It should be working now. All right, one of those mornings, right? It's all good. It's all good. It's all family, right? If y'all are expecting perfection from me, you would have left already. So, it left a long time ago.
So, Joel and I were talking about—we were just talking about—we both grew up in church. We've been in church our whole life. I mean, my dad was a pastor, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell y'all, I have probably been in a thousand churches. Scott, how many churches do you think you've been in?
Scott: At least a thousand.
More than a thousand. You got a couple of years on me, and you travel more than I have. So, you know what that means. I've seen a lot of church services, and I've seen some good stuff, some bad stuff, some crazy stuff. I've seen some stuff that worked.
One of the things we were talking about is some of this stuff that we grew up with that, for whatever reason, churches stopped doing. The conversation we were having is, why did they stop doing them, and would it be good to bring some of that back?
One of the things that we were encouraged to see is that right now there's kind of a push for churches to bring back a version of a choir. Like you're seeing, you know, they call them worship choirs, which is basically you throw 12, 15 people up on stage and just say, "Y'all just sing loud, and good luck," right? But out of that, you can begin to develop some talent.
It's work when you're not doing those kinds of things. It becomes work and extra work when you—I think you should be developing, you know, people. Obviously, you want to be developing teachers, you're developing volunteers, you'll be developing musicians from within the body. And we've tried to do that over the years.
So that was one of the things we were talking about. But one of the things I kind of missed that we didn't do regularly, but I would see, and I always loved it when I see it, were things like responsive readings. We've done those here occasionally, off and on, and I love that concept because I think there's a corporate voice to that that kind of removes the music.
And y'all know I'm a music fan, so I'm not bashing music, but it's just a little bit different element of worship. And I know the trend has been to ditch all the old traditional boring stuff, you know, to make sure it's cool again, as if it was ever cool or if it ever should be cool.
But I don't think the motivation for removing some of those things—I don't think we thought through some of that. And one of the traditions that was removed over time was a lot of the things that are outside of music, which was repetition in corporate worship.
And I think repetition is necessary for discipleship. We've been talking about that briefly this morning, about how, yeah, you keep hearing the same things over and over again, but there's a reason for that. You need to keep hearing the same things over and over again because if you don't, just give yourself a brief time.
It's why laying out of church for too long, all of a sudden, it becomes easier to not get back, and then you can't figure out why things aren't going well for you spiritually. So it's gotten worse over the last decade. The information age has changed things. It's conditioned us where, you know, new is good, fresh is good. You've got to have new content, fresh content, new ideas, and so you keep pushing the envelope.
You see this in media; you keep pushing things to the extreme to find something new and to see what the lines are. And you know, you kind of get a feeling of somebody saying, "Well, why would we just rehearse what we've already said or read or done?"
And so I think in corporate worship, particularly worship, repetition empowers us to be changed, not only as individuals but also as a people, as a body. We're already doing this in music, and the truth is that we sing together shapes our hearts as a church.
But I want us to discover some other ways to do this. And this is not new. What I'm about to do is not new; in fact, it's super, super old. It's just kind of new for us.
So for the next year, we're going to say the Apostles' Creed together every Sunday. Why the Apostles' Creed? Well, for one, it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, church creeds there are. So this ancient creed captures the essence, the heart, the foundation of what the people of God have believed now and have always believed.
I think doing this weekly will allow us to proclaim as one people with one voice to confess faith about what we believe, which will help define us a unity within our own body. I think it'll connect us to the faith of our fathers, connect us to the history of the church. As we say it together, we will internalize it. It'll help us understand even our own beliefs in these concise creeds.
We'll do those, and in just a moment, we're going to stand and do that. But before we do that, one of the ways we're going to do this is every week, whoever's leading this creed is going to get up and give a one or two-minute—if they go over two minutes, I'm gonna fire them—a one or two-minute just quick explanation of just a section, like "I believe in God." What does that mean? How does that encourage us in this creed? Then we'll say the creed together.
So I'm going to jump ahead in this creed because every time I've read this creed or read this creed in a group, I always get a question about a certain word in the creed. So I want to kind of head that off for you, and I will probably in about three months explain it again in case somebody wasn't here and they didn't hear it in the creed.
In fact, jump ahead one slide—actually, maybe two slides—go to the last slide. Do y'all see the trigger word there for some people? Catholic. All right, so that does not mean the Roman Catholic Church. That means that that word, the Catholic word there, little "c," is actually a Greek—it was taken from a Greek word that means universal.
So in the Apostles' Creed, this word is used to express the idea that the church is not limited to a location, to a time, to a group of people, to a geography, but rather it encompasses believers throughout history, across the world. It emphasizes the universal and the inclusive nature of the church, which transcends all things cultural, ethnic, national—all those things.
When that's the universal church, the church of all believers of all the ages, that's what Catholic means there. So if you grew up in Catholicism, it may take you a few weeks to get over the word, work past it. But I'm not changing it because I think it's better to learn what it means than just to change it to something else.
I mean, you could change it to universal, but I think it loses some of the heart when you do that. So we're not changing that word, which is why I think it's together.
So let's all stand together, go back to slide one, and let's say this together:
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified and buried. He descended to the dead. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from which he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."
And the life everlasting. Get it right, Scott. Amen. Amen. You can be seated.
So this morning, I'm gonna—I'm not really warning you because I'm just kind of letting you know today's sermon is really not going to be much of a sermon. It's more of an intro. We're going to start the book of Colossians today, and this is an intro to Colossians.
So I'm going to mention a lot of things in the book, and we are going to look at a couple of verses in the early part of the greeting, but I want to introduce to you the theme of Colossians this morning. So it's not going to be your typical sermon. Some of you might consider it a little academic; somebody might consider it boring. Some of y'all will probably love it because you love that kind of stuff.
But bear with me; it's going to take me a couple of minutes to get to the "let's read together in the text." Okay?
So, let me ask you guys a question. Are you all familiar with the concept of presuppositions? Raise your hands if you're familiar with the concept presupposition.
All right, even if you don't know, I bet you are. In fact, I know you are, even if you're not familiar with that word. Presuppositions basically mean that you're using your personal background, your knowledge, your personal experiences, and your cultural context—the context in which you were raised—to filter what you hear, read, see, etc.
We all use these in our daily lives. It's part of who we are as humans. One example is how we have different understandings of different things in cultures. Here's a good example: in America, the "okay" sign just means "okay," but don't use that in Italy; it means something else, and it'll probably get you punched in the face.
All right? You would make the assumption if you were in Italy and you saw somebody do that, it'd be like, "Oh, everything's good." You would have no idea what they were saying to you. We have a different symbol for that in America, and yeah, you can see it on TikTok a lot and some traffic disputes.
So, we use these things when we read the Bible, though. We also bring to our reading of the Bible presuppositions. You do this kind of to understand the text, to fill in some gaps, to help with some implied meanings, to make sure they're, you know, to see what they're clearly stated.
This process involves bringing assumptions and beliefs and understandings to the text, which may or may not be part of the text, which can affect how we interpret the text, how we comprehend what we read, some of those kinds of things.
And there are some who say we should try to remove all presuppositions, but that's impossible. That's actually not even a good thing to do, I don't think. It's impossible to not carry presuppositions with us. It's part of who we are; it's how we understand the world.
And so it's important to be aware of our own cultural presuppositions when we're reading the Bible, when interpreting the Bible, because they can influence our understanding and interpretation of what we read. But it's better, I think, to replace unbiblical presuppositions with biblical ones when we approach the text.
And there are some that we can't overcome; there are challenges for us, and we have to work on those. But some of them are easy. I'll give you an example: when I read the Bible, there are presuppositions that the Bible gives us about how we should read it.
When I read the Bible, I begin with the belief that what I'm reading is true. That's a presupposition. It's inerrant; it's infallible, and it's God's word to us about who he is. And if that's how I approach that text, it's going to affect my understanding of the text. Those would be presuppositions.
And if I'm reading the Bible and I don't believe it's true, if I don't believe miracles actually happen, if I don't believe God exists, that's also going to affect what I'm reading. You'll understand kind of what I mean by that.
If I assume that the scripture is God-breathed, God-inspired, and profitable for reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that's a presupposition that I got from scripture. But if I believe that its only purpose is for reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, I've missed a major purpose of the Bible, and all I've done is turn it into a religious rule book.
You'll kind of see what I'm going for here. So instead of attempting the impossible and trying to remove presuppositions, I think it's better to read the Bible and discover what the Bible says about itself and develop a proper understanding that will help us interpret the Bible and apply the Bible the way God intended.
So I'm just going to talk just briefly through a couple of these things on how we want to approach the text. For one, the Bible is definitely inspired; it says that about itself. That's its claim: inspired by God. It contains the word of God.
So the presupposition there is that the Bible is not just a human creation, but it has divine authority and guidance in its writings—divinely inspired. It's inerrant and infallible, which is the belief that the Bible is written without error or fault in its original manuscripts.
So this presupposition suggests that the Bible is completely reliable and accurate in its teachings. Also, a presupposition will be that the Bible is our authority, and this is a big one. The Bible is considered the ultimate authority for Christian life and practice.
And the implications of that are that if it's the authority, it should be followed and applied to us, which means if I disagree with something I read in scripture, I adjust my belief to what the Bible says. I don't try to adjust the Bible to make the Bible say something I need it to say. All right? That's a big one.
Also, there's unity within the scripture. Think about this: you've got 66 books written by various authors over centuries, and the Bible is considered to have a unified message and purpose, which is miraculous. Even critical scholars of the Bible will say the fact that there is an overarching theme to this thing scattered out over these authors in these times is a miracle.
So the presupposition here is that the Bible should be interpreted based on its themes and teachings. Also, historical and cultural context—we were talking about some of these this morning with some people. The Bible was written to a specific audience during a specific time for a specific purpose, and understanding that historical and cultural context around that audience helps us interpret its meaning.
And then also, I read from a covenantal framework. There are some people that read it from a dispensational framework. I am a covenantalist. In fact, if you'd like to call yourself reformed, you should really, really learn what that means in depth.
This refers to God's relationship with how he has interacted with his people. We talked this a lot in the early parts of Genesis, how God has worked in humanity and the promises made by God to his people. So God's done this through covenants. If we read this in that way, it affects our interpretation.
And then the big one—this is one of my favorite ones—is what's called the analogy of faith. Some of y'all might have heard that called scripture interpret scripture. The principle here is that scripture is its own best interpreter. The meaning of one part of the Bible is best understood in light of the overall teachings of the Bible.
So scripture interprets scripture; it never contradicts itself. And this also would mean that things like proof texting and biblicism are not good; they're bad practices, so don't do those things.
So some of y'all might be asking why in the world I'm bringing all this up in the intro to the book of Colossians. I do have a reason for it; I'm not just rambling. Well, for one thing, that's important stuff, right? Might as well bring it up and repeat it as often as we can because we need to learn how to interpret the Bible properly, and that's where we start.
All right, but as we head into Colossians, we're going to have to really use some of the list we just made. We're going to have to work around some of the cultural understandings and gain some insight into the culture of Colossae. Why? Because Colossians has an interesting and unique aspect to it.
There are times when it reads a bit like hearing one side of a phone conversation. You can figure out a lot by what you hear, but you might have missed out on some of the details. Y'all understand what I'm saying? So you can read more in there than is intended to be there, or you cannot read enough into it.
And so we're going to focus on what we can discern and interpret and apply without making it say something it doesn't say, particularly when we get over to chapter two and the passages that deal with legalism and Christian liberty.
So this little letter, though, had a significant impact on Christian theology and practice despite the small size of this little town and this little church. Christian theologians and laypeople have turned to this book for teachings on Christ, his role in creation, his preeminence over the church, warnings against legalism, and how that shaped their understanding of Christology and the things surrounding Christian liberty and unity within this body—all that's covered in this book.
This also contains some broad ethical principles that provide guidance for believers as we want to live out our commitment to Jesus. But I don't want this to be a sermon about information because that was not Paul's point in writing Colossians. He had a clear point, and we're going to the clear theme. If you can't figure it out right by now, it's on the thing back there.
Could anybody guess the theme of just based on the slide? So, Paul is giving this church some incredible instruction that's necessary in the way they think and believe, and I think it'll speak to us in our present day.
So go ahead and turn to Colossians 1, and we're going to look at a bit of the background information to help us with some of the context. JB Lightfoot said the church in Colossae was the least important church in which any epistle of Saint Paul was written. I thought, man, that's a—I don't know how to take that. Is that an insult or whatever? But I mean, that's a weird thing to say, right?
But he did have a reason for it. This town, Colossae, was a lot like Radiator Springs in the movie Cars. At one point in its history, it was an important town because it sat at the crossroads of two of the main trade routes in that particular region. However, somebody went and moved the highway, and when they did, now everybody went to Laodicea, 11 miles away, and they left Colossae up on the hill without a main road.
Things are, you know, it's just kind of there doing its thing. It was kind of a forgotten-about little area. Not only that, not long—within just maybe a year or two at the most from the time this letter was written, a major earthquake happened that destroyed the city, and as far as we know, it was never rebuilt.
However, one of the most important points to note about this city—and this will really, really matter when we get into the text—is that because of its long history as a travel hub, it had an extremely diverse group of people that lived in and around it.
The diversity of the population and its exposure to so much outside thinking meant that Colossae was a place that had numerous religions and philosophical viewpoints, and they were all kind of mixed together. And then on top of that, you throw in some Jewish people who had fled, and you've got a kind of a strange mix of things going on.
And this tells us a lot about who Paul was writing to and why he makes certain statements because remember, the audience matters. The diversity helps explain some of the strange and kind of varied practices that seem disconnected that Paul is going to talk about and the theme of this letter about trying to correct some bad theology.
But unlike Paul's other letters, he actually never personally visited Colossae. He never personally vetted this church; he didn't establish this church. It's most likely that Epaphras, who's actually mentioned in the second verse of this book, was the founder of this church because he traveled with Paul, he learned from Paul, and he actually ministered to Paul while Paul was in prison at one point.
And then Epaphras is mentioned again at the end of the book in 4:12 as one who heard from the Lord what Paul believed. Epaphras was actually from this little town, and so we're making the assumption that he mentioned this guy twice, called him a servant because the people would have known Epaphras, and that would have been the connection between them and Paul.
We know Epaphras and Paul hung out; we know Epaphras was from Colossae. So you have to—you—I don't think it's illogical to assume that Epaphras was one of the key founders of this church. He had journeyed to where Paul was in prison for the sake of the Gospel. He shared in Paul's imprisonment; he was in prison with Paul.
And because Paul refers to him as his fellow prisoner in Philemon, however, we also know from the end of Colossians that Epaphras was supposed to take the letter to the church in Colossae but couldn't, so Paul sent Tychicus instead to present the letter.
And because we're assuming Epaphras must have still been in prison with Paul at the time, it's clear this church knew Epaphras, and it's likely he was the one that sought Paul's help in dealing with the deviation from the truth of the Gospel that Paul's addressing in the book of Colossians.
This is why Paul writes to a community that he had nurtured through what he calls his son Epaphras. So think about it like this: if Epaphras was like the father of the Church of Colossians, Paul would be like the grandfather, right?
And so, but one thing is clear: the purpose of this letter is to provide resources that the Colossians need to fend off some type of false teaching that was attempting to infiltrate this young church. As I already mentioned, we're listening to one side of a conversation. We don't have a ton of specifics. I mean, we've got some specifics, but not like we do in a book like Galatians or First Corinthians.
However, this brings us a unique opportunity because it's going to give us a little bit of leeway on our interpretation, particularly on application, because we're going to be able to see how what Paul talks about in Colossians connects with a lot of modern false movements that are within Christianity today as well.
And you all know me; I don't mind naming names, and when we get to that point, I'm just going to name names. And I really hope I don't hit out on your favorite TV preacher, but if I do, hopefully, you'll stop listening to that dude.
So, anyway, all right, where were we? All right, so in the book, Paul does one particular thing right, and it's profound. All right, Paul wrote this book while he's in prison in Rome. Paul was in prison a lot, but we know of three particular times. So he's in Rome; it's around 60 A.D., just a few years before his death.
And the letter is intended to head off his false teaching. There's one overriding theme, one clear subject of the book as Paul addresses this young church. He attempts to help them focus, and to do that, he does something we can all learn. He goes on the offense. He doesn't try to defend himself or the gospel; he goes on the offense.
He exalts Christ. He doesn't argue over details; he just points to the truth of who Christ is, and that's what we're going to focus on as we go through this. That's why I titled this series "Christ Above All: Living in Light of His Supremacy."
Because what Paul basically does in this book is tells the church that Christ—and Christ exalted, and Christ preached, and Christ glorified, and Christ magnified—is the reason we call ourselves Christians. It's the reason we're set apart.
And if you want to avoid false teaching, if you want to live in light of the Gospel, look to Christ. This book is all Christology. It's why I made Christ so big on the slide. You have to filter everything you read in Colossians through the theme that this is all about Jesus.
I don't care what the sentence is; it's about Jesus. Many, many, many times, the name of Christ is mentioned in such a short book. So you want to know what your presupposition is as you read through Colossians over the next several weeks and months? Christ.
Paul makes it clear; it's no secret. Paul tells the church that Christ stands in a unique relationship with God the Father, and he and he only is the one that brings creation back under God's sovereignty. And because of that, he's the only one that can provide the resources that the believer needs to flourish in a world that's dominated by hostile powers.
That's what Paul is telling this little church in Colossae. Look, I don't know about y'all; that's something I need to constantly be reminded of in the world we're living in right now. That's why I really—I had been back and forth on which book to go to, and that's really why I settled on this book.
If Christ is who Paul claims he is—and I believe he is—then only Christ can provide the fullness of life and joy that the false teachers that are mentioned in this book claim happen through legalism and religious—really just dead religious practice.
So throughout the letter, there's a theme of the sufficiency of Christ. I'm just going to mention just a few of these, okay? In verse 4 of chapter one, the Colossians' faith is in Christ. Verse 2—I mean, sorry, verse 4 of chapter two, same thing: faith is in Christ.
Epaphras is described as a faithful minister of Christ in Colossians 1:7 and 4:12. The kingdom of the rescue from darkness belongs to the Son, Christ, whom he loves—Colossians 1:13. Christ's role in reconciling the Colossians to God and empowering of Paul's ministry by Christ are emphasized in five or six verses in Colossians 1:27, 2:2, and 4:3.
The mystery of Christ revealed to the saints is Christ in you, the hope of glory, or simply Christ—Colossians 2:3. Christ is portrayed as the source of all wisdom and knowledge. The tradition received by the Colossians is summed up as "Christ Jesus as Lord." Their entire tradition is "Christ Jesus is Lord."
The believer's identification with Christ and resurrection and glory and hidden in Christ and appearing with him—so we have some eschatology, end-time stuff happening here in chapter three—all is tied to Christ. Christ's peace is to rule in the believer's heart again in chapter three. His message is to dwell with them again in chapter three.
Everything the believer does should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The household relationships are governed by Christ. The ministry of Paul's associates is tied to Christ.
And I know it took a long time to get there. We're actually going to read now in Colossians 1. We're going to read 1 through 8, but really for the rest of our brief time—and it will be brief—I'm going to focus on verses one and two.
So let's read in 1:1: "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit."
So Paul begins this salutation, this greeting, by identifying himself as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And I know a lot of times we blow through these greetings as if, you know, he's just like, "Hey guys, just I wanted to say hey before I start, you know, beating y'all up too bad."
But some of the language Paul uses here is super important. There's an important aspect to the way Paul phrases these things. He's speaking with authority. He talks about himself as an apostle, but he also makes it clear that he's not simply a commissioned or empowered representative of Jesus.
He has—I'm sorry, he has no personal stake in this. This is not Paul's personal words. He is coming to this church as a representative of Jesus Christ. His title came not through any outside sources but through the will of God.
And in fact, in verse 7, you see the humility in Paul's reaction. He calls himself a fellow servant. So he writes with this gracious approach to the people that may—that he doesn't know at all and probably don't know him at all other than reputation, but they're going to have a high regard for who he is.
So his authority is unique because it's derived directly from Christ, but Paul is not setting himself up as a guy in some kind of high office who's hitting here just to give you divine directives. He is an ambassador, a minister, a servant of Christ, and that's how he's speaking to these people.
I love what one guy I read this week said: "God assigned Paul a task, not status." And I think there's a lot of leaders who need to understand that concept—most leaders.
All right, it's interesting that he also mentions Timothy in the early part of this book. As far as we know, Timothy had no connection to the church in Colossae. It's most likely his name is mentioned because he would have been the one who penned the letter, composed the letter that Paul dictated to Timothy, which was not uncommon for people, especially guys like Paul who had bad eyesight, to use a secretary to dictate these letters.
Romans is a clear example of this. Romans just pretty much states it that, you know, "I wrote this letter with my—" you know, like, "I wrote the letter, Paul." It's Paul's letter, but I wrote it, right? That's in the early part of Romans.
So one reason to think in verse 4 and chapter 4, verse 18, Paul says he writes this—the greeting at the end. He writes that; he says, "with my own hand." There's three other times where—two other times where Paul uses that same language, which implies that the rest of the letter was physically written by somebody else.
And if you were reading the letter, you were to see the change in penmanship. Now you have a guy who probably wrote big because we know that because he had bad eyesight, and he already mentioned in Corinthians that he was writing it extra big.
I don't know if he's writing it for himself or writing it for them, you know, like all caps kind of thing. I don't know if any church ever deserves some all caps; it was a church in Corinth.
But it's worth noting that adding Timothy's name, though—and this is as I thought about this this week—all right, so he mentions several people in this book. He mentions Tychicus, he mentions Epaphras, and he mentions Timothy.
Now we know Timothy's history because we have writings by Timothy, and we have a lot of history from Timothy in the book of Acts. We know the trust that this church would have had in Epaphras. So when Paul names these people, think about it like this: it's worth noting that Paul adding Timothy's name, adding Epaphras's name, adding Tychicus's name—these guys—that Paul's basically saying, "What I'm writing to you is not my opinion. I'm not a lone wolf theologian out there doing things on my own. This is not some maverick out there."
He's working within a team of ministers, and this letter reflects the consensus of those who were with him because they would have all read the letter. And don't think for a second if they ran across something in there, they're like, "Paul, what in the—where did this come from?" They wouldn't have called him out on it.
I think that's something important to note. So then Paul does something else really, really unique. It's the only time he does this in any of his writings. He greets this church, and he calls them holy and faithful brothers and sisters.
Now, he's called other people holy before, and that doesn't mean you—we'll do that next week. What I want to understand is the language of calling them faithful. The word he uses there—this is the only time Paul refers to a group of people by this word. It means they were faithful to the gospel message.
It means that whatever was happening here, it had not taken over like what had happened in Galatians, where in Galatians it said, "I'm really, really angry that you guys have chased another gospel as if there is another gospel."
That's not what Paul is saying. He was like, "I understand you guys are dealing with some stuff, but as far as I can say, I see you as faithful to the gospel." So we have to assume that whatever this false doctrine was, they had not yet succumbed to it.
So they were instead in the midst of a battle for truth, and Paul is helping guide them in that battle. And which means as Paul—excuse me—as Paul sets up his argument at the beginning, not just holy and faithful, but holy and faithful in Christ while living in Colossae.
It says "in Christ at Colossae," and the order here matters, especially in that day and age as Christianity is working its way—it's in its infancy—and understanding of what it meant to be identified with Christ. A lot of these people are still learning this.
Think about how new this is, foreign. They've got a history of polygamy and all kinds of crazy religions that they're having to filter through. So when Paul addresses the Colossians as holy and faithful in Christ, he's emphasizing something unique about their identity.
Being in Christ goes beyond geography; it encompasses their entire lives. It means Christ is the center of their existence. It means that they're guiding and shaping every aspect of who they are is tied to Christ.
And being in Christ implies exclusivity. It means that they're exclusively joined to him—no other gods, no other goddesses. There's no room for divided loyalties; there's no room for competing allegiances.
And because of that, we'll come to discover that their identity, their joy, their fulfillment is not found in religious practice; it's not found in their job; it's not found in their marriage; it's not found in their kids. Their fulfillment is found in Christ.
And if your fulfillment is found in anything else, then what you've done is turn that into an idol, right? Y'all sound like you're really looking forward to that sermon.
All right, so Paul is telling this church that every spiritual need they have is found in Christ, and he's going to talk about the freedom that comes from that. And we're going to look at the freedom that comes from that, what that means.
It also meant that being in Christ has practical implications for behavior. I mean, you can't get around that. If the conduct is determined by Christ's teaching, Christ's example, and those kinds of things, they're going to deal with immoral practices and all that stuff, and he's going to talk about the bond of Christ being unbreakable.
Nothing can separate believers from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Amen? I can't wait to get there.
So that means that not even death, angels, demons, any powers can sever the relationship that these people have with Christ. And also, being in Christ means being a part of a new family. This would have been a huge concept then and even now.
Believers are joined together by a mutual faith in Christ, creating a spiritual kinship that transcends social and cultural and ethnic backgrounds and differences.
So my desire for us as a church as we work through this book over the next probably three months at least is that we would come away with a renewed focus on what it means to live in Christ, that we would see Christ exalted, to embrace the profound truth that in Christ, with an unwavering faith, we would approach this with a commitment.
And then to allow Christ to define our identity, our behavior, to unite us as a family. And being in Christ is not just a theological concept; it's why I put "Living in Light of His Supremacy" because I think if we can really grasp this, it will change us.
It will make us more like Christ; it'll change the way we live. Not only that, it'll transform us and empower us to live victoriously so that we're not under bondage, we don't have divided loyalties, and that we can go into this life with the joy that's found in honoring our Savior.
So that's a big task, Steve. Over the next—right now, I got 11 sermons, but you know me, it could be 15 when it's all said and done. I reserve the right to change my mind, and so we'll see how it goes.
But I am really, really excited about getting into the meat of this book and celebrating Jesus Christ. Amen?
Well, we're going to partake in communion now, and we're going to go back—I know we did a little different last week—we're going to go back to the old way of doing it.
But as I've read through—I don't know how many times I've read through Colossians in the last couple of months—but thinking about the exaltation of Jesus Christ in the book, I couldn't help but think through even yesterday as I was thinking about this moment in communion to consider just how important it is for us, even in a moment like this, something we do every week, to not take it for granted, right?
And I know when I was a kid growing up, we did it every six months on Sunday night, and I didn't even know what it meant at the time. I mean, I knew those deacons took a long time to fold that sheet; that's all I knew. And that was over the communion table in the front.
But now, as I've grown and aged and hopefully spiritually matured on top of physically matured, just this moment of remembering who Christ is in my life, why that matters, why it's important, what he did for us is all represented in this simple act of worship.
And that should encourage us; it should spur us to love and good works—all the things that happened. This is a moment that God gave the church for us. It's a moment of worship because we are honoring Christ and exalting Christ, but he gave this to us for our encouragement.
And I want you to think about that; consider that this morning. And if you're with us and you're a baptized believer, we encourage you to partake. I'm going to go to the keyboard, and Sandy and I are going to sing a song, and then we're going to come back and partake in communion together.
So during this song, I'll just take a moment of worship, meditation, and prayer, and then come grab your elements whenever you feel ready.
on Nov 05, 2023
