Introduction to Colossians

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to the book of Colossians and hold your place at chapter 1.
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Before we read, I want to give a few words of thanks.
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I want to first thank God that I'm able to be back in the pulpit.
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Our child is doing well.
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His health is well.
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Jennifer would have been in church this morning, but our other son, JJ, is sick, so unfortunately was unable to be here.
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But they will be back very soon, and his health is allowing for us to begin to get back to somewhat of normal life, so I'm thankful for that.
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Also thankful for my faithful brothers who preached and gave me time off.
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I'm thankful for Andy and for Mike and for their faithfulness in proclaiming the Word in my absence, and I'm very appreciative of having that time to spend with my family.
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Thirdly, I'm thankful to begin a new book.
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Mike joked with Andy and me this week and said, it's going to sound good to hear you come up and not say, turn to Genesis, as we said that for three years.
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So we're in Colossians today.
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Now, I don't know how long this is going to take.
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I did put an outline on the back of the bulletin.
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That is my outline that I have written for the whole book, but that doesn't mean that each one of those is going to be a sermon.
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Each one of those could be two or three sermons.
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So I have no idea how long it's going to take at this point.
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We're going to go as the Lord leads.
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But with that in mind, we're going to stand together.
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We're going to read the first two verses of the book of Colossians as our opening, and then I'm going to ask the Lord to bless us as we study His Word together.
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Colossians chapter one, verse one, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father.
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Father in heaven, I pray that as we open this new book, Lord, that You would be here with us by the power of Your Spirit and that Your Spirit would be the teacher.
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I pray, Lord, that through this study we would see Christ as both supreme and sufficient.
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And Lord, that through this study we would not only grow in our understanding in His nature, but understanding of our own submission.
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I pray that our hearts, Lord, would be knitted together around the study of Your Word and Lord, if we have come with ought against one another, Lord, that we would release that and that we would seek forgiveness and that we would forgive one another and love one another so as to be able to receive from You today what You have for us in Your Word.
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I pray, O Father, also that You would keep me from error.
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For Lord God, I am a fallible man.
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I am capable of preaching error.
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So I pray that You would keep me from that for the sake of Your name, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of those who will hear the Word.
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I pray, O God, now that You would do what only You can do.
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That You would, through Your Word, encourage the saints, exhort them to good works and faith.
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And Lord, that You would draw the unbeliever to Yourself.
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I pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen.
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As I began to get close to the end of the series in Genesis, I began to prayerfully consider what would be the next step in our exposition.
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As you know, my normal pattern of preaching here has been to preach through books, verse by verse.
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And so when I began to come to the end of one book, I began to prayerfully consider what would be the next book.
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And oftentimes I will discuss that with our elders about what do we believe should come next.
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And we all thought that a return to the New Testament after three years in Genesis would be a good idea.
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And so I had decided to return to one of Paul's letters.
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And I've chosen a brief letter of Paul so as not to move from one three-year series to another.
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At the same time, I want to mention this.
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On Wednesday nights, I have begun just last Wednesday, I began a series on the Gospel of Mark.
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And really these two lesson series are going to sort of coincide.
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Because the Gospel of Mark is going to give us a picture of a theological biography of Christ and His life.
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The shortest of the four.
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Mark's Gospel is the shortest.
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So on Wednesday nights, we're going to be looking at Jesus' life.
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But on Sunday morning, we're going to look at the theology of Christ.
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Because that is, in a sense, what this book, Colossians, is all about.
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It is the focus on the supremacy, the sufficiency, and the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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In fact, one of the things that we need to understand moving into this study, is that the cosmic Christology, and that's a phrase that I want you to understand what I mean.
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Cosmic in the sense that it is otherworldly, it is universal, it is powerful.
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The cosmic Christology of Colossians is so powerful that many skeptical scholars doubt Paul's authorship.
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Because they say, this level of Christological precision did not exist during the life of Paul.
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And therefore, they claim that this particular writing is what's known as a pseudepigraphal writing.
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Pseudepigraphal means it was written by someone else and a name was added to it to give it some clout or credence.
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And so some people believe that Paul's name was added to Colossians later, but it wasn't uniquely and truly and authentically written by the Apostle Paul.
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I want to say from the outset that I disagree with that wholeheartedly.
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I believe Paul wrote this.
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In fact, I believe this letter to be authentically Pauline and that he wrote it around the same time as he wrote Ephesians and the letter to Philemon.
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In fact, in the survey of the New Testament, a book that was actually given to me by Pastor Tim.
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Remember the book you gave me brother? That big thick Carson and Moo book? Well I used that in my introduction study and one of the things that Carson and Moo say in that book is that one of the ways that we can be confident that this letter is not pseudepigraphal but that it is actually written by the Apostle Paul is the audience who receives it.
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Because the town of Colossae was actually during the time of Paul a very small and insignificant town.
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Much different than its neighbors Hierapolis and Laodicea which were much more metropolitan, were much larger and at that time were much more important.
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And so the idea that an author would come along and use Paul's name to write a letter to an insignificant city doesn't make a lot of sense.
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But rather when we see this letter being written to the Colossians we can be confident that it indeed is from the Apostle Paul to a legitimate church in a legitimate city even though that city be very small.
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In fact that is one of the things I wanted to talk about today is a little bit about the history of this book.
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Anytime I do an introduction to a book I try to give a little bit of the background, a little bit of the history, a little bit of the information in the book and if you have a study Bible you'll notice that if you open your study Bible to the first page of a new book it'll often tell you about the dating of the book and the theme of the book and the history of the book and who wrote it and when they wrote it and why.
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Those things are not unimportant, those things are important and so that's what today is about.
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I want to talk about, did Paul write it? I think he did, I say he did, I believe he did.
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Paul says he wrote it, I believe it's true.
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Who was it written to? Who are the Colossians? Well that's what we're going to talk about.
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As I said it's a somewhat unimportant town but it was once a great city.
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During the time of the Persian king Xerxes which would have been around 481 BC when he marched through this area of the world it was a great metropolitan city.
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But 480 years later during the time of Christ during the time of the Romans a trade route which had passed through Colossae was actually rerouted and it became sort of the radiator springs of the ancient world and if you're not familiar with that then you don't have children because that's from the movie Cars.
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If you remember the movie Cars they had a city that was a bustling city until the highway came by and when the highway came by and took the people away the bustling city became laid by the wayside.
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Well that's sort of what happened to Colossae.
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Colossae was a city which was a great metropolitan city during the time of Xerxes but later during the time of the Romans because a trade route had passed through and was rerouted it began to decline and compared to its two neighbors it was very unimportant.
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Its two neighbors as I said it was a threefold city triangle in the Lycus River Valley you had Hierapolis you had Laodicea which many of us are familiar with Laodicea because of the book of Revelation mentions the church at Laodicea so you had Hierapolis you had Laodicea and you had Colossae and a hundred miles to the west was Ephesus which was on the Aegean Sea.
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So that's where Colossae sits and at this point Colossae was a very small town it was known really only for two things it was known for large pasture lands which were used to raise sheep and so they had a wool industry and they had chalk deposits nearby the chalk deposits were mined and used to create dye so that they could dye the wools and make fabrics.
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So they did have an industry in Colossae but it wasn't a metropolitan booming city like we might imagine.
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The population there was primarily Gentile however there was a sizable Jewish population as well and what we're going to see as we begin to dig deeper in our introduction is we're going to see that both the Gentile population and the Jewish population of Colossae had both come into the Colossian church and both were bringing with them traditions from their past which were beginning to become a problem in the church because the Gentiles were bringing pagan traditions and the Jews were bringing Jewish ceremonial traditions and both of them were being added to the gospel and that was the problem was that Christ was being seen as insufficient.
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You have to add ceremonies or you have to add circumcision or you have to add Sabbaths or you have to add pagan worship or something like that because Christ was not enough.
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Now, sorry if I'm going kind of fast I'm excited to be back.
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I'm talking like really quick but got a lot to say in a short time I guess.
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So let's look at where Colossians rests in the New Testament.
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Most of us are familiar with the fact that the Bible is broken down into two parts you have the Old Testament and the New Testament and the New Testament is made up of 27 books four of which are gospels and then we have the one historical book which is the book of Acts and then we have 13 letters that were written by the Apostle Paul some to churches and some to individuals and then we have other letters by Peter and John and Jude and James and then we have of course Revelation which was also written by John.
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So where does Colossians fit into this? Well, Colossians fits into those 13 letters of Paul we call them the Paul line epistles.
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Interestingly and historically one of the most significant early movements in the church was the collection of the writings of the Apostles and the writers of the New Testament to collect them into books to be sent out and distributed.
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And the first collection of books that we know of was the 13 letters of Paul that were collected and distributed copied and distributed within the church.
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And within the writings of Paul we have four letters which are called prison epistles.
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The reason why they are called prison epistles is because tradition states and some internal evidence concludes that Paul wrote these letters while he was in prison.
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The four prison epistles are Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon.
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Those are the four letters that are typically referred to as the prison epistles.
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And unlike many other churches that Paul wrote to Colossians is one that he didn't found.
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Colossians was not planted by Paul.
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In fact, there's a good chance based upon what he writes in the letter of Colossians that he had never been there.
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Now we know he planted other churches and other churches are mentioned but Colossians is not mentioned in Acts.
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It's only mentioned in the letter written to it.
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And so it's interesting that we find this letter among Paul's other letters to a church that apparently he didn't plant and he had never been to.
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But he's writing to this church from prison.
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And somebody says well if Paul didn't plant the church who did plant it? Well we don't know for certain but we can conjecture some things from within the text about who planted the church.
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If you'll just look back at the first chapter with me and go down to verse 7 you'll notice at verse 7 it says these words.
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Speaking of the grace of God it says this.
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Just as you learned it, that is the grace of God.
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Just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant he is a faithful minister.
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Now that word minister is the word diakonos where we get the word deacon but still could be used of someone who was a leader in the church.
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It says he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.
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So this man is introduced early in the letter.
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He is introduced as one who according to this text it was the one through whom they learned about the grace of God.
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So there's a good chance that what we have here is Epaphras was a man who heard about the grace of God through a preacher likely Paul.
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He took that message from the apostle Paul or whoever he learned it from.
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Of course we can't prove that but I believe it was Paul.
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If he heard the message from Paul maybe he heard it in Ephesus.
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Again that's only 100 miles away.
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Maybe he heard Paul preaching in Ephesus.
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Maybe he heard Paul preaching in one of the Galatian cities.
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And he brought it back to his hometown and he planted a church.
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Now I mention that for this reason and I'm going to just for a second step off into the realm of application.
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Paul's preaching or whoever it was that Epaphras heard preach the gospel was so powerful that that man not only heard the word was converted by the word but he went back home and planted a church that is now growing with people who are hearing the word and being converted.
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We live in a day where there is so much consumerism in the church.
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We live in a day where the attitude is so much so what can the church do for me? I get phone calls.
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You got a great youth group? What are you guys doing at your church? Are you doing anything exciting? Well we're studying the word of God.
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Dial tone.
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We're gathering for worship on the Lord's day.
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Dial tone.
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That's not enough.
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People want six flags over Jesus.
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People want a place where they are going to come and all their needs are going to be met.
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All their children are going to be enticed and excited and entertained.
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And they want a clown to stand behind the pulpit.
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And entertain rather than preach and proclaim the word of God.
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And I say this.
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Growing churches should be planting other churches.
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We should be looking toward not just seeing our own seats filled but we should be looking for men like Epaphras who are going and hearing the word of God and taking it back to their communities and planting churches in their communities.
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The church of Colossae is the result of a man who was on fire for God.
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In fact I want to show you one other thing about him.
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And again I'm going to talk more about him as we go.
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This is not an exposition of him yet.
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We're going to get to that.
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But I do want to show you.
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Go to chapter 4 and look at verse 12.
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Paul is beginning to bring his letter to a close.
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He's beginning to give admonitions about his different companions.
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And he talks about Epaphras again.
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And look what he says.
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He said, Epaphras who is one of you.
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This again tells us that Epaphras is a Colossian.
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He is one of them.
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A servant of Christ Jesus greets you always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.
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That's a man of God.
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A man of God prays for the people of God.
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A man of God is a servant of Christ who struggles on behalf of the people in his prayers.
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Oh that we would have men of God raised up in this place.
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Oh that we would see men of God raised up.
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Men who struggle in their prayers for one another.
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You don't have to be an elder to do that.
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You don't have to be a deacon to do that.
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To struggle in prayer for one another.
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To love one another enough to go before the Lord on your knees and lift one another up in prayer.
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Epaphras' attitude was not what can this church do to meet my needs but rather what can I do to build Christ's kingdom on this earth.
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So the church at Colossae was a church that Paul had never been to as far as we know.
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He did not plant.
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It was planted likely by Epaphras and Paul is writing them a letter.
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Paul is writing them a letter likely because he's gotten information from Epaphras.
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This is what we read in the text that he's gotten information and now he's writing to them on behalf of himself as an apostle.
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We're going to talk about in a moment what he says in verses one and two.
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I'm going to give an exposition of that in just a moment.
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This is still introduction by the way.
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We haven't got to the text.
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This is a long introduction with a short sermon.
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There's going to be a short sermon at the end.
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But all this is introduction.
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Because what I want to look at now is when did Paul write to them? That's a question right? If Paul is the one who wrote this letter and Paul is the one who's writing to the people when and why is he writing this letter? Now the exact dating of Paul's writing is not certain.
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But I will say this.
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It was probably before AD 61.
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And the reason why I believe it was before AD 61 is because in AD 61 there was a major earthquake that leveled Colossae and had to be rebuilt.
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It also affected Hierapolis and Laodicea never mentioned by Paul.
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So there's a good chance that this letter preceded that because if this was after that it likely would have been mentioned.
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Again we can look back at historical events and we can conjecture some things based on those historical events.
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So then we begin to ask the question okay when did Paul write this? We believe he wrote it from prison.
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But Paul has different imprisonments so we have to begin to then conjecture what year was Paul writing? We know about two of Paul's imprisonments and a possible third.
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The first place Paul was in prison we see this in Acts 23 through 26 23 through 24, 25 in those chapters we see Paul arrested at Caesarea.
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And there he awaits.
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And so it could have been that he wrote from there.
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But most scholars don't agree with that.
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Most scholars would say that's probably not the case.
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Now after this he spends some time in Ephesus.
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Now there are many who believe that while he was in Ephesus he was also in prison.
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The book of Acts doesn't mention that though so there's no proof that he was in prison during that time.
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So that one again becomes sort of a possibility but not likely.
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We know about Paul's imprisonment at the end of the book of Acts.
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And there he was imprisoned where? Good Bible students where was Paul imprisoned in the end of the book of Acts? Rome.
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Right? Paul is imprisoned in Rome.
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He is imprisoned in Rome about that time between 60 and 62 that time where I said about the time that this book would have been written.
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And during that time we are told in Acts 28 that he was under the guard of soldiers but he was also permitted visitors and he was able to share the gospel.
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Which means he was likely also given an opportunity to write.
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And so there's a good chance that the book of Ephesus I'm sorry Ephesus the book of Ephesians the book of Colossians and the book of Philemon were written from here.
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Now Philippians we don't know.
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Philippians could have been it could have been Ephesus.
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Philippians sort of has a different tone than the other two so it's possible that it was written other places but it could have been as well.
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All four could have been written from this Roman prison at the same time.
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And you say well okay Paul's in prison he's writing these letters why is he writing these letters? Why is it important that he writes these letters? Well this leads us to the question of the whole book.
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And that is the question of why does Paul write any of his letters? In some of his letters he tells us clearly why he writes.
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If you go through 1 Corinthians he says I got a messenger from a lady in the church and this messenger came to me and she said there are some of you who say I follow Paul some who follow Apollos some who follow Cephas some who follow Christ and I'm writing to you to deal with that problem.
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And he talks about in 1 Corinthians writing about the issues in the Corinthian church.
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But when we come to Colossians it's not all together clear what the issue is that Paul is seeming to address which leads to a question what's so funny because Mike and I we talk a lot on the phone I feel like a painter myself I do so much painting with him.
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But I hear him slapping paint on the wall while we're talking.
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But the first time I said I was going to preach to the Colossians he says well what do you think is the Colossian heresy? What's interesting about that question is that's the question everybody asks.
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What is it that caused Paul to write the letter to the Colossians? What was the heresy that was happening? What was it that was going on? Well let me say this first of all.
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Most of Paul's writings were intended to correct.
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As I said 1 Corinthians corrects heresy we see this in Romans we see this in Thessalonians there were those who believed Jesus had already returned.
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There was a lot of heresies that were going on.
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So each letter is based on an issue and what we have to do is we have to be good students of the Bible and we have to do what's called mirror reading.
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That's what Doug Moo calls it mirror reading.
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Basically we have to read one side and discern what the other side is saying.
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Sort of like you ever been in a coffee shop and somebody near you is talking on the phone and you can't hear what the other person is saying but your desire to eavesdrop is a little too strong and so you begin to listen in and because you can only hear one half of the conversation you begin to pick up what's going on oh they're fighting or oh you know something's going on but you can only hear one half? Well that's sort of like Paul's letters when we read them we only have his half of the letter.
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But we do know this heresy had to be dealt with even in the early church.
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There's a popular theory going on around right now.
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The popular theory is this that the early church did not have a unified belief but that it was all eclectic and everybody believed a bunch of different things and there was no orthodoxy in the early church.
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That's a lie.
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There was orthodoxy in the early church.
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I have a book on my shelf by Michael Kruger called The Heresy of Orthodoxy where he proves beyond doubt that there was orthodoxy in the early church based not only on the scriptures but on historical writings and the writings of the patristics that there was orthodoxy in the early church and one of the things Paul wrote against was the falsehoods that were coming into the church.
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I mean in fact Paul's first letter is the letter to the Galatians and what was Paul writing to the Galatians about? The heresy of the Judaizers the one who were coming in and trying to make them be circumcised and obey dietary restriction and all the Old Testament commands and he says no these things have been done away with.
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So what is Colossians about? Let me say this.
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I have a couple of screens I'm going to put up real quick.
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The first thing is heresy justifies the need to persistently clarify orthodoxy.
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Heresy justifies the need to persistently clarify orthodoxy and that's what Colossians is.
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Colossians is a clarification of Christian orthodoxy regarding the person and work of Christ.
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It's clarifying orthodoxy regarding who Christ is what he did and who we are in him.
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And here's what we see in this book.
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Here's three things that we see in the book of Colossians.
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Number one it might be a little small for you guys to read so I'll read it to you.
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Number one Paul emphasizes the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ.
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I cannot wait until we get to Colossians 1 15 through 20.
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I have no idea how long it's going to take me but I know it ain't going to be just one Sunday.
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That section of the book is one of my favorite sections in the whole New Testament.
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Paul expresses and emphasizes that Christ is supreme.
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He calls him the firstborn of all creation.
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That doesn't mean he's created.
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That means he's overall.
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That he is supreme overall.
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And that he is sufficient.
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So we know that whatever's going on in the Colossian church it likely had to do with the diminishing of Christ.
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Because Paul's right out of the gate proclamation is Christ is supreme Christ is sufficient.
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So whatever's going on it's got something to do with Christ.
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Number two Paul addresses philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world.
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And that language indicates that there is likely a Greek root to the heresy.
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Because all of that language is actually connected to pagan worship.
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And so we see likely an influx of pagan thought and philosophy in the Colossian church.
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Third thing Paul addresses circumcision as well as dietary restrictions and the Sabbath which would indicate that there is a Jewish element to the heresy as well.
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So here's the answer.
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Here's my answer.
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Can I be wrong? Yes, I can be wrong.
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But on this I think I'm correct.
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I think the issue that Paul is dealing with is what we would call in our modern day syncretism.
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What is syncretism? Syncretism is the idea that yes you can have Christ but you can add other things as well.
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And you have a religion that is a mix mash of all different perspectives.
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Whether they be Jewish, pagan, Christian and you mix it into a what you want you can have idea of faith.
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And Paul is going to say that ain't the way it is.
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You can't add things to Christ.
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It's Christ plus nothing is the gospel.
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And Christ plus anything else is heresy.
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And so we're going to see both an influence from the pagan society and an influence from the Jewish people in this book.
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I want to quote Carson and Moo real quick.
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They say this.
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Such syncretism was a feature of the ancient world and it need not surprise us that when it appeared it constituted an attraction for new and imperfectly instructed Christians.
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It was the type of teaching that attracted first century people.
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You see understand this.
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In the first century it wasn't a problem to worship many gods.
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It was expected that you would worship many gods.
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Think about when Paul was going in Acts 17 through Mars or going towards Mars Hill.
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Remember what he passed by on the way? It was a statue.
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And who was it to? An unknown God.
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And he comes and he says to them the God that you don't know I now proclaim to you.
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But why did they have a statue to an unknown God? Because they had statues to every God.
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They had statues to Diana and they had statues to Zeus and they had statues to all of the other fake deities.
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And Paul says there is one God who created heaven and earth and he has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
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And you know what they called the early Christians? Atheists.
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Because they denied the existence of other gods.
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They called them atheists because they denied that there were other gods.
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They said no there is one God maker of heaven and earth.
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The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
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The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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One God.
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So the idea of syncretism was one that could not be tolerated.
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In fact we have a similar experience in our modern church don't we? Where everybody wants to have their own ideas and everybody wants their own ideas to be validated.
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Everybody wants to bring in their own ideas of how God is and who God is and what God is.
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And everybody thinks that their opinion and their view ought to be respected and put on the same level as any other view.
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That my friends is syncretism.
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Now I have to mention this and part of me thinks this might be going out in the left field but I'm going to do it because it's my first day back I can do what I want.
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Oh boy.
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There is another theory and it's not my purpose to get up here and just expound theories but when I read a theory that I think has some potential merit I do like to mention it.
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Morna Hooker is a writer and she wrote an essay on the book of Colossians and this essay has made the rounds among scholars and I had the opportunity to look at it.
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The title of her essay was Were there false teachers in Colossae? And she contends this and I want you to just consider this for a moment because what we've said so far Paul is dealing with a heresy the heresy is that there are those who are bringing in paganism there are those who are bringing in Judaism and there's a problem in the church of these people bringing this stuff in.
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Well this was Morna Hooker's contention in her essay.
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She said it's possible that there actually were not false teachers in Colossae in the church but that Paul is warning them of what can happen if they let their guard down.
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This is the example she gave.
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She said imagine a modern preacher.
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Let's take me.
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And she said imagine if I were to preach and I were to preach a sermon against astrology and horoscopes and that kind of modern pagan nonsense.
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By the way if you're into that it's modern, it's pagan and it's nonsense.
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Just so you know.
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And if you bring that stuff up in here you're going to get called out because it's ungodly.
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But here's the thing.
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If Paul is addressing the syncretism in Colossae because it would have been everywhere at that time in history it doesn't necessarily mean there's someone in the church promoting it.
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Rather it's Paul warning the church about allowing that in.
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And so she's saying maybe there wasn't actual heretics in the church yet but they were poised at the door.
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And Paul is saying look, watch out for this.
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Now again I think that's an interesting view.
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And it doesn't take anything away from the idea that this is still an important thing.
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Just because someone here isn't playing with horoscopes doesn't mean I can't warn you against it.
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Just because someone here isn't playing with pagan worship doesn't mean I can't warn you against it.
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Just because someone here isn't doing that yet doesn't mean you won't do that.
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And so her contention is that Colossians is a warning rather than a correction.
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I think that's interesting.
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I thought it was as I was reading through it I thought this is a person who's really thought through these arguments.
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And again I like to bring it up.
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But while she may have a point as I said we mustn't think for a moment that this somehow lessens the intensity of Paul's writing.
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It does not.
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He is warning them that syncretism is a dangerous threat.
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And here's the response to syncretism beloved.
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Here it is.
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It's going to go up on the screen.
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Big letters.
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Here's the response to syncretism.
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It's simple.
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Christ is supreme and sufficient.
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Say I need a horoscope to tell me about my future.
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No you don't.
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If the Lord of Glory is holding you in the palm of his hand you don't need to know whether you're an Aries or a Jupiter or a dinosaur.
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You say well those other two ain't real.
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Ain't none of it real.
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It's all fake.
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So throughout Colossians that will be our theme.
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Christ is supreme.
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In fact on the back of your bulletin you'll see the outline of the whole book.
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Again I'm thankful for Mike and Andy.
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I had the opportunity to have a month where I didn't have to preach so I got the chance to do a lot of preliminary work as I was home and I began to outline the book.
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And this is my outline.
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I didn't get this out of a book or anything like that.
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This is just as I see Colossians and this is how I'm going to preach it.
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But you'll notice it's two parts.
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The supremacy of Christ.
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Chapters 1 and 2 which is doctrinal and corrective.
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And then submission to Christ.
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Chapters 3 and 4 which is practical and reassuring.
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And that's how we're going to look at this book.
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And so today what I want to do as I said short sermon at the end of a long introduction now I want to look at verses 1 and 2.
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Because this is how Paul introduces the book to us.
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Oh and by the way I have to mention this.
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There's a group of young men in the church who have said with me we have a challenge going on.
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We're going to try to memorize the text each week that I preach.
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I'm going to go slow and I'm going to go short.
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So if anybody else wants to try to memorize the book of Colossians giddy up.
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So it begins Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Timothy to the faithful excuse me to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae grace to you and peace from God our Father.
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So let's for a moment consider what he's saying in this opening.
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This is a very common opening for the apostle Paul to begin with his name much unlike our letters and by the way that's what an epistle is it's a letter unlike our letters which we put our name at the end.
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In the ancient world they would put their name at the beginning so as to know who it was from.
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And so Paul began saying Paul and we know who Paul is because of the book of Acts.
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Paul is introduced to us as one who hates Christ as one who hates the church as one who is so in opposition to the church that he was willing to hold the coats of those who stoned Stephen to death.
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He was willing to be sent by the authorities to go and arrest men for their proclamation of the gospel and see Christians imprisoned and even killed for the sake of the gospel.
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That is who this is.
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He is referred to by two names.
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His Hebrew name which is Saul and his Roman name of Paul.
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We call him Saul of Tarsus at certain points but he's also known as Paul the apostle.
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And that word apostle is an important word.
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The word apostle means one who is sent.
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A messenger.
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One who doesn't go by their own authority but the authority of the one who sends them.
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Paul is saying Paul an apostle one who is sent and he doesn't make it up to us to try to discern who sent him but he says I am an apostle of Christ Jesus.
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I am sent by Christ Jesus.
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Now Paul wasn't like the other apostles.
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The other apostles walked with Jesus on the earth.
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Even the one who was chosen in the upper room after the death of Judas had to have been with the brother since the beginning.
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Remember that was one of the reasons why he was chosen because he had been there since the work began.
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And so they chose Matthias to replace Judas.
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But Paul later in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 identified himself as what? As one born out of season.
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He says I was born unlike the other apostles.
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I didn't grow up under the teachings of Christ.
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I didn't walk with him for three years and I didn't hear him preach directly in my ears even though we don't know if Paul actually heard Jesus preach or not specifically but Paul had a different experience.
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Paul was on his way to Damascus.
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He was on his way to imprison Christians.
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He was on his way to have them killed and imprisoned and Jesus blinded him.
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Jesus spoke to him.
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Jesus converted him and by the way not by his permission.
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People get all upset sometimes because I'm a Calvinist and I say God is able to save men by his will.
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Well look at what it says.
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Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus diathelematos by the will of God.
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Paul didn't choose to be an apostle of Jesus.
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Jesus chose him.
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Paul was an apostle by his own will.
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Paul was an apostle by the will of God.
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And by the way if you're saved today you are saved by the will of God.
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Paul says I'm an apostle by the will of God.
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And he mentions Timothy.
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Now I want to clarify something.
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I do not believe Timothy is co-author of the letter.
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I believe that Timothy is Paul's companion at this point and we see this in other letters as well.
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Well Paul will mention his companions in the beginning and in the end.
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That doesn't mean that Timothy is writing alongside of him but rather that Timothy is ministering alongside of him.
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So when he says that Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother he's also setting Timothy up for something very important.
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He is setting Timothy up to take his place when he dies.
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Paul has raised Timothy up as his son in the faith.
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And he's putting him out front.
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This young man is my man.
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And when I'm gone this man will lead.
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And then he says in verse 2 To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ and Colossae.
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We've already learned where Colossae is why it was the city it is and why Paul is writing to it.
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And he says to them Grace.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
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Paul calls the Colossians saints and faithful brothers.
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And he says to them Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
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It's interesting to consider the fact that if you are a believer you are a saint.
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Throughout church history one of the most one of the most confusing and confounding things is that they began to establish sainthood as something that someone could earn by righteousness and good works.
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Again, an absolute opposition to the gospel.
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Paul doesn't say I'm writing this to the saints.
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Those among you who are good and special and spiritually supreme.
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No, he writes to them all as saints because all of them are saints.
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He says to the saints and faithful brothers and Colossae.
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Now I want to mention one last thing as I begin to draw to a close.
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When he calls them saints and faithful brothers I think that within that we actually see a breakdown of the book.
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You say what do you mean? Saint is what we are because of Christ's work.
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And faithful is what we ought to be because of Christ's work.
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And so what we see in this two fold designation is we see chapters one and two.
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Because why are you made a saint? Because of Christ and what he has done.
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And what should you be because you have been made a saint? You should be faithful brothers.
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And what we see in chapters one and two is we see Christ on display.
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And what do we see in three and four? We see the command to live out that Christian walk.
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And Paul says I am an apostle giving this to you by the will of God.
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I am messaging you.
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I am his sent one.
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I am sending you this message on the authority of Jesus Christ.
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And by the way we have to consider that.
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We do not have a take it or leave it attitude when the Bible speaks.
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When Paul writes we don't become cafeteria Christians.
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And we say I like verses one and two but I don't like verses five and six.
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Or I like chapter one but I don't like chapter two.
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That's cafeteria Christianity.
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That's American evangelicalism.
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And it's damnable heresy.
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Because it says that you get to choose what the Bible says.
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You get to choose what you will obey and what you will not obey.
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And if that's the Christ you have you don't have a king.
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You have a servant.
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Christ says no.
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Or Paul says no.
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We are to have faith in the supreme and sufficient Christ and we are to have faithfulness to the commands of Christ which come through the apostle Paul.
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And through the study of this book we're going to be challenged to add nothing to the gospel but to trust in Christ and Christ alone and to grow our lives in faithfulness to his sufficient work.
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During the early stages of Martin Luther's life as a monk and he began to have issues over what was being taught by the Roman Catholic Church.
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He spoke to his teachers the men who were over him and he said the Bible says we are the gospel is to everyone who believes from faith to faith as it is written the just shall live by faith.
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He was quoting Romans 1.
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And he says in this we don't see relics.
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In this we don't see masses.
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In this we don't see all of the trappings of Roman Catholicism.
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He says we don't see those things.
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And the leader his authority said to him if you take those things away what will you replace them with? If you take away relics if you take away those things if you take away all these things that you call mere crutches what will you replace them with? And Luther said Christ.
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A man needs only Jesus Christ.
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What better way to think of what Paul is telling us in the book of Colossians.
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Don't add to Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Father as we consider today that Christ is enough and we consider our entrance into this book I pray Lord that you would bless our study.
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Bless us as we begin to consider all the things that we're going to learn.
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Bless us to read through this book.
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Bless us to even those who desire to to even begin to memorize the words on its pages so that we might grow.
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And Father I pray all of this not so Lord that we would have some type of pride to look to ourselves but Lord that we would relinquish pride and trust in Christ.
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For there is no other who can save other than Jesus Christ.
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And no work or religious practice can be added to what he has done.
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So let us rest in him.
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And Lord if there are those here who have not rested in Christ Lord today let them relinquish all and trust in him.
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In Christ's name, Amen.