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The Full Life |10.20.24| The Good Life Pt.2
October 20, 2024
Colossians 2:6-14
Pastor Erik Anderson
Well, I'm gonna invite you to open up your scriptures and if you need, you can use the black seat back Bible in the seat in front of you. Reach underneath, there's a little compartment down there and it's the black Bible. You can grab that or if you have it on your phone or if you brought your own Bible, that is fine too. We're gonna be in the book of Colossians. It's right toward the end and I don't have the page number off the top of my head. So somebody finds it in that black seat back Bible, holler out the page number for me.
(...)
155 is what I hear. 155 toward the end, it'll be page 155. We're gonna be reading from Colossians, which is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Colossae. We're gonna be in chapter two, beginning in verse six. Chapter two, verse six, and this is what we hear.
(...)
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord continued to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also, you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh and the circumcision of Christ. When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith and the power of God who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. This is the word of the Lord.(...) Thanks be to God. I don't know if you have this same experience that I do, but almost every conversation that I have, if I shake somebody's hand or say hello, I say,
(...)
"Hey, I'm gonna get a question. "I almost always get the same answer." And it's busy. Do you get that answer too? And I find myself giving that same answer. We're in the process of moving and all that kind of stuff. And our life feels pretty hectic. So anytime anybody asks us how we're doing, I'm usually say busy or stressed. That's usually how I answer. It feels like we just, there's not enough time for everything. And everyone is like that. In fact, sometimes you can even get into awkward conversations, where you're trying to like almost outdo each other
(...)
and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm busy." And they go, "Oh man, I know about business. "I got this thing, that thing, the other thing." And before you know it, they're listing off their whole week, everything that they have to do. They feel stressed. In our society, business is almost like a badge of honor. It's something that we wear that when we talk to people, we want them to know and experience how stressed we feel about our own lives. And so we talk about all the things that we have going on and all the different things that are happening. We try to compete even for who's, even for who's busiest. And even if we aren't busy like with work or things to do, our minds are also really busy.(...) I don't know if you've noticed this and when you have conversations, but people bring up a lot of weird stuff that they find on social media, or they bring up stuff that they're outraged about. Stuff in politics is where, just days away from an election of other cultural fears that they might have. People's minds are busy, even if their hands are busy.(...) And as I've had conversations with people, it just seems like everyone's lives are so full. Full of thoughts are full of activities. They're taking their kid from this activity, that activity, they're getting their kid tutored, and they're doing this and doing that. They're trying to do all these things, trying to work and trying to make ends meet, trying to make sure that their kids are successful while also being upset about whatever this politician or that politician said. They're just busy. There's lots of thinking going on, and life feels full, but ultimately for a lot of people, it feels unfulfilling as well.(...) It feels full, it feels busy, but it's unfulfilling.
(...)
That even though we have all this busyness, we have all these thoughts, we have all this stress, it doesn't seem like it's producing good things in our life.
(...)
And scripture would actually just call this busyness, it calls it emptiness.
(...)
And this is what we see here in what Paul writes in Colossians chapter two and verse eight. He says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit." He's writing to this church in Colossae. He's not writing to a particular person, but actually to a whole church, and probably to a series of churches. He probably meant this letter to be sent around to lots of different churches. And the churches in that area, they were influenced. They spoke a Greek and they were influenced by the Greek culture, which was very busy thinking about the nature of reality. Very busy thinking about philosophy. The biggest philosophers that you heard of, Plato, Aristotle, are all Greek philosophers.(...) And this was in the water. And there was some sort of false teaching, maybe some false ideas out there in the culture, or maybe even in the churches themselves, that Paul is warning against. Make sure that no one can take you captive through this kind of philosophy and empty deceit. He calls it empty. Specifically, he says that it's according to human tradition.(...) Paul's talking about how these people's minds were busy trying to understand the reality of the world. They were busy trying to understand all the things going on around them, what they were seeing, if that was real or if it was actually just a projection. Plato was having conversations about, are we living in a matrix? He was having those like 3,000 years ago. He was like, is this real or is it not real? How do we know? How can we know? Is it by what we can see and touch, or the breakdown of the world? And Paul is looking at this and saying, "Hey,(...) don't get carried away with that. "Don't be captive with all this stuff "'cause it's all based on human tradition. "It's humans trying to wrap their minds "around how the world operates. "And if you went to college and you took a philosophy class, "you just know how ridiculous it can be." It's those questions that they're like, what if your blue isn't my blue? You know what I mean? It's like not deep, right? It's just empty. And it really doesn't mean anything. It doesn't really connect to real life. And he's saying, "Don't be caught up by this. "Don't be caught up by spinning your wheels." And maybe we fast forward to 2024. Maybe he might say something like, "Hey, don't be caught up in useless conspiracy theories. "Don't be caught up in all of the busyness of thinking "that you know exactly how the world actually operates "and you need to make sure that you share it." Or you somehow have some sort of secret knowledge that you can unlock the world for other people. Don't be captivated by this. Don't be worried about this. Don't busy yourself with this thinking because it's according to human tradition. It's humans trying to understand through a human way what's going on. And then he says, "It's according to the elemental spirits."
(...)
And this needs to take some unpacking because it's a weird phrase. So I've never heard that before. And I've read it, I've read this passage hundreds of times. And I never paused and thought, what in the world does that even mean? And what he's talking about here, that word elemental is also the word like elementary,(...) like the basic, like the building blocks of matter elements.(...) It's the ABCs. And Paul is saying that there are actually these spirits, these spiritual beings that are trying to distract people by being too worried about the basic things of life, what makes up the world. For Paul, for the scripture, they understood that sometimes behind some ways of thinking there are actually spiritual powers behind them. And sometimes there are even spiritual beings that can distract humans by making them think about certain things and have certain ways of thinking. That's what he's saying here. It's a basic, it goes back to that like childish or useless way of thinking. The elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. Paul's looking at these false teachers and he sees that they're trying to navigate life and spirituality from a human, from a natural perspective.
(...)
They were not considering God's revelation. They were not considering who God is as Christ shows him.(...) And Paul says, "Instead of this," he continues in verse nine, "in him," that is in Jesus, "the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. "That in Jesus, all of God, "the creator and sustainer of all things," earlier in Colossians, Paul says that God is in all and through all, that the one who sustains all life is seen fully, the fullness of the creator is in Jesus. That in Jesus, the fullness of God is in a body, a human body. That Jesus is this master human, this ultimate human, this superman kind of image,(...) that we get to follow and learn how to be human. That Jesus is the fullness of all things that God is and he shows us who God is, because Jesus is God. Jesus is the fullness of everything that the universe is meant to be and is meant to point towards. It's all in Jesus that he's the only one that can show us the revelation of God. He is the only one that can get us to truth.(...) Philosophy and empty deceit and all this busy way of thinking, this doesn't get us anywhere, but Jesus gets us somewhere to a good life, to a full life. And then Paul says, "And you have come to fullness in him "that you can follow him as Lord, "that he is the head and the ruler of every authority, "that he stands above and beyond all things spiritual "and physical and you can follow him, you can know him. "You can be part of Jesus's family, "you can be part of Jesus and you can have your fullness." This is where we find our meaning, because we know that if we try to find our meaning in other places, we turn up empty.(...) If we try to find our meaning in money, in our career, in our ambition to be successful in our family, or in our stuff, ultimately we wind up empty.
(...)
If we put so much stock in making sure that we're getting all the money that we can to have all the fun toys that we can,(...) natural disasters happen. There were two hurricanes that blew through and destroyed the southeast. You can lose everything that quick.(...) If you spend all of your time worrying and thinking about this,
(...)
you can lose it so fast. Your job, your career, your ambition, that thing gets lost. If you're so concerned about your kids being successful and doing well and they decide to make poor choices and derail their lives, that thing can get lost.(...) When you try to find fulfillment(...) in the things of this world, they come up empty. Whether it's your family, because families get broken or people die.(...) If it's your stuff, natural disasters happen or you can lose everything.
(...)
You lose, you know, jobs come and go. And this is why we find ourselves working so hard to try to manipulate and lie and cheat and steal in order to have some sort of security blanket, in order to find some sort of meaning, but ultimately we're failed by those things. And we're ultimately failed by ourselves.
(...)
We fail ourselves and this pressure is suffocating
(...)
and inevitably we'll feel empty. We'll feel without security, which is why we have to find meaning and we have to find fullness from something outside of us, not within us, but something that does not go away. Something that does not perish. Something that does not change.(...) And we're told that Jesus is the only one who fits that description.(...) Jesus is the only one who never changes. Jesus is the only one who rules forever. He's the only one that we can't lose.
(...)
Paul continues, he says, "In him also you were circumcised "with a spiritual circumcision "by putting off the body of the flesh "and the circumcision of Christ.(...) "When you were buried with him in baptism, "you were also raised with him through faith "and the power of God who raised him from the dead." Paul points here, when he talks about this empty deceit versus fullness of life, he points to the proof of that in baptism.(...) Baptism is how you can have fullness of life. Baptism is how you can have a good, full life. And it's not because of something you do, but it's actually because of Jesus, that you are buried with him in baptism and that you are raised to life with him. And other places in scripture,
(...)
we're told that when you're baptized, you die. Your old self dies, it goes away, and you are brought up into a new life, which is in fact the life of Jesus.
(...)
So it's not only your life with Jesus that you have, but you actually have Jesus's life. He gives you his very life.
(...)
He is outside of us and he bestows upon us the gift of life, the gift of this new life.(...) When we rely on our own power, our own authority to be fulfilled, we come up empty, but the joy and the good news that the gift of Jesus for us is to live his life with him, that he is the ultimate human and he teaches us how to be fully human.(...) And in baptism, he gives us his life. And we die, we're brought back to life with him.(...) And Paul uses this metaphor of circumcision. And I know it's like an uncomfortable thing, so we're not gonna belabor the point. But it's helpful for us to think about this, how circumcision and baptism are connected or how we can learn about baptism through circumcision. In the Jewish world, in the Israelite world, a baby was circumcised on the eighth day and it indicated that that child was part of God's family, that they were different from the other people around them. And they were actually physically different from the other people around them by way of being circumcised this particular way. And so just like when you are born into a family, you don't get to choose your family, do you?(...) And you don't get to decide if you are born or not.(...) No, the ideal thing that happens is that a husband and a wife love each other and out of their love for each other, a child is born.(...) That's the ideal way that it's supposed to happen. You did not get to decide if you were born.(...) And also as a child, you did not get to decide if you were part of God's family. You were circumcised, you were brought into God's family because of your parents. God made his promise to you, not because of anything you did, but it's actually was a promise that he made to you.(...) And so just like that with baptism, you are brought into the family of faith, not by your own will, but by God's will. It's actually God's love for us that then creates new life. Just as a husband and a wife's love for each other creates life in the natural way. And this happens even as an adult. So even as an adult, if you're baptized, it is still not really your choice. And this is why, because somebody else had to tell you about Jesus.
(...)
You did not come up with Jesus on your own. You do not decide on your own one day, hey, you know what would be great? If there's some Messiah who died for me and wants to give me his life. That's not a natural way of thinking. No one naturally comes to that conclusion. Instead, God had to send somebody to you.(...) God had to tell you through somebody else that Jesus is the Christ.(...) And so it's not even a decision that you really make on your own because God assists you in the same way that you are born naturally, you are born spiritually. Out of God's love for you, he sends someone to you. Oftentimes, that's through a Sunday school teacher, through a family member, through a friend, through a preacher, whatever that might be. Somebody else, though, outside of you has to tell you about Jesus in order for you to have new life in him.
(...)
And also, just as in circumcision, your body is fundamentally changed. There's a mark on your body that is different now. In baptism, you are spiritually fundamentally changed. And again, it's not by your doing. It's by someone else doing it to you.(...) Somebody else baptizes you.(...) God uses somebody to preach the gospel to you. God uses somebody to baptize you. It is from somebody else that you receive the gifts of God. It's done for you without your work, without your effort. It's simply a gift.
(...)
And when we try to attempt to take our life for ourselves,(...) we come up empty.
(...)
But when we realize that actually all of life is done for us and is given to us by God, it feels quite full.
(...)
It feels quite joyful.(...) And so when we back up to verses six and seven, this is what Paul writes.
(...)
"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord,(...) "continue to live your lives in him."(...) Notice he did not say, "As you therefore have sought Christ Jesus."(...) "As you therefore have decided for Christ Jesus." Not what it says, "As you have received him." This is the reality that we have received Jesus. We have not found him. We have not searched for him. He is the one who has found us. He is the one who has hunted us down. He has sought us up. We are the ones who are being pursued. We do not pursue Christ. He pursues us.(...) And we receive him as a gift.(...) And then we're encouraged to continue to live your lives in him, rooted in him and built up in him, established in the faith just as you were taught. Again, you have to be taught by somebody else. Abounding in Thanksgiving for Paul. All of Paul's writing can be summed up that life is a gift in Jesus Christ. And all of our lives is lived as a response to what God has done. And that primary response is with Thanksgiving.(...) With joy for what he has done for us.
(...)
Thanksgiving is the fundamental reality of our lives. The full life is a thankful life. Because we have received a gift. And everything good comes from God. It comes from outside of ourselves.
(...)
And so we respond to him with Thanksgiving.(...) We respond to him with praise and with joy because we have received Jesus.
(...)
We have not sought him. He has sought us. We have not hunted him down. He has hunted us down.(...) And we get to receive a good life. We get to receive a full life. We get to receive all the gifts of Jesus Christ and they are abundant. Paul says, "Greater than we could even imagine."
(...)
Now our life may not be full of empty deceit. Our lives may not be full of money and things and family and all of these things. Our lives may not be full of philosophy and human tradition, but we are wrapping our hands around understanding everything that goes on in our world. Our life will not be full of that, but our life will be full of Jesus.(...) Because Jesus has given himself to you.
(...)
Jesus has given himself for you and for your good. That you may have a full, good and abundant life. My prayer for you is to receive Jesus today.
(...)
Receive a good, full and abundant life.
(...)
And enjoy an enjoyment of Jesus.(...) Amen.
(...)
We're gonna take some time now.(...) The music team's gonna come up. They'll play a little bit of music. But we're gonna take some time to reflect.(...) And we have two reflection questions in response to scripture that we oftentimes go through. And it's these two questions. What is God saying to me? So we have heard the scripture now. We've heard it expanded. What is that thing that the Holy Spirit has brought up in your heart and mind? What is the thing that really hooked on to you as you heard the word? And what is God inviting you to do in response to that? What is Jesus asking you to do in obedience in response to what you have heard? So let's take a few moments now and do that.
Pastor Erik Anderson
Well, I'm gonna invite you to open up your scriptures and if you need, you can use the black seat back Bible in the seat in front of you. Reach underneath, there's a little compartment down there and it's the black Bible. You can grab that or if you have it on your phone or if you brought your own Bible, that is fine too. We're gonna be in the book of Colossians. It's right toward the end and I don't have the page number off the top of my head. So somebody finds it in that black seat back Bible, holler out the page number for me.
(...)
155 is what I hear. 155 toward the end, it'll be page 155. We're gonna be reading from Colossians, which is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Colossae. We're gonna be in chapter two, beginning in verse six. Chapter two, verse six, and this is what we hear.
(...)
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord continued to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also, you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh and the circumcision of Christ. When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith and the power of God who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. This is the word of the Lord.(...) Thanks be to God. I don't know if you have this same experience that I do, but almost every conversation that I have, if I shake somebody's hand or say hello, I say,
(...)
"Hey, I'm gonna get a question. "I almost always get the same answer." And it's busy. Do you get that answer too? And I find myself giving that same answer. We're in the process of moving and all that kind of stuff. And our life feels pretty hectic. So anytime anybody asks us how we're doing, I'm usually say busy or stressed. That's usually how I answer. It feels like we just, there's not enough time for everything. And everyone is like that. In fact, sometimes you can even get into awkward conversations, where you're trying to like almost outdo each other
(...)
and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm busy." And they go, "Oh man, I know about business. "I got this thing, that thing, the other thing." And before you know it, they're listing off their whole week, everything that they have to do. They feel stressed. In our society, business is almost like a badge of honor. It's something that we wear that when we talk to people, we want them to know and experience how stressed we feel about our own lives. And so we talk about all the things that we have going on and all the different things that are happening. We try to compete even for who's, even for who's busiest. And even if we aren't busy like with work or things to do, our minds are also really busy.(...) I don't know if you've noticed this and when you have conversations, but people bring up a lot of weird stuff that they find on social media, or they bring up stuff that they're outraged about. Stuff in politics is where, just days away from an election of other cultural fears that they might have. People's minds are busy, even if their hands are busy.(...) And as I've had conversations with people, it just seems like everyone's lives are so full. Full of thoughts are full of activities. They're taking their kid from this activity, that activity, they're getting their kid tutored, and they're doing this and doing that. They're trying to do all these things, trying to work and trying to make ends meet, trying to make sure that their kids are successful while also being upset about whatever this politician or that politician said. They're just busy. There's lots of thinking going on, and life feels full, but ultimately for a lot of people, it feels unfulfilling as well.(...) It feels full, it feels busy, but it's unfulfilling.
(...)
That even though we have all this busyness, we have all these thoughts, we have all this stress, it doesn't seem like it's producing good things in our life.
(...)
And scripture would actually just call this busyness, it calls it emptiness.
(...)
And this is what we see here in what Paul writes in Colossians chapter two and verse eight. He says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit." He's writing to this church in Colossae. He's not writing to a particular person, but actually to a whole church, and probably to a series of churches. He probably meant this letter to be sent around to lots of different churches. And the churches in that area, they were influenced. They spoke a Greek and they were influenced by the Greek culture, which was very busy thinking about the nature of reality. Very busy thinking about philosophy. The biggest philosophers that you heard of, Plato, Aristotle, are all Greek philosophers.(...) And this was in the water. And there was some sort of false teaching, maybe some false ideas out there in the culture, or maybe even in the churches themselves, that Paul is warning against. Make sure that no one can take you captive through this kind of philosophy and empty deceit. He calls it empty. Specifically, he says that it's according to human tradition.(...) Paul's talking about how these people's minds were busy trying to understand the reality of the world. They were busy trying to understand all the things going on around them, what they were seeing, if that was real or if it was actually just a projection. Plato was having conversations about, are we living in a matrix? He was having those like 3,000 years ago. He was like, is this real or is it not real? How do we know? How can we know? Is it by what we can see and touch, or the breakdown of the world? And Paul is looking at this and saying, "Hey,(...) don't get carried away with that. "Don't be captive with all this stuff "'cause it's all based on human tradition. "It's humans trying to wrap their minds "around how the world operates. "And if you went to college and you took a philosophy class, "you just know how ridiculous it can be." It's those questions that they're like, what if your blue isn't my blue? You know what I mean? It's like not deep, right? It's just empty. And it really doesn't mean anything. It doesn't really connect to real life. And he's saying, "Don't be caught up by this. "Don't be caught up by spinning your wheels." And maybe we fast forward to 2024. Maybe he might say something like, "Hey, don't be caught up in useless conspiracy theories. "Don't be caught up in all of the busyness of thinking "that you know exactly how the world actually operates "and you need to make sure that you share it." Or you somehow have some sort of secret knowledge that you can unlock the world for other people. Don't be captivated by this. Don't be worried about this. Don't busy yourself with this thinking because it's according to human tradition. It's humans trying to understand through a human way what's going on. And then he says, "It's according to the elemental spirits."
(...)
And this needs to take some unpacking because it's a weird phrase. So I've never heard that before. And I've read it, I've read this passage hundreds of times. And I never paused and thought, what in the world does that even mean? And what he's talking about here, that word elemental is also the word like elementary,(...) like the basic, like the building blocks of matter elements.(...) It's the ABCs. And Paul is saying that there are actually these spirits, these spiritual beings that are trying to distract people by being too worried about the basic things of life, what makes up the world. For Paul, for the scripture, they understood that sometimes behind some ways of thinking there are actually spiritual powers behind them. And sometimes there are even spiritual beings that can distract humans by making them think about certain things and have certain ways of thinking. That's what he's saying here. It's a basic, it goes back to that like childish or useless way of thinking. The elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. Paul's looking at these false teachers and he sees that they're trying to navigate life and spirituality from a human, from a natural perspective.
(...)
They were not considering God's revelation. They were not considering who God is as Christ shows him.(...) And Paul says, "Instead of this," he continues in verse nine, "in him," that is in Jesus, "the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. "That in Jesus, all of God, "the creator and sustainer of all things," earlier in Colossians, Paul says that God is in all and through all, that the one who sustains all life is seen fully, the fullness of the creator is in Jesus. That in Jesus, the fullness of God is in a body, a human body. That Jesus is this master human, this ultimate human, this superman kind of image,(...) that we get to follow and learn how to be human. That Jesus is the fullness of all things that God is and he shows us who God is, because Jesus is God. Jesus is the fullness of everything that the universe is meant to be and is meant to point towards. It's all in Jesus that he's the only one that can show us the revelation of God. He is the only one that can get us to truth.(...) Philosophy and empty deceit and all this busy way of thinking, this doesn't get us anywhere, but Jesus gets us somewhere to a good life, to a full life. And then Paul says, "And you have come to fullness in him "that you can follow him as Lord, "that he is the head and the ruler of every authority, "that he stands above and beyond all things spiritual "and physical and you can follow him, you can know him. "You can be part of Jesus's family, "you can be part of Jesus and you can have your fullness." This is where we find our meaning, because we know that if we try to find our meaning in other places, we turn up empty.(...) If we try to find our meaning in money, in our career, in our ambition to be successful in our family, or in our stuff, ultimately we wind up empty.
(...)
If we put so much stock in making sure that we're getting all the money that we can to have all the fun toys that we can,(...) natural disasters happen. There were two hurricanes that blew through and destroyed the southeast. You can lose everything that quick.(...) If you spend all of your time worrying and thinking about this,
(...)
you can lose it so fast. Your job, your career, your ambition, that thing gets lost. If you're so concerned about your kids being successful and doing well and they decide to make poor choices and derail their lives, that thing can get lost.(...) When you try to find fulfillment(...) in the things of this world, they come up empty. Whether it's your family, because families get broken or people die.(...) If it's your stuff, natural disasters happen or you can lose everything.
(...)
You lose, you know, jobs come and go. And this is why we find ourselves working so hard to try to manipulate and lie and cheat and steal in order to have some sort of security blanket, in order to find some sort of meaning, but ultimately we're failed by those things. And we're ultimately failed by ourselves.
(...)
We fail ourselves and this pressure is suffocating
(...)
and inevitably we'll feel empty. We'll feel without security, which is why we have to find meaning and we have to find fullness from something outside of us, not within us, but something that does not go away. Something that does not perish. Something that does not change.(...) And we're told that Jesus is the only one who fits that description.(...) Jesus is the only one who never changes. Jesus is the only one who rules forever. He's the only one that we can't lose.
(...)
Paul continues, he says, "In him also you were circumcised "with a spiritual circumcision "by putting off the body of the flesh "and the circumcision of Christ.(...) "When you were buried with him in baptism, "you were also raised with him through faith "and the power of God who raised him from the dead." Paul points here, when he talks about this empty deceit versus fullness of life, he points to the proof of that in baptism.(...) Baptism is how you can have fullness of life. Baptism is how you can have a good, full life. And it's not because of something you do, but it's actually because of Jesus, that you are buried with him in baptism and that you are raised to life with him. And other places in scripture,
(...)
we're told that when you're baptized, you die. Your old self dies, it goes away, and you are brought up into a new life, which is in fact the life of Jesus.
(...)
So it's not only your life with Jesus that you have, but you actually have Jesus's life. He gives you his very life.
(...)
He is outside of us and he bestows upon us the gift of life, the gift of this new life.(...) When we rely on our own power, our own authority to be fulfilled, we come up empty, but the joy and the good news that the gift of Jesus for us is to live his life with him, that he is the ultimate human and he teaches us how to be fully human.(...) And in baptism, he gives us his life. And we die, we're brought back to life with him.(...) And Paul uses this metaphor of circumcision. And I know it's like an uncomfortable thing, so we're not gonna belabor the point. But it's helpful for us to think about this, how circumcision and baptism are connected or how we can learn about baptism through circumcision. In the Jewish world, in the Israelite world, a baby was circumcised on the eighth day and it indicated that that child was part of God's family, that they were different from the other people around them. And they were actually physically different from the other people around them by way of being circumcised this particular way. And so just like when you are born into a family, you don't get to choose your family, do you?(...) And you don't get to decide if you are born or not.(...) No, the ideal thing that happens is that a husband and a wife love each other and out of their love for each other, a child is born.(...) That's the ideal way that it's supposed to happen. You did not get to decide if you were born.(...) And also as a child, you did not get to decide if you were part of God's family. You were circumcised, you were brought into God's family because of your parents. God made his promise to you, not because of anything you did, but it's actually was a promise that he made to you.(...) And so just like that with baptism, you are brought into the family of faith, not by your own will, but by God's will. It's actually God's love for us that then creates new life. Just as a husband and a wife's love for each other creates life in the natural way. And this happens even as an adult. So even as an adult, if you're baptized, it is still not really your choice. And this is why, because somebody else had to tell you about Jesus.
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You did not come up with Jesus on your own. You do not decide on your own one day, hey, you know what would be great? If there's some Messiah who died for me and wants to give me his life. That's not a natural way of thinking. No one naturally comes to that conclusion. Instead, God had to send somebody to you.(...) God had to tell you through somebody else that Jesus is the Christ.(...) And so it's not even a decision that you really make on your own because God assists you in the same way that you are born naturally, you are born spiritually. Out of God's love for you, he sends someone to you. Oftentimes, that's through a Sunday school teacher, through a family member, through a friend, through a preacher, whatever that might be. Somebody else, though, outside of you has to tell you about Jesus in order for you to have new life in him.
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And also, just as in circumcision, your body is fundamentally changed. There's a mark on your body that is different now. In baptism, you are spiritually fundamentally changed. And again, it's not by your doing. It's by someone else doing it to you.(...) Somebody else baptizes you.(...) God uses somebody to preach the gospel to you. God uses somebody to baptize you. It is from somebody else that you receive the gifts of God. It's done for you without your work, without your effort. It's simply a gift.
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And when we try to attempt to take our life for ourselves,(...) we come up empty.
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But when we realize that actually all of life is done for us and is given to us by God, it feels quite full.
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It feels quite joyful.(...) And so when we back up to verses six and seven, this is what Paul writes.
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"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord,(...) "continue to live your lives in him."(...) Notice he did not say, "As you therefore have sought Christ Jesus."(...) "As you therefore have decided for Christ Jesus." Not what it says, "As you have received him." This is the reality that we have received Jesus. We have not found him. We have not searched for him. He is the one who has found us. He is the one who has hunted us down. He has sought us up. We are the ones who are being pursued. We do not pursue Christ. He pursues us.(...) And we receive him as a gift.(...) And then we're encouraged to continue to live your lives in him, rooted in him and built up in him, established in the faith just as you were taught. Again, you have to be taught by somebody else. Abounding in Thanksgiving for Paul. All of Paul's writing can be summed up that life is a gift in Jesus Christ. And all of our lives is lived as a response to what God has done. And that primary response is with Thanksgiving.(...) With joy for what he has done for us.
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Thanksgiving is the fundamental reality of our lives. The full life is a thankful life. Because we have received a gift. And everything good comes from God. It comes from outside of ourselves.
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And so we respond to him with Thanksgiving.(...) We respond to him with praise and with joy because we have received Jesus.
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We have not sought him. He has sought us. We have not hunted him down. He has hunted us down.(...) And we get to receive a good life. We get to receive a full life. We get to receive all the gifts of Jesus Christ and they are abundant. Paul says, "Greater than we could even imagine."
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Now our life may not be full of empty deceit. Our lives may not be full of money and things and family and all of these things. Our lives may not be full of philosophy and human tradition, but we are wrapping our hands around understanding everything that goes on in our world. Our life will not be full of that, but our life will be full of Jesus.(...) Because Jesus has given himself to you.
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Jesus has given himself for you and for your good. That you may have a full, good and abundant life. My prayer for you is to receive Jesus today.
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Receive a good, full and abundant life.
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And enjoy an enjoyment of Jesus.(...) Amen.
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We're gonna take some time now.(...) The music team's gonna come up. They'll play a little bit of music. But we're gonna take some time to reflect.(...) And we have two reflection questions in response to scripture that we oftentimes go through. And it's these two questions. What is God saying to me? So we have heard the scripture now. We've heard it expanded. What is that thing that the Holy Spirit has brought up in your heart and mind? What is the thing that really hooked on to you as you heard the word? And what is God inviting you to do in response to that? What is Jesus asking you to do in obedience in response to what you have heard? So let's take a few moments now and do that.