R1651 Introduction to Colossians, Pt.1

God has an encouraging word for you and me today through the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton, beginning a study in the book of Colossians, as we open the word together, know that our phones are open at 866-899-WORD anytime to talk or pray or connect you with resources.

That's 866-899-9673. Now, Dr. Don Wilton. Let's just bow our heads together in the presence of the Lord Jesus. And with every head bowed, this is what it's all about. The anchor holds strong believers, strong church, church strong. We're coming together to pray, people of every persuasion, every walk of life. We're joining with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association all over the world in praying for Afghanistan, for the people of Afghanistan. We're praying especially for Christian people who are facing unmitigated persecution, and then especially, especially for women and girls. We're praying for Haiti. We're praying for people in our community worshiping, live streaming, on television, people at home, people away, people in hospital, people grieving, people struggling. We're praying for believers, those of us who know and love Jesus, that we would be strong in our faith because the anchor holds. Lord Jesus, O God, Holy Spirit, come down upon these people.

Lord Jesus, I ask you, I ask you, I'm just one drop in a bucket. I ask you to come down upon my people, Lord. We ask you to come down upon our people. Speak to us by your Spirit through your Word, and we pray this prayer in Jesus' name.

Amen. You're going to need your Bibles. Sometimes I'm inclined to say like never before, but long before I was privileged to become your pastor, there was established in this church generations ago the fact that nothing matters outside God and His Word. How serious are we about that today, church?

Is that open to debate? Do we as believers find our strength, get our instructions, know how to live, what to say, how to behave? Is there any meeting in this church that is necessary outside of Jesus? Is there any believer in this church who knows better than God? Is there any believer in this church who has been appointed by God to be the policeman of this church? Is there any pastor? Do I have that?

Do you have that? Is there any believer here who thinks that you can behave badly in the church? Is there any believer who has a question about our world and then wants to know the answer? Would we go to any other place other than to the Word of God? Where are we going to take our stand, church?

Maybe on the Democratic Party, maybe the Republican Party, maybe on an individual in this church who seems to know better than anybody else, maybe the school board, maybe me. Who are we? What are we facing? So my precious people, for the next several weeks, church strong. We're going to be in the book of Colossians. All of that to say, please open your Bibles to Colossians chapter 1.

We've got to hear what God has to say. Now I'm going to show you a map, and a map's going to appear for all of us to see. You can see it there, and you'll see very easily the map of Europe as we know it.

Self-explanatory, I don't want to take anything for granted. You can see Italy over there and Sicily, the football that's about to be kicked off the season, excepting that one's going to stay in the same place. And you can look over on my right, or your right, I guess I'm facing backwards right now. You can see the Middle East there, you can even see Nazareth in the picture. See Nazareth?

All know about Nazareth? Oh, and Samaria, Judea, Samaria. Go a little further up there into Syria, there's so much conflict going on there today.

And Turkey, Cyprus, Crete, and of course over in the middle of the picture you've got Greece. You know, today they're suffering from a lot of fires like we are in California, and other parts have had just terrible fires going on down in the lower part down to, you see Corinth there? That's where a lot of those fires are, and then all around Athens, which is the major city in Greece, and we need to pray for our friends and the people of Greece.

They're facing a lot of that. This picture here is a picture in the time that this letter was written, and it was written to the people at Colossae. You can see Ephesus right over on the sea there, on the Aegean Sea. Ephesus, quite a place today.

Like some of you, I've been there quite a number of times. In Paul's day and age, you can see some of the towns there. Philippi right up at the top in the province of Macedonia, and what book in the Bible was written to Philippi? The letter to Philippians.

So it was to those people, to the church there. You can see Corinth. We've got 1 and 2 Corinthians in the New Testament that was written to that group of people. This timeless truth, God's Word, was given to those believers. And you see Thessalonica, I love 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

In fact, Steve Skinner will tell you my many conversations. I was that close to, I sort of wondering if the Lord wanted me to be in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, a lot of eschatology. Well, we may go there next, but the Lord said, just hold on. By the way, we've got one of our wonderful women's Bible studies is in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. We've got Bible studies everywhere in our church.

Be a part of those. We've got some incredible teachers teaching men and women's Bible studies. So, Colossae, I want you to see where Colossae is. By the way, as the crow flies, if you were to track from Colossae there to Rome, see Rome up in the top corner there? Paul wrote what God wanted him to say, God's words to these people at the church. This church, it was literally a church like ours. It was a gathering of believers.

And Paul wrote to them while he was in prison in Colossae, in Rome, about 1,300 miles. If any of you are, that's as the crow flies, okay? If I was to get on my kite and fly over there, probably as the crow flies, about 1,300. But there's a lot of water to negotiate. Of course, you can get there by land, by the way, excepting for a little slither that you'd have to get in a canoe to get there to cross over, which is not a problem today because a big bridge is built.

You can do that. You can cross over from Asia Minor to Macedonia on land. In fact, did you know, I don't know what this has got to do with our Bible study, you can go from England all the way to southern Africa now by land. Did you know that?

I mean, it's just they call bridges and connections. But back in Paul's day, it was an interesting journey. And Paul wrote this letter to this group of people who were in this town. You may be interested to know just by the way that he probably helped to establish the church at Colossae when he was in Ephesus. He was there for three years, if you remember, on one of his missionary journeys. But he didn't start the church. A fellow called Epaphras did so.

He started the church. And in fact, we're told that right there in verse 12, the Bible tells us about it, not verse 12. In verse 7, you learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of the gospel.

So let's just, I want to put on before us all today something very important and then I want to share something very important with you. Let's just read the first two verses. Now this is Paul sitting in prison near the end of his life and God speaking through his servant. This is the inspired, infallible, inerrant word of the living God. God used an instrument just as he's right now.

Please beg my pardon, I'm not asking you to look at me. But right now you're listening to me and I'm an instrument, that's all I have. I'm just an instrument. God uses us as instruments. You and I as the church, we are instruments in the hands of God. You're God's missionary, not because God cannot share that word or feed those people or go to that city, but he chooses to use you and me. And what he told the rich man who was already in eternal hell, he said they've got Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

That's you, that's me. So this is Paul in prison very shortly before he is executed. Just before he was, the Taliban was on his front doorstep. His life was about to be given for the sake of Christ. God spoke through him and he wrote God's word to those people in that place, to the church, but this is eternal, this is timeless. So this is what he said in the first two verses. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the holy and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in the church at Colossi. Grace and peace to you from God our Father.

Isn't that a beautiful way to begin something so critical? God told him that he, God, had something eternal, non-negotiable, to say to these people, to the church, designed to strengthen them. This was the anchor that would hold them despite the storms.

Just a word about them. The church at Colossi had not yet succumbed to the world around them, and I'm going to tell you what they were facing. They were under threat. They were surrounded by paganism. Their world was very troubled, and these were faithful and holy.

By the way, I'm not even going to get into that today. Holy? Which one of us, if I was to ask all of us today worshiping, whichever one of you is holy right now, would you please stand?

None of us would want to stand. That designation comes because of what he's about to say, concerning the all-sufficiency of Christ and the indwelling presence of Christ. It is because of him he's the anchor. He's the one.

He is that anchor, and we study God's Word as a means to help us stay more connected to that anchor. Don't go away. Dr. Wilton will be back with the rest of today's message, but he wants you to know we're here for you 24 hours a day on our website at www.tewonline.org. That's tewonline.org. Sign up for the daily devotional from Dr. Wilton. It pops into your email at 6 o'clock every morning, and it's guaranteed to encourage you.

That's online at tewonline.org. Now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don. You take him out of the equation. Church, you're going to be anything but holy.

You're going to look like the world that you're living in. You take Jesus out of it. Take God out of it. Church, you take God out of it, and we're going to discuss that. You pay lip service to God, like you dust him off just on a Sunday morning, and your behavior does not mirror what it means to trust in God. You will be rendered unholy and unfaithful, which is where?

That's all around us. The world is not only unholy, but unfaithful. That's what sin does. Sin separates people from a holy and a righteous God.

I'm going to be talking about these things for several weeks. So this church at Colossae, they were facing serious challenges. They were coming to church on Sunday morning and Wednesday and whenever it might be, and the people were bringing with them the raging wildfires that were going on into the world.

They came and sat. They prayed together, studied God's Word together, and they were dealing at the same time with pain, with agony, with unbelievable ugliness, with bad behavior. And most of all, with a world that was increasingly saying, are you kidding me? Jesus? The church at Colossae was being squeezed, and they hadn't yet succumbed.

I'm saying this is a don statement. I wouldn't be surprised if word had gotten to Paul that there were churches falling like dominoes all across this region. They were succumbing left and right because the devil infiltrated them. And it'll come through one person in this congregation. One. It'll take one of you.

He will lick his chops. It never happens through a pew. Pews don't give you trouble. Pews never threaten God.

It's always people. And people's biggest problem is we always know better than God. And we're living in a world today where we've set up a monument to our own glory. And the world wants the church to mirror the world instead of the church wanting the world to mirror the Lord Jesus. And essentially at Colossae, in their world, now I'm going into their world, you had this collision between multiple anti-Christian philosophies. It became known as the Colossae heresy. That's what it was known as. And the church faced the danger, but they hadn't yet fallen to it. They faced the danger of being pulled into it. If a fire starts in your house, don't go and waft around it. Put it out.

If your children are dabbling in, stop them. If you're part of the one foot club, you have one foot in the world and one foot in God's kingdom, take your foot out of the world. That's what Paul is about to say to them. You know, in chapter 1, verse 23, we will read, we'll get there. If you continue in your faith, established and firm, you will not be moved from the hope held out in the gospel.

Did you hear what he said there? If you continue in your faith, you will not be moved from all the joy and the promise, the blessing that comes from knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, because he's all sufficient. So what about the Colossian heresy? So just to try and help us understand that briefly. There were really two worlds that were colliding in this town.

Watch me now, okay? I'll try and explain it very simply. On the one hand, there was Greek philosophy, rank paganism. It was all based on knowledge and philosophy. Greek philosophers believed that the gospel of Jesus was just far too simplistic. I mean, get a life.

Give your heart to Jesus and you'll be forgiven and go to heaven. How stupidly simplistic. The Greeks, they were overthinkers. They were philosophers.

They had superior knowledge. So you can go and read about that, for example, in 1 Corinthians is replete with the challenges presented by this brand of paganism. Like, is there anything more ridiculous than being a Christian? And they found any reason to brand Christians to associate Christians. They just looked around. The filmmaker Michael Moore just this week said, you know, he equated the behavior of the Taliban to conservative Christians in America. Give me a break. It's like groping at something to bring down Christians. That's what the Greeks did. They belittled.

When their kids went to school, it was like... I mean, have you lost your mind? Are you in church on Sunday?

Do you realize you could be at the beach right now? Worship your gods, man. So you can summarize Greek philosophy in three denials, and I'm just giving this to you. First of all, they denied the humanity of Christ. They denied the humanity of Christ, you know. How could a perfect God take up human matter which was overtly evil?

Can't happen. So they denied the humanity of Christ. In other words, Jesus could never have taken on flesh.

And that whole thing about becoming sin for us even though he knew no sin, that's just gobbledy gobbledy nonsense. Secondly, they denied the deity of Christ. It's one thing to deny the humanity of Christ, but secondly, they denied the deity of Christ. And to deny the deity of Christ literally meant there is no way that God ever could become man. Remember, they had plenty of gods and made statues of them, they had temples erected to them everywhere. Their brand of worship was a Mardi Gras brand of worship.

It was live today because tomorrow you die. And thirdly, they denied the sufficiency of Christ. What is the sufficiency of Christ? It's the sufficiency of Christ for salvation. Such powerful teaching and preaching from the pulpit of Dr. Don Wilton.

Now as he steps into the studio, open your heart to what he wants to share next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today I repent of my sin and by faith I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. Welcome to the family of God. Some of you perhaps have just given your life to Christ for the very first time. Praying along with Dr. Wilton, others rededicating your life. You need to know we have free resources we want you to have if you'll call us at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 or join us online at www.tewonline.org where you'll find great resources like this. Did you know that you can listen to Weekly Words of Encouragement written by Dr. Don Wilton on YouTube? Follow us each week as Dr. Wilton brings you Words of Encouragement for the week ahead. Just type in YouTube's search bar, Weekly Words of Encouragement, Don Wilton Devotional. We hope that this will be a blessing to you. The encouraging word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. Tomorrow we continue in our study in the book of Colossians. Between now and then let's stay connected. We're on our website 24-7 at www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org. The encouraging word.