Colossians 1:23 - Not Moved Away From The Hope, Pt. 3

Colossians 1:23 and the Doctrine of Eternal Security

Appreciate Dave and Katie and Ben and Ashton for getting these Wednesday night things going and now they are official. All right, so we are in the book of Colossians chapter 1 verse 23 and I want to welcome Tom Carlson, by the way, who is a longtime Tradeway client and student and friend and thanks for driving all the way up today to be with us.

I hope you can stay for lunch. We have lunch every Sunday, plenty for visitors and every day and glad to have our home folks with us to pray for those who are traveling soon. When school starts, everybody will be here.

The vacations will be mostly over. All right, so we've been traveling through this first few verses of Colossians chapter 1 and we got to a point down around verse 12, all the way up to verse 23, where it starts talking about who Jesus Christ is.

Now, there is an amazing parallel passage in Hebrews chapter 2 and 3, even 1, 2 and 3 that parallels this so amazingly. And, you know, there is a rule of Bible interpretation that says, let the Bible interpret the Bible.

So it's always good to go out and look at parallel passages to see if that sheds more light on the thing we're studying, which we are in the process of doing that. But basically what we talked about is that, number one, Jesus is the king of God's kingdom.

He is the king of kings. Secondly, he is the image or the embodiment of the invisible God. Thirdly, he is the first born from the dead. He is the first resurrected human being from the dead. And fourth, he is the creator of all things.

All of this is in the few verses we've covered so far. Fifth, he is, he is before all things. In other words, he is eternal. And then the sixth thing is he holds all things together. He is not a God who folds his arms and watches to see how it turns out.

He is intimately involved in even your body keeping to work and the pew you're sitting on, the molecules, I don't mean molecules, the atoms and the electrons spinning around the nucleus of those atoms.

He is touching those and keeping, giving the power to them or you would fall right through. In fact, the earth would stop spinning and you would go out of existence. So he, of Jesus Christ, all things consist.

The Greek word for that means he holds it together. And then Jesus is the head of the church and he has all preeminence. And then Jesus is all of the fullness of God. And we're going to see that again when we get past chapter one.

And I'll talk about that in more detail when we get to it. And then the next thing is he made peace through his blood, reconciling the entire cosmos, both heaven and earth to himself. It doesn't mean every individual person, but it means all kinds of people, both Jew and Gentile, but also everything even out to the stars.

Because when man sinned, it affected the entire universe. And the first and second laws of thermodynamics came into play, which means everything tends towards disorder if energy is not put into it. Look at your closet.

Look at your garage. If you don't believe me, you got to go put some energy in there to make it look nice.

Again.

Right?

The whole universe is like that. But when Jesus died, he died to fix that and put it back like it was prior to Adam and Eve falling. So that's one of the things we talked about. And sometimes in there around verse 20 or so.

And then Jesus brings us five-fold eternal security. We talked about that, which I think was my favorite part of that portion.

All right.

So that kind of brings us to where we are. So I'm going to read verse 22, in the body of his flesh through death, he died to present you holy, unblameable, and unreprovable in his sight. And that is beautiful because it encompasses literally around 200 verses from the Old Testament to the end of the Bible that talk about eternal security throughout the entire Bible.

A lot of it is just outlined in that one verse. Eternal security. He presents us. It means it's his job to do it, not our job. It's the shepherd's job to present us holy and without blemish is what the Greek word for unblameable means.

And unreprovable means you cannot be brought before a court and found guilty because you are innocent. So that's how he presents us to the father. And that to me is very beautiful. But what's interesting about it is the next word is found in verse 23, and it's the word.

If.

And that's what we've been studying for a couple of Sundays. And it'll be a couple of more at least just to study this one word. Because what it says is he will give you, make you five fold promises of eternal security.

And it looks like it says, if you continue in the faith, grounded, settled, and be not moved away. That almost sounds like, but if you don't do that, you could lose it. Well, it would make no sense to give you five reasons why you can't lose it and then tell you, but you could lose it.

So that's not what this verse means. Now it sounds like it in English, in King James English. Well, what's interesting, that little word if, as we talked about earlier, can sometimes be translated for as much as, sometimes it's translated since.

And obviously if you put that there, it changes the whole meaning. I'm going to give you five, I'm going to give you five ways I'm keeping you eternally secure where you cannot lose your salvation, where as much as you are going to continue in the faith, blah, blah, blah, makes way more sense.

So we talked about that and we gave quite a few verses in Hebrews. Well, I'm going to give you a couple of days just because we're studying through Hebrews in this parallel passage, but there's one in Acts 11, 27, where that same Greek word is interpreted for as much as.

There's one in Hebrews 2, 14 that we'll see today where the same word or the root of the word is where as much as, or for as much as, and so forth. So we kind of talked about that last time. Now we move into the parallel passage in Hebrews chapter three, starting with verse one, and you're going to read down through there and when you get to verse five, you're going to see if again, and it sounds a little bit conditional again, it says, but Christ as son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoice of the whole firm to the end.

So does it mean you could lose your salvation? It does not, but we have to look at that little word if again in this passage, and what's great about it is this whole passage in Hebrews sheds a lot of light on the one in Colossians that we're studying.

And so look at the first word in chapter three, verse one, it's the word wherefore. That means you got to go up and read verse chapter two because it refers to what came.

Before it.

So we were doing that. We're in the midst of doing that right now. So I'm going to save you some time and we'll skip down to chapter two of Hebrews and go to verse 14, Hebrews chapter two, verse 14. It's interesting that that starts out with the word for as much then as the children, and that is the same root word, the same Greek word for if so, and that's something.

So it gets translated for as much as here, it gets translated if in a couple of other places, but it's the same Greek word, which means to me, you have to, you have to figure out whether it means if, or sin, because for as much as kind of means like since, or because this is true.

So which one is it? You can only tell by the context. So think about what we studied in Colossians. If God just got through in that context, giving you five reasons you cannot lose your salvation, then probably the next word is not if it's probably since, since you're going to continue in the faith.

Now I would base that on many other scriptures, 200 or so, but one in particular where it says that God is the one who gives us the desire to do his goodwill and then makes us do his goodwill. That is a verse of scripture.

God gives us the desire and the will to do his goodwill. So you know, there are so many verses like that, that I think the word since or because would be a better translation for as much as is a great word.

If is not such a good word to put there. But even if you do put if there, then we would look at, okay, why is it in Hebrews? And now we look at everything that comes in the context prior to that use of this Greek.

Word.

So we can see how would we interpret it? Would we interpret it if, or would we interpret it since? Okay, so that's what we're looking at. So now let's look at verse 14, chapter two, Hebrews for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, Jesus also himself took part of the same.

So Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was fully a human being.

Why?

So that he could die so that through death, he might destroy him that has the power of.

Death.

That is the devil.

So the first thing that we see in this context is it teaches us that Jesus, when he died on the cross, he destroyed Satan. And Satan is one of the three enemies we have that would cause us to want to go against.

God.

And here he's one of the three has already been destroyed by Jesus. This is in the context. So let's remember the points that we see in this context, working up to the word if, and it'll help us know what that word should be translated as.

Now it's interesting because the very word for as much as at the front end of that verse is the same word translated if it's the little Greek word IEI is how you put it in English letters preceded by the prefix ep.

So the ep, when you put it in front of something, it means superimposed upon. So it comes out and it gets translated thereupon or since, or for as much as. So you give these five reasons in Colossians that we can't lose our salvation and that the next word is since we follow through to the end, then that makes sense.

Oh, that's good. I used the same word twice, but it meant two different things.

How about that?

Anyway, we see that starts right here with the same word being translated for as much as all right now, um, when you go to verse, let's go to the next verse. And so we've already gotten our first point that I want to bring out in verse 14.

So the first point is that Jesus through death destroyed Satan.

Okay.

Remember that one, Jesus through death destroyed Satan. So he destroyed one of the three enemies that would cause us to be lost, to never want Jesus to save us, to run from Jesus, to run from God and to hate God.

Satan is the person who would want that for us. And Jesus already destroyed him.

All right.

Now look at verse 15 and to deliver them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now this word deliver is the best translation for the word that we call getting saved.

It's the same Greek word I like delivered better because it implies not only that you're saved from hell, but you're delivered while you're here. You can be delivered from sin habits. You can be delivered from the sins of the youth of the flesh that you did as a youth that still bother you can be delivered from it.

You can be delivered from anything that's ungodly. And that's what salvation is about. It's not just the salvation of your soul in heaven. It's the salvation of your soul here from your spiritual birthday forward.

So that is the same word there. So whoever these, the word them implies it's those who are delivered. So this passage is written to save people, both Jew and Gentile.

All right.

So you have to remember the book of Hebrews is written predominantly to Jewish people who don't think God will even save a Gentile. Keep that in mind. They don't think God even save a Gentile. And the apostle Paul's always said, Oh yes, he will.

He died for all men, but it doesn't mean all individuals. It means all kinds of men. That's the Greek word, pos, all kinds of men. Just knowing that changes your whole understanding of scripture from Genesis to Revelation, I think, but it's very important to know that.

So he died to number one, destroy Satan. Then it says he died to deliver them. That means the elect, those who God knew before the foundation of the world, the ones that Jesus said, no man comes to me unless the father draws him, but out of them, I will lose nothing, but we'll raise it up in the end.

That same group of people, same group of people in Roman chapter eight, where it says before time began, God, both foreknew and predestined, or predestined and foreknew. There's no order to it because there's no time.

It's just both were true. God foreordained and predestined who he would save out of a totally fallen race. That same group comes into time and says the Holy Spirit calls that group of people in their lifetime and opens their eyes and lets them see who the shepherd really is and makes him irresistible to them.

And then that same group is justified, made as if they've never sinned. And then that same group is glorified, which God already sees them as in heaven and perfect, the father does, because of what Jesus did on the cross.

So this is what he means by delivered, this group of people that he died for. He didn't die for everybody because if he did, everybody would go to heaven because you ain't saved by nothing besides his blood.

If he gave his blood for everybody, everyone would be saved. And Jesus said, no, there's very few people that will be saved out of the entire human race for all ages, very few, a small remnant. But God said, I'm doing that as a love gift to Jesus because he loves the earth and he loves humans, and I'm going to save a remnant of them to keep the human race going on into the thousand-year millennial kingdom someday.

And so that's the promise of the father to the son. And the son promised the father, of them I will lose nothing. Does that sound like eternal security? I think it does. So all of this is going to color how we interpret this Greek word, I, whether we're going to interpret it if or since.

Are you following me? Because it means both, and you can only tell by the context. So now, the first point is he destroyed Satan. The second point is that he died to deliver the seed of Abraham who were in bondage.

All right?

Now, that includes, according to the book of Galatians in the New Testament, it includes us too, Gentiles too. In fact, all of us, even in the New Testament, are saved by the Abrahamic covenant which preceded the law by 400 years.

It had nothing to do with law. It was totally grace. God did it all. You didn't have any part to play in it, and that's how salvation works. He does it all. All you do is receive it. It's a free gift.

It's a birth, like you're born into his family. You wake up, you're in his family. You don't even know why. You don't deserve it, but here you are. Same way with physical birth. You didn't deserve to be born in the family you're in.

It just happened. You had nothing to do with it. Just happened.

There you are.

It was part of God's grace too. And so, it says he delivered them who, through fear of death, were in bondage before they got saved, right? But then delivered means he took them out of bondage. And in verse 16, for truly he took not on him the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham.

So, Jesus, unlike what the Mormons say and the Jehovah's Witnesses say, was not an angel. He was not a created being. In fact, Colossians, the book we're studying, says he's all the fullness of the Godhead and a body.

He is God.

He is not an angel. He created the angels. Ridiculous theology. They had to write their own books to make you believe it, and only poor, ignorant people believe that stuff. People who don't read well, people who don't know how to study or think, or people who are blinded by Satan, maybe the non-elect.

It's like Brother Otis said, the non-elect have to have a place to go to church too, Brother David. So, maybe that's it. I don't know. I don't like it, but I don't mind fighting against them. It's real easy.

You just show them these verses. You take them in the first three chapters of Hebrews, there's no way they'll win the argument against you. Trust me. They're just hoping you don't know that. They're hoping you don't know Hebrews 1, 2, and 3, those chapters.

Now, so here, now he has delivered the seed of Abraham who were in bondage. Look at verse 17. Wherefore, in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren. Still talking about Jesus. He was made a man.

He's like his brothers, not like the goats, not like the tares, but he's like the wheat. He's like the sheep, and he's like his brothers, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the sins of his people, of the people.

Now, the third point that we see then is that Jesus, through dying for the people, and you have to look at the context of that. It's talking about the people of God, not every human, but the people of God, God's people.

We see that through death, he made reconciliation. Now, the best translation for that literally means to propitiate. So this is really talking about propitiation, a great doctrine in the Bible, not reconciliation.

There's another word for that. But propitiation means that when Jesus died, he satisfied God's justice and wrath so that he can also show his love to his people because he paid for their sins. That's propitiation.

The best English word for that, big theological word, is satisfied. God is satisfied that your sin debt has been paid in full. That's what it means. And so that's the next thing it says that Jesus did.

It's why he came, became a man so he could die, so he could do these three things. He could destroy Satan, he can deliver his people, and now he can make reconciliation between his people and a holy God who is perfect, and we ain't, right?

We're not perfect. And yet Jesus made us to be perfect by imputing his perfect righteousness to us, taking our sins upon himself. It was a transferal. Our sins went to him, he died on the cross, his righteousness went to us, and we rose with him on the third day, a new man, a new woman, new boy or girl, and that's you.

You're the new man.

The old man hangs around and bothers us. We should try to avoid living in the flesh. We should live in the spirit. As long as we do, we don't sin.

How about that?

Wonderful thing. That's part of being delivered. So we are right with God. We're in a right standing with God because he reconciled us and he was a propitiation for the sins of the people of God. Romans 3 .25 says, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God.

That's talking about the Old Testament people were brought in under this too. Jesus, when he died, he died for people going backwards and going forwards, which includes us and includes the Old Testament people.

All right.

So Hebrews 2 .18, for in that he himself have suffered being tempted, is able to secure them that are tempted. And this word in English means to relieve them. So that's talking about us. So another reason Jesus came in the flesh is so that he could be tempted in all points as we are and yet without sin, but he can relate to our temptations and he can relieve us, he can bring us relief when we are tempted.

And it's interesting because the Greek word for that means to sort of come along beside and to aid and bring relief to. So Jesus through death is able to bring aid and relief to them that are tempted to his people when they are tempted.

So now we've seen these four things. Number one, Jesus through death destroyed Satan. That's verse 14. Jesus, number two, through death delivered the seed of Abraham from bondage. And number three, Jesus through death made reconciliation or propitiation to God, the father, between him and his people.

And then number four, Jesus through death is able to bring aid and relief to those who are tempted. All of these things are things that help us to be eternally secure. They are things that help us to have assurance of our salvation, which means we know the more we study.

We don't know this as a new Christian, but when we get saved and we start studying the word of God, we know that he saved us, we did not save ourselves. And if we didn't save ourselves, we can't mess it up.

If we didn't do one thing toward our salvation, then we cannot do one thing to lose it. And if the Bible says it was the operation of God, it means it was not the operation of you on yourself. You cannot give yourself a heart transplant.

I'm sorry, don't try it, but God can. And God did do that, and it's finished, you've been delivered. So now, all of that came before chapter three, verse one, and it says, wherefore? So you got to think about those four things.

He destroyed Satan. He has delivered you forever from Satan and from bondage. He has reconciled you to a holy God where he sees you as perfect, already glorified. And in Romans chapter eight, it's in the past tense.

The father already sees you in heaven with him, perfect. And then fourth, he's able to help you when you do go through sin, because Jesus and the Holy Spirit are with us in time and space. And they take note of these things when we're tempted.

They take note of it when we sin. The father does not. He's outside of time and space. He does not see your sins. You don't have any sins to him. But Jesus and the Holy Spirit are in time. And when you sin, they might give you a whipping.

And when he does, they're bad sometimes. He's always watching. In fact, if you get such a whipping, count it as a good thing, because it means you're not a bastard, the scripture says, that you're actually Jesus' child.

That's why he spanked you, because goats and tares, when they do wrong, they don't get a spanking at all from God. You know what they get? They just reap what they sow. The very stuff they do kills them.

The very habits that they're in, that they have no deliverance from, kills them at a young age, quite often. So God doesn't have to spank them, but his own children he will spank. And when he does, take joy in it, because it means he loves you, and he's not going to let you mess up your testimony, and keep messing it up, and keep messing up.

He's going to steer you back. He's the shepherd. He's going to bring you back to the flock, bring you back home every time. And if you burr up that neck so much that you won't let him, he will just take you home early, and you'll die early from a human viewpoint.

You will die young, but you still go to heaven. The shepherd is not going to lose you. He prefers to bring you to the flock, and you live right, and you live a long life, right? That's what he prefers.

The shepherd always prefers that. But there is a sin unto death, 1 John says. We have to be aware of that. So now, because Jesus has done these four things, wherefore, I'm in Hebrews 3 .1 now, wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.

So you see, there came a time when the Holy Spirit woke you up, and your eyes could see the things of God. Your ears could hear the voice of God. Your dead spirit, which was a dead little kernel in there, came alive, and that's the new man within you.

And when that happens, that's called the calling. And so this says, wherefore, because of the things Christ did at his finished work on the cross, and because of his continuing work as our intercessor, our lawyer, always telling the father they're innocent.

Satan's always saying, you're guilty. Jesus said, nope, they're innocent. I already paid the sin debt. I've covered everything they'll ever do. They're totally innocent. They've never done anything wrong.

I took it away from them. And the father says, I know. It was my plan. Thank you for doing it, though, son. He says that to Jesus. I made that up. But I would imagine that something like that happened.

So wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, you've been called. And when you get called, you are then justified, because he makes Jesus irresistible, and you receive him as your personal Lord and Savior.

All sheep do. They always do it in various different ways. I was in my car driving, probably too fast. And the Holy Spirit came in the car and woke me up. And I got saved in my car going to work one day when I was 24.

All of you got saved today, different place in a different way. You even prayed different prayers. I said, dear Jesus, I've always known about you. But today, I want you to be my boss, instead of me being my boss.

Why did I say that?

Because I was a businessman. So I thought in terms of a boss. You may have said, be my Lord, because you went to church more than I did. I didn't know what to say. But he saved me, because it's him saving me.

My little prayer was just a response anyway. It was a response to him awakening me. And I was so happy. And I went home and told Charlotte, something happened to me in the car on the way to work today.

What?

I got saved. I think I got saved. And as I studied scripture more, I realized Jesus had saved me. That was the calling, the heavenly calling. We are partakers. Listen, that means it's already happened.

It's already happened. You've already been called. You can't get uncalled. The goats and the tares never get called. Now, they have what we call a universal calling, where they hear the gospel. And they'll be judged by that.

I think really the only thing the father's got to ask them at the great white throne judgment is, what did you do with my son? And they say nothing. And he says, depart from me. I never knew you. And they go to hell, the lake of fire at that point.

He doesn't have to ask him, well, all the bad stuff that you did. All he has to know is they're disbelievers. Well, he already knows it. But he's going to make them say it. He'll make them say it out loud.

Yeah, I hated your son. And depart from me. I never knew you. Oh, but I went to church a lot. Depart from me. I never knew you. Oh, well, I healed people. Depart from me. I never knew you. Oh, I could speak in tongues.

Depart from me. I never knew you. It's funny that it puts that as some of the things they will be saying. Makes sense to me. Consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, Jesus Christ. Because of the four things that he did, he destroyed Satan.

He delivered us from death. He reconciled us to a perfect, holy God. And he brings us aid when we are tempted to sin. Because of that, we're supposed to keep considering that. That's what it means in verse 1 at the bottom where it says, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession, that is Jesus Christ.

Consider what he did for you. Consider, think about what he did for you on that cross. You think about that, and you will sin less. But your sins, more or less, don't have one thing to do with your eternal security.

It might have to do with how long you live on this earth, but not your eternal security in heaven. That is already sealed by God, by his plan, by the death of his son on the cross, and by the Holy Spirit calling you and making you want him, and you did want him.

And once you got him, you got him for life, for all eternity, really. Did you know that you don't have to die to start living eternal life? You start it the day you're born again. We're living it right now together, and we'll be together in heaven.

I mean, there'll be more people than us, in case you don't like us or something, and you don't want to just stay with us forever. It'll be us plus a lot of other cool people. But we'll know each other.

We will go over and hash over some of the things we did together down here and say, wow, that was quite an experience. I don't know how much you'll pray when you get there, because you'll be with him.

But you'll think back at the times you did pray here, because that, in itself, prayer is actually a honor that we have here in this time, that we may never have again once we're with him for eternity, because we just talked to him there.

But prayer is talking to him when you can't see him. Prayer is a conversation that takes place by faith only. You cannot see who you're talking to, and he don't talk back to you, except through this book, where he's already spoken to us, and his Holy Spirit will enlighten us.

And it's amazing what all he can say to us in the fashion that he does. But that is a discussion that takes place purely by faith. That'll be over when you get to heaven. You might think back and say, man, I wish I'd done it more while I was there,.

Because it's really cool.

It was a cool thing for me to be able to do, and I didn't do it enough, maybe. Or maybe you'll feel that you did. I don't know. Wherefore is a big word, boy. It looks back at all the finished work of Christ.

Verse two says, who was faithful to him that appointed him. So I wanna ask you this. Jesus was faithful to who appointed him to do this for us. And who was that person that appointed Jesus to die for us?

It was God the Father. Now, if it says he's faithful, what is a faithful shepherd? He is a person who doesn't lose one single sheep. And like King David would risk his life and kill a lion with his bare hands, he probably had a knife or a spear.

But he didn't have a gun. And he killed that lion rather than letting one little lamb be eaten by him. When he could have just run and let him have the lamb and the lion would have left. But no, no, he didn't do it.

You know why?

Because he is a perfect picture. I won't say perfect. He is an allegory or a picture or an object lesson of who Jesus would be like. King David is. In fact, Jesus will sit on the throne of David for 1 ,000 years.

David risked his life to kill that lion. And it wasn't just one, I'm sure. He risked his life to kill Goliath, that was a bigger lion. And that is a picture of your shepherd who will give his life and then live his life after he was resurrected eternally to keep you saved.

The rest of all of existence of humanity and God. Now how long does God exist? So that means forever you are kept. You are kept safe by this shepherd who was faithful to him that appointed him. That should be all you need for today, so let's stand and have prayer together.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word and how amazing you tie it all together. And how irrefutable it is, irrefutably true it is. And for every age of all humanity. And Lord, thank you that you give us the opportunity to share it with others.

We ask you to bless our fellowship time now, bless the food we're about to have. And we pray for safety for those who are traveling. For Charlotte and I, as we're gonna get on a plane here in a few minutes, give us safety, bring us back to our families and our church family safely.

And bring those who are still traveling back safely, we ask it in Jesus name,.

Amen.

You are dismissed and lunch will be ready just in a few minutes.