Would you please follow along in the bulletin or in your own scripture? As we read from Colossians 2, please stand for the reading of God's Word.
Therefore as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. Just as you were taught, a bounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deeds. According to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. And you who were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh. God made alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside nailing it to the cross. He has disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphant over them in him. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated.
Let's pray together. Thank you Father for this wonderful passage from your word. For the hints that Pete has wisely already given us of its content and help us now to hear it. Help us to understand it and apply it to our lives. Help us to live the full life in Christ. To understand what that is and to enjoy him and to know that we are even enjoyed by him as he fills us with all that he has for us. We pray in Christ's name, amen. In the passage we looked at last week, there is a note that I did not get to comment upon very much. It is in verse three of chapter two. It says, in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The image there is of a treasure chest and it's absolutely overflowing. Maybe like one of those old pirate movies where the treasure chest can't be contained, but it's just filled with all of the precious jewels that have been discovered in someone's shipwreck. That's a good image because really what we are going to learn this morning is that the fullness that everything that God has for us, he gives us out of the shipwreck of our own lives and out of the devastation of lives lost, really lost. Christ comes to us and not only undoes the lostness but gives us everything else that we could possibly want. And my object, my goal is to have us leave here in just a few moments, more assured and more thrilled at what you possess and what I possess in Christ than we ever have been perhaps before. Now, verses six and seven are somewhat familiar among us Evangelical Christian types, especially in America. There are ministries called Colossian to six ministries that have a spread in our land, much to the benefit of many people. These verses are straightforward and somewhat familiar therefore. As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, but I want you to notice right away that Paul uses what you could call the formal title of Jesus. He uses his full name, Christ Jesus the Lord. He is Christ which means he's the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. He's been promised for countless generations. He's Jesus, Jesus refers to his being the son of God, the eternal second person of the Trinity who came in flesh as a man. He is the Lord, the risen one who has by virtue of his resurrection reign over every creature in heaven and on earth, as we've also seen in the book of Colossians so far. By saying his full name, his formal title this way, Paul is saying more than we usually mean when we talk about receiving Jesus into our hearts. That's a good phrase and useful when we become Christians, many of us do precisely that. We would say we receive Jesus into our hearts and lives, but here there is even more meant. It is not just our personal commitment to Jesus that is being talked about. It means that we receive everything that Jesus is. We receive all that he is. Christ Jesus Lord and it means therefore that we receive the truthful tradition that the early church built up and came to understand quite quickly about him, which would include at least these three things, his death and resurrection. Secondly, a summary of Christ's own deeds and words which we have in our four gospels. And third, a summary of the ethical teachings of Jesus by which we are to live our lives. So Paul is saying that everything you know him to be as Christ, as Jesus says, Lord, this you received. Jesus just doesn't come to live in your hearts. You received him completely for all that he is. You believe in his death and resurrection. You are willing to study and understand his deeds and words which are given to us in the gospels. And you are prepared to begin to reorder your life according to the ethical principles which he gives us in his word. In light of this, what you have received, what you have made your own, now Paul says continue to walk in these things. Now, walk is Paul's famous word for to live. And some of our translations that some of us use actually use the word live there instead of walk. I'm glad that our translation we use in our church says walk because that's a better, stronger word. It means to move, to live out. As we go, we do it according to the truth that we understand in Christ. It means that we live in a manner pleasing to him as we said in chapter one. In light of who he is. And he gives us four characteristics right here in these two little verses describing what that means to walk in the Jesus Christ, the Lord we have received. The first is that we are rooted in him. Now, where does that image of rooting come from? It's an agricultural image, isn't it? It comes from hornaculture or pre-culture. It suggests that young plants or plants that are not rooted well are in danger of being uprooting. Wednesday night we had a storm in Dallas, nothing like the storms they've had in the Gulf. I spent two and a half hours, early Thursday morning, about seven to eight Thursday morning. And again, about six to seven, six to seven thirty Thursday night, breaking my yard. Not only did I earn great brownie points from Barbara for doing that, but I got to see the destruction that can happen even from a relatively mild storm. How things can be uprooted. Treelands, branches, plants, leaves, that's the first image. We're rooted in him. The second image is from architecture. We're built up in him. The same danger is alluded to here. If the foundation is not strong enough, if we do not really understand what it means to have received Christ Jesus as Lord and live that way, then our foundation will not be able to support the building. And here again, if I could bring the hurricanes in, John Hawkins, an elder in our church, runs, owns and runs a construction company. And he took teams of his people from his construction company to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, over the last two weeks where they worked with first Presbyterian church there in rebuilding homes all over that community. John did this on his own time and out of his own generosity. It was a wonderful ministry, wonderful thing he did. He took some time off one day and he drove down to Paschristianne, as I believe the way you say it, Mississippi, which is precisely the place over which the eye of the hurricane came. John told me on the phone as he was driving home from Hattiesburg on Friday, he has never, never seen destruction like this. The storm surge was so great that for five full blocks from the ocean, there is now nothing but cement slabs. And for many, many more blocks inside that, there is extensive, extensive damage. What happens when our lives are not built on what we say we believe? Damage. Damage can happen. We are not ready for the storm, much less the hurricane. And it can be very dangerous. Third image is to be established in the faith he says, this is an image that probably comes from the legal system of those times. It means to write something down as clear and documented. He's referring actually to the legal status we have as those who are in Christ Jesus's Lord. He's referring to the fact that in God's transaction with us in our becoming Christians, there is actually a forensic or legal action that took place where God looks at us no longer in terms of our own sin, but in terms of the righteousness of Christ. And he does this by solemn oath or the Bible word covenant used throughout the whole Bible, consummated in the covenant of the Lord Jesus Christ, who sees us now and understands us in terms of the righteousness he earned and he lives. And this is a kind of legal way of saying it that we're established in the faith. The fourth image results from the first three. Paul is saying, if you are rooted in Christ, built up in him, established in him, in Christ, he says, just as you were taught, that just as you were taught as a kind of code language that says, there it is, that's the whole truth. That's the tradition that we believe, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the deeds and words of Jesus, the way we are to live out our lives because of Jesus, the whole package. If these things are true of you, then he says, using the fourth image, we will abound in thanksgiving. And the word literally means to overflow. The image is probably a culinary image. It probably comes from the kitchen. It means a pot or a jug that overflows, that can't contain all it's supposed to. It harkens back to what I mentioned before about the treasure chest that we have in Christ, that just can't be contained. And the idea is that in the Christian's life and in the church's life together, you see, this isn't just a one for one deal, Jesus and you, it's Jesus and us, it's the church. We are to be filled with so much thanksgiving because of what he's done for us, that it's constantly pouring out, we can't contain it. Now that's the basis of what he is saying to us about what it means to live, to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord whom we have received. Then in the longer paragraph that follows, verses 8 through 15, Paul gives us the reason why Christians are to live by these four metaphors of being rooted, built up, established and abounding to overflowing in our thanksgiving. The reason in summary in this paragraph is this, it is because there are forces at work, even seriously bad and mean spiritual forces at work that will seek to dissuade us from our confidence that these things are true of us. I'm not going to go into all of the details of the language, very, very rich language that's in this paragraph, but I want you to see that we are being told to hold onto him who holds onto us so that we continue to walk in Christ Jesus our Lord. In other words, Paul is saying this and I've already hinted at it, haven't I? It is easier than you think to be uprooted by life's storms and blows and hurts and hardships. It is easier than you think to be knocked off your foundation. It is easier than we think to be confused about our status before the Lord. Am I really his? Did he really do it for me? And it is easy to stop giving thanks. And there are many practical ways that this can happen and he'll speak more of those practical ways in chapters three and four, but just here he focuses on what you could call spiritual confusion or delusion. What Paul calls in verse eight, empty deceit according to human tradition. And Paul is saying that there are wickedly bad spiritual forces at work in this universe that are warring with your view of yourself as rooted, built up, established in Christ giving thanks. And these forces, though they appear strong and persuasive, are actually full of empty deceit. It literally means their hollow ideas. And Paul is saying that these empty hollow religious practices or empty hollow ideas about how to live the good Christian life. These things, and this is his main point, are completely undone when we understand that we have been made full by the fullness of Christ, in whom the fullness of God dwells. If you have Christ, he is saying, you are not running on empty. You have everything you need. You have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that God could ever want to give you. You don't need something extra. You don't need special words. You don't need a Christian way of talking. You don't need a Christian way of dressing. You don't need all of the extra things that we Christians sometimes add on to our confession of faith. You need to realize that the fullness of Christ is already yours, and you are already full in him with nothing else beside. And what are you saying therefore? Is you need to be who you are in Christ, according to what the scriptures say of you. We might put it this way today. You do not need many of the things that we think we need in order to have a full life. That the full life that God wants to give us is a life that is given without necessary attachments of all other kinds. That is why you have heard me say sometimes. When a person says to me, I am so blessed and they go on to talk about either their health or their material possessions, especially, or that God has given them this or that. I honestly say, I need to honestly tell you, this is what goes on in my head. I don't know if you're blessed at all, brother or sister. You may not be blessed at all, because you may be confusing the blessing of the fullness of Jesus with other things, with things that don't constitute the fullness. You're confusing the blessing of Jesus with the nice things that He does out of His grace give us. But the fullness of Jesus is never to be equated with those things which are ultimately deceitfully empty. I never read the newspaper on Sunday morning before church, except this morning. I don't know why, but I do get up very early. I go out to the curb and I get two newspapers, the Dallas Morning News and New York Times. I come in and I sort them for Barbara. That's my heroic Sunday morning activity as to sort the ads from the different parts of the newspaper. My eye got caught by an article that I want you to go home and read in the front page of the Metro section by the commentator Steve Blow. Many of you have read his articles. Many of you might know him. He speaks about a place called the 24 House, referring to its being opened 24 hours in a very, very bad part of our city. It's the last stop for alcohol and drug addicts who have nowhere else to go and have failed completely, who have nothing, who have made a shipwreck of their lives. And he went and spent 24 hours in that house. And he tells about his experiences. And at the end of the story, he says this, I was about ready to leave after 24 hours and I met this man in the kitchen. And the man was just glowing. He was radiant. He'd been off of drugs and alcohol for perhaps three or four months. But when Steve Blow said to him, why are you so full of joy? He said it is because something happened to me last week. God, God came to me in a new way. And I think Steve Blow was a little reluctant to use the name of Christ and so forth at that point. But I knew exactly what he meant and so do you. The man became a Christian. And when he became a Christian, he realized that the fullness of God in Christ was his. And that his life, which had been shipwreck, now had a new beginning. And he was beginning to put his life together and he was rejoicing in his rootedness, in his establishness. He was rejoicing in the fact that he was consolidating his life in Christ. And he was therefore as a result, what? Abounding in thankfulness. Now Paul describes being filled with Christ by saying, what we have been saying all along is the theme of this letter, chapter three, verse three, you are hidden with Christ. That means that if you are a Christian, you have already participated in the death and burial and resurrection of Christ with him. These events have already happened. No one would deny that historically. We would not deny that the events of Christ's death and resurrection have already happened. What most Christians don't understand is that they've already happened to you too, that you are united with Christ in those things when Jesus died somehow in the mystery of the wonder of the way God worked it all out, you died too. And when Jesus rose, you died too. You are already being given the new life. It is already given to you, and there's no need for you're adding to it to have the fullness that is promised to you. That is why six times in this paragraph, Paul uses the phrase in Christ or with Christ. Those are key symbolic phrases that Paul uses again and again to say, you're in Jesus, you're in his death, you're there in his resurrection. What's true of him is true of you. And Paul uses some strange language to our ears then. He says you were circumcised in Christ's circumcision. That means you died as death. You were buried with him in baptism. That means the same thing. When he died, you died. You were raised with him in the powerful working of God which he didn't go on to disfine as God raising Jesus from the dead. When those things happen, they happen to you if you have received Christ Jesus as Lord. Paul is saying you've already been made alive in Christ's own life. And this is a sharing of the life which Jesus received when he rose from the dead. By his Holy Spirit he shares with you that full life. You have already been forgiven your trespasses. He says in verse 13, the dead has not only been cancelled but referring to the legal documentation idea again that I alluded to earlier. He says in verse 14 that the documents on which your sins were written have been destroyed. God did this by nailing this record of debts. This IOU that you have, that you owe God by cause of all of your sins. He has nailed it to the cross when Jesus died. Some scholars believe that this refers to an ancient custom that when a debt was cancelled in a small village, public notice, written notice of that cancellation of that debt would be nailed to a public bulletin board in the village square in the center of the town. Finally, Paul says, God stripped the authority away from these spiritual rulers and authorities that are seeking to dissuade you about your own status in Christ. As one commentator describes them, these who keep us in their grip through their possession of this document. It's another word as if these spiritual forces that work in the universe are taking this document that has already got cancelled marked all over it but they're still waving it in our faces and they're saying, do you see this? Do you see who you are? Do you see what kind of sinner you are? Do you see what you have done this week and do you see you have no right, no right to say that you are a person who is walking on with the Lord? That's what you're being told by these wicked forces in multiple ways. Bill Lambert, one of our pastors this week shared with the pastors in a meeting we had that he went out to lunch with a man and of course he did not say the name of a man but he said that this man asked Bill in candidness, am I the only one in this church who comes to church on Sunday morning and says, how can I even walk in here? I'm such a sinner. Am I the only one who comes to church and says, all I could think about is how many times I've sinned against the Lord yet again this week, even in the ways that I told the Lord last week I didn't want to do. Am I the only one
and of course we know the answer is no and by the way I do know the man's name and I know her name too. It's you and it's me. It's all of us because that is the way the wicked powers of the universe are at work even to this day and will be until the day of Christ's triumphant return until their destiny is finally sealed. Their defeat is now secure but their destiny, their ultimate ability to dislate us will then be gone
and we will know ourselves to be those who have received Christ's Jesus as Lord who walk according to the confession of our faith, who are rooted in Christ and are therefore those who draw our life from Him who are built up like a strong tower by the master builder who are established like a bulwark of legal documentation that no one can defy and who therefore keep on keeping on giving thanks overflowing because of what it is God has done for us in Christ. Now I want to tell you that when I finished studying this passage and finished writing what I wrote for this morning I said skip what is your reaction to this and my reaction was grief. I was really grieved particularly because of how little I get thanks
which is a clue really to perhaps how little I understand about my rootedness, about my being established, about my being consolidated in Christ Jesus the Lord and I was sad but then I thought this don't stay stuck in your grief because if you do those bad guys are winning instead tell the Lord you are sorry to use the Bible repent again of even your lack of thankfulness tell the Lord I'm sorry I'm not more thankful about all you've done for me and I'm sorry I don't live every day out of the riches and the treasure of what you have given me and then I went on and I sought to remind myself of who I am in Christ and with Christ. I sought to remind myself that I'm in him I'm with him and that despite the treachery of the rulers and authorities of this universe I cannot ever be separated from him. Now I want you to do the same thing and I want you to do it right now. I want you even as you listen to me to say Lord you are the fullness of God himself. I want you to recognize who you are that you have received the fullness of the fullness of Christ and I want you to begin to live that way.
The church is the community of the wounded not the strong and I deplore the fact that sometimes people think in our church everybody has it together. When you know you know that's not true but just as we are the community of the wounded we also must become the community of the thankful, a founding in thanks for the fullness that has been given to us already and to begin to live out of those treasures may God make itself in our hearts and minds.