Spiritual Maturity

Colossians 1:1-2

Col-010

We are studying Colossians 1:1-2: "The Salutation," segment number 10.

The believers in the city of Colossae were under the influence of false doctrine from a group of religious intellectuals. These intellectuals, often well-educated, were claiming to possess superior spiritual insights, which contradicted the teachings of New Testament Christianity – that which we refer to now as the Bible. Paul wrote this letter to expose the false teaching of these high-IQ minds which had been corrupted by the delusions of the sin nature. A human mind, please remember, is always enslaved to human viewpoint until one is regenerated spiritually, and until he has then been taught the divine viewpoint of Bible doctrine.

The sad truth among Christians today is that many of them come into the Christian life with their human viewpoint orientation, and they never get away from it. No one ever is there to teach them the straight scoop, and to help them to change their human viewpoint into the divine viewpoint of the mind of Christ. Yet that is our heritage. And you as a congregation, as individual believers – that is your right. In most congregations, the people of God are simply robbed of that because the people of God are treated as dumb sheep, and I highly resent that comparison of born-again believers to sheep. Now, sheep are very foolish. They are stupid creatures in what they will do. They will follow bad leaders to their great injury. But while we are sheep in God's comparison, and while we need a shepherd to guide us, the truth of the matter is that that shepherd is the Holy Spirit Who indwells us. So, because we are all, as believers, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we are not dumb. We're not without orientation to do what is right. We do have the capacity to rise at the highest, finest level of human existence in our personal lives.

IQ vs Spiritual Understanding

So do not respect their words. Do not be intimidated by their position. These are the people that we refer to in our society as liberals. Liberalism, theologically like liberalism, educationally, liberalism, politically, liberalism and economics always create great injury to the people who are subject to that liberalism. And we are a society now, which is going through the throes of agony, trying to shake off the terrible things that liberalism in various expressions has done to our Christian oriented nation. Now, the Christians in Colossae were being diverted from true doctrine which had been delivered by the Holy Spirit through the Apostles. The Lord Jesus Christ was being debased by these people to a simply a spirit creature who had been created by God rather than the God man of salvation. Angels were presented as objects of worship. Masters of wisdom were propagating Satan's viewpoint and were honored as the source of the deep things of God.

Human good works and the legalisms of the Mosaic Law were promoted as the way to please God and to reach heaven. That's the social gospel of the liberals. The ignorant intellectuals of Colossae were spiritually insane while they were smugly proud of their crazy satanic insights. And remember that insanity is bad business. And I don't know if you've ever had a deal with someone who is insane. On a few occasions I have, and you have a volatile situation. You have something that is way out of control and very often under safe and demonic direction. So, to be spiritually insane is even worse than to be mentally insane. But these intellectuals at Colossae were simply spiritually out of touch. And when you are insane, please remember that you're out of touch with reality. You're out of touch with reality. That's the core factor of insanity. You're spiritually saying you're out of touch with spiritual reality. It's like the people I heard of one time who were in an insane asylum. They'd gathered in their gathering room, and they were discussing why in the world they were there in that institution. And then one person got up after another to explain why they felt that they were in that institution until one guy, crazier than the rest, stood up and said, "Friends, we're all here because we're not all there." And that is the problem with insanity. You got one oar in the water and you're going in circles, you're out of touch with reality and you're going nowhere. It is very important to understand that being spiritually insane is very serious business. So, because somebody comes along with great intellectual capacity and great prowess of reputation, don't be impressed and don't be intimidated. The simplest child among us who has been well versed in doctrine is head and shoulders above these ignorant intellectuals. The liberals today in their spiritual insanity are out of touch with the real world, but at the same time they think that they are beyond the unwashed masses. That's how far they are out of touch with reality.

The Apostle Paul began the book of Romans with this principle. He began the very first chapter. He said, "I want to tell you that the human race is crazy when it comes to spiritual things. They're out of it. They don't know what they're talking about. They're out of touch with the real world. That is the world that they must deal with when they confront God." So right off the bat he explains in his opening chapter this problem. For example, in Romans 1:21-22, Paul says, "For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks." They did have information. They had that from Adam on down, and they certainly had it after the flood from Noah on down. But they did not honor the doctrine they had. Instead, they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. And this is Paul's description of the ignorant intellectual professing themselves to become, to be wise. They were nothing but fools. Why? Because they'd had a knowledge of God and turned their back upon it. Notice Romans 1:28, "And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which were not proper." They were so intellectually sophisticated that when they turned her back upon the principles of doctrine and of God's morality, then they went off into all the things that are subsequently described in this chapter, the horrendous lifestyle of the homosexual and the lesbian and all the evil things that come from that. They were so smart, so sophisticated, they knew so much better than the doctrine that God had revealed and all that they did was end up as fools and degenerated to the status of animals. Romans 1:32 notes, "And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but they also give hearty approval to those who practice them."

Here they know that death will follow certain practices. The medical world now is up in great concern because the homosexual world has said they're tired of all their safe sex and all the restrictions and inhibitions upon them. So, they're going back to their old lifestyle and their old ways. And though they know that God says that upon this act there is the judgment of death, they pursue it with vengeance. And the result is that the AIDS epidemic is rising again in the homosexual community and they're paying the penalty of death. Now, is that smart? Is that intellectual? Is that educated? Is that high IQ? It is not. It is, as the Bible calls them, they have become fools, and their foolishness is evidenced by the detachment from the consequences of their acts. Their detachment from reality on the part of the spiritually insane, the ignorant intellectual causes them, you see, simply to fail to make connections between cause and effect.

And that is the problem. Society today, they do not understand that we have done this, which is wrong, and that's why we have this effect. So, they go out there and they try to correct the effect in some way, but only make it worse instead of going back and correcting the cause in the first place. This is comparable, again, to the man in the insane asylum who's put in a room to test his level of sanity. He is given a mop and a bucket with a ringer on it, and then they turned the water on in the lavatory bowl and the bowl overflows. There's water all over the floor, and they tell him to mop up the water and get all that water off the floor. Now, if he's crazy, he will start mopping up the water and start ringing it out in the bucket, but he won't turn the faucet off on the lavatory, so the water keeps flowing over. That's the cause. That's the reason for the effect. But he doesn't make a connection, so he keeps swabbing the deck and squeezing out the water, and the water keeps accumulating. Liberalism is characterized by that as all of you know. The bad things that are in our society, we know what caused them, but do they go back and finish the cause? No. On a program this morning on TV that I watched for a little bit, Meet the Depressed, a public speaker in Congress said that at the next election everything will be back the way it was before. The people are horrified by the terrible things these conservatives are doing. These Christian fundamentalists. You know who he was talking about, not me, you kind of people. And this poor guy has not made the connection, and he is so backward that, though he is a high member of Congress, he stands right there on public television and is not ashamed to tell people he is so crazy that he can't figure out what's made the consequences that we're suffering from. But we're going to go back and keep the same cause going just as much as we can and greater than ever.

The New Testament teachings of the church dispensation were considered flawed by these ignorant intellectual false teachers and Colossi. They rejected the concept of inherent doctrine. So, they considered that what the Apostles taught was not right, and they were going to fix it up with their superior minds. They were totally out of touch with the reality of the corruption of the human mind that man by nature cannot find his way to God. But they turned around and said, "Yes, we can." And these Colossae Liberals actually hated God. They were infuriated by him because he was inhibiting the expression of the lust of their sin nature with his moral rules and his laws of the establishment of society. The laws of establishment of society deal with the laws of government and how society conducts itself. Those are very explicit in the Bible. And when you violate that, you get some very explicit bad consequences. Now, these Colossian false teachers had an eternally destructive effect on the believers. So, Paul takes off the velvet gloves in this book. He takes them on, and he exposes them without mercy. There's a certain point where you deal gently with error and then at another point you take off the velvet gloves and you put on the steel helmet, and you give no mercy to those who are creating eternal destruction to the believers.

Being in Christ

Matthew 16:18, which we looked at in detail, was the declaration that Jesus made after He was formally rejected by the Jewish people and the Jewish leadership so that He could not fulfill His mission of fulfilling the covenants to Israel. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus crosses over into Gentile territory, Caesarea Philippi, and He says, "And I also say to you that you are Peter, you're a pebble, but upon this rock, your confession that I am the Christ, the son of the living God. I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it." There the Lord Jesus Christ indicated that a distinctively new thing I will build future and is being carried on by Him to this day. It was not something that existed in the past. The divine plan for Israel to rule all nations under Jesus Christ is now on hold while God is doing a new thing, creating the church, bringing together a group of people who are in Christ. The Jews were never in Christ. People under Judaism can never say they are in Christ. That is a select and intimate position that only Christians enjoy. The key feature of the church age is God's grace enabling a believer to live a supernatural life through the application of the doctrine that he has learned by the indwelling Holy Spirit, this specialized body. This specialized body of believers is addressed in the Colossian letters as those who are in Christ.

Now the beginning of the church was made very clear early in the Book of Acts 1:5. And I want to again stress to you that it did have a beginning after centuries of Judaism being in operation. Acts 1:5, "For John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now." Ten days later, this prediction was fulfilled. It says that the baptism of the Holy Spirit will happen in a few days, namely on the day of Pentecost. And on that day, they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Nobody in the history of the human race had been baptized by the Holy Spirit up to that time. Here was a tremendously totally new relationship to the living God. And it is because the church age is so distinctively different that we have to remember these details so that we understand the power that we Christians had that others never had. And because we are baptized into Christ, we have an intimate relationship with the Son of God.

Holy Spirit / Pentecost

So today at the moment you believe in Christ the Savior, you are baptized into the universal body of Christ. You're placed in Christ, you're in the church, the body of Christ, born again believers. So, the church started in one local geographic place, the city of Jerusalem. And in 30 years it covered the known world. In Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost were 120 Jewish age believers. These people were born again. These people were sealed to the eternal destiny of being in heaven. They were as born again as Abraham was or David or any Old Testament Saint. But they were on Jewish ground, they were in Judaism. And on the day of Pentecost, they were transferred from that position into the position of the church. In Acts 1:12-14, "Then they return to Jerusalem from the Mount following the ascension of Jesus called Oliver, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. That is Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas Bartholomew and Matthew, James, the son of Alephs and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, the son of James. These, all with one mind, were continually devoting themselves to prayer along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with His brothers." The total number in the room was 120 people. Now notice Acts 2:1-4, "And when the day of Pentecost had come 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus, when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting, and there appeared to them tongues as a fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with tongues as a Spirit was giving them utterance."

Holy Spirit

In John 15:26, Jesus says, "When the Helper that is the Holy Spirit comes, whom I will send to you, you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He shall bear witness of me." Jesus says, I'm leaving, and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to replace me to guide you into spiritual truth. John 16:7, "But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you." Jesus was here present physically. He was omnipresent everywhere in His deity. When He left, which He did at the ascension, then the Holy Spirit who had been present in His omnipresence on this earth, now was also present Himself in all of the believers who formed the church body. Notice John 16:12-13, "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come." That which the Holy Spirit has revealed is now recorded in your testament. And that is why we tell you that He is your teacher. I may be the speaker or somebody else may be the speaker who explains a doctrine to you, but you'll never learn it until God the Holy Spirit makes it real to your understanding. He will never make it real to your understanding when you're out of the inner circle of temporal fellowship. That's the way the system works, and it works inevitably.

Spiritual Maturity

If you have ever had occasion, which unless you've been ill, to stay home Sunday morning and listen to the radio programs of the great religious establishments of our Dallas community, you'd be surprised the trivia, the shallowness of the greatest churches and the greatest names, and there is nothing. What a price the believers will pay! They who are members of this unique distinct aristocratic body, the church of the Living God. So, these 120 Jewish age believers were suddenly indwelt by the Spirit of God. They were filled with the spirit of God. He controlled them. They were baptized by the Spirit of God into the body of Christ. They then preached on that day the gospel to devout Jews. These were Jews who had come from everywhere to celebrate the Passover festival. And these devout Jews, some of them may have been saved, some of them may have not been saved, but were told that that's what was the immediate result of their being baptized by the Holy Spirit. They had a voice to speak the gospel, and they began preaching the Word of God.

This is what we have indicated for us in Acts 2:5, "Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven." And these Jewish believers were also at this point in time who did believe this message were born again, and they were brought into the body of Christ and temporal fellowship. The believers 120 received a spiritual gift on a day of Pentecost. One gift among others was the gift of speaking in foreign languages. And it is probably true. There is some doubt about this, but it's probably true that all 120 spoke in the foreign languages and not just the apostles. But in any case, Jewish age believers suddenly were placed into this body of Christ. And when they did, it was confirmed by their being able to explain what had happened, this marvelous new thing. It wasn't the gospel so much that they were preaching to tell them the marvelous new thing of what God had done by this baptism of the Holy Spirit. And they did it in languages that people understood.

Now, there three things that were new to believers at this point in time. One was this baptism of the Holy Spirit union with Christ. Secondly was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit permanently living in a human being from the point of his salvation until he dies physically. And the third new thing was spiritual gifts. Spiritual abilities which are operating today, some of them were temporary like speaking in tongues and prophesying. Now that we have nine and each of us has at least one of them. The spiritual gifts were given to us permanently. You never lose your gift, you can't ask for it, you can't pray for it. You just find out what it is. And that's the way you serve God. And this again was totally new. Sometimes God, the Holy Spirit indwelt people in the Old Testament to perform a mission, and He left them. Sometimes He gave them an ability gift to do something, like the men who constructed the temple, and then He left them. But you have not only Christ living in you, the hope of glory, but you have the Spirit of God living in you, the hope of great power and achievement in your life. They already had regeneration. They were already sealed to the destiny of eternal life. So now these five things that are characteristic of Christians became true of all of them. After the day of Pentecost, these Jewish believers were Christians, and all who subsequently were saved, received these five things automatically. In Acts 19:1-7, we have the example of some Jewish age believers who hadn't heard about Pentecost. When they were told the truth about God's new work, they were brought into the body of Christ. And in the transition period between the close of Judaism and the beginning of the church age, Apostolic hands sometimes were the means by which a person received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But the normal process settled in with I Corinthians 12:13.

What is the purpose of the church?

How clever are you? Do you remember when Abraham was staggered by these promises and the potential that God was going to do with him? God said, "Now I'm going to sign this as a contract. You and I, Abraham, we're going to sign a contract." And Abraham was put in a deep sleep and people in those days would make a contract with each other which was irrevocable before God by taking some animals as a sacrifice. And they would split the sacrifice in two parts, and they would put one on one part side of a path and one on the other and they'd have several sacrifices. Then the people would say, "I covenant to do this; you covenant to do that. And we make this covenant before God and now we're going to sign it." And then, arm in arm, they'd walk between these sacrifices down the path that sealed it.

Abraham

We are not in the business of building a kingdom. I used to be associated with a denomination where the preachers were forever talking about building the kingdom. And the church is not building a kingdom. The kingdom is in a band. A lady one time told me the reason she had her infant children sprinkled and called it water baptism was in order that they might have a claim upon the promises of God's covenants. And I said, "Wait a minute, you're a Christian. There are no covenants with you. God has no covenant promises to you. Those belong to the Jewish people. What makes you think that you have some access to it?" Well, the reason was because of this confusion between Israel and the church. And when you do that, I'll guarantee you, you'll fritter away your life and you'll stand at the judge in the seat of Christ. And if you haven't learned this lesson now, you'll learn it then. And then you'll say, "Now I realize why my life was so useless. If I'd have lived under my program of the church with the power of the Spirit of God and the knowledge of doctrine, I could have been like a skyrocket going off with a blast of glory and I would've enjoyed such a great eternity. Now, it is a serious thing to miss this difference. God is not building the kingdom now. Israel's kingdom was postponed through the rejection of Jesus Christ, her King. Acts 1:6-7, "Then the disciples said, 'Lord, everything's messed up. Verse six: You came to inaugurate the kingdom, You came to fulfill the promises to Israel, and here it's all messed up. They rejected You, but now You're alive again." So, their natural question was they hadn't quite caught the church age vision, yet that came with Paul. They said, "Are you going to do it now? Are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?"

Now I heard a very famous preacher in the Metroplex area, every one of you would know his name and you would genuflect the minute you heard it in respect and adoration. And I heard him preaching a sermon, and he quoted this verse, and he said, "These disciples were so ignorant they still thought that there was going to be a kingdom. They still thought there was going to be a kingdom upon this earth." Well, that's when I stopped genuflecting before him because I found who the ignorant one was. It was this preacher with more members than could ever fit in his auditorium at one service who thought that there was to be no future for Israel. These disciples were right. The timing was the problem. So, in verse seven, Jesus says, "It's not for you to know the times of the epics which the Father has fixed by His own authority.

It is not for you to know when this is going to happen." That was not a true answer from Christ. That would've been a total falsehood if there was to be no future kingdom upon this earth. Jesus should have said, "Now look, let's get it straight once and for all. Israel has lost the kingdom. Israel is gone, Israel has finished. The church is going to take over from now on." Instead, Jesus said, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You should be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to their remotest parts of the earth." And what Jesus was saying to them was that a new thing is coming in you; concentrate on being My witnesses. The age of the kingdom is now in the future.

Furthermore, when Paul wrote the book of Romans, he stressed again that things were not over for Israel as a nation. Romans 11:25-27, Paul says, "For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery. Lest you be wise in your own estimation, that a partial hardening is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." Paul said one of the secrets that God never revealed in the Old Testament was that the Jewish people would come in the total spiritual blindness, total spiritual blindness. They would reject their Messiah. And even after they rejected Him and even after history moved on, they still wouldn't catch on. That total blindness rests upon the Jew today. But he says partially, here and there, a Jew is going to become a Christian here, and there a Jew will become a Christian, but most Jews will go into hell because there will be upon them this blindness. In verse 26, "And thus all Israel will be saved." Eventually God will restore the nation and it is written that the delivery will come from Zion. He will remove godliness from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins. Is there anybody in this auditorium that is so diluted to think that God has taken sin away from the Jewish people today? He has left them in their blindness. And because, as Jesus said, "No man comes unto the Father but by me" and they reject this savior. Every Jew goes into the lake of fire.

Our society may praise him and hold him in great esteem, but without Christ, no matter how good a person was, he is doomed and he's doomed because there's a blindness upon him. So, Israel's promises are yet to be fulfilled, but they will be fulfilled apart from the church body. God's program today is very simply the calling out from Jews and Gentiles to form a body which will be the bride of Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:18 puts it this way, "For through Him we both have our access by one Spirit to the Father; we have access to Him by the Father." And Romans 10:12-13, "For there is no distinction between Jews and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him, for whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." So, God's program today is a call from Jew to Gentile, a new group of people, a group of a people which are specifically designed to be related to Jesus Christ. The church is the product of divine grace alone. Grace is the unearned blessing of God, and God is free to bless us because of the death of Christ. The church is to show forth the glories of the living God. We are not commoners, brethren. Please act like royalty. Ephesians 2:6-7 says that He raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. In order that any ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of His grace and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. God is going to be so proud through all eternity to be able to point to the lowest human morally and show what a great trophy of grace He has made out of Him.

Grace

Consequently, it is the act of God that brings us together. God's way of dealing with us is grace. We close on that high note in contrast to the Old Testament way of life, which was doing things to get God's blessing. Grace in salvation and in the Christian life is the way God works now; that is His dispensation. So, grace must be the guiding factor in our local church operation. Grace must govern how we teach the Word of God. We appeal to you to respond to the Word of God for the blessings and fullness and privileges that are yours in Christ. And we do that in the privacy of your priesthood where you sit in this auditorium and a pastor-teacher with a spiritual gift of teaching gives you the information. Nobody knows whether you're saying hooray or baloney, but you're going one way or the other. You're accepting or you're rejecting. That's the grace way. You do not try to force people to come into the Christian life, and you do not force people to do what's right. You do it constantly, gently when people do what's wrong. We learn this in summer camp; we have to constantly, gently try to bring people who are doing wrong to doing what is right, but it has to be a grace method.

Church Membership

See, it's all private, no pressure. And grace decides how we give an invitation. We don't give it like the preacher I just told you about. This is a matter of belief. It's not a matter of public profession. And any time a preacher says "Come down the aisle," you know he's going for one thing. He wants you down the aisle because he wants to look good in the eyes of his congregation, and he wants to build up his membership. That's what he's after. If he was after getting people saved, he would be very careful not to give them one human act to perform that would dilute, that would confuse them into walking an aisle to be saved. Instead of sitting there and saying, "God, I'm wrong. I'm a sinner and you're right. You've made the provision and I want to tell you I accept Christ and what He has done for me."

Grace must govern how we receive members into the local church organization. We don't have people come forward and sit down in the front row and the secretary give him a card to fill out. How many of you want this person, he, this person. How many you want this man in your church? Well, he happens to be Jack the Ripper, but you don't know that. So, you raise your hand; here, bring him in. Membership is a big thing. We want to be able to give a good report to our organization at the end of the year. You must examine people before you bring them in and give them voting privileges so that, by grace, they can function is how we treat your priesthood as a believer. You are living as unto the Lord, and we respect your privacy. Sometimes we'll tell you something we think you shouldn't do, but you are. It's between you and God, how you live your life. And we live and let live in that respect. And how we treat visitors in a service, no gimmicks. We don't embarrass people in our service. We don't say, "Well, look at that new person. Will you stand up? We'd like to take a look at you. In fact, just why don't you parade by here? We want to see how you walk and what kind of hair do you have." We don't embarrass people by calling attention to them. Now after the service, we have friendly people who will go up to visitors, and that is proper and should be done and how we view leadership in the local church. The leadership is not perfect, but we respect it and where it needs correction, we leave it with God, Who ultimately will straighten things out. And it's how we deal with sin nature, failures of members. We have no heroes in the Christian life. Frailty covers each of us, and we treat each other with grace. And we make correction as correction needs to be made. That's the church. That's what it's all about to be in Christ.

Closing prayer

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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