Keeping Our Confidence in Christ

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Well, I’m fascinated by numbers and statistics, which is strange for somebody who barely made it out of math in high school. But I’m fascinated by numbers and by statistics. I was looking at some this week that I thought were interesting.

It was one of the Gallup polls that they’ve done periodically for the last several years about the confidence that the American people have in our institutions. And by the way, across the board, that confidence has gone steadily down in all of our institutions since they started taking these polls. And the first one that caught my attention, I’m not going to recount all of them for you, But the first one that caught my attention was the statistic that said that in 2020, that’s the last time they’ve asked this question to date, 42% of Americans said they viewed the church as an institution they could be confident in.

And my first thought was that’s horrible, only 42%. And then I got to look further down the list and realized we beat just about everybody else. So we’ve got some work to do in demonstrating ourselves to be trustworthy, but we’re ahead of most other things.

I was looking at some of these numbers. The Supreme Court was only 40%, and they just make stuff up. I mean, liberal justices, conservative justices, I swear none of them have ever seen a constitution in the wild.

You know, they, 40%. So we beat the Supreme Court. We beat big business.

19% of Americans trust big business, although 38% trust the banks. Maybe they’re counting small banks. That could be it.

41% trust the public schools. Newspapers, 24% of Americans have confidence in the newspapers. Only 18% have confidence in the TV news.

39% have confidence in the presidency. Now, here’s my favorite number of all, Congress. 13% of Americans trust Congress.

I want to know who these 13% of people are so I can visit with them. I’ve got some things I might be willing to sell them. Show me the 13%.

I noticed that there were very few things that Americans trusted more than the church. The only ones I can remember that a majority of Americans trusted were the medical system at 51% and the military at 72%. Strangely enough, the military is the only institution in our country that an overwhelming percentage of Americans still have confidence in.

I also thought it was interesting that the only groups Americans trust are the people who can come after you with guns or syringes. Yes, we have every confidence in you. We don’t doubt you, all right?

But overall, we just are not feeling very confident in our institutions. We’re not feeling very confident in each other. We don’t trust each other the way we used to as a society.

And there’s probably reason for that. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t trust each other, but there’s probably reasons why we don’t, as a society, trust each other the way we used to do. And our confidence is based on remembering someone’s track record.

And I think that’s why trust erodes over time. in society, we see how people act individually and sometimes in groups, and we get to where we think, I just don’t trust people as a whole. I said that when the shelves started emptying about a year ago, well, about 11 months ago, close to a year.

That’s been a long year, and it’s been a fast year at the same time. The shelves started emptying, and I told Charla, I no longer trust people. Individually, yes, but collectively trust our community not to lose its ever-loving mind.

We never ran out of food. It was just in everybody’s houses. The supply lines never went down.

It was just panic buying. I said, I don’t trust people anymore. That’s when we started talking about chickens and goats, and my wife suddenly saying, I’m living in Green Acres.

I’m going to have to, not because of moving here, but because of what I was talking about. We’re going to do all these things. She said, I’m going to have to climb the telephone pole to talk to my mother, and he’s going to be out there on a tractor and a suit.

That’s what she’s picturing. Because I said, I no longer trust people. But it’s because you look at the track record.

And the reason why people don’t trust Congress anymore is you look at their track record, individually and collectively, of saying one thing and doing something else. The courts, the banks, the media, you look at all of it. And I dare say a lot of churches and a lot of religious leaders of saying one thing and doing another.

You look at their track record and that really determines whether you have confidence in them. or not. We’ve been dealing with the hospital in Ada with this pregnancy.

And people have asked us, are you not worried that they might not pick up on a heart defect again? Because they didn’t know Carly Jo had a heart defect until she was born. But we have no reason not to be, you know, we’ve told people we still have the utmost confidence that they caught it as quickly as they could because they had no reason not to, they had no reason to look for that heart defect.

And so instead of just looking at that. Well, they missed that one thing. We look at the long track record they have of all the stuff they’ve taken care of.

Yes, we trust her doctors. Yes, we trust those people. You look at the track record.

You know, I have a track record of being trustworthy with my wife. So sometimes I’ll tell her things that are surprising, but she believes me because I have a track record of telling the truth. So our confidence in anything, the point I’m trying to make to you here is that our confidence in anything is based on remembering somebody’s track record.

They’ve got to have the track record of being trustworthy, you’ve also got to remember that track record. And Paul reminded the Colossians of Jesus’s track record, of being faithful, of his track record, of doing what he said he would do, of his track record of being able to do things that nobody else could do. He reminded them of Jesus’s track record, and he encouraged them to remember that track record, and encouraged them to reject anything that would ignore that track record.

Tonight we’re going to be in Colossians chapter 2. You may have already turned there if you haven’t. Join me there if you would in Colossians chapter 2.

And once you find your place, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, we’re going to look at Colossians chapter 2 starting in verse 1. And it says, For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding for the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now this I say, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words, for though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men according to the basic principles of the world, excuse me, the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. And you may be seated.

Up to this point, Paul has been talking a lot about spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. And as we move into chapter 2, he’s making the case here that spiritual growth requires us to have confidence in Christ. If we’re wavering back and forth and we think, well, maybe he can, maybe he can’t, or we think maybe he is all that he said he is, maybe he’s not. If we’re not sure who Christ is, if we’re not, if we’re not sure and not, if we don’t have it nailed down, our confidence in him that he can do all the things that he says he can do, if we don’t have that confidence that he can even change us, if we don’t have that confidence, we’re not going to grow because we’re going to be too busy dealing with things we should have already settled when we should be moving on, should be moving on and continuing to grow.

And so Paul, as we look in verses five through seven here, and he praises the Colossians, not in a praise, in a way like you would praise God, but he commends them, the Colossians, for their steadfastness in the faith. Notice verse five says, even though I’m absent from I rejoice to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. See, Paul had never met them in person, and he points that out a couple times in this passage. He’d never met them in person.

We talked about that a few weeks ago. But by reputation and by report, he knew them and knew what kind of people they were. He knew what kind of walk they had with Christ because it was so strong and it was so steady.

They had such confidence in Jesus that news got around. You know who’s really walking with Him? The Colossians.

You know who really trusts him over everything? It’s those people in Colossae. And so word had gotten back to Paul, and he talked about some of the reasons why that steadfast faith made sense.

Why they should have had the confidence in Christ that they did. Because Jesus Christ actually provides for us what others just promise. When it comes to wanting to grow spiritually, you can find any number of teachers and any number of sources who say, yeah, we can do it.

We can total transformation of your life. We can change you into what God wants you to be. All sorts of religions, all sorts of programs, all sorts of things will promise that they can do that for you.

All sorts of philosophies and religions will promise that they can get you closer to God, but only Jesus Christ can actually provide what they all promise. Some of the things that He promises, and some of the things that Paul says He delivers on. He provides us with, in verse 2, the riches of full assurance of understanding.

Now, it doesn’t mean that we’ll understand everything ever. But what it means is He promises us, He gives us full assurance of understanding what we need to know. What it takes to please God and walk in a godly way and what we need to know for salvation.

He promises, He gives us full assurance that we’ll understand those things. The knowledge of the mystery of God. The things that used to be hidden.

Now, this is not a new agey type of secret knowledge. This is the fullness of the gospel. He talks about this in Colossians, and he talks about it in Ephesians, probably talks about it elsewhere.

And I hit on it a lot last Sunday in both the morning and evening services, talking about that mystery of the Gospel. He says it’s a mystery because nobody saw it involving the Gentiles. Nobody saw the church.

And so it was a mystery hidden both from the Gentiles and from Israel that God would not only reconcile people to Himself, but through Jesus Christ, He would reconcile the Jews and Gentiles together and make something completely new. See, nobody had even conceived of the idea that God could save people who were outside of Israel. And I don’t mean geographically outside of Israel, but people who weren’t part of that nation, weren’t part of that ethnicity, weren’t part of the covenant.

God could save even the Gentiles. They didn’t see that coming. And so part of the mystery of the gospel is that God can save absolutely anybody.

Whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. There’s nobody so lost, there’s nobody so estranged from God that He can’t save them through Jesus Christ. And Jesus promises us a knowledge of the mystery of God, the mystery of the gospel. All the treasures, verse 3 says, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Jesus doesn’t promise us treasure, but He promises us something even more valuable, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In verse 9 it says, for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That’s why He can do all the things He says he can do.

That’s why Jesus can provide what others only promise is because he is God in human flesh. He’s not just some other moral teacher. He’s not just some preacher.

He’s not just some rabbi. He is the eternal God of the universe. He is God the Son who became a man to dwell among us.

And he’s not even, some people think of him as, well, there’s God and then there’s Jesus. He’s more than a man, but He’s not quite all the way to God. No, it says all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily.

That means all the power, all the authority, all that the Father is, Jesus also is. He’s every bit as much God as the Father is wrapped up in a human package. So we can’t look at Him as just any other teacher, any other rabbi.

He’s God in human flesh. And verse 10 says He’s the head of all principality and all power. He’s in charge.

There’s nothing that can happen without either Him causing it or allowing it. Even when the world feels out of control, Jesus is never out of control. The world is never out of His control.

It says in verse 10, you are complete in Him. Some of your Bibles may say perfect in Him. That word perfect means complete.

It doesn’t mean sinless. It means mature. He’s talking about coming to a place of spiritual maturity in Jesus Christ. He’s telling them that if you want to grow spiritually, if you want to be everything God wants you to be, you don’t have to go after all these religions.

You don’t have to go after all these philosophies. You don’t have to go after all these practices. You don’t have to find some new answer.

He says you’re complete in Him. And let me tell you that’s true tonight. You are complete in Him.

The world may convince us, well, we don’t know enough things. We’re not smart enough. We’re not handsome enough.

We’re not rich enough. We’re not important enough. No, the Bible says you are complete in Him.

In Him, you are equipped with everything you need to be what God wants you to be. Now, it is a process. He does take some time to sand off those rough edges.

But there’s good reason for that. I’ve noticed in woodworking projects that when I try to cut corners on the sanding, try to get through it as fast as I can because I hate that part, it never works out quite as well as when I spend all the time I think I might possibly need and then double that. That’s what Jesus is doing with us.

He’s sanding off the rough edges. And God is conforming us to the image of His Son. He’s making us to be more like Jesus Christ. When it comes to spiritual growth, when it comes to spiritual maturity, we have everything we need.

We have everything we will ever need in Jesus Christ because He is the one that works in us and transforms us. And so knowing all that, knowing what Jesus can provide, and knowing how complete we are in Jesus, Paul wrote to the Colossians and warned them. He reminded them of that track record that Jesus has, of that faithfulness, of that fulfilling of promises that Jesus has.

But he also wrote to them to warn them to avoid those philosophies that were going to lead them astray, those worldly influences that were going to undermine their confidence in Jesus. And they were inundated with it. We think of these people, you know, they were early Christians, and so we assume they were all just super spiritual. Don’t forget, a lot of these people were saved out of a Roman pagan background.

And a lot of them, they had the influences of the Roman pagan religions, some of the Greek pagan religion. There were numerous others that circulated in the Middle East, and it was kind of like a cafeteria. They seemed to adopt whatever god or whatever practice they wanted from wherever, and there were all these philosophies that they’d adopt, and occult practices, and you really could in some ways make up your own religion.

And in that day and age, people were very curious. We see Paul in the book of Acts dealing with people in Athens. And they listened to him preach the gospel just because they wanted to hear novel ideas.

They wanted to hear new things that they could borrow from. So these people were bombarded with worldly influences. Not just one worldly influence from the Roman pagan religion that they had, but it was all around them.

And it sounds a lot like our day. Because those worldly influences will come at us from every direction. And so there were all these ideas that were being floated around that they could easily pick from.

And they might think, well, you know, this will help me in my spiritual growth. I’ll go this direction. I’ll add this in a little bit.

Sort of like when I cook, I just go through the cabinet. That seasoning will work. I throw some in.

Grab another one. And Charles says, I need a recipe. There is no recipe.

It’s just right here. Just start throwing things in. And that’s sort of how they did, and that’s how we could end up doing today with ideas and philosophy.

That’s why a lot of people’s religious ideas, when you press them on, they don’t make sense with each other, because it’s just a little bit taken from here and a little bit taken from there. And Paul was warning against these influences, because some of these things that seem so benign were actually undermining their confidence in Jesus Christ. He warns them in verse 4, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. That idea of persuasive words, that’s things that sound true but aren’t.

And we get this all the time. There are things that sound true that aren’t. God helps those who help themselves.

Maybe, but a philosophy to live by, we see all throughout Scripture, God helps people who admit they can’t help themselves. That’s just one example. That’s just off the top of my head.

But there are going to be things that sound true but aren’t necessarily. I’ve given the example before. There’s another study, because again, I like statistics.

Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway have gotten together the last few years and done a survey of American theology. And they’ll ask a bunch of questions. And they break it down by the general public and evangelicals.

And the thing that really worries me is there’s this one question that says, do you agree with or disagree with this statement? Jesus Christ is the greatest and most powerful of all created beings. Something along those lines.

And there was a majority of evangelicals, of Bible-believing Christians who said yes to that. My hope is that they heard the greatest and most powerful part and just tuned out, because if you believe Jesus was a created being, that’s a heresy called Arianism that is unbiblical. It’s what the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, that He is a lesser God, Because if He was created, He can’t be God. God is eternal and uncreated.

So that’s another example of one of those things that you might hear out in the world. You might hear even in some churches that sounds true, but isn’t. Jesus is the greatest and most powerful of all created beings.

No, no, no. Jesus was not created. He is the Creator. And so He was warning them, be on guard, because some things you’re going to hear, they sound true.

But if you peel past that first layer, if you just look a little deeper, you realize that it’s really not true, and you don’t want to live your life according to something that’s not true, and you certainly don’t want to search for God through something that’s not true. He warned them about being led astray in verse 8 by philosophy and empty deceit. Now, there’s a lot of philosophy in the Bible.

I had to sit and think about this a little bit this week, because I don’t believe he’s condemning all of philosophy. Philosophy, I kind of like philosophy too. Philosophy is just the search for truth, trying to understand things.

Paul did a lot of philosophy. I don’t think he’s condemning all philosophy because we’re taught to search for the truth. The Bible talks in Acts 17 about how noble the Bereans were because they went and searched the scriptures.

They were thinking. Philosophy is just keeping your brain switched on. But there is kind of a philosophy that elevates itself.

I see this a lot as a freshman in college in philosophy classes where kids would come in and they’d get a little philosophy training and suddenly think how smart they were, and then they’d like to just sit around and philosophize just for the fun of philosophizing. I think there’s a difference between philosophy that elevates truth and philosophy that elevates itself. And that’s what the Greeks were doing a lot of times, was just that they were just thinking for the sake of thinking.

You know, kind of like, well, how do you know we’re even really here? How do you know we’re not a brain in a jar? How do you know we’re not a butterfly dreaming we’re a person?

Stop it, all right? That’s nonsense, okay? Because even if it’s true, then it doesn’t matter.

That’s the kind of philosophy he’s talking about. Not the search for truth. I don’t want you to think the Bible says, oh, we’ve got to keep our brains turned off.

No, the Bible teaches us to think and to search for truth and to discern things. But he’s talking about empty philosophy. As a matter of fact, it’s tied together with this idea of empty deceit.

And so what he’s really talking about here specifically is the philosophy of the Gnostics. They’re a group I’ve mentioned before that they said the way to God was through secret knowledge. It wasn’t just for everybody.

They were the forerunners 2,000 years ago of the New Age movement today. And they thought there was secret knowledge out there that tells us how we need something extra to know God. It’s not for you little people.

We’ve got to sit here and be brilliant and think our way. We’ve got to think through all these philosophical ideas. And we’ve got to arrive at a deeper truth, that sort of thing.

That they were just elevating their own wisdom. And they were convincing themselves that if you need this secret knowledge to get to God, then guess who is not enough? Jesus.

He said if you’re adopting this empty philosophy, then it undermines your confidence that Jesus is enough. Again, maybe I’m spending too much time on this, but we as Christians get this reputation sometimes deserved. Well, we’re not critical thinkers.

We’re not good thinkers. To be a Christian, you have to turn your brain off. And that’s not what he’s saying here.

He’s saying don’t fall for every empty philosophy concerned with its own intellect and its own glory. There’s nothing wrong with thinking and philosophizing if you’re looking for the truth. He warned them against philosophy and empty deceit.

And then in verse 8 also, he talks about the traditions of men according to the basic principles of the world. And I got real confused looking at these four things, the philosophy, the empty deceit, the traditions of men, and the basic principles as though they were four different things. I think they’re really two things he’s talking about here.

The philosophies of empty deceit and then the traditions of men according to the basic principles of the world. This traditions of men, it’s the legalism, it’s the ideas of the Pharisees that they were going to add extra rules to what God had said. So in order to be godly, it’s not enough to do what God said.

You’ve got to follow our extra rules on top of that. You’ve got to be righteous according to our traditions. And then this basic principles of the world is talking about superstitions.

Basic superstitions. The most basic religion that’s followed in any society at its least civilized. The worship of spirits and the worship of nature and the idea that these spirits are going to do things for you according to.

. . You know what superstitions are.

He said we’re to avoid those things. The legalism. The superstitions.

It’s basically the idea that we need something other than Jesus Christ. We need something else to cling to. Whether it’s being able to put a spell on somebody or whether it’s this idea that I check all the religious boxes. We’ve got to have something other than Jesus Christ to cling to if we want to grow closer to God.

He says, stay clear of all of that because it’s poison. If it at all adds to Jesus Christ, then it’s going to undermine your confidence that He is enough and it’s deadly and it’s dangerous. And so He says, stay away from those things.

Folks, God’s desire is for us to grow spiritually. He wants it to happen. It’s not something we have to beg Him for.

He wants it to happen. But for us to grow spiritually, we have to walk confidently in Christ. To do that, we have to be on guard against the things that are going to undermine our confidence in Jesus. The ideas, the practices, the philosophies, anything in your world that undermines your confidence in Jesus is going to be dangerous to your spiritual walk.

If we try to embrace Jesus and these influences, we do it to our own peril because they can’t be reconciled. And it’s very easy. It’s very easy to start from a place of, I’m just going to add this on the side.

I’m going to add this little superstition. I’m going to add this little philosophy here on the side. One thing I think of as an example, and if any of you have said this, I don’t think I’m calling you out because I haven’t seen it from anybody in here, but I see Christians on Facebook talking about karma.

You know, karma is just that what? Karma has nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity does teach that we reap what we sow because God is just. However, karma is like an account of good and bad deeds that follows you through a succession of births and deaths and rebirths until you do enough good to purge all the wrong that you’ve done so that you can finally stop going through that cycle of reincarnation and you can either merge into.

. . you can be one with the universal Godhead or you can simply cease to exist depending on whether we’re talking about something Hindu-inspired or Buddhism-inspired.

Dharma has nothing to do with Christianity. Again, if you’ve said that, I’m not calling you out because I haven’t seen it. I’m just telling you, be careful about trying to add a belief in karma, for example, onto your belief in Jesus.

Because this one, karma says Jesus is not enough. You’ve got to work through this cycle. That’s just one example I could have given any.

But it’s so easy to add one to the side. You know, that’s what Solomon tried to do with his wife’s idols. And before he knew it, those idols weren’t just up on the hills out around town.

They were right there in the palace. Folks, we can’t reconcile Jesus and the things that undermine our confidence in Jesus. So I would just ask you tonight to look in your life and see if there’s anything there that would undermine your confidence in Jesus and deal with it.

Recognize it for what it is. Realize how dangerous it is and get rid of it. Because if you want to grow closer to God, Jesus is your only way to get there.

And the only way we’re going to do that effectively is if we’re walking in a way that we have total confidence because we know him and we know his track record and we know he’s trustworthy.