What Keeps an Apostle Up at Night? - Part B

If Jesus is all you've got, it's because Jesus is all you need. In him is the fullness of God, and, and by the way, verse 10, you are complete in him, same word, play Roma. Fullness of God is in Jesus. Jesus made you complete. He completed your life.

Welcome to Connect with Skip Heitig. Today, Skip concludes his message, what keeps an apostle up at night and reminds you that you don't need anything more than Jesus because with him and in him, you are complete. Now, we want to tell you about a resource that'll help you better understand and follow God's will for your life. What is God's will for your life? Skip Heitig has biblical direction. The will of God is not some mystical, impractical, ethereal process that makes you weird. It is not a maze.

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That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now let's turn to Colossians 2 as we join Skip for the study. This is what breaks a pastor's heart.

This is what keeps a pastor up at night is he thinks about people that once were vibrant in their faith, they were growing in their faith, growing in their experience, they were very involved, they were so excited to follow Jesus. They're not here anymore. They're gone. Hey, we're so-and-so.

I haven't seen that person in a long time. You find out, well, they stopped coming to church, they stopped reading their Bible, they stopped hanging out with other believers, they stopped praying. They just stopped.

They just stopped. So we can't stop. We have to make progress. We have to continue to walk. Now I'm going to drill down in verse 6 and 7 for just a moment, because what I find here is that Paul tells us there are three things we need to do in order to have a healthy walk.

Number one, and I'll give you the principle, then I'll show you the text. Number one, keep moving forward so that you don't slip backwards. Keep moving forward so that you don't slip backward. That's verse 6. As you have received Christ as Lord, so walk in Him.

That is in the present tense. In other words, okay, you once received Christ, awesome, we're glad that you got saved whatever day you did, but now walk in Him. Continue constantly, daily, walk in Him.

Don't stop. Keep moving forward so you don't slip backward. Charles Haddon Spurgeon put it this way, the Christian life is like climbing a hill of ice. You can't slide up.

Makes sense, right? Any of you ever hear about somebody upsliding? What happened to that Christian? Oh man, he upslid. No, we say he backslid.

Nobody upslides. He says if you want to know how to backslide, stop going forward. Cease going upward and you'll go downward of necessity.

You can never stand still. Maybe we should even say it this way. Maybe we should say if you're not going forward, then you actually are going backward. This is why we talk about next step cards, and we don't just have next step cards because we like to print stuff on paper.

Let's just print stuff up because churches do that. No, we believe that every single one of us, self-included, have a next step to take. We can never plateau and say, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, I'm a Christian, I'm mature. All of us need a walk.

So, keep moving forward so you don't slip backward. That's number one. Number two, grow down so you can grow up. This is all under the banner of behave. Grow down so you can grow up.

Look at verse 7. Rooted, that's downward growth, and built up in him. That's upward growth.

Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught. So, grow down so you can grow up. Or, I'll put it another way, go for depth, not breadth.

Go for depth. Get a root system. Get a root system in your Christian life. Get a root system in your Christian life. A tree has to grow down before it can ever grow up. A tree has to develop a root system before it can ever have branches and leaves and fruit. So, good fruit depends on a good root.

Good fruit depends on good root. I learned years ago that I need to, the Lord told me this, focus on the depth of your ministry and let me take care of the breadth of your ministry. So, at this last service, the first service this morning, I met a family. They were sitting right over in this section, and they came all the way across the country from Kansas City and Savannah, Georgia, just to be a part of this church service. This gal turned 70 years of age.

She had a brain tumor this last year. A kid said, what do you want for your birthday? You want to go to Hawaii? She goes, I want to go to Albuquerque, and I want to sit in that church because I'm a part of that church online. That's my birthday wish.

Came all the way across the country. Now, I didn't years ago think, how can I get that to happen? How can I get people to do that? Just worry about the depth, and God will take care of the breadth. So, get a root system. Christians are not to be tumbleweeds. You know, we know a lot about tumbleweeds around these parts, right?

Some of us even decorate them for Christmas, I notice. Tumbleweeds really have no root system. That's why they blow around everywhere. So, I discovered that tumbleweeds, get this, have a single narrow root that turns brittle with age.

It sounds like some people I know. Very narrow, and they grow brittle with age. That's not how you want to live your Christian life, because a tumbleweed, because they have a limited root system, it's why they have a short life. It's why they blow around with every window of doctrine. So, a fruitful Christian has roots. Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches, stay connected to him, stay abiding in him. At all times, you will grow. So, keep moving forward so you don't slip backward.

Grow down so you can grow up. And the third part of behaving is this, thinking should lead to thanking. Thinking should lead to thanking. After all this great theology and after all this knowledge and stuff that he gives and throws down, he says at the end of verse 7, abounding in it with thanksgiving. That is the effect of a good theology.

If you are down in the mouth and always pessimistic and always bummed out, I'm guessing there's something you don't understand. There's something lacking in your theological construct, because the mark of maturity, a healthy Christian, spills out with gratitude. Paul the Apostle, the guy who was in jail a lot, got beat up a lot, is the guy who said in 1 Thessalonians 5, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Not in everything complain, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you, but in everything give thanks. So, believe, behave. And then finally, the third word is beware, and he says that. Look at verse 8. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in him, that is in Jesus Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. You notice he uses the word philosophy. I like the word. I took philosophy for a master's degree program years ago, studied all sorts of different philosophical constructs, and really got to understand how utterly confused these people are.

And here's unregenerate man trying to figure out life and not doing a really great job at it, except noticing certain things and writing them down and disagreeing with that dude. So, the word philosophy, I actually like the word. It comes from two Greek words, phileo, which is to love, and sophia, which is wisdom, or the right application of knowledge. It simply means somebody who loves or pursues knowledge or wisdom, philosophy. In one sense, every one of us is a philosopher because we all have a worldview. Everybody grapples with the question, why am I here?

What is the purpose and meaning of life? But Paul uses the word here, philosophy, not in reference to loving wisdom and loving knowledge in college courses on philosophy. Paul uses the term philosophy to mean this, man's attempt to find out by his own intellect and research those things which can only be known by divine revelation.

That's what he means. Man's attempt to find out by his own intellect and research those things which can only be known by divine revelation. Well, who was doing that in Colossae? That group we've been telling you about every week, that group of heretics, that group of people that were talking smack about Jesus and making up stories about Jesus, and infiltrating the church. They became known as Gnostics later on. They became known as Corinthian Gnostics and Docetic Gnostics.

I'm not going to take the time to explain that today. But here's what I want you to understand about these people. They used familiar words, familiar Christian words, with different meanings of those words. So they had the same vocabulary, but they happened to have a different dictionary. So they said God and Jesus, and those Christians go, I know about God and I know about Jesus. But the meaning poured into God and Jesus was from a different dictionary.

It meant something completely different. So the label was not accurate as to the contents. Years ago, when Gerber Baby Food started marketing its baby food in Africa, the continent of Africa, they made a fatal mistake in packaging because they package their product like they would package it in the United States. If you pick up a baby food jar from Gerber's, what's on the front of it?

A baby, a cute little baby, right? That's what sells it here. But in Africa, there are many countries where the illiteracy rate is very high so they don't read. So companies in Africa typically will put on the label the contents of whatever is in the product, in the jar. So for somebody in Africa to see a baby on the front of a jar, it's like, I'm not touching that jar, if that's what's in it. So they didn't do well.

They didn't do well in Africa. A few years after that, the Pepsi Cola company was marketing in China and their slogan on their product, on their can, was this, Pepsi brings you back to life. Nothing wrong with that. That's a good slogan, right? Gives you a little pickup. We know what that means. Pepsi brings you back to life.

However, in the translation, something was lost and it came out this way in Chinese. Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave. Yeah, did they do well? No, they didn't do well. So these are innocent mistakes. There's no babies in jars.

There's no ancestors that come back from the grave. But my point is this. Heretics words are like putting wrong labels on jars. They're putting wrong labels. Same vocabulary, different dictionary, wrong information.

Wrong information. And cults are notorious for doing this. This is why people get confused. We have conversation with cultists, people involved in in errant belief systems, and we go, well, they say they love Jesus and they say they're born again. Drill down deeper and find out what they mean by born again and what they mean by Jesus. Chances are it's not the same thing you mean and especially what the Bible means by Jesus. Go beyond just the labeling.

Find out the definition. So he says, beware, that's the warning, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit. The word cheat is sometimes translated. If you have an NIV, take you captive. Don't let anybody take you captive. A better translation is don't let anyone kidnap your faith. These heretics were nothing more than spiritual human traffickers. They were kidnapping people's faith. They were coming into congregations, and they were finding young impressionable believers and taking them aside and trying to push their stuff on them. And Paul warned about that, not only here, but he warned about that so many other places.

Church of Ephesus, Paul spent three years in Ephesus. When he's leaving that town, he said, this is Acts 20, after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will arise from your own ranks to draw away disciples after themselves. Almost every person I've talked to who's been involved in some kind of cult, many of them, most of them, were at one time in solid Christian churches, solid Christian churches.

But somebody got on their ear and drew them away. And it's not just people who would come into a congregation by subterfuge and do that. Sadly, pulpits are weak. And when pulpits are weak and ministers are off the wall, there's little hope for anybody who would listen to them. A magazine survey of over 3,000 Protestant ministers revealed that a considerable number of them rejected altogether the idea of a personal God. So why are you even in the pulpit, Mr. Preacher, if you don't believe in a personal God?

God, they said, was the ground of being, listen to these terms, the force of life, may the force be with you, the principle of love. 56% rejected the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, foundational principle of Scripture. 71%, these are ministers, rejected the idea of life after death.

Again, what are you even—work somewhere else. 54% rejected the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a large majority in the 90 percentile rejected the idea that there would be a personal return of Jesus Christ to the earth. So what does Paul have to say about stuff like that? Verse 9 is what Paul has to say. I love his answer, verse 9, for in Him, in Christ, dwells, means permanently dwells.

It actually means settle down and make itself at home in. In Christ dwells permanently all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form, bodily form, or the Godhead bodily. Now that verse, verse 9, if it's not marked in your Bible and you don't mind marking your Bible, any of you guys mind, is it okay to mark your Bible? Mark that verse. It is perhaps the clearest verse of the deity of Jesus Christ in Scripture, if not one of the most clear, solid places where the deity of Christ is shown.

It shatters arguments. It was effective against the Gnosticism of Paul's day that denied the deity of Christ. I'll pull this verse out if you speak to somebody who's involved in Christian science, or they're a Jehovah Witness, or they belong to the Unity School, or the Theosophy Movement, or Mormonism, or Unity School of Christianity. All of these that deny the deity of Christ show that one. In Jesus Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Okay, in that verse there's a word, fullness. See the word fullness? That happened to be a buzzword for the Gnostics, for the heretics. They loved this word fullness.

And this is what they said. They said, the fullness of God was divided up, the playroma, that's what the word fullness means, or that's the Greek word. The divine playroma, the fullness, is divided up in its expression among the various emanations that came from God. So remember I said there's all these little sub-gods, angelic beings that came out from God. Jesus was one of them. The playroma, the fullness of God, was divided in all those different emanations, all those beings, and it decreased the further down the ladder they got. And Paul knew that. He knew that they were teaching that. What Paul is saying this, Jesus did not get part of it. He got all of it, all of it. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus Christ.

It was a solid frontal blow to that heresy of the time. But let's close where he closes the paragraph. This is, to me, the most personal part. Verse 10, and you are complete in Him.

You are complete in Him. Gnostics said you're not complete in Him. Jesus is a good start.

It's a good place to start. We're going to take you into the deeper knowledge, the fullness, the playroma of God, through all these little steps and philosophies and legalistic practices. Paul's going, uh-uh. Jesus, if Jesus is all you've got, it's because Jesus is all you need. In Him is the fullness of God. And, by the way, verse 10, you are complete in Him.

Same word, playroma. Fullness of God is in Jesus. Jesus made you complete. He completed your life, who is the head of all principality and power. So, what kept Paul the apostle up at night?

What kept him up were two things. Number one, the Christians in Colossae who were complete in Jesus, but they didn't think they were complete. And, number two, unbelievers, who because they were unbelievers, were indeed not complete.

All human beings are incomplete without Christ. I have Jewish friends who have given their lives to Jesus, and they have an interesting way of describing their life. They say, I am a completed Jew, their terminology. I go, what do you mean a completed Jew? He goes, well, you know, Judaism always anticipated Messiah.

We sort of set the groundwork for y'all. And so, that's my heritage, Jewish, but now I've met the Messiah, met Jesus. I am a completed Jew. And that's a good description because human beings are incomplete until they come to Christ. Jesus makes you complete. You are complete in Him. So, if you're not a believer this morning, if you haven't personally received the Lord Jesus, let alone walk in Him, you just haven't received Him personally, maybe religious, maybe a good person, but you haven't personally come to a place where you said, I am giving my life to Jesus, now is the time for you to rest your life on the pillow of God's grace and be complete in Him. And if you are a believer this morning and somebody's saying, yeah, well, I'm glad you're a Christian, but, you know, you need this and you need that, listen, you are complete in Jesus Christ. You need to hear that message.

You're complete in Him. Now, it could be that you don't know what you have. There's a lot of people who sort of live like they're actually millionaires in the bank, but they feel like they need a second, third income stream. Even though they've got everything they need, it's in the bank.

Just go find out what you have in the bank and use what you got. There's a lot of us believers who are spiritually wealthy, but we just don't know what we have in the bank. That's why we read the scripture all the time to discover what's in the bank book, but you are complete in Him. That's Skip Heintzing with a message from the series Always Only Jesus. Find the full message, as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now, here's Skip to share how you can bless people around the world with God's Word through a gift to keep these teachings coming to you and others.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. Tomorrow, Skip begins his message, Jesus paid it all and encourages you with biblical truth about your completion in Christ. He gives us three separate areas of completion.

The areas are cleansing, canceling, and crushing. He cleansed my past. He canceled my debt. He crushed my foes. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.