WWUTT 056 Once Alienated (Colossians 1:21-23)

Christ saved us from the wages of sin and death, but that salvation does not mean that we are going to forget the sins that we did.

It is actually necessary for us to remember who we once were, so that we don't repeat those sins, also that we can show other people, here's who

I once was, and here's what Christ saved me from, and it makes us better worshipers of God when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky, and I am really struggling with my voice today.

I really don't know how this is going to go. Last week I had recorded all of my podcast at the very start of the week, and I started losing my voice around midweek.

Somehow my voice held on. I was able to present to a youth group that I was scheduled to speak at on Wednesday evening in Meade, Kansas.

If you want to look that one up, where is Meade, Kansas? Where I graduated high school from, in fact. So I went back to my old youth group and spoke there, and if anybody from TLC is now listening to this podcast, hey guys, drop me an email.

I want to hear from you. But anyway, so then Thursday and Friday I pretty much had no voice, and I felt like I was in good company because I heard that Al Mohler didn't have a voice either.

It was like the first time that he ever had to not be able to record the briefing because he didn't have a voice.

So I felt like I was in good company in that respect. My voice came back sometime around Friday. I didn't do much

Saturday and then was able to preserve myself enough to get through a sermon on Sunday. But there were some folks that said toward the end of the sermon they could tell that I was losing it.

So anyway, here we go. It's late in the evening, and I don't know how my voice is going to hold on, but we're going to do the best that we can here, and then

I'm going to see if I can't come around to recording Tuesday's podcast. I haven't been able to work ahead, obviously, because my voice has been kind of shot.

But today we are going to be in Colossians 1, verses 21 through 23.

If you want to open your Bibles and join with me there, let me read it to you. If that is the capacity that you're in, you're not in a place where you can open your

Bible and read along, that's all right. I'll read it to you. But as I've been encouraging you over the course of this study of the book of Colossians, at some point commit yourself to reading all four chapters sometime this week, chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, so that you're keeping all these things in context.

You're even looking ahead. So then once we get there and we're opening up the scriptures and expounding on some of those ideas, it just opens the world up to you a lot more.

You've known that that's what that passage says. Maybe you haven't known the context yet until we get there. So just a great discipline to keep yourself in as we commit ourselves to the scriptures.

Read your Bible every day as we get to Colossians 1, verses 21 through 23.

And I tell you what, because last week was such an important section, let's start in verse 15. We'll go all the way through verse 23.

First, let's come to the Lord in prayer. Our gracious Father, we thank you again for another opportunity to be able to open your word.

I pray that you give strength to my voice so that I'm able to get through 20 minutes of teaching here.

And thank you so much for every listener that tunes in to hear this valuable teaching that comes from the word of God.

Help us to know also by the conviction of your spirit how these things need to be applied. How is it that this is changing our lives, the ways that we worship

Christ, the ways that we interact with other Christians and take the gospel to unbelievers?

Help our conviction be extended to knowing the true application to our daily lives.

It's not enough that we just read this and we come to an understanding of it, but that we execute it in our lives and it changes the very things that we do.

To your glory, may all of this be to the glory of God. And it's in the name of Jesus we pray, amen.

It is about Jesus that we're talking about in Colossians 115. He is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

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. This is pretty limiting for me, and I love getting excited about the word of God, but my voice doesn't allow my cadence to get too much higher than this.

But it is such a delight to come to the word and read once again the words about Christ, that we might know

Christ better. But here is we get to verse 21. I mentioned to you when we opened up the book of Colossians that Paul's first order of business was to present to the

Colossians the gospel. He means to elevate Christ. He means to show them Christ is above all things.

That's that word preeminent that we have used to describe Christ. First time he's ever addressed the

Colossians, he's never met them, never been to that church before, and so he wants them to know Jesus.

So before we get to anything else, we've got some great instructions in Colossians on how we are supposed to behave as Christians.

Colossians chapter 3 is almost entirely dedicated to that. We have some great instructions in Colossians chapter 2 about how we need to be careful about worldly wisdom.

Some of the philosophies of this world that attempt to entice us and draw us away from the sound words of Christ.

But before Paul addresses any of that, he means to establish the preeminence of Christ and present the gospel.

And that's what it is that we've gotten from the very beginning of Colossians 1 all the way through verse 20.

Now Paul is taken for granted because of the testimony of Epaphras. He is taken for granted that the

Colossians know this. So he's not teaching them anything new, but he means for them to understand first the preeminence of Christ.

He is above all things. We need nothing else. There is no other knowledge that is going to lead us closer to the secrets of the universe, as perhaps one philosopher was presenting to the

Colossians, than what we can understand in Christ. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge as we're going to see in Colossians chapter 2.

So before confronting any of these things, it was so important to establish the preeminence of Christ and the importance of the gospel.

So then after we have this declaration of the gospel, again, Paul knows that the Colossians know this, but he is giving it to them again so that they know and understand how truly important all of this is.

After presenting the gospel, then he starts to get into some things that are a little bit more comparative.

So in verse 21, you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds.

So Paul has no need to call the Colossians to repentance. At least we don't see him addressing any particular sin that they have to repent from.

Epaphras has a real concern about some of the philosophical ideas that are presented in Colossae that have that possibility of wooing some of the

Colossians. So, of course, Paul wants to confront that. But he's not confronting any particular sin that is going on in the

Colossian church. Instead, what he reminds them of is the sinfulness that they once walked in so that they would continue to elevate what

Christ has done for them all the more. They continue to praise God, realizing that they've been drawn out of this and into his marvelous light.

As we had seen in verse 12, Give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

So as we continue to praise God for these things, the reminders of those praise in understanding that we were once alienated from God, we were once hostile in our thinking, we were once doing evil deeds.

When you look at Titus chapter 3, this is one of my favorite comparisons that Paul makes when he's talking about who we once were and then who we've become in Christ.

In Titus 3, starting in verse 3, For we ourselves, we were once foolish. We just didn't know.

And to Timothy, Paul said that God had mercy on me because I acted in ignorance.

And so he's sort of saying something very similar to his pastor friend Titus here, where he says we were once foolish.

We just didn't know. We were sinning in our ignorance. We were disobedient.

Though there were times when we may not have even known the law, as we understand in Romans chapter 1, there is a law that is written on the hearts of men also in Romans chapter 2.

There is a law that is written on our hearts, the conscience basically that we have so that when we do wrong, our conscience bears witness against us.

So we know we inherently know that there is a right and there is a wrong.

You have that concept in today's world of moral relativism.

What is true for you is not necessarily what's true for me, or you'll hear somebody say that there are no such things as moral absolutes, which is just a ridiculous statement because it's an absolute statement.

There's no such thing as absolutes. Are you absolutely certain of that? Clearly you would have to be in order to make that statement.

So therefore the argument commits suicide and it doesn't mean anything and doesn't really go anywhere. So a person knows they inherently know that there are moral absolutes.

There is a right and there is a wrong. And Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 1, the things that we inherently know.

We know that there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, but there are some people that have become so depraved in mind and God has turned them over to their depravity that they've exchanged the truth for a lie.

So now they continue to follow the lie no matter how ridiculous that lie is. They will continue to follow it because they simply do not want to repent of their sin and follow

Christ. There was a friend of mine that I had that I talked about these things with one time and he was an agnostic and he said to me once that agnosticism is not simply about knowing whether or not there is a

God. It's knowing whether or not there is anything true at all. And I said to him, is that a true statement?

And he got so mad at me for asking me that. Like he did not even want to entertain the reality that his worldview just did not work.

It collapsed in on itself. It's an argument that commits suicide. As my debate coach would tell me when

I did debate in college, he would say, find the argument that commits suicide and exploit it and ride that all the way to winning the round.

So my friend did not want to acknowledge that his argument simply committed suicide.

It didn't work. It defeated. It fell in on itself. Self -defeating is another way to say that.

Instead, he accused me of manipulating his words, of painting him into a corner, of throwing red herrings at him.

So it was my fault. It was my fault that his philosophy didn't work. And I think sometimes we have this idea about apologetics, that if we have the right apologetic answer that we can give to somebody and show them that their ideas don't work, that they'll just become immediately repentant and say, oh, you know.

But as Vodie Bauckham has said, apologetics has never saved anybody. It's great to be able to give an answer for the hope that lies within you, as we see in First Peter 315.

And we do need to give solid answers to some of those contestations to our faith. But ultimately, we need to get to the gospel.

Apologetics is great, but get to the gospel. I think we do need to know how to respond to people in this world and how to show them how faith works in this world, that we don't just dust off an old 2 ,000 -year -old book and then just start gleaning things from it and say, oh, yeah, this is what

I want to follow and I want to return our culture to a 2 ,000 -year -old tradition. That's not necessarily how the

Bible works. So we understand apologetics so that we can show people how the things that we read in Scripture do indeed work in the world today.

But apologetics is not what necessarily saves anybody. It is the declaration of the gospel. Romans 10 .17,

faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. The only way that a person can come to salvation in Christ is by hearing the gospel, and that's what we need to be obliged to preach.

But there was a time before we came to Christ that we were foolish.

We were disobedient. We who were a law to ourselves could not even live up to our own standards of right and wrong.

We were led astray. We were followers of the prince of the power of the air. As it's talked about in Ephesians 2, we were slaves to various passions and pleasures.

You were once a slave to your passions and to your pleasures. When you woke up today and you got dressed, what did you wear?

What did you put on? A shirt? Pants? Okay, something like that. And why did you pick those clothes? Because they're comfortable to you?

Why did you even buy those clothes? Because they were the style that you liked, right? Or something like that.

This is the way that I want to express myself through my clothing. And we think that about one another.

We will think that, hey, the car that I drive, the cell phone that I use, the clothes that I wear, the video games that I play, the music that I listen to, the

TV shows that I choose to watch. I do all of these things because I enjoy them. But, folks, really, when it comes down to understanding discipleship and how there are things in this world that are attempting to disciple you, you chose those things because you were discipled to choose them.

Somebody chose them for you. As much as you want to say it's an expression of you and it's the things that you enjoy, it's because you were discipled to accept those things and to indulge in those things.

I had a friend in college who was a goth. And I asked him one time, why do you dress like a goth? I was never imposing on his desire to want to express himself that way, but I finally just asked him, why are you dressed that way?

Why do you dress like a goth? He had to put a great bit of detail into the way that he looked.

And he said, it's my expression of my individuality. It's the way that I choose to express myself, him and the 20 other people that he hung out with.

So he had this idea of being a goth was an expression of his individuality, but then he hung out with a bunch of people who all dress like goths.

So as much as we want to say that the expression of ourself simply comes from ourself, that's just not true.

The style of clothes that you wear, even the clothes that I'm wearing here now, aren't necessarily clothes that I chose because they're comfortable to me.

I like to think that about them, but the way that my collar rolls, the way that my jeans are, the particular shade of blue that they have, all of these things, these were all chosen by stylists, somebody who developed these clothes according to those things, and I have chosen them to wear them because something in the culture has kind of influenced my mind to think that this is what

I need to wear and this is how I need to look. You notice that men in suits all look the same. They're all wearing exactly the same thing.

That's a cultural thing. Our culture has decided that a sharply dressed man needs to look like this.

It is the culture that has decided these things for us. And so as much as we want to say that it's our own decision, it's really not.

There is a constant discipling that is going on in our culture, and this is one of the reasons why we need constant reminders of the gospel.

It is why I said to you that it is so important for you to read your Bible and commit to reading the scriptures every day because a constant reading of the scriptures will give us the cleansing our mind needs to kind of wash out some of that filthy stuff that will tend to get in there because we're being discipled by the culture.

Now, some stuff the culture will throw at us is really not all that bad, like the clothes that you wear. There's probably nothing wrong with the clothes that you wear, but just in the fact that we're so exposed to as many commercial advertisements and a commercial market, the music and movies and television shows that we watch, all of those things attempting to sell us on something, even ideologies and philosophies.

And so we need a constant washing, a cleansing of the gospel in our minds to bring us back to the things of Christ, to be careful that we're not enslaved to our passions and pleasures.

Before we came to Christ, we were enslaved to those things. But in Christ, we've been set free to follow him and do what is pleasing to the

Lord, where previously we couldn't do that because we were slaves to things that did not please God. But now that we've been set free in Christ, we're able to please

God. So before coming to Christ, we were slaves to passions and pleasures. We passed our days in malice.

Again, I'm still in Titus chapter three, and this is verse three. Passing our days in malice and envy.

We wanted what everybody else had, right? The thing that I need to make myself happy is what that guy has.

We don't have that problem in our culture at all today, do we? Yes, we do. That constant covetousness that we have, keeping up with the

Joneses. If I just have what that person has, then I'll have all that I need to be happy. So we passed our days in malice and in envy, hated by others and hating one another.

And then verse four, the gospel Titus three, four. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our

Savior appeared, he saved us not because of anything that we did in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior. So that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs, according to the hope of eternal life.

And again, we come back to something that Paul has said to the Colossians, that we are heirs sharing in the inheritance of the saints of light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transformed us to his kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin.

So Paul brings this up a lot, actually, in some of the letters that he will write to other churches.

Here's who you were and here's who you are now in Christ. First Corinthians six, Ephesians chapter two.

Those are a couple of other places where you see that comparison of you've been washed and you've been sanctified, justified in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul is delivering that same message here to the Colossians. You were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.

That's who you were. We were all evil. We were children of wrath, as it explains in Ephesians 2, 3, doing evil deeds before Christ stepped in, before the

Spirit came in and called us. And we responded to that calling. And that's who we once were.

You who were once alienated, alienated from God, alienated from one another, as we saw in Titus 3, 3, hated by others and hating one another.

You who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. He is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

We will continue with the rest of that going into verse 23 tomorrow. Our Lord Christ, as we wrap up this time of study, this learning that we are drawing from your

Scriptures, I pray that you continue to teach us in these things. And I pray that we're constantly reminded of the

Gospel, that we're meditating on the Gospel and that our hope is restored in the Gospel, because it is the very

Gospel of Jesus Christ that is cleansing us from worldliness and making us more like Christ, constantly shaping us in the image of Christ.

And so, Lord, remind us of these things. Help us to write it on our hearts so that what comes out of us is praise that is acceptable and pleasing to you as we lift up Jesus Christ above all things, knowing that Jesus is enough and we are fully satisfied in our

Savior. And we pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Proverbs 29 .18

says, Where there is no vision, the people perish. This is why you need ambition for the future or you'll perish.

This is why churches need to set goals or they'll perish. This is why those churches need to follow their pastor's vision or they will perish.

The Bible says so. Actually, no, it doesn't. That whole verse goes like this. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

But he that keepeth the law, happy is he. Yeah, this verse isn't saying anything about having a goal or a vision. It's straight up saying that you need to know what's in the

Bible and follow it faithfully. Wait, what? Joyce Meyer, T .D. Jakes, Rick Warren, they all use this verse wrong?

Yeah, they use a lot of verses wrong. We can't stay on the bestseller list without telling you how you can have your best life now.

A better verse to use would have been Proverbs 11 .14, which says where there is no guidance, a people falls. But in abundance of counselors, there is safety.

But that one's not as popular because it can't be twisted to talk about ambiguous visions. And in seeking the counsel of others, someone eventually is going to tell you to ignore any yahoo twisting the

Bible to promote their vision. 1 Timothy 1 .6 and 7 says that such teachers have wandered away from sound doctrine into vain discussion without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make their confident assertions.

2 Peter 3 .16 says that they're ignorant and unstable, twisting the scriptures to their own destruction.

Yeah, get it? The verse they use to cast vision would be the very passage that condemns their false teaching.

We must be focused on the true word of God when we understand the text. This question comes from Denise in Minnesota.

She says, dear, what? Thank you for your video on where there is no vision, the people perish. I get and I see a lot of pastors using that verse to cast vision and even say things to people like, you have to be on board with my vision.

The Bible tells you to, or you can't be part of my church. I know that we need to respect those who have been placed in authority over us in the church.

Is it right that a pastor says that? And even though Proverbs 29 .18 is not talking about vision casting, isn't it still right for a church to have a goal or a vision?

So let me break down your question a little bit here. You say that I know that we need to respect those who have been placed in authority over us in the church.

And you're right on that point. As Paul says to the Thessalonians, first Thessalonians five, verse 12.

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

Be at peace among yourselves. And so what Paul is calling them to there is to be submissive to the elders and the authorities and the overseers that are in the church.

So, yes, we do need to be submissive to those positions in church authority. Now, where you say that that a an overseer might say something like you have to be on board with my vision.

The Bible tells you to or you can't be part of my church. Is it right that a pastor says that? Well, I would say it depends on what that vision is.

So we are supposed to be submissive to their authority. And I think that the vision that a pastor can lead a church in is that we are submissive to sound doctrine.

He says to his congregation, we're going to commit ourselves to right teaching, to expositional preaching, which

I think needs to be the diet of any church. It's not that topical preaching is inherently wrong, but a regular diet in any church needs to be expositional preaching so that we are in full submission to the authority of the word of God.

And so that kind of vision for the church is great. I think that a pastor should also be leading his church in supporting missions, whether that is to raise up missionaries from the church to send overseas and support them, or whether it's supporting another missions group.

Maybe another missions family has come and appealed for funds and that church can support them or committing to something like the

International Missions Board or the cooperative program. Those kinds of things are very important for the spread of the gospel. I think the church should also have a kind of a coalition with some other doctrinally sound churches in the community, not getting too fuddy duddy on some doctrinal things.

But but when you're talking about churches that keep the main thing, the main thing, I know that statement's kind of corny, but still some truth to it.

Then there could be a coalition of some churches that are joined together in the community for the effort of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with those in that community.

Those are all very important visions that a pastor can have for his church and the church should follow him in that leadership.

Now, where I think that this thing can go awry is when.

Well, let me give you an example of a church in North Dakota where a pastor stood in front of his congregation and said, the

Lord has told us talking about himself and the other elders of the other leaders in the church. The Lord has told us that we're supposed to build another campus.

So we've borrowed millions and millions of dollars from this bank and you're going to support it. And if you don't support it, then you can leave.

That's basically what he said to his church. I watched the sermon from a based on a recommendation from a friend.

And I said to that friend, if I was part of that church, I would leave it because he's basically saying the Lord has told us that we need to be enslaved to the lender in order to build this other campus.

Whereas if God really wanted them to build another campus, I think that there would have been wiser ways that the money would have been provided for them.

So I think that's one of the ways where a pastor has abused his authority over members in his church to say that you have to follow my vision or you can't be here.

So may we commit ourselves to authority that is submissive to the word of God.

And may we follow it knowing that God has placed them in their positions for our good.

Lord, help us commit ourselves to these things and understand and handle the word of truth rightly. And we pray this in Jesus name.

Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of the church family committed to gospel teaching.

And we thank you for including us in your Bible learning. If you would consider a gift to this ministry, please visit www .utt

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