Colossians Ch2v8-15 - Christ Is Enough

[0:00] Thanks very much Sam for leading this morning and thanks to the musicians again for playing.

[0:28] It's always good to have people who can play music and help us along in our singing. Thanks again Sam for your organisation of yesterday. It was a good time, a great encouragement.

[0:44] Let's turn in our Bibles please to Colossians. This is the book we're looking at. If you've missed any of the talks along the way, you'll find them all on the website.

[1:01] And again, thanks to Christopher who does that. And yeah, they're all in good order now so you can follow up on past series as well. But you'll find them there. We're going to read this morning from Colossians chapter 2, starting at verse 8 through to verse 15.

[1:20] So let's hear God's word together. Colossians 2, starting at verse 8 through to verse 15. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world, rather than on Christ.

[1:48] For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. And in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

[2:00] He that is Christ is the head over every power and authority. In Christ you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands.

[2:13] Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

[2:32] When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

[2:45] He forgave us all our sins. Having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.

[3:00] And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

[3:13] Well, these are rich words and we need God's help to understand and apply them. So let's pray and ask for his help now.

[3:25] Father God, we thank you again for all your many blessings to us. Thank you that we can meet together like this in peace and in safety.

[3:44] Thank you that we can enjoy one another's company and support. And thank you that you have given to us your word.

[3:55] That the God who made this universe has written down his word for us today. So that as we listen to it, we can hear your voice speaking to our hearts afresh.

[4:11] So please, will you encourage us. And would you meet every need of every person here today.

[4:23] In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Life with Christ is good.

[4:35] But you know what? It can be so much better. Wouldn't you like to experience the best life, the good life?

[4:48] And please don't misunderstand me. Christ is a good place for us to start. But don't let that restrict you. There is so much more beyond Christ to experience.

[4:59] Well, be very careful of such teaching. Look at verse 8.

[5:11] See to it that no one, including the preacher, takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy. We don't know exactly what this philosophy or teaching is, but we do know its source.

[5:27] Continue with me through verse 8. It depends on human tradition. In other words, it is nothing less than the imaginations and speculations of people.

[5:40] And it also depends on, the rest of verse 8, the elemental spiritual forces of this world. That is, its roots, the teaching of this, its roots are sinister, evil, luring you away from the truth.

[6:01] The problem is, this teaching depends on other things. Do you see the last sentence of verse 8? Rather than on Christ.

[6:12] Their foundations are in other things except Christ. Christ is a good place to start, they say, but there is something more.

[6:29] Christ can meet some of your spiritual needs, but not all of your spiritual needs. Now we face the same kind of deceptive philosophy today.

[6:41] Let me share with you two that I came up with. Christ plus religious tradition. So people will say, Christ is good, but it's your religious traditions that really count.

[6:56] It's not so much who Christ is, but believing in your rituals and your practices. Or how about this one?

[7:08] Christ plus personal experience. Christ is good, but it's your personal experience that counts. It's not so much who Christ is, but what you feel and think is best for you.

[7:24] Now these things sound right, they can almost feel good, but we've got to be careful, it's deceptive. Such teaching, as we see in verse 8, is human speculation.

[7:39] It depends on human tradition. It's luring you away from the truth. It's not Christ plus that we need. We need Christ alone.

[7:51] You see, if we add anything onto Christ, we're actually taking away from Christ. And that's dangerous.

[8:04] Rather than free you, look again at the beginning of verse 8, it takes you captive. And rather than fill you, it leaves you hollow, it leaves you empty.

[8:18] It's not Christ plus something else, but Christ alone. And we're going to look at three things in the remaining verses that show us that Christ is enough for us as we walk the Christian life.

[8:38] Three things. We have fullness in Christ, we're made alive with Christ, and we experience victory through Christ. So fullness in Christ, alive with Christ, and victory through Christ.

[8:54] So let's look at the first one. We have fullness in Christ. In Christ, we have all that we need to live the Christian life.

[9:05] Three things are going to help us see this. Here's the first one. We have union with Christ. Look at verse 9. For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

[9:23] Now to help us understand that, we can go back to chapter 1, verse 9, where the same thing is said. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ.

[9:40] Christ. All of God, so if my fist, if you like, is God, and this is Christ, all of God is in Christ.

[9:53] That's why it says, if we go back to chapter 2, verse 10, the very last sentence, Christ is the head over every power and authority.

[10:04] That's actually a position that belongs to God alone. But here it's telling us that Christ is the head over every power and authority.

[10:15] In other words, Christ is God. And the more we know the Lord Jesus Christ, the more we know who God is.

[10:27] Now look at verse 10. So we've seen that in Christ is God. And now we're told at the beginning of verse 10 that we are in Christ.

[10:42] That's who we are if we're trusting in him. Go back to chapter 1, verse 2. Remember how he described the church to God's holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.

[11:00] Now put these two things together. If God is in Christ and we are in Christ then we have been brought to fullness.

[11:16] If all of God is in Christ and we are in Christ then verse 10 we have been brought to fullness. To be in Christ, to be trusting in him is to be filled with the fullness of God.

[11:34] Which means Christ is enough. All that we ever need to know of God, all that we could ever have or receive from God is found in Christ.

[11:52] Therefore we can say Christ is enough for me. Christ is sufficient for me in my walk with him. And if you have been filled with the fullness of God, with all the greatness and glory of God, if we've been filled with him, how could you ever think that you're missing something?

[12:13] How can we ever say I don't have enough if we've been filled with the fullness of God? God has given us everything. He's given us himself so that we could be eternally satisfied.

[12:29] You see, to know Christ is to know God. And if you have God, then you can never add anything better and greater onto that.

[12:42] Christ is enough for you and for me. Maybe you're asking, well, okay, this fullness of Christ in me, how can I experience that for myself?

[12:57] Well, very simply through faith in Christ. We have this union with Christ, we have this fullness as we place our trust, our confidence in him.

[13:09] We are united to him, we're bound to him, we're in him, we're incorporated into him. It's an eternal union that can never be broken, ruined, or destroyed.

[13:23] His life becomes my life. So think of it like this, think of a marriage. So when Kirstie and I got married, we became one.

[13:36] The two became one. Through our vows and promises and commitments, my life became her life and her life became my life. We were united, we were bound.

[13:50] Well, in a much deeper and eternal way, through our faith, by trusting our life to Christ, his life becomes my life. All that Christ has becomes ours.

[14:02] He has the fullness of God and if we're in him, we have his fullness. We don't need anything else.

[14:13] We don't need to add on to Christ. So, first, we have fullness in Christ. Second, we've been made alive with Christ.

[14:28] In Christ, we have the best life. And again, three things are going to help us see this, how it works out. First, we are circumcised by Christ.

[14:42] Look at verse 11. in Christ, again, so it's that union language as we trust in him, in him you are also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands.

[15:00] Now, circumcision was an Old Testament covenant sign given to God's people. The foreskin of every baby boy was cut off.

[15:12] It was a mark or it was a sign to show you that you belonged to God. However, circumcision was always outward and physical.

[15:24] It was just a mark. It never changed the inside. It never changed the heart. What was needed was something inward and something spiritual. In fact, God told Moses, or God told the people through Moses, this is what God said, he says, I want you to circumcise your hearts and don't be hard hearted any longer.

[15:53] Well, of course, God didn't mean to physically cut out your heart with a knife. No, God was saying, what you need is not something physical and outward, but you need something inner and spiritual.

[16:09] You need to change the inside. You need to cut away the sinful self so that you can be devoted to me. And that's what Christ came to do for us.

[16:23] So, look at the rest of verse 11. Your whole self ruled by the flesh, so when it uses that term flesh, it's talking about the sinful desires of the heart, your whole self ruled by the sinful desires of the heart was put off or cut off when you were circumcised by Christ.

[16:51] In other words, our hearts which represent our true selves and are ruled by sin, we want to live God's way. But that needs changed and we can never change that on ourselves.

[17:05] We don't even want to change our hearts. We need Christ to come to us and change us inwardly to give us a circumcision of the heart, not performed by human hands, but a spiritual working of God in our life.

[17:24] It's like Christ performs inner spiritual surgery. You know, if you were to go to the doctors and say, there's something wrong with your heart, there's a valve that's blocked, well, you go into surgery, they cut open your heart, they do all the work, they take out what needs to be taken out, so that you can live.

[17:47] Well, Christ does that to us inwardly, spiritually, he cuts us open, he circumcises, he cuts away the sinful heart, so that we can live for him.

[18:03] Well, you say, how on earth does that happen, because it's all kind of picture language, isn't it? How does Christ cut away our sinful hearts? Well, baptised in Christ.

[18:21] Christ cuts away the sinful self by his death and resurrection, which is symbolised in baptism. Let me say that again, it's quite a lot there.

[18:34] He cuts away the sinful self by his death and resurrection, which is symbolised in baptism. So look at verse 12.

[18:46] So the cutting off has been done by Christ. Verse 12, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

[19:04] You see, when Christ died, and when Christ was buried, we died and we were buried. We died to our sinful self.

[19:18] Through faith, our whole self, ruled by the sinful nature, was put to death. death. And similarly, when Christ was raised from the dead, we were also raised from the dead.

[19:32] We were raised to new life. Through faith, our whole self is now ruled by Christ and we live for him. Now all of that is symbolised through the act of baptism.

[19:46] You know what baptism looks like when you go down under the water. It's a picture of you saying, I am dying with Christ.

[19:57] When Christ died, I died. I died to my sinful self. Then when you come up out of the water, it's a picture of being raised with Christ.

[20:10] We now live for him. You see, Christ deals with the internal, not the external. He changes us on the inside, not the outside.

[20:22] He gives us new life. Look at verse 13. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, so before Christ dealt with your inner life, he says God made you alive with Christ.

[20:48] You see, when I trusted Christ, the old died and the new lives. When I trusted Christ, the old Johnny died.

[21:02] There was a dying to it all. And the new Johnny, well, he's alive. Look what God has done for us. It is nothing less than a spiritual resurrection.

[21:14] Look at the end of verse 13. He made you alive with Christ. You see, spiritually, we often see ourselves as people who are in a bit of trouble and we're crying out to God for help.

[21:31] We're like a person struggling in the sea. We cry out and someone hoists a life belt out to us and pulls us into safety. And we can say, my life was saved.

[21:42] And somehow that's how we think it is with God. We see something that needs to be put right and we cry out to God to come and help us. Well, it's kind of right.

[21:56] Because our spiritual condition is much worse than that. But our salvation is even greater than that. Rather than see ourselves flailing around on the surface looking for someone, to help.

[22:11] Spiritually, we're like a corpse at the bottom of the ocean. We're dead. And dead people don't cry out for help. We need somebody to come and intervene into our life and give us life.

[22:30] That's why it says, you were dead in your sins. But God came and made you alive. life with Christ. Now, what life is better than that?

[22:43] To be given resurrection life. New life with him today. New life with him for an eternity. We have the best life ever.

[22:54] We've been made alive with Christ. Christ. And then third, we experience victory through Christ.

[23:07] Through Christ, we can live a victorious life. And again, this is just to help us through and to get the big picture, three things. To see how we have victory through Christ.

[23:21] First, we're forgiven by God. Look at the end of verse 13. God forgave us all our sins.

[23:32] Sin is not just misdemeanors. Sin is our rebellion against God. It's our personal demand that we want to rule our own lives and do our own thing.

[23:45] It's seen in our selfish actions every single day. It's heard in our angry words. we see it in the thoughts in our twisted minds. And it separates us from God.

[23:57] It breaks relationships with others and it destroys our own self. Sin is a burden that weighs us down and cripples us. And left to ourselves, we're just suffering with our guilt and shame.

[24:13] But what has God done for us? Verse 13. He forgave us all our sins. Not just some of our sins, but every single one.

[24:27] Not just the public ones that people get to see, but the secret private ones that people don't see. Not just the one-off sins, but the daily habitual sin.

[24:40] He forgives us of all of our sin. There's no sin too big, no sin too dark, no sin too destructive, that God can't forgive.

[24:55] Now that's good news for you and me, but how does he forgive? Well, we're told it's nailed to Christ or it's nailed to the cross.

[25:11] Verse 14 shows us how we are forgiven. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us.

[25:26] He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. Now if we commit crime and we're caught and we're arrested, we're hoisted off to court.

[25:40] And there we sit in court. and the evidence is carefully detailed and recorded before the judge. The charge for our crime is then decided and we're sentenced.

[25:54] Well, here we are. We all stand before God as guilty before the judge. Verse 14 tells us the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us.

[26:09] That is, all the evidence of our guilt through our whole life is all piled up, is all carefully detailed and recorded and presented as it were towards God.

[26:20] And it stands over us. It condemns us. We're guilty. And we've got no defence, no excuse. The record is crystal clear.

[26:31] The sentence of God's judgement hangs over us. But look what happens verse 14. Look at the beginning of verse 14. He cancelled the charge that was against us.

[26:47] And how did he do it? Look at the end of verse 14. He took it away by nailing it to the cross. Can you picture that in your mind?

[27:02] That if we are trusting in Christ today, all our sin, every single bit of it, was taken on by Christ on himself.

[27:14] The evidence against me has been nailed to Christ. The judgement that is mine has now fallen on Christ.

[27:25] And the charge against me has been cancelled through Christ. An old hymn that we sometimes sing here puts it like this.

[27:39] My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, all of it, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.

[27:57] Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul. Sin is nailed to the cross, Christ. And it stays there, never to be taken with us again.

[28:11] That's the victory we have through Christ. But there is even more to that victory. Our victorious Christ.

[28:23] Look at verse 15. Christ has disarmed the powers and authorities. Now what do you think of the powers and authorities here?

[28:37] Well, you can talk to me afterwards, but I think the powers and authorities here are Satan and his minions. You see, Satan has always been at war with Christ, hasn't he?

[28:50] Through the temptation in the desert, as we follow his life through the Gospels, the opposition of religious leaders, people pursued him, people were against him, and behind it stood the powers and authorities of Satan.

[29:06] They were at war against Christ. And it seems like Satan won the battle. When Christ was charged by those religious rulers and sentenced by the Roman authorities, when he was stripped naked, and when he was beaten and whipped, and when the crown of thorns were crushed on his head, and the nails were driven into his hands and feet, all hell went wild in delight, because Christ was defeated.

[29:39] But no, what Satan thought was the final blow on Christ turned out to be Christ's victory over Satan.

[29:51] Verse 15, he disarmed the powers and authorities. He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

[30:05] One writer helpfully put it like this, follow on screen, the cross was not the defeat of Christ at the hands of the powers, it was the defeat of the powers at the hands, yes, the bleeding hands of Christ.

[30:25] You see, as Christ died on the cross, that was a demonstration of the greatest power ever, because he defeated Satan who throws at us every accusation, who reminds us of all our sin and all our past and all our failure, and points fingers and says you're useless, you're rubbish, you're a failure.

[30:47] But Christ has taken away, he has disarmed Satan, he has taken away that weapon of accusation, so it can never, ever touch us again.

[31:03] You see, through the death of Christ, our salvation is secured, through the suffering of Christ, our debt and sin is forgiven.

[31:13] You know, in ancient times, when kings went out to battle, and they won their battle, they would march back into the city, and in tow would be their enemies, their disarmed enemies, in chains, following the conquering king, and people would line the streets, cheering their victorious, triumphant king.

[31:43] Well, the cross is God's victory parade. As people walked by, they saw suffering and death, a crucifixion, brokenness.

[31:57] But it is through the death of Christ that we have victory. The cross is God's victory parade. Jesus Christ is our victorious, triumphant king.

[32:10] He has won, and we now share in that victory. And if Christ has won the greatest battle, if he has defeated our greatest enemy, why would we ever go looking for something more?

[32:26] He's done it all. He's enough. He's sufficient. so let us together, verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.

[32:46] Be careful of dangerous deception. People who say, Christ is not enough. You need something more. No, we have fullness in Christ.

[33:00] We've been made alive with Christ, and we experience victory through Christ. Christ is enough.

[33:11] He's sufficient for you and for me. Let's pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[33:23] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[33:33] Let us pause, and reflect, on where we so often put our hope and our trust. Father, thank you that Christ is enough, and he is sufficient for our life today.

[33:57] Thank you that we have fullness in Christ. We have all of God with us and for us. Thank you that we have been made alive with Christ, new life to live your way and new life forevermore in your eternal kingdom.

[34:18] Thank you that we have victory in Christ, all our sin dealt with, never to be held against us. Never to be accused, never to be condemned, but living with the sure and certain hope of life with you for all eternity.

[34:41] Father, thank you for the gift of Christ and thank you that through our faith in him, his life becomes my life.

[34:53] Thank you so much and it's in his name we pray. Amen. We're going to sing together.

[35:06] Amen. I once was lost in darkest night, yet thought I knew the way. The sin that promised joy in life, well, it had led me to the grave.

[35:19] I had no hope that you would own a rebel to your will. And if you had loved me first, I would refuse you still. Hallelujah.

[35:30] Hallelujah. I have loved you still. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

[35:41] Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

[35:51] Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.