Above All: A study in Colossians
Walk in Him
Colossians 2:2-7
Pastor Jefferson M, Williams
Chenoa Baptist Church
05-22-2022
Intro
In 1969, Martin Broadwell described the “four levels of teaching.” Some have called it “four stages of learning any new skill.” They are:
Unconscious Incompetence - the person doesn’t know what they don’t know
Conscious Incompetence - the person figures out how much they don’t know. This causes a lot of people to quit whatever skill they are trying to learn.
Conscious Competence - the person starts to become proficient at the skill but still had to concentrate to do the skill well.
Unconscious Competence - the person now performs the skill without thinking. It has become almost automatic.
Let’s take learning to play the guitar. A lot of people have a guitar in the their closet somewhere.
At some point in the past, they picked it up and tried to play it but the strings didn’t cooperate and it sounded terrible.
Maybe you watched someone play guitar that was very good and you started realizing what you were doing wrong. You learned that there was a lot you didn’t know.
At that point, you had a choice - give up or practice more than you have before.
If you chose the route of practice, you started learning chords and scales and strumming patterns. It started to be a little easier for you but, in order to impress your friends, you really had to concentrate.
Malcolm Gladwell has cited research that says that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert, or unconsciously competent. This is when you can close your eyes and play and not think about what your fingers are doing. Think Eddie Van Halen. [Slide]
When you were born again, do you remember how much joy you had? You were zealous and wanted everyone to know about Jesus. But you didn’t know what you didn’t know.
Then you started reading your Bible, studying it, memorizing it. And, all of sudden, you were overwhelmed with how far off you were in many areas.
So you started not only reading and studying but seeking to apply the Scriptures in your life. It wasn’t easy. You had to have accountability. You had to be intentional.
But then after many years, some of the things that were so hard are not that difficult anymore.
Take the example of handling conflict. My dad was scared of conflict. My mother was a pro at conflict and would rip your still beating heart out of your chest. I grew up terrified at the thoughts of dealing with conflict.
But as I started growing spiritually, I learned that fear isn’t the heart posture that God wanted me to have when it came to conflict.
With the help of a mentor, I started putting Scriptures like Matthew 18 into action and dealing with conflict in a Biblical way.
It was scary and wasn’t natural but after a few situations where I saw the incredible benefit of handling conflict the way God tells us to I was sold.
I’m not unconsciously competent by a long shot, but conflict no longer terrifies me.
In fact, we never become unconsciously competent in our spiritual lives until we get to heaven.
This is all a part of sanctification - the life-long process by which God makes us more and more like Jesus.
And this is what Paul will focus on in these two power packed verses today.
Review
In the autobiographical section that we have studied the last couple of weeks, we have seen:
Paul’s Attitude: He rejoiced in being able to suffer for the Church that he loved
Paul’s Calling: He was commissioned by God to preach, admonish and teach the Word to the Gentiles
Paul’s Purpose: To make known the mystery, that Gentiles can be part of of the kingdom
Paul’s Energy: He worked to the point of physical exhaustion but Christ energized his ministry
Paul’s Struggle: He may have been a 100 miles away, but he wrestled in prayer for these believers.
Paul Goal: He prayed for the churches to be encouraged in heart, united in love, and grow in their understanding of Jesus
Paul’s Warning: He wrote to make sure that they wouldn’t be deceived by fine sounding arguments.
Paul’s Delight: Paul is overjoyed and proud that the Colossians were standing firm against the false teachers.
Turn with me to Colossians 2:6-7.
Prayer.
The Heart of Colossians
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”
We are only going to study these two verses today but these verses have been called the heart of the letter of Colossians.
These two verses are sandwiched between two warnings:
“I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.” (2:4)
And the verse that will begin next week’s study:
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (2:8)
How can these believers, and us, guard against false teaching? Paul would say it is about being grounded, growing, and grateful.
Received
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord…”
“So then” is much like the word “therefore.” Paul is writing, “In light of everything I have written so far, from 1:1 to 2:5…”. And he highlights a past reality.
He writes that they have “received Christ Jesus as Lord.” The Greek word “received” is a technical term in the Greek for the “transmission of a set of teaching from one group to another.” It’s specific in that in means to take this information as a package deal. They didn’t get to cherry pick the material they wanted and discard the rest.
They had learned it from Epaphras, when he shared the Gospel with them and they not only heard it with their ears but understand God’s grace in their hearts. (See 1:6-7)
But what they received wasn’t a program but a Person. Paul puts together three terms for Jesus that is found nowhere else in the Bible.
Christ: The anointed One, the Messiah promised by the Old Testament prophets
Jesus: This name means, “The Lord’s salvation.” It was the name of a real human man that lived a perfect life and died a perfect death for them.
The Lord: “Yahweh” not a lord but the Lord.
He is the "image of the invisible God” (1:15), the “firstborn over all creation” (1:15), the “head of the body, the Church” (1:18), “the mystery of God” (1:27; 2:2), in whom are “hidden all wisdom and knowledge.” (2:3)
Paul wrote to the Roman Christians:
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10:9)
Billy Graham once said, “No man can be said to truly be converted to Christ who has not bent his will to Christ. He may give intellectual ascent to the claims of Christ and may have had emotional religious experience; however, he is not truly converted until he has surrendered his will to Christ as Lord, Savior, and Master.”
Paul received these truths and then passed them on to others, including Epaphras:
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.” (I Cor 15:3-5)
And that brings us to the first command in the letter of Colossians.
Walk
“…continue to live your lives in him.”
If you remember from our study of chapter one, Paul prays for this very thing:
“We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way…” (Col 1:9-10)
The word live can be translated “walk.” Literally it means to “walk around” but is more often used metaphorically as “a way of life.”
In Ephesians 2:2, Paul writes that before Christ, we walked according to the world’s standards.
In Ephesians 2:10; Paul paints a picture of our lives as poems and encourages us that God has good works for us to walk in.
In Ephesians 4:17, Paul commands us to no longer walk the way Gentiles walk.
In Ephesians 5:2, we are commands to walk in love, in verse 8, to walk in love, and in verse 15, to walk as children of light.
Aboriginal young men in Australia are encouraged to do a “walk about.” Between the ages of 10-16, they go on a journey into the wilderness for up to six months to make the transition into adulthood.
Their trek is random, they literally “walk about.” But that is not what Paul is calling believers to do.
We are to continue to live our lives (or walk) “in Him.”
Douglas Moo comments:
“Let Christ - and no other! For He is Lord - establish your values, guide your thinking, be the basis of your conduct.”
So what does look like when someone has received Christ Jesus the Lord and they walk in Him? What kind of actions lead to spiritual maturity?
That is Paul’s goal and every pastor and ministry leader:
“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” (Col 1:28)
Paul gives us four word pictures that describe this walk of faith.
Tree
The first word picture comes from the world of agriculture and it that of a tree with deep roots. Paul writes that such a person is “rooted.”
In Jeremiah 17, the prophet writes:
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
This word is in the past tense, “having been rooted.” It is something that happened in the past with present effects. It was something done to us from the outside by God.
In 2016, a tornado hit Pontiac a mere three blocks from my house. The next day, I took this picture. This tree had been recently planted and it didn’t have deep roots. The tornado literally sucked it out of the ground.
Jesus told a parable the sower who sowed his seed on four different types of soils. When the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable, he replied:
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matt 13:18-23)
I’ve always wanted to see the Redwoods in California. They can grow up to 300 feet tall and their root systems can be over 100 feet in all directions.
Unlike the little tree that got sucked out of the ground by the tornado, these trees are going anywhere.
How can we grow in our “rootedness?” How can we become Redwoods and not tumbleweeds? How can being rooted protect us from false teaching?
David tells us in Psalm 1:
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither - whatever they do prospers.” (Psalm 1:1-3)
We need to send our roots down deep into Scripture. That’s how we grow, that’s how we become mature.
As Baptists, we say we are “people of the Book.” But many Christians are as Biblically illiterate as unbelievers.
Many people claim to base their entire life on the Bible but they haven’t read it and only know what others say about it.
What if you were talking to a Constitutional lawyer who admitted that he hadn’t read the Constitution but he’s heard other people talk about it?
Recent polls have show that 25% of people who identify as Christians think that Jesus sinned, 33% believe that He didn’t rise from the grave, 33% believe that all religions are the same.
How is that even possible? It is obvious these people do not know the Scriptures.
In order to grow our roots down deep, we need to be reading the Bible every day. Like a tree, this is where we find our nutrition and stability.
Guess what happens when you read a little every day, eventually you finish it! And when you finish it, then you start again because the Bible is living and active, and each time you read it, (or listen to it), God had something to say to us.
Digging deep into God’s written Word and receiving God’s Living Word, Jesus, is what will cause you to grow and “bear fruit in every good work.” (Col 1:10)
Jesus told his disciples:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
If you are currently not in the habit of reading your Bible, start today. You can use a Bible reading plan, or listen to it through the Daily Audio Bible app [Show video], or take one book and really dig deep, like the book of John.
Point to Ponder: How deep do your roots go spiritually? When the strong winds blow, and they will, are you blown like a tumbleweed or do you stand strong like a Redwood?
Building
“Rooted and built up…”
Paul then uses an architecture word picture of a building to describe our growth in our spiritual life.
Paul wrote the Ephesian Christians that when they were born again they were being “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” (Ephesians 2:20)
A cornerstone was a big stone placed at the intersecting angle, where two walls of a building came together. In biblical times, buildings were often made of cut rock. By uniting two intersecting walls, a cornerstone helped align the whole structure and tie it together.
Jesus said,
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24-27)
New buildings in Japan, a country prone to earthquakes, have to be built to withstand a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. These foundations go deep into the ground beneath the building and keep it stable during even the worst shaking.
As opposed to this $375,000 house in North Carolina, that was built on sand and fell into the ocean last week!
I had only been a Christian for two years when we went to seminary. They should have never let me in! I had no background in the Bible and knew very little. But that became a blessing for me.
Over the next three years, through the professors and the other students, I received an amazingly solid foundation in the faith.
If our foundation is faulty, we might fall for false teaching. How do we make sure that our foundation is strong?
One way is not just attending church on Sundays but using your gifts and talents to build the kingdom in a local church. Invest. Plug in.
If you have been here for the full four years that I’be been preaching, you will have studied Jonah, Habakkuk, Galatians, Titus, Esther, Revelation 1-3, about 25 Psalms, The Beatitudes, the fruit of the Spirit, among other series.
But if you only eat on Sundays, you will be malnourished. You need to eat every day. Reading or listening to your Bible every day is a good way to build a strong spiritual foundation.
Being a part of our Wednesday morning Bible study is another way to strengthen your foundation. In the past couple of years, we have gone verse by verse through James, I John, Jonah, Habakkuk, Ephesians, Ecclesiastes, John, I Samuel and we are about to start 2 Samuel.
But the most important way is to make sure that Jesus is our Cornerstone.
In order to grow as a Christian, we have to have a solid foundation and that foundation is Jesus:
“For in Scripture it says “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” (I Peter 2:6)
Point to Ponder: How strong is your spiritual foundation? God wants us to grow. Each month, each year, we can adding another floor to our foundation.
Student
“…strengthened in the faith as you were taught…”
Next, Paul uses the word picture of a student, a learner. The word strengthened can also be translated, “established.”
Notice that it is “the faith” that we are to growing in. The very faith they were taught by Epaphras.
Healthy things grow.
How many of you made marks on the door frame to measure your children’s growth? Each month, they got a little taller and they loved to see the line on the wall move up.
If you do absolutely nothing to grow spiritual over the next few years, you will remain the same. Spiritual growth isn’t automatic.
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Phil 2:12-13)
We are not called to work for our salvation, but to work it out. Through this process, we will grow as God enables us.
Paul prayed for this kind of growth for the Ephesians:
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:17-19)
I was running a 5k once and set my turtle pace and was slow and steady. There was a boy, probably about 10 years old, who kept passing me running full out. Then I would pass him as he was walking. Then he would pass me again running like he was being chased by a bear. Guess who finished first? Slow and steady wins the race.
That’s what some people do. They hear a sermon like this and they go home and for the next three days and they read their Bible for an hour. Then…well it goes back on the shelf.
Spiritual growth isn’t a sprint, it a marathon. It’s an every day process where we read, study, meditate, memorize, and apply Scripture.
Our growth sometimes is even hard for us to see. But other people can see it.
When I was dealing with my father and stepmother, I was driving back and forth to Memphis, living in a hotel, and stress eating like mad. I gained 30 pounds! None of my clothes fit.
About six week ago, I started working really hard to take the weight off. I’ve lost 13 of those pounds but I don’t really feel it or see it. But my son Austin told me recently, “I can tell you’ve lost weight, especially in your face.” That was super encouraging.
Spiritual progress may not be as visible or measurable as weight loss, but it can be observed.
I have a friend who had a bad temper. It effected his family, his job, and it frustrated him terribly. Several years ago, he decided this was going to be an area of spiritual growth for him. He sought out a Christian counselor, asked others to hold him accountable, and memorized Scripture about keeping his cool.
He has grown significantly in this area and no longer is controlled by his anger. It’s noticeable to his family and friends.
Are you different spiritually than you were five, ten, twenty, thirty years ago?
What is one sure fire way to grow? By discipling others. Remember, it isn’t an option but a command, to make disciples who make disciples. When you are discipling someone else, they will ask you questions you don’t know the answers to and you will have dig deep and learn more. When you are discipling someone, they are watching your life so you are more aware of the areas you need to grow in.
Point to Ponder: Are you growing spiritually or are you stagnant?
River
“…overflowing with thankfulness.”
The last word picture is that of a river, overflowing its banks. Paul makes the case that a spiritually growing person will be overflowing with thankfulness.
We often ask what is God’s will for our lives and feel like it’s a mystery. But many times, God tells us directly in His Word
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (I Thes 5:16-18)
This past weekend, an 18 year old gunman walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and started shooting. He was in body armor and was live-streaming the massacre on Twitch.
Why did he do this? Because he hated back people…and brown people…and Jewish people…well, anyone that isn’t white.
I’m thankful for John Piper’s encouragement to pastors this past week. He said that preaching against racism isn’t being woke and it isn’t virtue signaling. It’s what we are called to do and we should never be afraid to call out sin.
White supremacy is sin and it is evil.
One of the people killed was 77 year old Pearly Young who ran a food pantry and every Saturday for 25 years she fed people in Central Park. According to her family, “She was a mother, grandmother, and missionary.”
In takking to a friend about this event this week, he told me the he noticed a KKK flag flying in front of a house here in Chenoa. In the past, this friend was a self described racist. He said that has much has he hated black people, he never understand the clan.
Then he wrote those words in a text to me:
“I’m grateful that God has changed my heart and mind. And I’m grateful also that He’s not finished with me yet.”
Kent Hughes writes, “A thankless spirit betrays a life which is no longer focusing on the greatness of Christ.
Point to Ponder: Are you thankful for the grace that you have received? Are you overflowing with thankfulness for Jesus’s sacrifice for you?
My friend Brian lists for ways we need to grow:
Grow downward by being rooted
Grow upward by being built up
Grow inward so that we can be strengthened in the faith
Grow outward as we overflow with thankfulness
Baptisms
Dr. John Cheung was a beloved sports medicine doctor in Laguna Woods, California. In fact, a friend that I went to high school posted that he was her family’s doctor.
On Sunday afternoons at Geneva Presbyterian Church, the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church would meet. There are a lot of elderly people in the congregation so when a gunman walked into the sanctuary this past weekend, Dr. Cheung didn’t hesitate to jump up rush the gunman and tried to disarm him. He was killed and five others were injured.
He wasn’t even a member of this church but had brought his mother to a special dinner honoring a former pastor.
He is being remembered as a hero.
“He sacrificed himself so others could live,” said Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.
Jesus died on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for our sin so that we could live with Him forever in a place the Bible calls heaven.
Once you received Him as Christ Jesus the Lord and made a commitment to walk in Him, the next step, the very next step is baptisms.
Song transition to baptisms - Living Hope.
