[0:00] 1 and into the beginning of chapter 2. So we're going to pick up the story as it were from there. So first of all we'll read chapter 2 of Colossians beginning at verse 1.
[0:12] I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not met me personally. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they may know the mystery of God namely Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
[0:41] I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine sounding arguments for though I'm absent from you in body I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then just as you received Christ as Lord continue to live in him rooted and built up in him strengthening the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness.
[1:10] See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on 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. In him you were also circumcised in the putting off of the sinful nature not with a circumcision but done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins having cancelled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come.
[2:35] The reality however is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection from the head from whom the whole body supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews grows as God causes it to grow. Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why? As though you still belong to it, do you submit to its rules? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. These are all destined to perish with use because they're based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body. But they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Well, we thank God that his word is powerful and applicable. Well, let's come to him once more in prayer and let's bring those needs and concerns on our hearts.
[3:49] I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. Lay down the weary heart, lay down the heart of the Lord. I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. Lay down the weary heart, lay down the down the weary heart, lay down the weary heart, lay down the weary heart, lay down the weary heart.
[4:24] I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I came to Jesus as I rose, weary of water, and I heard the voice of Jesus as I rose, weary of water, lay down the weary heart. I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I and he has made the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I heard the voice of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I came to Jesus as I rose, weary of water, high-end from my sixth movement. He who truths of Jesus say, come on to me and rest. I came to Jesus, but I came to Jesus as I rose,كل that crying. Am I mad Jesus said, come on to me and rest. I came to Jesus as I rose, and I found my healing seed. I just was frankly, I so benign and now I live in Him. I hear the voice of Jesus say, come on to me. And we bail down the earth. I
[5:27] The voice of Jesus said, I am this dark world's night. The mountain in my watch of Christ, and all my daily night.
[5:45] My love to Jesus, and I bow in Him, my son, my son.
[5:55] And in the night of my power, till drowning they start. So Colossians 2, and again particularly verses 6, and following that we read just a few moments ago.
[6:17] So, there was a waiter who was working in a very plush restaurant attached to a hotel. And he noticed that every morning there was a particular guest who, after he'd eaten a huge breakfast, would go back up to the table and stuff his pockets of his jacket and his trousers with bread rolls.
[6:39] And later in the day, he never saw this man again. He never saw him at lunchtime. He never saw him at dinner time or any other time, only in the morning. And so, this went on day by day through the week of the holiday.
[6:50] This man would come down, eat a huge breakfast, and then take all this bread away with him. Last day of the holiday, the waiter, who'd been watching this man for some time and was quite perturbed, approached the guest just as he was stuffing his pockets with more bread rolls and taking as much as he could.
[7:08] And he said to him, why are you filling your pockets with bread? This is an all-inclusive hotel. Everything's been paid for in full in advance. There's no need to live off bread rolls.
[7:19] You can eat fine food any time, day and night. So, it is with us who are Christians. All we need is lavishly provided for us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
[7:31] We have an all-inclusive package when we come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not come to a part service, half-bored, or bed and breakfast, or even self-catering.
[7:43] When we come to Christ, we come into something which has been paid for in full in advance for us. So that we never need to look to ourselves nor to anybody else to provide for us anything.
[7:57] Paul, when he begins his letter to Ephesians, begins with this wonderful praise. Praise be to the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
[8:14] Now, in the church where these Colossian believers were, it's obvious that there were those who were teaching falsely concerning the Christian life. They've been hinted at already in chapter 2 in verse 4, where Paul says, I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.
[8:34] But as we get into verses 6 and following, Paul particularly targets these false teachers. They were deceiving the Christians there and telling them they needed to do certain things for their salvation, needed to add to what Christ had done, if they were to progress and to continue in the Christian life and faith.
[8:55] The things that they were telling them to do were included circumcision. There, verse 11, where Paul argues against it. They set out certain rules about what foods you could eat.
[9:08] There, verse 16, don't let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink. And setting aside special days and feast days and Sabbaths and so on. And when you go over into the later on, we're told as well about various other things that they were not to do and were to do.
[9:25] Do not submit to the rules. Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. And so on. And I think it's pretty fair to say that most Christian teachers and scholars and theologians would say, well, what's happening here is what's happening in many other parts of the New Testament is that there are those who are from a Jewish background who are seeking to, as it were, combine Judaism with Christianity.
[9:49] They're trying to bring them together. They're trying to synchronize the two. Law and grace. But the reality is, of course, that these two can never be mixed together.
[10:01] They cannot go together. They can as much mix together as trying to mix oil and water. They will always separate with one on the top and the other on the bottom. So one will always rise above the other.
[10:13] If we are ruled by the law, then we find that grace is suppressed and hidden under works. But if we exalt grace, we find that the law is fulfilled through faith in Christ alone.
[10:28] But these Jewish people, and it's unlikely that they were genuine Christians because of some of the way that Paul speaks about them in other places as well here. These people were attempting to persuade the Gentile Colossians, because that's what they were.
[10:43] They were Gentiles. They'd come from the pagan religions of ancient Greece. They were persuading them or telling them if they wanted to be converted, if they wanted to live to please God, they had to add to their faith in Christ the law, the Old Testament law, circumcision, as we've seen, avoiding unclean foods, observing special feasts, much of the things that we find written in Leviticus and Numbers and so on.
[11:11] And that teaching kept cropping up. It was something that Paul often had to write about, and many of his letters were written solely for the purpose of addressing that problem. Galatians particularly is well known for that very fact.
[11:24] Here's Galatians in chapter 5, 2-4. Mark my words, I, Paul, tell you, if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.
[11:35] Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, he is required to obey the whole law. And that's, the whole of Paul's teaching is really based upon that matter there in Galatians.
[11:47] Philippians as well, the same thing. He speaks, watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. He's talking about circumcision, for we are the circumcision.
[11:59] And so it's a big problem. And we may say, well, that's got very little to do with us today. As Christians, we don't find ourselves being drawn back to Old Testament law, but as we should go through the passage in the coming weeks, God willing, we shall see that this is so very relevant and helpful to us about how we live by grace and how we seek to avoid entrapping ourselves or others entrapping us into certain things which are opposed to that grace.
[12:28] And so they're teaching these things. To be a Christian, you've got to be circumcised, just like it was to become a Jew. And to be a Christian and to live your Christian life, to follow God and be holy, to overcome sin, you've got to observe the law in the Old Testament and keep it.
[12:50] And so Paul is tackling this matter. And he begins then in verse 6 with some very simple words of advice. So then, or therefore, in light of this, and what we've had before, and of course what we've had before in chapter 1 particularly has been all about Christ, hasn't it?
[13:09] About the supremacy of Christ, the deity of Christ, about the work of God in our salvation, about the wonderful riches that God has lavished upon the Gentiles so that they are included in the promises of God.
[13:23] So then he says, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him. It's as simple as this. Carry on as you started off. Carry on as you started off.
[13:35] See, the Christian life is not like the triathlon. You know what the triathlon is, isn't it? They begin by swimming a mile and then when they've swum a mile, or something like that, they get off and they ride a bike for 20, is it 50 kilometers or something like that, and then they get off the bike and then they run a marathon or a half marathon.
[13:54] Now the Christian life isn't like that, chopping and changing from one thing to another. We start with faith, we continue with faith. We don't start with faith and then change to works and then finally finish up with the law.
[14:07] We begin with faith, we carry on with faith, we finish by faith. It was faith that we started with, wasn't it? You become a Christian. How? By being the law?
[14:18] No. By going to church? No. By keeping rules and regulations and rituals? No. By being circumcised? Or by even being baptized? None of these things are the beginning of the Christian life, are they? It's when our faith is placed in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
[14:34] And it's that faith, of course, that we continue to live in and by. We finish, we run the course by faith. Here's Paul as he writes to the Galatians in chapter 2 about his own life being one of faith.
[14:48] It's a wonderful passage, we know only too well. Galatians 2.20. He says at the beginning of the verse, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
[14:59] But here's the crux, the life I live in the body, in other words, the life I'm living now, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I'm living by faith.
[15:11] I'm living now by faith. He came to faith in Christ on that Damascus road when Jesus revealed himself to him. And he's continued to live by faith. And so it is with you and I.
[15:22] We have come to faith in Christ and we carry on with faith in Christ. Everything in this chapter is all about Jesus Christ and faith in him.
[15:34] Just look through. Just as we go quickly, we've got there in verse 6, as you receive Christ as Lord, rooted and built up in him, who's that? Christ. Later on, verse 8, the end of verse 8, then on Christ.
[15:49] Verse 9, for in Christ have been given the fullness in Christ. Verse 10, in him. Verse 11, that's Christ. Done by Christ. Verse 11.
[16:00] 12, raised him. Christ, buried with Christ. So it's all Christ, isn't it? This is, of course, the whole of Paul's teaching. This is the whole of New Testament. This is the whole of the Bible. It's all Christ.
[16:11] It's all centered and focused upon him. See, the major problem with any religion, other than biblical Christianity, even a distorted type of Christianity, which is what these people were teaching, the distorted Christianity of the cults, like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and other types of Christianity, is this.
[16:31] It seeks to take over where Christ began. It seeks to add to and do things for ourselves, which we cannot do for ourselves, but Christ has already done for us.
[16:43] It's always about Jesus where it gets it wrong. So Paul is now correcting the thinking of these believers by drawing their attention, as he has done all the way through.
[16:56] He's now specifically drawing their attention to how Jesus fulfills and provides everything necessary. The biggest problem I had when I began to study this passage was not only where do I begin, but where do I end?
[17:12] Because, as you know, with much of Paul's arguments, they sort of flow. He starts off beginning in one verse, and really you don't get to the end of his argument until you get probably about 30 verses later before he goes on to something else.
[17:28] And so I wasn't sure what to do. I was tempted to try and preach the whole of the passage of Paul's defence in one sermon, but you'll be glad to know I decided against that.
[17:40] So, God willing, we're going to travel a little bit more slowly through this passage together. I don't want us to miss any of the splendid sights of Christ that are here for us and encourage us in every line.
[17:53] So, let's just think then about this first two verses, verses six and seven. That's where we'll be for this evening. So, what are we to do? We're told then we're to continue to live in him.
[18:06] Continue to live in him. Well, clearly that's an ongoing thing, isn't it? It's a continual act. To continue is to continue. It's to go on.
[18:16] It's not something that just happens once. Yes, we came to faith in Christ. That was a one-off act of God in our lives that brought us into this saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
[18:28] But we're to continue. How are we to continue? Well, because as he says this, so then just as you received Christ, Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him. Just as you received him, continue.
[18:39] So, in the same vein, in the same way that you received him, that's the way that you are to live each day. Well, what does he mean by that? Now, we need to realize that Paul is not talking here about what has become quite a common expression amongst some Christians.
[18:58] There was a day they might say, well, I received Jesus as my Lord. And what they mean is this, is that there was, in one sense, it's a conscious decision to receive Christ and for him to become part of my life.
[19:11] I received Jesus. Even evangelists will speak about, receive Jesus. That's not what Paul is talking about here. He's actually talking about something else. He's talking about what we received of Christ, the gospel message that we received, that we heard, and that we believed.
[19:29] That's why he has later on in the same verse, the faith as you were taught. We'll come to that in a moment. So just as you received Jesus Christ as Lord, just as you heard the gospel message at the beginning, that gospel message which had the power, which was Christ as Lord, so you need to continue in that same vein, in that same faith, in that same person.
[19:50] Well, how did we receive Jesus as Lord? What was the message that we heard? Well, hopefully it went something like this. God entered into the world in the person of Jesus, a truly human being.
[20:02] He was the promised Messiah, Christ, that was spoken out throughout the Old Testament, who came to rescue sinful people from God's judgment by dying in their place upon the cross.
[20:16] He rose again from the dead, thus proving himself to be both God and Lord of all creation, the one in whom all people must put their trust for eternal life.
[20:27] I hope that's the gospel, or something like the gospel that you heard. Jesus, truly God, truly man, Christ, the Messiah, who came to die in our place on the cross, Lord, who rose again, and is sovereign over all.
[20:41] Now, if that was the Jesus Christ you received, and there is no other Jesus Christ, than that Jesus Christ who is Lord, then we're not to deviate from that understanding of him, that he is everything to us, that he is all that we need, that faith in him is something that we are to apply to our lives day by day.
[21:02] And again, it's very important then, isn't it, that we just take hold of this reality that how we present the gospel when we first meet with somebody has ramifications upon how they live their lives.
[21:14] One of the big problems, I think, that we can often see in church life is this, that people become Christians, if I can put it this way, on not a full gospel.
[21:26] They receive Jesus because he is loving only, and they do not receive him because he is also holy and just. Or they receive Jesus in some other way, that he is someone who is their friend, but he's not their Lord.
[21:41] And so how you receive Christ at the beginning of your Christian life has ramifications and effects upon how you live out the Christian life from then on. So it's very important, isn't it, how we present the gospel, that we present this Christ in his completeness and not just a poor copy or a substitute.
[22:03] See, a Christian is like any child, someone who will only develop into a healthy adult if they're given the best start in life. We know that rob a child of good nutrition or of love or whatever it may be that's necessary, and it will affect them for the life long.
[22:24] So this is why Paul says, just as you received him, just at the beginning, you received this Jesus, that's how you're to grow, that's how you're to carry on. And so then we have the rest of the verse about what he has to tell us about how we received Christ and how we go on.
[22:42] And he does a very naughty thing. You know Paul was very naughty, wasn't he? If you were a teacher, grammatically, he mixes all his metaphors. He uses all sorts of different metaphors, in other words, lots of different illustrations which are unconnected to say something which is similar.
[23:00] First of all, he speaks about being rooted. Well, we know what the roots are. They're those parts of a plant, particularly if we think of a tree or an oak or something like that. They're that part that the very tree depends upon for support as it goes down into the earth.
[23:17] It creates a firm union, doesn't it, for the supply of life and water and so on, nutrition to the plant. And of course, this is again something that's happened to us.
[23:29] Here we have this past tense verb, rooted. We have been rooted. Seems to draw my mind to Jesus when he teaches in John 15 about the vine, isn't he?
[23:43] About him being the vine and us the branches. We're united to him. We are one with him. That life that we need flows through him into us. And Jesus makes it very clear that apart from me, you can do nothing.
[23:57] But the wonderful thing is this. When we became Christians, we were immediately rooted into Christ. We were immediately united to him and knit to him in such a way that our strength, our security, in all the gales and winds of life, our nutrition and our refreshment finds itself in him.
[24:18] You're rooted in him. Continue to live in him, rooted. Drawing from him. Drawing from him. Drawing from him. The nutrition. Drawing from him. The life. And in one sense again, when we put it into the context of what Paul is saying here, why would you look to the law to provide spiritual life when Christ gives it so much better?
[24:40] Why give to the law which in itself is dead when you have life in Christ? Why look to the letter when you have the spirit? Rooted. Rooted.
[24:51] Continue to be rooted. Are you continuing to be rooted in Christ? Well, if you're a Christian, there's nothing you can do about it. You are. And no one can uproot you.
[25:02] No one can take you out. But let your roots go deep that you might draw from him all that you need. Then he uses another metaphor. He moves from gardens and plants to buildings.
[25:16] Rooted and built up in him. So now he's talking about a building, a construction. In one sense, being built up like one stone after another being added as a building rises and ascends to completion.
[25:32] Unlike being rooted, which is a past event, something that happened at conversion, being built up is an ongoing event. It's a now event. It's something that's happening all the time.
[25:43] Christ is the master builder. Peter. Peter speaks about that in an illustration of the church. We are living stones. But actually, in one sense as well, in our individual lives, there is a building up that's going on.
[25:59] Not just an encouragement, but a growth, a development. Christ is the master builder who's carrying on the work which he himself began. I love that encouragement and promise that Paul mentions in Philippians chapter 1 where he speaks of the confidence he has that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.
[26:23] He's not a cowboy builder, our Lord Jesus Christ. He's not someone who starts a job and then goes off to do another job and leaves us half built. He carries on that building work. He carries it on and will carry it on until that day of completion.
[26:39] I'm sure you all remember the story of the three little pigs. You know the ones where the pigs, one pig built a straw house, one pig built a wooden house, one pig built a brick house. Well, imagine a retelling of that story where actually the pigs got together beforehand and decided that between them they would build a house together which would be made of bricks and straw and wood and one layer upon another throughout the war.
[27:05] What would be the consequence? Well, it would be this. The wolf would come along and easily knock that wall down because the wood and the straw would reduce the strength of the bricks and render them obsolete.
[27:19] So this is what Paul is saying here. You can't mix false teaching with good teaching. You can't mix law with grace. You can't mix works with faith.
[27:31] They don't go together. You can't build your Christian life upon anything else but the solid foundation which is Jesus Christ. If you use inferior materials which is confidence in the flesh, confidence in the works that we can do, confidence in our own ability to keep God's law, then you can be sure that these things will fail.
[27:52] He has something to say similar to this in 1 Corinthians and chapter 3 where he talks about building. He says, Christ is the only foundation. foundation. But then he goes on and says this, if any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is because the day will bring it to light.
[28:15] It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward.
[28:27] So he gives that picture, building with wood, straw and stubble. What's going to happen when the fire comes? They're going to be consumed. What about the gold and the stone and the brick? Well, those things will last.
[28:40] If we're going to be built up as Christian, in Christian faith in our lives, then we are to be built up in Christ by who he is. He is the one who does the building and he is the good material.
[28:54] Are we using good materials in the building up of our faith? Well, then he goes on to that, doesn't he? Because he says, rooted and built up in him and then he's the change, strengthened in the faith.
[29:09] And notice what he says. Notice the words. He doesn't say, strengthened in your faith or having your faith strengthened. He uses that, whatever the clever word is, I don't know, the faith.
[29:23] The faith. And the faith is a phrase that crops up in the New Testament and it's the Bible's shorthand for the sum of Christian truth about the Lord Jesus Christ.
[29:34] It's what we believe about Christ concerning our salvation. You remember, if you've ever read the little letter Jude near the end of the New Testament, end of the Bible, Jude writes to the Christians.
[29:48] He said, I wanted to write to you about the salvation we share, but he says, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.
[29:58] So the faith is the collection of truth concerning Christ which we have received and has been passed to us that we are to pass on to others. It is that truth concerning Jesus.
[30:11] And so this phrase, strengthened in the faith, has more to do with the mind than with the muscle. It means to have a growing confidence in the truth of who Christ is and what he's done for us.
[30:26] A growing confidence in him and in what we have trusted him with. Now Paul often refers to what we already know about Christ as a way of assuring us in times of uncertainty.
[30:42] He reminds us of what we know. In other words, we are to grow by being strengthened in our faith, in the faith. We are to grow by being more certain and sure of what we have received that it is true and trustworthy.
[30:57] What do I mean by that? Well, here's Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as he writes concerning the resurrection of Jesus. Again in a situation where false teachers were saying the resurrection had taken place.
[31:09] He starts back at the beginning. Verse 3 of 1 Corinthians 15. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to scriptures, that he appeared to Peter and then to the 12.
[31:28] So he's reminding them, assuring them, giving them confidence in what they believe about Jesus which will be the foundation to assure them about how he is now at work, that he is trustworthy and that he will fulfill his promises to them.
[31:46] Again, when Paul is dealing with the difficulty around the Lord's Supper, he speaks again to remind them of what he's already told them. 1 Corinthians 11. For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed.
[32:01] He's going back to the faith, the things that they had received, the things that they had believed, that they might be certain of them and more certain of them so that when difficulties arise or confusion arises, those things will not overtake them.
[32:20] So the more certain we are of the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, the less we'll be hoodwinked by something inferior. That's what he's saying. Built up, strengthened in the faith.
[32:33] The Christians needed that. We need it too. And finally here, we see that Paul speaks about something that seems almost out of place. He's talked about rooted, built up, strengthened, faith, assurance, confidence, and then he says and overflowing with thankfulness.
[32:53] Doesn't that seem a strange thing to you? You can understand him saying that he's talking about prayer in other places. You can understand him talking about that in the matter of suffering, but here, overflowing with thankfulness.
[33:06] How is that how we continue in what we started with? Because that's what he's saying, isn't it? We continue with what we started with. He's using this metaphor.
[33:17] When it says overflowing, he's thinking of the picture of a jug, a jug of wine which is pouring out lavishly into our laps. Well, when we think about Thanksgiving and continuing as we started off, then that makes sense.
[33:35] Think about what was the first response that you had to God when you understood what Christ had done for you in his salvation. What was the first thing he did?
[33:47] Thank you, Lord, for loving me. Thank you, Lord, for saving me. Thank you, Lord, for sending the Lord Jesus to be my savior and rescue me. The first initial response to the Christian when they have put their faith in Jesus is this.
[34:02] Thanksgiving, gratitude, appreciation. And why? Why did we respond like that? Why did we overflow with thanksgiving to God? Well, because we knew it was all of grace.
[34:14] We knew that we hadn't deserved that forgiveness. We knew that it wasn't something that God had done because of our goodness. We knew that it was purely out of his love and the free gift of his grace that he had done this for us and we couldn't stop thanking him enough.
[34:28] I wonder if we feel the same way about our salvation now. Are we still overflowing with thankfulness? Because it's a sign of us understanding grace.
[34:43] Because once we understand grace that it's all of God's free gift then we will not be able to stop ourselves from thanking him for giving it to us. We only stop giving thanks to God when we lose sight of the reality and we try to live the Christian life in our own strength.
[35:01] That's when things are hard. That's when things are difficult. We begin to make things tougher for ourselves because we begin to look to ourselves and we begin to beat ourselves up and we begin to say it's up to me.
[35:14] And when we fail and fall into sin we feel bad because we've lost sight that it's all of Christ and all of his grace and all of his doing.
[35:27] we start off talking about Christ being an all-inclusive Christ and saviour. But really what is happening here to these Colossians and to us as well is in one sense this, a going back to the past.
[35:47] There's a going back to the past which is good, which is going back to when we began the Christian life. But there's a going back to before Christ which is bad, which is works.
[35:59] That's how we understood God, didn't we? Before we understood grace, we understood God as a God who only helped you if you helped yourself. Only God who answered prayer when you were good enough, going backwards instead of forwards.
[36:13] And that's what they were being tempted to do. Go back to the Old Testament, go back to law, miss out grace. It's a bit like somebody saying to you, would you like to swap your fan-assisted oven for a cauldron over an open fire?
[36:29] Or how about giving up your automatic washing machine for a scrubbing board and a bucket down by the river? Who in their right mind is going to want to give up something which is so good for something which is so poor?
[36:43] We've already got the best in Christ. The best that there is, the best that ever will be. And he'll never fail us.
[36:54] Because it's not just as we received him at the beginning, but as he began that work in us, rooted us in himself, building us day by day so we can overflow with thankfulness day by day too.
[37:09] Let's sing our final hymn. It's going to be on the projector on the screen. My heart is filled with thankfulness for him who bore the pain. Let's sing to the praise of our Lord Jesus.
[37:21] Let our hearts be lifted with thankfulness again to him and all that he is to us. rise head of the heavens and here pour the lui like fun with 그렇 hear hishost好像 por certainty he'll swap into the într align Ukraine for a tale The depths of my disgrace And gave me life again Who Christ and does all sing fullest And glory in His light And who is all a righteousness In God upon my God
[38:22] My heart is filled with thankfulness Till He who walks beside The birds my weaknesses with strength And causes me to cry Whose every promise is enough For every step I take Sustain in Him with love And crowning me with grace My heart is filled with thankfulness To Him who reigns above Whose wisdom is my perfect peace
[39:24] Whose every glory is love For every day I come on earth Is healed by the King So I will give my life my hope To love and follow Him May the God of peace Who through the blood of the eternal covenant Brought back from the dead Our Lord Jesus That great shepherd of the sheep May He equip you with everything good For doing His will And may He work in us What is pleasing to Him Through Jesus Christ To whom be glory For ever and ever Amen Amen Amen
[40:28] Amen Amen Amen I come to Ring