Welcome to the Liberty Baptist Sermon Archives.
The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
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we hope that this message from God's Word will be a blessing to
you. Colossians chapter #2 And we'll
be in verses one through 7 of Colossians 2.
So if you're there, we'll begin our reading.
Colossians 2, verse one. For I would that you knew what
great conflict I had for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as
many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts
might be comforted being knit together in love.
And unto the full riches I'm sorry unto all riches, of the
full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the
mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, in whom
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And notice what he says next. Under whom are all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge? Notice it says there are hid.
It seems perhaps like maybe not an important point, but it it's
really important. And you'll see that as we get
into the the lesson. They are hid in him in whom
would be Jesus Christ. And this I say, lest any man
should beguile you with enticing words.
For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the
Spirit, join and beholding your order and the steadfastness of
your faith in Christ. Now verses 6 and seven really
represent what I would say is the core climax of the letter.
This is the whole point. This is everything he's trying
to get across and he does it in 2 verses here verse verse 6.
Verse 7 would really be probably the most important statements in
the whole letter. So notice what he says.
As he have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk
in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith
as you have been taught, abounding therein with
Thanksgiving. So the the title of the lesson
this morning is Spiritual Growth from the Christian School of
Thought. Spiritual growth from the
Christian School of thought. Probably many of you have just
seen, just driving around, I noticed as we were coming here,
many different entities, religious entities, different
groups that are trying to teach people theology or religion,
truth about God, right? There are many different groups
that are out there and they all have their own spin on things.
They all have their own message to deliver, right?
And they're trying to reach you. They're trying to get that
message to you. And here in Colossae there was
those individuals who were going around, they were trying to
spread a message. And it was, it was somewhat
similar in the way it sounded to the Christian message which
these believers at Colossae had received.
And so they, they got duped into listening to these so-called
teachers and it began to steer them away from that belief that
they had placed in Jesus Christ the true doctrine of
Christianity. And so they, they were coming
from two different schools of thought, right?
You've heard of that term, I'm sure a school of thought.
It's a common expression that signifies a particular way of
thinking about something, right? You have a, you have a perhaps a
school of thought over here that you would say if you're a
Democrat, you'd have a particular school of thought
about things, wouldn't you? It's amazing.
You mentioned you mentioned something about politics and
everyone. He wakes up all of a sudden,
right? And then you see, maybe the
Republicans would have a different school of thought than
the Democrats. I think we could agree on that,
right? We probably live in the most
divided time in our country's history.
I mean, so much division and polarity in our culture today,
two different schools of thought.
I'm not here to talk to you about politics today.
I'm simply here to illustrate the point that there are
different schools of thought and we want to make sure that our
school of thought is coming from the truth of God's Word, right?
From the revelation that God has given.
And, and most of the time people will make that claim, but the
problem comes down to how they interpret Scripture, right?
There's different ways of coming and approaching the Scripture as
independent Baptist. We interpret God's word as it is
literally grammatically using the context, defining the words
so that we could see exactly what God's word is to us.
And So what I believe this passage is dealing with as we,
as we study it, and we'll have to talk about the letter and the
context and everything that was going on there in Colossae,
We'll see the, the apostle Paul, who certainly wrote under divine
inspiration of God, his school of thought concerning Christian
growth. And, and it, and I think we'll
see as we get into this that Christian growth is not about
adding more, but it's actually about going deeper.
It's, and it's apparent to me that we live in a society,
especially with churches today, and I'm using that term quite
loosely, but churches have tried to adopt all different models
and ways of reaching people and getting people into the to just
to come to church, right? I mean, there was a time in our
country's history when people just came to church.
You didn't have to pull their arm, you didn't have to twist
their arm. They just came, they just showed
up. And that's not the society we
live in today, is it? I mean, there certainly is an
interest. But I mean, I just, I just
mentioned to some of the gentleman in the back, there was
a road race going on this morning.
We were stuck in traffic for probably 7 minutes.
And to me that seems like a long time, right?
I mean, we're, we're busy. We're trying to get from one
place to the next. And I'm here, I am trying to
preach and teach this morning. I'm like, come on, people, hurry
up. I got to get to church and
they're doing it on a Sunday. There's a time in our history
that wouldn't have happened. You couldn't even go to a
grocery store on Sunday. What?
That's not the case today, is it Because there's a different
school of thought. Our society is more secular than
it's ever been. And so churches have tried to
make church more appealing to people.
And what they've actually done in the process is not have
church. So they do think try to get
people in the door. I was just, I just saw this
recently, Mario Church, the pastor is dressed up like Mario
from Nintendo. And they had hundreds of
thousands of people attending this.
There's like 80,000 people at this mega church.
Well, that's not church, It's Mario and it's Nintendo.
And they're trying to do that to get people to sit in the seats.
But just because you have people sitting in the seats doesn't
mean you're successful. It doesn't mean that you've
accomplished anything. It just means you've changed the
way you're reaching people. And if you reach them with that,
then you're going to have to keep them with that.
And so this church at Colossae had been reached, but not with
the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And, and, and I know that your church is, is about doing soul
winning and visitation and, and that you're open with preaching
the gospel to people and reaching people with the truth
of God's word. And, and you'll find that when
you try to go reaching people, they've already been reached by
something before you got there. They've been reached by
something and between social media, between the information
age, people have been reached with all types of messages that
simply are not true. They're not rooted in God's
word. And and what the Bible teaches
is that when you give in or give heed to false teaching, it
doesn't improve your life. A big surprise, right?
When you when you give in to false teaching, it doesn't
improve your life, but but it also it always rather has this,
this conclusion, destruction and ruin.
And these believers, I'm not going to say they had, they had
wholesale bought into it, but they were, they were really
entertaining some of these different ideas about Christian
growth. And, and what they were, what
they were trying to tell these believers, these false teachers
is what I'm going to refer to them as, was this theology that
was based on kind of like a the theology, the theologic word
would be syncretism, where you kind of mix in a little bit of
this and mix in a little bit of this and then mix in a little
bit of this. And what you end up with is kind
of like a monstrosity, right? It's got a little bit of
everything. And so this, this theological
recipe that they had concocted was causing them to doubt that
Jesus Christ was all that they needed, that they needed to do
works, or that they needed to add to their salvation to make
them like elite Christians. Well, there's no such thing as
elite Christians. There's just sinners saved by
grace. And you have all that you need
in Christ to live the Christian life.
Amen. He's all that you need, and
God's word is all that you need. And so we'll see when we, when
we read this that he's, he's talking about this great
conflict that he had for them, this great conflict.
And, and there is a conflict that's going on for your
spiritual well-being. Even this morning, there's a
conflict going on. Sometimes you may be aware of
it, sometimes you may have an awareness that this conflict is
going on. But I would say most of the time
we're probably not as aware and we could be even oblivious to
the conflict that's going on around us.
And it is a conflict of, of who's going to be your greatest
influence. And so Paul the apostle wrote to
the to the church here. He actually had never visited
this church. He had never preached to them
personally. It was likely started by this
man Epaphras. And we'll, we'll get into that
just in a little bit. But he had never personally
visited them and and Colossi was in their society as a as a town
you would say, or a village had dwindled quite significantly in
significance and and status from what they were previously.
And so it was, it was on this strategic location where the
East and the West would meet. And so all you, all you, you
could imagine traveling, right? There's ideas and, and
philosophies that would come from the East and ideas and
philosophies that would come from the West.
And there were those that were coming and they were traveling
through here and they really weren't going to Colossae.
They were just stopping there on the way, right?
You know, there's some towns and some places they're really not
that important. You know, it's kind of like
where I live in Connecticut. Every time I've I've talked to
people outside of the state say, oh, I've never been to
Connecticut. Well, you're either traveling
through get to New York or to get to Boston or go somewhere
else because, I mean, it's just no reason to stay unless you're,
you got to go through there to get somewhere right?
Now, what's kind of like what colossi was.
And they had dwindled in their wealth and their economy.
And so they really weren't that important anymore.
But nonetheless, these ideas, this influx of ideas had come
through and it had influenced them.
And there were three particular ideas or philosophies that had
come through into this teaching that that the Colossians were
buying into. And the first would be Judaism.
Judaism. You're familiar with Judaism,
right? The the idea that you needed to
practice the law to merit favor with God.
Judaism in and of itself wasn't necessarily wrong.
It was just always meant to lead to Jesus Christ.
It was never meant to be perpetually practiced by people
because the true Jews are the ones that really knew the
message that was preached would understand that the law was
intended to show to us our need for a Savior.
Amen. You go through the 10
commandments and you realize I can't follow the 10
commandments. Amen.
Anyone here want to stand up and say I've followed them all?
Every day of my life, I follow the 10 commandments.
You say that and you are lying because you haven't.
We're all sinners. We've all fallen short of the
glory of God, and the law shows us that we are guilty before
God. Good morning.
Glad to have you in church this morning.
That's what it says. We're all guilty and we need a
Savior. So Judaism was influencing them
as there was this prevailing idea, particularly to Gentiles
from the Jewish world, that if you're not a Jew, you're not as
close to God as we are. And so you need to practice the
law, you need to be circumcised, you need to practice the ritual
washings, you need to be, you need to be part of the Sabbath
worship. And it's kind of like going back
into Judaism so that you could be a better Christian.
And if you're, if you're solid in the word of God, you would
think, no, that doesn't make any sense because Christianity is,
is the final truth. It's the final revelation in
Christ. We have all that we need.
He's our Savior, Amen. He's all that we need, and in
Him not through us, we know that we have the righteousness that
appeases. God's just demands.
So there's nothing you can do to make yourself more righteous.
If you have Christ, you are righteous.
You're perfectly righteous. There's no degrees of
righteousness, right? You're either righteous and
you've and you're pure before God or you're sinful and you're
defiled before God. There's only two categories.
There can be, and thus it makes no sense have to practice these
rituals and which by the way, have no spiritual significance.
They're just physical washings. And the circumcision, all of
those things were given to the Jews for that purpose, but they
were never meant to be practiced after Jesus Christ.
And so they had Judaism, but then they also had another
teaching, this teaching of Eastern mysticism and Hellenism.
What we would think of is probably like Greek philosophy.
And they were using these Greek philosophers like Plato and
Aristotle. And then they were, they were
mixing that with the Judaism. And then they were also mixing
it with a, with a new doctrine that was called Gnosticism.
You said, Brother Brett, I don't know what all these words mean.
And you may, you may not think about it in these theological
terms, but believe it or not, it has made its way into the 21st
century Gnosticism. You haven't, you haven't seen
that on your feed on social media or watched it on YouTube.
That was the ancient form. But it's this idea that we are
in the know. That's what Nos means.
Nos means knowledge Gnosis. And the idea was that we are
Gnostics. We are, we are in the know.
We have knowledge that everyone else doesn't have.
And if you want to get it, you got to come through us, you see.
And, and really what I would say this was, was a cult teaching
that had followed what I would say is probably the, the most
common form that all cults follow.
And it's used in mathematical terms.
They add, they add to divine revelation.
In other words, they say, yeah, God's word is not enough.
You need my teaching plus God's word.
Well, that's false teaching. We believe that this is the
final revelation of God. There's nothing to be added to
it. There's nothing to be subtracted
from it, right? And so they add to divine
revelation. Jehovah's Witnesses do this, all
of the publications of the of the Watchtower Society.
You need to read these publications.
You need to listen to our teachers and you need to read
our version of the Bible. Mormons do this.
Joseph Smith who had had an experience and said he saw these
golden plates. Of course, no one can verify
that it happened. And the ones that said it
happened ended up reneging on their testimony and saying it
was false. But some man has this experience
and in his mind he says, well, I've got a vision from God and
it's it's going to correct Christianity for the past 1800
years. You should listen to me.
And so they add to divine revelation, but they also
subtract from the person of Jesus Christ.
They make him less than who he really is.
He is God manifest in the flesh. They said, no, no, no, he's not
God. He's a good teacher.
He's like a rabbi. He came to teach us the Golden
Rule. And he, he's, you know, he's
pretty high up there, but he's not God.
False teaching. And then they multiply the
requirements of salvation. They add, subtract, multiply.
They multiply the requirements of salvation.
No, you don't just need to be saved.
You also need to be circumcised or you need to be baptized or
you need to do it. Take a two year missions trip.
You need to take all these other steps and then maybe you'll be
saved. That's what cults do.
And you can imagine the burden that that places under people as
they're constantly working, as they're trying to hope that they
can make it. If I do this, maybe I'll be
good. And if I do this, and then if I
do this, and then if I take communion enough times and then
if I give enough times and it's you're always under this burden
and never able to truly spiritually grow, you see.
And then they divide the loyalties of their followers.
Oh, you, if you're not one of us, we, we, we don't have
anything to do with you. Now, I do want to be careful
with this point because as biblical truth does mandate that
we would be separated, it doesn't mandate that we would be
isolated. Did you catch that?
There's a difference between separation.
Separation means I'm not like the world.
I'm not going to give in to the morality of the world.
I'm not going to give in to the unholiness of the world that is
against God. But isolation takes it a step
further and says you're all dirty and unclean.
I don't want anything to do with you.
I'm just going to go on my own little island somewhere and
separate from the world. Jesus didn't call us to
completely isolate ourselves. He taught us to go into all the
world, didn't he? How are we going to go into all
the world if we're so worried in our own little watchtower
somewhere, in a castle, hiding from the world?
We can't do that. That's what cults do.
So you can imagine how, how destructive, how dangerous this
teaching was to these believers at Colossi and what he's saying
here, in this first verse here of Colossians chapter 2.
I want you to know what great conflict I had for you and for
them at Laodicea. And for as many as have not seen
my face in the flesh. Paul had a burden for them.
And just just imagine, he had never met these people before.
He'd never visited them. He'd never seen their faces.
He didn't even know their names. But he knew there was a church
there and he knew also there was a church at Laodicea.
We're going to talk about them tonight.
And also as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.
I believe there was also another church in Hierapolis, all that
were planted by this man Epaphras.
So if you'd like to, to turn with me, go to Colossians 1 and
verse #7 to to make the point here.
Colossians 1/7 what he says as he, as he also learned of
Epaphras. So Epaphras was a teacher.
They learned of Epaphras, which implies Epaphras was a teacher.
Our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of
Christ. OK, now chapter 4, verse 12,
still in Colossians, chapter 4, verse 12, as he is saluting the
brethren here, he says in verse 12A, Pafrus, who is one of you,
a servant of Christ, saluteth you always laboring fervently
for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in
all the will of God. I'll drop down to verse #16 and
I think this is important point that we'll revisit tonight.
He says this in verse 16. And when this epistle is read
among you, 'cause that it be read also in the Church of the
Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from
Laodicea. So while we need to understand
what was going on in Colossae, it was never the intent of the
New Testament authors that their letters would only reach or only
circulate to that one church, but rather that they would
circulate through all the churches and for all of God's
people. Now, the letter to Laodicea
didn't make it into Scripture because it wasn't Scripture,
Amen. If it was, God would have
preserved it for us because we believe God's preserved His word
and that it is without error and, and that we have access to
it. We still have access to the
letter deck colossi. And that teaches us that God
intended not just for the Colossians to hear it, but for
us to hear it. And while we're not dealing with
Gnosticism and, and some of these problems, we do deal with
other problems today. And, and the principles that we
see here about spiritual growth are really very simple.
And I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag too early in the
message because I don't want you to fall asleep.
But I'll tell you and give you just a little bit of a glimpse
that the whole point he's trying to make is that if you want to
grow spiritually, you don't need to go outside of what you have.
You just need to go deeper with what you already have.
Amen. Doesn't that really change
everything? When we talk about church life
and we talk about things in church about how, how there's
such an appeal to have more technology and there's an appeal
to make services more engaging and to, to really try to find
ways to entertain people, how does that make us different from
anyone else? Are people not entertained
enough? I mean, the attention span of
most people today is, is on average far less than it ever
used to be. I mean to just try to, and, and
this is not the insulting one, but just try to get people to
sit in a 45 minute service to listen to preaching.
And it's just like what I mean, I'm not trying to be mean
spirited today, but that's a problem folks.
We expect our children to sit in school for 8 hours a day and
learn, and adults can't sit in the church service for 45
minutes. I mean, I'm thankful for you
all. You're awake this morning and
I've been trying to engage you the best I can.
But we don't need more entertainment.
We don't need more of the world's things.
We need more of God's Word in our lives, and that's how we
grow. You're not going to grow apart
from God's Word and you're not going to grow apart from a
relationship to the local church.
You see? So that's the conflict that's
going on because I have a great conflict for you and I, and I
would say to you this morning that there is a conflict going
on over your spiritual well-being.
So these churches are there and, and, and Paul hasn't visited
them. And he's saying this is my, this
is my desire for you. This is my conflict for you.
And that the word conflict in Greek really basically has the
idea of agony. It's, it's like a it's like a
wrestling match that's that's face to face.
And he's like, this is really intense.
And this, this conflict that's going on is really heated.
And, and this is my conflict for you is that you and all these
other believers in this region that have been affected by this
teaching that their hearts might be comforted.
Aren't you glad that God wants you to be comforted?
You know what false teaching doesn't produce comfort.
It only produces conflict because you'll always be
wondering and they design it this way.
So to keep you coming, right, you got to keep doing the works
and you got to keep coming and you got to keep doing this.
Otherwise God won't accept you and otherwise you won't be
saved. So people, rather than motivated
by true genuine passion for Jesus and love for Jesus and
assurance and confidence, they're motivated by fear and
they're motivated by the potential.
What if I do something wrong? Is God going to like ZAP me
down? God's not going to ZAP you down
if you're a believer this morning.
And even if you're not a believer, if you're a visitor
this morning, God loves you. And God brought you here today
to hear his word, not because I'm teaching, I'm not anybody,
but because it's God's word this morning.
And he says I'm, I have a conflict because I want you to
be comforted. I want you to be comforted.
You know, I'm thankful for your pastor.
He's been a great blessing to me.
And I know that he has this part for you here at this church,
that he wants you to be comforted in your faith.
He wants you to know the truth and be grounded.
And any, I mean any pastor, any minister that's worth his salt
has the desire that people that are under his ministry would be
comforted. If they'd be built up, they'd be
edified in their faith, comforted.
Notice the next word, the next phrase.
Rather being knit together in love, knit together in love.
You know, there's a, there's a prevailing idea in Christianity
Today that you can grow spiritually on your own, and
that's just not in the Bible. I, I, I hate to tell you, but
you, you, you won't be able to grow or reach your full
potential apart from God's work in your life through a local
church. It's just not going to happen.
And he did not design Christianity to be practiced
individually, but corporately as a faith community.
It's so important. And, and I've, I've preached
this at the church where I come from and other churches I've
seen where you just, you can tell when there's a church that
has that knit together in love going on.
They pray for one another. They don't bicker, they don't
gossip. Those things are so destructive
in a church and they happen because people are in churches.
Amen. I mean, people are sinners.
And wherever you have people, you have problems.
That's just the reality. And guess what?
There's people here at Liberty Baptist Church and there's
people where I come from a Grace Bible Baptist Church and I'm a
people, a person. And so I know my own problems
and my own sinful tendencies. And, and God's design is that we
would be knit together in love, that we would grow past our
sinful tendencies, that we wouldn't just put it off and
say, well, no one's perfect. Well, we all know that, but
that's not an excuse not to grow.
Amen. But we're to be knit together in
love, which means you ought to be close with your church
family. I think it's important that we
say church family because that's what it's supposed to be.
That's what God intended. And that's why we say, hey,
brother Rivero, hey brother Dan, brother Chuck, brother Dave.
There's nothing wrong with calling someone by their first
name without saying brother or sister in front of it.
But the whole point is that we're we're brothers and sisters
in Christ. We're a family through the blood
of Jesus Christ. We are blood relatives this
morning. Amen.
I I haven't met some of you just until today, but I know this.
For those of you that are saved and believe in Jesus Christ,
we're Blood Brothers. Praise God for that.
And notice that he says this and unto all riches.
Notice the financial terms he's using here unto all riches of
the full assurance of understanding.
You get what he's saying there. That real treasure, the real
treasure of your Christian life, is having full assurance of
understanding. If you don't understand God's
plan for your life or the doctrine of God, then you'll
never have the true riches, because true riches come from
understanding God's plan for your life.
It's in understanding the truth to the acknowledgement of the
mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, the
acknowledgement of the mystery of God.
Now, I'm going to touch on this briefly.
I don't want to get too bogged down in this because sometimes
preachers chase rabbits and they never kill the buck, right?
So we want to, we don't want to chase the rabbit and not kill
the buck, but we do need to chase this rabbit for just a
little while. But we're going to make sure
that we chase them and then go off to the main idea.
The mystery that he was talking about there was related to the
false teaching that was going on that was basically elevating
Jews above Gentiles, which basically promoted this idea
that you had, you had elite people and you had common
people, right? I mean, you had like super
Christians. These are the best Christians
that there are. And then you have, well, I mean,
they, they come, but they're not like one of us.
The mystery that he's referring to was that because all
believers are in Christ, we all have equal standing in Christ.
There's there's no better and worse.
We're all equal. The, the, the playing field is
level at the cross because in Jesus Christ, we all share the
same standing before God. Regardless of your wealth,
regardless of your status, regardless of your family you
come from, regardless of the job that you have, regardless of
what street you live on, you're in Christ.
Jews and Gentiles in the same body, all worshipping God
together. That's the mystery.
But notice he says this in verse 3.
In whom? Now you have to use grammar to
understand who he's referring to.
The last word there was in verse #2 Christ Christ.
You see that in whom? OK, so he's Speaking of Christ
as the whom, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. Who, who has all the wisdom and
knowledge? It's hidden, Yes.
And that's that word that the Gnostics were using, the idea
that the that the the hidden teaching wasn't them.
It's not in them, it's in him. Jesus has all of the teachings.
He has all the wisdom and all the knowledge in him, but
they're hidden. If if you have a shallow walk
with God and you have a shallow surface level understanding of
the scriptures, you're never going to get to the full riches
you're never going to get, You're never going to mine the
wealth that's there because it's too shallow.
He's hidden them. Why would God allow someone
who's really not interested in understanding his truth or
interested in knowing him and just have a shallow surface
level understanding of God? Why would he not?
Why would he just give that out so freely, right?
In fact, this is one of the, I think one of the most, I don't
know. It's a profound truth that Jesus
taught in parables, not to make things easier to understand for
people, but to conceal truth. Now that may maybe no one else
sees that as an important point, but I see that as an incredible
point that God taught in a way to conceal the truth because
here's what it did. It filtered through the motives
of the people that were coming to watch him.
Do you know that not everybody that came to the church services
that Jesus had, I know there wasn't necessarily church
services then, but the people that came to hear Jesus, not all
of them came because they wanted to be believed in Jesus Christ.
Some of them just wanted to be entertained.
Some of them just wanted food. No, I'm a, I'm a Baptist, Amen.
And Baptist love food. Amen.
And that's just, that's got to be one of the fundamentals of
the faith, right? I mean, you have, you have to
love food if you're a Baptist. But that's not why we're
supposed to come to church. Supposed to come to church
because we want to know Jesus more and we want to serve him.
And you know what he's saying? If you want to grow spiritually,
you don't need to add this way, You don't need to add this way.
You don't need this program and this program and this
entertainment system and this sound system.
And I'm not saying all technology is bad.
I'm just simply saying it's not going to contribute to your
spiritual growth. But you know what will?
Going deeper in your walk with God and going deeper in your
understanding of Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, I want to know
you more. I want to fellowship with you
more. And you know what you'll find
you will never exhaust the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge in him. He'll never exhaust it.
So it's, it's not like, OK, you know, I remember as a kid, we
would, we would dig, right? So you're digging a hole to
China, right? You just keep digging a dig.
Sooner or later you're going to hit a wall, right?
You're not going to be able to go any further.
But that's not so with God. And that's not so with your
relationship with Jesus Christ. You keep digging and you'll keep
getting more treasure. So what does that mean for you
this morning? Keep digging or start digging.
That's the application. How do I do that?
Well, we'll talk about that in a little bit because there's
really two ways, two ways that we do this.
He says this in verse 4 and this is really the reason why he's
writing to them. And he says, and this I say, I'm
telling you this, lest any man should beguile you with enticing
words. Just something I've learned is
that false teachers are typically powerful orators.
Typically speaking, it's not to say they all are and it's not to
say right preachers are all poor orators, but generally speaking
they are successful because they have an ability to communicate
right? I mean, Brother Dan and I took
practice preaching at Heartland Baptist Bible College and
there's basically 2 ideas. You have the content of the
message and then you have the delivery.
You know, if you're a really good in your delivery, God can
really use that and God is for it, He designed it.
But if your content is false, there is no amount of good
delivery that can salvage that message.
Did I miss anyone there? Just because they sound
impressive and just because they sound convincing doesn't mean
you should listen to what they're saying.
That's why we bring our Bibles to church.
I praise God that we bring our Bibles to church.
Why? Because you can check out what
Brother Brett is saying this morning.
You have the word of God right in front of you.
And it's not so so we could have a skepticism towards preachers,
but it's so we can know for sure before we appropriate some
message to our life that it aligns with God's word.
And what they were doing is unlike the Bereans of
Thessalonica, they were just wholesale swallowing what these
teachers were saying, and it was derailing their faith.
And he says, for though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I
with you in the Spirit, enjoying and beholding your order and the
steadfastness of your faith in Christ.
So I'm not with you there, but I'm with you in spirit.
And I know you have a good testimony.
This is a good church. And they were about to get off
track if they continued to give heed to this teaching.
But Paul is saying you don't need any of that.
Here's what you need as you have therefore received Christ Jesus
the Lord. OK, as means like, right, as
means like in the same manner that you receive Christ Jesus as
Lord. Well, how do you receive Christ
Jesus the Lord? Well, there's only one way we're
in agreement on that, right? There's only one way you can
receive them. There's no not multiple ways.
There's just one way, and it is in humility to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and receive. Receive.
It means to accept, right? I mean, the idea of the
illustration we often give as preachers is that it's a gift.
The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.
How do you receive a gift? Well, there's nothing you can do
to earn it otherwise. It's not a gift anymore, right?
I've been privileged to have my birthday on the 21st of
December, which is just a few days before Christmas, which
usually means one of two things. You get gypped on one of them or
you get double presents. And praise God, I usually got
double presents because I'm an only child and so my parents
said no one else to give stuff to but me, right?
You know what I had to do to receive those gifts?
Just sit, just take them. Thank my parents for the
blessing they were to me or, or my uncles or whoever gave me
gifts. I didn't have to pay for it.
I wouldn't have been able to because I was just a kid.
By the way, there's no currency you possess that could merit
salvation with God. You don't own a there's no
currency that you have that God would see and say, well, this is
this is it. I'll accept this.
He won't accept it. It says very clearly in
Ephesians chapter 2 that God will not let us earn salvation
or merit salvation through our works, lest any man should
boast. If God let you work your way to
heaven, you'd spend all eternity talking about how good you are.
You won't let us do that. We receive it by grace through
faith. So as you have therefore
received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.
So how do I walk in Him? The idea of walking is a common
illustration in Christian teaching.
It just means to take repeated steps in the truth, to take
repeated steps in your walk with God.
We call your walk with God, right?
Which simply just means you're taking a journey with Christ,
You're going somewhere, and hopefully you're growing rooted
and built up in him, in him. OK, how are you going to grow?
You need to make sure your roots are in Christ.
So if you're saved this morning, then you don't need to get
rooted. You're already rooted, you
understand you had roots already in Christ now because He is the
source of all of your spiritual nourishment and He is the source
of all your spiritual nutrients that you need to follow the
illustration of a tree. Then the tree will just grow
because it has the right roots and it gets built up and it's
become strong and it becomes sturdy.
How sturdy are you in your Christian life?
Well, how deep are you rooted in Christ?
You can't get more saved than you already are.
You understand that. I'm not saying that, but in your
walk with God, or as he says here to soul walk with him, then
you're you go deeper and by going deeper in Christ, he helps
you to grow. So that tells me that we have
reason not to read our Bibles less, but to read our Bibles
more. How about that?
Do you think you're going to grow by being in the word less
or being in church less or being under less preaching or having
less prayer time? I mean I don't think every
message should apply. Read your Bible and pray.
Read your Bible and pray.
But this would certainly be 1. Read your Bible and pray.
Because if you want to grow you need to read your Bible and
pray. And it wouldn't.
It wouldn't be as much a need to be stressed if believers did
read their Bible and pray, but it's amazing how many that I've
seen that simply won't, they just won't commit themselves to
doing it. And it's no wonder that their
Christian life is unstable. So, so here, here's the main
truth to get across this morning.
You have to receive the truth, right?
You have to receive it. And then you have to resume in
Christian disciplines. And that's how you grow.
That's the Christian School of thought on growth.
You have all that you need in Jesus Christ.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.