The Pattern for Our Walk

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Well, I interviewed for a teaching job several years ago at a Christian school in the city, and the principal hired me on the spot to be the French and Bible teacher for the junior high and high school kids. And every school is just a little bit different in the way they do things, and so he said I would need to train under the lead teacher and get to know the way they did things, the way they work the curriculum and all that, and I said, that’s fine. So he took me and introduced me to the lead teacher for the high school, and I really got the sense that she was not thrilled that I was there, got the sense that she was not thrilled that I existed, and I thought, well, maybe it’s just me because I feel that way all the time.

I often feel like people are not thrilled that I’m there. And now, a lot of us have that insecurity, Don’t we? It’s not just me.

Okay. All right. Don’t feel sorry for me.

It’s just part of it. Part of being an introvert, I guess. I realized, though, quickly, it was not just me.

All right. She was not thrilled that I was there. She was not thrilled that I existed.

I mean, I could just tell. And later on, she told me so. After we had moved on to the point where she was glad I was alive, she said, you know, I was really not thrilled that you came here.

I said, okay, because I thought I picked up on that. I’m not the most observant bulb in the box, but I thought I picked up on that one. And I said, why were you so, why were you so bothered that I was here?

And I just went and did what I was supposed to anyway. The way my dad raised me, you pull your socks up, go do your job anyway, whether people like you or not. But I said, why were you so upset that I was here.

She said, well, number one, I was the only male teacher at the school at that point, and she was old enough to be my mother, her words, and she said in her experience, younger men didn’t take direction very well from a woman her age, that they came in acting like they knew everything that, and she may be right, I mean, anyway, but she said she just assumed I was going to come in and not listen to her and do my own thing and that we were going to butt heads. And she said, so you pleasantly surprised me when you came in and you were willing to listen and you were willing to learn. And I said, you’re the one in charge here, not me.

My job was to come in and learn from you. So I figured doing my job, that required learning from you and doing the things that you taught me Because that’s what we’re supposed to do when somebody is in charge. When our job is to pattern our activities after somebody, then that’s what we ought to do.

And that’s part of being a Christian. Not necessarily in the workplace, although that’s part of it. But as a Christian, we have somebody who’s in charge, and we’re supposed to pattern our lives after.

We’re supposed to let them take the lead. We’re supposed to learn from them and follow their example. And that person is Jesus.

We’re supposed to follow the example of the one who’s in charge. And over the last several weeks, as we’ve been studying through this series on who is Jesus, we’ve seen some of the biblical teaching about how He is in charge and why He’s in charge. We started out spending several weeks going through the nature of Jesus and His relationship to the Father, seeing that He is God in human flesh and that He’s always been God.

He’s always been every bit as much God as the Father is, and yet He came down and became completely human without giving up any part of being God. And again, I can’t completely explain to you the mechanics of how that works. That is above my pay grade.

Yet the Bible teaches it, and so I believe it, whether I can explain it or not. As I gave you the example last week, I can’t explain how all the little ones and zeros mean that my computer and my watch and my phone talk to each other, but they do, and I believe it. I accept it, even if I can’t explain it.

So I don’t have to be able to explain the mechanics of the inner workings of the Godhead to acknowledge that this is what the Bible teaches. And we’ve seen over the last few weeks how Jesus came to be a sacrifice for us, not just a sacrifice, but he came to be the ultimate sacrifice, the only provision for our sins to be forgiven, how he rose again from the dead to prove it, not just to prove that he could forgive sins, but to prove that He is in charge. And so we come this week to the concept of Him being in charge and what that means for us.

That’s what I want us to look at this morning, is what the Bible teaches about Him being in charge and us patterning our lives after Him as a result. And there are several passages in the New Testament we could look to this morning, but the one I’ve chosen for us to look at is in Colossians chapter 2. So if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2.

If you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find Colossians 2, it’ll be on the screen for you. But once you find it, if you would stand with me as we read from God’s Word, if you’re able to stand without too much trouble. We’re going to start in verse 4 this morning and go through verse 10.

This is what the Apostle Paul says to the church at Colossae. 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 the 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, 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. You may be seated. The point of this passage that we’ve just read is that Jesus is our Lord, and he’s the example that we’re supposed to follow.

Now, we throw that word Lord around frequently, like it’s a name, it’s a title, but it’s very much supposed to be a description of his relationship to us. A Lord is somebody in charge. A Lord is a master, somebody that calls the shots.

And as our Lord, he’s our example. We have to understand that when the disciples followed him and called him Lord, master, teacher, they were following the established custom in their culture that somebody, when they were going to study under a rabbi, they would leave everything behind and they would go follow this man. They would eat what he ate, go where he went, sleep where he slept, read what he read, and they would just let him be the example and call the shots, and they would emulate him.

The disciples learned to do that with Jesus, and you and I are called to do the same thing with him as our Lord. And so he is our example. At the beginning of this series, though, I mentioned how part of the reason for this series is that so many people look at Jesus as just an example.

There are churches that teach he’s just an example. That he is, in their view, just a wise human teacher who taught us good things, had good moral teachings, taught us to be nice to each other, but that there’s not much beyond that. And I think we’ve seen over the last several weeks we can either agree with that or we can agree with the Bible, but not both.

And when I present these things to you, I don’t ever want it to be my opinion versus their opinion. I want us to go and look at the Bible and see what the Bible says. And so we have this view though that Jesus is just an example and we have the way he’s portrayed in the Bible and these two do not match up.

And I want to clarify that because I’m telling you today that Jesus is an example. But there’s a difference between him being an example and him being just an example. Make sense?

An example, for him to be an example, is built on everything else he is. God the Son who came in human flesh was the perfect sacrifice for our sins and rose again from the dead, and as a result, he is our Lord and he’s our example. There’s a big difference between that and, well, he’s just an example as a good moral teacher.

He is our example because he’s Lord. And so we come to verse 5 where Paul rejoiced to see what he calls the good order, that the Colossians had. This word, there’s a few things in verse 5 here that in Greek, these are military metaphors he’s using.

When he talks about good order here, he’s describing their disciplined way of walking. And if we look at Colossians as a whole, he’s dealing with some false teaching that was creeping up in the area around the Colossians that they were being bombarded with. Some of this was Gnosticism, the idea that Jesus hadn’t actually come in human flesh, that he came as a spirit, and the problem with that is a spirit can’t be crucified.

He’s dealing with these false teachings, but he tells them right here at the outset of chapter 2 that he’s thankful for their good order, their discipline as they served the Lord, and that points to the idea that their lines had not been broken amid false teaching. If you’ve ever watched old war movies, And when I say old, I mean like portraying wars before maybe World War I, before machine guns and things like that. When armies used to march in formation, and you know, they’d line up against each other on either side of the battlefield, and they’d, in a very gentlemanly way, they’d take turns firing at each other, and then just stand there and take, I don’t understand that.

As Americans, we kind of put the end to that with the Revolutionary War guerrilla tactics. Forget that, I’m going to hide in the trees and pick off the redcoats as they come marching through. but used to the lines would line up across from each other and they’d take turns.

Sometimes there would be a cavalry charge and if your men were not incredibly disciplined they would get intimidated by the cavalry charge or any other part of the battle and they would break ranks and they would begin to turn and retreat. And not an orderly marching out retreat, they would turn and run. There would be chaos in the ranks.

And when it comes to their faith in Jesus Christ, Paul is saying that has not happened. That you’ve been bombarded by false teachings. You’ve been bombarded by false teachings about Jesus, and yet your lines have stayed strong.

And so he’s thankful for that. And then after that in verse 5, he rejoices over their steadfastness. Their steadfastness in the faith.

And this is another military metaphor where the Greek word is used to describe a tight phalanx or formation. And some of the ancient armies, I can’t remember offhand if it was the Greeks or the Romans or maybe both, they would have their practically body-sized shields, and they would march in formation. The front line would have the shields going side to side across, so you’re entirely covered in the front.

And the ones in the second row would put their shields over the top of the first row. Third row would put their shields over the top of the second row, and so on, to where you’ve got this tight formation that is completely covered in armor. And they were only as strong as their formation was tight.

That’s how they stayed strong and protected. And he says that their faith, when he uses this word stereoma, this steadfastness in Greek, he’s saying that their faith is like that. Their faith is tight.

They’re not leaving gaps in here that they’re staying prepared for the spiritual battle. And so amid this onslaught of false teachers and worldly influences, they held firm to the truth. It was a challenge for them.

We think we have it difficult today. And it is a challenge. We are bombarded by false teachings.

We are bombarded by worldly influences. Not a week goes by that I don’t read stories in the media of what goes on in some churches and think, what in the world is happening? How are people falling for these things?

And no, I’m not saying we’re the only ones practicing the truth. But I read these stories and think, how are people falling for these things? This has been going on for 2,000 years.

They were facing, and by the way, a lot of the heresies are the same now as they were 2,000 years ago. They just have a better social media presence. They have slicker terminology now.

But the ideas underlying them are the same. So they were dealing with these same things, and they held firm to the truth. And Paul instructs them in verse 6, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.

You believe the right things, He says. Because up until now, he’s dealt with their faith, their beliefs, their standing in Jesus Christ. You believe the right things, now he’s telling them to put them into practice. You’ve received him as Lord.

You’ve acknowledged him as Lord. Now act like it. That word walk means to act, the way we live our lives.

He says, because you’ve received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk in him. He’s your Lord, act like it. You believe the right things, act like it.

Put it into practice. Him being Lord means that we follow Him and that we follow His example. And when we do this, we see that Jesus is the source of our strength and our growth.

And so Paul switches metaphors here, getting away from the military metaphor, to talking about trees. He says in verse 7 that they are rooted in Him, rooted in Jesus Christ. Now the idea of the roots for the tree, it’s very important. When they’re clinging to the example of Jesus Christ, they’re going to grow stronger and stronger and firmer in the faith because a tree is only going to be as strong as its roots.

The roots are where the tree grows, where it draws nourishment. It’s where it draws stability. I have been, we just saw the memory on Facebook this week that we bought our house two years ago this week here in Lawton.

And I don’t feel like we’re any closer to having it ready than when we bought it. But part of what I’ve been doing over the last two years is trying to clear out some trees that don’t need to be there. And even some of these old dead trees are a pain because they’ve got really deep, strong roots.

It’s like the tree is dead, but the roots don’t know it yet, and they haven’t quite let go. A strong root makes all the difference. Some of these trees are very old and lived a very long time because they had good, strong, deep roots.

And he says that we are rooted in Jesus Christ as we walk in Him, in verse 6. That means living in light of His lordship, following Him, obeying Him. then our roots are going to grow deeper and stronger in Him.

Now, that’s not a salvation issue. That’s not saying go out and grow deeper, stronger roots so you make sure you get to heaven. This is talking to those who are already believers in Jesus Christ, and it’s a sanctification issue.

It’s saying if you want to grow closer to Him, if you want those stronger roots, if you want the stronger relationship with Him, obey Him. Obey Him. If you want to grow closer to Him, if you want to grow to be more like Him, it starts with obeying Him.

That is a really easy thing to tell you. And it is a really challenging thing to practice when we get outside this room. So please don’t think that I’m standing up here saying, oh, I’m super spiritual and I’m just telling you how you ought to do.

No, I’m saying this is what we are supposed to do. We cannot disobey Him in every facet of life and then stand around and say, gee, why am I not growing spiritually? We start by obeying Him.

And those roots grow stronger and they grow deeper. And then it says in verse 7 that they were built up in Him. And this word describes in Greek, and this is another one that I’m not going to try to pronounce.

I’ll write it out for you if you want. You can look at my notes later, but sometimes the oki is just too strong. And no matter how many times I practice it in my office, I know the pronunciation.

Some of y’all were in here last Sunday night for the presentation on missions in Romania and our ministry among the Hungarian minority in Romania. I practiced all afternoon to say that verse in Hungarian for the benediction. I got up here, I still felt like I was wearing dentures that didn’t fit.

So this is why sometimes I don’t spell out the Greek for you, but I’m not going to try to pronounce it. Anyway, the word describes the upward and the outward growth of the tree. When it says that they were going to be built up, we think of a tree growing, not just the roots growing deep, but the branches reaching up toward the sky, reaching new heights as the tree grows bigger and fuller.

And he says that our faith, our relationship with him will become like that as we are walking with him. But not only this outward growth, because I’ve seen trees that grow too big and then they get wobbly. I don’t know if that means they get too much water and then not enough.

I’m not an expert on all of it. But I’ve seen trees that grow too big, too fast, and they don’t have the internal support. So we have not only this idea of building up, but he says in verse 7, established in the faith.

See, where the built up is talking about the tree growing bigger and wider and taller, the idea of being established in the faith describes the inward strength of the tree. That it’s not just a facade. It’s not just an appearance on the outside that we appear to be growing bigger, but that we’re growing stronger on the inside as we’re growing more deeply rooted and as we’re reaching new heights in our faith.

There’s this growth that takes place upward, downward, inward as we’re being obedient to Jesus Christ. And all of this is tied back to verse 6 and the idea of walking in Christ. They were instructed to walk in verse 7 as you’ve been taught. Keep putting into practice what you already know to be true. So many times we are looking for the next thing.

I want to understand the next thing. I want to know what the next step of faith is. I want to know what God’s wanting me to do.

and we get frustrated and we struggle because we don’t know what that next thing is. Meanwhile, there’s the last thing we’ve been told to do and we’re not doing it. That’s why so many times there’s this advice.

Advice makes it sound like a suggestion. There’s this command in the New Testament, the last thing God told you to do, what He’s already taught you, go do that. And then in His time, He’ll show us the next thing to do.

But it was very simple, very basic for them. They already knew to obey Jesus Christ. Start there and watch the growth take place. and he says in verse 7 abounding in it with thanksgiving there’s this promise that accompanies it that we will grow abundantly and this idea of thanksgiving is that we’ll be thankful for what God does in our lives now as we’re growing in our faith and we’re growing in our relationship with him through obedience is it always going to be fun in the moment is it always going to be pleasant some of you are afraid to answer no it’s not it’s not always going to be fun it’s not always going be pleasant.

I look back and some of the times of greatest spiritual growth in my life have been some of the worst experiences of my life. And I’m thankful for what God did through those experiences. But I can still look back and in my humanity say, Lord, wasn’t there another way to do that?

Wasn’t there some way you could have given me the lesson without having to walk through that particular valley? In reality, I learned the hard way, and many of us do. So no, there’s not a way to just open this up and slide the lesson in there without having to go through that particular valley.

So he’s not promising here that it’s all going to be wonderful, but that when we obey, there’s going to be this abundant growth and we’re going to be able to look back and be thankful for what he’s done in our lives. And then we have this sort of closing, not to the book, not even to the chapter, but to this section of the text. This closing where he just kind of reassures them a little bit for those who might be on the fence that Jesus is superior to everything else we could follow.

That the Lord we have is superior to any person, any ideology, any idea that we could follow. And so he says in verse 8, beware lest anyone cheat you. Be on guard.

Be on guard against anything that could take you captive. That’s what’s tied up in the word cheat here. Us being carried off into captivity by some other way of thinking.

Because there are going to be other ways of life that are going to come along and promise freedom to us. But it’s really captivity. How many times have you heard somebody say, well, I don’t want to follow Jesus because I can do what I want now.

No, you’re doing what sin tells you to. Apart from Jesus, that’s what we do. We exercise our sin nature.

We are simply slaves to sin. It’s the illusion of freedom, but we’re enslaved to sin. We are only truly free to be what God designed us to be when we’re obedient to Christ. And yet, they’re going to be these ways of life.

They’re going to be these cultural ideas. They’re going to be these worldly influences that are going to come along and promise freedom. Hey, if you’ll just do this, if you’ll just walk away from what God’s telling you, if you’ll just turn your back on that, you’ll be free and you can do whatever you want.

Paul said these ideas are going to cheat you. He talks about philosophy and empty deceit. Now understand here that Paul is not saying that philosophy is evil.

He’s not saying that it’s evil to seek for the truth and that it’s evil to seek out reasons for the things that we believe. What he’s warning against here is a kind of philosophy that isn’t geared towards seeking the truth, but it becomes a cover for self-delusion. Because the word philosophy just means to love the truth or love wisdom.

And I can’t tell you how many philosophy classes I’ve sat in where it’s been stuff like, how do I know I’m not a brain floating in a jar. What? Prove to me that you exist. No, I can’t believe how much I’m paying for this class.

Right. And then those things I found were often teamed up with arguments against Christianity. Oh, Christianity makes no sense.

Really? What evidence do you have for that? Well, how do you know it’s true?

Well, we can walk through some of the evidence and arguments. Well, how do you know any of that’s true? How do you know we exist?

How do you know I’m not a butterfly in a giant’s dream? That’s the kind of philosophy I think he’s talking about here. He says beware of those things.

He talks about the traditions of men. Now this refers to all of human tradition. All of the things that mankind looks at and just sort of reasons through and thinks this is how we’re going to make ourselves better.

This is how we’re going to get right with God. At worst, at worst, these are things that point away from Jesus and at best they’re just a terrible substitute for Him. Human traditions like, well, if I just obey these laws, if I just do the right things, if I’m just really sincere, if I’m really pious, if I’m involved in charity, none of these are bad things in and of themselves, but they are terrible substitutes for Jesus Christ. And if we orient our lives around trying to just do good religious things instead of being obedient to Christ, we’re missing the mark.

Now, that doesn’t mean that obedience to Christ is going to lead us away from being good, But this deals in our motivation. Am I doing what I’m doing because Jesus told me to? Am I doing what I’m doing because Jesus said this and I’m going to obey?

Or am I doing what I’m doing because some religious system told me it’s the right thing to do? Human traditions. And the basic principles of the world he warns against here in verse 8.

This refers to primitive or natural impulses and ways of thinking which are often opposed to Jesus. You say, what does that mean? Look at just what our natural instincts are.

Look at small children. Another child has something they don’t want, they punch them in the face. Not that that’s ever happened in my house.

But that’s human nature, isn’t it? The impulses that we go off of. How many times have we said to each other, ooh, I wanted to say to them, and I stopped myself.

And by the way, I’m not looking at any of you on purpose. If I had a mirror here, I’d be looking at me. Because I’ve told Charlie, here’s what I wanted to say.

That’s our natural impulse. that’s those basic principles of the world that’s how the world just operates apart from God and there are all these things that we could obey these traditions these religions these philosophies these human impulses the things that that feel good that sound right that that sound like what everybody else is doing and he says beware of those things lest anyone cheat you because no matter how wise or how common sense it may seem anything that we base our lives on other than him is not according to Christ as it says in verse 8. Anything else that we base our lives on, anything else that I allow to lead me is an affront to the Lordship of Christ in my life.

I’m going to say that again because I think I need to hear it again. Anything else that I allow to lead me is an affront to the Lordship of Christ in my life and for you as well. We don’t need anything else.

We don’t need another Lord. We the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Looking at Jesus Christ, we have everything that God is packaged in human flesh.

When it comes to knowing what’s right, when it comes to knowing God’s truth, there is no deficiency in Jesus Christ. He has everything that we need, and it says you are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. He is fully God, and we are complete in Him. That means we have everything that we need in Him.

Everything we need to make the right decision everything that we need to live a life that honors God, everything we need to be the people God designed us to be, we have in Jesus Christ. And so those of us who trust in Him as our Savior, we should also live as though He’s our Lord. If He’s our Lord, our job becomes to act like it. Number one, because it’s right, and number two, because it’s good for us.

I don’t think that’s wrong to say that. God does build incentives into some things, right? Because God knows how He wired it is good for us as believers to follow the lordship of Jesus Christ and obey him.

It may not always feel good in the moment, but it is for our ultimate good. And I want to close with this. I don’t want anyone to take away from this this morning, that the things I’m saying about obedience and lordship, that this is somehow a way for you to get right with God, that this is a shortcut in the process.

That, you know, if you’ll just obey what he says, if you’ll just find all the little red letters, which by the way, the red letters are not more authoritative than the black letters. If you believe in the inspiration and authority of Scripture, you believe God inspired all of it. There’s no division in the Trinity.

So if it’s in there in black, Jesus said it too. All right, he just didn’t verbalize it while on earth. But it’s not saying, I am not saying to you this morning, go pick out all the little red letters and do exactly that, and then you’ll be right with God.

When I’m talking about obedience to the Lord, when I’m talking about obedience to Him as Lord, I’m talking about those who have already trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior. Those who have already recognized that we all as humans are disobedient to Him. It’s part of our nature.

And so we are all separated from Him. The Bible calls it sin. Whenever we disobey Him in our words, our actions, our thoughts, our attitudes, it’s sin and it separates us from a holy God.

And when we recognize that, and we realize that there’s no way for us to ever be good enough to get right with God, and that that’s why Jesus came to take responsibility for our sins and to be crucified, to shed his blood and die in our place so that our sins could be forgiven, our slate could be wiped clean with God. And then he rose again three days later to prove it, and we have come to him believing that that is our only hope for salvation. Then we turn to him and begin to obey him.

But if you’ve never trusted in him as Savior, there is no way for you to obey him well enough to get to heaven or to have peace with God. This all must start with understanding what I just talked about, that you and I have all sinned and we are separated from God because of it. Jesus Christ came to pay the penalty for our sins.

He came to pay the price to take the punishment as the only way that we could be forgiven. And then three days later, he rose again to prove it. And so he makes you this offer, that if you’ll simply believe that he is your only hope, and you’ll ask God’s forgiveness not because you’ve been good enough or religious enough to earn or deserve it, but simply trusting that Jesus did everything that was necessary.

You’ll ask for that forgiveness. You’ll have it. You’ll have it.