THE KING AND HIS KINGDOM OF LIGHT
Text: Colossians 1:11-20
Probably everyone remembers the story of the Pied Piper. It is a story---- a German legend about a musician who lived in a town called Hamelin. As the story goes, the Pied Piper, played his flute and got the rats of the city to follow him to the river where they drowned. Since he was not compensated for this deed, he sought revenge by lead children of the village in to the mountains where they disappeared.
In Colosse, the community to whom the apostle Paul wrote the New Testament Epistle we know today as Colossians, Paul was addressing the concerns of those who were being led astray by false teachers. Paul addressed both the false teachers and their false teachings. These teachers were like a kind of Pied Piper with their religious teachings because they were leading people astray from the truth. They were infiltrating the Gospel and mixing it with other teachings and denying the humanity of Christ. As someone (Warren Wiersbe) has pointed out, “The gnostic false teachers believed in an organization of evil spirits that controlled the world (see Colossians 1:16, 2:10, 15): angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions and thrones”. (Warren W. Wiersbe. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Volume 2. Wheaton: Victor Books, 1989, p. 115). Instead of worshipping God and God only, the false teachers were spreading their false teachings. They were watering down the truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with other religious and non-Christian views.
Paul sought to put the record straight about Jesus’ identity and supremacy. Paul explains that Jesus came to rescue the alienated, and reconcile those who are lost.
ALIENATION
To be alienated in the context of Colossians 1:21 is to be lost from God. It is one thing to be lost and not even know it. We call that ignorance. It is another thing to be lost and not care at all. We call that apathy---indifference. There is nothing sadder than someone who is estranged from God who could care less. I have read countless stories of this type that have one common theme. The common theme is a scoffer who makes light of eternity until he or she is confronted with his or her own mortality. These stories sometimes have the same tragic ending. It is tragic when those who had contempt toward God will soon meet Him face to face without having been reconciled to Him.
There is hope for the lost. As someone has observed, we sometimes know the facts about others’ whereabouts even though they are still lost. “Sometimes we read in the newspaper or see on television that a mine has caved in and people are trapped in the tunnel. We feel something of the despair of their families as they grimly mutter, “They are lost! Lost!” “But,” we think, “they are not lost. We know exactly where they are in the tunnel.” “Yet,” the reply comes back, “they are as lost as if they were a hundred miles underground. We cannot reach them. We know where they are, but they are lost.
“This expresses the condition of those who are spiritually lost, without Christ and without salvation. We know where they are all right. But they are still lost without Christ”. (T. T. Crabtree ed. The Zondervan 2001 Pastor’s Annual. Harold T. Bryson. “What It Means To Be Lost.” Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000, p. 317). The situation is not hopeless because God sent Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son to bring those who are lost back to God.
RESCUE
Only through Jesus Christ are we rescued from the dominion of darkness. Someone (Maxie Dunham) has noted a custom that was in practice for the people of that time. “It was a common practice in the ancient world that when one nation was defeated by another, people living in exile in that now-conquered nation would often be liberated to return to their homeland. This would have been familiar to the people in a Roman province such as Colossae”. (Lloyd J. Ogilivie. Ed. Mastering The New Testament: Galatioans, Ephesians, Phillipians, Colossians, & Philemon. Vloume 8. Maxie Dunham. “Colossians”. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1982, p. 342). It seems as though the false teachers were indirectly claiming that their religious teachings had the power to liberate people. But, it was quite the opposite that was true. The teachings of these false teachers would do nothing more than keep people in the dark.
Only Jesus Christ can bring us into God’s kingdom---the kingdom of light. Only Jesus Christ has the power to liberate us so that we have been able to leave the dominion of darkness behind and be brought into God’s kingdom. Jesus came to bring us back to God and set us free from the darkness that was dominating us. Only Jesus can reconcile us to God. The false teachers of Colosse were teaching the contrary. The major heresy of the false teachers of Colossae was that they taught that Jesus was not the only way salvation was possible. Jesus explains that He is the way, the truth and the life and that no one gets to the Father in heaven except through Him ( John 14:6). Paul shot holes in their teachings by explaining this truth---the truth of John 14:6 in his own words.
Paul addressed the false teachings of these false teachers head on. Paul refuted the ideas of Gnosticism which the false teachers endorsed. They combined ideas of Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism with some of the ideas of Christianity and taught that salvation comes through knowledge. Paul heavily refuted these false teachings and their slant that leaned heavily on Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy “… taught that everything needed a primary cause, an instrumental cause and a final cause”. (Warren W. Wiersbe, p. 116). That is why Paul explains that all things were created by Jesus and for Jesus which is why He is the Head of the Church and also why He has supremacy over everything (Colossians 1:16,17,18). Paul explained that is why Jesus Christ is Lord of all--- the way the truth and the life!
EDUCATION
One of the things that happens in education is that we grow intellectually. When Paul talked about “growing in the knowledge of God …” (Colossians 1:10) he is talking about growing spiritually. When we are growing spiritually it will become unmistakable because of how we are producing fruit in every good work (Colossians 1:10). It seems as though Paul was saying that we need to strive to be all that we can be in our spiritual lives so that we never stop growing in our knowledge of God. When we stop growing spiritually we allow ourselves to become vulnerable for another false teacher’s advantage to take us captive through his/her hollow and deceptive philosophy (Colossians 2:10).
One of the things that we will struggle with in our spiritual lives is patience and endurance and how they are related. Someone has related how physical exercise relates to our spiritual lives. “After college and marriage, I found it easy to put on weight and get out of shape. A year ago, I became committed to working hard to take the "sag" out of my sagging waistline. Day after day, I worked hard on cardiovascular exercise and weight training, seeming to get nowhere. Straining. Sweating. Sucking wind. Questioning my sanity.
“But then after several months, it was as though a quantum leap occurred. Weight began to drop off. Muscle began to get toned. And endurance increased significantly. Medical friends tell me that during the constancy of working out, regardless of how I felt, a whole new freeway system of small blood vessels and capillaries was forming within my body. Then came the day when they decided it was time for a "grand opening." Suddenly, more blood came flooding into the muscle tissue, and the resultant benefits seemed to be exponential”. There are times when we might feel impatiently spiritually and wonder if we are making progress.
“Likewise, when we're walking through the depths of trials, God is building up a secondary support system of endurance, that we might be even more prepared for the next time adversity comes our way. (David P. Barrett. ed. More Perfect Illustrations For Every Topic And Occasion. [Citation: Bob Reccord. “Forged by Fire.” (Broadman & Holman, 2000), p. 24]. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2003, p. 84). When we are growing the knowledge of God, we learn the both the reason and the need for patience and endurance.
There is no philosophy and no amount of human knowledge that can save us and strengthen us in our spiritual lives. We grow in the knowledge of God because of our relationship with the Savior who knows us and loves us beyond our ability to comprehend! Only Jesus Christ can save us because He has secured our freedom on the cross! He has redeemed all who believe in Him and made them heirs who are “qualified to share in the inheritance of God’s kingdom” (Colossians 1:12). Jesus helps us to “endure” (Colossians 1:11) because “His strength is made perfect in our weakness and He gives us grace that is sufficient” (II Corinthians 12:9) for every time of trial!
