Discernment Radar Wk. 2

Colossians 2:8-23

Discernment Radar Wk. 2

Chet Phillips

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Well, all right, everybody doing well tonight? I hope we did have a good Fourth of July. It's been two weeks since we've gotten together like this on a Sunday to dig into and talk about Colossians. I just spent the past couple of days, I manage a fireworks store during the Fourth of July and New Year's. And so if you've ever thought, is he kind of a redneck? I hope that clears it up for you.

I am. I love fireworks. I get in there and I get like a little kid. But you can't tell people when you sell fireworks, you can't tell people all the cool things they can do with them. You have to be like, no, don't hold that in your hand. No, don't throw that at your brother, like those kind of things.

But it is fun and has been a busy past couple of weeks. And a week before we didn't gather, we had the opportunity to eat or to eat here with First Baptist West Columbia or to come hang out with Midtown Fellowship or to stay at your house and nap. So hopefully people made good choices there. I think eating here and then napping would have been a good combo, but whatever you want to do. But what we're talking about tonight, we're in Colossians chapter 2.

We've been going verse by verse through Colossians. What we're talking about tonight, we're finishing up. We started talking in Colossians chapter 2 about a discernment radar. And so we'll be in 8 through 23 tonight. And what we're kind of doing is we're finishing up this idea of having a discernment radar that Paul kind of starts off in the beginning of chapter 2. And so really what we said that was is as Christians, as really as humans in the United States, we're bombarded with ways to think and to feel about everything.

So we're told constantly by television how we ought to view romance, life, joy, hope, the purpose of why we're here. We're told through books that we read and through shows that we watch. I mean, constantly. I was watching the end of a show. My wife and I were watching the season finale of a show. And I found myself sitting there wanting one of the main characters to get rich.

There was a job he was trying to work out. And I was wanting him to have it work out really well at the end of the show so that I could just know that this character, who wasn't real, was going to be okay off in Fake World when I was no longer allowed to watch him. And I remember sitting there thinking, like, wanting that to work out. And then I was like, you know, the truth is I don't think that's where life and joy and hope and happiness come from. I don't think that wealth accomplishes that for us. But through this show, I was believing that for this guy.

And I was beginning to think that that would make his life better and he would have joy and hope and life if he had that. And this was like two nights ago, and it just reminded me of the fact that as we watch television, as we read books, we're constantly being sold a worldview. And so what happens is we get indoctrined by everything around us. And that's what Paul is. He's writing to the Colossians. He's saying, look, there's all of this coming in at you, and I want you to have a way to process it.

I want you to have a way to understand what's healthy and helpful and good for you. And so what we talked about in the first seven verses of chapter two is, and we kind of went through it backwards, but Paul says, I want you to be knit together in love. I want you to be one so that you can have the full assurance of Christ, so that you can know what is true in the gospel, so that you're not led astray by plausible arguments. And so what we basically said last time we got together was, we're constantly being attacked by plausible arguments, things that sound smart and good, but we need to be able to submit them to Jesus in the context of community.

And that's actually what our discernment radar is. Does this line up with Jesus? And we do that in the context of community. As we finish out this chapter, we're going to see that Paul, it feels kind of like a father talking with his children in this passage. It's almost like, look, I'm not going to be here with you, and I want you to have a way to process everything that's coming in. I'm not, Paul tells them, he says, you've never seen me face to face.

And so I'm just trying to equip you with a way to understand the world around you, a way for you to know what's good and helpful and true. And the truth is, as we go through, we're going to look today more at what comes into us from the church, what comes into us from what we see and read in Christian literature and books and pastors and teaching and all that. And so in some ways we get constantly attacked by society. And then we'll walk into a bookstore and we'll like run to the Christian living section and feel like we're at home base. It's like, can't get me here. I'm safe.

That sign says Christian. Or like you're flipping through television channels and you'll flip to some sort of a Christian channel. And it's like, no, can't, this, this is going to be good for me. And that may not necessarily be true. And so Paul's going to kind of unpack. And what he does in this passage, we've got a lot of ground to cover.

It's a lot of verses. And Paul's going to bring up a bunch of ideas. And so actually some of this will need to be unpacked in our community groups as we go throughout the rest of the week and weeks as we continue to walk through Colossians. But what basically Paul does is he brings everything into the room. So he's going to bring up all kinds of different teaching and philosophies and, and ways to understand the world.

And he's just going to gather them all together and say, the way you process this is by looking at Jesus. And so he's going to bring up all this stuff, but he's going to point to Jesus. And so that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to pull it all into the room. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time unpacking what all of it is, but we're going to point to Jesus. So I'm going to pray and then we'll, we'll hop in.

God, I pray that you'd help us see you clearly in this. You would give us wisdom as we walk through it. Thank you for your word that you do in it, reveal yourself to us and that you lead us through it. And so we praise you. We thank you. Pray that you'd bless our time that we have together tonight in Jesus name.

Amen. Okay. So chapter two, he just, we just finished reading in verse six. Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. So what we said last week was that we're to be one.

We're to be knit together. We're to know that everything submits to Jesus. And then that way we won't be led astray by plausible arguments. One of the things we said is that that means we have to be one. We have to have the Bible, not just books. We have to actually study God's word to know that, that Jesus, God revealed himself through Jesus coming to earth.

And that then we, we have him revealed to us through scripture. And so for us to know whether or not something lines up and submits to Jesus and lines up with what's true about the gospel, we have to know scripture. We can't just read books. We can't just, because it's a Christian author. We have to even weigh that against scripture. We also said it has to be community, not just crowd.

So we can't just be like, well, I read some online reviews. This is probably pretty good. Like we can't do that. We have to actually have people around us who know us. One of the best things about my community group is that they know me well enough that I can't trick them. I can't try to try to tell them half of a truth and convince them that what I'm pursuing is actually good for me.

They'll be like, no, man, we know you. And we know that you're actually pursuing this for wrong reasons, even though it's an okay thing. And they get to help guide me. They get to help me point me in the right direction. And so we actually have to have people around us who know us. And so then we get established in the faith and we abound in thanksgiving.

So verse eight, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. Okay. So we've said in Colossians that every time we see the word you, it is the plural you. It's the Greek version of y'all. And so every time we see you, it's actually y'all. He's talking to the church, the group of people.

And so when he says, see to it that y'all aren't taken captive. What he's saying is that it's actually a team effort. That the person responsible for you not being led astray is you and all the Christians around you. That we actually have to care enough about each other to point out where we're getting off, where we're chasing after dumb things, where we're believing something that isn't true. And we have to actually care about each other in order to do that. And so it's, it's our job to defend against everything together as a team.

So see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit. So basically philosophy, ways of thinking, ways to process the world, empty deceit, people who are just outright lying, just making stuff up to try to trick us. Philosophy, empty deceit, according to human tradition. So just, this is what we've done forever, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. But he says, he starts gathering all this in the room and he says, everything has to point to Jesus.

We submit to what points to Jesus and nothing else. And so what we're going to see as we go through this is Paul is going to tell us where we actually have the power and the authority in having discernment, what we actually hold everything up against, what we actually hold everything up against so that we know whether or not it's true and helpful and good. Just keep going. For in him, that's Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. It means that God became a human, that fullness is in Jesus and Jesus alone, that wisdom and life and joy and fullness are in Jesus. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority.

So fullness is in Jesus and we're filled up in Jesus. And he's the head of all rule and authority. You know, that's really good news. We have so many rules and authorities in the world right now. In Colossians, what that means is it both means spiritual rulers and authorities and earthly. So Paul in chapter one would say that Jesus is in charge of visible things, invisible things, things on earth, things in heaven.

I did my hands backwards, but you know what I'm talking about. And, and so what, what this actually means for us is that everything submits to Jesus. And so someone has a PhD that has a rule and authority. It's submitted to Jesus. You have a local church leader, rule and authority submitted to Jesus, local government submitted to Jesus. Which means if I stand up here and point you to something other than Jesus, you tell me to shut up and sit down.

Everything submits to Jesus. That's how that works. And so all rule and authority is submitted to him who is the head and he's head over all rule and authority. Verse 11, in him, you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. This just got weird. Um, uh, so Paul's going to start talking about circumcision here.

If you're not familiar with what circumcision is, Matt would love to talk with you about it afterward. Uh, he'd love to walk you through that. Um, okay. So what Paul's going to start talking about circumcision and what, what he's referring to is Jewish religious Acts. So in the old Testament, the way that you knew you were initiated into being a God fear, a God follower, uh, was circumcision.

So all the males were circumcised and that was how they knew that they began to follow the law and how they followed God. And so what happened is after, um, after Jesus came, after he died, after he rose again, and after the church began, it began amongst Jewish people. Uh, contrary to the painting your grandmother has at her house, Jesus was Jewish, not some sort of blonde haired, blue eyed woman with a beard, uh, that you may have seen in a painting. Or if you Google it, there are some pictures of him with dreadlocks, but Jesus was Jewish. So dark hair, dark eyes, Jewish, uh, and Christianity began out of Judaism.

And so what happened was as Christian, Christianity began to grow to those who weren't Jewish, Jewish people would say, yes, you need Jesus. Yes, you need the gospel, but you also need to be Jewish. You need to be a good Jewish person. And your initiation into that is circumcision. And you need to also follow the law. And what Paul is saying is that he says, in him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Paul says that our initiation into following Jesus was done without hands. That is such good news. That means that nobody in this room accomplished salvation on their own. It was done without hands, that he accomplished it for us. What brings us into being Jesus followers, brings us into being rescued by Jesus is not our hard work, our good morals, our intellect, our effort. It's Jesus.

Jesus has already accomplished it for us. And so what it says is that you, verse 12, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. Christianity is us placing faith in God. And faith is not us doing work. It's us admitting that we can't, that we wouldn't accomplish this on our own. So we place our faith.

We say, I'm not going to work this out. I'm not going to accomplish this, but you can on my behalf. And that's what baptism is. It's us saying that Jesus died for our sins, that we died with him, that our sins died with him. And that when he rose again from the grave, we rose with him. And that's all it is, is us publicly proclaiming that the gospel is true for us.

And so some of you in this room may have become Christians, and you actually need to be baptized, which is just a public declaration of, this is true for me because of Jesus. We'll be doing some baptisms again in August. We throw parties when we baptize people, because we want to make much of Jesus, and we want to celebrate, and we love dunking people to point to Jesus. It's great. And so we eat food and celebrate and make a big deal out of it. And so that's what he's saying.

You were baptized with him. You were buried with him, and you've been raised again through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised Jesus from the dead. It's about to get good, y'all. It's one of my favorite sections in Scripture. And you who were dead in your trespasses, trespasses means sin. Every time we've overstepped the bounds, every time we've stepped out of line, every time we've rebelled against God, every time we've loved something more than we've loved him, every time that we've pursued something, that we've placed in higher importance in our life than he is.

Every time we've been greedy and selfish, every time. So we were dead in our trespasses, and those of us outside of Christ in this room are dead in our trespasses, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, meaning that Jesus hadn't brought you in yet, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. All right, we're Americans, so we're familiar with debt, correct? Y'all know what debt is? Okay, it has legal demands. So like China could show up and be like, give us everything now, and they have legal demands on us.

We'd tell them no, because we don't have anything to give them. But we'd say, come get it, we have guns. But we have debt, and Americans have debt, and we accrue debt constantly. I saw a thing after the Olympics that said, it was USA and China talking, and it said, USA, we got more gold medals than you did. And China was like, that's cute. You owe us infinite money.

And then USA said, USA, USA. Just change the subject. But anyway, what it's saying is that we, when we sin, have a record of debt with God. A record of debt when we sin. My wife and I own a house. We rent it from the bank.

It's the correct way to say that, I think. Because if we quit paying our mortgage, we'd find out really quickly who actually owned it when they took it from us. But we have a mortgage. We have an electricity bill. We have a Netflix bill that comes in. We have an internet bill.

And they show up every month. We live in West Columbia, but not in the city of West Columbia. So we have to pay water to the city of West Columbia and sewer to the city of Casey. Seems a bit fishy, but that's how that works. And so we pay two bills on that. And so they show up every month in my mailbox.

And that's debt that we owe, and it has legal demand. And so I got to thinking about this. What if God sent me a bill every month for the record of my debt? Sins of commission, which means when we do something we shouldn't do. Every time that I'm just absolutely just selfish with my wife or just pop off and say something really mean to her just because I'm a jerk and she lives with me. Every time that I should have done something and didn't, when I should have been generous, when I should have cared more about someone else than myself, but I convinced myself that I deserved my money more than they did, that I had earned it, that I had more value than they do, and so I don't need to be generous to them.

Every time I stepped over the bounds, every time I missed the Mark, God kept a record of my debt and sent it to me at the end of the month. My neighbors would wonder why I got a phone book once a month. They'd be like, man, we get a phone book once a year. This cat gets a phone book every month. I'd be like flipping through and be like, wow, Tuesday the 12th was a bad day for me. I must have had to have been around a lot of humans.

So what it says is that we have a record of debt, that we're dead in our trespasses, and that we owe a debt to the God of the universe. And here's what it says. We'll start back in 13. And you who were dead in your trespasses, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Jesus was nailed to the cross.

He became our debt. He became our substitute, that he died in our place for our debt, and in so doing, paid it for us. You see, Jesus is the fullness of deity. See, God became a man and lived a perfect, sinless life. He wouldn't have gotten a bill every month. He had no record of debt.

He had a clean slate. He had not only not committed sin, but he'd done everything he was supposed to do to be right with God. And then, he died to pay our debt. So our God is a judge. We stood before him in his high courtroom, and he looked at us and declared that we were guilty and that we owed an unpayable debt. And then he passed our sentence on to Jesus.

So that Jesus, who owed no debt, paid our guilty sentence. And that we, who owed all the debt, received Jesus' innocence. So that we were declared innocent, and Jesus was declared guilty because he swapped places with us. If you're a Christian in this room, you have no debt when you stand before God. Because Jesus was nailed to the cross, and he became our debt, and he canceled the record of our debt. And we've been set free.

Let me show you why this is such good news. Other than the fact we've been set free, it says this. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. So that when he canceled the record of our debt, he disarmed the rulers and authorities. And so this is both spiritual heavenly rulers and authorities and earthly rulers and authorities. Let's talk about spiritual ones first.

Satan, who is real, he's a created being. He has fallen angels that follow him. They're called demons in scripture. They are spiritual beings that exist. He's called an accuser, which says that he accuses God's people before the throne of God day and night. When Jesus died for our sins, he has nothing left to accuse us of.

So when the enemy shows up and tries to tell you, how on earth can you call yourself a Christian when you did this and this? How on earth can you say that you love Jesus when you've just acted this way? They're disarmed. All that is is an opportunity to say, good point. You're right. Grace is unfathomable that Jesus would pay for that.

Thank you so much for helping me praise his holy name, that I am that messed up, that I did just do that, and that I get to claim the name of Christian because Christ has already paid my debt. The enemy has been disarmed. I used to watch a bunch of movies when I was growing up, like action movies and stuff, and in any pirate movie or Princess Bride has a scene like this, and I think Three Musketeers has a scene like this, but they're always fighting, and then the hero does this wrist thing that I'm not sure actually exists in real life, but they do this, and then the sword shoots up in the air out of their enemy's hand, and then they grab it. And then the bad guy is standing there with no weapon, and he's suddenly in a really bad position because he used to have a weapon, and now he doesn't, and the guy he's fighting has two weapons, which makes it harder because both ends are pointy now, and so it's just a bad day.

That's what Jesus has done for us. What the enemy held against us, what the enemy would hold against us to say that we had fallen short, that we weren't good enough, that we weren't going to make it, that we hadn't earned it, Jesus has disarmed him so that when he says that, we say absolutely. Isn't Jesus good? Absolutely. Didn't he rescue me to the utmost? He's disarmed.

Not only spiritual enemies, but earthly rules and authorities that say you have to do this to know that you have value. You have to do this to get God to love you. You have to accomplish these things to know that you're successful, to know that you have worth. Not at all. Not no heck no. Jesus has already accomplished all that for me.

I've already been given worth freely. I've already been made successful freely. There's nothing that's held against us anymore. And so that's what Paul says here. He says, therefore let no one pass judgment on you. Judgment is where God stands up and he Judges us based off of our merit.

Judgment is when you're in any kind of a competition, there's a certain level of standard or measure that you have to measure up against. And so if you were in a beauty contest, you'd be judged based off of beauty. So if I entered into a beauty contest, I would lose. I would have losing well in hand. Like I wouldn't even get like a participation award. They would just be like, no, stop it.

Go home. No ribbon for you. Because they're basing it off of beauty. If I was in a pie eating contest, that I could actually do. I'm just going to, let's just think about eating pie for a second. But you have to, you have to be based off of the rules that are there.

And so what Paul is saying is that there are no more rules that apply to us that base our acceptance, that our acceptance is based off of, that our merit is based off of. Because Jesus has already brought us in. He's already initiated everything that needs to happen. He's already accomplished it without hands. And so what we're going to look at is three areas that this shows up in the church, that this kind of plays out in how we walk through life as Paul unpacks this. So he says, Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival, or a new moon, or a Sabbath.

These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Okay. If Jesus has already accomplished that for us, and if that's what we hold everything up against, then we aren't judged by legalism. We're set free from it. So what Paul says is, don't let anybody pass judgment on you when it comes to how you behave and how you participate in religious activities.

That they're a shadow of the things to come, and the substance belongs to Christ. And so what that means is, we gather together on Sunday nights. We gather with our community groups, and we walk through life, normal life together, but it's not to get God to love us. It's not to qualify ourselves. It's because of what He's already accomplished. So if you're here tonight to make God love you, that's not how this works.

He's already accomplished it for us. So we do these things because, He says, these are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. We do these things because we enjoy the shadow, because it points us to Jesus. We enjoy the shadow because it outlines Jesus, but the shadow is a means to point us to Jesus. It's not Jesus. It's not the goal.

Religion isn't the goal. Legalism isn't the goal. Adhering to a certain strict set of rules isn't the goal. It's to point us to Jesus. And we get off on this in our thinking. I know my grandparents were, a pastor and wife and my dad, whenever he was sick, they would come home from church, if he was sick and didn't go to church on a Sunday night or something, they would come home and touch the back of the television to see if it was hot.

Because if he was too sick to hang out with the church, he was too sick to watch television, which seems like odd logic. Because you know those people aren't real. Like I can't get them sick through the screen. They're not actually there. Like I think I can watch TV while I'm sick. But that's what they would do.

Because the point was, your adherence to following God in this religious way, but that's not the point. The point is growing closer to Jesus, finding Jesus and realizing that he's already accomplished everything for us. Another way this shows up in the church is Christian karma, which is when things are going well, I just assume I must be doing things right. God must like me because I'm behaving well. And when things aren't going well, I just assume that God must be mad at me. I've got to figure out what I've done wrong.

Jesus. Y'all know everybody likes Jesus, right? That's a thing. Like not many people are like, man, if I met Jesus, I bet we'd fight. Like most people think that Jesus is probably an okay guy. All right?

Jesus was God and he was perfect. Jesus died to cancel the record of our debt that we owed. That's not karma. That's grace. So our walk with God isn't based off of our actions and our effort and our merit.

It's based off of Jesus. So when things are going poorly, it just means things are going poorly. You get to talk to God about it, who's good and who in the cross has already shown you that he's good and that he's for your good. And when things are going great, you get to praise Jesus for it, who's good. But it's not based off of you.

So we're not judged based off of legalism. We enjoy the shadow. We enjoy the things that God's given us that point to him, but we don't base our worth and our value and our salvation off of it. Let no one disqualify you assisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God. We aren't judged by spiritualism. So some of us think that Christianity is about having intense spiritual experiences, that we've got to have these experiences, these moments that we're just swept away or it's not real or we're not actually in.

But that's not how that works because it's not based off of you and your experiences. It's based off of what Jesus has already accomplished. And so what Paul's saying is that there are people that get swept up in worship of angels, which I didn't know this was a thing. I was talking to Jordan about it. He's from Liberty University, and he said that there's a whole section of Christians now that have gotten into very experiential worship, which there's nothing wrong with that. But then they've started talking about like glory clouds and finding angel feathers, and it's like, nope, that's gotten weird.

And biblically angels fly, but there's only one place that we're ever told anybody had feathers, so I'm not even sure that's a thing. Usually they just show up looking like really scary men. The wife of Samson's mama told her husband there's a really awesome man outside, which I'm sure made him feel great. He's like, awesome man, I'll show you an awesome man. Good gosh, you're gracious. So we get caught up in all of this thing, and we'll overly spiritualize things.

And this isn't the case in all churches, but in some areas in the holiness church and in Pentecostalism, they're taught that in order to show that you are truly a believer, you have to speak in tongues. That's not true. That's not in here. Speaking in tongues is, it's a gift given by God, but it's not to show, you don't have to have this experience to prove that you've been rescued. You don't have to have this spiritual moment to prove that Jesus has accomplished this on your behalf. So for us, we want to have spiritual experiences.

We want to speak in tongues. The Bible says not to forbid the speaking in tongues, and so that's what Baptists have done. They forbid it, and it's like, okay, explain to me Romans 14, where it clearly says, don't do that. Let me show you, let's get into Greek syntax. I'm pretty sure it means don't do that. And we want that to happen, but in a way that points to Jesus.

He says that they're not holding fast to the head. And so we have spiritual experiences, yes, and the Holy Spirit moves, yes, but he points to Jesus. Revelation says that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. And so if you want to know if you're in a spirit-filled church, you're talking about Jesus, you're praying Jesus, you're praising Jesus, everybody's pointing to Jesus. That's what the Holy Spirit is about. It's pointing to Jesus, it's making much of Jesus, it's showing us that salvation is in Jesus, it's convicting us of sin, and drawing us close to Jesus.

A way that we do this, overly spiritualized things, is we throw around the phrase, God told me a lot, and we use it like a trump card. So you'll be talking to somebody, and be like, hey man, I really don't think that this relationship you're in is really healthy, there's some obvious signs of some sin areas, and some things y'all need to be working on, it's like, well, God told me we're supposed to be together. It's like, okay, I don't know if that's true, maybe, after you repent, and start lining up with the other things that he said clearly and wrote down. So, we'll say things like, I feel more spiritual when I'm not, I don't feel like I have to read the Bible much, I feel more spiritual when I'm not reading the Bible, I don't feel like I have to be around the church much, be around church family, I just, I get really spiritual in the woods, and it's like, okay, the Holy Spirit's gonna point you to the head, who's Jesus, who's revealed to us clearly in scripture, and the head, is going to grow the body.

It says the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God, as we hold fast to the head. So we don't overly spiritualize things, we won't have spiritual experiences, and so some of us in this room, you want to have that, that's great, but let me tell you something, let me just pastor you a little bit, if you've never had intense spiritual experiences, it doesn't mean you're not a Christian. It doesn't. It's faith in Jesus, and what he's accomplished, and not what your life looks like, and the experiences you've had. It's faith in Jesus, and what he's already done.

We're not judged by spiritualism. Last one he points out, knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God. If with Christ you dived to the elemental spirits of the world, why as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. Referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion, and asceticism, and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

So what Paul's saying is, yeah, we're Christians, and we deny the flesh, which means that we deny ourselves, pick up the cross, and follow Jesus, which, whatever he calls us to, we follow him in. But that doesn't mean we're ascetics, is that how that's said? Asceticism, which is just, you don't indulge any area of the flesh, which means you don't, anything that seems enjoyable, you just don't do. So it's like, your clothes should be uncomfortable, and you should eat gross food. And it's like, well, what does that do? C.S.

Lewis, who's a theologian, he said, yes, deny yourself, but don't pour out the port, and get rid of the cigars. Like, he's like, no, we still get to enjoy things in life, but as they point us to Jesus, and so we don't make it about, what we're partaking in. Like, I can eat a really good steak, but the enjoyment doesn't end on the steak, it points me to the God who invented flavor, and cows, and flavorful cows. And so we're not judged by moralism. We're not judged by our adherence to a set of rules. Here's the thing, with all of these, we love rules.

We do. Everyone thinks they don't. There's a few people that probably know you do. Everybody loves rules. Because if I, like, if I invited you to my house and said, we're going to play a game, first question, okay, how you play, like, what are the rules? And I said, there are no rules, and then I pushed you and said, I win, like, you wouldn't play that game.

If I, like, kicked your shin and yelled Yahtzee, like, we wouldn't play the game, because you're like, no, there's no rules, this is stupid. And so, our whole life is based on rules. Like, the way you woke up this morning, you woke up at a set time, based on a general set of what's acceptable in our society. When you drove down the road, you followed road signs, you dressed appropriately for generally what's acceptable in our society, because our whole life is guided by rules. And when we approach Christianity, we want something that tells us whether we're in or out. We want something that we can measure ourselves by and say, no, I know I'm in, I know I'm here, because I've done this and this, and I don't do these things.

Because I act this way, or I participate in this, and not those things. It's not about that. It's made without hands. It's not your calloused hands that accomplish your salvation. It's Jesus' scarred hands that accomplish it. It's not your hard work, your effort, your religion, your morals, any of it.

Does God love morality? Yeah. Does He want us to repent of sin? Yes. Does He want us to gather as a church family? Yes.

Does He want us to enjoy the shadow that points to the substance? Yes. Does He want us to have spiritual experiences? Yes. Does the Holy Spirit lead us to prophesy, and to speak in tongues, and to move, and change people, and lead us to repentance, and joy in life, and grow us in the body? Yes.

But none of that gets us in. Jesus does. None of that pays our debt. Jesus does. No amount of adherence to rules, and regulations, and experiences brings us in. Jesus does.

And so when it comes to how do we know what's coming in? Is it helpful? Is it good? Is what I'm reading helpful and good? Is what I'm being taught helpful and good? We hold it up to, does it make much of Jesus?

Or is it telling me that I have to accomplish something to bring myself in? Is it pointing me to Jesus, or is it saying that my worth and value comes from my hard work, my effort, my experiences, my life? And so when it comes to our discernment radar, when it comes to how do we vet, how do we know, there's two really helpful questions. Who's the hero? And what's the goal? Who's the hero, and what's the goal?

Because in this story, Jesus is the hero. He's the one who pays the debt. That old school, I'll pay the rent thing, and then you put the bow on your head, and you say, oh, my hero, you know what I'm talking about? Anybody know what I'm talking about? No? Nobody knows what I'm talking about?

I think that's an old SNL from like the 60s. My mom loved it. But anyway, I should have known better than to bring that up. At the end, the guy pays the rent, or he pays the debt, and then the girl says, oh, my hero. And the question is, who's the hero? Who are you pointing me to?

Who's bringing salvation about? Me, or Jesus? Is it my hard work, my effort, my morality, or is it Jesus? And what's the goal? What am I getting out of this? A good marriage, or Jesus?

Is it I'm getting a good life out of it? Is my goal financial success, or is it Jesus? We love to take the American dream to Jesus, and have him rubber stamp it, and he's not into that. The enemy has been disarmed, and that's really good news for us. And so for those of us in this room who feel like Christianity, Christian or non-Christian, you feel like Christianity is about your morality, your effort, your work, your goodness, your value, I'm here to tell you that you have debt that's paid by Jesus, and you have value that's given to you by Jesus, not by you. It's not made by your hands, it's made by his.

And that's really good news, because none of us were actually going to get that accomplished. Jesus is the hero, and Jesus is the goal, and we walk in community pointing each other to Jesus, because he's where life and joy and hope and wisdom are found. Band's going to come back up, we're going to sing, and we're going to make much of Jesus. We're going to praise Jesus, that he has rescued and redeemed us, that he's paid a debt we couldn't pay. And if you're in this room, and you haven't placed your faith in Jesus, I'm here to tell you that you get to, that he pays our debt, not on your own merit, but on his.

You don't have to clean yourself up, he accomplishes that. You don't have to make yourself good, he accomplishes that. And we're not inviting you into religion. We're not inviting you into, come behave like us. We're inviting you to come follow Jesus as we repent, and learn what it looks like to be more like him, and continue to have the gospel change how we live, and how we think, and how we feel. I'm going to pray.

We're going to praise Jesus. God, we thank you. Thank you for your grace. We thank you for your love. We thank you that you did disarm the enemy on our behalf, and that we are made new and right because of you. We thank you that you are the hero, and that you are supreme, you are what we, you are our prize.

Help us to see that, help us to walk that out in community. Thank you that you paid our debt. Pray for those people in this room right now, God, that are still trying to pay their own debt. Pray that you, through your grace, show them they can stop. Show them the futility of paying off debt, and show them that you, when you died, you died for them. That in faith, you can pay their debt and give them life.

We love you, we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.

Discernment Radar Wk. 1

Colossians 2:1-7

Discernment Radar Wk. 1

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Okay, so we're in chapter 2. Here's the thing. Our culture is confused when it comes to a lot of stuff. Like, we're all over the place. I think some of it has to do with we have the internet now, and so we have all this access to information. I saw a thing that said, if you met somebody from 100 years ago, the most difficult thing to explain to them would be that you have a device in your pocket that gives you access to all the information in the world, and you use it to watch videos of cats and to get into arguments with strangers.

So, like, that's what we have access to. We got a phone book was sent to our house the other day, and my wife was like, do you want this? And I was like, no, I know where the internet is. Like, I can get there, so I don't need a phone book. But the truth is, we've got a lot of information, and not a really good way to sort it.

We have a lot of information. We have access to studies. We have access to what scientists are learning. We have access to what great minds in the world think, but we don't have a really good way to filter it. And so I even got to just thinking about simple things. I remember when I was growing up, milk was, like, super good for you.

And then for a while it was like, well, we're not so sure it's good for you. Like, it doesn't help your bones as much as we thought, and it might be the reason you're fat. Like, there was just like, so now you can have skim milk, which is basically white water. It's just lying to you. It's not actually milk. And so, like, there was, and then it came back, and it was like, no, milk's good.

And they had the big advertising. And so I was just, so I just got on Google and started typing in why blank is, and then Google fills it in for you. So I did milk first. Why milk is, and immediately my options are bad for you, because Google fills in related searches. So why milk is bad for you, why milk is good for you, why milk isn't good for you, which is the same as the one above it.

It's just trickier. Why milk is white and why milk is bad for cats. Those are the things you can search when it comes to milk. So I could get on Google, and I could stand up here and give you reasons why milk is bad or why milk is good just as easily. So I started thinking, okay, if milk has this, what else do we have that's pretty baseline stuff that Google's going to help me either fight for or fight against.

The next one is water. Why water is important. Why water is good for you. Why water is so important. Why water is bad for you. Why water is important for life.

At least bad for you is further down the line than on milk. But there's probably some sort of a study that proves that water is bad for you that scientists did. Just for the record, water is not bad for you, unless we're in one of the boil water things that Columbia does constantly, because we can't apparently not need to boil our water on a regular basis. So water, I did eating. So eating, pretty baseline thing.

Why eating is important. Why eating is good. Why eating is important for weight loss. I need to check that one later. Why eating is bad for you. Here to tell you, there's two things you need to stay away from.

It's water and eating. The internet says they're bad for you. I did sleeping, because I thought if people had a problem with eating, why sleeping is good, important to your health, healthy, so important, why sleeping is awesome. The internet agrees. Nobody's making an argument against sleeping. Sleeping is great.

It just got better. As you went, ends in awesome. Nobody's like why sleeping is bad for you. The internet would get rid of them. That person would be wrong. So we have people willing to argue that you shouldn't eat, but nobody's against sleeping.

Then I started doing some things that are really important to me. Bacon. Why bacon is bad for you. Why bacon is healthy. Why bacon is amazing. Why bacon is called bacon.

Why bacon is the best food ever. Which really doesn't even need to be on the internet. If you've had bacon, you know why it's the best food ever. And then I checked another one that really means a lot to me. It's fried chicken. Why fried chicken is bad.

Bad for you. Unhealthy, good for you. But right there in the middle, why fried chicken is racist. And I'll tell you, that made me feel so good about fried chicken. Because you know how people would be like, meat is murder and stuff. This fried chicken is racist.

I'm glad we killed it. People would be like, you shouldn't eat so many chickens. What about a chicken? I'd be like, you want this racist chicken to live? This chicken hated Filipinos. And I'm glad that it died.

It deserved it. Now pass me the hot sauce. So just so you know, fried chicken deserves to die. It's racist. All of us should eat fried chicken and get rid of racism. Because those racist fried chickens.

I guess if you bake it, it's not racist. They only take the racist ones and fry them, I guess. I don't know how that works. But here's the thing. We have access to an inordinate amount of information. We have access to studies and all of this kind of stuff.

And people would back these things up with facts and reasons why. And you'll hear all the time, well, studies have shown or doctors say. And we've got all of this coming in. And we don't have a really good way to sort it out. We have a constant flow of information. But we don't have a good way of filtering what's good and what's bad and what's healthy and what's right.

And I'm not even just talking about, those are just fun examples. I'm not talking about when it just comes to food. But in more important life issues, we are constantly bombarded with ways to think, ways to feel. And we just don't have a good framework in America for how we handle that. How we process what's good and healthy, right, wrong, or otherwise. And so we're in the sixth week of Colossians.

And Paul is writing this book to the Colossian church. And a lot of times Paul would write a letter to a church and he'd have a specific thing that he was mad about. Like that he was angry about or that he was fighting against. In 1 and 2 Corinthians, he's answering specific questions. There are even times where you can tell he's like quoting them in response. Like you said this, let me respond to that.

In the book of Galatians, he's arguing against people that said you needed to be good Jewish people in order to be good Christians. And so Paul doesn't beat around the bush. He starts off with like, hey, my name's Paul. What the heck is wrong with y'all? And like he says some really mean things in the book of Galatians. That's why it's one of my favorite books.

He just goes after them when it comes to adding religion to Jesus. And so in the book of Colossians, he doesn't really do that. He talks about, you can see that he's talking about different concepts. And so it seems as if more he's combating just culture around them and culture inside the church that was slowly pulling them away from Jesus. And so it wasn't a big thing. It wasn't this one specific area, but it was just this constant onslaught.

And so it actually is helpful for us because we're in the same situation. I saw a statistic that said, because studies have shown, that the average American is going to see 2,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day. 2,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day. So thousands of times a day, we're going to be told, you need this to be happy. You need this to be complete. You need this to have fun.

You need seven razors to shave your face and not just four. Loser. Like we're going to be told over and over again that we need something else to make us happy, to make us complete, to fulfill us. I saw a statistic that said the average American watches 34 hours of television a week. Now in some places, that's a full-time job.

Definitely a part-time job. 34 hours a week. That's average. So some people in this room probably watch a little more, some people a little less. But here's the thing.

Each of us for hours a week are having worldview pumped into our brain. How we should think about romance. How we should think about finances. How we should look at success. How we should know what masculinity and femininity is. Like what makes a man a man and what's to be honored in females.

Like we're having that pumped into our brains. And how do we sort out what's helpful, what's right, what's good, and what's not. So that's what Paul is going to point them to. And so what we're working to do for the next two times that we get together is to build a discernment radar. We just want to have something. Discernment just means to make a good decision, to judge rightly.

And so Paul's giving them, he's equipping them in chapter two to discern well, to judge rightly. And so radar just means something that, you know, the little, when you're watching a movie and the little thing's spinning around and they're like watching for an enemy aircraft or something and it's just the little green thing. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, radar, yeah. And then it goes, boop, boop. You know, they can see it or whatever.

That's what we're talking about. So we're talking about we all have some sort of a system to gauge what's coming in and whether it's healthy, good, or right. And so some people in this room, we all have one. You all have some way that you gauge what's coming in. Some of us, super intense, like we're way over here. We believe like stuff our grandmother said and maybe some things Billy Graham said.

And if you're the president of the United States, but it depends on which team you're on. We'll listen to you a little bit. Like that's it. Like we have like a very tight amount of who we'll listen to. And then some people more in the middle. Well, we have some gauge for how we what we believe and what we won't believe.

And then some people just pretty much we don't have a system at all. If it just sounds good. It's like, cool, that's true. And so here's the thing. We've gotten to where we're so used to having information pumped in that we've stopped sorting it. We've stopped thinking through what's good and right.

And the truth is, it's the same way that water can run over a rock and and bore out a channel. And it's happened slowly and it happens over time. But eventually, a river running over rock will dig its own hole. And for some of us, that's what culture is doing to us. We have constant cultural onslaught of information and ways that we should believe. And we don't notice it.

But it's happening slowly and slowly and slowly to where we're drifting and how we think and what we believe. And so that's what we're going to be looking at in Colossians. We'll be in chapter two. And so I'm going to go ahead and start reading. Verse one. For I want you to know.

This is Paul writing to the church. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea. And for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the fullness of assurance and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. And so he says, I want you to know how much I struggle for you, how much I'm fighting for this, that you may be encouraged being knit together in love.

So he says that y'all would be together. Being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom, in Jesus, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible argument. So he says, I want you to be knit together so that you can grow in Christ. And I'm telling you this so people won't delude you, trick you with things that sound smart. That's what he's talking about.

So here's the thing. Paul's going to say that what our discernment radar is, and that's all we're talking about tonight is what it is. The next time we get together, we'll talk specifically about how it functions and how we kind of catch things. But what he's talking about tonight is what it is. And he says this. It's submission to Jesus in the context of community.

So we hold things up to Jesus in the context of community, that we were knit together so that we can grow in the fullness of understanding of Christ. You can go ahead and skip to the Colossians slide. Don't show the one with the other. Yeah, there you go. We'll get to the other one later. There you go.

Yeah. That we would be together and we would submit things to Christ. So here's what happens. We constantly have a lot of viewpoints pumped into our brains. And so I think sometimes as Christians, we like run into the bookstore and we run over to the Christian living section and we feel like we're at home base or something like safe. That sign says Christian.

Or we flip it through the channels and we cut it to like, oh, TV preacher, we're good. He's going to talk about good Bible things. That's not actually always the case. We have to submit everything to Jesus. We have to submit everything to Christ. It's about him.

And so what's the criteria for how we do this? Like what's the criteria for even with Christian things? Like they have cool hair. Is that like what we're shooting for? They have a TV show. So obviously, I know what they're talking about.

That they pastor something. I wish that was true. I wish that if someone was pastoring a church, that meant that they were pointing people to Jesus. But that's not always true. What is it? They seem trustworthy.

Like they wrote a book. They have a doctor in front of their name or a PhD after it. See, a lot of times we have information being sold to us, given to us, we're reading books about, and it actually isn't pointing us to Jesus. And so what Paul says is it's got to be in submission to Christ. It's got to point us to Jesus. It's got to be about him.

So you heard about blood moons? Anybody? Not in a long, some people have heard about blood moons. People, a guy wrote a book about blood moons, because there's going to be blood moons this year, which a blood moon is a way that Jewish people describe a certain type of lunar eclipse, I think, or solar eclipse, but I think it's a lunar eclipse. And so they're freaking out because there are blood moons, which is a type of lunar eclipse, landing on major Jewish holidays. There's a big book written about it.

And it's a Christian book about how we as Christians should be thinking about, worried about blood moons and what they mean for us. Okay, first of all, it's not a super big deal that blood moons land on Jewish holidays, because Jewish holidays follow a lunar calendar. So if there's ever going to be a blood moon, it's going to be on a Jewish holiday, just for the record. So that's how that works. Secondly, the Bible mentions a few things about prophetic, the moon will turn to blood, but it does not camp out there, and it's not a major thing, and it's not super described. And so for us to run off into some sideline small issue that doesn't point us to Jesus is actually not appropriate.

Because Paul says, the understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So if we have any Christian teacher standing up and pointing us to some hidden treasure, some hidden mystery, and it's not in Jesus, they're actually pointing us in the wrong direction. And so I've actually gotten into conversations with people before, Christians who are telling me, oh, but these blood moons. Somebody said, but Jewish scholars say, and I let them just talk for a while, and then I said, yeah, Jewish scholars miss Jesus when they're studying the Old Testament.

And the Old Testament's about Jesus, so I'm glad they found this blood moon stuff, but I'm not sure they're hitting on much when it comes to how we're supposed to grow and know and what we understand to be true. Harold Camping, anybody know who this cat is? He had a radio program. He did Bible math. Numerology, I think is what they call it. It's where you take random Numbers in the Bible, and then you do math, which sounds horrible.

And then he figured out when Jesus was coming back, when the world was going to end, I think is how he did it. And so there was a bunch of, like, billboards. This was a big thing up in Lynchburg, where I was at the time, but, like, it was a thing. And he said the world was going to end at 6 p.m. Which time zone, bro? Like, how's that going to work?

Is it Eastern Standard Time? And some people asked him, because he said that, and people asked him, and he was like, at 6 p.m., wherever you are. Which means that the world's going to end until it hits a time zone and wait. No, no, no, wait for it. Wait for it. There we go.

It doesn't make any sense. And what he's saying is he's found secrets, he's found mysteries, he's found knowledge, he's found understanding, and it's not in Jesus, it's in something else. And so what Paul's going to say is that if anybody comes with mystery, secret, knowledge, wisdom, and they're pointing you to something other than Jesus, it's not right. Now, those examples are a little bit easier, although they are big mainstream Christian things. But how do we do this in a very simple day-to-day basis?

How do we know if the information that our aunt or our best friend just told us over coffee points us to Jesus or doesn't? How do we have a functioning radar for when people are talking to us that we grow in our knowledge of the gospel, that we grow in following Jesus or something else? So I'll give you a few examples. You're a dude, and you're wanting to get married. You have a desire to meet a lady and to get married. And so you're talking to someone about this, and it's like your aunt, and she's super nice and has really cool blue hair, and so she's talking to you about how to meet a lady.

She's Christian, you know, in church, and her advice to you is make yourself a good gift, that God gives good gifts, and so you need to make yourself a good gift. So you need to get your finances in order. You need to have a job. You need to, you know, if you're a little bit overweight, like you need to get healthy. Like her advice is make yourself a good gift, and then God will give you as a good gift to someone else. And that's the advice.

Okay. That's actually not bad advice, but does that point us to Jesus? Is that what the gospel says? That we work on ourselves, that we make ourselves good, and then he owes us? Is that the gospel? That you do good religious things, and then God owes you something?

No. It's that we're completely messed up, that we don't deserve anything, and that in his grace he grants us things. That in his grace he gives us things. So yes, good advice. Take a shower. Yes, use shampoo.

Get a job. Sure. Quit eating things that end in Edo. Absolutely. But God doesn't owe you anything on the back end of that.

You don't earn a spouse from God that way. That's not how that works, and that actually doesn't point you to Jesus. It points you to legalism. It points you to moralism. It points you to hard work, and then he owes you something. And so nice advice, but wisdom, knowledge, mystery wasn't found in it because it didn't point you to Jesus.

Okay. You're a, um, you're female, and you've gone from guy to guy. She's gone from guy to guy, and she's constantly just needs a man to be in relationship with, to have a relationship with, to know that she's okay. She has to have a man, and so this has been a problem. It's kind of derailed some things in her life, and so she's sitting with a counselor, and the counselor tells her, here's what you need. You need to get a job.

You need to be successful. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet, and then you won't need a man. You'll be your own person. That's the counsel that's been given. Okay. Is that good advice?

Does that point us to Jesus, or does that point us to something else? Where, where are we trying to grow? Do we, as we take in advice, as people say these things to us, we have to submit it and see, how does this fit with the gospel? How does this fit with what we know about Jesus? Okay. The truth is, she does need a man, and his name is Jesus.

She's not complete by herself. She doesn't need to be self-sufficient. Getting a job is fine, if she needs to be able to operate on her own, but the goal isn't to be a successful, self-made woman, to be empowered. She actually needs to find rest, and hope, and life, and be a complete person because of Jesus. And then, yeah. Have a man, don't have a man.

Be successful in a job. Don't be successful in a job. But the goal isn't to find something outside of herself on earth to make herself complete, but to find Jesus, to rest in him, to find fulfillment and satisfaction in him, so that what she's looking for in a man, she finds in Jesus. So, yeah. Get a job. Don't have to have a man.

Sure. But realize that hope and life is found in Jesus. All right. Here's one. I've seen this a good bit. Hanging out with some people, Christian people.

Somebody's, like, super depressed. Just, maybe not even depressed isn't the word, but, like, just feels, unworthy feels, like there's no, there's no way God loves me. They have this guilt. And so what I've seen people do is they'll sit around them and start telling them why they're special, why they're good, why they're loved. Here's all the great things about you. And so it could be a spouse, sit down and say, here's why you're wonderful.

Here's why you're good. Here's why you should feel good about yourself. Or it could be a group of guys in, like, a community group, and one of them is just like, man, I just feel, every time I mess up, I mess up so much, and I just don't feel like God could love me. And everybody says, no, you're doing great. You're trying really hard, and you did that nice thing for that kid two months ago. Remember?

Remember that? You pumped up his basketball. Like, God wrote that down, and he loves you. And, like, they do this, like, you should feel good about yourself. And the truth is, that's encouraging. That's nice to say to someone.

But if my standing before God is based off of how I feel about myself and how good I feel like I'm being at the moment, you're not pointing me to Jesus. You're pointing me to me. And as soon as I stop feeling good about myself, I bottom out again because my rest and my hope is in something other than Jesus. And so what they ought to say is, hey, man, be encouraged for these things. This is where Jesus is at work in you. And know this.

You don't have to feel good about yourself. Jesus loves you regardless. And you don't have to have it together. Jesus died for you because you don't and because you never will. And then we get to point to Jesus and we get to grow in the gospel and we get to find riches of knowledge and wisdom and mystery because we submit everything to Jesus. And so we have to have a functioning radar for how we do that so that when someone says something to us, we can gauge, is this gospel?

Does this help me grow closer to Jesus? Are you pointing me to Jesus or is this something else? Are you pointing me to me? Are you pointing me to something outside of me? Do I need a job or a man? Like, what are you pointing me to?

And just for the record, don't point me to a man. I'm not going to take the bait. We have to have something, some way that we functionally walk that out. And so Paul says this. He says he's praying that their hearts would be knit together in love, their hearts be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the fullness of assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this, that no one may delude you with plausible argument.

He says, I want you to be together and I want you to know that everything's found in Jesus. And I'm telling you that so that you won't be led astray by plausible arguments. He doesn't say dumb things. He says stuff that sounds smart. Plausible argument. Yeah, actually sounds pretty good.

That's what leads us astray. Not when someone tells us something blatantly stupid. But when someone says something that sounds pretty good. So he says, I want you to be together. And so that's our discernment radar. Submission to Jesus in the context of community.

That we actually have people around us that we're knit together in love. So that we can reach the fullness, the full assurance of the gospel and that we won't be led astray. So really practically, we're going to land on a few things that we just need to know. Here's what we do. Here's how this happens. Oh, sorry.

I already went to my last page and then I hid it for myself. Anyway, here's practically how this happens. Somebody tells you something, you hear something, you read something, you don't just accept it, you think. Does this line up with the gospel? Does this line up with Jesus? And then when you've thought about it, you take it to a team, you've got a team, and you say, hey, other believers who know me, this is what I think this is saying.

Is this smart? This is what my aunt told me. Didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, although I did take a shower. Like, is this, is this, does this line up with the gospel? And then your teammate gets to say, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?

Like, this doesn't really line up. And this passage says this, and we get a team. We get to do this in community. So practically, just a few things this means for us. It has to be Bible, not just books. We have to have Bible, not just books.

What I mean by that is this, we have to know what this says about Jesus. We can't just read what other people say this says about Jesus. So in college, I used to work out a good bit. I worked out a good bit in high school, playing football, and different times I was trying to put on weight. And I would take supplements like protein powder and creatine and, you know, Explode, some different supplements. And so there's stores at the mall that sell just straight up supplements.

And so, they are to help you put on weight or bulk or whatever. They tell you they do all kinds of things. Some of them, I think, are more helpful than others. But they're supplements to you exercising, to you lifting weights, working out. They're supplements. If somebody asked me, hey man, what kind of workout program are you on?

I was like, I eat creatine three times a day. Yeah, but what kind of workout program? I just told you the creatine plan. It's like, you know, you've got to lift weights and run. There's got to be, that supplements what you're doing. The truth is, books, commentaries, devotionals, they supplement us spending time with Jesus.

Now, here's the thing. One of the pushbacks a lot of times for reading the Bible is a couple of things. One is, I don't know where to start. Start in the book of John. Or if you're walking with us, start in the book of Colossians. Study it along with us.

Read it ahead of us and be studying in it. I don't know where to start. I don't know what Bible version to use. There's a bunch of them. We can have conversations about that. And some people will be like, well, the Bible's confusing.

Yes, sometimes it is. But here's the thing. The disciples who hung out with Jesus all the time were constantly confused by him. Because he'd be like, here's the gospel. It's like a tree. You plant that tree in your garden.

And he would talk and then he'd walk off and they'd be like, I don't know who he's talking about. What kind of tree did he say it was? Like, constantly confused. He would look at them and say just straight up, I'm going to die. They're going to deliver me over into the hands of men. They're going to kill me and three days later, I'm going to come back.

And then it would say that he left and it would be like, none of them knew what he meant, but they didn't ask him. So you know they were having conversations. No, no, John, you ask him. I ain't asking him. I asked him last time. See the look he gave me?

So, here's the thing. Study this. Catch 60% of it. And grow and grow and grow in your understanding of the Bible. You should rather be confused by Jesus than to understand completely the nonsense that someone else tells you. You should rather that happen.

We need to be Bible people. It has to be Bible, then books, then movies. All right. They made the TV show The Bible miniseries. Okay. Then, the show did well.

Then they wrote a book about the show. So they took the Bible and they made a show about it. And then the show did well, so they took the Bible show and wrote a book about it. Which is great, because now we have all our favorite Bible stories in book form, which we already had. And here's the thing. Some of us are, we grow, we learn by watching Bible shows and by reading the Bible stories, Bible show, miniseries, book thing, which it says, based off of the Bible miniseries.

And I wanted to say, that was based off of the Bible. We've got to read the Bible first. We've got to grow in that. And that way, when somebody tells us something, we have a framework for, uh, not, because I read this. And here's the thing. We say the Bible's confusing.

We get to do this in community. So we read the Bible and then we go talk to other people. I was reading this. I think this is what it's saying. Is that what it's saying? Is that what he means here?

The other thing is this, and you need to realize this as a Christian. For those of us in this room who've placed our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God actually dwells in us, which we talked about. Paul says this is a profound mystery, that Christ is in us. The Holy Spirit authored Scripture. So he knows what it means and can teach us.

So there are times, this happens probably about once a week. I'll be reading Scripture and I'll read something and I'll just be like, I don't fully know what that, what you're trying to say, like what I'm supposed to take from that, what that's supposed to mean. It just seems like it's a story or just, and so I'll pray, God, if you want me to understand this, tell me. He wrote it. It'd be like if you had the author of the book with you and you could say, what was this whole thing about? Chapter three was weird.

Like you get to do that and so I just ask, tell me. And then I'll read it again and if I still don't get it, I just assume he didn't want me to know and I move on. I don't let it stress me out. I understand enough of the Bible to stress me out. Like I understand enough of it to know where I ought to be doing and how I ought to be walking and the things that I don't get, I just assume he'll teach me later. We get to do that.

So we get to be Bible first so that we get to know Jesus, so that we know if things submit to him. It has to be community, not just crowd. So Bible, not just books, community, not just the crowd. What I mean by that is don't take, oh yeah, I talked to other Christians because I read a review online. You actually have to, if we're going to process what's coming in and what we're being taught and what we're trying to believe and how we're trying to function, we actually have to have people around us. He says be knit together.

It should almost be awkward if we're doing things on our own because we're so used to being in community. It has to be people that are actually around you, that actually know how you walk in life because the truth is this. The people in my community group know that approval isn't a big thing for me. I don't super struggle with approval. It's more success. I don't care if you like me, I just want you to think I'm awesome.

That's a thing for me. And so I talk to my community group about this. And so when I have a life decision coming in, something I've got to think through, I get to bring them in on it and they already know me so they can actually give me helpful advice. They can see where I'm chasing after wrong things. They can say, well this isn't really something that you're pursuing for wrong reasons because we know you, we've been around you. And you want actual community because you need people to say hard things to you sometimes.

You need people that care enough about you to say real stuff and that know enough about you to be able to do that accurately. So it's got to be community. It's got to be actual people around. Here's the difference between me watching somebody I don't know about to do something stupid and me watching someone I do know about to do something stupid. Someone I don't know. That fool's about to hurt himself.

And then you just watch. You just, I think this is going to be really bad. So I'm watching this. Like this is what I'm doing at the party now. I'm going to watch this guy hurt himself. And then if I know them, I'd be like, hey fool, you about to hurt yourself.

And then you still get to watch. And that honestly is some of the difference between community and just people that are around. You need people around you enough to call you out, to talk to you, to say real things with you and to know you well enough to be able to do that accurately. You need people around you. The thing about blind spots is that you can't see them. And so if you're processing things and there's a giant blind spot in your life and you just don't realize it, you may make some poor decisions or you may not line things up well.

But if you've got people around you, just say, hey, you don't realize this about yourself, but I see this pattern and actually be helpful. And it makes life way easier and way better. That's what Paul says he struggles for. He says, this I'm struggling for, that you'd be knit together in love. I want you to be community. I want you to actually care about each other.

Okay. We've got to study the Bible. We've got to know the Bible. It's got to be Bible, then other things. And then we can actually decide whether those other things are helpful. And it's got to be community, not just a crowd of people, not just people around that we every once in a while sit down and say, hey, here's the situation.

I'm going to give you the gist of it. Is this smart? Because all you did was give them the stuff you're seeing. So of course they'll agree with you most often. But if you've got people around you who say, actually, yeah, but don't you know this is how you're pursuing this and this is what's going on with you?

It's actually more helpful. So it's got to be community, actually people around. We get to have faith. So don't freak out. We get to have faith. I've gotten to go out of the country a couple of times.

Not a lot, and I hope to do it some more, but it's always funny to me when you're leaving the country and coming back into the country because there's customs. And customs is like when you come in or out of the country as a foreign person or coming back into the country and they have to check your passport and they ask you questions and stuff. And it takes a super long time to walk through. But like I've been in four and you walk up and they're like, are you checking anything into the country that you should not bring with you? Like do you have anything that is illegal? They just ask you.

And you're like, nope. No ma'am, I am not. And then she looks at you and she's like, checks out. And like they don't check at all. Like they don't look at your bags. They just ask you.

And you're like, okay. Like I could have smuggled all kinds of things in here. And so some of us, that's been our radar. Is this bad for me? No. Seems legit.

Like that's how, that's our customs process. This person said it with their mouth so it's got to be true. Read it on the internet. Like that commercial with that guy. It's like everything on the internet is true and he shows up and she's like, he's French. And he's like, oh yeah, bonjour.

Like that. Like that's our, that's our process. We just believe it because we read it or because someone said it. And then, all right, so, but don't, don't freak out. We get to have faith and so sometimes you're somewhere and they've got like the drug dogs. So it's like an armed officer.

Got one on the side. Maybe he's holding one. He's got a, an intense looking dog. Like a scary, pointy ear. No nonsense. Like you don't see that dog and think, I need to pat his head.

Like, you know, that dog's got a job to do. He means business. He's got this look that like scares children and stuff like that. Like he's, he's in the zone and, and they're looking for drugs and it's a serious thing. What I am not saying, when we build a discernment radar, I am not telling you to go live in the woods and be afraid of everything or to start a website where you just look for stuff to argue with. That's not, that's not what we're talking about.

Fruit beagles. That's what we want. When you're coming back into the country, they have fruit beagles, which is a beagle, still an officer, walking around with a dog that is smelling for fruit because it's actually not good for us to go to another country and bring fruit back to the U.S. because it can have bugs that we're not ready for. And it can actually, like, you could bring an apple back and it could decimate crops here. And so, that's what we want. We want something that, we're not always having to be super intense, we're not always having to start pick fights with people, but we have some process for how we bring things in, how we know to check whether or not something's good.

We have the ability to submit it to Jesus in the context of community. I always like it when the fruit beagle comes by because I know he's being helpful. You do look at him and think, I can pet this dog if I wanted to. Like, he's still got a job to do but he's not crazy and I'm never worried because why would I have fruit? Now, if they bring a bacon beagle by, I might be in trouble but it's like, I never have fruit. We're okay.

Me and you, we're okay beagle. And so, we just, we want to have some process. So, you just need to be willing to know that we have to have a process and we get to have faith. Here's the thing, we're not going to always get this right. We're going to believe some stupid things. We're going to not believe some good things.

And we get to walk that out in the context of community and we get to constantly push towards finding hope and depth and wisdom and knowledge in Jesus. And here's how he lands this. This is what he says. We'll start in verse 5. For though I'm absent in body, yet I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, so therefore meaning all this stuff we just talked about, that you would be knit together, you'd have a community, you'd submit everything to Jesus.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. We get to rest. We get to have joy. We get to be in community and we get to talk about real stuff and we get to have joy. We get to abound in thanksgiving. We get to, therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith.

Here's the thing. All of us received Christ Jesus in the same way. We were messed up. We had fallen short. We were not going to fix our lives or get it together. And Jesus came and lived perfectly on our behalf and died for our mistakes, died for our rebellion, died for our errors, died for our inability to fix the situation.

And then he rose again three days later so that he could fix the problem for us. So that he could take care of our errors, so he could take care of our sin, our rebellion, our brokenness, and we place our faith in him. Not our good works, not our intelligence, our faith. That he was good on our behalf and that he gives us life. That he paid for our sins. He paid our penalty and he gives us life.

That's how we receive Christ. That's how we're rooted in him. That's how we're built up. Not in our ability to work really hard. Not in our ability to have a really good discernment radar and not do stupid things. That we get to follow him.

Yeah, we get to have that. We get to follow him in faith. That he's good and that he'll teach us and that he'll train us and that ultimately it's up to him, not up to us. And then we get to do this in community and we get to abound in thanksgiving. We get to have joy in relationship with each other as we try to follow Jesus and we try to point each other to Jesus. That's us.

That's what we get to do. That's our discernment radar. Submission to Jesus in the context of community. Band's going to come back up and we're going to sing. We're going to abound in thanksgiving. We're going to make much of Jesus.

And then we get together next time, not next week, but next time. We're going to talk about specifically things that we need to be on guard for. Specifically why we have a discernment radar. What it is we need to be looking for. What it is we need to be in defense of. But ultimately we get to rest in Jesus and our faith is in him not in anything else.

I'm going to pray and then we're going to sing. God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you that we get to be built up in our faith in you. That in you is found knowledge and wisdom and life. So we praise you and we thank you.

We ask, Lord, that we would submit things to you. That we would be willing to test what comes in. Know what's good and keep it. Know what's bad and get rid of it. We ask for you to lead us in this. Give us community.

Help us to grow closer to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.