Colossians 2 (Pastor Jeremiah Shipley)

Now, I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military size.

It wasn't the type of people. The guy who prays God. Alright, let me begin with some prayer.

Lord, we depend on you in all things and all times.

Lord, we depend on you for every breath and every step. Lord, I depend on you here and now.

Lord, guide this time. Lord, guide my words. In your name I pray.

Amen. Knowledge is important.

Like I said, I'm in charge of MIT. You're not going to hear me bad talk about the irrelevance of knowledge or theology.

It is highly important. But knowledge is not what saves you.

You are not saved by your theology. You are not saved by your denomination.

You are not saved by your political views. You are not saved by anything than the blood of Jesus Christ.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because I do spend so much time, because of MIT, talking of theology.

Whenever I teach or preach, it is so heavy in my heart to talk about the simplicity of faith.

The simplicity of returning to the basics of Christianity. As Christ said, woe to you scribes and Pharisees.

You do this, you do that, you tithe, but you forgot mercy, faith, and justice.

You forgot love. What was it that He said to the church of Revelation?

You're doing this stuff well, but you forgot your first love. And it is this,

I believe, that at the root of it, at the foundation of it, causes people to walk away from the faith.

At the end of the day, what does it matter if you were a good Christian for 10 -15 years and then forsook everything in the end?

Endurance. Long suffering. Holding on to the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To the end. To death. No matter the death.

Whether that be through persecution, or in some instances worse, cancer.

Whether that be through whatever trial. What does it matter if we forsake

Christ in the end? And so it's always heavy in my heart the message of, hold on.

Hang in there. Don't forget the love that we are called to have.

Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 -10. Let us read. Therefore, as you received

Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit.

According to human tradition, according to the elemental principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

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.

A couple weeks ago, MIT students specifically, I want you to note today, Pastor Josiah gave a perfect example of how to do a topical sermon.

Today is expository. We will walk through this. Verse 6, it says, as you received

Him. What does it mean to receive Him? What does it mean to receive Christ? We don't want to use the words that you were told in VBS as a 4 year old to accept

Jesus Christ in your heart. That's nowhere in the Bible. But it does say to receive Christ. And what does it mean to receive

Christ? Other than that you didn't earn it. You did not work for it.

Your salvation is not based on you. In order to receive

Christ, it requires a few things. This is the first principle a

Christian must learn. The elementary principle of Christianity. How to receive. And what are we receiving? The grace of God.

So first of all, it requires humility. It requires submissiveness.

It requires you to recognize who you are and who God is. The position.

It's not JC in the house. It's not Big Dad upstairs. Who you are.

The seriousness of your sin. JC is in the house. The seriousness of your sin.

It requires this. The scripture does not say humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

And He will lift you up. Does it not say in James, submit to God, resist the devil, and He will flee.

There is a humility and a submissiveness that we as Christians must remember.

And like I said in the beginning, going back to the elementary principles of Christianity. That doesn't change when you're 50 years into Christianity.

That doesn't change. We think that if we have been a

Christian or done so many works or lived a certain kind of life, that somehow, someway, that earns us something.

And how quickly we forget how serious our sins are.

How quickly we forget our positioning. We think that if we are a

Christian for 30 years, our status before God changed. It was Paul the Apostle who said,

What a wretched man I am. That was not when he was first saved that he wrote that.

That was the Apostle. The Apostle.

The greatest evangelist to ever live. The man who was martyred for his faith.

And he recognized his position late in his faith.

I am a wretched man. My works have not gained me an inch of righteousness to God.

He understood his position. That it was all the grace of God.

Because if it is not all the grace of God, then all glory does not go to God. It must all be the grace of God.

And the work of Christ. Because all glory is deserving to Christ. Second thing, what does it mean to receive?

It means that you must grasp it. You must, and what do I mean by that? I mean that when you receive

Christ, you received Him as your own. If I receive something, that it is now mine.

I am taking ownership of it. I account it of my own. Does it not say that we just read

Psalms 23? The Lord is my shepherd. He's mine.

You cannot take Him from me. I will hold on to my God. To my

Lord. To my Savior. To my Shepherd. To the dying breath and the last bit of strength

I have. I will hold on to Him. He's mine.

When you receive Christ, when you receive His grace, you have to grasp it.

And hold on. We hold on to the Lord. We hold on to Christ.

When the doubts and the lies come, we hold on. I have a saying, that when you're in the place of not having good mental health, and we're struggling with the lies in our head, and those times we must listen to the truth in our ear rather than the lies in our head.

Scripture speaks to us. The saints of God call to us. And we push them away and push them out.

And we listen to the lies in our head. Stop doing that. Listen to the truth of the

Word of God that is speaking to you, rather than the lies that want to tell you to isolate, to come inside yourself, to get inside your own head.

Submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee. You must submit to God first.

Submit to the Word. Brother Evan Wiesner has a quote that I love.

He says, Your faith isn't yours until you question it. This goes more to the brain than it does the heart.

If you are the person who your faith is built off what Mama said, what Grandma did.

Well, I went to church with Grandma as a kid. Well, my youth pastor told me this, that means nothing.

It means nothing. Because in the dark times in your bed at night, those will not suffice.

When the sickness and the disease comes, when the death bed calls, my pastor told me, will not suffice.

I don't care how good looking I am. It doesn't matter how eloquent your preacher is.

It doesn't matter how many podcasts you listen to, or lectures, or I was in church for this many years.

It does not matter when the tough moments come. It's going to matter what you read on your own.

It's going to come down to the scriptures that spoke to you and you memorized.

Loneliness is real lonely. Loneliness gets real lonely.

And what Mama said ain't going to cut it. It just won't. Your faith isn't yours until you question it.

Dig deep into the Word of God. Dig deep into the questioning. Because there are answers.

If you're one of those guys that questions the Word of God just as justification for you to live how you want, that's lazy.

Asking a question is fine. Questioning is not. I can ask

God a question, but questioning Him, questioning who He is, questioning His authority, questioning

His goodness, that's not. That is not what we ought to do.

2 Timothy, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.

The other thing that happens is when you receive Christ, you have to receive Him for who He is, not for who you want

Him to be. You cannot accept

Jesus as the hippie Jesus. The hippie Jesus ain't going to cut it. That's not

Jesus Christ. The hippie Jesus that is non -judgmental and you can do whatever you want, that is not the

Jesus of the Bible. You cannot accept the Jesus that's not divine. The non -divine

Jesus. This is the big problem with Jehovah Witness and Mormonism. They strip the divinity of Christ.

If you strip the divinity of Christ, He's no longer the judge. He's not the man sitting on the great white throne anymore, which is why that's appealing to strip

Him of His deity, of who He is. So we cannot have the hippie Jesus. We cannot have the solely human

Jesus. We cannot have the Jesus who practiced homosexuality. An extremely popular, quote -unquote, pastor on TikTok named

Brandon Robertson. Complete heretic. He's an openly gay pastor in New York City.

And this is, if you want to know an example of an eisegesis, when you read what you want to read in the text instead of getting what the author meant, here's an example.

Brandon Robertson was doing a sermon on the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

And he said that when Jesus looked at Lazarus, He says, Lazarus, come out.

I'm not playing. That this was a statement of the social norms of the time, to come out of those social norms and to live freely as who you really are.

Now I'm not, I listen to it myself. This is what hundreds of thousands, it might even be millions,

I don't know. Hundreds of thousands of views deceiving hundreds of thousands of people.

This is the view of Jesus that He is portraying to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Oh, by the way, parents, this is why you need to be teaching your children at home, not just relying on a church.

Because this is the crap they listen to for hours a day, and they're here for like, what, one, two hours a week.

Yeah. So we cannot have hippie Jesus, the solely human

Jesus, the gay Jesus. Wait a second, health and wealth? What about the health and wealth

Jesus? Everything is for your success, for your prosperity, for you to have a good...

Every time I hear that stuff, I just literally ask, like, yeah, how'd that work out for Jesus? Did health and wealth work for Jesus?

Or Job? Or like, all of the people of the Bible who lived a horrible life?

I love when people will try and say that about the prophets, and I'm like, you've never read anything. The prophets had horrible lives.

I mean, they were killed and persecuted and run out of town, all of them. This is not the

Jesus we have to accept. If you're going to receive the grace of God, you have to receive the correct

Jesus. The correct Jesus is the Great High Priest. He is the

King of the Universe, who right now is sitting on the throne at the right hand of God, who will sit on the great white throne that will judge the living and the dead.

He is the Lion of Judah and the Lamb that was slain. He is

God. He is the one who will cast them to hell and the one who will snatch from the fires.

If you have never read Zechariah chapter 3, you can turn to the back of your sheets where you have homework, and you can add

Zechariah chapter 3 on that homework. One of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, Jesus Christ says, is this man not a fire brain plucked from the fires?

Is he not a burning coal and ember that I have taken out of the fire and cleaned?

You are already in the fire. Remember how I said earlier you have to recognize your position and where you're at?

You are already in the fire. Christ is the one that reaches in, grabs you out, and cleans you up.

Alright, I can't do a whole sermon on that right now. Now, we've talked about received

Him, now we need to talk about walking in Him. What does walking in Him look like? So all of that was about receiving

Christ, and what does it mean to receive Christ? Receive the grace of God. Now walk in Him.

Let's go back for context. Let's read verse 10 of chapter 1. Chapter 1, verse 10.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.

When it talks about walking, this refers to the way in which we live. How you walk, how you talk, how you treat people, your co -workers, your employees, your bosses, how you treat your wife when no one's looking, how you discipline your children when they're being brats.

We must walk in Christ in everything we do.

It is not a church thing. That is not what being a Christian is about.

It is not a church thing. When it says the knowledge, that walking worthy means growing in the knowledge of God, increasing in the knowledge of God.

Remember how I said you're never going to hear me talk bad about theology? If you're not studying the

Word of God with a seriousness, then how are you growing in the knowledge of God? How are you going to walk worthy if you're an ignorant

Christian? Do you know what you believe and why? I guarantee you, most of you in here, if I pressed you on why you believe what you believe, you would fold.

You cannot stand up to the actual questioning of why you believe what you believe.

That's not acceptable. I cannot stand ignorant Christians. You want to be a Christian?

Great. Welcome. Figure it out. What do you believe? Why? Because, again, that will hold you up when the doubts and questions come.

But this knowledge is not solely of trivial theology.

The knowledge, it says, is the knowledge of God. Now, how does this work?

How does it work that my knowledge increases my love and my walking in Christ?

Well, the analogy I thought of was this. You ever heard the old married couple that have been together for 60 years, and they're old and wrinkly, their skin is barely hanging on, they got the blood splotches all over them, they walk kind of like...

Why'd you look up so quick? And then you'll hear them say, you'll hear the husband say, you're more beautiful than the day

I married you. Now, in one sense, you could say, whatever, right?

Or there's something genuine in that. And there's something authentic in that.

And that the beauty of the person is not in the outward expression. And the love grows.

And you see them differently. Is your knowledge of God, how you know

Him, is it growing? Do you love watching

God work in your life? Do you love to talk to Him? Are you becoming the old married couple with God?

Or not? Learn who

God is, how He works. Sit in His providence and His sovereignty.

Don't fight against the stream so much. Sit and rest in the hand of God, and you'll learn how

He moves. And it's the most beautiful thing in the world to sit among God.

Very good. Ephesians chapter 4. A prisoner of the

Lord, I urge you, as a prisoner of the Lord, I urge you to walk in the manner of the calling.

Same author, different book. Paul's saying he's an urgent. So when it comes to walking in the

Lord, there also needs to be an urgency here. There needs to be a seriousness here.

That walking in accordance with the Lord is not something to play with. It is not something to take lightly.

He is urgent. Urging, the root word of urgency. There needs to be an urgency about yourself.

A seriousness about walking in the Lord. To walk in Him means that you are never walking without Him.

He is the guide of your life. The paradox by which you see the world. He is the filter over your mouth before you speak.

I read this in Pastor Christian's office. I went over there to work. And he has this printed out right over his computer.

It says this. Christ with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me.

Christ in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right. Christ on my left.

Christ when I lay down. Christ when I sit down. Christ when I arise. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me.

Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me. Christ in the eye of every man who sees me.

Christ in the ear of every man who hears me. Now with that in mind, let me ask you again.

Are you walking worthy of the Lord? Is He the guide of your life? Is He the paradox by which you see the world?

Is He the filter over your mouth? And over your ears? Or not?

And again, there needs to be an urgency in this. Christ in everything we do.

Amen? Rooted and built up.

What does it mean to be rooted and built up? Well, one of the things it means to be is rooted in what you were taught.

Just as you were taught, Colossians says. So we are rooted in what we were taught from the beginning.

Hosea chapter 4 says, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge,

I will reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

What does it mean to be rooted up? What are we rooted in? We must be rooted in the

Gospel. We must be rooted in Christ. We must be rooted in Scripture. I'm not going to go through all of these for time's sake.

But we must be rooted in Scripture. Man should not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Did you know that scripture before I finished it? Your word is the lamp unto my feet.

Faith comes by hearing. And hearing this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.

But you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

And then you will have success. Psalms chapter 1,

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the godly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits to see the scornful. But his delight is in the law of God.

And in this law does he meditate day and night. You know what verse 3 says? And he will be like a tree planted with its roots deep next to the waters.

This imagery goes throughout all of Scripture. What are you planted in? Are you planted in the word of God?

The law of God? Are your roots deep in it? Or are we still surface level

Christians who, yeah, you're a Christian here today and next year we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.

Are you a see what happens kind of Christian? Is that the kind of Christian you are?

Do not be deceived. Going back. Verse 8.

See to it. Chapter 2 verse 8. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit.

According to human tradition. According to the elemental principles of the world. And not according to Christ.

What are the philosophies that it's referring to? Well, let's talk about today for instance.

I'm not that old guys. I can speak to this with some authority. The biggest philosophy on college campuses and universities today is relativism.

Not a question. The idea, and again, all the popular people that your children will go see and your grandchildren, this is what they're going to be told.

That relativism says that truth is relative. Truth is completely relative.

The more popular one is moral relativism. There's no such thing as right and wrong.

Whatever you do is perfectly fine. And it's funny, the only wrong thing you can say is that there is such thing as right and wrong.

It's kind of a contradiction. If there's no such thing as right and wrong, why is what I'm saying wrong? The only wrong thing you can say is that there is an objective standard of right and wrong.

There's a God who will hold you accountable. It's the only wrong thing you can say. Everything else, it's fine.

It's whatever. Do not be taken captive by philosophy and this empty deceit.

This relativism is dangerous. It is a lie. You can't even live it out.

Do not listen to the world's philosophy, guys. I was talking with Pastor Josiah, and this was a couple years ago.

He said that he got a bag of clothes for his daughters. And one of the shirts that he found says,

I wrote it down, I stomped my feet, I screamed, and I got what I wanted. That was the shirt that he got in a bag.

And you know what he did? Took it, went straight to the trash, and threw that away. Are you listening to the philosophy of this world?

Is that what you're going by? That is how you ruin a child.

That's how you ruin a child. That doesn't work in life.

It sure as crap don't work with God. You are setting that child up for failure.

In every area of life. There is no area of life where that philosophy, and don't get me wrong, that's not, oh, it's just a cute shirt.

No, that is not just a cute shirt. That is not how that works. You cannot placate with these kind of things.

You can't just pass it off as it's not a big deal. That is a philosophy that the world is preaching, and you are buying.

That is not cute. It is not funny. That is how you ruin your child.

If your kids have clothes like that, time to go shopping. And if they cry, oh well.

You kind of set yourself up for that one. Do not listen to this world's philosophies.

Here's the other one that it talks about, human tradition, legalism. Let me give you a definition.

Pastor Jeff talks about legalism all the time. Let's give a definition. We don't know it. Legalism is any time you put a human tradition or rule on equal footing with Scripture.

Any time you put a human tradition or rule on equal footing with Scripture. Isaiah chapter 5.

Woe to you who call evil good and good evil. Who put darkness for light and light for darkness.

Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. You know what? Woe is like a cursing, a damning.

Woe to you who call evil good or good evil.

Do not do that. Legalism will ruin your life.

Legalism will ruin your life. Liberal philosophy on the one hand entices people by giving them a false sense of freedom.

Legalism entices people by telling them they can obtain a level of righteousness through their own works.

And both are lies. This sense of freedom, the idea that I can do whatever

I want, that's not freedom. Because you are slave to your sin. You are slave to that bottle.

You are slave to the pipe. You are slave to the pornography. You're not free. You think

I can do whatever I want. I don't have to obey the law of God. I can live however I want. That's freedom?

You think that living however you want sexually is freedom? That's not freedom.

You are enslaved to it. That's not freedom at all. That's the lie that liberal philosophy will tell you.

Law of God. You're going to listen to a law that was written 4 ,000 years ago? You really think that a law written by cavemen 4 ,000 years ago is going to apply to you today?

It wasn't written by cavemen. It was written by God. Anyway. But then legalism.

This idea that you living a certain type of way, the wearing the right clothes, doing the right things, somehow earns you righteousness before God.

This is what we call a lie. This is what we call deception.

Some of you need to stop living with the chains of the past on your back. You need to let that go.

Others of you need to stop putting that on those beneath you. And stop putting those chains that you wore and have beaten you down on those beneath you.

Don't pass those chains on. Let them die when you hit the coffin. That is a beautiful thing.

It's the most beautiful things in the world. That the chains on your back will die when you hit that coffin.

Death is not always a bad thing, my friends. Let's skip down for a second to verse 18 of chapter 2.

Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink. This is still legalism.

Passing judgment on food and drink. Or with regard to festival or new moon or Sabbath.

I'm sorry, that's verse 16. I'm going to keep going. These are shadows of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Now 18. Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worshiping of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up with reason, without a sensuous mind.

Asceticism is the idea of self -harm or self -denial in order to obtain righteous, holy living.

That's what asceticism is. This was very popular with Catholic monks. That they would whip themselves and starve themselves.

Refuse to wear comfortable clothing. Crazy stuff. There's accounts of people who would put rocks in their shoes.

And force themselves to walk with uncomfortability. Martin Luther famously would go out and beg.

Like a beggar, a homeless beggar. Not because he needed anything, but he thought it would teach him humility. And how to deny pride.

This not right thinking. You know what's crazy? Is that some of you still do that today.

You say, I don't deserve the grace of God. I don't deserve forgiveness.

So you choose to keep the chains on you. Because you don't deserve grace.

I call this emotional asceticism. You will refuse the grace of God.

Refuse to live in freedom. Refuse to live in the freedom that God has paid for you.

Because what? Because you're undeserved? I've heard this.

I've had people in my office counseling. I've heard this. I don't deserve the grace of God. I deserve to feel miserable.

I deserve to struggle with depression. Depression is my fault.

I deserve to feel this way. This is just a consequence of my own choices. That's nothing but asceticism.

That you are no different than the monk who is whipping himself in the back.

You feel that you being like Eeyore and whipping yourself in the back and feeling bad about yourself.

Somehow it is spiritual punishment that makes you more righteous or holy.

This is a lie. That's not true. You're doing the same thing the monk was.

You're just doing it in an emotional way which may even be worse. An emotional asceticism.

Pay to forgive yourself. I talk to people all the time. Did Christ forgive you? Well, yeah,

Christ forgave me. Then why can't you? You're going to hold yourself accountable for something

Christ already forgave you for. So your opinion about your sin is held higher than Christ?

Well, I didn't mean it like that. I know, but that's the consequence. That's what you're doing.

That's what you're doing. You're putting your own judgment of your sins at a higher judgment than Christ.

He already deemed you forgiven. Galatians says, for freedom's sake,

Christ has set you free. But do not use your freedom as an excuse to live in sin.

Do you realize that part of the reason the Catholic Church fought against Martin Luther so hard was because they believed that people would just take the grace of God and use it as an excuse to sin?

You're doing the opposite. You're refusing the grace of God because you're so horrible of a person.

We say it all the time. This is not the place to share your war stories. I've got a dozen people around here that I can line up.

Your war stories do not impress us. I don't care about what happened to you.

I don't care about what you've done. You have no understanding of the significance of what Christ did.

This is not about me. This is about Christ. It's not about what you did.

It's about Christ. Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ.

If you want a theme for today's sermon, it's Christ. That's it.

What did I say from the beginning? Going back to the elementary principles of Christianity. Grace, forgiveness, love.

Addicts will use this often to refuse rehab and to push those who are trying to help them away.

They hate themselves. They hate what they are. They hate the person in the mirror.

And it is better for me to deny help and to deny rehab than to accept it because living in misery is what

I deserve. Again, emotional asceticism. These are lies.

Believe the truth in your ear rather than the lie in your head. Now, we're going to skip mysticism.

And whoever's doing music, you can come up. The last point is this. How do we not be deceived?

How do we not be deceived? We're talking about deception. The deception of philosophy. The liberal philosophy.

The deception of legalism. The deception of asceticism. The deception of your own misery.

How do I not be deceived? Colossians chapter 1 verse 23. If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which

I, Paul, became a minister. Do not shift from the gospel.

The gospel of Christ is what holds you. Like I said in the beginning when

I said to grasp on and hold on to it. You must hold on to the gospel.

Hold on to that which is true. Chapter 2 verse 19. Right after 18.

So, we'll read 18 for context. Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worshipping of angels and detailing about visions pumped up without reason about sensuous mind.

19. And not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body nursed in it together, through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

Who's the head of the church? How do you not be deceived? By holding on to Christ.

Hold on to the gospel. Hold on to Christ. I'll finish with this.

There was a pastor for 50 years. He was a pastor for 50 years.

And decided to throw it all away for a young relationship, an affair with his wife.

Prominent pastor. I learned a lot from him. My own youth pastor.

My youth pastor. Wife had an affair. It crushed his soul.

His children went into rebellion. He had to choose between seeing his children or staying true to the gospel.

And he fumbled. He fell under the pressure. Hold fast.

At the end of the day, hold fast. What is the will of God for your life?

To abstain from sexual immorality and to be sanctified in Jesus Christ.

Thessalonians. That's it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you're a cop, a fireman, an accountant, a worker at McDonald's, or you're homeless.

It doesn't matter what you do. It's a matter about how you do it. Hold fast to Christ.