Untitled Sermon (25)

Northside Church

May 7, 2023

Colossians #4

Jamey Mills

My name is Jamey Mills, lead pastor at NS.

It’s always good to be with you guys.

Today we are starting a brand new series on the NT Book of Colossians… We’re calling it Nothing More/Nothing Less…

God used the Apostle Paul to write it, most likely while in a Roman prison.

It was likely 61 AD, Just a handful of years after the life, death and resurrection of Christ.. Many people would have still been alive.

It was written to the Church in Colossae. Southwest corner of modern day Turkey about 120 miles east of Ephesus…

At one point it was a large, wealthy and influential Roman territory.

A commercial center on an important trade route in the Lycus river valley.

It was known for this dark red wool cloth…

It began to lose some of it’s influence when Laodicea was founded.

These two cities along with Hierapolis were destroyed and rebuilt after earthquakes in AD 17 and 60. By 400 AD the city no longer really existed.

There are some really cool ruins from Hierapolis and Laodicea (SLIDE) which aren’t far away…

Here is one example of pictures we have from Colossae…

Some say because it's much older and some say because there really hasn't been a huge focus to excavate Colossae…

Colossians is interesting because even though Paul wrote it… He didn’t plant the Colossian Church.

Acts 19 talks about how Paul began to teach at the school of Tyrannus. It was a place for deep thinkers and philosophers…

It says that everyday, for two years… Paul rented a space… got up and preached the gospel until the people throughout the province of Asia… Heard the Word of the Lord. One author calls it the most important and under-discussed aspects of Paul’s ministry.

One who heard Paul… likely a lot was a guy named Ephaparas from Colossae… who became a believer… and who went home and began to share…and eventually planted the church in Colossae. Most scholars don't think Paul had even been there.

Epaphras planted the Church in Colossae.

Some time later, Epaphras travels to where Paul is to visit and gives him an update on how the Church is coming along… and this letter was Paul’s response.

To really understand it… you have to understand why Paul wrote it.

Who he wrote it to. What was going on within this Church and around them? What was his intended outcome?

Colossians 1:3–8 NLT

We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News. This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace. You learned about the Good News from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker. He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.

3 We always pray for you, and we give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, 5 which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven. You have had this expectation ever since you first heard the truth of the Good News.

6 This same Good News that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.

7 You learned about the Good News from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker. He is Christ’s faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. 8 He has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you.

Paul commends the Church in Colossae for doing a lot right.

Paul is excited to hear about them and how they are getting along… and wants to encourage their…

Deep faith in Jesus

Great love for God’s people and for others

It sounds like The great commandment… (Matt 22:36-40)

Jesus was being tested about the most important commandment… His response was… Love God with all you are and love your neighbor as yourself…

Paul seems to be saying that it had been going well.

Matt Chandler said it like this…

Vertical always translates to horizontal…

A growing love for God always translates to loving His people

… and to loving others.

That’s dealt with in scripture in several places…

1 John 4:12 (NLT)

1 John 4:12 NLT

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

1 John 4:20 (NLT)

1 John 4:20 NLT

If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?

20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar.

A deep love for God, seeking Him, leads to a deeper love for people.

Learning to see things His way… becoming more like Him… Becoming more aware of our need from Him and stepping more and more away from self righteousness.

Paul is commending them… and Epaphras…

Things had been going well… God was at work in their lives and in their Church

This love for God and people, Paul says, is driven by this confident hope of Heaven

… Of Jesus and what He’s done.

I had a friend that put it this way…

10 out of 10 of us will face death and every moment we live moves us closer to that end. It’s not our favorite thought, and even though we don’t live like it… we know it's true.

And for me NOTHING helps evaluate where my hope is… better.

What am I believing in… counting on…

Money can't… careers can’t… nice things or houses can’t

One author said this… a common philosophy of our day is… I am banking on that I’ve been good enough… compared to what? Is our hope really in the fact that I think I’ve been less of an idiot than my neighbor?

Here is the issue… before a holy God…

Isaiah 64:6 says even your righteousness is like filthy rags. Even on our best day… doing our best things… in view of a holy God… is like dirty clothes.

Tainted with pride… selfishness motivation… dishonest gain… a divided heart…

Chandler used another… the idea of living it up now and taking our chances…

Solomon… writer of ecc… maybe the richest person the world has ever known… high brow… low brow…

tried it all… had it all… money, women, power, authority… he indulged and then he even tried to go without… his summary… ALL that this world clings to and has to offer is meaningless, it's a lie. It’s empty. It cannot deliver on what it promises. Not worthy of hope.

Paul is calling them back to it…

Back to the hope they knew when they first heard…

IT'S NOT ROME.

IT’s NOT Ceaser

It is simply Jesus… Nothing more and nothing less.

Paul tells them that the same Good News that changed their lives… is changing lives all around the world.

They are not alone… and neither are we.

As God, people take the Gospel out with them… God’s Kingdom is on the move and growing… something God said would happen all the way back in Genesis.

Paul stops praising and turns to praying…

Colossians 1:9–14 NLT

So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.

9 So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while, you will grow as you learn to know God better and better.

11 We also pray that you will be strengthened with all his glorious power so you will have all the endurance and patience you need. May you be filled with joy, 12 always thanking the Father. He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.

Despite all the good things… there was an issue growing.

Paul wrote this letter to encourage them… but also to speak into this growing Issue…

His praise for them turns to prayer over them… a prayer that Paul says they’ve never stopped praying… Continually… seeking God on their behalf.

And I hear two things in Paul’s prayer

1. A deep desire for continued spiritual growth/maturity.

2. Paul is praying into what they… and we need… in the face of a very secular culture.

Paul prays for.

Complete knowledge of God’s will

Spiritual wisdom and Understanding…

Strengthened in Him and by Him

Endurance and patience

Filled with Joy

Paul connects it to lives that honor God

And lives that are fruitful

And then Paul reminds us of this…

HE… He is the one that rescued them… and you and I… from the kingdom of darkness

He is the one… that brought us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.

He is the one… who purchased our freedom and forgave them… and you and I… of sin.

It wasn’t Roman might… it wasn’t Roman leadership… it wasn’t Roman money… it wasn’t Roman hope… It wasn't being a good citizen…

One author said it like this…

We haven’t seen anything like Rome… before and after…

The sheer size of the empire, rule and influence was massive.

The Roman empire ruled for about 1500 years

We are working on 245

And you can hear that right… It’s possible that no other empire has affected the world more.

Understanding some of that helps us understand what's happening in Colossae …

One example is this…

Roman Roads… the first one was early 300BC. By the end of the second century there was over 50K miles of Roman road…

Here is the crazy thing… Some of them, including bridges, are still used today. (SLIDE)

Why does that matter…

It shrunk the world. One author said… Roman roads did for that era… what the internet has done for ours.

My first thought was… I see that and how cool is that… Literally… changed the world.

My second thought is… I know when Al Gore invented the internet… some of the ways its being used… was probably NOT what he had in mind.

It’s good in so many ways… but it’s also the armpit of morality in so many too.

Sorry I’m going there… as parents… I hope you are in the loop and in the know as to what's going on… in general but also with your kids.

If you haven’t I’d encourage you to stop by the APD and talk with the officer over there that gets to work on those things… and the # of cases they deal with was mind blowing… and his view on social media… was… well… an educated opinion that might be worth listening to.

But that is exactly what the Roman roads did…

In some ways it ushered in or at the very least held up something called Syncretism.

I believe it is at the heart of what Paul is addressing and it's very much alive and well today… and one of the most dangerous things about it is…

Unless you're living intentionally within a secular culture… Syncretism seeps in.

Basically… all roads lead to Rome…

Colossae being an area of commerce… those who traveled those roads brought with them their own culture, ideas, philosophies, morality, and religion.

A lot of scholars believe this was the incubator for Gnosticism… which became a HUGE thing in the world… that anchored on special knowledge… certain people had this special knowledge…

Syncretism was the merging of many things… primarily

Greek Mysticism

Hellenism

And Jewish Legalism

And for even those in the church it went something like this…

I believe in Jesus… they would probably even Say… Jesus is the main thing…

But I really appreciate the way my neighbor prays to all the gods… I don't want to miss out so…

I like this person's view on… whatever…

Or I feel like this view is really offensive to this culture so I’m gonna rewrite what my Bible says or at least pretend I didn’t see it.

And so little by little the gospel was being deluded in the lives of the people and in the church…

And it was becoming this idea, subtle at first, that Jesus was… NOT ENOUGH.

Would you agree… that this is happening within the Church?

Do you see it happening in you or your family?

And that is the message of colossians…

And one we need to know… It became known as the Colossian Heresy.

If you were to sum up the entire Bible in a word… what would it be?

OT and NT…

It would be “Jesus” Nothing more and nothing less.

There is no other word… or other name… Or other way… or other truth… or other life..

Proverbs 14:12 (ESV)

12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

Isaiah 55:8–9 (ESV)

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

In every generation , Christians are tempted to go along with the philosophy of the times. It’s not easy or comfortable to step out the broken things that culture often holds as essential.

Galatians 1:6–8 (ESV)

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

Paul is calling them back to the one…

And it's a timely message for our day…

How has culture invaded your theology?

What the world clings to… values… teaches… and have you drank the kool aid…

Have I?

It was a huge threat to their faith…to their salvation… and to this Church in Colossae… and if we are willing to acknowledge the world we live in, it's a threat to our own as well. It is a very real and present danger.

Paul is calling them back to Jesus… Nothing more… Nothing Less.

Jesus is enough…

ROME… ceased to exist

And so did colosse

Jesus still lives

Your day is coming… lol…

Where is your hope?

Are there areas where culture and compromise have creeped in?

Are you anchored in the reality of Jesus and truth? How do you know?

What a great day for considering that reality…

Prayer