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Introduction to Colossians
Let's read here, Colossians 1, verses 1 -8.
The Word of God says,.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints, because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you as it has and also in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is among you also this day, since you heard and knew the grace of God in truth.
As you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. This morning, that's all we're going to read from the text and we're going to take some time here just to go through the words, from particularly just the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th verses to look at those because the words that make up the word of God, the scripture, matters each and every word and the words have a specific meaning and it's important that we look to the specific meaning of the words.
Now it's important also for us to understand and to know why Paul wrote this letter to the church at Colossae. Now this letter was written historically, as far as the records go, probably around the year 55 to 57 AD, so some 32 to 34 years after the resurrection of Christ.
The apostle Paul is writing this letter to the church at Colossae. This letter to the church at Colossae is in fact a letter to be read at Colossae and at Laodicea. We'll see that from the body of this letter as we move through this letter in the coming weeks ahead.
It was meant to be read in Colossae and in Laodicea. Colossae was never a church where the apostle Paul physically went to. He never physically went to this church but there were people as such, Epaphras as is mentioned, and if we look over toward the end, you'll see several other names mentioned in the fourth chapter.
You'll see Tychicus mentioned. You'll see Onesimus mentioned. You'll see Aristarchus mentioned. You'll see Mark, the cousin of Barnabas mentioned. You'll see Justus mentioned. And again, you'll see Epaphras again mentioned there.
You'll see Luke, the physician mentioned, the gospel writer of Luke. You'll see Demas mentioned. As well, you'll see Archippus mentioned. And as we move through, we'll look at those men but it's very important for us to understand and to know that the reason that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Colossae.
So the reason that the apostle Paul wrote to the church of Colossae was similar to a reason that he wrote to some of the other churches. Some of the other churches, if you'll recall the past couple of weeks, week before last, the message that we preach, we preached to you about the difference between being a antinomian versus being a legalist.
Those were issues within the church. Last week, we mentioned to you, we preached about the importance of understanding that Jesus is the focus of all the scripture that when we look throughout any text of the word of God, it points to Jesus.
And so here in the church at Colossae in which Epaphras was a faithful minister, it did not make it a unrealized expectation or an unrealized reality, if you would have it, that the people were always tempted to kind of go off a little bit or a lot in some cases on their own tangents, on their own philosophy, upon their own mindsets and begin little by little to become idolaters.
Now, I wrote a few questions down that I wanted to ask you and for you to ask yourself. Number one, can a Christian commit idolatry? And I'll make this easy for you. The answers to these questions are yes, that I'm going to ask.
So you have the answers before the test. Can a Christian commit idolatry? Yes. Is it still a temptation to commit idolatry for Christians in the year 2019?
Yes.
And last of all, is it still a sin today in 2019 for a Christian, for anyone to commit idolatry? The answer is yes, because the word of God has not changed. In the commandments, we see if you go back to the Old Testament, the Lord, our God is one.
You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all of your strength. And you should not have any other gods other than me, says the Lord. And so idolatry is any time that we give the worship and the adoration to anything other than God alone.
And so that was the issue here in the Colossian church. Now, there are many things I want to read you just a little bit of some notes here as we lead into this, some good info for you to have concerning what was going on at Colossae.
So the apostle Paul was addressing false teaching, which again has to be combated in every single church, even still today. Anytime that a church stands upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is always a temptation because every single person that sits in a church is still in the flesh somewhat.
Amen?
You still fight the flesh. If you're not fighting the flesh, you're one of two things. You're either physically dead or you're still dead in your trespasses and sins. And number one, you need to be saved.
Or number two, if you're dead in Christ, then you can just go ahead and rejoice because you're absent from the body and you're present with the Lord. So the issue of false teaching that had arisen came from many, many reasons, many sources, but this area of Colossae was located around an area called Phrygia.
It was really just, if you look at a map in the back of your Bible, you'll see that Colossae was about this far away from Phrygia. It was this far below Phrygia. Now, how far that is in actual miles, I can't tell you necessarily, but it was right below Phrygia.
Now, in the ancient times, the religion of the day and of that area gave birth to the worship of a goddess called Sibyl. And this goddess called Sibyl was a cult and it was basically, it was renewed during the Roman era and it was characterized.
This is what was practiced by this cult that worshiped Sibyl. It was characterized by ritual cleansing in the blood of a bull. It was characterized or identified by folks going into ecstatic states. Now, here's where the challenge comes in.
When I say ecstatic states or when history teaches us about ecstatic states, I want to be very clear and very forthright in what I'm saying here. An ecstatic state is when you get worked up into a frenzy.
Now, as a Christian, there are times when I hope every one of you have had a good fit for the Lord. And by that, I mean this, that you've gotten so happy that you cannot contain yourself. Where you rejoice, where you shout, where you say amen, where you clap your hands, where you raise your hands, those are the necessary outworkings of the joy of the Lord.
But there are many in the church today as there were then who made these experiences the focus of their worship rather than Jesus Christ. Like those folks who say we don't need doctrine in the church.
Let me tell you something. If we don't have sound doctrine in the church, there's no real reason for you to shout or rejoice anyhow. Because Jesus Christ is true doctrine. And the salvation of Jesus Christ is true doctrine.
And if there's anything that ought to make us want to rejoice as God's people, it ought to be the doctrine of Jesus Christ. But this sybil, this cult, this practice, their practice was to work themselves up into an ecstatic state.
I heard it years ago, I heard an old preacher, and at the time when I was a young man, I thought that's a pretty awesome saying. But the more and the older I get, I think to myself, I can't believe that somebody actually said that.
It was about a preacher that had gone to a church and they began to sing. Now some churches, some churches, the focus is more on singing than it is preaching. The church sang one song, they sang two songs, they had sung four or five songs, and the preacher was just sitting there and he looked at the preacher beside of him and the one preacher looked to the other, he said, are you not ready to get up there and preach yet?
He said, sing a few more songs. He said, I like to scald, he said, I like to have the hog scalded before I skin them. That is the most dumb thing I've ever heard now that I think about it.
That I've ever heard in my life.
Friends, working ourselves up into an ecstatic state does not make us more spiritual. Anybody can work themselves up into an ecstatic state. You can go to a ball game and get worked up into an ecstatic state.
But when the spirit of God bears witness with your spirit that you are his child, that is a source of true joy. But this cult practice of working themselves up into ecstatic experiences, which is what, and just bear with me here, because it's not that I'm trying to bring this into everything, but it's in everything in the scriptures.
The charismatic movement today does the same things. Their focus is on the experience rather than worshiping the creator, worshiping that God that sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins, who was followed by the Holy Spirit to be the comforter for all those whom he has called.
So this history, this practice of blood sacrifice, of ecstatic states, of prophetic rapture and inspired dancing in the latter half of the second century became the center of a distorted, very distorted cult practice known as Montanism.
So it moved into Montanism. Montanism basically says you need to be worked up into these ecstatic states, and you don't need necessarily the Old Testament, which is just a heresy recycled today. That's what they would say.
You don't necessarily need the Old Testament. You just need the words of Christ, but we know they all go together. So this is what the purpose in Paul's writing to the Colossian church was about. This week, as we move forward through this study, through the book of Colossians, I want to encourage you to read through this book.
Maybe read a chapter a day. There's only four chapters in the book of Colossians. If you read a chapter a day until we're through this book, by the time we get through with studying this book, you'll be well aware of what was happening and being able to understand what the apostle Paul said in many cases.
So the book of Colossians provided a reminder that idolatry, meaning this, that the setting up of anything instead of or even alongside of Christ is sinful. No one deserves to be set even on the same level as Christ.
So that was the information that I wanted to give there to you. I want to give you a little bit more history on Montanism, but know this, Christian living is grounded in Christian doctrine. If you profess to be a Christian, your worldview, your ideologies, your mindsets, the pattern of your life ought to be purposed according to the doctrine that is laid out in the word of God.
For it is in the word of God that we as Christians find our motives. It's where we find our resources. It's where we find our ideologies and it's where we find our truth in the word of God. So last of all, and we'll move right into the verses here, but I want to tell you just a little bit about Montanism.
Montanism is named after a man named Montanus who become a convert to Christianity around AD 170. Now get this, he was a priest in the cult of Sybil and then when he quote unquote converted to Christianity, he brought the practices of the cult Sybil into the worship of the Christian churches.
Now we know that the mixture of the two is idolatry. It is sinful. So a little bit more about that history. He was a priest in the Asiatic cult called Sybil. He claimed, listen, he claimed that he had the gift of prophecy.
We see this continuously in our day, prophesying in an ecstatic state. Eusebius, a church historian born around 260 to 270 wrote the following concerning Montanus. In his lust for leadership, he became obsessed and would suddenly fall into frenzy and convulsions.
He began to be ecstatic and speak and talk strangely and prophesied contrary to that which was the custom from the beginning of the church. Now in the book of Corinthians, Paul said this God is not the author of confusion, but of peace as in all the churches of God.
Now, whether it was in the year 100s or whether it's in the year 2019, it's still the same issues that need to be addressed and they ought to be addressed according to the word of God. So Eusebius went on to say they rebuked him and they forbade him to speak concerning Montanus, remembering the warning of the Lord Jesus to be watchful because false prophets would come.
Montanus was joined by two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, who also claimed to have the gift of prophecy and also prophesied in ecstatic states. It was not the idea of prophecy that caused a great disturbance in the church, it was the manner in which they prophesied.
They had departed from the biblical norms of prophecy, both in content and in the manner in which they expressed their prophecies. They as a trio believed that they had received revelation from the Lord while being in an ecstatic state.
This style of prophesying was likened to the same irrational ecstatic prophetic style that was part of Montanus' life prior to his conversion when he was a priest of Sybil. One of his more serious and obviously heretical prophecies was that the apocalyptic spirit was abroad and that Christ was to soon return and set up the new Jerusalem in the vicinity of the town of Pubusa in Phrygia, Asia Minor, which was right above Colossae.
This of course never happened and proved again that they were false prophets. Now again, I'm saying this because Paul's purpose in writing them was to address the issue of this false and heretical teaching.
Now the principle from the word of God kind of as an overview of principles is this today, if you're writing these down, the principle is this, that the issues that were going on then are the issues that are going on today and they must be addressed in the same manner according to the word of God.
To always, always, always point you and I back to the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which brings us to kind of where we are right here in this first verse. Again, we had mentioned it last week, 10 times in the first eight verses of this first chapter of the book of Colossians, eight verses make up two sentences.
Now, this was a big sentence from the third verse to the eighth verse, that was one sentence, that was a big sentence, that was a big statement and there's a whole lot written into that, but let's take note here and let's look who Paul is writing to.
So number one, we know who wrote the letter, the apostle Paul. We know that because in verse one, in Paul's introduction, in Paul's greeting, he says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And he not only says an apostle of Jesus Christ, but he says by the will of God.
Apostles were those who were physically called by Christ. Matter of fact, the definition is a messenger duly appointed by Christ, meaning a messenger that was personally appointed by Christ. We know that according to the word of God in the book of Acts, the Bible tells us that Saul was on his way to abuse Christians, to kill Christians, to sentence them to death on the road to Damascus.
And by the way, the Lord struck him down from his horse,.
Called him by name,.
Saved him that day, gave him this calling on his life. It was by Jesus Christ. That was one of the marks of an apostle. Another mark of an apostle, a biblical apostle is that they do miracles just as Christ did miracles.
Those miracles were not over a period of time. They were not curing of headaches, but they were organic, instant miracles. The blind received their sight, the lame physically walked, the deaf physically heard, the dead were physically raised up.
Those were the signs of the apostle. Now in this area, in this locale, in this region, as with many of the other letters that the apostle Paul wrote, there needed to be some form of verification on the letters were coming from, because there were those people who would come in and say they were from Paul, but they would be coming in and they would be spreading lies.
Now what Paul was doing was assuring these people.
By naming names,.
Epaphras, Tychicus, as we read the other names at the end of the chapter or at the end of the book there, he was assuring these people that these people, that they could trust these people and they could listen to these people and they could believe what these people were saying.
So Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, not by the will of man, but by the will of God and Timothy, our brother. This is a kind phrase that Paul uses with Timothy here. Typically to Timothy and his other, in the pastoral epistles, Paul referred to him as his son in the faith.
Now he's referring to him as his brother in the Lord. And then Paul says in verse two, to the saints, I told you these words matter. Who was this letter written to? This letter was written to the saints in Colossae.
Now, what does it mean to be a saint? It doesn't mean that you necessarily had your name as a member on the church roll, but that you had been saved by the grace of God. Being saved by the grace of God is the most important thing in your life.
To the saints, that word saint in the Greek means to be set apart for God, to be as it were exclusively his. Are you exclusively Christ? If you are a saint, then you are exclusively Christ to the saints and the faithful brethren.
That word faithful there, again, I can't remember all the Greek pronunciations, but that word faithful there, as we studied that out and we looked up that word, that word faithful means that the definition is to be a person to show themselves faithful in the transaction of business.
Faithful in the transaction of business, in the execution of commands or the discharge of official duties. They were not part-timers. They were not there to get their ticket punched. They were not there half in and halfway out.
They were faithful because he who called them was faithful. Christ does not call his children to be part-time Christians. You can never have Jesus as Savior and not have him as Lord. You either have him as Savior and Lord or you have no salvation.
Faithful to the saints and to the faithful brethren who are in Colossians. You see how specific this is? This is very specific. He wants them to hear this and he asked later on, actually, make sure that not only the Colossians hear this but that the Laodiceans hear this and vice versa.
I want you to read the letter I'm writing to the Laodiceans to the Colossians. But moving forward, he says this, grace to you and peace from God our Father, Lord Jesus Christ. In this introduction, in this greeting, I wanna say this and I'm gonna come out and say this.
Knowing the history of why Paul is writing this letter, you see as we move further through this book, this is like Paul setting them up. Paul is setting them up, he's setting them up staging Jesus as the first and the foremost because here in just a little while, he's gonna be reminding them of their practices and of their worship that they are not giving Jesus Christ the preeminent place that he and he alone deserves.
So he says we give thanks to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that word Jesus, by the way, some may think that we take for granted that word Christ there. That word Christ means the anointed one, the one who by his Holy Spirit and power indwells believers and molds their character in conformity to his likeness.
There could be no other that he was making a reference to. He was speaking of God's anointed one, the only begotten son of God, full of grace and truth. By the way, that word grace there, that word grace means that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, and charm or loveliness.
When he said grace to you, he's saying I want you to have joy in the Lord. I want you to have pleasure in the Lord. I want you to take delight in the Lord. I want you to understand the sweetness of God, the charm of God, understand the loveliness of God.
All that goes into this. This is why the meanings of the words matter so much. And then Paul said, I'm praying always for you since we heard of your faith. Now, remember, Paul is writing this letter from the jail cell.
Epaphras has been taking the word back and forth to him, bringing him knowledge of what's taking place. So Paul sends a letter back by Epaphras to the church at Colossae. And in this letter, he says, I've heard about your faith and your faith not being in the religious practices and not being grounded in the asceticism of the style and the things that you do.
But he said, I've heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, in God's only son. And I've heard of your love for all the saints. Now he links these two and everything from here down to verse eight is linked together in one sentence.
It's all builds one upon the other. He said, I've not ceased to pray for you since I heard of your faith, since I heard of your love, since your faith in Christ and your love to all the saints. Here's the thing.
You cannot hate your brothers and sisters in Christ and be saved. Not for any length of time. It will be a manifest evidence in your life that the love of God dwells in you, that you're able to love and forgive your brothers and your sisters in Christ.
And he says this, because he gives the reasoning for their faith and their love for the saints because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven. What is the hope that is laid up for them in heaven?
It is the same hope that is laid up for us. It is the hope of eternal life. Do you have the hope of eternal life, Kira? Do you have the hope of eternal life? Do you know that you've been saved by the grace of God?
Is your heart fixed and set on the things above and not on things on the earth of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel. Epaphras had been a faithful preacher and teacher of the gospel to this church.
He said, which has come to you as it has in also all the world and is bringing forth fruit as it is also among you since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth. That is very, very important there.
So verse five there, let's just look at that and then we'll move right on and we'll close for this morning. But stemming from their faith in Christ and love for the brethren was their hope. Their hope was that of eternal life.
But here, remember what Paul is doing. He is setting them up with the doctrine of Jesus Christ so that when he addresses the issues and the practices that they are doing, that they have no leg to stand on other than to fall on Jesus Christ for mercy and for grace.
Paul's purpose in writing was to warn them against their practices. What were their practices? And this is just, again, the last part of the introduction. So as we move forward in the coming weeks, you'll kind of have a groundwork for this.
Asceticism was the practice of the day. Asceticism is a big word, A-S-C-E-T-I-C-I-S-M. It is basically the practice of strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline.
Now, ascetic practices were practiced by the elite. You would consider someone who practiced asceticism as a legalist, someone who based their standing before God upon their own good deeds. And that was what was going on in the church.
They worshiped angels, or better yet, not only did they worship angels, but what they did was by working themselves up into ascetic states, they assumed that they were being transported to be in a congregation of angels around the throne of God.
Now, I hope that you can see the problem with that. We are not called to have out-of-body experiences, to put our minds into neutral and to just throw into worship with God. Our worship unto God ought to be based upon the knowledge of God.
And we find the knowledge of God in His Word. God has set aside and set up a method and a mode of worship of Himself, and that is unto Himself through the Word of God. That's how we know Him. But these people were, by working themselves up into ascetic states, were assuming that they were transported out of their bodies into the assembly of angels and worshiping around the throne of God.
Now, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. So, and by doing this, they thought that they could get to this place by being strict, by strictly denying themselves. And here's the challenge again. Two weeks ago, antinomianism says, we don't need the law, we can do what we want, we're saved, we've got our ticket punched, that's it.
Legalism says, we must do this and we must do this to be right in the sight of God. There's always this balance that we have to discipline and bring ourselves to as God's people. And that balance is always in the Word of God.
How should we worship God? When should we worship God? Why should we worship God? It's in the Word of God. So asceticism was that challenge. We are called to deny ourselves as Christians. The problem with the Colossians asceticism was that they were justifying themselves in their spiritual standing based upon their own experiences and not upon the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
Let's remember that good works are the result of salvation and it's not the other way around. Luke 17, seven through 10, and then we'll close. Now, I want to say that in light of this, this passage of scripture in Luke chapter 17.
And actually, let's go back to verse three to get a little bit more context here. And when we get just a little ways into this text, about midway through this text here, you're going to hear some very familiar scripture.
And this is again, one of those times where you see this scripture and we hear this scripture quoted and we hear it proclaimed and we hear it declared when it's proclaimed and declared and spoken out of the context that it was written in.
Luke 17, verse three, the Lord says, take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him.
And if he repents, forgive him.
And if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day, he returns to you saying,.
I repent, you shall forgive him.
Now, let me be the first to admit that's a challenge. That is hard to do. It'd be much easier to wring their neck and twist their nose.
It would.
Guess what? Listen to what the apostle said to the Lord. Verse five, increase our faith. What did they need faith to do? They didn't need their faith increased so that they could do all these signs and wonders and tell everybody, look at me.
This is what God wants you to do. They needed faith so they could love their brother like God called them to. It was the doctrine of Christ. And so the apostle said, Lord, increase our faith. So the Lord said, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea and it would obey you.
And which of you having a servant plowing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from the field, come at once and sit down to eat. But will he not rather say to him, prepare something for my supper and gird yourself and serve me till I've eaten and drunk and afterwards you will eat and drink.
Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise, verse 10, so likewise you, when you have done all those things, which are you are commanded, say we are unprofitable servants.
We have done what was our duty to do. That group at the church at Colossae had become so self-centered and self-focused and self-aggrandizing and self-magnifying and self-worshipping that they thought everything was based upon how worked up they got and the things they did while they were worked up when it was not about them at all, it was about Jesus.
This passage that we just read to you is a sobering reminder to myself as well as to you that as Christians, as children of God, we don't need to praise ourselves for doing the things that we ought to be doing in the first place, but we need to understand and know that in the truest sense, it is our duty as Christians.
Matthew Henry said this, it becomes us therefore to call ourselves unprofitable servants, but to call his service a profitable service for God is happy without us. The church at Colossae needed to understand.
And to know church,.
Reformata Baptist Church in Seymour, Tennessee needs to know that God is happy without us,.
But we are undone,.
Matthew Henry said,.
Without him. We need the Lord and we need to obey the Lord and we need to worship the Lord.
In spirit and in truth. Stand with us if you would this morning. Rob, would you care to dismiss us in prayer, sir?