Jesus Paid it All! - Part A

Now in verse 11 down to verse 15, the passage that we are considering this morning, he tells us how we are made complete. He gives us three separate areas of completion.

The areas are cleansing, canceling, and crushing. God uses the generosity from friends like you to impact so many lives. Help connect more people to the life-saving message of Jesus Christ. Give a gift today at connectwithskipp.com slash donate. That's connectwithskipp.com slash donate. Or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Let's turn to Colossians 2 as we get ready to hear from Skip. So a little boy built a boat. Thank you for that boat. He built a boat. He was so proud of all the work he did to put sails on it and to get it worthy to put on the water. And as soon as he was done building the boat, he held it up and he said, it's mine.

I made it. So then he took it to the lake, Cochiti Lake. No, he took it to a little more sizable lake than that. And he set it on a very placid water, beautiful blue water. It was a nice day.

A gentle breeze was blowing. He tethered it to a piece of string so it could get carried out by the breeze. And he watched it as he guided it along the shore. And he was so pleased, so happy. This was his boat.

He made it. But then something happened. A gust of wind came up, broke the string, and it carried that little boat out further and further onto the lake. And it eventually vanished. He lost his little boat. It was lost.

He went home sad. A few weeks later, he's walking downtown by the toy store and he goes right past the window and something catches his attention. He turns and he goes, could it be?

Is it possible? And it was indeed his boat. He could tell by all the details on it. So he walks inside the shop. He points to the boat and says to the store owner, excuse me, sir, that's my boat. I made it. It's mine. The store owner said, son, congratulations. You did a good job. But it's mine now.

And if you want it, you have to pay that much for it. Well, again, the boy walked out sad because he made it. But he was determined. He went home. He worked hard. He saved up his allowance money for the next several weeks. And by the end of the summer, he made enough money to go back and buy the boat.

And he did. He walks into the store, lays out the cash on the counter, purchases the boat, takes the boat and says, now you're twice mine. You're mine because I made you and you're mine because I bought you.

That is a picture of redemption. We belong to God because he made us and we belong to him because he purchased us. He bought us.

Paul has already stated the first part of that truth in chapter one, verse 16, that Jesus Christ created everything in heaven, on earth, whether visible or invisible. So we are his because he made us. But now he tells us that we are his because he bought us.

He purchased us. And that really takes us to the paragraph that we're stuttering, stuttering, studying. I'm stuttering, but we are studying Colossians chapter two in verse 11, where Paul says, In him, that is in Christ, 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, 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. 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, having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Let me tell you just a little bit about what we just read. Paul the Apostle is like the king of metaphors. He likes figurative language. He likes analogies. And in this paragraph, he like stacks them up. I think it was my one of my English teachers who said, never mix your metaphors.

Paul mixes them a lot. And here he talks about the cross, one event in history, the cross of Jesus Christ and our redemption. And he speaks of it in five different ways, five different metaphors, circumcision, baptism, resurrection, a financial transaction and a military victory. It's like he realizes my audience may be in the military, might be bankers, might be Jewish people, might be this, might be that. I'm going to come up with descriptions of the same thing, but in different ways. So he stacks up these metaphors.

And here's why. As believers, we have a single reference point that we are always told to go back to and remember, and it's the cross. It's like our reset button. It's why the New Testament, it's why Jesus at the Last Supper said, I want you to do this often in remembrance of me. I don't want you to ever let this fact go that I am going to the cross, and I want you to take these elements often, and when you do, do it in remembrance of me. We're always going back to the cross. It is the major theme of all four gospels. It's estimated that depending on which of the four gospels you are reading, between 20% and 40% deal with that one event, the cross of Christ. Also, Jesus is called in Revelation 13, the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. So what that means is all of the Old Testament points forward to the cross.

All of the New Testament looks back to that event, and we are told to completely and ongoingly remember that. Now, the name of this message is after a hymn. I named this message Jesus Paid It All, and I did it intentionally. We sang a little bit of that hymn a moment ago. That was a song that was written 175 years ago by a 47-year-old widow who was sitting in a choir loft one Sunday morning, and after a message, I don't know what the message was on.

I'm sort of guessing it might have been Colossians as I read the lyrics of the song. She's listening to the message, and at the end of the message, the pastor gave a rather lengthy pastoral prayer, during which time she opened up her hymnal and got a blank page, and she wrote a little poem that became this wonderful hymn that we just sang. I hear the Savior say, Thy strength indeed is small. Child of weakness, watch and pray.

Find in me Thy all in all. Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

But there's a fourth verse that is often not sung because hymns, as you know, are lengthy endeavors, and the fourth verse is probably my favorite, and we'll put this up on the screen, because it feeds right into what we have been studying in Colossians. And now complete in Him, and now complete in Him, my robe, His righteousness, clothes sheltered beneath His side, I am divinely blessed. Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. She is writing about the total sufficiency of Christ, and she says, and now complete in Him. May I remind you of verse 10 from last week's study? Look at verse 10 of Colossians 2. And you are complete in Him.

That's His statement. He has made you full, complete. Okay, now in verse 11 down to verse 15, the passage that we are considering this morning, He tells us how we are made complete. He gives us three separate areas of completion. The areas are cleansing, canceling, and crushing.

Cleansing, canceling, and crushing. He cleansed my past. He canceled my debt. He crushed my foes.

So let's consider the first. He cleansed my past. That's in view in verse 11. In Him, you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Now in this paragraph, He mentions two rituals, right? Circumcision and what's the other one?

Anybody remember what we just read? You can talk in church. So, circumcision is one. What's the other ritual? Baptism. Baptism. Circumcision and baptism. Both of those were Jewish rituals. A lot of people think, no, no, baptism sort of came along when Christians came along. Jews practiced it first. It became initiated into the Christian church and became something we continue to practice as commanded by Christ. But circumcision and baptism are mentioned.

Why? Why circumcision? Well, we've been telling you the last several weeks about what we are calling the Colossian heresy. It became known as Gnosticism later on. It was this belief system that started spreading through the congregation and it was a mix. It was an amalgamation. It was a syncretism of a few different belief systems from pagan philosophy to Jewish legalism. Sort of like a smorgasbord of religious ideas. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, a little bit of this.

Throw it all together. They would have loved the bumper sticker that I see on cars, the co-exist bumper sticker. They'd have been all over that.

Yeah, a little bit of everything. It's all the same. And that became their heresy that they were pushing. But part of that is they insisted that if you're a male, like in Judaism, you must be circumcised. If you want to be right with God, you have to go through the ritual of circumcision. I probably don't have to explain what circumcision is to any of you. But I will just tell you that on the eighth day of a male baby's life, the foreskin of the child was excised, was cut off. And it was a sign, an outward ceremony of an inward spiritual reality. It symbolized the cutting away of the flesh life. It symbolized that I have a covenant with God that I follow God.

Great. Here's the problem with circumcision. It's also the problem with baptism, by the way, is people started looking at the ceremony as a magic charm. As long as I go through the ceremony, I'm okay.

As long as I get circumcised, I'm all right. Like people say, when you ask them, are you saved? And they don't answer the question.

You know what they say? I've been baptized. It wasn't my question.

I didn't ask you if you once got wet. I'm asking you, are you a saved individual? Well, I got baptized. So they were doing that. They were looking back to the ritual, and they were trusting the ritual as something that would save them. And that goes all the way back early on in the early church. In Acts chapter 15, there was a group of people, we called them the Judaizers, who came into the church and said, unless you are circumcised and keep the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.

So they really held to that ritual. It got so bad that the rabbis even had a few sayings about circumcision. One of them was, circumcised men do not descend into Gehenna. And the other one is that circumcision will deliver Israel from Gehenna. So what they're saying is, whether you take it personally or nationally, what saves a person from hell is the ritual of circumcision. So you'll notice that Paul is referencing this ritual, but look at verse 11. Paul does not say, okay, you guys, you need to be circumcised. He says, in him you were also circumcised, Jew or Gentile, male or female. In him, you also were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. So obviously he is speaking spiritually.

He's using a metaphor. By the way, even Moses himself knew that the ritual only pointed to a reality. Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 10 said to the children of Israel, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer.

Yeah, you can have gone through the ritual of circumcision, but you can have a stiff neck or a hard heart. You cannot be right with God even though you went through the ritual. Okay, so he mentions that, and this is the metaphor, that spiritually speaking, he has done for you at the cross a cleansing at the deepest level.

He cleansed you of your past, and that is symbolized by circumcision and baptism. But I want you to turn to a passage of Scripture that's going to shed a little bit of light on this. Go back just a couple pages into the book of Philippians, the book right before this one. Go to Philippians chapter 3, because I'm going to have you and I read something that I think is going to surprise you a little bit.

He's talking about circumcision again. Philippians chapter 3 verse 1, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. We know this letter is the happy letter, right? Philippians is the letter of joy. Paul's in jail, but he's filled with joy. Rejoice in the Lord.

For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe. Now watch this. Beware of dogs. Whoa. What's up with that?

It's like, hey, dudes, rejoice in the Lord. Beware of dogs. Whoa.

What a switch. Now, he's not saying beware of Fido. Beware of the pit bull in your neighborhood, like the people have those signs, because back then, dogs were not pets. People didn't have dogs that they brought into the house. Dogs were scavengers. They hunted in packs.

They carried diseases. And there's something else you need to know. Ancient Jewish people often referred to non-Jews, Gentiles, as Gentile dogs. Paul picks up on the term, but he calls not Gentiles dogs, but people who are pushing circumcision as dogs. So he says, beware of dogs. Watch this.

Beware of evil workers. Beware of the mutilation. He's referring to circumcision. He calls it here a mutilation. Now, I know he's talking about circumcision because, look at verse 3.

For we are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. He's talking about when he talks about dogs. He's talking about men whose teaching distorts the gospel. Men whose teaching distorts the gospel. Those people who add anything to the gospel of grace are dogs.

Wow. You know that salvation is a free gift, right? Ephesians 2, by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the, tell me, gift of God.

But some people add to that. They add religious duty to that. You've got to go to church. You've got to keep the rules.

You've got to do this. You've got to take a pilgrimage. Paul would say, dogs.

Or they add moral responsibility. You can't be saved until you stop smoking. You can't be saved until you stop drinking.

You can't be saved if you listen to that kind of music. True or false? False. So, what does Paul say about them? They are?

No, say it like I say it. They are dogs. Yeah, scavengers. These are people who are ripping off your faith. And then, I love how he puts this in Philippians 3, verse 3. For we are the circumcision, the true circumcision, who worship God in spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. That is, we depend totally on Jesus Christ. The humanists will say, no, you've got to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And the legalists will say, you've got to work your way to heaven and keep the rituals and go through the ceremonies. But Christians will say, Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. It's all credit to Him. But the moment you start adding to the gospel, it's dangerous.

Because, Paul would say, he and he alone cleansed your past. Back in 1922, they made a very interesting and significant discovery in Egypt when they uncovered the tomb of King, King Tut, right? Most of us, that's all the Egyptology we know, King Tut. So, King Tut, 1922, they uncovered his tomb. They went inside and they found not just the burial chamber and the ornate decorations of the burial chamber, they found his sarcophagus or the burial box, large casket, a very ornate casket. They opened up that casket and they found inside that casket another casket of gold leaf over wood. They opened up that casket and they found, guess what? Another casket of solid gold. They opened up that casket.

They did not find another casket. They found a gold mask and gold cloth and gold stuff and they took that off and you know what they found? A dead guy. A withered up, even though he was a boy king, old looking corpse. Now, that is what religion and ritual and legalism especially does. All they're doing is dressing up a corpse.

Here's gold, looks pretty good, yeah. But it's dead. He's dead. You can dress the thing up, but the problem is there is separation of life.

Speaking of that, look at verse 13. He kind of presses that point. And you being what? Dead. And you being dead.

Well, that's a problem. If you're dead, that's a problem. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him. So here he says, big problem is, and the reason you need the cross, is we were in the realm of death. We were spiritually dead.

Ephesians chapter 2 is almost identical to this. He says, and you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world. Interesting that he said you were dead, but you walked. You were indeed the walking dead, Paul was saying in Ephesians chapter 2.

It's important that we get this. Unbelievers aren't just sick, they're dead. They are dead. They don't need a self-help course.

They don't need a personality adjustment. They need salvation. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Always Only Jesus. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Right now, we want to share about a special resource that will help you uncover God's will and follow it boldly. We want to tell you about a powerful resource that will help you understand and follow God's will. It's Pastor Skip's eight-message package, Discovering God's Will. You have the Spirit of God living in you, and He will guide you, He says, with His eye. And do you realize God is more interested in guiding you than you are in being guided?

So as soon as you say, Lord, I want to take and be ruled by your peace and rooted in Scripture, and I want to honor your name, He's right there to direct your steps. Skip Heitzig's Discovering God's Will package includes message titles such as Guardrails to Knowing God's Will and Navigating Another Year as part of eight full-length teachings by Skip. We'll send you this powerful resource as thanks for your gift to expand Connect with Skip Heitzig to reach more people in major U.S. cities. So request your resource when you give and start to make your life count for God's kingdom. Just call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. We're glad you joined us today, and be sure to come back tomorrow as Skip shares a powerful word about the one relationship that will never fail or disappoint you. Why are you looking to be fulfilled in anyone or anything else if you really can't be? And I want to say to you, live your life and have relationships, but don't look to any relationship to totally satisfy you because every human relationship will fail. Every human will fail you at some point. Disappoint you. Make a connection Make a connection At the foot of the crossing Cast all burdens on his word Make a connection Connect with Skip Hyton is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.