Sunday PM Sermon, PRBC, Colossians 1

Before we look to the Word of God, let us pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come before You once again seeking

Your favor, Your grace, the great blessing of Your Spirit to be with us, to open our hearts and our minds to understand

Your Word. Help us to see the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in this hour.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. As we look through the

Word of God, we see that God's people have always been in a struggle.

They have always been in warfare. Evening services, we have been reading through the

Old Testament for many, many years now. And if you think back to what we have read, we have read about the various idolatries of Israel.

We have read about the religions around the people of Israel that were constantly trying to draw the

Israelites away. We hear the Judges, we hear as far back as Moses.

We hear the prophets all constantly reminding the people of the great danger that exists from the false religions around them.

And yes, there were times in historical works amongst the prophets when the worship of the one true

God, Yahweh, would be completely abandoned by some. Pure, open apostasy.

But that wasn't the normal result of the warfare that existed between the people of God and their neighbors around them.

The greatest danger was normally a form of syncretism. A form of compromise.

Where the people of God would still come to the temple. They would still profess allegiance to Yahweh.

They would still bring their sacrifices. But then on other days, at other seasons, they would be found on what are called the high places.

The groves that you see referred to many times in the historical record of the

Old Testament. And they are engaging in worship of other gods. And for us, how can you worship that God and this

God? We need to recognize the context back then. That was normal. In those days, people believed in lesser deities that had authority over particular realms.

Whether it was agricultural, or the weather, or warfare, and things like that.

And so, the idea was, well, you can worship Yahweh. But what is wrong with also worshiping

Dagon, or Bel, or the Baals, or whatever else it might be?

What could possibly be wrong with that? Everybody does that. And besides, you

Israelites, don't you realize how offensive you are to your neighbors?

You say that your God is the only God. We don't say that.

We don't deny that Yahweh exists. Aren't we much more loving?

Aren't we much more open than you are? There was great pressure put upon the people of God.

Now, you would think that once we come in the New Testament, things would be different. But no, they are not.

The danger of syncretism, the danger of compromising the worship of the one true

God with other kinds of worship, the alteration of His worship so as to change its nature and to begin to give glory to something in the creation, continues apace and has always been something the people of God have had to struggle against.

Now, when Paul writes to the church of Colossae, he is writing to a church that he himself did not found.

Evidently, in the wisdom of God, the Apostle had gone to Ephesus.

He had put a great deal of time into founding a solid church.

He had trained the elders in that church. Spent three years there in that place. And the reason is fairly obvious to see.

Ephesus was a major, major city in Asia Minor. And up the Lycus River Valley were many other cities, but anyone going up there via the river would come through Ephesus.

And so just as he wanted to go to Rome, knowing that if you plant a church in Rome, then that message is going to spread out from there, he does the same thing in Ephesus.

And so Colossae, the church there, seemingly, is a second generation church.

It has been founded by the converts there from Ephesus. And so the

Apostle writes to them. And he is concerned about a religious movement coming into the city.

Most modern scholars today recognize that this religious movement that was just now coming out of the east and was moving west, that is coming into the church at Colossae, is an early form of what is known so well today as Gnosticism.

Gnosticism, one of the greatest enemies of the early church. Gnosticism, that religious movement that sought to literally destroy the

Christian faith. Not by denying that Jesus ever existed. Not by denying that you could believe in Jesus.

But through syncretism. Through compromising the key elements of the

Christian proclamation. And folding them in amongst all these other religious concepts.

Hence, ultimately, altering them and changing them. Gnosticism was the great enemy of the early church.

And so it should not be surprising to us today, at what we might call the resurrection of Gnosticism.

For in the last century, documents were discovered that had been known only in certain translations and very late manuscripts.

But new documents were discovered in Nag Hammadi and other places that have reminded us of exactly what it was the

Gnostics were teaching in the second and third centuries. And so today, when so many people seem to not believe,

Gnosticism has become the new popular movement. And within academia, it is the

Gnostic writings. Even though you can read all of them in a very short period of time. There certainly isn't anything consistent about them.

There's nothing overly compelling about them. But they are touted as the great evidence that the

New Testament and Orthodox Christianity was but one small little movement amongst many.

And no one really knows what was originally taught, and so on and so forth.

This is what you hear in academia today. And yet it is very clear that the writers of the

New Testament did know about at least an early form of Gnosticism. The Apostle John was very concerned about those who would deny the reality of the

Incarnation. And so in verse John, he talks about what our hands have touched and felt and seen with our eyes.

And the Word became flesh. Remember, we've discussed that before. But likewise, the

Apostle Paul has received word about this strange kind of worship.

It doesn't look like it has yet truly entered into the church, but he is very concerned.

Because there are people who are in essence seeking to bring about this syncretism.

And as we read Colossians, we hear about worshipping of angels and elementary spirits and some kind of a demotion of Jesus.

And when we go back and we look at the actual words that the later Gnostics would use to describe their beliefs, we discover that the

Apostle Paul already knew about these words. They were already being used.

And he uses them against these false teachers in Colossians.

We have been doing a series demonstrating the deity of Christ from the pages of the

Bible. And we have primarily read the Gospel of John, but now we step out of John and we see

Paul's testimony to the deity of Christ. And here in the first chapter of Colossians, we start seeing

Paul developing an apologetic, a defense for the real Jesus over against the

Jesus of a religion that wants to make room for Him, wants to acknowledge

Him in some way, but refuses to allow Jesus to be who the

Christian faith says He is. And so there's much modern application to this situation.

There is much that we can learn from this situation because despite the fact that it's Gnosticism itself that has become so popular again today that you can go on to Amazon .com

and you can buy a half dozen books, a dozen books published over the past couple of years by people promoting

Gnosticism, the ancient religion that has been the enemy of the Christian faith all along.

You find people using this kind of information all the time. But even beyond that, the whole idea that Jesus can be formed into some new shape, that Jesus can be edited to become most comfortable for individuals is addressed by how

Paul responds to the Gnostic heresy there in Colossians. You see, today if you want to order something, you can go online and you can get it exactly the way you want.

You can get the color you want, the shape you want, and everything else. And it seems we take our consumer mentality and we transfer it into the realm of religion.

And why not? I mean, if you don't have any real transcendent truth that has been true for each generation, why not edit it for yourself?

Why not make it something that fits you real nicely? Well, as popular as that might be, that is not the teaching of the

Scriptures. And so the Apostle Paul begins to write to the church at Colossians.

This evening we'll only have time to begin looking at just a few verses in chapter 1, beginning around verse 12.

He starts with commending the Colossians for their faith, praying that they be filled with the true knowledge of His will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that they would walk worthy of the

Lord in everything that is pleasing to Him. But then he begins to move into his primary message to Colossians.

And that is that Jesus can never be made merely a secondary aspect of one's religious belief.

He cannot be an add -on. It seems that what was going on is that if we look back, and we have to be somewhat careful, we can look at the fully blown

Gnostic Heresy of the 2nd century and sort of read that all back into the 1st, and there certainly would be elements of it.

We need to be careful. We need to be as accurate as we can be. But it seems that what's going on here is that these individuals coming out of the

East, they have one central belief. And that is they are dualists.

That is they believe that that which is spiritual is good and that which is physical is evil. And if you believe that, then there are certain questions that you have to try to answer.

And one of the main questions is, well, if that which is spiritual is good and that God is spiritual, then how did the creation come into existence?

If the creation is evil, how could a good spiritual God create an evil physical creation? And the various Gnostic groups might come up with slightly different answers.

But the primary answer, and what seems to be developing in and around Colossae, is this idea that you have the one true spiritual

God, but then you have emanations coming down from Him. And each emanation is just a little less than the fully spiritual

God. And you've got a whole ladder, a whole chain of these intermediate beings.

And they refer to this whole chain of intermediate beings as the pleroma, the fullness.

And each one of these beings is called an aeon. So you have individual aeons, and sometimes they attach names.

That way, if Gnosticism ran into a very polytheistic religion, you'd go, well, come on along.

We'll call some of our aeons by the names of your gods. So come on along and worship with us.

It was a very flexible religion. Gnosticism wasn't saying that it had some revelation from God that was unchanging.

It would just sort of morph into what would be most acceptable in a particular area. And so you have this pleroma, this fullness made up of aeons.

And then finally you get to an emanation from God down here, a demiurge, who's still very powerful, but he's far enough removed from the one true

God that he can create the physical universe. In the second century, once the

Gnostics really now had time to examine the Old Testament Scriptures and the

New Testament Scriptures, many of these individuals who would call themselves Christians, by the way, came to the conclusion that the

God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was that evil demiurge.

And so the most famous of the Gnostics was a man named Martium. And Martium came up with his own canon.

He took the ancient equivalent of an X -Acto knife to the New Testament. He started cutting out everything it had to do with the

Jews. Because the Jews were the followers of that evil demiurge. And so he hacked up the

New Testament and got rid of everything about the Jews that was positive, kept the stuff that was negative, and came up with his own canon, his own list of the

New Testament. And immediately the Orthodox Christians began to react against this. And everybody and their second cousin writes a book against Martium.

He was certainly a very popular fellow on that level. And so it seems that what's happening here is that Jesus is being made one of these eons.

He's in the Pleroma. He's in the fullness. He's one of these emanations from God. They didn't have any problem.

They had plenty of room. Anytime they ran into somebody's God, they'd go, put him in there. Everything's okay. And seemingly that is what is going on here.

But of course they also had another element of belief. And that is, you obtain salvation through going through these secret ceremonies.

In these secret ceremonies, knowledge, gnosis, from where of course they get their name, gnosis would be given to you.

And that gnosis would allow you to escape the physical body you were in. And that's how you gain salvation.

So they were real big on the idea of resurrection. And so with that as a background, we look at what

Paul says. And the overarching assertion Paul makes is very clear. In Colossians 2 .9,

we are told, For in Him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

In Him, that is in Jesus Christ, all the fullness of deity.

Now there are two Greek terms used in the New Testament. Unfortunately in some translations they're translated by the same word.

They're not the same word. In Colossians 2 .9, this word, theatetos, means that which makes

God, God. The very being and essence of God is dwelling, present tense, in Jesus Christ in bodily form.

Somaticos, soma, the body. Now you can hear how a

Gnostic would find that to be extremely repulsive. All the fullness, the pleroma of that which makes

God, God is dwelling bodily in Jesus. Talk about an absolute rejection of all

Gnostic categories. A Gnostic would see that as someone who knows what they believe and is saying what you believe is 180 degrees wrong.

No room for compromise. They'd look at Paul and say, my, you're a closed -minded man, if they were modern

Americans anyway. My, you're being mean to me. I'm offended. In fact, if Paul was a

Canadian, he probably would have been in deep trouble. And so this is what's going on.

So the overarching approach that Paul takes is no, Jesus cannot be fit into this middle category.

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, notice wisdom and knowledge, Gnosis, are found in Him.

All of them. You can't divide them up amongst a bunch of eons. You can't get this knowledge through secret ceremonies.

It's only in Him. And then, here in chapter 1, he starts off with the greatest reputation of this concept.

I've said to you many times, when we look to the Old Testament and the one true God is showing that He's the one true

God over against all the false gods, what's the primary evidence He puts forward?

He says, who's made all of this? Who's made all of this?

Who is the Creator? Who is the Maker? All these other gods came out of creation. I'm the one who made creation.

I am eternal. I am not dependent upon this physical universe. I'm the

Maker of this universe. So here at Colossians 1, we have the

Apostle exhausting the language to emphasize Jesus Christ is the

Creator of all things. How does He do so?

Well, He begins with thanks. He gives thanks to God who had made us worthy.

He had qualified us to have that portion of the saints and the inheritance in life.

He says He's the one who rescued us, He delivered us from the authority of darkness, and He's transferred us,

He's translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

His beloved Son. So we have this kingdom of the Son, the beloved Son, and He's the one still being described in verse 14, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And so He doesn't compromise with the Gnostics at all. They don't believe in any kind of idea of redemption, especially because they believe that sin dwells in the physical body.

It's evil, but it doesn't touch your soul. It doesn't touch the spiritual you. So what your body does can't really impact the spirit.

That would normally lead certain groups to a very licentious lifestyle, which happened very often.

But it could also lead to the other extreme where you had ascetics who would say you can't marry, you can't touch certain things, you can't do certain things, because you want to be a more spiritual person, and you want to try to divide between the spiritual person and the physical body.

It went different directions. I have a feeling the licentious side was a bit more popular than the other side, but they did go both directions based upon a similar theology.

So the idea of the forgiveness of sins and especially redemption was clearly offensive to the

Gnostics. But then we have this assertion. Who is the image?

The image of the invisible God. The image, the likeness, the form, the appearance.

It's the same term Paul's going to use in Philippians 2 when he talks about who Jesus is and how

He exists in the form of God. And that idea here is a slightly different term.

It's the idea of what would appear if there were to be a physical image of God, this is what would strike the eyes.

But you see, the interesting phraseology he uses here is the image of the invisible

God. Very similar, in my thinking, to what we saw in John 1 .18. No one has seen

God any time, but who? The unique God. The only Son who is

God, who is close to the Father's heart. He's revealed Him. He's explained Him. He has made

Him known. Same kind of concept here. Everybody who was running around saying the Apostle Paul made up all of his own theology, all the rest of this stuff, just doesn't really read him closely enough to see how much his thought parallels directly that of the

Gospels of themselves. And so he is the image of the invisible God, and then here we have one of the favorite phrases of the folks who knock on your door on Saturday morning and distribute the

Watchtower and Wake magazines. The firstborn of all creation. I cannot tell you how many people

I've encountered over the past 25 years now.

Alpha Omega Ministries started 25 years ago this October. Over those two and a half decades of people who've just thrown out this phrase, well, of course

Jesus can't truly be God because He's the firstborn of all creation. And the immediate thought in their mind is firstborn means first created.

The first thing made. Well, how would that fit, especially in this context?

We're talking about the very image of the invisible God. The next two verses are going to tell us in Noah's certain terms that Jesus Christ created all things.

How can He be Himself created? But the reality is the term firstborn does not mean first created.

Indeed, the term firstborn refers to one having priority and preeminence.

If you just go back to the Old Testament and ask who is the firstborn? How is the firstborn treated?

The firstborn is given a double portion. The firstborn has particular blessings.

But it's also interesting to note the firstborn one has preeminence.

Preeminence over the rest of the children. But here it's firstborn over all creation.

That is the one having preeminence over all of creation. He doesn't come forth out of creation.

He has preeminence over creation. The fact that firstborn does not mean first created is seen in a number of places.

For example, in Exodus chapter 4, in the Psalms we also find this.

Israel is described as God's firstborn using the exact same Greek term in the

Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint that is found here. Clearly, Israel was not the first thing

God created. Israel was not the first nation that is formed. Anything like that.

But Israel bears a particular relationship to God. That is the nation that He has chosen to favor.

And if Israel is God's firstborn, then to read into this term the idea of first created is clearly in error.

Besides that, the second part of the word, the word is protonikos, the second part of the word never means created in the first place.

And so it is a gross misuse of the text to render it in that way. What it means is

He has preeminence over all creation. The next two verses will tell us why. Why does

Jesus? Remember, don't forget about the Gnostics here. Don't forget about the people that Paul is refuting.

They think Jesus is one of these intermediate beings. He is not the creator of all things.

To make Him the creator of all things, it would make Him evil. Because the creation is evil. But to say

He has preeminence over all of creation would mean all of the eons, all of the pleroma as well.

Why does He have preeminence? Well, we are told in no uncertain terms.

Because by Him was created, ta pantah, all things.

Now it is interesting in the form that the Apostle uses here. There are other ways of saying all things.

But one way you could do it would sort of turn everything into just one amorphous whole.

And the idea of creating it would sort of be diminished. Instead, Paul uses a form that emphasizes the concrete existence of all things.

It is not like the Christian scientists, you know. As somebody asked me yesterday, I have a relative who is a Christian scientist.

If you know anything about Christian scientists, you know that in their theology, the physical universe is basically a mirage.

It does not really exist. That is why physical sickness, they do not go to a physical or medical doctor, because sickness does not really exist.

There is no physical realm for it to exist in. And I said, I will be perfectly honest with you, that is one group

I have not spent a lot of time on. I have a lot of difficulty witnessing to someone who does not think that I exist.

About the only meaningful way I have been able to figure out to maybe do that would be to punch him in the nose, ask him if that hurt, and then say, okay, we have a place to start.

But that generally gets you in jail, so I do not want to do that. So the idea that is said here would refute that.

The physical universe exists. It was created, but notice

Paul is saying, by Him, by Him were all things created.

Well, you know, it is amazing how people can find ways around even clear statements like that. So they might say, well, all of certain kinds of things maybe.

So Paul slams the door on that idea. Notice his description.

Were all things created in the heavens and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or principalities or authorities, all things through Him and for Him were created.

This is an excellent text if you are ever studying Greek prepositions, because the apostle exhausts the whole realm of Greek prepositions to make sure that he leaves no stone unturned, he leaves no exit, he leaves no way out.

First, at the beginning of the verse, he says, in Him, probably by Him, but in His creative power.

Then he uses dia, by Him. Then he says ais, unto

Him, for Him, were all things created. I mean, can you see the

Gnostic sitting there taking body blows at every shot? I mean, Paul is not compromising here in any way, shape, or form.

He wants to make sure that people understand this teaching is not consistent with Christianity.

All things, heaven and earth, visible, invisible, thrones, lordships, rulers, authority, all things created through Him, all things created for Him.

Stop and ponder that one just for a moment. And He is before, from all things.

And in Him, all things hold together, have their consistency.

A very similar term to that which was used in Greek philosophy about the Logos. The Logos ordered all things.

Here in Him, all things hold together. All things stand together.

Now think for just a moment. This is a description of the Creator. Not some evil, deadly urge.

But this is a description of the Creator. How do you get around this?

Well, the simplest way is just to dismiss the authority of the Apostle Paul and the authority of the

Bible. That's the standard direction. That's normally what the Mormons do when you point this out because it's rather destructive of their entire cosmology.

Since their God once lived on another planet, it might point out, excuse me, but if a planet exists, Jesus made it.

So it's hard for Jesus to make a planet that His Father lives on with His Father before He claimed that God was a man, and so on and so forth.

Well, this is just about this world. I don't see any limitations like that. The Jehovah's Witnesses have a really cool way around it.

It's just translated. They put the word other in brackets after each word in Paul.

I remember walking right up this aisle once and looking over to the right and I see laying on the pew where a visitor had been sitting the

New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. And little red lights go off, little flags go up, warning, warning, danger,

I'm immediately looking for this particular visitor. And they didn't know what it was. They found it for 50 cents in a used bookstore.

It had really cool notes in the back and stuff like that, so why not? It's like, well, let me tell you a little something about that.

It's not really Bible. So we were able to give them something significantly better. But what they do is they put the word other.

Now when they first translated it, they didn't bother. They put brackets around it. They just stuck it in there boldly.

And there was such a hue and cry that in later editions they put the brackets around it.

They still try to defend it. And they have a fairly complex way of trying to defend it. We won't go into it today.

It has to do with partitive genitives and things like that. But what they're trying to say is because by Him were all other things created in the heavens and the earth.

There's one obvious fatal flaw to the argument. Think about it.

I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses, very well -read

Jehovah's Witnesses. But they don't tend to focus upon Biblical backgrounds very well.

And if you take their understanding, because remember, they believe Jesus is Michael the Archangel. He is one of the lesser beings.

In essence, they agree with the Gnostics. They agree that this is where the position of Jesus Christ falls.

And so it's no wonder then that they render Paul's argument against the Gnostics meaningless.

They have to, because they sort of agree with the Gnostics. Well, when you turn the

Apostle's argument on its head and cause him to refute himself, you probably should not claim that you are consistent with apostolic teaching.

All things created by Him and for Him. All things exist in Him.

He is before all things. Therefore, He cannot be a mere creature. He cannot be an emanation in a paloma.

Instead, He must be, as He will say in Colossians 2 .9, all the fullness of deity dwells in Him.

We are told that He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, in order that He might come to have first place in all things.

And that it was pleasing to the Father that all the fullness should dwell in Him and through Him to reconcile all things unto

Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross whether things in heaven or things upon the earth.

Now let me just mention, you could spend a lot of time just on verse 20 because that has stumbled a lot of people, but again,

I think you just stand back and see what the argument here is. The point is that everything

God does, all the justice that He is going to demonstrate, how

He is going to sum all things up in Jesus Christ, everything is focused upon Christ and what

God does, He does in justice because of the cross of Christ. Remember what we said this morning.

All of history looked forward to the cross. Now we look back upon the cross.

The very center of time in Pauline theology and New Testament theology is found in those three hours upon the cross of Calvary.

And so what do we hear in the apostles' words? We hear words we need to hear.

Brothers and sisters, what we believe is radical. What we believe is radical.

We cannot try to make what we believe palatable to rebel sinners.

Only the Holy Spirit can cause His sheep to hear His voice. It is useless to try to shave off the rough edges of the

Christian faith. And it is radical to say that the One we worship truly entered into human flesh.

He existed at a point in time. We know where He was formed. We know where He lived.

We know when He died. We know when He resurrected. He lived historically. He was truly a man.

And yet we are honestly saying He was the Creator. Everything that exists came into existence through Him.

And that we serve Him as a risen Savior, that is a radical claim.

Radical claims cannot be substantiated by arguments that start from any other but a divine foundation.

You can prove a non -supernatural Christianity, but there is no such thing as a non -supernatural

Christianity. And what we hear in these words, what we're given is an example from an apostle.

Here's an apostle. He knows a church that he doesn't know personally. He's in danger of false teaching coming in.

And what does he do? Does he teach them, well, you know, we want to be very accepting, we want to be very open.

No. When he responds to that teaching, he contradicts it directly.

And he explains why any level of compromise with that false teaching destroys the very foundation of faith, a

Jesus who is but an eon in a group of emanations, the one true

God, He is not the one through whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins.

You start to see a pattern. Over the past four sermons, how often is the reality of the gospel directly connected to the highest view of who

Jesus is. You see now why liberalism, in all of its forms today, has no essence or substance to it.

Because once you turn Jesus into nothing more than basically an ancient political figure, without a divine

Savior, there's no power or authority left in the gospel. That's why we must stand firm.

We must be aware of what these texts say. Our young people need to be aware when they hear their beliefs being mocked in high school and college and any more, junior high school and grade school, for that matter.

They need to know why they believe what they believe. We as parents need to be ready to give an answer to them as well.

And it's not that we have not been given a fullness of revelation of how much to do so.

We simply need to know the Word of God. And so as we conclude this evening, as you look forward to a week of ministry and service to Christ, we are called to be

His servants. You are called to be the servant, the One who created all things.

Every breath that you take, every beat of your heart comes from Him. And isn't it wonderful to know every breath taken and every beat of the heart of every person, even those who refuse to bow their knee before Him, comes from His hand.

He truly is Lord. He truly is Lord. Let us pray.

Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word and the clarity and force of Your message.

We are creatures and we are so thankful that we have come to know our Creator. May we be bold in our witness.

May we be clear in our witness to Your honor and to Your glory. We thank

You for this time we've had together. May we not be those who hear Your Word and then walk away and forget.

May we remember so that we might be better servants of Yours, we pray in Christ's name.