The Sufficiency Of Jesus Christ - [Colossians 2]

Have you ever met a false teacher? That's a good question.

Maybe another question is, what do they look like? What does a false teacher look like? Maybe they're smiling and nice and fashionable.

In the old days, false teachers in the thirties, they would wear horned rimmed glasses. These days, maybe they're wearing tight skinny jeans, hipster.

Who knows? But as you know, the key is not what they look like. The key is what they say.

What do false teachers say? And at the essence, every false teacher says something wrong about the

Lord Jesus Christ. They either add to his work or they subtract from his work.

What they say about the person and work of Jesus determines really if they're a false teacher or not.

And as you think about the Apostle Paul, I wonder what he thought of false teachers. Well, they just kind of die out on their own.

Or it doesn't really matter, the Gospel is powerful anyway. When Paul thought about false teachers, he wanted to stand up for the truth and guard the

Gospel. If you'll take your Bibles and turn to Colossians, we are going to see that in our chapter today.

Colossians is a book about Jesus and how He is supreme and how He is sufficient.

And there are people who run around saying, either directly or indirectly, Jesus isn't supreme and He's not sufficient.

He's not who you think He is. Some say, oh, He's just a man. Some say, oh,

He's just some kind of spirit. Some say, yeah, He died on the cross and all that stuff.

But let me take you to the deeper things now. You've got to deny yourself. You have to say no to yourself. You have to have certain practices.

Or maybe have certain experiences. In the book of Colossians, Paul is trying to tell everyone that Jesus is supreme and sufficient.

And therefore, when people come along and say things about Jesus, we have to be inflexible.

We have to stand against them. We have to give them the spiritual or maybe even literal, what do they call it when football players just take their hand and just smash it against a guy's face?

We call that a what? A stiff arm. That's exactly right. So what we're doing in these four weeks is going chapter by chapter in the book of Colossians so you can see at a 30 ,000 foot level,

Jesus is all I need. In my own study of the Bible, I'll say to myself, as with you as well, yes, it's true,

Jesus is all that Paul wants these people to know. All they need is

Jesus. And I want you to think big picture to you because we're not just living in this world. We're living in this world that Jesus is everything you need.

There's no one greater. There's no one better. You can't move beyond Jesus. Jesus isn't the

ABCs. I'm learning some modern Hebrew on my phone and Duolingo and they start off with just how to trace the aleph and how to trace the

B sound and just kind of tracing and I'm learning the ABCs, the introductory things. But then it's time to move on.

And so Paul wants you to realize with Christianity, you can't move on from Jesus.

It's not like we've got him figured out, we've got him all tucked in and squared and ready to go. No, Jesus is sufficient and he is supreme.

And dear congregation, your view of Jesus will affect everything. It'll affect your day -to -day relationships.

It'll affect your evangelism. Everything about you is determined, dear

Christian, by your view of the Lord Jesus. And of course, your union with him because as Jesus died, you died with him.

As Jesus was raised from the dead, you are raised with him. And you can say now no to sin and yes to righteousness.

Everything is affected by the Lord Jesus. That's why I love this book, Colossians. And just over and over and over, it's a book that tells me the

Lord Jesus is preeminent. The Lord Jesus is supreme. The Lord Jesus rules over creation.

He rules over new creation. He is the one to be worshipped. And in spite of what goes on in your life, in the world, your personal life, hold on by faith to this

Jesus. Now, of course, you know, the book of Colossians is written by Paul. Paul's in jail.

He hears about this little tiny, tiny church in a little tiny city. And they've been bombarded by false teaching.

False teaching that says, probably should add some Judaism to your Christianity. And probably you should have some special visions about angels and other things.

And Paul hears about it. And so what does Paul do? He writes from Rome, the prison, to tell these dear

Christians that Jesus is preeminent. Hold fast by faith.

So today we're going to look at all of chapter 2. That's 23 verses. I talked to some people last week when we were going over the first 29 verses of chapter 1.

And I heard up in the video room or someplace upstairs, they were having overs and unders if I could finish.

Like, they're up there betting on my sermon. They need to understand that Jesus is supreme and He's preeminent.

And a view of Jesus will affect everything in their life. Now last week we saw, after Paul's greeting, three kind of easy ways to think of Colossians.

Prayer, preeminence, and what was the third one? A proclamation. Paul starts off with a prayer.

And if you go back to chapter 1, we can just remember this. He's thanking God in verse 3.

And he thanks God for their faith and for their love. And what do you think the third one is? Their hope.

Right? The great triad. Faith, love, and hope. And he wants them to know that he's praying for them, verse 10, to walk in a manner worthy of the

Lord, fully pleasing to Him. And he says, I'm praying that this walk will bear fruit.

Right? He says that in your passage in Colossians 1. I want you to increase in the knowledge of the

Lord. I want you to be strengthened. And I want you to be abounding in thanksgiving and to be thankful.

And that's what Paul would want for each of us. That's what the Spirit of God would want for you. That you would be bearing fruit, increasing in the knowledge of the

Lord, strengthened with the power that God provides, and being a thankful person.

Do you bear fruit? Do you increase in the knowledge of the Lord? Is that your desire?

Of course it is. Then he talks about how great Jesus is in verses 15 and following in chapter 1.

Do you remember? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Of course, people say, Jesus is firstborn, somehow He's created. By the way, there's a word for first created, and it's not this word.

This is firstborn, meaning preeminent, meaning superior. If he wanted to say born, he could have.

I mean, created, he could have. Jesus is superior. He's going to be better than angels or anything that you can come up.

In rank, He's superior. And by creation,

He's superior. Verse 16, For by Him, including you, dear Christian, all things were created.

And Paul's going on in this hymn, maybe a modern hymn that might be kind of equivalent to this, not equivalent, but reminds me of Colossians.

Then sings my soul, my Savior, God to Thee, how great Thou art. He's just so great.

He's great as Creator. He's great as Sustainer. Verse 17, He holds everything together.

He's the head of the body. Verse 18, The church, including this body, and everything about God, we see in the

Lord Jesus. Verse 19, In His saving work. Now we move to chapter 2.

This chapter 2, we come to verse 6 for our key verse. If you want to look big picture, which we're doing in this four part series, is big picture.

Verse 6 of chapter 2 unlocks the key to this chapter.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. If you want to understand chapter 2, you're going to say verse 6 is the key.

Everything is leading to that and drawn from that. Our outline for chapter 2 is going to be simple.

Last week for chapter 1, we had a prayer, preeminence of Jesus, and a proclamation of Jesus.

Today's outline is going to be pretty simple as well. It's going to be Leave, Receive, and Deceive.

But not in that order. Deceive, Receive, and Leave. I just want to try to make it memorable.

So memorable that I switched the order already. Deceive, Receive, Leave.

That's what happens if you don't look at your notes sometimes. Verses 1 -5, Deceive. Verses 6 -15,

Receive. And verses 16 -23, Leave. I want you to know,

Christian, that Jesus is sufficient not just to get you to heaven, but also for you to live a holy life.

We're not going to move past Jesus for sanctification. Just give me the rules. Just tell me what not to do.

Tell me what to do. I want you to know that Jesus is important to you, not just for your justification, right standing before God, but your sanctification that is

God working in you to live a holy life. And so, verse 6 is the key, but the whole passage is going to revolve around Deceive, Receive, and Leave.

Let's look at the first five verses. Deceive. I don't want you to be deceived.

I don't want you to think, you know what, I'll start with Jesus for salvation, and sanctification is my own hard work.

I don't want you to think, you know what, I've got Jesus all figured out, and I've been reconciled to God through Jesus, and now that I want to live a holy life, a blameless life, a life of obedience,

Jesus is just kind of there somewhere. I don't want you to think that. I want you to realize that the key to your sanctification is the key to your justification.

It's the Lord Jesus. Even Paul said, the life I now live, he said it as a

Christian, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Verse one, for I want you to know how great a struggle

I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all those who have not seen me face to face or in the flesh.

Here's Pastor Paul, yes, Apostle Paul, wanting the best, and he says there's this great conflict, there's this striving,

I want to be there, but providentially I'm not able to be with you. I've got this struggle that's going on.

By the way, how could Paul struggle for those dear Christians if he's in jail? How do you struggle for other

Christians when you're in jail? Answer, what do you think the struggle was? I think it was on his knees, struggling and praying.

I'm thanking God for you, for your faith, hope and love. I'm also saying, Lord, would you give them fruit? Would you give them increase in knowledge?

Would you strengthen them? Would you give them thanksgiving? I'm struggling for you on my knees.

Verse 2, that their hearts may be encouraged or built up, strengthened, be knit together in love.

I'll tell you what false teaching does. It fractures people. It divides people. It has little clicks. That's what heresy means.

To separate and have own little sex. That's what happens with false teaching. But I want you to be knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is

Christ. And you're not going to receive any kind of assurance if you're thinking to yourself that it's

Jesus plus. Because verse 3, in whom? In whom? Jesus. In Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge except for sanctification.

Gary just looked at me like, what? I'm reporting you to the elders. Of course not!

Of course it's everything you need for wisdom and knowledge. Remember the false teachers.

We've got inside knowledge. We've got inside scoop. Come talk to us. Pay me some money too and I'll tell you how to live the secret victorious

Christian life. Paul says no. The only initiation you need into this special club to see the inside scoop is you need to be born again.

You need to be made alive. And once you're made alive by Christ Jesus and the Spirit of God with the Father, you're going to say, oh, now

I see, but there's no inner circle or special knowledge. Paul says,

I just want you to realize everything's in Christ. Remember, how did Jews and Gentiles become reconciled together?

Because they're both reconciled to God. That's the wisdom of God. How can God be just and love at the same time?

Oh, it's the wisdom of God. Go elsewhere at your own peril, Paul says. Every treasure is found in Christ Jesus.

Verse 4, he moves into this kind of stand firm mode against false teaching.

I say this in order that no one may delude, or that's where I get the outline point, deceive you with plausible arguments.

These false teachers were smooth talkers. These false teachers were not stutterers or people that couldn't turn a phrase.

You almost want to believe what they say because they speak so well. Plausible arguments.

Sounds reasonable. Sounds persuasive. I mean, the way you tell me about kind of how I need to live my life and Jesus doesn't need to be at the center, it sounds almost good.

These days, by the way, as a pastor I think to myself, the Internet helps me so much, but also if people in the congregation have some kind of weird idea about Jesus, all they have to do is type in a weird idea about Jesus and they think, other people believe the same thing,

I must be right. So many false teachers online. I have to be very careful.

I always say to myself, most false teachers' websites, they look kind of weird. They're kind of like off.

Like if somebody hands me the Watchtower magazine, I look at it and I go, kind of these weird funky pictures about things.

That's almost how those websites look. But that's another story. Don't be deceived by smooth talkers.

That's the point. Paul says in verse 5, for though I'm absent in body, remember he's in prison, I'm with you in spirit.

I feel like I'm one with you. Rejoicing to see your good order and firmness of your faith in Christ Jesus.

He does not say, I want you to start getting in good order to buttress yourself against false teaching and I want you to start having a firm faith.

He says, I'm rejoicing to see your good order and firmness of faith. Both good order and firmness are metaphors from the military world of discipline and order and rank.

And we're going to have our artillery here and we're going to have our battalion come in from the side. Everything is lined up.

He's saying to them, you're doing a good job of protecting yourself. Like a military protects against an invading army, you are set and stable.

I like that. Remember that movie Gladiator when

Maximus says before the big battle, three weeks from now I'll be harvesting my crops. See, now you're all paying attention, right?

Imagine where you will be and it will be so. So, hold the line. Stay with me.

And that's what Paul is saying. Hold the line. Stay with me. Don't stop because the false teachers, they just kind of multiply over and over and over.

And I would say to Bethlehem Bible Church, one of the things I appreciate about you, dear congregation, is that you are very, very rigid when it comes to false teachers.

You're inflexible. You don't just open your arms to anyone. You're holding the line. Stand firm.

There should be a stiffness and an unwavering attitude when it comes to false teaching. And we say to ourselves here at the church, federal vision, false teaching.

New perspective on Paul. False teaching. And the list goes on and on. We're standing against this because we're standing for someone.

So, Paul says don't be deceived. Congregation, you know about Jesus. Don't be deceived. Verses 6 -15, we come to the second part of the chapter.

And we'll use the word receive to just make it easy. Deceive, receive. And you see the word receive right there in verse 6.

The key to chapter 2. As you have received, look at the three words for Jesus there.

Christ, Jesus, the Lord. So walk in Him. Rooted. That happened at salvation.

And now, ongoingly, we are built up in Him and established in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving.

How did you receive Jesus? By circumcision? By baptism?

By good works? No, you received Him by what? Faith. Right?

Faith alone. As you receive Jesus by faith, keep trusting in the One who is the

Messiah, Christ, who is the God -Man, Jesus, and who is the

Lord. You're saved by faith, so you walk by faith. You're saved by the Word, so walk according to the

Word. Don't go elsewhere. I mentioned a little bit earlier to start the service, but one of the best things you can do to walk in Him and to live a life commensurate with your calling as Jesus is

Lord is to continue Lord's Day worship. Of course, should you read your

Bible at home? Yes. Of course, should you do the one another's? Yes. Of course, should you have a home group?

Yes. And this goes on and on and on. But here's where we're reminded both with the Word and the elements

Jesus Christ is Lord and we've received Him by faith. He's the One who saves our sins and we'll walk in Him.

See too at verse 8 that no one takes you captive. This is where we get the word like kidnapping.

You're like a pirate in Somalia and you go take stuff. And how do you take it?

Here you take it because of the mind by philosophy. This is godless philosophy. Empty to seat according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.

Anything that says Jesus isn't preeminent, Jesus isn't sufficient, Jesus isn't supreme, Jesus isn't enough, we're going to say, nope, not for me.

I'm not going to hear it. Paul says, see to it, I want you not to be led away captive.

It's somehow led away from all the beauties of Christ and His triumph on the cross. I think

Paul learned this from Jesus. Does this sound familiar? The thief only comes to kill and steal and destroy.

I came that they might have life and have it abundantly. I'm the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who does not own the sheep sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

Beware. Watch out. People are going to try to deceive you. Don't be fodder for the deceivers.

Why? Verse 9, for in Jesus, the fullness, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Bodily. The essence of God. The attributes of God.

The totality of God. By the way, look very carefully at that verse. If you reread it, you think, okay, in Him the fullness, the whole fullness of deity dwells, present tense, bodily.

By the way, where's Jesus' body now? Any guesses? Of course,

He's in my heart. Well, that would be odd. No, where's Jesus' body now?

His Spirit's in my heart dwelling within me. His body's in heaven. And he's talking about, you know what, why would we run away from Jesus when

He wasn't just the Eternal Son, although He was, He wasn't just incarnate. He wasn't just living a perfect life on earth and dying on the cross.

Jesus is in heaven. He's glorified. Why would we run away from a glorified Jesus? There would be no reason to do that.

Verse 10, He goes on and says, And you have been filled in Him who is the head of all rule and authority. Not angels, not false teachers.

They're not the leaders. Don't do that. Charles Wellesley said,

Thou, O Christ, art all I want, more than all in Thee I. And then kind of it's interesting.

There must have been some Jewish influence there with false teaching. So kind of almost out of nowhere, He says, In Him also you were circumcised.

But this is not kind of the regular circumcision. This is worth a circumcision made without hands. By putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.

You were circumcised in a spiritual way. By the way, it leads right into baptism talk, does it not? Verse 12,

Having been buried with Him in baptism in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised

Him from the dead. And just like baptism signifies dead to the old life and we immerse the person and rise in newness of life.

We've been baptized not just with water, but also we've been immersed into Christ spiritually.

Jesus died for us. He suffered for us. He was buried for us. He was raised for us. And we with Him.

Verse 13, And you were dead in your trespasses uncircumcision of your flesh.

God made alive together with Him having forgiven us all our trespasses. It's almost like He just wants you to reflect a little bit and say, why would

I go away from Jesus who forgave me? Why would I want to run away from Jesus who died for me?

We'll read Hosea 14 in a couple of months. Hosea 14. It's an amazing statement.

God says, I have loved you freely. Why would I want to run away from that kind of God who's gracious?

That's where the word forgiveness comes from. Sometimes the word to forgive means to go away. Scapegoat runs away.

It kind of just goes away. This means to grace. And we've had so much debt of our sin and He's graced us.

Why run away from the One who graces us? You know the song, There's a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins.

And sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains. If God would do that for me, and He did do that for you, dear

Christian, why would I go to someplace else for deeper knowledge? Verse 13 says,

He made you alive together with Him. We were dead in trespasses and sins. God made us alive.

This is God alone working. Monergistic. God alone did that. He made you alive together.

Forgiving all your trespasses. And so I sit back and I think, Okay, Mike. Application time for you, the congregation.

I've been taught a lot about Jesus. And I have from Sunday school teachers to pastors, to friends, to books, commentaries, people that are alive, people that are dead.

And I think they've taught me about Jesus. He's the eternal Son. For no reason except divine love

He came and rescued me. And I think about my sins that I've committed and some

I don't even remember, some I don't know the depths of, but I know many of them and I think,

I have earned hell. Jesus on the cross.

It's like hell was condensed into three hours and poured out on Jesus. He did that for me. And He's true because He was raised from the dead.

He raised Himself from the dead. And if somebody would forgive me for my sins, I think

I should respond with faith and trust and thanksgiving. And when somebody comes along and says, You know what?

All this Jesus stuff is fine. But there's an inside scoop. And He's pretty good, but He didn't do all these other things.

And you've got to do extra things. You've got to do things that are subtracted from what Jesus does. He's trying to remind you like He's reminding me.

Don't forget about your Savior. You can hear John write the words of Jesus in the book of Revelation.

You don't want to lose your first love, do you? Because if you do, everything goes after that. If you're a

Christian here today, I want you to know all your sins have been forgiven past, present, and future. Isn't that good?

Isn't that a lot better than me when I'm 21 years old and I remember coming home from the University of Nebraska for Christmas and when do most college students get their surgeries done and their wisdom teeth pulled out, their tonsils taken out?

Well, it's during spring break. You're home. I had my tonsils taken out. They said don't cough from your throat because you could bleed out in the night.

Cough from your stomach. I happen to get a cold. I'm laying there trying to remember how to cough from my stomach and not from my throat.

But in the night when I was sleeping, I start coughing from my throat and I wake up and there's just blood all over my parents' bed.

By the way, it was a bed given to us by Warren Buffett, but that's a different story. That's just to get you... I'm bleeding all over Warren Buffett's bed.

Odd. And I get the yellow pages out and I'm looking up the phone number for the emergency room because I think

I'm going to die. What am I going to do? And I thought in my wrong thinking about Jesus because I've been held captive by plausible arguments and people that have said things about, yeah,

Jesus is good, but unless you confess every sin that you've ever committed before you die of bleeding out from tonsillectomy in Omaha, Nebraska on Warren Buffett's bed, then you're going to go to hell.

All your sins were forgiven. Past, present, and future. Omission, commission, high -handed.

They're as far as east is from the west. He's thrown them behind his back. And this God who loves you, wouldn't you say, you know what?

I should keep believing in that God and not deviate when people come along and say, Jesus is good, but you need something else.

Yeah, Jesus teaches that He suffered and you'll suffer instead, but I want the people that teach all the prosperity gospel.

No, we need to stiff -arm them. We had a debt we couldn't pay.

And it was nailed to the cross. Do you see verse 14? By canceling the record of debt that stood against us, every one of us, with its legal demands.

And the demand was the wages of sin is death. Eternal death. And what did

Jesus do? This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Your death has been paid for by another. Why would we run from that one? Why would we listen to anybody else that would say things?

It's nailed to the cross. I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord all my soul. And by the way, what else did

He do at the cross? For anyone that's thinking, angels might be good worship people.

Angels might be good mediators. I think they were saying some of that at Colossae. Angels inside scoop.

Touched by an angel. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame.

He humiliated them. When? At the cross. And He triumphed over them in Him. At the cross.

What did Jesus do to all the fallen angels? It's finished. It's over. Why run to some angel for a mediator if that's what they were doing?

No, I'm not going to do that. Deceive?

Don't be deceived. Receive? How did you receive Jesus? By the people that taught you the Bible? Keep walking in Him.

And now, leave. Verses 16 -23 If you found such a friend that loved you, what do you do when people come along and have all kinds of legalistic things they want to give you?

Verse 16 Since Jesus is supreme, chapter 1, since He's sufficient, chapter 2, and I've got all my sins forgiven, verse 16, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to festival, new moon, or Sabbath.

These are the shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Hey, wait a second.

I know you've got Jesus, but the way you live your life and you're going to be more holy in God's eyes if you celebrate the

Feast of Booths. If you celebrate Passover. If you celebrate some festivals in the

Old Testament and some new moons. If you don't eat this kind of food, if you eat only

Ezekiel bread. You ever eat Ezekiel bread? Please read the rest of the chapter, chapter 4, before you buy

Ezekiel bread. Just please, please. P .S., when we talk about kind of what to eat and what not to eat, this has nothing to do with diets.

If you want to be on keto, if you want to be on Atkins, if you want to be on...

I think Jordan Peterson said he eats meat, salt, and water. That's all he eats. Beef, salt, and water.

If you want to be on that diet... I'm not talking about diet. I'm talking about, if I eat this food,

God's happier with me. If I don't eat this food, God's happier with me. If I go right over there to Lancaster Mass and say,

I'm a Seventh -day Adventist, and I think, you know what? Cheese isn't good. Meat isn't good. These things aren't good.

That's what I'm talking about. And what does Paul say? Don't let anybody pass judgment on you. Because things like festivals and moons and Sabbaths, they were shadows.

And the substance belongs to Christ. Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but I did some studying on cars, where they got their names.

Nippon Sango. Too hard to say, so it turned into Nissan, I guess. Toyota, with a

D, turned into Toyota. It's a man's name. It's his last name. Walter Chrysler. So, Chiro Honda.

Lots of these are named after people. David Dunbar Buick. Swiss race car driver and mechanic,

Louis Chevrolet. John and Horace Dodge. By the way, they started off with a bicycle company, so we like Dodges.

An Australian entrepreneur had a daughter named Mercedes. Volvo, one of my favorite ones, is

Latin for I roll. I roll. I got my Volvo parked right out there.

225 ,000 miles on it and I just roll. I roll. Swedish company, but a Latin name, I roll.

Why was it called I roll? Because they made ball bearings. And you roll them.

And they switched to cars. Cadillac. Cadillac was named after the French explorer who founded Detroit in the early 18th century.

Volkswagen, the people's car. Mazda, borrowed from the Zoroastrian religion.

Anybody here drive a Mazda? Pagans, one and all. You see, you missed one.

Kia. I've driven Kias. I think Pastor Steve just bought a

Kia. South Korean car. Ki means to arise, and a stands for Asia.

Rising from Asia. Kia. So what does it have to do with anything?

Look back in your Bibles, and I want you to see a particular word in verse 17.

There is a shadow of the things to come. Now, we think a shadow. We think, okay, the light's coming down and I'm intercepting the light and behind me is a shadow.

It could be that. But most likely it's outline. It's trace.

You see some of the outlines and tracings in the Old Testament, do you not, about who Jesus was? And in the

New Testament, it's not a tracing. It's not even a picture. It's Jesus Himself.

God -Man in the flesh. And the Greek word for shadow is S -K -I -A.

Skia. So I want you to redeem Kia, rising from Asia. And every time you see a

Kia or get into your Kia, I want you to start thinking, it's an outline of a

Mercedes, but it's not a Mercedes. It's an outline. There's something filled in.

Why are you telling me as a false teacher I'm supposed to go back to my Kia when I got a Mercedes? How much more?

Why go back to the outlines and the tracings when Jesus the God -Man appeared and walked on the earth and died for my sins and was raised and said

He's coming back? Why go to the outline when I have the substance? That's what

Paul said after verse 18. Let no one disqualify you. Don't let anybody tell you you're not a

Christian because you don't do Messianic Judaism. Don't let anybody tell you you're a

Christian because you eat meat on Fridays. Don't let anybody tell you you're not a

Christian. That's what he means here by disqualify you. Insisting on asceticism. We'll get to that. Worship of angels going on, running their mouths in detail about visions puffed up without reason by sensuous mind.

Don't go back. Now, there's a time to be gentle. When people are saying something about Jesus, can't you hear

Paul's tone change a little bit? Can't you hear him say, don't let these people run their mouths and talk about Jesus.

You just tell them no. You rebuke them. They're trying to cheat you.

And you, dear Christian, should never feel inferior to anyone, even another

Christian who says, well, I had this experience and you didn't. I speak in tongues.

You don't. I'm a have. You're a have not. Christian, you are a have because Jesus has you and you have

Him by faith. Don't let anybody say, by the way, you've got to have these worship of angels and experiences and everything else.

That makes you a full Christian. And see, it's tempting. Here's why it's tempting. It's hard to love your wife.

It's hard to submit to your husband. It's hard to train your children. It's hard to submit to your boss.

We struggle. We sin. We fail. We hate it. We repent. The cycle continues and we keep falling short even as Christians and we struggle in this body of...

And you know what? Wouldn't it just be good to just snap out of it? Wouldn't it be just good to come and just dedicate myself and be slain in the

Spirit and just kind of have it all done? Wouldn't it be better if I could just circumvent Romans 7?

I know there's no condemnation, but I'm still the wretched man. I don't do what I want to do. I want to do what I don't want to do.

I know it's not right. And so, just help me. Instead of sanctification being in time,

God sets me apart. God is working on me now. And I'll one day be glorified. And on earth, this is in heaven, so I need to be dying to sin and yes to righteousness over and over and over.

There's no fast track for sanctification because you have Jesus.

So be careful. Verse 19, you see how He ties it in. "...not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that's from God."

Oh, any false teacher could get some people for some behavior modification. But real growth has to be tied to the head who is

Jesus. Don't let anybody rob you of that. If you're watching, dear

Christian, people on TV that would rob you of the supremacy and exaltation of the Lord Jesus, it may be time to stop.

Maybe it's time to just say, I've had enough of Copeland and Hagen and Furtick and Andy Stanley and all these people that are trying to be smooth talkers and they're deluding you from the personal work of Christ.

I mean, if angels are the key, Jesus has depreciated His work and His person. If, Christian, verse 20, with Christ you died, and you did, to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you're still alive, in the world, do you submit to regulations, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch?

Referring to things that all perished as they're used according to human precepts and teachings.

These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self -made religion and asceticism, denial, and severity to the body.

Listen. Mark it down. Tie it to verse 6. They are of no value stopping the indulgence.

When you walk away from Jesus as sanctifier, and say, just tell me what to do and what not to do, you've failed in your thinking of sanctification.

We died at conversion, so therefore, what we eat, our taste, our handle, doesn't defile us.

Our own sin defiled us. We've been forgiven. And what comes out of a man's mouth defiles, or a woman's mouth, not what we put in.

So people say, don't eat this, don't eat that, don't eat the other. God's diet, Daniel's diet,

Weigh Down Diet, all these other things. Be careful. Because it's appealing in a sense.

Well, it's hard for me to say no to self today, and deny self, and pick up a cross and follow

Him in this life of holy living. But if I just give

Him like three things to do, I can do those things. And now I'm a good Christian because I did those three things.

Sometimes I think we fall into this category at Bethlehem Bible Church. I read my

Bible today, prayed for a little bit, God loves me more. Or, I didn't read my

Bible today, I didn't pray like I should, God loves me less. Is that good thinking?

Nebraska, what do we call that kind of thinking? What did you say? I was going to say stinking thinking.

What we know in our own kids, we forget about in God. Daddy, I didn't dump the trash today,

Daddy, do you still love me? I didn't push my chair in afterwards, so we had dinner.

Do you still love me? Daddy, I pushed my chair in today. You love me more, right?

We're thinking, what's going on? There's a relationship we have. Father -son, father -daughter, mother -son, mother -daughter.

And nothing's going to separate that. Oh, I'm going to encourage you. I might spank you. I might discipline you.

But nothing's going to sever that. So now we've got these people that are running their mouths and telling me if I just eat the right thing or deny myself a certain thing,

God will love me more. No, He loves me in Christ. He's made me alive. He's forgiven all my sins. I have a spiritual circumcision.

I have a spiritual baptism. And my Savior triumphed over all these entities. And I stand complete in Christ.

Actually, come to think of it, Jesus is sufficient. Flesh can't be restrained by rules.

I know what it's like to go, maybe Lancaster, Mass has its problems.

But Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Amish might be pretty good.

Maybe Montana. Maybe a cloister. Maybe just get away from it all.

Jesus is your only remedy to say no to sin. He's your only power to say yes to righteousness.

These other things seem like they're right, but they don't stop the flesh. By the way, do a little study sometime on the number one religion here in New England and see what happens when you tell people don't touch, don't handle, don't taste, don't get married, and you watch what happens.

It's sick. We should know better. We should know better by saying, all

I need is Christ. That's why everything in the worship service is said about singing about Him, hearing from Him, preaching about Him.

It kind of makes sense that Paul said in the first chapter of Colossians, we proclaim Him, because He's the key to remember out of gratitude what

God has done for me and that I want to respond rightly. Dear Christian, don't let anybody stand as an umpire over your life.

All you need is who Jesus is. He is sufficient. Paul is writing this letter to the tiniest of churches about the largest possible error, and that error is

Jesus isn't enough. So Paul says in chapter 1, I'm just going to tell you about who

Jesus is over and over and over. Yeah, yeah, I got that. I understand. Lived, died, buried, etc. I got that.

Just tell me what to do. Paul won't do that. Paul's going to tell us what to do in chapter 3, verse 5.

That's for certain. But he's after our minds. To love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And it's easier to do than it is to love God. It's easier to have a rule than it is to love

God. For those in the sound booth today and the video booth, by the way, what were the over and unders today on Colossians?

You see what Paul is doing. It's all about Jesus. Don't let anybody tell you, huh,

I get saved by somebody besides Jesus. None of us would probably fall for that. But what we would fall for is do you know what?

I need to do things in order to be sanctified that are outside of Scripture. And I'm just not going to eat food and I'm going to fast every day and I'm going to climb up the steps on my knees and to deny myself and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that and I need this experience and I'm kind of lacking.

Some of us might fall prey to that. Paul says, don't be deceived.

Remember who you've received and then leave all that false kind of sanctification.

What's real sanctification look like in a person's life? How does it manifest itself in holy living?

I'm glad you asked. I'll see you next week. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your

Word. I confess on behalf of the people here at Bethlehem Bible Church that we might not have fallen into false teaching of a radical kind.

But, Father, we do struggle with the counterintuitive thought that Jesus is all we need for sanctification.

For us to say no to sin and yes to righteousness, the answer is found in the triune

God. So help us to remember that. I pray that if there are people here today that are not

Christians because they're trusting in a different Savior, would you show them how supreme

Jesus is over even their own creation, how they are sustained by the

Lord, and how there's only one Redeemer. Father, we do want to live a life that's commensurate with our calling.

We want to bear fruit. We want to be more knowledgeable about your Son. Give us strength and help us to be thankful.