In the second chapter, ten years ago today we were stunned as we watched the
space shuttle Challenger go throttles up and explode right on live television. And
our minds immediately asked the question, how did this happen? Why did this happen?
Now we have learned that there were two engineers at the corporation responsible
for making the rockets that did everything possible the night before to
delay the launch. They predicted exactly what happened, but unfortunately their
pleas went unheeded, resulting in disaster. I draw a certain corollary from
that tragedy to what Paul writes to the Colossians in the text before us. The
church at Colossae had been successfully launched. Everything seemed to go, but the
Apostle saw a menacing danger, a threat to the church's well-being. And so he
writes in these words to warn them that their belief system, their theological
integrity, was being subtly attacked by a heresy that would cause them to
disintegrate as a faithful and flourishing body of believers. Paul was
concerned, I think we can say Paul was worried, for the well-being of the church
at Colossae. He does not describe for us in this book in some systematic fashion
exactly what the heresy was, but we infer from what Paul does say that the danger
there involved a cult-like teaching that exalted human thinking and human
knowledge and human ideas above the divine revelation as final authority. They
were not satisfied with what God had said to them. Those in this false
teaching were looking for some superior knowledge, and part of their cult
involved man-made rules and regulations, including asceticism or self-abasement
and self-denial. As part of the requirements for being righteous and for
being able to please God, it seems also that this cult sought some sort of
mystical experience with angels or spiritual beings, even worshipping them.
And they said that in order to communicate with God, in order to commune
with God, you had to go through these ranks of angels or these emanations from
God, and their idea was that Jesus Christ was on the first rank of
these angels. Now if you've listened to what I've said, you can understand why
Paul was worried because this cult degraded Jesus Christ. The revelation
from God that came in Christ, according to the cult, was insufficient. They sought
some reasoning from man's mind or some gaining of knowledge above Christ.
Christ's sacrifice on the cross and the righteousness that he gives to believers
as a free gift through justification by faith was not enough. It was important to
keep rules and regulations and to abase oneself. Jesus Christ to them was but a
created being, one of these angels or emanations descending from God to man.
God was pure spirit and therefore in order to communicate with pure spirit, one
had to go through these levels of angels to finally commune with God. And Jesus
Christ was but one of them, a superior one to be sure, but one of the
created angels. And so they degraded Jesus Christ in his person and in his
work. Paul's intent in writing this book is to correct this Christ denying heresy
before the church's ministry and its fellowship exploded into futility. And so
as he writes he is reminding these believers of true doctrine so that they
will adhere or continue on in it. I'm going to begin reading in verse 1. Please
follow along in your Bible. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have
on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not
personally seen my face. Paul is writing to some people he had never met. He did
not personally found the church in Colossae. Probably a team from the church
in Ephesus that Paul did found went to the city of Colossae and witnessed and
founded a church. There was also a church in Laodicea which was nearby and in the
city of Hierapolis which was only about 10 or 11 miles away. Laodicea, Hierapolis,
and Colossae were sort of a Tri-Cities area in Asia Minor. And the work of Jesus
Christ was going on there but Paul had never been there personally. He writes to
them now. He writes that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together
in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of
understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery that is
Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And I say this in order that no one may delude you, that is may cheat you, may
deceive you with persuasive arguments. For even though I am absent in body,
nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and
the stability of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Christ
Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him having been firmly rooted and now being built
up in him and established in your faith just as you were instructed and
overflowing with thanksgiving or gratitude. See to it that no one takes
you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of
men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than
according to Christ. Now Paul weaves into this text some of the very language of
the cultists, wisdom, knowledge, elementary principles of the world. These
were some of the words and phrases that they themselves use. Now Paul takes these
phrases and fights back at them with them. What he tells us in these verses is
that Jesus Christ is supreme over all human ideas. Human reason is a wonderful
gift, but a woeful God. We live in a day when human reason has been exalted as
God. In the period of the Enlightenment, which was a reaction to the Reformation,
reason was exalted above revelation. That heresy, that human reason can be
exalted above the revelation of God in the Bible and in Jesus Christ, has grown
fruit that is poisoning our culture 300 years later at the end of the 20th
century. Out of this heresy of exalting human reason above the Bible have come
humanism, which says man himself is the measure of all things, not the Bible, not
God's revelation. Man is the center of all and the measure of all. Along with
humanism has come secularism, a denial of the supernatural, a denial that there is
a God in heaven who intervenes in the affairs of men. Along with humanism and
secularism has come relativism, which says there are no absolutes. Everything is
relative. It depends. No one can say. Who are you to say that that's right or
that's wrong? All of these are but the fruits of the heresy that has plagued
the Western civilization for the last 300 years. Now let me be clear that God
designed man to think and Christians above all people should value the
intellectual capability of man. Ravi Zacharias is one of my favorite preachers
and writers. He is an intellectual which puts him on a little different level
than me but I try to keep up with him and he has a radio broadcast that he has
cleverly entitled, Let My People Think. God designed us to think but when man
forgets God, when he exalts his own ability to reason above what God has said
in his word, his ability to reason will quickly lead him to error and to
delusion. My friend that's what Romans chapter 1 is all about. When they
willfully turn away from the knowledge of the Creator and exalt themselves above
God, they're turned to foolishness and moral degradation and that is exactly
where we are at the end of this century.
Along with the other false isms that I've mentioned from the exaltation of
human reason, there is another heresy that is taught in our schools that is
assumed in our cultural values that is dominant in science as well as in
liberal theology and that is the heresy of evolutionism. Evolution has become
the religion of our day. It has permeated all of our society until we live in a
time when if you dare question it, you are immediately denounced and ridiculed.
Witness some of the conversation that took place when a person who's a member
of our church talked about the possibility of talking about creationism
in the public school classrooms in one of our school districts and the kind of
response and reaction from some in our community about that. I'm telling you
evolution is the modern theology of America. It is foolishness. Our recent
trip to California it was a real privilege for us to visit the Institute
for Creation Research in El Cajon. They have their marvelous museum and if you
ever get out to San Diego area I encourage you to go to the Institute
for Creation Research Museum. In this museum they show the first 11 chapters
of Genesis from a scientific viewpoint and argue for its truthfulness against
the false teaching, the false idea of evolutionism in our day. It's a great
place. It'll be helpful to you as well as to your children. And the church today,
the Church of Jesus Christ is as vulnerable to heresy as was the first
century church in Colossi. The thinking of our culture denigrates the supreme
place of Jesus Christ and the unique revelation of God in him and that can
subtly filter into the church. I think that there is cause for alarm today as
much as there was in Paul's heart when he wrote the Colossians. God's revelation
in his Son and in his Word take precedence over. They become the judge and
the standard for all human thinking.
Isaiah 820 says, to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to
this word it is because there is no light in them. My friend, God's revelation in
Jesus Christ is supreme over all human thinking and human thinking that does
not put him first and put God's revelation supreme is human thinking
that is damned and doomed to delusion and judgment.
Paul gives a warning about that in verse 8. He writes to us as well as to the
Colossians and he says see to it that no one takes you captive through
philosophy and empty deception. His first warning is that a Christian can be
abducted and carried away from the truth and enslaved to error. A Christian
is no less vulnerable or susceptible to lies than the non-Christian if he doesn't
listen to the Holy Spirit and arm his mind with the truth of God. A Christian is
just as susceptible. You look at the contemporary movements that have
captured so many who profess Christ. The prosperity gospel with its heretical
ideas regarding materialism. Some of the extremes of the charismatic movement.
This holy laughter that we hear about, I'm convinced is from the pit. It is not
from God. It is but another excess of those who are seeking to base their
faith on experience rather than upon the revelation of God.
And when you do that you have to keep finding some new experience because
experience wears out after a while. It gets old. A few days ago I heard about
the most recent sign now that you're filled with the Holy Spirit. It's gone
from holy laughter, now get a hold of yourself, it's gone from holy laughter to
projectile vomiting. Now I heard about this ten years ago when we visited in
Indonesia but now it's come to the United States. I would like to be the
janitor crew in that church. And then the New Age kind of thinking that creeps in.
And there are many churches today quote-unquote who have forsaken the
revelation of God for a heresy that is very close and in some respects to what
was taking place in Colossus. And the worship of angels, channeling angels,
finding the God within you, etc. ad nauseum. Listen a Christian can be
abducted. That's why Paul says see to it that no one kidnaps you. If you're going
to keep from being kidnapped you have to guard yourself and that's what Paul
wants us to do. The second warning he says false teachers use human thinking
that is devoid of God. It's hollow, it's powerless, these deceive, these align he
says with what one generation passes on to another. He speaks about philosophy,
an empty deception according to the traditions of men. For 300 years we've
had this idea that human reason is superior to what God has said in the
Bible. It's been passed down from one generation to another and it has proven
itself empty and hollow. It has proven itself damning the cultures and yet it is
being touted and praised. Too often when we think about false teaching in the
Bible we think about some televangelists or we think about the cult that that is a
classical sort of a cult. I want you to know that false teachers refers to anyone
who knowingly or unknowingly passes on information to others that is false and
leads them away from the truth of God. Anyone and I'm including educators,
philosophers, cosmologists, that's not cosmetologists that's cosmologists,
psychologists, religious scholars and and teachers, the media, entertainment stars,
writers, columnists, anyone who knowingly or unknowingly passes on lies to others
that leads them away from God as a false teacher as far as the Bible is concerned.
Sometimes we think in order for it to be false it's got to be rank with lies. In
fact the most dangerous false teaching is the one that is only slightly less
than the truth or which incorporates some of the truth along with the false.
The third thing Paul says in his warning to believers is it is this that the
ultimate source of error is what he terms the elementary principles of the
world, it's not Christ. What does he mean by this rather difficult statement the
elementary principles of the world? Literally it means the basic components
of things. As you would think of language or of words the basic components would
be the letters, the ABCs. He's breaking things down to the most simple element.
I think that there's a very strong argument, at least one that I accept, that
what Paul is referring to here is that are those cosmic spirits, those demonic
forces that are behind all lies and false teaching. Where did this idea of
Descartes and Locke and others arise that says that human reason is to be
exalted above the Bible? Ultimately says Paul it comes from demons whose purpose
it is to lead people away from the truth of God. That's the ultimate source of
false teaching. Hence Paul's warning to you and to me don't be captured by false
teaching. How then do we defend ourselves? Paul gives us not only a warning but he
gives us a reminder that we have a defense system against false human
thinking. We must learn to use it. I think he begins underscoring our defense system
in verse 1 when he tells about his own experience. He says I want you to know
how great a struggle I have on your behalf. The word Paul uses here is the
word Agone and if you listen to that you can hear our word Agony. He is talking
about pain in the soul. It is a word from the arena. It refers to a wrestling match
that requires the best that one has in all of his strength to the point of
agony. I want you to know how great a wrestling I have on your behalf and for
all of those who've not seen me. Paul is talking here about his prayer life and
so the defense of false teaching for us is first prayer. Prayer. There are
different kinds of prayer of course. There's worship, there's Thanksgiving,
there's confession, but there is also intercession and warfare praying. That's
what Paul is talking about here. Now no praying is easy but the hardest kind of
praying is warfare praying in which you are praying for others and for yourself
to be delivered from demonic forces and the lies and the tricks and the snares
that are placed out there to trip us up and to take us captive. Prayer is like
wrestling. We're not so much wrestling with God as we are wrestling with the
enemy in our prayer life. We need to pray for those whose thinking is being
undermined by false human reasoning that doesn't put God in his right place. I
know I share a burden with all of you who have children who are in school on
any level including college. We need to pray for our kids. We need to pray
for the youth in our student ministry. That God will help them to think
correctly. That God will guard their minds. We parents need to exemplify that.
That we're thinking rightly that Christ is above all. We need to pray for one
another. Pray for ourselves. Second line of defense is found in verse 2. That
their hearts may be encouraged. Their hearts may be admonished or exhorted
having been knit together in love. Paul seems to be saying here that the second
line of defense is association. Being knit together with others. He is praying
he says that the believers that he's not seen may become united together, may be
associated together. That their hearts may be welded together in love. Sometimes
truth divides but love unites. And he prays that we as believers may not
isolate ourselves, may not pull back, but may be knit together. There is such a
line of thinking in the church today. In fact I was talking with someone about it
this last week. The migration of people from church to church. You know they
disagree with something at this church and so they migrate to this church. And
they're there for a year or two or ten and they disagree with something and
then they migrate to this church. My friend that is not of God. God wants us
to be welded together in love. And love covers a multitude of sins. When there's
a difference, love looks over that. The weld is there. And Paul says there is
strength, there is defense against false teaching in associating with other
believers. Of course there's a great benefit that we watch out for one
another as we're associated in the church. And then there's a third line of
defense. Verse 2 he goes on to say attaining to all the wealth that comes
from the full assurance of understanding resulting in a true knowledge of God's
mystery. And God's mystery he says is Christ. He says that there are riches
that we ought to enjoy. Riches of understanding and that's what I believe
is the defense. It's understanding. It's gaining understanding that comes through
Jesus Christ and through the Word of God. That's our defense against false
teaching. All knowledge and wisdom relates to the person of Jesus Christ. He
is the source of it all. And he says that we need to become rich in our firm
conviction, our full assurance of understanding regarding the true
knowledge, the rich spiritual insights that are in Jesus Christ and whom are
hidden, in whom are stored away all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Remember these are the words the cultists are using. They're saying you
need to have some knowledge. You need to gain this knowledge and here's how you
do it. Paul says look Jesus Christ is the storehouse of all wisdom and knowledge.
You don't need more than him.
When it says that Jesus Christ is the storehouse it doesn't mean that he is
hiding them in himself. It means that they are deposited in him for all to
receive and to enjoy. To grasp how Christ is the Creator, how that he called into
existence all things and by him everything holds together. To grasp that
is to have a rich source of knowledge so that when you begin to read about how
science is discovering this and that you can put it into place. If you don't have
the knowledge, the rich insight that Jesus Christ is the Creator you can fall
for the lies of evolution. You can fall for the assumptions that are based upon
untruths that most people in our society just accept. These rich spiritual
insights that we gain in Jesus Christ then become the measuring stick for
everything else that we think and we hear. Now if this sort of thing intrigues
you, if you have a desire to investigate more about how the Christian worldview,
the Christian mindset is different from the humanists and the evolutionists and
certainly the Marxists mindset. I want to commend to you a book by David Noble
called Understanding the Times. You may need to save a couple of weeks to buy it.
It's a thick book and it's not the sort of book that most of us will sit down
and read through before we go to bed. It's rich with content. It's a wonderful
resource though showing you how the Christian mind approaches everything
from biology to ethics to theology and politics. Understanding the Times by
David Noble of Summit Ministries. Paul says if you want to be on guard against
false teaching then you must gain understanding that comes through Jesus
Christ who is the source of all wisdom and knowledge. The fourth line of defense
is found in verses 5, 6, and 7. He says, I rejoice to see your good discipline and
the stability of your faith in Christ. Paul as a wise leader is writing to
commend them as he warns them and so he commends them for their good discipline
and for their stability. Both of these are military terms suggesting to us that
Paul sees this whole issue as a warfare for the mind. He says your good
discipline that means your order that you're keeping rank and for your
stability of faith the word stability means a solid front, firmness, a solid
front, a phalanx of soldiers that give no ground. He says as you therefore have
received Christ walk in him and so it seems to me that the fourth line of
defense is continuance. He says you've received Christ now go on and grow on.
Don't allow yourself to become stagnant. Be disciplined like a soldier. Walk in
him. The result of that will be that you will be built up and established in your
faith. To walk means to conduct yourself to live out your life in relationship
with the Lord. Walk in him. If you and I are going to protect ourselves from
being taken captive by false thinking in our culture it must involve our walking
in Christ as a continual habitual experience day after day. We have been
rooted in him now let's be built up and established in our faith. The word faith
here means our belief system. It means our understanding of theology. Be built
up in that just as you were instructed and he says do this with an overflowing
gratitude. Well if Paul were to write the church today I wonder how he would view
the state of health in the church. Would he see any impending dangers and
tragedies? Would he see any false human thinking that has taken
captive God's people? Well I think the answer is yes he would. To be honest with
you some of the attitudes found among God's people today amaze me. They amaze
me. I recently read a statement where someone extrapolated if the decline of
giving in the church continues at its present course unabated the last church
will shut its door in the year 2048. It'll be all over because of the way
that we think about money and giving. That's just one example. How do we think
about sports? This is something to talk about on Super Bowl Sunday. What place
do we give to that? How do we think about it? How do we think about what we see
coming down from that marvelous instrument floating around the earth a
Hubble telescope? I've gotten into the internet and seen some of the pictures
and some of you have too. That most recent picture on the front page of the
paper was absolutely spectacular. Reaching far far out into space close to
the quote edge of the universe. How do we think about that? Does that come from a
Big Bang which assumes that matter is eternal? Not that God created it but that
matter is eternal. Is that how we interpret what we see? Or do we understand
that that is one of the productions of Jesus Christ the Creator and his
intelligence? What would Jesus Christ through the Apostle Paul write to you
regarding the way you think? The attitudes that you harbor. What would he
say has influenced your thinking? Has it been the Word of God and the revelation
of Jesus Christ or is it human reasoning? What is it that's persuaded you to leave
your walk with Christ and to go in another direction? We need to take strong
remedial action in our lives about the sources of false thinking that easily
influences. We need to commit ourselves to the defense system that suggested in
this text. We need to devote at least some of our praying to the hard work of
wrestling against false ideas. We need to commit some of our praying to
interceding for the saints, for the young as well as the old. Then we need to take
the step of associating with God's people in a local church fellowship where
the Bible is taught, where Jesus Christ is honored. Some of you have been hanging
on the fringe of church commitment and membership. The Apostle Paul prays for
you that you might be knit together, be welded together in a local church family.
We need to study the Word of God to discover the rich spiritual insights
that are in Jesus Christ and to establish those as the measure for
everything that we hear and agree to and live for. And we need to conduct our
lives intentionally every day with Jesus Christ as the Lord. And if we will do
that, then we will be protected against kidnap. We will not be abducted by the
false thinking of our age. May God search our hearts and try our minds and find
within us anything that is false and show that to us so that we can have our
minds renewed. And not only believe but live out that Jesus Christ is supreme
over human reasoning and thinking. Let's pray.
Father, I ask that the Holy Spirit would do his work of convicting us where our
minds have been deceived and we've accepted false thinking. And I pray that
we will all put up the defense system that you've provided for us. God, I pray
that none of us will allow ourselves anymore to be taken captive by philosophy
and empty deception. The work of demonic spirits seeking to lead us away from you.
But may our thinking be disciplined. May it be subjected to your revelation in
Jesus Christ. And I pray that we will be a people unashamed to live out that
truth in the world. And that we will stand for what is true and what is right
despite the dominant religion of our day. May we be the people of God, exalting
Jesus Christ as supreme at the end of the 20th century. In his name I pray, amen.