July 20, 2003
"What’s Below the Surface?" Colossians 2:6-15 Pastor Jon MacKinney
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This morning it’s my purpose to encourage you. I have to begin, therefore, with recognizing those things that can discourage us, ’cause there are plenty. As believers, we live in a world of constant comparisons, don’t we? We live in a world where there is always someone who is smarter than us, faster than us, more talented than us, on the fast track while we are on the medium, or maybe the slow, track. Our whole society is based on comparison, even comparison to ourselves. It seems like every day, doesn’t it, some company is coming out with their earnings report which makes the stock market go haywire and it’s a comparative earnings report to last year. "Last year at this time we made x amount of dollars. This year we’ve made this many dollars." So, it’s either up or down. And if it’s down, it’s bad and if it’s up, it’s good. And it’s always comparison. Or, if you are like me, a fan of baseball, there’s this constant statistic. Is there any sport more fixated on statistics than baseball? This guy with the lights on in a night game on an artificial turf, playing against a left-handed pitcher, with Barry Bonds in left field, always gets a hit to the left hand side – three out of four times. It’s always comparative. "Last year this guy was batting .267. This year he’s batting .295." But next month he’s going to be batting .102. So, there’s this constant, constant comparison.
Don’t you wonder, those of us (and I count myself and I think most of you count yourselves in this category) the ’normal’ people? How many of you think you’re pretty normal? How many of you think you’re abnormal? Lots of hands up for abnormal. All on this side, too, it’s an interesting fact. It must be the abnormal side of the church. When I say ’normal’, talking about those people who are (well, you wouldn’t want to call them average), but you know you’re not exceptional. Maybe you’re exceptional in one particular thing, but you were the kid at school who got Bs. You worked hard, but you got Bs or maybe Cs. You were the kid that when you played baseball you were okay, but you didn’t get any college scholarships. You were too small or too slow or too something or not enough. But, sometimes those of us who are just normal people, who are not exceptional, think that we must be missing out on something huge. And, as Christians, we think sometimes that if we are not winning the world, we’re not on television, or we’re not the head of some large Christian organization, there must be something wrong with us. Perhaps we think we should go to some weekend experience that guarantees to change our lives. Have you seen those? "This weekend will change your life forever, transform you." I’m not so sure that a weekend has that kind of power.
I’ve been thinking the last couple of weeks about how many millions of believers have lived their lives in complete obscurity. Nobody knows them. Nobody knows their name. They’ve lived quiet, Christian lives, completely out of the limelight. And I’ve asked myself, "Is it possible for ???? people to get passing marks in the Christian life or ????? the Apostle Paul and Billy Graham and all the rest of us are just, like, losers?" Well, it’s interesting that the Apostle Paul didn’t think so. He’s writing to normal people. And he has some very encouraging words. He’s writing to the believers in Colossi and apparently these believers were under some kind of attack from false teachers who were saying, "I’ve got something better for you than Jesus alone and if you will buy into what I’m doing, you’ll be some kind of a superstar. It’s Jesus plus what I’ve got to give to you." And, so the Apostle Paul has some very encouraging words for us.
He first defines what is this thing called the Christian life? What does it look like? Secondly, taking a look at what the Christian mind will look like as part of that Christian life. And then where a Christian gets his power. Now, I’m not preaching from the entire passage that’s been read for us because as I worked on this passage, there was just so much in it that I couldn’t fit it into the time that I’ve got, so I’m going to do verses 13-15 next week, after the children have done their presentation, as long as there time, and I think there will be some.
Let’s look first at this idea of the Christian life. What is the true Christian life? Do you have to be the Apostle Paul? Do you have to be Billy Graham? Do you have to be Billy Sunday or D.L. Moody or the president of a Christian college or some missionary who leads thousands and thousands of people to Christ to be a Christian? Let’s look at what Paul says here in verse 6. He says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him." The first step in the Christian life, the true Christian life, is not what you do in terms of your works, doing good works, being kind to your neighbor, not running over the neighbor’s cat with your car – it is this: accepting the truth about Jesus Christ. The people to whom Paul is writing had accepted that truth. He says, "Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord," that is a past event that continues to have results in their lives. "Just as you have received him." But, that’s a starting point because he says, "Continue to live in him." Continue to live in Him. That is one of the few verbs in this passage that is imperative, a command. Paul’s saying, "You received Christ at some point. Okay, that’s good. Now continue to live…" He doesn’t say as a good church-going person. He says continue to live in Him. There’s something very specific going on in there.
When I was thinking about this, I was thinking well, we should use marriage as an example, but not everybody here has been married. So, I’ll use conception. Everybody here, I’ll guarantee it, you were at one point conceived. It was an event. And that event took place in the past, but continues to have effect in fact that you were born and you are living. And that’s what Paul is saying here. "You were conceived at one point. You had a starting point in Christ. Now," he says, "continue to live in the same faith that you had when you began." You don’t get conceived as a human being and then live the rest of your life as a dog. Dogs are dogs. People are people. If you were started as a believer in Jesus Christ and your faith in Jesus Christ was the beginning point of your new life, then continue to live in that same faith world. Don’t change.
Now, we don’t come to Christ and then dispose of Him, walk away from Him and say, "I’ll see you later. I’ll see you when I die and then you can pick me up again and take me to heaven." That’s not what the Christian life is. The Christian life is a continual faith experience where we continually put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ to do what He said He would do. We have come to Christ not only for forgiveness and eternity in heaven, but we have found in Him the very central focal point, meaning of life.
Now, it’s interesting in verse 7 that the grammar changes. In verse 6 we have this commandment, "Continue to live in him." And then in verse 7 we have four words that in the Greek are called participles. And the participle that follows a command basically says, "Here’s what I want you do to and here’s what that means." We see that in Matthew 28 when Jesus tells His disciples, "Go into all the world and make disciples of all men." And then he uses these participles, "Baptizing them, teaching them to obey whatsoever I have commanded you." So, it’s the same idea. "If you want to continue to live as believers, here is how to do it. First, continuing to live in Him means you are securely rooted in Christ." The word there is a passive verb, which means this is done to you. We do not root ourselves. We have been rooted by God into Christ Jesus. And this word that is used, the word that’s translated ’rooted’, is used to describe the foundation of a building, or as I found in an illustration, the end of a long cable.
This is, as you’ll recognize, the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, the Golden Gate Bridge is over a mile long. It’s a huge bridge. It’s one of the ten greatest engineering feats in the world. You see this is a suspension bridge and a suspension bridge means that that roadway there is actually held up by those cables that are strung over those towers and then the cables that are coming down. Now those cables that are stretched across that bridge are not tied to a tree at the end. Those cables, each one of those cables is rooted in what’s called an anchorage and so there’s four of those anchorages, one at each end of each cable. And each one of those anchorages weighs 60,000 tons. That’s big. The whole bridge structure, including the anchorages, weighs a little short of 900,000 tons. Of that 900,00 tons, 240,000 tons is just the anchors for those cables. Everything depends on those anchors. If all the anchors come out of the ground, that thing comes down and everybody on it. 111,000 vehicles go across that bridge every day, as I found out at $5 a crack. How’d you like to have that franchise. That’s the view from the top. One of those cables, as you can imagine, are big. But they have to be rooted. If they’re not rooted, they’re nothing and that whole roadway collapses.
When we talk about continuing to live in Him, we have to take advantage of this rooting that God has done. He has sent our lives into the concrete of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s where your faith is. Your faith is not in your works. Your faith is not in you being a good enough person. Because as soon as we take our focus off of the person and the work and the character of Jesus Christ and put it on ourselves, and how we’re doing and what we’re doing, we will be miserable, fearful, insecure.
God has rooted us into the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, on that rooting, he begins to build. This is another passive verb. God is doing this through the power of the Spirit. We think we’ve got to root, we’ve got to build. Well, what we need to do is continue to exercise faith in Christ. He is doing the rooting. He is doing the building on that structure. He has laid down for us and He is building for us that structure, that rooting of Jesus Christ, He is building a new life with new attitudes, with new priorities, with new burdens, with new ethics. We are being built on a new foundation, the foundation that will never disappoint us as God continues to build through, as we’ve taken the truth of God’s Word and we’ve taken the truth that God has revealed to us, we grow.
There’s another word, again a passive verb. "Strengthened in the faith." This is just the time together. We are getting more and more sure that what we believe is true, that as we test Jesus, as the storms of life … Just as the storms test the Golden Gate Bridge, the storms of life test us, test our faith. And we find that the faith we have in Christ holds solid. As we are strengthened, we become more and more dependent. Isn’t that interesting? More and more dependent on Christ. You’d think, as a believer, the stronger you get the more independent you get. It’s just the opposite. The more mature we become, the more we recognize that our life is hidden with Christ and in Christ. And so our priorities begin to resemble the priorities of Christ. Our attitudes toward others begin to resemble the attitudes of Christ.
I’ve used this illustration many times, the Christian life is like a tube of toothpaste. You open up the cap and you open up the bottom, so you’ve got a open at both ends tube filled with, at the beginning, the lies of the world. And as we take in the truth of God that expels out the lies at the other end that we have held so dear for so long, the lies that are opposed to the truth of God. And the more we take in the truth, the more lies go out, until we find ourselves eagerly sucking in the truth of God because we know that it’s good, we’re tasting it. We’re finding it to be wonderful and true to experience until we just can’t wait until our toothpaste tube is empty of the lies and filled with the truth of God. That’s where Paul is going. That’s the normal Christian life. The normal Christian life is being rooted in Christ, being built up in Him, being strengthened with Him and in Him. And our response: we begin to overflow with thanksgiving and joy. People aren’t thankful for something until they’ve really learned to appreciate it, are they? You give your kids something for Christmas, you know, and they give you that look. Or like we said last week, you moms and maybe some of you dads, when you cook a meal, you bring it to the table, you put it down and the kid says, "Yuck." That’s not exactly overflowing with thanksgiving is it? Because it’s unappreciated. But, the more we are strengthened, the more we are rooted into Christ, the more we understand who He is, the more we understand what He has done for us, the more we embrace His priorities, embrace the truth that He brings us. We say, "This is great!" And we overflow with thanksgiving. That’s the normal Christian life. But the normal Christian life is a person who is dependent on Jesus, who is watching His life, and is participating in the transformation of his own life and recognizing more and more everyday it seems the wonder of this relationship that we have received.
Jan and I have been married for 27 years, and I’ll guarantee you that the way I feel about her today is no comparison to how I felt about her when we got married. You know, your feelings at that point and your understanding, it seems so shallow compared to what it is to having known a person and lived with a person and experienced the joy, to understand that person and to have some of your priorities changed by that person and recognize that those new priorities that you have learned are good ones. And then your heart just bubbles with thanksgiving.
Let’s move on to the Christian mind because Paul has some warning for us here in verse 8. "See to it," this is another imperative, another command, "that no one takes you captive to hollow and deceptive philosophies. Beware," he says, "of empty lies." Because there are plenty of them aren’t there? Even sometimes within the Christian community. People will say, "Well, if you want to experience the full joy of this life, you’ve gotta have this. You gotta have that. You gotta have this experience." And that causes, sometimes, a pocket of insecurity and fear and discouragement. "Well, that’s not true of me. I’m not called to that or I don’t have a burden for that or I’m not gifted there." Or something, and there can be lies coming when it talks about, "Beyond Jesus, you need to have this experience." Man, of course, always has substitutes and they’re very appealing. And Paul uses these words, "hollow, deceptive, empty, lies" to describe them. And there’s a reason for that.
There’s a reason why there is all these lies are about us, thundering onto us, always surrounded by them. That is, there is human tradition out there. Paul talks about that here in verse 7, "don’t depend on human tradition and other basic principles of this world, rather than on Christ." Human tradition is going to be based on limited observation. Here’s the way it works. A person who is a non-believer, who does not have the Holy Spirit working in his life, has not been enlightened by Christ, has a certain limited observational ability. He can see things, he can observe things in the world, and he can make good responses to some of them. In fact, some of the observations he makes are quite remarkable, in terms of what he can see. And these observations are passed down from one generation to another, but they are on the surface. Many of the observations are just on the surface. For example, for centuries, people believed (including believers) that the earth was flat. Why? Because when you go out on a plain and you look, "Wow, it looks flat to me." And for years people thought it was flat and for years people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because after all, it comes up over there and it goes down over there and it comes up over there, so it must be going around and we’re standing still. Observations on the surface, they look like they make a lot of sense, but there’s a problem because that wisdom is limited to just the basics, what Paul calls here "the basic principles of this world." The word can really mean ’the abc’s.’ There are certain things that we can see and say, "Well, that’s pretty obvious." But there’s a whole other dimension of the world that is not obvious and that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 2:14 when he says this, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” What does that verse say? It says that the person without Christ can do fine in terms of limited observations of things on the surface, but in terms of the principles, the spiritual principles, underlying those observations, he hasn’t got a clue. That part of his intelligence has been removed. The non-believer can only understand the abc’s of life. And while he may be very gifted in those abc’s, the bottom line is that the most limited believer, limited in intelligence, can understand spiritual things much better than an Albert Einstein or a person with a 200 IQ. That’s amazing. But, that’s what the Word of God teaches. That in the spiritual realm, the things under the surface, the things that underlie everything, people without Christ can’t see them. So, Paul says, as a believer then, don’t be sucked into buying into teaching and instruction that is on the surface because you know what’s underneath. You know the spiritual reality. Have you ever noticed that you aren’t as attracted to the things that the world promotes as you used to be? Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that you’re not aflutter because J-Lo and Ben Affleck are going to give an interview on TV. Oh! Stop the music! And, even if the Diamondbacks lose you’re okay with that. As long as they don’t lose all the time. Because something has changed. You’re no longer satisfied with the stuff on the surface because you found something better underneath it. You found something better, the spiritual reality that explains the surface and explains the shallowness that so many people are mesmerized by. You know what, brothers and sisters? You can follow people for math. You can follow people for technology. You can follow people for engineering and chemistry. But, when it comes to the realities of life, the things that really matter, the things that are eternal, there’s only one Man who knows the score and His name is Jesus Christ. "For in Christ," verse 9, "all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." Jesus Christ is a package that God made and into Jesus every characteristic was packed in and somehow limited, that’s the miracle, limited to this bodily form. And then God mailed that package to us. And that package contained the fullness of the wisdom and the power and the grace of God. Jesus owns not only the surface, but He has the franchise for all the stuff underneath it. He owns the whole ball of wax. One explains the other. The surface stuff is explained by the wisdom that Jesus revealed. And so when Paul says, "Don’t get swept up into hollow deceptive philosophies that come from the traditions of man," he is saying, "Don’t get hooked up into anytime someone is seeking to speak on a spiritual level and they leave Christ out of it or they don’t start with Jesus and they don’t end with Jesus, don’t listen to them. Don’t get kidnapped." That’s the word. Don’t get kidnapped by these ungodly philosophies that don’t start with the wisdom that comes from Jesus because they don’t know what they’re talking about. As my wife would say, they’re talking through their noses. She says that about me sometimes, but not about the Bible stuff.
Jesus has enlightened our minds. Look at verse 10, "You have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority." You have been given the same wisdom that is contained in Christ has been given to you. So, while we may be considered to be fools by the world, idiots, following foolishness, we know the real deal. And the real deal is Jesus Christ. If you have the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life and if you’re indwelt by the power of the Holy Spirit and if you’re a person who is following Christ, that’s a guarantee. You’re one of the smartest people on the planet. You’re one of the wisest people on the planet. You know things that some other people will never know. You are able to see things that other people can never see. You are able to understand things that other people can never understand because you’ve been given fullness.
Jesus enlightens us beyond the obvious to the real. Anybody can handle the obvious. Anybody can deal with two plus two is four. But, Jesus gives us an introduction, an enlightenment into what’s real. The foundation principles are eternal. Now, there’s a power as well, for the Christian life because a Christian is rooted in Christ, and a Christian’s mind has been enlightened and transformed so that he can see through the deceptive philosophies. And thirdly, the Christian has a power source. There is a dramatic change in the engine that runs our life. We are exchanged rulers. (??) Look at verse 11, "In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature. Not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with a circumcision done by Christ." You see, in the church of Colossi, there were people who were called Judaizers, people who were Jewish believers who believed that, who said, "Now that you are a believer, you also have to follow the Jewish law." This is one of the things that Paul was always talking about. And one of the parts of the Jewish law was, of course, the circumcision of young boys and older men, if they hadn’t been circumcised as a child. And so here Paul comes down and says, "Don’t worry about that. You’ve already been circumcised and it’s on a deeper level than just a physical act done by men. But, it’s been done on your heart. What has been removed from you is the power of the sinful nature, which made you do things that were opposed to the plan and will of God." It used to be that our sinful nature ran our lives, led us into sin, ruled our lives with really an iron fist. But, notice again, who does this circumcision. "In him, you were also circumcised." This is a passive verb. This is something Jesus has done for us. He has removed this tyrant from us, so that while he still screams and yells and tells us to do things, we don’t have to listen to him anymore. As I’ve said before, just like my oldest daughter used to say to some people, "You’re not my boss!" Can you hear Amy saying that? Some of you know her. Well, we should develop that attitude to the sinful nature. "You’re not my boss. You can’t tell me what to do. I don’t have to do that thing that you’re tempting me to do. I don’t have to and I’m not gonna." We can get really childish about it. It’s okay. Use that grammar.
This happened to us when by faith we shared in the death and resurrection of Christ. Verse 12, "Having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead." The reason this power is available in our lives is we said, "You know what? I’m sick of living my own life. I’m sick of trying to be good. It isn’t working. In fact, my good isn’t good enough. I’m going to put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and let Him work in me and through me to change me and give me the power that I cannot have any other way." To do this, to be successful in living a power-filled life, we need to focus on the inner realities instead of the outer circumstances. One of the harder things about the Christian life is reading in the Bible that I am justified, that I have been declared to be righteous by God and then look at my life and say, "Man, there’s a big disparity between what God says I am and what I am every day." That’s a problem. "Why am I like this?" We love that passage in Romans 7 where Paul says, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? The good that I want to do I don’t do. And the bad that I don’t want to do I end up doing." Here’s the bottom line. You have been buried with Christ. That means you died. You have been raised with Christ. That means you are alive with a new engine running your vehicle. A new ruler who’s there. And so the daily walk of victory and power is not your walk, it is God’s walk. It is God’s living in you who gives you power. The power comes not from ourselves, but from the Holy Spirit. Look at this wonderful passage in Galatians 5. "So I say live by the Spirit and you will not," that’s a powerful statement, an amazing statement. "You will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature because the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so you don’t do what you ought." Here’s the bottom line. Left to ourselves, we are susceptible to the leading and the lies of the sinful nature. It says, "This is going to be good. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to feel good. Whatever it is, it’s going to make you money. You get to have this benefit and that benefit." And so we fall into sin. The Holy Spirit is not so tricked. He knows the sinful nature. He knows exactly what’s it’s about and He says, "I hate it. I don’t kind of hate it or hate it once in a while. I hate it. I desire what is contrary to the sinful nature." The sinful nature desires to destroy us. The Holy Spirit desires to construct us, to root us, to build us, to strengthen us. And so the Holy Spirit is always dependable to be there and to give us power over sin. It’s what you are, brothers and sisters. It’s what I am. We are people who have been rooted in Christ. We are people who are having things built into our lives – good things, good transformations. We are people who are being strengthened every day, who say, "Yeah. This stuff is true." We are people who are overflowing with thanksgiving. We are people who are able to recognize the lies and deception and resist them because they aren’t rooted in Christ. Just like people who are trained to recognize counterfeit money, they spend their time playing with the real stuff. When you know the real Christ, when you know the real wisdom that comes from God, you aren’t fooled by the lies. And when those lies come in the form of temptations, we have the power within us and He’s called the Holy Spirit of God. Your choice and my choice, when we are tempted to sin is to say, "Holy Spirit of God, I entrust You with this temptation." Don’t you think the devil hates that? "I don’t want to mess with the Holy Spirit. I want to mess with you. I can mess with you. I can turn you inside out." And God says, "Turn it over to me." When you get in that boxing ring with Satan, stay in the corner. Send Jesus out as your substitute. He’ll do a lot better job.
The voices and images of the world are telling us that there’s a secret power or wisdom beyond that of simple faith in Christ, if it doesn’t begin with the wisdom of God it doesn’t go anywhere. They only spin around on the surface, scratching the surface, not going anywhere underneath. All the wisdom and the power of God is yours through the Lord Jesus Christ. Find your center in Him.
