Historical Introduction to Colossians

Colossians as a Letter to Born-Again Christians

Yeah, wow, that's great. That was a great quote from MacArthur. He's, he might be the last great voice in this world before Jesus comes back, as far as a conservative sound preacher with a large following.

Who knows? We might be one of the young men in this room, though, that reestablish a large following with a great voice. We don't know, do we? We don't know the hour of his coming. We just kind of know that the trees are budding, right?

I love the Sunday school lesson this morning, Dave. Very interesting about the enemy and how he crouches before he strikes, makes himself less visible. And then all of a sudden when he lurches, he's all you can see and it's often too late, but not always.

Really good, great lesson. So if you guys haven't made it to 10 o 'clock adult Sunday school class, try to make it, it's really good. And if you want to go to Charlotte's children's class, you could go there if you prefer.

It's actually the best because of the students that happen to be there. It's the cutest, right? All right, good to see all of you. Benjamin, good to have you back in the crowd today. So good to see you.

And Brother Raymond, you're back. You got all the cylinders hitting now, right? That's awesome. And Sharon, we missed you and we know you were taking good care of him. And thank you guys, glad you're all back today.

Good to see all of our online crowd as usual. Good to have you guys. And let's turn to Colossians chapter one. We're in a new book, a new era for our church. We're actually learning about the book of Colossians.

It's not the first time we've gone through it, but it's been a good while. I know Ben sent me a text last week and said, listen to this, and it was Otis teaching it when he first came to our church years ago.

And apparently he and I tag team preached it in the afternoon service for a while on Sunday afternoons, but that's been a long time ago. So it's interesting because I searched my laptop for sermons I'd preached years ago on it and couldn't find any.

So I don't know what happened to those notes.

But anyway.

All right, well, let's pray and we'll get started. Lord, thank you so much for this day to come and be together with you and with one another and to hear your word. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, without it, we would not know you.

We wouldn't know ourselves. We couldn't really know much of anything without your word. And thank you that you've given it to us and teach it to us this morning by your grace.

Amen.

The First Lessons from Colossians 1:1-9

Well, we talked about Colossians chapter one, verses one through nine, more or less, last Sunday morning. And today we're gonna actually do the introduction of the book, which I didn't wanna do last time because I actually wanted to get into the scripture a little bit and kind of introduce it through the first introductory verses last time.

This time I'll give actually a historical introduction to where this place is and what it was like and what the people might've been like that Paul was preaching to and speaking to, writing to. And, but last time in verses one through nine, we learned several things about this little passage, which kind of opens up the door for the whole book.

The first was we asked the question, who is this entire book written to? It's written to only born again Christians. It's not written to anybody else. It's not for the world. It's not for going out and witnessing, telling people this, what's in this book.

This is for us. This is to make us grow. This is for God's people who are already in the family of God. And it's very important to know that because that means that the promises that are in this book are not for everyone, they're for God's people.

It's who the book's written to. Secondly, older and more mature leaders and Christians are supposed to be thankful and to pray for the younger ones. We learned that. And then a third thing is this opened up something that I've talked about so much of my life in the pulpit for 40 years now.

And I call it symptoms of salvation. It's kind of like, you have a cold, several of us have one. I know Jeannie's fighting one off and we got several people that couldn't make it. But when you, you know, if you want to convince me you got a cold, then you need to have a runny nose and itchy eyes and be sniffing a little bit like that.

And, you know, or I don't believe you have one, right? So those are the symptoms. And so Christianity has the same thing. If a person is really truly born again, there's some things that are in his life that weren't there before that.

And you can see them and hear them. And so some of those symptoms were obviously faith in Jesus Christ, which the person didn't have previous to that. And that was a gift that the Holy Spirit had to give that person.

He couldn't work it up from inside his own brain. It's not human belief that saves you. It's the faith of Christ that saves you, which is a gift from Christ. Secondly, love of all saints. I mean, that's one of the greatest marks of a Christian is that he loves other brothers and sisters and he treats them well.

Kind, gentle hearted, things like that. Patience and love shows up. And then hope of heaven, which is laid up for us. The Bible talks about that. There's hope in that person's heart. If you ask a true born again person, where would you go if you die today?

He should say, I'm going to heaven. He shouldn't say, well, I might. He should say, I'm going to heaven. Well, how do you know? Because I'm in Christ, Jesus saved me. And then the next thing is just fruit in general, like the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long suffering, things like that.

And then another thing that we noticed was that this person all of a sudden has ears that can hear. I mean, you don't understand all the Bible when you're first saved, do you? Even later, you don't understand all of it.

There are a few difficult passages that you might learn later. But if you read a couple of pages, you're going to find a lot of things in just two pages that you do understand. More things that you do than that you don't.

And so you learn that and you keep moving through the Bible. And then when you read through the next year, you might understand one or two of those things you did in the first time. That's just how it works.

But the point is you have ears that hear all of a sudden. You can understand when Jesus speaks to you through the word of God, you can understand it. And then the fourth thing is that all of a sudden, it mentioned faithful elders, such as Epaphras, who is in this book, this church in Colossae.

But the fact that it mentioned him shows that these people all of a sudden are going to church because they wouldn't hear that pastor if they didn't go to church, would they? And so that's a symptom of a person that's saved.

All of a sudden, they like church. Whereas before that, it was boring. They hated it, did not want to show up. That was me before I got saved. I did not want to go to church. My poor little grandmother was inviting me every Sunday.

And I'd tell her, I'll think about it. And I just wouldn't go most of the time. Every once in a while, I'd go with her. And when I did, I hated it. And then when I got saved at the age of 24, all of a sudden I wanted to go to church.

It just changed. God changed me. And so that's another symptom of salvation listed here in this book. And then love, true, genuine, God-like love for other people is in the spirit, as the scripture says.

You can't have that if you're not born again. And then it says for this cause also, since the day that Paul heard about these Christians, he never stopped praying for them. And the main thing he prayed for was that they would have the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

Those two things. So later, I'm gonna do the introduction so I won't get to this, but I'm gonna come back to that verse nine where it talks about the knowledge of his will and wisdom and spiritual understanding next time.

Well, we may have a Christmas thing next time, who knows? But next time we get back into Colossians, we'll talk about that. So that's kind of where we are. And today I wanna talk to you a little bit about the background of this place where this church was.

And we have to remember this church was in a home and there's no evidence there ever was a church building in this town back in the first century. It was a house church. I don't know how big the house was.

Maybe they had a barn in the backyard and it was in their barn. I don't know. I just know it was not a building built to have church in. It was a church meeting in a house. And so remember that the church is not the building.

The church is us. And so that's kind of interesting fact of history. So I wanna read to you a little bit from Matthew Henry. It's one of the greatest old commentators, the Matthew Henry Bible Commentary.

It's great if you're a new Christian, if you're thinking about, well, what would be a good commentary? That's a really good one. I'm gonna quote from a second one here in a minute. That's probably even better for a new Christian or any Christian actually.

But this one is well known and very sound. And here's what he says about this book. He says, and first he's gonna sort of outline what the book talks about. He says, we have here, number one, the inscription as usual.

He's talking about the first two verses where Paul greets the church because he does it almost word for word, the same way in every epistle. So he doesn't spend much time on that. And then number two, he says, we have Paul's thanksgiving to God for what he had heard about this church, the fact that they had faith, love, and hope, and that he had heard good things about them, especially their love for one another, that Paul had heard that.

And then the third thing is we have Paul's prayer for their knowledge, fruitfulness, and strength. Some of these things we talked about last Sunday. And then the fourth thing is an admirable summary of the Christian doctrine concerning the operation of the Holy Spirit, the person of the Redeemer, the work of redemption, and the preaching of it in the gospel.

And so he says, the apostolic benediction is the same as usual, grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. He wishes them grace and peace, the free favor of God and all the blessed fruits of it, every kind of spiritual blessing, and that from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ jointly from both and distinctly from each as in the former epistles.

All right, so that's kind of beautiful language. That's how he introduced it. And then he did a commentary on every verse of the whole book of Colossians. And then Dr. J. Vernon McGee, how many of you ever have heard or have his commentary?

Yeah, it's great. If you don't have it, you can buy it at several sets. He used to preach through the Bible on the radio and probably you can still find it. He's with the Lord now, but he preached through the Bible on the radio and it was called, then they put all of his teachings in a book, a commentary called Through the Bible Commentary by J. Vernon McGee.

And he talks like this, he sounds like an old Texas boy, but he's a PhD and a brilliant man. And he doesn't talk about his education ever. He's not somebody who flaunted that fact. I was reading something that he said about himself.

The other day.

He said that when he got his first church and he was preaching, he was a young man right out of seminary with a PhD. And some old deacon came up to him and say, J. Vernon, you just can be yourself when you preach.

You don't have to impress us with your doctrine.

Degree.

And he said, man, it touched his heart. And he said, from that day, I never, he said, I never try to be anything but just myself and just talk plain to people. And when you hear him on the radio, you'll hear that that is a fact.

But here's some of the things he said about the book of Colossians. This book brings Christ down to where we live, right down to the nitty gritty, where the rubber meets the road. That's where we need and want a fresh understanding of who Jesus is.

You get all you need in Christ. This is something that's very important for us to see. You get all that you need in the person of Jesus Christ. You don't need philosophy. You don't need theology. You don't need anything but Jesus.

That's what his point is there. Then he said this, Jesus is the image of the invisible God that's found in Colossians 1 .15. In him, there is no darkness at all, 1 John 15. Night turns to day when Jesus walks into the room.

Pretty nice language. Then the author of this epistle is the apostle Paul, as stated in the first verse. The epistle to the Colossians is one of the prison epistles, which are so-called because they were written by Paul when he was hanging on a dungeon wall.

And when you think about that and the joy that Paul had, and he would often break out into hymns while he's hanging on a dungeon wall, it kind of makes our problems seem better when we go through them.

But it's one of the prison epistles, which Paul wrote while he was in prison in Rome. The prison epistles include Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, and the very personal epistle to Philemon. And the year was about AD 62 when this book was written.

So it's not one of the oldest books in the New Testament, but it's written later with regard to all the other books. It's written on the later side of the books that were written in the New Testament.

Four messengers left Rome unobserved, and I'm gonna quote McGee again. Four messengers left Rome unobserved, but they each carried a very valuable document. He's picturing people that carried documents from the prison in Rome after Paul wrote them, people who carried them to the churches because Paul was still in prison.

Someone else had to carry the letter and deliver the letters. So four messengers left Rome unobserved, but they each carried a very valuable document. Tychicus was carrying the epistle of the Ephesians over to Ephesus, where he was the pastor or the leader of that church.

Epaphroditus was carrying the epistle of the Philippians as he was the pastor in Philippi. And Epaphras was carrying the epistle of the Colossians, which is the one we're studying today. Apparently, he was the leader of the church at Colossae.

Onesimus was carrying the epistle of Philemon, and Philemon was his master, and Onesimus was a slave who had run away and was returning to his master, bringing this book with him. Isn't that something?

These four are companion epistles, and together have been called the anatomy of Christianity. Or the anatomy of the church. We can see that the subject of these epistles cover all aspects of the Christian faith.

Ephesians, written around 60 to 62 AD, is about the body of believers called the church of which Christ is the head. Colossians, written around 62 AD, directs our attention to the head of the body, which is Christ.

So Ephesians talks a lot about us, the Christians. But this book we're studying talks about the head. Ephesians pictures the church as a body, right? With different members. And so Ephesians talks about that, but Colossians talks about the head of the body, which is Christ.

It directs our attentions to the head of the body, Christ. The body itself is secondary in the book of Colossians. Christ is the theme. He is the center of the circle around which all Christian living revolves.

Colossians emphasizes the fact that Christ is the fullness of God. And then you have Philippians, which was written sometime between 60 and 62. It shows the church walking here on earth, Christians living, and Christian living is the theme of Philippians.

It is the periphery of the circle of which Christ is the center. Philippians emphasizes the gnosis, kenosis, which is Christ becoming a servant or manifest in the world. And then there's Philemon, which gives us Christianity in action.

We would say it is where the rubber meets the road. You can see I'm using that phrase a lot. Or in that day, as it was the sandals touching the Roman road. It demonstrates Christianity worked out in a pagan society.

We can see why these four documents have been called the anatomy of the church. They belong together to make a whole, J. Vernon McGee. If you wanna talk about the city itself, Colossae, the ruins of this town are still there and they stand in what are called the gates of Phrygia.

And Colossae is the same area where Laodicea and some other areas like that are. So you read about Laodicea in the book of Revelation and there are some ruins of the city, but there are no ruins of any church.

So there's no evidence there ever was a church in Colossae. It was in a house. It was a house church. The church at Colossae met in the home of Philemon and I doubt that there ever was a church building there, J. Vernon McGee says.

A great civilization and a great population were in that area. It was more or less the door to the Orient from the east to the west. It was called the gates of Phrygia. Here, the east and the west met.

Here is where the Roman Empire attempted to tame the east and to bring it under Roman subjugation. Colossae was a great fortress city, as were Laodicea, Philadelphia and Sardis and Thyatira and Pergamum, which were all written about in the book of Revelation, if you remember that.

All of these were fortress cities in that area. But by the time Paul the Apostle came along, the danger had been relieved because the Roman Empire was pretty much in charge of the world at that time. So even though they were fortress cities, they weren't really that worried of being attacked because Rome controlled them at this time.

And when Jesus was born into the world, the power of Rome was at its peak. The Roman Empire was the strongest it would ever be. And from the point of Jesus's life to the point when Pilate did the wrong thing, the power of the Roman Empire declined from that point until it disappeared from the earth.

But at this time, Rome was at its peak and so they didn't have to worry about being attacked, but they were still fortress cities. As a result, the people had lapsed into paganism and gross immorality.

So you think about the life cycle of a civilization. Rome at this time was at the part where they no longer had to fight for what they had. They're no longer poor, they're rich. They're not afraid of anyone.

They are the superpower. And so now they're just sitting around and living in gross immorality and in a pagan world without God, not needing God in their own mind. And this is the place where this church was that Paul ministered to.

Now, it kind of makes you kind of think about where is America in its cycle at this moment, being the superpower of the world as Rome was. In that time, the entire city used Roman currency. At this time, the entire world uses US dollars.

At that time, everybody in the world had to speak Latin. Some still spoke Greek, but a lot spoke Latin. And at this time in the world, everyone speaks English. If you go to Europe, they know at least two languages.

They know their language in English. And so you have to wonder where is America today at this time in its life? Is it at a time of paganism where the young people wanna go out and get tattoos like pagans used to and Christians didn't used to, but now the Christians are doing it?

Is it a time of gross immorality where it's kind of okay to do just about anything? And kind of seems like where America is right now to me. As far as the record is concerned, Paul never visited the city of Colossae.

There's no evidence that he actually walked into that town and preached to these people in person, but he was the founder of the church. And I'll explain how that happened in a moment, but he sent them this letter and it may not be the only letter, but it's the one that is a part of our scripture.

Even though Paul was never in the city of Colossae, he was the founder of the church there. Epaphras was the leader of that church, and most likely the elder. And he may have actually been the direct founder, but Paul founded the church at Colossae and here's why.

He was the founder in very much the same way that he was the founder of the church at Rome. He touched multitudes of people in the Roman empire who later gravitated to Rome and formed the church there.

So more than likely, it was people that Paul's life and ministry had touched that gravitated or moved to Colossae and started the church there. It's probably some of his disciples or disciples of his disciples.

Paul may have visited Laodicea and believers may have come from there to Colossae, but convert from Paul's ministry in Ephesus very definitely could have come to Colossae to form the nucleus of the church at Colossae.

Colossae is located just 75 miles east of Ephesus. Paul spent three years of ministry in Ephesus, two of them teaching in the school of Tyrannus. You remember that? So he spent, Paul probably spent as much time in Ephesus as anywhere, just discipling people.

And so disciples from that church went out into different other churches that are mentioned in the Bible and helped start those churches. And that's probably what happened at Colossae. And that's why Paul is considered the father of the church at Colossae, even though Paphras was the pastor who probably actually opened the doors to the home and started inviting people in first.

There was tremendous civilization in this area. The culture of the Roman empire was centered right in this area. It was no longer centered in Greece, which had pretty much deteriorated along with their philosophy and culture by this time.

But the Greek culture was very still much alive in Asia minor, the area known as Turkey today. It was this area that Paul did his greatest work along with his coworkers. And by that, I mean, this area around Colossae.

There were with him, John Mark, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, and apparently some other apostles. We know that the apostle John became the pastor at Ephesus later on. Asia minor was a great cultural center, but it was all the center of heathenism, paganism, and the mystery religions.

Gnosticism, Mystery Religions, and the False Spirituality of Colossae

And that right there is very important for us to understand the background of the city in which this letter, this church was, that this letter was written to. This mystery, these mystery religions that were in the area.

And I'm praying about whether I might play a portion of an audio, very short part of it to you next Sunday, or not Christmas time, but after that, next time we get back into this. Just to give you an idea of something that is 2000 years old, which it speaks up here, the mystery religions is very much alive today, even with some people that we know and have walked with.

And they think it's new. And they're saying, the Lord has shown us something new and we're sharing it with our brothers and sisters. And it's very old, it's 2000 years old at least. It's older than that because it came from Satan.

So it's however old Satan is, which we don't know how old that is. We know it's more than 8 ,000 years old, right? So these philosophies that were taught in this area called the mystery religions are attempt, people are attempting to bring those into Christianity right now in this generation in America.

Trying to merge it together as if Christianity has always had this in it, which it has not. In fact, it spoke against it. In fact, this book will speak against it, but other writings of Paul spoke against it quite often.

And it's just, right now we'll just call it mystery religions and mystical teachings that are not found in scripture, but people say it's just has just as much authority because they say it comes from the spirit.

Now it's interesting to me, they never call him the Holy Spirit. They say it comes from the spirit. The spirit taught me this. I, or I transported into heaven and the spirit taught me this. And then when you try to say, well, that's not in the Bible, show me that.

And I said, well, yes, John was transported into heaven and saw and wrote the book of revelation. Paul was transported into heaven and saw things and wrote things, people in the Old Testament, but here's what they miss.

Those were apostles and there are no apostles today. They're all in heaven now. The very things you have to do to be an apostle, which are listed in scripture for us, a list of, I don't know, five, six, seven things that you had to have done in order to be an apostle.

One of them was you had to have walked physically with Jesus on the earth and that's not possible today. So there are no apostles and that's the big mistake these people make, but they are seduced by unclean spirits who feign and act as if they're the Holy Spirit and teach them things so that they'll come back and corrupt the church.

That's what false prophets have always done. Go home and read the book of Jude tonight. It's just one page. You can read it and it talks about these kinds of people, but what they invariably do is they bring in what they call mystery religions or mystical things.

And so it's very sad. I mean, the Roman Catholic churches had major problems with that being brought into it and the Protestants left because of it. And they said, we will only allow this book to be our sole authority, not something that you think some mystical angel told you to tell us.

And yet now I may play part of it. I don't know if Charlotte will let me.

We'll see.

I usually ask her, should I play something like this? And she'll say, I don't think so.

And then I don't do it, but we'll decide.

But anyway, there it is. They take this spiritual enlightenment that they get from someone they call the spirit and here's your Bible. And they put it higher than the Bible. It's more important than the Bible.

And the Bible, in fact, is quite boring without this stuff. And it's always, and they think it's new, but here J. Vernon McGee is talking about it from a historical viewpoint existing 2000 years ago in this area where the Church of Colossae was.

In fact, it was the center of paganism and mystery religions. McGee says there was already abroad that which is known as Gnosticism. And that by the way, the Gnostics were the first heresy that the church ever had to battle 2000 years ago.

It's called Gnosticism. You can study it. You could Google it and read all about it nowadays. Before we had Google, I studied all these different philosophical, false philosophies and teachings just in studying theology.

But the first thing I ever heard about was Gnosticism because it came first in the life of the church 2000 years ago. Yet it's rising up today and the people bringing it.

Think it's new.

You know why? Because they didn't study church history. They don't study much. They're pretty ignorant of the Bible and church history, but they think they're smart. In fact, they think they have gifts that you'll never have.

And I pray that they're right. So there was, let's see. Okay, so you had this heresy known as Gnosticism, the first heresy of the church, McGee says. There were many forms of Gnosticism and in Colossae, there were the Essenes.

You hear of the Essene monks, right? And are they the ones that preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dave, Ben, isn't that right, you guys? Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved by the Essene monks. Am I right or did I have the name wrong?

We can check it out. Someone out there will probably send you a chat and say, yep, that's it, or nope, you got it wrong. But anyway, this was a group of monk type people who wanted to separate themselves from the world and they taught Gnosticism, which is a mystery religion.

And so McGee brings this out. He says in Colossae, the Essenes were one particular group that taught their form of Gnosticism. There are three points of identification about that particular group who taught their form of Gnosticism.

The first is that they had an exclusive spirit. Now, if you have any friends that are charismatic or Pentecostal and think that they can speak with unknown tongues, and don't think for a minute that they can't, they can, but it's not coming from the Holy Spirit.

And the first thing they always tell me is you can't tell me, it's not real because I've experienced it. And the first thing I tell them is I'm not telling you it's not real. I believe it's very real, but the source is not the Holy Spirit.

And I know that from Hebrews 1, verse one and many other places that I've studied for over 40 years, including church history. It's not real. It's not from the Holy Spirit. It's from a different spirit, very important.

Or it's a learned response that you just learned in church when they taught you how to do it. And you don't have to teach a spiritual gift. So that's another fallacy. They teach people spiritual gifts.

You don't teach spiritual gifts. God just gives them. But anyway, so when you have these kinds of people, they have an exclusive spirit. And by that, I mean, they think they're higher than you and that they have gifts you don't have and that they'll talk with you, but underlying in their discussion is they're smirking at you because you ain't got it.

You just don't, like you might not even be saved if you can't speak in tongues, that sort of thing. And they have this spirit of superiority and they cover it up with fake humility and they talk softer and they're kinder than you are.

And you start getting a little upset, your adrenaline's flowing because you don't like false doctrine and you start almost looking mean compared to them. They're so sweet. And that is this spirit of exclusivity which occurred 2000 years ago among the Essenes.

This is not new, ladies and gentlemen. There were the, these people considered themselves to be the aristocrats of wisdom because they get these secret words of wisdom from God that no one else gets. You can't get it with your Bible.

It's gotta be God told me this and I need to tell you, because you don't know it yet. It is a spirit of aristocratic wisdom. They felt that they were the people, the people. They had knowledge in a jug.

J. Vernon McGee says I like his old Texas way of talking,.

Right?

Rubber meets the road and they got knowledge in a jug. They got knowledge in a jug and held the stopper in there with their hand. They only let it out if you asked for it. Then they'll tell you what God told him to tell you.

I always tell them, I don't want to know what God told you to tell me. Thank you very much. I don't wanna know it. If I have a dream, by the way, I wanna forget it before I wake up. And you pretty much dream every night.

So pray and ask the Lord to help you not remember your dreams. They are not ever from God. Just mark it down. David Mitchell said, your dreams are not from God, okay? And if you wanna talk to me about that, it's gonna take like 15 hours so we can meet in my study, or we can start the study at lunch.

But if you disagree with me, give me 15 hours and we'll go through church history and everything in the Bible about it and we'll see what the Bible says. But God does not speak through dreams now like he used to in the Old Testament.

And he says it in Hebrews chapter one, verse one. If the Holy Spirit says he doesn't do it and you think he does, who's lying? Or who's deceived? You think the Holy Spirit's deceived? Like he said, I'm not gonna do that, but he was deceived.

He actually is gonna do it. He didn't know he was gonna do it. Or is the Holy Spirit omniscient and he knows all things? You see my point? It's not real. People everywhere say, oh, I had a dream and boy, I think the Lord's speaking to me and there are books written on it.

I've got a document, Dave, you'd probably like to see this. I think people would consider it heresy. You'd like to see it. It's called Interpretation of Dreams. I don't remember who sent it to me. Some charismatic friend of mine sent it to me and I saved it.

I haven't read it, but I did save it. It's many pages long. So those kinds of things, if you were to name, basically what Hebrews 1 .1 says is God used to speak in time past as he spoke through the prophets, as he used to speak through the prophets, he no longer speaks that way.

Now he speaks through his word, Jesus Christ. And so if you just ask yourself, okay, if he no longer speaks to us like he spoke through the prophets, let's name the ways they spoke and he no longer does that.