This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back for day two of week three of our look through the
New Testament. We're looking at the book of Colossians today. As you open up the
Bible to the book of Colossians, any book in the Bible, you're really opening up
the truth about today.

We live in a day when a number of people want to design a religion that suits
them. So they'll take a little from Christianity, they'll take a little from
Hinduism, and they'll take a little bit from the force in Star Wars, and they'll
make that their belief 'cause it just suits them. And we have a name today for
those systems that we put together.

We call it New Age. Well, in the day the New Testament was written, they had a
name for the same kind of thing. People taking all the beliefs of that day and
putting them all together.

They called it Gnosticism. And so the people of the city of Colossae were
struggling with this false teaching that wanted to take away from them the truth
of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. They had what has come to be
called today the Colossian heresy 'cause it was a mix.

It was a mix of Gnosticism, false teaching about how great we are. It was a mix
of Jewish ceremonialism, false works. It was a mix of angel worship.

You can read about that in Colossians chapter two, false worship. It was a mix
of asceticism or false sacrifice. So false thinking, false works, false worship,
false sacrifice, it was all false.

And because Paul addresses what was false in this book, he helps us to remember
what's true. Colossians, the book, answers questions like, do the heavenly
bodies have any influence over our lives? Is astrology, is there anything to it?

It answers questions like, is there any relationship between diet and spiritual
living? Does God speak to us in our minds only or does he have something to say
through his word? Colossians answers the question, do the Eastern religions have
something to offer us as evangelical Christians?

When you look to the book of Colossians, you get answers to questions like, how
can we believe in a good God in an evil world? Is God all loving? Then if he is,
then how can you explain evil?

If God is all powerful, why doesn't he take away all sin? If Christ died for our
sins, why is there still sin in the world? Is Jesus the only way among many
other ways?

Colossians answers all of those questions that we still have today. Now it's
interesting to notice, we looked at Ephesians a bit back on our study and
Ephesians and Colossians are very similar letters. Ephesians though focuses more
on the body of which Christ is the head and Colossians focuses on Christ, who is
the head of the body.

So let's start out as we look at an introduction to the whole book of Colossians
by reading Colossians one, one to two. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the
will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the holy and faithful brothers and
sisters in Christ at Colossae, grace and peace to you from God our Father.

So here's the characters at the beginning you have Paul, we've talked about him
almost every letter so far. And later as we talk through these letters in the
New Testament, we're going to get to some other writers. This is one of the prison
letters written by the apostle, written most believed while he was a prisoner in
Rome.

And then Timothy, Timothy is named 24 times in the New Testament. He is co-named
with Paul in six of the openings to his letter. So it's Paul writing along with
Timothy.

And they're writing to the other character in the story is Colossae. One of the
three cities that was located about a hundred miles inland from Ephesus. The
Colossian church was probably about five years old when Paul wrote this letter.

Colossae was situated in the Lycus River about a hundred miles from Ephesus and
12 miles inland from Laodicea. And he says to them the same thing he said to
most of those he wrote to. He reminded them that they as believers were both in
Christ and in Colossae.

I'm writing to those of you who are in Christ and in Colossae. These two worlds
that we live in. The worlds that the saints in Colossae were living in but also
the worlds that we live in.

There's this vivid contrast between the saints who were in Colossae. Colossae
was a small, insignificant town. It was overshadowed by its rich neighbors,
Laodicea and Heropolis.

And it was a town that was filled with paganism and idolatry. So to be a saint
in Colossae seemed like a contradiction in terms. But the truth is that's still
true today.

Every Christian lives with a dynamic of two things placed alongside of each
other. We're in Colossae, we are in Christ. You are in, put your city name in,
and you are in Christ.

He says here, he writes to the holy and the faithful who are in Colossae. So
every one of these letters that we read, they're written to you as one of the
holy and the faithful. The word holy means separated unto God.

Or one way to say this in modern terminology is to be claimed by God. As a
follower of Jesus Christ, you are holy because you belong to God. Why is God's
name holy?

Because it's God's name, it belongs to him. Why do we call the Bible the holy
Bible? Because it's God's book.

Why do we call Israel the holy land? Because it, in a particular way, belongs to
God. So why are you holy as a believer?

Because you belong to him. In one sense, holy has not so much to do with how you
act, but whose you are. You belong to God.

And then you act based on that reality. But it starts with whose you are. Now,
why did Paul write this letter?

Colossians, in a great way, tells us how to live a full life. Not a life that's
emptied of truth or emptied of meaning or emptied of all that God has for us,
but how to live a full life. In order to help them to do that, Paul had to write
and combat some errors in the church and to show believers as he combated these
errors that they had everything that they needed in Jesus Christ already.

They didn't need something else. They already had the fullness of everything
they needed just in Jesus. Colossians 2, 9 to 10 says, "For in Christ there is
all of God in a human body.

" So you have everything when you have Christ. And you are filled with God
through your union with Christ. He is the highest ruler with authority over
every other power.

So anytime someone says you need Jesus Christ plus something else to really have
all you need in faith, it's just a lie. How could you need anything but Jesus?
You have more than you could possibly need in him and nothing else that you
could need could be greater than him.

Now with that sense, Paul talks in the book of Colossians about how to live a
full life. And let's just walk through what that means for him as you walk
through this book. He starts in chapter one talking about to live a full life
means you have to have full knowledge.

In Paul's prayer for the Colossians in chapter one, verse nine, he prays this,
"We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all
the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. " So to live a full life,
you have to have full knowledge that God wants you to live a full life, that
God's will for your life can be discovered through his Spirit, that he will lead
you and he will guide you. That's where it starts, with God's answer to this
prayer that was prayed for not only the Colossians but for each of us.

To live a full life, you also need to understand what we talked about just a
moment ago. You understand the full image of God and that the full image of God
is in Jesus. So you have full knowledge and now you have full image that's in
Jesus.

Those verses we just looked at, "For in Christ all the fullness of the deity
lives in bodily form. " So that means you have everything that you need in him.
Our lives are always diminished.

When we look for our deepest needs to be met anywhere outside of Jesus, because
anywhere outside of Jesus is less than we could possibly need. To live a full
life is also, Paul said, a life of full service. When we say full service, you
might remember the days or live in a state where that means you drive in and
they make sure you get the gas that you need and the oil that you need and the
gas station.

But Paul is talking about an attitude toward service, an attitude toward serving
God, which is very challenging. You may have never thought with the depth that
he talks about in Colossians about what it means to serve God, to serve Jesus.
Listen to this, Colossians 1.

24, Paul says, "Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, for I fill up in
my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions for the sake of
his body, which is the church. " Now this one verse is worth a whole week of
study, but let me just say very briefly. He says, "I fill up in my flesh what's
lacking in Christ's afflictions.

" What does he mean? He can't mean that he would be able to die on a cross in a
way that Jesus wasn't able to die on the cross. Jesus finished all that needed
to be done.

He said it's finished on the cross. So what is he filling up in his flesh what's
lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions? He's talking about serving the church
and serving others, bringing others to a place where they understand what Jesus
did on the cross for the sake of his body, which is the church, he says.

So it's about the church. So to fully serve God, you realize you're fulfilling
the ministry of Jesus in what you do. It's not your ministry, it's Jesus's
ministry.

And as a church and you as an individual in the church, whatever you do in
Jesus's name, you're fulfilling the ministry of Jesus Christ. Now in chapter
one, verse 25, he says, part of that is presenting the word of God in all its
fullness. In chapter one, 28, he says, part of that is presenting everyone
complete in Christ.

That's fulfilling the ministry of Christ. So don't think of it as your ministry.
Think of it as Jesus's ministry and you get to be involved in fulfilling it.

In chapter four, he talks about having a full understanding that one of the keys
to living a full life is being able to confront the false teaching that wants to
steal that kind of life from you. Full, rich is a complete understanding he
talks about in chapter two, verse two. All the fullness dwells in Jesus, two,
verse nine.

You've been given fullness in Christ, he says in two, verse 10. The reality is
found in Jesus, he says in chapter two, verse 17. Again and again and again he
says, you want the truth?

Look at Jesus. You want to confront false teachers or false teaching in your
life? It's the real Jesus.

Don't argue with false teaching. Just present the real Jesus. He'll win every
argument in your heart and with that false teacher.

And then he ends the book of Colossians, chapter three to the end of the book,
talking about how to live a full life. You live a full life, he says, by setting
your heart and mind on things above, by taking off the old and putting on the
new. You live a full life.

Well, let me read these verses as we come to an end. Colossians 3, 12 to 14.
Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance
against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues,
put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let's pray together. Our Father, we want to live the fullness of the life that
you've given to us. And so we look to the reality of Jesus and who he is and ask
that through our focus on Jesus, you would protect us from being drawn away into
any kind of false teaching that appeals to our pride or that appeals to our
fear.

We want instead to trust in you. And we want to do what we just read. We want to
put on love, which binds everything else together in unity.

So we know that today, the most full life that we can live is the life that
expresses love towards you and love towards others. Give us, we pray, this day
the opportunity to do that. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow, we're going to take a look at "First Thessalonians," a book that
moves from the full life we talked about today to talk about the authentic life
that we can have in Jesus Christ.