Gooding, David: 1 - The Main Themes of Colossians

And good morning once more, and welcome to you personally from me. Thank you for coming. Thank those particularly who have volunteered or will volunteer, even if they haven't done so, so far, to lead the study groups. And as usual, the questions that I have provided are simply for general guidance. They are aimed mostly at making sure that people have understood what I have said, not at making sure that they agree with me. Moreover, the questions this year, you will see sometimes, are rather numerous, and that is so that in your various study groups, you may be able to choose those questions that, uh, may particularly be to your taste or to your interest. You're not obliged to get through the whole of the list of questions in any one discussion group. And of course, so long as people have understood what has been said in the talks, then you are always at liberty, of course, that goes without saying, to discuss other matters arising from the epistle to the Colossians, which do not appear on the list of questions. And so now, as we come to our three seminars on the Epistle to the Colossians, let us just devote our first moments to a reading of certain passages as a tribute of worship to the blessed Lord, who is the topic of this epistle. Let's begin by reading from chapter one, starting in verse thirteen, where at the end of the verse we read of him who is here described as the son of God's love. God's loving and beloved Son. He is to be the major topic of this epistle. Let us read now as a tribute of our worship to him. The Son of God's love, in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were all things created in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things have been created through him and unto him. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fullness dwell. And if chapter one of this epistle talks to us of the Son of God's love, chapter two will talk to us about our blessed Lord as the mystery of God. Chapter two and verse two, Paul prays that we may know the mystery of God, even Christ. Let us read, therefore, what he said of him in chapter two, verses nine to fifteen. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him you are made 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 of writing, written in ordinances that was contrary to us, which was against us, he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. Having put off from himself the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. And finally, from chapter three of this epistle, let us read together the verses ten and eleven. They too speak to us about the worshipful person of our Lord. You have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him, where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free man, but Christ is all and in all. This then is the glorious theme of our epistle, and I suggest that we make it our theme song, so to speak, in our hearts for these three weeks, that Christ shall be indeed for us all and in all. May the Holy Spirit, who inspired the epistle, use it thus to glorify the Lord Jesus and reveal him to our hearts, so as to provoke our faith and deepen our loyalty and increase our thanksgiving and our joy. Now, our aim in the study is to s- study and capture the message of this epistle to the Colossians. That is to say, that message which Colossians in the whole of the scripture brings to us in a way that no other part of scripture does in quite the same fashion. We aim to capture the special message of the epistle to the Colossians. And I suspect that if we are to do that well, then we must bring to our study sympathetic understanding, first of all, of the spiritual experience and the state of the people to whom the letter was originally written. Let me remind you of what their experience had been. They were, I suspect, for the most part of them, originally rank heathen. Educated people may be, but heathen in the sense that they didn't know the true God, were alienated from him. Some of them, of course, would have been Jews, but there again, Jews that had not come to know the Messiah, and therefore it was true of them as of the Gentiles that they originally we were without God, without the Messiah, and therefore without hope in the world. The gospel was brought to them by a certain Epaphras. Forgive me if I get muddled up in my pronunciations and on occasions refer to the good man as Epaphras. It was a nickname anyway. His longer name was Epaphroditus. Epaphras or Epaphras is the same man for all purposes, uh, in today's seminars and in the next two weeks. The gospel brought by Epaphras had had revolutionary effects in their lives, as we can see from what is said in the epistle. It is described, this revolution in their lives, it is described as a coming out of darkness into light. Chapter one and verse thirteen: Delivered us from the power of darkness and qualified us for an inheritance of the saints in light. It is described in chapter two and verse thirteen as a change from a state of death to one of life. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your heart, has he brought to life nothing less than a veritable spiritual resurrection. And we gather from chapter three and the verses we have just read, that the change that had taken place in their lives had led to a totally different lifestyle. It is said that upon hearing the gospel, they put off the old man and put on the new man. And that may sound to your ears at first as if what had happened to these people was simply that they had received a new set of rules, a new code of morality. We shall find that is far from true. The revolution that took place in their lives as a result of hearing the gospel was not simply that they received a new set of standards. It was that they received a new kind of life, being before simply creatures of God, and sinful creatures at that. They had received the Lord Jesus and become the beneficiaries of that great new movement in God's universe that happened with the coming of the Lord Jesus into our planet, his life, his death, and his resurrection. A vast and hitherto unheard of thing, that the creator should not only become human, but upon his death and resurrection, the personal Lord Jesus Christ should enter the heart and personality of those who love him. So that the secret of the new lifestyle of these ancient people was that they became indwelt by the Lord Jesus, ceasing to be mere creatures of God, they became children of God, in whom the very Son of God dwelled. So they had put on the new man, says Paul, where Christ is all and in all. With that, it becomes apparent that their spiritual revolution had given them an utterly new outlook upon the universe around them. They were, as I have reminded you, many of them, heathen, and they lived a long while ago and in a pre-scientific age. To them, hitherto, the universe around them had been a very mysterious affair, not only beautiful in its spring and summer and winter and autumn, its animal life and its glorious flowers, but sometimes terrifying with mysterious powers, earthquakes and pestilence, and in the end, death. It wasn't always a pretty thing to live in the ancient world in pre-scientific conditions. It has improved a lot since, hasn't it? But how much is an open question. For still to us, the universe remains in some of its, its workings exceedingly mysterious. It can fill your heart with joy and gladness one day and break it with disaster and disease the next. The spiritual revolution that had taken place in the lives of these people had, however, given them an utterly new outlook upon the universe. Instead of a world of hostile powers and no ultimate hope. It had introduced them to the very maker of the universe personally. They now knew God. The Son of God had shown them what God is really like, the God who stands behind the universe and behind our individual lives. And Paul uses that delightful expression. They had been introduced into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. Just imagine what that means. To know the king who stands behind the universe, to have come to know him as the one whom God loves with all his infinite power and all his infinite wisdom combined, and God loves him. There's nothing that God wouldn't do for him. Not only is he the son of God's love in the sense that God loved him, but as the creator and ruler of the universe, he is the son of God who expresses to us the love of God. Oh, ponder anew as we read this epistle seriously together in these coming hours and weeks. Ponder anew what the Almighty can do if with his love he befriends you. And they had come into the enjoyment of the universe and of this kingdom of God's Son, because, so we are told, they had been forgiven, they had been forgiven their sins and their trespasses, and they had been reconciled to God, so that they were no longer alienated, no longer hostile to God, no longer feeling God to be a threat or afraid that God, if they got too close to him, would restrict their liberties and take away their enjoyment. They had discovered in Jesus Christ what God is really like. So they had found, to put it in a nutshell, as Paul does in his opening verses, they had found the gospel that Epaphras had brought them to lay before them a hope, a hope laid up for them in the heavens, and it had had a revolutionary impact on their lives. That briefly sketched then is the experience of the people to whom this letter is addressed. The letter won't make full sense to us unless we have, to some extent at least, had that same kind of experience. These people had been born again. They had been converted. They had been saved. Let's sum it up once more. They had been enemies of God, they now were reconciled. They had been dead, they were now made alive. Previously, their lifestyle was that of an the old man. From now on, it was that of the new. We shall have to ask ourselves as we read this letter and study it, have I also had this kind of experience? Would these things be truly said of me? Me. But not only had the preaching of the gospel led to their initial conversion, we gather that it had led to a subsequent desire to make progress in spiritual life. It had indeed made, led to actual progress being made. We read in chapter one and verse six how that the gospel was bearing fruit among them and increasing. Or again, we learn that their newfound hope, so says verse twenty eight of chapter one, had set before them a new objective in life. The coming day when Christ should present them before the Father, before his throne with exceeding joy, and an objective, therefore, and a longing that on that occasion Christ should be able to present every one of them mature, perfect, to use the old English, fully developed in Christ. And it had given them not only an objective that they themselves might make spiritual progress and arrive at spiritual maturity, but according to chapter four, verses two onwards, it had given them a tremendous desire to get involved in the spread of the gospel throughout the world. And though they were, so to speak, an infant church, it is remarkable how many of the missionaries engaged then in worldwide evangelism were known to them by name, people for whom they knew and for whom they prayed. So they had been converted, therefore, and now they were seeking to make progress. And I suppose if we are going to understand this letter as it should be understood, that will have to be true of us as well. To understand this letter, it wouldn't be enough simply to be converted. The letter would need to find us filled with a desire to make progress in our own spiritual life, filled with a desire to be engaged up to our very necks in the spread of the gospel in our locality and in the world. And one of the reasons for that is as follows, though only one, that the dangers that were persetting this early church and other churches in the locality were the dangers that Christians are liable to fall into, not as a result of careless, unspiritual, lackadaisical, couldn't care less lives. Dangers that people are liable to fall into, not because of the attractions of worldliness, though those dangers are big enough in all good conscience, aren't they? The dangers that beset these people were the dangers that beset people precisely because they are determined to make progress in the spiritual life. Because I didn't know that there were any dangers along that path. I thought that if only you were keen to serve the Lord and to please him and to make spiritual progress, then all is plain sailing. There are no dangers. The opposite is true. His satanic majesty has traps and snares and perils and dangers for every type of believer. And if he can't misdirect us through our worldliness, then he'll have a good go at misdirecting us through our spirituality. He's been a long time at the job. You will remember how in the wilderness temptation he in- assaulted our Lord himself, and how crafty and devilishly cunning were his temptations. The first temptation we remember that our Satan offered to our Lord was that he should act in independence of God. It was only a simple matter. At least it was a simple matter for our Lord. It concerned his daily bread, concerned also for the fact that when the temptation came, he was desperately hungry after a fast of forty days. And the tempter came first to him, tempting him to worldliness, suggesting that he act in independence of God and independent of his father, to use his miraculous powers to turn stones into bread. And our Lord saw through the temptation and confronted it at once. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. You couldn't tempt our blessed Lord by a few bits of bread to live in independence of God. Ah, but the second temptation took notice of that fact, didn't it? So the devil came to the Lord Jesus, and he s- took him up to the temple and suggested that it would be a grand idea if he flung himself from the top. This time the suggestion was backed home by Holy Scripture. Watch the devil when he begins to cite scripture. He's not given to too much Bible reading, nor normally interested in that you should fulfill it. But on this occasion he posed, uh, as a spiritual advisor to the Lord, suggesting areas in which he might make spiritual progress. I've noticed, he said, if I miss may, uh, uh, interpret his words, I've noticed what a godly young man you are. You're not like some others, where a bit of bread or an extra ten pounds a week would be enough to entice them into independence of God. You're determined to live in dependence of God, young man, that's marvelously excellent. Take it a step further. Look, the Bible says that he will always support you. Now, the ordinary five-eighths believers, they tread on the earth, you know, and uh, they they don't take too many risks. But a man like you who's prepared to act in independence of God, young man, step forth on scripture, cast yourself off the temple top, and prove that God's word means what it says. And how many of us would have been unspiritual enough to try and follow the advice, thinking we were pleasing God and making progress in our spiritual course. It was a dastardly trap. Our Lord saw through it and refused it, and countered the devil's misquotation of scripture with a balance of another direct command of the Lord. Satan that opposed the Lord Jesus, by trying on that second occasion the tactic of urging him along what looked like the path of spiritual progress, will certainly try to do the same for us. We too need God's holy word to dwell richly in our hearts, as Paul puts it, that we might be saved from these deceptions of the enemy. Thank God, the evidence of the epistle is that these early Colossians, when they were suddenly surrounded by temptations of this sort, withstood them. But how long they would have gone on withstanding them had not Paul written his letter to them, who can tell? So we shall find, as we read the letter, that the special danger to the Colossians was that certain teachers had come among them, offering them all kinds of recipes for spiritual advance that on the surface looked brilliant and wonderful and very impressive, but were nothing other than the deceptions of Satan and absolutely bogus. So Paul sat down to write to them. He, of course, tells them in explicit terms what these bogus recipes were and exposes their nonsense. But of course he doesn't leave it there. But prescribes that panacea for all our spiritual troubles and dangers, that is the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. In this epistle he takes them back to their initial conversion, back to the gospel which they originally heard, and expounds to them from that gospel the wonderful glories of the Lord Jesus, that they might see again that in him, their savior, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. They need nothing else but Christ. He is for them, for their initial salvation, for their growth in sanctification, for their final glorification. Jesus Christ is all they need. And Lord, use our studies to help us take a firmer grip on the glories of the gospel. Use our studies to help us unpack a little bit more the immeasurable, measurable riches that there are in the mystery of God, which is Christ. That our lives be kept from falling, our hearts be filled with faith and joy, and our new lifestyle properly represent God in this sorry world. And now to our study groups.