Thank you for directing your internet connection to the sermon audio page for Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You can learn more about ChristOPC by visiting our website at www.christopcatl.org. ChristOPC meets for worship each Sunday at 11 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. Our sermon text will be from Colossians 2, Page 983 of your Pew Bibles. Hear now the word of the Lord. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance and understanding, and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, 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 are 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 the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross, He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used. According to human precepts and teachings, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in the stopping the indulgence of the flesh. The word of the Lord. Well, it's good to be with you all again this evening. Today, our goal is to understand the vast exclusivity of Christ and what the cross achieves. We're going to look at how Christ is not only the fullness of God, but that he completely fulfills all of our needs in his own body. To do this, we're first going to look at the origins of our faith, Then we will look at the exclusivity of Christ. And finally, we will look at what the cross achieves. The origins of our faith, verses 7 through 8. Exclusivity of Christ, verses 8 through 10. And lastly, what the cross achieves, verses 10 through 15. The exclusivity of Christ and what the cross achieves have much overlap. They share a verse, verse 10, because that boundary is a blurry line. It's more so two concepts that we're taking from one text rather than two different texts expositing one idea. So verse six, therefore, as he received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. This verse starts with therefore, which means that it is based on what came before it in the text. We have heard the exhortation walk worthy of him earlier in verse 10. We were told to walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. We were told who the Lord is, the grandeur of Christ, Christ is the image of God who perfectly reveals the Father's will. Christ is the full revelation of the mystery from the past ages. Christ is how God reconciled all things to himself. And in Christ, we have full assurance of our status before God. And for these reasons, we are told to walk in him. Therefore, walk in him, just as we received Christ Jesus, the Lord. How was it that we received Christ Jesus the Lord? It was by faith. Ephesians 3.8 states, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We received Christ Jesus by faith, not by works. Paul also writes in Galatians 3, let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh, which is to say by works? It is by faith that we received the Spirit of God, and now faith ought to characterize our lives. It ought to be the defining factor of our lives. We received Christ Jesus by faith. We received him as the Lord. Many titles have been given to Jesus Christ so far in the book of Colossians in this letter. Beloved Son, image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, creator and sustainer of all things. head of the body of the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, the hope of glory and God's mystery. These are all the titles that Paul gives to Christ Jesus. And these titles are stunning and they are huge. But we should note that perhaps the most shocking title thus far given is this one here in verse six, Christ Jesus the Lord. We should not let our familiarity with this term or this title for Christ make it mundane or unsurprising. When Paul uses this term, Lord, he is carrying with it all the Old Testament baggage that it would have. He's not merely using Lord here as he would out of respect for a governor or a king, and he would call them Lord. When he calls Christ Jesus the Lord, He is calling him the Lord of the Old Testament. Daniel Wallace, a Greek scholar, writes, Jesus Christ, the Lord. Jesus Christ, the God. Jesus Christ, the Almighty One. The name for God, this name for God, wasn't even pronounced in Judaism because of its magnitude and because of fear of sinning against it. Jesus Christ, the Lord, that's how we received Christ Jesus. In the 70s and 80s, it was popular to believe that you could receive Christ Jesus as Savior and not as Lord. Campus Crusades for Christ helped make this idea popular because they thought that it would make it easier to evangelize. If you had Christ Jesus as Savior, that's really happy. But if you have him as Lord, that has some negative connotations with it, particularly in the 70s. They thought that the gospel would be better received if they said, look, you don't have to give up the throne of your life. You don't have to kneel before the throne of Christ to have salvation. You can have Christ as Savior without having him as Lord. Jesus doesn't have to be the Lord of your life. This idea is foreign to Paul. The only reason we can have Christ as Savior is because he is Lord of all things. We must repent, therefore, and turn to him. Whenever Paul or Peter or Jesus or John the Baptist say, repent, they are charging you to give up the throne of your life and to acknowledge Christ Jesus as Lord. That is how we received him. We received him by faith. We received him as Lord, Lord of our life, Lord of our decisions, Lord of our family, Lord of our mind, Lord of our career. Therefore, as he received Christ Jesus, the Lord, which was by faith, so walk in him. Paul continues in verse 7 to explain this. Rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught. Note the passive verbs. They have been rooted and they have been built up in the faith. They have been established. It is a work of God to make us a part of his temple. He is the one who did the work and who continues to do the work. We walk by faith and our pastors may provide the water, but it is God who provides the growth. And Paul concludes abounding in thanksgiving. Remember, we are not to be sunshine thanksgivers only. What we esteem lightly, we obtained cheaply. Salvation was not obtained at a cheap cost, and we cannot esteem it lightly. We must be thankful, and our lives must be characterized by thankfulness. Further, we run the danger of seeing the things of God as mundane or ordinary. We become used to the magnificent truth of the gospel in our lives, so we stop being thankful for it. This is why Paul is reminding us yet again to look to the origins of our faith, the origins of our walk with the Lord. When we first received the gospel, it was with overwhelming thankfulness and gratitude and faith. We were saved at last. This is the origins of your faith. Christ Jesus, the Lord, you received him by faith and now your life is characterized by faith and thankfulness. Paul goes on now to explain the exclusivity of Christ. The main urgency of these verses is that we would not be taken in or taken captive by an ideology that is contrary to Christianity. So verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. I grew up in California, and my home church used to be rather large, probably around 1,000 attenders on any given Sunday. And because of this, the youth group was also quite large, and I loved my youth group growing up. There were probably a range of 30 to 60 high schoolers that would meet three times a week to worship God. They were all in. I looked up to so many of the upperclassmen when I was a freshman and when I was a sophomore. And when I became an upperclassman, I looked up to my colleagues and even some of the younger kids. When I was a freshman, seeing senior and junior boys crying during worship was so pivotal for me, understanding that you can be emotional with God and that you can weep over your salvation. It was formative. And many of them, after high school, they wanted to go to Christian college to prepare for Christian ministry vocationally, guys and girls both. Many of them just wanted to go to Christian college to receive a Christian education so that they wouldn't be led astray. And I watched from the sidelines as all but one of my friends from youth group growing up who went to a Christian college in California, had their faith deconstructed, torn down, and eventually walk away from Christ. They went to a Christian college to learn more about their Lord and Savior, but they came across empty deceit and man-made philosophy. Not only did they come across it, they were taken captive by it. They were taught it by hell-bound professors. It started with rejections of seemingly small doctrines, virgin birth, inerrancy. These small things that just don't make sense, so you can get rid of them without it affecting your faith in Jesus Christ. But eventually and inevitably, it led to a complete epistemology, a worldview that precluded and excluded Christ Jesus as Lord, God as the one who can reveal himself. Jesus is the preeminent one. They were taken captive by philosophy and empty to see. It was according to human tradition, whether that human be Kant or Freud or Marx, It was according to the elemental spirits of the world, which here almost certainly means demonic and evil spiritual forces. Please know that there are spiritual powers at play in the world, and they cannot wait for their shot at making you stumble, at convincing you to be prideful in a worldly philosophy or ideology, and eventually estranging you from the body of Christ. My friends were not taken captive by Christ. They were taken captive by something else. I was recently talking to one of them, who's currently at a seminary, and he said, my school actually disavows Jesus as God. We view Allah as God, though, and Buddha, Krishna, Baal, Zeus, and even God the Father, but only the Old Testament one. Can you see how heinous this sort of a thing is? But Paul here is not condemning all philosophy. He's condemning the vain and empty philosophy that is centered on man, that's not in submission to Christ, and that fills the individual with pride. Calvin writes, for the difficulty is not in rejecting those inventions of men which have nothing to commend them, but in rejecting those that captivate men's minds by a false idea of wisdom. The ideas that have nothing to commend them. They're easy to reject. They're easy to see the flaws in and to move away. It's the ideas that sound close to truth that make you sound wise and that captivate men's minds that require discernment. You sound really smart when you start talking about how there are two classes of people in this world, the oppressors and the oppressed. and that the oppressors have set up a hegemonic system by which the oppressed eventually form a sort of a Stockholm Syndrome and will defend their oppressors so that all they do is oppressive as oppressors. Even supposedly genuine attempts to free the ones that they oppressed are really just expressions of their oppressive mentality. It is true that there are some people in this world who oppress others, and it's true that the Bible hates this sort of a thing. We're to stand up to oppressors. But it is unchristian to view all people as inevitably and completely belonging to one of these two groups, unable to escape and unable to do anything outside of this group. If the church adopts this sort of an anthropology, this sort of a view of man, we stop viewing all people as redeemable by God. We start requiring that they do constant penance for their sins if they're in the oppressor group, understanding that there is no possible escape or end to their oppressive behaviors. We stop telling those in the oppressed class that what they do could be sin. We stop being able to categorize some of their behaviors as sin and therefore we're unable to give them the gospel which tells us to repent of our sins. Similarly, you sound really virtuous in many areas when you start describing how America was founded to be a truly Christian nation and how God has used America to bring about unprecedented prosperity to the world and bring unprecedented times of flourishing and freedom for those who he loves. It's OK to love your nation. And it's true that God is the head of all rulers and authorities. But it is unchristian to view any nation now as the nation of God, directed personally by him and incapable of sinning or doing wrong. If the church adopts this mentality, they will start equating material prosperity to faith and to God's favor. A prosperity gospel destroys the gospel of Christ Jesus, who had no place to lay his head. We also start to equate Christian with American, and we will see that we confuse the two. We will see American things and call them Christian, and we will then necessarily think of American Christians as the true Christians. These ideas and philosophies are not according to Christ, they're according to man. were not to be taken captive by them. We are to hold on to Christ in faith. I've watched dozens of my close friends become captivated by these We're not to seclude ourselves, terrified and scared of what these dangerous ideas might do to us or our families or our children when they go off to college. Rather, we cling to Christ humbly and totally with both hands by faith and confront these false ideas wholly and wisely. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. We walk according to Christ. We think according to Christ. And we view this world according to Christ, through the lens of Christ. The empty philosophies are trying to fill a deficiency. They're trying to make sense of the world without understanding who the world was created by. Paul writes, but in Christ is a perfection, or Calvin writes, but in Christ is a perfection to which nothing can be added. Hence, everything that men add of themselves attacks Christ's nature because it charges him with imperfection. So verses 9 and 10, 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 Christ, all the fullness of God dwells bodily. This is an incredibly sufficient reason not to be given to worldly deceit, to pseudo-spiritualism, to semi-Christian legalism and empty philosophy, but to cling to Christ. Because in Christ is not just godness or godlikeness, but rather the actual and full divine nature. All that God is is found in Christ. Paul is contrasting the whole fullness of deity that is found in Christ with the empty deceit that is found in this man-made philosophy, these man-made philosophies. You do not need to look to empty the seat because you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. The same words used in verse 16 to describe the preeminence of Christ. Christ's claim on your life is exclusive. You must view the world through the lens of Christ because the world was made by Christ. The mammy philosophies and empty deceits try to make sense of this world and they can't do it. Only knowing Christ will make sense of this world because only if you know Christ can you see the fallenness of this world. So what the cross achieves, verses 10 through 15, you have been filled in him. This does not mean that you are fully divine as Jesus is fully divine, but it means that Christ meets all of our spiritual needs. One of the false teachings that the Colossians were dealing with, that they were being pressured by, was that they must participate in heavenly worship, with quotes around it, through visions, through dreams. There were some elite Christians who supposedly experienced these visions and these dreams and thus set up a two-tier system of the Christian community. Paul is telling them that all believers have full union with Christ, who is the fullness of deity. They all have equal access to the Father through Christ. There is no two-tier system. God spoke through Jeremiah, and he said, "'Circumcise yourselves to the Lord. "'Remove the foreskin of your hearts, O man of Judah, "'and inhabitants of Jerusalem. "'Let my wrath go forth like fire, "'and burn with none to quench it, "'because of the evil of your deeds.' "'And later,' he said, "'behold, the days are coming,' declares the Lord, "'when I will punish all who are circumcised "'merely in the flesh, all who dwell in the desert, who cut the corners of their hair. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart." What is going on here? God is saying that we need to be circumcised in our hearts. The significance of circumcision goes all the way back to the time of Abraham and the start of the Abrahamic covenant. It was not merely an outward expression of faith in God. It was a sign and seal of God's covenant on his people, which was passed down through the generations. Circumcision of the flesh was meant to correspond to circumcision of the heart. It wasn't a physical only event or thing. G.K. Beal is really helpful here. He writes, This command to circumcise the heart includes both a reference to cutting off oneself from an old condition and being separated to a new condition of life. It was an active command negatively to set oneself apart from the corruption of the world and to positively set oneself into a new condition of life. Whenever there is circumcision in the Old Testament, there is the background that there will be a greater circumcision yet to come. Circumcision, like so many other things, was a shadow of a heavenly reality. It was an identity marker. We who are in Christ are circumcised in him. Our identity is Christ. Our identity cannot be founded or based on anything other than Christ. There can be no modifiers to our identity in Christ. It's exclusively Christ. Christ was cut off from this world through his death, and he was raised to a new condition of life in his resurrection by the powerful working of God. That was the circumcision of Christ. Paul writes in verses 11 and 12, 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. We have been buried with Christ in our baptism. Just as he entered the grave, we entered the waters, and we have been raised to new life with him by the powerful working of God. This is not our own doing. Verse 11 states that our circumcision was, quote, made without hands. The point is that our circumcision in Christ is done by God, not by humans. Verse 13. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him. If this verse sounds familiar, you may be thinking of Ephesians chapter two, verse one, and you who were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked. But there's a difference here. To the Colossians, Paul wrote, you who are dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him. The uncircumcision of our flesh, which reveals our uncircumcised hearts, is very important to Paul. Because Paul was an Old Testament scholar. In Ezekiel 44, God is listing the many sins of the people of Israel, and he says, in admitting foreigners uncircumcised in heart and flesh to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. Thus says the Lord God, no foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel shall enter my sanctuary or holy place. That is us. We were foreigners. We were Gentiles by birth. Paul says that we were dead in the uncircumcision of our flesh. And he almost certainly has in mind passages like this one from Ezekiel. But long before Ezekiel wrote these words, God spoke to Moses from our scripture reading earlier. In Deuteronomy 30, verse six, God said, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. It is the Lord who circumcises our hearts while we were dead. It is Christ Jesus, the Lord, that was circumcised so that we can enter the holy place of God. Indeed, that we can be the holy place, the temple of God, so that we can love our God, that we can live. This is what the gospel achieved. We have been made alive together in him. We've been made acceptable, circumcised in our hearts, because he forgave our trespasses. It was customary for the Romans when they crucified a man to write the laws that he broke, write his crimes on a list and to nail that list to the cross. You'd be able to look at the crosses and you'd be able to see exactly what these men did to deserve such a horrible and humiliating punishment. And we have a laundry list of charges against us. Adam sinned. One man sinned. And in that moment, the whole cosmos broke and all mankind was given to sin and death. The effects of one man's one sin. How many more sins have you committed than that? If one sin can have that great sweeping effect in large scale, what must be the effects of all the sins that you've committed since you were born? How could it be possible to undo even one of these sins? by nailing it to the cross of Jesus Christ. God, seeing the state of his beloved creation, sent his one and only son to bear the weight of every sin of every one of God's people. When Paul says, he forgave us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He is barely speaking figuratively. Of course, there was no actual physical list of our sins that was nailed to the cross with Jesus, but reality is not merely physical. When God looked at the cross, he saw a list of all of our sins there being paid for by Christ, his son. Your sins were on that cross, nailed to it, being paid for by the blood of Jesus. The rulers and the authorities, both earthly and spiritual demonic, thought that they had a victory over Jesus Christ the Lord when he went to the cross. Because in the economy of this world, dying on a cross is the ultimate defeat. You're hanging naked, you're suffering and suffocating and dying, humiliating, and the defeat is total. But in the heavenly economy, the king dies for his servants, not the other way around. The king dies so that his servants can live. The rulers and authorities were thus stripped, unclothed, disarmed by the cross, by the resurrection, and by Christ now ruling and triumphing over them. To the same degree that we were positively affected by the cross, God's enemies were negatively affected. We now have the ruler of the world in us, loving us. He abides in you. He did all this so that you could love him so that you might live. This is what was prophesied long ago in Deuteronomy 30, that your hearts would be circumcised, that you could love the Lord your God so that you would live. So by faith, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him. Do not let yourselves become captive by the philosophies and the empty deceits that are found in this world that are man-made, that are not according to Christ. Because Christ is the fullness of deity. In him is all truth, all meaning, and all power. He did this for you. Please pray with me. Lord God, we thank you. We thank you that you have triumphed over the powers of this world. We thank you that in your seeming defeat was your victory for your people. Please help us to walk in a manner pleasing to you, worthy of you. Help us to be captive to nothing but Christ. Remind us of our original faith in the gospel, the word of truth, which was proclaimed to us. Speak to us as we live our life. Help us as we go out in this world and are bombarded by empty deceits. Thank you for all that you've done. Amen.