Why do we forget this so easily?

Wise Disciple

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Jesus Christ is not a menu option, Jesus Christ is manna. He's not the side dish, he's not the appetizer, he's not even the main meal, actually.

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He's the only meal. And when we go down the buffet aisle of ideas and we try to add anything else on top of the only thing that leads to eternal life, the only thing that we need to live our lives righteously today, it may taste good in the moment, but it's poison.

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As some of you know, my journey to becoming a pastor was a little unexpected.

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Normally, you graduate from seminary and then you find a nice church with a nice staff and you join.

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So for me, though, I thought it might be worthwhile to go into the public school system after getting my theology degree because I thought it would be interesting to be a

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Christian here in Clark County, amen? So I got my theology degree and then

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I went and became a public high school teacher. Now, let me tell you something. Becoming a teacher was extremely difficult.

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It was extremely difficult. I don't know if you know this, fun fact for you.

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They don't just let theology students walk into the classroom here at CCSD. Did you know that?

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I don't know if you... No, you need to get a teaching degree and then you need to go and get licensed here to teach in the state of Nevada.

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And so after my theology degree, I had to go to UNLV and get another degree.

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At the time, there was only one program that I could join. And the program was set up where it didn't matter what my previous education was.

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I could basically jump right into the classroom after two years. This was what was called a graduate licensure program.

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And in order for my program to be complete, I had to do essentially two things. I had to take master's level classes on teaching, and then

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I had to take a bunch of undergrad English courses in order to teach the subject matter that I was gonna teach, which was

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English. As a matter of fact, I had to take so many English classes that by the time

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I was done with it, I basically could confer an English degree. So in other words,

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I had to get two degrees in order to become a teacher, and I had to do it all in two years to complete my program.

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Life, it was a slogfest. It was a slogfest. Let me tell you, you can ask my wife. She's right over there. I mean, if you can imagine, there were days where I was writing 60 -page papers on teaching theory at the master's level.

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And then I would go around the corner and I'd sit in an undergrad English course with 18 -year -olds learning about Victorian literature.

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And then I would drive across town and observe public classrooms in order to complete my practicum.

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And then on the weekends, I had to work 10 hours a day at a hospital. If you can imagine, it was a true test of my marriage.

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I mean, this was a time where I basically survived on two thermoses of coffee a day in prayer. You know what

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I'm saying? You guys ever been there before? It's not recommended life, okay? This is not recommended living. I remember this one, there was one summer,

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I'll never forget this. One summer semester where I had to take five classes to complete my program.

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Now, I don't know if you remember this, normally it's four classes for one semester. That's usually how it goes at the university. I had to take five.

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And this was summer. So like the classes were condensed, they were more difficult and they were shorter.

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And I couldn't fail these classes either. I couldn't make, there was no room for error. I couldn't make a mistake.

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I had to get good grades to complete the program. And one of the classes was linguistics and semantics.

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I almost died. I almost died that summer. And after all of that, we spent all that time and money, all that work

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I put into the program, killing myself essentially for two years. This is how it went and check this out. I finally went to apply to graduate.

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And UNLV came back and told me, Nate, we changed the requirements to graduate your program.

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You see where this is going? Somewhere during my program, the requirements for me changed.

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Now under this new system, check this out, I didn't need any English classes. Can you believe that?

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In other words, I took all those classes, all that money and I killed myself basically. And at the end of the day, my program was already complete.

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I didn't need all that extra stuff. Can you imagine my face? The veins on my forehead.

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Listen, friends, today, the apostle Paul is gonna show us that when you gave your life to Jesus Christ, there is no other work that is required of you.

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In Jesus, you are already complete. Amen, let's turn in your

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Bibles. Open your Bibles with me to Colossians chapter two. We are studying verses six through 15 this morning.

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Colossians chapter two, if you didn't bring your Bibles, it's gonna be on the screen here. Verse six from the word of the

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Lord, here it is. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.

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See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ.

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For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in him, you have been made complete and he is the head over all rule and authority.

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And in him, you are also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

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Having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

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When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him.

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Having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.

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Words of life right there. When he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them having triumphed over them through him.

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I ask you today that you would give us your insight, that you would allow us to see one thing and one thing only today.

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In Jesus, we are complete. Never let us stray from that fact.

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Never let us start to add anything on top of that. Let us always come back to that one central truth so that we may live our lives the way you have designed it.

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We love you. We thank you for your word. Amen. So last week, we talked about Paul's solution to the

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Colossian problem, the reason he desired that they walk worthy of Jesus Christ back in chapter one, the reason that he said that they must receive

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Jesus in the same way that they did when they placed faith in him, but they must do it every single day, and that's in chapter two, and the reason that he keeps making the case for the fullness and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ is that the

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Colossians were starting to look at Jesus as insufficient. Sure, Jesus is a part of righteous living, but he's not the whole package.

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Turns out Jesus needs our help. He needs other ideas. He needs ourselves, other rituals, in order to complete this process.

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Now, I said this last week, but what's so great about Paul's solution to the problem is it goes way beyond simply solving this specific issue that was going on with the

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Colossians 2 ,000 years ago. As it turns out, what Paul has done here is he's provided the fundamental framework for Christians to live their lives every single day moving forward.

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These are Christians for all time. This is way bigger than this specific problem.

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Now, last Sunday, we called this fundamental framework our faith walk. You remember this? This is our faith walk, and this is how it looks.

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We live our lives every day the same way that we got saved, totally surrendered in faith in Jesus Christ.

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Amen? Amen. What a solution, right? What a solution.

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It's as if Paul gave the Colossians a million dollars to a hundred dollar problem. You know what

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I'm saying? They needed a new carburetor, and he basically taught them how to build a whole car. That's what's going on here in chapter two.

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Today, as we pay close attention, we're gonna continue, and we're gonna discover the process or the formula of living totally surrendered in faith.

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Let's look again at verse six together. Therefore, as you have received

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Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.

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Now, pop quiz from last week. You ready? Pop quiz. You didn't realize there was gonna be a quiz. I love it.

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Pop quiz. Who's doing the work in verse seven? Anybody? In verse seven,

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Paul says you're being rooted, you're being built up, and you're being established in the faith. Who's doing the work?

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Is it us? No, it's Jesus, right? It's Jesus. Jesus is doing the work. So we already start to see a bit of the formula here.

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Jesus has done the work, and our job is to receive him and what he has done. Amen? Now, as we study verses eight through 15, what

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I want you to notice is Paul's not going to introduce something entirely new. He's just gonna continue to unpack this concept of our faith walk.

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He's just gonna do it a little bit further. Look at verse eight with me. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.

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According to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

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Do not be taken captive. Now, the original language here is evocative. Paul's trying to say something very specific, and he's not trying to communicate that we are possibly taken captive in the way that we use it today, like we're attracted to somebody.

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I'm very captivated by this thing. No, what he's really doing is he's giving a picture of being kidnapped.

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Of being stolen away by philosophy and empty deception. That's a lot more serious.

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Now, today we use the word philosophy in a much more narrow sense than what Paul did, and what others did in the first century.

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Today, we use the word philosophy, and a lot of times what we mean is the study of other philosophers and what they taught in the past.

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And these are philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant. Other times we'll refer to philosophy as the art of thinking critically or making logical argumentation, but in the first century, the word was used much more broadly.

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It actually entailed a lot more. What Paul means by philosophy is basically any system of thought, any set of ideas that is not according to Christ, and that's key.

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He's saying, don't be stolen away by these ideas. This actually takes us back to 2

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Corinthians 10 .5. The nature of our warfare trades on any speculation, every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.

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That means that what Paul is talking about here applies to everything. The bigger systematized religions of the world, like Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, New Age paganism, atheism, but Paul is also talking about the less systematized ideas, and I think this is where it gets real tricky for us today.

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I wanna spend a moment on this, especially for those in the church here. I think it gets a little tricky. This is where we have to be extremely careful to rightly divide the word of truth because the devil is crafty.

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Amen? One of the things that we are known for here in Las Vegas is our buffets.

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Am I right? And some of these places are so enormous. They're so decadent that you walk in there and sometimes you get lost.

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All right? Anyone ever get lost at a buffet before? You went to get the food. There was so many twists and turns, and then when you turned around to find your table, it was gone.

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Anybody ever? Two of you. I wanted to feel better about myself. That's happened a few times.

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And everything at the buffet is laid out. All the food is arranged in such a manner. It's presented in such a way.

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It looks like you wandered into one of Willy Wonka's rooms. You know what I'm saying? It's so decadent.

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It's so lavishly presented. It actually reminds me of one of those old Roman banquets. You know what

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I'm talking about? You remember your history? The old Roman banquets where they would lay out and they would gorge themselves on food. So much so that they invented other rooms.

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They created these rooms around the corner where they could go get up and walk around and then let the food go, if you catch my drift.

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They would eat too much and they would drink too much and they would let that food come back up. There we go.

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That's it. Here's the interesting thing about those

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Roman banquets. Check this out. Every now and then, someone would poison the wine.

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Did you know that? Talk about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, right?

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Every now and then, the food or the wine would be poisoned and you didn't know at any given time which was.

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Why am I talking about this? Because we cannot treat our Christian faith as if it's one truth among many truths.

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We cannot treat our Christianity as if it's one meal among many meals.

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The truths of God are not a buffet. Jesus Christ is not a menu option.

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Jesus Christ is manna. Amen? Did you hear me? Jesus Christ is not a menu option.

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Jesus Christ is manna. He's not the side dish. He's not the appetizer. He's not even the main meal, actually.

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He's the only meal. He's the only meal. He's the bread of life. And when we go down the buffet aisle of ideas and we try to add anything else on top of the only thing that leads to eternal life, the only thing that we need to live our lives righteously today, it may taste good in the moment, but it's poison.

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It's poison. That's what

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Paul's getting at. Any idea, big or small, that is not according to Christ is empty deception. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.

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Now, here's the thing. Paul chose not to give us a great many details about what specifically this philosophy was.

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And I know a lot of Christians in the past have speculated, maybe it's Gnosticism, maybe it's Judaism, maybe it's a blend of certain things, but really what

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Paul does here, and I want you to catch the proportionality here, okay? He spends, in verses eight through 15, in this particular chunk, he spends one verse on the false ideas, and he's rather vague about it.

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And then he spends seven verses talking about the truth. You see that? You see that proportion? I think that is an excellent strategy.

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Even the secular world understands this kind of strategy. I think this is how we need to proportionally understand things and look at the world.

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The FBI does this, by the way. When they train their agents to detect counterfeit money.

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Have you heard of this? The FBI, when they train their agents, they teach them to study the real deal.

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The real deal Holyfield. That's what they train them to do. John MacArthur pointed this out in one of his books.

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All right, he said, federal agents study genuine bills until they master the look of the real thing, and then when they see the bogus money, they can identify it.

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That's what Paul is doing in verses eight to 15, and that's where we need to spend our time in that proportion.

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Do you understand? See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

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For in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete, and he is the head over all rule and authority.

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This leads us to our first observation this morning. So if you grab some notes, I want you to write this down. You ready? First observation, false worldviews leave you incomplete.

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In Christ, you are complete. If you didn't grab notes, pull out a piece of paper, all right?

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Hopefully you hear something today that you wanna take with you into your life. False worldviews leave you incomplete. In Christ, you are complete.

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Notice the contrast between the two pictures here in verses eight to 10. On the one hand, you have the traditions of men, the principles and the ways of the world, and they're empty.

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Then on the other hand, you have verse nine, Jesus Christ who is full.

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It's the fullness of deity dwells in Jesus Christ. And more than that, in Jesus, you are filled.

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All right, verse 10 in our translation says complete. The word actually means filled.

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So there's your picture. Empty versus filled. That's what Paul wants you to get.

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That's the dynamic that takes place when you have anything else and Jesus Christ.

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In Christ, we are full because Christ is fully God. And now I think we can start to see the structure of the argument that Paul is beginning to make here.

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Paul's about to share the gospel. Watch the structure. The traditions of men, the principles of the world, they have no power over the fundamental problem with humanity.

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What is the fundamental problem with humanity? It's sin. It's sin.

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If anyone ever tells you anything different, they're wrong. I lead a college ministry with Pastor Chuck Williams.

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And every now and then, we try to get the young adults to really wrestle with the various worldviews that are walking around and interacting in today's culture.

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We literally sent them out with these questions in hand. What is wrong with the world? And how can what's wrong be made right?

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We heard a lot of answers. What's wrong with the world is politics. What's wrong with the world are

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Democrats. What's wrong with the world are Republicans. What's wrong with the world is climate change.

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Bible says what's wrong with the world is our sin. Our sin acted like ground zero and it rippled out to even the world.

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That's what's wrong with the world. That's what's wrong with humanity, our sin. And this problem leaves us incomplete.

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And our incompleteness is terminal, ladies and gentlemen. We are spiritually incomplete. We are dead in our trespasses and sins.

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Paul says this in verse 13. He says this again in Ephesians chapter two. But watch this, verse nine,

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Jesus Christ is fully God. In Christ, the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

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In verse 10, Jesus has all authority in kingship. What does that mean? He doesn't need our help.

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Jesus doesn't need our help. He didn't need it at the cross. He didn't need it when he rose from the dead.

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He doesn't need it now. When we're trying to live our life. You know what, Jesus? I'm gonna go ahead and take care of this and you take care of everything else.

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False. That's not how this works. Therefore, and here's your big idea this morning, life.

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If you're taking notes, I want you to write this down, please. Here's your big idea. We are complete in Christ because Christ and his work in us is complete.

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You're gonna notice it's very simple this morning, okay? The message is very simple. Why is the message simple?

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Because last week I said we keep forgetting this, ladies and gentlemen. We keep forgetting it.

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It appears to be a fundamental problem with humanity. We are complete in Christ because Christ and his work in us is complete.

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That's the structure of the argument that Paul is making in these verses. Hey, real quick.

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I'm so glad that you're watching, but did you know that 68 % of you that watch are not subscribed to the channel?

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Can you believe that? That blew my mind when I saw that. That's amazing. Would you please help me get this video out to more people by liking and subscribing to the channel?

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I really do appreciate it. We read the scripture and we see in various places, very clearly it is taught.

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In Jesus Christ, in Christ alone, that we are complete. It was true when we were saved.

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It's true as we live our lives every single day. Nothing changed. The truth didn't change.

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The fundamental structure of how we got saved and how we live our lives has not changed. And we love everyone, by the way, amen?

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We love everyone, but we stand on the word of God against systems and ideas that are empty. We have to.

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It's life or death out here. It's Jesus who we must allow to root us.

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It's Jesus who we must allow to build us up. It's Jesus who we must allow to establish us in the faith.

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This is day -to -day living. It's not just at the point of salvation. This is the clear teaching of God's word and everything else we try to add on top of this is empty.

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Well, if Christ is complete and his work is complete, what is the work? What is it that he has done for us?

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Verse 11, here we go. And in him, you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

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When you were dead in your transgressions in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.

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This is the gospel, friends. This is the gospel. What does this mean?

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It means that in Christ, we died with him, we were buried with him, we rose with him, and we continue to live in this faith every single day.

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It's interesting how Paul talks about our death in this particular passage. You notice this? He doesn't say death.

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He says circumcision. Did you catch that? And it's not a physical circumcision of our bodies.

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He's talking about a spiritual circumcision, one that was made without hands and it removes our body of flesh.

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Now, this connects right back to what Paul said in chapter one, verse 22. In verse 22,

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Paul says that Jesus has reconciled you in his fleshly body through death. And before this even happened,

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Paul says you were alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds. That's verse 21.

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So the picture's real rosy. Just seeing if you're awake. The reality is your entire person, your qualities and your characteristics before you were saved, they were living in a manner that was hell -bent on rejecting your creator.

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And I say that word advisedly. You were hell -bent on rejecting your creator. It's what the

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Bible says when you were dead in your transgressions. Your transgressions are your moral crimes against God.

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But when you were saved, your dead body and your old ways were removed like a circumcision. Kind of gross, a little grotesque, but it gets the job done.

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It's a nice picture. It's a circumcision. You were given a new life and a new spirit. This is why

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Paul says in Romans 6 that our old self was crucified with Jesus in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

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Now let me ask you a question. Is Paul referring to a partial circumcision here? Is Paul, is he trying to tell the

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Colossians that, you know, they were kind of, sort of crucified with Christ? That only part of ourselves was removed and God left an element of our old selves so that every now and then in our own strength that we can actually help out

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God? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So here's our second observation this morning, life.

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Number two, in Christ, we were completely crucified, buried and raised with him.

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Completely. Not partially, not halfway, not mostly. Completely.

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Some of you are like, he keeps repeating himself. I'm gonna tell you why. We cannot miss this concept because here it is again.

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When we start thinking otherwise, that's the moment that we make the Colossian mistake. That's the moment that we start looking like the

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Galatians. That's when we start thinking that God needs our help. We don't say that a lot of us out loud.

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We don't even think that articulately, but we act as if it is the case. God needs our own strength.

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God needs our own flesh and he needs our own rituals to help him out. This is an empty and deceptive philosophy and frankly, friends,

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I see this floating around the churches all over America right now. I wonder if the apostle

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Paul were alive today, if he would see what I'm seeing. And it's so subtle because it's baked into the cake of our secular culture right now.

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There's no way around this, friends. We are Christians living in 21st century America. We've grown up on a steady diet of consumerism, of individualism and a pull yourself up by your bootstrap sense of autonomy.

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And so the question is, what happens when we try to sprinkle these concepts on top of Christ who is complete?

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On top of the work that he has done that is complete? The answer is we try to accomplish in our flesh when only the

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Holy Spirit can. This is an exercise in spinning our wheels and it's so prevalent in people.

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It's all over the place and not just folks today. Like I said, this happened 2000 years ago. Look at Paul in Galatians chapter three.

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This is what he said to the church. Are you still foolish? Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

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The answer is no. You cannot perfect yourself by the flesh. The old self has zero capabilities to do what only

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God can do. But what happens when we act like we can? What happens when we try to add our own selves and our own strength on top of God?

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How absurd is that? And we do it all the time. I'm guilty of it. I'm guilty of it.

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We do it all the time. And maybe you're even praying sometimes, right? Because in your best intentions, right?

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You're praying and you're saying, God, let me help you. Let me help you.

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Help me help you, God. I call this the Jerry Maguire prayer. God, help me help you.

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Here's what happens when we do this. When we do this, we rely on our old self. We pick up that old dead body.

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It's Weekend at Bernie's. I got all the movie references for you. And we try to live out in that old self.

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And here's what happens next. You step out of total surrendered faith. You step away from it. You dust off that old self and you try to accomplish in your own strength what only

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God can do. And then what happens next? Very often, you get frustrated. You get frustrated.

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You get discouraged. You get tired. You get burnt out. You become divided in community and you stop bearing fruit.

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And when God takes a left turn, when you fully expected him to go right, you become overtaken with questions and confusion and doubt.

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That's what happens. Here's the last observation, number three. In Christ, we are completely free from sin and all other authority, completely.

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The Bible says Jesus made us alive together in him. He forgave us our transgressions. And then verse 14, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.

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When he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them having triumphed over them through him.

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Good Bible study question to ask at this point is what are the rulers and authorities that Paul is talking about here?

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Now, this is a bit of an ambiguous phrase, okay? And Christians, they have different answers on this particular issue, but here's what

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I think. Back in verse 13, take a look at it with me. Verse 13, Paul points out three things that had power over us.

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We were dead, we were condemned, and we were uncircumcised in our flesh.

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I think that's what Paul's talking about here. I think that's what Paul means by rulers and authorities.

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Death, condemnation, and uncircumcision. These were our rulers, but then Jesus dealt with these specific issues.

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This is what Paul says, verse 13. He made us alive again, he forgave us our transgressions and canceled out our debt, and he nailed everything to the cross, verse 15, which is a reference to Christ's death and our circumcision of our flesh.

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That's verse 11. And Paul says when Jesus accomplished these things, he not only put them on public display, he also triumphed over them.

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That's the resurrection. That's the resurrection. In other words, when he rose again on the third day, he proved these previous powers have no place over us.

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They are not our authority. Remember biblical faith? Biblical faith is trusting in God because he has given us reason to do so.

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The proof is in the resurrection. You guys with me? Now don't forget, we started with verses six and seven.

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Verse six, as you receive Jesus, so walk in him. That's the formula. As you receive Jesus at the point of salvation, continue to live your life every single moment in the same way.

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Being rooted up, being built up in him and established in your faith. In other words,

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Paul doesn't go to all the trouble of focusing on these fundamental gospel truths for no reason. These are the very truths that become a path for us to walk every single day.

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We put one foot in front of the other. That's how we're supposed to do it, in totally surrendered faith. And this path leads to your sanctification.

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That's a big $1 .50 Christian word, sanctification. Sanctification is the continuing work of God to enable you to die to sin and live righteously as we put one foot in front of the other.

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That's sanctification. That right there is the end result of this faith walk that Paul's talking about.

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We are sanctified. We die to sin and we live righteously every single day. I was talking to a brother.

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I run a couple of discipleship groups. If you are lacking in any group for whatever the purpose is, men's group, women's group, discipleship groups, please come talk to us.

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We would love to find good brothers and sisters to walk alongside you, to hold you accountable in sin, to study the scripture together, to grow in your knowledge of Christ.

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I was doing a discipleship group and we were going through Romans because if you notice Romans 6, this is a separate study.

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Romans 6 basically says the same thing that Colossians 2 says. And there's a moment where Paul says, therefore no longer consider yourself dead to sin, but put to death the sins of the flesh and the body.

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And this brother was struggling. He was struggling with sin and it really overtook him to the point where he acted and sounded like, he didn't use these words, but he acted and sounded like he was a victim of his sins.

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You're not. He's not. And when I tried to point this out in Romans 6, he got upset.

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He got upset with the scripture because deep down, he didn't believe it. He didn't believe the scripture.

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This is how we're supposed to do it. We're supposed to walk totally surrendered in faith. The moment that you say,

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I can help you God, give me this little 2 % or 5 % or 10%, you're off.

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You're off. The way we are sanctified, the way we continue to die to sin, it's possible, we're not gonna be perfectly sinless, but it's possible to turn a corner on sins in your life that you're struggling with right now by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. That is by definition sanctification. And the Bible tells you that you can be sanctified by God, by his grace, but this is the formula.

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Now I've been talking about these truths in a very abstract sense. I wanna close by talking about what it looks like. What does your faith walk look like practically?

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Maybe another way to say that is, what does it look like to abide in Christ practically? All right, here at Life, we're about to bring back a class that used to run throughout the year.

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We call it Starting Point. You remember Starting Point? How many went to Starting Point before? Oh, a lot of opportunities to go to Starting Point.

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That's good. We're gonna do it again very soon. Starting Point goes over a lot of what I'm discussing this morning.

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It does, just more in depth. And there is a discussion portion in the class that's very valuable.

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I would encourage those of you who have not gone, when we get this going again, please sign up. I would ask a question when we ran these classes, because I would lead the classes.

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I would ask this particular question to every class, because I was curious if we really understood this concept. And here was my question.

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What do you think it looks like practically to abide in Christ? And what

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I discovered as I asked this question is it became very clear to me that we don't understand what it looks like.

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We understand the truth. We understand this in the abstract. We can, when we're tested, we can get the right answer on the test question.

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But a lot of us don't understand what this looks like when the rubber meets the road. And that's what matters.

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Amen? We need to figure this out. And I don't blame anybody.

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As I mentioned, before I came here, I got a theology degree, and I didn't get this until I came here.

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When I got here, our previous pastor, Paul Godhart, he pulled me aside immediately, and we sat together for about eight months.

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And we unpacked this concept from the scriptures. We read the scriptures together. We went over another book together.

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By the way, I highly recommend this book for you if you're taking notes. It's called The Green Letters by Miles Stanford.

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The Green Letters. It unpacks everything. It's not some new concept. It unpacks what is all over the place in the scripture.

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And if we're not careful, we miss it. We miss it. I call it our faith walk.

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Here at Life, we call it the Christ life. And this is a very difficult concept to articulate, but I wanna give you a picture of what this looks like.

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And these aren't in your notes. It's not gonna be on the slides. But write down what you need to, okay? There are three expressions of what it looks like to have a faith walk.

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All right, and all of these overlap. Here's the first one. Number one, behold God daily.

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Behold God daily. What do I mean by behold? I mean to seek

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God in such a way where the primary focus is on him and him alone. There's a lot of great studies that you can do in the scripture.

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You can do some word studies. You can do some thematic studies. You can go through the Bible in a full year. And those are really great.

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But what you should primarily be doing on top of everything else is finding God in the scripture, beholding him, and spending time with him where the focus is on him.

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You heard our previous pastor say that quite a bit. Behold God in reading his word, and when you find him there, don't take your eyes off him.

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Continue to behold him. Behold who he is. Behold his attributes. Behold his qualities, his actions, his promises, and keep your gaze fixated on him.

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This is difficult in today's culture. We have ADD these days.

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Social media, thank you very much. Screens, they've given us attention deficit disorder.

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I tell you, we need to stay focused on God and his word. Jesus said, eternal life is knowing the only true

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God, and Jesus Christ to me is sent. That's John 17 three. You can do the same thing in the word.

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Know God. Spend time with God where the focus is on God. And as you do, you'll know him more. You can do the same thing in worship.

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What we just did this morning. You don't need to wait Sunday mornings to worship. All right, somebody needed to hear that.

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You can do this in prayer. You can do this in going out into nature. And for a lot of us, this is like one of those things that I just listed is the easiest way for us to get into the presence of God.

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And we sense it. We sense his presence. In every available means behold

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God. And if you continue to behold him, you won't take your eyes off him and your faith walk will be strong. Here's number two.

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Pray without ceasing. Ceasing means stopping.

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Pray without ceasing. You're not talking about prayer where you go to God the divine vending machine and you say the magic words so you can pop out your request on the bottom.

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Okay, because that's how a lot of us actually treat prayer. And that is sad. That's sad.

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I mean prayer in the biblical sense. Prayer is a direct communication to the Lord fully submitted to him.

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Your stance is fully submitted. Remember when we used to kneel down and pray? That was supposed to be an outward expression of the inward reality.

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We're supposed to submit to the Lord in prayer. And what happens is if we make requests, which by the way, that's not every single prayer that you should be praying, you know.

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If we make requests, the attitude is we're gonna align ourselves to God's will. It's not our will, it's

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God's will. Jesus said that right before he was killed. That's our attitude.

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Pray without ceasing. Somebody's like, wow, Nate, that sounds like a lot of prayer. I'm a busy guy.

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I'm a busy lady. Yeah, that's a lot of prayer, but I'm not the one who's saying it, the Bible says it. Okay, Paul said it in 1

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Thessalonians 5. Pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing. That means before you do anything, before you go to work, to school, when you wake up in the morning, before you get your coffee, pray.

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That means when you get in the car and you're on the way to work, pray. No, Nate, I like to listen to my podcast.

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Shut them off and pray. You realize I'm saying this in love, right? I have angry resting face,

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I love you guys. And let me give you the prayer. This is what the prayer should look like.

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You ready for this? It's a combination of John 15, five and Galatians 2, 20. You ready? Jesus, apart from you,

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I can do nothing. That's John 15. Apart from you, I can do nothing. Would you live your life through me today?

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Would you live your life through me in this moment? It's not an extemporaneous prayer.

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We're praying the scripture. John 15, five and Galatians 2, 20. Jesus, apart from you,

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I can do nothing. Would you live your life through me? And by the way, somebody's confused, right? This is the first thing.

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Pastor Paul told me this and I was like, well, wait a second, are we like, where do we go when Jesus lives his life through us?

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Are we on a coffee break? Like what's happening to our bodies? That's how silly I am. I'm not suggesting that Jesus takes over your body.

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What I'm saying is you are actively living your life. On the outside, it looks no different than anybody else, but you're doing so in totally surrendered trust and obedience, that's the difference.

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That's the difference. You are recognizing that it's not your will, it's God's will. It's not your way, it's

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God's way. Everything we do, we're supposed to pray this way, do you understand?

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Number three, obey God thankfully. Obey God thankfully.

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Jesus said, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him, we'll live with him.

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Here's what happens when you behold God daily. You pray without ceasing. He starts to show you what you're supposed to do.

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You start to see things differently. All of a sudden, the scriptures comes to mind because you've put them right here and now you see in this particular situation, you know what to do.

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All of a sudden, you see the providential moments unfold in your lives. You start to see things in terms of God's desire and when that happens, obey it.

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Obey it and watch that overflowing gratitude that Paul was talking about back in Colossians 2, verse seven.

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Watch that come. Behold God daily. Pray without ceasing. Obey God thankfully.

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That's how it looks. That's how it looks. I don't want you to hear what I'm not saying, okay? I'm not telling you to perform a series of functions and therefore, once you've performed the functions, now all of a sudden, you have a faith walk.

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That would be violating what I just told you this morning. All right? Your faith walk is not a new legalism.

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Do you understand? What I'm giving you is a picture of what it looks like on the outside when the inner reality of your heart is totally surrendered.

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That's what it looks like. There's other ways to do it, by the way. It's not exhaustive. I'm giving you a picture.

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Do you understand? And if we've learned anything as a church family, especially over the last week or so, every moment matters.

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Every moment matters. Don't waste it. Don't waste a single moment. Now maybe you walked in here this morning and that's exactly what's been happening for your life.

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You've been living your Christian life in a partial surrender to God, but you're trying to help them out with your own strength and your own flesh.

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These are areas of your life that God has not been able to enter into I used to say it like this, but I like to throw a good house party, but everybody knows when they come over to my house, don't go into my master bedroom.

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It's off limits. This is what we do with Jesus in our heart. We don't let

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Jesus go into every single chamber of our heart. We need to. That's total surrender. Now maybe you walked in here and that's what's going on with you right now.

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Maybe like the Galatians and the Colossians, you started out in the spirit, and now along the way, you are acting as if Jesus is insufficient.

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You're trying to do in your own strength and in your own flesh, what only God and the Holy Spirit can do. And you've become frustrated.

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You've become discouraged. You're tired and you're burnt out.

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And you stopped bearing fruit. If this is you today, I want to pray for you.

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In the same spirit that Paul did for the Colossians, I want to pray for you. Today is the day to totally surrender to the

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Lord. Today is the day to give up those areas that you have been holding onto in your own strength and let it go.

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You gotta let it go. God is willing to course correct in your life today.

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The question is, will you let him? Let's bow our heads for a moment. Right now,

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I want to give you a moment. If you need to confess to God today because you have not been living your life, completely surrendered in faith,

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I'm gonna give you this time. You need to confess. You need to confess.

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Let the spirit convict you in the areas of your heart that you have not totally surrendered to God.

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Take this moment. We thank you for your grace, for your mercies and patience with us.

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Heavenly Father, I beg you on behalf of my church family and everyone watching, fill us up with your love, with your mercies and with your grace.

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Let us love you so much that we live in total abandon, that we are completely and totally surrendered to you and to your desires in our life.

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Let us have your eyes to see exactly how we should move and act and speak in the world that you have made.

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Let us walk worthy of you, Lord Jesus. Let us never stray from this moment forward because the moments matter.

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Let us not stray from the central truth that the way we live our lives as Christians is totally surrendered to you.

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I thank you for this message, Lord. I pray that it would continue to remain with us by the power of your Holy Spirit.