the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. Well, as we come to the Scriptures this evening, we have there the Apostle Paul drawing the attention of the Colossian believers to consider and to have as their priority the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a disease that can infect a church and render it helpless and kill it. And if it's not rapidly diagnosed and treated, that church will not continue to exist. The disease that we are thinking about is a Christlessness. Sometimes in life we may have to go to the doctor because we are unwell. and we may have some blood tests taken. And in the course of having those blood tests taken, they discover that we are deficient in some particular electrolyte or some mineral, for example. So if you had a low potassium, you'd have something called hypokalemia. And if you have a lack in something, it can cause great harm. And although we may only be talking about minuscule amounts of a particular element or electrolyte, it can have a drastic effect upon the body. When we think about a church that loses sight of Jesus Christ, that compromises on the doctrine and our understanding of who he is as revealed in the Scriptures of truth, then the church is going to die. And so the Apostle Paul here in Colossians is going to draw back the believers here to consider and to be focused upon Christ. Throughout the history of the church, there have been many who we would describe as being heroes of the faith. There is that great chapter in Hebrews 11 that describes those who have gone before that have kept the faith. And we can think about the church age from the time of Pentecost right through to the present time of those who have vigorously and courageously stood for the faith. At the same time, you could look through history, and it is littered with those who have denied the faith, those who have brought shipwreck to their souls, and those who have worked tirelessly to undermine the faith that was once delivered. And they have come, and they've wreaked havoc upon the church. the church here in Colossae was in great peril. There were issues in this church that needed to be addressed. And I find as we come to these epistles that Paul is writing to, He's very honest with his assessments of those places. He doesn't conclude that they're all perfect, wonderful people with not a problem in life, no difficulties there. They really got everything sorted. He often will have to come to them and show to them an area where they are lacking. Colossae was no different. They were a church that had error amongst them. They weren't the only ones. Corinth is well documented as to the problems that they were facing. There were divisions, there were distractions, there were all kinds of terrible things happening in that church and Paul comes and deals with them head on. We find the church at Ephesus so greatly commended for its stand against error, and yet they too were condemned for their lack of love. They'd lost their first love. And so it is very dangerous for a church and for a company of God's people to think that we have everything sorted, that we are as best as we can get it. Because in that kind of attitude, we will not see perhaps areas where we're going astray. And so here in Colossae, they had some problems. Well, what were their problems in verses 11 to 17? We find the word circumcision is mentioned, and like Galatia, they were having a problem with people that wanted to pull them back to the Old Testament. They wanted to have Jesus Christ and everything that pertained to Judaism. And so to be a proper Christian in their understanding, was to be a Jewish Christian. And somebody that was a Gentile was somehow a second-rate believer. And Paul has dealt with that with the church at Ephesus as well. But Christ has not come to bring Judaism and Christianity and bring a hybrid together. He has come to fulfill the old covenant and to usher in the new covenant. And so you could describe this group that was working at Colossae as being a Jesus plus your work sect. They accept Christ, but there's also something else you have got to do in order to be a Christian and to be right with God. That kind of thinking is not isolated to first century Christianity, we find it very prevalent today. In the Roman Catholic Church, there is an emphasis on Jesus Christ being the savior, yet there is also how that salvation comes through work, effort, diligence, fulfilling all of the various sacraments that are as part of the church in order for the person to be saved. It is a Christ plus works religion. and we find that that can also happen even in things like our church, places like us. People think, well, it's yes, it's about Jesus, but we've also got to do this thing and that thing and the other thing, and if we don't do that, then we are not going to be good enough. Well, we have to be on our guard against those who would reduce the emphasis Jesus Christ alone for salvation and suggesting that there is some other things for us to do as well. That was one problem that they were facing. Another problem was this. In verse 18 of chapter two, we find that there is a suggestion of the worship of angelic beings. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Perhaps this area of mysticism, this idea of being taken up with the supernatural, was something that had infiltrated this particular congregation. They were interested more in the worship of the spiritual realm. So in Colossae, there was a worship of the angels. In Eastern Orthodoxy, there is the worship of the saints and iconography. And we find that the worship of things that are unknown and mystical have been something which have plagued the church down through the ages. And so if the Jews were attacking the sufficiency of Christ, then these pagans were somehow denying the exclusivity of Christ as well. And so the Church at Colossae was suffering from both of these issues. On the one hand, it is Jesus plus your works, plus Judaism, and also this idea that you can worship other things as well. And so Paul has come to deal with the condition. And he's making it very clear in verses six and seven, how that the remedy for this is to be focused on Jesus Christ. This church was heading into a state of Christlessness, dumbing down the gospel, watering down the work of Christ, and it needs to be brought back on line. How is this done? Well, verse six and seven. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. Rooted and built it up in him, established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. How is it we can stand firm in our day as a church? How is it we can stand firm in our own hearts? It is by having our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. Paul in verse 18 of chapter one has already been speaking about the preeminence of Jesus, how he is to have the highest position and the highest glory, and he's already said that, and now he's going to emphasize it, how we are to live in him. So we're told to be essentially Christ-centered. And we have these things given for us. We are firstly to receive him. Paul is speaking to a Christian congregation, and he's telling them, as ye have therefore received Christ. He's speaking about their conversion. And so before we can ever try to defend ourselves against any kind of heresy, we must know who we are following, who we are walking after. We can't begin to apply these steps unless we are first a child of God, that we have received Christ. How do we receive Christ? We do so by trusting in him. We repent of our sin and we trust in him. We find the idea of receiving Christ It is how it comes to us. It's not that we decide to open our hearts and then he comes in, but rather it is that reception and that receiving of a gift. And when we think about many false teachings that are around and prevalent today, so much surrounds what we have to do and what we have decided to do. But here we read how it is something that we have received. it has been given to us. As ye have therefore received Christ, so walk ye in him. So our salvation must be Christ-centered, and if there's no Christ-centeredness to our salvation, then you have no salvation at all. It doesn't matter how nice a person you are, it doesn't matter how religious you are, unless you have Jesus Christ as your savior, then you are not saved. The Apostle Peter and John would say, in Jerusalem, after that miracle of raising that paralyzed man, that there's salvation in none other save Jesus Christ alone. So salvation is something that we receive, it's not something that we earn. We're then told, as we have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. We are to be a people who walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. We're talking spiritually here, of course. It doesn't mean we have to go down to Israel and to traipse around the various sights and scenes of Israel to discover the way that the Savior walked. We're not talking about a physical walk, but we must go His way and not our way. Our feet must be ordered in him. We must look to him and him alone to be our guide and to have our feet walking the way that we should go. In other words, we must follow his example. We must be those who imitate him. If we don't walk where he walked, we can leave ourselves prone to attack and succumbing to some of these terrible monstrosities of a gospel. And we find the Savior, what did he do? His life was a life of obedience to the will of the Father. He was there to serve his father and not his own interests. It was a path often of sorrow and difficulty. It was a way that was acquainted with grief and we're told to walk in it. The way of the Lord has been set for us. It's governed by holiness. We have the law of God to show us the way to go, to teach us what is right and to show us what is wrong. People will come and suggest some other way. They may come and say, well, come this way, it's smoother, it's easier. There may be more temporal rewards, more earthly blessings, you may say, but we're to be those that walk in him. We have that wonderful picture of the savior as being the good shepherd. In Psalm 23, there he is walking, guiding his people. and they are to walk in the way that he takes. And the way that he takes, although it may be difficult, although we may not know the way we're going, we know that it will lead in glory. We're to walk in him. Verse seven, we're to be rooted in him. We are to derive our strength and our spiritual nutrition from him. He is to be the thing that sustains and fills us. Other soils will pollute, it will cause harm, it will stunt growth, it could bring death. Our life and the life that we have now in him comes from the fact that we're rooted in him. And those roots need to go down very deep. We've just had some building work done on our house, and they've taken down some trees, quite a few trees, and as they were digging, they discovered how extensive the roots were. And they had to use diggers to get them up, and even now we're still finding roots creeping through. Well, that's one thing. But our lives have to be so rooted into Christ that we're not easily moved, we're not easily shaken, that we have our strength and our energy and spiritual growth coming from Him. When we find the life of the church, we can go astray if we start to not depend upon our savior for everything, not look to him, not inquire of him, but we start to have ideas that we can do things just as well ourselves, or perhaps if we're honest, we think we can do things better. So we instead of coming to God's word, we'll go to church growth experts. Instead of looking at the principles of scriptures, we'll come up with our own strategies and our own ideas. And we try to use the carnal means to attempt to engineer spiritual growth. And the result is that there'll be no real genuine life. We find the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the vine and we are the branches. And the only life that we have is by being rooted in him. Connected with that, we find in verse seven, we are to be built up in him. The foundation that we have is Jesus Christ. We cannot have any other foundation or any other kind of co-foundation. He is that chief cornerstone upon which everything is built upon and upon which everything is set. He is the one that is the firm ground. He is the one that is the rock. He is the one that's lifted us up from that miry clay that causes us to sink and to despair. And in Christ, we can have that firm, secure foundation. When we think about our lives, it can be easy to partition our lives into different aspects. We might think about our work life, our family life, our leisure time, and then perhaps our church life or our Christian life. Well, we can't have different foundations. We are to be built on Him, because all other ground, all other foundations will ultimately fail. And so we are to stand, and if we're built in Him, we're rooted in Him, we've received Him, we're walking in Him, we shall continue to abide. But not only that, we find in verse number seven that we are to be established in the faith. Established in the faith. This has the idea of being secured or tethered. In the world of turmoil in which we live and all the uncertainty that swirls round about, we need to be tethered to something which is not going to move and is not going to shift. The world can be like a raging sea, tossing to and fro, and if you were like a ship on that ocean, you'd find yourself in great peril. But we are to be anchored in Christ, secured in him, established. in the faith. Why is that? Because he is the unmovable one. He is immutable. He's the one that's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And when difficulties come, and they will come, we are to cleave to him, and he is the object of our faith. And as we look to him, we are secure. When we start to do things ourselves and lose sight of him, we will sink and fail. We must be anchored in him. We find also that we are reminded here about the things that we have been taught as you have been taught. When we think about the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, we find that it was about preaching the kingdom of God. It was about preaching the gospel. Yes, he was moved with compassion to those that were in need. He did do a great number of miracles, but we find he came principally to preach the kingdom of God. And as we sit at his feet, as we hear his voice coming through his words, we are to be those that are like students, soaking up this wisdom, soaking up the great truths of the scripture. He is the one that teaches, we are the ones that are to be taught. We find the the woman that had five husbands, that Jesus met at Samaria at the well. And when she went back to the people of her town, she said, come see a man which told me everything I have ever done. When we think about the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to be taught of him. We are but dust in his sight. compared to him. We are minuscule in comparison to him. Our wisdom is puny in comparison to the wisdom that he is. And we are to come to the one that has all wisdom. We must be taught. How can we be taught? Reading his word. Studying it. Gathering together to hear it preached. praying over it, having it applied to us, and asking the Spirit to lead us in the way that we should go. We find then in verse 7, we are to abound therein with thanksgiving. We started by thinking about a church that loses sight of Christ, can become Christlessness, and that can result in danger and being swayed into error. When we think about who we praise and who we give thanks for, then our worship must be Christ-centered as well. Everything that we are about is to bring glory to his name. And here Paul is saying to them to abound therein with thanksgiving. When we think about what was happening in this church, they were rather worshipping angels. And here we're told to focus our attention upon worshipping the Saviour. When we think about our worship, is it about what we want? No. It's about what is glorifying to Christ. And so Paul is exhorting this church here to be overflowing with thanksgiving. And so a praising church, will be a blessed church, which will be a spiritually safe church. And so we find that the church, if it is Christ-centered and always determined to be so, then other things will be much more difficult to get in. So Paul tells us that we have to receive him. That seems to be pretty obvious. That's a prerequisite of being a Christian and being a church. We're told to walk in him. We're told to be rooted and built up in him, established in the faith in him, and as we've been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Well, it doesn't end there, because in verse number eight, we're told to beware. Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men and after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. So Paul has given it positively, he now tells us to be on our guard. And he identifies three areas, human philosophy, that idea of human reasoning, human intellect, human logic, everybody doing what they think is right in their own eyes, that rationalism that people have. They're told also about the human traditions, very much dealing with the Jews that were coming in, wanting them to be like their old forefathers and to have those traditions. We've always done it this way. We're not going to change. No real firm foundation other than what we've already and always done. And in this rudiments of the world, this worldly basis, everything coming from a carnal perspective. And so faith being removed and self-reliance instituted. These are some of the areas the enemy will come. And what does Paul tell us? Beware. Be on your guards. Beware of these things, beware of being spoiled and taken in by them, and not after Christ, not losing sight of Him. The only reason the church indivisible is here is because what Christ has done for us. If we lose sight of Him, then we will not continue to be here. And the Lord Jesus Christ has promised to bless, and to be with, and to sustain, and to keep, and we are to keep our eyes on him. We are told, walk in him, be rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, being taught of him, abounding therein with thanksgiving. May we as a church never become Christless, but always look to Him.