How To Avoid Being Taken Captive

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Jon Nowlin
North Campus Youth, Dir

0:10I'd encourage you to keep your Bibles open. It's gonna be a helpful guide. We're gonna try to walk through this text line by line, but I wanna begin with a question. How many of you saw evidence this Thursday of the storm that came through the area on Wednesday? It was just fairly localized. I'm not sure how far it spanned. I know some people missed it, but as we walked around our neighborhood, we saw trees over and roots up. We saw a lot of streets or streets filled with sticks and things like that. A lot of evidence of the storm and those of us that were at the park, we made a memory together. Um, I don't think I have ever gotten as wet under a pavilion before in my life.

1:00And as I look at the evidence and I think back to that storm event, God was really kind to us to protect us and keep limbs and things like that from coming our direction. Well, I also was very impressed by Lucas Cheka who taught and was interrupted by the storm a few different times until we had to completely stop and un unplug everything to try to save our gear. His text, do you remember what it was about? I say because it connects beautifully with our passage today. His text was Proverbs 27 6 and says, faithful are the wounds of a friend. And his aim was to try to help us realize that as believers we need others speaking into our lives what may feel like a wound if they're using God's word in love, helps us and corrects us.

1:55And the issue in our texts today are unfaithful friends. And Paul, a faithful friend, there were people teaching and correcting the Colossian church in error. And Paul was being a faithful friend and saying, do you see it? Do you see the mistakes? Do you see what they're missing? Let me be a faithful friend. Let me correct you. Let me call you to stop believing certain things. Stop being affected by certain things. Don't go there. It's going to lead you astray. In fact, all of chapter two, which this is the third sermon on, uh, from chapter two, all of chapter two is doing that. And I really quickly let me share the kind of contours of this argument that I'm gonna explain to you why I have a flag in my pocket. Okay, so we'll get to there in just a second.

2:51The contours of this argument is there was teachers who were calling them to rely on themselves for growth, not relying on trusting in Jesus. You can look at chapter two verse six. You can glance up the page and see that Paul is saying you need to continue in how you began the Christian life. You didn't begin the Christian life by saying, oh, I'm gonna try harder. I'm gonna do this. No, you began the Christian life by seeing your bankruptcy and trusting exclusively in the work of Jesus Christ. And that's how you keep growing. That's not like what gets the ball rolling and then you push it the rest of the way. No, keep relying. Be rooted in him. Be growing up in him.

3:42And why are you abounding in Thanksgiving? Because it's not you, it's him. That's the core error. And today we're gonna get into the nitty gritty teaching of this false realities and collage. Say, and, and here's the deal. Some of these things are gonna be weird, but this is what was going on in this church. And so I brought a flag with me because I, if you're a sports fan, now obviously this isn't the right kind of flag, but if you're a sports fan, there's this fairly new phenomenon called under review. And what we're gonna try to do today is we're gonna try to look at these false teachings in Colossae in order to raise our powers of discernment so that we know when to throw the flag so that we need to say, when does this teaching, does this person and what they just said need to be under review?

4:38That's our aim and we're gonna do it in three ways. You can look at the passage with me. Paul has two commandments and one heart probing. Question two commandments and one heart probing question in chapter two verses 16 and 17. He says, let no one pass judgment on you. That's his first command to avoid. That's gonna be 0.1. Point two is the second thing to avoid. Let no one disqualify you. It's another command that's gonna help us enter into this and think, how are we tempted in these ways? And then as he ends this whole teaching, this whole chapter in teaching, he goes right for the heart. And that's where we need to go.

5:26Are you willing to allow God to go for your heart today to say, are you falling into anything like this? Are you letting things slide that shouldn't? Are you accepting and being affected by teaching in a way that shouldn't? That's taking a reliance off of Jesus and putting it on yourself. This is so important to us because there are similar teachings in our day and they're coming at us from everywhere, books, teachings, all sorts of different things. Even things under the banner of evangelicalism. We need to be aware of this is this deepening our trust in Christ or causing self-reliance. We are hardwired to want to trust ourselves.

6:04So we need this teaching very much. Would you pray with me as we then open up the text? Father, we greatly need discernment. Thank you so much for your word. Thank you for this example in Colossae where we get to see some of the details and and see how it applies to our own lives. Would you help us? Would you open up this text and would you open up our eyes to see the places where we are believing even lies in our own heads where we're relying on ourselves and not trusting in you for this In Jesus name, amen. Well look with me at two verse 16 and 17 and we're gonna try to consider what it means to let no one pass judgment on you.

6:56The first command here begins, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regards to festivals or new moons or sabbaths. These things are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. These verses begin with a command, then give some really specif specific examples of that and then a reason for the command. So what is the command? Let no one pass judgment on you. Now you might be saying, okay, does this mean I'm supposed to live a life in a way where I'm approved by everybody and nobody judges me? No. Does this mean I need to get inside of people's minds or take over their Facebook, uh, depending on whether they like or dislike me? No.

7:40What this is talking about is are you allowing the judgments of others to affect you? Are you allowing the judgments of others to false judgments that is false judgments of others to cause you to change your behavior or to cower or hide? Are you allowing them to cause you to second guess yourself and continue to go into a cycle of second guessing? Are you allowing false judgments of others to affect you? That's not a big deal in our day and age, right? Yikes. Yes. I mean social media is like rampant zone for that. And that's just one example. So we need this. So what was going on? They were not supposed to allow, they were to avoid allowing the influence of others' judgments to affect them.

8:28And there's a very specific context that Paul has in mind for the Colossians food laws and festivals. Now the deal was these things are talked about in God's word. Leviticus 11 goes into great detail about food laws and what was the purpose of that? If you did these things, they would make you unclean. So you need to avoid them so that you can enter into the presence of God for worship. Those were very good things for God's people before Jesus came. Underline that last sentence before Jesus came or all of these festivals. You could learn more about those in Leviticus 23. It goes into details about first day of the month or the new moon festivals for example, or feast of booze or different things like that that were very important times of worship. But these again, were pointing or they were for things for God's people before Jesus came.

9:29The truth of God's entire teaching on these things was being ignored and just the commandments about these things were being emphasized. If you look at Jesus's own words in Mark seven 19, he declared all foods clean or because he the great God died to bring them to God. He was the one that solved that worship and holiness and I'm not holy problem. Now let me be clear. Each of these food laws and festivals had an important function before Jesus earthly ministry. However, they were temporary pointers towards Jesus. And that's where Paul goes next. Look at, look at that with me. The reason in Colossians two 17 says these that is food laws and festivals are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

10:29So for example, let's just say I'm in the backyard and I'm doing some work. Maybe I'm attacking the nasty crab grass that I don't like growing up or I'm fixing an old fence that I probably replaced boards every year. So I'm out there and it's hot, it's in the sun, and my wife who cares greatly for my hydration walks out behind me. I don't see her, but I see her shadow. When that happens, do I turn and start talking to the shadow? Do I look at the shadow? Do I embrace the shadow? That would be silly. I turn to what the shadow is pointing to and interact with her, engage with her and and see if she has help to offer to me or suggestions or whatnot. What happened in the Old Testament is these were beautiful pictures.

11:20For example, the Passover lamb was a beautiful picture pointing to the reality. It's like the fire of a firework when it first goes off in the Old Testament and you could look at that and something great is happening, something important is happening. But when it explodes in the sky and Jesus Christ, we marvel. And what these people are tempted to do was to cut parts of their Bible off and focus only on the shadow they were seeking to gain, gain sustenance from the shadow rather than the substance. So what can we learn from this aspect of the false teaching today? Well first lemme give you a very specific example.

12:06You should know there are still groups out there who said those that teach the whole Bible, they're wrong. Don't listen to them. We actually do need to hold onto these things. The keeping of sabbaths, especially on the seventh day of the week on Saturday or celebrating the Jewish feasts and festivals and keeping the dietary law a banner over some of those groups are called the Hebrew roots movement. You need to know that's false teaching and that is very present in our world. Our teaching is going out through the internet, but that most likely is not what you're facing today. How do we do this broadly? How do we know when to throw the flag, so to speak?

12:44How do we know when something that's somebody's teaching needs to be under review? Well, if someone uses a Bible passage or a broad bi biblical concept in a way that ignores or discredits the wider teaching of scripture, we should throw a flag. We should try to understand a little bit more and press in. What does God's word? That's where we review these things. What does God's word say about that? And there are biblical examples of that. Jesus himself, when tempted by Satan, heard from God's word from the mouth of Satan. Psalm 91, 11 and 12. Satan even said, this is what the word says. Do it this way. And what did Jesus do?

13:33He looked at the wider teaching of scripture and says, I don't put my God to the test that contradicts the wider teaching of scripture. We need to have discernment to know when do we need to look? Is this excluding the wider reality of scripture? That is what the berean were commended for. The very teaching of Paul. They received it, but they didn't stop there. They kept searching the scriptures to see if these things were so that's the type of people we need to be. That's the type of people we need to be. So lemme just ask you a personal question.

14:17Are you growing in your understanding of God's word? We cannot get by with platitudes. That's what these false teachers are using. We must know and study and continually dig into God's Word so that our discernment can be up and we can know how to navigate and wrestle with big questions. And they're coming around every corner. It seems we must be in God's word. Let's look at the next thing to avoid. Let no one disqualify you. Let no one disqualify you. The first section that he's concerned about is pressures that people were feeling because of others'. Judgment. These are pressures that people are feeling because of others'.

15:00People exclusion of them, exclusion of them. This, the wording in here is a little bit more tricky. So let me read it and then we're gonna try to take it phrase by phrase to try to understand what's going on here. Let no one disqualify you. Insisting on asceticism. I mean these are lots of big words and the worship of angels going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body nourished in it together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God. So if you begin by understanding this, let no one disqualify you.

15:40This is like a baseball umpire. It's the ninth inning. There are two outs and somebody is coming towards home and the umpire says You're out, which means that your team loses and the other team wins. You are a loser. So what these people were doing is they were looking at specific circumstances that were going on in their day and they were saying, you don't have these experiences. You're out. You're excluded, you're a loser. You aren't measuring up spiritually. They were disqualifying them based on their experience. What experience are they specifically talking about? Insisting or that word could also be rejoicing in.

16:28These are the things that they really love. Rejoicing in asceticism. That means harsh treatment of the body so that you can earn some spiritual advantage or make yourself more spiritually uh, acceptable asceticism and the worship of angels. Yes, these people were actually worshiping angelic beings more on that in a moment. And they go on in detail about visions. Now that phrase is very, uh, challenging to figure out in the original language. It certainly is talking about visions. And it could be they're going on into detail about that. They're just talk, talk, talking about it. Or it could mean that they are talking about or having this experience of entering into this visionary, spiritual other experience where they're worshiping angels. And from my study, that's what I think is probably being talked about here. Okay?

17:24So if you can imagine there are people that have this very otherworldly, supernatural experience, what's gonna happen to their hearts? Especially if it's not in line with scripture, which those things are not in line with scripture. They're puffed up without reason. Hey, I've had this experience. I know what's going on. I am in the spiritually cool group without reason means it's in vain, it has no value by his sensuous minds, their thinking is worldly. Now this is very, very serious, but let me just put it in a context. So imagine a grade school playground scenario where there are certain group of popular kids who can go from one end of the monkey bars to the rest and nobody else can.

18:17And they decide that they're better than everybody else and they're gonna look down on those people who are not qualified in are second class citizens and say, well, you're not as good as us. Keep trying harder. That is what's happening here spiritually. They're having this spiritual experience where they're proud about it and they're judging or saying that you don't qualify, you're excluded. You need to get with the program, you need to get on our plan. You need to start taking the steps 'cause we've already arrived.

18:52There's a whole lot of problems with that. Paul rejects that for several reasons. Let's look at verse 18. First I mentioned he said it's without reason. But then in 19 it is that they are not holding fast to the head. They've lost sight of the head and the head notice in your version should be capitalized. They've lost sight, they're not connected to the head, they're not connected to Jesus Christ. Yikes. They've cut off the head. That cannot be good. They're not connected with the head. And what is more, they're not connected with the one from whom the whole body. This is gonna go into talking about the church, the body pay very close attention from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows.

19:47That phrase and this, this teaching here should, should cause those of us who are familiar with Ephesians four to go binging, he's using similar language. In fact the language is so overlapped in this section. What he's talking about is the body grows from the head Jesus Christ. And we the body of believers build one another up. The growth from God is through the joints, ligaments, and the body. The the people of the body, the members of the body who are speaking the truth in love. Okay, thank you for hanging with me in that pretty bizarre false teaching. Let me try to apply it to our lives and hopefully some of those explanations can really connect to your lives. First, you need to know again, specifically, there are still people in the church who are being tempted and called to worship angels today. Now, there may be some that I'm not even familiar with, but I read an article about it being prevalent in Ethiopia.

20:48And you should just know since we're just preaching through God's word and we get to talk about what's in front of us, you should know that this is idolatry. We should serve the Lord our God alone. And in fact, in Revelation 1910, when an angel was interacting with the Apostle John and showed up as he's revealing these wonderful things about Jesus Christ, John was tempted and bowed down to worship this angel. And what did the angel say? You must not do that worship God. Well that's pretty clear. So don't do that. But how do we broadly apply this to our discernment? How do we know when to throw the flag when certain things like this are happening to us? Notice first, the very end, the source of our power and growth.

21:44If we get a whiff of any lie, teaching strategy for growth that somehow goes along with God helps those who help themselves. We should throw the flag and try to lean in and understand more. We grow by relying on Jesus Christ. Christians are those that continually keep on trusting in Jesus. They don't move on from Christ, they don't abandon the head. Secondly, this text very clearly shows that they are not looking to the mutual upbuilding and sharpening of God's church. In fact, they're seeking to divide it. If you hear any teaching or idea that's like it's just me and Jesus, I don't need that church. I don't need to be a part of a church.

22:34Something is off. If you think in your own head that you can do this on your own, or if you hear teaching that you can do this apart from the body, or if you think I can keep this in the dark, other believers don't need to know about that 'cause I can handle this on my own. You are believing lies vital. One. Another connection to God's church is how we grow. Don't believe any lies. Take it under review, take it to the word. There's 30 plus one another commands that we should be doing in small groups and in the commons and with one another. We must be with the body. The body builds up the body when it's equipped and empowered by God.

23:23Throw the flag if you hear anything leading you away from God's church. Third division over experience. If you are encountering ideas of judgment from others or a spiritual experience is being used to differentiate between the good and the better your warning light should be going on. I experienced this in my first year back from college. Maybe it was my second year back. I was working on a cleaning crew. We were sent out in teams of two. And some of the guys that I would go out with were believers. And some of them believed that I was lacking because I had yet to pray in tongues and they wanted me to take the next level. Now, they weren't saying I wasn't saved, but there was definitely a have and have not dichotomy there.

24:14And there can be many other examples, but that was a place where I encountered that if those around us in the church are being included or excluded due to some spiritual experience, we should toss a flag. Finally, mixing biblical and unbiblical teaching. Notice that they're puffed up by their sensuous or worldly minds. I'm talking specifically about spiritual core things here. We must know the core teachings of Christianity, about God's goodness and about the fallenness of man and about Jesus being our only hope for salvation and about ongoing trust in him and other core doctrines. If they're mixing in worldly thinking into that, we should throw the flag. For example, how many philosophies, kids, movies, books are built upon the goodness of humanity and and the strategies and the ways that they're encouraging us to go are kind of mixing in like, well, they're a good person, they'll figure it out.

25:23Or they just need to try harder. No, they'll, that's a lie. We are fallen people, we desperately need Jesus. Our hearts are prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. We're not good. God is good. He sent his gospel to free us, to allow us to rely on him and have him help us. So if you're seeing mixtures of core biblical, what I would call worldview ideas, throw the flag. Now here's what I'm not saying really quickly. Here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we don't find other truth outside of God's word. We certainly do. God tells us in his word that that he has created all things and he's set us to take dominion over his creation.

26:13He's given smart people the ability to understand aviation that is a marvel and to cause us to fly across the skies or to dig deep into how blood clots work so they can help people who have struggles with that or just the list goes on, how to make really good ice cream. I mean, there's a lot of wonderful things that aren't taught specifically in the Bible. What I'm talking about is mixing in core teaching. Worldview matters. How did this whole thing start? What went wrong with this whole thing? And how does it get right? Again, if they're mixing in false ideas about that, you should throw the flag.

26:54It should be under review. Well, let's move on to a heart penetrating question, a heart penetrating question in verses 20 to 23. There's a lot here and we don't have to go time in, we don't have time to go into all of it. So we're gonna look exclusively at the question and a specific teaching in verse 23. But let me help you uncover the question because Paul is like a chef who layers an incredible lasagna and he piles ideas on top of ideas and sometimes we just need to pull out the noodles and just look at those. So that's what we're gonna try to do. Just look at the question. If you died to Christ, to the eternal spirits of the world, that's really important.

27:40But we're not gonna focus on that because the question starts in the next word. Why? Why as if you are still alive to the world? Do you not submit to regulations? Now notice what's after the word word regulations. Probably in your Bible there's a little dash. That means Paul's gonna insert some other really important ideas. They're important, but we're gonna not focus on them. Do not handle, do not taste. Do not touch referring to the things that perishes they're used. Here's the final part of his question. After the dash, according to human precepts in teachings. So let me read that question to you again. Why do you submit?

28:21Why do you place yourself under regulations As if, I'm sorry, as if you're allowed to the world. Do you submit to regulations according to human precepts and teachings? So let's try to understand this. If you were here last week, does anybody remember? And it's not for show of hand, you can just think about it in yourself. Does anybody remember Pastor Sam going a couple different times to the word according to He really wanted to help us see that there are two kinds of teaching. Those are, which are according to human traditions, human rules, worldly ways of thinking versus teaching according to Christ.

29:04So which one do you think that he's talking about here? Why do you submit to regulations according to human precepts and teachings? Is that according to Christ or not according to Christ? Those are not according to Christ. And there's even more here. The words that he uses, you can put your finger underneath them. Human precepts and teachings have a rich biblical history behind them. They were the very words in a different order, but the exact words that Jesus spoke in Matthew 15, 3, 7, and nine, which he was quoting the prophet Isaiah. If we look there, I think we're gonna understand this heart probing question.

29:50So you can listen with me or you can turn to Matthew 15, verse three and seven through nine. He that is, Jesus answered them. Who is the them? Jesus was in a debate with the Pharisees and the Pharisees were doing the very thing that was happening in the Colossian church. They were looking at Jesus' disciples and they were differentiated between them. And they were saying, why don't they abide by the traditions of the Pharisees and Jesus, our perfect example in obedient to everything in God's word, did not let that he, he threw the flag and he's the perfect judge. And he asked them a question and he says this, why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

30:37You're not looking at the whole scripture, you're making up your own stuff. You're disobeying God's word. That's the serious thing here. Not whether we follow your rules or not. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said this. People honors me with their lips. Notice they're getting their external shell in shape, but their heart is far from me. Do you realize we have willpower over what we taste, touch and handle? See verse 21. But God has the willpower over our hearts. Has the ability to transform our hearts, has the ability to take out a heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh in vain. Do you worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men?

31:25Those final words as doctrines, the commandments of men are the exact same words that Paul uses here. So what Paul is causing them to think back through to remember the teaching of Jesus and saying, whoa, we're doing the same things that the Pharisee was doing maybe in a different light, but we are honoring God with our lips, but our hearts are far from him. That is an extremely penetrating question that we should ask to ourselves. Am I honoring God simply with the outward things that I can control? Or am I giving him humbly my heart and saying, Lord, here's my heart. Do surgery help me? I am desperately in need of you to provide grace and I'm gonna trust in your promises which say that you're gonna work in me as I work out my salvation with fear and trembling. So just consider these realities.

32:19This is man's teaching, not God. That is not a good thing. It involves self-centered willpower rather than dependence on God. This leads to self congratulations, not thanksgiving to God. It leads to proud judging of others, not love and dependence on others for prayers correcting or rebuking and encouraging this type of spirituality leads to self love, not God love.

32:53And Paul closes it with this teaching in verse 23. These that is human precepts and teachings indeed have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and the severity of the body. What he's saying is they're really busy doing a lot of stuff that really looks good, but it is of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. It doesn't address the heart, it doesn't solve the heart problem. It's just getting the externals all looking good.

33:27These things had the appearance of wisdom. What they were doing is therefore, as you have received Christ, Jesus the Lord, they were not walking in him. They were walking in their own strength. So let's, let's consider that. Let's ask ourselves this important question. What is my growth strategy? What am I trusting in to become more like Jesus? What is my plan? Am I bringing my heart to God? My heart, which is prone to wander and saying, Lord, help me. I'm completely dependent on you. Show me your word. Illuminate the instructions or the promises that I can rely on entrust you as they step out and your spirit will show up and help me grow.

34:14Is that their path or are they seeking to do it on their own? How do we, how do we navigate life? Which, which path are we on? You might notice, look at the last phrase of verse 23. You might notice that this text ends in a cliffhanger. They have no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. I dunno if you see that. But that's sort of like begs the question, well then I see that I have flesh, by the way, the flesh is the me monster inside all of us that wants to take what we want and control our worlds by our own strength that is opposite of the spirit relying on Jesus.

35:01This is a cliffhanger because we should ask ourselves, well, what does stop the indulgence of the flesh? Well, let me give you two quick answers to that. This is only chapter two of a four chapter letter. So there's more to come. He might be like, ah. But I also want you to know our church is built on a rich tradition of acting the miracle. That might be a phrase that some of you know and some of you have no idea what I just said. It's a rich tradition of something called apta, an acronym where there's teaching from God's word flowing outta the scriptures. Um, specifically Galatians three, five, which says that God does miracles among us by hearing with faith.

35:46We hear God's word rely upon it. We trust in Him and we step out and do it. There's, there's many articles on desiring God that talk about that you can, I can show you one afterwards. This one's called practical help for praying for help. But look that up. Obeying in faith. How do I do that? And hopefully that's further fleshed out in the rest of the letter to Colossians. Let me just close with this final question. What are you relying upon? And if you're not quite sure, look at your heart. Are you either growing weary because you're trying so hard and you wanna give up? You're not relying on Jesus? Are you growing proud?

36:26Because look at how far I've come. You're not relying on Jesus. Or is your faith and trust and humility growing in a God that you desperately need in order to change? That's what we need. Let's pray for his help in that Greek God, we need you. We need you. It's a very nuanced thing that we easily drift away from probably several times, every day, relying on ourselves rather than trusting in you. Would you please help us? Would you please help us to see it? Would you help us to see the right way from your scriptures? Would we be people that trust and keep trusting in Jesus Christ? And Father, for those who haven't begun to trust in Jesus Christ, would you help them to come to the end of their self-reliance and look to Christ? Would you help? All of us?

37:26We all need the same thing. We all need to come to the end of trusting in ourselves and look to Jesus Christ. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Sermon Text

Colossians 2:16-23