A Powerless Answer For Powerful Problems | Colossians 2:16-23

Scripture

• Colossians 2:16–23

About this sermon

Introduction: In the early church, and in the world of the New Testament, there were two polar-opposite errors that were often championed in a world of licentious living. We understand living in a licentious world. The longer that we live in our time, the more our world looks like the world of the 1st century church. A world filled with gross immorality. A world that assaults every godly standard. A world that normalizes perversion. A world in which false Christianity relaxes Biblical truth. How do faithful churches live faithful lives, pure lives, holy lives, in such a world? FAITHFUL CHURCHES MUST RESIST THESE POLAR-OPPOSITE ERRORS. In the New Testament, on the one end of the spectrum, there were those who held to a false view of grace. They excused, and sometimes even gloried in, the deeds of the flesh. God’s grace was used as an excuse to go in the sins that Christ died to set us free from. 1Pe 2:16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Jud 1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. ESV Galatians 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. We understand that error quite easily. That error has often been recognized and acknowledged by churches that take the Word of God seriously. Churches that believe the Bible, that believe in church discipline, that understand our calling to holiness, do not usually struggle with embracing a perversion of grace that excuses sin. But on the other end of the spectrum there is another error addressed in the New Testament. IT IS JUST AS DEADLY AS THE FIRST ONE, BUT PERHAPS NOT AS EASILY DISCERNED IN CHURCHES LIKE OURS. We often tip our hat at this error — acknowledging that it can exist — but then we struggle to recognize where we are guilty of practicing it. We struggle to resist it as much as we resist the first one. THE ERROR THAT I’M REFERRING TO IS THE ERROR OF BEHAVIORAL LEGALISM. I qualify it with the word BEHAVIORAL because I am referring to something that CHRISTIANS can be attracted to. I’m not talking about legalism as a system by which you think you are saving yourself. I’m talking about people ON THEIR WAY TO HEAVEN, who are looking for an answer to the fleshly indulgences all around them — and to the fleshly lusts that they recognize within themselves. When you look at the New Testament you see both errors addressed. When we examine legalism in the New Testament, we DO find people trying to save themselves by behaviorism — I do not deny that — but you also see BELIEVERS being influenced by those people. ESV Galatians 3:1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain-- if indeed it was in vain? 5 Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith-- 6 just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"? 7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. ESV Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ESV John 17:15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. ESV 1 Corinthians 5:4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people-- 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler-- not even to eat with such a one.