Colossians 2:1-3 - The Mystery of the Trinity

Thanksgiving, National Renewal, and Trusting Scripture Over Politics

Praise the Lord for this wonderful week of Thanksgiving. And most of us, if not all of us in the room have a whole lot to be thankful for because we may be seeing the Lord turn our nation back to the old ways.

And, you know, I don't vote for any particular party, but I vote for platforms that match up with the scripture the best. None of them match perfectly, right? Because they're human. But I don't like any platform that says we're going to forget the past and move forward to something new because the scripture says to not do away with the old landmarks.

Of course, that's an allegory that means the word of God and God's ways stick with them. Don't move forward into some new progressive style that moves further away from scripture. And so I'm happy. I know that Jesus is our savior.

If anyone will turn this country back to the right way, it'll be him. It won't be any human, but he can use humans. He can use all of us. In fact, he prefers to do that. Even when he parted the Red Sea, Moses was holding the rod of God up and God works together with his kids.

And we're his kids. So it's one big family business, God's business. I'm glad all of you are a part of it. And that you're here today. Let's get right into the scripture. I'll have a short word of prayer and we'll begin.

Lord, thank you for the service already today for bringing each individual who was supposed to be here here today. And may your word speak to each of us. May we each grow from it today and benefit from it and be able to contribute to your kingdom because of it.

And we pray in Jesus name, amen. Turn with me if you would to Colossians chapter two, verse two, and we will get started there. We're going verse by verse through the book of Colossians. I want to welcome our visitors today.

We're so happy that you're here with us and our home folks. And I'm excited about the message. So let's get right into it. Colossians, you know what? I'll just start with verse one. Colossians two, one.

For I would that you knew what great conflict I have for you, the apostle Paul says to his converts or his converts, converts. These are either children, spiritual children or grandchildren of Paul's.

And for them at Laodicea as well, and Laodicea as well. And for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh that their hearts might be comforted. Now here was his prayer for these converts that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding.

And listen to this, because this is where we're going to be today. And to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the father and of Christ. He speaks of a mystery. Now this word mystery is a sort of a word formula throughout the new Testament.

You might think it has several meanings, but what you're going to find out is really has one meaning and the others are just sort of subsets of that or else they contribute to it. And so we're actually in chapter two.

So let me read this little portion. Oh, wait, that was chapter two. Let me go back though and read a little portion from chapter one that came right before this to look at the context a little bit and look at chapter one, verse 26, please.

And I do like you to see the scripture if you have a phone or a Bible so that you can see it's God's word. So it says, verse 26, chapter one of Colossians, even the mystery. So you see this word mystery again, and this is what we're going to be talking about for several Sundays.

Even the mystery, which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now has made manifest to his saints. So this is a perfect definition of what the word mystery means in the new Testament. It's Bible language.

It's not the same as looking it up in Webster's or even looking up in the Greek. It's Bible language for the Greek, but what it actually means is exactly what verse 26 says it means. It is something that the Old Testament prophets and men and women of God looked into, but they could not figure it out or understand it or even see it.

And in fact, God didn't manifest it into the world until he did so through the apostle Paul after Jesus spent the better part of three years with him in the desert in Arabia. And that's when Paul became an apostle.

And so Paul got this straight from Jesus, and now he's teaching it to the world, and it's a mystery because in the Old Testament, they didn't have a clue about this. Now, what is this mystery? Well, look at verse 27.

To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of his mystery among the Gentiles, which is, here's the mystery, Christ in you, the hope of glory. The idea and the fact of the Holy Spirit indwelling every new believer from the time of Pentecost until today and on until Jesus comes back, that is the mystery.

No one ever thought of that in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit came upon people in the Old Testament. He would come upon people like Samson and give him power. He would come upon people like David and give him the Psalms.

And he would come upon people, but he could also withdraw from his people. And that's the way it was. And Jesus told the apostles this right before he went to heaven. He said, look, the Holy Spirit has been with you, but he shall be in you.

That was a prophecy of just a few days into the future because a few days from there into the future at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit indwelt the bodies of all the believers. And from that point on, as you go through the book of Acts, as the word of God was preached and the gospel was believed, the believers were indwelt by the Holy Spirit at the moment of their regeneration.

And that's how it is now. It's how it will be until he comes back. That is the mystery. So the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, I'm not talking about the filling. The filling is a whole different theological concept.

The filling is something that has to do with your will.

And mine.

We are filled with the spirit when we choose to be. And the filling is like, be not filled with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. The filling of the spirit is when you, you could picture it this way.

If you could picture being Peter in the boat and Jesus is walking on the water and he says, come out here with me. And you reach out and you grab Jesus's hand and you walk on the water with him. And then you look at the water and you take your eyes off of Jesus and you sink, right?

So the filling is when you choose to hold Jesus's hand at any given moment on any given day, many times throughout the day, hopefully, the more we grow in the Lord, the more we want to be holding his hand all day.

And when you are, you cannot, will not sin. First John tells us that, but when you let go, you sink just like Peter. So unfortunately for us, it's not unfortunate because it was God's perfect plan that we would live with an old man still attached, even though the Bible says he's crucified, positionally he's dead already, but we are the new man, but we go in and out of the new man.

And when we're out of the new man, we can sin. And if you're born again, a really good symptom of that is that when you do sin, it bothers you so badly and you wish you hadn't done it. And you go to the Lord and you admit to him it was a sin.

And he cleanses you from all unrighteousness at that point. Every time and you get up and you go again, that's the life. It's a little tiring because none of us in this room, if you're born again, none of us want to sin.

Whereas before we were saved, we enjoyed it and we ran with the goats. We did the same thing they did. We were lost sheep. Then we got saved. Now all of a sudden when we do slip and we sin, we hate it.

And we go to the God, to the Lord and ask him to cleanse us. And then we get up and go again. And the Bible says this treasure was put in earth and vessels, that's our body, our natural fleshly body on purpose so that God would get the glory when we do get it right.

And so we see it's God's will for us to be this way. So we're not going to be perfect. It bothers the world. The world looks at us and says, well, how can you claim to be Christians? I just saw what you just did, right?

You know, I saw what you just said, how you just acted. So I don't see that it's real. Well, it's because they're blinded. So the Bible nowhere says you're going to be perfect in this life. When it says be holy, the word holy doesn't mean perfect for a human, it does for God.

But for a human, it just means be different. Be different than the world. You should be different. Listen, if it's true that when you got saved, your body became the temple of the living God, which is the mystery we're talking about today.

If that's true, you can't be the same as before that. You implicitly are different. And that differentness is holiness. You are less like the world and you're more like God every day. It doesn't mean you're perfect.

So don't think you're going to be, but try to be. How about that for good theology? You know, you could go many days without sin, but you probably won't, but you should try to be. You should try to. So that's kind of the state we live in.

Now, the mystery of the filling of, I'm sorry, of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the filling is a moment by moment decision that you make.

All right?

The indwelling is a decision that was made by God before the foundation of the world. And it happened to you at the moment of your regeneration, God did it to you. It's not something you did for him. So you had no decision to make.

It was a gift along with about 33 other things the Holy Spirit gave you at the moment that he saved you. So the indwelling is a gift God gives you and something he does to you that you can't change. He is sealed within you.

There's nothing you can do to change that. There is no way that any born again person who's indwelt by the Holy Spirit could lose his salvation because he didn't gain his salvation. It was a gift from God and God is not an Indian giver.

He does not change his mind, nor does he withdraw his gifts. It's just that the world, we all grew up thinking it's all about works. I don't care what church denomination you grew up in, you thought you had to do good to be saved.

You thought you had to be good to be saved. And the problem with that is no one is good enough. And thanks be to God for the gospel and the good news, which is what gospel means. The good news is this, you don't get saved by doing.

Because if you did, we would all lose it because tomorrow we may not do right, right? You get saved as a gift from God, whereby the father always knew you as his, the Bible teaches, before the foundation of the world, Ephesians chapter one, Roman chapter eight, and all through the entire Old and New Testament.

Before the foundation of the world, he knew you with love and knew you by name as his child. And what happened on the day that you got saved was you became aware of it because the Holy Spirit called you.

That's called the effectual calling. Churches don't talk about it much anymore. You go back 150 years ago, they all talked about it. Didn't matter what denomination, they all talked about it. The Holy Spirit has to call a person or he'll never be saved and she will never be saved because we're not trying to be saved.

And the proof of that is you didn't get saved three minutes before you got saved, why not? Or a day before or a week or two months before.

Because you didn't want to.

And when the Holy Spirit awakened you and opened your eyes and said, there's Jesus, he is your shepherd. You are a sheep and you're hungry, he's got the food. What will you do with him? That's when you made the choice because the Holy Spirit made him irresistible to you at that moment.

Oh, you were able to resist him up until that moment and that's your spiritual birthday. And so the Holy Spirit awakened you and me. He opened our blind eyes, our deaf ears and that little dead kernel of a spirit came alive.

And from that point, you're regenerated, everything else is an effect of it, not the cause of it. So since you didn't cause it, you can't lose it. Isn't that beautiful? Who would want to believe the other way?

Listen, if you believe the other way that you could lose it, how would you even sleep at night? How would you sleep over your children or your loved ones if you thought that false doctrine were true? So anyway, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the fact that he is sealed within every believer by God, a man can't break that seal.

I know I have friends in other denominations that say, well, yeah, but you can decide on your own to reject Jesus again. Okay, so you're gonna break a seal that God put on your life, impossible. They're just not looking at the whole of scripture.

All they're looking at is what their putrefied denomination.

Taught them.

All of us as adults, Christians, should be more than willing to lay aside the false things any denomination taught us and just hang on to this book and let this book be the authority and let men's philosophies be way down here somewhere.

It's okay to reason together. God says, though, we're supposed to be reasoning with him. So let me ask you a question. Logic is great, but only if it's biblical, where he says, come let us reason together.

So if, I taught this to the kid, by the way. You heard me teach this part to the kids. If God is a person and you can reason with him, then reasoning means you've got two people talking with each other.

They may not be agreeing, but they're talking back and forth. That can't happen, number one, if Jesus isn't alive today. And number two, if you can't talk to him and he can't talk to you, then you're not reasoning.

But the Bible says you can, in fact, God commands it. So how do we talk to him? Prayer, how does he talk to us? Through his word, read Hebrews chapter one, verses one through three, if you think he still talks in audible voices, because he doesn't.

If you think you've heard God talk to you, you heard you talk to you. If you'll be honest, you'll say, yep, that was my voice. You didn't hear God talk, because Hebrews one, one through three, the Holy Spirit says, I don't do that anymore.

And I have people tell me, well, he did to me. And I say, okay, well, who's the liar, this person or the Holy Spirit, when he said he won't talk to you? He won't do it. So listen, here's how he talks to you, is through his completed word, the perfect, that which is perfect has come.

This is how he speaks to us. Now, can the Holy Spirit move us on the inside and give us a feeling of peace versus conflict, if he wants us to walk through a door or not? Obviously, yes. So that's a form of him speaking to us.

But we have to be very careful when we say, well, God told me to do this. I mean, we say that in our church here sometime, but we know what we mean by that here. But we have to be careful when we say it, because others don't.

Because what we mean is, we feel that through the written word of God, the revealed will of God, what I'm thinking about doing is not in conflict. It's not against scripture. And I've been praying about it for weeks and I've got a peace about it.

That's what we mean when we say, I think God's telling me to buy that particular house or whatever we say. We don't think we heard God speaking a voice. Because since he says he doesn't do that anymore, then he doesn't.

So here's how he speaks to us. So if you're gonna reason with God, you gotta be in the word. You have got, listen, you have got to be in this more than just on Sunday morning. You've got to be in this in your house and start wherever you want to and just start reading through it again.

You know, we own a company called Tradeway. So we get through that sort of a ministry because we teach the Bible and the gospel while we're teaching people how to trade in the stock market. But we get an opportunity to speak to people in every major market in the whole country.

And so many people have sent me emails and said,.

You know what?

I like the stock market stuff, but I really come to hear the rabbit trails. And what they mean by that is the Bible stuff that we throw in there. And we've had people say, you know, I've got revival in my life because some of the stuff that either me or some of our teachers taught made me want to study the Bible again.

Because really I disagreed with you when you said it and I had to check it out. But now I'm in the word every day. It has happened scores and scores and scores of times. And so this little church is like the background for hundreds of thousands of people getting the gospel.

That's pretty cool. So bless you and stay true because we don't want the Lord to take his hand off of what's happening. Now, as we look at these things, this particular mystery of God in us, the hope of glory is the indwelling, not the filling.

Okay, everybody's got that. All right, now that perfect definition for what a mystery is, is there in Colossians chapter one, verse 26. And we talked about that quite a bit. The next thing was, we kind of looked at Colossians chapter two, verse two.

Oh, I need to mention this. Do you remember there in the verse, look at Colossians two, two. See the very end of that verse. To the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the father and of Christ.

You have the fact that God is one God who subsists as three distinct personas. All right, it's mentioned at the end of verse two in Colossians chapter two. We're in chapter two for the rest of the day, by the way.

So right there is the mystery of God. And it is an interesting thing because notice it calls it the mystery of God and of the father and of Christ. And it's not the only place in the Bible where it speaks of the triune nature of God and calls it a mystery.

And so here's what I want you to understand.

This is a little bit of review.

Is that this is not like a second idea because the main idea of the mystery that we're talking about is the indwelling of the spirit. All of the, you're gonna see some other scriptures in the New Testament where it uses the word mystery and you're gonna think it's talking about something else.

And it can be, but it all relates to the main mystery. So I like to say that there's one Roman numeral one and it's Christ in us, the hope of glory, it's the indwelling of the spirit. But there are a lot of A, Bs and Cs under it and they all relate to that main topic.

So think about this. Could there be any way that Christ could live in you since we know he's physically at the right hand of the Shekinah glory in heaven right now, he's not here. Could he dwell in you without the Holy Spirit?

And the answer is no, he couldn't. So God has to subsist as three distinct personas. So if God was just one God like the Mohammedans think or like the Jews think or like nearly every false religion thinks, he couldn't both be in heaven and be in your heart at the same time.

And the fact is the more we study scripture, we see that the father is not in time and space. He's not on the earth, he's not even in heaven. He's outside of all of it because heaven has time in it, by the way, and it's a place.

The father's not there, if he were, he'd blow it up. He would blow it up because he's now, he's I am. And if he came into time, everything would flee from him. The book of Revelation says that actually happens at the great white throne judgment.

So you have to start learning a little bit about, it's not enough just to know about the Trinity. You have to understand that often in order to solve the most difficult Bible questions, you have to think of the distinctiveness of the persons of the Godhead.

The distinct, not just the unity, but the distinctiveness. How is Jesus different than the father? How's the father different than the Holy Spirit? How's the Holy Spirit different than Jesus? And when you start to think this way, you can solve a lot of biblical problems that other people just argue about.

And it's really fascinating. So here we have this sort of sub-mystery of the Trinity that is the cause of the ability of God to dwell in your hearts and also Jesus to be in heaven and the father to be outside of space and time all at the same time.

You see, that couldn't be that way if God didn't exist as a triune God. Another thing that our people have heard me say a million times is if it's true that God is love, do you realize that by definition, love has to have an object?

So he would have to have always existed as father, son, and Holy Spirit, and each person loves the other, or you couldn't have love. He wouldn't be love if he didn't always have an object of love. So he's always existed as a triune nature.

In fact, I just, I'm a terrible teacher because I always answer the question that's on the test before you see the test. I was gonna ask you, how long has God existed as a triune being? I blew it, because I wanted to see if you could answer that.

The answer is always. There's never been a time when he didn't. All right. So there, then the next thing that we saw recently is the sufficiency of scripture. And we see that in verse two as well of Colossians chapter two.

And then the next thing that we saw was the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And we see that in verse three. And then in verse four, we see why all these things are needed. Why is it important to think about the mystery of the indwelling and the mystery of the triune nature of God?

Verse four says, because otherwise, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. So Jesus said, in the end times, we'll have many false prophets. It's true, we do.

They're everywhere.

They're in churches. They're all around us. They're all around the world, teaching things that have maybe 90 truth, 10 error. And that 10 will kill you. It could kill you forever. And so it's bad.

And one reason we need to keep in mind the triune nature of God is it knocks out almost all of the world religions of the world other than biblical Christianity, knocks out all of them. So any false prophet that comes to you and says, well, by the way, the Trinity was created by the Roman Catholics.

It's not really biblical. If you hear that, they're lying. Now, I'm not gonna get obviously very far into this study. I mean, I think I printed 20 new pages last night and I already had enough for today.

So, but when I do get to it, after I show you all the places the Bible teaches, don't worry, it's not thousands, okay? The places the Bible teaches that God exists this way, that he's one God subsisting as three distinct persons.

Then I'm gonna go into church history and I'm gonna go back before Constantine. Now, why do you guys think Constantine's important? I didn't answer that one ahead of time. See, I usually do. Okay, who was Constantine?

He was the one who was responsible for making Christianity the national religion of Rome. He basically founded the Roman Catholic church. And the reason that's important is we know when he lived and when he did this.

So therefore, if we can find any church father that existed prior to roughly 300 AD, and they talk about the Trinity, then it's a lie to say that it was invented by the Catholics. You see my point? I will show that to you probably next Sunday or the next,.

But we'll get to it.

So the point is the Trinitarian position is the only true Christian position. Anyone that says, oh, all this other stuff is true, but God doesn't exist as three distinct persons because that would be three gods.

Well, most of the time when people say that it's because they're trying to philosophically figure out how that can be true. And since they can't think of a great model, they just think, well, that can't be true because basically you're saying there's three gods.

Well, no true Trinitarian says there's three gods. There's one God. Okay, but think of yourself. You're one person, right? But you have a body, a soul, and a spirit. You're triune because you're creating his image.

There are so many trinities that God put in creation, I think probably to give us some models we can use to convince the naysayers because if you just philosophically think it won't work because you can't figure it out, but the scripture says it is that way, then you're an unbeliever.

You don't get saved by philosophically figuring stuff out. You get saved by belief. You believe that what Jesus said is true. What his apostles said in the word of God is true. And you base your faith and your eternal security and your life in the hereafter on faith.

So I will tell you for sure, the Bible teaches the Trinitarian position. The Roman Catholics didn't make it up. They do believe it. Maybe not exactly like we believe it, but great. I'm glad they do, but there's a lot of Judaism.

We talked about that in Sunday school this morning. If you were here, Ben talked about the Judaizers where they want to bring legalism into grace, which you can't do, they don't mix. And a lot of those guys are trying to say, and I've got, I know acquaintances in this area in Mahea and in Corsicana, and the main leader I think is here, who is teaching and I read his paper when he first came out with it back in the 80s.

No, it'd be in the 90s, early 90s, where he said the Trinity is not true. And he claims to be a Jew, a Jewish believer. He used to call me little brother because he's 6 '4", big dude. And so I read his paper and I said, look, let's take a two night, three day retreat and study nothing but the Bible on what it says about the Trinity together.

How about that?

And he agreed to do it. And we looked up every verse that has it, even ones that allude to it. And we marked out a few where we felt like the context wasn't really teaching that. And we eliminated those, but there were still scores and scores of Bible passages that talked about it.

And yet he said, no, I see it sounds like it says that, but I think the Catholics invented it. And I said, well, if I could show you an early church father before Constantine that believed it, would you then agree with me?

He said, yes.

I said, well, I know I've seen it, but I can't find it. So I went home and maybe two months later in my study, I found it. And I read it to him at work. And he looked at it and I said, so what do you think?

He said, nah, and he walked away. So I never fellowshiped with him again after that because he's not honest. You see, he didn't care about the truth. He cared about his argument. I don't talk with people about the Bible.

That are like that.

I have not time for that. I want people that care about the truth where they'll even change their position if they see theirs is wrong. I will change mine if I see mine is wrong. That's the kind of people I hang out with.

That's why this church is so in the word. That's why, and the reason, like we've had people say, well, that's a different kind of church. It's kind of like a family.

You know why?

Because we're in the word. When you're in the word, you have peace and you lack division. You lack it, don't like it, you lack it. You lack division because the Holy Spirit hates division. So here we see that it speaks of the triune nature of God in verse three there in chapter two says, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, talking about Jesus Christ.

And this word knowledge means understanding the way things really are in the Greek is what that means. And so why is it important? Well, because the idea of focusing on God's word rather than philosophy, it's smart to have philosophy, but it must be underneath the scripture, not above it.

The rudiments of the world, the lies of Satan, the cares of this world, the lies of riches and other things coming in to quench the Bible out of your life. We can't let that happen.

Why?

Verse four says, lest any man should be guileless. If we're not in the word, we don't know if a prophet's false or true because they all seem true. Otherwise they wouldn't be a scammer. Scam artists are always believable by definition or they don't last long.

And when they build the biggest church in town, I'm not talking about of course Canada, but when they built maybe Houston, when they build the biggest church in Houston, okay, just because of that doesn't mean he's telling the truth.

He might be the best scam artist you've ever met in your life. And the only way you know is if what he says matches up with this. And if his emphasis matches up with the emphasis of the preachers in this book, which I can say that they commonly don't.

So that's why it's important. And then verse 10, we dropped down to verse 10. We'll come back to eight and nine because we skipped them. It speaks of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Now, if it's true that verse two says that the scriptures are sufficient to equip us, we don't have to have man's philosophy.

The scripture is enough. And then verse 10 says, Jesus is enough. Our relationship with him, because what it says is we are complete in Christ. And that word complete means replete in the Hebrew. And what that means in English is fully or abundantly provided for and filled.

We've got everything we need if we have the word of God and we have Jesus in our heart, everything. Listen, Paul said very clearly, I don't preach with flowery words. I don't preach with the skills of men's speeches and beautiful verbiage and a bunch of stories and poems and things.

He said, I preach the word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what Paul did. He was, you think about it. Paul had a kid listening to him. Of course, his average sermon was a couple hours. So was Spurgeon's only 150 years ago, by the way.

I can't believe you guys can't handle me for two hours. But then again, I'm not Spurgeon. But anyway, Paul was preaching and some kid fell sound asleep, fell out the window and it killed him. I've never done that.

That's why we have only one story in our church. But Paul went out, laid on top of the kid's body and life came back into the kid because he's an apostle and he can do that. We don't have apostles today.

So people that tell you they can still do that are lying. Either they've been deceived by teachers or they themselves are a deceiver, but they're lying because they can't do it. I always love to ask them, where's your grandma?

In the grave.

How come?

You're a faith healer. Did you hate her? Well, even if she's in the grave, why didn't you raise her? You're an apostle.

You see, I hate to be that way,.

But you know what? In Sunday school, Ben taught that Paul said, when people are speaking lies, you don't deal with them for an hour. You shut their mouths. You can't do that without being a little bit forceful.

Now, I like to be kind to people and meek as possible, which I'm growing. Don't laugh at me, Emily, my daughter-in-law. You're like me, so just be quiet. So, but sometimes when Paul says their mouths must be stopped does that sound like gentleness?

Or does that sound like in their face, blow them away so that the kids that are listening know that's an idiot? That's how you have to do it sometimes. Don't do it at Thanksgiving around the table with your family, please.

Brother Mitchell said, blow you away. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Let us do it from the pulpits, better, safer for everybody. All right, so we're complete in Christ and we see all of that. Now, how do we know?

So I wanna go back to this concept, this little subset of the triune nature of God.

For a little bit.

How do we know that God is one God subsisting as three distinct personas? And I wanna thank Dave Senior down here on the front, second pew here for coming up with that word, persona, rather than person, because it's much better.

And no one's been able to shoot down here, sink your ship on that yet. So I'm hanging on to it. How do we know God exists that way? And do you wonder why I just said that today? The way the church has said it for centuries, going all the way back to like 100 AD, just barely after John the Apostle died, when you get into Polycarp, the next pastor and so forth, they've been talking about this that long.