Come with me once again to the book of Colossians where last Lord's Day we entered chapter 2. And we're going to make some more headway this morning. I'm going to take a step back and help you remember the big picture of the book of Colossians before we tackle our specific text. The overview of a book is always very helpful for remembering how each passage within it that you happen to be dealing with fits into the big picture. When this was written, the Apostle Paul was in prison in Rome. His friend Epaphras, who was from Colossae and had been the one, apparently, who had founded the church there, probably the pastor of the church there, Epaphras had come to Rome to visit Paul and he gave him a very good report about the believers in the church in Colossae and how they were doing overall, but he also told Paul about some influences from false teachers spreading false doctrine which posed a threat to this church. The presentation of the incomparable Christ that we have seen at the last part of chapter 1 and the first few verses of chapter 2 is the first stage of this letter for good reason because Paul wanted to lay a foundation of who Christ is and what he had accomplished so that he would be ready to deal with the specifics of this perversion of the truth. Now, in due time, we're going to see how Paul applies the things he has already taught us about Christ to the errors which threatened the Colossian Christians. And right now, we're just going to dive into the very beginning of that part of the book. Here's the big picture. The first twelve verses are where he makes the introduction. Remember, he'd not visited Colossae. He only knew of them. He didn't know them personally. And so he introduces himself and he gives thanks for them and prays for them in the beginning. And then, from chapter 1, verse 13 through chapter 2, verse 3, we can call that section, The Glories of Christ. I told you that the chapter break between 1 and 2 really doesn't make any sense, so just kind of disregard it if you will. And that's how far we have gotten today. We dive into what is the theological heart of this letter. This is where Paul begins to confront the elements of this collection of false influences that has been labeled the Colossian heresy. That's so we can sound scholarly when we don't have a clue what it really was. We can ascertain elements of it, which we will as we work through chapter 2. But it's chapter 2, verses 4 through 23, where he, with marvelous wisdom and insight, confronts the Colossian heresy. Chapters 3 and 4, then, are the very intensely practical portion of this book in which Paul tells you how to live in light of the great truth about Christ and His sufficiency for all that we need. There are many parallels between Colossians and Ephesians, especially the last half of both books. Chapters 3 and 4 of Colossians are very similar to chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Ephesians because both of them are the practical implications of the great doctrinal truths that are in the first halves of the book. The purveyors of this so-called Colossian heresy had turned being a Christian into a never-ending chore. It was the never-ending pursuit of step after step along a process that never did actually lead you to a position of spiritual safety and security. Right away, as he confronts the error of that idea, Paul exhorts us to realize that in Christ, we have all we need. Now in our passage for today, and I'm aiming at verses 4, 5, 6, and 7, there is one rather profoundly simple command which is the centerpiece of this passage. Three words. Walk in Him. Walk is a metaphor for how to live your life in such a way that you are not deceived by slick-sounding false teachers. I should say, to walk in Christ is to be living in such a way. Here's a little outline to get you going. And today I'm going to kind of beat you over the head with this outline because it is so important to grasp what is in this text. Verses 4 and 5 you might label cling to Christ. And then verses 6 and 7 is the command to walk in Him. And there are four elements that contribute to obeying that command. Let's dive in at verse 4. This is the point where Paul turns to specifically dealing with the errors of the Colossian heresy and how to resist them. Verse 4 says, I say this." Now what does that refer to? Well, what's he been saying since chapter 1 verse 13? He's been talking about who Christ is and what He has accomplished and all the riches that are hidden in Him. When you come to Christ, you get everything you need spiritually. Not phase 1 of step 1. You get it all in Christ. And He says, I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. Right from the start you can see that He is warning them against something. False teachers such as the ones in Colossae are well equipped to use persuasive arguments. It's all designed to derail you from standing on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Yesterday, we heard a little knock at the door. There were two representatives of a certain group that would have been happy had we given them the opportunity to sit down and give us persuasive arguments to show us how we are wrong. Such things are all over the place. Now from this text, I would suggest, if you have a somewhat cynical, twisted mind like I do, just from this verse you can get an idea of what it takes to be deluded or derailed in your Christian life. I would suggest this. First of all, be ignorant of Scripture. Make sure that you take the Bible only in very small doses. It may be a good idea to buy into the idea that a verse a day keeps the devil away. For goodness sakes, don't read whole chapters or whole books of the Bible. If you do, don't read them over and over or they might begin to stick in your brain. And by all means, don't read all the way through the Bible and get the proverbial big picture. You cannot be deluded when you know what Scripture says. Another way to be deluded is to accept anything you hear that someone says is in the Bible. Look, Satan can quote the Bible better than you can. I remember as a young Christian, a time in college, I had this literature professor. I was a brand new believer and I was learning some Bible verses. And so I quoted one to him one day. He had proclaimed himself to be an agnostic. And he hit me back with a barrage of about five verses that he had committed to memory that I hadn't yet gotten around to even reading. He knew the Scripture better than I did. Just because someone uses the Bible, quotes a verse, don't buy it. Reviews to believe that people can know what the Bible says and misrepresent it are twisted. Just get the idea, if they quote the Bible, they must be right. And you'll be able to be deluded. Cults and aberrant doctrines of all kinds always start with a little kernel of truth. So, if you want to be deluded, don't think critically. Don't ask hard questions and don't go read verses in context when someone uses them to claim to prove their point. Another way you can be deluded. Do not examine or question the logic of what people say. If it sounds good, especially if it's catchy or clever, just believe it. You know, people can say things and they can say them with confidence, and if they say them over and over again, you start to get the idea, well, it must be true. Just, you know, just buy in. Don't actually ask hard questions. If somebody says that you can catch cold by not drying your hair, just believe it. I mean, don't go ask a scientist about it. You don't get cold, you don't catch a cold through your hair. Alright? You have to get a little beastie inside your body in order to catch a cold. But if Grandma said it, it must be true. Well, people do that with Scripture all the time. Somebody quotes something in the Bible like Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. That's in the Bible. That's Hebrews 13, chapter 13, verse 8. And they say, therefore, since Christ is in you and He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, you can do the same miracles that He did. Logical, right? It just happens to be really bad logic. You get the point? He doesn't want you to be deluded, and he says, they're going to come, and they're going to be slick, and they're going to be persuasive, and they're going to know the Bible. Just be careful. Learn what the Scriptures say. Believe what the Scriptures say. Let what the Scriptures say change your life. That's how you become effective in spreading the Gospel and making disciples who are, to use what Paul had said earlier, knit together in love. So for today, he's going to give you the antidote for delusion and the prophylactic against allowing delusion to affect you. And it starts in verse 5. He says this, For even though I am absent in body," that tends to be true of people who are in prison, that they don't hang out with your fellowship. Even though I am absent in body, nevertheless, I am with you in spirit. And then he gives them another compliment. Rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. Even though he wasn't with them in person, even though he didn't even know them in person, Paul knew exactly what the Colossian Christians needed, and so he was coming alongside them from afar in words inspired by the Holy Spirit to help them build upon the good things that they had. Now, he praised them for two things here. Notice he says, good discipline. The word here means order or good arrangement. In a military context, it describes being in battle array where the army has no gaps in the lines. In a sports setting, it would be like, stay in your lane, play your position, guard your territory. And he says, they're doing that. In a setting like this, it describes the opposite of chaos. They were standing together. And He commends them for that. And then He praises them for what flows from that. He calls it the stability of your faith. The word stability here comes from a root from which we get our word stereo. The noun form of this word, which sounds just like our word stereo, happens to occur only here in the New Testament, and it describes something firm, or something steadfast, or something strong. Now, I am so old, I remember when we didn't have stereo. You'd get one speaker, there would be one source of the sound. And then, some of our cars, we got a rear speaker. You could actually hear the radio when you were relegated to the back seat. Two speakers, that's cool. And then, somewhere in the 14th century or sometime when I was growing up, we got stereo. where you heard part of the sound from here and part of the sound from over here, and it sounded so much fuller. That's what he's saying. You guys have the full, stable kind of faith. You have stability in your faith. And then somebody wrote and recorded the songs where they actually made it sound like it moved from here over to here, sliding from one speaker to the other. It was full. It was rich. Well, that's stereo. We as a church should have stereo faith. That's our goal. We build carefully on the foundation of Christ and the initial response to Him. So the point is that then the result turns out to be that people hear in stereo sound, or now we might say surround sound, that Christ is who He said He was. It seems Paul was very concerned about the Colossian heresy, but at the same time, he knew these people could resist it. They had the ability to root it out without doing serious damage. And when we get back to chapter 2 next time, you're going to see a fuller development of how he confronts the first part of this heresy. But before he gets there, Paul makes a crucial point for them. I said we could label verses 4 and 5, cling to Christ. I want you to stand there with your good discipline. Keep the ranks in place. Sing the same tune so that together you are making this stereophonic declaration of who Christ is. And then we come to the key command for this passage. Walk in Him. It's verses 6 and 7. Listen to it carefully. As you have received Christ, Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude." Now I want you to look at this carefully because it's the punchline of these four verses. Notice the one simple command. Walk in Him. And it has a little word, so, in front of it. Walk is the Bible's metaphor for living your life in a systematic sort of a way. Your walk is, if you will, your lifestyle. Make your lifestyle be in Christ. Make it so that you are a representative of Him. And this passage tells you to walk in a certain way. That's the significance of the word, so. As you have received Christ, so walk in Him. As this, so this. Now there's a standard cliche application of this verse that goes like this. So, how did you receive Christ? By faith. Okay then, continue to live by faith. You received Him by faith, so walk by faith. Or, you received Him by grace, so walk by grace. Now there is nothing untrue about that. I just want to suggest to you that's pretty shallow compared to what is actually here in this very sentence. Now, Paul included in this instruction a command And then grammatically speaking, for you grammarians, that doesn't mean people who have grandchildren, for you who pay attention to actually how the text is put together, there are four participles attached to this command, to walk. Now, Greek does something far more sophisticated with participles than we do in English, but this is very explicit. Walk in this way, and I'm going to tell you exactly what I mean, point one, point two, point three, point four. And let me suggest to you, this could be your home base for a very productive Bible study that you can do on your own. If you'd like to do a rewarding, practical Bible study, take a walking tour of your Bible. Go look up all the places where the word walk occurs. My computer Bible told me when I asked the question that there are 388 occurrences of various forms of the word walk. And they occur in 368 verses. So if you did a verse a day for a year, you'd only have to double up three days a year. Maybe on your birthday, the 4th of July, and Thanksgiving, you would cover one verse a day. You can have your walking theology of the New Testament. Now, not all of those are going to have a metaphorical use. Some of them are going to be, he got up and he walked from this place to this place. But say half of them are. That's over 180, probably, occurrences of this metaphor in the New Bible. in your Bible. You might even want to just start with the New Testament. Look for how people walk and what are the consequences of how they walk. Look for how the Bible says that you should walk and how it says that you shouldn't walk. And these two verses will be right at the core of your walking theology. This is the final flourish on his antidote to delusion. The way you received Christ What became yours at the moment that you came to faith in Him, and what you need to build upon that is these four truths. This is what it looks like to be walking in Christ. So, walk in Him, and here is the first of the four participles, or the first of the four sub-points, having been rooted. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him." Now here comes the first thing. This is directly connected to walking in Him. This is the starting point. Having been firmly rooted. That, my friend, is the definition of true saving faith. You've been rooted in Christ. Again, for you grammar buffs, it is a perfect passive participle. Perfect, the perfect tense means it's something that was accomplished in the past time such that its results are in full force right now. This is describing a done deal. The fact that it's passive means it's not something you do, it's something that is done for you. When you come to Christ, when you say yes to the invitation, when you put your faith in Him, you become firmly and permanently planted in the relationship with Him. God has caused you to have your roots in Christ. And that is a direct assault on the Colossian heresy. They said that as you come to faith in Christ, that's the beginning. And then you have to gradually work your way, step by step, stage by stage, level by level, in order to get into a firm relationship with Him. And you never are quite sure if you've gone far enough. The truth is, God grants you security in Christ from the moment that you enter into your relationship with Him by grace through faith. You have to be in Christ before you can walk in Him, right? And so he's saying, having been firmly rooted. So it's correct to say that before you start being able to walk, you have to be firmly rooted in Him. Can you say for certain, I am rooted in Christ? If you say I'm struggling to become a Christian, well, you're right in one fact, you're not a Christian yet. You give yourself to Him. He grows the roots. He establishes you in Himself. The command is to walk in Him. having been rooted. Second sub-point. Being built up. Read on. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him. Being built up in Him is a metaphor that views your spiritual life as a building that is continually under construction. Even though you are rooted in Him, your spiritual growth is an ongoing process. Now, you are always involved. You always have a choice about whether you're going to grow or not. But notice again, this is now again a passive participle. It's something that God supplies for you. What you need always comes from God. This one, however, is a present passive participle. That means it's going on right now. The root has been sunk deeply in. It's firm. It can't be shaken. Now you are in the process of being built up in Him. As soon as you stop growing in your understanding of Christ and your practice of what He wants for you, you've slipped out of His will. He always wants you to be more mature tomorrow than you were yesterday. Can you say for certain? I am being built up in Christ. I'm cooperating with what He wants to do to make me more mature. I'm growing in Him. And this is also a reputation of the Colossian heresy. Their idea was that you grow into salvation. The truth is, you don't grow into salvation. You become saved and then you grow in salvation. You grow unceasingly, relentlessly toward maturity. The command is, walking in, having been rooted, being built up, and here comes the next one, and being established in your faith just as you were instructed. That is a caution to maintain the purity of the essentials of the faith. Christianity is the one thing on earth that does not need or welcome innovation. When it comes to your faith, That which you believe, innovation in doctrine is a bad thing. Innovations in theology are called corruptions. God has revealed it and it stands written once for all. So He wants you to be established in your faith just as you were instructed. You don't need other things to add to that. Somebody wrote me an email a couple of days ago and said, have you ever heard of a book by so-and-so titled, Lost Books of the Bible? I didn't know the exact book, but I know exactly what it's talking about. It is a modern version of the Colossian heresy. The Bible's nice, but did you know there are lost books? There are other things written. And, oh dear, you only have the Bible? That's the idea behind it. There are no lost books. We can go into that in great detail, and we have from time to time. But the point is, you need to be established in your faith just as you were instructed. How were you instructed? You were given this book. Get to know it. That's what you need. Now this is another present passive participle describing something that you receive from God as you yield to His will along the way. So ask yourself, Do you know sound doctrine better than you did six months ago? That's part of walking in Him. So, cling to Christ, walk in Him, having been rooted, being built up, being established, and then the last one is overflowing. Look at verses 6 and 7 again. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, number one, having been once for all firmly rooted. Number two, now being built up in Him. Number three, and established in your faith just as you were instructed. And number four, the fourth element here of walking in Him is, and overflowing with gratitude. That means that if you are walking with Christ properly, you will be abounding in thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving is not a regular and growing part of your life, then your claim to walk with Jesus Christ is really suspect. Now this one is a present active participle. You can get to heaven not knowing the difference between perfect, passive, and present active, but catch the significance of it. You are the one who actively does the overflowing of gratitude. And you do it present tense. It's an ongoing, always kind of a thing. What was the song we sang just before the sermon? It is well with my soul. Written by a man absolutely devastated by the most horrible of circumstances. And he could say, it's well with my soul. Even if you're reduced to that level there can be an overflow of thanksgiving. If your prayer life does not include large portions of thanksgiving, you're out of line. You're not doing what God's plan for your life is and you apparently don't realize what you have in your relationship with Him. I was talking to someone after the first service. I was talking about someone going through a large medical trial of everything. had actually gone to the Mayo Clinic and been checked out for all these things and wrote a poem saying, thank you for what I don't have. Just realizing all the things that weren't wrong, suddenly there was thanksgiving. And this person attributes part of the person getting well to giving thanks for all the worst things I don't have. If your conversation on a regular basis does not include frequent and heartfelt expressions of thanksgiving and gratitude to God for His abundant, everyday goodness, then I don't think you're walking with Christ the way that He wants you to walk in Him. Number one, having been rooted. Number two, being built up. Number three, being established. Number four, overflowing. Now you can look at your watch and you can see it's not the end yet. So there must be something more. But I said we're going to stop at verse 7. Well, I do have a final exhortation for you. I've been speaking to you as if all of these things are your personal responsibility. Make sure you are rooted in Christ. Make sure you are being built up. Make sure you are being established. And make sure you are overflowing with gratitude. But I want you to go one step further. Don't take this passage on only a personal level. The command to walk in Him is plural. I want all of you collectively together to walk in Him. Remember I said that word describes being in proper order, like an army in battle array? This is a collective thing as well. The four participles are also collective in nature. If we don't think of this as a collective responsibility to the whole church, we're going to miss out on a big part of its significance. I have a way for you to picture this. Long ago, as a matter of fact, it was 1980, I visited India. as a guest of a wonderful organization called Bibles for India. They've now been merged into the World Bible League. They took a group of American pastors over there to learn about indigenous evangelism, Indians evangelizing Indians, which is a lot easier because they speak their own languages, and how Americans could help. And it was an interesting and moving experience to say the least. Talk to anybody who has spent much time traveling around in India and they'll tell you that one of the very best parts of that trip is getting on the plane to go home. It's a beautiful place. It is breathtaking and it's a place you really don't mind getting out of to get back to America pretty quickly. Well, when we left, our flight was packed. It was an Air India 747. That was the biggest airplane that flew across the world in those days. It had every seat full and it had a full load of luggage and a full load of cargo. I had already learned that Air India is a synonym for adventure. We had an adventure on the way home. We left from whatever city it was. We crossed the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Flew only about 45 minutes. And we had to stop in Bahrain to refuel at the lowest price for fuel. I didn't know that there was a country called Bahrain then. I had to look it up on the map. We're going to where? Because the way they pronounced it, I couldn't even tell where we were going. But I think Bahrain in Arabic means air maverick. Cheapest price for gas in the region. So they intentionally took off with very little fuel, enough to get to Bahrain and fill up the tanks for the cheapest possible price. It took inordinately long to refuel. We weren't first in line, so we had to wait. It was in the middle of the day. It was well over 100 degrees. There was no breeze blowing at all and we were privileged to sit out on the tarmac with no air conditioning and the doors open for about an hour and a half. Opening the doors on a tin can sitting in the sun full of 300 plus people doesn't make it very cool. I was having a little problem with the overflowing of rejoicing at the moment, I'll admit. Finally, they closed the doors and finally the air started to flow. The temperature immediately dropped from 120 down to probably 117 or so, so starting to get comfortable. And we started taxiing for takeoff. Now the plane is not only loaded to its limit, it also has a full complement of people and cargo and baggage. It has full fuel tanks, completely full. I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of gallons of 747 holds. I'm glad there was enough to get across the ocean. Now, as you know, the hotter the air, the less lift it provides and the more thrust is required to produce enough airspeed to create enough lift to actually take off. Well, we reached the end of the runway and we turned around. I happened to be sitting in the row right behind where the engines were so I could hear the noise. The engines roared louder than I personally had ever heard. Maybe it was just that I was a little bit grumpy with it being 117 degrees. And the giant plane began to roll. A little faster. A little faster. You know that feeling you feel when the airplane is accelerating and you kind of get pressed back into your seat because of the acceleration? I didn't feel that. And I found that a little bit disappointing, just sort of like sitting there on a chair and watching stuff slowly move by the windows. On and on we rolled. I started thinking, I wonder how long this runway is. The buildings of the terminal passed by and then there was nothing. And then I wondered if we were just going to drive home. We were roaring and we were rolling and we were rolling and we were roaring and it went on for, seemed like, way too long. I was sitting in my seat and I was actually thinking, I wish I could pull back on the stick. At last, the pilot pulled up the nose a little bit. We got off the ground and I saw, just as we got off the ground, I saw the end of the runway go by. We got airborne and we got into a climb about seven feet a minute, I think. Fortunately, there's no mountains at the end of the runway in Bahrain. And obviously, we got airborne. We got home. I remember that takeoff. It's not my favorite. Hope I never live through one like that again. Now, here's the analogy for that long story. A church can be like that 747. In my analogy, our collective airplane is specially equipped so that each person on board, every single person who calls this or any other church their spiritual family, we each have a stick and each one has a little bit of a share of the control of the plane. You need to pull back on the stick if we're going to get airborne and get where we should be. Now, incredible things have happened On this flight, almost 11 years now since Heritage Bible Church was born, we never dreamed the places that we would go when this little flight got started. But in a sense, every day, every week, we are still like that loaded 747. There are so many more people on board than eleven years ago. There are so many more places for us to fly. So many more ministries going on than eleven years ago. And so many more opportunities that God has in mind for us. The power is available because it's God's power. We have all the thrust at our disposal that we need. But the question is the same every day. Are we collectively willing to pull back on the stick? To control what we can? To lift off from the runway and take off? Or are we just on a long taxi ride? On a runway out in the desert? Are we willing to do what was described earlier in this book? To agonize for things that matter to the Lord? We have a collective responsibility to obey this passage, to walk in Him. You know, God grants opportunities not only to individuals, but to churches together. It's a matter of His grace. It's a matter of His will. Remember what Jesus wrote to the church in Philadelphia? It's in Revelation 3. He says this, He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this, I know your deeds. Behold, I have put before you an open door which no one can shut because you have a little power and have kept My Word and have not denied My name." He's saying basically to that church, I've given you the flight plan. I've provided all the power. Will you pull back on the stick?" He says, I'm coming quickly. Hold fast what you have so that no one will take your crown. Don't let somebody sneak in and delude you with clever arguments. God gives us opportunities. And He will reward based on how diligent we are in pursuing them. The plane is rolling. The power is on. Are you just going to let go? Go along for the ride? Or are you going to pull back on your stick and help us get airborne to ever more lofty heights? How do you do that? Make sure that you're rooted in Christ by faith. If you're not rooted in Him, you're in danger of eternity in the lake of fire. Let us show you how the roots can be grown by the grace of God. Make sure you're growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord so that you're being built up in Him. Because if you're not growing in your faith, your faith is highly suspect. Make sure you are established in the essential doctrines of the faith. If you aren't sure about what God's Word says, then you are susceptible to needless, damaging, sidetracking confusion by slick-sounding false teachers whispering things to you. Make sure you're overflowing with gratitude because you revel every day in God's grace and His goodness. And then when God gives you an opportunity, think of it as we're all in this together, an opportunity to serve, an opportunity to meet a need, you say yes. And what you'll do is you'll pull back on that stick and you'll find out, oh, the power is on. This thing really does fly. That's walking in Him. It's not magic. Sometimes it's hard work. Sometimes it is agonizing and working copiously like we saw earlier in this chapter. But that's what it means to walk in Him. Heavenly Father, as we pick up our feet one at a time and take step after step to walk with You, remind us that we are indeed in Your Son, Jesus Christ, where all the power that we need resides, where by Your grace, by Your power, You can get glory even through us. So do Your will, I pray, through my life. Do Your will, I pray, through Heritage Bible Church. that we might be faithful stewards of what You have granted before us, what You've put before us, that we might, by Your grace, fulfill Your desire. Thank You. Do whatever needs to be done in our hearts to make it so, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.