The Mystery Revealed

Turn to your Bibles, please, for our text this morning in Colossians 1, verses 24 to the 5th verse of chapter 2,

Colossians 1, 24 to 2, 5. When you have that, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

Now rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which

I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the Word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. For I want you to know how great a struggle

I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, for though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. You know, other than Jesus Christ himself,

I share at least one thing in common with the Apostle Paul. I dislike mysteries.

Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote with the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot just drives me and drove me crazy.

I almost never put together the clues that solved the whodunit, and I couldn't even recognize the hints that were given to be clues that were about to revealed, about to be revealed.

I just don't get mysteries. Columbo and Monk, I mean, when you watch those, you know right away whodunit, and you even know how they'd done what they'd done, but you don't find out how the detective figures out whodunit and proves how they'd done it until the end.

But you know the guilty one at the beginning, but I still don't get the mystery part, the clues.

I don't like that. I like things to be right above board. My sense of humor is more poking the eye in that dup -dup -dup kind of thing that the

Three Stooges used to do. So mysteries, and puzzles, and mind benders, and escape rooms, and Rubik's Cubes, I say away with them all.

When I'm king for a day, they'll all be gone for a day. If you're like me at all, and even if you do like mysteries, you'll be glad for what the

Apostle Paul wrote here in Colossians 124 to 25, because he writes about the end of mystery, not the end of puzzle games, or Rubik's Cubes, or escape rooms.

Those are for entertainment. Really, I have nothing against them for you, but the end of a much more important mystery, the end of the mystery of what

God intended all through the ages to do, and has now done in Christ Jesus our

Lord, the end of a mystery. There remains some mystery, things unknown about God that will stay that way until Christ draws us heavenward, and I don't think

Paul would have anything against mystery for entertainment. But the mystery that Paul targets is this mystery unveiled by God in Christ Jesus.

And one of Paul's purposes here in this letter is to present Christ as sufficient answer, the sufficient means for everything

God intended in Christ. He is sufficient, and that's the theme of this short series we're doing just for these eight messages this month in Colossians.

Like I said at the beginning, we're not going to cover everything in Colossians, but just this one main idea, that Christ is sufficient, and in Christ, God accomplishes what he intended in Christ.

And because Christ is sufficient, we don't need anything other than Christ, and we need to be careful of these subtle things that come in, representing themselves as Christ, or understanding them in scripture, but they're just off.

They could be off just a little bit. We need to be aware of them. And one mystery that Paul targets here is a false mystery, because if God has uncovered his mysteries and his purposes by revealing

Christ Jesus to us, then there's this false mystery idea that was at risk of coming into the church.

And that's why Paul says, Christ is the mystery, Christ is unveiled, there's no more mystery.

Don't be enticed by this other thing, by these other options.

Mystery religions were a big problem in the day. Mystery religions were one of the great alternatives to Christ.

Now we don't know exactly what the false teaching was that was at risk of coming into the

Colossae church. They don't tell us exactly, though we're starting to get some hints as we go through this.

Last week I said we really don't know, and we still don't know, but the hints at what Paul was contesting do get stronger as we go through this.

Mystery religions. I'll describe them in a moment, but first we need to stake out our ground, because the difference between our faith and those falsehoods couldn't be more stark.

And while I'll describe briefly what they were like in the first century, know this, as I describe what mystery religions were, and probably what

Paul was trying to protect the church and us against, remember this, there's nothing new under the sun.

They're here today. They change Christ just a little bit.

They take the scriptures and change just a little bit what's been the understanding for 20 centuries of the church, centuries of scholarship and common understanding, working out these things.

Just a little touch here, a little twist over there, just a little different color.

And what do we have? We have less Christ, because he's been wrapped up in mystery again, even if ever so little.

Remember this, as I describe these mystery religions that I think Paul was starting to contest here, that when he says that the mystery is unveiled, that Christ is presented, and Christ being that way to God, that the mystery is unveiled.

Christ is not mysterious. It's not hard to understand. The scripture has been given to us, he's been revealed to us, and there he is.

Just as God intended, all we need to know in the scripture. Not mysterious, not cloaked in darkness, not made hard to understand.

You don't need a secret handshake, you don't need a secret code. Just Christ as he is in the scripture.

By their very nature, mystery, the unknown, the puzzle needs to be worked out, the undefined requirements, they have no defined finish line.

By their very nature, they're antithetical to God, they're directly opposed to your Christian faith.

So Paul's goal in this passage that I read is to dispel any hint of mystery and the insecurity that it brings.

Mystery brings insecurity because mystery makes you unable to know fully. The fullness of God dwells fully in Christ, and Christ dwells in you.

And so reject mysteries when they come near you. If they hide

Christ a little bit, just ever so little bit, reject it out of hand.

Paul's goal in this passage, and therefore mine, which is very antithetical to any mystery, the goal is this, that you have full assurance in what

God has done in Christ. We'll come to that as we finish this passage later. Full assurance.

And that's exactly what the mysteries would take away from you. You can't know fully because the mystery remains ever so little bit unsolved.

Walter Elwell wrote, Christianity is based on a historical person, which of course is

Christ, while the mysteries were based on gods whose experiences were repeated yearly.

Now the historical person in whom our faith is based is Christ Jesus. It is in him that God has unveiled all mystery by revealing himself in him, in God the

Son who became flesh and blood. So first I want to describe to you very briefly the mystery religions, maybe the cults of Paul's day.

And then we'll go to our passage and see how he answers them. See the traditions by Paul's time, the traditions of the

Olympic gods were starting to fade. Even more and more, they're seen more and more as unable to answer man's spiritual needs, most especially his need to understand the afterlife.

So what was the problem with those gods? So the problem with those gods is they're starting to be understood as being more human than the humans they ruled over.

They were vindictive, they were murderous, they were conniving, they were licentious, they were salacious, they were everything that man's

God -given conscience knew to be wrong and everything that God's given, the God -given conscience knew to be wrong, the

Olympian gods were. So enter the mystery cults. They taught that immortality could be obtained through initiation into a secret experience only they knew and could teach, so there's hints there of Gnosticism as well.

R .C. Kroger wrote, they provided a reason to live with joy and to die with better hope. A false joy, a false hope, we as Christians would say, but that's what was being offered.

That was the attraction. And Kroger goes on to point out that they especially attracted women because of their greater recognition and status.

They not only participated in false worship, they were integral to it. And something else about these mystery religions that's very antithetical to our faith, something that would make them mysterious and the opposite of what we do publicly and openly, they were private affairs.

Adherents were enjoined to not reveal the secrets to the profane, to the uninitiated, sort of like, you remember the

Know Nothing Party from the mid -19th century of America? What do you stand for? I know nothing. Because they couldn't tell what their party was about.

Don't ask, don't tell kind of a thing. Well, it's a mystery, so I'll keep it to myself. That's the idea.

So how do you worship Christ? Well, that's my business. It's a personal thing. And by keeping it to myself,

I become the authority of how I will worship, when I will worship, with whom I will worship, and even what

I will worship. Now have you ever run into a Christian or have you ever been a so -called

Christian who says something like, my faith is personal, it's between me and Jesus? Have you heard this before? Anybody?

Thank you. Yeah, we've heard that. No, I don't have to worship at church. My faith is personal. I know

Jesus Christ personally. It's my faith, I'll keep it to myself. Or they say, faith is personal,

I can worship at home by myself as well as with the rest of you. Enter live stream and Zoom, and on and on it goes.

Well, what's that? That's mystery religion, folks. That's what that is.

It's alive and well today. If you're one who thinks you can worship at home alone by yourself in your own way, your own time, in your own manner, you're a mystery, because it all depends upon you.

I'm not saying I'm, or Pastor Owens wouldn't say of himself, there were any grand paradigm of eloquence and biblical extreme scholarship.

We do our best. But we're not mysterious. We're open books. We have the book open here.

We do the best we can with the scripture and we put it to you plainly and openly and publicly. Those who go the other way that I described, 20 centuries ago, that was mystery religion.

Do it at home. Do it alone. Keep it to yourself. And it lifts you up and it makes you higher.

It also makes you not responsible to any but self. That's mystery religion.

That's alive and well. Now, we need to compare that to Jesus who said, I have spoken openly to the world.

I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple where all the Jews come together. I've said nothing in secret.

And to us, he says, what I tell you in the dark, say in the light and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the house stops.

We are proclaiming from this house stop publicly, openly, no secret, no mystery.

One last comment about the mystery religions. The idea of resurrection is not to be found in mystery cults of the day.

Oftentimes you'll hear that Christianity just picked up that idea of resurrection. And copied it from them and incorporated it into our faith so we would look like we're at least as good as them 20 centuries ago.

That's totally false. The idea of resurrection is not found in mystery religions until after the first century.

They picked it up from us. They imitate us or Christianity.

To our passage, with all that background, to our passage,

Paul unveils the mystery in three purpose statements here. In verses 24 to 26, his

God -given purpose is to reveal the long -hidden mystery by making the word of God fully known.

That's his first purpose. His second purpose is verse 27, and that's really God's purpose. And God's purpose is to have the riches of this mystery made known.

And third is verses 2, 1 through 5. Paul's purpose is that the unveiled mystery would bring to Christ's people the riches of full assurance.

And so you get my purpose in this message this morning, what I said earlier, that you would have full assurance in what has been revealed to you in the

Scripture and you know by faith. Full assurance in what God has done in Christ.

So first, Paul's purpose. Remember verses 24 to 26 again. He says,

Now rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's affliction for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which

I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.

His stewardship from God, recall verse 1 of chapter 1, that he is an apostle by the will of God.

By the will of God, he was made an apostle, and now by the will of God in our current verse, he's made an apostle for this purpose, to make the word of God fully known.

So no more mystery. No more mystery. No more clouds around it. The veil's been taken away.

No more dark secrets. God's purposes have been revealed in all their riches, all its glory, all its fullness.

He says he's filling up in himself what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Now that sounds mysterious, and that's a verse, that little phrase there's had a lot of different interpretation, a lot of different ideas, and some people go and do self -flagellations with a whip to fill up in themselves more affliction, to make up for what

Christ didn't do sort of thing, and that's just almost blasphemous, totally blasphemous. What Paul says sounds mysterious.

He's making up in his flesh the afflictions that are lacking. It's not really mysterious at all. He's not trying to prevent mystery by adding mystery.

Now hear again what he says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh

I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body that is the church. Well, suffering is simply what we all are going through and will continue to go through in this age of the spirit.

As Jesus says, in this stage you will have tribulation, you will have persecution, you're going to have trials, offenses must come, said the

Lord Jesus Christ. We live in a broken world, and in that sense we're still broken people waiting to be perfected by the

Lord Jesus Christ, which won't happen until he calls us to himself through the resurrection and his second coming, but suffering in this world is what we're all going through.

The whole church. We suffer degradation and persecution. We suffer as we strive to be molded and to mold ourselves after Jesus Christ our maker.

That's chapter 1 verse 16. We suffer because we know what lies ahead in the new creation and cannot but compare it to what we have now.

As we look ahead to a new heaven and a new earth where there's no more tears, there's no more suffering, no more sickness, where God is the light, we no longer need the sun.

We look forward to that because we know how great that's going to be, how unbelievably magnificent it will be.

Just being here instead of there is suffering, as does

Paul. We suffer in the flesh. We suffer in these physical bodies. We suffer in this fast fading life.

We're just like grass that withers when the sun comes up. This is suffering.

Paul doesn't mean he's taking upon himself any kind of suffering special or unique from the rest of us.

We all suffer in this world the same way because we're in this world.

So what's lacking? He says it pretty clearly, for your sake, making up my flesh, filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

Now, that again, that sounds almost blasphemous. It's like, wait a second, Paul, you're saying the cross wasn't enough? Would the apostle

Paul say that Jesus Christ didn't accomplish salvation, that we have to add something to it or he had to add something to it?

Now, he, the great apostle, took care of it and we're okay? Could that be what he's saying?

You can shake your head no. No, that's impossible. What's lacking?

Well, again, this is all about revealing mystery, about assuring us that there is no mystery, that God has revealed this mystery.

He's unveiled it all. He's given us the key and it's not a secret handshake. It's not a code word.

Paul suffers for the sake of his body, that is the church. He suffers in regards to the church.

He suffers with the rest of us. So what is lacking? What is lacking in the afflictions of Christ's body, which is us, his church, is simply that the days until his coming are not over.

What's lacking in the afflictions of Christ's body? The church.

Christ's body is the church. What is lacking? Tomorrow. We haven't suffered what comes tomorrow.

And if Jesus doesn't come today, we are going to suffer tomorrow. And if Jesus doesn't come

Monday, the suffering continues to Tuesday. What's lacking is the days between now and when

Jesus returns. I hope you're not dissatisfied with that answer.

It's a very simple answer. It makes sense of much of Scripture. It's not mysterious.

And it's one of the reasons, I think, that we've got this right. What does Paul mean? He's filling up his flesh with sufferings.

We're going to suffer as long as it is until now and Christ's return. That's what

Jesus said. That's what Paul says in many places. That's what Peter says. James alludes to it.

What's lacking? Tomorrow. Just tomorrow.

And when tomorrow comes, we will suffer more. We need to move now to God's purpose in the apostles' stewardship.

To make the Word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to His saints.

Fully known. This is so important. This keeps coming up in here. The fullness of God dwells happily in Jesus Christ.

He's fully God. You're filled in Him. We're going to get to that. Fully. He's fully known.

To make the Word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to His saints.

Now revealed to you if you've repented of your sin and in faith come to the

Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. Well, there's a lot here, but I just want to make two points from that.

One, that Paul's stewardship we could say is commissioned from God to make

His Word known is a strong proof that the apostles self -consciously wrote the very Word of God.

Paul and the other apostles knew that what they wrote was inspired by God's Spirit directly from God to them.

I want to back up just a little bit here because when I quoted that again, to make the Word of God fully known, just before that, remember that he's saying he got this commission from God.

He's an apostle by the will of God. He rejoices in his sufferings, making up what is lacking. He became a minister according to the stewardship from God given to me.

So my idea that they self -consciously wrote the Word of God because His commission is to make the Word of God fully known, they self -consciously knew that they're writing for God.

So Paul in that way knew he was writing the inspired Word. Peter says, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. So that's one thing we know from this, or we can derive from this.

The second thing, the Word of God dispels mysteries. The Word of God dispels the mystery.

It unclogs what God spoke in ages past, things that couldn't be fully known because the point of it all hadn't come.

If it was mysterious back then, meaning Old Testament days, from Genesis all the way through to Malachi, if it was mysterious then, it's simply because the key to it all, the sum of it all, the point of it all, read

Luke 24, was none other than whom? Jesus Christ. So what remained mysterious, not that God was trying to do something in that gnostic way where you had to have that secret handshake and that code word and the decoder little tool.

No, that's not it at all. It was pointing plainly and openly, not in secret.

It only seemed to be shrouded in darkness because the point of it hadn't come. And the point of it all was

Jesus Christ. That's what's been revealed. The Word of God fully revealed in the

Jesus Christ, which is why good exegesis takes the New Testament and has it rule over the

Old. The New explains the Old, and oftentimes when you get into a puzzle in the New, or especially in the

Old, and you can't figure something out, and I'm not going to go through a lot of examples, just think resurrection and see if that might guide you along and give you a good answer to whatever it is that's puzzling you.

So Paul, Matthew, Luke, John, James, Mark, Peter, Jude, these all made the Word of God fully known in what we call the

New Testament. The mystery that was hidden but now revealed is in the next verse, and to Paul's purpose in this letter, the mystery prevented was false religions, dark cults, unknowable demands, hopeless striving towards an ill or an undefined goal.

The mystery cults are defeated by the open and plain Word of God. And too often we get wrapped up in these things, in false religions, in these cults, in these unknowable things.

And what's the reason? Well, oftentimes we want to know something that you don't know. I want to have an elite association that you don't have because you don't know the handshake, you don't know the password, you don't know what's really between those lines.

And I've got some special key from the original languages, and on and on it goes, and you just get your mind so wrapped up in a

Gordian knot of a pretzel, you can't even think straight anymore. And dear ones, if you're hearing something that's so complicated, you just can't think straight, you know those things that you hear, like you listen to a

YouTube or you even go to a conference in person, and it makes such sense, and you come excited, and you stand up and you're still excited to have heard it, and by the time you start your car and turn on the air conditioner or whatever, you go, wait a second, what was that?

How do you put that together? What was that connection, what was that key? And you forget it all, it's probably no good, probably no good.

You could be like me, a bit of a dullard, and you forget things, or it could be something so complicated, it's just a recall of the mystery of religions.

You need to hear of a Jesus Christ that you can understand. You need to hear of a Jesus Christ by whom and through whom you know

God better. You need to hear of a Jesus Christ, as Paul says in Galatians, clearly portrayed to you as crucified, a

Christ you can leave this place with, and know being close to Him, and be confident you could become more like Him, and know that one day

He will come and redeem you and call you to Himself. You need to hear a Jesus like that, that when you go to your car, you got all your kids strapped in, you start heading home, you're getting ready for the rest of your day off here on Sunday, you remember what was said, you're encouraged in the

Lord, you feel closer to Him, that's the opposite of mystery of religions, and that's what

Paul would have us to know, full assurance in Christ. Mystery cults are defeated by the plain and open

Word of God, and Paul's task was to make that Word plain, to do His part in bringing it to completion.

So God's purpose in verse 27, we had Paul's purpose to make the Word of God fully known. Now God's purpose is in verse 27, to them, meaning to the saints, to them,

God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is

Christ in you, the hope of glory. So what is the mystery?

The glory of this mystery, this mystery, which is Christ in you. There's the mystery revealed,

Christ in you. Did not Jesus say in John chapter 14 through 17, in different ways and at different times, in that one prayer time, that He and the

Father will come to you and make their home in you, that the Holy Spirit will reside within you?

What's the mystery? It's right here, it's revealed, and if you are a Christian, and you have

His Spirit, Christ is in you, that's the mystery. There it is,

Christ is in you, mystery solved. He's with you by His Father, He's with you by His Spirit, He's converted you and given you a heart to believe in Him.

What's the hard thing to understand? Well, how does the triune God dwell in a sinful believer?

We're not going to touch that this morning. I'm not going to dare call it mysterious, but it might be hard to understand, but the scripture will explain it.

What's the mystery? The mystery that God so remakes a person, a sinner like me or you, that He is happy by His Spirit, the triune

God, to reside within you. There's the mystery, all revealed. The cults can't touch that, they can't come near that, all they can do is obfuscate it, make it mysterious, make it darker, make it harder to understand, and make you elite and smarter and different from that person next to you because they don't get it, because you've been brought into the mystery.

Away with all that. Here it is, can I say it again? The riches of the glory of the mystery, the mystery is

Christ, the riches and the glory of it is He is in you, period, and He is the hope of glory.

Mystery solved, all the clues lined up, all the trajectory plainly and easily seen,

Christ in you is the mystery, Christ in you, His personal residence by and with His Spirit, that's the end of it.

And this is what God chose to make known, knowable, knowable, the plain text of scriptures.

And if you would know it, it comes by faith in Christ, it comes by repentance towards God, this is it.

So we come back now to Paul's purpose, Paul's original purpose to make the word of God fully known, and if God's purpose in having

Paul make it fully known is that you know the riches of the glory of the mystery, which is Christ in you, He is the hope of glory,

Paul's third purpose, just in this one passage, the third purpose. Chapter two, verse one, for I want you to know how great a struggle

I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, pardon me, which is

Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments, for though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

You see there are riches here, there are riches in your life here, there's riches of contentment, riches of stability, riches of certainty.

Paul calls the understanding and knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, just that, the riches of full assurance.

Do you know that Christ has saved you? Are you assured of your salvation in Jesus Christ, our

Lord? Do you know that He is going to return and you, if you're alive at that time, and I, will be translated, and if you're dead at that time, you'll be resurrected and brought to Him.

Do you know this? Are you assured of it? It's Paul's purpose here.

That's the riches of the glory of his purpose here, and there's riches in knowing this.

In the home groups we're going through, Jeremiah Burroughs, the rare jewel of Christian contentment, being assured of what

God has done in Christ for you, is the riches that Paul has in mind here.

You recall a few weeks ago I preached from Galatians chapter 2 and verse 1920. We talked about the

Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me, personal. Paul made that individual himself, he's speaking of himself,

Paul the apostle, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who loved me, Paul, and gave Himself up for me,

Paul, and we put our own names in there because that's singular, it's personal, it's what the scripture says. Are you assured of this?

That's the riches of the glory, the hope that we have, the hope that is Jesus Christ, the mystery that is

Jesus Christ. We can't grow in Him very much if we're not assured that He's in us and leading us along.

There's riches here, full assurance, there's a glory here that we can have. Assurance of what? Assurance of everything that God has vested in Jesus Christ, in whom all the promises of God find what?

Yes and amen, all in Jesus Christ. Everything mysterious, everything that mystery religions promise but cannot deliver.

It's all the treasure of God's wisdom, all the knowledge of God wrapped up in Him, in Jesus Christ, and there's the mystery, and there's the mystery solved, the mystery unveiled, the word of God uncloaked, made plain and public and easy to understand.

The series in Colossians has a fairly limited purpose, it's like the messages are going to be just these four

Sundays in August, and the afternoon messages have to be shorter than the morning messages because of our prayer time and taking the

Lord's table. So my purpose in Colossians is fairly limited, and it's that you be assured of the sufficiency of Christ for you personally.

You be assured that there's nothing you need outside of Christ Jesus and faith in Him and the word of God to understand and to know

Him as well as you must, and to continue to grow in Him. That's my purpose.

And so this is my final point this morning, Paul's purpose was to ensure that the plausible arguments of men impedling their mystery faith would have no effect on God's people.

How can you tell if you're being enticed by something that is ultimately, truly, though they wouldn't call themselves that, but really is a mystery cult?

One simple way is how individual does that make your faith? How individual do you become?

Are you the arbiter of your faith? Do you decide who or where you will worship, when you will worship, with whom you will worship, what you will worship?

Are you the deciding factor? Mystery. Do you get to determine what the regulative principle of worship means?

Mystery. Are you elevated and Christ made harder to understand?

Mystery. My purpose here is with Paul's purpose, to dissuade you and to make you sensitive to and able to ward off anything that would even hint at this.

And how does Paul protect the people? By his commission from God, by making the word of God fully known.

Paul doing, and I imagine he did it better than Pastor Owens and I do, but we do our best, make the word of God fully known to you.

Open this book up and tell you what it says, as best we're able, making it fully known and that will dispel the mystery because God's purpose is not that you be confused, but that you be assured.

I would place under Paul's polemic here, any faith that makes what God has made known, unknowable.

I might go so far as to call them cults. Now, if this sounds too much to you, at least understand that a lack of assurance in the promises of God is what

Paul labors to vanquish. So any faith, any communion that takes away that assurance is what

Paul is arguing against here. I think of Roman Catholicism.

You know they have that cup of righteousness, have you heard of this? So they envision you going to find out if you're going right to paradise or down to purgatory.

Of course, they don't tell you how long you're going to be in purgatory or how much money they have to spend in indulgences to get you out of purgatory, that's all mysterious.

But it's a cup of righteousness, it gets filled as you do righteous deeds and then you find out when you see

God, if it's full enough. So how can you be assured in this life and if you're not assured in this life,

I'm going to call it a mystery religion. You find out when you die where you're going.

Brethren, you must be assured now where you're going because Christ has been unveiled, the mystery has been solved, the riches of the glory is full assurance.

Not a cup that you find out when you get there if you did enough. Not some saint who did more than they needed to get saved and they pull out the treasure of merit and hand that over to you.

If one of your relatives is willing to pay enough to get the indulgence so you get, it just goes on and on. It's a mystery because you don't know therefore it's what

Paul rails against and I with Paul. The church of the Nazarene, Arminianism at its worst really, is this doctrine of salvation that you cannot earn but you can lose.

It's crazy, but if you can have that which you didn't earn but you can give it up and maybe next day you feel better so you get it back and it just goes on and on.

Brethren, if you don't know, capital K -N -O -W, if you don't know with full assurance, it's mystery.

God's word unveils it all. Any so -called faith that refuses to teach full assurance, that's the heart of the mystery and I stand against it and I warn you against it.

Do you like mysteries? Escape rooms, Rubik's cubes, enjoy them. Leave me out but enjoy them yourself but never let a mystery sneak into your faith in Christ.

Reject out of hand anything or anyone who says you cannot know if you're saved or whether your faith is strong or pure enough.

The richest Paul presents as a steward commissioned by God to make his word fully known as this, it's full assurance.

Not in yourself, not in me, not in Pastor Owens, not in solving the puzzle, not in learning the code, assurance in Christ and the promises of God that he bears and that he is.

You see, the mystery religions can't tell you when you're done. Christianity says it's been done.

The mystery religion says you got to keep doing so that you can understand where you're going to go.

Christianity says keep doing because you won't be like the one to whom you know you will go. You get that?

Assurance in Christ, the glory of the richest, a full assurance and that's what

I would have you know because that's what Paul presents to the Colossians and that's how he would protect them from the insidious danger of the mystery cults.

Amen? Heavenly Father, I do thank you for this morning and for your word. I thank you,

Lord, for the assurance that we can have in Christ because of the Holy Spirit you've given us, because of the historical fact of Christ's life, his perfect life on our behalf and his death for us, his burial and his resurrection.

Father God, that we might know you better by this word that you've given us, by this word that you've given us that unveils all mystery and makes you known to us as much as we can know we have in the word that you've given us.

For that, we give you all the thanks and the praise and we glorify you in this place in Jesus' name. Amen.