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Before we pray, I'd like to read a few scriptures.
In First Chronicles chapter 12.
First Chronicles, chapter 12.
Start with verse 38.
All these men of war that could keep rank came with a perfect heart to Hebron to make David king over Israel. All the rest also of Israel were of one heart to make David king.
Particularly verse. I was thinking of it. There they were with David three days, eating and drinking, for their brethren had prepared for them.
Moreover, they that were nigh them, even unto Issachar and Zebulun and Naphtali, brought bread on ***** and on camels, and on mules, and on oxen, and meat and meal cakes of figs, and bunches of raisins and wine, and oil and oxen and sheep abundantly. For there was joy in Israel.
Psalm.
68.
First, the last part of verse 10.
Thou, O God, has prepared of thy goodness for the poor.
Then in.
Romans, Chapter 9.
Romans Chapter 9 verse.
23.
That he might make known the rich of his riches, of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had a four prepared unto glory over a couple pages to 1St Corinthians.
Chapter 2.
Verse 11.
Oh sorry, verse 9. But as it is written, I have not seen, nor ear heard either. Have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared them that love him, God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. Hebrews, Chapter 11.
Hebrews Chapter 11 and verse 16. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city.
Hold your finger here and go to Revelation 21.
Revelation 21 and verse two and I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem.
Coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Back to Hebrews 11.
Hebrews 11 and verse 7 by faith Noah.
Being warned of God, of things not seen as yet moved with fear.
And prepared an arc to the saving of his house and one last verse in Ezra.
Ezra, Chapter 7.
And verse 10.
For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes.
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I'd like to make a suggestion for what we might take up.
Colossians, chapter 2.
And I would submit it to my brethren for their consideration.
I believe that chapter brings before us something that we very much need today, and that is the fullness of Christ as the head of the Body.
For fulfilling every need to that body.
1St chapter of course is the fullness of the head as to what He is in Himself before God, and also of course before us as well.
But then in the second chapter I believe we get the fullness of the head for the body.
Would my brethren be happy to take that up?
Amen.
Colossians, chapter 2.
Right with that you knew what great conflict I have for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.
For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the Spirit. Join in beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding therein with Thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him which is the head of all principality and power. In whom also your circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, and putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, Wherein also you're risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead, and you being dead in your sins.
And the circumcision of your flesh.
Hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross, and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them, openly triumphing over them in it. Let no man, therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days.
Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in the voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he had not seen vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head, from which all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment, ministered.
And knit together increases with the increase of God. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why is thou living in the world? Are you subject to ordinances? Touch not, taste not, handle not, which are all to perish with the using after the commandments and doctrines of men, which things have indeed a show of wisdom and will, worship and humility, and neglecting of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.
Just perhaps as a bit of an introduction.
And this is going over familiar ground, I know for many. But in the book of Ephesians, it's the emphasis is more on what the church is to Christ. But in Colossians we get what Christ is to the church. And as we mentioned earlier in the first chapter, we get the fullness of Christ as head of his body.
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As head over all things, as head of creation and so on. And it's wonderful we could take that up and spend our readings on that. But in the second chapter, it's more the fullness of the head of the body for His church, for you and for me. And it's, I feel in my own soul a very necessary thing today when we're facing some of the problems that are brought before us here.
The things mentioned in verse 8, for example, the being spoiled through philosophy and vain. But he had heard of them. He knew how things were going on. He writes to them according to what he had heard and what he felt they needed. And you and I can benefit from that same ministry today.
With only two reading meetings, we probably won't have time to get through the whole chapter.
But I would call attention first of all to what the apostle says in verse 2.
He wants their hearts to be comforted being knit together in love unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding.
And this complements what our brother Bruce brought before us last night.
To the acknowledgement, and I'm going to read this second and third verse the way they are in the Darby translation because the correction here I believe is rather important.
To the acknowledgement it says of the mystery of God, and then leave out the rest of the verse.
In which not in whom here, but in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
There's no such thing as a mystery of the Father mentioned in the Scriptures, and the mystery of Christ is brought in elsewhere. That's more the focus in Ephesians.
But here in Colossians the emphasis is on the mystery of God. That is, it brings before us God's purposes in Christ to exalt Him as head over all things, and of course bringing in you and me as the church along with it. And I would lay some emphasis on that, because when it says in which are hid all the treasures.
Of wisdom and knowledge. We have to realize that in order to understand the Scriptures, in order to come into all the blessing that God has for us, we have to understand the mystery of God and the mystery of Christ in the church. Without that, the Scripture does not make sense. And I say it very kindly, but how many dear believers I have talked to?
Who could not understand how verses fit in properly, how chapters fit properly into the Word of God and into the interpretation of it, because they did not see the mystery or secret of Christ in the church. Maybe someone else can enlarge a bit on that for us, but I feel it's extremely important in these days to have that before us, to realize that God has in His purposes.
The exaltation of Christ has head over all things with His church as a heavenly company. And when we see that everything else in the word of God, whether it's Israel or whether it is the nations at large, prophecy, whatever it might be, it all falls into place when we have that clear in our minds. And I believe that's why the apostle brings it in here for us.
That mystery is mentioned in chapter one and verse 26 I'm going to read from.
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25 To get the context says whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you to fulfill the word of God or to complete the word of God. Even the mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, but now has made manifest to His Saints. And so it was something that was not made known before.
It was hid from ages and generations. There were great men of God in the Old Testament times.
Abraham is called the friend of God.
Was a man who talked to God face to face and there were so many others as well, but they knew absolutely nothing of what the apostle Paul received a mystery that is now made manifest and I think that is so good to see. It's something that was hid from generations. Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 3 and Bill is mentioned it because the mystery.
As is mentioned there as well, and it's interesting how it puts it there.
Verse nine it says to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God. It doesn't say hidden in the Old Testament.
Of the church in the Old Testament. Now that we understand that God was thinking about that, but it was not revealed in Old Testament times. It was hidden.
This is so amazingly wonderful that you and I can enjoy things that those Old Testament faithful men that they were did not understand anything about. It was to the Apostle Paul a special instrument. Remember he was not one of the 12. He was a one born out of due time and it was to him that God revealed this mystery.
And I think, I love to think about it, that he learned the truth.
Of this mystery, Christ and His Church united together in one body the very day he was arrested on the way to Damascus. Remember what the Lord said to him.
So, so why persecutest thou me? He didn't even know who it was that was talking to him. He said, Who art thou, Lord? He knew that he was Lord, but he said, why persecute us, thou me? And I think it must have been a shock to him.
Me persecuting someone in heaven. But there he learned that in touching believers in this world he was touching Christ in heaven. Such as the intimacy of the union that exists between Christ and his church. Oh brethren, it is a beautiful thing to understand and to enjoy. And so we have in our chapter, like Paul, our brother Bill was mentioned in.
The mystery of God in which?
Our hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in this beautiful that you and I have been brought into the understanding and enjoyment of this mystery.
That's why I believe it says in that third chapter of Ephesians, and we don't need to keep going back to it, but it mentions the.
Unsearchable riches of Christ.
Are there riches of Christ that are searchable in the Old Testament? Oh yes, there are.
Wouldn't you and I have loved to have been those two on the way to Emmaus and listened for about 7 1/2 miles of walking to the Lord Jesus bring out the searchable riches of Christ in the Old Testament?
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But now what do we have today?
Unsearchable riches. Are they unsearchable to you and me? I don't believe so. But they're unsearchable in the sense that they can't be searched out. In the Old Testament they were revealed as Bob is brought out to the apostle Paul from a risen Christ in glory. And now you and I have the benefit of it all and the present living enjoyment of it all.
In this dispensation of God's grace, and how many there are, Brother Bruce was bringing that before us from Matthew's Gospel last night. How that many kings and prophets have desired to hear those things which she hear, and to see those things which she see and have not seen them, but you and I have the benefit of them. We couldn't have chosen, as many others have mentioned to us, we couldn't have chosen a better time.
In the world's history during which to be born than this present age when God has revealed this mystery or secret, that maybe is a an easier word for us to understand because the word mystery sometimes connotate something that's difficult to grasp. It's not difficult to grasp, but it's a secret that was not revealed until Paul came on the scene and the Lord chose him as the vessel to bring it out.
How beautiful it is. And so, as we said here, as it says here in verse three, in the knowledge of that mystery and the acknowledgement of it, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. Some people here, including myself, have been in big libraries, huge libraries, libraries with rare books in them. I know when I went to university, they had a section of the library there that was.
Rare books, and they guarded them very carefully. They weren't allowed out of the library. You had to sign them in, out very specially. And you could look at them only at a table there in that special room. Do they have a lot of treasures of knowledge in them? They did, but those treasures of knowledge never went beyond the horizon of this world. But you and I have access to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
That have been stored up in the heart of God, concerning His Son and concerning you and me.
So Colossians is one of.
Paul's prison epistles. So here he's getting towards the end of his ministry and he is in prison and he writes Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians and Philemon, and these are known as his prison epistles and they are the ones where he spends the most time Speaking of this mystery. We know he spoke of the mystery. He touched on it in Romans chapter 16, which was written earlier.
But the actual explication, the elaboration on the mystery and the things that constitute the mystery are really found largely in Ephesians and Colossians. And thinking of something that Bill said a few moments ago about the arrangement of Scripture and why certain things are where they are. It's good to ask the question, especially when we're younger and we're starting to study the Scriptures, why is this book even in the Bible?
Why did God give us the five books of Moses? Why do we have the book of Job? Why do we have the Psalms every? Why do we have 4 Gospels? Every portion of the word of God has some purpose according to the design of the Spirit of God.
Whereby we would have the complete written revelation of God. So let's ask about Colossians right now. And I was thinking just here in this chapter.
Where he speaks in the end of verse two of the full knowledge of the mystery of God. That's what the apostle wanted the disciples to have.
In Hosea, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, whatever knowledge that might have been at that time that they had. We want to be able to lay hold of what God has given to us in our day. What does God want me to have as a disciple of Christ today? I want to lay hold of that.
I don't want to be missing something.
And so he says here, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge now.
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Can you think of any competitors for that?
There's lots of competitors out in the world. There are those who will profess to convey to you all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
And in the next verse.
In verse 4 the apostle says I am saying this.
Because there are those who will seek to delude you by persuasive speech. Well, we could all probably name any number of different competitors. Paul wrote this because there was a competitor, and over in the eighth verse he'd referred to philosophy.
I understand in the original that has the article, it is the philosophy he's referring to. He's not talking about reading something by Aristotle, or reading something by Thomas Aquinas, or reading a chapter in Immanuel Kant. He's talking about Gnosticism, the greatest competitor to the Christian system of doctrine and teaching.
In the early days was a perversion of Jewish thinking added to philosophy through a number of men, and this got going in the early centuries.
Before Christ and then shortly after Christ, and it professed to be a whole system of wisdom and knowledge.
That was higher and deeper than the Gospel of Christ, and so here the apostle has to let them know that is simply not the case. We see elements of this in John's writings as well, where he talks about the person of the Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ manifest in flesh. The Gnostics had a philosophy about Jesus as well, where they sought to take you to a higher level of knowledge.
But what does it do? It undermines the gospel of Christ, and it really makes the Jesus of the Gospels, the Jesus of Christianity as it was given by the apostles, forever inaccessible to you. We want to have the Jesus of the Bible because that's the only savior that God has given. And so really the apostle here in Colossians, he sees, you might say, a clear and present danger that they would be turned aside.
To something else, and This is why we might emphasize in the second epistle of John.
He says to the elect lady if anyone comes to you and preaches.
Any other doctrine, you're not to receive him into the house. He talks about the doctrine of the Christ. I remember hearing years ago, it's not a doctrine, it's a person. Yes, it's a person, it's the living Word, but it's also a doctrine. Don't ever be afraid to study doctrine. Learn what the Word teaches about the person of Jesus because he is the one that God has set forth as the Savior.
Young people, don't be afraid to study doctrine. You are perfectly capable.
You have a mind and each one of us has the indwelling Spirit of God that wants to take the things of Jesus and show them to us. Why does He want to do that? Because He wants us to have fellowship with himself. He has brought us to Himself because He wants us to have fellowship, first of all with himself and with one another over His things. So I think we can say This is why a portion like this is very critically important, because the apostle Paul he saw.
A danger?
Something that was going to turn them aside. Everyone of us in the room knows. We can name somebody who was turned aside from the faith by some. Something came in and turned them aside from the faith. And we want to make sure that that doesn't happen to any of us here. We don't want it to happen to our children. We don't want it to happen to our grandchildren. We don't want to watch as the things that the apostle is Speaking of here.
Would draw souls aside from the doctrine and the person of Christ.
I think that's why.
Rather than Dave that it mentions in verse one conflict, great conflict.
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In Darby, translation says combat.
And it's used at the end of chapter one as well. Wherefore I where unto I also labor or combat, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily?
So we need to realize there is a conflict going on and it's because the enemy wants to take away the enjoyment. He can't take away this, that it belongs to us, but he can take away the enjoyment of it. And I just want to say to the young people today, it seems so marked in our culture that it is, that our culture is given up. Absolute truth.
And when we think of what is absolute truth, I say it's that beyond which there is no appeal. It is the last word. And when we talk about absolute truth, I think we need to be very clear that we're talking about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and His word. We have that verse very clear in John 14, the Lord Jesus said I am.
The way, the truth and the life, if he hadn't have been exactly that.
It would be the most awful perversion possible, but it is the truth, a person. But then, like Dave was mentioning in John 1717, it says, Sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is truth. What we have in our hands is the truth. You know, sometimes, brethren, I think we do damage when we sometimes the way we talk about the truth.
We use ourselves as a reference point.
Help us, Lord, not to do that because they're going to see failure in US and then they will shake their heads.
It's the person of Christ and it's his precious word, the truth, and for that there is conflict.
I remember when I was in high school, I think I was a sophomore and was taking a biology class, that I was introduced to what's called evolution. And I'm sure most of us know something about that. And I thought, well, first of all, I thought, well, these guys must have good, good evidence for what they're teaching. They're teaching it as if it's an absolute fact. And and yet I came across a book which was very helpful to me, actually written by a man named Francis Schaeffer. Some have heard about him.
He was fairly popular about that time when I was a young person, and he helped me because he pointed out something that's called worldview. I believe that's really what we have in this chapter is the worldview that God gives to us, the revelation of God and the person of Christ, and three examples of the worldviews that the world would propose to us. I think it's helpful to see that we might just go over those very briefly because that's what we have in this chapter.
And as Francis Schaeffer pointed out, he said worldview is very critical to the way we interpret experiences and facts that we come in, in that we come into, come and we face in our lifetime. He said worldview is like a grid. He said two people can be looking at the same object, but through different grids and they see different things. They interpret the facts and the circumstances differently.
Because they have different worldviews, and so there's a worldview that God gives us, and that's the absolute truth.
It's the revelation of God. It's the it's the mystery. As mentioned here. Perhaps we can use a little different word, say it's really the principle of dispensational truth that gives us the outline of Scripture of which Christ is the center from Genesis to Revelation. That's the absolute truth. That verse that our brother Ben read in first Corinthians 2 gives us that same outline of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
That's absolute truth. It's revelation, but then it goes on and it says there's three worldviews that the world offers up. Primary worldviews filters through which they're going to interpret the world. The one is that either entered into the heart of man, that's intuition, and that's a philosophy, whether it's philosophy, humanistic philosophy, or whether it's it's stepchild.
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Naturalistic Philosophy.
Remember, humanism is a worldview begins with man and it ends with man, whereas the revelation of God comes from God. He's the only one who can truly give us the truth of things. But men's philosophy begins with man and it ends with man. And we have to be careful of those filters because they're going to mislead us. Another filter in First Corinthians 2 is.
Nor ear heard. Some people go by tradition, they say well, this is what so and so is believed and this is what so and so is thought. It's been published many, many times and reviewed. It must be true. Well, not necessarily has to be tested by the word of God. And then the third one is I have not seen or observation personal experience. There's a great deal of emphasis on that today.
What's sometimes called narcissism, it's all about me, it's all about my experience. And so that's also brought out in this chapter. We're going to get into or at least touch on some of these things. But I think in a certain sense we may have a summary of it in verse 8 where we in the first 7 verses, we have the Christian worldview, the mystery. And verse 8 gives us a, perhaps a brief summary of what we have, these three worldviews that the world would.
Attempt to foist on us. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.
That's the one we mentioned neither hath entered into the heart of man or man's to it intuition and vain deceit. Well, that's another one. Perhaps that has to do with our experience. It's something that makes me feel good and important and we hear a lot about that today. The feel good society and then after the tradition of men. That's religion, no doubt, but it's.
Also traditions of many type. And then here's perhaps the key. In a certain sense, a summary of all three After the rudiments of the world. Those 3 worldviews are after the rudiments of the world. It's those alternative worldviews that Satan's World attempts to offer to men to satisfy their needs in their hearts. But the only true worldview is that which God gives to us.
And it's so important and critical to understand that.
In an advertisement that surfaced in our valley, it said it was advertising the the Confederation Church and it said.
Come to our church, we don't condemn, we receive everyone. And come and feel good about yourself.
The AD and you see that happening today, a lot of throwing out the apostles doctrine. Thomas Jefferson wrote a Bible and it was, it ended up being very, it was a copy of the scriptures that he copied out, but he left out all of the apostles doctrine. I've enjoyed the fact that in Acts, that verse, in chapter 2 and verse 42, it says and they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship in a breaking of bread and in prayers. And I think the order there is significant.
Maybe before going too much further beyond verse 8, a few comments on verses 5-6 and seven and I'm thinking of how here the apostle Paul, he was absent from them. And that takes me back to the thought that the Lord Jesus in the upper room ministry, he prepares them for a time when he is no longer going to be with them.
And so he lays out certain things to his disciples. The Lord Jesus is going to go back to the Father and he's going to empower his disciples and they are to take things out and teach others also. We have that also in Second Timothy chapter 2, how the things that Paul had, he was conveying to others and they were to take those things and to teach others, those of us who are 2000 years down the road.
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We haven't had any inspired apostles with us for a long time. Are we lacking not according to the word of God. We're not lacking and I want to use this to point out that that he has in the end of verse 5, the firmness of your faith in Christ. Every person needs to start with faith in the Lord Jesus and I want to emphasize it's been said before, do not allow.
Things that you don't understand.
To cause you to question the things that you do understand the gospel of Christ, that which brings us into his presence and sets us free from sin and fear and death. That's the starting place whereby we can learn all about the mysteries that God has revealed in his Word. Verse six as therefore you have received the Christ Jesus the Lord.
Number one walk in him.
Rooted and built up in him and assured in the faith.
How many souls can be turned aside by something that seeks to undermine their assurance? To turn, as Eric was speaking, to turn the gaze from the perfection of Christ and his work on to self. Very dangerous kind of a thing. We need to be rooted and built up in Him, a daily gaze at the Lord Jesus and learning the things that the Word teaches.
About him he says, assured in the faith, even as ye have been taught.
Teaching is important.
Abounding in it with Thanksgiving. Souls who get away from God, what's one of the first things that happened? They abandon a spirit of thankfulness for the simplest things that Christ has given to us. Every one of us can think of things that we can be thankful for. And you know what a thankful spirit does. It makes you want to draw nearer to him. I want to draw nearer to the one that I'm thanking for the good things that he's given to me or.
If I think of affliction and faithfulness, Thou hast afflicted me. There's four times in the 119th Psalm where he talks about affliction. We can even thank the Lord for the afflictions that He has given to us. This world created by God, even though man has departed from God, this world is full of the gift. And I mean this world is full of the things that God.
According to his nature has freely given to man, we even learned.
God is good to the wicked. He's even good to the wicked.
He lavishes his blessings even upon those who do not thank Him and have no use for him, those in the Psalms who say.
Depart, depart from us.
He has not yet said to them, Depart from me.
He has not uttered that word to them yet. That's an allusion to the 6th Psalm. I believe there's a day coming when he is going to say, depart from me. I never knew you. But what he's, what is he doing right now? He's not imputing their trespasses unto them. He is freely extending the gospel of Christ. And for those of us who are younger and believers, what you have, walk in it every day with the Lord and in fellowship with your brethren. And I think that that is a real help.
In in being able to ward off.
Any of these temptations to lay hold of these delusions and deluding teachings and practices and so forth, to maintain and enjoy what you have today.
So I'm glad you brought that up because maybe there are some here that are thinking this is pretty exalted truth that's being brought out. This is not that easy to grasp. Maybe some of you are thinking that way. And I believe Paul recognizes here that as brother Dave has been bringing out, it starts with what we have in verse 5.
Joining.
Paul says, And beholding your order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ, and then as you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, I believe that simply refers to their salvation. They had received him as Savior. Have you received Christ as your Savior? Then you are entitled to move forward with all of this. But there are dangers in the way, and Paul warns them of those dangers.
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And so these things are not in one sense that difficult to grasp, but in some cases we need to remember that it starts with as Dave has been bringing out a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and a desire to follow him in fullness of heart. And that is so important because as we have often had mentioned to us.
Bears repeating, intelligence in the things of God does not come through the mind, but rather through the heart and the conscience. And here these dear Colossians believers, and I don't know whether we'll get time to get to the end of the chapter, but they were having difficulty holding the head. Or at least there was a potential difficulty, let's put it that way.
Not holding the head.
And what was it? It was that very thing that we've just been hearing about, that Gnosticism which would bring in a higher level of intelligence and so-called truth. It wasn't really truth, but a so-called exalted knowledge which originated with man and took the mind and the heart away from Christ. And so I believe that's why Paul brings that in here to show how important it was.
That they be assured and rooted and grounded. We get rooted. We get rooted by.
Enjoyment of the things of Christ and walking in the good of it. And that's why in Second Timothy chapter 3, Paul exhorts Timothy, or at least talks to him about those things which thou hast learned and has been assured of.
He learned things from the Old Testament Scriptures. He learned things from Paul, but he was assured of them in walking in the good of them and in walking in the good of them. That assurance will be ministered to our souls, and we can move forward in the things of God, and we can learn more.
I like that word rooted because that's a root system of a tree is not visible, it's down into the earth.
It's interesting it says build up which is the other direction up.
And that's what we generally look at, the part that's up above the earth. And living in Bolivia many years, I had the experience of different kinds of trees there. We had an avocado tree in our property in Montero, and one day we had a heavy wind and it toppled over. And I found out that cotton trees.
Their roots are totally superficial.
And so when the wind came, it just blew it over. We also had another tree, it's a mango tree, and it had a huge.
Root directly down into the ground and we had one heavy work to get that to fall over and so, and another illustration was the brethren in the jungles. They cut down stretches of jungle and then let it dry and burn it so that they can plant their rice crops.
Well, he said one time I was out there and they they showed me a great big tree. He said we don't topple those huge trees because they're just too much work, dude. We just leave them there. But what generally happens is because they have grown amongst so many other trees, their root system is not very well formed. And so when the wind comes, it topples them over so we don't have to do it ourselves. And that really struck me because.
And another part of Bolivia, on the high Alta Planos, there's very few trees.
And those trees get hit with the wind from one side and another. Those trees are tremendously well rooted. And I I think in saying the truth of God that we have sometimes, brethren, the Lord allows trials in our life. He allows those winds of controversy and things that are contrary to come to us so that we will be well rooted. And so put down your roots into the.
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Scripture.
Brethren, when you have something that troubles you, you might ask your brother to help you. That's fine, but get it from the Scriptures. That's so important because this is where you will be steady and firm. And then there's a place of being built up. And that is beautiful to see some who are well rooted and then also build out.
Along that line, Brother Bob, not to carry the illustrations too far, but.
I have enjoyed reading about the huge Redwood trees in California and how that despite their huge size and so on, their root systems. So they tell me I've never obviously delved into them, but their root systems are not that big. And yet they tell me that it's extremely rare for those trees to topple over. But they say the reason for that is that.
Not only are there root systems strong, but they're intertwined with one another. They're intertwined with other trees. And so if the wind comes along and one of those trees is in danger of toppling over, it's going to have to take half a dozen more trees with it before it'll go over. Well, that shows us, and I know that's not particularly what we have here, but it shows us how we need one another, doesn't it?
Now I know that the Lord can keep us, and if we have to stand alone. And I believe with all my heart what you've been bringing out, Brother Bob. The difficulties and problems of life, they make us put our roots down deeper, just as it happens to trees. But how much we need to intertwine our root systems with one another too, especially in these last days.
One thing when we read Scripture is we see that there's a remarkable parallelism in Scripture, and I think I've enjoyed that. There's the oldest book in the Bible is generally considered to be the book of Job. I think in Job we actually have an illustration of what we're reading about in Colossians chapter 2. I'll just explain that very briefly. I believe in the book of Job we have first of all, the the three enemies of the believer.
We have Satan, we have the world and his three friends and we have the flesh and and Job himself. Job appreciated the blessings of God, but he never really learned to know the blesser himself. That's the secret of our roots being deepened, isn't it is to learn the blesser himself and we all have we're are in danger of that. But I just want to mention I believe the three friends of Job illustrate these three worldviews that we.
Have discussed in this chapter so far is is the one who illustrates philosophy. He hardly even mentions the name of God. It's all from the mind of of Zofar. He was the 3rd of Job's three friends and the tradition, of course, is brought out by Bildad. Remember the first one who spoke was a life as and a life as speaks about his own experience and we were speaking about that before. There's a great emphasis on how I feel.
And my experience and I only have one life to live and it's got to be you got to.
Got to grab hold of it because it's we're only going to live so long. That's a worldview that's introduced any life has gave some of that. And he speaks about mysticism actually borders on the occult. We have to be careful about that because that's becoming more common. And then the second friend, of course, was build that and build that center. Wait a minute, your experience is only very limited. We go back to tradition. We get the the wisdom of the ages.
So he says that's really much better, that's tradition and that that that appeals to the emotions and we have that particularly in religion. And then the third again was that we mentioned Zofar, the third friend that spoke and he speaks from intuition or philosophy. He says, well, even traditions, not that good, but we can make a higher order of intellect of understanding and we can come up with natural philosophy and different philosophies, whether it's.
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Narcissism, or much broader than that.
And these are the three worldviews. So again, I mentioned it's remarkable, and there's other places in Scripture we can find this as well, but the parallelism of Scripture is remarkable, even going back to the very oldest book in the Bible.
So in verses 9 and 10 then we can say, if we want to be rooted and built up in the faith, here are two of the fundamental pillars. Or in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
Do I want to know about God? Do I want to understand the love of the Father? Do I want to see something where everything is right and according to God, I look to Him and to no other in Him?
In the Lord Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. This is Jesus Christ Incarnate.
He that hath seen me hast seen the Father.
And then he says, And ye are complete in him.
Do I feel incomplete? Is there something lacking? Is there some barrier between my soul and God? I come to the One in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, and I will only find completeness in Him.
And that's a good place to start. It's the only place to start.
That's it. It's all about relationship, isn't it? Yeah, that's what we're that's what we see when the two people fall in love. They they can't get enough of each other. They're they're just overwhelmed with each other and they want to learn more and more about each other. And that's what relationship does. And we live in a relationship world and the Lord Jesus, he wants a relationship with us. I think of first John there where it says in truly our fellowship was with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ. There's where.
We get straight, that's where we get rooted is in that relationship.
Like to talk about verse seven again here.
In verse seven, I just wanted to give a practical example of herself. I know we've been talking about this so and maybe this isn't the meaning of verse, but I want to give an application so rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith.
You know, when I started riding a bicycle, I started riding with the training wheels.
Spiritually, I might steal my training wheels on. There's an analogy there.
And you know, those trees like we've been talking about are holding each other up. They're taking the brunt. But sometimes there's going to be a test when I'm standing alone maybe, and those train wheels will be taken off. I want to tell you about some trees in the nursery, a procedure that we had to start doing.
So in our nursery there's.
Three different kinds of steaks we use on every tree.
We use a bamboo steak. That's a very heavy bamboo steak. It's not flexible, it's very rigid and you put that steak on the tree.
And this tree has that bamboo stake, say for four years. And if you cut the steak off the tree?
Sometimes the trees will fall over on their face.
So we used to take the stake off the tree when we're loading the trucks. We'd ship them out to the customers and they would send us pictures back that the trees were laying over.
So we stopped doing that.
There's another steak we use. It's about 1/4 of an inch wire steel steak and it's flexible.
What's crazy about that steak? I can't send the steak out the door because it's too expensive, but that steak lets the tree move back and forth.
What am I talking about this? I was raised in a Christian home.
Wind didn't blow very much on this tree, that saga.
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But the winds are going to hit you. Maybe you're 54, maybe you're 84, maybe you're 14. The winds hit you at different times. And what are you rooted in? Those roots? It's not just the roots coming up, but the tree just bends over. Some of the trees don't die. They're still rooted in the pot, but they're laying on the ground. And the wind strengthens the plants up. When you look at the plant, that is.
Moving in the wind, the caliper on all those trees is bigger diameter. They're stronger plants. So I just thought analogy here, I want to be helpful is to me it's huge. You only can protect somebody so much and there is protection. I remember what a young person said years ago to me. There is protection in the assembly. You want to be here, you want to be here when the meetings, you want the fellowship of other believers. But there's going to be a time.
When you're not going to have this room, you're not going to have all the young people, you're not going to have all of these, all this wonderful ministry, and you might be by yourself, but you're not by yourself if you have the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and if you're feeding on the right thing.