← Cornerstone Chapel - Audio Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
For today we're going to be Colossians Chapter two. So if you'll take your Bibles and go to Colossians chapter two. If you're new to Cornerstone, we go straight through the Bible and we are presently in Colossians 2. And I'm going to read verses 11 to 15. So you can pull up your Bibles on your phone if you didn't bring a paper one. I like a paper one because I like to write in the margins and take notes and underline things. I'll be reading from New King James. This is Colossians 2, verse 11 to 15. Here's what it says in him that is in Jesus. You were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. Verse 13. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross, how having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it, meaning by the cross. Let's pause there and pray. Father God, we thank you for this day that we can gather here in your house to worship you, to not only sing songs, but now to open up our Bibles and to study to see what you would have to say to us today. So Lord, we pray that we would have ears to hear what your spirit says. Thank you for these verses that speak to us about your great and wonderful work in our lives. And I pray that it would impact us, Lord, that it would speak to our hearts. Today we pray for our troops. We remember them serving especially in the Middle east, and ask you to bring them home soon and safely. Lord, this is our prayer. Thank you for meeting us here today. We ask these things in Jesus name and everyone said Amen. Well, the context of these verses 11 to 15 are really based on the previous verses. So let's just jog back to verses 9 and 10. We looked at, we mentioned these verses last week, but I didn't really teach on verses 9 and 10, but it frames the context for the passage we just read. So look again at verses 9 and 10 where Paul writes, For in him that is, Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. I want to ask you to underline or circle the word complete. You are complete in Jesus. The word. Originally, in the Greek language of the New Testament, the word for complete is, can translate to be full, to abound, to lack nothing, to be wholly satisfied. In other words, he's saying to us, you have been made whole and complete and fully satisfied in Jesus. Now look, when you read that, it implies that without Jesus we are incomplete. And that is true. If Paul is saying, here, in Jesus you are made complete, that means without Jesus, we are incomplete. It is important for us to understand that Jesus is the only one who can make us completely fulfilled. He is the one who completes us. Not a friend, not a spouse, not a talent, not a career, not possessions, not a boyfriend or a girlfriend. The only one who can complete us is Jesus. And this is why it's important to understand, particularly among relationships like boyfriend, girlfriend, or even spouses. Listen to me, everybody. If you're married or if you're in a dating relationship, okay, stop saying, this person completes me. Stop saying that. I hear that from young couples in love. They're like, this person. I'm only half a person until I met my soulmate, and now I'm complete. We each have necklaces with half a heart, ever. But together, we're like one heart. And we're just like glue. We're whole now. We finish each other's sentences. We feed each other at restaurants. Like, give me a break, right? I love my family. My nephew was up visiting us a couple weeks ago. He's just got engaged. He and his fiance were up together. We took him out to eat. Afterwards. They're feeding each other off the plates, okay, I'm just like, stop it. Like, stop this. But it. But it's. It's what happens, you know, when people are in love and they think that this other person completes me. But listen, by implication, then you're saying that a single person is not complete unless they're married. And by implication, you're saying that a married person is not complete unless they're with their spouse. And the fact of the matter is, the only person who can complete us, fulfill us, and satisfy the deepest longings of our souls is. Is Jesus. It's Jesus. It's not another person, not another thing. It's only Jesus. And so in. In the verses that we just read, Paul goes on to write about, okay, well, if we are complete in Jesus, what does that look like? What has he done for us that we are complete in Him? And between verses 13, 14, and 15, there are four participial phrases. You English majors are going to drool over this. Four participial phrases that describe what God has done to make us complete in Him. I'm going to highlight those four phrases. Let me throw up verses 13, 14, and 15 on the screen. Let me read through it, and then I'll highlight. What are these participial phrases that explain to us how we are complete in Christ? Verse 13. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. And he has made alive together with him. Here's the first one. Having forgiven you all trespasses. So I'm going to underline it as we make our way through. That's the first one. Having forgiven you all trespasses. Here's the Second one, verse 14. Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken it out of the way. The third participial phrase. Having nailed it to the cross. Having nailed it to the cross. And then the last One is verse 15. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So here are the four. Having forgiven, having wiped out, having nailed, having disarmed. Now, before we talk about those four particular phrases, let's back up to verse 11. Let me briefly explain what all this talk is about. Circumcision. Because he says in verse 11, in him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. So remember that in the Old Testament, circumcision was a covenant God had made with Abraham. And circumcision was required for every Jewish male. In fact, the Levitical law required that when a boy was born on his eighth day, he was to be circumcised. And circumcision was a sign that he and the family belonged to God. It was the idea of putting a knife to the place of reproduction so that they would always remember they are God's progeny, that they are children of God, and they are children of the promise who have now been related to him by virtue of covenant. And so circumcision was a right and a requirement to that that then showed that the people belonged to God, that they were a covenant promised People who belong to God. Now, that's physical circumcision, which is no longer required because we're under grace. But what Paul is talking about here is not physical circumcision, but he's talking about spiritual circumcision. Look again at verse 11. In him, you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. Without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. In other words, he's saying here, when we come to Christ by faith, we are to cut away the old life of the flesh with its sinful behavior, because we belong now to God by faith in Jesus Christ, in a covenant relationship through the shed blood of Jesus. See, what you have in your Bibles, in your hands when you have your Bibles, is from Genesis to Malachi is Old Testament. Well, Old Testament is literally old covenant. And what you have as New Testament from Matthew to Revelation is really new covenant. And so under the old covenant, circumcision was a cutting way of the flesh to show that one belongs to God. But in the new covenant, it is the cutting away of our sinful behavior. Because now we have been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. We are in covenant with God, and. And we are his children, children of promise through faith in Jesus Christ. And so he calls us here to circumcision of the heart. He says, I want you, when you belong to Christ now, to be intentional about cutting away the things of the flesh out of your life, cutting away the sinful behavior, because you now belong to him as his children. And then he follows up there in verse 12 by saying, now that you belong to him, demonstrate that through water baptism. In verse 12, he says, buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you see, water baptism is not required for salvation, but it demonstrates that one is saved. You go under the water. You are identifying with the death and burial of Jesus. You come up out of the water, you're identifying with his resurrected life. And in effect, we're saying we are dead to our old ways, our old lives. We are raised in newness of life, and we follow Jesus as his disciples, as his followers. And so again, baptism is not required for salvation. But he says here to us, now that you're in him, I want you to cut away the sinful part of your lives. I want you to be baptized to demonstrate your faith in Jesus Christ. And then here's what God does verse 13. Now, obviously God initiated the whole thing, but here's what he does in particular verse 13, and you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, okay, in other words, before you got saved, now that you are saved, here's what happens. He has made alive together with him. He's made us alive together with Him. The first thing that God does is, is to breathe life into our dead souls. You see, we are all born physically, but we're all spiritually dead without the Lord. And so we must be born again so we can have life spiritually. This is the whole conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus in John chapter three, when Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. And Nicodemus doesn't quite understand the terminology. And so he says, well, how is it that an old man can go back into his mother's womb for a second time to be born? And Jesus says in John 3. 6, he says, flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit. What was he saying there? He's saying flesh gives birth to flesh. There's a physical birth, but spirit gives birth to spirit. There must be a spiritual birth. See, listen, everybody. Physical birth is by God's design. Spiritual birth is by your decision. It's a choice to believe by faith in what Jesus did on that cross. Make a decision to trust him, and then you can be spiritually born. You can have life through faith in Jesus Christ. When you choose Jesus and you believe by faith what he did for you on that cross, how he died for the forgiveness of our sins and shed his blood for us, then you trust him as Lord and Savior. And this is what Paul writes here in verse 13, when he says, and he has made us alive together with him. And Jesus concludes that conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:16 by underscoring that when he says in John 3:16 that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. You're going to have life now which is more important than physical life, because spiritual life will far outlive physical life. One day our physical bodies will return to dust and our spirit will continue to live. The question is, where? And so when he gives us life, we are able to have eternal life through faith in Jesus and go to heaven when we die. And. And that's the whole important thing about a spiritual birth. Now, in verses 11 to 15, sorry, 13 to 15, Paul then writes about. Here's how Jesus has completed us. Let's just go through these four different phrases. Number one, in verse 13, having forgiven you, all trespasses. Having forgiven you trespasses. Now, what are trespasses, and how is that different from sin? Well, they are related, but they are actually two different words. In the Greek New Testament, the word for sin is harmatia. Harmatia means to miss the mark, to not measure up, to fall short. Paul spells this out for us in Romans 3 when he says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us measures up. We fall short. We miss the mark. God is a perfect, holy God. None of us is. So all of us fall short of the glory of God. We miss the mark. That's sin. Now, trespass is a different word. Trespass. It's different, but related to our sin nature. It's the Greek word paraptoma. Paraptama means willfully doing wrong. And we can understand this when you think about just how it's used in English. If you see a sign that says no trespassing, okay? And you decide even after seeing that sign, you're gonna go where you're not supposed to go, that's trespassing. It's the idea that when we willfully disobey God, we go to places. In other words, we practice things, we do things, we participate in things that God says off limits. That's trespassing. It's the willful disobedience of doing things that we know are trespassing. Let me use a baseball analogy to kind of explain the difference between sin and trespasses. Okay? Back in the day, I used to umpire high school baseball at the Babe Ruth level. And it was a wonderful thing for me. Cause, you know, pastorally, I always have to kind of be nice. You know, That's a pastor just like, hello, God bless you. How can I pray for you? Okay. I get out on the baseball field, I'm just, like, calling strikes and, you know, ringing people up and just having a good time, all right? And once in a while, some kid would come up to the plate like, hey, Pastor Gary. I'm like, hey, I think Pastor Gary, today I'm umpire Gary right now. You know, we better swing that bat. But anyway, once in a while. Once in a while, an overly eager runner coming into home would slide too early and not get all the way to the plate, like, be six inches off. They were an easy out because they slid too early. And so they would be tagged. And that's the idea of sin. We miss the mark, we don't even measure up. We don't even get there. God is perfect. So we missed the mark on the other end. There were also runners who would come into home, lower a shoulder, and plow right into the catcher trying to dislodge the ball. That's trespassing, right? That's ejection too, by the way. I mean, that's like willful. You willfully know what you're doing and you just do it anyway. Now here's the good news of what Paul is saying here. Here in verse 13. He has forgiven us all. Would you circle that word, please, in your Bible? All our trespasses, every willful thing, every intentional thing you've ever done, said or thought that was offensive to God, he has forgiven. When you come to faith in Jesus Christ, he forgives us of our sins and our trespasses. This is the beautiful thing. It doesn't say, he forgave some of our trespasses. He forgave the biggest trespasses. He forgave them all. All of our trespasses he has forgiven. Now, you and I cannot remember every single trespass we've ever done that we've committed against the Lord, but I bet you can remember a few that stand out. And here's the good news. Jesus died for that. He died for that. You were forgiven in Him. The second phrase is in verse 14, where he says, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements, that was against us. The word requirements here is the Greek word dogma. It can mean ordinances, it can mean rules. When he uses this phrase, the handwriting of requirements against us, it's the idea of a handwritten list of crimes that we are guilty of. It's our rap sheet, so to speak. It's our moral debt that we owe God, but which we cannot pay because no imperfect person can. But it can be paid. And the debt was wiped out by a perfect Savior. And that's what Jesus did. He expunged our record of wrongs. He took the punishment that we deserved. He paid the price for our crimes. This is what he's done for us. He's wiped out the handwriting of requirements. That was against us. In fact, the ancient Greek word translated wiped out can actually be translated wiped over. In the ancient Greek culture, they would use the same word to describe whitewashing a wall. You've wiped over it. You've covered something up by whitewashing it and making it clean. That's the picture of what Christ has done for us by His Blood. He has washed over all of our transgressions, all of our trespasses, all of our sins, and he's made us clean. So he's wiped them out. He's wiped them over with his blood. He's completely removed them. And then the next one goes with that, the rest of verse 14, having nailed it to the cross. See, Jesus not only wiped out or wiped over our list of crimes, he then nailed it to the cross. Why would he do that? Because he did everything possible to make certain that our past would never accuse us again. So he puts our past, he wipes it clean, and then he nails it to the cross so that we can know never again will we be accused of our past. In fact, remember in Scripture, In Matthew chapter 27, it tells us how though Jesus committed no sin, he did no wrong. They accused him. They accused him of sedition, basically, against the Roman government. And they. They nailed above the cross his crime. King of the Jews, okay? Which was an affront to the Roman government because there's only one king, and that's Caesar. And so that's the charge they laid against Jesus to crucify him. Sedition against the Roman government. He claims to be king. He's king of the Jews. There's only one king. That's Caesar. And so they nail that accusation on the cross above his head. And Paul reminds us in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So in a sense, when we identify with Christ's death, it's as if our accusations also were hung on the cross with him, never to be revisited again. Because God forgives our sins as far as the east is from the West. Psalm 103:12. So he nails it there so we would never be reminded of our past again. Now, you know who does love to remind us of our past? Don't look down the row. Eyes right here, okay? I'm talking about Satan. People can do that, too, but, you know, they shouldn't. But Satan is the real accuser. In fact, his name in Hebrew, Satan means accuser. In Revelation 12:10, he's called the accuser of the brethren. He's the accuser of believers. So even though we've been forgiven and our crimes have been nailed to the cross, Satan loves to try to remind us of our past. He loves to try to come along and try to discourage us in that way. I heard somebody once say, whenever Satan tries to remind me of my past, I remind him of his future. Now, I don't recommend you talk to the devil like that, like Satan. I'm telling you what your future is, but I get the principle. I get the idea, right? It's like, you know, Satan is going to eventually be thrown into the lake of fire, and he will be eternally punished and tormented. Okay? My past is under the blood of Jesus. It's been nailed to the cross. Don't let the enemy deceive you in that way. But it all leads into the fourth and the final participial phrase here in verse 15. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he, Jesus made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it by the cross. Now, this is a reference to fallen angels and demonic principalities that wage war against us. Paul had a lot to say about this in Ephesians, chapter 6. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. There are demonic principalities, part of the fallen, angelic beings who occupy the unseen realm. And they will do their best to try to attack, tempt, discourage, torment, lie, deceive us. But Paul is saying here in Colossians 2, that Jesus has rendered these forces of evil powerless over those who are in Christ. Now, that doesn't mean that there is no spiritual warfare. There is, and that's all Ephesians, chapter six. But it means that Satan and his demons no longer have the same power or control over believers that they do over unbelievers. And that's because we have weapons of our warfare that the rest of the unbelieving world does not have. We have the name of Jesus to stand behind, the name of Jesus to stand behind to fight against these demonic principalities. They may try to torment or tempt us from time to time, but they can only do so without they cannot possess us from within. First John 4. 4. Greater is he the Lord Jesus in me, than he that is in the world. Jesus does not share residency with demonic principalities. You receive Jesus, you have his fullness of his spirit. But the enemy can still try to work from without in different ways, to try to tempt or discourage or deceive. But the other weapon we have is not only standing behind the name of Jesus, but we have the Word of God. We have Scripture itself as our weapon to fight against the fiery darts of the evil one. And just like Jesus quoted Scripture when Satan tempted him in the wilderness. And every time the enemy comes against you, hit him with the Word. Hit him with the word. He might be A roaring lion, like Peter describes in his Epistle. He might be a roaring like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. But friends, his roar is bigger than his bite because Jesus defanged him on the cross. He did. Jesus defanged him on the cross. I had that image of. Of like Rudolph with that. The Abominable Snowman. And how Hermie the dentist, anyway, pulls out all of the. And then he's just this toothless, you know. Anyway, so the idea is here, look, friends, Jesus has completed us because number one, he has forgiven us. Number two, he has wiped out the record of our crimes and he nailed it to the cross. And number four, he has disarmed the powers and principalities of darkness, triumphing over them by the cross. You are complete in him. David says in Psalm 34:10, those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. The Lord Jesus has completed us, filled us, and he is the only one who can satisfy the deepest longings of our souls. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your good work to save us, to rescue us, to redeem us from our sins and from this fallen world. We thank you, Lord, that you have made us complete and whole in you. No other person, no other thing can make us complete. Only you can forgive us, Lord, when we have gone in search of different things to try to fulfill us. When in reality only you can. I pray, Lord, for those here today or watching online who have never trusted you as Lord and Savior. They've been looking for fulfillment and always coming up short. But today can be the day if they trust you as Lord and Savior. Where. Where they can have their sins forgiven and be wholly complete in you. So I'm going to pause in my prayer with your head still bowed. If you don't know Jesus as your Savior. I just want to invite you to trust him today. Surrender your life to him. Invite him in as Lord and Savior. I'll lead you in a simple prayer. If today you want to choose Jesus, you can just right where you're seated or watching online, you can pray a simple prayer like this. Just say, lord Jesus, thank you for loving me and dying for me. I choose you today as my Lord and Savior. Thank you that you chose me 2000 years ago when you died on that cross. You had me in mind. Forgive me of all my trespasses. Come into my heart today. Be my Lord and Savior. I trust you by faith. Thank you for making me whole and complete. I trust you in Jesus name. Amen. And Amen. If you prayed that prayer with me. Listen, there'll be a pastor down front to give you a Bible today if you want to receive one before you leave. If you prayed that online, we'll mail you a Bible. Just text the church. I have decided 703-844-969. All right, everybody. You're complete in Christ. Go in that. God bless you. Have a great.