Colossians 2:1-10 - The Mystery of the Indwelling God

Father, we pray your Holy Spirit be working in their lives too that maybe some people would have the veil removed from their minds and their eyes and they could see clearly and realign with scripture, which would give them the knowledge and the wisdom that they.

Need.

And so, Father, we just pray for our nation. We ask you to strengthen it. It's in a very weak state, and we ask you to move all the way from the colleges and universities into the elementary schools and the high schools, Lord, and help us to bring the Bible back into these places.

All of these places were started by preachers and around the Word of God, and we see where they are now, Lord. We just ask you to return them to their original positions. And Lord, we ask you to bless the preaching of the Word today in Jesus' name, amen.

The Mystery Hidden in Colossians and Revealed in Christ

Well, Colossians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul ends the previous chapter with this remarkable statement in chapter 1, right at the end with verse 25 there. He says, Whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the Word of God.

And then next, we have really the perfect definition of what the Bible means in the New Testament when it uses the word mystery. So for the next few Sundays, we're going to be talking about what that word means.

It's like a word formula in the New Testament. It has immense deep meanings, and I will tell you this. It will seem like it has several different meanings, but the fact is it only has one Roman numeral with some A, Bs, and Cs under it.

So all of them relate to one predominant meaning of whatever this mystery is that Paul's talking about that none of the Old Testament prophets could discern. They looked into it. They could not see it.

They didn't know anything about it. Some of them even wrote about it, especially King David, but he didn't know what he was writing about because God was inspiring him to write, but he couldn't understand it.

And the apostle Paul was the human being that God from the foundation of the world had determined would be the human instrument that he would use to reveal this mystery to the world for the first time ever.

It never even existed before Paul, and no one knew the answer to it before Paul, and yet we have it, and so many thousands of years they didn't have it. And so what a blessing it is, and we're going to be talking about this word mystery and what it means throughout the New Testament.

So if we look at verse 26 is where it begins to talk about it back in the previous chapter that we just finished. It says, even the mystery, which has been hid from the ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to the saints.

If you want to write down the perfect definition for what the Bible means by a mystery, especially in the New Testament, there it is. There's your definition. What is a mystery? It is something that was hidden from former ages and generations, but is now made manifest or brought out into the light.

That's what the Greek word for manifest means. Brought out into the light where we can understand it for the first time in human history. That's what it means. That's the perfect, verse 25 is the perfect Bible definition for the word mystery as it's used in the New Testament.

Verse 27, to whom God would make known what it, and he starts to talk about what this mystery is. God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. So it relates not only to Jews, but also to Gentiles, which the Jew didn't believe in.

That.

They didn't think God could bless a Gentile. So you always have to know that when you're reading the New Testament. So, so, um, even to the Gentiles in here is the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Now we talked about it at the end of our study of chapter one, but that is the key to understanding this mystery, Christ in you, the hope of glory. So the Roman numeral one is the mystery of the indwelling Holy spirit in the heart and mind and life of a believer that never occurred in the old Testament.

It never occurred before Pentecost. And after Pentecost, everything was different and always will be different. Yes, God would dwell with people in the old Testament. Even the Holy spirit would come upon people in the old Testament, but he never was sealed inside the body of a human being.

And this side of Pentecost, every person who is truly born again, at the moment of their regeneration, the Holy spirit comes to live in their body for the rest of their life and is sealed there and cannot come out and will not come out.

And you say, how can that be? Because he's omnipresent. So he's not only in your body, he's in the person sitting next to you, his body, he's in Christ and he's in the father and he ties all of us together with God, with any, any part of the triune nature of God you want to talk about.

He connects you with Jesus. He connects you with himself, obviously, because he lives in you. I'm talking about the Holy spirit and he connects you to the father. And Jesus said, when that happens, you don't even have to pray through me.

You can just go straight to the father because of the indwelling Holy spirit. Now this is not the same as the filling of the spirit. That's a whole different concept. The indwelling of the spirit literally means that your body became the temple of the living God on the day you got regenerated.

And so that is the mystery that no one ever understood. They couldn't see it. They didn't know it. They couldn't have known it. Jesus revealed it to the apostle Paul in the wilderness, uh, when he was in the Arabian desert and Jesus appeared to him in physical body and taught him.

That's the only way he could have been an apostle because one of the qualifications for being an apostle is you have to have walked with Jesus physically on this earth. Paul was the last and greatest of the apostles.

He was also the apostle to the Gentiles specifically, but he always preached to the Jew first and then to the Gentiles. He wanted to see his brothers saved. He would preach to them first and then to the Gentiles.

But here is your mystery. The mystery which was hid from all the ages, all the generations, none of the men of God, none of the women of God of the, of the previous times could see it. They couldn't even begin to vaguely understand this concept of your body becoming the temple of the living God, nor could they understand that the old Testament wilderness tabernacle was in a sense, a picture of your body.

It was also a picture of Jesus's, but the Holy Spirit is pictured as living in there. Now this is the Roman numeral one and there is no Roman numeral two, but we will see there's a lot of a, b's and c's, but every one of them relate to this.

So that'll help you understand this as we go to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. So it's implied that it's going to be made known to the Jews, but the mysterious part was, and this is part of the mystery of it, is that it would be made known to the, and available to the Gentiles.

That was part of the mystery because you think about it, it was the Jews that had the oracles of God. Now what is that? It just means they had the Bible. It's Jews, the Jews that God gave the old Testament to.

It's the Jews that were the people of God and it's understood that the, this mystery would be available to them. What was really weird to a Jew was that God made it available to Gentiles and Jews alike.

And what it is is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. So there we have it. Christ in you is your only hope of glory. You can't have any glory in your fallen state. When we're born into this world, we're born as fallen creatures.

We're born as part of a race that's totally lost and on its way to hell. And God in his love and predestination and his election and his foreknowledge chose to save a remnant, a small remnant of that human race that's totally lost.

And he does it purely by grace, totally undeserved by any of us. And that's the gospel. It's not like the world thinks it is where you got to be good or you got to join a church and say a little prayer, dear Jesus, come on and say amen.

It's none of that. It's not how it works. It doesn't unsave you, by the way, if you do pray the prayer and go to church, that doesn't unsave you, but that's not how it works. And so it's all by grace.

It's all undeserved. And while you were yet in your sins, hath he saved you? So you didn't play a part in it. You were still in your sins when he saved you. He regenerated you. It's something God did to you and you got the benefit of it.

And there are many effects that come because of it, things you will do because you are saved now. But none of that caused it. None of that was the cause. Those are the effects. And that's this is what this is talking about.

And when it happens, one of the one of the things that does happen is the Holy Spirit does about 33 things for you. One of them is he places himself within your body and seals himself there until the day of redemption, which means when you meet Jesus face to face.

And I believe it goes on beyond that, too. I don't believe it stops there, this indwelling. So this is Jesus Christ, the hope of the glory of every man whom we preach, warning every man, teaching every man and always that proves right there.

That's the gospel. Now, I know the gospel includes the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus, and that's what has to be told to people is that he died for the sins of his people to take those sins away and to die in the place of them dying for their own sins.

And yet this tells what happens to a person after they receive the gospel and are regenerated. This is what we're supposed to warn people about. Now, don't you find it interesting that instead of talking about the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus here in this specific place, he's talking about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and says this is what we need to warn people about.

Why would you need to warn people about that? So I'm going to leave you with that question, let you think about it a little bit. Why would you need to warn people? It sounds like a blessing you would tell people about.

Why is it a warning? Okay, so think about that. And so we're to warn every man and teach every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. There is no way for any man to be perfect in any manner of speaking unless he has Christ in you, the hope of you being perfect.

And perfect doesn't mean sinless, by the way, it means completed. Like you are a complete human like God meant for you to be, whereas before your salvation you had an empty hole in your soul. You weren't complete.

You had a spirit, but it was a kernel, a little dead kernel, like a dead seed. It didn't even operate. Because that's the only part of you that can communicate with God and it wasn't communicating with God.

And so when he regenerated you, that came alive and that hole in your heart was filled with the Holy Spirit, which is the spirit of Christ, Christ in us, the hope of glory. A lot of the gospel is in those three verses right there, but it says for us to warn and teach every man this, these truths.

So it's very important that we understand what the truth is and that's why we'll spend some time on this mystery. We're into also Paul says, I labor striving according to the Holy Spirit's working in my life.

So not only does, not only does your salvation come from God and not only does he place himself within you at your point of salvation, but at that point him being in you is the very power that causes you to witness to other people and tell them the gospel with power.

It's not enough just to tell someone the gospel. You have to be, have anointing power when you do it or it will not, they won't even hear it. You need power of God to even know who to tell it to because you're not supposed to tell it to everybody.

Paul very often said, oh, I was going to go over here and the Holy Spirit restrained me. He wouldn't let him go witness over in areas like India, Iran, Iraq. He wanted to go into some of those areas and God didn't let him go.

Why?

Because it wasn't God's purpose for him to go there. It was God's purpose for them to be Hindus or them to be Islamic. And you say, well, that doesn't sound right. Well, it doesn't have to sound right.

God's ways are different than our ways, higher than our ways. We don't have to understand everything God does and why he does it. We just have to receive him and be happy that he counts us as his children and loves us more than you could ever love your kids or grandkids, which seems amazing to me.

But here it is, the Christ in you, the hope of glory. That is the great mystery and only by him working in us will we share that with the right people. So that's kind of our job. Now let me remind everybody about this word hope, Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Let me give you the Greek word because it's much better than the changed English word. It doesn't mean what it used to mean when it was translated into this. The word hope in Greek is elpis and comes from a little Greek word elpo.

And it means, listen, to anticipate something. See it doesn't mean it probably won't happen. It means you're anticipating that it will happen. That's what the Greek word means. It usually means to anticipate something with pleasure.

So you're anticipating a great thing to happen in the future. And this hope of glory, the thing you're anticipating is the day that your old man falls off of you at the rapture or when you die, whichever comes first and the old man falls off of you and all this left is the new man and nothing is pulling against God in the way and the weight that's gone when that happens is going to be tremendous.

Literally you can fly. And when that, that is the hope that is this pleasant anticipation that we have of when that happens. I was joking about the election and I said, you know, this is awesome. All this great stuff that happened.

The bad news is it's put off the rapture maybe by 20 years. Now I'm joking because you don't put it off because God knows when it's going to be. But from our viewpoint, like man, maybe he's not coming back quite as soon because America is still going to be here and helping Israel for a while.

He, he, God wants Israel protected for a while, apparently. So maybe we do have to wait a little longer than we thought we might for Jesus to return, but he is coming back, isn't he? So this little word for hope is to have pleasurable anticipation of something.

And another wonderful synonym to give it for the Greek meaning is to, is expectation. It is the expectation of something. It's not expecting something not to happen. It's expecting something to happen.

And then another, a third one is confidence, confidence that it will happen. That's what this word hope means in the Bible language. So the hope of glory, Christ in you, the hope of glory, a better way to translate it is Christ in me, the pleasurable anticipation of the day that I'll meet him face to face and I'll be like him.

I won't be more like the devil than him. I'll be more like him than the devil. I'll be like him when that happens, because my old man will fall away and be gone forever. He's already been crucified. He'll be buried.

And I can anticipate that with pleasure. Christ in me, the expectation of me being glorified, Christ in me, the confidence that I will be glorified someday and that God the Father already sees me as glorified now.

That's Romans chapter 8. If you don't understand it, go read it. So the indwelling Holy Spirit, Christ in us, is our confidence, our expectation, our joyful anticipation of our future perfection and glorification in Jesus Christ.

This is the great mystery that he is talking about. This was not the first mention, by the way, of the concept of a mystery in the New Testament. Something that is not understood by the Old Testament saints and prophets, but revealed for the first time through Paul.

It's not the first time we see this, and we'll look at some of those others maybe in a little while, but the passage continues into chapter 2. So there's the context starts at the end of chapter 1, and now we get into chapter 2.

Paul’s Great Conflict for the Church at Colossae and Laodicea

So look at verse 1. With all of that in mind, here's what we see. For I would not, for I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you. He's speaking to his converts at the Church of Colossae, and they may not have been his direct converts.

Some people say he may have never gone to the Church of Colossae. I don't know that that's true, but certainly, they are converts of his converts. So he's either their father or their grandfather, spiritually, you see my point?

And so he, these converts of Paul's who live in Colossae, go to the Church of Colossae, he says he has great conflict for you and for them at Laodicea, another nearby town where another church is, and for as many as not seen my face in the flesh, which would include us.

Wouldn't you say that would include us? I mean, we haven't seen Paul in the flesh, and he has great conflict for us Christians. What in the world does that mean? Well, I'll tell you how to picture it.

It comes from the Greek word agone, and it literally means a place of assembly. And you say, well, what in the world does that mean? Well, this is what it means by study to show thyself approved unto God.

You've got to look, because at first glance, you're going, what, what does that mean? But by implication in Greek, having been in the Greek-Greco-Roman world, this place of assembly, I want you to picture a Roman Colosseum, and picture yourself there sitting in the crowd and two gladiators fighting down in the middle of that Colosseum.

And it's a great athletic contest going on, and the only difference is it's going to end with one of them dead, and you're watching it. Ask yourself how you would feel. Now how do you feel if you love sports?

I can name several sports that I can watch, and if my favorite team and or person, like if it's tennis or something, is getting whacked, it feels so bad. You know, the Cowboys lose, ruins my whole week.

That's why I've had horrible weeks all year for 10 years. Okay, now so imagine if the sport you were watching, the team that loses, all of them die. They have to die. They have to be killed with a sword.

How would you feel?

What if your favorite one's the one that didn't win that day?

How would you feel?

Okay, now picture the feeling of adrenaline and sadness or maybe joy, depending on which one wins. Picture that, because that's what the word conflict means in Greek. So Paul is looking at these new Christians in a world that hates God, in a world of Jews that hate Christianity, and he is feeling like he's about to watch a bunch of gladiators die on the field, or they might die on the field, or they might be victorious.

One of the two is going to happen, and that's how he feels. Paul has that much feeling for his converts, and every pastor that's truly called will feel that for his people. And every single person in the church, he will feel that.

He will never want one single person to ever leave for any reason. Even if they got a job somewhere else that's better and they make more money, he doesn't want them to leave, but he has to change his mind on stuff like that, right?

But that's just how pastors should be. Paul was certainly like this. I have great conflict I have for you, and he wants to be there in person with you, but Paul couldn't be with everybody in person, but he wished that he could.

Now look at verse two. Why does he want to be with them? So that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love and into all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ.

Can you believe how concise the Bible is? Can you understand how it could take a preacher like me months to preach through a book? Because how much is in verse two? Ten Sundays worth. Not really.

Four.

Four Sundays worth. Just in verse two. And that's not talking about the mysteries. We don't want to talk about the mysteries. There's another bunch of Sundays, but I mean, just four. You could take four.

I'm not going to, but you could take four on that one verse. Because Paul here, his heart is hurting for his people because he wants to be with them face to face to do several things, to make several things happen in their lives that may not happen if he's not there face to face.

Now, the cool thing about Paul is we have him with us because the Holy Spirit inspired him to write what he wrote and he stuck it in the Bible and it became part of the perfect, the only perfect thing in this world, which I'm holding in my hand.

And we have the mind and heart of God, the mind and heart of Paul here. And he is with us and all these things can be accomplished in our hearts because we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, which connects us to guess who?

Paul in heaven. Is that crazy to think about? You can read Paul and be connected to him while you read it because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, this mystery that he's talking about. There's so much wealth in this thing that we're talking about, but here he says he wants their hearts to be comforted.

Well, I will tell you when you mentioned these things, a comforted heart, people who are knit together by love with no division, none, no division without Satan, even able to bring.

Division.

People who have all riches of the full assurance of their salvation, but also assurance that they understand the things of God and their doctrine is correct. That they know what God is saying about himself and what he's saying about us and we're getting it right.

You have full assurance of that. What if that could be accomplished? And then acknowledgement of the mystery of God, the father and Christ, there's three. So the God there must be the Holy Spirit, God, God, the Holy Spirit, the father and Christ are not three gods, they're one God, but three manifestations of the one God that you would understand that.

Now there is one of the sub mysteries that we talk about when we see the word mystery in the Bible. I'll show that to you here shortly, but what I would say about verse two, then I got this in bold print.

It's like one of the main points of this message today is there might not be a better verse in the whole Bible. I hope Ben's hearing me probably is on his phone. There may not be a better verse in the whole Bible than verse two of Colossians chapter two on the sufficiency of scripture.

If there's a great verse, one verse that talks about that, the Bible itself is sufficient for the man and woman of God for all that they need in this life. As far as knowledge, wisdom, and understanding this verse is it.

There's no better verse because when you look at those things that mentions, this is an amazing amount of things that we can gain simply by having the scriptures. So sufficiency to provide peace in our hearts, unity in our meeting, in our group, unity in love, the sufficiency to give us full assurance that we're understanding the things of God that few men and women in the whole world understand any of things about God.

And this results in the acknowledgement of the triune nature of God. Now we come to another interesting word, acknowledgement. What does it mean? What does it mean that one of the reasons Paul wanted to be with this group is so he could help them get to a place where they acknowledge the triune nature of God.

Why is that important and what does it mean to acknowledge it? Well, this is this, I dove into a big dictionary Greek study of this word, acknowledge. And the word in Greek is, you know, you know, scheme, you know, scheme.

And it means knowledge, but you know, there's different kinds of knowledge. So it's kind of a, an in-depth study of this word, but basically it means the intelligent comprehension of an object or matter.

So it's different. There's a different Greek word for, if you just wanted to say that, I know the pews are in the room. Like I know something exists or I know it's daytime, you know, there's a different Greek word for that than there is for this word, which means an in-depth intellectual understanding of something that you've studied.

You see the difference? So that's what this word means. So when Paul says that I want to help them get to a place where they have an in-depth comprehensive understanding of the triune nature of God, that tells us that even though that is a mystery, we can never stop trying to understand it better.

Isn't that something? Now I got two, three pages on this word, but we're not going to go there.

I like it though.

It's not really, it's just one page. This dictionary will have three pages on one word. It's not like Strong's where you have two lines on what it means. You can really get buried into the meaning of this word and it shows all the different Greek words that are synonyms for knowledge, but they don't mean this kind of knowledge.

Like some of the words might mean that you think you know something. And so now you have a great idea of this. And I like the way that the big dictionary ends. It says this word embraces things as they really are.

Not like people think they are. Not where people have my truth and your truth, but how they really are from God's viewpoint. That's what the word means. So that's when we acknowledge these mysteries or especially the Trinity, we need to know how it really is.

And this is kind of what it's talking about. Now look at verse three. Once we have those things, we have the unity, we have the peace in the heart. We have the acknowledgement of this mystery, the understanding of the things of God.

Then it reveals what it says in verse three, it reveals in whom, that means God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit in whom that's who it refers to up in verse two, God in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now there is the second best verse in the Bible on the sufficiency of scripture, except it's not talking about the sufficiency of scripture here. It's talking about the sufficiency of the one who wrote the scripture, which is God.

So now you have the word of God right here. And Paul has argued that it is completely sufficient for everything you need in your life as far as knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. You don't need human philosophy.

You don't need human science. You don't need any of that. This is all you need. It's not wrong to add science. If it's true science, it won't contradict the Bible. It's not wrong to learn philosophy and logic.

You should, because God says, come let us reason together, but you can never put that stuff above this. It has to be this way. Most denominations and cult groups and false religions get it this way, especially the.

Catholics.

So, but Baptist, Baptist are like here used to be here. Now they're here and it's, and it's moving this direction. So this is interesting. So Paul's talked about that book and the sufficiency of it. But now he says, what about the indwelling Holy spirit living in you?

That's God in you. And now he says, if you have that, you have all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge. Now that you're pretty well equipped. We're so well equipped. It's a shame when we don't use that more.

We need to be more prayerful about Holy spirit today. Who do you want me to talk to about the Lord? You know, not like, uh, well, if you want me to let me know, who do you want me to see assumed clothes, Dave, like somebody's out there, it's going to be somebody who is it.

That's how we need to think. You want to see your church grow? Well, let's listen. God's going to save the sheep and from a human viewpoint, he doesn't need you to talk to.

Them.

Okay. But from a human viewpoint, if it's you that talks to them, they might want to come to church where you do. You might get to disciple them. You might get to laugh with them when they're happy and things are going great.

And you might get to cry with them when it's not. And then when you get to heaven someday, you might get a crown because you're the one. It's the reason on the human side for that person even being in heaven, you need to think about that more.

And so do I. So now we've made our way all the way down through, um, verse three. It's interesting here where it says we in God, plus the scriptures and the God that the scriptures tell us about our head, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

What's the difference between wisdom and knowledge? Don't you think wisdom is a little bit hard to grasp exactly what that is? Like, are you just born with it or can you gain it? Are there some people that just seem wiser than others?

Why is that? You know? And so the Greek word here is Sophia. We should name one of our grandbabies Sophia, the wise one. And it's translated more often than not wisdom. But if you want to know what wisdom is, it's actually judgment.

I think that is a better word for us to think about, to comprehend what it means. Someone with good judgment, all right? The ability to reach intellectual conclusions that are correct. That's what it is.

So we, we have that when we're in this book more than the other person. We have that when we not just read this intellectually, but then we put it down and we go over and we walk with the Lord and say, I want to follow you today.

Where are you going? And you walk with him all day. And I know you can't exclusively do that when you're working. You got to do math. Sometimes you got to do accounting. You got to do all these things, but he's with you and you know it.

And you're aware of his presence with you at that desk. And then when you get a break, you talk to him. And then when your kids are with you, you just keep doing the same thing, but you do it in front of them and your grandbabies are with you.

And then when you look and you see a cloud that looks like a moose, you tell the grandbaby, look what Jesus just painted. See the moose? Jesus painted that. You tell them as you go, God is there as you go.

And when they see that, it's way more powerful than having a formal Bible study with them in the house. You can do that too. But the other is way more powerful. And this, this idea of being able to reach correct intellectual conclusions only comes by the amount of time you spend in the word of God and then walking away from that with God that you know, because of the word of God and communicating with him and being with him and sitting on his lap, so to speak, like a grandbaby does.

The ones that get the biggest part of the inheritance stay the longest.

That's how it works.

Same with God.

All right.

So God likes it when we do that, when we spend time with him and guess what comes from it? Wisdom. Isn't that something? That's where it comes from. And what is knowledge? Well, knowledge embraces things that really are.

It's the same Greek word we studied a minute ago. Knowledge you embrace things as they really are. Not like humans think they are not like humanism thinks it is not how the next person thinks it is. You embrace it like God says it is because that's how it really is.

So you get both of those when you're in the word and you're walking with God. And why is this important? This idea of focusing on the word of God rather than philosophy of men, rather than the rudiments of the world, the lies of Satan, the cares of the world, the lies of riches and other things coming in to choke the word out of your life.

Why is this more important than that? Well, verse four says, and this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. So all of the things we've written, talked about this morning, all of these concepts of being in the word and walking with the Lord and the things that the apostle Paul wanted us to have by doing that, such as peace and hope, a peace, hope of a life that's got peace in it.

That's got unity that has acknowledgement or understanding of the way it is because we're in the word. All of those things are there so that false teachers cannot beguile us with enticing words and lead us astray.

Now, isn't that interesting? All of it comes down to verse four. Why does he want us to understand the triune nature of God? Because a lot of people teach us not that way. A lot of people teach, it's just God.

You don't have a son, son of God. He was just a good man. He was just a prophet, a good prophet. Even the Islamics will say that. A lot of their Christians, believe it or not, even in Mahea, I know a couple of women that are teaching this, that the Trinity is not even real.

The Catholics invented it. Well, I had a friend, a very smart friend that told me that one time. And I said, well, if I can show you an early church father that talked about the triune nature of God a long time before Constantine, would you then believe it?