Uncompromised: The Book of Colossians | In Need Of Prayer

We, we've begun this new series out of Colossians, and basically what Paul is saying in his day to one of his communities and what the Spirit is saying to us in our day in this community is we have to know the difference between when something is okay, when something is becoming dangerous, and actually when something has become rotten that can take you out.

And so this whole series is an invitation into discernment, into understanding.

And for you, again, who belong to another faith, or maybe you are agnostic or atheistic, or you are Christian in background, or you are here trying to understand Christianity, this is an incredible series for you to be at.

Because as you walk through this, you will see what makes Christianity Christianity and what pretends to be Christian and is not.

This is week two out of the letter of Colossians.

If you have a Bible digitally or in paper, you can turn to Colossians one again.

We found out last week Paul was writing to a local church that was growing and there was a ton of life and excitement, but it had become, uh, it was basically under existential threat because of false teaching.

Last week in the first two ve-verses, Paul showed us the true Jesus, reminded us of our core identity, and also shared with us the good news.

But now before we get to where he goes next, we need to pause, and we need to ask something contextually that most of us won't know sitting in the rooms watching.

Who actually were the false teachers that Paul was responding to? In other words, who were the pastors and the small group leaders who attend your small group who look Christian and have the same study Bible, but actually don't worship the same Jesus you think you do? There are not one, there's not two, there are three groups of false teachers now in this local church.

The first one are called Gnostics.

We've talked about them before.

They were teaching that matter, the physical world, is evil and the cause of evil.

They had phrases like, "The body is the seat of sin and is fundamentally demonic or evil." They would say without hesitation or blushing that the true God would have never created the material world, so it must have been created by a demented and lesser God.

And so in time, what certain groups started saying is actually Yahweh, the God of the Jews, the Old Testament God, was the demented God because he created the physical universe.

And so they started saying that Christianity needed to liberate itself from any aspect of the Jewish history.

They also started saying that Jesus, of course, was not fully human and fully God, since God hates the physical.

And then there were ethical implications.

One group started saying, "Well, since God doesn't care about your body or the physical universe, you can do anything you want with your body.

It doesn't matter how you work through gender or sexuality or gluttony or drinking.

You can use your body in any direction.

God doesn't care because the true you is inside of you, and this is just a prison." Where have I heard that before? Oh, like on every podcast these days.

And then the reverse was also true.

Others who were in this group started saying, "No, you need to treat your barty- body with harshness, and you need to hate the physical world, and you need to beat yourself into submission." Then they started saying things, "Well, Jesus only appeared human.

He actually wasn't human." Another group started saying, "Well, actually, there was a man named Jesus and he was walking around and suddenly God sent his spirit to possess the man Jesus and took over his mind and eyes, and then Jesus became this conduit for secret knowledge and spiritual information.