But ultimately, anything that's not the gospel of Jesus Christ,
anything that's not the Word of God,
is going to eventually fall apart and not hold up.
All right, we're continuing our study of the book of Colossians
using Colossians 3.17 as our guide.
Whatever you do, do it for Him. Point to Jesus.
So today we're in Colossians 2, starting in verse 6.
We're going to go through verse 15.
So let's start by reading this passage, and then we'll get into it.
Colossians 2, verse 6 says,
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 in you,
who were dead in your trespasses in 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.
He disarmed the rulers and authorities
and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Him.
So if you look at this passage as I was studying this passage,
it kind of naturally breaks into three sections.
And so the first being verse 6-7,
then you have verse 8, and then you have 9-15.
And what's cool is they all really weave together,
and you can understand if you look at the context of this passage
why Paul wrote in this way.
And so he starts in verse 6-7, he's saying,
walk in Him, rooted and built up.
Walk in Him, rooted and built up.
And what we see here is kind of a fun mix of metaphors that Paul's using, right?
You hear these words, walk, you know, we use that word a lot,
the Christian walk, rooted, right?
You want to be rooted and grounded and then also built up.
But you don't always often see them mixed like this.
He's saying, walk in Him, rooted and built up.
And so it's kind of like a fun picture
if you try to imagine somebody doing all three of those, right?
So you're walking forward, but you also have roots that go down,
and you're also being built up.
You're kind of moving in three different directions,
forward, upward, and downward.
And these are all good things, right?
Walking, we talk about the Christian walk.
We also, as believers, talk about roots.
Ephesians 3 says being rooted and grounded in love.
And then also built up, you want to be built up in the faith,
and also be building each other up, right?
As blood, sand, and allies, as community,
you want to be building each other up.
But again, looking at all three at the same time
is kind of an interesting picture,
moving forward, downward, and upward.
But what you notice is the only direction Paul doesn't mention
is moving backwards.
He says moving forward, he says built up,
and he says roots that go down.
So he's not saying backwards, and I think that's intentional, right?
We shouldn't be moving backwards as believers.
We should be moving forwards.
Roots that go down deep, built up in the faith,
and walking forward.
And all of them, though, point to this idea of growth,
that we as believers should be growing, right?
We should be growing by moving forward in our faith.
We should be growing by growing our roots down deep
in the truth of the word.
We should be growing our faith by being built up
and building up each other.
We should be growing.
You should not be in the same place spiritually today
as you were when you got saved,
unless you got saved today, right?
You should always be moving,
you should always be moving forward and growing.
And Hebrews talks about this
with the idea of moving from milk to solid food, right?
And I've got a couple kids,
and I remember when each one of my kids
ate solid food for the first time,
and it's kind of a fun moment,
and they enjoy it.
They're usually confused by it at first,
then they enjoy it and love food,
and all of our kids love food.
That's a fun moment when they eat solid food
for the first time,
but they're not ready for solid food
when they're two weeks old.
It happens in stages,
and the same is true of our Christian faith, right?
When we're saved, we're on milk,
but we shouldn't keep drinking milk, right?
If my six-year-old son is still drinking milk
and has never had solid food, that's a problem.
There's gonna be a problem with our faith
if we never move off of milk,
and so we should be progressing and growing.
And the other thing I wanna say about growth,
while it's good, and it should be happening,
it's necessary, doesn't mean it's easy, right?
Growth can be uncomfortable,
and we can feel stretched,
we can feel growing pains, right?
Every so often, one of our kids will wake up
in the middle of the night with crying, right?
And there's different reasons for the crying.
Sometimes they're sick, sometimes they're scared,
but a lot of times, they feel pain, right?
And these growing pains in their legs
as kids grow fast, and it's uncomfortable.
is true of growth in our own lives. Sometimes it's uncomfortable, and
sometimes the Lord is stretching us, and it's going to be uncomfortable. But I
think that's important, and if we aren't willing to leave our comfort zone, we're
not going to see growth in our lives. We're not going to grow if we're not
willing to stretch and to be uncomfortable, right? And so that's part
of the process, and I think it's important to recognize that. So walk in
him, Paul's saying, establishing the faith, abounding with thanksgiving. And he uses
these first two verses to set up verse 8. And so verse 8, there comes a warning.
And so Paul, before he gets to the warning, he's saying, you got to be
walking with him, you got to be rooted, and you got to be built up because of
verse 8. So let's look at verse 8 again. He says, see to it that no one takes you
captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, elemental
spirits of this world. And so here comes his warning. He's saying, make sure no one
takes you captive. Other translations say, cheat you or lead you away as prey.
And so what is being cheated from you? What's being taken away? Well, the riches
and the promises of God's kingdom, righteousness, peace, and joy. And so Paul
knows if you're walking in him, if you're rooted, if you're built up, then you
won't be able to be taken captive or cheated. And Paul also knew that the
church of Colossae was under attack from a few different angles. You had early
Gnosticism taking root, you had Greek philosophy, you had Jewish mysticism. And
what was especially dangerous about these ideas is that they sounded highly
intelligent, and they made sense at first. But ultimately, anything that's not the
gospel of Jesus Christ, anything that's not the Word of God, is going to
eventually fall apart and not hold up. But if you aren't careful, they sound
good and they could lead you astray. And so that's what Paul's warning the church
of Colossae against. Watch out for these ideas that are out there. And guess what?
This warning is still relevant to us today. Philosophy, tradition, some of these
things that are out there, they're not necessarily bad on its face, right?
Philosophy means a love of wisdom. Tradition, you know, people like to rely
on tradition. But if those things become the main thing, then that's a
problem, and they're ultimately going to crumble and not last. And all of that
stuff, too, is man-made, right? The things that Paul lists here. Philosophy, empty
deceit, human tradition, they're man-made. And anything that's man-made, again, is
not going to last. It's not going to stand the test of time. But God does. God's
beyond time. His Word lasts beyond the test of time. So we need to follow things
that were created by God, not man. And so ultimately, no matter how clever and
smart-sounding these things are, they're going to unravel and fall apart. And
that's why Paul is warning against them. And so what's cool about this third
section, 9 through 15, is Paul goes at these myths and these lies and these
deceits that are out there. And he goes at them really quickly. So if you
look at verse 9, he says,
And this is really cool because that goes after these Gnostic and mystic ideas
that were in Colossae and other parts of the world at the time, which believed
things like, well, God doesn't actually physically contact Earth. God doesn't, you
know, he probably didn't even create the world himself. It was probably one of his
angels. Or God doesn't talk specifically or interact with man. You know, those are
some of the ideas that were floating around there. And so Paul, in a brief
verse, like half a sentence, he attacked those ideas because he's saying, you know,
he goes right after these lies. He says,
God sent his son Jesus, who was fully man, fully God, walked this earth and
interacted with people. That is God interacting with the physical world, as
much as you possibly can. I can't even think of another way that you could do
that as much as that, right? That was it. So he's saying, no, the fullness of deity
dwells by the fullness of deity. The fullness of God walked around this earth
as man. And so he's saying, and then he's all, he takes it a step further in verse
10 and says, and you have been filled in him. Okay, so that means Jesus is still on
this earth, still interacting with people today through each one of us, right?
Through Jesus, his interaction on earth as man, and the fact that he
didn't stay dead, now we can still interact with him and he can reside in
us. We can be filled with him, right? And so he goes after these lies right away.
And then Paul keeps going in verse 11, he talks about circumcision and he says,
you know, it's no longer made, he says, made without hands, right? And so he's
talking about circumcision coming from a physical act to now a spiritual act. And
how we do that is by getting rid of the old flesh, the old sinful ways, and
walking in a new life. And so then he moves from that to talking about baptism
in verse 12. And baptism is a powerful symbolic act that Christians should
partake in. And it symbolizes being buried and raised as Christ was. And we're
raised with him through faith in the power of a working God, as it says in
verse 13. And he says we were dead and then God made us, or verse 12, sorry, and
then in verse 13 he says we were made, we
dead and then God made alive. God made us alive and that's what we get to
demonstrate through the act of baptism and make that public. That physical act
of leaving away, leaving behind the old sinful way and walking in newness of
life and then getting filled with the Holy Spirit and doing ministry. Actually
Jesus demonstrated that with his own baptism when he went to John the
Baptist in the Jordan River and he was baptized and the dove descended on him
filled with the Holy Spirit and go do ministry, right? And so we should use that
model in our own lives. But Paul keeps going and he writes that Jesus canceled
the record of debt that stood against us and set it aside and nailed it to the
cross and he triumphed over the rulers and authorities and that is what Jesus
did. He was fully God. He was fully man. He chose to walk this earth. He chose to
bear our sin, our shame, our pain on that cross and to cancel the record of sin
and death and triumph when he rose again and I think that's a powerful thing to
meditate on and you can think back in your own life to your own sin and your
own shame and your own pain and it's often hard to recall those things but I
think it can often be an important exercise because when we think about the
pain in our life and maybe you're currently experiencing pain in your life
Jesus knows exactly what that pain feels like because he felt it when he was on
the cross. So we serve a God who can relate because he chose to be fully man
because he chose to bear those things on the cross and feel it he can
relate when we're walking through it. But he didn't just feel it he conquered it
right and so Jesus conquered all of that sin and shame and pain by raising from
the dead and now reigns over all of it and that's what Jesus did our Savior and
our King and so I think there's a lot of stuff in this passage from the Apostle
Paul and Colossians too that we can that we can kind of respond to right so I'm
going to encourage each one of you to walk in him to stay rooted and built up
to be careful not to be taken captive or led astray by it by deceit to be filled
in him filled with the Holy Spirit to walk with the Holy Spirit and to
recognize how great Jesus is and what he did for us and finally whatever we do do
it for him because he deserves it and because we were created to glorify him