Colossians 2:11-15
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Introduction
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to FCC where we worship God in Spirit and in truth, one verse at a time!
Isn’t the white fluffy stuff absolutely beautiful. Whit means pure church and I am reminded every time it snows of this verse:
“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land;
The Lord invites us into a relationship and part of this is that he makes us as white as snow.
Praise God!
Prayer
Prayer
Read Colossians 2:10-15
Read Colossians 2:10-15
Review
Review
In the last couple of weeks, we learned about one mark of false teaching that started to creep into the church at Colossae was Greek Philosophy. And we learned that it comes into the church 3 ways:
According to the traditions of men
According to to the elementary principles of the world
And not according to Christ
All of these have elements of humanism intertwined in them church
Humanism- An outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.
Can you see philosophy in this church?
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
2. Then last week, we spent all of Sunday realizing that we are complete, we are whole in Christ!
We learned that every-time Jesus healed someone he made them whole.
Complete-pleroo- to be filled (supplied) v. — to be or become generously supplied with, to be filled, complete, finished, to render full or complete, to fill to the top: so that nothing shall be wanting to full measure, fill to the brim. To render perfect!
When you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ church, you were made complete, you were made whole in Him positionally, but then we must workout our won salvation practically by :
Spending time with Jesus in prayer
By spending time with the Lord in his Word
By spending time with the saints so we can exercise our gifts, receive and give love, even be knit together in love and to be encouraged
If we are doing these 3 things, a natural by-product of doing these will be witnessing of sharing your faith.
Let us remember there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can make you complete, that can make you whole apart form Christ! Nothing church! Nothing!
In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
Paul gives us three elements of what our completeness looks like:
Salvation
Forgiveness
Victory
SALVATION
I think it is worth noting that all through this epistle thus far, we see Paul exalting the Deity of Jesus Christ. Why?
Because all religious systems, false teaching, and cults seek to attack Jesus!
Here we see Paul begin to shift is train of thought from Philosophy to legalism.
The is legalism, not legal was ism!
It still exists today!
Legalism- The word “legalism” does not occur in the Bible. It is a term Christians use to describe a doctrinal position emphasizing a system of rules and regulations for achieving both salvation and spiritual growth. Legalists believe in and demand a strict literal adherence to rules and regulations.
Do you think this still exists today?
In Him you were circumcised! In Him church, In Him, not by yourself, not with someone else, only in Jesus, not a religious system or works, but Jesus.
However, let us not discredit works because God saved us for works
This means that if we are saved, we will have good works!
Note: this is a circumcision made without hands. This means there was a circumcision made with hands:
And God said to Abraham: “As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant. He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
Circumcision was a sign of the Abrahamic covenant
Every Jewish little boy had to be circumcised church on the 8th day
Why the 8th day? It is because vitamin K is at its peak
However, the Jews turned this into a ritual that to them meant that if you were circumcised it meant that you were saved, you could call this surgical salvation, not matter what they did wrong or how they lived, if they were circumcised they were saved.
This is not true just like baptismal regeneration is not tru.
God never said to the nation Israel, he said this:
Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.
Physical circumcision was only a sign of the Abrahamic covenant and the Jews through the tradition of men turned it into something that it was never meant to be.
Church, the circumcision that Paul is talking about here in Colossians is made without hands
It is not cutting away of the foreskin, but is of the heart!
Therefore, being complete in Christ means that we have recieved a spiritual circumcision In Him.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.
Lets look at what Paul says about circumcision in Romans:
For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
This was a huge deal church to the Jews because they really believed that if someone was converted or saved they were circumcised.
This is were we get things like infant baptism.
Some teach that if you are sprinkled as a child that your good with God, where does this come from?
It is not in the Bible
We know this was the Judaizers because they attempt to derail the Apostles teaching over and over look here at Galatians :
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?—Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
Church, circumcision symbolized man’s need for cleansing of the heart and was an outward sign of cleansing of sin that comes by faith in God.
At salvation, believers undergo a spiritual circumcision by putting off the body of sins of the flesh.
We have been made complete in Jesus Christ because we have been circumcised in Christ.
This is the new birth, the new creation in conversion that is talked about here:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
In salvation we recieved a circumcised heart , but we are also buried with Him in Baptism and raised with Him from the dead.
Just as when we trusted Christ as Savior, there was a spiritual circumcision performed by Christ without hands, so also there was a spiritual baptism.
The baptism referred to in this verse is Spirit baptism, not water baptism
. The baptism referred to in this verse is a real baptism, not a ritual baptism.
At the moment we trusted Jesus Christ by faith, the Spirit of God baptized each one of us into the body of Christ (I Cor. 12:13).
For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
At that precise moment, in the mind of God, we were so truly and really identified with Christ that we are already raised with Him and seated in the heavenlies.
The original text literally reads we have been buried with Christ in “the” baptism.
The baptism that is a without hands baptism is spirit baptism.
At the moment we believed on Christ, God’s Spirit so identified us with Jesus Christ that we are alive unto God.
Look carefully at the verse; it all happened “through faith.” The moment you believed on Christ, God identified you with everything Christ is and with everything Christ accomplished.
We have been crucified with Christ, but the nail prints are not in our hands, they are in His.
We have been buried with Christ, but the death was not our death, it was His.
We are seated with Christ, but the honor is not our honor, it is His.
We have been made complete in Jesus Christ, because we have been baptized in Christ.
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
2. Forgiveness
Here we see our condition before we came to Christ, we were dead trespasses and in the uncircumcision of the flesh.
What does dead mean?
Dead means dead !
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
So before you came to Jesus Christ you were dead church dead!
I mean when you were born, you were born dead spiritually. And what does death mean?
It means an inability to respond.
You see dead people, and you can do whatever you want, and they don’t react. Dead people can’t respond.
That is the – that is the signal that somebody’s dead; they don’t respond.
Now, I don’t want to get into all the technicalities of that, but when you see the little thing going bleep-bleep-bleep-hmmmmm, it’s all over.
When you go to the funeral, and everybody moves but the one in the casket – dead.
Everyone files out but him. Can’t respond. No ability to respond.
That’s what spiritual death is: to be dead in sin. It means to be so locked in sin that you are unable to respond to God.
Christ came into our lives church and saved us, it was then that we are born again and raised in the newness of life.
We are forgiven church, therefore, you know what that means. It means we must forgive others!
"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." - –Louis B. Smedes
Forgiveness to church is the mark of a disciple of Jesus Christ!
Note that Paul said that the He wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us.
Handwriting- refers to the handwritten certificate of debt by which a debtor acknowledged his indebtedness.
All people owe God an unpayable debt for violating His law and thus we are under the sentence of death.
The weight of the sin crushes us through condemnation until we are willing to go to the Debtor and sign the debt.
When you take responsibility and admit your sin before God and that moment church, he blots out your sins. They are gone they are forgiven
You are justified- just as if you never sinned.
Paul says that Jesus paid it all church
Let’s look at wiped away or blotted out, It says, “That which was against us, was contrary to us. He took it out of the way.”
Literally, He wiped it off, like erasing a blackboard.
This is the forgiveness of God. The day you walked up to God and signed your confession is the day He erased it totally.
And what were you confessing? Sin. This is – I’ll give you the idea of this.
The substance on which ancient documents was written was a papyrus. And papyrus was a kind of paper made of the bulrush. There was another thing that was used, vellum, which was made from an animal’s hide. And both were fairly expensive and wouldn’t be wasted. And since no ancient ink had any acid into it, the ink never bit into the papyrus or the vellum anyway. But it lay on the surface. If nobody fussed with it, it would remain there because it didn’t bite into the surface; it had no acid.
And sometimes a scribe, in order to preserve his paper, and because he didn’t have too much money, would simply take a sponge and wipe the ink off the papyrus or the vellum and use it again. And that’s exactly what he’s saying. When you receive Jesus Christ, and you walked up and signed your confession, that’s when God nailed it to His cross, paid the penalty, and wiped it clean. It’s a great thought, isn’t it?
So, God, by our faith in Christ, took that indictment, nailed it to the cross. We signed it, and He erased it. You know what’s left? Not one trace. And He remembers it – what? – no more. Complete forgiveness. Oh, the wonder of that kind of grace. Fantastic.
So we were made complete in Him, the moment we were forgiven.
Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
Jesus not only dealt with sin and the Law on the cross, but He also dealt with Satan. Speaking about His crucifixion, Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31).
The death of Christ on the cross looked like a great victory for Satan, but it turned out to be a great defeat from which Satan cannot recover.
Jesus had three great victories on the cross.
First, He “disarmed the powers and authorities” (Col. 2:15, niv), stripping Satan and his army of whatever weapons they held. Satan cannot harm the believer who will not harm himself. It is when we cease to watch and pray (as did Peter) that Satan can use his weapons against us.
Second, Jesus “made a public spectacle” (Col. 2:15, niv) of the enemy, exposing Satan’s deceit and vileness. In His death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ vindicated God and vanquished the devil.
His third victory is found in the word triumph. Whenever a Roman general won a great victory on foreign soil, took many captives and much loot, and gained new territory for Rome, he was honored by an official parade known as “the Roman triumph.”
So, the three marks of our completeness are:
Salvation
Forgiveness
Victory
Remember, we do not fight victory, but from Victory church!
Prayer
Prayer
Announcements
Are there any?
Benediction
“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.
The Lord Bless you!
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