Growth Which is from God, Col, 2:18-19

Good morning. We're continuing to work our way through Colossians chapter 2, nearing the last half, if you will. And as we proceed through it here, Paul is continuing on with kind of an alternating series of warnings and teachings, warnings and teachings. And this morning's passage is a part of that same pattern. One of the things you notice as you go through the passage, particularly in verse 18, but also in 19, that sort of jump out at you in terms of the verbs.

And they're strong ones. And we'll take a look at them, particularly noting this not holding fast. That's the first one there that's a negative. It's a negation, okay? And we'll want to take a particular look at that, because what he is not doing, what this false teacher, or the false teachers he's describing, are not doing, are critical.

But Paul turns that into a teaching moment for the church. Now, as we look at these two, verse 18 and the very first part of 19, and then the last part of 19, I have a different character. The message in verse 18 and the first part of 19 is a warning that describes the false teachers. This is what the false teachers are doing. This is the position from which the false teachers are teaching. And then the second part of that is Paul turns that, and he begins in verse 19, to turn that into a teaching point for the body of Christ. Here is what the body of Christ has and does that the false teacher is not a part of. And the connection that the false teacher is missing is connection with the head.

Now, as we look at chapter 2, we've been going through here and noting that there are four places where Paul brings up the no one, let no one do this, no one do that. And this is now the fourth of them. And so this passage makes the final point. Last week we also brought up point two, the tolerance as you look at each of these is zero, plus or minus zero percent.

No false teachers should have this place. None of those should be judges in your life. And as we see this morning, None of them should take on the capacity that we'll see described shortly. There's also this distinction. The first two of those warnings of no one refer to the false teacher's persuasive speech and enticing doctrine. It sounds awfully good. The second two of those refer to the spiritually stunting and hazardous practices. These are toxic things that the false teacher is bringing in. And so he warns about that. Now, as we look at these, what we will do is look at verses 18 and 19 separately. It makes it easier to handle that way. And so we begin with his starting idea. Let no one, the idea is absolutely none, keep defrauding you of your prize.

Now, the Greek word there Kata-bra-be-uo, and kata-bra-be-uo, as you know, is when a Dalmatian mother gives birth... No. No. This is me speaking off the top of my head. No. No. Anyway, kata-bra-be-uo is when a Dalmatian mother gives birth to Dalmatian kittens. That's the meaning of the word.

You don't buy that. That's all right. This one doesn't either. Okay. Now, let's really take a look at it this time. Okay, here's the deal. We previously pointed out some athletic terms used in Colossians, okay? And what we see is a pattern starting in chapter 1 and continuing on into chapter 2.

Paul uses a number of athletic terms, and this is no exception. When we're looking at Colossians chapter 2, verse 1, we brought out, for example, he says, I want you to know how great a struggle, and we pointed out that that word for struggle is agon, where we get our English word to agonize. And it was used for particularly athletic events, running or wrestling. And he says, I want you to know how great a struggle, and not just in the sense of an internal struggle, but he just says, I am contending on behalf of you. And that's the other part of it.

He has twice, as he goes into these first part of Colossians, used a phrase that means to represent, just as we this last summer had the Olympics. We had people who represented us as a nation in the Olympics. Paul uses that same term twice as he introduces the first chapter and two of Colossians. Now, as we get into here, what we find is he's using an athletic term and we'll need to really look at it this time.

No Dalmatian jokes, okay? This key word here, is kata brabe uo, and it's against, that's kata, an athletic official's decision. When he makes the decision, the act, is kata, is brabe uo. So a decision or deciding against is the idea of the word. If an athletic official was making a decision against you, the idea is in a race or in a wrestling event, that that would disqualify you. You would be counted out and it didn't matter if you had just won by any other measure. If the official counted you out, then you didn't. You lost whatever you had just gained. And of course, we've seen that, for example, in a football game. You know, somebody will think they made a touchdown.

The official says, nope, that doesn't happen. And he cuts it off and said, no, you're back here because of some penalty. Same thing that Paul is pointing to here. He's saying these officials then say, all right, you don't really have the position that you have in Christ. You don't really have that place that He's given you. No, that's been cut short because you're disqualified. He's making a decision which puts you out of the running.

When we get to Colossians 3.15, we're going to see this.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Now that rule does not mean rule as in a king or a government official ruling, it means to rule as an empire or athletic official, acting in the proper capacity there. Let the Lord, who is fully qualified, continue to make the call in your hearts and lives. Not human beings, and particularly not, as we see in Colossae, not earthly concoctions.

Now, if we look at this word, This word is a present imperative, which comes across with a couple of ideas. One, they're not to be allowed to continue doing it, which says, up until now, that's probably what's been happening. They've been allowed, he says, no more. Cut it off here, and he cuts it off with no one. It's not like we've got a tolerance for three false teachers and after that we've got to quit. No. Zip, none. No allowance, zero tolerance for these. Cut it off, it's not to continue.

The second thing, it's an imperative. Imperatives, as we pointed out, the way Paul uses them, are in the sense of a logical imperative. It's not a moral imperative that's saying, you must do this, and if you fail to do it, boy, there's somebody standing there to condemn you. No, it's a logical imperative. What does that mean? It means that based on your position in Christ, eternally fixed, the logical, the only logical conclusion to be reached is that you do this, okay?

Now, there's all kinds of clowns out there in the athletic world. You've encountered them, and of course, they're lots of fun. Lots of different ones out there, okay? And, you know, if you've been to a game, they're fun to watch. If you see them on TV, they're great to watch, too.

What's amazing is we look at these, and while they're lots of fun, you don't really want them in the game, do you? You don't really want to see, in the middle of the Super Bowl, these clowns running around out in the field. You hope that the players are not crossing over with the clowns. Now, Paul is going to tell us how these false teachers keep making these bad calls.

Now, how many of you think about this? If you've either been in an athletic event where you've got a ref that makes a bad call, or maybe you've been watching one and you see a bad call, you're saying, ah, that is not right. OK, what's even worse is if you see a bad call and especially if you're playing. And I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but I have to say I've seen it where the ref appears biased. The athletic official appears biased. And boy, that is just maddening and disgusting. OK, there's no whole lot you can do about it, but it's maddening and disgusting to see that.

And so you'll get guys that you'll be wearing the stripes and you think they ought to be wearing some different stripes. But nonetheless, That's how Paul's characterizing these guys. These are the athletic officials here. So what does he say? Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by... And he kind of counts them off here.

...delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, and taking his stand on visions as he has seen, inflated without cause with his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head. What we find is, of these bullets, the first two are kind of paired up, aren't they? Those are the things that he takes delight in. The second two are also paired up, taking his stand on visions he has seen and inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. And then the negation comes at the end. That's Paul's turning point.

What we see is the not holding fast to the head is connected up with the other things that he's doing. You see a dividing line here? They're going to head off in this direction, the false teachers are. It's because they're not holding fast to the head. Then he's going to describe the church holding fast to the head. and the difference that that makes.

See that? Now, let's take a look here. Delighting in self-abasement. We saw this word before. It's a word we saw in Philippians many moons ago, Philippians 2, 3, and 4. Tapenophrosyne is the word there, and so we'll step back to it. In Philippians it was humility of mind. The idea is a combination word. Paul loves those. Lowness of mind is the idea that comes across.

And remember, they had this word froneo, which is about how one thinks, one's mindset. And so this word, kind of the prefix word here, had a lot of uses. Some of the interesting ones, it was used in one document to describe the Nile River being at a low level. Or as they did at Herodian, where they cut the top off of a mountain to put a fortress on the top. that cutting the mountain lower was also described using this word.

Now, as we come here, what's happening is, here's the false teacher, and he is saying, I am going to make myself humble. I'm going to humble myself. And this reflects the character of the flesh. The flesh is always wanting to do something to fix itself. The flesh loves to do that. Give me a list. Give me something to do! Please! The flesh loves to do that.

These false teachers were saying, I am the ultimate in humility. I am the very most humble person you could ever imagine. As a matter of fact, you must, of course, give me an award for this. That was their mentality. Imposing humility on the flesh just suits the flesh just fine. It loves a list. My brother was teaching at a conference at Lake Tahoe recently, and as he was done, several people came up to him afterwards and said, give us a list of things to do. And he said, oh no. Because he recognized the flesh always wants to do something, but spiritual growth is not based on just following a list, whether it's a list of things to do or things not to do.

No matter how you slice it, the flesh just stinks. To use an analogy, the flesh is a rotten egg, and you don't want to slice those, believe me. You won't fix it by trying to restrain it. You won't fix it by saying, I know how to take care of the flesh. We'll just keep it from doing this, this, and this, and then it'll be fine. That's the way the flesh wants to deal with things. He adds to that, delighting in the worship of angels. Oh, we've got the right list of angels to worship.

It's interesting, the Bible only gives the names of two angels, Michael and Gabriel. What happened is that both the Jews and the other pagan religions came up with names of other lists of angels. And of course, they would like to call them all by name and put all the focus and attention upon these angels. They would place their focus upon the angels rather than upon Christ.

So, the idea being there, these false teachers would believe and then teach the false doctrine, the wrong doctrine. They didn't understand the believer's position in Christ, a strong indication that they themselves were not believers, and they made the wrong call every time. This is the picture that we've been using. The false teaching was based on the understanding that God was a really good God and the world was an evil world, and so to have this world come into existence, they had this long series of angels to put some separation between the good God and the creation of this evil world. Christ was looked at as simply an angelic accident. So what the false teachers were doing is they were saying, well, look, we've got all these angels and those are the ones that we have some contact with, so worship the angels. Give them the attention. That was their idea.

Now, think about it now, even today, a lot of people will come up with the idea, well, you know what we really need to do is just get religious. I mean, get really religious. That's what we've got to do. I've got to get real enthusiastic and I've got to feel really deeply We've got to come up with the right garb, doing things at the right time. We've got to go to the right place and the right church and be a part of the right organization. We have to follow the right laws.

That's the answer. We have to get some personable accountability going for somebody else to sit there and bounce it back at me. That'll fix it. Or, do everything at the right time. Let's get things on a schedule here. The right time, right church, right place, right activity, and the right organization. right accountability, we'll get it all right.

But what does the false teacher do? He takes his stand here on visions he has seen. Now, if you look at the English translations and try to compare them, it's a little puzzling to try to figure out what's behind this, what's going on. So, let's take a look. There's a couple of key words that are translated here in the English, and I think if we explain it, it'll make some good sense. Those two words. Hara'o meant to have a subjective vision or experience. That is in this context here.

Obviously, it's not verifiable. If I have a vision or an experience, I come to you and I say, hey, I had this vision or experience. Can you look at it too? No. I remember my kids at one point in time expressing exasperation that I couldn't remember their dream. The truth is, these things that happen in people's personal experience, they're not objective. They can't be taken to the outside.

But this was precisely the way the false teacher was coming in and saying, I am authoritative. Why? Because I had an experience you didn't have. So that's the way they would carry things out. He would then use this word, mbateuo. This was a word that was used among the pagan mystery religions. having been through all this training and been through this experience, you were then said to be at this master level. That graduation, that graduating, was this word here. So this fellow, or the fellows, the false teachers, were using this idea, I had a subjective experience and my subjective experience that I had puts me on a higher level than you. That was the idea.

So the false teacher would come in and say, I'm at this high level and if you will be a part of the elite group, we will also bring you along to this higher level eventually. And then you'll be able to have your nose up in the air like us. This basis of authority, a false basis of authority, is with us today.

Various kinds of mysticism and gnosticism, New Age, secular existentialism, religious existentialism, both in and outside of Christendom. And notice I use the word Christendom, because it's not necessarily biblical Christianity in any form. But you have probably heard this term, a leap of faith. People say, oh, you have to take a leap of faith. That's not from scripture. This is from a philosophy that was invented by a man less than 200 years ago.

Postmodernism, the idea that there are multiple truths and they're kind of culturally defined anyway, and so we can kind of dabble and mix and match, but certainly there's no way to call one absolutely true and another absolutely false. Eclectic mix-and-match spirituality. Oh, I think I'll go to the Islamic folks over here today, but this next week I might pop over to the Buddhists, and Friday afternoon I'll just watch Oprah, whatever it is. Christianity, which claims to be true, but denies the historical reality of things that are in Scripture. Oh, these things you see, they're not really historically true, they're just spiritually true. Spiritually true. So true. And all of a sudden, it's left the historical realm. Whether Christ actually lived and died for us really doesn't matter.

All these kinds of teachings, we look at them here, and I've got them bulleted, in truth, they're foggy. In truth, there's a lot of mix and match, and you've probably noticed that too. Because once you step into this realm of subjectivism, and that's what the false teachers were claiming, you've lost all that objectivity.

Things get foggy. Things get a little blurry. And so you'll see a lot of crossover. You will see Christianity that is mixed up with this other thing. You will see something that appears to be Christian mixed up with this thing that's over here that's Buddhist. Lots of fog because they don't understand.

Jesus said, I am the singular way, the singular truth, the singular life. Nobody, no one comes to the Father but by me. It's exclusive, and it's specific, and it's clear, and it's absolute. Look at the contrast here between what the false teachers have, which is being sold today in our culture, and what the Bible says. The false teachers wanted people to base their lives in eternity upon the false teachers' subjective vision and experience.

They claimed it. Nobody could verify it. You can't even discuss it with others because in their mystery religion, you're sworn secrecy upon threat of death. to talk to anybody else about it, completely secret, subjective, unverifiable. There it ends.

The biblical pattern brought on by the apostles there is urging people to stand entirely on the authority of the Word of God, objectively verifiable, based on facts to which they made multiple testimony, many observations. Let's take one example, Colossians 1 that we looked at. What's Paul basing his message on? The preaching of the Word of God.

Is it secret? Absolutely not. We're going to proclaim it to everybody. Everyone entirely. The objective biblical appeal. John writes in 1 John, and he's not talking about something that's spiritually true, but not historically true. What's his basis? What we have heard, what we've seen with our eyes, what we've touched, what we've looked upon. These are real world things. Real world, real time events. That's the basis of appeal. not a subjective experience, not something that is spiritually true, but not historically true. Inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.

Now, this is interesting. This is a person who is a legend in their own mind, okay? The word translated here, inflated, or in the King James, a very good equivalent, puffed up, is interestingly used seven times in the New Testament. This is the one time in Colossians, the only other place that it's used, all in 1 Corinthians six times. Now you know what kind of a problem they had in Corinth, okay? Really puffed up. Now, this isn't quite what Paul means by puffed up, but the analogy isn't bad.

You see, in those days, what they would do in order to do smelting of various metals, particularly of iron, they would have these goatskin bags. and they would use handles and things of that sort to pump these to force air into a furnace in order to get the fire hotter. And some of them also had, kind of like we have in the bellows now where you get kind of two handles, and they also had some of that design. But interestingly, they chose the name for it that sort of sounds like the device. The action was Fusiao, or the name of the item was a Fus, Fus, Fus, Fus, okay? If you look at it, that's what these false teachers were doing. That's the word that Paul uses. Foos, foos, foos.

Okay? We have, as believers, zero basis for human pride. None. We have been saved, marvelously and eternally, far beyond anything we deserve. It's interesting how often, you deserve something is used in advertising these days. If we look at what we deserve, oh boy, that's not what we got, folks.

Then we've been blessed beyond all comprehension out of God's grace alone. There is nothing to base our human pride on, nothing we do, don't do, nothing we know or don't know, nothing we've experienced. There is nothing that we can contribute to what God has and has accomplished and blessed us with. It is entirely by His grace.

God has due all the praise and honor and glory, unlike the false teachers. the ones who are the legends in their own minds. Finally, he says in verse 19, not holding fast to the head. And this is the turning point, because it's what the false teachers were not doing that is true of those who are of the church.

Holding fast is krateo, and it's a powerful word. It conveys the idea of grasping with strength. It's a word that was actually sometimes used in seizing somebody in an arrest, for example. It's a word of intensity. It's not a casual holding, but a holding with strength.

The false teachers are not connected with Christ as the head. They think they've got their own basis of life. They say, I've had this experience, and I worship the right series of angels, and I deprive myself of this and that, and I'm so humble I should be rewarded for it. That's the basis, instead of holding on to the head.

So, if you think about it, what's so special about what Paul wrote here? What is so special? The New Testament applies the analogy of the head and body to Christ and the church, and that's what he does here in verse 19. Paul, by the way, is the only one that uses this analogy. In 1 Corinthians, it's a reference to Christ the head, and in Romans and 1 Corinthians, the church is the body.

But in terms of putting the two together, Ephesians and Colossians are the ones that do precisely that, particularly the passage that we've got right here. Now, so is this what Paul had in mind? Well, maybe not. But anyway, we've got Ephesians and Colossians presented a unified teaching there. Christ is the head and the Church is the body. So we have that passage.

The head is shown in this passage and also in Ephesians 4.16 as the source of growth for the body.

The head is the focal point of growth for the body in Ephesians 4.15. Christ, the head, is the savior of the body in Ephesians 5, which we'll get to in several decades. And the church is subject to Christ, who is an authority again in Ephesians 5.

Now, as we look at this, what does it really mean? What does that mean for you and me? The point here, he has the supremacy. Christ has the supremacy. He is the authority in the body, in the body of Christ. He is the life of the church, as we'll see in Colossians 3-4 in not too many weeks here. Christ is the head of the church or the body, which means this is an organism, not just an organization. An org chart does not describe all that goes on in a church body. So you say, that's great, but what does it really, really, really mean? It means submission to Christ in all things. It means living in union with Christ as our Head.

This is personal, real, not just hypothetical. Unity is based on a relationship with the Head. We have unity not because we all just come into the same room. not just because we're not at fisticuffs with one another, but we have unity because it's a spiritual unity that God has created. There is diversity in this body. Yes, we have lots of diversity here, and you probably noticed that. There is interdependence of function within the body here, and that as well.

There's the absolute necessity of the head for the body. Think of the contrast here. Holding on to the head is exactly what the false teachers are not doing. They are specifically not holding on to the head. Those who are in the body are, by Christ's design, not just mechanically attached, like this bolt here is holding on this bracket to the rock. It's not just a mechanical attachment. Okay, now you're connected. Boom.

As we'll see in the rest of verse 19, holding on to the head means growth, which is from God. And as we move ahead in Colossians 3, 4, Christ is our life. It is an organism, not just organization, from whom the entire body, one of the things we see in verse 19 is the rest of the action all takes place from connection to the head. The head is the focal point and the turning point in this passage here. And the emphasis, all, the entire body is being supplied. There are no peripheral incidental parts. Every part counts. Here at Holly Hills, what does this mean?

It's God's intent that every believer be involved with a local church, but it's not just because we come here, not just because we have a meeting in the same room. The intimate connection to Christ is the basis for our gathering together here. That's what counts. We appreciate every person that gets involved in different activities, and we thank the Lord for the things that the Lord does through the body here, through individuals do different things. But ultimately, it is our life connection to Christ that is the basis for what we do that is of value, that is of eternal value. That's what counts. It's not just how many things am I signed up for, but whose life is it that's being lived out and extended into this church body.

Now, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments here, The phrase conveys intimacy and close connection, mobility and activity. It is the action of a living organism. Notice that the parts that Paul comes up with aren't just rocks and dirt and mechanical things. He describes something with intimate connection, life, living. It's not just a bureaucratic organization. Here's your inbox, here's your outbox, process the stuff in between.

The false teachers had a system. Christ has a life. Then, with a growth which is from God. The false teachers prided themselves in a singular event. You notice that? I have had this experience, and because of that experience, I'm now graduated above everybody else. What we see here in Scripture is growth that is a process, and every believer Having the same position is involved in that growth process.

Very different. We're not looking for some final event. We're not looking for some second blessing to complete us. We're not looking for something that will magically and instantly make us mature. It's a growth process that goes on, not a single event.

You see, we could go in and come up with all sorts of schemes to grow this church in numbers if we wanted. In fact, I studied a lot of this stuff in business school. But you know what? We really better not do that stuff here. We could do it. Be no problem. I have the training. Heaven help us if we ever do.

Because in spite of all the ability to do that technically, Paul's writing here, no, there is a growth which comes from God and not out of the textbook in business school. Not out of your marketing program. Not out of the software. not out of your census demographics and your surveys. There's a growth which has God as its source. It comes out of fellowship with Jesus Christ.

Paul has already said that there's an individual maturing process. We saw that in Colossians 1, 28 and 29. Every, every, every. So it extends to every single person. But there is also a growth which is a body growth, and that's what he's put the focus on here. There are both kinds of growth taking place, and they take place together. Individual believers growing, and the body growing. Those are intended by God and designed by God to happen in harmony with one another.

If we look at this passage here, it is a matter of looking to the Lord. The false teachers were providing every distraction possible and every appeal to the flesh. Oh boy am I humble, the false teacher would say. Paul says no, they're not holding on to the head, Christ. It is from attachment to the head, the life of Christ, that there is growth in the body, individually and especially corporately as he's addressing here in this passage.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you that as we look at these things here, the growth is indeed from you. We do not have to cook it up, generate it, concoct it, or come up with our own schemes. We do not have to draw upon this world's techniques and schemes and mechanisms. But instead, it is your life in each of us, in all of us. What a wonderful thing you've done. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.