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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Colossians chapter 4 and hold your place at verse 18.
We come today to the end of a study of the book of Colossians.
Last week we finished 40 sermons and 4 chapters and today we are going to step back from those intimate studies of the individual parts of the book and we're going to look at the whole of the book and seek to have that view that gives us what Paul intended when he sent this letter to the church at Colossae.
There's two ways that you can study anything.
You can study a broad study or you can study a very narrow study and we think of it like this and I've used this analogy before that if you were to want to study a landscape you could go on top of a tower.
When I was a kid my dad used to take me to this place out west of us.
It was actually called the East Tower but it was west of here and it was just a large tower that men would go up and sit and watch for fires.
My dad would take me there and we would climb this thing.
We never could get in because it was locked but we could climb up to the very top of the ladder that you could get to and you could look out and you could literally see for miles and you could see the nuances in the landscape and you could see all the little creeks and ponds that you couldn't see because the trees were in the way but once you got over above the trees you could look out and see those things and it gave you what we might call a bird's eye view of that area and then you could climb down from the tower.
You could get down on your knees and you could examine a single blade of grass.
Well, for the last 10 months we have essentially been studying blades of grass.
We've been looking at individual parts of this book.
Well, today we're going to ascend that tower and we're going to look out upon the whole of the book and ask ourselves what have we learned.
We're going to simply read the last verse as our beginning of this study so let us stand together and read God's word and be reminded, of course, of the author of the book as he closes this with a personal statement.
He says in chapter 4, verse 18, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
Remember my chains.
Grace be with you.
Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
I thank you that your word is true and always true and that we can trust in what it says as you so did inspire its writing and have given it to us through the process of preservation down these last 2,000 years.
And Lord, we thank you for the apostle Paul.
We thank you that you gave us a man who loved the church, who sent letters to the churches because he was concerned for them and that he prayed for them and asked that they pray for him.
And Lord, in that relationship, there was a reminder to us that this relationship of the gospel continues on down to our very day.
And Lord, the center of that gospel is Jesus Christ.
And as we look today at the sufficiency of Christ, I pray, first, that you would keep me from error, second, that you would open the hearts of the people to understand your word, that your Holy Spirit would be the teacher, that I would simply be the mouthpiece, that he would take the message of the word into the ear, through the mind and into the heart and write these eternal truths upon our hearts, Lord.
For the believer, I pray for closer conformity to the person of Christ and for those who are here who are not yet followers of Christ, I pray that you would, by your mercy, give them the gift of repentance that leads to eternal life.
Lord, give us faith in Christ's name.
Amen.
Coming to the end of a series always reminds me of a story from Professor Howard Hendricks.
Professor Howard Hendricks wrote.
Living by the book, which is a textbook that we use in our academy for how to study the Bible, if you're ever looking for a book to help you study the Bible, living by the book is a good resource to use.
And in that book, Dr.
Hendricks tells a story of how he was once invited to preach at a church.
And when he spoke to the people who were inviting him, he said, I would love to come and preach at your church.
Can you tell me what you would like me to speak on? Professor Hendricks was a master of church history and and had taught for years.
And so when he would go somewhere, he would ask, is there something specific you would like for me to talk about? And they said, Professor Hendricks, it's up to you.
You can preach anything you want as long as you don't preach Ephesians.
Well, that, of course, would have gotten my attention and it did it did as well, the good professor, because Professor Hendricks said, well, now I have to know why don't you want me to preach Ephesians? And they sort of sheepishly said, our pastor has been in Ephesians for two years.
We want something else.
And Professor Hendricks, in his ineffable way, he was a very, very witty man.
He said to the people he was speaking to, he said, you've been in Ephesians for two years.
What is Ephesians about? And he said not one of them could give him an answer.
What is the main idea? What is the thesis statement? What is Paul's reason for writing to the Ephesians? And not one of them could give an answer.
So this is a good reminder to us that it is very possible in our seeking to be very deep in our exegetical mining of the text that we miss the forest for the trees.
And I don't want us to do that.
I don't want us to focus so much on the details that we miss the big picture.
So today is all about that big picture.
Today's about the 30,000 foot view.
What has God taught us since October of last year when we first began this study? And by the way, that's when we began.
What are our takeaways from this book? What are the things that are going to apply in our lives? And if someone were to ask you, what is Colossians about? Would you be able to give an answer? Well, my hope is that you will, especially after today.
If I had to put the entire book of Colossians into a single thesis or a main idea, it would be the sufficiency of Christ, the sufficiency of Christ.
And a good way to compare this may be if we simply did a reasonable comparison very quickly in our minds to the book of Hebrews.
The book of Hebrews is about the superiority of Christ.
If you've studied Hebrews, if you've looked and read Hebrews, you will find from the beginning to the ending, there is one thread of continuity which holds the entire book of Hebrews together.
And that is Christ is better.
He provides a better covenant because he is a better priest and he has given a better sacrifice.
That is the book of Hebrews.
And there's much more, but there's nothing less than that statement that Christ is superior to all.
Well, the same idea of finding the meaning, the main thrust of the book can be taken to Colossians.
And the distinction is where Hebrews focuses on the superiority of Christ, Colossians focuses on the sufficiency of Christ.
Hebrews, Christ is superior.
Colossians, Christ is enough.
And so if someone asks you as you're walking today out to the car and I expect this of the parents in here because I do this to my own children, what is the idea of the sermon today? You ever do that with your kids when you get in the car? What did Pastor Keith preach about? I do that.
I don't ask him what did Pastor Keith preach.
I say, what did Keith? I don't even say that.
I say, what did I preach about? And my kids will say, I don't know.
No, they sometimes know they do a good job.
I love them.
They're home today six.
So unfortunately, they're not here.
But the idea is that Christ is enough.
That's what it means to be sufficient.
Means lacking nothing.
Nothing needs to be added to the Lord Jesus Christ and to his work and nothing that I can do can ever add one step to what he has taken to the journey he took to the cross for me and the death he died for me and the sacrifice he made for me and the life he lived for me and the mediation he continues to provide for me cannot be added to by anything of me.
He is my all in all.
In fact, that very phrase, which I know we have a song that we sing, that very phrase is taken from Colossians, where Paul says, Christ is our all in all.
The key passage of this book is chapter two, verse six, chapter two, verse six, provides to us what I would consider to be the thesis passage, meaning that this is what Paul intended for them to get and everything else is based on this.
Everything that comes before it and everything that comes after it is focused on this singular idea of what's in chapter two, verse six and chapter two, verse six says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, excuse me, I'm sorry, as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him.
Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him.
I ask you this, church, and I know you know the answer.
I hope you know the answer.
And so I'll ask you, how did you receive Christ the Lord? By faith, and let me ask you this, did you receive Christ the Lord by faith plus the law? No, Paul, in fact, says the very opposite in Galatians, right? If you if you started in faith, do you make yourself perfect by the law? The answer is obviously no.
Right.
So we have the Apostle Paul who tells us that you received Christ by faith and we say by faith.
Alone, by the way, if you want to just a quick heads up when we in Colossians today, next week, I'm going to do a few weeks on the subject of apologetics, and that goes along with something we studied in Colossians.
And then we're going to do five weeks on the five solas.
And if you're not familiar with the five solos, you will be by the time we get to Reformation Day, the Reformation, in fact, one of the songs we sang today, Glorious, Adam, don't know it, but we're going to do that again.
I know we're going to do it again, but we're going to do it again on the day we study solely Deo Gloria, which will be the last of those five.
And my hope is that that will end on Reformation Sunday as we focus.
But but the one precious.
Sola.
That is sort of the foundation of everything is this idea of sola fide.
That we are, in fact, that was the article that Martin Luther said, the article upon which the church stands or falls.
Is sola fide, that our justification is by faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, if you go down the solas, it's all about that idea that we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to scripture alone, to God alone, be the glory.
Now, that may sound somewhat reductionistic, and I do think that there is times where we often become very reductionistic in our thinking.
It's all about faith alone.
But that's what Paul is saying here in chapter two, verse six.
He's saying, as you receive Christ, the Lord, you received him by faith.
Therefore, how do you walk in this life? Therefore, how do you live this life? You live this life by faith.
I can't believe we landed on Habakkuk two this morning.
That is a gift of God.
Is this not on? It's on, but I'll stay here then.
Is this coming through? I won't depart.
So, Habakkuk chapter two says the righteous shall live, and I do say it the southern way, Habakkuk.
Habakkuk chapter two says the just shall live by what? By faith.
Very quickly in your Bibles, turn with me to Romans chapter one.
I just want to show you this, as there is an idea that flows through all of Paul's letters, and there's this idea of understanding our justification is by faith.
And Paul, when he's writing his letter to the church at Rome, which is his doctrinal magnum opus, his great work, he writes this letter to the Romans.
And in Romans chapter one, verses 16 and 17, I taught this in Sunday school this morning, and I told my class, this passage changed the world.
And do you know why this passage changed the world? Because this passage changed the heart of one man.
His name was Martin Luther, and Martin Luther changed the world because one passage changed his heart.
As he was studying the word of God, and he came to this passage.
Look at it.
What does it say? I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For in it the power of God, or the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
As it is written, the just shall live by faith.
It is that quote.
He's quoting Habakkuk here, and he's quoting to show that this idea of justification by faith is not a New Testament concept.
The idea of justification by faith is not a New Covenant concept.
It is the concept that has begun all the way back since the very beginning, and that is Yahweh God calls for faith in His promises, faith in His word, faith and trust in Him, and the just, the righteous live by faith in Him.
Therefore, when we come to Colossians, and Colossians 2 tells us, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, how did you receive Him? By faith.
That's how you walk.
You walk by faith.
You received Him by faith, now walk by faith.
He is sufficient.
He is creator.
He is sustainer.
Therefore, He must not be added to.
We must trust in Him.
We must walk in Him.
We must conform ourselves to Him, and we must stand against all people and teachings who would seek to add to Christ.
That's Colossians.
That's the book.
Dr.
R.C.
Sproul wrote an overview of the Bible.
It's called What's in the Bible? I have it on my shelf in my office.
He wrote it with another man named Wagmuth.
I think I'm saying that probably incorrectly, but that's how it's spelled.
And the two of them wrote this book, and it overviews every book of the Bible.
And I, as I was preparing this week, I was like, I went back and I pulled some books off the shelf because I want to make sure I didn't miss anything in my studies, and is there a main idea that maybe I overlooked in my looking at the small parts? And so I pulled this off the shelf, and this is what it says.
A little paragraph about Colossians.
It says, Jesus did not make His first appearance in a cattle trough in Bethlehem.
He was a full participant in creation.
The universe was made by Him, through Him, and for Him.
The cosmic Christ will not be belittled only to be given a tacit nod on a Sunday morning.
No, the Christ of the Bible is more grand than we could ever imagine.
The church, which is the body of Christ, is the continuing work of Jesus Christ in the world, and if we are doing His work, worshipping the cosmic Christ instead of the consumer Christ, we will participate in His victory by means of His suffering.
This is a promise.
That's a great quote.
And it reminds us that who we're talking about here is not, I love this, not the consumer Christ, not the Santa Claus who beckons us to come and sit on His knee and tell us what we want and to share all our wants and needs, but the cosmic Christ to whom all people will bow the knee.
And at the name of which, and only which, salvation comes.
For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
Not can be saved, not shall be saved, not but must be saved.
There's only one name by which we must be saved, and it is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And at that name, every knee will bow.
You serve a king.
You don't serve a slave.
You don't serve one who begs for your attention.
You serve one who commands your attention.
You serve one who commands.
You serve a cosmic Christ.
He who created all things, sustains all things, and holds all things together by the word of His power.
That is the Christ of Colossians, and He is a sufficient Christ.
This book can be separated.
This is where we're going to start getting back into some of the details.
This book can be separated into two main divisions.
Some people call it different.
Some people say it different.
But this is how I have divided the book as I understand it.
The first half of the book, chapters 1 and 2, are what I would refer to as the doctrinal treatise, meaning this is where Paul explains the doctrines upon which he will make his applications.
Paul always begins with a truth that we must conform to before giving us the confirmation to that truth.
He tells us this is the truth, and here's how this truth should affect your lives.
So we have the doctrinal treatise in chapters 1 and 2, and then we have the final chapters, which is the ethical treatise.
Some might not call it ethical.
Some might say applicational.
I say ethical maybe because right now in my mind is Christian ethics.
I just happen to be teaching Christian ethics in our academy, so that just is in my mind as I think about Christian ethics.
But that's what it is.
Because the first two chapters is all about the truth of our faith, and the last two chapters is all about how the truth of our faith should exercise itself in how we live.
It should exercise itself in what we do with our lives.
And these can be further broken down.
I want to look at some passages today.
I want to show you how this overall look comes from taking apart the pieces.
So let's look first at the doctrinal treatise.
The doctrinal treatise comes to us in chapters 1 and 2, and it is three parts.
First, that Christ is the creator and sustainer of all.
Second, Christ is reigning.
Notice I said reigning, not will reign.
Christ is reigning overall.
And third, Christ's enemies seek to pervert the gospel.
That's the doctrinal treatise Paul shares with us.
Let's look first at Christ as creator and sustainer.
Turn back to chapter 1 and look at verse 15.
In chapter 1, verse 15, we have one of the most profound presentations of the Christ that is in the whole of Scripture.
This is what I would say one of the most Christologically significant passages in all the Bible.
Because in verses 15 through 20, Paul explains to us who Christ is.
If you remember back at last Christmas, I did five Sundays on this.
I went one verse at a time, and we looked at all of these verses in particular.
So if I say something today that doesn't make sense to you, and you feel like it needs to be further explained, I recommend you pull out Sermon Audio, go back to Christmas of last year, and listen because I'm sure it might be there.
I'm sure it might.
That sounded pretty sure because I did deal with these.
But I want to remind you what we learned when we looked at verses 15 to 20 because, again, this is one of the most Christologically significant passages in all the New Testament.
Speaking of Jesus, Paul says this.
He says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation.
For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authority.
All things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And He is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent.
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.
Did you hear that, what that said about Jesus, your Savior? I know sometimes maybe when long reading like that comes on, maybe sometimes our brains kind of cut out for a second.
But think about what Paul is saying about Jesus.
Think about the fact that he says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
The Bible says in John chapter 1, no man has ever seen God.
And then we start having confusing questions because we say, wait a minute, Isaiah saw God in Isaiah chapter 6, and Adam saw God in the garden, and Abraham ate with God under the oak trees at Mamre.
Why does the Bible say in the New Testament that no one has ever seen God? Well, if you read the whole passage, what it says, it says no one has ever seen God, but the only begotten God who is at the Father's side, He has disclosed Him, or made Him known, or the word exegeted Him.
Christ is the image of the invisible God.
So when we see Him in the Old Testament, we are seeing Christ's pre-incarnate Christ showing up on the scene because He is the image of the invisible God.
I can prove it because in Isaiah chapter 6, the Bible says Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple, and the seraphim were around Him saying, holy, holy, holy.
Remember that? Well, if you go to John chapter 12, when John is explaining that passage, he says they saw the glory of Christ.
Isaiah saw Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God.
This is why I say Christ is creator of all things.
We cannot separate the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We can distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the economics of the Trinity, but we cannot separate the being of God.
There are not three gods, and we are not tritheists.
We are Trinitarian, one God, eternally existing in three persons, and these three persons are co-equal, co-existent, and co-eternal.
That's what we mean when we say Jesus is God.
Now, I don't normally say that.
Not that I have an issue with saying Jesus is God, but almost always when you hear me say, I'll say Jesus is God incarnate, because when we think of Jesus, we think of the man.
And when Jesus the man was walking the earth, he was talking to God, and he was praying, and on the night before he went to the cross, he said, Father, if it be your will, take this cup from me, nevertheless not thy will, but my will be done right.
So we have an issue in our brains of how we can connect the two, the Christ of the man and the God of heaven, and what we have to understand is that in his incarnation, there was a humiliation.
Philippians chapter 2 says, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a bondservant, and going to the cross.
See, he became a man so that he could be a representative of men to God.
See, the creator who created you came and died for you.
We sang it in the song this morning, where the song said, the earth you made, you were put into.
Like you were buried in the very earth you created.
That's wild! That's wild! So in Colossians 1, when it says he is the creator of all things, he is the sustainer of all things, your heart beats in your chest at the command of almighty God.
Your heart beats in your chest because Christ wants it to.
Right now.
You ever laid at night and heard your heart beating? Maybe there's something wrong with me.
I can hear mine.
But you lay there and you hear it beating, and you think, one day, it's going to stop.
Not this time.
Maybe I'm...
There's another one.
But the reality is, it beats at the command of almighty God.
So Colossians wants us to know that this Christ is the creator and sustainer.
Paul, in his writing to the Colossians, I want you to know who Jesus is, because there are people in Colossae who are trying to get you to think he's not enough.
And if you think he's not enough, I'm going to tell you who he is.
He's the one who made you.
He's the one who sustains you.
He is the Christ.
He is God incarnate.
That's who he is.
Christ is the creator and sustainer of all.
But I want to add to that.
As I said, I'm not going to exegete every passage, but if you want to go back, verses 15 through 20, rich, there's five hours of sermons on this, because there's so much richness here.
But just think about all that's being said of him.
But now I want to look at the second thing, because I've got a whole other section we've got to get to.
Notice it also says Christ is reigning over all.
Turn over to chapter 2, verse 13.
Christ is creator.
Christ is sustainer.
But Christ is also reigning over all.
Look at verse 13.
It says, And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
Do you understand that when Christ did what he did on the cross, he not only paid the penalty for your sin, but he defeated his enemies.
You say, Oh, I don't feel like I live in a world of...
I feel like the enemy is in total control.
Man, when I look out and I see abortions and drag queen story hour and all this nonsense, I say, Man, it seems like the enemy is all in control.
But I want to tell you something.
Satan is bound by the power of the gospel.
He is on God's leash.
He's not in control.
Now, I have to be careful because what I'm about to say, one, might create a lot of questions and two, might take me into another hour sermon.
So I'm going to say this quick.
In the book of Revelation, chapter 20, there is one of the most controversial sections in all the Bible.
It's only 10 verses long.
But man, it has divided churches, divided pastors and friends because it asks the question known as the millennium because it says in Revelation chapter 20, Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.
And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and he bound him for a thousand years.
And he threw him into a pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended and then he must be released for a little while.
That goes on to talk about the saints ruling and reigning with Christ and it talks about his release.
But those first three verses really bring the issue up.
And you end up with a debate over the millennium.
The debate is whether or not people are pre-millennial, post-millennial or amillennial.
Pre-millennial means Christ is going to return and then the thousand years begins.
That's what a lot of people believe if you've ever read the Left Behind series.
That's called pre-millennialism.
And that's what a vast majority of people in the church believe because that was popularized in the nineties and, well, eighties, nineties, all throughout.
Pre-millennialism.
Post-millennialism is that Christ returns after a golden age or after a millennial age.
And amillennialism is the third view which says Christ is reigning now.
Now based on what I said five minutes ago, what position do you think I'm going to sit? When I say we, I can only speak for myself and our elders because I know I can't speak for every single one of you but based on the fact that this is what we teach, I can say that our church is what's known as amillennial.
Now often we think that A means something that doesn't exist, like an atheist, God doesn't exist, agnostic, doesn't know, right? But the A in amillennial simply means that we do not believe that the millennium is a literal thousand-year period.
But what that thousand years represents is the time between Christ's first coming and his second coming or his final coming.
And we call that the interadvental period, the period between his two advents.
He came once and he will come again and the time between his first and second coming is known as the millennial age or the church age, where we are right now.
That's where we are.
You say, how can you come to that conclusion? How can you conclude that Satan is bound right now? Well, if you go to Matthew chapter 12, when Jesus is preaching the gospel and the Pharisees accuse him of being in league with Satan, you know what Jesus said to them? He said, how can I be in league with Satan? Because you can't have two different directions.
If a house divides against itself, it'll fall.
And he says, the way you attack is you have to bind the strong man.
And in that he was talking about Satan.
And what was Jesus talking about? He's saying, as I go out and preach, I'm binding the strong man.
Because as the gospel goes out, he is being bound.
And when the apostles went out in Luke's gospel and they came back, having preached the gospel, they came back and they said, the demons are subject to us in your name.
And Jesus said, I know because I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven when you preached the gospel.
You see, you understand that what binds Satan, what causes Satan to be crushed under our feet in Romans 16, when it says in Romans 16, 19, be excellent at what is good and be innocent at what is evil.
For God will soon crush Satan under your feet as you go out into the world and you preach the gospel.
This is why we see the gospel having success all over the world.
You say, I don't see it having success in Florida.
I don't see it having success in Jacksonville.
Go to Africa and go to China where the gospel is persecuted.
And guess what it does? It overcomes.
That's what we see.
As we see a triumphing gospel, we see a gospel that begins as a mustard seed, 12 young men in Israel takes over the world.
Jesus said, mustard seed goes into the ground and produces a tree so big that birds come and make nests in its branches.
Like I said, I didn't mean to bypass Colossians to come talk about the millennium.
For those of you who don't know, I did a debate on the millennium this week, so it does happen to be in my brain.
But I just wanted to show you that in Colossians chapter 2, when the apostle Paul says, he disarmed the rulers and authorities.
He put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
Every single one of those words is in the past tense.
It's done.
And so what are we waiting on if it's done? The consummation.
The kingdom has been inaugurated.
The king is on his throne, and one day he will come to consummate his kingdom and usher in the eternal state.
And all of the promises will be fulfilled in them.
And at that point, he will put away everything, all evil, all sin, and we will go into the eternal state, sinless and confused, because we ain't ever lived that way before.
Just kidding about that last part.
But I do wonder sometimes how we're going to be able to live.
I don't even know how I'm going to be able to live.
My whole life is going to change in a moment.
I'm not going to desire sin anymore.
I'm not going to have bad thoughts, bad words, bad anything.
I know.
And until that day, I can say this.
Christ is Lord.
He reigns now.
I don't make him king.
He is king.
I either choose to bow or I rebel, but on that final day, every knee will bow, because he's reigning now.
And Christ's enemies hate that.
Let's get to the third thing.
Go back.
Christ's enemies hate that truth, and that's why Christ's enemies seek to pervert the gospel.
Just because Satan is bound doesn't mean he's not active.
If you had a rottweiler tied to a 30-foot post, he's still got 30 foot of room, don't he? The Bible says he roams around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he, what? May devour.
Right? He's still an enemy, and he still hates us.
But you know what? Votie Bauckham said something great, and I know a lot of you guys like Votie.
Votie Bauckham said this.
He said, here's the thing.
People get upset when we say Satan is bound because they say, oh, the world is so evil.
Understand this.
So much of the evil in the world doesn't rely on Satan.
We do it ourselves.
We have three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the flesh is enough.
The flesh is enough to produce things like abortion and euthanasia and genocide because men hate other men, because we are bound in sin, and because men want to pervert what God has made holy.
Men want to pervert the gospel.
So Paul says in chapter 2, verse 8, see that no one take you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of this world, and not according to Christ.
Now, he goes on later, and you remember because I did sermons on this.
He talks about the Judaizers, those who would come in and try to force Jewish ceremonial law upon the church.
And he says, do not be taken captive to that.
And he talks about mysticizers and Gnostics who would come in and try to get people to worship in a way that would encourage the worship of angels and asceticism and things like that.
And he said, don't do that.
He said, because those are worldly philosophies.
Those are an attempt to add something to Christ.
You understand, I'm going to say this.
There's nothing wrong, there's nothing wrong with a church wanting to have a Passover meal to remember what God did in the Passover.
We've done it here.
But that is not required of the New Covenant believer.
What's required of the New Covenant believer? The table.
We are to come and take the table.
Why? Because those Old Testament, Old Testament feasts had a termination point.
You know what the termination point of the Old Testament feast was? Jesus.
This is pointing to something greater, and when that which is greater comes, that which is lesser gets put away.
The greater has come.
Christ is superior.
Christ is sufficient.
Therefore, when someone comes to you and says, well, you know, you're not worshiping God right because you're not keeping the feast of booths.
You don't think they're out there.
They are.
They're still out there.
The Hebrew Roots Movement, the Seventh-day Adventists, spend five minutes with them, they'll spin you in knots telling you how you're not serving God right, and they'll tell you Paul wasn't saying here what he's obviously saying here, and that is those things were a shadow of what is to come, but Christ is the substance.
And if you have the substance, you don't go and worship the shadow.
You don't go and worship with the shadow.
It's like a man who goes to war and takes a picture of his wife, and all the while he's fighting the war, he's got the picture of his wife, and every night he's in the foxhole and he pulls that wallet out and he looks at that picture of his wife and he longs to be at home, and when he gets home, his wife's standing there, and he goes, it's okay, honey, I've got the picture.
What a fool.
But that's what we're doing when we say we have the substance, we have the Christ.
Oh, I'll go back and look at the picture.
I'll go back and use the picture.
No, no, no.
The picture is overcome by the substance.
Paul says don't add those things to Christ.
Those things pointed to Christ.
Christ has come, and now when you know what you have, you have two new pictures that point backwards.
The first picture is baptism.
Baptism pictures your death to sin and your resurrection in Christ.
The Bible says I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, right? In this life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, right? That's the life I live because I've been buried with Him in baptism, raised to new life.
There's a picture in baptism of what happens to me when I die and resurrect.
And then after that, what happens? We come to the table.
And what does the table do? It says do this in remembrance.
It's written right across there.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Because this is meant to point back to what Christ has done.
You understand Christ split time in half.
Split it down the middle because the way that everyone, even the secular scientists, everyone divides time in that which was before Him and that which has come after.
It used to be called BC and AD, before Christ and Anno Domini, which means in the year of our Lord.
They don't want that anymore.
Now they have BCE and CE, which means before common era and the common era, and they can take and throw that away because I ain't never using that.
It's always going to be BC and AD to me.
Because Christ is the reason for the common era.
Christ is the reason why anything before it mattered.
In the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He would redeem those who are under the law and give us the adoption of sons.
That's the fullness of time.
And that's what matters.
Christ is the center of all of history.
And the focal point, and the enemies of Christ will seek to disqualify you, pass judgment on you, and take you captive by their vain philosophies and additions to Christ.
And Paul says, don't let them do it.
Trust that Christ is enough.
Now the second part, I won't have time to divide as thoroughly, but this is the second half of the book.
And this is the ethical treatise.
This is what flows out of the doctrinal.
The doctrinal is Christ is enough.
Don't let anyone add anything to Christ.
For in doing so, you're abandoning the truth of the gospel.
Now how should we then live? What is the standard for our life? The ethical treatise.
And it's three things.
Number one, Christ is the foundation of our ethics.
If you want to know what that means, just turn to chapter three and look at this.
Look at verse one.
Chapter three, verse one.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things that are above and not on the things that are on earth.
For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
And when Christ who is your life appears, then you will appear with him in glory.
You understand what it's saying? It's saying while you live in this life, you are to set your mind on the things above where Christ is, not on the things that are on this earth, knowing that he's returning one day, therefore he's the priority.
One day he's going to come back.
And I tell you what, we need to be ready for that day.
I've asked this before and I know many evangelists have asked this before and I'm certainly not doing it to manipulate emotions or try to turn you into some kind of an evangelical knot, but I do ask this question a lot to myself.
If I knew Christ were coming tomorrow, would it change what I do today? Paul says we should live with an imminency in our heart, an urgency in our heart.
We live with our minds set on things above where Christ is.
That's the heart of our ethic.
And everything flows out of that.
He says put to death what is earthly and put on what is heavenly.
How do we do that? We do that by recognizing who's in charge, who's the authority, who's the king.
And Christ is the foundation of our ethics.
He's also the focus of our relationships.
We did this relatively recently.
Remember, we went wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, and masters.
And what was the point of every one of those ethics where it says wives submit unto your husbands is what? Ask the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives.
Now this is the Ephesians passage, but it also referenced essentially the same thing in Colossians.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
He becomes the focus of our ethic.
He becomes the focus of our relationships.
I go home and my wife doesn't do something that necessarily pleases me or she says something that I don't necessarily like.
My job is to love her in spite of any differences we may have because I'm to love her as Christ loved the church, not just because she makes me happy.
And my wife is to submit, not only because she knows that I care enough to lead her in a godly way, but because she knows that in submitting to me there is submission to the Lord.
And the children are to obey their parents in the Lord, recognizing that he's the real authority.
I'm not my children's real authority.
I'm at best a mediated failure.
But I point them to Christ.
And when I love my children and I fail, I do seek not to provoke them because I understand I have an authority over me.
Men like to say, I'm the head of my house.
Well, the reality is Christ should be the head of the house.
We have an authority.
It's a mediated authority.
We're mediators of Christ's authority in the home, and he's ultimately in charge.
See, this is how Christ becomes the focus of every relationship that we have.
Remember when Paul says, be wise how you deal with outsiders.
Remember that? We studied that just a couple weeks ago.
Why do we be wise for those who are outside the church? Because Christ is in charge of us even when we're not here.
Christ is the authority even when we're at work or when we're doing business or when we're walking through Lowe's.
I don't know why.
Just wherever.
Whatever we're doing, Christ is in charge.
And how we treat people should be influenced, informed, and forged by how Christ has treated us.
He's been gracious to us.
He's been merciful to us.
He has loved us even when we were unlovely.
He's cared for us even when we didn't care for him.
He loves, and he calls us to love even our enemies because we were once his enemies, and he loved us.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
And I say the ultimate ethic, and this is...
I do think chapter 2, verse 6 is the thesis of the book, but if I had to say there's an ethical thesis of the book, it's chapter 3, verse 17.
And in chapter 3, verse 17, it says something very simple.
It says that we do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the ultimate Christian ethic is that whether you are working at your work or you're banging on the drums, whether you're turning those knobs or feeding the cows, Tim, when you're pushing them weights, doing everything to the glory of God and doing everything in his name, right? Right? That's the ultimate Christian ethic is that Christ becomes the center of all that we do.
Not just like I read from that quote earlier from R.C.
Sproul.
It's not just a tacit nod on Sunday, but it is a life lived to the glory of God through Christ by the power of the Spirit.
That's the Christian ethic.
Christianity is a holistic faith.
Now, holistic does not mean mystical Eastern philosophy because often when we think of the word holistic, we think of it in terms of some type of Eastern philosophy, and that's often how the word is used.
But do you know what the word holistic means? It simply means pertaining to the whole.
It simply means all-encompassing.
So if you go to a holistic doctor, in general what that means is they don't deal with just one part of you.
They try to deal with all of you in diet and exercise and everything.
They're trying to make you healthy as a whole person.
Understand Christianity is a holistic faith because it's not just about three hours on a Sunday morning, but it's about your whole life, body, mind, and spirit, all under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Work and play.
Engagement and entertainment.
Evangelism and fellowship.
Everything done in the name of the lord Jesus Christ because he is king and he is enough and he is sufficient, and that's the book.
Christ is enough.
But I ask, is he enough for you? Christ is enough.
But is he enough for you? The world is happy to provide you a substitute.
The idols are everywhere, and they are powerless to save.
So I would say the call of Colossians is to turn from any idols you may have created or found.
Turn from everything the factory of your mind can create and run to Christ because he is enough.
Let's pray.
Father, I thank you for your word.
Thank you even now that we have the opportunity to hear your word preached, that we would be reminded over and over and over and yet again over that Christ is enough, sufficient for all.
Lord, be with us now as we turn our attention to the table of communion.
Remind us, Lord, that this table is to point us back to the sufficiency of the cross, that what was done on the cross was enough.
We need not add to it.
We simply need to trust in it.
Lord, let us have this time of breaking of bread as a reminder of the sufficiency of Christ.
In his name we pray.