Colossians 10/24 (Abbie Sawczak).

So if you all have your Bibles with you, we're going to be continuing today in Colossians chapter two. I was supposed to get through like the first half of it last week, but honestly, there's just way too much happening in these few verses that it turned into a two-part message. So this is part two of Colossians chapter two.

We're going to start reading today in verse eight. And I'm reading the NASV translation, so it might be a little bit different if you have the NIV or something else. Let me read this for you.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

Colossians 2:8-12

Verse 13 says:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross and having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15

Paul has a lot that he's talking about here in these verses. But ultimately what he's telling us is that we were created in the image of God, and that through Christ's death and resurrection, we have the fullness of Christ and we can walk in that. Because of Jesus, he canceled the charge that was against us because of our sins. He nailed it to the cross. And one of the things that we see right away here is that nothing has any power and authority over us once we have Jesus and are following him. We were created for fullness.

Take captive your thoughts

The question then is: how do we live in that fullness? If you guys are taking notes today, I pulled out three main things from this scripture: we need to take captive our thoughts, we need to know the real thing, and we need to publicly display Jesus. That's essentially what Paul is walking us through.

We need to take captive our thoughts, we need to know the real thing, and we need to publicly display Jesus. The enemy has no real authority over us, and he knows that. He has no strength. He has no power. But what he does have is strategy. The enemy has incredible strategy on how to kill, steal, and destroy the lives that God has called us and created us to live.

We're reading about some of that in Paul. As we find ourselves back in these passages and remember the beginning of Colossians 2 where he says, I have earnestly struggled on your behalf. As a pastor, my heart aches like Paul does when I look around and see the state of where our Western church culture is today. I want to be clear that the global church right now is thriving. God is doing incredible things all around the world. Revival is taking place. More and more people are hearing about him and the good news.

However, when it comes to the Western church, specifically the church of the United States, there is a continued decline in people not only attending church, but people following Jesus. Just recently, statistics came out and said that before COVID, the average committed church attender would attend church twice a month. And that was considered like the highest of the high. Like you are a committed follower of Jesus if you attend church twice a month. Now coming out of COVID, it is only once a month.

The average committed church attender only goes once a month. I just spent this past week gathered with pastors all over the country that are doing church and leading in similar cities and contexts as Madison. This is a common theme that everyone's talking about. The isolation starts so small. We're not gonna go to church as often. And eventually it leads to this isolation where more and more people walk away from following Jesus.

Not attending church on a Sunday is not a sin. It's not inherently bad, but it is something that the enemy can easily get us to slip into, becoming part of our norm, of not being in community, of not putting ourselves in a place where we are hearing from the word of God and worshiping together. It's like any spiritual discipline. Most spiritual disciplines in our lives function as anchors. So if you're out and you're at sea and you put an anchor down, you might not feel it in the moment when you put it there. You actually might not feel it that much at all, but you're going to feel it when you start to drift and that anchor starts to pull you back in.

All spiritual disciplines are the same way. Like reading our Bible, like praying, like worshiping, like coming to church. So many things can be disciplines in that way where you might not have this great awakening every time you open your Bible and read it every single day. But if it's something that you do and it's a discipline in your life, then when you start to drift, that anchor pulls you back in.

Let me recap what Paul's talking about when he's saying don't be taken captive by this philosophy that's happening. The philosophy at the Colossian church was this eclectic mix of Gnosticism, Greek philosophy, local religions. They say in this commentary that there were mystery religions. Like there were so many different sects of these religions, Jewish mysticism. But ultimately this philosophy was so dangerous because it was not obviously sinful. I want you to take note of that today. It was dangerous because it was not obviously sinful.

Gnosticism is described as a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in first century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of traditional religious institutions. When it comes to philosophy, it's described as originally having a good meaning of love and wisdom, but Paul here has this vain speculation and he's referencing it with these false teachers. In the Old Testament we have Proverbs, which is the book of wisdom. So godly wisdom is something to seek after. Godly wisdom is good. However, the wisdom here that Paul is talking about is the wisdom of the world.

The things that we live, the beliefs that we have, they all start in our mind. They all start with these thoughts and with these lies. Jenny Allen, in her book Get Out of Your Head, says this line that I think is so true: the greatest attack that the enemy has and the greatest battle that's happening in our generation happens in between our ears. That's happening in between our ears. It's our thought life.

So much of the life we live is based on our thoughts. And the thing that happens with our thoughts is either we have two choices. We either take them captive or they take us captive. If you don't take your thoughts captive, your thoughts will take you captive. The average person has more than 30,000 thoughts per day. So many of them are negative. According to researchers, the vast majority of the illness and plague that plagues us today is a direct result of toxic thought life. Other studies have shown that our bodies can physically react to the stress and anxiety that starts in our head and in our thought life.

And you see the way that the enemy comes in and deceives us with the lies and with our thoughts. Some examples of deception that I want to talk about today is we start to just believe what culture tells us. And we hear things that are obviously sinful, and we start to adapt to that, and we start to live by that. Next thing you know, that's the rule of life, the anchor that's guiding us, that's keeping us there, and we get stuck.

One of the phrases I found interesting as I was preparing for this is the heart wants what the heart wants. How many of you have heard that before? The heart wants what the heart wants. Did you know the first time that this was recorded in writing and on paper was an interview of a celebrity who was married to a woman who had a daughter. That wife found pictures, inappropriate pictures of the daughter at her husband's house and found out that they had had intimate relationships and were having an affair. When confronted about it, he said, the heart wants what the heart wants. So this terrible response to a terrible thing that happened has then become in our culture something that we say just kind of flippantly.

We justify things that we do by the heart wants it. I'm following my heart. We hear that another one is just follow your heart. Follow those desires. Another thing that we hear all the time is live your authentic self. Like you be you. You do you. Live your authentic self. And what happens then is we've gone and we put authenticity at the highest level and the authority found in the word of God and the authority found from God is way over somewhere else. That we've completely lost track of. We've started to follow our desires in a way that as long as we're being true to ourselves and it's what the heart wants, then that's our moral code and that's our moral compass.

And in that, we no longer can salt the authority in our life, but instead we follow our authentic self and we find ourselves living as humans who are sinful and far from God and it's our sinful flesh and self that's leading the way. Because modern authenticity encourages us to create our own beliefs and our own morality with the only rule being at the end of the day if it's what my heart wants. If it's what makes me feel alive.

The thing is, all the wisdom and power and authority we read earlier in Colossians, it says that it's been given to us that we can walk in that fullness. And so we don't want more of our authentic self. I don't want more of Abbie in this world. I want more of Jesus. So in order to do that, we have to put to death our flesh and our desires in order to walk in the fullness. But it all starts with our thoughts. It all starts with the things that we start to believe and then we eventually become and we start to live.

Some of the questions to ask are, where are we getting that type of information in our lives? And is it rooted in scripture or is it full of empty deceit? In his book Live No Lies, John Mark Homer says something. The best lies are 95% true. The best lies are 95% true. Meaning this, someone might come up to you and they're going to say, once you get married and you find a spouse, it'll complete you.

Now, if you're married here today, you know that that's just not 100% true. You're not just instantly complete once you're married. However, a spouse can add value to your life. If there's someone that loves Jesus, then it can make your life valuable and it can add to your life. It can be a great investment to have that partnership here on earth. But it's not something that's going to complete you because only Jesus can do that.

But the best lies are 95% true because the enemy is not going to come into our lives and tell us something that's obviously fake news. That's obviously not true. Like today, as it's raining outside, I'm not going to look out and say, guys, if you go outside today, it's going to be sunny and warm. That's obviously not true and no one would believe that. But he works in a way that is deceptive, that is manipulative, that tries to get us any way that he can. He attacks our identity.

Another example of these lies that are 95% true might be: well, at one point, someone walked out on me in my life. So that means I'm unlovable and no one wants me. Now, there might be some truth to maybe someone in your life at one point walked out on you and left you. Maybe that person hurt you. And that is true. But where he gets you then is that last 5% of saying because of all these facts and things that happen, now your identity is someone that is unloved and unwanted and abandoned. And that is a lie from the enemy.

I don't know what your story is today or how that comes in, but I want you to think about in what ways have you been living in the lies that the enemy has been feeding you in the not obvious things instead of walking in the fullness. We have to be so cautious and so aware of our thoughts and our desires and how they lead us. We have to realize that the loudest voice isn't always the wisest and that the strongest desire in our life isn't always the deepest desire and what we really truly need to be complete and to be whole.

I love this in Galatians 5:13-17:

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh. Rather, serve one another humbly in love, for the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.

Galatians 5:13-17

Paul, once again in Galatians, is telling us, our flesh is constantly at war with the Spirit within us. It is constantly trying to lead us astray, and we have to be so aware that it's not obvious, but there is a danger to it. So we have to take captive those thoughts.

But what does it actually mean to be captive? Well, a basic definition. To be captive means an abductor doesn't come and say they're going to kidnap you. They rely on psychological manipulation and deceit or a combination of both. They lock their victims in cells and they throw away the key. I want to highlight a few things here for you. They rely on psychological manipulation, deceit, or a combination of both. Right now, that's basic when you think about it. Someone doesn't come up and say, hey, I'm about to kidnap you. No, they don't warn you. It's not obvious, but it happens. They rely on psychological manipulation and deceit, straight up lies. And the goal is to eventually lock you away and throw away the key.

How often does the enemy do this to us where he starts planting these thoughts in our mind and we start believing them and we all of a sudden are taken captive by this. But the reality is that we have that key and it's Jesus. So we have the power and the authority to overcome. But the enemy doesn't want us to know that either. He wants us to think that we are stuck in depression, that we're stuck in anxiety, that we're stuck, crippled by fear and that we have no power and no authority to overcome the loneliness and the abandonment and everything that we're processing.

But it goes on to say, for in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, verse 10, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and every authority. We were not meant to live captive but to live free and to use our freedom to then go be the hands and feet of Jesus.

Know the real thing

But in order for us to accept that and to walk in that, we have to know the real thing. A few weeks ago, I was at an event and I had to pay someone with a hundred dollar bill to which they put up before the light to make sure it was real. And I was kind of joking, like, you really have to check. Like, you think I'm trying to give you counterfeit money. And they started to share with me. They're like, well, yeah, I actually do this job. I had to watch a ton of YouTube videos and do some training on how to tell if it's counterfeit money. And I don't know if you know this or not, but one of the ways that people study and make sure they know when it's counterfeit is they study the real thing. They study real money. They hold it up to that light. They look at all the details of the real money so that when fake money is given to them, they instantly know it's fake and it's not the real thing.

Do we know Jesus in a type of way that when anything else, any thought comes into our mind, any false philosophy, false wisdom, false knowledge, patterns, customs that are of this world that are here to kill, steal, and destroy us, do we know Jesus in a way that we instantly know that that is fake, that is a lie, that is not from him? Because that's how he wants us to live, in a way that when we hear something, we don't believe it and we don't become it, but we overcome it because we know. Jesus, that's not you. Jesus, you wouldn't think that way. Jesus, you wouldn't live that way. Jesus, you wouldn't want me to feel that way or to treat someone that way.

Do we know the real thing? Because again, the thing about the philosophy and the Colossian church was that it was not obviously sinful. It was a mix of all of these things. So in some ways you have to picture like maybe they were referencing scripture, but were they referencing it in its wholeness or were they referencing just the bits and pieces that were going to let their heart do what their heart wanted to do?

Publicly display Jesus

Because finally, when we know Jesus and we're plugged into him, it's then time for us to shine that truth and to publicly display Jesus. Paul mentions two things here in the end of this passage. He mentions baptism and he mentions circumcision. Both are these outward symbols. In the Old Testament, if you were a male, you were circumcised. And essentially it was this outward symbol of that: I am ripping away this piece of my flesh to show that my flesh is fully yours and that I'm surrendering these earthly pleasures and earthly desires to be all in for you, Jesus.

Now in the New Testament, we see baptism. Jesus was baptized. Jesus stepped into the water and his body was fully submerged and he went under the water to signify his death to his flesh and he was raised back to life to signify his resurrection. So we too, when we say yes to Jesus, we receive his fullness. We receive the power and authority to go and be his hands and feet, to make disciples. And that's why when we publicly display our commitment to follow him through baptism, our bodies too go under the water to say, I'm leaving everything there. And when I come up, it's a symbol that I am walking in the fullness of that new life as a new creation. It's this idea of going from shame to honor.

Because let's be real here for a minute. Sometimes, especially in the state that we live in and in the city that we live in, there can be a level of shame that the enemy tries to trap us in when it comes to following Jesus. Maybe you've been hurt by people in the church or things that you've seen online. But I'm just gonna say you probably will at some point because the church is made up of a bunch of humans trying to be like Jesus and do what he did. But sometimes even for me as a pastor, I have moments where people are like, oh, what do you do? And I almost don't want to tell them and if I do tell them I'm a pastor, I want to be like but not like that type of pastor or that type of pastor. Like I'm a cool pastor, you know, like that's what I want to tell them. But it's hard sometimes.

But the idea of us publicly displaying Jesus to people. One, it gives us accountability to the body of Christ. To say like, shoot, you know, I follow Jesus. So if I'm not living like it, someone's going to call me out. And it also is just that practice of saying, no, I'm not going to be trapped in the enemy's lies, but I'm going to realize that I am a new creation. And because I carry all of the fullness of Jesus inside me, that means I can give other people light. I can give other people hope. I can give other people life and help them see their true identity in Christ and not be stuck, held captive by the lies.

Walking in fullness

You see, so many times we get stuck in these moments because it starts with the thoughts that we don't take captive. And those thoughts we let direct our life and guide our life rather than the word of God and the scripture of God. But it says in verse 9, Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He's the head over every power and authority. In him you are also circumcised with the circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by flesh was put off and having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

We weren't meant to live captive but meant to live free and to use our freedom to continue to build his kingdom here on earth.

The thing about that Colossian church is that it was not obviously sinful. That philosophy. It was a mix of so many things. And I wonder today how quickly that we get our lives mixed up with this eclectic mix in the same way. Culture, patterns, traditions, customs, beliefs, ways that we start to feel these desires and those desires become our moral compass and our moral code and they tell us how to live and who to become rather than being like Jesus and walking in that fullness.

Maybe you've been in a place like I often find myself where I'm feeling some of that emptiness and I feel like I have the same thoughts over and over again or the same offenses over and over again. Of why is it when this person said this one thing to me it made me feel some sort of way? What's happening and I feel myself just spiraling and going back to realizing that if we are to live in the fullness, we have to empty ourselves and get rid of all those lies in order to receive that, in order to heal that.

And so just kind of in conclusion, Paul is struggling for the Colossian church. In the same way that I feel some of that pain and those struggles. Even when I was with other pastors this past week and we're together at the altars just praying over our churches and praying over all of you and saying, God, like we want to see our cities come to know you and to continue to build your kingdom.

And what is that going to look like when the reality is that Satan is real? The reality is that he is after your sanity. So if you ever wonder, like, why do I feel crazy all the time? Well, he's after you. Like he comes to kill, steal and destroy. He's after your sanity. He wants to misguide you. He wants to mislead you. He wants you to forget everything that God called you to be and created you to be.

And the reality is that when we don't fight, that we lose. When we just sit still, he does take us captive through the manipulation, through the lies, through the deceit. So what we need to do is we need to get up and fight and we need to train our thoughts and realign them and our desires with Jesus. So that ultimately we can walk in the fullness and we can walk like we're overcome. Because we are through Jesus.

Practicing what we've learned

For us to live as a new creation, for us to live as free, for us to live as whole in who God created us to be, it's going to be a process of constantly being on guard and being aware that there is an enemy force that's trying to manipulate us. That's trying to plant these lies. So it's going to take us practicing to know Jesus, to know his voice so that when the lies come we know. We know when it's fake news. So in order to do that we need to learn how to take our thoughts captive.

What is one thought that we need to take captive? Because it is a process. And then how can we publicly display Jesus in that? When we sing the name of Jesus, like we did earlier, there is power in that. Things shift, things change, and we believe that. But it's gonna be a constant process of us saying, God, would you reveal to me the lie? Would you show me the truth through your word, through your community, through your spirit?

And that's how God often speaks to us. Through the written word of God, through his Holy Spirit that he left within us and through the body of Christ, the community. Would you close your eyes for just a few moments? We're going to invite the Holy Spirit to come in and to just show us what is one thought that we need to take captive. And maybe you already thought that the second I started talking when I'm talking about lies and I'm talking about getting stuck in these spirals. And you already knew, yeah, like, this is the lie that I have in my life and my identity. And maybe you don't and so we're just gonna take a minute and pause and in your own way would you just ask the Holy Spirit. Would you show me just one thought that I need to take captive? So Holy Spirit would you show us? We invite you to speak.

Now I want to invite you in that same way that you asked the Holy Spirit to reveal to you that one thought you need to take captive. That next you would pray and you would invite the Holy Spirit to show you the truth. To show you how he created you to live. Who he created you to be. And that might come through remembering a scripture or something that was said. It might come in just feeling something. Would you just take a moment?

Would you say, God, would you now show me? Show me the truth. God, show me who you created me to be. Holy Spirit, would you come and would you speak? We're now just going to take these next few minutes and we're going to sing this song again: Jesus, you change everything.

Because at the end of the day, the thing about the lies and in this philosophy of this world that comes in that maybe isn't obviously sinful is that it's always going to try to get us to think and believe and live in a way that says something else will complete us, something else will make us whole other than Jesus. And although there's a lot of good things that God has given us in this world, nothing is going to complete us. Nothing has the power to transform and to heal and to change like Jesus.

And so I want to encourage you that as we sing this out, that if there is healing that needs to take place in your life, would you pray and would you ask God to heal you? If it is of a fake, false identity that you've been living in as someone that maybe is rejected or abandoned or as someone that is not enough, would you ask the Holy Spirit to say, come, Jesus, heal me of this. If there have been ways that you have found that you're saying, man, I've been living more according to culture than I have according to the life of Jesus. And I'm finding myself being pulled away into that isolation and getting my information from other places that's not straight from the mouth of God. Would you just want maybe to have a spirit of repentance and say, Jesus, would you come? Would you transform my heart? And would you just set it on fire for you again? Would you change my desires from being for this world and for you again?

So Heavenly Father, I just pray right now that as we sing these words and we proclaim it, publicly display our love for you and say, Jesus, we need your healing. We need your freedom. We want these chains to fall. We don't want to be captive to the lies that the enemy is feeding us. We don't want to be captive to the customs and the patterns of this world. But we want your fullness. We want what you have already given us.

And so God, I just pray that as we sing and as we pray that the chains would fall and that we would walk in the freedom, we would walk in the wholeness, in the completeness of who you have called us to be, who you have created us to be. We ask this, God, in your holy, beautiful name. The only name that changes things and transforms. We ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Jesus, today we thank you that we don't have to look anywhere else to find healing, to find wholeness. Anywhere else to change us, to transform us, but you, Jesus. So God, I just pray over every single person that's in this room. God, would you help us to live as free? Free from the lies, free from the captivity, free to be who you have called us and created us to be. God, that we would not follow our desires or our flesh or try to just be more of our authentic self, but that we would seek to know you so that when the lies come, we know how to overcome because we know who we are in you, Jesus.

We know that we're whole and we're complete and we don't have to keep looking because everything we need is found in you. So God, we ask that you continue what you started in this room throughout our Mondays, our Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and every minute and moment in between. We love you, Lord. We thank you for the work you started. And in your precious name we pray. Amen.

As we kind of head out of here tonight, I just want to challenge you with a bit of a practice to kind of walk this out this week. Continue just what we did even today together, of having those moments when there's any lie or anything that you're feeling that's in your head, those thoughts, to say, God, would you reveal to me the lies that I'm living? And would you show me the truth through the word of God, through community, through his Holy Spirit?

Because I think that there's some of us that maybe we're looking for security and we're just going to keep working hard to get promotions and then we'll finally feel secure. But only Jesus is going to give us that security. I think for some of us, we're overcome with anxiety and we're thinking to get peace, I'll just take a few more bubble baths. But as much as we love those bubble baths, it's not going to be the peace that Jesus gives. And so I want to challenge you.

Let this be the beginning of what God continues to reveal of what it looks like for you to accept his fullness and to walk in it. So we love you guys and we will see you next week.