colossians: built up in christ…colossians:)built)up)in)christ))))) may)17)&18,2014)))))...

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Transcript May 17 & 18, 2014

Colossians: Built Up in Christ Aaron Brockett | Colossians 2:1-15

Alright. Good morning. If you have a Bible go ahead and grab it and turn to Colossians, chapter 2. That’s where we’re going to be. I want to welcome you if you’re visiting, if you’re a guest, or if you’re joining us online. We’re in week number four already – hard to believe – in this series in Colossians and we’re going to be looking at the first 15 verses of chapter 2 together. This is really the whole idea of being built up, being grounded, being rooted in Jesus Christ. And it’s one to thing to say that, it’s another thing to be motivated to do that. What’s our motivation to be built up in Christ? Paul’s going to get after that in our passage. When I was a senior in college – my last year of college, several months before I was getting ready to graduate, I was in desperate need of a new car because the one that I had been driving died on me. Any of you ever had a car die on you? It’s a very sad day. We had a funeral for it. We put it out to pasture – it was a 1990 Pontiac Grand Am. Do they even make Grand Ams anymore? Not sure if they do but if you remember right, Pontiac made a version of a Grand Am that was a pretty sporty looking car. That’s not the one I had. I had the 4-‐cylinder little brother of that car and it did me well for several years but it died and I was in need of another one. But it was a bad timing because I was still in college, the part-‐time job I was working paid me a solid $75 a week, and so I did not have a real big budget to buy another car. But, I heard about this guy who owned a shop on the east end of town and he would rebuild salvaged cars and get you into them for cheaper than what you could buy that same model for at a used car lot. The only downside is that it would have a salvage title to it but I didn’t care. I needed some transportation. So, I go out to his lot and I’m looking through his inventory and there are these wrecked cars all over the lot. And I found a 1995 Honda Civic. It was a little 5-‐speed, it had a spoiler on the back, it had a sun roof and it looked like a “V” because it had been wrapped around a telephone pole. Apparently, this girl had lost control on an icy road, slid into a telephone pole and the driver side door was all bashed into the seat. The windshield was shattered. The hood was all torn up and I was like, “Hey, I think that looks good.” And so I asked him how much he could rebuild it for me for, it had relatively low miles on it. He got it in at a pretty good price, rebuilt it for me in about 5 weeks. And as soon as he was finished with it, you couldn’t even tell that it had been wrecked. And it was actually good, solid transportation for the next several years. Lindsay and I got married in that car – well we owned it when we got married, we didn’t get married in the car. It was a solid car. But six months after I bought it I went to the grocery store late one night to pick something up and came out to the parking lot – all of the lights are turned off in the lot so it’s very dark. I put the key in the ignition, I turned the ignition, and nothing happened. There was no power whatsoever. It was completely dead. And I am not very good with cars at all – and that may not be a surprise to you. But I didn’t know what I was doing so I called my grandfather. He was already in bed at the time. And I said, “My car won’t start.” And he was like, “Give me 20 minutes. I’ll be right over.”

Colossians: Built Up in Christ May 17 & 18, 2014

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

Now, my grandfather was the kind of guy who owned every single tool known to mankind and kept them in his F150 pick-‐up truck. So the truck rattled when you drove it. Not because there was anything wrong but because there were all of these tools in the back. And so he comes rattling into the parking lot at 11:30 at night, pops the hood, gets his flashlight out. We’re looking around and within five minutes he notices that there is a wire that has been disconnected – from what I don’t know. Let’s just call it the flex-‐capacitor. The flex-‐capacitor had been disconnected and so he takes it, he plugs it in. That’s all he did. He plugged it in and said, “Why don’t you try it now?” And I turned the key and it started right up. And I was like, “Oh, who knew? You need to plug it in.” And I had the power back. Now, you would think that I would have then gone and taken some kind of measure to ensure that that plug would never come unplugged again. I don’t know, fasten it down, duck tape it – something. Not this genius. I just left it the way that it was. So every four or five weeks, due to the vibration of the engine, that plug would slowly come unplugged. I’d get in. I never knew when it would be. I’d turn the key and nothing would happen. And so, I’d get out, pop the hood, plug it in and it would start right back up again. That was just my routine the whole time I had the car. I never did fix it until I sold it to a guy and hoped that he would figure it out. The power was there all along it’s just that the connection was bad. Now, the thing that was true for that car is the same thing that is true for every single person in this room spiritually and emotionally. In fact, I would even say that as this relates to your walk with Jesus Christ, if you have not yet experienced this, you’re well on your way to experiencing it. You’re going to get in so to speak. You’re going to come to church, open your Bible, start to pray and you’ll turn the key to the ignition and nothing will happen. And it will be perplexing to you because at one time it did ignite. It did start up. And so, at one time your prayer life was vibrant and alive. At one time you did open up the Bible and it came to life to you and you felt an appetite for it and you couldn’t get enough of it. At one time your connection with other Christians, Christ followers, was rewarding and affirming. And then there are these other times that are so painful because your prayer life is flat, and non-‐existent. You get around to opening up the Bible but it seems dry, it seems boring, it’s not coming to life for you. The most painful thing is when people who you loved and trusted, people you looked up to, maybe other Christ followers said something, did something that hurt you in some way. Maybe your Life Group has imploded. Maybe somebody got the wrong impression of you and so now all of these things are amiss. There’s this lack of power in your life and in those moments we’re especially vulnerable to the number one warning that is found in the New Testament. The number one warning in the whole New Testament is the warning against false teaching. And you would say well, “I think that I can withstand false teaching.” But whenever you are in a season of perceived powerlessness, when you’re in a season of spiritual dryness, when you’re in a season where you are parched and thirsty – you may be more vulnerable to it than you realize. This is why my wife tells me to never go shopping while hungry. Because when I go shopping when I’m hungry, I come home with a canister of beef jerky and a keg of cheese balls – whatever. I thought it was a good purchase at the time and now the budget has gone out the window. When we are in a season when we are like, “Okay, this doesn’t seem to be working anymore,” all of a sudden we become desperate for power and we’ll take it from wherever we can get it. And so, it’s like an addiction to caffeine. After a while it wears off. It doesn’t do for you what it once did and so you go to two cups of coffee, then you to those five hour energy drinks. And common knowledge will tell you if



you want to have energy to sustain yourself you need to have a good diet, you exercise, you take your vitamins, you get eight or nine hours of sleep at night – but you’re like, “No, no, no – I’m just going to go for the five hour energy drink.” In the same way, Scripture tells us – Paul is contending here in the letter to the Colossians that the power source, the sufficiency, the supremacy, the centrality is Jesus Christ alone. And yet, many of us in this room don’t wholly buy that. Many of us say, “Well, I don’t think that that’s practical enough. I don’t know, fully, what that means when you say that Jesus is sufficient not only to save but to sustain.” Now this was what was going on in the church at Colossae. What we need to understand is that by the time Paul wrote this letter to the church the church was already about six years old. They weren’t seasoned veterans yet but they weren’t newbies either. They had been at this long enough to have known and experienced the power of Jesus Christ and then there were times when they got in and turned the key and nothing happened. So they have this false teaching that was coming at them from outside the church in the realm of the Greek intellectuals and they have some bad theology that was coming up from within the church. So Paul is writing to contend for the faith and to say, “Man, when you are in that season, don’t be vulnerable to those other things that entice you to add to or to take away from the Gospel of grace. And just as I think it was a blind spot to many of them, I think it’s a blind spot even for many of us. We don’t live in the Roman Empire, but we live in something incredibly close to the Roman Empire. We live in America. And there are a lot of parallels. There are a lot of similarities. And so look at what Paul says. One of the things you might have noticed if you’ve been here through this series – we’ve already finished chapter 1. We’re heading into chapter 2. I would describe the first two chapters of Colossians like a series of mountain peaks. And so, what Paul is doing is he keeps coming back to who Jesus is, His identity, what He’s done for us and he keeps repeating himself in various ways. Now he’s going to get into exactly why he keeps repeating himself to us. So look at what he says in verse 1. He says, “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, 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, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So Paul uses this word struggle here. And that word “struggle” is this idea of, if you were to go out and you were to run five miles today, and you begin to break a sweat, and you begin to breath heavily, and your muscles begin to tighten up, and you say, “I’m going to finish the five miles,” you would struggle to finish the five miles. This is the same word that he is using. “I want you to know,” he’s writing to the churches, “that I’m struggling with that same kind of intensity for you,” the church in Colossae, “for the church in Laodicea ,” which was about 10 miles down the road, “and for all of the other churches throughout Asia that have not seen me face to face.” He says, “The reason why I am struggling is so that you will be encouraged.” And, encouragement is a great anecdote to powerlessness. If you’ve ever been lonely, if you’ve ever felt spiritually dry, and then somebody comes along and they encourage you with something – totally unsolicited – what does that do to your spirit? What does that do even to your physical expression? It’s almost like a wave of energy when somebody just comes up and gives you a word of encouragement. That happened to me



yesterday afternoon just talking with somebody and they just gave me some unsolicited encouragement that was genuine and sincere. And I walked away just feeling lit up by that. Paul says, “I want to encourage you and I want you guys to be knit together in love because this is so difficult you can’t do this alone.” One of the dangerous things for the church, a church like ours, is to begin to get internally focused and say, “Well, let’s just be thinking about, and praying about, and focusing upon what God is doing here.” And no, God’s working in many different congregations and He needs to work in many. This is just one expression of that. We need to be knit together, encouraging others because it’s difficult to continue to follow Jesus Christ in this world. And then he says, I love how he says this, “to reach,” I circled that word in my Bible. When you’re feeling powerless he’s like, “Hey, man. Don’t just sit back and hope that maybe you will feel better again.” He goes, “Reach.” Reach for what? Look at your Bibles, “reach for the,” say it with me, “riches.” Say it with me, “riches.” Alright – you’re going to get it. It’s nine o’clock. Do we really need this sermon? We are reaching for the riches of all the fullness and assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery which is Christ. I said last week that, throughout the epistles, the Gospel is often described as the mystery because for ages, for generations the Gospel was something like – how in the world is God ever going to reconcile man back to Himself? And now he says, “The Gospel is revealed in Jesus Christ.” So the mystery is the Gospel. The Gospel is Christ. And then he says, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” So, he’s basically saying here that the Gospel is simple but it’s not simplistic. And that’s where we’ll get picked off. This is where the Greek intellectuals were coming along and saying, “That’s really cute that you think that you’re saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. It has to be more than that. It has to be more practical than that. You’ve got to add some things to that.” And he’s says. “No, the Gospel is simple but the subject of the Gospel is – the scale and the scope of the subject of that Gospel is incredibly vast.” He says here in the passage that in Jesus is hidden all of the fullness of knowledge and wisdom. So the mental image that came to my mind was this idea of a warehouse. I’ve never been over to the Amazon warehouse. It’s across the interstate from us. But, I’m so thankful that it’s there because when I order a book, many times I get it like within a half-‐hour. Maybe they should just create a drive up window – I think that would be awesome. But, I’ve been on the outside of that building and it’s vast. This is the image that he is showing. That in Christ is contained everything you ever need, everything you need to know all the vastness of knowledge and wisdom is found in Christ. The thing that you’re going to have to contend with in your life is you’re going to say, “Okay, this just sounds kind of simple. Jesus might be sufficient to save but how is He sufficient to sustain me in the issues, the trials, the problems, the difficulties of life?” Paul just said that, “I want you to know that in Christ are hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” And he says, “I’ve been repeating myself over and over again as to who Jesus Christ is. For starters, because repetition is a good thing, repetition is something that we do to finally get it, finally get it ingrained in us.” Now, in verse 4 he tells us why. He says, “I say this in order that,” so he knows that he’s been repeating himself. And he says, “I’m going to tell you why I’ve been repeating myself. I’m going to tell you why I’ve been trying to get this fixed in your heart and mind. I say this so that, ‘no one may delude you with



plausible arguments.’” A plausible argument is an argument that sounds reasonable. It’s an argument that sounds good. It actually appeals to us. Verse 5, “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit,” in other words he’s saying, “I’d like to be there to help defend against these plausible arguments, but I’m with you in spirit, ‘rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.’” In other words, he’s already saying, “Hey look. I am already rejoicing that you’re going to withstand this onslaught. I’m already rejoicing that you’re going to stand firm against this.” And so he says, “I want you to know, the reason we’ve been traveling through this series of mountain peaks, as to the identity of Jesus, is so that you won’t be deluded by plausible arguments.” Paul is not worried about arguments that are crazy. He’s not worried about teaching that sounds so ridiculous that there’s no way that you’re going to believe it. You just roll your eyes at it. He’s not worried that somebody in your Life Group – you’re going to go around in a circle and somebody is going to say, “Well, I don’t really know that Jesus is the Son of God. I think Jesus is a unicorn named Bianca.” Nobody is going to say, “Oh, tell us more about Bianca.” He’s not worried about that. No, he’s worried about plausible arguments. Let me give you a definition. A plausible argument is something that is close enough to the truth to be respectable yet far enough away from the truth to be devastating. And we’re surrounded by plausible arguments all of the time. Just turn on your television, open up a magazine, read a newspaper. Our culture is filled with an arsenal of plausible arguments that if you don’t know Christ well enough, that if you’re not fully built up in Christ it’s easy to get picked off by them for the simple fact that there are elements that, to our flesh, they are appealing. Let me give you an example. There is no such thing as absolute truth – everybody is on their own path to get to God. We just need to respect everybody’s path. That’s a plausible argument in a sense that it kind of sounds good. In the sense that – especially those of you who don’t like conflict, you just took a deep breath – in the sense that we never like to be the person who stands up and says, “No, no, no – I think you’re wrong.” It’s a plausible argument. We’re like, “Okay. Absolutely. So, I can be sincere about my belief in Jesus Christ and I can give them the freedom to be sincere about whatever path they want to take – there is no such thing as absolute truth.” But here’s the thing about plausible arguments. You play them out – they always break down. And so there is no such thing as absolute truth is a statement where you’re declaring some sort of knowledge about absolute truth. You’re saying, “I absolutely know that there is no absolute truth.” You just defeated your own argument. And every path that get’s to God we seem to be sincere about those paths, we’re all making our way to the same god – but just study those other systems, study other world religions, and approaching those different gods is dramatically different. Let me just give you the biggest one. Every other god or deity of other systems of belief says, “Devotion first and salvation later -‐ maybe.” Jesus Christ says, “Salvation first because of My finished work on the cross.” And because of that salvation it transforms your soul to where devotion is natural. It’s fundamentally different. Paul says, “Don’t be deluded by plausible arguments that sound good but in the end don’t work.” And then in verse six he says, “Therefore,” and therefore is always a transitional word in the text leading to implication, he says, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” Here’s the question that you might write out in your notes or write out in your Bible. How are you to receive Christ Jesus as Lord?



How should you receive Him? Well, you should receive Him in humility. You should receive Him open-‐handed, fully dependent upon Him, coming to Him asking Him that He would give you His righteousness. He says, “Just as you received Him, so walk in Him.” And I love that because the Bible’s number one analogy to describe our growth in Jesus Christ is a walk. And, I love that. It’s not a sprint, it’s not a flight, it’s not a skip – grown adults who skip, don’t they just annoy you? It’s cute when little girls do it – I skipped the other day and it just felt ugly. As a human being what is one of the first things you learn to do – it’s not talking first. You what? You walk. It doesn’t look real great at first, does it? When all four of my kids started to walk I was huddled around them – didn’t want them to fall and hit their head on the coffee table. It’s wobbly and if they fell down I didn’t look at them and say, “Man, you’re useless. Just stay down.” No, I picked them up and said, “Take another step.” He says here that if you’re going to grow in Jesus Christ you continue to walk in Him. And notice how we’re to walk, if gives this analogy in verse 7. I want you to be, “rooted,” like a tree, “and built up,” like a building, “in Him and established,” like a legal document that cannot easily be changed, “in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” I love those analogies. He says, “I want you to be rooted in Christ.” How many of you have ever gone out in the yard and looked at a good sized tree and said, “You know, I’d like to move that tree over 25 yards.”? That isn’t going to happen because it’s there, it’s rooted, it’s fixed. You’re not going to move it. How many of you have ever gone out and said, “I don’t really like where our house is. I think I’ll move it back a bit.”? That’s not going to happen because it’s fixed. These are the analogies that he uses for those who are in Christ. He says you should be built up, you should be rooted, you should be walking in Him. So, this is one of the convictions and the burdens that we have as a church – not only would we be leading people to Jesus Christ but that we would also see hundreds and hundreds of people growing in Jesus Christ. Honestly, that’s what the membership process is. The membership process is so that we – I don’t even know, officially, how many people we have on our membership roll. I don’t really care about the numbers – I just know that the membership process is a step – it should be a tool that helps us grow deeper in our understanding of Jesus Christ. I’m not interested in just opening up the doors every weekend and just doing a service where you come and sit through it and then go home unchanged. I want to see you take the next step in your walk. Now, some of you are like, “I’m not really a reader. I don’t really think of myself as a theologian.” I’m not asking you to be. I’m asking you to get this – if you can get this, you’re way ahead of the game. Christ takes my sin and I get His righteousness. And if you get that you’re way ahead of the game. I want to ask you to be careful about what it is you watch, what it is you read, what it is that you listen to and be careful about being deluded by plausible arguments. So if you go to Barnes and Noble let me give you a tip here – under the spirituality and religion section, just because there is a book in there it doesn’t mean that it is good. You are like, “Well, how do I know if it’s false teaching?” Well, here’s a litmus test – where is the cross in that teaching and what does the teaching do to the cross? That’s a big indicator as to whether or not it’s a false teaching or a plausible argument. So, he says, at the very end of verse 7, “abounding in thanksgiving.” I love that because he says don’t forget to be grateful and to express your gratitude. Let me ask you this question. Why is that important?



Why did he tack that on to the end? Because, now I’m speaking for myself, when I forget to be grateful that’s an indicator of where my heart is. How many of you are like me? You can relate to this – that when things are going haywire, when things are out of control, when you can barely keep your head above water, and you’re on your knees and you are praying to the Lord, “God, You’ve got to come through, You’ve got to help me. You need to bail me out here,” and then God does or His blessing are coming in your life and things are going really well – I forget to go back and say thank you. That’s an indication of the heart. Is it easy or difficult for you to be grateful? And people who have a firm foundation in Christ are just, naturally, very grateful people. So he tacks that on at the end of verse 7. Look at what he says in verse 8, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit.” So, the idea here is – you can say it in one of two ways. See to it that nobody makes you a slave, that nobody kidnaps you. See to it that nobody rips you off. That’s the idea. See to it that you don’t get cheated. How many of you like to be ripped off? I didn’t think that many of you would. How many of you have ever had to make a big purchase for the family – whatever it is. Some sort of appliance, maybe it’s a vehicle – so what do you do when you make a big purchase? Well, you research it. You compare prices, “Okay, this person over here is selling it for this. This person over there is selling if for this. I’m going to do my research. I’m going to go in, I’m going to haggle, I’m going to get the best possible deal,” because as human beings we are firmly fixed upon, “Hey, man. You’re not going to rip me off. I’m going to get a good deal here.” This is what Paul says. He says, “See to it that nobody rips you off by philosophy and empty deceit.” The idea behind it is – many of us spend more time being careful about getting a good deal on the washing machine than we do about receiving certain teachings into our hearts and our souls. He says, “Don’t let anybody rip you off with philosophy and empty deceit.” This is the number one warning in the New Testament – it’s a warning against false teaching. Paul warned of it. Peter warned of it. James warned of it. Jesus, speaking to the seven churches in Revelation – six out of the seven letters He warned them about believing something that is not true, believing something that is wrong. Oftentimes I will hear people saying it just doesn’t matter what you believe just as long as you sincerely believe it. And that is empty deceit. It doesn’t even make sense because it doesn’t work in any other arena of life. Nobody ever says, “It doesn’t matter what key you use to start the car just as long as you use a key.” Nobody says, “It doesn’t matter what bank account you deposit money into. Just deposit it into a bank account.” I’ll just go ahead and volunteer mine. That’s what you’ve got there. So, it doesn’t matter what you believe just as long as you sincerely believe it – that’s empty philosophy according to the human tradition. So Paul says, “Don’t let anybody cheat you by human philosophy that robs you of your confidence in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.” I talk to people all of the time, their confidence is stripped from them of the sufficiency of Christ. He says, “according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” Now that word “world” there could be used to describe three different things. It could be use to describe our planet, the earth. It could be used to describe the people of the world. Or it could be used to describe the philosophy – the dominant line of thinking of the world. It’s the last one that Paul means. He says, “Don’t be hijacked according to human tradition, the dominant philosophy in the world.” The stuff that’s coming out of Hollywood, the stuff that comes out of Harvard, the stuff that comes out of TMZ,” alright?



He’s like, “Don’t be hijacked by that kind of thing – that’s all elemental.” In fact in 1Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 20 God said that He makes the wisdom of the world, foolish. So Paul says, “Now that you know the vast wisdom of God, now that you know all of these hidden treasures in Jesus Christ – don’t go back to elementary school. Don’t lean back on these other things. He says that we need to rely upon the wisdom and knowledge that is according to Christ. Oftentimes we get freaked about this idea of the anti-‐Christ. Like there’s going to be this figure who is going to rise up. He’s going to have long, flowing blonde hair. His name is going to be Nicoli and we’re all kind of afraid of this anti-‐Christ and were kind of looking out for him. 1 John says that we should be more afraid of the spirit of anti-‐Christs, anti-‐Christs is anything that is not according to Christ. Paul just made this list here, anything that is not of Christ, anything that does not come out of His character, anything that is not of His wisdom. And so he says that the way that you stand strong, the way that you withstand some of these storms in life is to be rooted and to be built up and established in the identity of Jesus Christ because then when you do hear something that is not of Him – that’s when the alarms go off. When you should be concerned is when you are somewhat confused by it. Is this of Christ or is it not? How many of you ever heard gossip or rumors about a really good friend of yours, a family member of yours, somebody that you have spent a significant amount of time with. How many of you have ever heard gossip or rumors about some that simply wasn’t true? Maybe there was an element of truth to it – but it was twisted just enough to be false. And the reason why you know it is not true is because you know the person well. If you don’t know the person very well you could be deluded into think that this is reality. This is the same thing that he is saying here. He says, “You should be so rooted in Jesus Christ that when this empty philosophy, when this deceit that comes out of the world pops up about Jesus – whenever we add something or take something away – that we immediately can detect it. We immediately pick up on it. Then once again he concludes with the identity of who Jesus Christ is. Verse 9, “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” that’s a great statement. The whole fullness of God was packaged in the person of Jesus Christ, “and you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” In other words, if the fullness of God dwells in Jesus Christ, there is nothing else to add to Him. He’s the full package. Verse 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.” What that means is that, traditionally and historically, one of the things that God required of His people was an external marking showing that they belonged to God and that external marking was circumcision. Well, when Jesus came, under the New Covenant, He did away with that and said, “I’m not interested in external markings, I’m interested in an internal transformation. I want to make you new. I want you to put off that body of flesh.” So, it was a debate in the First Century church as to whether or not somebody needed to become a Jew first before they could then receive the Gospel. And that made Paul furious. He was so adamantly against those external markings, the circumcision of the flesh in order to make somebody a Christian because he said, “Look, man. Jesus wants to change you internally.” And then he gives us this picture of this. And I would say that verses 12 through 15, this is the power source that you come back to. There are a lot of artificial things out there – maybe they give you a buzz for a little while but then it crashes.



This is the power that sustains you, “… 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 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.” He says, “Listen, you’ve been made alive in Jesus Christ and you’ve been buried with Him in baptism, you’ve been raised up now as a new creation and remember what He has the power to do. He came and He cancelled the record of your debt.” How many of you have ever been in crippling debt before? Nobody wants to raise their hand. They didn’t want to last night either. We’ve all been in debt in various degrees. How many of you have been in debt where it feels suffocating, where there were bill collectors calling. You are like, “Man, we’re under water. How did we get into this situation?” He just said here that the condition of your sin places you in a debt that you could never repay and Jesus came along and He cancelled it. He didn’t say that He renegotiated your interest rate. He didn’t say that He extended out the plan so that way you could make monthly payments that were feasible that would fit your budget. You know what we call that? Human tradition and man-‐made religion, let’s just make this more manageable, God renegotiated your interest rate, devotion first – salvation later, maybe. No. He said that He came along and He cancelled the debt. How would you feel, right now, if someone just walked in and said, “Hey, man. You know that mortgage that you’ve been paying on – yeah, it’s taken care of. You know all of those credit cards that you’ve been paying,” one person over here is jacked up about that! All of the rest of you should be too. Somebody comes along – you’ve got a stack of bills – that’s been taken care of – that’s been done away with. If what I just read was unaffecting to you, if it bounced off of your heart of stone then you don’t understand the condition in which you are in. Jesus Christ comes along and He says, “Man, I disarmed all of those rules and authority Jason Bourne style. I just ripped it out of their hand, I disarmed it, I cancelled the debt that was placed against you.” That’s why Jesus is sufficient to save. That’s why Jesus is sufficient to sustain. Listen, I look out across this room now – I know so many of you. I don’t know all of you but I know many of you. And I know that every single person sitting in this room, right now, whether you are cognitively aware of it or not, you are living your life leaning against some sort of philosophy. There is a philosophy that is the operating system, it’s the filter by which you make all of your decisions, it’s the filter by which you wake up and by which you operate. Throughout your life – you’re leaning against some sort of philosophy. What I ask you to do this morning is to simply identify it. What’s the philosophy by which you are living? Is it, “I think I know best.”? I can understand why you’d feel inclined to go that way. I feel inclined to go that way sometimes as well. And the times that I have it’s never worked. Is it the philosophy of the world – the elemental spirit of this world? Ask yourself, how does it play itself out. Ask yourself – listen, if Jesus Christ isn’t the answer then what is? What’s the alternative?



Jesus is sufficient to save. Jesus is sufficient to sustain. And when you find yourself in those moments of spiritual dryness, of emotional bankruptcy, of powerlessness don’t go looking for the artificial substance to make you alive once again, enough of the five hour energy drinks and the elemental spirits of this world. Come back to the foundation of Jesus Christ. Remember who you are, remember who He is and what He has done for you. Lord, we come to You right now and in these following moments I pray that Your Spirit would be in this room. That You would be in our hearts and minds as we respond this morning to what we’ve heard. As we receive communion which is Your body and blood symbolized in this bread and this juice, I pray that we would do some business with You. I pray that we would, as an act of worship, return our tithes and offerings to You as we’re going to do. And then as we sing this song, we are actually going to sing a song that’s been written directly out of the passage we just studied. So, now that we’ve heard it we need to do something with it. We need to respond back to You with it. So, God, my prayer this morning is that if there is somebody here who is outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ that maybe today would be the day that they would respond and make You the Lord and Savior of their life, right where they are seated right now. That they would just come to You open-‐handed, and they would pray a prayer, that they would ask You into their heart – that they would place their faith and trust in You. God, I pray if there is somebody hear who is desperately looking for some additional power, maybe they’ve been tempted to go outside of the person of Jesus Christ to do that, that maybe today they’d be made aware of it and that they would realize that the power source is right there in front of them. They just need to connect. Paul says 15 times in this letter to the Colossians, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. God, I pray that we would not be deluded into thinking that because the Gospel is simple it’s simplistic. It’s not. It’s vast. But it’s easily assessable. Jesus has removed all those barriers that exist that stand in our way of coming to Him and I pray that we would this morning as we respond to You in worship. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Ushers would you come now.

colossians: built up in christ…colossians:)built)up)in)christ))))) may)17)&18,2014)))))...

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