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Morning in Colossians chapter two beginning in verse one. For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden away. This I say that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As therefore you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and builded up in him, and established in your faith, even as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Take heed, lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him you are filled full, who is the head of all principality and power, in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, wherein you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did he quicken together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. Having put off from himself the principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. May God give us good understanding of his word. Yesterday we were thinking together on the topic of our progress towards spiritual maturity and full growth. And as we came to the end of chapter one, we heard Paul remark as to the methods he adopted in promoting this spiritual maturity among his fellow believers. He said, we proclaim Christ, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom. We must now today develop this twin theme, the theme of wisdom, in connection with our progress towards spiritual maturity. As we have observed before, it is the theme of wisdom that dominates the central section of this epistle. Chapter two and verse three: in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. Verse eight: take heed lest there shall be anyone that leads you away as spoil through his philosophy, that is his wisdom, his supposed wisdom. Verse twenty three, in the final paragraph, talking of the disciplines of asceticism, he says they have a show of wisdom, but they are not in fact of any value. Our theme then today is wisdom as it pertains to this question of our progress towards spiritual maturity. What then we say to ourselves is wisdom? It would be certainly beyond my feeble powers to attempt to define wisdom, but one description of it could be this, could it not? Wisdom is shown in the selection of means and methods to attain a desired objective. For instance, your car stops on the middle of a road somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You get out, and your goal is clear. You've got to get the foolish thing going again. Well, one possible means to adopt is to kick it. Kicking in the appropriate place, accompanied by suitably strong language, has been known sometimes to work, on other times not. But kicking is not generally thought, I gather, to be the height of me- the wisdom of mechanical engineering. The handbooks advise other methods. So similarly, if our goal is spiritual maturity, wisdom is to be shown in the methods adopted, the means employed towards attaining that spiritual maturity. Our goal, salvation and sanctification too. And the clear message of this part of the epistle is this, that God's method for our sanctification and maturity are wise, divinely wise, and if pursued, will lead to the desired end. All other methods are not wise, but are in fact foolish. Paul warns us very carefully that if we follow these foolish and mistaken methods in our attempt to arrive at spirit. They will, if we're not careful, delude us. Look at verse four: This I say that no one may delude you. They will, if we are not careful, take spoil of you, verse eight. Beware lest there be anyone that makes spoil of you or leads you away as spoil. If we follow foolish methods for our sanctification, not sanctioned by the Lord, then Paul reminds us in verse sixteen that they will produce in us a false conscience. Constant victim to other people's judgmental attitudes. Let nobody judge you. And again, he says in verse eighteen, let no man rob you of the prize. That would be a bitter experience indeed, would it not? The glorious prize of maturity and full growth in Christ, and we set our hearts to attain it, but through lack of knowledge or failure to listen to Paul, we follow foolish disciplines that seem for the time to exalt us and lead to great emotional elevation, but in the end are proven bogus and rob us of the glittering prize of spiritual maturity. And finally he says, verse, uh, twenty, if you died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourself to ordinances? It will enslave you to no good effect if you follow bogus, foolish methods of spiritual progress. So that now we can, uh, see why Paul is so insistent in this part of his letter on our listening to him. He has already told us at the end of chapter two about his agonizings and strivings, and now he tells us again at the opening words of chapter two, I would have you know how greatly I strive for you. I want you to know. I want you to listen to me. Why must I listen to Paul? Why must I become aware of his strivings for me in this particular context of movement towards spiritual maturity. Because he says, I want you that your hearts may be encouraged. I don't know, my brothers and sisters, how you have found the road to spiritual growth and maturity. Perhaps you have found it one unbounded and constant success, filling your hearts with hallelujahs of victory morning, noon, and night from January to December. I have to confess I found it otherwise. One step forward and two steps backward, so it has seemed so often. And I tell you straight, you younger folks, unless you're proposing to be Gabriel or Michael the Archangel or something. Though you rightly praise the Lord for your present victories, you wait till you're middle-aged. And youth's idealism has fizzled away, and life's burdens come. You will be blessed indeed if you are saved from disillusionment and cynicism and sometimes despair. You are wickeder than you know. A heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can know it? The weaknesses of middle life and older age may discover to you that you've not been quite so holy as you thought you were. That can be a great step forward towards spiritual maturity, but it is a painful step. How often it is that we start out determining by God's grace to grow in holiness. We have some success in the goodness of the Lord. We give it our full devotion and good intention. Then they're not coming so much progress as we thought. We yield to frustration, and then doubt, and then despair. And some end up doubting their initial salvation completely. You should have listened to me, my brothers, says Paul. Yes, it is a difficult pathway. Listen to me, please, so that your hearts be encouraged. And in spite of the difficulties of the lessons and the off-time mistakes, you don't lose heart. You needn't lose heart. There is an abundant wealth available for you, and the God who designs to make you one day conform to the image of his son knows the difficulty and has the provision. Listen to me, says Paul, and not only so that your hearts may be comforted, but they may be knit together in love. And now one of the sad results of false methods of holiness is that presently they produce a certain kind of superiority attitude in those who think they have attained. And they are more holy, and they are more blessed with spiritual gifts than you. And you're a Christian, but only a five-eighths Christian, where they as are hundred percent plus Christians, you'll see. And presently there comes a division. You should listen to me, says Paul. The pursuit of God's divinely wise methods of sanctification will never produce that kind of superiority attitude, making other people feel inferior, but will tend to unite rather than divide God's people. And that they might come to all riches of the full assurance of understanding in this great battle against sin of which bill talked the other day. In this great battle against sin, the fundamental important thing is that we maintain our confidence and our understanding. And not only our confidence, but a sense of wealth and And riches. riches. If we're not careful, the battle of life will reduce us to a grinding sense of poverty. I sat not so many months ago with a man bordering on his forties, in grave spiritual difficulty. He told me that from his youth he had listened to exhortations to devote himself to the Lord, and rightly so. And he had tried over years to devote himself to the Lord to his very last happening. And worked and toiled and toiled and worked and worked and toiled and sacrificed. And now in middle life he was meeting a very difficult situation, both in his domestic cons- uh, concerns, the question of house and living and wife and children, when prayers didn't seem to be answered. And in great confusion and bitterness of heart, he said to me, David, they've always told me I got to be devoted to the Lord. I tried to be devoted to the Lord, given my time and more than my time. When am I going to have five minutes to myself? Yes, don't blame him too hard, will you? He'd lost the sense of the wonder and the glory and the wealth and the riches that there are in Christ Jesus. All my brothers who minister to words, and you, my sisters, pray remember the feebleness of the human heart, the strength of the opposition against all those who would live godly lives, and minister to their hearts, if you can, fill them with a sense of God's superlative riches, lest the very battle of life itself reduce them to a poverty-stricken sense of need. Listen to me, my brothers, says Paul, as you set out on this journey towards spiritual reflect- maturity. For in Christ, in God's method, there will come a sense of abundant wealth in him, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden away. Oh, my brother, my sister, open this morning, by God's grace, the casket of his treasures, and dip your hands and fingers in the pearls and the gold and the sapphires and the emeralds of the grace of God. Do your little heart burst with a sense of your millionaire wealth in Christ. And it won't be time lost. It will nerve you for the battle when the going is hard. And pray, listen to Paul, so that your heart is clear of the fundamental matter of salvation. I say again, it is possible so to pursue the path of developing holiness as to forget the fundamental doctrines of grace, and then to come unsettled about your eternal salvation. In my little experience, there are more believers in middle life who, in the secret of their heart, have doubts about their eternal salvation and security, more of them than would ever dare confess it to anybody. Listen to me, says Paul, that your hearts may be knit together in the full assurance of understanding. So then we come to consider the, uh, false methods and put them alongside the true. This I say, says Paul, that no one may delude you with his persuasiveness of speech. You see, it's an easily thing to, easy thing to do. People did it in Paul's day. You can, if you want to, make out an easy case against Paul the Apostle, that he was a woman hater, that he was a legalist. You let anybody deceive you with that kind of talk, and you put yourself in grave danger. Pray remember you've got to meet St. Paul one day, won't you? And he's a long memory. Pray remember he is the apostle of Christ, and a man who toiled not only for those at Colossae and Laodicea, but for us who sit here this morning. The general rule then is this, the first positive lesson. As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him. The little word so that some translation adds is not strictly there in Paul's original statement. It's not so much a question of how you walk, so walk, it is where you walk. As you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, you say, yes, that was the absolute indispensable condition for receiving salvation, and thank God I have received Christ Jesus and received him both as Savior and as Lord simultaneously, we hope. Well, if you have received him as the first condition of salvation, then the golden rule of spiritual progress is to walk in him, that is not outside him. Just as he was sufficient for your initial salvation, so he is sufficient and more than sufficient for your road towards spirit. Walk then in him, rooted in him, builded up in him, establish firm in your faith, even as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Bill won't re- reproach me, I'm sure, tonight, though, uh, I have to be careful what I say. Amen to what he said about a lot of psychology, but there is a good psychology. Do you want a tip about making spiritual progress? My brother, my sister, abound in thanksgiving. If you don't, as you get rightly faced, and God will face you with it, won't he? He will allow the desert road, like he did for the Israelites, to bring you to circumstances where, to your horror, you discover what was in your heart. You know, when they first came out of Egypt and saw God's great deliverance at the Red Sea and stood on the other side, Moses sang, Miriam sang, all the Israelites sang, fit to burst their little lungs, and they thought they were almost an inch or two, uh, to heaven. Five months down the road, it was a different story, wasn't it? When the water ran out and they discovered in their hearts what was really there. That's the first necessary step towards repentance, isn't it? Discovering how sinful we are, but it can be a chilling and discouraging process, can't it? And if we allow ourselves simply to concentrate on our failures, then presently we shall become discouraged and weak. Oh, mix that discipline with the other one. Give thanks, my brother, my sister, you say, whatever for? Ha! Oh, how we do forget. Give thanks. I have to train myself to do it every morning when I'm shaving, you see, for early mornings are a difficult time with me, and I have to train myself to remember the things that I have to give thanks for. He forgives all my iniquities. He heals all my diseases. He, ah, he, he redeems, he delivers my soul from destruction, and then he adds all his sparkling jewels on top of it. He crowns me with his loving kindness and tender mercy and fills my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagles. All make a habit of giving thanks, for though we are miserable the way we don't learn our lessons, he abideth faithful. We have enough already to fill eternity with praise and thanksgiving. But then, of course, we have to face these false recipes, and they will sound to us a little bit odd and queer. We should attend to them because they are recorded in Holy Writ, and the principles underlying them have their relevant applications to today. What were these false recipes that bothered the Colossians? Well, first of all, there was a kind of theosophy. Paul makes reference to it in verse eight: take heed, lest there shall be anyone that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy, as he calls it. It was a form of theosophy, actually. Then look in verse sixteen: let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day. This false recipe was that of Jewish observances and rituals. Then again, verse eighteen: let no man rob you of your prize by voluntary humility and worshiping of the angels, and so forth. Mysticism. And finally, in verses twenty to twenty three, what is technically known as asceticism, rigorous, painful disciplines applied to the body for the supposed purpose of perfecting and refining the soul. False disciplines, false roads towards spiritual maturity. And Paul helps us to see how false they are, first of all, by making a contrast in each case. Let's briefly look at that contrast. This false philosophy, verse eight, he says, is after the tradition of men. See how he contrasts that in the very, uh, next verses, verse, uh, nine: For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead. You have your choice between the tradition of men on the one hand and the fullness of deity on the other. I know whose wisdom I wish to follow. Similarly, with Jewish rituals, he says this, they are a shadow of the things to come, verse seventeen. But immediately contrasts it, saying, but the body, the solid reality, is Christ's. And if there's a choice, who wouldn't, uh, leave the shadow and lay hold of the reality? Then talking of mysticism, he explains to us what's going on inside the head of somebody having one of these marvelous visions. He says at the end of verse eighteen, he's vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. That's a false recipe, contrasted immediately by this not holding fast the head. You have your choice. Your own fleshly mind on the one hand, and the head, the mind of Christ on the other. And finally, he says in verse twenty three that these practices of asceticism, outwardly they have a show of wisdom, but he immediately makes the contrast and points out that in actual fact they are not of any value. Four sets of contrast then. And we must now give ourselves to thinking about them in a little more detail. As we do so, one word of caution. As we listen to Paul criticizing these false methods, we shall understand it that here he puts very often one side of the question. To get a completely balanced view of Paul's understanding of these things, we should re- need to remember what he says elsewhere on these topics. So we come first to philosophy, false philosophy. Do let us notice that Paul is using the term in a different sense from what we use it nowadays. If we won't be shocked beyond survival, let me declare my own interest. I taught philosophy for some years. I hope not the kind that Paul is talking of. What he is talking of is not philosophy in the sense of a genuine technique of thinking. It was the Greeks, was it not, that first taught us logical thinking. And analyze the techniques of thinking. Helping us to distinguish between a description and a definition, for instance. Pointing out the rules of logic. That, my brothers and my sisters, is not to be despised. You, I know, have access to a greater mind. You have the very mind of Christ. But logic itself is not a thing to be despised. Logic is a gift of the Creator. And it is a sorrowful thing to hear some dear believers so, uh, inflamed by inflammatory speeches that they deny the value of education, of thinking, of logic, and all the while, in their very attempts to condemn it, try to use it. You've noticed it, haven't you? Therefore this, and hence that, and so something else. They are arguing and using the laws of logic in order to try and condemn it. Very foolish. I come from a country where sometimes people have told young folks that they don't need education. We need less education. An unbalanced understanding of what Paul is saying. And when Paul is talking about philosophy, he's not talking about what was first natural philosophy, that is the attempts to understand the universe. I gather that you here in America don't believe that the moon is a god. Good for you. It was the Greeks who first speculated as to what the moon was made of, and somebody said it was a bit of rock. Sorry to spoil your vision, it was the Greeks that knew it first and not the American astronauts. And all of you with your modern contraptions, your wristwatches, and your public address systems, and your beautiful motor cars in which you arrive. Aren't you glad of science and technology? Paul is not condemning these things. Though be it said at once that even the true kind of philosophy has its limitations, does it not? Scientific investigation and logical thinking cannot create the basic evidence. That is so, isn't it, in the realm of science. Scientific logic investigates the reality that is already there. They don't create the universe, they merely study it. And logic can never take the place of God's revelation. God's revelation is the objective evidence that is given us. Woe betide the theologian that attempts to substitute his own little logic and his own system of thought and put it in the place of divine revelation. The task of logic here is not to create the evidence, nor to alter the evidence, but humbly bow before the evidence and attempt, by God's grace, to understand it. Logic has another limitation too, doesn't it? It can never save you. Not the most impeccable form of logic ever invented could possibly save anybody. Paul then is not talking about true philosophy, he's talking about what we should nowadays call theosophy. That was a widespread and very, very variable worldview in the ancient world, of men who would attempt to explain to you all the ordering of the universe and the great spirit powers and angelic beings that, according to them, were put between man and God. They would argue that, yes, there was a creator, but then they looked at this imperfect world and they said it was impossible to think that the Almighty, the sum of all perfection, created this imperfect world. And so they said, we will have to assume that God did not create this world. He committed the task of creating this world to a high spirit being, the Demiurgos, so called. And he, being less than God, didn't manage to do the job too cleverly and, uh, made a poor show of it in parts. They developed this whole notion of ranks and principalities and powers and angelic beings, and urged upon you that if you would understand the universe, and if you would come to the full development of your personality and rise to the highest levels of spirituality, you must come to terms with all these spirit beings that lay in between. Was, of course, an early form of Hinduism. The danger of it is that there is a grain of truth in it, isn't there? There are principalities and powers. We mustn't be modernists, may we, and deny the existence of angels and of a personal devil. There are principalities and powers, and we'll be tied us if we forget it. But many of those principalities and powers are not interested in truth. They're not interested in loyalty to the supreme God. They're interested in bringing you, says Paul, under their domination and their slavery. Not interested in truth. But in that sense, they're real, they're there. And it was an endless, uh, fascination, particularly to people of the Greek mind, as it has been to other nationalities as well, to get preoccupied with principalities and powers. And then, of course, the devil in his cleverness adds his, uh, spiked bait because he gives it all a twist. And seeming to profess a great holiness, he says, look at this imperfect world. That couldn't be the work of the great supreme God, could it? Because he would have made everything perfect. It must be the work of some lesser functionary in the hierarchy of angels. And that's evil. That is the lie. This universe is the work of the creator. And as you have seen Paul in this letter to the Colossians fighting with every spiritual muscle that he can bring to bear upon it, it is our blessed Lord in whom all things were created. The work was not given to any lesser created being. Being. You'll say, why do you waste our time of a Thursday morning talking about things like that? We're not in any danger of succumbing to such ideas. I'm glad you're not. I have observed, like William was saying, huh. You write a book on Christ, it won't necessarily sell. You write a book on witchcraft, it will sell by the millions. Why do Christian folks find the occult and folks that get converted from the occult and then take the occasion to write great books and explain to you all the great details about the occult, and people say, isn't this marvelous? And they get involved with the occult. You know, on the continent of Europe, there have come divisions amongst God's people. Why is that? Well, some people came along and they said, uh, you must speak in tongues and you ought to have the power to cast out demons. So they were going around, they saw demons, if I may so say so, behind every lamppost. They were casting out demons in great array. As a reaction to that, there arose another movement, and they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. All this charismatic thing is itself demonic. If you have ever spoken with tongues, they said, the likelihood is that you're inhabited by a demon. So they started casting out the demons. My, there were demons everywhere. Demons on the one side, demons on the other side. I get asked when I go there, do you think that homeopathy is a form of demonism? Yes, if you were a homeopathic doctor in some cun- in some cities in Europe, they wouldn't allow you to practice your homeopathy. They believe it is full of demonism. The result is, instead of the Lord's people being concentrated on the blessed Lord Jesus, they are seeing demons everywhere. It's like the story of the two preachers, isn't it? Who found themselves in the same compartment of a train going to a conference at the New Year, one in this direction and one in the other. Said the first man to the other, what are you going to speak on? He said, Christ. Said he to his fellow, what are you going to speak on? He said, Antichrist, so he said you'll get the biggest congregation. I had a knock on my door one day in Belfast. There was a young lady. She'd been to London, she told me, with the Divine Light Mission, and she had seen the light. She wanted me to see it too. I said I had no doubt whatsoever she had seen the light. The question was, which light? I said, you know, there are different kinds of light. The Bible says that Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. No doubt she'd seen some light. Which kind of light? We fell into long conversation. At length, her superior colleague came along, and he was getting a little bit angry. He didn't want to stop. He said, our guru, you know, our guru is the Messiah, but so is your Jesus. He's the Christ as well. Why can't we agree? I said, you don't believe that, do you? Yes, he did. I said, no, you don't. You say Jesus Christ is the Messiah, you don't believe that. You don't believe he's the Christ. There happened to be two milk bottles standing on my doorstep. I said, see those two bottles there? If I said to you there are two bottles, you'd say yes, wouldn't you? If I said there are two milks there, you wouldn't agree, would you? I can talk about two bottles, but the liquid that fills them is the same. I wouldn't talk about two milks. It's the same liquid milk in different bottles. And I said, what you really mean by the Christ is the great world spirit, don't you? He is the Christ, according to you. And you say that Jesus Christ was like a bottle, and he was filled with the Christ, but he wasn't the Christ himself. And your guru is filled with the Christ, but your guru isn't the Christ, is he? He's just a bottle filled with the Christ. Well, if he said, if you must have it, yes, that is what we believe. And I said, let me tell you before you go what Holy Scripture says. Who is he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? Jesus is not just filled with the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. There is a fundamental lie between this kind, uh, behind this kind of theosophy. And in its newer form of the New Age movement, it is filling the European continent, and voices tell me it is prospering here in the States, to the point where some evangelicals think it is a marvelous thing. It will lead out into terrible darkness. And of course, not the least of its weaknesses and and errors is this, that it couldn't possibly ever save you. How could it? As Paul now reminds us of our terrible spiritual state, first of all, uh, we were dead in our uncircumcision. How could God get rid of the body of Frege and yet save us? That was number one problem. You'll say, what is the body of flesh? Well, let me r- remind you of the context. Paul is saying, walk in the Lord Jesus. Will you remember when God came to Abraham, Genesis seventeen, he said to Abraham, walk before me and be thou perfect, and I will make a covenant with you, and the covenant was the covenant of circumcision. And that Abraham might walk before God perfect, God had him submit to that physical operation, and a small part of flesh was cut off. Now comes the command to us. We're to walk in Christ, to walk towards spiritual maturity. Ha. And it would be a happy thing, wouldn't it, if all we had got to do was to cut off a tiny little bit of flesh. The trouble is deeper, my brethren. Not only a tiny bit of flesh to be cut off, the whole body is fallen. Meaning not just my physical body, but my whole self. The man or woman in Adam, the body of flesh, that gray bundle of fallen humanity. How will you cut it off without destroying me in the process? As an unconverted man, I have no other ground of my being but this fallen human personality. If you destroy that, you destroy me. How could you save me? If you had to get rid of the whole body, the whole person of flesh. God himself has only been able to think up one answer, one answer to that problem, and it involved the redeemer being none less than the creator. So that he who made me and gave me life was prepared to come down so that I might be joined to him. And I died with him, and I was buried with him, and all thank God I'm risen with him. We have been circumcised with the circumcision of Christ. The real you, the I that had no other ground of existence but that fallen human nature. Yes, you have suffered the circumcision of Christ, the roots of your very being cut and transferred from a fallen humanity into the blessed person of the Savior, and you're in him. You haven't got rid of the flesh with all its works. They are around you still, but the real you, oh, thank God for the great miracle, has been transformed from its rootage in a fallen humanity and transformed into the very life of God's incarnate Son. And you are in the spirit and not in the flesh, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. What good would an angel have been, or a philosopher either? Just imagine saying, I died with Socrates. That would be pitiful, wouldn't it? I died with Michael the Archangel. What absolute nonsense. But it's verily true. You died with Christ. You are in him because he is the blessed creator incarnate. There was another great opposition. That is God's holy law against us, and we needed forgiveness. How could the opposition be met? Not by God tearing up his own law and saying, well, this is inconvenient, for you've broken my law, and I'd like to forgive you. Well, the law stands in the way, so let's just tear it up. If he'd attempted to do it, and he never would have done, then all the fiends of hell would have laid hold upon God's very moral integrity and said, God, it's impossible unless you deny yourself to co- forgive these human wretches that have broken your law. God must have a salvation that answers the moral universe, that silences the criticism of Satan and all his hosts, and honors his own law. Oh, how could he do it, he the very author of the law? And the marvelous story is that he, who was himself the author of the law, became incarnate in Jesus Christ and took the law and all the handwriting that was against us, that mountain of our sin, died to pay its penalty and nailed the public, public proclamation of our freedom to his cross. Oh, give thanks, my brothers and sisters. Never forget to give thanks on every inch of your road home to glory, however many your mistakes. All praise God for the encouragement of the heart, the full assurance that the bill has been paid. God has paid the expenses of our spiritual education every step of the way home to glory. I must not spend so much time on the other false recipes. You know them. First of all, there is Jewish ritualism. Let's be careful how we talk about it, because there was a sense in which it was God-given. And it served in its day as a shadow of the coming good things. It wasn't therefore in itself essentially sinful, was it? It was but a shadow. And in early Christianity, and in some parts of Scotland still, there are Christians who feel that they should still observe these shadows. And Paul elsewhere would tell us that we must respect their conscience, even if we know ourselves to be free. We have to hear to be careful. But of course, we mustn't content ourselves with shadows, must we? We must go for the reality. It's all right for an infant in his bath to be playing with toy ships. They not only entertain his infantile mind, but they're preparing him for the day when he shall be captain of a real ship. Little pathetic to see the forty-year-old, now gone bald playing with toy ships in his bath, wouldn't you? Ha! Now we have to leave the shadows and go for the reality. Oh, what a lot of shadows there are still stalking Christendom. Keeping of days and rituals and going back to Judaism with its special priesthood and its repeated sacrifices, and all this in the name of supposed Christianity. How folks will be keen on celebrating Christmas and Easter, and if you went to them and said, do you know the risen Lord? They got the shadow. They don't have the reality. Let's make sure that what we go in for is God's divine reality. Then there was a question of mysticism. This is a complicated business, but in the ancient world, and amongst Jewish communities too, for that matter, there were those who practiced mysticism. For instance, one form of it took, uh, one part of it took the form that we call merkabah mysticism. Jews that had read the first chapter of Ezekiel and the picture of God's throne with its wheels within wheels, and they professed to be able, by certain spiritual and mental tricks and psychological manipulations, to take you out of the body into a visionary state so that you could rise up through the principalities and powers and take your journeys to high places and come at last to see the very throne of God as Ezekiel saw it in a visionary ecstatic experience, and then you could come down again. It was apparently, according to them, a dangerous business, because if you weren't hurt by the principalities and powers as you went up, you were likely to be hurt by them when you came down, you'll see. Anyway, they profess to have vision. Now, there are such things as good visions, aren't there? John the Apostle had one, an extended one on the Isle of Patmos, and Paul had another. We must be careful what we say. We mustn't say that all visions are simple. Now, this kind of vision was bogus. First of all, it showed the danger of getting in touch with demonic powers, a number one difficulty. And if it didn't imagine, uh, manage to do that, it still was not necessarily any use. What's going on inside the man's head, you say, when he's having one of these ecstatic visions? Well, all sorts of things are happening. He's being puffed up by his fleshly mind. But got no relation, objective relation to the blessed Lord Jesus. And here is a principle to be applied to a lot of so-called spirituality. You can have elevated ecstatic states going on in your head, and they're real, they're actually happening, the lights are buzzing and blinking in your head. The question is, is it valid? How would I know whether it's valid? Well, is it in fact making contact with the blessed Lord Jesus? Does it stand in relationship to the objective reality. You see, you take me to a museum, and you're an art lover, and there I am in front of a big picture, and you say, look at this picture, good thing, isn't that a marvelous picture? I say, yes, it is marvelous. It gets me hopping up and down. Ooh, it's a marvelous thing. You say, do you like it? I say, yes. Look at that girl's beautiful golden hair and the red poppies around it. And you say, what do you mean? There isn't a girl with red golden, uh, with golden hair nor any poppies. This is a picture of a lion in the middle of Africa. But I don't mind what it says. I think it's a marvelous picture. And you turn around to me, and I've got my eyes shut, and I'm dancing all over the place with my eyes shut, and I'm not looking at the picture. There's going on in my head all sorts of wonderful things. There's no use. Why? Because it doesn't relate to the great reality, which is the head. Oh, hold fast the head, says Paul. And finally, asceticism, stringency to the body. Here again, I must be careful what I say, mustn't I? Because the man who wrote these words tells us that he used to keep his body under, metaphorically he beat it black and blue. Stringent in his rigorous self-control of his body and its appetites, that he might win the more people effectively for Christ. There is a place for bodily discipline. That kind of bodily discipline cannot save you or make you more holy. You can come to Ireland, if you like, and climb Croat Patrick in the middle of the night. I've done it. It didn't make me any more holy. You can lie on concrete floors on Davinish Island if you like. Maltreat your body. It won't make you holy, and it's a silly thing to do anyway. It was the Creator that made your body. Suppose your car is broken down, and I rush up as a supposed expert, and I say, what you want to do is to kick it. Well, that doesn't work. Well, I'll teach this car something. I'll put a bit of sand in the petrol. That'll teach it. We'll say, well, whatever the good man is, he isn't the creator of motor cars. For what he proposes would ruin the thing and for no good. The creator made your body. Don't want you going around afflicting your body, thinking thereby that you're going to gain salvation. What is more, the danger of asceticism is this. It is of no value to salvation. It tends to, if that is the right translation, it tends to the indulgence of the flesh. Mark the pride of the Pharisee who can stand and tell you, I'm holier than thou. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I possess. Instead of leading him to spiritual maturity, it is but leading to the indulgence of the flesh. And my brethren, if you have died with Christ, don't carry on under those old rules and regulations. What use are they? Well, see, suppose in some of your, one of your states here that still electrocutes murders in the electric chair. Suppose I were to come along one day, and there is the man sitting strapped in the electric chair, waiting for the current to be switched on, and I look at him in great compassion, and I say, you poor man, you did get yourself into drugs, didn't you? You did get yourself into alcohol, and it ruined your body, and it's brought you to here. I tell you what, my friend, you take up vegetarianism. That will help you. What a fool I should be. The man will be dead in five minutes. Take up vegetarianism. Man needs is somehow deliverance from the condemnation of the law. How did you get delivered from the condemnation of the law? You died with Christ. Suppose when the poor man had been electrocuted, I came again, and there he sits slumped in the chair, and I say, ah, this is desperate. You know, you're going on like that, you'll go to corruption, old chap. Um, what do you want to do? To take up jogging? What consummate fool I should be. Nothing will do him any good now, but new life. Oh, my brothers, you, my sisters, you died with Christ. And the answer and the potential for spiritual progress and maturity is this: you are risen with Christ. If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, for you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God. Courage up. We know not what we shall be, but when he is manifested, then shall we be manifested with him in. The Lord bless his word for his name's sake. And now, Lord, we thank thee for thy holy word and for these sessions together of mutual encouragement and provocation to study it the more deeply. We bless thee that thou dost not mock our efforts to invest time in its studies. This week, in thy grace, thou has drawn near and shown thyself to us. We bless thee for the immeasurable riches. We bless thee for the kindness of our brother Paul, the great apostle, for his gracious and kind concern for our spiritual and psychological state. Give us grace to listen to him and to thy counsels to us through him, that we may make indeed serious and real progress in the path to holiness and spiritual maturity, the while our hearts abounding with thanksgiving and encouragement and full assurance of our great initial and final salvation. Thus give us wisdom, we pray, true divine wisdom, that profiting thereby we may live to glorify thee and fill eternity with thy praise, through Jesus Christ our Lord.