Perils for the Church
Colossians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Good Morning everyone! This morning our main text we will be looking at is Colossians 2:8-10, but we will be using all of Colossians 2. So, if you have your bible please turn to it now. As you are turning there let us pray.
The story is told of an atheistic barber who was talking to a pastor. The barber asked the pastor, “If there is a loving God, how can He allow poverty, war, and suffering?”
Just at that moment a disheveled man crossed the street. The pastor said, “You are a barber and claim to be a good one. How can you allow that man to go unkept and unshaven?”
“He never gave me a chance!” the barber replied.
To which the pastor said, “Exactly, men are what they are because they reject God!”
Today, we will be looking at what Paul says “takes you captive”. It is the perils of the church that has been attacking it since its formation. This is nothing new. Just like the atheist in our story, Paul is warning us against man made philosophies, human traditions and worship of the elements of the world.
I have said it once, I will say it again, You can not have man-made agendas in a God given gospel.
Let’s start with the first part of our text.
Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ.
Paul is very good with his wording here with the use of takes you captive. The more literal meaning is to be kidnapped, to be taken prisoner. Do you know that the majority of people who are part of an antichristian cult once came from a christian church and home. Why are they so easily removed from the church? The two main reasons were church hurt and lack of knowledge. They did not read the Word of God for themselves. They took only what the pastor taught on Sunday mornings.
For the love of all things holy, don’t do that. I am truly blessed and grateful to be your pastor, but I will probably one day cause you some church hurt and for that I am sorry. I say this with all love, the church is not all about you and your feelings. I will never intentionally go out of my way to hurt you. There will be one day, I may make a mistake in my sermon prep and say something wrong up here. Go back and study the verses I give you. Read it for yourself. That is the beauty of what William Tyndale did. He printed you off a bible, so you didn’t have to rely on someone else to study it for you. You can do it.
Paul first addresses philosophy. Philosophy in itself is not a bad thing. Matter of fact, philosophy means the study of wisdom. There has been a many of great Christian philosophers. When it becomes dangerous, is when you think you know more than God. Your wisdom and knowledge become your idol. Then it starts to become a false teaching. It starts to become delusional. It starts to add things to Christianity that does not belong.
Like human traditions. Notice Paul calls them human traditions, not Godly traditions. Traditions in themselves are not bad. We have traditions here at NEC. On the months with a fifth Sunday, we have the Lord’s supper, where we remember what Christ did for us on the cross and we also have fifth Sunday fellowship. Now both of these traditions are biblically based. Christ said to have the Lord’s supper and do this in remembrance of me. the fellowship meals is based on Acts 2 where they early church broke bread together and had a meal.
Traditions become bad when it become what false teacher call necessary. Let’s jump down a bit in our text to Colossians 2:16-17
Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ.
That therefore has some meaning that we will get back to, but for now notice Paul is going against Jewish traditions. The Jews were telling the Christians that if they wanted to get to heaven they had to follow the the kosher diet…what no bacon or boudin or cracklins…them people is crazy. They were also telling them that they had to participate on the seven Jewish festivals. What if I stood here and told you that they only way to heaven is that you went to every festival in the Acadiana area and had to spend a weeks worth of pay at each one? Or that you had to do absolutely no work from Friday -Saturday.
What Paul was addressing is that worship of anything else, but Christ is very dangerous.
No human tradition or ritual or specific way you have to pray or pray to other than Christ will get you into heaven. It is only your belief in Jesus Christ that will get you saved. It is Him and Him alone.
If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
I said we will look at that therefore. That therefore means that Paul said something before that needs to be addressed.
For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
We see here that the second we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are filled with the Holy Spirit.
In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.
How are we sealed with the Holy Spirit? How are guaranteed our salvation?
Through circumcision and baptism. What a minute pastor, you just went over saying that we are not saved through traditions or rituals, yet here you are saying we are sealed as Christians by two traditions.
Yes. I am saying that, but not how you are thinking it. Let’s look at Paul’s words in
You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Circumcision
It is physical sense, it is the surgical removal of a man’s foreskin. In Jewish tradition, it signified that they were set apart by God by cutting away part of their manhood. Unfortunately, this became another tradition that became more of a symbol of pride and a badge of honor than what it truly was suppose to mean.
Circumcision as it is put here does not mean a physical cutting, it symbolizes the death of Christ and our death with him. It shows we are cutting away our old self. We are dying to our old self. It is through this symbolic action, we are reconciled with Christ.
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
So it is not a tradition, but a symbolic action. Just like
Baptism
Here at NEC, we believe in a believer’s baptism. This means that when you are of age to understand who Christ is and what He has done for you, you are immersed in the waters of baptism. Do you need to be baptised to be saved? Absolutely not! Point in fact, the thief on the cross that Christ told that together we will be in paradise. Did he get baptized? The disciples did not run up there and sprinkle his little head with water? John the Baptist did not come up from the grave and dunk him the Jordan river. Do you need to be baptized in our giant Christian fish tank to get to heaven? No!
Baptism stands for our new life with Him. It reflects the work of the Spirit imparting new life from Christ, a new humanity, the human spirit made alive. It is the difference between a true Christian and merely a professing one. It is the true Christian having been made alive in Christ. He has a whole new basis for living. That is the true meaning of baptism. When we immerse someone in the waters of baptism, he is not left there, symbolically, he is brought out again with a new life.
So no, you do not have to physically have a baptism, but do I feel you should. Yes absolutely. The two reasons I think you should go down in a believer’s baptism is one, you are telling the church, I have made a commitment to Christ and I need the church to be there for me. To hold me up and help me out. And the second is obedience to God’s Word
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.
Baptism can not and should not be a source of pride or a badge of honor. It should be a point of humility, dying to self and raising up in new life in Christ. So I will close with this, do not let pride start your process of baptism and do not let pride stop you from being immersed in the waters of baptism. It is not about pride, it is about humble obedience.