verse 12, he’s describing the way in which we identify with Jesus death, burial and resurrection. When we go into the waters of baptism, we’re saying something without saying something. You know what I mean? By our actions we’re saying that we’ve died with Christ – we’ve died to sin and self – that we’ve been buried with Christ and that we’re raised to new life in Christ.

And he concludes with this, and so will we. Paul says that Jesus forgave us of all our sins. Look with me, if you still have your Bibles open, at verse 13. Notice how Paul is writing in the second person plural (you) and changes to the third person plural (us), “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.” It’s as if Paul couldn’t contain himself as he wrote. He just had to include himself in that great statement of forgiveness. It’s the great longing of people’s lives – to be forgiven. They may not be able to articulate it, but to somehow or another be free from guilt.

The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 that a “time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” People will do everything in their power to find someone who will tell them that things are not as they are, to justify themselves and their sin, all the while deep within their heart of hearts knowing that forgiveness only comes through Jesus Christ.

He forgave us all our sins, but He also “cancel[ed] the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.” It’s a wonderful picture, isn’t it? All of us have had opportunities to help people out in times of significant hardship, whether that’s financially or physically or emotionally. Many times, you can physically see the burden being lifted off their shoulders, the stress, the anxiety, all of it going away. Now just alter the image slightly and see your mountain upon mountain, depth upon depth, record after record of sin being placed upon the shoulders of Christ and being nailed to the cross.

I was perusing some old music the other day, trying to get some things ready for the choir and thinking and praying about what’s next for us as we search for James’ replacement. And I ran across an old gospel hymn titled The Old Account Settled Long Ago, by author Frank M. Graham that was published over 100 years ago. Listen to the lyrics:

There was a time, I know / When in the book of heaven / An old account was standing / For sins yet unforgiven / My name was at the top / And many things below / I went unto the Keeper / And settled long ago.

(Refrain): Long ago / down on my knees / long ago / Yes, the old account was settled long ago / And the record’s clear today / For He washed my sins away / When the old account was settled long ago.

The old account was large / And growing every day / For I was always sinning / And never tried to pay / But when I looked ahead And saw such pain and woe / I said that I would settle / And settled long ago.

When at the judgment bar / I stand before my King / And He the book will open / He cannot find a thing / Then will my heart be glad / While tears of joy will flow / Because I had it settled / And settled long ago.

Finally, Paul says that “[Jesus] disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him” (v. 15). The enemies of Jesus – both human enemies and spiritual enemies – saw the cross as the instrument of their victory, and yet God turned the cross into the chariot of His victory.

That’s what I believe. That’s all my hope of forgiveness. Every day, all day, for the rest of my life, that He forgave my sins, He canceled the written code, that He disarmed the powers that seek to ensnare us and bring us to nothing, and He triumphed over them in the cross.

“Gracious God, how we thank You that Paul was able to write with such power, with such strength, with such integrity, and clarity and purpose. It stirs us. It makes us want to read our Bibles more. To learn more about who Jesus is and the wonder of His dealings with us. May we, O Lord, live lives worthy of Him and consistent with His fullness, which has been given to us. Keep us satisfied with Christ when all the world around us is clamoring for more. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.”