And you who are once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body for death, provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Oh man, please be seated. Have you ever heard the saying, I'm not what I want to be, not what I'm going to be, but thank God I ain't what it was, not what I want to be, I wish I could be so much more in this life, not what I'm going to be, I know that there's a greater thing in store for me, but thank God I'm not what I once was. Paul calls it the putting off of the old man and putting on the new. It's the tension that we saw in Galatians between the flesh and the spirit. It's that constant need of bringing something to the cross and leaving it there. It's this process that's called sanctification. Now the problem is the sanctification doesn't happen all at once, unfortunately. And so the Christian life ends up being this tension between wanting to follow God and do what's right and this constant struggle with sin that still remains in our heart and it rears up its ugly head. Now for all this, there's grace, there's grace that keeps us going day in and day out and it helps us walk in forgiveness, both with ourselves and with others. The believers in Colossi felt this tension because it's relatively new converts to the faith. They were struggling with the past that was right before them every day in the culture that they lived in. And Paul later talks about some of these struggles, struggles with impurity and evil desires and greed and a holdest of other things. And in response, what was going on in Colossi with these believers is they were fluctuating between two extremes. On the one hand, they were tempted to just pitch it and go back to their former lives. Being Paul sensed in them a real danger that they would give up and laps back in their former pagan and sinful ways. But on the other hand, they were being taught a whole host of legalistic ways that they were being told were the key to live a righteous life. And in the face of these two extremes, this is what Paul is writing to. And he challenges them, this, he challenges them to continue in the faith without shifting from the hope that was promised you in the gospel, that gospel that you heard, the gospel that Jesus is enough. And for the Colossians, and for us as well, faith and walking in faith, faith exists between the extremes. Now first of all, let's just admit something right off the top. Now walking in faith is the harder path. It really is. I mean, the two extremes either just pitching it and giving it a sin or living this life full of legalism. You know, those are easy. Think about legalism for a second. Husbands, have you ever said to your wife, your wives, just tell me what you want. Right? Just lay it out or we say this to our kids. I want you to do this, this and this. And I don't want you to do that. Or what about it? What about an job? You start a new job and what do you expect to see? Well, hopefully you've seen it before him, but you've won a job description, right? You want to know what is expected of you because because a set of rules is black and white. Then you can measure your performance with a set of rules. You can know just how well you're doing. And more than that, it doesn't have to involve the heart. Now, think about the gospel story of the rich young ruler. He comes to Jesus and he says, what can I do for eternal life? What does Jesus say? He says, you know the law. And what was his reply? All these things I have done since my youth. And the thing is, I'm sure he had. But to the letter, he had followed the law because that was way easier than caring for the poor, selling everything and following Christ. And ultimately, he went away sad because the way of faith is harder than the law. Or what about pitching it and going back to the world? I mean, have you ever gotten to a point in life in your Christian walk where you said, okay, I'm done with this Christianity stuff. I'm done. This is too hard. I'm going to go live life for myself for a while. I mean, living for self is easier. I mean, being narcissistic, that's easy. You don't have to account for anybody, but yourself. You have no worries. You shut out all concerns for others. But see, that's not faith either. Both of these extremes may be easy, but they lead ultimately to death. And I'm not saying that walking in faith doesn't involve rules. It doesn't, I'm not saying it doesn't involve discipline, but it also doesn't mean that we live as monks. It's just harder living in that tension because it takes faith to know how to walk that path. See, Christian faith is being wholly dependent upon someone else. Living a life of dependency is what's hard because what if he doesn't come through? What if he can't? What if what he wants from me is too hard? Or what if he doesn't answer my prayer the way I want it to be answered? See, faith, faith only works if the object of your faith is completely worthy of your trust. And this is exactly why we read in this passage. This is exactly why over and over we see the phrase all things. So you notice how many times Paul says all things, all things in heaven and earth were created in him. He is before all things. He created all things, including dominions and powers. The very dominions and powers that some of these teachers were trying to get them to follow. Paul says, Jesus created those. He is all things. Creation itself, all of creation is held together through Christ. And in fact, if Jesus were to step aside, if he were to not be involved in creation for a moment, everything would cease to exist. That's what that verse is saying. Christ is above all, over all, in all. He is our sovereign king and he is ruler of everything. Now, we probably don't have a problem with that. We can accept that Jesus is king. We hear it all the time. We can accept that he is ruler intellectually at least. But here's the thing. There's a lot of confusion in the world about Christ. There's a lot of confusion about who he is. There are a lot of different stories out there about Jesus. And if we're not careful, we may fall into the trap of accepting the world's narrative as opposed to the Bible's narrative. Here's some things that people believe about Jesus that hear me closely are simply not true. Some people in the world actually believe that Jesus and Satan are pretty much equal in power. They spend existence in this constant battle. And it may be general. I'm sure like Jesus will probably win at some point. But in the meantime, we're caught in the middle of this struggle. No, that's not true at all. Some believe that Jesus's hands are tied. They're tied unless we come to him first. Like if we have faith in him, we demonstrate some faith, then he can save us. That's not scriptural. Others believe Jesus wants to have our best life now. Okay, this one's a little bit more difficult because there are great things because he blesses us now. They're great things stored up for us in heaven. But here's the thing, glory only comes through the cross. And we are called to carry our cross in this life and receive abundance in the next. See, we may not consciously believe all of these things, any of them or more, but it's possible without realizing it to act as if they are true. And each of these discount the power and the majesty of him who is overall and in all who is everything. And this is another reason, by the way, why it's important for us to love God with all our minds. Like we talked about last week, it's important to study scripture because the more we read scripture, the more we read about Christ, the more of a foundation we have to place our faith and hope and trust in him. It's the only way that we can know him. So he is over all things when Paul doesn't stop there because Christ is not only over all creation. He is everything we need for our salvation. He is the first born of the dead. You can't say that phrase. He is the first born of the dead. His resurrection has blazed the path for hours. God has reconciled all things to Himself through Christ where we were once hostile towards God. And while we were hostile, Jesus reconciled us through his death. Jesus alone did the work of redemption and there is no other path to God. Let's take a moment and consider all the different ways that the world says we can come to God. Since the Garden of Eden, humanity has been trying hard to define its own way back. And yet, according to scripture, God has provided one and only one way and that's through the blood of His cross. So this is the problem with legalism. When we develop schemes to justify ourselves before God based on our own works, we are denying the sufficiency of Christ and His cross. I mean, for the Colossians, it was Jewish ceremony. It was extreme living. And it was even being dependent upon angels. That may sound crazy for a moment, but stop and ask yourself this question. Why does God love me? Not me. You asked yourself that question. Why does God love me? If you are tempted to say, because I have done this, I have done that, or I have done this other thing, you might be depending on something other than Christ. And there's a third path between the two extremes. Just thinking about this this morning. There's a third path that some people follow that's not mentioned in the text. And it might be actually be more appropriate from where we live in America, in the American church. And that's just being comfortable.
Maybe we don't struggle with extreme sins. And maybe we're not trying to build up all sorts of legalism to get ourselves into heaven, although I would take issue with that. But maybe life is pretty good. Maybe family's going well, jobs going well, retirement, we're having a great time in retirement. Maybe everything's going well. And when you get down to it, you don't really need Jesus for this. We don't need Christ for everything else. And the problem is we fall into the trap of only coming to Jesus for some things, and not all things. Because remember, all things are his. Here's Grace. The grace is this. God loves you. God loves you. And not on the basis of your works, but on the basis of the cross. God loves you no matter how many times you've messed up in this life. Not God loves you no matter how badly you spoke to your spouse this week or your kids or your neighbor or whatever. I mean, he loves you despite all of that. And quite frankly, I don't know why God loves me. I can give you all the reasons why you shouldn't. But I can tell you that he showed me that he does. See, walking securely established in the faith simply means coming to Christ humbly and saying, Lord, I need you for another day. Help me to walk in your path and not be lured away. It means accepting the gospel story as the whole story and not trying to add anything to it. It's acknowledging that I can't do this by my own strength. And I am wholly dependent on you and you alone. That's all abiding in faith really is. And here's the thing. In the more we rely on faith, the more we are drawn closer to Christ, the more in love we become with him and the more we actually want to do things. But we do it not because we're trying to earn our way. We do it in response to the love that he has shown us. See, in some ways, faith is harder, but actually it's not. When we can rest in the completed, when we learn to rest in the completed work of Christ, that's where faith becomes easy. If I can say that. This week, one of the gospel passages was was just the passage in Matthew 11 that says, come on to me. All you are burdened and heavy laden. And I will give you rest. See, when we come to Christ on the basis of faith and his completed work, it's there that we find rest. When we're just spinning our wheels trying to do something for God for the sake of making him happy, that's not restful. There's rest in the means of faith and following him. So in face of the extremes of the world, we are encouraged to persevere in faith. Don't give up on a gospel story. Don't replace that story with another story. Don't listen to the world. Christ is supreme and over all things. And he is all we need to make it through this life. And the mystery of faith is this, that Christ lives in us. Faith means he is within us. And when we have Christ in us, that's where we have the hope of glory. Amen.