Col No.15 Fulfilled

And if you'd like to join me and we'll read all these verses together, even if you've got another version than the A.V., nonetheless still plough along and join with us in the reading. Then came together unto him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen hands, they found fault.

For the Pharisees and all the Jews, except they washed their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables.

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, that eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups, and many other such like things ye do.

And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother, and whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free.

And ye suffer him no more to do aught for his mother or his father, making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered. And many such like things do ye. Well, we pray, God, that we may be delivered from a mere external approach to Christianity, that there shall be reality in our worship.

Colossians 2. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world, rather than on Christ. For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

And you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. Now, I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at Colossians and chapter 2. And if you don't have a New Testament, then you'll find that the verses that we're going to inquire into are typed out on the bulletin, which you should have been handed as you came into the church. It's been our practice for 14 or 15 consecutive Sundays to work our way through this epistle of Paul to the church at Colossae.

There's much value in expository ministry, in as much as a consecutive approach to the Word of God enables the Word itself to discipline and control, as it were, our diet, our curriculum. And so we have been enjoying and been stimulated by what Paul said to the Colossians yesteryear. And in the providence of God, it has seemed to us on many an occasion as though the time distance between the writing of this epistle and us reading it has been narrowed completely to the extent that the apostle inspired by the Spirit has been writing directly to each one of us.

Now, you will recall, those of you who were present last Sunday morning, that we were looking at the sixth and seventh verses of this chapter, where I worked out from Scripture what it means to receive Christ Jesus as Lord. And we appreciated that someone who has had that inestimable privilege is indeed in a special category in this world. They have a basis for their spiritual stability and security, which is described in the seventh verse as being rooted and built up in Jesus and established in the faith.

And as a result of that, they've cultivated a disposition which is outstanding. They abound therein with thanksgiving. Now, you remember, the apostle has not visited the church at Colossae.

He's in jail as he writes this letter. And you might think that being incarcerated in some Roman prison would cause someone to be absolutely miserable, but not the apostle. Indeed, it appears that there was a smile that came across his face from one's reading of verse 5, because there he makes reference to the joy that filled his heart when he thought of the Christians at Colossae, these people who he hadn't met, but he'd heard a great deal about them and their faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus.

So he says, though I'm absent in the flesh and can only be with you in the spirit, I joy when I behold your maturity and the stability of your faith in Jesus. And then he works out the reason for this stability. It's because they have received the Lord Jesus and made him master in everything in their lives.

But, and this brings us to the 8th through to the 10th verse, the apostle is no starry-eyed pastor. He realizes, probably because of the basic bias that there is inherent in his personality, that a Christian community can become duped by the wiles of the devil. And so the apostle, in the 8th verse, puts up an admonition.

And in the 9th and 10th verses, he makes a declaration. In the 8th verse, he warns against those who might spoil, look at that verse in the AV, who might spoil the Christians and their testimony at Corinth. And in the 9th and 10th verses, he refers to the one who completes their testimony.

In the 8th verse, he's suggesting ruination, destruction. In the 9th and 10th, he is suggesting completion and wholeness. So then, this is what we're going to look at this morning.

The apostle Paul putting up a warning to Christians at Colossae and Christians here in the tabernacle about some force or some person, some group of people who might spoil what we have in Jesus. And in the 9th and 10th, he's going to declare what should keep us together as a whole and make us spiritually healthy. So look, first of all, then, at this admonition.

And he says, beware lest any man spoil you. And it seems as though, as far as the Colossians were concerned, he got one person in mind. But he doesn't name names.

He doesn't expose this person. Not for all the churches to read about. But the people in Colossae, they're aware that there is one person, perhaps heading up a group, whose fundamental concern is to rob the Christians of the freedom and the liberty that they have received by confessing that Jesus is their Savior.

And look at the way the apostle describes the activity of this man, of this group. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. That's a very interesting word, spoil, in the original.

It's got the idea that you may remember in history of the Assyrians, this barbaric race that instituted their own empire. Sometimes when they took over a new country and made it one of their colonies, they would remove the local inhabitants. And they did this in a terrible way.

They got fish hooks and put them through their noses. The Old Testament describes it. A very painful experience indeed.

And all these poor folks were linked together. And they were taken across to Assyria, transplanted from the land in which they had been living. They became human spoil, human plunder, a very barbaric practice.

Well, the apostle has this thought in mind. There are those who would plunder you. There are those who would rustle you.

They would be like the people in the Wild West who stole the cattle of the ranchers. There they were on the perimeter of the ranch, and they got their lasso, and they tossed the lasso into the middle of the cattle, and they pulled one off, and then another off, until they'd robbed the rancher of his herd. Beware, says the apostle, lest any man do that to you, lest he spoil you, lest he comes along and plunders the church.

Now that would be a tragedy. Why? Well, you see, in the 13th verse of the previous chapter, the apostle has referred to the liberation that those who have confessed Jesus as Savior have experienced. Jesus has delivered us from the power of darkness.

He's transposed us. He's translated us. He's transplanted us into the kingdom of his dear Son.

All the liberties and the blessings of the gospel, they have become ours since we were rescued from the tyranny of sin and evil. But here, and the thought is tragic, is a possibility of going back into that bondage from which you had been released. So says the apostle, I don't want this to happen to you at Colossae.

Beware, lest any man plunder your church, lest any man lead you away as booty and cause you to defect from your confession of faith in Jesus. Now, how does this spoiling come about? Well, the apostle lists three areas along which the ones who cause trouble might proceed. He talks about philosophy and vain deceit, about the traditions of men, and about the rudiments of this world.

People can be spoiled, you know, as Christians. They can be spoiled in the 20th century as much as in the first. We've just come through an election, and in every constituency there would have been some voting papers, and they would not have been taken into account in the in the crediting of votes to one candidate or the other.

Why not? Well, these voting papers were spoiled. They were no longer applicable to any particular candidate. And I tell you that one of the tragedies of Christianity is that it's possible for a Christian not to have his salvation taken from him, but for his witness to become spotted, for his cutting edge to be blunted.

And this is what Paul argues against. There are people, let me stretch this point because it needs to be applied very carefully, there are people in this congregation who I reckon if I threw the meeting open to testimony would have to get up and say, yes there was an occasion, it lasted for a month or several months or several years in my life when my Christian witness was spoiled. I went off on one track or another track.

I became as a prodigal, and out in the far country those spiritual blessings which God had granted me, which were given to me by godly parents, they fell through my fingers and I was spoiled in my testimony. Well, says the Apostle, I don't want this to happen to the church at Colossae. Beware, lest that man that you know whose name is spoils you and his clique influence you against maintaining a good testimony for Jesus, spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.

And there to really understand the Apostle you'd have to put quotation marks around the word philosophy. He's using it in a cynical fashion. What are these people teaching? Well it's some philosophy, but it doesn't really deserve this high description.

Indeed the Apostle goes on to say it's vain deceit, it's hollow, says the New International Version of the Bible. Hollow teaching that people are putting across to rob you of the liberty and the truth that there is in the gospel of Jesus. And of course there will be some people here this morning who will say, well there you go again, referring to something in the first century.

But don't you realize you've got to be contemporary in your preaching and in your application. This heresy that was in existence in Colossae, it's not with us today. And I'd have to agree to a large extent, it's not with us today.

But we have had many people who have come along in the 19th and the 20th century and they have endeavored to rob evangelical Christians of the faith that they shared in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've had people who have been taken in by the musings of that one-time gold digger Joseph Smith and have been plagued by the teaching of the Mormon Church and the various splinter groups within that organization. There are people in this town who have been taken up by the writings of Mary Eddie Baker.

There are families who have been absolutely broken apart as a result of the teaching of Jim Taylor and people sometimes referred to as exclusive brethren. We make these comments not without love within our hearts but having seen some of the effects of these modern heresies and the way that they have broken into the homes and complicated the situations of ordinary men and women. This is a word that's contemporary.

It's a word for the 20th century church. Beware lest any man, lest any group of men intrude, come into your fellowship and despoil you and take you off as plunder and teach you which are in a word empty philosophy, vain deceit, who spin the traditions of men around the gospel of Christ and say that they have a revelation which is far in advance of what you would get in a Bible-believing church. Now the Lord Jesus, you remember from the reading that we had some moments ago, he is the one who uses this expression, the tradition of men.

He was referring of course to the Pharisees. The Pharisees not only admitted to the authenticity, the authority of the Old Testament but there was a whole deposit of law and regulation called the Talmud which had grown up alongside the Bible and this particular Jewish book, it goes on for hundreds of pages. It talks about Rabbi so-and-so and Rabbi somebody else and it's a compilation of all their regulations and their legal requirements and the Jews eventually, particularly the Pharisees, they raised this above the level of Scripture and ere long they were more concerned with ritual than reality, more concerned with ceremony than sincerity and Jesus had to expose them and he said of your religion, it's just an outward thing, it's an external thing, it's a matter of keeping regulations, it doesn't deal with the heart, it doesn't bring a man into direct contact with his Lord.

You feel that just by a number of regulations, if you keep them then you'll be on your way to heaven. Religion is nothing to do with this. The revelation that I bring to you shows how a man's complete personality must be absolutely changed by what? By keeping regulations? No, by acknowledging that he is a sinner and that he needs to be saved.

So the Lord Jesus corrects the Pharisees and Paul takes up the very teaching of the Savior and he corrects any tendency that there may be in Colossae to reduce Christianity to just a means of keeping regulations, going after traditions over and against the gospel, listening to Greek philosophers who come along and in the name of philosophy say we have got some mystery that is so wonderful we can't even put it down in writing, we must pass it on, almost like the mythology of Freemasonry in the 20th century. We who are enlightened, we who have got a greater revelation than you Christians have, come along and follow us. And so what happened in the first century has been echoed down the centuries, for the devil does not change his strategy, he may use new labels, but the principles are the same.

So Paul warns these Christians, beware lest any man puts a hook, so to speak, through your nose spiritually and leads you into an empty philosophy, into the traditions of men, after the rudiments or the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. What does he mean by the rudiments of the world? Well, there's some difference amongst expositors as to what that term is, but let's just take it as the basic principles of understanding life. Now, Christian people have got a grasp of life inasmuch as they believe that there is the Lord God behind creation, but they have gone beyond that.

They have turned just from the ABC and they have gone on in the alphabet to an understanding that this God of creation has sent into the world the Lord Jesus Christ. They have gone on to understand something of the mysteries of God, the secret of God, as revealed through Jesus. So the Apostle says, all this option that has been presented to you is really an attraction to go back to the ABC, to go back to certain basic principles which some people have cottoned on to and then developed wrongly.

But you're no longer in the ABC class. You're not just being fed with milk. You're people who mature in Jesus Christ.

Then stay with the Savior. Stay with the blessed gospel and chase not after things which don't take you deeper into Jesus. Well, that's the admonition that the Apostle has in this eighth verse, but he goes on in the ninth and tenth and there he speaks positively as he makes a declaration as to who Christian people are following and what will keep them stable in the faith.

The ninth verse he speaks about who Jesus is and in the tenth verse what Jesus does. Who is Jesus? He is the one in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. What does Jesus do? He completes men and women.

He gives them a sense of fulfillment, purpose, objectivity. He gives them back their self-respect. He sends them, sets them on a course which will ultimately lead to heaven.

Who is Jesus? Let's pause for a moment and remember the teaching of the Apostle in the 19th verse of the previous chapter. For there he's made reference to the person, to the personality of Jesus. He says, of the Christ it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.

In the ninth verse he is saying, of the second chapter, the same words with just a slight qualification at the end. For in him, in no one else, only in Jesus dwells, inhabits, is located all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Now why is the Apostle particularly majoring on this again? Well you see, he's talking to these people who might be deflected from the faith, who may chase after something else.

But he's saying, look, in Jesus Christ and in him alone is all the fullness of God. The temple of truth resides in Jesus. There is nothing beyond Jesus.

To be attracted from him means that you're defecting from him. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ has in himself all the fullness of God. In him all heavenly glories are stored up.

All the fullness of God is in him so that he can pass this on to us. The heavenly treasure has been placed in the earthen vessel of Christ's manhood so that it might be within our reach. And the Apostle tells us elsewhere that Jesus is made our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification.

All that we need is found in him. So says the Apostle to chase off into the ranks of the heretics, to discuss with the philosophers certain aspects of their mythology, and to feel that they've got a greater revelation. Well, it's in effect admitting to your conclusion that you have not got everything that is necessary in Christ Jesus.

And the Apostle nowhere will concede to that. For the Apostle Paul, Jesus is the apple of his eye. And if anyone touches that, then Paul just goes back.

And then he comes with a full blast of teaching. And he emphasizes the sufficiency that there is in the Lord Jesus Christ. In him is all the fullness of a Godhead bodily.

He behaved like a man in as much as he went to sleep, in as much as he hungered, in as much as he wanted a drink. Yes, he's a man indeed. He is man truly.

But he is not man only. There is more to Jesus than just man. There is God.

There must be. And because of the things that he can do, the miracles that he can perform, because of the pronouncements that he makes, he is a man who's paralyzed. And his friends have lured him down into the very presence of Jesus.

And what does Jesus do as he speaks to the paralytic? Well, he does not immediately concern himself with the physical need of that man, rather with the spiritual. And he said, son, thy sins be forgiven thee. No, no one can forgive sins apart from the person who is sinned against.

And here is Jesus taking upon himself, indeed acknowledging that he is the one who is sinned against. He is God. All the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Jesus.

You see that little babe in Bethlehem's manger. Who is he? Well, it is none other than the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity, veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. This is God contracted to a span, follow the life of the Lord Jesus during his earthly ministry.

And you see so many flashing forth of his deity. You see his power. There is an authority in his word.

There is a dynamism in his action. And you come to the conclusion, as did the soldier who was on guard as Jesus was being crucified. Surely this is none other than the Son of God.

Now, if in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, if whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are perfect, if all these coalesce in him, then why go to anyone else? Why follow any other teacher? If Jesus Christ and he alone is the embodiment of all that God is, if there is now in heaven a man in the glory who intercedes for us, who brought his own body to this world and offered it to God as an atonement for the sacrifice of, for the sins that we have committed, then why go to anyone else at all? No, says the apostle Paul in his admonition, beware of any man who might plunder you and lead you off from the riches that there are in Christ Jesus. For he says secondly, in the 10th verse, ye are complete in him. These people who were working to the detriment of the spirituality of the Colossians, they were concerned to ruin them, to spoil them, to destroy them.

Not so Jesus. He has come to make men and women complete. He has not come to destroy.

He has not come to condemn. He has come to give life and everlasting life to those who trust him. So the Lord Jesus Christ comes into this world and he deals with the bias that there is in man towards sinfulness.

And when a sinner woman sees the Lord Jesus and he gives her back her self-respect and tells her to sin no more, so she recognizes that she has become complete in him. He has done something for her that no one else can do at all. Do you remember the story of the disciples? Here they were on one occasion.

Jesus has been teaching for a long time and there are thousands who have listened to him. But what he has to say gets increasingly difficult for them to to acknowledge and accept. For he speaks not only in terms of someone who is a king and who they wrongly conceive might take over authority from the Romans.

He projects his crucifixion, his offering of his own body on the cross, and the necessity of, as it were, drinking his blood and eating his flesh. This is strong language. These men, these women, they're no longer attracted to what the carpenter says.

And so like ice under the sun they melt away. The congregation that once was is no longer present. There's just a handful of men left, the closest followers of Jesus.

So he turns to the twelve and he says, will you also go away? Do you remember the classic response of their leader? Lord, to whom shall we go? For only thou has the key of eternal life. Precisely, to whom will you go? There's only one who makes you complete. There's only one who can pour into your heart the Spirit of God.

It's from the Lord Jesus Christ and his fullness, says John in the gospel that bears his name, that all Christian people have received. To whom then should we go? To whom else should we give allegiance? Will we be deflected by the traditions of men, by the endless ramifications of human speculation? Not a bit. Are we going to return to the essential elements of life, as some people declare? Some of the philosophers, one quite recent one, who tells us that for a real understanding of life we have to go back to such things as drugs and sex and alcohol.

These rudiments of the world, are we going after these? No, indeed, why not? Well, they would spoil us. They would mar our testimony. We realize that all this leads us to a cul-de-sac.

There's no way forward there. There are countless people, it is true, who have been spoiled through such teaching, through such vain deceit, through the traditions of men. And they have discovered at the end that life is worthless, absolutely bankrupt.

But here in Jesus we are made to be complete. Thou, O Christ, art all I want, more than all in thee I find. Or as we were singing in the last verse of that hymn, plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin.

Let the healing streams abound, make and keep me pure within. What is the Apostle Paul saying to these Christians at Colossae? Be warned, you have treasure that the Lord Jesus has given you, treasure which he has placed in your life, spiritual blessings. Don't let any man spoil you.

Don't get too clever for yourself. Don't follow after anything that would deflect you from the cause of Jesus, be it the philosophy of men, be it an attraction to the rudiments of this world. No, come back to Jesus.

Why? Because in him and him alone dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. There's nothing beyond Jesus. All that you need is found in him.

He is the supreme one. He is the chief. He is the one who is above every principality and power.

And to those who belong to God through faith in Christ, they are complete in him. And their destiny is sealed and secure. And so, my friend, these words apply to you and to me.

This Lord's day morning, there are forces who would spoil, which we reject. But there is a power of the Spirit who completes and heals. And that, blessed be God, we accept.

Amen. And Father, we thank you for the gift of our Lord Jesus, for the adequacy of his gospel. And we pray that we may feast more and more upon him and be satisfied with all the spiritual blessings that you make over to us through Jesus.

Father, we have to confess that sometimes the vain philosophy of this world, it does attract. And the cheap materialism tends for us to get our priorities out of order. But we ask, O Lord, that we shall, by the power of your Spirit, not allow any of these things to spoil us or our witness.

But rather, increasingly, may we find our completion, our sense of fulfillment in him, your Son, and our Savior. Amen.