Colossians 2:6-10 | Walking with the King

BAPTISM

Romans 6:1–4 (ESV)

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Testimony:

Baptism

Prayer

Little different this morning!

Hello

Catechism

Question: How does the Holy Spirit Help us?

Answer: The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, and enables us to pray and understand God’s word.

Read Text

Walk with the boys

Friday morning, it got to 7:40am and we had had breaky, boys were clothed, they had done thier chores and we have finished our devotion… very rare that all those things occur, let alone with that early. So I take the boys out for a walk while Tess gets set before I go to work.

And strategic by the way…. I don’t have daughters but i grew up with three sisters and from my freinds who have girls… different species. Young boys… gotta touch grass. You gotta run those things, like a puppy, if they don’t burn thier energy out the cushion’s getting torn apart.

And normally Judah would get thrown in the pram… although this time i just put on his crocs and we walk up around the corner to a building site. The boys are off. and me and Judah are tagging along behind. He has his beer gut out and he still walking funny… cute as.

But as we are heading along the soft grass on the easement, im leading him… Judah, like most children, has a deep fascination with the thing that he knows he’s not allowed. To walk on the road. Proverbs 22:15 is correct when it says 15 Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,

So as we are walking, I am constantly, directing and redirecting, picking him up off the road as he wanders onto it.

Becuase even though he knows the way he ought to go, and he has his father to follow, he is consistently distracted by the temptation and drawn by his own desire, to leave the path laid out for him.

ntroduction: Walk in him

Paul here begins a new section which has an overarching central point.

Walk in him. vs 6

A central point that takes us all the way until his final greetings part way through chapter 4.

When Paul calls us to life in light of the grace of God… he calls us to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Becuase of the grace of God for us in Christ Jesus, becuase he has forgiven us of our sins, through the divine Son and delivered us from the domain of darkness, now… walk in him.

This is the Christian life - saved by grace, and walking with the King!

Its a walking -‘in him’

It is a life that we live in union with Jesus. An idea James is going to talk more about next week. Although an aspect of what this means is that the Christian life is a life lived in relationship with God in Christ.

It’s walking with Jesus.

As many of you have found out - One of my go to questions as I disciple, counsel, or just try and love and be a good friend… is

‘how is your walk with Jesus at the moment?’

I like this question, 1) becuase its biblical, and 2) beucase it is unusual enough that it often catches people off gaurd, and therefore more likely to give an honest answer.

But he most common response I get, is in some form a review of how that person is going with thier spritual disciplines. You know, I havnt really been in the word a great deal lately. - OR - well yeah good i have been really consistent with my time in prayer and devotion. Now, don’t get me wrong, those and others are good disciplines but our faith is not based on what we do, or how we perform. Our faith is based on what Jesus has done, and trusting him in it. Our spiritual disciplines - should be disciplines of grace. Not laws to abide by. Disciplines of grace that help us commune, delight in, walk with the king.

Can I reframe this for you:

Read the word We don’t read the Bible, becuase to tick it off or to appease God with what we can do for him. We read the word beucase we love the king and we want his words to penetrate our hearts and lead us down the right path. - Read his word, and allow Jesus to speak to you.

Pray Not becuase its the practice of piety that will make my life seem holier. No we pray, becuase in doing so we speak to Jesus, the king we are walking with. We are seeking his wisdom, his guidance, his direction. - Pray and speak to God

KIDS!!!! You are invited… we read, not just an old big book, but we are welcoming the words of the king to shape and teach us. YOU can pray, anytime, anyplace, anyprayer, and when we do so trusting in God we are speaking to King Jesus.

How is your walk with Jesus?

Even thoough our sin cuased us to be seperated from God… God has come in the person of jesus Christ, redeeming us from sin and death and filling us with his Spirit, so that now the Christian life is a ‘walking in him.’ As Christ dwells in us. This only comes about:

by faith - Colossians 2:7 7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.

just as you received Christ as Lord, continue to walk in him. How did they receive Jesus as king? by faith, by giving thier allegience to the king who was crucified but then rose again from the grave. By having faith in the promises of God. 2 Corinthians 5:7 “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” Walking by sight, sees the doubts, the fears, the anxieties and the ordinary burdens of life. Faith trusts in the promises and presence and love of God. Like Peter walking out on the water to Jesus, sight sees the wind and the waves that fill with fear… faith looks to the king who is mighty to save us and keep us. The manner by Which we are to live our Christian life is with the same faith that we began it with. Faith in Jesus as Lord and saviour This sort of faith filled walk that …

abounds in thanksgiving

The Christians walk should not be a life that walks with head bowed and feet dragging. Nor the walk of a bored and aimless teenager kicking stones on the street. No, the walk of Christian, is like the walk of a captive who has just been released from the concentration camp.

Its the delighted walk of the Paralytic brought to Jesus in Mark 2, who received forgiveness of sins and who was able to stand up, pick up his own mat and leave on his own two feet. Its a life that is joyful, beucase it abounds in thanksgiving since God has shown us grace and kindness when we deserved only judgement. King David Famous for defeating Goliath and having a heart after the Lord. Was certainly not perfect. His infamous failing came about as he took another mans wife and then murdered that man to cover it up. In Psalm 51 we have recorded his prayer to the Lord when he came to be confronted by his sin. Its a prayer of real repentance and greif over his sin.

Psalm 51:9–12 (ESV)

9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11 Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Go and read this Psalm for yourself… although can I point out, that no where in this prayer does David point to his own lusts as the cause for his sin, nor his anger, or fear of man, that led him to murder. Though certainly those were present in him. No, he makes plain, that he had lost his joy. SO he prays, ‘restore me to the joy of you salvation’

Joy that humbled him to know his need for God Joy that brought thanksgiving to him, a sinner, that rejoiced in the God who had taken the shepherd and made him king. Joy that delighted in the goodness and the glory of God.

We ought to ask ourselves whether our lives display an abundant thanksfulness to God that expresses itself in Joy?

As you walk with the king, are you filled with delight that you get to even do that? to be known and loved by God — or are they just a set of Christian statement that give you an answer to the religious question on the census.

when we come to worship the king, is it an activate response of thanksgiving that expresses itself with joyful praise? Or is this just what christians are meant to do… So you come, do the sunday morning christian kareoke but your heart is far from God.

By faith in the grace of God we have the delight of walking with Jesus.

Nevetheless, like my one year old, we are equally susceptible in our flesh to be distracted by temptation and drawn to leave the path that Jesus is walking.

And this is exactly of what Paul warns of next.

Let no one take you captive

Colossians 2:8 (ESV)

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.

Do not be taken captive.

Ideas capture us. They shape how we think and therefore what we beleive and how we behave. They lead us to walk in a certain direction.

Paul here specifcally warns here against - philosophy and empty deceit

The Philosophy and empty deciept.

Not all philosophy is bad, but paul here condemns that which does not base itself on and line up with faithful teaching.

‘It is Philosophy that is ‘empty deception”:

(1) becuase it is based on ‘the tradition of men’ and not on the ‘word of God’ (1:25) or true ‘instruction’ (2:7), which they have’received (2:7);

(2) becuase it is based on worldy doctrine(“the elemental spirits of the world”), and not that which proceeds from heaven (3:1-3);

Now we are going to delve deeper into what Paul means here when he gets to describing these false teachings in vs 16-23.

But the final and most important reason this philosophy is empty deciept is,

(3) becuase it is not based on Christ and Christ alone.

It’s a false Gospel.

Becuase It has replaced Jesus as the source of truth. Or, it has added to Jesus. It has said, yeah, you can walk with the King… but to do so properly just make sure you:

follow this tradition as well

Or you adhere to bloke x’s wisdom for life.

Becuase if you don’t, well are you really a Christian.

or sure, Jesus is saying one thing, but modern psycology is saying something different. ‘the science says’

Don’t be taken captive. Be wary of the danger of wandering onto the road.

Ephesians 2:1–3 (ESV) The state of captivity.

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

We are all walking, following something. - Spiritual, human tradition, worldly wisdom, our sinful flesh.

Paul says don’t be taken captive, why, becuase in Christ we have been delivered from the domain of darkness.

Colossians 1:13–14 (ESV)

13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

We are no longer subject to these rulers. So don’t go back, don’t be held captive by them.

You have been saved by the king to walk with the king in life.

Don’t go back to the concentration camp, don’t go back to the oppresive ruler that made you subject to death.

But be

Captivated by Christ

Colossians 2:9–10 (ESV)

9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

In Him Fullness of diety dwells bodily.

Jesus is God with us

In the Old Testament God’s presence swelt among his people in the tabernacle and then in the temple.

He has come and dwelt among us in Christ.

John 1:1–2 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

John 1:14–16 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

He is the new temple of God. Where the fullness of the divine has come to dwell among us.

We don’t get to the divine by:

going up the mountain, or to a temple

or getting the right crystals or saying the right mantra’s

we don’t access the divine by understanding ourselves perfectly or getting in sync with the flow of universe

We don’t appease the divine by offering sacrifices to atone for our sins

we don’t speak to God by praying to angels or ancestors or past saints.

God has come to us, in Christ Jesus, in whom the fulness of diety dwells.

Jesus, Who laid down his life that we might be forgiven by faith… and who welcomes us to come into his presence with praise and thanksgiving.

ANd now, we have been filled in him. Part of this new Temple

Colossians 2:10 (ESV)

10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

As we give our allegience by faith to Jesus who is king, we become a part of this new temple. The Spiritual house of God.

the body of Christ

or the church.

Did you notice in verse 6-7, Paul loves a mixed metaphor - walk in him… rooted and built up and established in faith…

What… walk… rooted - walk like a tree, rooted to the spot!

Walk - Built up and established. walk like a building

Live as the new, living temple, fixed by the gospel of grace and filled with the fullness of God by faith in Christ!

Don’t be captivated by anything, other than Jesus.

Don’t walk in any direction, other than the one Jesus is going.

And he gives one final reason, and that is the outcome of each path.

Empty vs Full in outcome

Walking with the King is the way of life, of fullness - filled in him.

every other way, is empty.

Every one of us is looking for a life of meaning, or purpose - - or we might say, the fulfilled life.

We can follow the science and the wisdom of the day, having more luxuries and comforts available to us than ever before. But the suicide rate is also higher than it has ever been. Empty.

More connected than ever. but lonely. empty of real relationships.

More entertained, but empty of meaning.

More life hacks than ever… so more organised, more efficient, more ordered, — empty of peace and so crippled by anxiety.

You can try and find fulfillment in accumulated as much wealth, or experiences or successes, but you will still find your soul is empty.

And it will be so, unless it is filled in Jesus, In whom fullness of diety dwells.

Walk with him.

Freinds,

I am not special, i have nothing of lasting value to offer you except to point you to the one who can bring you eternal fulfilment.

If you are walking with Jesus - fix youself upon him.