You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. You know, sometimes people tell me the craziest religious stuff. And sometimes those ideas are just captivating. You want to explore them. Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to have, like, a storehouse you could go to where all wisdom and knowledge is? Someplace we could check for what's really true.
Yeah. Well, Paul's going to tell us where that is today on More Than Ink. Hey, you found us. This is More Than Ink. I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're with us. And we are looking at this marvelous little letter of Colossians. I mean, it's little in number of words, but it's big. Oh, it's so dense. In terms of what it talks about. And so Paul's writing to a little church in Colossae.
It's just inland in some ways from Ephesus and Turkey. And it looks like it's a place he's never been before. And so now today he's going to tell them how his heart is really moved on their behalf. That they understand the truth and understand it well. And he feels like I could probably do a better job if I was physically there.
But I'm not. So I'm writing here. So there's a great passion in his words today as he speaks to them about their wrestling over truth as they've heard it from him. Well, and he had just been talking about, as we left off last week, about proclaiming Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone. This is verse 28. So it's just before the end of chapter 1. He says, To present everyone mature in Christ, I want you to be grown up, to think like a spiritual adult.
Be complete. And for this I toil, struggling with all the energy that God is working within me. Okay, so I paraphrased that. But that's basically what he's saying. And he is struggling because he's in prison. He's struggling to communicate the truths of the gospel to people he's never actually met.
Yeah, right. So that's a struggle for him. And I'll remind you again, the struggling word is a word that was used a lot in the Greek Olympics. As you struggle like you're running a foot race. Agonizing. You push on to the end and agonize.
You've got that funny bad pain in your stomach and all that kind of stuff. That's what he's talking about. He's pushing ahead like an athlete was. So we're starting into chapter 2 as he continues the thought of struggling on their behalf and into verse 1. So you want to read verse 2, 1?
So he says, For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those at Laodicea who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding, and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Shall we stop there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good.
That sounds good. Oh, my goodness. I don't know where to start. Well, look what he's been laboring for. He says, I want you all to know that your hearts may be encouraged, right? If your heart is encouraged, you are strengthened in what you believe, what you know to be true, what's in the very innermost part of you. Being knit together in love.
Right, right. And, you know, we can speculate the opposite of encouraged is discouraged, and the opposite of knit together is divisive. So the speculation is that they were going through some pretty heavy duty kind of heresy here in Colossae, and it was causing them to be discouraged about what they knew, causing them to be discouraged because people were taking sides, and it caused disunity and maybe even a lack of love for one another. Well, that is in reality what happens when we divide. That's what happens, I know. We stop loving each other and start pointing fingers at the wrong things.
That's why this is a very good speculation about exactly what's going on in Colossae right here. So that's part of why his struggle, because if you or Paul, if you were in his shoes and you weren't stuck in a Roman jail, you'd say, man, I've got to go there right now and put to rest all these divisive notions, and as a result of that, they will be encouraged, and they'll be knit together, and then they'll turn back to love with one another rather than biting at each other. And they're going to grow in maturity right at the end of that sentence, he says, so they can reach all the riches of the full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. This is all about Jesus Christ, not about all these other additional things that we're creeping in around the edges. And that's an important distinction because, again, there was a lot of crazy stuff going around at the time in terms of heresies, and it didn't have much to do with Jesus.
Or if it did have to do with Jesus, it had a crazy idea about who Jesus was. So are you prone to look for wisdom and the riches of assurance on understanding and knowledge? Are you prone to look at that outside of Christ or within Christ?
And that's what he's saying here. You need to focus on who Christ is because in Christ you will find all the riches of assurance of understanding, the assurance of understanding what's going to be happening, and the knowledge of God's mystery in Christ. I mean, that's where the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are. And he had prayed that they would be growing in spiritual wisdom and the knowledge of Christ way back at the beginning of the letter. And it's really all about Jesus in this particular sense.
If you really want to understand the way things work in the universe and in philosophy, I mean, everything about religion and the divine and all that stuff, Paul is saying here you need to focus on Christ. So this tells us that probably the things that were creeping in around the edges was this idea that there was secret hidden knowledge. Other knowledge.
It only came from another source and was only available through certain kinds of activities. Right, right. So he says, no, you're just wrong. It's all in Christ. All the wisdom, all the knowledge, all the understanding of what is real and true comes through Christ. So, you know, in verse four, we probably should have read this verse earlier. He says, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.
For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. So he's encouraging them, but at the same time he's warning them. Yeah, exactly.
So this does tell us that there was this kind of divisive speculation about religious things that was separating them. Well, the idea of delusion. He said somebody's fooling you.
Somebody's trying to pull off a sleight of hand. Right, right. And saying I've got secret knowledge that's outside of who Christ is. Right. And he's going to talk about that more in a minute.
Yeah, he will. And so, you know, we often go back and tell people you need to go back and see what Jesus said about this or about that. You know, sometimes people will inject crazy religious things to do or not to do. And we'll say, well, did Jesus talk about that? I mean, we've got four gospels, did Jesus talk about that? Is this in Christ? Is this something that Christ defined or is this something we're adding to what Christ did? Yeah, they'll add an overlaying of something that sounds spiritually plausible. It sounds spiritual, right. But it departs from the lordship of Christ and him alone being enough for our salvation. Yeah, and you have to be disciplined, too, because although people who bring those weird speculations out, although they're not being against Jesus, because we would know, well, you know, you're against Jesus. They'll say, no, no, I'm totally for Jesus and everything he said. I'm just adding a little bit to it.
You're going to go, no, no, no, no, wait a second. If Jesus didn't talk about it, I'm not too sure if I should even play with that idea, tell you the truth. I mean, that's what he's saying here. Like if you go back to verse three, in whom are hidden, that doesn't mean made secret. That means to store away or laid up.
They're nestled in. So what he's saying is that in Christ, everything that you want to know about wisdom and knowledge, everything is in Christ. Everything. So there is no secret knowledge. Everything is in Christ. So go back to Christ about everything in terms of your discussions about what's true and not true. Go back to Christ. You know, in that conversation at the Last Supper, Jesus said to them, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
You want the way, the truth, and the life, you've got to come to me because I am it. Right. So Paul is refocusing them back on the person of Jesus. It's super important in terms of when you talk about these religious and divine speculations, let's go back to what Jesus says and who he was. That is just key.
That's key. And there was a certain kind of version of Gnosticism at the time that really trafficked in this hidden and secret knowledge things like, hey, I know something you don't know. You want to hear the hidden knowledge?
So the term Gnosticism comes from the record gnosis, right? The knowing. The knowledge. Right. And he's saying, look, all the knowledge is in Christ.
There is nothing outside that. If you're hearing something outside of what Christ has preached or who he is, you need to question it because everything has been stored away in Jesus. It's interesting that as he says that in the same breath, he says, I'm rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. So the fact that they were even troubled by this weird teaching is evidence of the firmness of their faith in Christ.
That it stood up. Yeah. That they're like, but wait, I believe only in Christ that he accomplished my salvation and so I don't need all this other stuff. So this is troubling to me.
That's extra. He's claiming to be Christian and be teaching this other stuff. So he's proud.
You're doing good. He's proud of the fact that, in fact, he's using military terms in that last verse in verse five, this order and firmness. It's like you have this military defense line set up against the enemy. And what he's saying is here is that your line is in order and firm.
You have not budged because of all this stuff. Don't let anyone delude you with plausible arguments. Now the plausible, I mean, it'll sound good. It'll sound good. It'll sound positive. It'll sound even Christ faith promoting. I mean, it'll sound like it fits in the bigger picture, but it doesn't.
They're plausible and they just don't fit because they're not part of who Christ is or what he said. So good for you. Your line has not been broken.
Your order is there and you're standing firm. Good for you. So because of all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge being hidden in Christ, then he goes on in verse six. Therefore, because of that, as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Okay, let's just pause there for a second. It's interesting to me that he says because it's all in Christ, as you received Christ, so walk in him. Well, how did you receive Christ? By faith. By faith, yeah.
And so how do you walk in him? By faith. By faith.
By that confident, fixed steadiness knowing that the things I can't see, that God has said are true, are more concrete than anything else. Yeah, because Paul says you can either walk by faith or walk by sight. Right. You can walk by what you can see or you can walk by what God has said, which you cannot always see. Right. And Paul also emphasizes in other places that the things you can't see are actually more firm, more real than the things you can see.
So we're not talking about just wispy stuff here. We're talking about real things that you have eyes of faith to be able to see and you put on. So if that's how you received Christ, if that's how you accepted him as your Lord, by the way, Lord means the boss, the guy in charge, the authority.
If you received him as that authority, well, you need to walk every day with that knowledge of who he is in that authority and your relationship with him. Step after step. Yeah.
One step at a time. Right. And then he kind of mixes up his metaphors.
I love this. Which is kind of funny. Yeah. Because he can't be rooted like a tree.
Well, yeah, because he kind of switches from military to organic. Rooted. But there's a nice firmness. Built up, established in the faith, right, with that deep foundation that growing up out of a root, right, the stuff that's built up on the root, established, it's settled, it's founded on what you were taught and abounding in thanksgiving. Again, for what you were taught, the truth of salvation in Christ and by no other means.
Yeah. And look again at how central Christ is to that rooting, to that establishment. It's not about, it's not being established in various kinds of theological systematic studies.
It's just about being rooted in who Christ is. In him. In him. In him.
Did you hear how many times he said that? Right. And this is actually the source of why your line, your military line, hasn't broken. It's because you've held firm to who Jesus is.
Your root is stuck in the solid ground. And it's Jesus. It's Jesus.
Yeah. So now he's going to warn them, right? Verse eight says, so see to it. This is a very earnest warning. Watch out carefully that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.
For in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. Wow. Wow. So first he just says, be careful not to be deluded by these guys. Don't be taken captive.
But now it's like, now he's back, he's back to the military stuff. There's a war going on here and the war is in your mind. It's for what you believe. It's for what you understand and what you, what you embrace as a result.
See that no one takes you captive on the battlefield because, because of these weird philosophies. And that's what's interesting. The philosophy doesn't, it just means vain speculation. Right. I mean, people are saying, well, it could be this. Right. My way of thinking. And so they put it out there and you go, how do you know that? Well, because I don't know, it's just kind of, it's vain speculation and an empty deceit. It's empty to see to get you nowhere. Yeah.
So a deceit is something that's not real or true. Yeah. Right. It's empty. It's hollow.
There's no substance to it. Yeah. Yeah. According to human tradition. Right. Human reasoning apart from God. Yeah.
Stuff we make up in our wild imagination. Oh, it might be true. Hey, it must be true. Cause it sounds spiritual. Yeah.
And there's, there's a nice, there's a nice connection here. He says, according to human tradition, that word tradition means something that's given to you. It's passed down. Handed down.
Tradition that's given from your parents to use the traditions in your home and stuff like that. It's the given stuff. It's the same word he uses in verse six about being, of receiving Christ, what you have been given in Christ. So that's the contrast.
In six, it's what you've been given in Christ and here in verse eight, it's what you've been given through humans. Right. It's the contrast.
Right. And it's often, it's often a deceit. It's often vain speculation. I mean, it has no basis.
It sounds just like a wispy guess from humans, but what you get from Christ is solid and it's foundational and it's established. So he says, don't, don't be taken captive. And again, you know, before he said it would sound plausible, it sounds like it's good. You have to be careful when you try and weigh things that you hear that are speculations, you know, religious speculations based on saying, well, that sounds kind of right. It feels kind of right.
No, you're being taken captive. Let's hold it up against what Jesus actually said, what his life demonstrated, what the rest of scripture points to. Let's compare it very carefully to what we know is solid and true.
Yeah. Which is why we are very careful and disciplined when people bring up, I don't know, just crazy things, you know, and we say, well, okay, that's an interesting speculation. I don't know if that's true or not. Let's, let's do this. Let's open the word and take a look for ourselves. That's why that's our reflex. We will test it or else we are prone to be taken captive in what sounds like plausible things. So if you're taken captive, you are, you're stuck, right? You're bound up by something and you can't get away. Right, right, right. Yeah.
And so this is going on all the time. In fact, Satan is primarily characterized as a liar, right? He's a deceiver. He's trying to get you to believe and think things that just aren't true and there's reasons why he does that. I mean, in getting you to believe what's not true, he can end up destroying your faith in God and the truth of how you know it in Christ. I mean, he can actually do that and you'll, you'll listen to these things.
The lie will come across and you'll kind of think, hmm, you know, maybe that's true and you'll consider it for a while. It's a dangerous territory. You are actually in a battlefield and Satan is shooting bullets at you and those bullets are these vain speculations. You know, indeed, this is exactly the process that he took in the garden with Eve. Yeah.
Oh yeah, totally. He said, did God really say? Did he? Did he? And then Eve began to think about it and kind of introduce her own thoughts and then she saw, oh, the fruit actually looks good.
He tells me it tastes good, so it must be good. Yeah. And pretty soon she's just completely far afield from what God had actually said and then she eats it. Exactly, exactly.
So the battlefield from Satan's perspective is to get you to believe things are totally false and in doing so, you know, you will, you will do an entrust to the things that you believe to be true and if indeed it's the fact that he's telling you false things, he's going to be pulling you away from God. That's his whole process. So listen to the source, right? Identify the source. Where is this information coming from and how does it stack up with the way, the truth and the life as I just said recently that Jesus said, I'm the way to God, I'm the truth of God in the flesh and I am the life of God.
Yeah. So listeners, you need to, you need to routinely test things you hear based what's in the Word. You really, really need to and if you say, well, you know, I can't read the entire Bible. You can at least say, let me listen to what Jesus has said and let me go through. You know, some of our friends who came out of the Mormon Church would always get a red letter Bible because they'd say, I just want to listen to the words of Jesus. I want to go through the words of Jesus and you know, if he didn't mention anything about such and such a thing or such and such a practice, maybe it was added to the Gospel rather than from.
Maybe it's not important. Right. So let's say I'll get a red letter Bible, which is the actual words of Jesus. I'm just going to read that. I'm going to, I'm going to get it from the horse's mouth and so this is what we need to do routinely on everything because you are prone to believe baseless speculations because they're attractive to you.
Don't do that. Test everything on the word. Test what he says because this is a battle for your mind. It's a battle for what you think and in doing so, you can reverse what Satan tries to do in terms of his deception.
They're very clever and if you ever take a position yourself saying, well, I'm a pretty smart guy, I can spot lies, I don't think he's got much on me, then you're going down because he's an extraordinarily clever liar, Satan is, and he knows how to deceive you. Don't trust your own thinking, you need to go look at the word. So while you were talking about that, I just turned to 1 John 4 where John, John, Jesus' closest fleshly friend, said, Beloved, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they're from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Okay, so every spirit that agrees that Jesus, the sent one, came in the flesh, right, as John 1 said, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, right, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. So then in this 1 John letter, he goes on and says, and every spirit that does not confess or agree that Jesus is, is not from God and this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you've heard is coming and now is already in the world. That's 1 John 4. 1 John 4. So that whispering that opposes Jesus in his fundamental nature or what he has said or done.
Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, the particular flavor of Gnosticism, that heresy that was going at the time, which had a strong differentiation between the spiritual and the fleshly, or the material. Well, you know, a lot of the lie back at the time was the fact that Jesus is divine, yes, but he wasn't physical. I mean, that's what Gnostics would say. He appeared to be human, but he wasn't really. He appeared to be what he wasn't.
Yeah. And you say, well, that's kind of a crazy philosophy. So with that in mind, keep track from this point on in Colossians, how often, how often Paul will mention the flesh reality of the humanity of Jesus. He'll say that over and over again for that very reason and while he does it, we need to read verse 9. Verse 9 and 10. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, right.
So there it is again. So that's part of what John was talking about in 1 John 4, it's what Paul is talking about here is a particular heresy at the time. And this actually is the second time Paul has said this in the letter, because back in chapter one, when he talked about him being the head of the church and the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself might come to have first place in everything, verse 19 of chapter one. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. All the fullness of God dwelt in the human form of Jesus.
That's an amazing statement. Now that hurts our brain, right, because we can't figure out how that can be. But that's where the Gospel of John begins, right, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and a little while later he says, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, a little while after that he says, and he has fully explained God. The human person of Jesus was full, fully dwelt by God the Father and made him known to us. So what about God was not in Jesus? Nothing.
Nothing. Yes. And on top of that, it blows your mind when you put nine and 10 together, because nine says that the fullness of deity dwells in him, and then in 10 it says, and you have been filled in him. So doesn't this sound like Jesus' prayer in John? So in him and him and me and me and him and him and not, and all that kind of stuff. So here's- Oh, you're talking about John 17. John 17, yeah.
Because this is- That's a subject for another day. That's exactly what he's talking about here. So the fullness of deity dwells in Jesus and you, here's the mystery again, Christ in you, and you have been filled in him. And when it says filled, it doesn't mean just has some of, it means completely filled. Like to the top. Full up and overflowing.
Yeah. Over to the top, totally. So no nook or cranny that's missing, it's all completely filled. And not only that, but the one who fills you is the head of all rule and authority. It's like, there's just too much big here for my brain to hold onto and he is in you. That's the amazing part, this incarnation, this second incarnation of Christ in you, who is the one who's in charge of the universe. It doesn't mean we're in charge of the universe. Nope, nope, nope.
But that he has indwelt us, given us his heart, we can love what he loves, given us his mind, we can think like he thinks, we can value what he values. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. What were you going to?
We just got a couple minutes left. Well, I was looking at Ephesians 1 when we were looking at – I was thinking the same thing. You've been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. Paul says in Ephesians 1, verse 20 and 21, that God seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that's named not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And he put all things in subjection under his feet. That's big. It's the same statement of the utter preeminence of Christ.
Right. And where the rubber meets the road for you and I, I mean that's a big statement about the universe. A similar thing in Romans 8, the end of Romans 8. Listen to this one who's the head of all rule and authority because Paul says, I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So there is the head of all rule and authority who is also in charge of making sure that you're never separated from the love of God. Wow. Oh my goodness.
Wow. So this isn't just theory when we read 10 about the fact that we're completely filled in him who's the head of all rule and authority. You have someone who is in charge of the universe who intimately dwells within you. I mean I can't put that together in my head, but it's true.
That's the mystery. And that's what he intended from the very beginning, way back in, I think it's Leviticus 2611 when he says, I'll dwell among you. I'll make my dwelling place among you and my soul will not reject you. That's always been God's goal, to dwell with us. And so he himself took on the responsibility to pay the penalty of sin, to establish the possibility, the open door that we could come into complete fellowship.
Yeah. It actually extends even back to the Garden of Eden. God's intention was to be there with them and then they rejected him. And then at the end of the story, we're back together with him and he's in us and we're in him and that, and we are reconciled.
The separation is finally fixed. So Paul says, don't let anybody fool you, don't let anybody take you captive, regardless of how plausible it sounds, because here's what Jesus has done and he is in you. Yeah. And all the riches and treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in him. Go to Christ.
That's the answer. Wow. He's gone big. Well, we need to stop. I know we're out of time. We'll continue this in verse 11 next time as we come back here in More Than Ink. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you're there, take a moment to drop us a note. Remember, the Bible is God's love letter to you. Pick it up and read it for yourself and you will discover that the words printed there are indeed more than ink. Almost 200. We should have a party. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
