David Pawson - Colossians - Unlocking the bible

when Paul couldn't visit a church to deal with the crisis he would write a letter to deal with it but towards the later stages of his ministry he couldn't visit churches because he was in prison and the majority of the letters we have were written while he was at least under house arrest if not in a prison cell so he just couldn't go and sort out a crisis he had to write letters and the next letters were going to look at were all written either during his first arrest in Rome when he was under house arrest chained to a Roman soldier but able to live in a rented house of his own and receive visitors and then later the letters to Timothy and Titus were written when he was in a prison cell in the condemned cell awaiting certain execution so most of the letters we have were written in prison such a lot of good Christian writings of Carter prison Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would be an outstanding example so we're now going to look at some of the letters called prison epistles written during that first imprisonment when he was under house arrest I told you earlier I'm just going to run through some of the things I said to you in a previous study that he wrote three kinds of letters personal to individuals occasional to a local crisis situation in a church and general letters or encyclical letters which were for general circulation not dealing with particular problems and we have three letters all written at the same time and sent with the same postman a man called tychicus to the same area the first is the letter to Philemon which was the first little letter he wrote about a runaway slave but we'll be studying that later and then he wrote to Colossians they a crisis in the church at Colossae and then he wrote a general letter which we call Ephesians but which actually didn't have an original address the word Ephesus is not in there in the earliest manuscripts so it was clearly a general letter which ultimately came to rest at the city of Ephesus so we have the three and I said that especially with the second type of letter which we're going to look at now Colossians you have to read between the lines and try and read the circumstances the situation the crisis and the need that had arisen we asked what does he correspond to or who does he correspond with or why does he correspond at all correspondence corresponds to a situation of the other end and we've always got to ask about what the corresponds is that's simply the pattern of letters which he always used which is the formal pattern used in the Greek world the name of the sender the address of the receiver greeting compliment the substance of the letter summary a closing greeting and the signature and with all biblical epistles therefore we have to first of all make it real by going back into the situation trying to find out what was happening there look at the actual practice of the church but then we have to make it relevant to today by bringing it forward and applying the principle to where we are at so we've got quite a lot of work to do when we read a letter of Paul well now let's just look at the geography of it we are now looking at the western part of Turkey yet in fact I'm going to start with this one first almost all Paul's letters are on that map the letter to the Galatians the letter to colossi and to Philemon the letter to the Ephesians the letter to the Corinthians the letter to Rome is just off the map letter to Thessalonians the Philippians most of Paul's letters can be found around that Aegean Sea but the area we're going to look at now in more detail is the western part of Turkey which was then the Roman province of Asia here and there's a kind of circular route here Ephesus Smyrna Pergamum Thyatira Sardis Philadelphia Laodicea does that strike a chord those are the seven letters of the book of Revelation a postman could take them around the road here but we're concerned now with this area here there was a valley here with three tones in it here ah palace Laodicea and colossi and it's that little area plus Ephesus that we're going to look at now Paul is now way in Rome under house arrest but he's writing letters to this little area here and in particular this valley light to show you a picture it's a beautiful valley but the name of the river running through it is very significant here's the valley here's colossi and it's a very beautiful valley surrounded by hills but the river that runs through it is called the river meander meander you ever heard that name before it's a river that goes all over the place and from it we've got the word meander a meandering river and we're going to see that colossi was the meandering church and so often something that happens in a church is because of the district in which it is the background of it has got inside the church and this is a church that was beginning to meander and wander away from the truth and it's quite common for a church to begin to meander well let's just given you the setting of it and we now look at the place colossi paul wrote the first the letter to Philemon about the runaway slave and he sent our nessam as the slave back to his master in colossi or rather with Laodicea I think we're far Lehman was but he also at that time wanted to write a letter to the church at Colossae so he sent that as well and he sent Ephesians as well so all three letters were sent at the same time through the same postman to the same area well now let's look at colossi what kind of a place was it you can see it's on a major route through Asia this road down to Arabia is a very important Road and one result of being on such a major east-west artery is that you get a very mixed population all sorts of people settle there travelers from all over so you have a very what we call a cosmopolitan city in colossi you had the original people who are called Phrygians you had many Greeks you had many Jews you have many Romans later the Saracens made this a Saracen town but it's always been an international town and therefore and this is more significant it was a town with many different religions many many religions it's what we now call a pluralist town have you heard that word it's becoming very common pluralist means you get different religions in the same street and that is now happening in England to a degree as never before you can find some streets in Birmingham where you'll find Sikhs Muslims Buddhists Hindus Christians Jews all in the same street and that presents of course many relational problems how we to live in peace with so many different religions competing with one another and the pluralist situation is a very different situation where you're dealing with just one large pagan religion Ephesus was very much more one pagan religion Diana of the Ephesians that goddess Artemis was the main religion in Ephesus but colossi everything was there at Colossae let me just run through there was a lot of animism animism is where you believe in elemental powers in nature a spirit controlling the river of spirit in the tree a spear in the mountain now I would have thought that would not trouble our modern thinking but I tell you under the green movement it's coming right back in the fertility killed the worship of Mother Nature and it's interesting that when you worship the Earth that's always feminist because the earth is always feminine and mother nature and mother earth well there was a lot of animism of sheer primitive worshipping nature spirits and there was a very unusual natural feature it's not on that photograph that I showed you but a way over on the hill there's a whole hillside that's white they give it the nickname the cotton caste and in a number of travel brochures I've seen pictures of it recently of people swimming and sunbathing on this white mountain it's just covered with salt deposits from Springs and it's quite a sight you'll see it in your tourist brochures now people go there to bathe in the hot salty water and sunbathe on the white cliffs it's called cotton castle spa waters so there were plenty of unusual natural features around from to worship then there was the astrology was very strong it had come along the road from Persia from the east and astrology was one of the problems they had to deal with in the church in Colossae and that's right back you know six out of ten men and seven out of ten women in our country read their horoscope every day and as Shakespeare put it The Fault dear Brutus is not in your stars it's in ourselves but they still read the stuff so animism astrology had come along the road from this way the Greek and the Roman pantheon were there all the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome were all in kalasa in colossi mystery religions as they're called from the east had come there often described as Gnostic religions GN o STI see that's the opposite of agnostic agnostic as someone who doesn't know agnostic as somebody who says I do know and they had lots of secrets and initiation rites and the mystery religions were there Judaism was there but the Judaism of colossi being quite a long way from the Holy Land had taken on a different kind of tone and as Judaism often does if ever you've listened to rabbi Ilan or blue on the radio then he is very typical of what happens to Judaism when he gets away from its roots and becomes more philosophical it becomes less moral and more mystical and is not the heart of real Judaism and it's it's very compelling and very interesting for people and very dangerous stuff it's now that Judaism or Christianity and then there was Christianity it not come to colossi from Paul Paul had never been to that place don't even know that he passed through how the church at Colossae came about was this when Paul was in Ephesus one of his converts was a man called a Paris and a puffer said I want to take this gospel to my hometown and Paul said where do you come from he said colossi then Paul said go and preach the gospel new kalasa and it was a path for us one of Paul's converts at Ephesus who'd started the church at Colossae so that's important Paul is writing to a church he is never founded and never visited and that's why it has such a large number of greetings in it because he's trying to establish contact when you write to estrange you say we have a mutual acquaintance since and so and so Paul mentions a Paris he mentions Aristarchus who also comes from there he mentions Dimas and a number of others whom they knew whom he knew but the report had come to him from a Paris that things were going badly in the church and the Paris wasn't himself officially an apostle II just preach the gospel and got a few neighbors together but now the church was running into problems and a Paris had told Paul what was happening and Paul said well I'll write a letter to them but remember that he's writing to a church really over which he has no authority because he didn't start them and he's never they don't know him so his tone is fairly cool and gentle all the way through he certainly doesn't talk as we heard him talking to Corinth you wouldn't do that to complete strangers you can only speak like that when you've got a relationship with people so it's a different kind of letter well no what's the problem what's going wrong and here Bible scholars and students have argued endlessly about what was happening certainly wrong teaching had come in in the two major areas of belief and behavior and your beliefs affect your behavior and when you believe wrong things you behave in a wrong it's inevitable if you get the right faith then your behavior gets right but if you get the wrong faith and your behavior goes wrong and so false teaching had come in but was it a particular heresy that's the argument of the scholars and they've looked at it and said was it one of these mystery religions was it a gnostic faith that had come in and they've never been able to reach a conclusion because when you make a list of the errors that paul deals with in belief and behavior they don't add up to any known sect or cult now sometimes you can see straight away the false cults that had come in and got hold of them but in Colossians you cannot work it out and you say what was it that had got in it certainly wasn't Judaism that got in it wasn't one of the mystery religions it wasn't astrology and yet somehow it seems to be a mixture of the whole lot of them and that's the thing that has puzzled scholars a lot of it is what we call new-age today but like New Age New Age is not a particular cult it's not even a movement it's what I call a mood rather than a movement and it's a kind of snowball that picks up all kinds of things vegetarianism feminism gaia ism whatever and and new-age thinking kind of picks up things as it goes along like a snowball picks up anything in its path it's not a particular organization it's a mood that people have got into and I think that's the real reason why we can't identify the particular heresy at colossi it was a mood or to put it more simply it was a mixture and the real problem at colossi was one we're having to deal with all the time outside into Christianity so the problem is not so much heresy as syncretism now that's a word you need to learn syncretism is to mix faiths together and you finish up with a hodgepodge and it picks up anything and mixes it all in it's not a particular cult or a heresy it's just it's just a bad mixture and when you mix the Christian faith with bits from these other faiths and from your pagan background you finish up with something that's not Christianity even though you may still call it that you have lost something and this is the real problem at colossi and it's a problem we are peculiarly wrestling with now here in the 20th century and therefore the letter to Colossians has a very important message for us it's a cool message but we need cool heads today we really do need warm hearts but very cool heads to think carefully what's happening all kinds of things that creeping in to the church today reflexology is now right inside the church and you had Christians practicing it and yoga is right inside the church we've got to ask what's happening and what's the result of all this happening and Colossians gives us a wonderful tool to analyze syncretism the mixture of faiths and especially the pressure is on us today to mix Christianity with other religions to have festivals of faith in which Buddhist Hindu Christian and Jew can all meet together the Pope calls for United prayer in Assisi for world peace and all the religions come together there was a festival of the forest in Canterbury Cathedral when all the religions came by different roads to the Cathedral to pray for the trees and a lot of it is tied up with environment believe me and you'll find that the elemental powers of nature and somehow got mixed in with the Christian faith of the Colossians very very relevant I've begun there because I want you to see how relevant it is to right where we are it's just what we've got a handle today syncretism some of the mixture of course was Jewish and some Jewish things had been brought in and some pagan things and some animistic things and the whole thing was getting to be such a mixture that Christ was losing his preeminence and that's the key to the whole letter you see the more you bring in all these other things and all people want to talk about the good that reflexology is done from the good that Yoga did from NOLA res somehow they stopped talking about what Christ has done for us and in many of these mixed festivals of phase with different religions its Christ who disappears see it's the name of Jesus that is no longer prominent preeminent and so this letter puts great emphasis on the preeminence of Christ that he may have the preeminence that he may be the focus of all our attention but when you start mixing Christianity with other faiths and especially your background faith then Christ loses his place he is no longer the focus of Christianity well now let's look at the letter itself and begin to see what was happening the problem was syncretism and it was turning Christianity into a religion that is always the danger Christianity for many people in this country is a religion I call it churchianity you know what I mean England is officially Christian but a lot of it is religious and if there's one thing Christ does he saves us from religion isn't that your testimony when you come to Christ you stop being religious and yet the funny thing is all your neighbors will say I hear you've gone religious well that gives you a wonderful opening to say no I finished with religion I'm not religious anymore I used to be but I'm not now because it's it's unbelievers in Christ to a religious even in their superstitions their religious we have stopped being religious for Christianity is not a religion and to combat syncretism the only thing you can defend Christianity with is the simplicity of Christ and essentially Christianity is simple it is not a religion it is a relationship with Christ as simple as that and that's the one thing that stops this syncretism just saying no I'm not religious so I don't join in congresses of religion I believe in Jesus simple so these are the two themes syncretism that makes a religion of Christianity and the simplicity of centering everything on a relationship to Christ and that's a summary of the letter now let's look at what was happening in the syncretism that was taking place at Colossae it may not be the same as syncretism today but we can learn from this the effect of mixing other faiths with the Christian faith is to reduce belief and in two particular ways at colossi belief had been reduced first they had lost a sense of the imminence of God now let's just explain these big words Christians believe that God is both transcendent and imminent he is both far above us and far from us and near to us it's a paradox and if you forget either side of the paradox you lose the Christian belief in God God is both greater than the universe and nearer than breathing that's what we mean by transcendence and imminence now the mixture of faith at kalasa they had lost the sense of God being near them and God was now far away from God was a distant being yes he was there but he was almost beyond reach and they filled in the gap between with all kinds of beliefs in angels and spirits and other things and when God is not near to you you have to fill the gap with something else and those things or beings that you fill in the gap with become nearer to you than God you see and that was the first thing that was happening at colossi their sense of God being with them was getting lost and God was somehow receding he was still real they believed in him but he was somehow far away and you know sometimes we build church buildings that gives the impressions God's an awful long way away from us with very high ceilings you know soaring archways that when you go in you sort of feel like a church mouse don't you and you whisper and God seems remove so far away on the other hand I would think in many fellowships today God has become so near to us that we've almost got to pally with him do you know what I mean and got to friendly and forgotten that he is an awesome God and we've lost the reverence it's a balance that we need here and if you forget the transcendence of God how great he is now far above us you will lose your reverence but if you forget the imminence of God you will lose your sense of his being with us so we need to hold on to both they were losing the imminence of God and God was now too high in their estimation at the same time Christ was too low in their thinking and they had lost the preeminence of Christ and somehow he was being placed alongside other beings and in fact the Jehovah's Witness error had crept in in which they were thinking of Jesus as a creature rather than a creator as on the creature side of reality rather than the Creator sovereignly exactly what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is not quite God that he's somewhere in between us and God do you see now that means God has got too high and jesus got too low and the faith is getting distorted now that's on the belief side and Paul is going to really deal with those two things and he does most effectively the behavior side he not only had a reduced belief but the result was a regulated behavior and he mentions two things that had crept in that were non-christian essentially but a right inside the Christian life now the first he mentions was the observance of a calendar they now observed annual festivals and monthly festivals and weekly festivals there is no trace in the New Testament whatever of Christian observance of a calendar now see this where it comes home because the calendar the church observes is largely pagan and it has been mixed into Christianity I'll come back to that in a moment the outstanding example of syncretism in Britain is Christmas and yet you tell Christians that they should not observe Christmas and you'll I know because I've done it and I could show you some of the correspondence I've had because I've I've stood for getting Christ out of Christmas and you wouldn't believe how unpopular that is show me one verse in the New Testament that says Christians should do anything special at Christmas it's not there but syncretism has put that pagan midwinter festival right in to the Christian calendar and where would we be without Christmas and Christmas Eve communion you see it is sheer paganism that has got mixed in and Christ is reduced to a baby in a manger which he is not all right I'm getting warmed up because can you see you see this is Colossians and we read that so objectiveness all those dreadful Colossians are letting all those pagan things get mixed up we do exactly the same and when we accused of doing it hey no no Christmas is the best time in the year in our pitch observance of a calendar Christianity is not the observance of calendars it is not the observance of Christmas and Easter where in the New Testament old have a special Easter know where Christ is risen every day and even Sunday observance is never commanded of Gentile observers in the New Testament yet we all want to keep Sunday special there's not a basis in the New Testament for doing that we are free to do that if we want to and we're free to count every day the Lord's Day if we want to were free we're not under any law about Sunday or any law about Christmas or any law about Easter but we do it and we assume it's Christian were Colossians anyway observance of calendar Paul says have nothing to do with annual or monthly festivals or weekly Sabbath's these do not belong to the age to come well you're willing to obey that word the other thing again this came in from the Greeks again abstinence of the body that there is virtue in denying your body its appetites and therefore they were forbidding people to marry now that celibacy was now the thing and they had a list of taboos don't touch this don't take taste that and Paul was going to have to say God has given us all things freely to enjoy a Christian is free to fast and to feast you're free I remember being invited to father mother three children gorgeous meal and the smell of it my I was drooling already you know like the Pavlovian dog I was really ready for and the father said would you give thanks and I said Lord I'm ready for this and it's ready for me thank you and I opened my eyes and the father mother looked at me with horror you know thought this was a man of God we had flesh but the kids loved me and the children's faces said if this is Christian they will go for it I'm not going to spoil a good meal with a long grace that's sacrilege you see and oh I hope I'm shocked you have an but you see Christianity is not a matter of giving up sweets in Lent giving up sweets in Lent is precisely putting these two things together they will come later to what Paul says Christians should be giving up this should be giving up pride and anger it's got a whole lot of things to give up and not just during Lent either do you see problem is if you give up sweets and Lent you put in your thumb and pull out a plum and say what a good boy am i you see and then soon as lens over or at least before Lent comes you can fill up on pancakes that's precisely what started Pancake Tuesday and then after Lent is over you see it in the Muslims Ramadan they don't touch food until sunset during Ramadan then they feast and get all indigestion become a quite bad-tempered you see Christianity is not a matter of observing periods it's a matter of giving up pride and anger every day see it's not a matter of doing things from this calender period it's a matter of living consistently in Christ or every day of your life every day is Christmas Day to the Christian every day is Easter Sunday to the real Christian it's not something we observe it's something we live in the whole time well I'm getting all excited but you see how their beliefs in their behavior somehow were drifting meandering away from Christ so Paul says the answer to this is simplicity boil it down I remember that conversation between Martin Luther when he was still a monk trying to save himself by praying to three saints every day 21 different Saints every week flogging himself in the cell till he fell unconscious on the South trying to beat the sins out of him and he tried everything he went on pilgrimage climbed the holy steps in Rome on his knees he did everything and then he gave it all up and his Superior General his father superior man called van stopp it's said to Martin Luther if you take away relics and pilgrimages and prayers the Saints and all these devotional practices what will you put in their place and Martin Luther said Christ men only needs Jesus Christ that's how the Protestant Reformation began did away with all this and put Christ back this place important thing is not whether you give up sweets in Lent but whether you are in Christ every day keep it simple the simplicity that is in Christ and he then focuses our attention on Christ in a wonderful way he says two things about Christ first all the divine fullness you got in Christ it all dwelt in him bodily as Charles Wesley put it our God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man when you've got Jesus you've got all of God you got everything in God in Jesus and therefore we must remember Jesus was the creator of the universe he was involved before he made chairs and tables he made the trees from which he'd get the timber before he preached the Sermon on the Mount he made the mountain so he'd have a pulpit Jesus was there at the creation without him nothing was made that has been made he's not owned in the creator of the universe he's the Conqueror of the powers all the principalities and the powers in the universe are under Jesus can you know all authority in heaven on earth is his and the third thing he says he's the controller of the church he's head of the church church has only one head not many has no human head it has one divine head the head of the church is Jesus that headship is not delegated to anyone else he is the creator of the universe the conqueror of the powers all those element and elemental powers of nature are all under Jesus control why don't these marvelous nature films on TV give the glory to the Father God instead of mother nature and give the glory to Jesus that's all Jesus doing he made those creatures he gave them their beauty in their marvelous powers and the other side of it is our relationship to this Christ who has the preeminence in whom all the divine fullness dwells is a life lived focused on him and that life has to be worked out in many practical areas the first it needs to be worked out in your own passions giving up those wrong passions not just for Lent but every day putting off those things that are not christ-like that's true Christian living it's not denying yourself sweets in Lent it's putting off the UNCHR iced light passions that so easily come take over it means charity in the church it means forgiving one another as he is forgiving us he's been amazing the patient with me then I must be patient with you that's living in Christ he's forgiven me I must forgive you forgive me my sins it was prayed this morning as we forgive see that's working it out that's simplicity in Christ and above all how many in the home that's where it's to be worked out the relationships between husbands and wives between parents and children between masters and slaves all of which were in the home of course the slavery was in the home the domestic and not a very popular word here submission is used submission of wives to husbands of children to parents of slaves to masters but also their responsibilities on husbands and parents and masters to be sacrificial towards those who submit to them and it's all there so that this is the kind of thing not the observance of a calendar not turning up a church at Christmas and Easter and not denying the body and trying to say I'm doing without listen what a good boy am I what is really involved is the simplicity of seeing that Christ is everything you need and everything in God is in Christ and then letting that affect every part of life what a message sees so God isn't looking for people who will turn up in great numbers to a Christian festival he's looking for those who will simply live in Christ all the time in every part and in every relationship I think it's a beautiful message of Colossians and why do we need it today well we need it for two reasons and with this our clothes the first is that I have to be honest and say that I believe all the way through the New Testament there is clear warning that we can lose our salvation and it's here in Colossians very clearly it's very clearly in many other letters supremely and Matthew and Hebrews and Revelation all of which state it very clearly but here in Colossians Paul says if you continue in the faith you were given very important and he warns them that if they give way to the unwise like passions they will forfeit their place in the kingdom of God it's a solemn thought if you don't continue with that simplicity in Christ and get involved in religion again get involved in ritual and get involved all this and think that's Christianity and somehow Christ loses place in your life you are in danger if you lose Christ you lose everything and there it is clearly stated verse 23 of chapter 1 if you continue in your face all this is yours we can't underline that too strongly he says because of these other passions the wrath of God is coming and I don't want it to come on you he says you can be disqualified in chapter 2 disqualified for your inheritance he says I want you to be qualified he says these other things that have crept in have kidnapped you it's a very strong word have kidnapped you and taken you away from Jesus that's what these things do when you mix Christianity with other things they kidnap you and take you away from Jesus so that's the negative side it's a strong warning that you can lapse into religion having come to Christ and if you do you lose him and with him you lose everything the positive side is Christianity as Christ so continued in him that's why he says the key verse is verses 6 & 7 of chapter 2 he says as you received Christ so live in him as you rooted him in him be built up in him as you were taught about him be established in him now it's not just enough to come to Christ you need to be rooted and built up in him and established in him and continue in Christ all the way the danger is that other things coming in can get you back into religion even a religion called Christianity which is not Christ and then you lose everything it was Jesus himself who said I am The True Vine abide in me stay in me branches that abide in me will be fruitful branches that don't abide in me will be cut off and burned that's the real danger why Paul was willing to write to a church he'd never been to a church he didn't found and yet a church that poison was getting into and he was so concerned that they'd lose what they originally had in Christ that he wrote this lovely letter it's a cool letter it's a sobering letter but it's a letter we all need to read

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Length: 40min 32sec (2432 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 05 2013