Colossians 2:11-23 Our Sins Nailed to the Cross

The speaker starts by mistakenly thinking it's Sunday and talks about a friend named Jack who used to be the evangelism director of the Southern Baptist of Texas. He mentions that Jack's son and daughter-in-law are pastors in Florida. He then talks about another friend named Gary whose wife recently passed away. The speaker emphasizes the importance of treating each other with kindness and understanding because everyone is hurting in some way. The speaker then mentions that they are studying the book of Colossians and gives some background information on the location of Colossae and the churches in the area. The speaker explains that Paul did not start the church in Colossae but wrote a letter to them regarding a heresy that denied the divinity of Christ. The speaker emphasizes that the book of Colossians is Christ-centered and talks about a key verse that summarizes the book's message. The speaker then briefly mentions the conservative resurgence in Southern Baptist life and its focus Well, good morning. Good morning. Good to see you. I didn't get up and dress for church yesterday, so here I am reminded Friday night, and that's tomorrow, not Sunday. So anyway, all right, where's Jack Harris? I saw him earlier. Jack, over here. Stand up, Jack. Let me, I want to tell you about Jack. Jack was the evangelism director of the Southern Baptist of Texas for many years, and so been a friend for a long time. His son, John, was a staff member here. He and his wife, Beth, and they're pastoring in Florida now, down in Lakeland. And go ahead and sit down, Jack. You don't have to stand up the whole time, but just wanted to do right, right? They wanted to do what they were supposed to do, and they're in Lakeland, Florida now. Unique thing about John and Beth, they were minister of singles here, was it, single adults, and they went to First Baptist Church, Maryville, Illinois. They were there in view of a call the day that a man came out of the audience and shot the pastor dead. And they were there in view of a call that Sunday. Interesting thing is, John and Beth were not in that service. They were being taken to other parts of the church, but the church never did get to hear them or be presented. But the next week, they voted to call them anyway. So, and they were there for several years, but that's quite a traumatic thing when something like that happens. Al Meredith, who's pastor over at Waysward, when they had, you remember they had a shooting over there and about five or six of the people got killed on a Wednesday night. The first Sunday after Fred Winters was shot and killed in Maryville, Al preached there. And he told them they ought to have me come up there. So, the next Sunday, the next two Sundays, in fact, I, Caroline and I flew to St. Louis and drove over into Southern Illinois to preach at that church. But that's Jack's family, and he's got kids in the ministry. And his wife passed away this last year. And so, Gary, where's Gary? I see you through there, Gary. Yeah, Gary can identify that. His sweet wife passed away recently, too. So, it's just a good reminder to us, all of us are hurting people in some way. And so, that makes it more important that we treat each other with kindness and give each other the benefit of the doubt. And anyway, so much, don't need to take more time for that. We're in the second chapter of Colossians, and we will finish up the second chapter today, and then Brother Jack will do the third chapter the next several weeks. And then I'll end up doing the fourth chapter at some point. It's kind of iffy because we're coming up on our 120th anniversary. And on the 1st of September, John has asked me to preach to the 830 service. And he said, I just want you to remember some things, just kind of reminisce. We just kind of set the stage for the anniversary coming up. So, there's a passage that I don't have a text. I just want you to kind of reminisce. But David wrote a text for us in Psalm 77, and that just reminds us that we need to remember the things that God has done, the greatness of God. And there is a song, a great song that we'll sing that day, too, called We Will Remember. And so, and I'm teaching that day, so y'all pray for me because I'll preach, and then you come in here and take time to punish you a little bit, I guess. But anyway, Colossians is on the Lycus River in what is modern-day Turkey today. And it's about 100 miles east of Ephesus. I think Jack went through a lot of this. It's kind of interesting, the Lycus Valley narrows down to about two miles where the river runs through there. And that's where Colossae is located. It's at the foot of Mount Cadmus, which is 8,000 feet above sea level. So, it's an interesting site, beautiful part of the world. And, but Colossae was one of several churches that Paul never did get to attend. He didn't start the church, but as Jack told us the other day, Epaphras, who was converted when he came up to Paul's church in Ephesus. Paul was there three years. And you remember, I think I told you about the greatest evangelistic report in Scripture is Acts 19 and verse 10 that says that everyone in the province of Asia heard the gospel within two years. That was Paul's ministry in Ephesus. That's where Epaphras was saved. So, he went to Ephesus, got saved, he came back. And most folks would say that Epaphras started the church in Colossae and possibly in Hierapolis and Laodicea. Because in the fourth chapter, verse 15, 13 of Colossians, Paul gives greetings to the church and then mentions Hierapolis and Laodicea in connection to Epaphras. So, there's a possibility that Epaphras was the one who started all three of those churches. Now, Paul never did go to either one of these churches. So, he's writing and there's no doubt that the churches in Hierapolis and Laodicea read this epistle too because it was kind of, most of the epistles of Paul's probably were circular type letters that not only went to the church that it was addressed to, but to others. And certainly, you have Hierapolis and Laodicea and Colossae are just bound up in a little knot together. They're not far apart, just a few miles apart. And very interesting churches, a beautiful part of the world. They actually were the center. Colossae was the center of the greatest challenge to Christianity in the early church. The early church had a lot of challenges. And by the way, most of the heresies of the first century were surrounded some misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Godhead or the Trinity. And interestingly enough, that's not much different today. You have those who do not believe that God has everything, that the Holy Spirit has something else. So, well, that's misunderstanding the whole thing about the Trinity. We have three persons. We have one God. They can't disagree. It is impossible for them to disagree. They never have a split decision. They never have to say, oops, they just, what one says, they all say. So, someone says, well, the Holy Spirit did this. Well, God did it. If the Holy Spirit did it, God did it. Jesus did it. God did it. If God did it, Jesus and the Holy Spirit did it. What one says, they all say. What one does, they all do. And so, the heresy here in Colossae was a denial of the divinity of Christ. They did not believe that he was the Son of God. I use the word emanations. I looked that word up yesterday. You know, I don't know how to describe it to you except that if you take a big rock and you drop it in the lake, it's going to create a lot of ripples. The rock is gone, but the ripples are there. And so, that's kind of what an emanation is. It's something that emanates from God. It's not God. It's just sort of something that God initiated. Well, that's the way the heretical teachers believed Jesus was. That he was not God. He was not Son of God. He was just sort of an emanation. He was just sort of a product of God. But he did not—there's a total misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Godhead. And so, that's why this book of Colossians is the most Christ-centered book in the New Testament. I told you last week, and I didn't count again this week. I always said there were 53 references to Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Godhead in the book of Colossians. Then I counted, and I've got 76 last week. So, I decided I'd quit. If I've got to go back, I'll probably find some more. But it is Christ-centered. It is Christ-centered. And we look today in our passage in Colossians chapter 2 at the center, one verse that really tells it all. And in Colossians 2 and verse 14, this is a good summary of the book of Colossians. He, Christ, erased the certificate of debt with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. Then he goes on. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly. He triumphed over them in him. That's what Christ did. And we can be confident that that is adequate. What Paul is saying is, the heretics were saying, Jesus doesn't know everything. We know some things Jesus doesn't know, and you need to know what we know. You'd really be smart like we're smart. And we're all so humble, by the way. And obviously, a good camouflage for the pride that they felt. And we know what God thinks about pride. And so, they just felt like they had, everybody was basically simpletons that just needed higher learning, higher revelation. They believed they understood truth at a higher level, the highest level that was beyond Christ, beyond Scripture. And they saw themselves as spiritual elite and exclusive possessors of things that pertain to God. They saw the rest of the church as kind of simpletons that were just there and in the way. But we'll make you better. You think like we think, and you'll be okay. Now, this additional, that's the heart of the heresy. Far beyond Jesus Christ and Scripture, they sought to present a different way to be saved. And this was a combination of pagan philosophy and Jewish legalism and Eastern mysticism and asceticism. It was just a conglomeration, self-man-made construct of God and the things of God. And we have the Word of God, and that's all we need. We have the Son of God, and He's all we need for salvation. And we don't need anything else. It's not Jesus plus anything. It's just Jesus. And that's essentially what Paul is saying. Now, let me just pause a moment and make a statement about the conservative resurgence. You may or may not have heard, it's been long enough that you may not have heard about the the conservative resurgence that was in the last 25, 30 years of the 20th century in Southern Baptist life. Critics, more liberal brethren, said it was just a pastor's squabble. They were just pastors trying to see who could get the most credit. They were just preachers debating things that weren't important. Truth is, the whole issue was the inerrancy and the sufficiency and the completeness of the Word of God. I will give you one illustration. When I was elected president of Southern Baptist Convention in 1982, Carol Ann and I visited all the seminaries. I preached in all the seminaries fairly quickly, six seminaries. I went to every one of them, preached in chapel, and met with the faculty. At one of the seminaries, I preached, and then we went into a stadium classroom, seat about 150, just had like seats in a basketball arena, about 150 professors and administrators there, and just stood and answered questions for about an hour and a half. And that was interesting. And the first question they asked me was, what is a liberal? Now, you'll understand a little bit better why that question was asked first when I finish the story. But bear in mind, I've been pastoring for many, many years, but I'm no theological whiz. Jack goes under that, and he could fulfill that description. But here I am in hostile territory, and they are unhappy about conservative resurgence. They're not happy that I was elected president, and they started me off by saying, what is a liberal? So I hadn't even thought about that, but I said, well, I guess I would say anyone who denies any portion of Scripture. And I use it as an illustration where the—an Old Testament illustration about liberalism, about not believing in the flood or in whatever it was, and then went on. On our way to the airport from there, we had lunch with the faculty and all, and after that, we were taken to the airport, and one of the—our host was a graduate student who also was the understudy of one of the professors there. And he said, if you had said in answer to what is a liberal, anyone who denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus and substitutionary atonement, you would have nailed 85% of the faculty. Well, I thought that was a little extreme, so my friend Louis Drummond was on the faculty there. The next week, I called Louis Drummond, and I said, Louis, here's what I was told. Is that true? There was a silence on the line for a few seconds, and then he said, well, yes, it probably is. That is what we were facing. The professors—I've had personal testimony to men who were in the room when these things happened—would go out on Sunday and preach like a fundamentalist evangelist and come in and teach in classroom heresy. And that was not everywhere, but it was there a lot. And so, we were dealing with the heresy that the Bible's not sufficient. Jesus didn't do this, didn't do that. It was mostly in the shadows, and we went through a lot of strain and a lot of stress, a lot of controversy. I lost friendships with guys that did not agree with the conservative resurgence. I was broadly criticized in the classrooms at Baylor, because I dared to ask a question of one of the professors that resulted in me essentially telling him, I don't think you ought to be teaching at Baylor, which did not please him very much. He was kind enough to read my letter to his classes, however, because one of my kids was in one of the classes, and I had to tell my kids, don't defend me. You're going to get to hear all kinds of stuff, but don't feel like you have to be my defense. I don't need any defense. But the heresy of believing a little less of the Scripture and a little more of man-made philosophy had made some inroads into our denomination. That's what happened in Colossae, and Hierapolis, and Laodicea. Heresy was not blatant, but it was present. It was intimidating. They tried to minimize the maturity of the believers in the churches and claimed to have superior knowledge beyond Christ, beyond Scripture. I know I'm a relic. I just happen to believe that the Bible is sufficient and Jesus is, too. I don't question either one of those. So, the heresy that we're talking about in Colossae is one that still exists today. It is that existed in every generation. Every generation has to defend the truth, the faith that once given for all. That was what the New Testament told us. Every generation has to fight with that. We had ours. None of us set out to be crusaders. I never tried to be a revolutionary. I just found myself in positions that I had to take a stand. I was a trustee at Baylor, and an issue came up over the sufficiency of Scripture, and I took my stand. And I'm happy to tell you that there were 48 trustees at Baylor at that time, six of the pastors, and none of the pastors stood with me. But one layman did. He was a lawyer from Houston. Two of us, 46 voting the other way. It's how insidious it got. Now, I never introduced all of that here in the church. We didn't get sidetracked by the conservative resurgence. We just kept winning people to Christ, and sending 100 people a year on mission trips overseas, and still standing for what we believe. But we did get embroiled. Anyway, but the point is, the heresies of today are not new heresies. They may have a new face on them. But the first critical encounter and challenge to the early church was this Colossian heresy in the Lycus Valley, on the Lycus River, there Colossian, Hierapolis, and Laodicea. And that's what we're talking about. And basically, the false teachers taught that Christ was not sufficient for us to know what we need to know about God. They needed some higher revelation. Truth was beyond Jesus and was greater than scripture. And of course, they were the ones that could tell you what it ought to be like. Well, the church in Colossia, we'll get back to Colossia for a moment, was both Gentile and Jew. It was both a Jewish church and a Gentile church. So, it's not surprising that Jewish legalism would be part of the heresy, because that was part of the Jewish teaching. And some felt like that you had to do certain Jewish, keep certain Jewish laws and observances if you were going to be a Christian. And in this chapter, we're at verse 11. Let me just read a few of these real quickly. We'll try to get on with it. But in verse 11, he says, you were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ. And what typified that? When you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. Circumcision was a physical act initiated from the Old Testament covenant that God had with Israel in Genesis chapter 17. It was a physical act, but it had a spiritual meaning. And at this time, the Jews had missed or had pushed aside the spiritual meaning of circumcision and had dwelt on the physical act of circumcision. And that led to and fed the false teachers because they insisted on circumcision as being part of the salvation. And this is not a new thought, this idea of spiritual circumcision. Jeremiah 4.4 talked about it. Ezekiel 44 talked about it. It talked about the circumcision of the heart. The circumcision of Christ is the spiritual circumcision of the heart that is only provided by him. And that's what transforms the life of believers. Stephen used the same words in Acts 7.51 when he was preaching. He said, you stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears. Paul occasionally refers to similar language when talking about hard-hearted and hard-of-hearing believers. The circumcision not made with hands gives the believer incredible blessings that are received by the fullness of God in Christ Jesus today. We don't have to be circumcised today because the whole requirement of circumcision was done away with when Jesus fulfilled the law and through the cross of Jesus Christ. He lives in us and that should shape everything we do. And Romans 10 even says in verse 4, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes. So we're no longer bound by the Old Testament law in its letter because Jesus Christ fulfilled all of that in himself. And we're not required to do that. Verses 11 and 12, he says, you were also circumcised with him in a circumcision not done with hands. Now look at this passage as he talks about it. Look at what's there. In him, buried with him, raised with him, he made you alive with him and forgave us all of our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt. He disarmed the rulers and authorities. He disgraced them publicly. He triumphed over them in him. Paul is just saying Jesus is everything you need. My dad died when he was 52 years old. On his desk, when we got there and prepared for the funeral, on his desk was a poem of a song called, Jesus is all I need. It's a beautiful song. And when they sang it at my dad's funeral, but this is what Paul said. Hey, don't bother with all this other stuff. Jesus is all you need. He's sufficient. He's not insufficient. It's not Jesus saying anything, not Jesus plus anything. He disarmed the rulers. He disgraced them publicly. He triumphed over them. He, it's done. And Christ is sufficient for every need in our lives. And we're completing all things in him. That's what Paul is saying here in Colossians. When a believer is immersed in water, because he mentioned baptism here about being buried with Christ in baptism, that act of being immersed in water is a declaration that the finished work of Christ has sufficiently transformed the life of the individual through the inner circumcision of his heart. That's what salvation is. That is spiritual circumcision. It has the power of God, not the power of water. Theirs was a new heart, a new spirit, a new life in Jesus Christ. And they had all they needed in Jesus Christ. Baptism by itself doesn't produce death or burial or resurrection. It only represents what has taken place in the heart of the individual. Well, it's all through verse 12 says, through faith in the working of God. That's how all of this takes place through the activity of God in our hearts and our lives. Last year, I finished up a little book called It's Not Rocket Science. Those of you who were there, then I gave you a copy of it. And you all might be the only ones that have a copy because I haven't had any way of marketing it, so I cherish those copies. They're unique. The point of that book was, I started with Genesis 1-2, where it said the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, watery depths. That's the Holy Spirit. We meet him in Genesis 1-2. And if you follow all the way through the Bible and on into the New Testament and beyond, after the establishment of the church, you will find that every movement forward of the church, of the people of God has been through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells us. We're not our own. We've been bought with a price. And if we had been saved, born again, then our lives, nothing's the same. Everything has changed. I won't chase that rabbit. You know, being saved ought to make a difference in how you live. People get saved, say they get saved, and then they act like the devil and say, well, that's just me. Well, stop being you. You're not the same. If you're the same, you're not saved. It doesn't mean we don't make mistakes. Of course we do. And no one is going to escape the fact that we all face temptation. We have had six major staff members and pastors in Dallas-Fort Worth who have resigned over sexual improprieties in the last two months. Now, before you get on your high horse and start thinking what terrible men these were, every one of us is tempted. I told you some time ago, but I'll tell you again. Charles Stanley told me one time a number of years ago, he said he was on an airplane and they had a meal on the airplane and he was sitting next to a guy and the guy didn't take his meal. And so Charles got to talk to him and said, well, are you fasting? I mean, is something wrong? You don't like your food? He said, no. He said, yes, I am fasting. He said, I'm fasting and asking the devil to destroy the Christian leaders in America in their homes. The guy is a target. Devil hates John Meador. We don't necessarily make him a god, but we ought to respect him and we ought to pray for him because he's in the crosshairs. You talk about someone that's in the crosshairs. Several of those men who resigned are friends of mine. Devil's active and he wants to get them. But when you get saved, you still are tempted. And Galatians 6 gives us how we deal with that. I personally am very disappointed in the way some of these churches have responded. Because Galatians 6 says, if a man falls, stumbles, you who are spiritual restore him and you work with him and help him be repaired. Oh, and by the way, watch out for yourself because you too may be tempted. This, you know, we're in a battle with evil. And the heresies that diminish the place of Christ and deny the deity of Christ and deny the sufficiency of the scripture, these are old heresies that still have emphasis to them. They're still here. Now, we can disagree on a lot of things. And I've told you many times, we don't have to be ugly about it. My daddy said you ought to have strong convictions. We don't have to be brutal about it. To the day that he died, the leader of the liberals in Southern Baptist Convention, and I swapped handwritten notes. Well, I should say letters because they were more than one page. We disagreed on everything, but we were friends. And the heresy was deep and great. We could never reconcile that. But we still maintain friendship. We've reached a day where that's not possible. Look at politics. I can remember, many of you can. I don't think any of you as old as I am, but I can remember when the Democratic platform and the Republican platform every year was about the same. Not true anymore. I can remember when Democrats and Republicans would fight it out like cats and dogs in the Senate and the House and then go have dinner together and laugh and tell jokes and enjoy with their friends. It's not true anymore. Now then, Democrats hate the Republicans. Republicans hate the Democrats. I hate both of them. Where's the third person or third party? You know, the tension that exists in America today of division, this is what heresy does. And if I could be nationally spiritual for a moment, the Constitution of the United States is a godly doctrine, and that's the source of the controversy today. It's the heresy in the political world. And this was going on. Now, this is why Paul is so stressed over this. Paul is seeing churches that he had never seen in person, but they knew him and he knew them, they corresponded, and he sent messages to them and they in return. But it broke his heart. The thing is, Paul's in prison when he wrote this, and his heart was broken not because he was chained in prison, not because he was isolated from his friends, not because of anything like that. His heart was broken because of the heresy that was invading the church. And that's why we have to stand for the truth. We don't have to be ugly about it, but we have to take a stand for the truth. And our church, we never got embroiled in that because we all knew what we believed. And I had one member that was a precious friend, but she wanted me to have one of the liberal leaders come in and preach to our church. I said, no way. I'm responsible for who preaches in this pulpit. I wouldn't have him teach Sunday school, let alone preach in church. She's not ugly about it, but the point is that these things still exist and we're facing the same things they faced at Colossae. Jesus is not quite enough. He needs a little help. Oh, the Holy Spirit has something God doesn't have. So we need to have a special blessing in the Holy Spirit because God needs some help. Well, no, no, the Holy Spirit is God. They're not in conflict. They don't debate. They don't fight. They agree all the time. They're perfect love. And Jesus prayed in John 17, Father, may the church be like we are, like God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is. That's a pretty strong prayer. And I have to ask my question, would Jesus pray for something that's not possible? Well, I think maybe it may not be possible in our strength, but it's not impossible in his strength. Real unity is found up in our relationship with Christ and we're one in him. Well, anyway, I didn't mean to get into all of that, but we're almost through and I hadn't even started. So let me see how we can catch up here. All right. Verses 13 and 14. I think this is important. Jesus did not only cancel the debt that sinners carried. He freed us from the condemnation of the law and transferred the debt of Christ's death on the cross to himself. And we're no longer under that debt. That's important. God didn't just wing and say, oh, that's OK. Don't do it again. No, no. He sent his son and he not only knows that we're sinners. He said, I know you can't handle this by yourself, so I'm going to send Jesus. He'll take care of it for you. I mean, getting saved is not a simple thing. It's not an easy thing. It cost God his son. It cost Jesus his life. The false teachers didn't accept any of that. And Acts 15, 1 introduces this heresy when it says some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers, unless you're circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved. That was the heresy. Had many different arms, many different feelers going out in different directions, many different expressions. But basically, it was anti-Christ and plus whatever man can do to help him out. Now, you know, that's appealing to us. We want to help God out. We'd like to help him out. You know, surely we can do something to help him out to save us. You know, can we keep some law, learn some catechism? Can we do something? No. He says, just receive it. He offers it. It's not ours unless we take it. We don't need anything else. The heresy in Colossae and the Lycus Valley was basically that Jesus Christ was not sufficient to meet their needs spiritually. And they were teaching Jesus plus, not just Jesus. The greatest event in human history was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was the one thing that the enemies of Christ could not explain away. The resurrection of Jesus Christ documented and God approved, accepted, and applied the saving grace that Christ paid for on the cross to every believer. First Peter 121 says, through him you believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. It was the resurrection of Jesus Christ that opened the door to salvation. Whosoever will. That's God's offer to us. But if we don't receive it, we don't get it. I preached in Bonn, Germany several years ago and through a translator at a Baptist church in Bonn. And I never had done this before, but I thought, why not? I'm in a foreign country. They'll never see me again. So I pulled out a German mark, 10 mark, and I said, how many of you like to have this? Hands went up everywhere. Lady right up, I said, it's yours. She got up and came and got it. And I gave it to her. She took it and she stood there a minute and then she gave it back to me. I said, no, I don't want it back. It's yours. I gave it to you. And I said, that's exactly what salvation is. God offers salvation, but he's not going to force you to be saved. He wants you to choose to be saved. And he's putting you the ability to make that choice. And Christ paid the debt. All we have to do is receive it. We don't do anything to get saved. And it all made a difference in how we live. This heresy is one that we still face today. Anytime we push Christ over to the side, anytime we profess to believe something that our lives don't validate, we're engaged in heresy. Verse 13 describes us all as dead and trespasses in sin and the uncircumcision of your flesh. We were trapped in the grips of sin and had no spiritual life. But God took the initiative and he drew us to himself and brought us salvation. And that verse ends with, he forgave all our trespasses. That's why Jesus came to earth. He came to earth to provide for our salvation. And his last words on the cross were, it is finished. I mean, it's done. Nothing can be added to what's finished. Eternal life is God's free gift of grace. Jesus not only blotted out the charges against us, but he has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. Now, doing that, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly and triumphed over them. Now, you may slide by that verse and not realize that he nailed it to the cross. Now, what does that mean? Well, historians tell us that one of the procedures in crucifixion was that whoever was being crucified, there would be a list of his crimes printed and they would be nailed to the cross he was crucified on. And if you want to know why this person was being crucified, you could go read them. It was printed there. So Jesus said that he nailed our sins to the cross. That's why he died. He was our substitute. It's beyond me. I can't imagine why a believer would not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. But I even have a harder time trying to understand why they do not believe in substitutionary atonement. It's very clear. He died for us in our behalf. He took our sins. They were nailed to the cross. And when he died, they were done and finished. And we're no longer. And I say to these pastors when I have a chance to communicate with them, your failures do not define you. Your failures don't define you. Truthfully, as we all learn more through failures, we do success. Doesn't mean what you did was right. It just means God has forgiven you in Christ. You belong to Christ. And one of the most startling statements Jesus made is over in Matthew somewhere around Matthew 6, he said a little later in Matthew 10 or 11, he says, my sheep know my voice and I know them. So when a Christian falls, he knows the Lord, but the Lord knows him. That means he knows everything about us. He knows every wart and wrinkle in our lives. He knows every mistake we've ever made. He knows every thought that we should never have thought everything we've done. He knows it all. And he loves us anyway. Now that's grace. And that's what Paul is driving home here. He says, you know, no one is bigger than God's grace. There's nothing God's grace cannot cover. Oh, there are consequences to our sins. You can't escape the consequences. So when you've made a mistake, it's not a question of forgiveness. There are consequences. When I was at Lifeway, we had one of our major managers embezzled about $150,000 from the board, very active in a church in another city, retired while I was there and came to light after he retired. And we reported it to the district attorney. And so he was going to face those charges. His pastor called me and said, look, y'all need to forgive him. I said, hey, we forgive him. It's not forgiveness, but we do forgive him. But there are consequences to what he did. And here's something all y'all need to know if you don't know it. Once something goes to the district attorney, it is no longer your case. It belongs to the district attorney. It doesn't matter. We have a friend that grew up in our church in Oklahoma, and his wife divorced him and claimed that he had abused her and made a good case about it. They arrested him, and they sent charges of abuse. And that went on for years until just about two months ago, the wife, even though she claimed he abused her, would not testify. And she had said she wouldn't testify in court, yet the district attorney would not turn loose of it, even though she had recanted on what her accusation was. The district attorney kept it going for probably five or six years. When you turn something over to the district attorney, it is no longer yours. And I don't know why I got off on that, but it gives us a bad fever. But the thing is, Christ has taken care of all this for us. He nailed our sins to his cross. That means that he bore the penalty of our sins. He didn't just forgive our sins. He paid the debt. It wasn't just God winking and saying, oh, don't do that again. No, no. His son died the worst possible form of death because he loved us and because that was the only way we could have our sins forgiven without paying for them ourselves. You can pay for them yourself. You'll go to hell, but you'll have to pay for them yourself. Jesus paid all that for us. And not only that, he signed the doom of Satan and all his evil rulers and authorities. And he does it by picturing a triumphal parade of a conquering king who comes. When a king won a war, he brought his prisoners, his slaves, and all the loot that he got from the war, and they had a big parade and marched it in. That's what Paul is describing here, that Jesus, in essence, is the king in parade. And he doomed, he destroyed the enemy through his death upon the cross. And he disgraced them publicly. It's a complete victory. And so Paul's question is, since Christ triumphed over Satan, why are we so willing to fall back into his evil schemes? Why do we want something Jesus has already destroyed, that we don't have to have this? The victory over Satan is based upon all that has been done on our behalf through Jesus Christ. We are free and victorious in him. And so he warns these Colossians of the danger of throwing away the liberty they have in Christ. Look, he talks about the circumcision and festivals and days and new moons and all of these things. All these were traditions of the Jewish people, and Christ finished all that. We don't need it anymore. The heresy included festivals and new moons and Sabbath days. Those things were just a shadow, and Christ was the fulfillment. And so that was important for them to realize that they didn't need to keep trying to add things to what Christ has done. He says in verse 18, let no one condemn you by delighting in aesthetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm. Some people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind. It is actually a fact in history that spirit worship and the worship of angels was very prevalent in Colossae. That was part of the heresy, spirit worship and worship of angels. And verse 17 just reminds us that the law is only a shadow, that Jesus Christ is the real substance. So why would we want to live in the shadows when the real deal is here? He is the real deal. The word condemned there in verse 18 means to entice or beguile or to trick you. It's an athletic term, means to disqualify an athlete for a race. He could still be a citizen of a country, but he couldn't participate in the race. And that's why he said, don't let Satan do that to you. You don't belong to this realm and don't be tricked by the man-made doctrines that are being put before you. So verse 19 simply points out that the heretic leaders did not hold on to the head. It says Christ is the head of the church and Paul is still using that allusion. And so he concludes this chapter with the believer's union with Christ's death and resurrection. And he's just amazed that they would be subject to the heresies of false prophets since their lives have already been transformed. If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why would you live if you still belong to the world, he asks? Why do you submit to regulations? Don't handle, don't touch. These regulations were destined to perish because Jesus Christ fully fulfilled all the meaning of those issues. So the heresy basically was an attack upon the Holy Spirit within us, claiming for higher knowledge than the Bible or Christ has. The heresy teachers did not derive their doctrines from God. They were just cleverly devised human schemes and were not God's plan or God's will. And so Paul just takes his stand for the preeminence of Jesus Christ and is exposed to the heresies that are circulating in the church. And again, what you believe ought to make a difference in how you live. That's essentially what he's saying. But again, the focus is on Jesus Christ. He's enough. It's to Jesus that we surrender our lives. And it's a relationship. John talked about that this morning. God wants a relationship with you, not just know the answers to all the theological issues, but he wants a relationship with you, spend time with you. And that's what he is trying to emphasize. So the heresies are still challenges and they still crop up today. One of the great heresies in today is Mormonism. And you say, well, they're nice people. Well, they really are nice people. But did you know their own leaders will tell you they don't even know what they believe? They have revised and changed Mormon doctrines thousands of times by their own readers. I just wrote the forward to a book called A Million Mormons Couldn't Be Wrong or Could Be. But it just chronicles all the changes. And it's amazing. They don't really, their beliefs are not settled. And if you want to be a God in another world, you could be a Mormon because that's what they believe, that all the laws of Mormonism, when you die, you're going to be God. In fact, some of them believe Adam created the world. It's a heresy because it's something more than Jesus. And we need to be aware of that. It comes, you know, we like to picture the devil with a red suit and a pitchfork. No, no. He may be dressed in a three-piece suit like a Wall Street economics leader. He's shrewd. He's smart. And again, I can tell you what Manny Beasley always says, the greatest heresy is the one that sounds the most like the truth. So heresy is not something so off out in left field that nobody would believe it. Heresy sounds good till you get to dig deeper. And Paul is concerned about that as he should be. We're concerned about it as we must be. And the battle is still raging, but the victory is already won. We know who wins. My brother was a professor at Southern Seminary for 20 years. And when he died, they printed up a statement that he made that I can't even tell you what it was because it was so theological. I mean, it was brilliant. And boy, it was just right on target. I told him, and we did two services, one at Southern Seminary and one down in Louisiana where he's buried. They had that saying down front, and I read that. And I said, now, that's what Charlie said. My take on it is I've read the back of the book and we win. It's not very theological, but it's the truth. You know, the battle is real. In fact, Peter describes in chapter 5, verse 8, Satan is a roaring lion. But I'm happy to tell you, because of the cross, he is a paper lion. He has no strength. The strength is on that which we give him. And Christ is in us and we can resist him, stand tall and firm in the faith and love the Lord, preach the gospel and follow him. That's what Paul's talking about. Father, thank you for your love and grace. And thank you for a book that just reminds us that you're everything we need in every situation. And we claim that. And thank you for the relationship that you have given to us and your death on the cross by which we're saved. In Jesus' name, amen.