Enslaved to Traditions

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I want to invite you to open up your Bibles with me to Colossians chapter 2.
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You may remember that the last time I preached, which was a couple weeks ago, and I do want to thank Brother Andy for filling the pulpit last week.
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I was very grateful to hear the message as I was gone.
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Thankful for live stream as we were in the car driving back while you all were worshiping last week.
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So I'm grateful for that.
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But the last time I preached, I had attempted to do Colossians chapter 2, verses 6-10, and I ended up stopping at verse 7.
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So today we're going to be finishing verses 8-10.
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And so if you have your Bibles open, that will be where we will be reading.
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But before we read, I want to give just a few preliminary comments on today's subject.
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The title of today's message is, Enslaved to Traditions, Enslaved to Traditions.
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This past Wednesday, millions of people walked around their jobs and their homes with a black cross emblazoned upon their forehead.
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And the reason for that is that Wednesday of last week began the 40-day period of fasting, which is known as the season of Lent.
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It is meant to be a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter.
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It begins 40 days before Easter Sunday.
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And it is supposed to mirror the 40 days of Jesus when He went into the wilderness after His baptism to be tempted by the devil.
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It is celebrated in Roman Catholic churches, Anglican churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, and even in some Protestant churches.
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It is one of the oldest liturgical traditions.
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Some claim it goes back to the time of the apostles, but I wasn't able to find any evidence for that.
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I do know that it was discussed during the Council of Nicaea, so it at least goes back to the 4th century, which is when that council was held.
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But one thing is certain.
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It is not commanded in Scripture.
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In fact, it could be argued that there is Scripture that would go in opposition, particularly where Jesus said, wash your face when you are fasting and don't make your fasting a show unto men.
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And yet we see thousands, millions of people walking around with a giant black cross on their head.
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I think that's making your fasting known to men.
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Now they debate the meaning of that and we could get into that another time, but my point in bringing this up is today, we're going to be talking about what Paul means when he warns the Colossians about being enslaved to man-made traditions and worldly principles.
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Being enslaved to man-made traditions and worldly principles.
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Now, are all traditions bad? No, and we're going to talk about that too.
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But there are traditions which lead us away from Christ and we must be aware and beware of those.
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So let's stand and read the text, beginning in verse 6, I'm sorry, beginning in verse 8, Paul begins with a command, 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.
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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.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that even now that you would sanctify me for the purpose of preaching your word and that you would keep me from error as I am fallible and capable of erring.
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I pray for the souls of everyone under the sound of my voice.
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I pray that the believers would be edified, challenged, corrected.
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I pray that unbelievers would be faced with the beauty of Christ and the necessity of repentance and faith.
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And I pray all of this, Lord, would happen in this hour, in Christ's name, amen.
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You may be seated.
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I want to begin with a correction.
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I don't like having to correct myself because that means I said something wrong.
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And I don't like to say things that are wrong.
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But I do.
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And I sometimes say things incorrectly.
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And two weeks ago, I said something that could easily be misunderstood.
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And I want to clarify what I said.
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In chapter 2 of Colossians in verse 6, Paul says, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord so walk in him.
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And I said that we received Jesus as the Lord and we should walk in him as our Lord.
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And while that is true, that is not what Paul is saying there.
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The phrase Jesus the Lord is not in the form that it would be we're accepting him as Lord.
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What Paul is saying there is as we receive Christ by faith, we are to walk by faith.
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And I did say that later in the message.
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But as I went back and listened to what I had said at the beginning, I said I do not want to ever be misunderstood.
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So, and all that's relevant to today because what Paul is about to do in verse 8 is he's going to tell us the dangers of not walking by faith, but rather by walking by vain tradition and walking by vain philosophy and walking by worldly principles.
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And Paul is telling us don't do that, but just as you came to Christ by faith in Christ, continue to walk by faith in Christ.
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As you came, so you should walk.
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And if I was in any way unclear, I hope now that has been clarified.
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Understand that that is always my desire is to be clear.
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So with that in mind, I want us to consider something from today's text because Paul tells us now a warning which goes along with walking by faith.
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Because again in verse 6 he says as you receive Christ, so walk in him.
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And then he has these following prepositions or participles that we are to walk by him being built up and rooted and all of those things.
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But then we get to, excuse me, we get to verse 8 and he says this.
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He says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and vain tradition.
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I'm sorry, empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.
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If you remember last time I said in verse 6 we had the first use of an imperative.
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And an imperative is a command.
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Paul says as you receive Christ, so walk in him.
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And that's the first use of the imperative in all of the book of Colossians.
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It's our first command.
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As you received him by faith, so walk in him by faith.
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Now we have our second imperative and the second imperative comes right on the heels of the first imperative.
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And the second imperative is the word see to it or in a better term for us would be the word beware.
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Beware.
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The Greek word here is the word blepe.
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And the word blepe has to do with the idea of sight.
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To see something.
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And the way I remember this because as I learn the Greek language and as I begin to associate the Greek with English and words that make association in my mind.
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When I see the word blepe I think of like a radar screen and somebody who sees a blip on the radar that's seeing something.
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Well blepe means to see or to be watching for something.
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And as I began to think about that, the idea of being aware of something, it means to see it and to be on guard.
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And Paul is telling us we need to be on guard over this thing.
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We need to be watching out for this thing.
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How many of you grew up in Jacksonville? Most of you? You grew up going to the beach? Okay.
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Some of you live at the beach.
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When you go to the beach and you go swimming, I remember from a very young age I was told that you have to watch out for the undertow.
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Because if you get out into the water, the water will move you places you don't want to go and may either take you out or it may take you down and you've got to watch out for the undertow.
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That's the idea here is that we need to watch out for dangerous things.
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And the thing about the undertow is you don't see it.
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The undertow is there.
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If you could see in the water where all the water was moving, if you could see in the water where all the things were shifting and moving, you might be able to address that.
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But we can't.
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We can't always see it.
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So we have to be on guard.
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We have to be aware, knowing that it's there.
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Knowing that the danger is there.
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Well, what is the danger that Paul is concerned about in this passage? What is the thing that he is saying to keep out, keep our eye out for? Well, he says this.
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He says, beware, watch out, be on guard that no one takes you captive.
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Now, that word is an interesting word because it's actually a fairly long Greek word.
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The phrase takes you captive is all one word in the Greek.
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And it's a combination of two words.
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The word itself is sulagogon, which sounds funny.
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But it comes from the word sule, which means to plunder.
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And the word ago, which means to carry something or to carry it away.
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And the idea here is the idea of someone being kidnapped like spoils of war.
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Someone, when they went in, and they would take someone back as a slave or take someone back as having been kidnapped.
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That's the picture that's being displayed by the Apostle Paul here.
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This idea of someone has gone on.
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In fact, the King James says, don't let anyone spoil you.
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Well, that doesn't mean like spoiling a child.
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We were all told not to spoil our children by giving them too much or not disciplining them.
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That's not what it means when it says let no one spoil you.
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What it means is let no one take you as spoil.
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Let no one take you captive like someone who has been enslaved.
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And that's why I use the phrase enslaved to tradition based on that word.
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Because Paul says there are things, there are teachings, there are traditions, there are principles that make their way into the church like an undercurrent at the beach, like an undertow that will drag you down.
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There are things that are coming in that are dangerous, and you need to be aware of those things.
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That they not take you captive and carry you off as a slave.
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When I was looking up that word taking captive, I looked up Laonida, and that's just a Greek, not, it's not a commentary, it's a lexicon.
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It tells you how words are used.
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And Laonida is a semantic lexicon, and it says this.
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It says to take over complete control of a person as you would a captive.
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And that's the idea here, being taken captive.
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And I got to thinking about this whole maritime thing, because that's sort of what's on my mind is I'm thinking about undertoes, and I'm thinking about radar, and I'm thinking about that.
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And I got to thinking about pirates.
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I know that's weird, but stick with me.
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Because one of the commentaries I read, one of the lexicons that I was looking these words up, it said to be taken as booty.
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Now, you know, booty for a pirate is like the, everybody's laughing, is the treasure, right? The pirate's booty.
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And so you are to the false teacher, their treasure.
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They're trying to come and take you like treasure.
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They see you as something they want, and they're going to come and try to take it.
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So I wrote this illustration.
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I said, watch out for pirates, because what a pirate is to a mariner, empty and vain philosophy is to a believer.
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What a pirate is to a mariner, empty and vain philosophy is to a believer.
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Because if you're out on a boat, and you see pirates coming, you know you're in danger.
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But if you are a believer, and empty and vain philosophy is coming, you're also in danger.
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Because it can enslave you.
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It can take you captive.
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It can move you away from the gospel, and bring you into a false system of understanding that can ultimately lead you astray.
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So Paul is painting a picture here of the danger of false teaching.
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The danger of empty philosophy.
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And let's move on and talk about that, because that's the next word.
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He says, see to it that no one takes you captive.
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Now the ESV says, by philosophy and empty deceit.
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The King James says, through philosophy and vain deceit.
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And I think both are wrong.
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And I realize I just...
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Because in reading it that way, it seems as if they're separating philosophy and empty deceit as two different things.
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But it actually can be read as empty and deceitful philosophy.
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And that's the way I think it should be understood.
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The empty and deceitful philosophy is what Paul is warning against.
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Rather than saying philosophy's over here, and empty deceit's over here.
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No, it's empty deceitful philosophy.
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In fact, that's the way the New English translation...
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Yeah, pulled that one out.
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That's the way it translates.
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And that is one of my favorite translations.
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But that is the way it translates this verse.
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It says that we are to beware to not be captive by empty deceitful philosophy.
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And you say, well, what is that? Well, we've been talking for months now about the Colossians.
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We started this study 17 weeks ago now.
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And what have we talked about from the beginning? There are people who are trying to present the idea that there's something in addition to Christ that Christians need for salvation.
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Whether it's the philosophy of the Gnostics.
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Or whether it is the philosophy of the Judaizers.
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Or whether it is the philosophy of the Greeks.
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Whatever it is has tried to make its way into the church.
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And Paul is saying all of them are empty deceitful philosophies.
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And they're all dangerous.
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Now, I want to say something.
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Not all philosophy is wrong.
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Because philosophy itself simply means the love of wisdom.
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That's what the word philos means love in Greek.
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And sophia means wisdom.
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And so the word philosophia or philosophy means to love wisdom.
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And as Christians, we should all love wisdom.
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But worldly philosophy seeks to answer three questions.
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Who are you? Why are you here? And where are you going? If you read philosophy books.
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If you study philosophy at the university level.
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They're always trying to answer the great questions of life.
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Who are we? Where did we come from? And where are we going? And beloved, they got some really doozies of answers.
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They have got some wild answers.
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They tell you you came from monkeys.
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That's a philosophy.
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That's not a scientific fact.
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It's a philosophy of men based upon a scientific theory.
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That's actually less than 150 years old.
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You realize Darwin wrote in the middle of the 1800s.
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And by 1925, they were debating it so hard whether or not it should be taught.
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That in the Tennessee school systems.
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They had what was known as the Scopes Trial.
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And the Scopes Trial was to determine whether or not.
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You could teach children that they came from apes.
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It became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial.
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Well, you might not know this.
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But the creationists won that.
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They won and it became illegal to teach evolution for a little while.
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But that didn't last.
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Because such emboldened those who wanted to teach that philosophy.
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But that vain philosophy is still out there.
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That vain philosophy is still being preached.
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It's still being taught.
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It's accepted by Christians.
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There is an entire website called Biologos.
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And Biologos, the whole purpose of that website is to teach.
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That you can comport evolutionary thinking into scripture.
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And make Genesis agree with Darwin.
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And you can't.
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Amen.
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That's right.
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You can't bring two contradictory ideas together.
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And make them both be true.
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And that's what Darwinism says.
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Because Darwin says you don't need God.
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We've been doing this in our.
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Brother Mike and I.
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Ward.
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And I say Mike.
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That one.
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Um.
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Have been teaching our young people.
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Apologetics in our Sunday school class.
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Watching videos.
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And this is the big question, right? How do we know where we came from? Because the Bible tells us.
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How do we know who we are? Because the Bible tells us.
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How do we know where we're going? The Bible tells us.
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I don't care what Andy Stanley says.
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He says I can't say the Bible says.
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But I will say the Bible says until I die.
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This is the standard.
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Not worldly philosophy.
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And if worldly philosophy becomes the standard.
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Then we're no longer a church.
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We have to beware.
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Of empty and deceitful philosophy.
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And those who spew it.
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And again I'm not saying that all philosophy is wrong.
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There are times where we have to consider things.
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But it has to come from the word of God.
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The love of wisdom has to come from loving God's wisdom.
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And our philosophies have to come from God's word.
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Our truth can't just be Gary's truth.
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And Tim's truth.
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And Rachel's truth.
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And my truth.
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And we're all going to sing songs and go kumbaya.
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No.
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It's true or it ain't.
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You ain't going to hear that in a philosophy class.
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So Paul warns us on two ideas.
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He says see to it that no one takes you captive.
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By empty deceitful philosophy.
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That's I'm arguing that that's what it means.
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And he says according to two things.
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He uses the preposition kata.
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He says according to the traditions of man.
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And the elemental spirits of the world.
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That's why the ESV translates it.
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And I'm going to totally tear that apart in a minute.
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Because I don't think that's right.
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But we'll get to there in a minute.
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But let's start with the first one.
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He says let no one take you captive.
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Through philosophy and empty deceit.
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Or empty deceitful philosophy.
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According to the traditions of man.
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All right.
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What is a tradition? What does the word tradition mean? Tradition means something that is handed down.
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From one generation to the next.
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That's literally the tradition means to hand something off.
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The word tradition means to to pass something down.
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Right.
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That's that's all a tradition is.
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Something passed down.
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Okay.
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So he doesn't just say that traditions are bad.
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But he says it is what kind of traditions? Church.
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The traditions of men.
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The traditions of men.
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The actual word there is paradoson tonanthropon.
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Paradoson.
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Traditions tonanthropon.
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Of men.
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Anthropon.
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Where we get the word anthropology.
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Anthropos.
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Man.
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Human traditions.
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It's what Paul is concerned about.
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And I want you to think about that for a moment.
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Because in fact in your Bible.
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Just turn with me.
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Go over to Mark chapter 7.
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I'm preaching through Mark on Wednesday nights.
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I haven't got to chapter 7 yet.
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But in chapter 7.
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Jesus is addressing the Pharisees in verse 1.
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It says this.
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It says.
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Now I want to just say for a minute.
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Children.
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It's good to wash your hands before you eat.
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Don't go home today and say.
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Pastor Keith said.
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I can eat with nasty hands.
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That's not the point.
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But this is not about cleanliness.
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This is about tradition.
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They didn't only have a stand.
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They weren't so concerned about getting the dirt off their hands.
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They didn't ingest it.
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They had a tradition that went along with the standards of the elders.
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The standards of those who came before.
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And this was the way you did it.
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And if you didn't do it this way.
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You weren't right.
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And most importantly you weren't right with God.
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They had incorporated a tradition.
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Notice what it goes on to say.
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And when they come from the marketplace.
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They do not eat unless they wash.
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And there are many other traditions that they observe.
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Such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.
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And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him.
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That is Jesus.
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Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders? But eat with defiled hands.
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Now stop right there.
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Jesus's disciples are not obeying the accepted traditions of the Pharisees.
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Did Jesus keep the law of God? You better believe he did.
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I spent a whole Wednesday night three weeks ago talking about that.
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Because we talked about the Sabbath.
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I said Jesus did keep the law of God.
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He never once broke the law of God.
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If he did he couldn't be our savior.
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The Bible says he was tempted in every way like us but without sin.
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So whatever this washing is here.
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It's not legal.
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It's traditional.
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That has to be understood because Jesus is not making his disciples.
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Participate in this tradition.
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Sorry I had a hard drive stop there.
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But notice what it goes on to say.
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And he said to them, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites.
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By the way what does the word hypocrite mean? It means an actor.
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It does.
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It's one who puts on a show.
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That's what a hypocrite is.
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Somebody who puts on a show for others.
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Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written.
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This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.
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In vain do they worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
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So understand what Paul says about the traditions of men in chapter 2 of Colossians is not something new.
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This is something Jesus has already 30 years prior convicted the Pharisees for doing.
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By incorporating the commandments of men into the demands of worship.
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What they have done is they have perverted worship into man worship rather than God worship.
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They have made the opinions and the determinations of men more important than the opinion of God.
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And notice what he says in verse 8 and we'll go back to Colossians.
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Verse 8 says this.
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You leave the commandment of God and hold to the traditions of men.
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Notice that.
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Notice what it's saying.
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You have abandoned God's commands and replaced them with the commands of men.
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Beloved I tried to think of different illustrations for this and I want to tell you the hardest part about the illustrations for this is that whatever I say is going to offend somebody.
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Because if I tell you that the way we dress on a Sunday morning is typically based more on the traditions of men than it is on the commands of God someone will get offended.
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I've been told many times if you don't wear a tie you don't deserve to stand in the pulpit.
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I didn't wear a tie today.
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You may think that doesn't matter.
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Some people get offended and leave.
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Now are there things we shouldn't wear? Yes we shouldn't dress immodestly.
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We shouldn't do things that are offensive and that's true.
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But we tie so many things to the traditions of men and make them become the commandments of God.
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Do you know why? Because that type of hyper fundamentalism is easy.
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It's easier to give you a list of 10 do's and don'ts that have nothing to do with the actual 10 commandments.
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But if I can give you these lists of do's and don'ts and if you follow them then that becomes the standard.
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They all have nothing to do with the word of God.
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These guys had created a tradition around hand washing that didn't have to do with the word of God.
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Maybe they had taken bits and pieces from the washing rituals of Leviticus and maybe they had conforted it or contorted it into something that they could say well I could pull from this passage or I can pull from this passage or I can pull from this scripture and what they do is they take and they create what's known as a string of pearls to create their theology.
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And it's not based upon exegesis, it's based upon fore drawn conclusions forced into the text and that's called eisegesis and that's not how you do Bible study.
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It's not how you do Bible study.
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Just the other night I was on a show, I was invited to come on a show and talk about baptism.
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It was me and another Baptist talking to two Presbyterians.
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These are lovely men that I love in the Lord, had no animosity toward them.
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It was not a cantankerous debate just so you know.
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Love these brothers and I believe they're Christians.
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This is an intramural in-house debate.
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But two passages came up, Acts chapter 2, 1st Corinthians chapter 7.
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They gave their interpretation of those two passages and said see here we find the reason for infant baptism and I said read the text.
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I said without your preconceived notions, without your presuppositions, what does the text say because it ain't saying what you say it says.
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And I will tell you this, a passage can have a thousand applications but it only has one meaning and it does not mean what it does not say.
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That's a basic of hermeneutics, it doesn't mean what it doesn't say.
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It can't.
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Again you can apply a text all different kinds of ways.
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One of my favorite things to do in hermeneutics class, I teach hermeneutics, one of my favorite things to do is I give them a passage to interpret, we interpret it together and then I say now find applications for this.
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Let's find ways to apply this because there's all kinds of ways to apply a text but you have to have the right meaning to get the right application.
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And if you start with the wrong meaning you might end up with a good application but it will be in spite of yourself.
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But you see we're so beholden to the traditions of men, people walked around Wednesday with dirt on their face, why? Because the traditions of men, not because the scripture commands it.
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And I will argue people baptize their babies not because scripture commands it but because it's a tradition.
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It's an old tradition, yeah it goes back a long way but that don't make it right.
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Prove it to me with the bible, come to me with the word.
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And I'll say this even about confessions, I love the confessions.
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I love the 1644-46 confession, I even love the 1689 confession even though I argue they got some things wrong.
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But I will tell you this, if you want my life to change don't bring me the confession, bring me the word.
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And if you want to argue the truth you might can use the confession to articulate your point but don't let that be your final word.
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Do not be beholden to the traditions of men, be beholden to Christ and to his word.
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Second thing he says is actually a little harder to understand.
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Because the word he uses here, stoicheia is the word, stoicheia is actually translated differently and can be translated differently and has an interesting meaning.
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And this is where it says in the ESV, it says we said according to the traditions of men or human traditions.
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And he says according to the elemental spirits of the world, the elemental spirits of the world.
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Here's the first thing right away, the ESV adds the word spirit, that word is not in the Greek.
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The word spirit is not in the Greek.
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So right away we can say okay the translators are trying to incorporate an idea and that happens, even happens in the King James, just like I always point this out because in Romans chapter 6, should we continue in sin so that grace should abound, the King James says God forbid.
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But the word God and the word forbid are not there, it's the word meganoite which means may it never be.
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But that is the right way of saying God forbid means may it never be.
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I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that type of dynamic translation happens all the time.
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It happens in all translations because it's the way we do translation.
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One day this year I'm going to be teaching on how we got the Bible and one of the things I'm going to teach is how translation works because we need to know that.
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But the point here is the word stoicheia, all it says is ta stoicheia to cosmu which literally translated is the principles of the world.
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The word stoicheia means principles, it actually comes from the word, the idea for letters in a word.
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What make up a word letters? The parts, the pieces, those little letters make up the pieces of the word, right? And so what Paul is, and in the King James it says rudiments, right? It says the rudiments of the world.
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What does it say in the NAS brother? Principles.
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I like that one better, rudiments, principles.
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I don't like the phrase elemental spirits but I understand what the ESV is trying to do and here's what they're trying to do.
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Paul is using a word that is not common and he may be associating this with the idea of Gnosticism which did try to incorporate spiritual principles that were not godly principles into the church and that may very well be what he meant.
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And that's what elemental spirits is trying to put out in the ESV.
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And again, I hope I'm not boring you out.
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Guys, don't get bored.
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This is good, this is important and when I have to tell you it's good, it's probably not but it's still important because what is important about this is what Paul is actually saying and that is that there is a world of ungodliness around us and it trickles its way in through these worldly principles and whether it's spiritual or whether it's worldly material, it all trickles in.
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Well, we have three great enemies, right? The world, the flesh, and the devil.
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And how does the world make its way in? Through these elementary principles, through these things.
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Just like I said earlier, 150 years ago no one would have thought to bring Darwinism into the church.
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Now it's everywhere.
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Why? Because it trickles in.
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It's these little things.
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What do the little foxes do? Spoil the vine.
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That's these things that Paul is warning us about, these elementary principles that make their way in.
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I'm going to tell you a quick story.
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Now this is somewhat of a personal story because it happened just yesterday and it happened with a family that I was ministering to and I'm not going to tell you the whole story but I'm going to tell you enough of the story to hopefully make it make sense for this.
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Yesterday I was doing a funeral and you know that I do funerals for a funeral home.
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I minister to families that don't have a minister and I go and I preach the gospel.
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That's the reason why I go.
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I go because it gives me the opportunity to preach to people that may never hear the gospel otherwise.
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So I go and I do funerals.
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Well, during the funeral often the family will ask me to give an opportunity for somebody to speak and they'll say, open the floor and let anybody speak.
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And I'm like, oh boy, you really need a list and you need to know who's going to speak.
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But some families want to open the floor.
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Yesterday they opened the floor and the brother of the deceased came up and for 45 minutes he opined worldly philosophies of all sorts and even at one point insinuated God may exist, he may not, he may be a woman, we don't know.
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It's all kinds of worldly philosophies.
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But every three or four sentences he would drop a Bible verse.
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Way out of context.
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Way out of reason.
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But he would do that.
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And you know what the people would do? Amen.
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Beloved, please don't amen falsehood.
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Please don't amen things that are not true.
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I don't care if they come from me or Andy or Mike or anyone else.
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If we say it and it ain't so, it still ain't so.
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The word of God is our standard.
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And may we not be taken captive by the world's philosophies and by men's traditions.
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But what should we be taken captive to? This finishes the verse.
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He says, we don't want you to be taken captive by the traditions of men.
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We don't want you to be taken captive by elementary principles.
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But what should you be taken captive by? Christ.
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According to Christ.
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Christ is the beginning and end of everything.
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He is the beginning and end of our faith.
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He is all and all.
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Romans chapter 1 tells us the gospel is revealed from faith to faith.
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As it is written, the just shall live by worldly philosophy, vain tradition, elementary principles.
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No, the just shall live by faith in Christ.
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Beloved, if you come to us struggling and hope we give you something more than Christ, know that you're barking up the wrong tree.
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We're going to give you Christ.
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Now we're going to give you as much as we can, the best we can, in the best way we can.
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But we're going to take you to the word.
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We're going to give you Christ.
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Because if you can't be satisfied with Christ, you won't be satisfied with anything.
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If you can't be satisfied with Jesus, you're just going to keep licking the salt lick of worldly philosophy until it's gone.
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And you're going to find yourself just as bloated and thirsty as you were when you started.
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Watch out for these things, Paul says.
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They are dangerous.
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They are deadly.
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They can and do kill.
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Now, I said we were going to get to verse 10.
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And here's how we're going to do that.
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I just want to make the point of how verse 9 and 10 fit with verse 8.
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And then I'll close.
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And it's only take a second.
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Because in verse 9 and 10, he repeats something he said in chapter 1.
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And I spent six weeks on this in chapter 1.
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He repeats the deity of Christ and how Christ, being filled with the fullness of God, fills us by his spirit.
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And the reason why this comes on the heels of what he just said, is he just said, you began in Christ, so walk in Christ.
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And if you're walking in Christ, don't be taken captive to these worldly philosophies and manly traditions and all those things.
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But instead understand this.
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As Christ has been filled with the fullness of God, you have been filled with him.
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And that's what you need to be satisfied by.
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Read it with me.
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He says, for in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
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Amen.
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Praise God.
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That's the deity of Christ on display.
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Verse 10.
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And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.
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He has been filled and he has filled you.
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What else do you need? What else could you possibly ask God for? What else could you be desperate for if you are filled with Christ? That's Paul's whole point.
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Be satisfied in him or you will be satisfied with nothing.
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Beloved, are you satisfied in him? Is the fullness of Christ enough for you? You may say, I don't know Christ.
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Well, let me tell you this.
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You can know him today through repentance and faith.
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And here's how you would do that.
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First, you would recognize that you're a sinner and that your sins deserve God's wrath.
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Your sins deserve punishment.
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The Bible says we are children of wrath.
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But God, being rich in mercy, sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law for what purpose? That he would keep the law and give us the adoption of sons that we could call God our father.
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And if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can call God your father because you're adopted into his family.
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And you can find your satisfaction in him.
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And that is my prayer for all of you.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I do thank you for your word.
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I thank you for Christ.
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I thank you, Lord, for all that you have given us in him.
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Almost every line of this book, Lord, comes back to one simple idea.
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Christ must be enough.
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And when he isn't, we're in danger of being captive to something else in this world.
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Some other philosophy, some other place, some other idea.
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Lord, help us not replace Jesus with anything.
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No vain philosophy, no tradition, no rudiment or principle.
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But rather, may we be fully satisfied in our savior.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.